Build Your Wealth While You Build Your Business

Welcome to the Are You Awesome Today? podcast. I am your host, Stephen Schoener, and you are invited to join us weekly as we talk with successful people who will share with us their personal and professional experiences that have taken them from great to awesome. Hi, everyone.

Welcome to the Are You Awesome Today? podcast. I am your host, Stephen Schoener, the Attitude Chiropractor. Joining me today is Chase Insogna.

Chase is the owner and founder of Insogna CPA. Our topic today is building wealth while building your business. Chase, welcome to the podcast.

Are you awesome today? Yeah, thanks for having me. Oh, thanks for being here. Let’s start off.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how you developed this passion for all the things that you do as a CPA to help people build their wealth and their businesses. Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. I’ve always been entrepreneurial, even as a kid.

My parents liked to describe me. So, college and then graduated, got into accounting, always did businesses on the side, accounting and taxes. I was just naturally good at it.

And then that led to, eventually me getting my CPA. I was working in corporate accounting and then had the opportunity to kind of start my own firm. I hung out my shingle.

I bought a bookkeeping firm originally to kind of get started, but never recommend doing that again. So, that’s how I got started. I became Dave Ramsey, kind of ELP, which is his endorsed provider list for the Austin area, which is where we’re based, that helped us, get a number of clients initially.

And then we just grew organically on Google. 14 years later, we’re like an overnight success with 20 employees. And we focus on one to three business owners under 20, 30 million, kind of a general range, a large vertical in the e-com, online selling.

And really at the end of the day, we’re here to help our clients and focus on like coaching and advisory tax strategy planning. So, not your, I mean, certainly we do the transactional daily accounting and bookkeeping, reconciling monthly, payroll tax prep for individual business. But our main driver and focus is really advisory and helping clients build their business towards their goals here.

Okay. So, let’s say I decide I want to be an entrepreneur. I’m going to start my own business.

Generally, I’m not thinking about cashflow at that point. And that can sometimes hit hard later. So, what are some of the first things we should consider from a cashflow standpoint when starting a new business? Even if it’s a single person like me being an entrepreneur and starting a small business, what kind of things should we be thinking about? It certainly depends on the line of business.

When you’re a consultant, it’s a lot less expense than starting an e-com business where you’ve got to buy a bunch of inventory, sit on it until it sells. So, really, I mean, I would obviously recommend a budget, personal and business. So how much you need to pay the bills every month and then what it’s going to take to grow the business initially.

I mean, I didn’t pay myself for the first two years. So, I understand, kind of bootstrapping it and saving every penny as possible. Budget every year.

I know what my personal expenses are and what I needed to take home to pay those minimal expenses. I live pretty frugally. So, it wasn’t a big deal.

From that cashflow planning and budgeting, it tells you how much you can then reinvest in the business or e-com inventory to continue growing it. So, I always recommend a minimum level having a personal and small business budget. Sure.

From a personal standpoint, I’ve always loved the concept of pay yourself first. But we don’t think about that on the business side as much. Is that an important part of having a business? Yeah.

So, there’s Covey’s book out there, kind of profit first. I mean, that’s a little bit where I derived it from, but really in my own personal goal, kind of how we always approach people here is what we would do if we were in your shoes is how we go about the advisory and the coaching part of and consulting and helping our clients. My own perspective as a business owner, I mean, I want to be able to be financially well off growing the business eventually and not just waiting for the end of the rope and hoping to sell it for a price that I hope to get, which is what a lot of people do.

I think there’s a Forbes stat out there where 80% of businesses or 85% never sell. So, all these people watching Shark Tank thinking, oh, I’m going to sell my business, start something and sell it. I mean, the reality is most of them don’t get sold.

So what I discovered over 25 years is a lot of people put their blood, sweat and tears into it, 10, 20 plus years, they get to the end, life changes, whatever happens. And they’re like, I want to sell it. You’re not going to get a premium when you’re trying to force sell it.

At the end of the day, you’re never going to realize that big number that you were hoping for that you want to live on. So my, my philosophy and everybody teach their own, but mine is, to save and build wealth as you grow in your business. So whether that’s putting away, 500 a year or 50,000 a year or whatever it may be into retirement planning and tax saving strategies that pay dividends forward, like all those things kind of on a spectrum of retirement planning and saving along with short term cash, and cash, cash needs.

That’s really at the base of what we’re trying to help our clients with. So Maxiana IRA, initially, or, and it’s maybe a sub, then it can be a solo 401k. And then it’s maybe a regular 401k.

We’re doing more matching and you’re an S-corp saving on taxes to do that and getting into defined benefit plans, potentially with a financial advisor, kind of tax strategies around oil and gas leasing or wildlife funds or something like that. So all kinds of different ways. Every client’s different.

Risk tolerance is different. That’s what we’re identifying when we have conversations. But at the end of my rope, I don’t, whatever that looks like, I don’t want to be beholden to, hope, hoping somebody is going to give me a number after I put all that effort into growing it.

So I’m just trying to build a little bit as I go. Hopefully one day that turns into something. Sure.

You mentioned Covey. I was a facilitator of the seven habits for many years. I’m a big fan of Stephen Covey as well.

So. Yeah, cool. And what I’m hearing from you is ask for help.

There’s so much there and there’s so many ways you can go. Having a professional kind of give you some guidance and talk through some of those things is really important, isn’t it? Absolutely. You know, for me, I mean, I’m not an expert in everything, especially when it comes to marketing.

So I outsource that. I try to find the right resources. But I mean, I’m not an insurance expert.

So I go find an insurance broker to help me with that. Attorneys, whatever it may be. Probably about kind of having a sphere of influence.

So if you consider a circle with a bunch of spikes and you’re in the middle, what does that CEO sphere of influence need to look like? We do this a lot with athletes where you’ve got your, using athlete example, you’ve got your manager, maybe, and you’ve got your attorney, CPA, insurance, and you’ve got a real estate agent, financial advisor. You’ve got whoever’s representing you at the base level. That’s what you have.

In our belief, a lot of those should not be related to each other. I mean, getting commissions off each other. So you have a sphere of influence that is getting, you’re getting real advice that’s not related to getting paid from somebody else to give you that advice.

Being transparent, being ethical. At the base of every business owner, the same scenario. You’ve got your team of people that you go to.

So we want to be that call for our clients, when they have financial decisions and they’re looking to purchase something or life changes. Because at the end of the day, it affects taxes. So, it all boils down to the 1040 at the end of the day.

And we want to be there to help make sure you’re on the right track for that by year end. Excellent. Okay.

So I’m in business, I’m doing well, but all of a sudden things just kind of turn around on me and I’m facing some real financial challenges. What are my first steps there? Yeah, there’s no, there’s no right answer or wrong answer. One answer for everything.

Yeah, I think, I mean, definitely marketplace into is, is just short term. Is it an industry change where, maybe you should just consider longer term things. I mean, it’s really varies from all our clients.

Some have money saved up to get through it. Some don’t, sometimes the industry is done with and it’s time to move on. I mean, those tough decisions over my lifetime too.

So, it’s really independent answer there. Sure. Yeah.

Depending on the situation and where you’re at, I guess. So, all right. So we’re talking about building wealth while we’re building our business.

So we’re building our business, we’re doing those things. What kind of options do we have then to build wealth in the background? Great question. I mean, it’s really dependent on first, what do you have in short term savings? Young business owner, we’re not going to talk about retirement planning until, you’ve got at least six to 12 months short term.

You know, are you looking to buy a house? Major purchases, obviously that plays into it. Kids about to go to college, that could be a factor. And then from there, if you’ve got established, obviously saving for yourself as the business owner up to the 56, 58K limit, I mean, or whatever 401k is that the year we’re talking about, or is it just the minimum like individual IRA? We talk about paying your kids, paying your spouse and your business, like from a tax perspective, depends on your structure and how you pay them efficiently.

And then from there, we can get into tax strategies, like I mentioned, like the oil and gas stuff, or putting on your risk level, you got to be accredited investor for those type of things. But you know, if you want to do defined plans with your financial advisor, you can do that. A number of different avenues, save money and build the wealth.

But at the end of the day, I mean, I’m not, I’m not one of these like, or they call themselves fire people where I’m like living minimally. I don’t want people to think that like, I like to enjoy my life. But I also don’t want to, I’m also not the type of person that spends all my money as I earn it either.

So I don’t want to have to work, for the rest of my life, kind of like my parents did, where, they retired and, and, my mom passed away a year after my dad retired, and so they didn’t get to enjoy life as much as they wanted to. And she passed away at 67, fairly young age. I don’t want that for myself.

So again, to each their own. But my personal goal is to save enough as we go forward as the business grows. And hopefully one day when I’m ready to step out and semi-retire, fully retire, the business is here, it’s still working.

Other people are running it. Maybe it gets acquired or sold or whatever it looks like. At the end of the day, I’m at least taken care of financially.

And that’s what I’m working towards every year. As we retired, one thing we didn’t think about much, but now that we’re in that place, most of our outflow is for insurance, medical, everything. I mean, we’ve got insurance for everything up here.

So it’s amazing how much we spend just to insure stuff now. I mean, we could go off on a tangent, but my mother passed away recently. I discovered how horrible the US healthcare system is and how expensive it is for surviving spouses.

It’s unbelievable. Yeah, it is. It’s unfortunate.

Especially when you’re on full Medicare too. I mean, in my opinion, you shouldn’t have to pay anything if you’re on full Medicare. I would agree with that, but that’s not the way it is, unfortunately.

All right. Any final thoughts on this concept? I mean, goals have got to play a big part of this, right? Yeah. Well, first thing I always recommend, find a great CPA out there that’s proactive with you, that’s advising you, kind of like we talked about today, not just being transactional and bidding out a tax return, maybe dating, here’s your financials.

That doesn’t really help anyone. You want someone that’s proactive with you, going over the numbers, coaching, advising, strategizing with you weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, just kind of depends on the size of your business and what’s going on. So that’s the first thing, finding the right resource.

The second is, make sure cashflow planning for yourself, personally and the business. I mean, they’re obviously tied into each other. A lot of people plan with the business and then I’m always like, well, what’s your personal budget? And they never have one.

For me, I know exactly how much I need annually to cover my net for myself personally. And so I know I need to take that from the business or at least make enough to cover that from the business. And then from there, what do we do with the cash? I know from time to time, we’ll find some people out there that in your business that don’t have integrity and are doing some things they probably should not be doing.

How do we avoid that? I mean, are there specific questions as we’re meeting with a CPA that we can kind of get a better feel for how they do handle things? Yeah, I mean, like anything else, interview a few, see who fits your personality and your goals. It’s a relationship business. I mean, we don’t fit all personalities either.

We don’t take anybody that walks in the door. I mean, we’re looking for the right fit as well. Definitely follow around, see who fits you.

Look at the online reviews. We always recommend having a licensed individual. Obviously, CPAs are licensed, but there’s a lot of bookkeepers and tax people out there and financial coaches that have really no licensure background or qualification whatsoever other than maybe their background history.

But with being licensed, you have recourse. So if you get bad advice or you have a poor tax return that was wrong, financials are entirely inaccurate. At least you have recourse to go to the state board with a licensed CPA.

So we always promote licensed versus unlicensed. And then certainly do your research and make sure it’s the right fit for you. Excellent.

All right. Your website is insognacpa.com. Is that how people can reach out to you and what will they find there? Yeah, insognacpa.com. Reach out to us, click the contact us link. We actually reach out to you in one to two business days.

We have a team to do that. So it’s just not me doing all the work here and trying to call you. So we have a team and happy to have a conversation.

Love to learn more about you and your business. See if we’re the right fit for what you’re trying to achieve here and go from there. All right.

Excellent. Chase, so much for sharing some of your knowledge and your passion for helping people build wealth and avoid those money problems while they’re building their business. This is valuable.

I’ve taken a lot of notes here and I know the listeners will get some value out of it too. So thank you so much for being such a great guest. Thank you for having me.

And for you and for all of our listeners, everyone have an awesome day. Thanks for joining us today. For more information about our podcasts and speakers, and for additional educational resources, connect with us at awesomeattitude.net. Until next time, be you and be awesome.