November 22, 2024 • 14 mins
Ever wondered if your personal information is just a few clicks away from anyone, anywhere? Discover eye-opening strategies to protect your privacy as your business and wealth grow, starting with a hilarious tale about a Mexican tour operator who astonishingly tracked down a customer across borders. This entertaining story sets the stage for our exploration of digital privacy in today's world. Learn practical tips, such as using post office boxes or commercial mail receiving agencies like iPostal One and the UPS Store, to keep your personal and business lives distinct, avoiding awkward encounters and securing peace of mind.
But wait, there’s more! Uncover the secrets of using revocable living trusts (RLTs) to conceal your assets from prying eyes. Craft a trust name that’s cleverly unrelated to you, thereby keeping your personal details off public records and enhancing your privacy. While erasing your personal address from the internet might be a daunting task, adopting these strategies can significantly lower your risk. Plus, join our community conversation on our Facebook page, "Grow Your Painting Business," where you can share and discover more tips on maintaining business privacy. Tune in for these invaluable insights and fortify your business’s privacy fortress.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
this is Daniel, the founder of bookkeeping for
painters.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And this is Richard, the advising director with
bookkeeping for painters, andDaniel I'm.
I know you're going to ask mehow I'm doing and I'm just going
to preemptively say I'm doingpretty good.
My wife and I just got backfrom a week's vacation.
We took a little cruise out ofMiami and went to the Bahamas
and Mexico was.
(00:26):
We didn't have the greatestweather, but you know, I mean
we're out there in the Caribbeanso it can't be that bad.
I'm always amazed at like howmany people do cruises or trips
down to like Central and SouthAmerica.
The scenery is gorgeous, thefood is great in South America.
The scenery's gorgeous, thefood's great.
(00:47):
But it reminded me of thisstory that I was told about a
family that had taken a cruiseto Mexico and you know how they
do the excursions where theseguys I guess they wanted to do
an excursion where they rentedsome ATVs to a little tour and
the guy was going to pay withhis credit card but the vendor's
credit card machine wasn'tworking Amazing, they probably
(01:09):
don't have great internetservice or something like that.
So they did an oral agreementthat when I get back to the
United States I'm going to wireyou the money for the ATVs and
the vendor was okay with that.
So they had their fund, theywent back home and they tried to
wire the money.
But international transfers area pain in the neck.
(01:32):
It wasn't going as smoothly ashe thought.
About 10 days after the cruisethey get this knock on the door
and he goes up there and there'sthe tour operator with the ATV
standing on his front stepdemanding that he pay him, which
you can imagine was a littletense, right?
(01:54):
Everyone's a little heated.
They calmed down and they gotthe situation resolved.
You know the family was happyto pay.
They were just having troublewith the international transfer.
But it was just really shockingthat.
You know, here's this touroperator in Mexico.
They had never given him theirdriver's license or address or
(02:16):
any of this stuff.
He just had their name and hewas able to use the Internet and
publicly available informationto track them down in the United
States and knock on their doorand ask for payment.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
That's a great follow-up process that he has
the Mexican tour guide.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Absolutely.
Aggressive collection process.
Yeah right, so are werecommending that our listeners
do this for customers whohaven't paid them on time?
Speaker 1 (02:49):
that I mean the advantage for the painting
business owners.
Listening is, all yourcustomers are probably in the
same town.
At least you don't have to goacross international borders to
to collect payment right um, no,I I don't recommend not, you
know well.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I mean, do what you need to find us and to discover
not just our address but otherpersonal information that's out
(03:30):
there.
We might not be renting ATVs inMexico, but we've got customers
, contractors, former employees.
They might have a bone to pickwith us.
We don't want them knocking onour door one day and confronting
us in front of our familiesabout some, you know, perceived
grievance that they want to, youknow, duke it out like men on
(03:53):
our front doorstep.
So how do we protect ourprivacy?
You know, in this digital age,it's so, so important.
I thought today, after thisunnecessarily long segue, that
we could talk about the stepsbusiness owners can take to
protect their privacy and keepthemselves hidden from people
(04:13):
who might want to find out morethan they should.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, folks that are super rich, this is the kind of
stuff that they do Anyone thathas any amount of wealth.
You can't find them throughpublic records or the businesses
that they own.
They're not listed.
Their information isn't listed.
So if you're starting to become, the wealthier you become as
(04:40):
your painting business grows,the more of a target you become.
So this information is superimportant to pay attention to
especially as you grow in yourbusiness.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, I've heard it compared like privacy protection
is kind of like your camouflageit's not going to stop people.
I mean, if someone is attackingyou it's not going to stop the
attack, but it's going to makeit so much more difficult for
them to find you.
And it should kind of be likethe first of your different
levels of protection when itcomes to, you know, asset
(05:11):
protection, trust, things likethat.
So you know, if you want toprotect your privacy, the best
time to start is right at thebeginning.
You know the steps we're goingto talk about today are most
effective if you haven't alreadystarted giving out your
personal information.
But even if you have and I'lladmit I'm guilty of it myself
(05:33):
you know it never hurts to startthese best practices to start
kind of cleaning up the mess alittle bit.
And if you ever do move or havea new address, you will be, you
know, in a position to keepthat new address more private.
So the first step is you knowyou never want to use your
personal address for business.
(05:55):
I know it's convenient, right,like we all run our businesses
out of our homes when we firststart out.
You already got a mailbox outthere.
Why do I need another one.
But if you can, right from thebeginning, don't use your
personal address for business.
Instead, establish either apost office box or a commercial
(06:16):
mail receiving agency to be yourofficial company address.
If you're not familiar with acommercial mail receiving agency
or a CMRA, this is going to bethings like iPostal One, the UPS
store, different companieswhere you can get a mail drop
(06:40):
box and have all your mail sentto them and use their physical
address as your officialbusiness address.
And then you can either go andpick up your mail Some of these
guys will allow you to clickonline which letters you want
scanned or forwarded to you ormaybe for a couple of bucks,
(07:01):
they can shred junk mail.
You've got some options.
They're not really thatexpensive.
I use one for myself.
It cost me 15 bucks a month, sothat's money well spent.
And then my wife doesn't getquite as upset when I get a
stack of IRS notices sent to mypersonal mailbox.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
For your clients right Mostly, mostly, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
That's actually what kind of prompted me to look into
it.
To be honest with you, itwasn't so much privacy
protection Although that shouldhave been first on my mind it
was my wife getting tired ofgetting IRS letters and I said
well, I can't stop receivingthem have been.
First on my mind it was my wifegetting tired of getting irs
letters and um, I said I I can't, I can't stop receiving them,
but I can move them to a uhcommercial mail receiving agency
yeah, yeah, we, we use postscan, which no affiliation.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I don't get any money for saying that, but post scan
works pretty well.
It'll.
You have all their, your uh.
You pick out out your mailboxaddress and all your mail goes
to that mailbox and they'll scanit and then you can just keep
the digital copy and they'llrecycle or shred which you don't
(08:15):
want to use.
And it's also good fordelegating that task to your
team, like, if you don't want tophysically be checking your
mail all the time, you candelegate that to your admin
person.
Basically, they would just haveaccess to your online portal
and be able to see the scans,and you know you can have
(08:35):
certain rules on what they needto do with each piece of mail
rules on what they need to dowith each piece of mail.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, I like the commercial mail receiving
agencies too, because you have aphysical address as opposed to
a PO box, and some companieswill not ship to a PO box or
they demand a physical address.
So I kind of lean towards theCMRAs for that reason.
But a PO box can also work justas long as it's not your
personal address.
And this goes to for like yourGoogle business listing Don't
(09:09):
put your home on.
You know you don't need peopledriving by your neighborhood and
pops up.
You know a business is in thishouse.
You know.
Let them go to your post officebox or your CMRA instead.
So once you got that set up,we're going to want to remove
our home address from any stateor government filings because
(09:31):
these are public record.
So have everything from thestate or the IRS sent to your PO
box or CMRA.
That includes bills andinvoices.
I know you got to drive downthere and pick it up and it is
kind of a pain in the neck.
I just go once a week and it'sjust part of my routine.
It's just so much better thanhaving it come to the house.
(09:55):
Another area has to do with yourregistered agent for your LLC.
So I'm sure everyone listeninghas an LLC in place.
When you do that, you have togive the state an official
address where they cancorrespond with you and that is
going to be known as yourregistered agent.
Most of us we use ourselves andour home address as registered
(10:19):
agents because it's convenient,but this means that our home
address is registered agentsbecause it's convenient, but
this means that our home addressis now on the state's website
and if anybody wants to figureout you know who owns the
business, they can just findyour name and home address on
the Secretary of State's website.
That's no good.
Instead, we want to use eitherlike a law firm or a registered
(10:41):
agent service to officially beour registered agent.
In these cases, anycorrespondence would go to the
law firm or the service and theywould then forward that mail to
us.
So if somebody searches ourbusiness, they get the law firm.
They don't get your personaladdress.
You know this is not asexpensive as it sounds.
(11:04):
A registered agent servicecosts, I don't know, from $100
to $150 a year, depending onwhere you're at.
An official law firm might be alittle bit more, but I would
say maybe $250.
It's worth it to keep yourpersonal information off the
state's website.
And if you're going to dobusiness in more than one state,
(11:25):
you are required to have aregistered agent in each state
that you do business.
You only live in one state, soyou're going to have, you know,
a service or a law firm in thoseother states anyway, might as
well have one in your home stateas well.
And additionally, you knowpeople can look up things like
(11:47):
your personal assets, your home,your vehicles.
They might be able to figureout what your home address is
off of those.
So this is where a revocableliving trust comes in handy.
We should all have somethinglike this for estate planning
reasons anyway Keep our assetsout of probate if and when we
should pass away.
(12:07):
But for privacy reasons, arevocable living trust can keep
your name off of, like the deedto your home or the title on
your car.
You're going to want to nameyour revocable living trust
something that's not your name,right?
So don't do the Richard Duntonrevocable living trust, because
(12:30):
that's just pointing to who ownsit.
You know, I know some TaylorSwift fans who named theirs the
Lavender Hes RLT.
Some Disney fans who used theMickey Mouse RLT.
You can name it whatever youwant, whatever makes you happy
that you're going to remember.
Just don't have your personalname attached to it.
(12:50):
And people, when they look forwho owns this property, they're
going to find the Lavender HayesTrust.
They're not going to find youand your address.
So an RLT is very important forprivacy reasons as well.
If you've been in the habit ofusing your personal address, I'm
not going to lie it is going tobe kind of difficult to scrub
(13:13):
it out of the Internet.
The Internet has a very longmemory, but it is worth going
ahead and starting these goodpractices.
You might not be able to put thegenie back in the bottle
completely, but you're going tomitigate the damage and if you
ever do, change addresses, openup new businesses, gain new
assets, those things are goingto be protected because you're
(13:36):
doing it right from thebeginning.
So fairly low cost here, fairlylow difficulty levels, but it
can make a big difference,especially as, like you
mentioned, daniel, as yourwealth grows, you become more
and more interesting to peoplewho want to do bad things.
So just a little bit ofprevention was an ounce of
(13:58):
prevention.
An ounce of prevention is wortha pound of cure.
Taking some steps up front cansave you a lot of headache in
the future, so I hope everyonefound that kind of interesting
and useful.
If you have questions, feelfree to let us know on our
(14:18):
Facebook page.
Grow your Painting Business.
Maybe let us know what stepsyou take to increase privacy in
your business and to keep yourpersonal life out of your
business.
We'd like to hear your tips andtricks as well.
this is Daniel, the founder of bookkeeping for
painters.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And this is Richard, the advising director with
bookkeeping for painters, andDaniel I'm.
I know you're going to ask mehow I'm doing and I'm just going
to preemptively say I'm doingpretty good.
My wife and I just got backfrom a week's vacation.
We took a little cruise out ofMiami and went to the Bahamas
and Mexico was.
(00:26):
We didn't have the greatestweather, but you know, I mean
we're out there in the Caribbeanso it can't be that bad.
I'm always amazed at like howmany people do cruises or trips
down to like Central and SouthAmerica.
The scenery is gorgeous, thefood is great in South America.
The scenery's gorgeous, thefood's great.
(00:47):
But it reminded me of thisstory that I was told about a
family that had taken a cruiseto Mexico and you know how they
do the excursions where theseguys I guess they wanted to do
an excursion where they rentedsome ATVs to a little tour and
the guy was going to pay withhis credit card but the vendor's
credit card machine wasn'tworking Amazing, they probably
(01:09):
don't have great internetservice or something like that.
So they did an oral agreementthat when I get back to the
United States I'm going to wireyou the money for the ATVs and
the vendor was okay with that.
So they had their fund, theywent back home and they tried to
wire the money.
But international transfers area pain in the neck.
(01:32):
It wasn't going as smoothly ashe thought.
About 10 days after the cruisethey get this knock on the door
and he goes up there and there'sthe tour operator with the ATV
standing on his front stepdemanding that he pay him, which
you can imagine was a littletense, right?
(01:54):
Everyone's a little heated.
They calmed down and they gotthe situation resolved.
You know the family was happyto pay.
They were just having troublewith the international transfer.
But it was just really shockingthat.
You know, here's this touroperator in Mexico.
They had never given him theirdriver's license or address or
(02:16):
any of this stuff.
He just had their name and hewas able to use the Internet and
publicly available informationto track them down in the United
States and knock on their doorand ask for payment.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
That's a great follow-up process that he has
the Mexican tour guide.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Absolutely.
Aggressive collection process.
Yeah right, so are werecommending that our listeners
do this for customers whohaven't paid them on time?
Speaker 1 (02:49):
that I mean the advantage for the painting
business owners.
Listening is, all yourcustomers are probably in the
same town.
At least you don't have to goacross international borders to
to collect payment right um, no,I I don't recommend not, you
know well.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I mean, do what you need to find us and to discover
not just our address but otherpersonal information that's out
(03:30):
there.
We might not be renting ATVs inMexico, but we've got customers
, contractors, former employees.
They might have a bone to pickwith us.
We don't want them knocking onour door one day and confronting
us in front of our familiesabout some, you know, perceived
grievance that they want to, youknow, duke it out like men on
(03:53):
our front doorstep.
So how do we protect ourprivacy?
You know, in this digital age,it's so, so important.
I thought today, after thisunnecessarily long segue, that
we could talk about the stepsbusiness owners can take to
protect their privacy and keepthemselves hidden from people
(04:13):
who might want to find out morethan they should.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, folks that are super rich, this is the kind of
stuff that they do Anyone thathas any amount of wealth.
You can't find them throughpublic records or the businesses
that they own.
They're not listed.
Their information isn't listed.
So if you're starting to become, the wealthier you become as
(04:40):
your painting business grows,the more of a target you become.
So this information is superimportant to pay attention to
especially as you grow in yourbusiness.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, I've heard it compared like privacy protection
is kind of like your camouflageit's not going to stop people.
I mean, if someone is attackingyou it's not going to stop the
attack, but it's going to makeit so much more difficult for
them to find you.
And it should kind of be likethe first of your different
levels of protection when itcomes to, you know, asset
(05:11):
protection, trust, things likethat.
So you know, if you want toprotect your privacy, the best
time to start is right at thebeginning.
You know the steps we're goingto talk about today are most
effective if you haven't alreadystarted giving out your
personal information.
But even if you have and I'lladmit I'm guilty of it myself
(05:33):
you know it never hurts to startthese best practices to start
kind of cleaning up the mess alittle bit.
And if you ever do move or havea new address, you will be, you
know, in a position to keepthat new address more private.
So the first step is you knowyou never want to use your
personal address for business.
(05:55):
I know it's convenient, right,like we all run our businesses
out of our homes when we firststart out.
You already got a mailbox outthere.
Why do I need another one.
But if you can, right from thebeginning, don't use your
personal address for business.
Instead, establish either apost office box or a commercial
(06:16):
mail receiving agency to be yourofficial company address.
If you're not familiar with acommercial mail receiving agency
or a CMRA, this is going to bethings like iPostal One, the UPS
store, different companieswhere you can get a mail drop
(06:40):
box and have all your mail sentto them and use their physical
address as your officialbusiness address.
And then you can either go andpick up your mail Some of these
guys will allow you to clickonline which letters you want
scanned or forwarded to you ormaybe for a couple of bucks,
(07:01):
they can shred junk mail.
You've got some options.
They're not really thatexpensive.
I use one for myself.
It cost me 15 bucks a month, sothat's money well spent.
And then my wife doesn't getquite as upset when I get a
stack of IRS notices sent to mypersonal mailbox.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
For your clients right Mostly, mostly, yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
That's actually what kind of prompted me to look into
it.
To be honest with you, itwasn't so much privacy
protection Although that shouldhave been first on my mind it
was my wife getting tired ofgetting IRS letters and I said
well, I can't stop receivingthem have been.
First on my mind it was my wifegetting tired of getting irs
letters and um, I said I I can't, I can't stop receiving them,
but I can move them to a uhcommercial mail receiving agency
yeah, yeah, we, we use postscan, which no affiliation.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I don't get any money for saying that, but post scan
works pretty well.
It'll.
You have all their, your uh.
You pick out out your mailboxaddress and all your mail goes
to that mailbox and they'll scanit and then you can just keep
the digital copy and they'llrecycle or shred which you don't
(08:15):
want to use.
And it's also good fordelegating that task to your
team, like, if you don't want tophysically be checking your
mail all the time, you candelegate that to your admin
person.
Basically, they would just haveaccess to your online portal
and be able to see the scans,and you know you can have
(08:35):
certain rules on what they needto do with each piece of mail
rules on what they need to dowith each piece of mail.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, I like the commercial mail receiving
agencies too, because you have aphysical address as opposed to
a PO box, and some companieswill not ship to a PO box or
they demand a physical address.
So I kind of lean towards theCMRAs for that reason.
But a PO box can also work justas long as it's not your
personal address.
And this goes to for like yourGoogle business listing Don't
(09:09):
put your home on.
You know you don't need peopledriving by your neighborhood and
pops up.
You know a business is in thishouse.
You know.
Let them go to your post officebox or your CMRA instead.
So once you got that set up,we're going to want to remove
our home address from any stateor government filings because
(09:31):
these are public record.
So have everything from thestate or the IRS sent to your PO
box or CMRA.
That includes bills andinvoices.
I know you got to drive downthere and pick it up and it is
kind of a pain in the neck.
I just go once a week and it'sjust part of my routine.
It's just so much better thanhaving it come to the house.
(09:55):
Another area has to do with yourregistered agent for your LLC.
So I'm sure everyone listeninghas an LLC in place.
When you do that, you have togive the state an official
address where they cancorrespond with you and that is
going to be known as yourregistered agent.
Most of us we use ourselves andour home address as registered
(10:19):
agents because it's convenient,but this means that our home
address is registered agentsbecause it's convenient, but
this means that our home addressis now on the state's website
and if anybody wants to figureout you know who owns the
business, they can just findyour name and home address on
the Secretary of State's website.
That's no good.
Instead, we want to use eitherlike a law firm or a registered
(10:41):
agent service to officially beour registered agent.
In these cases, anycorrespondence would go to the
law firm or the service and theywould then forward that mail to
us.
So if somebody searches ourbusiness, they get the law firm.
They don't get your personaladdress.
You know this is not asexpensive as it sounds.
(11:04):
A registered agent servicecosts, I don't know, from $100
to $150 a year, depending onwhere you're at.
An official law firm might be alittle bit more, but I would
say maybe $250.
It's worth it to keep yourpersonal information off the
state's website.
And if you're going to dobusiness in more than one state,
(11:25):
you are required to have aregistered agent in each state
that you do business.
You only live in one state, soyou're going to have, you know,
a service or a law firm in thoseother states anyway, might as
well have one in your home stateas well.
And additionally, you knowpeople can look up things like
(11:47):
your personal assets, your home,your vehicles.
They might be able to figureout what your home address is
off of those.
So this is where a revocableliving trust comes in handy.
We should all have somethinglike this for estate planning
reasons anyway Keep our assetsout of probate if and when we
should pass away.
(12:07):
But for privacy reasons, arevocable living trust can keep
your name off of, like the deedto your home or the title on
your car.
You're going to want to nameyour revocable living trust
something that's not your name,right?
So don't do the Richard Duntonrevocable living trust, because
(12:30):
that's just pointing to who ownsit.
You know, I know some TaylorSwift fans who named theirs the
Lavender Hes RLT.
Some Disney fans who used theMickey Mouse RLT.
You can name it whatever youwant, whatever makes you happy
that you're going to remember.
Just don't have your personalname attached to it.
(12:50):
And people, when they look forwho owns this property, they're
going to find the Lavender HayesTrust.
They're not going to find youand your address.
So an RLT is very important forprivacy reasons as well.
If you've been in the habit ofusing your personal address, I'm
not going to lie it is going tobe kind of difficult to scrub
(13:13):
it out of the Internet.
The Internet has a very longmemory, but it is worth going
ahead and starting these goodpractices.
You might not be able to put thegenie back in the bottle
completely, but you're going tomitigate the damage and if you
ever do, change addresses, openup new businesses, gain new
assets, those things are goingto be protected because you're
(13:36):
doing it right from thebeginning.
So fairly low cost here, fairlylow difficulty levels, but it
can make a big difference,especially as, like you
mentioned, daniel, as yourwealth grows, you become more
and more interesting to peoplewho want to do bad things.
So just a little bit ofprevention was an ounce of
(13:58):
prevention.
An ounce of prevention is wortha pound of cure.
Taking some steps up front cansave you a lot of headache in
the future, so I hope everyonefound that kind of interesting
and useful.
If you have questions, feelfree to let us know on our
(14:18):
Facebook page.
Grow your Painting Business.
Maybe let us know what stepsyou take to increase privacy in
your business and to keep yourpersonal life out of your
business.
We'd like to hear your tips andtricks as well.
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