Ms.Biz

Ep. 25 Part 2 | Making Your Money Work: Tax-Saving Secrets for Your Business with Guest Mike Jesowshek

Join us for Episode 25 with special guest Mike Jesowshek. In this episode we discuss some crucial _tax saving strategies for small businesses_ based on the insights from our recent podcast. We delve into topics such as *maximizing business deductions*, *retirement planning*, *entity structure*, *real estate investing*, and the benefits of *hiring family members*. Learn about legitimate ways to write off various pre-tax business expenses including travel, meals, and home office costs. 
Discover how retirement plans like SEPs and solo 401ks can aid business owners in contributing larger amounts to tax-deferred retirement funds. We also talk about how the decision to incorporate as an *S-Corp* can reduce self-employment taxes. 
We also dissect the advantages of real estate depreciation deductions and the role of short-term rental losses in offsetting business income. Understand the financial benefits of hiring family members and how, with correct tracking of their work hours and pay, it can result in significant business deductions.
Lastly, we put stress on the importance of businesses reviewing their structure and adopting strategies such as tracking mileage and receipts to withstand an IRS audit. If you are a small business owner, this video is tailor-made for you. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe for more such valuable content
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Full Episode Transcript:
Brooke Boltz: As a business owner, your highest paid employee is the IRS. Boo! To grow your business, it is crucial that you learn and implement tax-saving strategies. This has been such a pain point for my business that I started searching for tax strategy experts and I came across the podcast called Small Business Tax Savings. From the very first episode and every episode thereafter I learned something new and valuable.
 
I am truly honored to have as our special guest today, certified public accountant and the host of the Small Business Tax Saving podcast, Mike Jesowshek.
 
Rachel Boltz: Listen Notes ranks this podcast in the top 1% of podcasts globally. Mike also offers a tax minimization program to teach small businesses how to legally shrink their tax bill. You are guaranteed to receive massive value from today's episode. So stay tuned. Hey lady bosses, are you working even after putting the kids to bed but still not getting results?
 
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Brooke Boltz: I'm your host, Brooke Bolts. I'm an attorney and founder of Bolts Legal. I started my business and in one year was bringing in seven figures and am now bringing in multi-seven figures.
 
Rachel Boltz: And I'm your co-host, Rachel Bolts, owner of Bolts Media. I've helped many businesses build their online presence and increase their revenue through digital marketing.
 
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Speaker 2: So Mike, a lot of tax strategists tell you to save money on taxes, to go out and buy a bunch of expensive things that you don't really need. But that's not your advice. How are your tax strategies different?
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, no, I think that that's such a common thing. I always say, if you do need a new truck, if you do need a new piece of equipment, sure, let's utilize tax code the way it's written. But let's not go buy things we don't need because at the end of the day, if you buy something for $100 as an example and you save 32 cents in taxes, you're still out, you know, whatever that 78 cents is in total. And so you're just getting something on a discount that you didn't really need anyways. And so when we look at this idea of maximizing deductions, I think it's so important to understand kind of what that means.
 
And the best way to describe it is to look at this idea of pre-tax versus after-tax dollars. And most people think of after-tax spending and the best way to describe after-tax spending is let's think of a W-2 employee. So a non-business owner, just a W-2 employee that's working for somebody and they have gross wages and then they have all these taxes taken out that the employer takes out on their behalf. And then they have their take home pay. And any spending that they do, whether it's paying for kids' basketball camps or buying groceries, anything they do is considered after-tax spending because they're using the dollars of money, the dollars that they're spending with is money that's already been taxed.
 
And so if we look at this flip side, as a business owner, you have sales, and then you have all these expenses that go into it, and then you have your profit of your business. And any spending that you do prior to that profit piece is considered pre-tax spending because as a business owner, you get taxed on the profit of your business. And so that's this idea that we constantly want to be thinking about when we think of this idea of maximizing deductions is how can I turn after tax spending, spending that is done after being taxed, how can I find a business purpose and move that into pre-tax spending? And I think that's the power when you talk about this idea of maximizing deductions, I think that's where the majority of the power is. And so the best way to illustrate this as well is let's imagine when COVID hit.
 
If you were a W-2 employee, you were working in an office, now you get sent home. You go, you're using a home office, you're putting heat and AC in that home office, you're buying a desk, you're buying a computer chair, you're buying a laptop screen all for that home office that you have now. And you get no deduction on that. All that spending that you're doing on that is considered after-tax spending. You don't get a deduction for it as a W-2 employee.
 
But as a business owner, that desk you bought, that home office that you're sitting in, that computer screen that you bought, that's all business expenses. And all that spending you're doing now is pre-tax spending. It's a business expense prior to those funds being taxed. And so that's kind of this concept of moving after tax spending to pre-tax spending. And there's so many things in the day-to-day life of business owners that we can tie to our business.
 
And we'll talk about some of those ideas like hiring your kids and meals and travel and all those different things about there's as a business owner, our business is engulfed in our life in many different areas. And there's ways that we can intertwine that to move spending that we're already going to do. We're going to do no matter what, but now we're going to get a pre-tax deduction for instead of using after-tax dollars. And so Home Office is a great example of that, where if you have a home, you have that expense. Whether you're a business owner or not, you're gonna have that same exact expense.
 
But now as a business owner, we can take a deduction for it. We can take a deduction for our cell phone. We can take a deduction for our cell phone. We can take a deduction for our internet. And those are all pre-tax spending.
 
And so when people come to me and say, hey, you know, it's end of the year. Should I just go buy a new truck and get a bonus depreciation and clear out my income? I say, well, do you need a new truck? Is there a reason for that new truck that you're going to go buy? And they're like, no, I mean, the one I have is perfect, but, you know, obviously I need a tax deduction.
 
I say, well, let's look at different things first. Let's look at the other spending that you've done throughout this year personally and see if we can find some ways to be creative and think about, hey, is there a way that we could turn that from after tax spending into pre-tax spending? If
 
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Speaker 2: And That is what I love about your teachings and your podcast is the creativity that you bring to the things that we're already spending money on and categorizing it now or showing us how to properly categorize it as a business expense. I have gone on a search for tax strategists to help me lower my tax liability and every time they just tell me the same things I already know. And for the first time when I started listening to your podcast, I heard new ideas I hadn't heard before. And That is why I was so impressed with what you were teaching and thought other business owners need to hear these strategies. So let's start talking now about the top five tax saving strategies for small businesses.
 
And you talk a lot in your podcast about maximizing business deductions. What are some ways that a small business can do
 
MIke Jesowshek: that? Yeah, so again, it's this idea of moving after tax spending and into pre-tax spending. And so if we look at an example, let's look at travel. When you travel for business, that's a deductible business expense. The hotel, the Airbnbs, the airfare, all of that is deductible business expenses.
 
And what the IRS looks like, it looks at as a business day, means that the majority of the day you spend on business, then that day is considered a business day. And when they look at the majority of the day, they're looking at, you know, average day is eight hours, a work day is eight hours. So if you spend four hours and one minute on business for a day, that's considered a business day. Now the IRS doesn't care if you then go to the beach, you go to amusement parks with your family, whatever you're doing, they don't care as long as the majority of that day was spent on business. And so I think that this provides a really cool opportunity for business owners to say, hey, we have a family vacation planned.
 
We have a family vacation coming up. Can I intertwine that with some business? Can I maybe attend a conference on that trip that we're taking? Could I visit a rental property? Is there clients?
 
Is there a vendor? Is there something out and where we're going that I can tie some of this to business and at least get some business days as part of that travel. Now I always kind of tell people like you don't want to do this every time or your spouse is probably going to kill you but you know we want to try to think about this and be creative in these ways of hey you know if we're going to Disney with the family, you know, is there a conference going on in Disney that I can spend four hours and one minute or five hours a day doing that conference and then doing everything else I'd normally do with my family on that trip? And now it's a business trip. So that's this kind of idea of okay, we're playing this trip to Disney How can I tie this to business and get at least a partial business deduction for it now obviously?
 
With all tax strategies, and this is kind of this overall concept of tax planning whenever I'm looking at tax strategy I have to hit two pieces one is it legal and obviously we would never do something that's illegal. So if we hit a strategy that can't pass that mustard, then we're throwing that one out the door. But the second piece is, are we dotting our I's and crossing our T's? Are we doing what we can to protect ourselves? Because that's the important piece.
 
The home office deduction is completely legal. But is there a way to make the way that we datarizing crossing our T's make it illegal? Yeah, absolutely. If we take a home office deduction for 100% of our home, that's blatantly illegal. Like how is it a home office if it's 100% office and it's not a home then, it's just an office.
 
And so there's ways that we wanna look at those things. And that goes with all of our planning is saying, okay, concept makes sense, it's legal, we found ways to do it, now we just need to make sure we're doing it right. We're dotting our I's, crossing our T's. And so if we look at that travel as an example, if we're going to Disney with our family, obviously if our family's not part of our business, the travel associated with them is not included as that business expense piece. Or if we're buying a five-bedroom Airbnb instead of a one-bedroom hotel, you know, we'd have to account for, okay, we don't need a five-bedroom Airbnb if it was just me traveling for this business piece.
 
And so those are just some factors that we need to factor into it. But travel, I think, is a great way of saying, okay, how can we intertwine business with the travel that we may be doing anyways? And so that's kind of one idea when it comes to maximizing deductions. Another one that's very common is meals. And you know, we say that as a business owner, you're constantly talking about your business, whether you realize it or not, but you go out to dinner, you go out to lunch with a friend, a family member, you know, is it, are you guys talking about business?
 
Are you asking them for referrals? Are you asking them for advice in an employee that you have or asking them for advice in a client situation that popped up? You know, there's all these different times where you think that you're just going out to lunch or dinner with a friend or family member, but at the end of the day, you talk business at it. Well, that's a business deduction. You can find a reason that's ordinary and necessary.
 
Why is this a business deduction? That's something that we should be taking care of. And so, those are kind of the ideas we want to start being creative again of saying, okay, everyday life, what are we doing in our everyday life? What's the spending we're doing? Every time I swipe my credit card, is there a business purpose for this?
 
Can I find a business purpose that I can validly back up and support? If so, let's take advantage of it. Let's utilize the code to our advantage, but also let's make sure we're protecting ourselves. We're keeping receipts. We're keeping that documentation to back up that business proof and that spending that we're doing.
 
Rachel Boltz: Absolutely. And I really appreciate the clarity that you bring to business owners. I was listening to one of your podcasts recently and it was disgusting about going through your personal account and seeing if there were any business related opportunities. For example, you might have went to lunch with a friend and then ended up talking about business the entire time. And another tip that you had brought up specifically about travel was using an app to track your mileage and then using different documentation factors to kind of reinforce the fact that you had used this for travel.
 
Just in case the IRS did question you about anything, you had the receipt of where you had visited for lunch or for coffee, and you had, you know, like a calendar entry kind of validating where you were in that moment. So I really do appreciate you kind of encompassing everything and just making it very clear and concise to people who may not think that might not be top of mind for them. And I know a lot of times in your different podcast episodes you talk about different different tips for different corporations and talk about reviewing your entity structure. So is an S corporation, is that what you recommend for most small businesses?
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah. So, you know, I think an S corporation is definitely a strategy and we can talk about, you know, that strategy, why we like it. And it's a strategy that, yes, we see a lot of small business owners that we work with geared moving towards that idea of a NASA corporation. But I think the first and foremost thing is kind of understanding what you have. And we always say kind of part of that tax planning process or this idea to pay in least amount taxes legally possible is first just having a core understanding of taxes.
 
You don't have to be an accountant, but you just have to understand how does my business entity tax? How does this work? And then that second piece is building a foundation for your business. And I think this entity is a huge part in that foundation of your business. And so we always say, you know, when does an S corporation make sense?
 
First off, when would, why would we decide to be an S corporation? And one of the main reasons that we would utilize the S corporation as a tax strategy tool would be to help minimize the amount of self-employment taxes that we pay. And so, you know, let's set this up the stage of when it starts to make sense is that most businesses start out as a sole proprietorship. They're just no entity at all, or they start out as an LLC, which is what we see most commonly, a sole proprietorship or an LLC. And if you're just a sole proprietorship or a single member LLC with no S-corp election, you have to pay your normal income tax rate on 100% of your income, and then you also pay self-employment taxes on your business income as well.
 
And so with the sole proprietorship single member LLC, we're paying our regular ordinary income tax rate on our percent of our business income, and we're paying self-employment taxes on a hundred percent of our income. And so when we look at an S corporation, what we're trying to do is saying, okay, how can we help minimize the amount we pay in self-employment taxes? And an S corporation is simply just a tax election. It's not an entity structure. You start at the state level.
 
You're just electing for an entity that you already have set up to be taxed as an S corporation at the federal level. And so you need to have either an LLC set up in order to elect S Corp status, or you would need to have a corporation set up. And then again, you would elect for it to be taxed as an S Corp. But with an S Corporation, we take your profit or your income and we split it into two pieces. As an S Corp, you're required to take a reasonable salary as the owner of the company.
 
So you have to take W-2 payroll salary as the owner of the company. And that salary piece is good, you're gonna pay self-employment taxes on. But the beauty behind the S corporations that we split that income into two pieces, the salary and then anything over and above your salary, we take in an owner's draw or a distribution and you avoid self-employment taxes on that. And self-employment taxes is 15.3%. So depending on where your income level is, there can be some pretty significant savings there.
 
As an example, if you're making $100,000 a year in profit in your business as a single member LC or a sole proprietorship, you're going to pay your normal income tax rate plus $15,000 in self-employment taxes. Now, we take that same business and say, hey, let's do an S-corp election. Now, we're splitting your income into two. And let's just say, as an example, we say $50,000 is a reasonable salary for the work that you're doing for your business. Now we're paying self-employment taxes on $50,000, but we're avoiding it on the $50,000 over and above that.
 
And by simply doing an S-Corp election, we're saving $7,500 in taxes in that year. And so that's kind of really the power behind an S-Corporation. Now a lot of people say, well, why don't everybody do an S-Corporation all the time, every time? And the reason being is that if your income's at a lower dollar amount or some various other situations, sometimes it doesn't make sense. And the reason for that is that with an S corporation, you're required to take a reasonable salary.
 
So that means you need to take W-2 payroll. There's costs associated with that. You need some type of a payroll provider, and there's gonna be monthly or annual costs to do that payroll piece. So there's costs with payroll, and you also now need to file a separate business tax return, which is gonna be a little bit more complex of a tax return. It's still all gonna flow through to your personal return, but you have to do a separate filing specific for your business.
 
And there's obviously some costs associated with that. So we typically say once your business starts to hit about $50,000 or more in profit, generally stating that's when an S corporation starts to make sense underneath that it's not necessarily going to hurt you, but the taxes that you save are gonna get eaten up by some of those additional costs. ["Wacky
 
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MIke Jesowshek: So to go back to like how your original question, do we recommend or isn't S Corporation right for everybody? Now, it's not right for everybody, but I think that, you know, having a solid foundation, having an LLC set up and obviously being on the legal side, you can talk about the benefits of that. I love this idea of having an LLC set up for that protection piece. And when it makes sense, when your business gets to the profit where it makes sense, or when you have that opportunity where, yeah, I want to do an S corporation, now you can easily do it. You can easily do that as corporation because you have that entity structure set up.
 
You have that foundation built from the beginning. And so that's kind of the key piece of, you know, build that foundation and then that foundation is there to build upon as your business gets to the point where it's growing beyond that.
 
Speaker 2: So when we talk about the third tax saving strategy for small businesses, you talk a lot about retirement planning. How is retirement planning something that has an impact on your tax strategy?
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, you know, I always look at retirement planning. I think that's one small business owners oftentimes don't think about retirement. You know, they're so engulfed in their business, they're putting money away from taxes, they're living life and they just don't think about this idea of saving for retirement. And they think, well, my business is, I have my business and that is my retirement plan. And a lot of people get to retirement and realize that their business really isn't worth as much as they maybe thought it was for various different reasons.
 
That's the main part of the business and without them, the business doesn't mean much. And so what do they really have to sell? Other people, very completely different scenario, but I think it's important for business owners to think about that idea of retirement because it just doesn't come as natural as it maybe would for a W-2 employee. But when we look at retirement from a tax standpoint, I really kind of talk about that as like a deferral. You know, if you put money into a pre-tax account, you're gonna eventually pay taxes on that money when you get into retirement.
 
If you put money in a Roth account you get no tax break today but that money grows tax-free which is obviously a great opportunity as well. So you know there's there's still like and there's no tax completely avoidance when you're talking about retirement plans but it does provide some really good planning. And so as a business owner, I think it always comes down to you, how much do you want to put away towards retirement? That's going to tell us what type of plan you want to go with. If you're saying, I want to put five, $6,000 of you away towards retirement, we're going to say go do like a traditional IRA or Roth IRA.
 
Don't even worry about setting up a business retirement plan. But if you're a solo business owner, you're saying, no, I want to put away, you know, more money than that, then we might be looking at a SEP IRA or a solo 401k. And these are all plans that allow you to contribute a bigger amount than just your traditional IRA into retirement and once you start to have employees you know we'd look at a simple IRA or a safe harbor 401k. I think the the plan or the retirement plan is don't get into a plan that is too big for you or doesn't make sense for the business in your state. And so it's almost like thinking about it.
 
What is the reason that I want to open this retirement plan? Is it to fund my retirement or is it to help attract new talent to my team or retain current talent to my team. You know, find out what that plan is and it can be a combination of them. And then also find out, okay, how much do you want to put away into your retirement plan? Or how much do you think your employees will want to put away towards their retirement plan?
 
And how much of that do you want to help fund? And that's going to lead you to to what kind of retirement plan you set up. Again traditionally we say if you have no employees outside of maybe you and your spouse we're looking at a solo 401k or a SEPI array. If you have employees, we're looking at a simple IRA or a safe Harbor 401k as being the most common type of retirement plans that we're backing into for that.
 
Rachel Boltz: Retirement planning is huge. And I feel like a lot of people don't really even consider retirement planning until they start to get a little bit older and start thinking about their exit strategy. So I love that you bring up retirement planning and ways that you can utilize it. Now I also have a question about real estate investing. You had mentioned something about that briefly.
 
So how does real estate investing relate to tax saving strategies for small business?
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, no, we could dive down a long haul talking about real estate and the all sorts of type of planning opportunities that are involved in it. But I like to kind of talk when I talk about real estate, there's kind of two things that we talk about and where your opportunities are. The first one is more of a traditional real estate, you know, like where you're just holding a long-term rental property where you buy a single family home and rent it out to somebody and they stay there for years upon years. And then there's this short-term rental strategy and there's sometimes called the short-term rental loophole in how we look at that. But When we look at real estate in general, real estate is traditionally considered a passive type activity.
 
You invest in something, it gains some income, you get those rent checks. Maybe you're doing a little maintenance here or there, but you're not actively involved in it if it's just some rental properties and you have a day job. And the big thing about real estate is that you get a deduction for the cost of that real estate in the form of depreciation. And oftentimes depreciation is heavy up front where you can create a cash flow, you can create income, the depreciation, which is a non-cash expense, but it's going to offset that income that you're making. So you might make $10,000 of income from a rental property over the course of a year, but now you have $10,000 in depreciation that offsets that.
 
So you're paying zero in taxes, you're showing zero in income on your tax return, but you just cash flowed actually $10,000. And that's kind of the beauty behind real estate is that you get this idea of depreciation, which again, is a non-cash expense that can help offset a lot of the income that you have coming in. So when we look at real estate, I think it's very powerful in not only an investment that's going to continue to grow, but an investment that's oftentimes not, you're going to get positive cash flow without having to pay taxes on it, which is a benefit of itself. But if you can start to qualify as a real estate professional or you have a spouse that can qualify as a real estate professional, then we can look at real estate and say, how can we start creating losses in real estate that we can use to offset my business income. So if your business is doing really well, how can you create a loss or bring a loss over from real estate in those non-cash losses that we can use to reduce the income from our business?
 
In order to do that, we need something called a, you need to be a real estate professional, you need to have a spouse that's a real estate professional, or something along those lines. And so that's where you can really see power. You know, when we look at people were attacking And when President Trump found out his tax returns come out, a lot of people said, Trump paid $700 in taxes a year, and he's a billionaire, and that's not fair. When we look at what Trump was doing, at least from what we can tell from the information that was released, is he's using real estate losses to offset the majority of his income. So he might be cash flowing really well and bringing in a lot of cash, but he has these losses from real estate qualifying as a real estate professional that we can use to offset a lot of that income.
 
That's something that everybody can do, but the key thing is qualifying as a real estate professional. Then you bring in this idea of short-term rentals, where short-term rentals kind of throws that all up on its side and saying, oh, if we have a short-term rental with an average day of seven days or less, now we can use a short-term rental loss to offset active income. We can use a short-term rental loss to offset our business income. With a normal rental activity, you have passive income. You can't use that to offset business income unless you qualify as a real estate professional.
 
But now with a short-term rental, because it's not considered a passive activity because it's seven days or less, now we can utilize it to offset our business income. And that's kind of you'll see a lot of different things we talk about on our podcast. But this idea of the short-term rental loophole, that's where this idea of where you can utilize that idea of taking rental property losses to offset your other income, it opens up the door for people that don't qualify as a real estate professional, which can sometimes be a little difficult. So there's a lot of planning opportunities in real estate, not just looking at how can we help reduce your taxes or lower your taxes, but also just the investment itself and in where that can grow and kind of be a form of retirement planning, right? Like if you're not into the stock, bonds, mutual funds, those types of things, you know, maybe real estate is kind of your form of that idea of retirement planning.
 
And we see that with a lot of business owners going down that road.
 
Speaker 2: So for the fifth tax saving strategy for small businesses, tell us about hiring your kids. What are your thoughts on hiring your kids as a tax saving strategy?
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, this idea of hiring my kids is one of my favorite strategies because it's something that if you have kids, it's something that you're spending a lot of money on them. You're paying for basketball camps, you're paying for amusement parks to go with their friends, and all of that again, we're we talk about after tax versus pre-tax dollars. Anything you spend on your kid, you're always consistently thinking, oh, that's just after-tax dollars. You know, how could I ever say that a basketball camp is a business expense? You're right.
 
That doesn't make sense. But is there a way that we could hire our kids in our business and then the kids could help pay for that basketball camp themselves? And the idea behind this is saying if we hire our kids in our business we can get a business deduction and our kids potentially pay no income tax on the income that they receive if they're under the standard deduction which this year is is somewhere upper thirteen thousand dollars. So you could pay your kids you know up to just under fourteen thousand dollars in income this year from your business get a business deduction for that your pre-tax expense for you and your child would pay no income tax on that income that they receive. This is a great way to shift that income into a lower tax bracket, a zero tax bracket, while still getting a business deduction for it.
 
Now, it's not as easy to say, okay, you know, we're going to pay little Johnny $14,000 this year, get a business expense for it and move on and everything's going to be great. You know, there's, there's again, this idea of, is this legal? Yes, absolutely. Directly talked about in the IRS code about hiring your own children and the tax benefits behind it. But the second piece is, are we dotting our eyes and crossing our T's?
 
Just writing a checkout to little Johnny for $14,000 is not dotting our eyes and crossing our T's. And so it's important to know the basics. The child has to be doing actual work for your business, you know, do we have a job description? Do we have an employment agreement for it? We need to be tracking their hours, you know, what are they doing?
 
What are the tasks that they're doing? Are we paying them a rate that's reasonable? So You might have them cut grass around your office, but are you paying them $250 an hour when the local professional is going to charge you $80 an hour? Yeah, that doesn't make sense. You know, we'd probably want to figure out what's a reasonable rate for their experience.
 
So If the professional is charging $80 now, we're probably going to charge even less than that because we have a child that's maybe inexperienced. Those are the things we want to start to link about this idea. But now we can get a business deduction, child pays potentially no income taxes, And the benefit then is that they can then go, they want to use those money to go to a basketball camp, go to a amusement park with friends. Essentially, we just moved after tax spending into pre-tax spending in that case. There's also this idea of funding a Roth IRA that I absolutely love.
 
Because when we think about a Roth IRA, as we talked about this whole idea of retirement planning, the problem with a Roth IRA is you get no tax deduction when you fund it. But if you have income that you have to pay zero tax on, You don't need a tax deduction. And so why, if we fund that Roth IRA, we get no tax deduction, which we also didn't need one because we have no tax. But now that Roth IRA, when you're 12 years old, you've put $5,000 into a Roth IRA, think about the compounding growth that that Roth IRA can gain over the course of however many years until you hit retirement. That's going to be tax free, withdrawals are tax free.
 
So I love this idea of now that we have earned income, let's and if we don't need to use it for basketball camps or whatever it might be, could we think about funding a Roth IRA with this. The other cool thing about Roth IRAs is that you can pull back the principal without any penalties, fines, and interest. So if from the age of 12 to 16, you put $5,000 into a Roth IRA each year, and now your child gets to college and they're like, I need some money, I need whatever it might be, and you don't have other resources for them. Well, they could go back and pull the principal back out of that Roth IRA without any kind of penalties or interest. And so it's really kind of this idea of hiring your kids is something we want to make sure we do right, but it's something that I think every business owner should be taking advantage of.
 
As long as you have kids, at least, you know, I say between the ages of seven, 17 is kind of where the sweet spot is of this. If your kids are older than that, There's different planning strategy around that and ways that we go about that. But there's definitely some planning around this idea of, of hiring your kids. And you know, just to kind of end that thought on is a lot of people, when I first talked to that, they say, sounds great, but you know, you said this thing about dotting your I's and crossing your T's and how you need to make sure that they're doing actual work. They might say like, I'm an attorney, like what could my kid possibly do in my business?
 
And I always say that there has been yet to be a business owner that I couldn't find something that we could say their kid was doing for the business. We couldn't find something that their kid could do in their business. You know, and it might not be as obvious as it might be initially. You know, could they be shredding papers? Could they be stuffing envelopes?
 
Could they be cleaning around the office? Another one I love for people that are kids that are in that like 15, 16 age and where they're starting to get into social media is, you know, couldn't they do some social media posts for you? Can they be researching different articles and sharing them on your social media? That's all part of this idea of let's be creative. Let's think about things that they can do and let's make sure that we're implementing them in a way that makes sense for it while also making sure that we're doing things correctly.
 
So a lot of planning opportunities, I just think it's something that if you have kids in that range, it's something you need to be thinking about and just start research in that process. You know, when we talk about tax planning, it's this idea of let me learn, let's hear all these good things, let's hear about these tax strategies, but we can't just stop from learning. We have to actually take, put our feet on the ground and start to implement those and so that implementation piece could be researching a little bit Tweaking that strategy to get to where it needs to be for your situation specifically
 
Rachel Boltz: You know, we're all about that case about that case no trouble all about that case about that case no trouble All about that case about that case no trouble all about that case about that case
 
Brooke Boltz: We are all about your case. Text or call to schedule a free consultation for all your legal needs. Boltzlegal.com.
 
Rachel Boltz: I love that fifth tip. I am a huge advocate for putting my kids to work. It builds a strong work ethic, but then if you can use that as an investment for their future and their future goals, like that to me is the icing on the cake. So I really appreciate those tips that you shared with us today.
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah. And that's a great, that's a great point. You know, it's, it's, we're looking at a tax strategy and that's where my mind's always like tax saving tax savings, but you bring up a good point. Like not only are we potentially saving taxes or we are saving taxes, but we're teaching them this idea of working for a living, working for money. Maybe they might be, this might be a business that they want to look to take over, you know, down the road, 20, 30, 40 years from now.
 
What a great opportunity to get them in at a very young age. And they might say, I want nothing to do with it. Well, that just made your succession planning a little bit easier because now you know, okay, it's not going to the kids. What other options are there? And where's kind of the exit plan in here?
 
But yeah, I think that there's so many benefits over and above just the tax savings that you mentioned there.
 
Speaker 2: Rachel and I both put our kids to work at communities. They are great at handing out air fresheners or whatever it is that we're passing out.
 
Rachel Boltz: People don't want to say no to kids. You know, they'll say no to adults all day long, but they don't want to say no to kids. So we send them the kids out.
 
Speaker 2: A couple of summers ago, I had my daughters, they were like nine and 10 at the time, work at the office in the summer, and I thought, I'm going to put them upstairs. We have just kind of a little loft upstairs in the office where they would be away from people and not like disturbing the staff. But, turns out they can still disturb the staff. Cause I'd be sitting here like on a phone call or something, and I'd hear, get up! You know?
 
And they'd be fighting. And so if your kids get along, that's a little easier than a fight all the time like mine do. But they definitely, the task that they did, just in case people are looking for ideas, is they sent out emails asking my former clients for Google reviews. And so I made a template email for them and gave them the list and they sent those emails. And then I gave them Robux for every review they actually got because they don't really care too much about money.
 
I did pay them, but that's not what really motivates them as much, but Roblox money, they were into that.
 
MIke Jesowshek: I love that. That brings up a good point. I love that idea of what are some things that they can be doing. Now, I do have to ask, Was there any funky emails that they might have sent out where the template got tripled or they were fighting and all of a sudden the keyboard was typing a bunch of different things?
 
Speaker 2: Yes, so many times. They would send three emails to the same person or forget to change the name. So it would say, Dear John, I'm supposed to say, you know, plenty of errors, but people were, were very gracious with, with I would say that was my kids. I'm sorry. I'm trying to teach them how to, I'm trying to help them, you know, start learning how to work and seeing what work is like and so people were very gracious thankfully.
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah I love that concept and you know another thing I had an attorney that I was talking to about this strategy and again they're like well what can they do for my business? I said, throw them in social media, have them start doing that social media stuff. And he's like, why don't do social media? Like, I don't need to, I grow from referrals. Like I don't need, I don't need to grow my business at all.
 
I'm like, well, what would it hurt to have someone manage a social media account for you? Again, we're looking at this from a tax strategy standpoint. You know, we're getting a business deduction, kids are paying no income taxes. What would it really hurt by having them do social media for you? And hey, maybe you have some really good clients that always come from referrals, but now they're starting to see your stuff more often, now they're gonna come work for you, think about you more often in various different things.
 
And you might not need the business, but was it gonna hurt if we're looking at it from a tax standpoint as well?
 
Speaker 2: Absolutely. The social media, Rachel's given a statistic before that millennials and younger will look you up on social media before they'll go to your website. And having a social media presence is important, especially to the younger demographic.
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, 100%.
 
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for your time today. This has brought massive value to our listeners, and I just cannot thank you enough for volunteering and sharing your time today with us to teach us these strategies. And if anyone has not heard of or listened to the podcast, tax, Wait, I'm going to say it wrong. Small business tax savings.
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, that's it.
 
Speaker 2: Small business tax savings. I highly recommend it. It's in the top 1 percent of podcasts globally, according to ListenNotes, and on the first page of Apple Podcasts when you search tax and it is highly valuable. We'll give you all kinds of great ideas to save on taxes for your small business. So please check it out.
 
And with that, thank you for tuning in until next time.
 
Brooke Boltz: Take care.
 
MIke Jesowshek: Rachel Brooke, thanks for having me.
 
Rachel Boltz: Thank you so much. We appreciate you and are honored to be on this journey with you. We can't wait to help you, to encourage you, and show you how to grow personally, professionally, and spiritually.
 
Brooke Boltz: If you found Miss Biz helpful, please leave a review and share with others.
 
Rachel Boltz: You can follow us on social media at Miss Biz Podcast.
 
Brooke Boltz: For legal questions or services, please visit BoltsLegal.com.
 
Rachel Boltz: And for digital marketing needs, please visit BoltsMedia.com. Let's get biz done.

Ep. 25 | Making Your Money Work: Tax-Saving Secrets for Your Business with Guest Mike Jesowshek

Join us for Episode 25 with special guest Mike Jesowshek. In this episode we discuss some crucial _tax saving strategies for small businesses_ based on the insights from our recent podcast. We delve into topics such as *maximizing business deductions*, *retirement planning*, *entity structure*, *real estate investing*, and the benefits of *hiring family members*. Learn about legitimate ways to write off various pre-tax business expenses including travel, meals, and home office costs. 
Discover how retirement plans like SEPs and solo 401ks can aid business owners in contributing larger amounts to tax-deferred retirement funds. We also talk about how the decision to incorporate as an *S-Corp* can reduce self-employment taxes. 
We also dissect the advantages of real estate depreciation deductions and the role of short-term rental losses in offsetting business income. Understand the financial benefits of hiring family members and how, with correct tracking of their work hours and pay, it can result in significant business deductions.
Lastly, we put stress on the importance of businesses reviewing their structure and adopting strategies such as tracking mileage and receipts to withstand an IRS audit. If you are a small business owner, this video is tailor-made for you. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe for more such valuable content
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Full Episode Transcript:
Brooke Boltz: As a business owner, your highest paid employee is the IRS. Boo! To grow your business, it is crucial that you learn and implement tax-saving strategies. This has been such a pain point for my business that I started searching for tax strategy experts and I came across the podcast called Small Business Tax Savings. From the very first episode and every episode thereafter I learned something new and valuable.
 
I am truly honored to have as our special guest today, certified public accountant and the host of the Small Business Tax Saving podcast, Mike Jesowshek.
 
Rachel Boltz: Listen Notes ranks this podcast in the top 1% of podcasts globally. Mike also offers a tax minimization program to teach small businesses how to legally shrink their tax bill. You are guaranteed to receive massive value from today's episode. So stay tuned. Hey lady bosses, are you working even after putting the kids to bed but still not getting results?
 
Brooke Boltz: Are you tired of spending money on ads that aren't getting engagement?
 
Rachel Boltz: Do you feel burdened that you aren't fulfilling your purpose in life because you are so consumed with work.
 
Brooke Boltz: I'm your host, Brooke Bolts. I'm an attorney and founder of Bolts Legal. I started my business and in one year was bringing in seven figures and am now bringing in multi-seven figures.
 
Rachel Boltz: And I'm your co-host, Rachel Bolts, owner of Bolts Media. I've helped many businesses build their online presence and increase their revenue through digital marketing.
 
Speaker 2: Want to hear how we did it?
 
Rachel Boltz: We are here to help you achieve your goals personally, professionally, and spiritually.
 
Brooke Boltz: So kick off your high heels, sit back, and let's ignite that passion.
 
Rachel Boltz: We're Miss Biz where we're putting the Miss in Biz. Let's get Biz done.
 
Speaker 2: So Mike, a lot of tax strategists tell you to save money on taxes, to go out and buy a bunch of expensive things that you don't really need. But that's not your advice. How are your tax strategies different?
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, no, I think that that's such a common thing. I always say, if you do need a new truck, if you do need a new piece of equipment, sure, let's utilize tax code the way it's written. But let's not go buy things we don't need because at the end of the day, if you buy something for $100 as an example and you save 32 cents in taxes, you're still out, you know, whatever that 78 cents is in total. And so you're just getting something on a discount that you didn't really need anyways. And so when we look at this idea of maximizing deductions, I think it's so important to understand kind of what that means.
 
And the best way to describe it is to look at this idea of pre-tax versus after-tax dollars. And most people think of after-tax spending and the best way to describe after-tax spending is let's think of a W-2 employee. So a non-business owner, just a W-2 employee that's working for somebody and they have gross wages and then they have all these taxes taken out that the employer takes out on their behalf. And then they have their take home pay. And any spending that they do, whether it's paying for kids' basketball camps or buying groceries, anything they do is considered after-tax spending because they're using the dollars of money, the dollars that they're spending with is money that's already been taxed.
 
And so if we look at this flip side, as a business owner, you have sales, and then you have all these expenses that go into it, and then you have your profit of your business. And any spending that you do prior to that profit piece is considered pre-tax spending because as a business owner, you get taxed on the profit of your business. And so that's this idea that we constantly want to be thinking about when we think of this idea of maximizing deductions is how can I turn after tax spending, spending that is done after being taxed, how can I find a business purpose and move that into pre-tax spending? And I think that's the power when you talk about this idea of maximizing deductions, I think that's where the majority of the power is. And so the best way to illustrate this as well is let's imagine when COVID hit.
 
If you were a W-2 employee, you were working in an office, now you get sent home. You go, you're using a home office, you're putting heat and AC in that home office, you're buying a desk, you're buying a computer chair, you're buying a laptop screen all for that home office that you have now. And you get no deduction on that. All that spending that you're doing on that is considered after-tax spending. You don't get a deduction for it as a W-2 employee.
 
But as a business owner, that desk you bought, that home office that you're sitting in, that computer screen that you bought, that's all business expenses. And all that spending you're doing now is pre-tax spending. It's a business expense prior to those funds being taxed. And so that's kind of this concept of moving after tax spending to pre-tax spending. And there's so many things in the day-to-day life of business owners that we can tie to our business.
 
And we'll talk about some of those ideas like hiring your kids and meals and travel and all those different things about there's as a business owner, our business is engulfed in our life in many different areas. And there's ways that we can intertwine that to move spending that we're already going to do. We're going to do no matter what, but now we're going to get a pre-tax deduction for instead of using after-tax dollars. And so Home Office is a great example of that, where if you have a home, you have that expense. Whether you're a business owner or not, you're gonna have that same exact expense.
 
But now as a business owner, we can take a deduction for it. We can take a deduction for our cell phone. We can take a deduction for our cell phone. We can take a deduction for our internet. And those are all pre-tax spending.
 
And so when people come to me and say, hey, you know, it's end of the year. Should I just go buy a new truck and get a bonus depreciation and clear out my income? I say, well, do you need a new truck? Is there a reason for that new truck that you're going to go buy? And they're like, no, I mean, the one I have is perfect, but, you know, obviously I need a tax deduction.
 
I say, well, let's look at different things first. Let's look at the other spending that you've done throughout this year personally and see if we can find some ways to be creative and think about, hey, is there a way that we could turn that from after tax spending into pre-tax spending? If
 
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Speaker 2: And That is what I love about your teachings and your podcast is the creativity that you bring to the things that we're already spending money on and categorizing it now or showing us how to properly categorize it as a business expense. I have gone on a search for tax strategists to help me lower my tax liability and every time they just tell me the same things I already know. And for the first time when I started listening to your podcast, I heard new ideas I hadn't heard before. And That is why I was so impressed with what you were teaching and thought other business owners need to hear these strategies. So let's start talking now about the top five tax saving strategies for small businesses.
 
And you talk a lot in your podcast about maximizing business deductions. What are some ways that a small business can do
 
MIke Jesowshek: that? Yeah, so again, it's this idea of moving after tax spending and into pre-tax spending. And so if we look at an example, let's look at travel. When you travel for business, that's a deductible business expense. The hotel, the Airbnbs, the airfare, all of that is deductible business expenses.
 
And what the IRS looks like, it looks at as a business day, means that the majority of the day you spend on business, then that day is considered a business day. And when they look at the majority of the day, they're looking at, you know, average day is eight hours, a work day is eight hours. So if you spend four hours and one minute on business for a day, that's considered a business day. Now the IRS doesn't care if you then go to the beach, you go to amusement parks with your family, whatever you're doing, they don't care as long as the majority of that day was spent on business. And so I think that this provides a really cool opportunity for business owners to say, hey, we have a family vacation planned.
 
We have a family vacation coming up. Can I intertwine that with some business? Can I maybe attend a conference on that trip that we're taking? Could I visit a rental property? Is there clients?
 
Is there a vendor? Is there something out and where we're going that I can tie some of this to business and at least get some business days as part of that travel. Now I always kind of tell people like you don't want to do this every time or your spouse is probably going to kill you but you know we want to try to think about this and be creative in these ways of hey you know if we're going to Disney with the family, you know, is there a conference going on in Disney that I can spend four hours and one minute or five hours a day doing that conference and then doing everything else I'd normally do with my family on that trip? And now it's a business trip. So that's this kind of idea of okay, we're playing this trip to Disney How can I tie this to business and get at least a partial business deduction for it now obviously?
 
With all tax strategies, and this is kind of this overall concept of tax planning whenever I'm looking at tax strategy I have to hit two pieces one is it legal and obviously we would never do something that's illegal. So if we hit a strategy that can't pass that mustard, then we're throwing that one out the door. But the second piece is, are we dotting our I's and crossing our T's? Are we doing what we can to protect ourselves? Because that's the important piece.
 
The home office deduction is completely legal. But is there a way to make the way that we datarizing crossing our T's make it illegal? Yeah, absolutely. If we take a home office deduction for 100% of our home, that's blatantly illegal. Like how is it a home office if it's 100% office and it's not a home then, it's just an office.
 
And so there's ways that we wanna look at those things. And that goes with all of our planning is saying, okay, concept makes sense, it's legal, we found ways to do it, now we just need to make sure we're doing it right. We're dotting our I's, crossing our T's. And so if we look at that travel as an example, if we're going to Disney with our family, obviously if our family's not part of our business, the travel associated with them is not included as that business expense piece. Or if we're buying a five-bedroom Airbnb instead of a one-bedroom hotel, you know, we'd have to account for, okay, we don't need a five-bedroom Airbnb if it was just me traveling for this business piece.
 
And so those are just some factors that we need to factor into it. But travel, I think, is a great way of saying, okay, how can we intertwine business with the travel that we may be doing anyways? And so that's kind of one idea when it comes to maximizing deductions. Another one that's very common is meals. And you know, we say that as a business owner, you're constantly talking about your business, whether you realize it or not, but you go out to dinner, you go out to lunch with a friend, a family member, you know, is it, are you guys talking about business?
 
Are you asking them for referrals? Are you asking them for advice in an employee that you have or asking them for advice in a client situation that popped up? You know, there's all these different times where you think that you're just going out to lunch or dinner with a friend or family member, but at the end of the day, you talk business at it. Well, that's a business deduction. You can find a reason that's ordinary and necessary.
 
Why is this a business deduction? That's something that we should be taking care of. And so, those are kind of the ideas we want to start being creative again of saying, okay, everyday life, what are we doing in our everyday life? What's the spending we're doing? Every time I swipe my credit card, is there a business purpose for this?
 
Can I find a business purpose that I can validly back up and support? If so, let's take advantage of it. Let's utilize the code to our advantage, but also let's make sure we're protecting ourselves. We're keeping receipts. We're keeping that documentation to back up that business proof and that spending that we're doing.
 
Rachel Boltz: Absolutely. And I really appreciate the clarity that you bring to business owners. I was listening to one of your podcasts recently and it was disgusting about going through your personal account and seeing if there were any business related opportunities. For example, you might have went to lunch with a friend and then ended up talking about business the entire time. And another tip that you had brought up specifically about travel was using an app to track your mileage and then using different documentation factors to kind of reinforce the fact that you had used this for travel.
 
Just in case the IRS did question you about anything, you had the receipt of where you had visited for lunch or for coffee, and you had, you know, like a calendar entry kind of validating where you were in that moment. So I really do appreciate you kind of encompassing everything and just making it very clear and concise to people who may not think that might not be top of mind for them. And I know a lot of times in your different podcast episodes you talk about different different tips for different corporations and talk about reviewing your entity structure. So is an S corporation, is that what you recommend for most small businesses?
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah. So, you know, I think an S corporation is definitely a strategy and we can talk about, you know, that strategy, why we like it. And it's a strategy that, yes, we see a lot of small business owners that we work with geared moving towards that idea of a NASA corporation. But I think the first and foremost thing is kind of understanding what you have. And we always say kind of part of that tax planning process or this idea to pay in least amount taxes legally possible is first just having a core understanding of taxes.
 
You don't have to be an accountant, but you just have to understand how does my business entity tax? How does this work? And then that second piece is building a foundation for your business. And I think this entity is a huge part in that foundation of your business. And so we always say, you know, when does an S corporation make sense?
 
First off, when would, why would we decide to be an S corporation? And one of the main reasons that we would utilize the S corporation as a tax strategy tool would be to help minimize the amount of self-employment taxes that we pay. And so, you know, let's set this up the stage of when it starts to make sense is that most businesses start out as a sole proprietorship. They're just no entity at all, or they start out as an LLC, which is what we see most commonly, a sole proprietorship or an LLC. And if you're just a sole proprietorship or a single member LLC with no S-corp election, you have to pay your normal income tax rate on 100% of your income, and then you also pay self-employment taxes on your business income as well.
 
And so with the sole proprietorship single member LLC, we're paying our regular ordinary income tax rate on our percent of our business income, and we're paying self-employment taxes on a hundred percent of our income. And so when we look at an S corporation, what we're trying to do is saying, okay, how can we help minimize the amount we pay in self-employment taxes? And an S corporation is simply just a tax election. It's not an entity structure. You start at the state level.
 
You're just electing for an entity that you already have set up to be taxed as an S corporation at the federal level. And so you need to have either an LLC set up in order to elect S Corp status, or you would need to have a corporation set up. And then again, you would elect for it to be taxed as an S Corp. But with an S Corporation, we take your profit or your income and we split it into two pieces. As an S Corp, you're required to take a reasonable salary as the owner of the company.
 
So you have to take W-2 payroll salary as the owner of the company. And that salary piece is good, you're gonna pay self-employment taxes on. But the beauty behind the S corporations that we split that income into two pieces, the salary and then anything over and above your salary, we take in an owner's draw or a distribution and you avoid self-employment taxes on that. And self-employment taxes is 15.3%. So depending on where your income level is, there can be some pretty significant savings there.
 
As an example, if you're making $100,000 a year in profit in your business as a single member LC or a sole proprietorship, you're going to pay your normal income tax rate plus $15,000 in self-employment taxes. Now, we take that same business and say, hey, let's do an S-corp election. Now, we're splitting your income into two. And let's just say, as an example, we say $50,000 is a reasonable salary for the work that you're doing for your business. Now we're paying self-employment taxes on $50,000, but we're avoiding it on the $50,000 over and above that.
 
And by simply doing an S-Corp election, we're saving $7,500 in taxes in that year. And so that's kind of really the power behind an S-Corporation. Now a lot of people say, well, why don't everybody do an S-Corporation all the time, every time? And the reason being is that if your income's at a lower dollar amount or some various other situations, sometimes it doesn't make sense. And the reason for that is that with an S corporation, you're required to take a reasonable salary.
 
So that means you need to take W-2 payroll. There's costs associated with that. You need some type of a payroll provider, and there's gonna be monthly or annual costs to do that payroll piece. So there's costs with payroll, and you also now need to file a separate business tax return, which is gonna be a little bit more complex of a tax return. It's still all gonna flow through to your personal return, but you have to do a separate filing specific for your business.
 
And there's obviously some costs associated with that. So we typically say once your business starts to hit about $50,000 or more in profit, generally stating that's when an S corporation starts to make sense underneath that it's not necessarily going to hurt you, but the taxes that you save are gonna get eaten up by some of those additional costs. ["Wacky
 
Brooke Boltz: Wacky"] -♪ You don't wanna be wacky, coo-coo! -♪ We will cut you some slack, we got you! -♪ You just wanna make a big stack. Falling. Listen to our Biz Hack.
 
Rachel Boltz: Are you tired of waiting through spammy messages on LinkedIn? Here is a biz hack trick. Click on your profile picture, navigate to data privacy, and let freedom ring. Turn off the option that says allow others to send you open profile messages and while you're at it, switch off allow LinkedIn partners to show you sponsored messages. This will force individuals to have to connect with you first before sending you messages.
 
Brooke Boltz: It's like putting a no spam sign on your digital doorstep. Because let's be honest, no one likes spam on their sandwiches or in boxes.
 
MIke Jesowshek: So to go back to like how your original question, do we recommend or isn't S Corporation right for everybody? Now, it's not right for everybody, but I think that, you know, having a solid foundation, having an LLC set up and obviously being on the legal side, you can talk about the benefits of that. I love this idea of having an LLC set up for that protection piece. And when it makes sense, when your business gets to the profit where it makes sense, or when you have that opportunity where, yeah, I want to do an S corporation, now you can easily do it. You can easily do that as corporation because you have that entity structure set up.
 
You have that foundation built from the beginning. And so that's kind of the key piece of, you know, build that foundation and then that foundation is there to build upon as your business gets to the point where it's growing beyond that.
 
Speaker 2: So when we talk about the third tax saving strategy for small businesses, you talk a lot about retirement planning. How is retirement planning something that has an impact on your tax strategy?
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, you know, I always look at retirement planning. I think that's one small business owners oftentimes don't think about retirement. You know, they're so engulfed in their business, they're putting money away from taxes, they're living life and they just don't think about this idea of saving for retirement. And they think, well, my business is, I have my business and that is my retirement plan. And a lot of people get to retirement and realize that their business really isn't worth as much as they maybe thought it was for various different reasons.
 
That's the main part of the business and without them, the business doesn't mean much. And so what do they really have to sell? Other people, very completely different scenario, but I think it's important for business owners to think about that idea of retirement because it just doesn't come as natural as it maybe would for a W-2 employee. But when we look at retirement from a tax standpoint, I really kind of talk about that as like a deferral. You know, if you put money into a pre-tax account, you're gonna eventually pay taxes on that money when you get into retirement.
 
If you put money in a Roth account you get no tax break today but that money grows tax-free which is obviously a great opportunity as well. So you know there's there's still like and there's no tax completely avoidance when you're talking about retirement plans but it does provide some really good planning. And so as a business owner, I think it always comes down to you, how much do you want to put away towards retirement? That's going to tell us what type of plan you want to go with. If you're saying, I want to put five, $6,000 of you away towards retirement, we're going to say go do like a traditional IRA or Roth IRA.
 
Don't even worry about setting up a business retirement plan. But if you're a solo business owner, you're saying, no, I want to put away, you know, more money than that, then we might be looking at a SEP IRA or a solo 401k. And these are all plans that allow you to contribute a bigger amount than just your traditional IRA into retirement and once you start to have employees you know we'd look at a simple IRA or a safe harbor 401k. I think the the plan or the retirement plan is don't get into a plan that is too big for you or doesn't make sense for the business in your state. And so it's almost like thinking about it.
 
What is the reason that I want to open this retirement plan? Is it to fund my retirement or is it to help attract new talent to my team or retain current talent to my team. You know, find out what that plan is and it can be a combination of them. And then also find out, okay, how much do you want to put away into your retirement plan? Or how much do you think your employees will want to put away towards their retirement plan?
 
And how much of that do you want to help fund? And that's going to lead you to to what kind of retirement plan you set up. Again traditionally we say if you have no employees outside of maybe you and your spouse we're looking at a solo 401k or a SEPI array. If you have employees, we're looking at a simple IRA or a safe Harbor 401k as being the most common type of retirement plans that we're backing into for that.
 
Rachel Boltz: Retirement planning is huge. And I feel like a lot of people don't really even consider retirement planning until they start to get a little bit older and start thinking about their exit strategy. So I love that you bring up retirement planning and ways that you can utilize it. Now I also have a question about real estate investing. You had mentioned something about that briefly.
 
So how does real estate investing relate to tax saving strategies for small business?
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, no, we could dive down a long haul talking about real estate and the all sorts of type of planning opportunities that are involved in it. But I like to kind of talk when I talk about real estate, there's kind of two things that we talk about and where your opportunities are. The first one is more of a traditional real estate, you know, like where you're just holding a long-term rental property where you buy a single family home and rent it out to somebody and they stay there for years upon years. And then there's this short-term rental strategy and there's sometimes called the short-term rental loophole in how we look at that. But When we look at real estate in general, real estate is traditionally considered a passive type activity.
 
You invest in something, it gains some income, you get those rent checks. Maybe you're doing a little maintenance here or there, but you're not actively involved in it if it's just some rental properties and you have a day job. And the big thing about real estate is that you get a deduction for the cost of that real estate in the form of depreciation. And oftentimes depreciation is heavy up front where you can create a cash flow, you can create income, the depreciation, which is a non-cash expense, but it's going to offset that income that you're making. So you might make $10,000 of income from a rental property over the course of a year, but now you have $10,000 in depreciation that offsets that.
 
So you're paying zero in taxes, you're showing zero in income on your tax return, but you just cash flowed actually $10,000. And that's kind of the beauty behind real estate is that you get this idea of depreciation, which again, is a non-cash expense that can help offset a lot of the income that you have coming in. So when we look at real estate, I think it's very powerful in not only an investment that's going to continue to grow, but an investment that's oftentimes not, you're going to get positive cash flow without having to pay taxes on it, which is a benefit of itself. But if you can start to qualify as a real estate professional or you have a spouse that can qualify as a real estate professional, then we can look at real estate and say, how can we start creating losses in real estate that we can use to offset my business income. So if your business is doing really well, how can you create a loss or bring a loss over from real estate in those non-cash losses that we can use to reduce the income from our business?
 
In order to do that, we need something called a, you need to be a real estate professional, you need to have a spouse that's a real estate professional, or something along those lines. And so that's where you can really see power. You know, when we look at people were attacking And when President Trump found out his tax returns come out, a lot of people said, Trump paid $700 in taxes a year, and he's a billionaire, and that's not fair. When we look at what Trump was doing, at least from what we can tell from the information that was released, is he's using real estate losses to offset the majority of his income. So he might be cash flowing really well and bringing in a lot of cash, but he has these losses from real estate qualifying as a real estate professional that we can use to offset a lot of that income.
 
That's something that everybody can do, but the key thing is qualifying as a real estate professional. Then you bring in this idea of short-term rentals, where short-term rentals kind of throws that all up on its side and saying, oh, if we have a short-term rental with an average day of seven days or less, now we can use a short-term rental loss to offset active income. We can use a short-term rental loss to offset our business income. With a normal rental activity, you have passive income. You can't use that to offset business income unless you qualify as a real estate professional.
 
But now with a short-term rental, because it's not considered a passive activity because it's seven days or less, now we can utilize it to offset our business income. And that's kind of you'll see a lot of different things we talk about on our podcast. But this idea of the short-term rental loophole, that's where this idea of where you can utilize that idea of taking rental property losses to offset your other income, it opens up the door for people that don't qualify as a real estate professional, which can sometimes be a little difficult. So there's a lot of planning opportunities in real estate, not just looking at how can we help reduce your taxes or lower your taxes, but also just the investment itself and in where that can grow and kind of be a form of retirement planning, right? Like if you're not into the stock, bonds, mutual funds, those types of things, you know, maybe real estate is kind of your form of that idea of retirement planning.
 
And we see that with a lot of business owners going down that road.
 
Speaker 2: So for the fifth tax saving strategy for small businesses, tell us about hiring your kids. What are your thoughts on hiring your kids as a tax saving strategy?
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, this idea of hiring my kids is one of my favorite strategies because it's something that if you have kids, it's something that you're spending a lot of money on them. You're paying for basketball camps, you're paying for amusement parks to go with their friends, and all of that again, we're we talk about after tax versus pre-tax dollars. Anything you spend on your kid, you're always consistently thinking, oh, that's just after-tax dollars. You know, how could I ever say that a basketball camp is a business expense? You're right.
 
That doesn't make sense. But is there a way that we could hire our kids in our business and then the kids could help pay for that basketball camp themselves? And the idea behind this is saying if we hire our kids in our business we can get a business deduction and our kids potentially pay no income tax on the income that they receive if they're under the standard deduction which this year is is somewhere upper thirteen thousand dollars. So you could pay your kids you know up to just under fourteen thousand dollars in income this year from your business get a business deduction for that your pre-tax expense for you and your child would pay no income tax on that income that they receive. This is a great way to shift that income into a lower tax bracket, a zero tax bracket, while still getting a business deduction for it.
 
Now, it's not as easy to say, okay, you know, we're going to pay little Johnny $14,000 this year, get a business expense for it and move on and everything's going to be great. You know, there's, there's again, this idea of, is this legal? Yes, absolutely. Directly talked about in the IRS code about hiring your own children and the tax benefits behind it. But the second piece is, are we dotting our eyes and crossing our T's?
 
Just writing a checkout to little Johnny for $14,000 is not dotting our eyes and crossing our T's. And so it's important to know the basics. The child has to be doing actual work for your business, you know, do we have a job description? Do we have an employment agreement for it? We need to be tracking their hours, you know, what are they doing?
 
What are the tasks that they're doing? Are we paying them a rate that's reasonable? So You might have them cut grass around your office, but are you paying them $250 an hour when the local professional is going to charge you $80 an hour? Yeah, that doesn't make sense. You know, we'd probably want to figure out what's a reasonable rate for their experience.
 
So If the professional is charging $80 now, we're probably going to charge even less than that because we have a child that's maybe inexperienced. Those are the things we want to start to link about this idea. But now we can get a business deduction, child pays potentially no income taxes, And the benefit then is that they can then go, they want to use those money to go to a basketball camp, go to a amusement park with friends. Essentially, we just moved after tax spending into pre-tax spending in that case. There's also this idea of funding a Roth IRA that I absolutely love.
 
Because when we think about a Roth IRA, as we talked about this whole idea of retirement planning, the problem with a Roth IRA is you get no tax deduction when you fund it. But if you have income that you have to pay zero tax on, You don't need a tax deduction. And so why, if we fund that Roth IRA, we get no tax deduction, which we also didn't need one because we have no tax. But now that Roth IRA, when you're 12 years old, you've put $5,000 into a Roth IRA, think about the compounding growth that that Roth IRA can gain over the course of however many years until you hit retirement. That's going to be tax free, withdrawals are tax free.
 
So I love this idea of now that we have earned income, let's and if we don't need to use it for basketball camps or whatever it might be, could we think about funding a Roth IRA with this. The other cool thing about Roth IRAs is that you can pull back the principal without any penalties, fines, and interest. So if from the age of 12 to 16, you put $5,000 into a Roth IRA each year, and now your child gets to college and they're like, I need some money, I need whatever it might be, and you don't have other resources for them. Well, they could go back and pull the principal back out of that Roth IRA without any kind of penalties or interest. And so it's really kind of this idea of hiring your kids is something we want to make sure we do right, but it's something that I think every business owner should be taking advantage of.
 
As long as you have kids, at least, you know, I say between the ages of seven, 17 is kind of where the sweet spot is of this. If your kids are older than that, There's different planning strategy around that and ways that we go about that. But there's definitely some planning around this idea of, of hiring your kids. And you know, just to kind of end that thought on is a lot of people, when I first talked to that, they say, sounds great, but you know, you said this thing about dotting your I's and crossing your T's and how you need to make sure that they're doing actual work. They might say like, I'm an attorney, like what could my kid possibly do in my business?
 
And I always say that there has been yet to be a business owner that I couldn't find something that we could say their kid was doing for the business. We couldn't find something that their kid could do in their business. You know, and it might not be as obvious as it might be initially. You know, could they be shredding papers? Could they be stuffing envelopes?
 
Could they be cleaning around the office? Another one I love for people that are kids that are in that like 15, 16 age and where they're starting to get into social media is, you know, couldn't they do some social media posts for you? Can they be researching different articles and sharing them on your social media? That's all part of this idea of let's be creative. Let's think about things that they can do and let's make sure that we're implementing them in a way that makes sense for it while also making sure that we're doing things correctly.
 
So a lot of planning opportunities, I just think it's something that if you have kids in that range, it's something you need to be thinking about and just start research in that process. You know, when we talk about tax planning, it's this idea of let me learn, let's hear all these good things, let's hear about these tax strategies, but we can't just stop from learning. We have to actually take, put our feet on the ground and start to implement those and so that implementation piece could be researching a little bit Tweaking that strategy to get to where it needs to be for your situation specifically
 
Rachel Boltz: You know, we're all about that case about that case no trouble all about that case about that case no trouble All about that case about that case no trouble all about that case about that case
 
Brooke Boltz: We are all about your case. Text or call to schedule a free consultation for all your legal needs. Boltzlegal.com.
 
Rachel Boltz: I love that fifth tip. I am a huge advocate for putting my kids to work. It builds a strong work ethic, but then if you can use that as an investment for their future and their future goals, like that to me is the icing on the cake. So I really appreciate those tips that you shared with us today.
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah. And that's a great, that's a great point. You know, it's, it's, we're looking at a tax strategy and that's where my mind's always like tax saving tax savings, but you bring up a good point. Like not only are we potentially saving taxes or we are saving taxes, but we're teaching them this idea of working for a living, working for money. Maybe they might be, this might be a business that they want to look to take over, you know, down the road, 20, 30, 40 years from now.
 
What a great opportunity to get them in at a very young age. And they might say, I want nothing to do with it. Well, that just made your succession planning a little bit easier because now you know, okay, it's not going to the kids. What other options are there? And where's kind of the exit plan in here?
 
But yeah, I think that there's so many benefits over and above just the tax savings that you mentioned there.
 
Speaker 2: Rachel and I both put our kids to work at communities. They are great at handing out air fresheners or whatever it is that we're passing out.
 
Rachel Boltz: People don't want to say no to kids. You know, they'll say no to adults all day long, but they don't want to say no to kids. So we send them the kids out.
 
Speaker 2: A couple of summers ago, I had my daughters, they were like nine and 10 at the time, work at the office in the summer, and I thought, I'm going to put them upstairs. We have just kind of a little loft upstairs in the office where they would be away from people and not like disturbing the staff. But, turns out they can still disturb the staff. Cause I'd be sitting here like on a phone call or something, and I'd hear, get up! You know?
 
And they'd be fighting. And so if your kids get along, that's a little easier than a fight all the time like mine do. But they definitely, the task that they did, just in case people are looking for ideas, is they sent out emails asking my former clients for Google reviews. And so I made a template email for them and gave them the list and they sent those emails. And then I gave them Robux for every review they actually got because they don't really care too much about money.
 
I did pay them, but that's not what really motivates them as much, but Roblox money, they were into that.
 
MIke Jesowshek: I love that. That brings up a good point. I love that idea of what are some things that they can be doing. Now, I do have to ask, Was there any funky emails that they might have sent out where the template got tripled or they were fighting and all of a sudden the keyboard was typing a bunch of different things?
 
Speaker 2: Yes, so many times. They would send three emails to the same person or forget to change the name. So it would say, Dear John, I'm supposed to say, you know, plenty of errors, but people were, were very gracious with, with I would say that was my kids. I'm sorry. I'm trying to teach them how to, I'm trying to help them, you know, start learning how to work and seeing what work is like and so people were very gracious thankfully.
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah I love that concept and you know another thing I had an attorney that I was talking to about this strategy and again they're like well what can they do for my business? I said, throw them in social media, have them start doing that social media stuff. And he's like, why don't do social media? Like, I don't need to, I grow from referrals. Like I don't need, I don't need to grow my business at all.
 
I'm like, well, what would it hurt to have someone manage a social media account for you? Again, we're looking at this from a tax strategy standpoint. You know, we're getting a business deduction, kids are paying no income taxes. What would it really hurt by having them do social media for you? And hey, maybe you have some really good clients that always come from referrals, but now they're starting to see your stuff more often, now they're gonna come work for you, think about you more often in various different things.
 
And you might not need the business, but was it gonna hurt if we're looking at it from a tax standpoint as well?
 
Speaker 2: Absolutely. The social media, Rachel's given a statistic before that millennials and younger will look you up on social media before they'll go to your website. And having a social media presence is important, especially to the younger demographic.
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, 100%.
 
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for your time today. This has brought massive value to our listeners, and I just cannot thank you enough for volunteering and sharing your time today with us to teach us these strategies. And if anyone has not heard of or listened to the podcast, tax, Wait, I'm going to say it wrong. Small business tax savings.
 
MIke Jesowshek: Yeah, that's it.
 
Speaker 2: Small business tax savings. I highly recommend it. It's in the top 1 percent of podcasts globally, according to ListenNotes, and on the first page of Apple Podcasts when you search tax and it is highly valuable. We'll give you all kinds of great ideas to save on taxes for your small business. So please check it out.
 
And with that, thank you for tuning in until next time.
 
Brooke Boltz: Take care.
 
MIke Jesowshek: Rachel Brooke, thanks for having me.
 
Rachel Boltz: Thank you so much. We appreciate you and are honored to be on this journey with you. We can't wait to help you, to encourage you, and show you how to grow personally, professionally, and spiritually.
 
Brooke Boltz: If you found Miss Biz helpful, please leave a review and share with others.
 
Rachel Boltz: You can follow us on social media at Miss Biz Podcast.
 
Brooke Boltz: For legal questions or services, please visit BoltsLegal.com.
 
Rachel Boltz: And for digital marketing needs, please visit BoltsMedia.com. Let's get biz done.

Ep. 24 Part 2 Reels Revealed: Inside Secrets for Instagram’s Viral Video Platform

Episode 24 is here so get ready to uncover the hidden gems, tips, and tricks to master Instagram's hottest feature, Reels! If you're looking to boost your social media game, engage your audience, and take your content creation to the next level, you've come to the right place.
Hosted by Instagram enthusiasts and content creation wizards, Brooke Boltz and Rachel Boltz. We're here to spill the beans on the strategies that help turn creators from ordinary to extraordinary.
Whether you're an aspiring influencer, a business owner, or simply a fan of captivating short videos, Episode 24 offers insights and inspiration for everyone.
Join us as we unveil the best-kept secrets, offer actionable advice, and keep you in the loop with the ever-evolving Reels landscape. With our insider knowledge and your creativity, you'll be ready to create thumb-stopping content and boost your Instagram presence like never before.
Tune in, hit that 'Follow' button, and let's embark on a journey to Reel stardom together. You won't want to miss a single episode Ms. Biz! 🚀📷
 
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www.BoltzMedia.com

Ep. 24 Part 1 | Reels Revealed: Inside Secrets for Instagram’s Viral Video Platform

Episode 24 is here so get ready to uncover the hidden gems, tips, and tricks to master Instagram's hottest feature, Reels! If you're looking to boost your social media game, engage your audience, and take your content creation to the next level, you've come to the right place.
Hosted by Instagram enthusiasts and content creation wizards, Brooke Boltz and Rachel Boltz. We're here to spill the beans on the strategies that help turn creators from ordinary to extraordinary.
Whether you're an aspiring influencer, a business owner, or simply a fan of captivating short videos, Episode 24 offers insights and inspiration for everyone.
Join us as we unveil the best-kept secrets, offer actionable advice, and keep you in the loop with the ever-evolving Reels landscape. With our insider knowledge and your creativity, you'll be ready to create thumb-stopping content and boost your Instagram presence like never before.
Tune in, hit that 'Follow' button, and let's embark on a journey to Reel stardom together. You won't want to miss a single episode Ms. Biz! 🚀📷
 
Msbizpod.podbean.com
www.facebook.com/MsBizPodcast
www.BoltzLegal.com
www.BoltzMedia.com

Ep. 23 | Quietly Winning: Thriving as an Introverted Entrepreneur

Join us in Episode 23 where we debunk the common misconception that only extroverts can thrive as entrepreneurs. We explore the strengths of introverted business magnates such as *Mark Zuckerberg* and *Elon Musk* and break down the benefits of being an introverted entrepreneur. We underline the importance of embracing your introverted strengths like _creative thinking_, _passion for ideas_, _strategic thinking_, and excellent _problem-solving_ abilities. Being introspective individuals, introverts make up 25-40% of the population, and many of them are successful billionaires. Unravel great tips for introverted entrepreneurs including networking intentionally, delegating tasks, practicing public speaking, and creating a comfortable work environment. Learn how to seek professional development, plan thoroughly, and team up with extroverted partners to balance skillsets. Remember, with self-awareness, leveraging your strengths as an introvert, and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, you can achieve great success on your own terms as an introverted entrepreneur. This video is a must-watch for all aspiring entrepreneurs who identify as introverts aiming to make their mark.
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www.BoltzMedia.com
 
Full Episode Transcript:
Brooke Boltz: If you're an introvert or business professional, this episode is for you. There's a common misconception that only extroverts thrive in entrepreneurship, and today we're here to unveil the undercover geniuses who prove otherwise. Just look at Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. They're like introvert superstars. If you're an introvert, we want to encourage you not to let fear hold you back and provide some valuable tips on using your strengths to your advantage.
Get ready to unleash your introvert superpowers because the business world is about to feel the quiet thunder. Ready or not, business world, here we come.
Rachel Boltz: Hey, lady bosses. Are you working even after putting the kids to bed but still not getting results?
Brooke Boltz: Are you tired of spending money on ads that aren't getting engagement?
Rachel Boltz: Do you feel burdened that you aren't fulfilling your purpose in life because you are so consumed with work?
Brooke Boltz: I'm your host, Brooke Boltz. I'm an attorney and founder of bolts legal I started my business and in one year was bringing in seven figures and am now bringing in multi seven figures
Rachel Boltz: And I'm your co-host Rachel bolts owner of bolts media I've helped many businesses build their online presence and
Brooke Boltz: increase their revenue through digital marketing. Want to hear
Rachel Boltz: how we did it? We are here to help you achieve your goals personally, professionally, and spiritually.
Brooke Boltz: So kick off your high heels, sit back, and let's ignite that passion.
Rachel Boltz: We're Miss Biz where we're putting the miss in biz. Let's get biz done. Today's podcast episode topic was suggested by our good friend Nick Wagner with Roof Crafters. There is a myth that states that only extroverts can succeed in business. So in today's episode, we're going to be debunking that myth and offering helpful tips to help introverted entrepreneurs.
Brooke Boltz: So everybody knows that entrepreneurs are aggressive, outgoing risk-takers who take no prisoners. Wrong! This stereotype is flawed because introverts are not necessarily quiet or shy. What makes them different is that they tend to be more introspective and gain energy from their alone time.
Rachel Boltz: According to Dr. Jennifer Con Wheeler, the author of The Introverted Leader, Building on Your Quiet Strength. It's kind of like a battery they recharge. She states, and then they can go out into the world and connect really beautifully with people.
Brooke Boltz: So Rachel, what do you consider yourself, an introvert or an extrovert?
Rachel Boltz: I consider myself a little bit of both. I'm probably mostly on the extroverted scale, but I do have a lot of introverted tendencies and qualities.
Brooke Boltz: What are some of your introverted tendencies?
Rachel Boltz: My introverted tendencies are I get, I really like alone time. Back in the day, I used to be at every single evening activity that I could participate in and nowadays I just really enjoy being alone. I really enjoy being able to spend time with my children. I go to bed at like nine o'clock. So things of that nature.
And then also I really do prefer having like those one on one personal interactions with people. I would much rather go to dinner with someone than go to a huge networking event. Although I will, but I would prefer the one-on-one interaction versus just kind of like speed networking for entrepreneurs. So how about you? If you enjoy the Miss Biz podcast but still have questions or need advice, we have some exciting news for you.
Join us for Miss Biz Connects. Miss Biz Connects is a weekly one-hour Zoom call on Fridays at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Brooke Boltz: This is one hour each week dedicated to you. We want to meet you and put our brains together to help you grow personally, professionally, and spiritually.
Rachel Boltz: To access the meeting link visit us on our social media pages at miss biz podcast or send us an email to missbizpod at gmail.com.
Brooke Boltz: Join us this Friday and let's grow the Miss Biz Nation. So first, I would have considered you full extrovert from my perception because you just seem so comfortable with people in general, whether in big crowds or one on one, you just seem so comfortable with people. And maybe that's because that's how I was defining introvert and extrovert was not so much about the alone time to recharge and this is kind of a new definition from what I've been accustomed to using in the past. How would you, what would you guess that I was from what you know of me?
Rachel Boltz: I would guess that you are a full blown extrovert.
Brooke Boltz: That's hilarious because I always considered myself a full blown introvert. Why would you think that I was an extrovert?
Rachel Boltz: Because you are the type of person that when you go on stage and you do any type of public speaking event, you dominate it. You dominate it with confidence. You get the crowd actively engaged. Also, when you walk in a room where there's sometimes hundreds of people you just seem to fall it flawlessly be able to engage in conversation with them and just really seem to enjoy doing it
Brooke Boltz: You are too kind because I will say with being on a stage that that I'm more comfortable on a stage than I am in a crowd of a bunch of people. Being on the stage, I think it comes with my legal training and why being a lawyer such a great profession for me, because if I'm well prepared and rehearsed, then being on stage or being in a courtroom in front of a judge or a jury or even an audience in a business setting. That is one of the most exciting things for me. So that part of me I think is extroverted. But on the day to day when you say like when you used to get off work, you used to like to go out and hang out with people that has never been me.
Like the moment I got out of class or I got out of work, I just wanted to go home and be alone for as far back as I can remember. Like I just wanted to really kind of be by myself. And even now with a family of five, if there's a rare occasion where my husband takes the kids and they go somewhere for even just a few hours. I'm like, Oh, you're having the house to myself and just kind of getting to just be alone. I don't even know how to describe it, but the rejuvenation I feel from just kind of being by myself and recharging is something I look forward to and enjoy.
I never been a kind of person who was like, I feel lonely. I could be home for a week and still not feel lonely really because it just it just feels good to be alone sometimes. I now have kind of you know when you have a family they kind of become I don't know there's something natural in you that makes you enjoy that time with your family. So even if you're introverted, you don't miss so much the alone time because you just love being with your family so much as well. Now my alone time is more in the car, on a car ride or something like that.
And that use that time to recharge. But I would consider myself an introvert. So it's hilarious to me that you consider me an extrovert. I think it's been with practice and education and trainings that I've gone through that have allowed me to take on some of those more extroverted skills and be comfortable with them.
Rachel Boltz: It's estimated that approximately 25 to 40 percent of the population are introverted and something that I found really interesting when just kind of researching the topic for today's podcast was most billionaires are introverts. I read a couple different sources that said 98% of billionaires are introverted. I don't know if that fact is 100% correct because I can't verify the source But I thought that that was an interesting Statistic So if you're introverted Don't let that stop you from achieving your success?
Brooke Boltz: And I had no idea there were so many billionaires who were introverted, but it kind of makes sense because when you have that kind of brilliant ideas, it makes sense that those would come to you when you're kind of spending time alone. If you're constantly surrounded by other people and things that are drawing your attention, then coming up with those great ideas and strategizing your new action plan and things like that. Sometimes you just kind of need to be alone to come up with those ideas. Some of the billionaires that we are familiar with who happen to be introverts are Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and even Larry Page, the co-founder of Google.
Rachel Boltz: An introversion and extroversion, they exist on a spectrum. So most people fall somewhere in between in the middle. And you don't have to be an extrovert to succeed as an entrepreneur. And that's because building business success is about making smart decisions and solving problems.
Brooke Boltz: There are many advice columnists out there who would suggest just faking it. If you're an introvert, just fake it till you make it. But instead of pretending to be an extrovert, understand the way your introversion can play to your advantage. Also 25 to 40% of the population are introverts. So you're going to relate to other introverts if you are authentic with who you are and honest about who you are.
Those other people who are similar are going to really relate to your genuineness on who you are. Business success is about making smart decisions and solving problems. So use who you are to make the most of it, make the most of who you are, rather than trying to hide it or pretend to be somebody else.
Rachel Boltz: There's nothing worse than trying to be someone that you're not and instead of trying to work so hard to really not be able to flourish in that role, you can really focus on your strengths and use them to your advantage. So according to research, introverts display some very specific quality traits and character traits that make them successful business owners. And the first trait is creative thinking. So there's a link between introversion and creativity. Introverts express creativity through their work.
So for example Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, said, most inventors and engineers that I've met are like me. They're shy and they live in their heads. They're almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. Is it fun or dumb?
Is it glam or sham? Dope or nope? Welcome to Dope or Nope. This is where we want to hear from you regarding whether you think this item is dope or nope. So today we are talking about business gifting, specifically a lightning bolt lamp.
So if you're listening to the audio you'll want to make sure that you check out this video on social media So you can see exactly what we're talking about today
Brooke Boltz: the lamp is shaped like a Lightning bolt and this is something that I send to clients when their case settles It comes with a card that says you have taken on the challenge of going up against a monstrous insurance company and you have prevailed and for that reason we are giving you the bolts legal badass award and the lamp also has imprinted on it bolts legal badass. So do you like it? Is it dope or nope? And that makes sense to me also because creativity is so important to business growth, especially when it comes to marketing and advertising. You wanna set yourself apart, you wanna be different.
And the best way to do that is to come up with creative ideas that aren't the same as what everybody else is doing. So if you're an introverted person who spends a lot of time alone recharging, you know, being in your head and thinking of new ideas, it makes sense to me that you would come up with these create creative marketing strategies that would be successful. Maybe you're not always the best person to implement them because it's not so comfortable to you to maybe be on the screen or be in front of people or be making the real. But coming up with those creative ideas and being able to create the action plan on how to put them in the place seems like that would be really important in growing a business and something that introverts would be great at. Introverts also have passion for ideas that makes them great at business.
Introverts focus on ideas rather than power or attention. They build alliances and networks to make ideas happen. So they're not the lone wolf out there just trying to do things out of their own strength and do things alone. They build those networks and alliances with other people. Entrepreneurial focus on company success over personal glory is another key characteristic of introverts in that they are able to put the success of the company over their own personal glory or their own personal fame.
And always when you're able to humble yourself and put yourself, put others above yourself, that is always going to be a successful trait in building a business.
Rachel Boltz: It's funny that you just mentioned humble because that is actually the next thing on the list is humbleness, great listeners, and being natural problem solvers. So introverts excel at listening and empathizing. They really value in dealing with clients and employees. They enjoy that one-to-one interaction and they're able to build really strong connections as a result. Introverts also remain calm and analyze the situation So they're going to be less likely to blow up or kind of just, you know, wave the white flag for lack of better term.
You know, they're going to be able to really hone in and sit there and strategize the best solution for the situation.
Brooke Boltz: Introverts also tend to be thoughtful decision makers. They take time to process problems during their alone time. They appreciate that solitude aids their entrepreneurial journey.
Rachel Boltz: They also just really take the time to strategize. I think out of everything that we've listed in terms of strengths, I think the strategy is kind of one of the biggest strengths that they have. So if you're an introvert, don't let the fear of being around a large crowd stop you from really achieving your goals. There are so many other strengths that just come natural for you that can help you. So if you are an introverted business owner, here are some valuable tips to help you navigate the business world and leverage your own qualities for success.
And the first one is embrace your introversion. Recognize that being introverted, it's not a weakness, but a valuable trait that brings unique perspectives and skills to the table. Also play into your strengths. Focus on your natural abilities such as active listening, thoughtful communication, and strategic thinking. Use these strengths to your advantage in networking and decision-making.
And use your NAC to build deep connections. So network intentionally. Attend smaller focused events where you can engage in meaningful conversations. Quality interactions, they matter much more than quantity. Networking is all about building quality relationships and introverts tend to focus on learning more about the people that they wanna meet rather than just making small talk.
And along those same lines, instead of trying
Brooke Boltz: to gauge in numerous surface level interactions, concentrate on cultivating meaningful relationships with a select group of clients, partners, or collaborators. I heard a friend say recently who's a very successful marketer, find your people. So many times we think to be successful in business, we need to have this huge quantity of people who are sending us referrals and who we have these relationships with, when in reality, there may be a huge pool of people out there, But if you can find your people, meaning find the people who you relate to the most, who you can build those friendships with, who are also in critical positions, who are golden geese as we've spoken about before, who can, who, who want to work with you because you're friends and you're like-minded that's really what it takes and as an introvert you can find your people and be incredibly successful without having to have a ton of surface level conversations with just hundreds of people.
Rachel Boltz: Another effective tip would be to leverage your online platforms. So take advantage of social media, take advantage of virtual events, engage in online communication to network and market your business without the pressure of those face-to-face interactions.
Brooke Boltz: Yes, hence the online dating world where you just swipe, swipe, swipe, and you can have these interactions and build an entire relationship without ever having to come face to face with people. I think maybe even People who tend to be on the extroverted side of the spectrum sometimes have become more introverted because of how online focused our lives have become. I mean social media, social interactions, we now can do basically everything through Google Meet or Zoom or just online interactions. So it's a great world for introverts. There's a lot of options available to you to build a business if being face-to-face isn't comfortable for you.
Rachel Boltz: I think it depends on your definition of great when it comes to online dating.
Brooke Boltz: I'll take the advice from you there. The online dating came around after I was already married, so I never really got to experience that. But looks like it could be fun. No?
Rachel Boltz: Yeah. We'll save that for another broadcast episode, because that one is pretty in-depth. You know we're all about that case, about that case, no trouble. All about that case, about that case, no trouble. All about that case, about that case, no trouble.
All about that case, about that case.
Brooke Boltz: At Bolt's Legal, we are all about your case. Text or call to schedule a free consultation for all your legal needs. BoltsLegal.com. So also you can team up with someone else. And this is great, a great life tip in general, whatever your weaknesses are, look for someone who compliments those.
Even with Rachel and I doing this podcast, I mean, there are things that she is strong at that I am weak at and vice versa. And I think that's why we make a great team. So if you are an introvert, you can team up with someone who has those extroverted skills that you lack. Any business needs a good balance of perspectives and talent. And so this is where bringing in a business partner who can assist in that way, can make a big difference.
Or if you hate giving sales pitches and prefer to do the background analysis, find someone who complements your skillset with their own inclinations. You can hire an employee. If you're not looking to bring on a full fledged business partner, hire some salespeople who can do those sales pitches for you. Allocate tasks based on each person's strengths. Then work together to divide and conquer.
The same approach can trickle down to your team. If you have employees who thrive in customer-facing roles, let them take over the cash register while your introverted folks stock shelves or manage inventory. Creating a balance of introversion and extroversion can help leverage strengths and enhance the overall success of your venture. This has been really important to me in my business in that I do try to assess people's personality and strengths and put them in a role where they can thrive. I think that that is critical.
It's not really the subject of today's podcast per se, but we mentioned it and I think it's important and it helps with business growth is to just assessing where people are comfortable. You have Boltz Legal, We do a lot of videos and I have, I know that the people I can call on in the firm who are ready to jump up and get in a video at any moment. And then I know there's four of us. Yeah, there's four of us. And then I know the others who are like, get that camera away from me at all costs.
I'm not, I'm not so much as like taking a group photo in front of the signs. Like they don't that even that is pushing it for them. So, you know, finding the people who enjoy that kind of stuff is is gonna be great to building the business and keeping happy employees because they're doing what they're comfortable with and what they enjoy.
Rachel Boltz: And that kind of leads right into the next tip is to create a comfortable work environment and that is for yourself and for your employees who are working in those specific roles. So tailor your workplace to suit your introverted preferences. You can incorporate quiet zones, you can have soothing elements, and a setup that allows you to work effectively and comfortably. And some businesses are excellent at doing this, especially companies that their primary role is creativity. They'll have those creativity rooms and they'll have those rooms that have you know fountains and essential oils going because they want to make that person who more than likely is introverted as comfortable as possible so they can thrive in their zone.
Brooke Boltz: And prioritizing your alone time and your self care is also important because as an introvert, you're recharging in that alone time. Make that a priority. I know sometimes we may feel guilty that we need to be busy all the time as a business owner that if I'm not being productive, then I'm not bringing value. And for an introvert, you have to have a mindset shift to say that my alone time where I'm not necessarily being productive every second is going to allow me to be more productive in the time that I delegate for that. So don't feel Any type of negative emotion about setting aside that alone time to recharge, it is necessary for you to be your best self the rest of the time.
Plan and prepare as well.
Rachel Boltz: Leverage your introspective nature by thoroughly planning and preparing for meetings, presentations, and important conversations. Being well prepared boosts your confidence, and that kind of goes hand in hand with what you were speaking about earlier when you go and do these big speaking engagements.
Brooke Boltz: Absolutely, when I go to court, I prepare my outline and then my drive there. I plan to go at least an hour in advance and the whole time in the car I'm rehearsing my argument over and over and over, speaking it out loud. And I think that that has really helped in my success in the courtroom, because if you don't do that, you tend to stumble over your words sometimes or be looking for a piece of paper or just if your argument isn't smooth and perfected when you're in the courtroom, you can lose the court's attention and any little error can cause them to just be swayed in a different direction. So you really want to have everything prepared well going in. And that's been critical to my success and also critical to my comfort level when I'm presenting in front of people.
Rachel Boltz: I've never actually been on that side of the courthouse, but I have watched a ton of Law and Order episodes growing up, and I noticed that it was pretty much whoever could tell the best story, Whoever had the most polished story with the best points and could really drive home the message of what they were trying to say. Those are the ones that had the best closing argument. So I don't know if that's how it is in real life or not, but...
Brooke Boltz: I think so because you... When you're talking to a jury, particularly in a trial, you are needing to capture their attention. You're needing to tell your story in a convincing way. And yes, stories are persuasive to people, but stories don't usually just come out of the air. There are things you have to think about and plan for and be ready to not just tell the story, but tell it in the most persuasive way using the best imagery and the right tone of voice and doing the right hand gestures and just doing everything along with the story.
And no matter how great of a lawyer you may be rehearsing and planning and preparing those things are going to make you more effective.
Rachel Boltz: Another thing in addition to planning and preparing is to delegate wisely. Recognize that you can't do everything on your own and this is for anyone. Delegate tasks that don't align with your strengths to team members or professionals that excel in these areas. This is kind of like what we were talking about earlier with hire your salesperson. If you're introverted and that is not your gift, don't just delegate that to someone that it is their gift.
So you can focus on the strategy and the things that are really important that you as the introvert excel at. Also practice public speaking.
Brooke Boltz: And this doesn't mean that you have to just go jump in front of an audience of 500 people, but even like Rachel was saying, joining a networking group like BNI where she has to present the business in one minute each week. Another tip for building business as an introvert is to practice public speaking. This doesn't mean you have to go jump in front of an audience of 500 people. But take baby steps and start practicing by doing things like joining a networking group like Rachel suggested, where each week She shares just for one minute about her business. The Chamber of Commerce usually allows you to give presentations about your business if you're a member of the Chamber.
Other small group settings, even Zoom calls, or just other small group atmospheres where you can share short presentations about your business. Even using a PowerPoint is helpful to keep you on track and give you an outline and help you feel more comfortable about you know where you're going next in your speaking public speaking all of these things can help you to boost your confidence and help you to get stronger at your public speaking skills.
Rachel Boltz: The more you do something the more comfortable it becomes and the more naturally it flows as well. So one thing that I did to help me was, especially in preparation for the B&I meetings, because for a few months, I was just completely petrified every time my minute would come up. So I started practicing with my kids. I would have my kids sit down and I would do either my weekly presentation or my 10 minute presentation or some other type of presentation I was doing and I would have them critique me and I would have like a checklist of things for them to look at so not just in terms of you know how well I spoke but in terms of my body language. Did I make eye contact?
Did I scan the room? Was I using the right kind of gestures? Or you know, did I not know what to do with my hands? You know, things of that nature that I could really benefit from having a outside perspective on. So not only was I getting the practice out of it, but I was always getting, I was also getting very honest feedback from my children who had no problem telling me if something stunk or not.
Brooke Boltz: Oh, my kids, every time they hear one of our miss biz jingles, they go cringe, cringe, gross every time. So that's the feedback that I get from my kids. But you know, can't make everybody happy. If you can make your kids happy, then that's a feat. I videotape myself doing speak, you know, practicing for speeches because one thing that I recognize is I don't smile enough and I don't realize that until I see it on video and I think I look really angry.
I'm not angry, but it's just my face looks angry because that's my natural like resting. My resting face is an unhappy looking face. So when I videotape myself, I realize that, and it makes me aware that I need to smile more. So these are just ways to practice your skills and improve upon them.
Rachel Boltz: And then the last tip that we have is to seek professional development. Invest in courses or workshops that focus on networking, communication, and leadership skills. So some of these courses could be a toast masters club. Brooke, I know that you're in several mentoring programs as well.
Brooke Boltz: Yes, I love I love me some mentors. I am part of I've been a part of a number of different training courses and I found value in all of them. But in this particular topic we're talking about today, growing in your what we call self mastery, overcoming your fears and then growing in your influence mastery, which is being comfortable and speaking with people. The unblinded program is probably the most effective program that I have participated in and still do. What makes it so effective is not just the training itself, which is super valuable, but so many times we go to these training sessions or these conferences and we hear the information, but if we're not practicing it, then we're not gaining those skills ourselves.
And what I'm blinded provides is a daily deep practice session that's available to all its members where you can log in on a zoom call and practice these skills with the other members. And for so long, I never did it because I was just afraid of not being skillful enough at it. And eventually, I went to a blinded conference and realized I've been a part of this program now for a year and a half and my skills haven't improved all that much. And it's because I wasn't practicing. I wasn't going to the deep practice session.
So this go around when my membership renewed, I committed to go into the deep practice session several times a week, and I've been doing that. Just pushing myself to get out of my comfort zone and go out there and sometimes mess up and look bad. But the feedback that I get from the other students and just the exercise of practicing it each several times a week I don't go every day but few times a week I've already noticed a great improvement in my speaking and influence skills.
Rachel Boltz: Practice makes perfect with anything and we can sit here and we can learn and conceptualize and understand everything that's being said to us, but until we actually put that into practice, into reality, and make it happen, that's when it starts to become a habit, and that's when it really transforms your life and becomes more natural, and it's not something that you're fighting against so hard. Don't get me wrong, there might always be a little bit of feeling uncomfortable in certain situations, but sometimes that is a good thing. Having that that pressure is something that will give you energy. Kind of having a little bit of those nerves in some regard, in a balance, I feel is okay.
Brooke Boltz: And one thing that just reminded me of is Sean Callegy, the founder of Unblinded, in his last conference I attended, said that he is actually an
Rachel Boltz: introvert. That's so interesting to me because I see him on stage and he is in front of sometimes thousands of people. I would never think that he, I would just always assume that he was extroverted just because of the way that he interacts with people and the crowd and how he can just go into a seminar and speak for 12 hours straight without even taking a break
Brooke Boltz: after he shared that he was an introvert. I realized that when he comes off stage he disappears and I think that's because he needs his downtime to recharge. He will stay on stage for hours hours and hours with no breaks whatsoever. I mean, the last conference I went to, some of his sessions went until 1 a.m.
Rachel Boltz: Wow, that's crazy.
Brooke Boltz: Yeah, he has energy like none other. But he also when he's not on stage, he has to have that alone time to recharge. And I never would have guessed just like you that he was an introvert because he does seem so comfortable in front of people, both, you know, and he's been a personal mentor and coach of mine on an individual basis too. So I know him in the in the onstage presence and also on the in person, friends level presence and he is so comfortable in both settings that never would I have guessed that he was an introvert, but he is. So that's just another success story of how introverts can use your strengths to your advantage, but also overcome your weaknesses by, by working on personal and self-development to strengthen those skills that maybe aren't naturally so easy for you.
Rachel Boltz: So remember, your introversion is an asset that can contribute to your entrepreneurial journey in many meaningful different ways. By staying true to yourself you embrace your natural tendencies and strategically You adapt so that you can achieve more than just being pretending to be someone that you're not And you can achieve that success on your own terms
Brooke Boltz: So we want to hear from you If you're an introvert and we're not hating on extroverts today, by the way like extroverts We all know that you are awesome in business, especially when it comes to rainmaking and bringing in sales and building business But because introverts tend to feel like they aren't enough or aren't good at business, we wanted to really dispel that myth and try to build up introverts today. And most people frankly have some characteristics of both sides. So we hope that this episode relates to you, whether you identify mostly as an extrovert or mostly as an introvert. So we'd like to invite you to participate in our Miss Biz Connects. It is a zoom call we're doing weekly on Fridays at 10 a.m.
Eastern Standard Time. The zoom link can be found on any social media platform. We also have an event bright link that you can search for. If you register for the free event on event bright, It will send you the link for the Zoom call and send you reminders as well. So if you come and participate in Miss BizConnects, we wanna hear things from you like, are you an introvert or an extrovert?
How are you adapting your entrepreneurial efforts to your personality strengths? Share your thoughts and experiences on how you've adapted to your introversion.
Rachel Boltz: We want to create a community of business owners where we can share tips and strategies to be successful. And another important aspect of why we did this podcast episode is because we don't want anybody to feel like because they're an introvert that they can't be successful in business because that's not true at all. Anyone can be successful if if they put the right amount of effort in. So please join us on our Miss Biz Connect session on Friday. We'd love to connect with you and for us to just continue to encourage one another and help build each other up.
And thank you, Nick, for today's podcast episode idea. If you have any episode ideas that you would like us to discuss, we would love to hear from you. So thank you so much and stay tuned for more insightful episodes. We appreciate you and are honored to be on this journey with you. We can't wait to help you, to encourage you, and show you how to grow personally, professionally, and spiritually.
If you found Miss Biz helpful, please leave a review and share with others. You can follow us on social media at Miss Biz Podcast.
Brooke Boltz: For legal questions or services, please visit BoltsLegal.com.
Rachel Boltz: And for digital marketing needs, please visit BoltsMedia.com. Let's get biz done.
 

Ep. 22 Part 2 | Behind the Scenes: Exploring the Intricacies of Event Management.

Welcome to Episode 22 part 2 on maximizing your brand's presence at events! Here are the key points we've summarized from the transcription:
* _Community events_ like fairs and festivals offer perks such as *brand recognition*, *community involvement*, *in-person connections*, and *cost-effective participation*. Nonetheless, the challenges include being perceived solely as a vendor, committing high man hours, having superficial conversations, offering costly memorable giveaways, and lacking a connection to attendees. * _Hosting your own event_ projects an aura of authority, lets you gather attendee contact information, and provides attendees an opportunity to personally engage with you. However, it demands thorough planning, staffing, and budgeting. * _Virtual events_, like webinars, are cost-effective and have extensive reach. On the flip side, they are deprived of personal connection, so you need to up your game drastically to foster engagement. * When attending community events, go all out with memorable interactive displays or takeaways. Remember, it's about *quality over quantity*. * Craft creative, on-brand giveaways and touches that will stand out at events. Your goal should be to make attendees say "*wow!*". * Utilize event speeches and videos to position yourself as an authority. Don't hesitate to hire production assistance if required.* Make it a point to collect business cards and follow up with contacts post events. Add them to your email list. * Optimizing social media for SEO with keywords can make your posts stand out. However, you should also incorporate relatable language to connect with your followers. Stay tuned for more tips on how to enhance your brand's presence at events! Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe.
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Ep. 22 Part 1 | Behind the Scenes: Exploring the Intricacies of Event Management.

Welcome to Episode 22 part 1 on maximizing your brand's presence at events! Here are the key points we've summarized from the transcription:
* _Community events_ like fairs and festivals offer perks such as *brand recognition*, *community involvement*, *in-person connections*, and *cost-effective participation*. Nonetheless, the challenges include being perceived solely as a vendor, committing high man hours, having superficial conversations, offering costly memorable giveaways, and lacking a connection to attendees. * _Hosting your own event_ projects an aura of authority, lets you gather attendee contact information, and provides attendees an opportunity to personally engage with you. However, it demands thorough planning, staffing, and budgeting. * _Virtual events_, like webinars, are cost-effective and have extensive reach. On the flip side, they are deprived of personal connection, so you need to up your game drastically to foster engagement. * When attending community events, go all out with memorable interactive displays or takeaways. Remember, it's about *quality over quantity*. * Craft creative, on-brand giveaways and touches that will stand out at events. Your goal should be to make attendees say "*wow!*". * Utilize event speeches and videos to position yourself as an authority. Don't hesitate to hire production assistance if required.* Make it a point to collect business cards and follow up with contacts post events. Add them to your email list. * Optimizing social media for SEO with keywords can make your posts stand out. However, you should also incorporate relatable language to connect with your followers. Stay tuned for more tips on how to enhance your brand's presence at events! Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe.
Msbizpod.podbean.com
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www.BoltzLegal.com
www.BoltzMedia.com
 
Full Episode Transcription: 
Rachel: Back to School Bashes, Trunk or Treats, webinars, we all have attended these events. But as business owners, events can take on a whole new meaning as they are an opportunity to increase visibility for your business and make connections within the community. In today's episode, we are gonna review the types of events as well as their pros and cons. Today's episode will be broken into two parts, so please be sure to listen to both. 
Brooke: When I first started my business, community events and Events in general were not a part of my marketing plan. But over the years, I have come to realize the benefit that they bring to building my business. And for today's podcast, I've categorized the events into three types and we're going to talk about the pros and cons of each. The first type of event we're talking about is community events. Events that you participate in as a sponsor or an attendee, where you set up a booth or a table and you're one of a number of vendors.
The second is events that you host yourself, that you are the, you put the event together, you are the host, you are the coordinator of the event. And third are virtual events. These are things like webinars and zoom calls that are virtual. So when you're if you're first starting out, the community or virtual events are probably going to be more appealing to you because there's a lower cost and less staff needed to assist in the planning and preparation and invitations. But if you're further along in your business, you really should be posting in-person events yourself, And we'll talk about the reasons why.
So Rachel, can you, and actually, Rachel is the first person who really encouraged me to start doing community events. I never wanted to do them because I just perceived them as I don't want to stand outside in the heat for six hours you know handing out air fresheners I just I didn't want to spend my time doing that and Rachel said I'll do it it will benefit the firm I'll do it so we bought a tent we got you know a table got a tablecloth got some merch and giveaways and she really started doing it and that was the first time that Bolts Legal started participating in events.
Rachel: So in terms of community events, some of the major pros include brand recognition. When you are sponsoring an event, people get to see your name, whether it's on your tent or it's on a table. Or even if you're just talking to people, you don't have those branded items at your table. You're still talking to people. People get to see your business and may have an opportunity to be able to identify you, whereas prior to that, they might not have even known who you were.
Also, being involved in community events, it shows community involvement, and people like to do business with individuals who show their support to the community, who are contributing to a cause, or trying to make a larger impact. Also with the community activities this is an in-person meeting which I think is very important because it's going to increase the likelihood that someone will remember you and will contact you later. There's a huge difference between seeing an ad on TV or seeing a billboard or seeing you know an ad on Facebook. When you get to have that shared experience with someone, whether it be the business owner or employees of the company, you really get to form a connection in a much more impactful way than just simply seeing something from a distance or seeing a logo or some form of advertisement. Community events are an excellent opportunity to gather up business cards.
You can gather up business cards so that you can incorporate them into your email marketing campaign or even just follow up with them. If you have their address, you can send them a thank you card or you can give them a call on the phone as well. Also community events are very inexpensive to participate. Usually the fee to be a vendor or to have a table set up is very inexpensive and can benefit your business to reach more people that you wouldn't have normally been able to reach. And sometimes depending on the event, Whoever is coordinating it will tell you, you know, well last year we had X amount of participants or the year before that we had X amount of participants or we're expecting this amount of people to be here.
So that'll be a good way to gauge how much exposure you're going to receive and then be able to do the math to say, well, is my financial investment worth the amount of people that I could potentially connect with? Another pro of community events are the giveaways and games. So the Promotional Products Association International reports that 73% of people use promotional products at least once a week and 45% of people use the promotional product at least once a day. The brand spirit blog also reports that 20% of individuals have made a purchase from an advertiser after receiving a promotional product, which I think is an important statistic to be aware of. I also think it depends on the type of giveaway that it is, if It's something of value and useful.
But that's a great way for people to remember you and to be able to have that subliminal advertising ingrained in their brain after that initial point of contact. 
What's great about flyers and brochures is consumers trust print advertisements 34% more than search engine advertisements when making purchasing decisions.
Brooke: So there's obviously a lot of pros to participating in community events as a sponsor. And if you're wondering how do you participate in these type of events, if you're a business owner, you probably will already be getting emails from different events asking if you want to be a sponsor golf tournaments the city where I reside puts on all kinds of events Every year they do something for St. Patrick's Day, they do something called Bark and Brews, they do food truck nights, just almost every holiday Easter, they're having some type of community event. So if you just spend a little time online searching for events in your area, you'll find a website and there's going to be a link there to a sponsorship opportunity. But community events have pros but there's also some limitations and some of those things are yes it's going to create some more awareness of your brand, but you're going to be seen as one of probably dozens, if not hundreds of other tables or tents that were there.
You're seen as another vendor, not necessarily as a leader in your space or an authority figure. Also, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of man hours. And the return for your time is not always there. The financial investment to participate is low.
But the cost of the giveaways can be high. And the cost of your time can be high. And so, and if you have to have multiple staff people there, you have that staffing expense, and you know, it's just, it's a lot of work. Rachel can tell you setting up that tent, I mean she brings the tent herself and sets it up herself and sets up this big table, we put the tablecloth, she has all the different merch items. It's a lot of work And then you have to tear it all down at the end.
So it's just a lot of man hours. So that's a con in my opinion. Also, the event itself tends to lead to more surface level type conversations. When people are coming to these events they are there with the intention of just going from tent to tent or vendor to vendor grabbing a giveaway and keep on moving. And so it's They're not coming with the expectation of diving deep and talking about deep conversations and building an emotional rapport.
Next is the giveaways. Rachel talked about the giveaways are pro in that you're having an opportunity to access a lot of people in one place. You don't have to worry about shipping costs or mailing things out. These are gonna be people in your community who are gonna be likely part of your target audience, so you're having an opportunity to give them something in their hands about your business right then and there. But you wanna stand out.
You don't wanna be giving away something that they're accustomed to receiving, that they're just going to glance at and throw it in a bag. And to do that can become costly. We had some Boltz legal shirts and hoodies that we were giving away at events for a while. And I eventually was like, this is too expensive. The price per unit was very high.
And so it was really popular. People would come to our tent just to get, and we had hats too that were Under Armour brand. So people would come saying, I want to Under Armour hat, or I really love the hoodie that because they were, we had some crop top hoodies, like we had some really good quality, and really nice designed clothing merch that we were giving away. So people, people appreciated it, they came and asked for it, but it was expensive to be able to give away that much merch to that many people. And another con about the giveaways is that they don't have a connection to your business, the people who are attending, And because they're getting so many giveaways at once, that there's a good likelihood that yours gets forgotten or thrown away.
I know I've gone to events where we carry around a plastic bag in every booth. They give us a bunch of giveaways. And then at the end, the kids go through and grab the few things that they care about, probably slime and fidget spinners or poppets or something, and then the rest of it ends up in the trash. So, and maybe a pen, pull out a pen, put it in the pen drawer, something like that. But a lot of it gets thrown away just because of the volume of giveaways that you're getting at that event.
So there's, it's tough to find a good giveaway that is going to stand out, be memorable, be something that someone wants to keep, but not be so expensive that you can't afford to give it away in mass quantities.
Rachel: And I think I think it really if you can figure out something that relates to your brand that can be something different and unique, that that is going to stand out. So for example, I have a friend who is a realtor, and she has her own brokerage, and her whole theme is about bees. So one of the giveaways that she does that I think is genius is she gives seeds. She gives like flower seeds to people with instructions on how to plant them. And that's relatively inexpensive.
It's a good activity that kids and parents can do together and it's it's unique so it makes it memorable. Also in terms of the giveaways, you know, that is a great opportunity for you to have a shared experience with someone. So you have to have the promotional giveaways to entice them, and even the games, to entice them to come to your booth, especially if you're at a really big event with possibly hundreds of other vendors and thousands of people coming. You know, you've gotta find a way to strategically get people to want to visit your booth and not just walk by you. So having something that is really unique and can create that aha moment, that moment of shock is going to be something that leaves a lasting impression on them.
So for example, One of the things that Brooke had at one of the Easter events, is she had this big egg, and it was a beautiful egg, but because it was an egg, and there were a ton of kids, these kids really wanted the egg. The Golden egg. Yes, they really wanted this egg and their parents were willing to you know sign over all their information so their kids could win this egg. So we ended up getting a ton of people you know their contact information so we could add them on the email campaign. But then it was such a, like everybody came over to our booth and everybody I think remembered that because nobody else was doing that at that time or had that beautiful egg at their table.
So there are ways that you can do it that's relatively inexpensive, but you really have to think and try to come up with a strategy to do it.
Brooke: So when we first started doing community events Rachel I think was signing up for all of them she could find. It seemed like every weekend she was spending her day at these events.
And she would bring her kids sometimes, and they would help her. And they were troopers, because it's hard work to be out there, and it's hot here in Florida. And we were doing quantity over quality, I think is how we were approaching the events. Just get out there and let people see us. And now I think we've kind of shifted from that perspective to where I've adopted a go big or go home mentality with regard to events.
To me, I am now focusing on a few key events per year that I really want to focus on and then we put in the money to be memorable and to stand out so that it can have the most impact at the event. So we're shifting to a quality over quantity method. Some examples, I went to an Easter event in the community, and there was a real estate firm who had a their own version of a build a bear where the kids could come and stuff their own stuffed animal and that booth was so popular that there was lines of children and parents waiting for their turn to make their stuffed animal. And it wasn't a branded product. It was just a stuffed animal.
But I would bet that those parents will remember that real estate company because they did something that was unique and made their children so excited. Also I read a book, I've talked about it before on the podcast called the, of course now I can't remember the name of it the ultimate sales machine there we go by Chet Holmes and he talks about doing community events or the example he gives is a trade show where they had set up a booth and he and his employees, they wore Hawaiian shirts. They did a Hawaiian booth with like a tiki hut and just a fully decked out decorated booth and they had frozen drinks with little umbrellas in them that they were giving out. So everyone wanted to come to the Hawaiian booth to get their frozen drink and when they came he would give them a little invitation to come to an after-party that evening at you know one of the hot spots in the town. And he gave that example of really being memorable, standing out, going above and beyond.
Another example, we at Boltz Legal are sponsoring a chiropractic association event coming up soon. Actually by the time this airs the event will probably have already occurred. And we are going all out. I purchased the highest sponsorship that was available because it gives me five minutes of speaking time to the audience. And I'm using that time.
I've hired a production company to create a video that I'm hoping will be very memorable and will get people talking. It's going to be a music parody of a popular song that's going to involve, it's essentially a music video. So Rachel and I will be working on our dance moves for this parody and it's in my mind it's going to be awesome. You'll have to stay tuned to see how it turns out. But the goal, again, is to go big or go home.
If we're going to participate in this event, and it's got chiropractors there who are a great connection for me, I want them to remember me so I'm doing everything I can to be memorable to them by making this video and then I've been working on my two-minute speech once the video is over, and also putting together giveaways that align with the theme of my speech and video.
Rachel: So in addition to community events, what is highly recommended is to host your own event. And just like before, there are pros and cons. So some of the pros to hosting your own event is it creates the appearance of being an authority figure and perception is reality. Whenever you host your own events, people will literally line up to talk to the host. They will wait, you know, even like a half an hour or an hour after the event has finished just to talk to the host even if it's just saying like wow I really love this like people want to make that connection with the host we're just saying thank you
Brooke: yes Sometimes they want to just say thank you for for having me. Thank you for hosting this.
Rachel: Yep. And with with hosting your own event, you know, you have the opportunity to get contact information for all attendees for email list and follow-up and a lot of times you don't have to necessarily get this information at the event you already have this information if you've invited them because it's on one of your forms that you have or whatever the case may be. A lot of times you have this information so you don't have to bother people but it's also an opportunity if you know there is someone like let's say you invited someone but they brought like their practice manager with them you know you have the opportunity to get their business card and you know share share contact information with them and follow up after
Brooke:  Stay tuned for part two of today's podcast episode on events in person, community events, hosting events, and virtual events.
 

Ep. 21 | Level 5 Listening

Welcome to Episode 21 of Ms. Biz! Today, we're diving deep into a skill that can transform not only your personal life but also your business endeavors. Join us as we explore the profound significance of 'Level 5 Listening' and how it can supercharge your relationships, opening doors to success you never thought possible. 🎙️💼🔑
Your hosts Brooke Boltz and Rachel Boltz are your guide on this enlightening journey. With a wealth of experience in both business and interpersonal dynamics, they'll unravel the secrets of 'Level 5 Listening' and show you how to harness this invaluable skill to your advantage.
Learn how to implement 'Level 5 Listening' in your daily interactions, paving the way for deeper connections, increased trust, and greater business success.
In a world where attention is a precious commodity, mastering 'Level 5 Listening' sets you apart as a true leader and collaborator. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur, a budding business owner, or someone simply looking to enhance your interpersonal skills, this episode will equip you with the knowledge and techniques to transform your relationships and, by extension, your business.
So, it's time to turn your listening game up to 'Level 5' and reap the rewards in both your personal and professional life. Subscribe now to Ms. Biz and join us for this eye-opening episode, because when you truly listen, the world listens back! 🔊🌐📈
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Ep. 20 | 4th Quarter Marketing Plan

The final stretch of the year is upon us, and it's time to gear up for an epic 4th quarter! In this Episode 20, we're diving deep into crafting your "4th Quarter Marketing Plan: A Playbook for Year-End Success" with a twist of fun and a dash of optimization.
Hosted by Brooke Boltz and Rachel Boltz, this episode is your ultimate guide to ensure your business ends the year with a bang!
Whether you're an established brand looking to elevate your year-end game or a new player eager to make your mark, this episode is packed with actionable insights and a whole lot of fun. So, get ready to strategize, and create a marketing plan that will leave your competition in the dust. Subscribe now and join us for "4th Quarter Marketing Plan: A Playbook for Year-End Success" because, in business, it's not just about winning; it's about winning with style! 🏆🎉
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Ep. 19 | Should you start a Podcast? An Interview With Stefanie Gass

Welcome to Episode 19 of Ms. Biz, we’re excited to present our special guest; Stefanie Gass. She is joining us with valuable insights to the question: Should I start a Podcast? 
Hosted by Brooke Boltz and Rachel Boltz, this episode serves as your definitive guide to making an informed decision about embarking on your podcasting journey.
Here's what's in store:
We'll delve into the essential considerations you should ponder before venturing into the world of podcasting, helping you determine if it aligns with your message, brand, or business.
🚀 Expert Insights with Stefanie Gass: Get ready for a deep dive with our special guest, Stefanie Gass, an awesome podcasting expert who played a pivotal role in launching our own podcast. Stefanie will share her invaluable insights on navigating the podcasting landscape successfully.
🎧 Behind the Scenes: Gain a behind-the-scenes look into the intricacies of podcast production, demystifying the technical aspects and outlining the resources required to kickstart your podcasting journey.
By the end of this episode, you'll have a crystal-clear understanding of whether podcasting aligns with your aspirations and aspirations. Whether you're an ambitious entrepreneur looking to expand your reach, a content creator searching for a fresh medium, or simply someone eager to share their story, we'll help you arrive at the right decision.
So, should you start a podcast? Tune in and find out! Subscribe now to "Ms. Biz" and prepare to embark on an exciting exploration of the podcasting universe. Don't miss this enlightening episode featuring our special guest, Stefanie Gass, which could be the catalyst for your own podcasting journey. 🎙️🎉
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