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June 6, 2022

Charles Read On Everything You Should Know About Payroll But Probably Don't (#131)

Charles Read On Everything You Should Know About Payroll But Probably Don't (#131)

“Compound Interest. It's a fabulous thing and use it.” - Charles Read

Charles J Read is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), U.S Tax Court Practitioner ( USTCP), member of the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council (IRSAC), and the Founder of GetPayroll.

Mr. Read’s companies have provided full-service payroll services, payroll tax services, and other payroll-related services since 1991.

Charles is an accomplished senior executive and entrepreneur with more than fifty years of financial leadership experience in a broad range of industries and the author of four books with the most recent one being, The Payroll Book: A Guide for Small Businesses and Startups.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Sell My Business Podcast. I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. 

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. 

Your liquidity event is the largest and most important financial transaction of your life. 

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At the end of this episode, take a moment to hear from business owners, just like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience. 

 Charles J. Read is a certified Public accountant, US Tax Court Practitioner, member of Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council, and the founder of GetPayroll. Mr. Read's companies have provided full-service payroll services, payroll tax services, and other payroll-related services since 1991. 

Charles is an accomplished senior executive and entrepreneur with more than 50 years of financial leadership experience in a broad range of industries and the author of four books with the most recent one being The Payroll Book: A Guide For Small Businesses and Startups.

Welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast and as always so excited to have you with us. Today, we have a fascinating guest. And for all you business owners out there, I'm sure you know, a thing or two to about payroll, or do you? Well, today, you're going to walk away with a whole lot more than you ever could have imagined, but most importantly, we're going to get into a deep dive on how to make your life easier, how to save you time and how to keep your employees happy. After all, isn't that what it's all about and employees that are happy, it's just a positive feedback loop. You have happy customers, happy employees, and you have a thriving and profitable business, but let's put that off to the side, and let's get to the main attraction here. 

Charles, welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast. Absolutely delighted to have you with us. And Charles, there's always a story behind the story. What's your story? What got you to where you are today?

[00:03:12] Charles Read: Jeffrey. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure to be here with you. I grew up in a family business. From my memories, my father had his own business and my mother worked with him and I'll touch on that later. After high school, I wasn't ready for college.

Went to service for four years, got out, my service experience was not valued by businesses then as it is today. They don't understand what service brings to the table, military service. So I went to college, got my BBA, my MBA. Sat for and passed my CPA exam when I was still in graduate school and went to work for Texas Instruments.

And I worked in the corporate world, small and large corporations for roughly 15 years and realized I was never going to run a major corporation. I didn't have the political skills. I was unwilling to stab people in the back and toss them off the ladder. So if I was going to run a business and I wanted to I didn't want to work for everybody.

I would kind of have to start my own. So at the age of 43, Ruth and I, my wife started our own business and went into business together. My parents worked together so I thought it was a natural act and actually working with your spouse is an unnatural act, but we got through that. And so that was just over 30 years ago. And still in business. Ruth has passed about seven years ago, but I'm still here and kicking and growing the business and having fun. 

[00:04:40] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. Charles firstly, and I don't think this is said enough. Thank you for your service. All of us are able to do what we do because of individuals like yourself who make that sacrifice. And so thank you for that then, while we're on the personal side, I'm very sorry to hear about the passing of Ruth. She sounds like she's both an incredible partner and also a business partner, a partner in life and a business partner.

[00:05:02] Charles Read: The biggest question she got in her married life was why she married an like me, but get worked for us. And with Ruth, as long as I was married, I could never be ruthless. So it worked for me. 

[00:05:16] Jeffrey Feldberg: That's wonderful. I love hearing that. So, Charles, you have an interesting background and I know if we took all the degrees after your name, all those letters, it's an alphabet in and of itself. So what's going wrong with most business owners who are out there and they may not even have a clue that something's going wrong, but it really is.

 What are you seeing out there where you're really making a difference and helping to solve some problems?

[00:05:41] Charles Read: Well, first of all, I have been a critic of American business management for my entire life. I think most of it's terrible. However, there's a lot of people out there trying and trying hard, but in my industry because of my industry people don't know what they don't know. And payroll is a very complex set of laws. If all you had to do was okay, $10 an hour, 40 hours, $400. Here you go. Go home. Simple, easy, no problem. It's a lot more complicated than that. And that's where people get into trouble. And the analogy I use is when I grew up Palae was the world's best soccer player, wonderful athlete, maybe the best soccer player of all time.

But if you'd put them in a New York Yankees uniform in Sigma at second base, he would be totally lost. He doesn't understand the equipment, the place, throwing a ball with his hands. I mean, you know, It would just be an incredible learning experience. But he'd still be a great athlete. So a manufacturer, a doctor, a lawyer, a chef, a mechanic, they're good at what they do.

They make a living, they take care of their clients. They do their business. They're successful. But when you say, okay, now go deal with the Internal Revenue Service. They're lost because it's not their thing. We all outsource certain things. I don't make my own clothes. I don't build my own cars. I don't even mow my own lawn anymore.

It's work. So I outsource those things. So payroll is one of those things that businesses should outsource. Just like they should outsource legal and insurance and banking because it's not their thing. And they don't know what they don't know and they need an expert. So payroll is one of those things that you should, as a business person outsource. And that's us, we take all those complexities, we understand them. I get several emails from the internal revenue service newsletters every week. I go to conferences, I read the trade. I studied the law. I'm a US tax court practitioner, which means I can represent my clients in US tax court. Even though I'm not an attorney, I have a US Tax Court bar card.

I'm an expert. So if there's a problem, I probably know the answer. And if I don't, I know how to fix it. I know how to find the answer. I know how to take care of things. IRS in 2019 issued $13 billion in employment tax penalties, which were mistakes and they abated several billion of them. And there were several billion more that should have been in abated.

The IRS will penalize you for their mistakes. And if you don't know how to fix it, you don't know how to fight the IRS. The only other thing you can do is pay it.

[00:08:23] Jeffrey Feldberg: And Charles I know we're going to spend a lot of time on this, but I want to throw a question out there that I'm sure some listeners are thinking and we'll give them the information to have them think otherwise. But I'm sure there's a business owner out there who is saying Charles, I'm sure you're a terrific guy and you have a nice story in the business.

Congratulations. But listen, I have John as my bookkeeper or Jane as my bookkeeper, they've been doing it for years. They know what to do. I haven't really had any issues and I don't really want to spend any more money I'm spending. I feel what enough, enough money as it is to do this. Why would I want to take it outside?

[00:08:57] Charles Read: Well, Two things. First of all, do you have other things for Jane or John to do, or do they have just time on their hands and not doing anything? Either one of those is a mistake. Second of all, they're not professionals at it. They don't do it all the time. I do it all the time. My staff does it all the time.

We're professionals at payroll, we don't do your accounting. We don't do your invoicing. We don't do your HR. We don't do a lot of things that Jane or John may do for you. We do payroll. You have very effectively, we have very expensive software. We have very expensive equipment. We have very well-trained and people who are trained constantly on the law and what goes on in payroll. So John or Jane may be great at what they do, but they're not experts. And the other thing, and here's our real unique selling proposition is when the IRS makes a mistake and sends that letter, does your bookkeeper know what to do? Do they really understand the systems?

Can they prosecute that case for you? Do they know how to appeal it and appeal it? We are payroll insurance. Do you have insurance on the business? You probably have insurance on John or Jane if they steal from you. Okay. So we're payroll insurance. We make sure that it goes right. And problems get solved.

All the deposits are made on time. And I can't tell you as a CPA, how many times I've seen the bookkeeper steal the tax funds from the business and maybe get away with it, maybe end up in jail, but it happens all the time. 

[00:10:39] Jeffrey Feldberg: Let's talk about that because you're talking about fraud and theft and let's put that more in a general category. Just the other day, it seems like I'm having a conversation either with a client or friends that are in business, Jeffrey. You're not going to believe what happened. Somebody somehow got ahold of my checks and next thing I know all these checks are coming out of my bank account. That's one example of a fraud you're sharing another where the internal employee maybe is stealing from you. So how does GetPayroll protect me as a business owner from those kinds of situations?

[00:11:13] Charles Read: Well, first of all, everything is confidential. We send you the reports, preferably electronic they're on your computer and you have the password. So nobody else sees them to start with. The money we draft from your account we then pay all your employees out of our account. So if there's any check fraud, it's our risk.

And we're very staunch with our bank on protections in place. Every check we write for a client, we send that information to the bank. And if the check comes in and doesn't match that, or isn't in the file, bank doesn't cash it. The bank calls us and we either approve it or not. It's called positive pay.

We have debit blocks on our accounts where nobody can draft our accounts. We just don't allow it. If people say well, for our vendors we need to draft your bank account. Now you can hit my credit card, but you cannot draft my bank account cause we have absolute debit blocks because we have our client's money in there and it's sometimes millions of dollars and we're very cautious about that.

And so is are banks, so we're experts at this preventing fraud and helping you prevent fraud because if your checks are out there, there's a check fraud artist who's going to take that. And it's real easy for him to make up checks, copy the signature and start passing them all over town.

Now it may not hit your funds in the end. Your bank may reimburse you and so on, but it's going to cause you huge amounts of misery. We see it all the time. Check fraud is a huge crime in this country. Then we also do a lot of direct deposits and we like that for our client. It goes right into your employee's bank account.

They don't have to go, hey boss, I need to go to the bank to cash my check and are gone for three hours because the line was too long. None of that happens. In an emergency, we're not there. We're someplace else. We have backup and redundant systems and we can pay your people at their bank no matter what happens.

So it's there and you don't have to worry about trying to get checks to somebody in the disaster zone. It's sitting in their bank and their bank opened, their ATMs open. They're paid. So there's a lot of advantages to using an outside system that the expertise, the systems, the people, the fraud protection, the state-of-the-art, and knowing the law.

So when you have a question about the new change in the Internal Revenue regulations concerning independent contractors, is your bookkeeper up to speed on those? Probably not. I am, or my people. 

[00:13:45] Jeffrey Feldberg: That's fabulous and truth be told Charles, you had me at payroll insurance. So those two words I said, okay, done. And for all of our business owners out there particularly with Deep Wealth, our wheelhouse, are liquidity events and preparation. Let's think of this for a moment as though we're a future buyer and we're looking at your company.

All future buyers, what do they want to do? They want to minimize risk. And so when they're looking at your company and they see that your, with a professional outfit, like GetPayroll, okay. The fraud risk goes down, internal theft is going down and out of compliance is going down and you have this payroll insurance.

I mean, to me, those are all checkboxes where they need to be checked. And that's looking really terrific, but let's talk about something else, Charles. We've been talking about the negative, but there's also some positive out there as well. And you're protecting us from the negative. But it sounds like with GetPayroll I'm also going to get some positive kinds of things coming my way because there's all kinds of tax credits, and most business owners and the people that are doing payroll for them I suspect probably don't know about that. So what's going on with tax credits and how do you help with that?

[00:14:52] Charles Read: You're right, there's lots of them and they change. And there's new ones a couple of years ago, 45S came in and I've been pushing that and finally getting a lot of my clients to understand it and to move to it. Cause we send out information on everything new to our clients and say, if you want to do this, you want to do that.

Here's what you can do. Here's how you can save. We're very proactive with our clients because we want them to be informed, 45S allows you to get a tax credit if you pay for time off, it's that simple. If you record time off appropriately, and if it would be time off for what would normally be considered family medical leave FMLA. But you're not subject to that. Cause you're under 50. You can still get a tax credit for up to 25% of the amount you pay for time off. If you structure it properly, it's just free money. 

[00:15:45] Jeffrey Feldberg: I'm linking what I am hearing with that. And speaking of free money and maybe not in necessarily the best way of what's going on out there. Talk to us about the pandemic and what's been happening with that. Has that changed your role in payroll and what should we know about that?

[00:15:59] Charles Read: Well, obviously there are a lot of programs that we help shepherd our clients through, the PPP, where employees could defer employment taxes for a period of time and other loans and the whole thing currently about guaranteed income and payments for employees. And some of our clients got hundreds of thousands of dollars of credits, some of our restaurants because they were able to take advantage of that under the Cares Act. So these are all things we talked to all of our clients about, and they pretty much petered out now, but it was fun for a couple of years there, a lot of new things, a lot of changes. The PPP, when it came in, the rules basically changed every day for about 60 days. Every day, there were new pronouncements from the SBA and the IRS. The Congress didn't properly schedule it, properly paper it.

And the IRS said well, it's income. You know, the Congress said well, no, it's not And the IRS said okay, we won't make it income, but the things you pay with it aren't deductible. So Congress had to go back and rewrite it. So it became free money, which was fine. So that's the kind of thing if you're not in the business and you're not keeping up with that and you don't have the contacts to talk to. If I need help, I have numerous people, at the IRS I can call cause I know them. I spent three years on the IRS Advisory Council. I was up in DC five times a year meeting with these people.

So all these things are good for me to be able to help my clients and help them be successful and take advantage of programs and credits and changes that's not in the mainstream media. You'll probably never hear about it unless you're in the business. 

[00:17:42] Jeffrey Feldberg: What a difference that you can make and the whole thing Charles, in terms of your insights, your expertise, your breadth of knowledge, I'm wondering, how does that parlay into the world of mergers and acquisitions? So when it comes to some kind of liquidity event, maybe you're buying a company, maybe you're being acquired.

Payroll for most business owners when it comes to M&A is probably for honest about it. And no offense, Charles it's probably not even on their radar, is not even on the list. Now, I'm sure you have a whole other side of things to share with us. And I'd love to hear that. So what should we be thinking about acquisitions, M&A liquidity events, payroll, what's going on there?

[00:18:21] Charles Read: A client that bought up another medical practice two years ago. And we are still fighting the payroll fallout from that because they didn't pay attention. And the old guy was paying it, and the new people were paying it and double payments, double tax filings and all that has to be redone. And we're still not done, we're getting close. It's taken more than two years and they're buying another practice. And this time they came to us and said, what do we need to do about payroll? My fees have been substantial.

[00:18:57] Jeffrey Feldberg: I can only imagine. What was going on with that? How do you protect companies in this kind of situation?

[00:19:03] Charles Read: You sit down with them and preferably early on and say, okay, how are you going to structure the merger or the acquisition? I don't really care how you do it, but how you do it, determines how the payroll gets cut off, who pays what, who reports what. So on and so forth, if it's a true merger and it's coming in and under your FEIN then it's just a merger and we need all that data.

So at the end of the year, we can report properly for everybody that's merged in. If it's an acquisition of assets, then you need a specific cutoff where they stop and you pick up the people that you acquire come in under your FEIN and under your state number separately, start there. Limits all over again.

So yeah, between the two companies, you may pay some extra taxes, but that's the way you chose to be acquired. So that's just life, but it's when they don't know what they don't know and they don't ask the questions, then they have a tendency not to do things correctly. If they'll just sit down with us early on, we'll walk them through the steps in relation to payroll, payroll reporting, payroll tax depositing, paying their employees, dealing with the states, all these things, and all the employment tax areas. It doesn't matter if you want to acquire them you just need to let us know so we can tell you what you need to do in relation to all the payroll-related items.

It's again, it's not knowing what you don't know. And if you don't ask, we can't tell you if we don't know you've done it. If we find out later, and that's what happened with this client, it was several months later, we found out what they'd done and they'd already screwed it up. 

[00:20:48] Jeffrey Feldberg: And for all your business owners out there I hope you're paying really good attention. And we talk about this in the 9-step roadmap here at Deep Wealth. And we look to step number six, which is the advisory team. And for most business owners, when they're thinking about a liquidity event, Charles you'll have, okay I need an investment banker check done. I need to have an M&A lawyer. Okay. Got that done. However, you need a payroll advisor, a trusted payroll advisor. And I would even suggest that before you start a liquidity event, you have a trusted payroll advisor to give you some insights, just like a tax advisor would, hey Jeffrey, you're having a liquidity event based on how your business is structured the sales should be structured this way. Charles, I would imagine that you and the team are coming in, hey, you're having a liquidity event based on what's going on here's what you want to ask for in the deal. Here's what you want to see in the letter of intent. And it all comes back to the preparation. Better prepared you are, the better off you are.

[00:21:43] Charles Read: And here's some things to look at for due diligence, because you need to make sure that if you're acquiring somebody, all those taxes have been filed and paid properly. Because if you acquire them as a merger, you're acquiring those liabilities. And if you don't know what those are, you write that check, they disappear.

And all of a sudden you find out there's employment tax problems that you didn't realize were there. You may find yourself on the hook for huge problem. So, Yeah, you need to talk to us so we can advise you and give you the due diligence items to check out or help you check them out. We know how to do that as well as help you structure the procedures within the deal.

I'm not going to tell you whether you should be a merger or an acquisition, or how you want to do that liquidity event. That's a business decision, but I will tell you all the ancillary things that you need to know in making that decision in regards to payroll? I'm not an M&A specialist. I don't do that. In payroll and payroll-related items, we need to talk.

[00:22:49] Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, certainly words to the wise and I want to get your book, but before we get to your book, there are some business owners out there thinking, okay. You know, I came into this podcast thinking I can do it myself, Charles, you have me, the payroll insurance. You have me here, you have me there. I'm liking what I'm hearing, there's always the but it's going to take too long to transfer everything over or it's going to be too expensive or it's going to be too complicated.

So Charles what's involved when a business contacts you and says, yes, GetPayroll, sign me up. Let's get this going. How does that work exactly?

[00:23:23] Charles Read: Send out a file invite with a number of things, the contract, a power of attorney, and some instructions on the information we need. You get us that we do all the setup and we're normally ready in 10 days or less. We understand that change is difficult. And it is stressing.

So we worked very hard over the last 30 years to make it as simple and as easy as possible to let us take over your payroll needs. We'll also train your people who are doing the entry. We will work with your bank if need be. We will do most of the work. You'll just need to give us the numbers. We'll set up the systems.

We'll train your entry people how they enter payroll. And then we're always available. If there's a problem, we'll walk whoever's doing it through the first payroll and we will structure it so it's as simple and easy as possible. That's really one of our goals. Some of our competitors make it very difficult to switch from them.

And do it deliberately. We don't, and that's another thing. If you decide for whatever reason you're going to leave our services. Okay, we'll make it as easy as possible because we get a lot of clients that come back to us and say, your competitor lied to us. They're not easy to work with. They screwed things up, whatever.

Could you take us back? And we always will. So we understand, things change, people change. We're nice people, you know, like our clients be happy. Whether they're with us or not with us we never burn a bridge. And we want to make their life as easy as possible. We're the specialists, we're the experts. We shouldn't make it difficult. And we try very hard not to. 

[00:25:09] Jeffrey Feldberg: What a terrific attitude. And let's now parlay this into your book. So you put together a book and at first glance, some people may ask what the heck, a book that's nearly 300 pages what's going on with that. But it's called The Payroll Book: A Guide for Small Businesses and Startups. So what's going on with the book? What's there? What should we know about that? Why would we want to be reading that?

[00:25:30] Charles Read: As I've been in payroll for 30 years, there's very few reference guides. The biggest one is designed to train people, to pass the rural certifications for FPC and CPP Certified Payroll Processor. The APA, the American Payroll Association has those and their book is about 600 hours.

And it's harder to read than mine. So I put together what I thought was a reasonable guide for small businesses and startups. This has all the basics, it's not designed for IBM or General Motors. Okay. Or international. It's designed for the employer with under 50 employees in the US that's where the books designed. 

If you're in England, and I got one comment on my website, on my reviews with a one-star saying, because it didn't handle English payroll, it's not designed to, it's designed to handle US payroll. So we go through all the things in you know chapter one is business entity, the business entity you choose as a startup determines how you're going to be in payroll.

So it's important that you know, what the variations are. And then we go through all the things about who's an employee, who's not, statutory employees, deductions, taxes, pay periods, payroll, pay works, workweeks, all these things that you never think about when you draw a paycheck, but somebody back in their HR department or their accounting department designed all of these things at one point in time and oversees them.

Then we go through just running a payroll. What does it take? How do you calculate overtime? Blended overtime, Chinese overtime, all kinds of other miscellaneous things. And from getting from gross pay to net pay and everything in between all the deductions and taxes. And then additional essential things that aren't pure payroll, butter related, record-keeping all the bureaus and departments that you have to keep records for and what you have to keep and how long your worker's comp, internal controls, citizens abroad, aliens, legal and illegal other things like PEOs and it's cheat and so on. So you've got a reference manual that you can keep, and if you've got a question.

And is probably there, if not my numbers in the book call me and it serves one other purpose. It's a cure for insomnia. Just keep it on your nightstand.

[00:27:46] Jeffrey Feldberg: Multipurpose, always adding that value.

[00:27:49] Charles Read: Absolutely. And there's a lot of horror stories in there that to show you, if you do this wrong, this is what can happen. 

[00:27:56] Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that. And I know Charles, you were mentioning the offline in regards to the book that, and we'll put this all in the show notes that you have a very special offer for our listeners, which I think is terrific and generous. So what's going on with the special offer?

[00:28:08] Charles Read: Well, Jeffrey for your listeners. If they would like a copy of the book, The Payroll Book: A Guide for Small Businesses and Startups. If they will go to the website, thepayrollbook.com enter their information in the discount code podcast. We will send them a free book, no shipping, no handling, no nothing. We'll send them a free book. 

[00:28:29] Jeffrey Feldberg: Doesn't get any better. It's free all the way around, but it's not only free it's giving you the insights and the knowledge and the education. How are you going to protect yourself? How are you going to maximize your efficiencies? How you're just going to get from here to there in the smoothest way possible, which is really terrific and tremendously generous of you, Charles.

[00:28:49] Charles Read: I've got a stack here in the next room. And as long as they're there, I will send you one when they're gone. They're gone. So get on thepayrollbook.com and order it. And we'll get you one today next week. Hopefully, they'll gone next week. 

[00:29:06] Jeffrey Feldberg: And for listeners again, we'll make that easy for you. That'll be in the show notes. There'll be a point and click we'll have all the information, therefore, you and Charles, I'm wondering as we look big picture-wise, so let's do a 50,000 foot in the air overview. And you look at typical businesses that aren't working with, GetPayroll, maybe they're doing it on their own.

Maybe they're having another outsource provider that's helping them. What would be some of the biggest areas of concern that you would just share with them? Perhaps we haven't talked about, because you said something interesting. You don't know what you don't know, how can you master something you've never done before?

So what should they know?

[00:29:40] Charles Read: Well, That's what the book is for to teach them what they should know. And if they're dealing with a competitor, you need to ask that competitor, if they have a CPA, you can talk to, a professional. And most of them won't have, and if they do have one, they probably don't have a US tax court practitioner.

Well, You may never need them, but if you need them if they don't have one, it's going to cost you $5,000 with a tax attorney just as a retainer. And we throw that service is free. So if you're dealing with a competitor, you need to check on their professionalism. I did a trick one time, I called ADP and asked for the President, and the girl at the phone said, president of what?

And I said, the president of the company. She said what company? I said ADP. And she said, oh, he doesn't have a phone. You can't talk to the president of ADP, if you're a client. He won't take your phone call. If you're dealing with GetPayroll and Chris or Christie or the other Chris or who's ever in operations can't answer your question you asked for Charles and they'll transfer you over to me. 

[00:30:42] Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific.

[00:30:43] Charles Read: If you're doing it yourself, get and read the book, because you don't know what you don't know. And you're going to run into problems. And when the IRS screws up and makes some mistake, you will know how to solve it. And I'm going to give your listeners one huge tip right now, the IRS cannot penalize you for a simple mistake.

They can only penalize you for gross negligence. Now, the trick is who defines gross negligence. The IRS wants to, but the courts do in the end. So you have to fight the IRS and if necessary, go to tax court to get that simple mistake recognized and all the penalties reversed, but they cannot penalize you for that. They will but legally they can't, but you've got to fight it. 

[00:31:27] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, what an insight, and that in and of itself is worth the price of admission. Charles, I got to go back you had me a payroll insurance, but you also had me when you mentioned, and it's part of your title you are a US Tax Court Practitioner. You built that into the service. Hopefully, you never have to use that as a client with you, but if a client gets some kind of allegation from the IRS, there's an issue that's upcoming. It's a phone call away. It's saving time, it's saving money and you know exactly what you're doing. And to me, if that's not peace of mind, I don't know what is.

[00:31:58] Charles Read: We use it more often than I'd like, and we have yet to lose a case. I promise you at some point in time, we'll lose. Okay. It's going to happen. But at the moment, our records perfect. We don't take it to court. If it's silly and 95% of all US tax court cases get settled before court, 95%. So if you have a problem, even if you caused it US tax court will probably get you a favorable settlement. And the cost for going to tax court is $60. That's the cost of filing a petition and our services as a tax court practitioners are build in.

[00:32:37] Jeffrey Feldberg: It doesn't get any better. I absolutely love that. Charles, we're at the point in the episode where we transition now and I get to ask one of my favorite questions as we start to wrap things up here. And the question for you is this when you think of the movie Back to the Future, You have that magical DeLorean car that really, it can take you back to any point in time. So Charles, imagine now the DeLorean car it's there. You're looking out your window. The door is open, is waiting for you to hop on in. You go in and you're going to go back to Charles at any point in time in your life. Maybe it's Charles as a child, a teenager, a young adult, whatever point in time it would be.

What would you be telling your younger self in terms of life wisdom, lessons learned, or Charles do this, or don't do that? What would that look like for you?

[00:33:24] Charles Read: Save money and invest it. If I had invested a fraction of the money I've wasted, I'd be a very rich man today. 

[00:33:36] Jeffrey Feldberg: Good practical advice. I love that. 

[00:33:38] Charles Read: Compound Interest. It's a fabulous thing and use it. At my age. It's not much use anymore, but at 18 it would have been wonderful. I taught high school for five years before Ruth had her first stroke. I taught first period every day before I came to the office and I taught introduction to business and I had one young lady in there, she worked at the local McDonald's and I said if you lost $10 out of your paycheck every week, would it make any difference?

And she said, no. And I said, okay, let me show you what to do. You put in a bank in savings account, and when its get up to a thousand dollars. You call a broker and you invest in a mutual fund. And as it grows, you diversify. And when you get to be 65, if you'll put away that $10 every week, starting now at 16, you'll be rich.

And she was absolutely flabbergasted. As we went through the numbers as a class exercise. I saw her a couple of years later and asked her if she'd done that. And she said, no, sure. When she's 65, she'll kick her 16-year-old self for not doing that. 

[00:34:39] Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, that's absolutely terrific advice. And Charles, again, I'm going to put this in the show notes for any listeners that would like to get in touch with you online, what would be the best place?

[00:34:48] Charles Read: getpayroll.com, my email is cjr[at]getpayroll. If you want to look at some of our articles and blogs and video, and we have some fun ones out there, we have the payroll father, which is a godfather parody, youtube.com /GetPayroll works. And you can look at all our videos on youtube. 

[00:35:09] Jeffrey Feldberg: I love it. And again, we'll have all that in the show notes. It'll be a point and click. Charles wrote that point where we're going to wrap things up a heartfelt thank you for taking part of your day and spending it with us here on The Sell My Business Podcast. And as always, please stay healthy and safe. 

[00:35:22] Charles Read: Jeffrey, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[00:35:24] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

[00:35:27] Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions. 

[00:35:37] Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

[00:35:42] Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

[00:35:48] Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, maybe less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

[00:36:04] Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

[00:36:26] Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended. 

[00:36:36] Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

[00:36:50] Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

[00:37:08] Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

[00:37:35] Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

[00:37:54] Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode of the Sell My Business podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Reviews help me reach new listeners, grow the show and continue to create content that you'll enjoy. 

As we close out this episode, a heartfelt thank you for your time. And as always, please stay healthy and safe. 

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth. 

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