Do the Right Thing, and Good Things Will Happen

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Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. And so if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then I bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. Now if you have not yet discovered your why, go to why institute.com take the why discovery and then come back and listen to this because it'll have much more impact for you if you know your why. And so today we're going to be talking about the why of trust to create relationships based upon trust. Now if you have this why, then trust means everything to you. You believe that trust is the driving characteristic behind all you stand for and will work hard to create it. When the relationship is based upon trust, the sky is the limit for you. You will go to great lengths to demonstrate that you are trustworthy and do such thing as become an expert in a given field or with respect to a particular subject so that you can demonstrate your expertise and thereby establish that you can be trusted. You will look to do things properly and correctly because that is what a trusted person would do. You want others to know that you can be counted on and will go the extra mile to demonstrate that with your actions, your words and your deeds. Many people with your why enjoy numbers because numbers don't lie and endeavors such as gardening or sculpting that are predictable. While people with otherwise might get annoyed by a violation of their trust, for you, it's like a knife in the gut. Like those individuals whose why is contribute, you have a very noble why and work hard to be known as an individual who can be counted on you. Build loyal and lasting friendships and relationships. Now today I've got a guest for you. His name is Ron Pattison. Now Ron grew up in rural Montana. He graduated from the University of Montana with a BA in Business Administration specializing in accounting in 1980. Now while he was there he was a walk on on the basketball team as a freshman. And then after graduating, Ron moved to New Mexico in 1982, working in public accounting and receiving a CPA certificate in August of 1984. So after working for an international Employee benefits firm. Ron opened Patterson Pension Specialists in December of 1980. Ron has specialized in the design and administration of defined contribution plans, also known as 401ks for US regular folks, but there's many other types. He is an avid sports enthusiast as well as sports fan and follows many different favorite teams. Ron, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thanks, Gary. It's great to be here.

So let's talk about this first. What's it like to grow up in Montana? I grew up in New Mexico. That's really all I know. What's it like to grow up in Montana? And where were you?

Well, you know, it was a great place to grow up. I mean, I was raised in a town of about 5,000 people. We could go over the hill and be in the country in about two blocks where we could, you know, roam and you know, create environments to explore, you know, shoot gophers or chase grasshoppers or, you know, do whatever you can as a kid with just complete free reign. So you could go in town, ride your bike to the swimming pool and come back and it was really a wonderful place to grow up, in my opinion.

So what were you like as a kid? What were you into in high school? Were you into sports? Were you into studying? Were you into both? What was it?

What were you like? You know, I had a cousin that lived a block away from me that was. Ended up being an all state athlete and his dad had actually played college football and a couple years of pro football and he was only 5, 5. He's extremely quick and I was his shadow. I started playing sports when I was five, six years old and just followed him around and would always play with the older kids and, and just came my love. And that's what I did every waking moment of the day, pretty much. I never really studied, you know, and studying wasn't a focus. My drove my parents crazy because it wasn't important to me. Right, right.

Playing sports was being, being the star.

Yep. Well, I didn't care about, I just wanted to play, you know. Of course you wanted to be the best kid, but it wasn't necessarily, you know, it got bad enough that my friends would get quit playing with me, you know, at some point, you know, basketball, they said, well, you're no fun to play with anymore. So. So they would quit playing and play a different sport. So then I'd just. But you're always outside, you know, when it wasn't 40 below zero in the wintertime, obviously then you, you're playing in the gym. So then you were in the gym and indoors because it's so cold outside.

So you graduated, went off to University of Montana, which is where. Where is the University of Montana?

It's in Missoula, Montana.

Missoula.

And.

And did you know from the day you walked in the door that you were going to be an accountant or what did you think?

No, I didn't have any idea what I was going to do. I just knew. Actually, the plan kind of had been to go back and work on the family farm at that point. We actually hadn't been farming for a long time. My dad had been in business, and his dad had been in business, and his brothers have been in business. And so a long line of entrepreneurs. And early growing up, I rode around with my grandfather, who was still alive at that time. And he was probably in his 80s at that point in time. Late 80s. He lived to 104. Wow. And he was a businessman. He was very successful in our county. And so I went around with him and he talked about business. And when I ride around with my dad, he'd talk about business because they had a car dealership, implement dealership, and all that type of stuff. And business always fascinated me along with when they talk about taxes and stuff like that. So I actually got an interest in that. And. And then at the same time, when your introduction about trust being my. My why. And I kind of. It hit me that in eastern Montana, you know, your word was your. You know, your bond. I mean, you'd shake your hand and you committed to that. And that's where my family viewed business. I mean, if you shook somebody's hand, you had a deal. You didn't have to write it down on paper because you had your word was your bond, and you were good for that. And so trust was very important in that early life that you learned how valuable it was to me. And so kind of a long ways jump back from college. So that's kind of how I got. I had that business background. All they thought about was really sports. When I wasn't riding with my grandfather, listening to those how to run a business. My dad. And so I went to college really with the idea of going back to the farm and working that. And so I again realized pretty quickly in basketball that it wasn't going to be a life venture for me, you know, 5 11. And, you know, don't have the. The height and the quickness and the tools that you see for people to. To go on and make a profession of that. So I quickly started thinking what to do and Mostly how would I manage to just keep in college for four years so I wouldn't have to go back home to the farm yet? And so that's kind of what I did. You know, I really enjoyed my college experience and kind of again, didn't focus on school like maybe you should today or my kids do at school. But I did. I got through. And, you know, after a year, I really decided that accounting was the thing that I was good at. I was always good at math. And that would be the, I guess, the major that would allow me to stay there, get a degree and kind of, you know, hang out at the university, which is what I really wanted to do.

So you like numbers?

Always like numbers. I was really good at it. I remember going back to the third grade. We'd have the math flashcards where you would go around the room and beat everybody in the room except one kid who went on to be a physicist. But we would take turns. We'd beat each other every other time. And. And then, you know, so. Been good at math my whole life, and so that was something I knew I could always rely on.

What do you like about math? Why has math been so easy for you? Why has math been so attractive to you?

I think describe it is that, you know, I, you know, two plus two.

Is four every time.

Yeah. And although the joke is kind of as a good CPA or accountant is the answer to the joke is what do you want it to be?

Yeah.

So that's, I think, in the combination of being good at math and then having the business background from my family to know how to legally, you know, make numbers work for clients and for myself to try to take advantage legally of the tax code. Yeah.

So you got to know all that stuff. Right. So you graduated with your degree, you went off to. And then how long was it before you moved to New Mexico? Two years. Why New Mexico?

It was. Yeah, it was. You know, I kind of finished with school. I. I went to Europe on Eurail Pass for three months, traveled around. So right after I graduated with two buddies and backpacks, did that, came back and hadn't sat for the CPA exam. Yeah. And so then I took a course to. Specifically to study for the CPA examination. Studied and passed three of the five tests. So they call it a condition. So then I was able to take the other two tests by themselves and pass them and just study for them when time allowed.

So.

So that's kind of. So that's where there's a little bit of a gap in there. And in that transition, I was kind of still working for my dad on the farm a little bit. Not sure what we were going to do. Kind of had a little bit of a falling out because you know, my dad said, you know, it's like, well, you know, the farm really isn't big enough to support two families after, you know, I kind of felt let down a little bit because I plan on coming back to the farm. And then all of a sudden, you know, it's like, well, it really isn't enough. So you need to kind of go out on your own and figure something out.

How'd that feel?

You know, you're mad at first. And they said, well, I'm going to show them. Yeah, you know, I'm gonna. You know, this kind of. That seems to have driven me several times that people said I couldn't do things. And I said, well, I can now prove it. So, you know, along that same time, almost exactly at that time I had a real tragedy is why I kind of ended up in New Mexico. So I just got done studying for the CPA exam and took that and. And took a trip on an 1100 Yamaha motorcycle with a cousin to California. So we took a little trip. He just stopped in and said I'm going to California, have an extra bike. You want to come along? I said sure. So jumped on the spare motorcycle and we drove down along the Columbia River Gorge to Portland and down to just shy of San Francisco before we turned around on Highway 101 and drove back up to Portland and back up to Columbia River Gorge into Spokane and back into western Montana again. That happened. I get my sister and brother in law were taking a float trip down the Missouri river that starts just outside of Great Falls, Montana town called Fort Benton. And you float on the river down to Fort Peck Lake. It's just a lake the size of bigger really than Lake Powell right there. 17 miles from my hometown. And so we were really lucky to have such a place to recreate right around our hometown. So that was a big part of being there. In the summertime you could fish and water ski and mostly water ski in my case. But we went up to do this float trip and everybody always usually took power boats when it's been done almost exclusively. People would take that and float down for the day and power out of problems and do things and camp a couple nights on the way and. And my brother in law was getting into sailing and he bought about a little 21 foot sailboat. It was a decent sized. And they invited me to go along with him on this float. So it was my brother in law, sister, his best friend and his wife. So there was five of us going to be on this trip. And so that was. I just had got back from that other bike trip, you know, so I was having to real fun time right after college, no real commitments and didn't know what I was going to do again. And so we started on that trip. An hour into it is when the tragedy happened. We, we had put the mast up on the boat because just to give us extra room to walk around the boat, the mast could be laid down and it could be put up and on shore. A couple of times we asked representative from the I think it was the BLM whether there was anything we had to worry about, obstructions, power lines, anything like that. And he said no. You know, we asked him twice and they were kind of there kind of supervising getting everybody on the river safely, you know. And there's probably about 15, 20 boats going to be doing this. It was an annual thing that they did. And so about an hour into the, the float trip, the mast of the sailboat hit 10,000.

Line. And you didn't know what was happening because we had weren't looking up and we hadn't really started drinking. We're just brand new. That's that they. People tried to say that it was because we were drinking and I think maybe it had one beer at most. And the mast hit the power line and the boat starts tipping and it's kind of tipping up river. So you don't, you're kind of. Your thought process is like something is wrong because normally you'd hit a rock and you. The top of the boat would go downstream stream and it's just like what's going on here? And it's happening so fast. And so I just happened to be, I was leaning, I was being the fifth person. I was. The two couples were sitting in the back and I was sitting with my legs in the kind of the porthole or whatever and leaning against the mask. And right before we hit the power line, I looked down at my friends and said, you know, you guys are going to burn the top of your feet. We're going on the seven day week long thing. And the worst thing you want to do is burn the top of your feet the first day you're going to be miserable. So the wife jumped up and she went down below to get shoes so they covered the tops of their feet. And when she did that, I sat and turned sideways so I wasn't leaning against the mast. And when we hit the mast, then I wasn't leaning against it. The boat started to tip. She ended up being okay because she was down below. And I started falling off the boat and grabbed onto one of two pieces of wood that kept me from sliding into it. And in the meantime we heard giant explosions. When the 10,000 watts goes from the mast and the guideline and then jumps about three to six feet to the water is like a huge fireball explosion. You're kind of falling all over, you don't know what's going on. I just happened to look up and electricity makes your muscles contract and then when they expand kind of uncontrollably. I saw my sister fly about 50ft in the air because I was laying on my stomach. And she grabbed a guide wire around the front of the boat to stay on. And when power hit and released and she just went flying. And the Missouri is really muddy right then. And so now this hopefully isn't too long a story for you. No, but the. But I watched her to make sure that if she didn't come up, I know her relative to position in the boat so I could go after her once. Whatever stopped and then the boat righted itself. You look at the back of the boat, my brother in law and his best friend are both gone. My sister had popped up in the water and she was swimming so she didn't get knocked out. So she ended up surviving, as did her, the other lady and friend and myself. So we had two of the five people there die. And so how that ties into then, you know, to the rest of your life, you kind of just, you know, you kind of wonder why you're alive and why they died and you didn't and kind of what do you want to do? And so right at that time then, one of my good friends from college was getting married in Las Vegas, or actually Santa Fe, New Mexico. His girlfriend was an exchange student from New Mexico and she was from Las Vegas, blonde and blue eyed in Las Vegas, she said, the only one there. And so they were getting married at the Inn chapel in Santa Fe. And so after my experience on that other motorcycle trip, the motorcycles were on sale also because Mount St. Helens had blown up. And with the ash there was like all these extra 1100 Yamaha motorcycles in Spokane. So I had gone over and bought one of those on sale because I enjoyed my trip. And so I said, you know, I have my new motorcycle. I was planning on going up to Whistler in Canada and hanging out and seeing you know, trying to take a bike trip. And then I got this invite from my friend to come to Santa Fe for his wedding. And so he said, you know, I'll live in Montana. Canada is always going to be close. I'm going to go to New Mexico, because only time I'll ever get a chance to go to New Mexico.

And so.

Land of entrapment. Entrapment.

Yep. And so I packed a duffel bag and had a suit in it for.

For the wedding. And I got down here, and it was 1982. It was the worst job market before the 2008 recession. There was a recession there because the high interest rates and all that stuff that hit. And I ended up meeting the bride's parents, who had a business, and they introduced me to their cpa, who then interviewed me. And I went around on my motorcycle and got five interviews that day and ended up landing a job to come back for one winter. So I came back for one winter, and I had that blow up with my dad and just thought, you know, we'll try this, and we'll see. And it was extremely rough. I bet my friend that got married here moved away. They were living in Houston at the time, so they came here, got married, and left. So I moved to Santa Fe, and I didn't know a single person in Santa Fe. And I was working for a CPA firm, and they changed firms and went and started auditing on the road. So again, no chance to meet anybody. But on weekends, they'd come back. And, well, the first thing I did is I. One day, I was in the office on a Friday, and my boss, who was a cpa, they said they played basketball at their church for lunch. You go get a little workout on a Friday. And I said, you want to come? I said, sure, I'll come play. So I went and played with him, and, you know, a little better than most average accountants and scored almost all the points without really trying. Trying to not. And at the end of that, my boss walked up and says, you know, we have a team in a church, and we wonder if you would like to play with us. And so. So sports really was my entry into having friends in New Mexico. So I got on that team, and then that team. The guy said, well, we play for a city league team. Maybe you'd like to play for a city league team. And so they played for the city league team, and basketball ended, and they go, well, we have a softball team. Would you like to play softball? And so then I played, and so then I started Meeting people and kind of getting grounded and in Santa Fe and so forth. But at the same time, the public accounting really wasn't my love. I didn't like it. They had me doing auditing, which isn't what I enjoyed at all. And auditing, the, you know, you're telling people what they're doing wrong and what they need to write. And people never really like auditors coming to our office. That's my experience. They don't like that. And the audit season ended and had a short window before tax season started. And so they laid me off and said, come back, you know, have a job. It was like November 1st and said, January 1st, come back and start working tax season. And I said, okay. And said, in the meantime, this actuary called one of the partners up and said he was needing somebody to run his or manage his office in Santa Fe. And so they sent me to this actuary and I interviewed and he gave me a job for the six weeks while I was going to be unemployed. And at the end of the six weeks, he said, you know, Ron, we'd like to offer you a job to stay here. And he offered me about 40% more than the CPA firm was paying, which was, you know, really bad pay, indentured servants until you get your license. But so I said, you know, I don't really like that. And this really, you know, made. Started making a lot more sense, you know, how just pension plans work for businesses. And so that's what I found is I started and I could relate to business owners because of my family background. And. Yeah, and so rather than being stuffed in the back room crunching numbers, I was out in front, at least to some extent, that meeting with clients when projects were ready to be presented and so forth. And so I worked for that local firm. And then I got an opportunity to go to a larger firm in Albuquerque and met guy that ended up being a really close friend in actuary. And then that firm got bought by an international employee benefits consulting firm. And so I stayed there, being in charge of their 401k department, basically here in Albuquerque, and got my foothold again. But being new, I didn't have a lot of relationships, right. Coming to Albuquerque. And so as I was building them, you know, the company being a super large corporation, they're, they're impatient, they're very numbers driven, you know, month to month, quarter to quarter, they were, you know, they just, they wanted numbers every quarter. And it's like, again, my background is more of a family background, a Warren Buffett Kind of approaches, do the right thing and do it and the good things will happen to you in the end. So you always keep doing your best, trying to benefit your clients, trying to do what's right. Then in the long term, you'll end up ahead. And so they were always pushing for higher billings and wasn't necessarily called for my opinion or new clients when I wasn't quite. Hadn't been there long enough. And so long story short was I decided to leave, maybe before they asked me to leave, but, you know, who knows? I never stayed in a lot of jobs a long time. So as you said, you know, I think it makes sense for me to work for myself and start. And the timing ended up being perfect for me to go out and start working on the relationships that I developed in those five years of being in New Mexico and relationships. And again, I started playing basketball and intramurals. And that led to, oddly enough, another guy that was from Montana see me play in high school, worked for the KPMG office here. And he called me up and said, we're short of players for this accountant attorney league. And again, amazing how many people I met then, how it's helped my profession by knowing these people kind of through sports that ended up being business associates as well.

So, yeah, so it sounds like you got into accounting, you were put into auditing, didn't fit you.

So you.

So when you got into 401k retirement plans, all that, it just felt better.

Just a much better people like you. Yeah, like me. And I liked it. It just made sense. Yeah. You know, and. And better, worse. I was right before computers really started taking off or controlling everything. And so I did my first year or two of accounting on pension plans using green ledger sheets. I don't know if anybody's seen those anymore. Sounds fun, but, yeah, it wasn't fun. And if you made a mistake, you had to go back and start over. So you did a lot of erasing and the numbers were exact. But it gave me a real advantage, I think, in that I know exactly how things worked internally in plans where you just plug in a number and push a button. You don't necessarily understand what's happening when that computer generates those numbers. And so I'm really glad that I don't have to do the number crunching like that, but it does give me just a knowledge that a lot of people, I don't think have anymore because I learned it from the ground up, if you will.

Yeah. So let me ask you a couple of questions. Let's Talk for a little bit about your why now because there's something that's interesting about the why of trust and that is. And maybe this. Let's see if this applies to you or not. I find that people with the why of trust are pretty steady most the time. But every now and then they have this crazy spike where they go off and do something totally unexpected and then they come back to their normal life and then they're off doing something that you totally don't expect and. And then they're back to their normal consistent life. Does that seem to apply to you at all?

Yeah, I definitely think it applies because you know I like I said I went to Europe, I like traveling. I just actually got back from Belize because it was my kids spring break so I needed to take them someplace. And fortunately there's no cases of coronavirus.

Yeah.

Down there. And so it ended being the right place to go I think. And we did a lot of some jumping off cliffs into lakes and the cave going through some caves like Carlsbad Cave except has a river going through it. And so you're swimming and climbing in the dark with a little miner's hat on and light and doing that. And it's fun to in the business world too. I got offered a position on a board of directors in Utah for a regional mail delivery company. And I was able to. To work for that on that board for about seven or eight years and as it was for sale so I got to learn a lot, you know, and that was really actually a lot of fun, a lot of interesting knowledge and you come back and you start doing pensions. But again my knowledge base and it helps. I can, I always feel like I have a lot more to offer than necessary. Clients know when they just look at pensions because of all those other life experiences like to talk about, you know. So that's. I do try to be kind of stable and that for my family and provide for them but I can't help but have a little wild hair.

Yeah. What is that? Let's talk about that.

What?

Because I have a daughter who has the same, you know, the YF trust and in general, boy you can count on her. She's just reliable, easygoing, even keeled. But every now and then there's this little spike of something that's like where did that come from from? How did that jive with everything else that I know about you?

Right.

And what is that, man?

I'm not sure I can, I can explain that. I just, I don't know that I was really destined to be an accountant. I mean, I think, you know, I wanted to be active, you know, the sports and the farming and outside. I mean, I never. I worked all summer long outside, you know, and so I just to get behind the desk. And I think because I also have the ability to go out and meet with people, so I'm not kind of confined to that, just an accounting role that I get to do other things and you get the opportunity to just experience a lot of life that's not behind your desk. So I think it kind of goes with. I don't know if it goes. How you tie it into trust necessarily is that you're allowed to have a break from, you know, your normal routine that doesn't necessarily say you're not trustworthy anymore. Right. But you come back to that after you have your little adventure.

That's how I would put it. And I haven't really. You know, it's funny because everybody they talk to with the Y of trust and I kind of ask them that question. It's like, now what is that thing that happens to you periodically where you. You got to go off course or you got to.

But not be.

Not trustworthy, but just be out of character for a short period of time and then you're right back to being consistent. And nobody yet has had a really good answer for me because they're like, I don't know why I do that. I just kind of got to go off course for a little while and then I'm back on course.

Yeah, well, it's just, it's. You got to have fun. You gotta, you know, life is not everlasting, as we find out through other experiences, like whether it's my boating incident younger or, you know, my mom passing away at 95 last year, year before last. So was blessed with her for the whole time. But, you know, you just, you want to have great life experiences. I've been, you know, I think to a certain extent, you know, I also didn't share, but my dad had a drinking problem when I was young. And that's why I was with my grandfather a lot more. Grandfather a lot more. And so. And when my dad was around, we did a lot of stuff together, but then he would. Might disappear for a period of years or something. And then. And so that's again where I kind of said I really didn't want to start a family until I was ready. I settled down and would be there for my kids. And. And now I also wanted to be able to do things with my kids. That, so they would know me. They wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't just go off to the office and they wouldn't see me. They know I work hard, but they'll see. Also see that I play hard, too. And we're able to take this trip together. Last summer, we went to Alaska together for 10 days. And really trying to make sure that when the time comes, they'll have fond memories of me and be able to pass those on to their kids.

So it sounds like relationships are important.

To you very much.

And it sounds like your dad maybe broke that trust.

He did, but he, you know, he did. He came back at the same time, you know, so that was, you know, he was a really good guy that, you know, he just had a dependency problem and he couldn't control. But when he was himself, he was wonderful, man. He never abused my mom or did anything that would make me disrespect him. Yeah. From that standpoint. And so he was, you know. But it did shape my personality for sure. Right.

Yeah.

He was actually a professional gambler. I have a lot of funny stories about him. He was a very successful professional gambler. Wow. And so again, he built that dam that I mentioned. It's the third largest earth filled dam in the world. The dam is about four miles long. And they built that when he was a kid, and he started hustling pool when he was about 12 years old and playing and doing that stuff, and it kind of led down maybe the wrong path. But he also. And he also. He was in World War II, and he. He was the longest, I think you could be a private. He got. The only reason he got to be a corporal because he. They mandated in Congress that if you've been in the service or the war for five years or something, you couldn't be a private anymore. So he got mandated to be a corporal. And one of his officers said, you know, Patterson, you're pretty smart. You should try to take this training. I think you could be, you know, a sergeant or something. He says, you know, you can make more money. My dad said. He said, you know, just make sure you pay all the rest of the guys. Because he was confident that after Friday night that he'd have most of their money anyhow. Oh.

So he could win it off of them.

Yeah, he didn't need to make that much because he could.

So you've been doing pensions for quite a while. You do ours and you do a lot of people that I know. You work with a lot of people and you use them Differently, not just as a retirement plan, but as a way to help people when they're selling their businesses.

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of different ways to do it. So you can, you know, there's the normal kind of stuff that we do to help as an employee benefit and to keep employees, reward employees to help save for retirement. All of that stuff can be quite rewarding. But, you know, there's a lot of other strategies that we try to. To do, because my accounting background and business background, and one of them, like I said, is we help a client that sold his business and he was a C corporation, he still had a little over a million dollars in the corporation, like 1.1, $1.2 million. And he was going to have to pay corporate tax and then pay personal income tax on that money. And he was actually being a business coach after he retired. And he'd sit in on the group of the five or six business owners that he was kind of coaching and listening to my stories. Came to me after one of them and said, you know, Ron, I think I need to talk to you. And I said, okay. And we kind of talked about the facts and figured out that he didn't have any other employees. We had set up this plan called defined benefit plan. Usually you might only could put in 100, $200,000 a year for a person, which is obviously a lot of money. You have to be very successful to do that type of thing. But in this case, he'd been working there for, you know, 40 years and had the service, and we were able to come up with a way that he could actually put in a defined benefit and a 401 plan, he deferred taxes on just about a million dollars. So rather than paying 350, $400,000 in federal and state income taxes on the corporate side before taking and having to pay personal income taxes again on that, by putting it into the plan, we were able to save him that much money on the sale of his business. Now, there's also other ways to use it, such as to have one owner, or maybe it might be a son of an owner that's trying to buy a parent out or something, or a younger partner might be two, two doctors or two dentists. One is starting to come into the practice and one's trying to figure out how to retire. And the idea is you can discriminate between two owners, basically. So you don't do anything for the younger doctor or younger owner or son, and you provide a benefit of maybe $200,000 a year for the older partner and or father and, or whatever and say they do that for five years whether he's working there or not. And you have funded a million dollar buyout with pre tax dollars rather than after tax dollars. So I mean if the younger person has to make we have to make $400,000 to pay the senior partner who's leaving 200,000. Right, right. And so by doing it this way, you make $200,000, you put it in the plan, you get to deduct that $200,000 as a pension contribution and the senior partner just leaving gets 200,000 in their retirement plan to draw on as they need it. And so you can what you know, that's just an example. Whether it's five years of $200,000 million dollars or 10 years that you know for $2 million or obviously it's structured based on the value of the business and how you do that. So just some fun concepts. That's really where getting creative in the tax code and doing things that are legal. Yeah. And that's really what makes me get excited and have fun is when I get to do that stuff because I like using the law. I said, people ask me, it's like well can you do that? And I said well, you have to follow the law when it works against you. You have to pay your taxes even if you don't want to. Right? Yeah. And if the tax says you can do this and it just happens to be in your benefit, why not take advantage of it?

Yeah.

So again that's my approach is there's, there's definitely white and there's black, but there is some areas of gray or areas you can take advantage of.

So you study this stuff all the time?

Yeah. So I continue to keep up with my 40 hours of continuing education for my CPA certificate even though it's not required for my business. Yeah. And then you know, I meet with other people, listen to their ideas. They go to the LA Los Angeles Benefit Advanced Pension Conference every year in January and meet with actuaries and consultants and listen to strategies and new laws and how to take advantage of things and you know, as well as courses online and you know, everybody has a thing that maybe they're interested or excites them but to me and that's kind of my third why is contributors I really get excited when I can help people save not only taxes and save for retirement. It's just such a win, win, win. I feel good when one one of my clients, like that gentleman I mentioned before, he has A million dollars in the bank that if he would have waited another three months, he wouldn't have been able to do it. I'm sure he would have been fine. But there's cases of other people that have worked and put their money in their business their whole life and they haven't been able to say because the capital demands of the business. Yeah. And so it can be very valuable asset to piece of the wheel to be able to retire and have the government share in it and you share in it and be able to provide for your family in retirement and not be dependent on your kids or whatever else. So, I mean, that's what really excites me is to be able to help people. And you know, I have a line. I just why people ask me why when I'm going to retire and I say, well, I'm not sure. I mean, I just really like what I do. I mean I advise, you know, mostly in New Mexico, but I do around the country as well. And I say, I advise people who've been former governors and Hollywood people and people from all over and leaders of our community, the chamber of commerce and presidents and regents and all kinds of things. And I say, they come to me and they ask me for my advice and I give it to them and they pretty much almost always take it. That's a pretty positive feeling to have that kind of feedback from the leaders of our communities that come to you and value your opinion. And that's really what keeps me going. I don't necessarily have to work, but I love working and I love helping clients. And positive feedback is.

Makes it worth it.

Yeah.

So if I'm listening to this and I want help with my pension plan or I want to create one or I'm going to be selling my business and I, I want to know options on how I can do that. The best way. How can people get a hold of you? What's the best way to get a hold of you?

The best way really is just an email. So it's been the same ever since I started my business. Pretty simple and straightforward is Ronron Patterson pension dot com. It's a one word. So my last name is P A T T I S O N and then pension. The singular I always told people and that's really the best way. You can always that way you can figure out when time is I definitely going to be at the office and on my phone, not in a meeting. Someone could always call me at the office and leave a message at 505-88945-5.4, extension 1. But you might may hit or miss me if you call. But if we communicate by email, that's really the best way to sure get a hold of me.

Well, Ron, thank you for being here. Thanks for sharing your story. It's. I know if people work with you, I know they can trust you and I know you're going to do the right thing for them. So thanks for being here.

Thanks, Gary. It's been a pleasure talking to you.