The Due Diligence Project™ Podcast
The Due Diligence Project™ is a unique, global community of 500+ elite, independent CPA Firms and Family Offices that vet, rank, and rate hundreds of sophisticated tax strategies and resources to identify the highest ROI solutions net of cost and risk.
The Due Diligence Project™ Podcast
022: The Art of Client Relationships and Business Exits - Laura Dohanes
Episode Summary: In this engaging interview, Due Diligence Project founder Alex Sonkin speaks with elite CPA Laura Dohanes about her journey and approach to tax planning. Laura shares insights from her extensive audit experience and how she helps clients navigate complex tax scenarios, particularly during business exits. She reveals how her firm generated over $11.3 million in tax savings for clients in 2023 alone.
Key Topics Covered:
- Tax Planning Philosophy: How Laura developed a passion for tax strategy and her direct, transparent approach with clients
- Business Exit Expertise: Why Laura considers business exits "the most beautiful dance between tax, legal and investments"
- Client Relationships: The importance of building trust and understanding client goals before recommending tax strategies
- Tax Savings Impact: How Laura delivered $11.375 million in tax savings to clients in 2023
- Due Diligence Approach: The value of collective expertise and peer review when vetting tax strategies
- Virtual Family Office: How the right team of advisors can create substantial value, particularly during business exits
- Elite Tax Advising: The significant difference between average and elite tax professionals in delivering client value
Featured Quotes: "I think my life's journey is tied to the business owner and those are the people that I serve the most... Give yourself the benefit of the doubt, expand your mind just a little bit so you can have a basic understanding before you dismiss something." - Laura Dohanes
"The difference between the top 0.01% of CPAs and the average CPA is the same difference as the top basketball players who are at the NBA all-star game than the guys you see at the pickup games at the YMCA." - Alex Sonkin
Resource
This episode highlights how experienced tax professionals can deliver extraordinary value by combining specialized knowledge with a relationship-focused approach, particularly for business owners preparing for major transactions.
Want to know how elite tax advisors win the due diligence game to satisfy ultra high net worth clients who expect the very best. Welcome to the Due Diligence Project podcast, where you get a chance to learn from the elite CPAs, virtual family office professionals and tax specialists who are doing just that. We'll uncover their insider secrets on how they are dominating their competition, vetting new ideas and supercharging their due diligence process to deliver extraordinary results. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience with top tax professionals across the country, please welcome your host, alex Sunkin, please welcome your host, Alex Sunkin.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Due Diligence Project podcast. Today we have a special guest, Laura DeHannes. She's an amazing elite CPA, an elite member of the Due Diligence Project. What we want to do today is just really dive into the world of elite tax planning and see what's really behind the curtain. Laura, how long have you been a CPA?
Speaker 3:Gosh, that's a good question.
Speaker 2:12, 14 years 12, 14 years, and what made you even decide to become a CPA in the first place? Do you remember?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's such a good question. I have to tell you kind of a funny story. My parents wanted me to be a doctor. If you're not a doctor or an attorney, you're just not good enough for the breed that they were having. They wanted me to go to medical school. Then I said I'm going to go away and never come back. And so what do you want to do?
Speaker 3:I really liked accounting. I went to a very special high school. I went to competitions in accounting when I was like 16 years old. So I used to love looking at all the receipts when they were buying a piece of property, looking at all the deeds. I was the geek little kid going through the paperwork and kind of shushed away. So I think I was an accountant before I knew that I want to be an accountant In my mind.
Speaker 3:I just loved to dig into the paperwork and I think it was just a discovery what can you find? For me it was curiosity what can you find? I wanted to become a CPA. I got like the exact decision I remember when I decided to be a CPA, when I was just an accountant with the schooling, and this person had a loan and the bank refused the financial statements because it's not signed by CPA. I got so angry and I'm like this makes no sense. I'm getting the CPA, I don't care what. How. Like it's, this is a done deal. It was just an angry moment where the bank refused something because of certification that I didn't place a whole lot of value and I don't want to say I don't place value. It has value because you have to go through a refining process which, if you want to be the best in your field, you got to do and go to the certification, just because it has to be. It has to be there if you want to do what you want to do.
Speaker 2:So you started, you knew you love numbers. You were just a numbers person, numbers just you saw numbers. They just created energy in your head. Same with me. Did you ever realize, when you first fell in love with numbers and accounting, that you would be able to use that unique skill set that God gave you to help so many people save so much money in unnecessary expenses, taxes, and be able to use that money to benefit their communities, their families, charities, all these different things? That really is the result of all the work that you've put in all these different things.
Speaker 3:That really is the result of all the work that you've put in. Yes and no, I think I'm a visionary by trade. I had like visions and I don't get necessarily depressed or, oh, this didn't get to happen, I'm never going to try again, like it just fuels an energy to go again and again and never give up. But I think the story that was so fascinating for me my dad was in. He had several businesses. He was a serial entrepreneur. It doesn't matter how many times he got pushed down, he would start again, he would do something new. And when I was in high school he lost everything, like everything, and he got into a new industry and even though I didn't realize it at the moment what had happened to him, but running something outside of his field, outside of his comfort zone. He was in the auto industry and out of the bleak and in the manufacturing industry, and manufacturing can be. It's all about contracts, it's all about delivery, it's about negotiations ahead of time. You got to know your trade a little bit. So I think they got a little bit ahead of themselves and lost everything and he got very sick. He was given one, I think one in a million chance to survive because of his pancreas. So wanting to change that, I think that was like trying to change something by doing something for other people. Can you get the different outcome If they would have known what comes ahead?
Speaker 3:So I think my journey was not only to, it was taxes. Yes, that's the love I probably, if I wouldn't have to do anything, I would still read tax code just for fun. It's just so cool. I love court cases. I'm like duh, what were you thinking that type of thing? You didn't hire the right people.
Speaker 3:But at the same time, the idea that you can change the trajectory of somebody's life, that if you would have known ahead of time that you can build this company and exit tax-free or exit this or people know about things too late and I think for me it was I hate to be too late in the game, so I would rather lose ahead of the time of hey, the AI right now, right, with tax strategy. We were doing tax strategy before tax strategy was a term. I was calling it what-if scenarios. So I think the trajectory that, the possibilities that you can have by having access to that information and what you can do, is what I'm looking for is hey, giving you the options that I feel like I didn't have or that my family didn't have, and I want to give my kids options to have an open horizon.
Speaker 3:This is a don't take things at face value, right. Then the savings is an add-on If you have a good strategist. It's not just hey, someone's going to plug in your tax return, get all this. They will give you options that you feel like, hey, I know the road I'm taking and can see a little bit ahead of where you're going. If you go this route, this is what's happening.
Speaker 2:So, but that's our audience can already feel passion in your voice about how excited you are. You know, look, people don't really can't really relate to tax geeks like us, because when they first, if they ever, even look at the tax code, most people have never actually read the US tax code. And if you just try reading it for three seconds you'll understand why. But then some of us who are tax geeks, when we look at it and get through the first few minutes and dive in deeper, you see there's a rhyme and reason to it. And then when we realize that we can actually use this code and navigate this code like a puzzle and help solve people's problems using this unique skill set that 90 plus percent of the population just doesn't have, doesn't even want. You know, for those of you who've never read the tax code, google the US tax code and start reading it and then remember this conversation.
Speaker 2:Remember, laura is a tax geek who loves navigating this tax code and finding unique solutions and bring it to her clients. Those are the type of people that the Due Diligence Project searches for the tax geeks who are elite at what they do, who love bringing value to their clients, and Laura is just a great example of one of our elite members. So let's talk about your life before, because you were a tax geek before you met the due diligence project and you were doing puzzle solving for your clients before that and you're still doing it now. So let's talk about your life before we found you and you found us. And now, afterwards, what's changed?
Speaker 3:I'll tell you a little bit like it goes back to the vision that you have for yourself. And I have to go back and tell you a little story. I've done a lot of audits face to face and the reason why I loved audits is because I get to kind of be an investigator, right, I got to go in. I did only face to face audits with revenue officers where they wanted to see your property or claiming X, y and Z. You have obsolete inventory of five million. Let's see where's the obsolete inventory. So I would have to walk through the facility or buildings or properties with the revenue officers and it is very interesting that when you go through the whole scenario and you're trying to find out answers that nobody has Okay, so what? You realize when you go through that process that the business owner is alone. So I had this exclusivity contract with the people that I did audits. They were not my people. In case you wonder how did you get so many audits? Cause I've done more than 3000 of them. They were alone, they had nobody on their speed dial Okay, which is such an amazing piece and they had no support. They said we don't know. The accountant did this, the bookkeeper did this? What we don't know? We were just told by X, y and Z and they did not know.
Speaker 3:I think those are the moments when I valued the relationship more than what you could do for people. And what I like about DDP is I can call Alex. So I am like I'm very real If I can have somebody on speed dial and I say you know what, if I need something, it's going to get done. I might be imperfect, you might be imperfect, things might not go as planned all the time, but having that relationship where you can build that trust, that hey, you got my back, I got your back is really what I was looking for. So I only invest in relationships at this point because I believe that if somebody is working with us, like a business owner comes to work with us, we don't do projects Like I don't do.
Speaker 3:It doesn't matter how big it is or how small it is. I want the relationship and want to build on it, and that's exactly what DDP, for example. We have a relationship we can call Alex, we can call Brian, we have something. Hey, I'll make an introduction here and I like the idea that there's. I love peer review. Right, because I have my angle. You have your angle. Everybody comes with a different angle and if everybody's honest and transparent about, hey, this is what could go wrong. This is that it's very productive to have all around view on any type of piece of law, so I think that's my number one would be relationship Like. I'm a relationship person, so yeah, maybe because I'm a female.
Speaker 2:It's awesome hearing you say that, because it really we built this. Sometimes you build something and you don't even know what you built and then later on you look back and you're like we were trying to build this and we built something even bigger and better, because maybe God came in and oh, I like what you're doing. Let me make it even better than your original design. And what we have now is that, and really the key to our success is finding passionate, elite people like you and building this incredible infrastructure. And the idea was let's build a team of specialists and let's build a network of elite CPAs and together everyone's a tax geek in the group and we're all working for one another and we're all working really to protect our clients and to bring value to our clients. So one half is a bunch of elite CPAs we're doing to do independent peer review, due diligence, and the other group are the specialists we're trying to design the strategies and we're all looking at the same tax code, the same code that the IRS is looking at, and we're saying let's get all of the top smartest people in the country in our group and if you're an IRS agent, come on over, look at what we're doing and let's all make sure that everything that we're doing is super clean within the black and white lines of the tax code, so we can deliver value to clients, so that the business owner can be confident and have visibility and not just be by themselves with a tax code they don't understand, without being able to make that next step, because, at the end of the day, the business owner is what's driving the economy Absolutely, and if we provide value to the business owner like a family office type structure, they're going to be better. So the due diligence project this year is almost like a family office for elite CPAs and really what we've built is like an Amazon type of platform for tax geeks, so that all the tax geeks in the country can come in do their independent peer review.
Speaker 2:When you're reviewing a strategy, it's already probably been reviewed by two, 300, 400 other CPAs, but that's not good enough for you. You're going to have to review it yourself. So you're going to take the notes that we've accumulated. Reduce your time by a factor of 10, look at our notes. Did we make any mistakes? Did you find anything? You're going to look at the tax code. Was there something we missed. If we missed something, you're going to let us know. So the more eyeballs we have on a strategy, the more confidence we have that it's good, or we find something that's wrong with it that we have either resolve. Let's talk about the value that you're able to really bring to your clients as a result of this. Have you even calculated how much total tax savings you brought to your clients over the last 12 months?
Speaker 3:We haven't finished last year, but I think in 2023, we had $11.375 million in tax savings.
Speaker 2:That was from the times we could calculate it, that's a lot of money $11.375 million, that's a lot of money.
Speaker 3:We didn't calculate for forever, but it's just the last couple of years when we actually were intentional. And one of the things that I like to see and it is really I have to put myself in a business owner's shoes because it's almost you get an attorney when you sell a company. Let's go through a story Like you have a liquidity event and you're selling your company. You could go through a broker, you could have X, y and Z and depending on who you get on the transition, on that experience, your value could be exponentially more when you get out of the exit than if you just go hey, I got a broker, I had a business attorney, they're going to check all the T's, make sure every I's dotted, everything is done, it's all clean, you got your cash, they got the business, and it's the same liquidity event that can yield two absolutely different results. And the reason why is because of the people that you involve in that transition or a transaction. I don't think it's just the transaction, I think it takes place over a number of months and years.
Speaker 3:And this is my favorite. My favorite is exits. I love business exits for all the reasons possible, because it is probably the most beautiful dance between tax, legal and investments. If that is the only place where you can merge all of them, right, because if you get an inheritance, it's just not the same. You're not going to have the same mix. It's the most beautiful dance that you can imagine.
Speaker 2:Let's discuss this for a second, because why do these capital gain transactions, these exit business sales? I would say, when I think of that, I would say 90% of those are not tax efficient right.
Speaker 3:I think it's a higher.
Speaker 2:I think it's a higher I don't know why, but the business owners that are creating these 30, 40, 100 million billion dollar, $10 billion companies. These are not dumb people, but they're not tax geeks. And then they bring in Wall Street. Who are they going to bring in? Goldman Sachs, jp Morgan, morgan Stanley? Then they have the others right, those are elite M&A brokers, right, but they're not tax geeks. So they're going to come in, they're going to charge their fees, they're going to set it up, they're going to find the buyer and next thing, you're going to have 30, 40% tax bills because you have the business owner, you have Goldman Sachs, jp Morgan, you have the attorneys, also not tax geeks.
Speaker 2:How many hours of all of these entities spent with audit, with tax court? How much experience do they have with audit and tax court? How many hours? Probably less than five. They don't know how to comment on tax strategy versus when they make you or a tax advisor at the top of that food chain, which represents 30, 40% of that sales price. And all of a sudden, you're helping this client sell this asset in a 1% tax bracket or defer the taxes 30 years in the future or put them in a negative tax bracket. All of a sudden, you're taking 30, 40% of the value of the sale. Let's say it's a billion dollar company. That's three to $400 million that a tax advisor can bring to the table that a Goldman Sachs person, jp Morgan person or an experienced attorney has no idea how to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's interesting. Our people, we do the small business owners, and I want it to be applicable to them. They're probably not going to sell for a billion dollars. They will. Yeah, you never know. You're right. Let's just not bring inflation on the game. We're trying to be positive today. They're not going to discuss Doge.
Speaker 2:There are some business owners that benefit from inflation, so let's just Always.
Speaker 3:There's always someone who benefits from anything, including war and all the other things. But coming back down, so let's say let's make it something simple, okay, because we have a lot of people in the 45, 55 million kind of exit range. So that's like the people anywhere from 40 to about 100 million. It's a really good range. Someone can build something and exit. I have to commend the efforts of a business owner because coming in and building something, it requires so much resilience.
Speaker 3:I think it's the media and I think it's the kind of the old school fashion CPAs that were like no, you should do this. And they were like pounding on the business owner's head you make money, you should pay tax, and we've heard that over and over over the years. Or charging minimum fees and this like people don't want to discuss about fees. Charging $3,000 to do planning for a year and doing preparation. It is impossible. And I just got somebody. I talked to somebody last night. They're in LA and like just here in the top Palisades area and they're like it's impossible. How can they charge this when you have an attorney and a doctor and that they're having a business and you're charging that fee? Something doesn't match up and it's impossible to provide the value. So number one is making sure that people know, and the media, like I think just seeing ads is not good enough.
Speaker 3:I think the business owner should hear organic people, like a conversation, like you and I would have a conversation. I would have a conversation like a real conversation of a business owner say, okay, you know what, these are the people that I need, right, it's, and it doesn't come. Paying the fee is just part of the game. Like, I pay fees. I've had coaching, like hundreds of 1000s of dollars in coaching that I've done over the years. And I'm not saying this because, like, we just need the people and I might not have known or come to the understanding that I need to learn some things to get me to the next level and if I don't pay the price, I might not pay enough attention to it and it doesn't have to do with you've got to have the advisors. So my point is you've got to have the advisors and I think it's the overall kind of state of the economy that we're not educating the small business owner that, hey, you should have some people.
Speaker 3:I call this a three-legged stool. I say you should have a good financial advisor who does investments for you, investments that could be multiple people. You choose right, you should have a tax advisor right and you should have a good attorney that protects you, that understands the state law. So, coming back to the people are not educated. That's why they don't have necessarily what it takes to hey, I need these people to help me in an exit. I think that the second piece to that is the people who have money. Listen, I have business owners with 30, 40, $50 million net worth and they don't know private banks exist, like I have no idea what that is. So you go top morgan at the private bank at jp. Morgan has all the people that you just mentioned. They have an mna specialist, they have the attorney specialist. They don't have a tax strategist in their team. Yeah, and it's a private bank.
Speaker 2:it's crazy when we first started doing what we're doing. Our holding company is called the virtual family office hub vfo hub and what we do is due diligence. So the due diligence project is inside of the virtual family office hub and the original idea was exactly what you're talking about right now. Instead of building family offices for billionaires, let's build them for people worth 20, 30, 40, $50 million. Let's custom design the family offices so they don't cost $250,000 a year, where they can make one phone call. Who should be the head of that family office? In our model, it should be their tax advisor. In our model, we've been building this community for over 20 years and we've been using hundreds of CPA firms and law firms to peer review. The top specialists, the top bankers, the top resources, the top M&A people all these different people mostly across income tax planning, capital gains planning, cost reduction planning, obviously, financial services. But the idea was to find the very best resources in all these areas so that a CPA could build their own family office using Lego pieces, where the best attorney and that specialty is not living next door across the street or they're also a dad on the soccer team. They are in New York and you're practicing in California and you have access to the New York attorney, you have access to Florida attorney, you have access to the specialist in Minnesota who just loves Minnesota. He's never leaving Minnesota. So if he's never leaving Minnesota and you're in Oregon, how do you get the Minnesota guy to help? Well, we have technology that binds us all together. So the combination of technology, the combination of this whole world, is flat.
Speaker 2:Now, right, we're able to build virtual family offices not local family offices, but virtual family offices with the very best resources in the country, and the head of those family offices is their tax advisor. So imagine you as a tax advisor. You bring in the M&A people, you bring in the bankers, the attorneys, and everyone works through you, and now it's a team. Now everyone's on the same page. The client just has one connection Because, really, when the client brings in their own banker, their own advisor, their own attorney, all these people, they all need to be organized like a team, like they need a coach.
Speaker 2:Okay, you're a new player in the Lakers? Well, the coach is going to show you our plays on offense and defense so you can play with LeBron James and Luka Doncic and everyone can actually look like a team as opposed to hey, we're a bunch of instrument players, we're getting together, we're going to riff it up a little bit, because that's how the traditional planning works. The business owner brings in their own people, everyone's riffing it up and it sounds like crap. It doesn't sound good.
Speaker 2:But organizing everyone as a team under a virtual family office structure and that's very easy to do when you start with tax, because those other players don't know the tax ramifications and the tax ramifications on an asset sale, we're talking 30%, 40% of the value of the asset price. That is ROI. If we give that away, it's gone forever. If we keep it, that's immediate ROI. So wait for the sale before you start investing in your real estate portfolio. Become tax efficient first, because that 30, 40% it's going to be hard for you to make down the road. Oh, laura, I just sold my company for 40 million dollars. We're going to have a 15 million dollar tax bill and I want you to help me to invest in the proceeds. Well, you could have avoided that 15 million dollar tax bill if you called me beforehand.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. That's such a great question because it's more proactive than anything else. So remember, I want to not be too late. Like too late is not good enough.
Speaker 3:I think you could save so much by not being too late, and I think you and I had some conversations on this and I think the reason why I get attracted to all the private banks and all the scenario because ultimately I think the virtual family office is the ideal right, so even as a CPA firm, that we have so many moving parts and we have so much compliance and I think it's always sometimes it's just, it's just a weight like it's that kind of lays at the bottom and it makes it harder to ascend, to do anything else, just because there's just so much compliance is the busy work.
Speaker 3:That kind of drains you and puts you and keeps you down many times, but at the same time it's a process. A lot of people I think small business owners are very easily overwhelmed because they are doing so many things. We're doing a lot of things and running a business is hard, depending what you have. You're running multiple teams, you've got a, you might have R&D, you might do all these other things that are happening behind the scenes. So the idea of a virtual family office, I find it so overwhelming. For most business owners it doesn't matter. I don't know if it matters so much the wealth, but it matters like what's your role they place in the operating company.
Speaker 2:I think the key to what I think the key to the business owner is they already know the successful business owner, just like the successful coach of a team. They know the key to winning is the people Recruiting the right athletes, recruiting the right people on your team. I don't care if your business is a CPA firm or a manufacturing firm. If you hired the wrong people on your team, it's going to fail. So this idea of building a world-class team that's going to lead to victories and winning championship trophies like I have these $3 plastic trophies behind me for flag football you can buy them, but it's more fun to win them, and in order to win them you have to build an amazing team. And so the challenge is the business owner doesn't realize what they need on the tax planning side, so they use a shotgun approach let's just get a bunch of advisors, or we're overwhelmed. Let's just figure this out ourselves, because we don't trust anybody. And what they're ultimately trying to do is they're trying to create their best version of due diligence. The problem is they're not qualified to do due diligence on tax strategies, just like I'm not qualified to do analysis of a software engineer because I don't have any software engineering experience, I have to kind of use my gut. And so once people are exposed to the due diligence project, which is like a peer review system, like Amazon and Netflix does peer review movies and books and tchotchkes you want to buy on Amazon we have a peer review.
Speaker 2:But our audience are the tax geek, cpas, and they're doing the peer review on the biggest tax geeks in the world, which are the specialists who are designing these different tax strategies, and the common thing that we all have is the tax code.
Speaker 2:So our idea is let's have hundreds and hundreds of independent CPAs reviewing the same tax strategies, find the very, very best ones and then also find the very, very best resources. So now Laura, who plugs in the due diligence project, can basically pick and choose from the very best tax attorneys, very best specialists. Build her own virtual family office and that virtual family office is like the S&P 500. Who's the best attorney in that space this year? It might be a different firm next year because we're the S&P 500. We're like Amazon. Who's on the front page of Amazon? It's different products from five years ago to today. Every product is being ranked and rated and tested and voted on by our audience, which is an ongoing, never-stopping peer review, which is Due diligence, so that Laura can bring you the very best resources, so that she can take last year's 11 point whatever in savings and this year let's make it 20.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm not pursuing necessarily just the tax saving. It is so interesting. I had the masterclass for year end 2024. And during the masterclass, what I presented to the business owners was it's not about the strategies. It's not always about the strategies, because you can take that great strategy and not be efficient for you. So, knowing the goal that you have. Now, for some people, like we have, we classify the strategies in tax reduction and tax deferral strategies Very, very simple and, depending who you are, one might work better than the other or we don't have access to one versus the other.
Speaker 3:So, knowing the goal that you're trying to achieve, for example, I'm going to be in business for two more years, or I'm going to exit in three years, or I'm ready for the right offer to pop in and I'm out right. Different strategies can be yielding different results for different people, because some people might have different portfolios. We have people who are still building even though they're in their 60s. I'm building. I'm not seeing myself out anytime soon. We have other people in their 40s. They're ready to get out. I feel like it's this as an advisor. So the business owners kind of like dilemma is not to follow the shiny object, to just go for the strategy. I might tell somebody this is not the right strategy for you, even though we'll give you this, because if you tell me this is your goal for next year, it will defeat the purpose.
Speaker 2:What you're talking about is marrying the fact pattern with the combination of a hundred different strategies which are all different types of deductions. Some work for W-2s, some don't work for W-2s. Does Chad GPT know which deductions work for W-2s versus, k-1s versus? Do they know that yet? I don't know. In 10 years it might know it. You know what I mean. Depends on how good the programmers are. We've seen the average CPA's brain.
Speaker 2:I've interviewed thousands of CPAs so we know where the average CPA is and if the average CPA programs chat GPT, chat GPT is going to be garbage tax planning. If you or me or the top CPAs in the country all start programming chat GPT in 10 years, it'll be pretty good. And my question is how are we programming? So I think what's going on in the future is you're going to have these elite tax advisors like Laura plugged into elite resources like the Due Diligence Project, ai, to further separate ourselves from our competition. That really is not a tax geek. Has not dove into the tax code, does not understand the minutiae in the tax code, because One of the things that the average business owner does not know is how to differentiate an elite tax advisor from an average tax advisor.
Speaker 3:That's a good question, alex. I'll stop you on that, I'll interrupt you. How? Okay, because you, in your family, you've got business owners, right, you've got business owners. So how do you differentiate?
Speaker 2:You know what? Asking me that question is probably better than me asking you that question, because I probably interviewed way more CPAs than you have, because you're a CPA and my clients are CPAs. I'll tell you what I can tell, because this is all I do is talk to CPAs. I can tell very, very quickly, with the level of confidence when we start talking about tax strategies, there is a massive. The difference between the top 0.01% of CPAs and the average CPA is the same difference as the top basketball players who are at the NBA all-star game than the guys you see at the pickup games at the YMCA. So people who think that CPAs are very similar, they're not similar at all. It's very, very important to get the best ones. You have to get people who are passionate and really the difference in the guy at the YMCA and the guy who's on the NBA All-Star game is that guy in the NBA All-Star game. He just outworked the YMCA guy. He probably put in 100,000 hours more and you don't see that.
Speaker 2:It's like seeing the tip of the iceberg. So you can see Laura, she seems really smart, she seems really bright, but let's look under the surface. How much work has she put in the tax code. How much work. There's so much work behind the scenes that you don't see. Tax code how much work. There's so much work behind the scenes that you don't see. But it pops up in conversations because that energy pops up. I just don't think the average business owner will ever be able to differentiate until they see the bottom line. How much tax do I owe at the end of the year?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's the ROI.
Speaker 2:So they would have to take their tax return to a million different CPAs and be like what would it look like with you, you, you and you? But if they took it to a due diligence project member and said I'm making a million to this year, what can you do for me Versus an average CPA? Basically, our network of CPAs would run circles around not just average CPAs but elite CPAs. So I think that's a really great question, laura. I think it's very difficult for business owners to just to know the answer to that question, because the tax geek world is just like such a private world and CPAs do a great job of protecting their clients and going behind the curtain and they all seem really, really smart and conservative. And so I seem really really smart and conservative and so I don't know how would you go about differentiating CPAs?
Speaker 3:That is such a good question because I get asked a lot and I think my kind of value that I bring to the table is the defense. I got a text from a person that I represented. They had a practice up in LA 10 years ago over 10 years ago and I got a text. I'm interviewing. I couldn't find you, I don't know. I lost your number and I really like the direct way that you were telling me and I remember I started every single audit case with.
Speaker 3:Best case scenario is this this is your worst case scenario. Everything in between is a win. That was my line every single one of them. I said I want you to know what to expect and it was very direct. I'm not protecting you. I'm telling you, I'm very honest with you, what's bad, what's good and what's ugly. I think so. She comes and she's an attorney, but she comes after so many years and follow you and the question is why she's got so many different CPAs that they can use. Why would they come back after so many years? And I've had an experience with them and I feel like one of the pieces that really makes a huge difference for a business owner is when you talk to them they don't need sugar coating like I. I might be very rough sometimes with people. Maybe again I tell him I tell my stuff. Listen, you guys forget I'm. I was born in a communist country and sometimes it just comes very rough right, but you gotta be in countries.
Speaker 3:We're very direct and sometimes very direct you got it I prefer that.
Speaker 2:I'm from there too. I like very direct because it's I'm to the point, yeah, so yeah, I.
Speaker 3:My opinion is that a business owner who is after an roi, who goes beyond the bottom line, really can see that they appreciate somebody who can be really transparent, like caring. It doesn't mean that you're direct, you you're not caring and you don't care about their business and their outcome, but you can be so direct and you can actually see and paint the picture of what's coming If they don't do something or if they do something. That is my opinion. The serious business owner goes that way. A business owner who is building one foot in, one foot out, like borderline with their employees probably they're just. I can't communicate as well with W2 employees because I don't identify as well with them. Right, and they want it all but they don't want to be there. They don't have the grit many times and there's nothing wrong with a W2 employee, but the grit and the hard work to build a business builds something in you that nothing else can Maybe having kids, everyone is different.
Speaker 3:I'm still working on the kids part.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the W-2s are interesting because some of you have you know, sometimes we have these W-2s that are making millions of dollars of W-2s, and then you have a business owner is making a half a million dollars. As a business owner, their mindsets are completely different Absolutely a half a million dollars. As a business owner, their mindsets are completely different. Their risk tolerance is different. But at the end of the day, they need you, they need an elite tax advisor, they need due diligence, they need a network of support that they don't even know what's out there. And interviews like this give business owners or highly paid W-2s insight into the back end of the tax planning world, into the tax geek world, so they can learn a little bit more. Because everyone's trying to get to the same result. Everyone wants to be more efficient, everyone wants less risk, and so we'd like to do these podcasts and we'd like to introduce the most elite tax advisors in the world to our community so that people can get a real taste of how hard it is to be a tax geek. We're dealing with a tax code that no one knows how many pages there are. Clients expect you to know every change, every line, every strategy in there. It's impossible to do, and the only way we know how to do it is eating the self, one bite at a time, by building the largest independent peer review community of tax geeks. So it's good to have one CPA and attorney review a strategy. It's better to have 600 elite CPAs and attorneys review a strategy, give their feedback and then have a tremendous level of confidence of no, this strategy has been peer reviewed. We know exactly what the IRS is going to do. We're comfortable signing the tax return and we're comfortable because we have at least 10, 50,000 hours of audit experience, or tax code experience, which gives us a way to look at this tax return, look at the strategy and ask meaningful questions and give meaningful advice, versus someone who has no experience of audit, no experience of tax court, never read the tax code, look at a strategy and go.
Speaker 2:That seems a little risky to me. Based on what? Based on the feeling in your tummy? No, so bottom line is the business owner is the one we're trying to protect. Let's help them complete their virtual family office teams. If they have that liquidity event where they have that capital, whether they're earning a half million, a million, two million a year, let's make them more efficient. Let's help them achieve their goals, keeping that money within the hands of transparent business owners who are efficient, who are being audited, where every dollar, we see where it's actually going because they're being audited and they're staying in our community.
Speaker 2:We're following the code and really put people in a much better place. So I want you to leave our audience with one final thing, maybe one piece of advice. You built a very tremendous business. You're super successful. Something interesting piece of advice you might want to give our audience. It could be about anything.
Speaker 3:I'll identify with the business owner. I know most of the CPAs. I think my life's journey is tied to the business owner and that's those are the people that I serve the most. And I think one of the pieces that I tell everyone is anything that you choose to do, you have to have enough understanding. Don't dismiss things just based on the comfort zone. Many times, a lot of people dismiss something new, dismiss the AI, the VRs. We dismiss a tax strategy, even a piece of tax code that exists, just because it's something new. We just don't know enough about it. And what I tell my kids and I have three of them very different I would tell all my business owners, because they're very much the same sometimes is give yourself the benefit of the doubt, expand your mind to just a little bit so you can have a basic understanding before you can dismiss something, because that could go a long way, anything that comes up.
Speaker 3:We're seeing right now such a shift in the economy, such a shift in how things are being done, and if we don't allow ourselves to think a little bit outside the box, to go into the unknown, to go into the uncomfortable for just a tiny moment, so we can have that assurance and then you can trust your gut, because your gut is going to say no to something that doesn't know and has never seen before. But if you give it enough to at least have a basic overview and understanding of what's going on, it doesn't matter. It could be a tax strategy, it could be an AI, it could be giving my son a phone the same thing, it's exactly the same concept, and I feel like once we get that basic understanding that, hey, it just opens up a door of curiosity. If we are really in tune to what we're trying to do and we know the goal, then it opens a door for us.
Speaker 2:Okay, tell me more and then you go into the details. If you've been tracking this conversation between Laura and I, this is really the history of this whole conversation. Laura started she liked numbers. The numbers led to math. The math led to accounting. The accounting led to tax strategies. The tax strategy led to creating massive value for business owners and all of a sudden, she's created this incredible life, incredible business, where she's created massive value for these business owners, got compensated fairly for it, and now we're sharing this, these incredible insights, with our audience.
Speaker 2:Laura, thank you so much for our time. Your clients are extremely lucky to have you. Your future clients, who are meeting you right now on this podcast, are extremely lucky to be meeting you and I'm sure they're going to be reaching out to you. And it's really our pleasure and our privilege to have you as an elite member of the Due Diligence Project and have you just be part of our community, and I think our audience today has realized why we're so excited to have you as part of our community. So thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you so much, Alex, and I do. I think one of the things, like I said, I appreciate is look for the relationship, because AI comes, ai goes, it gets built, vr will come and I think the relationship will still stay, because as long as we're human, unless we lose that, the relationships will matter, and who's got your back back is always going to be a human.
Speaker 2:That's a great point to finish on. Relationships are so important. I'm so grateful for our relationship and that's a great point to leave on and for all of our audience to take home. So thank you so much. This was a great meeting and let's have a great day and great rest of your week.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much. That's all for this episode of the Due Diligence Project podcast. Thanks so much. That's all for this episode of the Due Diligence Project podcast. Be sure to visit duediligenceprojectcom to access the resources we have available for qualified CPAs and family office leaders. Our mission at the Due Diligence Project is to help you deliver more significance and value to your very best clients, while shifting your traditional practice into the firm of the future.