From Construction to Capital: A Tax-Smart Approach to Real Estate | Guest: Shannon Robnett - The School of Wealth

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and according to
Forbes, 93% of business owners pay more than legally required
to pay an income tax. And nearly 50% of all Americans
have bad credit, but not you, atleast not anymore.
See, this is the school of wealth where you learn how to

(00:21):
maximize your credit, minimize your taxes, and multiply your
assets so you can create generational wealth.
Hi, I'm Romney Lambert, certified FICO credit
professional, author, speaker and tax strategist.
For the last 20 years, I've helped 10s of thousands of
Americans just like you take control of their money, fix

(00:42):
their credit, wipe out their debt, cut their taxes by 50% and
multiply their assets. If you're ready to break free
from the rat race and start building a life of freedom and
abundance, then you're in the right place.
Welcome to the School of Wealth.Hey, Shannon, welcome to the

(01:03):
show. Hey, thanks Ronnie for having
me. How's your day going?
You know what? It's a fabulous day.
It's even better that you're here, right?
Yeah, you know what we we see each other often in person and
we do a lot of Zoom, but it's it's nice to actually do one of
these in person you. Know I did a podcast earlier
today and I always when I'm a guest on other people's shows, I
always just say it's good to be alive.

(01:24):
Yeah, you have health issues like I've had in the past.
Every day man, Every day I wake up and I literally start my
every single day with prayer thinking God for letting me live
one more day. That's right, that's right.
We do have a lot to be thankful for.
Yeah, it's a privilege to get old.
Yeah, a lot of people are like, I hate to get old, but I want to
get like 150 years old. I don't know man.

(01:47):
Think about if you could live, if you could feel the way you
feel now. Oh yeah, and live a. 150 I'm not
saying to be Joe Biden for another 70 years after Yeah, no,
I mean like a well, the good news, like a 70 year old life.
Yeah, yeah. You know, slow down a little
bit, enjoy the, you know, enjoy the roses.
But yeah, I don't think Joe's going to be with us long.

(02:11):
No, I don't think so. I was at my my my sister cousin
is what I call her. I know that sounds weird.
Like sister, wife. But I I know you well enough to
know that that's that's fairly normal.
My cousin Amy, she grew up, we grew up as brother and sister,
as in when my dad would beat up my mom and vice versa.

(02:34):
Her dad is actually my biological uncle, that's my
dad's brother. So they were both abusive.
So nine months out of the year, we'd not live with our dads
because they'd beat up our moms.And so then we'd live together
in housing and Section 8 and stuff.
So I call her my sister cousin because technically she's my

(02:54):
cousin, but really I grew up with her as my sister.
Anyway, I had I had AI went to her house for Sunday for a
barbecue and her 70 year old mother was there in a wheelchair
and her 72 year old husband is there all crippled and like.

(03:15):
Yeah, that's. 15 years away fromwhere I'm at now.
And you know, Ronnie, one of thethings that you and I have both
been looking at a lot in the last 18 months is we didn't
really think a lot about our health when we had lots of it.
And now that we're starting to get to the point going, I don't
want it to get any worse than this.
We're starting to pay a lot moreattention to it and, you know,

(03:40):
really look at, OK, OK, there's something to this longevity
thing. And how do I maybe stop the
aging process, hopefully reversesome of it, get to where this is
the worst we feel. And it's definitely not going to
be modern medicine that gets us there.
But I think, you know, there's alot of options out there in the

(04:01):
way that the culture, the way that the media is having being
forced to portray things now. I think you're going to start to
see a lot more that we didn't get to see before.
It's going to come out about ways that we can keep ourselves
feeling healthy, feeling good, enjoying life into our 90s.
You know, I was just in Italy a couple weeks ago with my parents

(04:24):
and I, I happen to see this statthat the average of people over
80 in Italy was in the 80 percentile of everybody, that
everybody that was born there, 80% of them make it into their
80s. And I'm thinking we don't have
that in the US. What are they doing different?

(04:44):
Well, there's a lot of things, but it's all very, very simple
stuff. I saw a report the other day
that that was the average life expectancy in America has not
gone up in like 22 years or. Something we spend, we spend
more than the next. I believe it's the next four
countries combined on healthcareand yet our our mortality rate

(05:06):
keeps increasing. And it's just, and I think part
of it, like we're on a group chat and I, I chatted in and
saying, I was going to start 75 hard.
And one of our members said, whywould you do that?
Why don't you put yourself through that?
And I was listening to Joe Roganpodcast the other day with Gary
Brecca and Gary Brecca said something like death is just the

(05:27):
slowly acceptance of or the solely slowly looking for
comfort. So basically saying if you want
death to come quicker, look for comfort in your life.
And you know, I, I never did a lot of weight training in my
younger years when I was a fireman and even after that
because I always had a real physical job and so I was always

(05:48):
carrying heavy things. So I was very strong.
But now at 53, I'm doing more and more weight training,
especially showing all of the life, how much it extends your
life. The more muscle you have, the
stronger your bones are. And one of the things that I'm
going to start doing is the farmcause Joe Rogan's talking about
all the time and that's farmer carry.

(06:11):
So I have some kettle bells in my gym.
I'm going to take them downstairs and put them outside
my front porch. That way when people come over
there like, why do you have kettle bells on your front
porch? And I'm going to start just
kettle carrying the kettle bellsto the end of the driveway or
back or to the end of the cul-de-sac.
And I want to start doing that farmer carry 'cause they're

(06:31):
saying like that is incredible workout.
Well, they say that the number one leading indicator of how
soon you will die is your mobility.
And if you think about it, once you become wheelchair bound, all
your exercise is limited. Once you can't get out of bed,
you're bedridden, everything changes.
And, and there are so many studies that show where the more

(06:54):
mobility you have and the longeryou have that mobility for
you're able to go to the coffee shop, you're able to go to the
grocery store, you're able to care for yourself, you know, and
you can be more physical even at7080 years old that you lose the
mobility. And they said that the number
one indicator of that mobility is leg strength.
Yeah, that's what I read. Another study said the three

(07:15):
things to to live the longest, most productive, enjoyable life
is healthy heart. So no alcohol, which I'm
starting to cut out completely, especially if I'm doing 75 hard.
Number 2 is lungs, so don't smoke, right?
And #3 is legs. Yep.
Just squats your butt, your quads, your hams.

(07:37):
Absolutely, completely agree with that.
Yeah, so I think I want to be. I want to live to 150 as long as
I feel good. Yeah, I don't want to be
decrepted in a diaper and all that nonsense, but.
Yeah, I think no sense being presidential.
Yeah, exactly. Well, thanks for being on.
I know that's, I like to start the podcast with just
conversations of big intro. You know, it's, I find it odd

(07:58):
that they they they lead into this big intro and it's like,
well, I just read the intro on YouTube, on Spotify.
So now that we've gotten that out of the way, Shannon, Shannon
Robnett from Boise, ID, let's get started with just like who
you are. Did you grow up in Boise?
You got you got kids, your siblings.
Yeah, I, you know, I, I moved here when I was 8.

(08:22):
My parents left California. I couldn't make my own
sandwiches, so I had to get in the car, you know, the old
station wagon facing backwards, you know, all the way up here.
And I grew up the son of a, a builder and a third generation
real estate broker. And growing up that was
miserable because if you weren'tgone from the house by 8:00 AM

(08:44):
at the latest on a Saturday, youbecame the indentured servant.
You were cleaning up job sites. You were doing all kinds of
different things that that weren't always fun.
And I, I decided, you know what,I'm not doing this.
I'm going to go to college, wentto college for a semester.
They wanted me to keep coming back.
They wanted me to learn things that were never.

(09:06):
I still haven't figured out where those would have applied.
And to top it off, my younger brother got right out of high
school and went to building houses.
And back in 94, he built three houses.
He made about $50,000 in 1994 right out of high school.
And I looked at everybody else in my class and they're in
college and I just went, this isstupid.

(09:28):
And so I began to build houses. I quickly learned I did not like
home owners. So I shifted my business to
commercial. I've done everything from city
halls to fire stations, you know, major medical stuff,
schools, gymnasium, city halls. And every time I got good at
what I did, I got fired because I'd finished the building, we're

(09:50):
under budget, everybody was happy.
And then I'm unemployed. So I had to keep going and
finding work. And I realized that the talent
that I had would better serve meand my investors than someone
else. And so I really shifted from a
for hire type of a position and began to do some deals, some
industrial stuff with a, with a doctor here in town and another

(10:11):
real estate agent. And I really kind of found
myself loving that part because I was building long term wealth.
And I did my I did a deal and, and we exited in 20, the
beginning of 22, we started it in in late 18 and I was doing
with the family office. We built 180 unit apartment

(10:32):
complex. We got all done.
The family office got a divorce,so there went my money supply,
you know, and so then I had to begin to find capital.
And I found that the easiest wayfor me to do that was to take
my, you know, my resume out to the market and let people know
who I was. And I began to syndicate

(10:54):
capital. We've done that since beginning
of 19 and actually, yeah, beginning of 19 and we raised
about 70, $4 million for different deals.
We've done, we've got stuff going in Florida, we've done
deals in Texas. We have some assets in Texas and
Washington and then a lot here in Idaho as well.
So I've got 3 beautiful children.

(11:17):
My between my wife and I, we have 7 and no grandkids yet.
I'm, I'm OK with that. Love to fly you and I have that
in common. We're both pilots and love to
find ways to make money and let other people pay for my stuff.
Yeah. And you don't make money, Deduct

(11:38):
it. Yeah.
You know, like taxes are a big thing in my life.
I talked about a lot. I learned at a very young age
that how much money you make is not as important as how much you
keep. Yeah.
And most people are just ingrained and taught and
brainwashed from childhood. Go to school, go good grades, go
to college, get a job and focus.They only focus on offense.

(12:00):
Yeah. Imagine if you're playing
football, only offense. That's it.
Yeah. And and we see games like that,
you know, 50 to 45, right. But it's.
So I was taught at a young age, like, focus on defense and learn
the rules, the playing field of money.
So make money, but keep as much as you can.

(12:21):
And you know, learn the rules. And if you know the rules, then
you keep more. I was telling you earlier,
before we went on in 2023, I hadto pay taxes and I had to pay
$356, right? So millions of dollars in
revenue, $356. And it wasn't because I had
millions of dollars of losses, it's because I was able to.

(12:43):
I understand the rules and I applied the rules.
Well, and, and the thing that I think a lot of people like you
and I have spent a lot of time learning, and I think that a lot
of people along that route of, you know, go to school, go get a
job, didn't really learn to do their own investigation.

(13:03):
And we're seeing that a lot right now with kids getting out
of college and they've got a liberal arts degree.
They, you know, and, and it's not paying what they think, but
they didn't do the research and didn't ask themselves the
question of what's this going topay when I'm done?
People don't ask that question of their accountants either.
They need to be looking at it. They need to be doing some self
study. There always has to be that own

(13:25):
your own element of what do you know about what you're doing,
because you need to know enough to be dangerous and then you
need to get a professional involved, right.
I remember sitting down with an accountant I used to have a
couple almost 20 years ago, and I would be throwing scenario
after scenario at her and we would structure things

(13:45):
backwards. And then finally I realized that
she didn't know what I knew. She knew how to fill out forms
and abide by the code. And then I, I realized that if I
wasn't coming up with these scenarios, we wouldn't be doing
that. And it's been decades since I've
paid a really big tax bill. And I, you know, last year I was

(14:05):
in the same boat as you in 23, you know, and I, it's because of
how I play the game. And it's not about, you know,
income versus non income. It's not like you have to have
losses. But you know, Rhonda, you know,
this, one of my favorite investments that I have is my
airplanes, right? My son and I just went out on

(14:28):
Sunday, went Backcountry flying,had a great time, dropped it
back off at the flight school that rents it out.
And I got, I think my, my incomelast month was 22 or $24,000 off
of my airplanes. And the flight school maintains
them, they insure them, they wash them, they fuel them, they
do everything with them. But when I bought them, I

(14:51):
depreciated them. And so I took these big losses
with loans attached to them thatallowed me to write off the, the
last plane I bought was a $400,000 airplane.
I wrote the whole thing off and actually wound up getting more
back from the IRS. Then I put into my down payment
and the flight school pays for it and I make money on that.

(15:12):
So now I look at that and I go, not only did I put $80,000 down,
so I've got $80,000 invested that's making me this money, but
I got $132,000 savings from the IRS immediately.
And then it produces. How do you calculate a revenue
that you get off of a negative money that you put in?

(15:32):
I put in 80. I got back 132.
I don't have any money in this deal.
Yeah, I got paid to get money monthly now. 100% right.
So I'm, I'm, I mean, I'm at an infinite return and have been
since day one. But people don't look at how
they can structure that, how they can do that in their life.
And it doesn't matter what it isyou like to do.

(15:52):
There's always a way to do it, you know.
Yeah. And it's it's if you, if you're
sitting there asking the question, how do I deduct this?
It's the wrong question it or orI'm sorry if you're asking your
accountant, can I, can I deduct this?
Can I deduct this? The answer is almost always
going to be no. That's the wrong question.

(16:13):
Right if if you're asking your accountant for sure.
Even with chat chat TBT if you go in there for example, I I
love camping right? And I didn't want to camp though
in a little camp trailer or in atent right?
So I went and bought $1,000,000 bus a luxury bus 45 point.
By the way, just just. I think it's called glamping.

(16:36):
Or you know, you know, it's a million dollars, 45 foot long
diesel pusher with four slides and the the whole thing this big
prevo bus. Instead of asking my CPA, can I
deduct this? Which they would have said no,
right? I asked myself, how can I deduct
it? Well, I started renting it.
I rented it every year that I had it at Burning Man.
Yep, for $35,000. Yep.

(16:59):
And I would tape off and everybody's like, it's going to
get ruined. No, you tape off all the vents,
you tape everything off, and then there's a big cleaning fee
on top of it. So and you.
Paid for the whole thing and it's.
Like Tom Willwright famously says, if you want to change your
tax, you have to change your facts.
The way you tell the story is everything I have.

(17:20):
Another buddy of mine loves to fish right.
I had him start a YouTube channel.
On fishing. On fishing and he's getting
views and he's getting stuff andhe's and he's advertising his
lures and he's talking about thestuff and he's like, really
that's all I have to do. And I said yes, that's what you
have to do because you are telling me and the world that I

(17:43):
want to become a professional Fisher person.
Well, you don't just wake up oneday and become a professional,
but all along the way you have the ability to write off your
trips, you have the ability to write off your boat and the use
of it, all of those things. But if you go to your accountant
like you said, and say what? What do I do here?
What can I do? That's always the wrong
question. And the other thing that a lot

(18:04):
of people do, Rhonda, and you see this all the time is they
asked the right question at the wrong time.
And sometimes to the wrong person.
Well, that's true, but if you'reasking your accountant what can
you do anytime after January, you're already smoked, right?
You need to be having that. I always tell everybody you need
to meet with your accountant in right, right now, May behind if

(18:26):
you meet with them in May, Well,but I mean, if, if you're
meeting them with in May about what you're going to do in 2025,
right? And you're going to have to sit
down, you go, man, this is what my year looks like so far.
This is what I think's going to happen.
They're done with the rush of taxes.
Their brain is open and you can kind of lay things out and then
you need to get back with them in November.
Make sure you're on track, make sure the things that you thought

(18:48):
to purchase were going to happen.
You know, we've got tax changes coming with the big beautiful
bill. We've got things that are going
to happen. Where are you going to get with
that that that's probably going to pass sometime in June.
So by July there'll be a lot of information out about it.
Getting in with your account in July and August and planning
your year. You know, we came to the end of
last year and I went out and bought $450,000 worth of heavy

(19:11):
equipment, you know, and that's easy to do now.
You know, $170,000 for an excavator just goes like that,
you know, skid steers now, 85,000 bucks.
But I went and bought that, financed it all.
Cat had a 0 down 0% interest, you know, took advantage of
that. I'm now making payments on it.
We're using it. But I was able to take all of

(19:34):
that depreciation into last year.
I was only able to get 40%. But of the 400,000, I got
$100,000 right off the top of myincome.
Well, I didn't need it, but I was still able to bank that.
So next time I need it, I got it.
You know, and if when the big beautiful bill gets approved,
you're gonna have 100% bonus depreciation.

(19:55):
On that back, yeah. So what you're gonna do?
If it was me, I would sell thoseheavy equipment to a newly
formed LLC. I've already got it planned,
Randy. I'm gonna upgrade them, you
know. Yeah, Yeah.
You know, you're gonna sell it and then get new ones or
whatever. Yeah.
And and you pay the recapture tax, but you know if there is
any recapture tax. Well, you're gonna yeah, you're

(20:15):
gonna pay recapture on 40% to reclaim at 100%.
So it'll, it'll win set, but butagain, if you go ask your
accountant, hey, I just bought this last year.
The big new beautiful bill went through.
What should I do? They're going to go, well, what
do you need for this year? They're not going to come up
with that kind of a strategy. And it's, it's it's unfortunate,
but it's back to people aren't asking.

(20:40):
Are these really the rules? And they think because they're
asking a professional, you know,it's not like you'd go to a
dentist to go. I'm going to get a second
opinion, but you really should, and you should be talking to
professionals that are actually doing it, people that are
actually taking advantage of it.I look at it this way, your CPA,
your accountant, your accountant's really the

(21:02):
bookkeeper. But if we'll we'll consider your
accountants also ACPA or an enrolled agent.
They're not necessarily tax professionals.
There's nothing that says CPA isa tax professional.
Some of them are, but most of them are not.
They're just entrepreneurs trying to get as many customers
as it can, do the least amount of work or the most amount of
profit. And your average CPA is the

(21:23):
referee at the football game. If you're losing the football
game, you got a minute left. You don't call a timeout, run
over to the referee. You talk to your coach.
But that's what most people do, is they think the CPA is going
to help them, and that's not their job.
Their job is to file the taxes and make sure you follow the
rules, right? Right.
And if you start thinking of that, and for the longest time,

(21:46):
Shannon, I used to think why whydon't don't business owners do
defense? And I've never, up until
recently, I could never figure it out.
And now with what I'm doing, sitting down with business
owners that owe, you know, $100,000 or more in taxes and
I'm sitting down with them, I think I figured out why business

(22:08):
owners don't actively play defense and learn the rules.
And I think it's because they'reoverworked.
They're, they're looking at it is I have so many different
hats. I got to be the CEO, I got to be
the salesperson. I got to do this.
And that's the first thing that they offset not realizing that

(22:30):
CPA is not necessarily their best friend.
Like your CPA with your with Anderson, you know, they're more
like strategists. I.
I consult with them, yeah, but Ihave, I have a separate CPA that
that knows. What files the tax?
But you know, the other thing isit's also one of the easiest
things for people to outsource because it you have to be quite

(22:53):
a company to have ACPA on staff.Yeah.
So most people get comfortable with the outsourcing and instead
of looking at it going, you know, I mean, let's just take
Amazon for a minute. I was just last week, I was in
Florida with a buddy of mine. He is one of the most profitable
Amazon DSPS that they have. And that's a designated service
provider. Amazon has literally outsourced

(23:16):
all the liability, but kept all of the write offs.
So Amazon does the service work on the vans.
They, they lease the vans themselves or they, they own the
van themselves and they lease them to you based on mileage
they have, you know, the fuel, the maintenance, the tires, all
of that they take. So when they're putting new

(23:38):
tires on, they're taking the, the immediate deduction on that,
not giving it to you. What you have is the headache of
the 170 employees you get, you get the liability, right.
Amazon takes all the benefit. And it's how you see them grow
so exponentially is because at the end of the year they have
millions of dollars in, in, you know, I mean, this particular

(24:03):
gentleman is running like 85 vans.
They, they've been giving him 20.
About 20% of his fleet has been upgraded in the last 12 months
to the Ribbian van. Now they're getting, you know,
green credits for that, but they're getting new vans.
They're constantly updating their fleet.
Well, all those are going into different leasing companies that

(24:23):
all flow upward because there's limits as to how much 179 you
can take, but I guarantee you they've got it routed.
So that all of that is going is depreciation and now you're
buying an $85,000 van and and writing the whole thing off
right now against real live after tax profits.
Yeah. And they're just wiping it out.

(24:44):
You know, and that's the difference between your average
small business owner and Amazon big businesses.
The structures that I do, for example, when I restructure
someone's business, every singleFortune 500 company does it this
way. Absolutely.
Every single one of them. Absolutely.
And when I share it with small business owners, their heads
explode. They're like, I don't understand

(25:05):
it. And so I've, I've come up with a
way now it's very simple to understand, right?
And they just don't realize whatthe Fortune 500 companies are
doing. Like Apple, for example.
Apple was paying 40 billion a year in corporate tax, including
what in California. So what they did is they sold
their IP, their intellectual property to a newly formed

(25:27):
company that's also called Apple, but it was incorporated
in Ireland where the corporate tax rate is 12%, right?
So then they sold their IP, theyhad to pay taxes on that capital
gains, big deal long term is a flat rate.
Now they're able to send 10s of billions of dollars out of
California, out of the United States to Ireland.

(25:49):
Yep. And they paid 12% versus leaving
it in America, paying 39 to 40%,right?
So, right, there's 70% savings, basically the same company,
Yeah. So and we can do it the same
way. We just set up a company in
Wyoming and we extract the moneyout of California.
And I did that for four years when I lived in Puerto Rico.

(26:09):
You know, I had, I had profits going to Puerto Rico.
I was claiming those as a PuertoRican resident.
It was beautiful. 0 tax bill down there on the federal side,
4% on the state side. And it was awesome, right.
But what I learned during that four years of exile, Yeah.
Well, because everybody, you know, look, Puerto Rico's
awesome, right? It's a great place to visit.
Living there is a whole different story that we can

(26:30):
spend hours going into. But, you know, the whole thought
is the thing that I, the things that I learned down there allow
me to do that without leaving where I want to be, right.
And so, yes, there are, there's basic things that you can do.
There's things that are slightlymore complicated.
You know, I mean, I had my parents, you know, they wanted
to buy a 500SL at the end of thelast year, right?

(26:53):
Well, it's under £6000. You can't depreciate it.
Well, yeah, you can. You just put it in a leasing
company, lease it back to yourself.
Well, that was simple enough. Then we just set up auto pay.
Payments are being made now they're making money in another
company and they have paid a lotless taxes.
And so there's ways to do that. You just have to think it
through, right? Yeah, two of my newest clients

(27:14):
are from Puerto Rico because thewives are done with living
there. Yeah.
They want to come back. And what I showed them last
month, I went to Texas and spokeat an event.
And after speaking, they came up.
They're like, we don't have to live in Puerto Rico anymore.
We can go back to Atlanta. I'm like, right, sure.
Yeah. They're like, we still don't
have to pay the income tax. Not at all.

(27:35):
Yeah, You know, if you just structure it right.
Yeah, and there's, and Puerto Rico's a great one to say if
that's what you want to do, right?
It's not terrible, right? But there's other ways to do it.
There are so many different waysto do it.
Again, like Tom Wheelwright says, if you just change your
facts, you could actually changeyour tax.
You already know the game is rigged.

(27:56):
What you might not know is there's a legal way to flip the
script. I'm also in a live three day
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and get registered today. You know you just spent.
How long were you in Italy? 10 days. 10 days.

(29:03):
Yeah, that was a write off. And can you do you mind sharing
that? No, not at all.
So my parents, they had, they sold their primary residence and
they had, they were allowed a $500,000 deduction.
They had another half a million.Bucks that they had, everybody
gets it. So is individual you get
250,000. If you're married, you get
500,000. I just want to clarify because

(29:24):
you said they got it, but everybody gets that.
And so they took that other halfa million.
We stuck it in a Family Foundation, not a Family
Foundation, a foundation becausea Family Foundation you can only
put away up to 30% of your income.
A foundation you can put up to 60% away.
It's a 5O1C3 registered that didall that stuff and everybody
goes Oh well now you got to run a nonprofit.

(29:45):
No you don't. You make donations to other
nonprofits. So I was with my parents and my
mom goes, you know, I just read the book Under the Tuscan Sun
and I'd love to do it Under the Tuscan Sun tour.
Well, me being the smart aleck that I am, I pull out, ChatGPT
and I go give me a 10 day itinerary complete with
reservations for restaurants andhotels.

(30:08):
There's my 10 day itinerary. I show it to my mom.
She looks at me and says, when are we going?
Well, then I was stuck, right? So then what do I do?
So what we did was I said, mom, I said, I need you to find a
nonprofit that aligns with whereyou and dad are AT and what you
want to do with your funds. And I said, I need you to tell
me where that is in Italy. So we found something.

(30:31):
We came back. We did a stateside comparison
because you have to make those donations to A5O1C3 in the
United States. We went, we saw it, we visited
it. So we were able to cover our
airfare. We were able to cover part of
our car, we were able to cover part of our meals, we were able
to cover part of our hotel. But the biggest thing was the
airfare there and back. So we were able to do that.

(30:52):
We came back, we make a donationto the five O 1C3.
The whole thing now becomes an expense as board members of that
all four plane tickets were a cost, half of the hotels and
half of the meals and all of that kind of stuff.
And so it's about understanding what you need to do.

(31:13):
You know another trick that I'lltell you what we did in we took
and we made all of the grandchildren board members and
in the bylaws you have to attendthe annual meeting.
So now my parents, at the expense of the foundation, are
having all seven of their grandchildren with their spouses
come to last year was Puerto Vallarta.

(31:36):
Who knows where it's going to bethis year.
And they're going to meet and they're going to spend 3 days,
four days planning where the donations are going to go.
The donations will be made. The foundation only requires you
to donate 5% of the value of thefoundation every single year.
And there's not really anything written about expenses.
They have to be reasonable. Well, if you've got the board

(31:56):
members traveling for the board retreat, no problem.
So that is what they're doing. And they'll have all their
grandchildren with them for fourdays somewhere cool.
And they'll, they'll decide whatto do here with the money.
And you know, so it's about understanding what you need to
do. Yeah, that's one of my favorite
is creating a private foundation.

(32:17):
And that's one of the only ways as AW2 to employee, you can
actually play the tax game because AW2, there's not much.
It's four O 1 KSHSAS Iras. Yeah, short term rental is one
that's amazing. Yeah, because then you can
qualify as a real estate professional, which you and I
are both real estate professionals, which means we

(32:38):
get to depreciate real estate that's appreciating in value,
but we can depreciate it againstour passive income.
As well as our active. As well as our active because
we're real estate professionals.But as AW two person you can't
claim it unless you do a short term rental.
The private foundation is one ofthe only other ways it's fairly

(33:00):
easy to set up. And this is the thing that I
think a lot of people miss out on.
Most people have benevolent anyway.
Yeah, yeah. I tied.
I just tied now through my foundation absolutely versus me
personal. But what it allows you to do is
it allows you to set aside when you have big windfalls, when you
have things that happen when like with my parents, my parents

(33:21):
had a half, $1,000,000 over and above their allowance for
deduction that they were going to pay 20% on.
Well, that would have been 100 grand.
So they put it inside the foundation.
They are very benevolent people.It's going to go that direction.
It's going to get taken care of.But it now this year they don't

(33:41):
have any real asset sale or anything like that happening.
Great. The foundation doesn't need any
money today, right? And so it allows you to do that.
And I think a lot of people get hung up in the fact that I've
got to have millions of dollars.In fact, when I set up mine, the
attorney that did it said, well,you know, don't you need a
couple $1,000,000 to do this with?
And I said no, I said I want to do it with a couple hundred a

(34:03):
year just to get it going. Because the The thing is, if you
put it off until you have those big events, you paid 1,000,000
bucks in taxes to get there. Yeah, You know, I, I set it up
for my clients with, you know, putting thirty $50,000 a year
because it's easy to set up, it's easy to maintain.

(34:25):
Setup costs are a write off, yeah.
So now the cost to set it up is 1/3 or two 2/3 of what it was
going to be. And then it becomes something
that that you can leave a legacyand you can make a lot of really
great decisions with it. But you can do it in your time,
not the tax year. Yeah, one of my favorite things

(34:47):
is, you know, obviously tax reduction, flying my airplane,
scuba diving and all of that stuff.
And then I do the same thing. I have annual meetings required
that everyone's has to go. So my children and my grandson
are directors. One of my companies of a company
I control because I don't own anything anymore.
So I can control, I'm the director and we go somewhere

(35:11):
either one year we went to to Costa Rica, another year we went
to Dominican Republic. I think this year we're going to
go to Hawaii. I was there two months ago for
the nonprofit that you and I areboth part of.
And you know what's interesting,I've been to Hawaii many, many
times and I never had a good time ever.
And this time I went, I had an incredible time.

(35:33):
People were nice and I was like,what changed?
Was it COVID? And then I realized that when I
was sitting at Starbucks, I was literally thinking, like, what
has changed from the last five times I've been here?
I was like, oh, it was the person that I used to go with to
why it's changed. That's what's changed.

(35:53):
Yeah. Well, so I can't wait to go
back. If you change your facts, yeah.
So I can't wait to go back. But another thing I like and
that's really helped me really become rich, and I think it's
one of the fastest ways to become rich and wealthy and
become financially free is you got to play offense, you got to

(36:17):
play defense. And what a lot of people miss is
the credit part of it. You know, really having good
solid personal credit, then establishing business credit if
you have a business and then leveraging, you know, Kiyosaki
talks about all the time other people's money and they miss out
on what that actually means. It's not just going to the bank

(36:39):
and getting a loan, right? So I know you've maximized
credit. What are some of the things that
that you've used credit for and how's that helped you with your
business and your journey as an entrepreneur?
Yeah. I mean, you know, everything we
do has an element of credit to it.
But the one spin I will add, especially in the digital age

(37:00):
that we live in is your personalcredit can be your personal
brand. You know, it's amazing how often
what we're currently doing in our lives can lead to business
ventures. You know, we were talking
earlier in, in the podcast aboutour health journey, right?

(37:21):
I'm, I'm getting ready to step into the syndication world in a,
in an, in a peptide in a, in a TRT clinic that we're going to
roll out nationally. And I'm taking my personal
journey and using that as my credit, along with my
syndication journey as my creditto leverage other people to join

(37:46):
me in this journey to not only get healthier, but to make money
doing it right. And it's not that we're, we're,
we're not starting an MLM. You know, we're not, we're not
Hawking vitamins, right? But at the same time, don't
overlook your personal brand andhow you're looking at the angle
of the world that you're seeing,right?
But when you bring it back to business credit, you know, we

(38:10):
have, you know, I've opened a Regis center in one of my
buildings this last year. So I used business credit.
I went to my local bank and I said, hey, you know, let's do
this business credit and they go, well, you're starting a
business that doesn't have any credit.
And I said, OK, let's put it in a leasing company underneath my

(38:31):
construction company that has credit and then let's let's
create it that way. So we did that.
So now I buy $150,000 worth of cubicles and desks and all that
kind of stuff. And now that new business has
business credit and my construction company has
business credit. And so by doing that, now I've
got multiple places that I can pull from.

(38:52):
I can go get business credit cards.
I've got, I've got every platinum card out there, right?
And I alternate between them. I use those, but I'm building
that out with something I already know is going to cash
flow. And then I'm able to go, hey,
let's do short term, let's do some long term, let's do some
installment. And we're able to maximize that

(39:16):
to where now it starts out that it's tied to this other company,
Phoenix that has five years, eight years, 10 years, what, 8
years of of history. Now it's tied to this new
company because I combined the two and now they, they're
symbiotic that way. You know, I took another tip
from you. My kids all have phenomenal

(39:38):
credit because I put them on my credit cards.
Now, I didn't give them, in fact, they didn't know they had
it, but they were asking, you know, why do I have, you know, I
just got out of my, my youngest just got out of college and he's
got a 780 credit score, right? It's like, how can I have that?
And I said, well, you know, you've got 12 years of credit
with $100,000 available at any one time.

(40:01):
This is how you do it, right? And so you're by leveraging that
and understanding that it doesn't mean I use it.
It doesn't mean. I am constantly maxed out on my
credit cards, you know, but it means that we do not pay cash
for anything. Even if I go to the go to the

(40:21):
the cat store and I need, we're buying a, a plate compactor,
right? Doesn't matter.
We don't use their credit. We put it on the card, we pay it
off if they've got terms that welike.
You're in sale. All of that went into build the
business credit because I wouldn't put it in my name.
You guys want to make the sale, you figure out how to get me

(40:42):
qualified, right? And so you're pushing that
around. But as you're building that out,
there's times when your credit may not be great.
You may have, you know, all the wrong things happen in a year,
but you've got business credit that it doesn't affect.
That's always the way to do it. Yeah, the other day I paid for
parking and it just irritated mebecause I hate paying cash for

(41:06):
anything, right? I hate it.
Yeah, just because I, I don't want to try to.
I obviously you can deduct it, you know, but I'd rather have a
credit card receipt. And so I'm downtown.
It was for the nonprofit UNR part of and paying for parking.
I've got in this habit where I don't carry credit cards anymore
because of Apple Pay. I have everything on my watch or

(41:26):
on my phone. So I got in this parking garage,
went to pay. There's I can't, there's no way
to pay. So I had to put $20 bill.
In, well, I. Hated it.
I still got the receipt but it was like.
Yeah, but remember when, when weall went to Mexico, Oh yeah, we,
we showed up down there, there'sseven guys.
We don't have 650 bucks cash between us.

(41:46):
We got every kind of card you want.
We probably had in the room. We probably had $600,000 in
credit available in credit cardsand couldn't buy dinner.
I know it. Was like, oh man, what were we
thinking? That that's the I carry cash in
my travel bag yeah. So I always have like 1000 to
$2000 in cash and it saved my butt so many you.
Didn't that time you only had 450?

(42:07):
Because I got it all from. You.
Yeah, I. Cleaned you out.
But but, you know, it's funny because we get into those those
cycles and you know. I'd spent it the week before
with Amanda when we went. Well, you.
You were. You were.
Already there. Yeah, yeah, like we, I think the
the dolphins was like 600 bucks and that's not tax deductible.
So I pay cash because a lot of times I found they don't want to

(42:32):
pay especially overseas or internationally, they don't want
to pay the ten 1015% processing fees.
So if you pay them cash just hey, can I get a 20% discount?
They'll do it in a heartbeat. You know, if it's not tax
deductible, then I'll pay cash. But that's about it.
Like, you know, I think, I guessthe neighbor kids when I was

(42:53):
there, they they watched the farm.
So I paid them in cash but. But I tell you what, even the
Girl Scouts have gotten smart enough.
They don't take cash anymore. They're they're all about the
card. Baby, yeah, you know speaking,
you see that the IRS is no longer going to accept checks as
of September 30th of this year. Really you can only do direct
deposit or EFT. That's it.

(43:16):
So even the IRS, and it's because DOGE found that would
save Americans almost $650 million if they could get rid of
all the paper accounting. So Doge put that through, I
guess Trump did an executive order that no more checks out as
of September 30th. That's going to be interesting.
Yeah. So one of the things that I like

(43:38):
doing with my credit cards, how often do you get those 0%
interest offers? You know, I don't know that I
pay attention. I'm sure I've got them
available. If you want to start getting it,
I, I bought a lot of real estatedoing this and that's the, it's
the American Airlines city executive card.
So it's the black card? Well.
I have that because you recommended I get it and I went

(43:59):
out and got it. So they will if once if you if
you pay that off and then don't use it for a month, the
following month they will send you your statement.
You you have to do paper statements otherwise this
doesn't happen. They will send you an extra page
and that extra page has three checks on it.
Would you do a balanced transferat 0% interest for 18 months for

(44:22):
three points? So I have a $50,000 card and
every 18 months or so I will paythat 3%.
So I'm pulling $50,000 off the card at 0%.
So it's cost me $1500 and now I can use that to go buy a Section
8 rental. And then I got 18 months to
stabilize it and then I can refinance it with their

(44:46):
traditional. Loan, so you're paying, you're
paying two 2% annually. If you really look at it, you're
paying 33 points for 18 months. So you you're paying 0% and and
you're getting that loan. But I also get 2% cash back on
that card, 2% points and and I get American Airlines points,
right? So really it's not cost me

(45:06):
anything, right? Because like when we went down
to Cabo, that whole trip was allpoints, the airfare, the hotel.
So I really like using credit. And that's another thing that
that I do every 18 months or so.We've got a, we've got a
business card that we use, accumulate the points on that

(45:28):
every 18 months or so. I go buy myself a nice watch
with the. Points, yeah.
Yeah, just the way it works, right?
You get a, you get a check back and you go out and you get
something nice for yourself. Yeah.
Just a few get. Just a shareholder's perk.
You know, if you get a dependingon what kind of watch you buy,
you know, like this one is worth3 times what I paid for it.

(45:50):
Yeah, You know, it's 1 of 200 and they've never made it ever
again. They never will, allegedly.
And I, I think a lot of times that, you know, when they say
those, when they say that, like this is it.
We're not making it. They don't make it just like my,
my Ferrari over there. They made 599 of them, right.
And that is it. And they've never made it sense.

(46:10):
So it goes up in value every day.
You know, I don't drive it. You know, I drive the wheels off
of it, but I drive it enough to maintain the maintenance and
stuff on it. And you know, it's just all part
of the game. If you can play the game, you
know that silly saying. It's like, don't hate the
player, hate the game, whatever it is.
But well, and it, but it's true,right?
It's it's if you, if you just look at the surface and say,

(46:33):
this is what they said, then youdeserve, I believe you deserve
what happens to you next. It's when you ask the question
of what are my other options? And I think that's, that's
what's gotten gotten me into every dollar I've ever made
because I could have just got out of school and said, well,
you know, I'm going to go to college.
I'm going to stick with this. I'm I'm going to go to work for

(46:55):
somebody else. I'm going to let them tell me
when to show up, when to go home, when my vacation is, how
much I'm going to get paid. But every single time I had the
opportunity, I asked the question, what's my other
option? And Rhonda, you and I both know
it hasn't been home runs every single day.
We have had some knocks, we havehad some bruises.
We have had to pick ourselves back up by our bootstraps.

(47:16):
That part's not fun, but at the end of the day, when you can
have complete autonomy because you're constantly asking
questions and asking is that really how this has to happen?
And I think that, you know, for those that asked that question,
they're going to find some fantastically different results.
They're going to find things that are going to be way better

(47:40):
than what is fed to you. They're things are going to be
much easier in the long run because you have options, you
have choices. You know, I recently got a
Facebook message was forwarded to me from a kid I went to
school with still running a delivery job.

(48:02):
Never asked the question, alwaysworked for a guy.
Was there a long time company closed.
He's out of work guys. 53 years old man, and he is, he has no
options between here and retirement.
And it's, it's sad, but if you're asking the questions,
there's always another way to doit.
Are you willing to put the energy in?
And I guarantee you, you will find yourself in a completely

(48:26):
different stratosphere at the end of of several years of doing
this if you're just asking the questions.
Remember that first Zoom meetingwhen you on our nonprofit?
So we're in a forum. There's there was seven of us,
now there's six of us. Remember what Doug said about

(48:46):
me? So everybody who basically has
the same. Personality.
You're the only one that has a slight chance of being
employable. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And up until really until about
2019, because in 2019, I hired 50 people.
I did staff over 50 people. Up until then, I pushed this
narrative of entrepreneurship, business owner, business owner,

(49:10):
business owner. And what I realized after having
50 people in the office everydayis not everybody's cut out to be
a business owner for one, and #2not everyone should be doing it
#3 not everybody wants to do it.Some people just want a good,
safe, fun, secure, upward bound business.

(49:30):
Yeah, well, or or upward bound investment, right.
I have a couple of my investors,very successful doctors.
They love what they do. They don't ever want to not be a
doctor, but they they want to get to where the doctor part is
an option faster, right. And so I've helped them through

(49:52):
different strategies that have allowed them to make investments
instead of paying taxes, right. I don't have to perform near
that. Great.
If I'm saving you 25% on your taxes and instead of investing
only 100 grand, you're able to put in 100 and quarter 135.

(50:15):
We can get there with 7%. We can make it act like a 15%
return if you're compounding that over four 5-10 years,
right? And there's just a lot of things
like that where it's, it's, it'sunderstanding that and these
guys, they, they love what they do.
They keep doing what they do right?
And yet, you know the entrepreneur.
And this is the other thing thatI've learned this last seven

(50:36):
months because I've I've hired the same coach you have.
And thank you for the recommendation, by the way.
But one of the things that he has helped me understand is just
because you're the business owner doesn't mean you have to
be involved in all the decisions.
It doesn't mean you have to be able to to action on all the

(51:00):
things. My father can do everything that
was ever required in him building a building, he could
plummet, he could wire it, he could frame it, he could lay the
block on it. He could do anything.
And often he did. But that allowed him to build
one or two buildings a year. I currently have about $14

(51:21):
million currently under construction.
We're getting ready to start another $40 million project.
We have another $60 million project by the end of the year
if things go well. There's no way I could be all
things to all people, but what I've realized through the
coaching is that I need to be the visionary and I need to find
the people that love to be the in the weeds people, to be the.

(51:46):
I have a guy I moved out of one role into another role that is
absolutely having a blast in thefield.
He's very social. He's got 60 subcontractors that
want to talk to him every day. And so in that whole thought
process of I need to be an entrepreneur to do the things
that Randy and Shannon are talking about, you don't.
You can still do what you love, but you need to work with the

(52:09):
people that love to do the things that you don't know and
don't want to do and not feel guilty about it.
And I think the guilt was the part that hung me up that I've
really had a lot of breakthroughin, in just my personal thought
process about I don't know how to do that.
I don't want to know how to do that.
I'm OK not knowing how to do that, as long as I'm getting the

(52:30):
result that I want and I've built the team efficiently
enough that it it. It happens without me.
Like I said, I was gone all lastweek.
A week and a half before that, Iwas in Italy.
My company's never done better. Yeah, You know, Mike really
helped me that with that as well.
His name was Mike Taylor. If anybody listen to this or
watching this once it recommended or introduction to

(52:52):
Mike, just send me Adm reach outand I'll send you Mike's
information. But he really helped me a lot
with it. You know, prior to my heart
attack, I was working 6570 hoursa week.
Yeah. And that's not exaggeration, No.
And I was involved in everything.
Yeah. Now I work 2 1/2 hours a week

(53:13):
for my credit repair and debt settlement business.
Right, That's it, right. I do a one hour.
Oh, I know. When I came over here, dude,
you're sitting out on the patio with the dog.
I'm like, dude, I mean, I put ina full, I put in a full 4 1/2
hours, 5 hours today and you didn't even do that.
Yeah, you know, I, I every Monday I meet with my entire
staff and I let them tell me what they did last week, what

(53:36):
they, they just told me what they did for fun, right?
And then I'll give them a little, little bit of education
coaching. And then after that I do a 1 1/2
hour meeting with my leadership team.
That's it for those two businesses.
I'm done. And Mike helped me with that.
And the other thing that I started implementing after

(53:56):
hiring Mike was when the staff comes to me with a question, I
respond with what's the three solutions?
Yeah, yeah. And now what I'm finding is I
don't get questions anymore. And now it took a year for staff
to figure it out, right? But I literally, I told them if
it costs less than 100 bucks, I don't want to know anything,

(54:20):
right? And if it's a customer wants a
refund, you don't need to ask me, right?
Or if whatever it is, Yep. And then even if it's over 1000
or $100, I want to know what thesolution is, right?
And now they're starting to build this confidence and they
have permission just to do it. I don't know how.
I don't know how any of it worksanymore.

(54:40):
Right. And that was the thing.
That was the number one take away I got from Dan's book.
You know, buy back your time. Oh, yeah, it's the 131.
What's the one problem? Because we start and, well, you
know, Susie's not happy and then, you know, this and that.
What's I just wanted a time. What are your three solutions
and what's the one thing you do?The only thing that I've added

(55:02):
to that is put the last sentencein there.
If you don't respond in 48 hours, I'm going to make this
decision. And it scared my staff because
they're like, are you serious about that?
Are you really serious about that?
That if I don't hear from you and I go, look man, you have a
get out of jail free card. If I don't respond and you make

(55:23):
a decision, you kept the companymoving.
But if we had to wait for me forevery A, OK, that's ridiculous.
I do that. I have people reach out to me
like I had some over the weekendreach out to me.
I knew him from a mastermind that I paid 100 grand a year to
go to. And he's like, hey, I I got some
financial problems, I need you to help me with my credit.

(55:44):
I said great, here's the phone number for the office.
He goes, no, I want, I want to work with you.
I'm like, no, you do not. Yeah.
The last person in the company outside of the tax strategy,
Right. If it's a credit or debt
settlement, you don't want me involved in it?
No, because it's gonna get so slowed down.
Yep. That it's just not a good idea.
So I used to, prior to having all these staff, I used to have

(56:07):
this entrepreneur mindset that everybody should start a
business, everybody should be anentrepreneur.
And then when Doug said I was the only one in the group, that
was the only one that was employable.
Yeah, I think he did use the word remotely.
He did. He said I remotely employable.
You know, look, I was a fireman.Yeah, yeah, I excelled at that.

(56:28):
I was a garbage man. I excelled at.
That I've never, I've never had a job in my adult life.
Never. Never.
No, no, my brother actually has never had AW 2.
Yeah, I think Brady, I think Brady said.
He's never had a job, even as a teenager.
Yeah, my brother was the same way.
Yeah, he always was was working,doing something that was
entrepreneurial and has never had AW 2.

(56:50):
And so for the longest time, I could not comprehend that
mentality because I know the benefits of it.
I also know the struggles of it.And now what I realize is some
people aren't meant for that. And if after having a heart
attack is really when this sunk in was if I had to, I could go

(57:10):
work for somebody. And I think that if you don't
want to be an entrepreneur, you go into sales and you become an
entrepreneur and you work on yourself and become the best
version of yourself. I mean, you know, one of our
former forum mates had that and it played out very, very well
for him because he was the entrepreneur to that multi multi

(57:31):
$1,000,000 business that he was the idea guy and had somebody on
top that was an execution specialist that just absolutely
rocked it. And at the end of the day, he
was able to do way more than he ever thought possible by being
that entrepreneur. Patrick Bet David talks about it

(57:52):
a lot in in what he does, that there's no need to necessarily
be the guy on top, but there's away to support the guy on top
and carve out your own niche andbe your own thing.
And again, if you're playing with the right game, you can
shorten the need to do even thatwith how you play the game and

(58:13):
how you pay your taxes. Yeah, cuz when I really start
doing a lot of thinking and I'm not going to call it soul
searching, but but after the heart attack because the doctor
said you can't go back to work. Right.
I remember, I remember that was driving you nuts.
Yeah. And so I just decided, well, I'm
just going to cut my, what was causing the stress, the credit

(58:34):
repair and debt settlement business down to two hours a
week and not deal with any of the clients and that eliminate
all my stress. So now I can do what I really
like doing the tax strategies inreal estate.
And what I realized because I was considering like maybe I got
to go to work for somebody. And if that's the case, I'll be
an entrepreneur and I'll do sales.

(58:55):
And I have a friend that his sales people are making a
million a year, a lot of them a million a year.
And if you can, if you don't want to be an entrepreneur,
become an entrepreneur and then start investing in real estate.
And just like you're talking with the doctor.
So that way, the job, the W2, you'd do it because you like to.

(59:19):
It's like when I was a fireman, I did it because I like to.
And I only left because they, they were, they created a policy
that firefighters couldn't have businesses anymore.
And if they found out you were doing anything at work on the
fire department with your business, they would fire you.
And how do you run a construction company with 26
crews and don't answer your phone for 48 hours At the time,

(59:42):
At the time, I was young so I was like, well, I guess I'm not
going to be a fireman anymore, right?
Because it was I didn't need it for income.
I did it because I, I love doingit.
But it was because I worked on myself and I this weekend when I
was at my sister's house, her brother was there and he's five
years younger than me. And he brought up some, brought

(01:00:06):
up some memories and reminded meof things that my stepdad had
done to me, my siblings, and then him as well.
Because. His mom and dad dropped him off
for the summer thinking it wouldfix their problems with their
teenage boy, with the psychopaththat spent time in the prison
for murdering someone. They thought, Oh yeah, this
would be a great place to drop your kid off.

(01:00:27):
But he had told me some stories that I completely forgot.
And he was telling me like his brain, he remembers all the
trauma where my brain is. I don't remember a lot of
trauma. It just, that's just how it
works. And what he said to me, though,
that was interesting, not the trauma part because, and I've
dealt with all that, but he said, you know what was
interesting when we were kids because it was a shack.

(01:00:48):
I don't know if I've ever showedyou a picture of that shack, but
behind it was a barn. And I had built this little
clubhouse, if you will. And he said I had, he goes, I
snuck up there one time because I, I saw you go up there because
I didn't tell my siblings about it and I didn't tell my parents
about it because I knew what would happen.
They would take it away from me.And he said you had it full of

(01:01:10):
books. And we, I, we were trying to
figure out where you were because you would disappear in
the day. And so I would go up there in
this loft. And in the summer, it'd be
extremely hot. It was like a sauna.
But I, it was my little special safe place back when safe places
actually meant something. And I would read and I just

(01:01:31):
completely forgot about it untilhe brought it up this weekend.
I'm like, Oh, yeah, I used to like, get all these books at the
library because, you know, we didn't have any money.
And I would hide them from my stepdad because he would take
them away. And reading, I've always been a
big reader. And I have a rule now where I
read 10 pages every single day. And I do that probably 90% of

(01:01:56):
the time. But if you read 10 pages a day,
the average book is less than 300 pages.
That's one book a month. That's 12 books a year.
And it starts stacking. The average person reads less
than one book after high school or college.
Personal development. Yeah.
So I'm, what I'm getting at is what's a few?

(01:02:20):
Because I hate that when see people are like, what's the most
important thing or what's your favorite?
What's a a list of books that you'd recommend to somebody?
Well, I, I mean, I think one of the things that you know, and I
think this list changes all the time as, as my journey
continues, but you know, with, with working with M1 of the, the

(01:02:41):
books that has been the most impactful this year is buy back
your time. Because what I'm really looking
at is, you know, what do I do well that I enjoy?
That's all I want to focus on, right?
Well, that means that there are things that I do well that I
don't enjoy that I've got to find somebody else for.
So I've got to be involved enough to get that outsourced to

(01:03:03):
the right person, make sure it'shandled right.
But what that does is that's bought back more time for me.
And I start my morning at about 5:30, sauna, cold plunge just
like you, And then I get to spend an hour and a half
reading. That's how I start my day
because I know the value of that, right?

(01:03:25):
It starts with the Bible. Then I go to some other reading
that I want that about improvement, but buy Back your
Time has really set me up on that journey.
So you kind of, you know, you look at it and go, what is it
that I want out of this season of my life?
The one that meant the most to me last year was Chris Voss's

(01:03:45):
book Never Split the Difference.And, you know, I've had lunch
with that guy. He is.
He is so funny because he's really kind of dry.
But I think if I'm going to be ahostage negotiator, my sense of
humor is going to kill people. You know, I mean, it's not going
to help anybody get out of the situation, right?
But looking at those kinds of things, I think that anything

(01:04:07):
that helps you understand who you are and what you want is
fantastic. You know, the one thing was
another great book. You know, there are a lot there.
And the other thing that I've also realized this year is I
have to read for enjoyment. I, I love working on myself.
I love getting better at what I do, but I have to read just for

(01:04:30):
enjoyment. You know, when we went to
Mexico, I picked up a paperback in the in the airport, read it
on the way down, was done with it by the time I got back just
for fun, because you can't always be be diving down that
rabbit hole. Obviously, if you're going to be
dealing with investment, rich dad, poor Dad is a fantastic
book. It's kind of a a no brainer, but

(01:04:52):
there's just, you know, there's so many that fit at different
times as far as what you're doing and, and how you're
getting there. But I would I would definitely
recommend starting with something like buy back your
time so you can free up more time to then grow yourself
personally. Yeah, that's all of those books

(01:05:12):
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(01:05:55):
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My son had a my son in my son's in my relationship is a lot like
your son in your relationship. There was a time where I didn't
exist. You want nothing to do with me.
And now, now that he's 30, right?

(01:06:18):
And he'll be 31 in August, it's different how wise I became.
Yeah. And so.
Stupido A so stupido no more. Yeah, he had an interview on
India. I just you remind me he had an
interview with Chris Voss to go work for Chris doing sales.
Yeah. So I forgot to ask him how his
interview went. Yeah, so.

(01:06:39):
Well, it's not the interview yougot to worry about.
It's salary negotiation. That's going to be the tough
one. You.
Know well, I told him, I said, look, if you have the
opportunity to work for Chris because he's just getting he, he
did sales for me and he's he's been doing sales.
I said if you have the opportunity to work for Chris's
team and he's going to train youon sales and negotiation, it
doesn't matter what the salary is.
No, you just go work for Chris. It doesn't.

(01:07:01):
It doesn't. That is worth.
That's yeah, an infinite amount of return.
Absolutely. It just whether it was going to
fit. He's got a little bit of
Asperger's, so it just whether it fits with his his
personality. Yeah.
But I have a lot of books that I'm reading that I've read and I
have a whole list. So if you're watching or
listening and you want a list ofmy books, you can go to

(01:07:23):
ronnielampett.com or click on any of the social media links
and there's a book of the, the, there's a list of the books that
I recommend, some same ones thatyou recommend.
What I'm reading right now is Story Cells by Matthew Dicks and
it's how to become a better storyteller.
And when you get done with whatever book you're reading

(01:07:45):
now, I highly recommend. I will do that because if not,
I'm trying to eliminate the word, but for my entire
vocabulary, I hate that word right now.
The reason I recommend that bookis you said you really want to
build up your syndication and with investors and bring in more

(01:08:06):
money. At least that's what I heard.
Yeah, share the opportunity withmore.
People share the opportunity more, and the number one way to
bring in more money is get better at telling stories
because people make decisions onstories and they remember
stories. They don't remember the slides.

(01:08:26):
They don't remember the profit. Well, and I had, I had, I had a
guy that came into my calendar first of the year, that was, you
know, a $2,000,000 investment. We get on the, the Zoom call.
He knows me, he knows my stories.
He's he, he's telling me, is this like that story?

(01:08:48):
Is this like that story? And I'm like, I haven't had a
stalker and I don't want one. But this was kind of kind of
like that, you know, where I just felt like this person knew
me and I was at a disadvantage. But I hit because a lot of what
I do is tell the story of how I got here.

(01:09:09):
What what did this one do? You know there?
There's another great book that I read a long time ago.
That is sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.
And it is a fantastic book and it's about understanding that
you've got to look at it and go,I didn't win.

(01:09:32):
That doesn't mean it gets thrownin the rubbish bin.
It means that what did you learn?
Because you paid a price. When you win, it's easy to
remember that, but you can repeat the same steps again and
again. Sometimes it works in real
estate, sometimes it works in business and other times it
doesn't. And when you can understand
that, you can apply a different lens.

(01:09:55):
And that's that's been kind of aphilosophy that I've had in my
life a lot. And unfortunately, I'm drawing a
blank on who the author was, butI'll get it to you after the
after we're done here, because Ican see his face, but I'm
drawing a blank. But he is, he is one of the
most. He has written more books on

(01:10:18):
business building, financial stuff than anybody else.
They haven't sold the kind of numbers that Robert Kiyosaki
has, but fantastic, fantastic author.
Look that one up. Yeah, I absolutely love reading.
One of the my hacks is I will listen to, I will read in the
morning and then when I do my walk, my rock, I'll listen to

(01:10:41):
the same chapter on Audible. And I usually listen about 2 1/2
to three times speed because I read very fast.
And, and so that especially if it's a book that I really am
into, because by reading and listening to the same thing,
it's, it's almost like I'm, I'm finishing his sentence.
If I read it first or, and sometimes I'll, I'll get a

(01:11:02):
little further ahead on my rock for 45 minutes.
So then I'll then the next day I'll read what I listened to the
day before. Well, and that's it's also a
great sales tactic that Alex Hermosa used in all of his
books. Before you get started, I
recommend that you listen to this and read this.
Here's where you go to buy this.So now he's sold you the Audible

(01:11:24):
and he sold you the book, right?Alex is funny.
He's a, he's the one that he, after my heart attack, I reached
out to him and said, look, you know, I've helped hundreds of
thousands of people with their credit.
I love what I do. It makes, it does make a
difference in people's lives. I just can't handle the stress
from it. And he said, Rhonda, your
problem is you are selling a great service to people who have

(01:11:48):
no money or broke. Yeah, you need to get a service
that sells to rich people. So start solving rich people's
problems. They pay better.
They pay better. They pay a lot better.
Yeah. You said soccer earlier.
I have a soccer. I've had a few of them.
Yeah. This one's been around since I
spoke at an event. Albert Preciato put it on and
Grant Cardone was there. Patrick Bet David was there.

(01:12:11):
The hardest man, David Goggins was there.
And so I spoke that year in 2017.
She'd been stalking me for eightyears.
And the reason that I used to post on social where I was
staying, like if I went and spoke in an event, I'd say, hey,
I'm here at like the last one. I was here in in Houston at
Credit Con. If you're in town, let's have
lunch, lunch, dinner, whatever. I used to do that.

(01:12:32):
I don't do that anymore, right, Because she would show up.
It's. Free lunch, you promised.
I remember I was leaving an event in Vegas and here she came
with her suitcase and then she'slike, oh, I'm look, all the
rooms are sold out. I have nowhere to stay.
I'm like, I'm on my way to the airport.

(01:12:53):
So now it's stalkers are scary. My friend Andy Forcella had a
stalker. He went out.
Fortunately he's got bodyguards now because of how many stalkers
he has and it's not because Andycan't take care of himself.
I mean he's your height and he'sgot about £100 on you.
I mean, he's. But it's all muscle.
It's all muscle and but he's gotbodyguards now and security team

(01:13:17):
at his house. And he said it was lucky that
the security team found the stalker hiding in his.
So he's got this barn that he made into a man cave, if you
want, where he's got his cars and his cigars and.
And he said lucky the security guy found him because Andy
probably would have shot him. Yeah, you know, and I pointed
this out there. Then you've got all that to deal
with, right? Yeah.

(01:13:38):
And then you got to deal with all of that.
When you look at your calendar, it's already full.
I know. Where do you put in there?
That kind of stuff. Yeah, you know.
When I first started dating Amanda, it took her a while to
get used to me having a gun all the time.
Like I'm, I'm, I'm not. I don't have on one on me right
now, but there's one very close to me.
Yeah. And so I used, I mean, so it

(01:13:59):
took her time because she she never really, even though the
family is well, her family is her father and her grandfather
are in the family in from Chicago in finance Vegas.
So you can kind of figure out what family she grew up in.
Your average you. Know just your average everyday

(01:14:22):
Italian. Family.
From the suburbs, But she never grew up around guns.
So from California, you know, they retired.
And so it took her a while. And the other day I'd showed her
I'd said something about the stalker that broke into Andy's
house. I'm like, man, they're lucky
that Andy wasn't there because he would have shot him because
Andy's always carrying. And she goes, really?

(01:14:43):
I said, yeah, have you never noticed it?
Every single day he posts he, and he's doing this on purpose
now. Every day he in his cars, 'cause
he's a big car guy, he will takethe phone and he goes over to
the passenger seat and it's not to show off that he's in a
$5,000,000 car. And he always goes to the
passenger seat. And every day there's a Glock

(01:15:05):
9mm sitting right there on his. And I, I think he's doing that
like I'm just telling you it's out there.
I, I did a back to the tax thing.
My former spouse and I were, we were spending a lot of money at
front sight. I think you remember at front
sight as well, in a lot of time with guns, I was buying a lot of

(01:15:28):
guns. This was right after Obama got
elected and guns and ammo. And I wanted to make it tax
deductible. So instead of saying can I
deduct a gun, I said how can I? So we created a, a firearms
training school. Yeah.
I remember that. And now all my guns and ammos
are tax deductible. But I was on a tax Zoom call

(01:15:49):
earlier today and there's actually part in the IRS code
that I didn't know about that asbusiness owners, we can write
off security teams. So I knew you could hire a
security guard 'cause I have friends that do that.
They hire their spouse or their as security at their events.
But there's actually part of thecode that you and I, as the

(01:16:10):
business owner can pay for our personal security as long as
it's reasonable and necessary, which I with my stalker, I can
prove it is reasonable and necessary.
And this part of the IRS code allows you to write off ammo and
firearms for personal security. Well, I have a friend of mine

(01:16:32):
that has a $65,000 dog that at the jaw of a hat will make mints
being out of you. That is his wife's personal
security. She is the sweetest dog in the
world until something comes out of her mouth and some of the
language I don't understand and that thing turns into a machine
that will eat drywall and rocks right.

(01:16:54):
And but, but there again, it's, it's those kinds of things then
who who would have thought, right.
Getting a well trained animal that can provide that, getting
firearms that can provide that based on what you know.
And you can write off your your animal if it's security 100% you
can. I mean, you know, I don't write
off Sawyer. He's not much of A.

(01:17:15):
Security animal I'm I might might get licked to death.
Yeah, yeah, I, I, you know, every once in a while I see
videos online with, with animalslike that, that a few months ago
my girlfriend went and had dinner with Charles.
He's the founder of Cardano, which is the Co founder of

(01:17:35):
Etherium. And she went to have dinner with
the governor of Wyoming. And Charles was also a guest at
this $15,000 plate dinner or whatever it cost was.
And she said Charles showed up with five Mossad guys and
special operators, and the security team was saying you
can't bring your firearms in here with the governor.

(01:17:57):
And they're like, then we're notstaying.
And it's they're like, no, we, we got this covered.
He's like, I don't care what yougot covered, but I'm not going
in without my security team, right?
We just saw, we just saw in the news, right, the guy in New York
that was tortured his business partner with a chainsaw to get
this, to get his, his crypto password, you know.
So this crazy world, four monthsago, this never hit the news.

(01:18:20):
So four months ago, another crypto guy was kidnapped and
they cut his fingers off and sent it to the family.
That's why Charles was walking around with five people.
He's like, I don't care who you are or what you're saying,
either my guys can come in with guns or I'm not going in, right,
right. And so there's certain dogs that
are trained and I've been seeingthem on Instagram because, you

(01:18:41):
know, they see our they figured that algorithm.
'S got, I'll send, I'll send youthe feed of where my buddy got
his. It's, it's pretty amazing.
This guy's former special forcestrains a lot of military dogs.
Is it a German Shepherd? It's a what is it the the Malmo?
The Malmo. Those things are the. 65 lbs of
missile man, I mean. There's a reason special OPS
teams use those dogs 100%. You know 100% there's stories of

(01:19:05):
those. I have friends that are special
OPS and SEAL team my in fact, my, my sister, her husband is
retired a Navy SEAL on SEAL Team6 and they use those dogs
exclusively. Those things are monsters.
Yeah, but they're they have one of the best personalities.
I mean, you would not know when you're around this dog that it

(01:19:28):
has any of these tendencies. It's just a sweetheart.
But man, when you look in its eyes, it's looking at you.
But there's a calculator runningin there giving you vagus odds
of how long you live. I have a a friend that he's also
retired special OPS guy. And for his service animal, the
VA got him one of those. Yeah.
And you're right. That dog's the sweetest dog.

(01:19:51):
And with that, when you look in that dog's eyes, like if you
look in Sawyer's eyes, you just see nothing but love.
Yeah, that dog is like how? How many of you will I kill?
Yeah, you know. There's a switch in here, boys.
You want to touch it. You want to touch it?
A lot of that language, I think is German.
They speak, they teach them German.
Yeah. And that would be bad thing if

(01:20:14):
you ever took that dog to Germany.
Yeah, that's the thing that. You can't take, you know, they,
they, they have taught this dog a lot of things that I don't
want to know. Ever.
I I don't want to find out that that dog knows that stuff,
right? There's a guy I met in Saint
when I was living in San Diego. He was a fish providers, so from
South Africa. I don't know if he's still there

(01:20:34):
with all the racism going on in South Africa right now and the
murders, but very successful. And I met him at a fish like a
fish place and a restaurant in San Diego.
And they came back to the house.We had barbecue and, you know,
had fun times. And then we just stayed in
touch. And he said in South Africa,

(01:20:54):
he's got inside dogs and outsidedogs.
The outside dogs never come in. The inside dogs never go out
other than do their business. And he said it's because they
need them, because people will sneak in.
They climb over their 12 foot fence, you know, and these dogs
are, they're vicious. In fact, I was looking at
getting a dog. In the last two weeks, I've lost

(01:21:16):
10 of my chickens and four of them were killed by raccoons.
The other ones just fell over dead.
I don't know why. And when few weeks ago I was
down at the largest cattle ranch, regenerative cattle
ranch, Will Harris's ranch in Georgia.
And he has thousands of chickens.

(01:21:37):
And when he brought in thousandsof chickens to his ranch, the
bald eagle showed up and they were decimating them.
So now he uses these, these giant white, I think they're
pernies. There's some words I can't
pronounce. Pernies are Hermes or whatever.
They're these, I'm going to go with white shaggy dogs, they're
called. They're guard dogs.

(01:21:59):
There's a special name for them,these type of dogs.
But Saint Bernard's are in that feat, in that thing.
But these are for sheep dogs, but they're protective dogs.
And so these big dogs, these arelike 120 LB big animals.
Sleep and live with these chickens.
No more eagle problem, no more raccoon problem, no more coyote
problems. Great Pyrenees is what they're
called. That's right.

(01:22:19):
It's Great Pyrenees. That's what I was going to say.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so we covered tax, we
covered real estate, we covered credit, covered your kids
flying. We covered foundations.
We covered, yeah. I can't wait.
I talked to your son. Yeah, he can't help me with my
IFR, but he can't help me with with getting recertified so I
can start flying again. I have a.

(01:22:42):
He'll be another couple months and he'll be he'll.
He'll have his. Oh, is that it?
Oh, OK. I thought it was going to be no.
Longer than that, No, he's pounding it down.
He's he's going through it so. I look forward to helping him
build a, a YouTube channel. Yeah.
You know, just back to the fishing guy, right?
You know, if you he's passionateabout it, he could.
You know, if you're passionate about anything, my friend Joel
Bauer says, turn your passion into profit.

(01:23:02):
Absolutely. And then once your your once
your passion makes more money than your W2 you can leave if
you want to. You have choices.
But I want to, I'm considering putting my plane in at
Ponderosa. Yeah, you know, it's, it's
advanced high performance and I'm not using it as much.
Yeah, I haven't flown. In well, and The thing is, the
thing that's nice about it is it's it's right here at the

(01:23:25):
Boise airport instead of being out South of town.
It's, it's getting used, it's getting regular maintenance,
it's getting regular service. You know, when was the last time
you went through a whole tank ofgas and filled it all the way
back up? You know, it's been a while
because we go out for an hour. I mean, we were out for three
hours the other day, but that's unusual, you know, so you're
able to get a lot more going on with it.

(01:23:46):
And you know, with your, with your undercarriage that needs to
be moved up and down. It doesn't need to sit there and
have let the seals dry out. So that's the advantage of all
of that stuff. And again, you're providing a
service to the community and you're making money on it.
Yeah, I can't wait to. I have my your assistant sent me
your flight, your doctor. So I, I have my physical

(01:24:10):
schedule. What's that, Doctor
Higginbotham. Yeah.
So I got that scheduled. So now I can get recertified to
start flying. Then your son's going to get me,
your son's going to get me recertified.
But the doctor approves it. So I think we covered
everything. Yeah, man, Shannon, if if
someone has 100 grand laying around and they want to get some
huge tax benefits, what's a costsag about 30 grand on $100,000

(01:24:35):
investments. Yeah, I mean just a rule of
thumb, you can get about 1/3. 1/3 So what that means is if you
invest 100,000 with Shannon, that's a $30,000 write off
towards your passive income theycan get.
So if anybody wanted to invest with you, whether it's for tax
reasons or for what are you, what are some of your deals

(01:24:56):
paying out? I know everyone's different but.
You know, we've had things go for, you know, 104% in 18
months. We've done, you know, typically
we're in the high teens. You know, depends on what you
want. We like to sit down and decide,
are you looking for cash flow? Are you looking for
depreciation? What's your game right now and
help you create a strategy around that.

(01:25:17):
If you've you know, we've had some of your people come to us
that says, hey, Ronnie says thisis my strategy, this is what I
want. Well, we don't steer you toward
this. We steer you toward that.
But just Shannon robnett.com is the easiest way to get a hold of
me. You can find us there.
We got a calendar link you can get directly onto my calendar.
Would be happy to chat with you.So Shannon robnett.com it's also

(01:25:37):
going to be in the show notes. Shannon's so much fun.
It's always good to see you, Ronnie.
I see a squirm in a little bit. You got to pee.
Yeah, I do. Yeah.
Yeah, I do. All right.
Let's take off. Thanks, Shannon.

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From Construction to Capital: A Tax-Smart Approach to Real Estate | Guest: Shannon Robnett

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From Construction to Capital: A Tax-Smart Approach to Real Estate | Guest: Shannon Robnett