Les Winston Shares Little Known Secrets On How To Increase Profits Through Endownment (#179)

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth.

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.

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

When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life.

But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time and your hard earned money wasted.

Of the quote unquote "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it.

I should know. I said "no" to a seven-figure offer. And "yes" to mastering the art and the science of a liquidity event. Two years later, I said "yes" to a different buyer with a nine figure deal.

Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event?

Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing the skills that built your business are the same ones to sell it.

After all, how can you master something you've never done before?

Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and the 9-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the best deal instead of any deal.

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

A pioneer in the field of philanthropic planning. Chartered Philanthropic advisor, Les Winston specializes in utilizing section 664 of the tax code to build endowments and lower tax bills.

With 25 years of experience in the field, Les founded SocialSECharity.org to educate America on how an endowed nation will secure the financial future of its people.

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. And as usual, you can count on us for a terrific episode, we are not going to disappoint. We are going to absolutely over-deliver on that today with a topic that's near and dear to my heart. As I know it is yours.

And for all your business owners out there. I know here at Deep Wealth, when we talk about a liquidity event, we talk about life after the liquidity event and how you can make a difference and perhaps set up a foundation or find a social cause or a charity. But what if I told you that after today, you're going to learn some strategies that can begin that process?

Now that you're actually richer than you think, and you have tools that maybe you didn't even know about that can really move the dial. And that's exactly where we're going to be going, but I'm going to stop there no more spoiler alerts, Les welcome to the Deep Wealth Sell My Business Podcast. We're really excited to have you with us unless there's always a story behind the story Les.

What's your story? What got you to where you are today?

[00:02:57] Les Winston: Well, I've been in the financial planning business for many years. Started in 1977. And during that period of time, my practices evolved into one that is more holistic in nature. Find that you can't really just deal with a piece of a financial plan. You have to deal with an entire financial plan for any individual.

And that included. And it includes today the use of charitable vehicles. And in fact, in 2005, I was one of the first advisors in the country to get a chartered advisor in philanthropy designation from the American College. And that designation has helped me with regard to the future of my clients.

I like to look at my clients in a way that expresses the building of confidence for them. And the confidence over money, of course, is the base of the pyramid. And then once they have competence over money, they have confidence over time. Relationships, they become a little bit more spiritual and they also eventually hopefully get to working at their genius, and working at their genius is what I like to get my clients.

I like to get them to that level. That means they're doing something 24 hours a day that they love to do that they could do 24 hours a day and never get tired of it. And that gives me a lot of satisfaction in the work that I do because part of that genius that most people exercise has to do with working in and for others and giving up oneself to not just their family, but also to the community and letting them express themselves in the most, appealing way to them.

[00:04:38] Jeffrey Feldberg: Les, I really like how you're approaching this and you don't hear too often the word holistic in this area, but you're so right when you're saying that, and maybe that's where we could have a quick dive into this whole area and something that we can circle back to what I started off with.

Offline you're sharing, you know, Jeffrey for most business owners, they're successful. They're generating some profits, some revenue. They don't need to be ultra-wealthy to be able to do some of these things and get the advantages of that. And then there'll be the benefactor much later on when they have a liquidity event.

Should they go down that path? Why don't we start there Les? So what's at our disposal today that most people just aren't aware of that can make all the difference?

[00:05:21] Les Winston: Well, you know, I used to have a radio show called Funny Money, the theme of funny mooney or the way, the funny money you got it to name was I was playing monopoly with my nephew. And if you know the game of monopoly, you traveled around the board, you build your hotels nearby and you opt to bankrupt the other players.

So my nephew had all the money and so I sat down and said we going to do with all that money now that you have it, what can I do with it on the list? I said you got to put it back in the box. He says, why is that? I said 'cause it's funny money. They want to spend it. And then I thought for a second, I said, suppose I gave you 25 cents of real money for every dollar, that funny money, which would you give me?

It's not gonna worth. And that's what everybody says when I asked her that question because you are getting something for nothing. And what I think most people don't understand is that taxes and the payment of taxes in transactions. It's not a given. We have the right and privilege to reduce our taxes as much as legally possible.

And if you don't know how to do that, using the tax code, using your advisors, then you're missing out on an opportunity to turn some of those tax dollars into usable dollars. And so what that basically translates to is if you have a business transaction, and as a result of the business transaction, you're going to pay capital gain or income tax, and you have an opportunity to reduce that tax by using vehicles that the government gave us all the way back in 1969, the sections of the tax code, section 664 and the other social security sections, when you know how to utilize those and you, if you don't know how to utilize them, then that's a problem because you don't have the right advice. And so you need to be aware of the use of those devices to help yourself increase the amount of money that you're actually getting in the transaction and thereby increasing the return to yourself and basically utilizing government dollars to do that by saving taxes.

[00:07:25] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Les, what does that look like then as a business owner? So I'm having some additional income that's left over. I want to make a difference or I'm going to find a way to make this work. So for every dollar that I have, how does that really, how does that work out when you break that out in terms of tax strategies and giving and how that comes back to me and how the benefits work with that?

[00:07:48] Les Winston: Well, You can increase your income by as much as 25% increase the amount that you leave to your heirs by double. And then you can also increase the amount that you leave to the community. Our foundation is called Endowment American Network Foundation. It's a 5 0 1 C3 organization, which where I'm devoting my time right now, that's my genius. I can talk about this 24 hours a day. Never get tired of it because it's something that I fully believe in, but we want to endow America using these devices. And the objective of endowment is key here. You need to think about endowment.

When I was a kid, my father was an insurance business and he used to sell endowments at 65. And that phraseology has left our general lingo. Insurance agents are not out there anymore going, you need to purchase an endowment at 65 back then. Everybody knew what that was.

I meant if I want to buy a hundred thousand dollars endowment at age 65. It meant that I was going to accumulate my money over a long period of time so that when I was 65, I'd have a hundred thousand dollars. That was the endowment. So I was basically endowing myself with my savings and the accumulation of those savings in a favorable tax envelope.

Today, people don't think about endowment terms of themselves. They think of about a dam and only in terms of charity that endowing something is giving to charity. But we talk about endowing America two ways, endowing the individual first. And then ultimately when that individual passes, they would be able to endow the non-whatever community thing they want to support.

That was a 5 0 1 C3 organization. They could plan to endow that at the end of their life. So there's two factors, one endowing the individual while the individual is alive. And then also endowing the community. Now, most people, when they go into a business succession plan when I see folks getting ready to sell their lifelong entrepreneurial spirit I always say to them what happens after, what is it that you actually need working backwards?

What is it that you need to support your lifestyle going forward? What's the present value of those future dollars? And then once we get a handle on what that is, their future budgetary needs, their future emergency needs, their future family needs, whatever it is. Once we have that number to find, we need to find the best way to provide that. if we can avoid taxation in a transaction, that helps a lot. Because if you think about an entrepreneur, that's built a business and paid originally, $175 to incorporate $500 into a corporation. And now it's selling that corporation for $10 million. They got a lot to gain. They got a lot of taxation out of that, so they can mitigate that tax and it could be as much as 2 million, $3 million, depending on what state they living in. That's a pretty big bite. So preparing for the event and knowing what the eventual potential taxation effect will be on their ultimate result is very important as a very important aspect of planning. And when you know that there is a way to mitigate that tax legitimately and also do something really good for the community and also something good for your family.

Most people see that as a win-win when we saw it's actually four wins. The donor wins. The income beneficiary wins. The ultimate family. Family wins, the community wins and even the government wins, that's why the government gave it to us all those years ago, but people really don't know how to use it yet.

[00:11:22] Jeffrey Feldberg: So we're talking about people not knowing how to use it. Let's take a look at that Les, and let's look at really a couple of different strategies and the first is where are we making mistakes? Because typically speaking, because when we know what not to do, that puts us on the right path of what to do. And then, we can talk a little bit more about that, but when you're working with your clients and a business owner comes to you, what are some of the typical mistakes that you're seeing?

[00:11:46] Les Winston: Some of the mistakes are that they don't consider the things that are necessary before. When you're selling a business if you want to use one of these very powerful vehicles, you cannot do it after the fact, you have to be prepared in advance. You have to know the strategy in advance in order to make this work because once the deal is done, you can't get the charity.

You can't make a gift of part of your stock to charity. So that's the biggest mistake that people make is they wait and then next year they say, oh my God, I got all these taxes to pay. Can you help me? No. Late seven 31st the cutoff, whether it's putting part of what you're doing into the transaction, or even creating a transaction to offset the transaction, both of those things need to be done before the end of the tax year in which the event took place.

That's a first warm bell that goes off when I ask people at what point have you considered the tax planning in this process? So that's a very important aspect. The other thing that comes up a lot, that's also very important is what is going to be the effect of taxes at the end of the day on this transaction.

And as a result of the texts that may have to be paid, doesn't impair your ability to completely fund what your living expenses are going to be going forward. And that's important. We need to identify what that is and make sure that this transaction is actually timely. And if it makes sense I know a lot of people that sell a business early and then they find out that it was a mistake because they didn't really plan for the future properly and they didn't allocate, for the potential of taxes. And at the end of the day, they start having to go back into business, to try and make income again.

[00:13:36] Jeffrey Feldberg: And, for our listeners out there with what Les is talking about. Yes. It's in the tax area. Yes. It's not what we talk about at Deep Wealth. But there's a common thread and that's preparation because when you do the preparation, you're giving yourself the time you're finding out the answers and you're saving yourself a whole headache of all kinds of issues.

All. Geez. I wish I would've known this before unless you know, it's interesting. I just a few episodes back. We had another guest that came on and told us a very sad story to what you were alluding to the business owners sold the business get into the proper planning and lo and behold, that business owner, the broker who sold the business, saw that business owner working at a home Depot and the long and short of it was, you know, I had my liquidity event and yeah, I bought the toys and everything, but shortly after that, I realize I can't keep up this lifestyle.

I have to go back to work and earn more money. So back to your point of, does it even make sense to have a liquidity event? Can it support you with no further income coming in from the business on a go-forward basis? And you're also saying really the importance of time. You got to give yourself enough time in order to put these instruments and these principles in place.

So let's take the assumption that we've heard you, we followed your advice. We listened to you. We're now doing all of this. What should we know of what we need to do right after we've taken care of some of the basics and put that preparation? And what would be some strategies coming out of here that we should be thinking about?

[00:15:02] Les Winston: Well, There's quite a list of ways that closely held corporations, more specifically C corporations can be done with S corporations in certain ways, but C corporations, especially C corporations with accumulated earnings problems where you have closely held corporations. And there's a lot of money that's been accumulated.

Back's been paid at the corporate level, but never paid it the personal level. And sometimes it's very hard to find a way to get that out of a corporation before it's sold, but there are ways to do that using the charitable vehicles, in particular, you can, and one of the most important just let me couch everything in terms of the most important preparatory thing that you can do in any of this, in my opinion, is getting a tax appraisal of your businesses entity. Getting a tax appraisal of your business entity. If you have an idea of what you can do with regard to making charitable deduction gifts with shares of the corporation that you own, I can give you a really good example of a gentleman who owned a golf course. He's had it for many years. He accumulated over a million dollars and had accumulated earnings of over a million dollars.

And he wanted to be able to use that to get that out of the corporation, he owned a hundred percent of the corporation and so we had it appraised, and then we had him gift to his own charitable trust shares, equivalent to the $1 million. And then we took the $1 million in accumulated earnings that was being held in a corporation.

And we use that to retire those shares to the treasury. The end result was that now he had a million dollars in a child remainder trust that was going to give him income for the rest of his life. He didn't have to pay any tax on that million dollars. He had a hundred percent ownership remaining in the corporation because he retired the stock to the treasury. And the end result was that we use, and we use the portion of that back savings because the tax savings was considerable. When he made that the million dollar gift to charity, he also got a $600,000 tax deduction, the cash that he saved on a tax deduction enabled him to buy a significant amount of life insurance.

So that irrevocable trusts premiums were paid by the tax savings. So in effect, federal government paid for the life insurance to replace the value of the stock that was given to a charitable trust that was going to provide income to him for the rest of his life.

[00:17:35] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.

[00:17:36] Les Winston: No better transaction that I can explain the unique power of these vehicles and how they can be used in a way that's just quite alarming to people when they hear it, they go, I've never heard that. And how come nobody's ever told me about that before? It sounds too good to be true, but it's not. And it was done for you by Congress. Congress, they set the recipe up. All you need to know is that it exists and you can't bake the cake without the rest of these.

So we try to teach you the recipes that are available. And I think that's a really important aspect of all the planning that you do is ways people may, they overlook a lot of things. A lot of people make a sale because they think they have to do it that way and or do it this way. We need to know everything that's really available out there.

And if you don't it can penalize you.

[00:18:24] Jeffrey Feldberg: and so last what you described, it's, I'll use your word. It's holistic and there's harmony there because you're getting a tax receipt and then you're getting a life insurance policy and all of these parts they're interconnected and they're working together. But for our listeners out there, To us it's at least to me, it sounds complicated, but when you have a professional, like Les his works and it's beautiful when that does that's one example, and I'm sure you have many examples, but I'm wondering what would be the minimum timeframe that business owners should be thinking of to have these kinds of conversations and have the right amount of time to actually implement these?

[00:19:00] Les Winston: My wife likes to play Canasta. She learned to play Canasta about two years ago. And she invited me to join her with the teacher because she went to meet on occasion. If there wasn't enough girls available, she wanted me to play. I just find it like the game. I learned a lot from the teacher, but the teacher, every time somebody would ask a question, what happens when you do, what, when do you do this?

When do you do that? And the teacher remote, we applied. Every single time with the same answer. And that is it depends of where you are in the game. And that's what this is really all about. It depends on where you are in the game and the solutions to problems that are there. First of all, most people don't know they have a problem. They're not even aware of the problems exist. And so it has to be pointed out to them what the problems are that they may run into. And then once you've outlined what those problems might be, you find the need to solve them. I believe that you find the solution when the problem arises, not try to find every solution to every problem before they even know there's a problem.

And so when I approach when I'm approaching a client I tell them there are some things that can be done immediately. There are some very favorable tax. Events, for example, at of the end of last year I had a client who he decided he had made enough money in a couple of stocks. He invested a hundred thousand dollars about four or five years ago, who is now worth $800,000.

He felt that stock was not going to continue to go the way it was. And so before the end of the year, he said to me, he says, I'm thinking about selling the stock. And I said if you sell a stock before, then you're going to have a heck of a capital gain because you're going to pay tax on $700,000 worth of capital gain.

It's going to question anywhere from $140 to $175,000 taxed in like that. Most people don't like that. And he said, no, he said, I want this to produce income. And if I got to give that much to the government, before I can produce income from it, what good is that? And I said, how about this? How about before the end of the year before we only had about a week left before the end of the year, you have to tell me whether you want to do this transaction. I want you to think about gifting that $800,000. We're going stock pooled income fund that belongs to the now American Network Foundation. The pooled income fund we'll sell the stock and not pay any tax. So the pooled income fund will have $800,000 in the pooled income fund in an account that's attributable to you.

And from which you will receive all of the income produced by dividends, interest, net short-term capital gains, and 50% of net long-term capital gain for the rest of your life and for your wife's life. So you'll have my $800,000 to produce income instead of $625,000. And not only that, you're going to get a $600,000 tax deduction this year.

It reduces your taxes by $600,000. Now your bracket, that's going to make you $200,000 cash return. So you'll have $200,000 more than you started with. You'll have 800,000 producing income. And no tax will have been paid at the end of the day. When you and your wife pass the money that's left in your account, passed to a donor-advised fund for your children to manage it to the community, to make gifts to the nonprofit organizations that they see fit throughout their lifetime. How does that sound?

[00:22:33] Jeffrey Feldberg: It sounds to me absolutely phenomenal.

[00:22:35] Les Winston: Too good to be true.

How come my accountant didn't tell me about that? I said well, this is the thing. Accountants are very good record keepers and they are good historical record, record keepers for somebody know how to report your taxes. But they generally don't do a lot of, instax planning, and especially in the area where we're dealing with these charitable vehicles, because they don't really understand them fully.

And it's important if you're going to use one that you have a real handle on the one that's appropriate for you to use. So in this case, the pooled income fund was a no-brainer because it was immediately available and already been set up by the. Nonprofit organization. Anybody could buy into it and anybody could make the investment of non-cash assets or cash assets if they want it.

But that's the beauty. If you can put non-cash assets into a device that enables you to reduce your taxes and you get the income full income from it without having any tax consequences, if you don't take advantage of that and you need to, re-examine how you're looking at the financial world.

[00:23:39] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Les walk us through this. Business owner here's this episode and says, okay, you know what Les it does sound too good to be true, but I'm going to take out your word that I am not crossing any lines. It's all within the law. It's really creating that quadruple win that you spoke about a little bit earlier.

What do you, how does your process work Les? What does that look like when someone comes through and say, okay, put me on the path? Where do you start? And how long does that take?

[00:24:03] Les Winston: Well, In the case that I was talking about earlier that person had been a client of mine for quite a while. So I knew enough about that individual's financial well-being and their financial situation to be able to tell them to do that. But I can't tell somebody to make an irrevocable, give charity.

Unless I know what I need to know about that individual's own financial well-being. And that's one of the advantages of working with an independent professional photographic advisor. Someone who doesn't work for a nonprofit, there are a lot of professional advisors should work for a. But they really have a difficult time becoming a financial advisor to one of their donors.

There's a conflict of interest in that situation that is hard to overcome. And so an individual who's an independent professional philanthropic advisor can look at it, a total financial picture of an individual, and also find out more about familial what the family situation is find out, have they contributed in the past other non to nonprofit organizations.

How important is the actual use of the dollars themselves? To me, a lot of this is like a real estate transaction. People always say then you can't spend the money. I said that's true. You can spend the money. There's good and bad. The bad part of that, you can't spend the money.

It's just that you can spend the money, but that also is good because in a lot of cases, people destroy their financial well-being when they run into hard times and they interrupt their tad, their retirement savings, they go and they start cashing in their 401k, or they borrow against their 401k where they cash in their IRA.

And that defeats the ultimate purpose of their planning. What I need from an individual is I will spend at least 90 minutes just to find out about the financial bag. But then I need to spend time over a period of time with the individual, finding out more about their value system, their beliefs, their what it is that they care about, and also the relationships between the people that they care about and how, and, maybe there's a, I can't tell I can talk to a gentleman that may have all the money in the world, but I can't tell whether he has a special needs child.

Unless I ask him I also ask a very important question that most people don't ask and it's amazing, but I always get an answer. And it's one of the most important questions. I think anybody that does the type of work that I do and asks somebody. And that is, and I've done this in large situations.

Take a pencil on a piece of paper, and I want you to write down the first number that comes to your mind. And then I say, what is the age at which you expect to die? And though people don't are not supposed to know when they're going to die. Everybody gives me an age that I'll never forget. I was in a presentation.

I was making to a bunch of financial planners. And I asked that question. I said, I want you to take a piece of paper and a pencil and write down the first number that comes to your mind.. And everybody wrote, I don't know where there's a guy in the front row sitting right near the podium and he's hyperventilating.

Instead of panic. So what'd you write down? He's just 46.

[00:27:17] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.

[00:27:18] Les Winston: I said, how old are you? 45. I said why? He says, I never ever thought about my father died at 46. My uncles both died at age 46, then I never thought about, but I thought, I think I'm going to die. But him, he was living his life like that smoker.

It was heavy, but that's the power of what I call a fixation on a number. And we don't know where it comes from, but we have it in our brains. And what I don't think people really get is that they can reset that and have the power to reset that. And that power actually works. It's a strange thing, but we mind over matter is not a joke.

We have the ability to change the way we view things. And so my objective is always to tell people. You can change that to whatever number you want. And as long as you have good health and you have all the money you need, why wouldn't so mine's 126?

The information gathering process, the way that you gather the information, what you ask, how you ask it, who you're asking about shows a lot of value to the individual because there'll be things that you're asking them. A lot of people never asked them, people, that have been in their lives and doing financial work for them forever, that don't even know.

I get a kick out of it. Sometimes I'll have a, we'll have our round table, our business table discussion with the advisors and the accountant and the attorney are there. And they've been with this gentleman for years and years, and I know more about him than they do, and that is startling in a way, but it's also, it does speak to what their professions are. And so this is a very unique profession, the Professional Philanthropic Advisor because it is holistic and it does involve finding out more information about the individual than anybody else really knows. And that's vital because it tells you where they are in the game. And so you can prescribe the proper problem-solving techniques that work most effectively for that individual.

[00:29:30] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Les, let me ask you this because within the Deep Wealth community, it's not just any community, a very special community, and it's a community of business owners that have successful business. They're learning all about the art and the science of a liquidity event. We have our nine-step roadmap.

We have our 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. And after that, 90 days on the 91st day business owners walk out with a very specific plan of how to increase the value of their business. And maybe they're going to have a liquidity event. Maybe they love what they're doing so much in the business just grows in ways they never even thought possible that they're saying, hey, I'm just going to keep.

But either way, they're in a very unique position. So for a business owner, who's actually thinking of a liquidity event and let's peg it to be two to five years down the road. So we have some time, are there special considerations that they should be thinking about or different strategies that they're not going to hear from their accountant, that you're going to be sharing with them of what they can start doing today, or start doing differently that they otherwise wouldn't be doing.

[00:30:33] Les Winston: Yes, just the idea of becoming more focused by making the focus occur, the focusing event. I think a lot of people, I don't think people know how to focus themselves, frankly. I think what you do helps them to focus on. Making the value of their business greater. And I think that's great.

And I think that's very important. I said, if you're going to show, I obviously you're going to sell a piece of property. You need to, it's just if you were selling real estate, if you don't stage it properly, you don't have the same kind of value proposition as you do if do stage properly. That's what real estate brokers help you do, they help you stage your property. So it looks the best. And I would imagine that's very analogous to what you're doing with your clients. So in my instance when I'm looking at is not just, I'm not looking at the business in a vacuum, I'm looking at the business as a part of this individual.

And in many instances, the business people own businesses who have created businesses. One of the things they fear more than anything is that when they sell the business it'll disappear and they won't have, and it won't be anything left of what they created. Now, if you think about that in terms of reality it's good for you Rigo to know that the business exists. It's good to know that you created something that lasted a long time. You may want to talk to your grandchild and say, Hey, I'm the one that started Alcoa. What is it that important? And sometimes they need to be, they need to be focused a little bit more and say, is it really important that business continue beyond your life so that it affects who you sell it to or how you sell it?

That's an important evaluation in your. Is there something you want to pass on to your kids, if you're going to pass it onto the kids and you may not want to sell it, is it that your kids are not interested in the business and why aren't they interested in the business or will they ever be interested in the business or are they too young to be interested in the business?

Is this something that somebody that may marry somebody that might be interested in the business? How do you know where to make the event happen? Where it really satisfies what you're focused on the rest of your life is all about. And so I kind of view it as a, as I was like a halftime, no, you built this business, you work your butt off.

You took something that was from nothing to something that's major. And now you're at a point in time where you're going to reevaluate it's halftime. The score is nothing, nothing. And now you're going in to the locker room. You're going to figure out what's going to be the second half? Am I going to come out with an offensive, I'm gonna come out with a defense.

I'm not going to come out with, what am I going out with? What is my purpose going forward? How much time am I going to do? How much time am I going to put into this? So what am I need? What is it that I really need? If it takes five years to focus on what those needs are, and those needs change, as things change around us, who would've thought of COVID, five years ago, if I was planning with somebody and I said, okay, here's your plan?

And and they said wait a minute, two years from now, we're going to have COVID. If you look at them and you go, eh, I don't know where you got that from. So we can't always see the future, but we can certainly conceptualize what we want our future to be. And then you can make it work. If it's possible.

There are situation that are possible. I mean, Some, you know, have people that have targets of income that they need that they'll never make. They'll never reach. They'll never be able to secure for the rest of their lives on a guaranteed basis. And that's a problem. So focusing, getting to reality, evaluating where you are in life is very important and taking as much time as you need to do is really important.

[00:34:16] Jeffrey Feldberg: So that's my takeaway here and for the listeners as well, goals and dreams are terrific. And you have this vision good for you. Most people don't, but it's not enough. You got to take that vision, that goal, your dream, speak to someone like yourself, Les speak to the professionals. Okay. This is what I want to do.

How do I go about doing that? And what does that look like? And you may find maybe you can, maybe you can't, but at least when you do that, you can now prepare to make that a reality and be able to move forward with that.

[00:34:41] Les Winston: Well, One of the things I can tell you, Jeff, from our conversation, that when I have somebody who is in a position where they're thinking about going forward, selling their businesses, Introduce them to you. So you can help them through that process because I think that's extremely valuable to them.

And it's an important aspect of exactly what we're talking about. How do you maximize an asset? How do you maximize the assets? We maximize it by eliminating taxation.

[00:35:08] Jeffrey Feldberg: And Les where we both read off the same page. And you've said this so many times within the time that we've been talking together, it's a beautiful thing to hear, you know, liquidity event. It's not how much you get. That's really in many ways, irrelevant is how much is left over after taxes and everything else.

And what that's going to look like.

And so that's what we've been talking about, all these things and you're certainly a thought leader in this area, but there's more to you than just as one area, because I know there's something very special that you do. Route 664 Radio: The Road To Human Kindness what's that all about?

What are you doing? What's the story behind the story on that one. And I'd love for a community to learn a little bit more about that.

[00:35:45] Les Winston: If I'm sure if you asked all of the people listening to you on a regular basis, what a 401k is they know you can ask any worker anywhere, 401k. Oh yeah. In order for, oh, wait, where's the name 401k come from. I don't know. If you go to 401k of the internal revenue code, you'll find the recipe there on how to create an employer sponsored retirement plan. And so when people say I have a 401k, they don't know why they call it a 401k, they just know that it's good. And so we're trying to do the same thing with section 664. And so we've created, several ways in which to introduce the public, to that thought, section 664, one of them is Section 664 Radio. The radio channel that we have is a digital radio channel and Wanda who's our phenomenal producer and who basically is operating the radio station single-handedly making the choices of the music and putting together the interview. But it's a blend of good music, happy music, kindness music, and also a replete of the interviews that I do on a regular basis on a weekly basis with people who are also thought leaders in this area, a new professional, philanthropic advice, people who are philanthropists, people who understand what it is to be volunteering in the community who give of themselves and give service.

And I think that's really important for people hear these days 'cause one of the last things we think about right now is human kindness, and that's where we need to be headed. I think we're entering into the era of human kindness and route 6 64 as the road to human kindness. If we can get people to utilize the tax code in order to reduce their taxes, increase the amount of income that they're going to get for life.

And then at the end of the day, Leave behind something to the community that is going to value, give value to the community. It's very worthwhile today. I interviewed a lady from the Parkland Board of Education Foundation. This is a foundation that was created in Parkland, Pennsylvania. You're Allentown, for the purposes of supporting schools, public schools that supports them in addition to the tax dollar, but supports them with things that they wouldn't ordinarily get to do. And so I wanted to broadcast her story. It led school boards know and let people know that they can help schools in general by creating foundations to provide additional funding for things that the school board can't fund a one point.

And then it has to do with two things, both safety in the schools. And I'm including mental health care in that scenario, because most of the, a lot of school boards can afford what it will take for mental health care for a lot of the situations that they have today. And then the second thing is to make the school great.

What makes it school great. Making sure that there is financial literacy taught, making sure that there is the ability for the school to be creative and have creative sessions that go beyond what the school board usually funds so that to me that aspect of the purpose of 664, the roads human kindness is really important.

Getting people to know that section 6 64, the tax code is as good for them as 401k or a 529 or a 1031 or 1035 those were all sections that people know about. They know that they're good and they know that they're usable. The same thing needs to apply here. You don't need to think that you're reinventing the wheel when somebody talks to you about a 664 Trust, it should be an accepted principle.

[00:39:25] Jeffrey Feldberg: You know, So terrific to hear this because in the age of social media and in the age where anyone can just get on the soap box and put whatever out there, there's so many negative kinds of things that are going out and to have something positive, like this. Keep on keeping on that's wonderful lesson for our listeners.

We'll put the links in the show notes where you can check out the route 664, the road to human kindness. And you know what, every Thursday at 11:00 AM, east coast time, this is when the Les and Wanda, they go live. So you can hear them and they're going to be having the interviews and you can be a part of that and just really be, become a part of their community with that.

And so let's thank you on behalf of all of us for putting that out there and putting the time and the effort into that.

[00:40:06] Les Winston: Thank you.

[00:40:07] Jeffrey Feldberg: Les, we can go on about strategies and what to do and all the other things that you're into, which is fascinating. But let me do this, we're going to begin to wrap up this episode.

We're starting to bump up against some time and I want to do a quick thought experiment with you. And so I'd like you to remember the movie back to the future and in the movie you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time. So imagine now it's tomorrow morning, you look outside your window and Les of there it is.

There's the DeLorean car. The door is open. It's waiting for you to hop on in, unless you can go back to any point in time, maybe Les as a young child or a teenager, whatever the point in time would be. What would you be telling your younger self in terms of life, wisdom or Lesons learned or hey, Les do this, but don't do that.

What would that sound like?

[00:40:53] Les Winston: I would repeat a mantra that I always repeated when I had my boat, that is, I always ran a ground when I didn't know where I was going. And that is in my life that has been one of the most important lessons that I've learned. I did run a ground in my boat and it was always one, I didn't know where it was going. And I find that having an idea and knowing where you're going. They're two different things. You're going to have an idea where you're going, but knowing where you're going is more important. And if you can make sure that the things that you need to do are in place in order to get where you want to go that's the most important life lesson.

And I learned very early on I was a pre-med student, I was a pre-med student at the University of Miami. I was graduating in June. And my father was in the insurance business, as I said before, and we were just chatting and he said, are you sure you really want to go? You want to continue to do what you're doing? I said, why? He says, you know, you got another eight years, you're going to have to borrow money. You're going to have to do a lot of things that you're not going to be free to do elsewhere. He says, you can be a doctor of medicine, but you can also be a doctor finances. You can take your scientific mind and use it in the financial arena. And you will have a tremendous amount of success as a result of that. So I was in my DeLorean car right now and I can go back. So that day, when I sat with my father, I would like to thank him what his advice was at that time because I hated his advice.

And it was really amazing because it said you come in the insurance business, I'm not let you work here. It really is. Now you're going to have, you're going to have to earn your stripes. And I'll never forget. I was twenty-five years old and I was a disability income specialist selling disability insurance to professionals, doctors, lawyers. And here when I was 25 years old, and I remember the first appointment I had with an attorney when I got off the elevator, his floor was the office. The office was the entire floor. To say that it was unnerving speaking to somebody of his caliber, but I was able to because I understood what I was doing and I understand my product.

So I looked back at that time as a real, a watershed day my life. And so I thank my father a lot for that, that's a great question.

[00:43:18] Jeffrey Feldberg: You know, that's a wonderful story. And today you mentioned how much you appreciate that. And even the fact that you'd go back to thank your father for that. I'm just curious, the 25 year Les, the day that you heard that the moment that you heard that, did you appreciate the gravity of what was being said or not so much back then? Like you did today?

[00:43:36] Les Winston: No, I didn't appreciate it at all. Actually it became confusing to me because I really did have to evaluate where I was and I had to make a decision. I think there's a, listen. I think young people today have a hard time making decisions about a lot of. We talk about, we have a white paper that we've produced where we're suggesting conscription for 18 year olds in this country.

And inscription is a bad word because it has a connotation of military, but I think that every 18 year old should serve the country, serve their state. At least our two year period doing, whatever it is. That's that's there, that's in their wheelhouse, what they enjoy doing so that they can make a better decision going forward.

A lot of kids are 18 years old that are not going to college. What do they do? Where do they go? What they, how do they get work? How do they get out of their parents' house? And if they were to go into a situation where they serve their state for two years and got paid doing that, They become independent because to have a way of evaluating them, Israelis have been doing it forever. Israeli system has been very remarkable.

And one of the reasons why that the state of Israel is called startup country, because they've actually learned how to utilize the brainpower and the skillsets and the ideal situations for the young people. And they do that by learning about them and finding out more about them. We don't do that anymore. We have a tendency if somebody is a problem student, we throw them to the curb and then we're surprised when they come back onto us and that's a real problem. I think life is sometimes hard to figure out and you can't hear everything out unless you've experienced it. And certainly when you don't, you haven't experienced as much as you should.

But I think the ability of focusing the individual and getting the individual aware of themselves and not so much aware of all the noise around them, really important..

[00:45:29] Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Terrific insights, terrific wisdom. And again, we have all of this in the show notes Les. If one of the members of our community would like to find you online, what would be the best place?

[00:45:39] Les Winston: They think I can go to socialsecharity.org. Im an advisor I'm listed amongst the advisors that are there. All the people that are listed a professional philanthropic advisors, some work for nonprofit organizations. So I'm working on most of them work independently. But there's a list of people there that know how to do the work that we're talking about with these jars will be vehicles.

And also approach a financial planning perspective from the holistic point of view so that decisions can be made at a very broad based that have to do with an individual's vision and their life going forward.

[00:46:15] Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. And again, for listeners, we'll have all that in the show notes. That will be a point and click can't be any easier. Well, Les, we're going to wrap up this episode a heartfelt thank you for taking part of your day and spending it with us here on the Deep Wealth Podcast and as always, please stay healthy and safe.

[00:46:30] Les Winston: Thank you very much, Jeffrey.

[00:46:31] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me.

[00:46:34] 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.

[00:46:44] Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity

[00:46:49] Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

[00:46:55] Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be 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.

[00:47:11] 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.

[00:47:33] 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.

[00:47:44] 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.

[00:47:57] 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.

[00:48:15] 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.

[00:48:42] 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.

[00:49:01] 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.

Click here to book your free exploratory strategy session.

Enjoy the interview!