Father & Son Ran Business! : Joe & Shorne Fortune on The Biz To Biz Podcast

Welcome to the Biz to Biz Podcast, your number one source for all business news. Hey everybody, welcome to today's episode of B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz Podcast, sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems and our new gateway product called NPS One. So if you do invoicing where you need to send out payment links, we have a solution for you. You can accept credit cards, ACH, Apple Pay, Google Pay, everything all in one platform. It's amazing. Book a demo, go to the website nationwidepaymentsystems.com. Today we're going to be talking about how your— how your business can get benefits and money back from the government through tax incentives and all kinds of other benefits. And today we have special guest Q Fortune and his son Joe. And he likes to go by Q because he wants to be cool. So he's a really fun guy to talk to. I haven't met his son before, but we're going to talk to him today too. And we're going to talk about how your business can, you know, get some of these incentives that are going around because, you know, there's incentives out there and there's no reason why businesses shouldn't take advantage of getting whatever kind of money that you can get. You know, everybody's used to, like, from back in, you know, when the pandemic was going on, you know, getting PPP money and all these other money. But there's a lot of other programs that are out there and have been out there and are available. And that's what we're here to do. We're here to educate business owners and talk about things that can help, um, help your business. So I'll let you guys introduce yourself. Q, you go first.

Well, my name is Q Fortune. I am, uh, the papa bear of the company. I actually got dragged into this company by my older twin. I have these, you know, Joe is a twin, so I have a copy of him running around the world somewhere. So in case I lose one, I've always got another one. Um, Joe actually dragged me into this. You know, they wanted to have a family-run business, they wanted to spend time with Dad, they wanted use my corporate America expertise. So he pulled me or yanked me out of retirement, and I spend my days helping him scale the company. And that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

All right, Joe, let us know about you.

Yeah, so Joe Fortune, I just want to clarify, Q is, is my dad, but and it goes by Q because You want to tell the quick story, Q? In short, in college, in high school, Q for quick, and he stuck to that name. And his real name is Sean, but I don't call him Sean, I call him Q. So yeah, Joe Fortune, we run a family business, and I did drag him into it because we got into life insurance about 4 years ago. And from there, we kind of pivoted and moved into helping businesses add life insurance at no cost, and that was through these tax incentives. And so my background, it just comes from, you know, all sorts of endeavors in music, entertainment, and art, and into tech, and kind of moved around a little bit, and then eventually found my footing in helping businesses, you know, create more efficiency in their, in their system. So that kind of gives me joy being able to help the employees and being able to help the businesses as well.

So how do you find businesses money?

Yeah, so, you know, there's, there's a whole bunch of tax incentives, obviously. Um, one specifically we work with is, uh, is based around wellness, and we leverage a wellness tax incentive that allows businesses to incorporate wellness programs into their, their company with, through, through PHI, which is short for the Preventative Health Initiative, right? This program has these wellness tax incentives built inside of them, and it's a, it's a payroll tax incentive. So through the payroll, through their payroll system, we're able to create not necessarily credits, But every time they run payroll, they're able to save some money because their employees are opted into a wellness program, and the government wants to incentivize businesses to keep their employees healthy. So by doing that, we're able to create these, these savings on FICA, and we apply them to other benefits like health, Medicare, and all that. And at the end of the day, it leaves a little bit of cushion for the businesses to save about $500 to $600 per employee.

So is there a minimum amount of employees you need to take advantage of this?

Yes. So the minimum amount, like bare bones minimum, is 10 employees. We typically deal with companies that have 50 to 200 employees, but we will go out of our way to help a smaller business because we are a family business. And if we are going to do— apply these tax incentives which are connected to payroll, So it's basically very simple. Everybody's like, you know, where is this free money coming from? And I always like to tell people there is no such thing as free money. The government is not doing this out of the kindness of their heart. It's very simple. If you've built a business and you have employees and you are paying payroll, the government wants to encourage you to do more of that. So they created this tax incentive for those businesses that have reached that point. I talk to businesses, you know, all day long that have 7 or 8 employees, and they're struggling with those 7 or 8, and they haven't quite reached that 10 mark, you know, the minimum requirement for the program. So once they do, the government says, hey, we're going to give you this money back so that you can scale your business because for them, the government, if you're scaling your business and your employees are healthy and they're showing up for work, they're going to generate more revenue. If they're generating more revenue, we all know the government likes to collect what?

Taxes.

Taxes. So that's how everything works, you know. Exactly.

If money's being spent and people are hiring more workers, then it's all good. All this money just gets pumped into the pumped into the economy.

Yes, 100%. So again, we always say they're not doing this out of the kindness of their heart. They're doing this as a win-win-win situation. Healthy employees show up to work. If they're present, they produce more. If they produce more, they generate more taxes. Everybody wins.

Exactly. And besides that, what other kind of tax incentives are there?

There are 2,100 tax codes that just relate to businesses alone. So everybody knows the fancy, sexy ones. You know, you mentioned earlier the PPP loans and the employee retention credits. And we also saw the downside of those particular tax credits because people who cut corners got themselves in trouble. Right. So there are tons of them. There's our— what's known as R&D tax credits. There are cost segregation tax credits. There are tax credits that are tied to the people that you hire. Did you know that there's something called a Workers Opportunity Tax Credit? And what that simply means in plain English is if you were hiring people and you hire a set number of people or more, then the government says, hey, we want you to continue hiring people even if those people didn't work out, and they will give you at minimum $1,200 for hiring somebody, training them, and even if they ghost you or they no longer show up or you had to terminate them, they want to encourage you to continue hiring people. In fact, they will triple, quadruple, and octuple it, right? If you hire someone with a known handicap. So whether somebody's hearing impaired, vision impaired, you know, if they're, uh, in the handicap category, right? Americans with Disability. Or even better, if you're hiring one of our veterans. If you're hiring one of our veterans, the government, even if it didn't work out, will pay you north of $9,600+ just for hiring that veteran. They call it a Workers Opportunity Tax Credit. That's just one example of things that are available to the guy with 10 to 15 employees as it is to Walmart with 2.1 million employees. In just one of their 99 businesses that they own.

Yeah, that's, that's incredible, you know, but, you know, there's still a lot of small businesses out there that don't even have 10 employees. It's a shame the government doesn't do something to help them. But, you know, it is what it is.

We, we are working with some of our partners, for example, New York Life. We're working with New York Life to create a program where we can go down to 5 employees, you know, to help out those smaller guys. But that's, you know, that's going to be a year. It takes a lot of moving parts to set up, and we don't quite have all the parts in place. So though we don't typically talk about it, we are, you know, we are advocating for, you know, pushing this program down to people who have 5 employees. Because you're right, I do talk to businesses that, you know, I would love to help them. I can't help them with the payroll program, but I can still help them with other tax incentives. And we just sit down and have a conversation so I can figure out what I can do.

Okay.

And what's the— what's the largest amount of money you ever got for a business?

Joe's our money guy.

I mean, we were able to get a business with about 1,200 employees. Not all of them were eligible, and that was just good fortune. So we are a strategic partner with Project Blue, and they, they are the ones that designed the program specifically, and they handle all the backend. So they're our partners, and they actually have just enrolled a business that has 30,000 employees. So, you know, again, not all of them qualify, but you Usually it's about between 60-80% of those that will qualify. So, you know, we're able to handle large, large amounts of employees.

And what would you say from like businesses that have 10 employees or more? How many, like, what's the percentage of people that's actually taking advantage of this and how many people are not taking advantage?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So our The way it works is we send out information on the program through email. They get it, usually about 80%. We have an 80% participation rate. That's our average.

No, no, but I'm saying like in the US, like let's say whatever, there's a million businesses. Like how many people are like a majority of people going after this incentive or people don't even know about it?

Yeah, that is the case.

Yeah, there are 33.2 million businesses in the US that qualify for this program. Less than 1% are participating, which is one of the reasons why we've amped up our, our program in terms of reaching out. Like, we literally have a program starting next month called FOTS, which stands for Feet on the Street, where it literally You know, I used to do this for corporate America in my corporate America job, so I'm just going to apply the same thing to our family business, work out the system where we go face to face and educate these business owners on all of the opportunities that are available to them that they are not taking advantage of. And then once I have that system in place, which is what I used to do, they used to call me the test market guru, right? So I will take that system, put it in place, and then just replicate myself. So there'll be like mini-mes running around in multiple cities doing the same thing, talking to people face to face.

Yeah, because it's, you know, when you look at like just one business comes to mind, just like restaurant nightclub businesses. I mean, easily any restaurant or nightclub of a, you know, mid-sized, you know, 100 seats probably has at least 10 employees, probably more, but they have a minimum of 10 employees. And I mean, that's just a huge market right there.

Well, the funny thing is that's actually, um, those are the, the 3 industries that you just mentioned are the 3 industries that we typically stay away from unless they are a larger one like you're talking about. If you're a 100-seat, you know, restaurant, you're going to have at least 20 to 30 kitchen staff that are already salary. You're going to have assistant managers, door girls, you know what I mean? Servers, they don't necessarily qualify because of the way that they're paid. Oh, okay, right. So servers— so it's got to be like managers, office staff, managers, office staff, kitchen staff, that type of thing. And you know, it's funny, we had a bar that we were talking to about a month and a half ago, and they've got 120 employees and 80 of those are servers, right? You know what I mean? So they've got 40+ that qual— that they easily qualify for the program. And they were thinking about converting their servers over W-2s. But again, the way that they pay them, you know, the government says if your employee pays enough in taxes, we will sponsor this program for them, which is why there's no out-of-pocket costs. And maybe we buried the lead on that one. There's no out-of-pocket costs for the employees and there's no out-of-pocket cost for the employer. It's not free money. It's, you know, every time an employer writes that check and funds that payroll and everybody gets paid, they're paying those taxes already. The only difference with the program is that we're now structuring those taxes in a way that it goes back to them with one stipulation: 75% of those savings that you just got back, right, that you didn't have to put into your payroll, 75% of that has to go to the employees.

Okay.

You know what I mean? And then the— yeah. And then the employer gets to keep 25%. It's very simple.

And then what is— how does that go to the employees? They get it in their paycheck or is that—

they get it in those benefits.

Yep.

They get it in the benefits. And the carrot that the program dangles in front of the employee to say, hey, Allen, if you're going to take better care of yourself, we're going to give you a cash value life insurance policy. And depending on the size of the business,. It could be anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 minimum. And then it also has a cash component to it, and it's permanent and portable, which means if the employee wants to be like LeBron James and they want to take their talent somewhere else, they get to take that policy with them. So long-term financial health is built into the program on purpose because healthy employees from a health perspective, healthy employees from a financial perspective, are less of a strain on our system, less of a strain on the employer, because that leads to absenteeism. If they're not healthy, if they're, you know, worrying about financial issues at home, they don't show up to work, even though that'll solve some of their problems, you know. So it's built into the program.

Yeah, you would think that, you know, recently, um, I think it was a couple of years ago, they changed how, you know, how workers were considered to be 1099, you know, commission, like, sales— commission salespeople. And you would think that you would see an increase in W-2 employees from all of that, but I'm not, I'm not sure how that kind of worked out, you know, in the long run, if how businesses handle— how businesses handled that, because, you know, every business struggles with, okay, Like I did a podcast the other day and we were talking about how to— how businesses struggle. Like, oh, do I have— especially when it comes to like salespeople, you know, do I hire salaried salespeople, 1099 salespeople? And then am I doing the virtual assistant thing, you know, offshore? And I know there's been a lot of talk about taxing, uh, companies who are doing offshore hiring. But it's, uh, you know, it's a struggle. And the same thing in the restaurant business. You know, you look at the restaurant business, hospitality business in Europe, everybody is more on a salary and they kind of figure out like tip or whatever service charge is kind of built into their price to pay all these people. And, you know, they're able to, you know, they have higher prices. Like when you go to a hotel or restaurant in Europe, sure, the price is probably a lot higher than you're used to paying in the US, but their employees are not— they don't really get tips, you know. They don't get tips. So it's, you know, that's something that really I thought would catch on in the US, you know, and it's never caught fire at all, you know. And, um, I would say there's very few restaurants that have taken that. And you would even think also, like, the law changed in California with the minimum wage. You would think that would have, uh, that would have pushed restaurants in California to say, okay, well, we're just gonna raise all our prices, we're gonna wipe out tipping, right? And we haven't seen that yet. And I think that was their hope with that law, you know, that they were going to get that done. Because if one state actually did that, it would kind of force a lot. Because, you know, because you would have chain restaurants in California who have restaurants in other states, and they would be forced, you know, they have to do it across all their restaurants. And that would kind of change things. But I think that law kind of just— I don't know, I guess it didn't have enough, um, I don't think there was enough incentive in there for the restaurants to actually want to do that.

Yeah. And right now there's obviously with, with AI and, and, you know, people losing jobs and there's a, you know, we started with 2020 with, with people working remote and now it's like stay home and now it's like stay home with no job, you know, people getting laid off and, and, you know, finding cheaper ways to scale their business. So this program in a sense is able to, you know, create that competitive advantage for businesses to, you know, recruit top talent, you know, keep their employees, you know, healthier, happier, staying longer, and, you know, show their employees that they actually care a little bit further than just them doing the work, you know. You mentioned Europe, like health insurance and wellness is a lot different over there. A lot of times here, You know, people think it's unaffordable or it's, you know, maybe coming out of their paycheck and it's too expensive. So for us to be able to give them these health benefits, telemedicine, you know, wellness, and be able to take advantage of that without taking out of their paycheck and just by participating, they're able to get rewarded, you know, through these incentives, cash value life insurance. It's really beneficial for the business and obviously the employees. So, you know, through the program, we're happy to be able to make this work efficiently from, you know, from the back end to the front end. And then that's basically our job. You know, we're, as Good Fortune, we're here to educate, you know, spread the awareness of the program and the benefits. And we have our team kind of handle everything on the back end to make it, smooth and efficient so the business can handle what they handle and we can take care of everything else.

Yeah, health insurance is probably a— it's a rough subject to talk about because if I go back to my very first business I started when I owned a restaurant and a catering company, you'll probably laugh, but I think I paid $80 a month for family insurance with the wife and kids. Yeah, I was able to afford to the— all the, you know, people, not the waiters, because they were, you know, they were not— they didn't— weren't eligible. But because I was a member of like some weird business, a small business association, right, I could give all my employees this same insurance benefit. And I think like a single person was like— a single male was $30, a single female was like $40 and a family was $80. I could literally afford to give insurance to my employees through that program. And, you know, insurance has gotten so, so out of hand. And, um, because they— one of the things that they did with insurance— you're too young, Joe— they did this.

I was gonna say, how much was a, was a gallon of milk in this time that you're talking?

Probably—

I mean, I remember when gas was 40 cents, so or less.

I mean, again, I remember, I remember 25.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, 25 cents too. I remember as a kid, not— I'm saying when driving, 40 cents. But I'm saying it's, it's, it's crazy because they— one of the things they did was, you know, they used to have it where insurance was just one price nationwide, and then they broke it down by state, by city, by zip code, and that, and that kind of just like drove prices through the roof, you know, drove prices 100% by doing that. Because it's crazy, I live in Florida, okay, my daughter lives in Iowa. I literally crack up, you know, my— like, I see my daughter's car insurance, I'm like, are you kidding me? It's like $100, it's like, like around $100 a month, right, for car insurance. And Florida car insurance is $200, $300 for a car.

Yep.

Okay, for the same car, health insurance, I mean, is through the roof. I just went on Medicare because I turned 65, right? And they changed the rules on that too. You know, now that's income-based. So if you're still working, they charge you— they charge you a lot more money based on your income.

Yep.

And, you know, instead of like everybody paying that one same price, So, you know, if, you know, for employers, if you have at least 10 employees, you should be talking to Joe and Q about what you can do to save money at your business. Everybody's always looking to save money, you know, on their business. There's probably millions of businesses out there that have 10 employees, and like you said, less than 1% of them are taking, taking care of, of this, uh, taking advantage of these type of programs, you know. And I'm sure that it— I'm sure it's probably more regulated than PPP because you have to show payroll records up front before you get the cash, not like PPP people got. I mean, there's people going to jail in Florida left and right for this PPP stuff. So besides that incentive, are there any other incentives that people can take advantage of?

Well, there, there is. And I want to kind of, kind of reverse back real quick and take a couple of steps back. When we talk about the payroll tax incentive, you know, people think, oh, I'm running payroll, you know, this tax incentive is great. But there are a number of different things that this particular tax incentive solves for a business owner. You've got retention issues, retaining the employees that you do have, providing benefits for them that even if you're doing good in business, you just don't have enough meat on the bones to be able to afford to pay 20% of the health costs that are associated. Like you were talking about, it was great when you could, you know, have— pay $80 for a family of 4, family of 6, and have full coverage you know, and you didn't have to pay $60 every time you went to go to see the doctor. That's not the case nowadays, right? Right. We've got, you know, the Affordable Care Act, we've got private insurance, which is just astronomical. Like, if we didn't have the Affordable Care Act, who around here is— it has got the money to pony up $1,800, $1,600 a month for health insurance? That's just— it's insane for me. So The payroll part, we simplify it by saying, hey, this is a payroll tax incentive, but it really takes care of a lot of pain points for employers, right? You've got recruiting, you've got training, you got lost productivity, you've got increased errors and turnover, you've got decreased morale. Like, you know, one of the top things that in a study, then they asked employees, what's the most important thing to you? Yeah, money was important to them, but feeling like they had support from their employers to be, you know, feel like they're not being treated like a number, like, yeah, just show up, clock in, do your job, we don't really care what happens to you, you know, that's really important, especially when you come to startup companies, you know what I mean? If I'm spending, you know, 20 hours a day coding and I got a sick kid at home and my wife is overwhelmed, my thoughts are not going to be on doing the coding, my thoughts are going to be on my kid, you know what I mean? And if there's a system in place where I know that she has the support to take care of them and they can hop on a telemedicine call, then yeah, I'll be paying attention to coding because I know everything is taken care of at home. So while we do say that this is connected to payroll, it solves a lot of problems that small business owners deal with every single day. Allen, please tell me if I'm correct here, but when you were running your business, how many different hats did you wear? When you were—

a lot of hats, the sales hat, the business hat, the buyer hat, the podcast host. You know, I got— you know, you're responsible for everything. You're the, you know, the chief cook, bottle washer, and the janitor sometimes.

Yeah.

So, you know, when you're running a business, you have to do a little bit everything. You're the accountant. You know, it's, uh, you know, it's a big job. You know, people always talk to me, I always tell them, you know, you're starting out a business, just remember one thing: no guts, no glory. And, you know, sometimes comes a day when you also have to, uh, pay your employees and maybe not pay yourself, and you have to be prepared for that, to run, to roll that dice. And then, you know, things become easier, and then you always look for, you know, ways to cut, you know, because, you know, things, things in business, everything costs money, right? So everything costs money. The electricity, your, you know, your rent, you know, all these expenses, you know. And they— I've never been a day ever to go and say, oh yeah, my rent just got reduced, you know. One, I've been in this— I've been, I've been in this business since 2001. And only one time did I get a rent reduction when we were like 2008, 2009 and the whole office complex was pretty much empty and they started leasing for less than I was paying. And I was like, hey, this is like totally not fair, right? You're renting out space for way less money than I'm paying. And the landlord said, okay, you know, if you will extend your lease, we'll, we'll give you 2 months free and, and, and lower your rent.

Yeah, nothing is getting cheaper in America right now, uh, so, you know, any, anything these small businesses and even medium-large size businesses, you know, they, they're more aware of cutting costs in certain areas, um, and this is a way for businesses to cut costs without taking away from their employees, right? And so Yeah, that's important.

And the important thing is, is probably you guys come in after having a phone call with somebody, somebody provides you with some records, and then you guys go to work. So it's not taking the business owner because that's one thing nobody wants to get involved in something that's going to take hours and hours and hours to deal with.

Exactly.

Like I have a client, they got a bunch of chargebacks. I was like, listen, you know, if you guys can't handle it, you got to get a chargeback company. We don't— we can give you a direction, but we can't do anything else. So, you know, you need to, you know, be aware of all that.

So, you know, well, the good thing about this program is that everything is done for you. So all the compliance, all the admin, you know, all of the backend work, all of that stuff is done for the employer. This is a plug-and-play system. This isn't, you know, I'm the employer, I've got 15 employees, I'm wearing 9 different hats. I'm, you know, everybody's psychologist. I am their administrator. I'm the guy that cracks the whip. And now I got to take on this other thing. No, our team does that. You just give us the green light. Our team does the enrollment for you so you don't have to worry about it. We handle the admin, we handle, you know, setting up the payroll, all of that stuff. And then once it's done, it's set it and forget it. The only thing you have to do as an employer, as far as that particular program goes, is tell us, hey, did you hire anybody new? Yes. Great. Who are they? Did you terminate anybody? Great. You terminated these 2 people. Perfect. We only receive the benefits for the people that you run payroll on. So since it's automatic, we just remove those people. We add the new people. That's a monthly check-in. That's it.

You work with them. Do you like integrate into their payroll program or payroll?

Integrate right into their payroll. So in payroll, all you're simply doing is putting a code in that says, okay, I put this code in so I can pay my taxes to the government. I put this code in so that they can receive their money. I put this code in, you know, for this tax, this code for this tax. It's the same exact thing. Our payroll people, they sit down with you, they sit down with your administrator, your designated person. If you have a company that's doing it, they'll sit down with your rep. They go through that process. That administrative stuff is done on the back end. That's, that's where all the magic happens.

So if somebody wants to get a hold of you guys, what's the best way to do that?

Yeah, just reach out to us on our website, goodfortune.biz, and there's a contact form at the bottom of the page. You know, let us know how many employees you have, make sure you're W-2, they're W-2, and, you know, we'll get back to you and hop on a call and see if, you know, we get you guys qualified.

And are you guys— are you guys on LinkedIn too? I know Q's on LinkedIn. You're on LinkedIn, Joe?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, uh, Joe Fortune, and Q's, uh, under Q Fortune, I believe, where you have Sean Fortune still there.

Sean Q, yeah, that's where we met.

Because I meet a lot of people on LinkedIn, and it's, you know, some people I do business with, and some people have an interesting business where, you know, we can establish a relationship and, you know, have him on as a podcast guest because that's what we're all about at B2B Vault, you know, educating business owners on what's out there and how they can help, you know, do things to improve their business and improve their cash flow and things like that. Because, you know, small business owners or any business owner, you know, wants to make money, wants to do the, you know, wants to take advantage of whatever they can take advantage of, you know, to, to, um, to save money. So this is a great program. Again, thank you guys for being on the show today. Any last words?

I was going to say— yeah, I was going to say two things. One, the same multinational companies, the big brands that we know, the Apples, the Googles, you know, the Staples, they use this to keep 30 to 40% more of their revenue right? The exact same things are available to small business owners, even with as low as 10 employees, right? And the second thing I want to say is that, you know, we talked about small business owners, but we also talk— need to talk about minority business owners. We need to talk about female-based businesses, you know what I mean? We need to talk about other family businesses. You know, these are things that are available to everyone, and we are a family-based business. I've I'm, you know, I was gonna give my phone number, like give me a call directly. You know what I mean? Like I wanna help as many of these businesses as possible because if I'm gonna do it for the big guys, if we are gonna do it for the big guys, then we're gonna do it for the little guys as well. And that includes nonprofits. We have a soft spot, we have a soft spot in our heart for nonprofits because guess what? They pay payroll, right? And this is available to them and every penny that they can claw back, that they can put to an initiative or support an existing initiative, we're willing to get in there, do the work, and tell them, okay, X amount of dollars is available. You'll be able to funnel this back into your nonprofit to whatever your, you know, initiative is.

All right.

So, yep. So if you need some help, you know who to go to. Go to their website, goodfortune.biz.com, and check out the podcast, B2B Vault. We're on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Anywhere you listen to podcasts and on YouTube. If you guys want to look at our smiling faces, you can see us on YouTube. We'll be posting clips of the podcast on LinkedIn. And, and everybody enjoy your day. Carpe diem. I would say seize the day. Peace out, everybody. Have a great day. And thank you to Q and Joe for coming on the show today. And I wish everybody good fortune. Everybody have a great day. Thank you.

Thanks, Allen Kopelman.