111 - Unleashing the Power of Tax Strategy with The Tax Goddess' Shauna A. Wekherlien

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Shawna, the Tax Goddess. Welcome to Listening with Leaders.

Oh, thank you so much for having me here, Doug. I'm so excited to chat with you today. Thank you, Shawna.

Okay, I gotta ask, Tax Goddess, what, what What is that all about?

So let me back up. Do you want the long story or you want the short story?

Well, let's start with the short story and then we'll go from there.

And then we'll dig in. So very short story. I am at a networking event with like 300 people. Okay. And I'm a little bit of a chatterbox. I do like to talk to people, which I know is super rare for a CPA that we even talk to anyone. Okay. But a little bit of a chatterbox. So I'm at this networking event and they're passing around a microphone. Right? So everybody stands up, does your 60-second commercial, whatever. Right? I'm talking away to my friend. I'm not really paying attention to where the microphone is. I get tapped on the shoulder and the microphone gets shoved in my face and I stand up in front of a room of 300 people and go, hi, I'm Shauna, the detox goddess. And every head in the room spins. Every head spins. And a very good friend of mine was sitting in the far back of the room and he was a marketing sales guru genius guy. Right? Comes up to me after the meeting. He's like, you're changing everything, everything, the name, the company, the logo, like Tax Goddess on everything. And so that was, geez, now about 15 years ago, a long time ago that we became Tax Goddess. And we have a trademark. We have lots of people trying to use that name, but got a trademark. So love it. And it kind of goes along with the hair and the personality and everything else.

So you're not your ordinary neighborhood CPA.

No, sir. Both from the personality standpoint and the technical knowledge standpoint, that is true.

So from the technical knowledge standpoint, you do something that's really unique. Tell us about that.

Absolutely. And this is my passion, which I'm sure you're going to be able to hear in my voice. So I am— I am CPA. I have my master's in taxation, and I'm also a certified tax coach and a certified tax strategist. And really what that means is, so if you were to imagine Go to Google and look up CPAs. There are 660,000 CPAs in the US. Well, CPAs do all sorts of different things, right? They're CFOs, they're controllers, they're auditors, they're tax preparers, right? They do all sorts of things. But as you start to specialize, so Master's in Tax, specialize in taxation, Certified Tax Coach is specializing in tax strategy specifically, and Certified Tax Strategist is the top 15 people in the country that do tax strategy for business owners. So what we do is we actually work with your CPA, with your tax preparer, with your bookkeeper, with your financial advisor. You know, we work with all of the rest of your team and we come in with the strategies of what you should do before December 31st to reduce your tax bill so that when your tax preparer files the tax return, your net profit is itty-bitty tiny and all that money went into your personal pocket, not the government's.

So all, of course, very legal.

Oh, 100%. Honey, I am still a CPA, right? So we are talking legal, above board, and especially as a redhead. Orange and red do not look good together. So, yeah.

Well, okay. And you've been doing this for how long?

Well, I've been a CPA now for 24 years. I have been specializing in tax strategy for the past 14. But our practice, Tax Goddess, is a company we've just turned— we will turn 19 in a few days. So super exciting.

Been at it for a while. And the other thing I think is really interesting is you've got a, a company with 90 employees, all remote, all over the world.

You got it. We are a global team, and I love it for so many reasons. So I'm originally— my background is originally KPMG, right, which is one of the four remaining big accounting firms. They've had global teams for 20, 30 years, right? I mean, they've been outsourcing for years and years. Well, when I went out on my own, right, I tried to hire local, right? It's very difficult. And I mean, that was 19 years ago, but even now it's really difficult to find top quality people in the skill sets that you want, right? I mean, so when we decided to start hiring globally, I found that all of a sudden my pool of applicants went from my little, you know, 50 people that I know here in Phoenix, Arizona to millions of candidates around the globe. And so we are now able to pick from the top of the top of the top for anyone that does anything around the globe. And it was one of the best decisions I've ever made ever. And I will never go back to having a physical office. We do hire in the States, but I hire based on skill and on talent, not based on physical location. And I love it. And it does— we just passed a billion in savings for our clients. So it does amazing for our clients as well.

So, so what is it that gets you really excited in the morning? You getting out of bed and you're thinking, oh my God, it's a great day. What gets Shana going?

I love it. Well, we got the business, we got the personal side. So, so two things, right? I will do personal first. I am a puppy mama, so I love and I love gardening. So very first thing in the morning, as I mentioned, I live in Arizona. It is hotter than Hades down here right now. Okay. And so very first thing in the morning, get up, go to the garden, play with the dogs, get my hand in some soil. Right. Check on the tomatoes, you know, like what's happening in the garden that makes me personally happy. But from a business standpoint, I love what I do, right? Because what I get to do is of course save people a bunch of money. And I've got story after story. We've paid for cancer surgery for kids. We've bought people homes for their parents in cash. I mean, like these superhero type stories about with the tax savings, what can people do to change their lives? And for me, I'm a teacher, I'm an educator. I love explaining things. I love making sure people know how to use these types of rules to help them, help their family, help their business. And so when I see these types of success stories, that makes my day. When I get to deliver a plan that makes you $500,000 a year, right, of money you were gonna pay to the government, it's like, I, ooh, brother, that's the deal. So.

So how much, 'cause you've got such a large organization, how much hands-on work are you doing now?

Yep. So good or bad, I wish I could make 50 clones of myself. That would make everything a lot easier. But you do need help. So I am the final be-all end-all of everything that comes out of the firm. So I do a lot of review. Right. I also tend to be at the very beginning, especially on our tax strategy side. I really like to understand who is the client, what do they want and what are their goals? Right. Because I will help. We've got a team out of all the people that work in the company. We've got a team of about 4 that are are specifically tax strategists, right? They do what I do, right? So we will together work as a team and say, okay, in this person's case, they want to buy that house for their parents, they want to buy a yacht, they want to massively fund retirement, you know, whatever those personal goals are. So I will help build the overarching structure and then the team will actually do all the work, get all the plans, gather all the data, get everything implemented and help the clients implement. These tasks. Of course, if you don't do the strategies right, and you're saving money. So, yeah, I feel very, very lucky that I have such an amazing team supporting all of our clients.

So what is it? I mean, you're a pretty unique individual, I can tell that right now. But what is it that you— what is it that's unique that you bring to the table?

You know, it's so funny you ask that question. There are two answers, I think, to that one. The first one is personality. Right. And I was asked what—

right.

Really? Oh, you know, a lot of people have worked with really, really big accounting firms. And that was the one thing that I always said. It doesn't matter how big we get. If we get so big that we lose our personality, that's a no-go for me. Right. I'd rather be small and still be fun and personable and the CPA you can talk to. I want our clients asking us questions. I don't want them trying to figure out on their own because they don't want to talk to the stuffy accountant. Like, that's a no-go in my world. So the first one's personality. The second one honestly is the ability to explain very complex concepts in human English, right? Because all of the strategies that we use are public knowledge, right? You could go and as you said right off the bat, right? These are all legal, they're all above board. You could go onto Google and do your own research. ChatGPT, what tax strategy should I use for my small business, right? ChatGPT can't, right? Yeah, don't be doing that. But anyway, side note, even ChatGPT says I am not a tax professional, which I love. But, you know, people do it all the time. And really what ends up happening is you go, you hear this strategy on TikTok. Somebody posts an article on LinkedIn, like wherever, right? You hear these strategies. We've had multiple clients go and try to do it on their own. Then they get audited. They have no support. They didn't do it right because the TikTok guy didn't even explain these 15 steps and paperwork you have to have to make sure this is done. So really, it's the— from my perspective, it's the support and the guidance and the ability to explain to a client, how do you do this in human English, not in go read this tax code of 67,000 pages, right? Like, this is how you do it step by step by step by step and providing that guidance. And we call it the tax love to make sure that you're doing it right and that you're taken care of.

So, okay. So this, this show is called Listening with Leaders for a reason. I'm a lawyer turned peacemaker, and listening is, I think, kind of the foundational skill of life. And I'm always curious about, with my guests, how important is listening in your business?

1,000%, 10,000%. I mean, you can't even put a number on it. This, it drives me nuts when we hear, because we hear stories all the time, right? People come to us because they've tried something else and it didn't work. Right. We're not cheap. We're expensive. Right. I'm going to say that we are the Ferrari from that standpoint. Okay. But you get what you pay for. Right. And so listening is extremely important because when somebody comes in, we ask 2 questions. Okay. The first one is, what is your aggression level? 0 to 10. 0 meaning the IRS never calls you, never, ever. Right. Except for a random audit. 10 meaning we're all going to jail. Right. Yeah. You talked about that level 8, right? I'm red and orange, not going to jail. Okay. So we We will go to a level 8, but I need to know that, right? So we will ask that question first and I have to listen, or my team has to listen to what you say, because if you're a 2, great, we're going to use level 2 tax strategies. If you tell me you're a 20, I'm going to drag you back to an 8 because mom's not playing that, right? We're going to an 8, right? That's that. But listening is extremely important. So the second thing that we ask, and this is where to me the listening really comes in, What do you want? Not just saving taxes. That's an automatic. Otherwise, why would you be calling us, right? We're going to save you taxes. That's not a thing. What do you want, Doug? Do you want to put kids through college? Do you want to buy that boat? Do you want to buy a second home on the beach? Do you want to move to Mexico? What do you want out of life? Because if we don't know what you want, sure, we can save you taxes, but we can't help you plan in the correct direction. For where you are trying to go. So listening is 10,000 important.

So, so I, I categorize listening into two types of listening, Type 1 listening and Type 2 listening. And, and I, I think you do a lot of Type 1 listening. This is where you're asking questions, you're gaining information, you're trying to figure out, help, help people understand what their goals are, what their needs are, what the, as say their level of aggressiveness is with their stuff. So that this tax strategy that you create is appropriate to their situation. And that's all what I call Type 1 listening. There's another type of listening that I call Type 2 listening. And this is where you're really listening from the speaker's frame of reference. What is the speaker feeling and meaning? Not just—

The subtext. Is what you mean? Ah, yes.

And you would use Type 2 listening to make somebody feel deeply validated and heard. So they really feel like they've been listened to. I'm wondering, as I describe these types of listening to you, how much— what's the kind of mix that you might use when you're interacting?

Love it. Type 1 is where we start, right? And Type 2 is where we end up, in my opinion. Okay. Type 1, you don't know me, I don't know you, right? We gotta have to start at Type 1, right? Because it's, that's how we build a relationship, right? Now I will never forget. So way back when, right? I, I had physical offices until, I don't know, 9 years ago, right? And then we went all digital. But until then, I would always keep a box of Kleenex on my desk because Type 2 listening happens and that level of conversation happens when you actually trust someone. And, and building the rapport and that's, it starts to come out. And so I would always keep a Kleenex box because no doubt, no fail. I, for whatever reason, I'm just really good at picking up on facial expressions or whatever that is. I wish I could train that skill cuz it's such an important skill, but to be able to see what somebody's trying to say without them saying it. So when you, especially as a CPA, as a service provider, right? When you can go to somebody and say, Hey, you know, you're saying this, but you're not saying it. Is this what you mean? And for them to break down in tears and, you know, you, I mean, not in a bad way, but like, you know, you nailed it and you can help this person with that. Yeah, I'm getting goosebumps even talking about it. Right. Yes, that listening is massively a part of the relationship, but often doesn't come in our world until we kind of get to know each other a little bit. Sometimes you can hear it. There are some people that are very open just in their lives. You know, they're just an open, kind of person. But most of the time, we don't hear that level of openness until, you know, until we've built that relationship, right? And then we hear those, those type 2 things.

I'm curious what it would be like if, if you could have that openness at the very beginning of the relationship.

Oh my God, amazing.

I'll just give you an example. Somebody comes in and you can tell that they're, they're upset or anxious about their tax situation. Oh, for sure. And then you you validate that before you get into, before you get into the Type 1 listening.

Yep, 100%.

It seems to me that the trust building you're talking about, if you could build that trust up front right at the beginning, that would ease your way through the process, I think, and make your client feel really heard and listened to.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And I would love to say that happens on every single case, but It honestly just depends on the person. That's right. At least from my perspective, you know, how, how much are they willing to give you, right? Because we also get a lot of people, good or bad, in, in my world. I've been to— we had just recently a prospect came in, right, and said, listen, I've talked to KPMG, I've talked to PricewaterhouseCoopers, I've talked to, you know, what used to be Arthur Andersen, right? They're gone now. But anyway, I've talked to the bigwigs. I honestly don't know what you're going to do to help. Arms crossed. I'm here as a last-ditch effort, right? Already completely shut down, right? By the— right, by the end of the meeting, we normally do like a 1-hour meeting. By the end of the meeting, literally said to us, I cannot believe that these bigwigs can't figure this stuff out, and you pulled all this out of me, and you're telling me you've got the solution and we can do this, and it's all above board, it's all legal. By the end of that 1 hour, So sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. It just, you know, I'd love to learn as a leader how to make that happen as a part of a strategy on every single case we deal with. Um, I'd love to learn something like that, some sort of skill.

What I do, we'll talk about it.

Okay, good, good.

So is your, your, is your business, since it's obviously key, well, it could be, it could be a calendar year, it could be a fiscal year. So do you find, do you find your business is pretty even all year long?

Yes. Well, especially with tax strategy, the only, the only time it goes dormant is summertime, right? Which I honestly, I think happens just across the US in general, right? Because parents have kids and kids have needs and nobody's talking about nothing during the summertime and Christmas, right? You know, the end of the year, that December 15th through January 15th, like you've either done what you've done or you haven't, right? At that point, right? There's kind of these two little periods, but otherwise nobody wants to pay tax ever. Right. I mean, so yeah, it's a full year round all the time.

And where does your business come from?

All word of mouth. We do have a little bit— I like, as I mentioned, I like educating. So I do try YouTube and we got LinkedIn and TikTok and all the things, right? But most of our business is referrals. And then just recently a lot has been coming from YouTube. I think more and more people are starting to look at YouTube and TikTok as a research engine to be just like Google.

So you've got a YouTube channel?

We do also Tax Goddess, so super easy to find! Ah ha! The marketing team did a good job!

Red-haired blue-eyed woman saying I'm a tax goddess—

yes, hello!

You have to be drawing views to your YouTube channel.

We do try, we do try. So it's, as I said, I love being a teacher. It's very important for me, for people to realize, like, listen, a lot of these strategies that I learned came from the big boy world, right? We're talking KPMG, Pfizer, Coca-Cola, like huge corporations, right? And as you guys all see in the news, right, they pay 2% tax, they pay zero tax. There are ways to do that for what I deem the little guy, which is the people making less than $200 million a year, right? Like gross revenue, less than $200 million. Typically a family-owned or a single-owned company, maybe a group of companies, that you've done really, really well with, something like that. But a lot of that kind of mid-market, small, small, they have no idea that they're allowed to use these strategies because nobody ever tells them. Right. Why would I share the big boy strategies with the little guy? So that's always been kind of my, I don't know, I feel like my place in the world. Right. I was with the big boys and I feel like I went from the dark side to the light side. Like now I'm on the, we're doing Jedi. I mean, this is protecting against the evil force, you know. So that's always kind of been my, kind of been my thing. So, so we—

you talked about ChatGPT a little earlier. Do you think that AI is going to have an effect on, on your practice down the road?

I actually think it's going to help. So I know a lot of people are kind of scared, like, oh, it might replace me, it might do this kind of thing. I, I don't believe, at least not at the moment, right? And who knows where AI goes and Are we talking Skynet? Like, who knows, right? What ends up happening with this thing? But at the moment, I actually find that it's helping. So I just had a client the other day come to me with a ChatGPT thread saying, hey, I'm looking at moving to Dubai. ChatGPT gave me all this information. Is this good? Is this bad? Is it right? Is it not? That's what I want. I want our clients to ask us because I do still believe, and even ChatGPT says, I'm not a tax professional, right? Like, you know, whatever. So I do still believe that the professionals are going to be involved and will remain involved because people don't necessarily feel 100% comfortable, like, putting my entire tax-saving life into a computer, you know? But I do think, especially for other professionals listening, if you're not up on what ChatGPT can do, we internal to our business, our firm uses ChatGPT 300 times a day. I mean, it's unbelievable what ChatGPT can do to help grow your business. So if you're not using it, you need to get on the train right now.

So I don't think it'll ever replace Peacemakers.

I, you know, you just never know, right? I don't think so either. I do believe that humans will always have an affinity for other humans, right? They like people with a personality, and you're just— at least at the moment, you're not going to get that with the ChatGPT.

So exactly, I don't think, I don't think they're ever going to be able to build them. I mean, I'm saying this, I don't know, but I think it's going to be very difficult to build emotions into artificial intelligence.

I agree.

And I agree, I work in an emotional space teaching people how to manage emotions.

As you said, type 2 listening, right? This is, this is emotion, this is reading the subtext.

So exactly right.

Agreed.

One more question, I'll let you go. Uh, what's one thing about you, Shawna, that we would not even begin to think about unless you revealed it to us?

Um, I feel like we're playing Two Truths and a Lie, which is— um, all right, I'll give you three things that nobody knows. But for any of you listeners, if you ever play Two Truths and a Lie, you can't use this against me, okay? Because this is my favorite Two Truths and a Lie thing. So when I was young, I used to be fluent in 23 ancient Chinese weapons. I did kung fu, right, for many, many years. So that's— I'm still fluent in a couple of them.

So I'll stop right there and tell you that I'm a second-degree black belt in Northern Chinese animal style.

No way! That's awesome. Okay, we're so happy to talk about that.

Okay, number 2.

Sorry, number 2. Up until I was about 30, I could physically walk into any museum I actually did this in Egypt. I could read hieroglyphs off of the wall and translate them into English for you. Wow. Super fun. I actually got caught with a group in— I was in Egypt. I was there with my sister. I was reading for her. Turn around, there's a huge group of people going, "Oh, are you an Egyptologist?" I'm like, "I'm a CPA." So that was fun. And then the third one, I am actually the only person left on the entire planet with my last name. So that's it. There's only one. I know I'm the end of a bloodline, so that's it. There's one. So anyway, so if anybody ever plays Two Truths and a Lie with me, now you know the three, which one's true.

So this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Really a lot of fun.

So much. Oh, thanks for having me, Doug. It's been such a pleasure.

Absolutely. Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.