TME 15 | Inside the Secret Network That Billionaires Use to Pay Zero In Taxes with Alex Sonkin

Title: Inside the Secret Network That Billionaires Use to Pay Zero In Taxes with Alex Sonkin Summary:

In this episode of Raise the Bar Radio, Seth Bradley welcomes Alex, founder of the Due Diligence Project, to discuss the massive blind spot in tax strategy among CPAs and how his peer-reviewed CPA community solves that. Alex shares how traditional CPA firms, despite servicing ultra-high net worth clients, are often unaware of the vast number of advanced tax mitigation strategies available. His platform introduces vetted tax strategies reviewed by hundreds of independent CPA firms, much like an Amazon or Netflix model for financial services.

Rather than relying on static, siloed in-house teams with mediocre solutions, Alex's vision is to empower CPAs and family offices through a Virtual Family Office model. This allows affluent individuals (not just billionaires) to access world-class, peer-reviewed tax and financial planning strategies while maintaining their trusted CPA relationship. The conversation emphasizes humility, proactive due diligence, and massive action as critical principles for success in tax planning and entrepreneurship alike. Links to Watch and Subscribe: https://youtu.be/v8RSrMRslHU

Bullet Point Highlights:

• Most CPAs, even in top firms, are not deeply versed in advanced tax mitigation due to limited time and exposure.
• The Due Diligence Project functions as an independent, peer-reviewed network, allowing CPAs to tap into the collective knowledge of hundreds of top professionals.
• Traditional large CPA firms and Wall Street structures are siloed and don't provide open-source best-in-class strategies.
• The future CPA firm is a Virtual Family Office — proactive, advisory-driven, and built with world-class independent specialists instead of static in-house teams.
• The Virtual Family Office model brings elite wealth management strategies to affluent individuals (e.g., $10M-$50M net worth), not just billionaires.
• Humility, curiosity, and willingness to collaborate are essential for CPAs and advisors to truly serve clients at the highest level.
• Success requires massive action and consistent pursuit of better solutions — complacency kills innovation and wealth creation.

Transcript:

(Seth Bradley) (00:02.094)

What's up, Builders? This is Raise the Bar Radio, where we talk about building wealth, raising capital, and all in all, raising the bar in your business and your life. This is the No BS podcast for capital raisers, investors, and entrepreneurs who are serious about scaling their business and living life on their own terms. I'm Seth Bradley, securities attorney, real estate investor, and entrepreneur, bringing you world-class strategies from the best in the game.

 

If you're ready to raise more capital, close bigger deals, build a better you, and create true financial freedom, you're in the right place. Let's go. Alex, what's going on, brother? Welcome to the show.

 

Seth, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure.

 

man. Fellow San Diegan. So, appreciate that and appreciate that you you love the weather like I do.

 

best weather in the world, All of San Diego County, even if it gets like 10 degrees hotter, it's as good or as better anything else on the planet.

 

(Seth Bradley) (01:05.698)

Yep, yep. Sometimes you gotta go outside of San Diego for a little bit to appreciate it because you forget that every single day is fantastic.

 

We're not going to get into the June gloom and the May gray because people outside of San Diego, don't want to hear that. uh, know, we get to complain between each other. everyone outside of San Diego, were like, we don't want to know about any of your problems.

 

Right, Exactly, exactly. All right, man. Well, let's just jump right in, Tell everybody a little bit about your background, about your story, and take it back as far as you like.

 

Sure, graduated University of Michigan Business School undergrad and became an options trader in Chicago as a member of the Chicago Board of Trade, the Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Board of Options Exchange was a market maker down there for many years and came up with a couple ideas and moved to California. What we do now is we have the largest independent peer review community of CPA firms in the country. We support

 

hundreds of CPA firms who basically introduced their favorite resources, favorite tax attorneys, favorite strategies. And then as a community and independently, everyone independently vets out every strategy, every resource. And we rank and rate all