How Nevada LLCs Can Save Your Business From Total Financial Disaster (Must-Know Tips)

Dr. Thomas J. Powell and Brent Busquet discuss how Nevada LLCs and trusts protect business assets from creditors. Single-member LLCs may not offer charging order protection in all states, while irrevocable trusts provide real ownership changes that revocable trusts cannot. Nevada, Delaware, and Wyoming offer the strongest protections, but entities require ongoing administration and review by litigation, tax, and trust specialists.
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Welcome back to another issue of the Powell Perspective. I'm Tom Powell and joining me again, very pleased to have Brent Busquet from Laughlin and Associates. And now more importantly for me, Laughlin Black, which as we mentioned before, I am an investor in that new go forward enterprise. And we're very excited about it. We're here talking about asset protection and LLCs and the different formations you can have and a lot of other things as well, including shooting of cans and names and phone books and stuff. So a little bit more fun and lively here. So thanks for joining us, Brent. Appreciate you here.
Thank you for having me.
So last time when we were chatting, we were going down the single member llc and then of course, soon as we go off air, you start giving us a lot of good information that is really helpful for people to understand because my bias with or against the single member LLCs and where they go is a little different than what you're seeing in the court cases that are coming through. And again, we're not giving legal advice, but these are things that you're seeing that come through that solidify up what's going on with single member LLCs.
Yeah, the weakness of the LLC itself has always been it was designed to be a partnership. I think as we stated last time.
Five states have absolute protection for single member LLCs with charging order protection. But we're starting to see with the popularity of the LLC becoming, you know, 8 out of 10 new business formations are LLCs. We are starting to get case law now that is dispelling the nomer that a single member LLC has no protection.
So if you're not in one of those five states and you a charging order, some people wouldn't know what that is. So maybe you can explain a little bit about that and then. But if you're not in one of those states or one of those five states and you have an LLC and you get a charging order, they can still get to your bank accounts.
They can still, they could still get to your bank accounts and in a worst case scenario, maybe foreclose on an asset to satisfy the need.
So what is a charging order?
Charging order protection is designed that originally again for partners that if Tom was to be sued or caused a lawsuit on behalf of the company in a traditional partnership, ship our joint assets together, our business assets could be taken or in some cases you could be removed and somebody could step in. And now I have another partner that I don't like and who is not out for my best interest. The charging order said, okay, if you were to cause that a harm, then what would happen is they're entitled to your distributions if the company is profitable. So if the company's profitable and you are entitled to distribution, they would be entitled to that distribution. So if it was a $1 million judgment and your distributions were $2,000 a year, what would happen? It would take a lifetime to pay off.
Which is a great negotiation tool in a settlement to make a lawsuit go away. We have charging order protection. You can wait the next 30 or 40 years to be bait, whole, or what can you do? We do have an insurance policy and we would be glad to share our insurance agent with you and you guys can negotiate.
Got it. So it's so interesting in law that there's terms that intersect and they don't actually even necessarily sometimes mean the same things. So one of the things that I've seen for the single member LLCs, and this is from well documented experience, is the litigating attorney sends a subpoena. So they're in the discovery phase of, you know, putting together that, that suit. And they say, I want XYZ LLC's tax returns. And it's a single member LLC, which means in the IRS's eyes, it got disregarded off the tax returns. It didn't actually file its own tax returns, kept its own books and records, did everything perfectly. But it shows up as on a, what's called a schedule C or a sole proprietor on the, the single member owner's tax returns. So now what has happened is you talked about, okay, you've got the spouse that's got the W2, is that all of those incomes, the child, everything that comes in there, any alimony, support they're having, any real estate, farm income, all of that other stuff gets turned over to the litigating attorney in the form of tax returns.
And you're 100% that one. Again, working with, you know, a lawful or a lawful in black. If you got into that situation, we're going to put you with the right defense team. And I think there's a very valid argument that those tax returns are not relevant for the lawsuit itself. Now, if we lose a judgment and we get to the debtor's exam, I would agree with you, an inexperienced attorney, an inexperienced defendant, might just happen to hand those over in deposition, which again would be a mistake. So having a team to help you put the right people to defend you, I think we could avoid that. But if we could not avoid that, you know, you have a valid, you have a valid point. Now we are Giving them a false picture of what the LLC is really doing. Because we're lumping on our personal tax returns other sources of income, whether it's W2 investments or anything that we might be throwing flowing through. We're giving them a false sense of picture of what the LLC truly generates.
Well, and is there another strategy possibly out there? I know that we've used at different times where we use LLCs as holding companies. Right. So they hold the other entities and that money's never necessarily going to get distributed to the shareholders. It's going to go in perpetuity for a while at least before it gets. It's going to grow and the entity is going to pay its taxes. Can an llc, is it always taxed as a partnership or can it be taxed as a corporation?
Hence the popularity of 8 out of 10 new formations being LLC is you can be taxed as a disregarded entity, which that's what we've covered. You could be taxed as a partnership, you could be taxed as an S Corp and you could be taxed as a C Corp. So the flexibility of the LLC is, is great and we can go into a lot of other flexible aspects of it, but the taxation is very important when you're looking at this. And you mentioned other strategies. Right. So if we have a profitable venture or a valuable asset, typically we are probably going to have more than one llc.
Absolutely.
In our strategy.
Yeah. And it really does end up, I look at it as. And the analogy I use a lot for this is over the last hundred years in the United States, the entrepreneur has been moved on to the chessboard. So originally the business people launching companies, getting out there, they were playing chess, building a business, doing farming or whatever, and they went all in. It doesn't mean they don't go all in. It's just that it's not wizard chess that if the, if that piece dies, that you die too. Right.
And you don't want to be the pawn on the side.
You don't want to be on the pawn on the side of the board. And yet there's the banks that want to have you have a personal guarantee, which all of a sudden, and especially if they cause for your spouse also to sign the personal guarantee, then all assets are now part of that guarantee. You went on the chessboard. If you are not properly set up in your structure, you went onto the chessboard. If you don't have various things as you get more complicated, more wealth in there, more assets you need to protect and strategies you're on the chessboard, whether it's from your charitable remainder trusts, your irrevocable trust, your revocable trust, your eyelets. Your eyelets. All of the things that get so complicated. And you know what? I think most of the people gloss over. I mean, if we have five people listening to this besides our friends or family members is going to be amazing to me. But it is something that's really important out there, because you're talking about just in the one formation, I've got an llc, and I may or may not have done it. Right. How do you. How do you. On the last show you talked about, you'd love people to go to LegalZoom or Rocket Lawyer to start with, because then they come to us and get it fixed.
Why?
And what's your process for that?
Well, as you know, one of the things is, as you know, it's best to start out right, not to have any lapses in a misstep. It's a lot easier to be proactive than reactive. And when we're reactive, we're on our heels and we're in defense mode. I will. I always want to be in the driver's seat. So when, you know, jokingly, when I said we love those, those Rocket lawyers and legal zooms in the time that a lot of times that it takes somebody to realize that they're missing the pieces, is it too late or is it at a. Is it at a situation that there's something we can do, but we can't completely protect them? So coming and having it, doing it right is very important.
We mentioned how when we have an entity, it's too good to be true. I file, you know, $100 and I pay $100 a year. I'm afforded all of these protections.
That's going to keep you from ever getting sued, ever having a lawsuit, ever personally being named in a lawsuit because you had a company. Right.
And. And most likely, if that's the situation, which, you know, there's hundreds of thousands of people out there right now exactly in that situation. Or maybe they even went to an attorney to do this filing for them and the filing is right, the initial documentation that they were handed is 100% correct. It's the after, what am I supposed to do next? And when we're talking about LLCs and corporations, the internal documentation and let's call them the permission slips, we have to make sure this entity is not an extension of myself. Right? It is its own legal entity. I am not the llc. The LLC is not me. If we merge those and we become one. We've lost.
How many business owners that have LLCs do you hear say, my company, we.
Sit all the time and it's in some of what. Some of my talks that I do when I'm on stage, that's the first thing we mentioned. Right. Is you meet somebody. I own this. Right. And then take some of these people. What do their trucks say? Their truck says ABC Contractor. And they're towing their, you know, their big boat, their $150,000, $200,000 boat. They're advertising to the world, making themselves a target.
Now, that big boat does say on its name, change order, right?
Yeah.
So I always love that. I don't know if you ever remember seeing the picture of the dinghy and it said contractor on it and the yacht said change order. That's how they all make. All make their money. Yeah. I mean, you're. You're spot on that. I know in my career now, for the people that are kind of new to our show, anybody that's been listening to it, especially my family that listens to this stuff, they get tired of it. But I started my first business when I was 12, right. Out of necessity, we needed to be able to have some extra heat in the house and some food and some different things. We're mowing lawns. We get employees, actually get someone to open a bank account for us. And all of that happened without a lot of legalities. We had to get a business license, and I remember that, and had to. Had to have a family member sign for the business license for us. The banking was actually remarkably easy at the time. And a payroll account. There was no such thing as QuickBooks. And yeah, I'm dating myself, you know, so this is back in the 70s. But that formation has grown over the years of being an entrepreneur. For now going on, gosh, 45 years and having those various iterations, you know, the complexities of just my enterprises, as much as. Probably as much as anybody except our attorneys. And it's complex. Did we set that up so that, you know, because we're criminals and if you Google me, you're going to see that I'm a criminal. And of course, you know, we take lots of people's money. Is that why these were the entity purposes?
No entity should be set up for that, you know, for that purpose. Right. Weird. When we're setting up entities, we are protecting ourselves from a dangerous world. We're not avoiding responsibility of harming somebody. We're not avoiding what we might do. We are protecting Ourselves from predators, you know, and it's very easy to see how much the times have changed where it's a, you know, a predator eats predator world. Everybody is attacking each other. Why? Because they think they deserve something that they didn't work for and we have the obligation to be able to protect ourselves from.
They think that that child should wear the bicycle helmet or somebody should wear a seat belt or whatever it is. There are some reasons that we've got very good protections in place. The problem is, is that they can be misused to take. Like you said, if you've got a well funded litigation team on the other side, you are going to settle.
Yeah.
Because they will go the distance. I mean, if you are also well funded and you can go the distance, that also happens to get to where you can actually get adjudicated in a court of law at some point and create case law.
But again, with, with a proper structure, everything being done right, if you get outspent and they win a judgment and you've done everything right, they're not getting anything. They're not getting anything right. You know, and that's the nice thing to know that you could protect yourself where you have somebody who's going to purposely outspend you. And usually when you get outspend, what is it? It's the government or a vendetta. They somebody with deep pockets has a true vendetta. Not a factual case against you, but a personal vendetta.
Right. And you see, you do see that happen and you see it happen with it makes the news more when it's a movie star type scenario or someone and you know, they kind of joke about it, but it's not really a joke, it's a reality. And you said something just, just a bit ago, it's laying the foundation for security. I don't think those are exactly your words. But another analogy I use is if you start taking martial arts when you're 11 or 12, in my case, for the, for the starting the first business and that you get attacked in an ALLEYWAY when you're 45 and you happen to be a master at that point in time because you've kept up with it, is it really your fault for being a master at martial arts? Or was it that you had the foresight to see that there are unfortunately bad things that happen in the world.
And in most cases in that scenario, as a master, you did it for defense, not to go on to the tack to be a bully. You did it for the defense of some of that bully who is coming after you in the dark alley?
I'm going to move to trusts for a minute and boy, talk about a complex. And there's probably five podcasts alone on there and we'd need to bling Elizabeth and others into the scenario. But the trusts. Why are trusts an important part of something that happens within all of these legal setups?
You really opened the door here. So when we're talking about trust, there's a lot of trust out there. There's a lot of trusts that have different names to be fancy in marketing. So if we're talking about and typically an irrevocable trust, let's start with a.
Revocable trust because that's what probably most people have.
We'll reverse it. So if when we talk about a revocable trust, let's just say the living trust or the family trust, that would be your common revocable trust. There is no asset protection in that type of trust. It is to avoid probate. And in some senses you have revocable trust. Let's take the land trust for an example that a lot of people use. No real asset protection. It's a layer that's providing you privacy. So when we're talking about that type of trust, even though it might not typically have asset protection, it could still be used strategically in the plan as the mapping that we're doing. That as you start to think, what pieces do I need? So it's a piece. So did I wouldn't disregard it. I think everybody should have a living trust no matter what.
So it goes back to that chessboard of in the more complex, if you're playing three level chess, you have a more complex system than if you're playing checkers, right? And even when we're playing checkers, you've got that small little enterprise like I did back at when I was 12 and by default I was a sole proprietor, right? So that was by default. And then the next venture that I did was a partnership and that was also by default. Right? Because that's just was there was two people and they weren't of the same family marital scenario, so they're a partner. And then that happens where they're both general partners. Unless there's a way to be able to say one of them is a minority partner. And now then they over the years formed and we went through the LLCs and as you said starting in the 80s and 90s and corporations and far too many companies to actually count at this point in life. But those trusts become part of the plan and trusts can be very inexpensive. You can get them again off legal zoom and you can answer a couple questions. Your living trust, right?
Yeah, we've seen them for $199.
Yeah. So that can help. And that's better than not doing it. I'll agree to that. But you can also spend tens of thousands of dollars on trust design.
Yeah. So. And that would be where we would get into the irrevocable trust. And again we can go on this topic and use these in a hundred different ways. But the traditional way that you we would see most common is a trust is its own legal entity. It is not you. So in the US there's basically two things that can own something. People or an irrevocable trust. It becomes a legal owner. That's not you. So in most asset protection and the.
Reason that a company is not that is because at the end of the day, somebody still owns the company.
Somebody stolen the company.
Nobody owns their revocable trust.
Correct.
Is that correct?
That is correct.
And in the way it's used most is you're gifting an asset or a thing to the trust. By doing that, you no longer own it. It is not yours. It's no different than if I took a hundred dollars out of my wallet right now and gave it to you. It is yours now.
Give it over.
It's no longer mine. Right. So I've effectively given it. Now there's different states that have different trust laws. And I'll go back to Nevada again. Nevada has some of the best trust laws for their irrevocable.
So Nevada is this teeny tiny state. How does it have these great laws?
The laws were designed as an attraction point. You pointed it out. If you, if you are in Nevada, which we were 40 years ago. Right. Look at Reno, look at Carson. I mean the size has. Reno used to be isolated from Meadow wood Mall to 80.
Absolutely right.
And that was it. You know, and from all the way down. And for those of you who know Reno, Reno is now spread out through the whole valley here. And it used to be isolated in the middle of the bowl. It was a way to attract and bring in different types of business besides gaming and prostitution. I mean you, you nailed it. Those that was the revenue generator. What generated revenue and allowed Nevada to be a tax free state is gaming and prostitution.
Gaming has now expanded throughout the United States. There's multiple states in the world that have gaming. Online gaming is legal in some aspects. So it was a way to attract and bring companies, enterprises to the state to use it, and in some cases it was crafted knowing that we didn't have to put the, the.
The tax, you know, the, the infrastructure, we didn't have to add infrastructure. It was designed so you could have a business entity, you can have a structure in Nevada without put adding schools, without people using our roads and adding water. So it was a great way to pump up the economy to actually bring large businesses in. And with the foresight that these are legal protections that everybody should have access.
To and you talk about it, I think one of the good points that you make too is Microsoft licensing is headquartered in Nevada. It is, it's not up in Redmond, Washington. There's a reason for that.
It's not too far.
Oracle's treasury is here, Apple's treasury is here. There's reasons that those happen.
Citibank processes all credit cards.
Yeah. So those things happen in little Nevada which now does have more than 3 million people on it. So it's a mid sized state for it. The point I wanted to get back to is the certainty of laws is where as practitioners out in the field, as business and where we have our legal and our accounting people, that's where you can kind of get a straight Runway. That's why oftentimes right now we talk about oh it's the election and there's uncertainty or the market's moving up or the market's moving down. Uncertainty doesn't play well with business unless that's your business is uncertainty. So Nevada's every, you know, other year, 120 days, except when special session is a big deal. The other thing that I think is really important that we did take from, from Delaware is we have a business court.
And you know, Nevada was the third state to have to have a business court. And we are seeing more states now start to adopt that. But that's powerful when you have judges in a business court who are instructed to follow the state statute and most law, most litigation might use state statutes as a charging, as a way to charge you with a crime or something, but not necessarily to defend you. They default to case law.
With business courts, especially Delaware, Nevada, you know, you have Wyoming that you can throw in there. The judges are instructed to fill, follow.
The statutes and they're business judges. They're not listening to a business case here and then a custody case here. And that doesn't happen anymore because we generally have family law. But you do have, where they're, they're having a vagrant case over here and a business case over here. And it takes a Much different person to understand the complexities of the two.
I mean, you just pointed out, you know, a thing about family law and, you know, having different cases. So last year there was a case against a business in Minden in Gardnerville, in family court.
Client came to me, said, hey, we're going, you know, I can we get a copy of our records? I need to provide it to the court. I said, what quarter are you at? And they said, we're at the family court. And I said, you know, stop, have your attorney come in. Let's talk to the attorney. Did you know that this is mandated to be in business court? All you have to do is request it. And it was moved out of the family court to business court, where the case was dismissed. The reason it was in family court is the plaintiff was friends with the judge and they were able to get it because you had somebody who didn't know that they had the option to use the business court. But once it got to the business court, it was dismissed.
That's, that's fascinating. I'm going to turn this back around. I know we're going to run out of time here, but to Laughlin Black and to the trusts and the entities and setting these all up, I'm sure to most of the business people out there, I just want to run my business. And you're absolutely right. That's the driving force for why we created Laughlin Black. So when we were running one of our enterprises and doing business in multinational areas, I had a big team of in house counsel, lawyers, accountants, all of that, and systems and structure for all of our various entities and how to keep those managers manage. So we're using Laughlin Services, you know, good customer, I would guess, over years, and then we would do those, take them in house. But Laughlin we left at the door, right? And it wasn't that Laughlin wasn't there for us to pick up and talk to. They were, you were always available to us if we had questions, but you weren't there. Holding our hands to make sure absolutely everything from minutes to a transfer of a loan, but interdepartment loan, all of those things, insurance, liabilities, all those things were there. So in, in the opportunity of learning that I've had over this last, you know, seven, eight years of going with, you know, against the government, I've learned the value both of the setup of planting that tree, but then more so of nurturing that tree. And that's where Laughlin Black comes in. So. So one of the pieces, I'd say About like even in setting up an irrevocable trust.
Even our best attorneys, who I love you very well, they hand you the book.
They do.
And then it's yours to kind of like you get, you know, I have a new granddaughter. It's here's the baby, go home. And you're kind of there going like, what the heck are you supposed to do with this new baby? And we've done that with raising kids.
It's.
They don't. They do survive, but they're not necessarily proper. And so Laughlin Black is about that roadmap of how do you keep it alive and venture and go forward and prosper?
I mean, you brought up a good point as a lot of times when somebody sets up an asset protection structure or even a simple business structure or let's keep it really simple. I set up my LLC for my business and I set up my living trust. Most people set it and forget it. What has changed over the 10 years since you created the living trust? Probably a lot.
A lot. You buy a house and it's just too much problem. I can't find the trust paper. I'm not going to put it in there.
And your excuse is I've been running my business. I'm making money. I said it, forgot it. You need to have the team there so you can just go run your business. And the team is keeping you in line. The team is coordinating. The team is reaching out and making sure. Tom, what has changed? So we don't want to get into thing where we look at our living trust or God forbid we die. Our kids get the living trust and the only asset is our childhood home. That our parents have gone through seven homes since then. Yeah. Which we see all the time. We see it all the time.
It happens. Right. Or it's on the bank account and then you can't even get access to the bank account because you're not the trustee on it on the scenario. So you can't close it out. So you're putting your own money in. Those are things that happen because they did it late night on LegalZoom and not bashing LegalZoom or.
Rocket Lawyer. Great tools, great tools out there. And I'd rather see people do something rather than nothing because again, starting that company at 12, you couldn't do it today. First of all, the CPS would be there and say you can't do it. You can't operate a lawnmower. But it is important to know. And the other part of the trusts are the trust attorneys. The that set these things up. I'm, I'm just amazed at how few of them have litigation arms. And the reason I say that as so it's not a, it's not pounding on anybody out there for litigation or for setting up trusts or having that in there. But if you haven't had your work tested, it's just like having case law, you haven't had it tested well.
And as you know, and we do this all the time, if you have a litigation arm and you have your trust creation side, and let's add another piece, we have the tax side for estate planning and for trust, which is going to be different than what your local CPA is going to be able to help you with. You can challenge each other, you could put things to test. And it's important. And I think anytime you do a structure, you don't want one set of eyes looking at it. So if I do a blueprint, which is a map of where I think you should be, and I don't map you out of just where you are today, we're also going to map maybe what some of the near future looks like. So what does the end game look like? Well, it's not, I might be the creator, the mastermind of it, but multiple sets of eyes are going to look at it. The litigation, the trust, the accounting team, everybody's going to take a look at it and we're going to pick it apart and fight and make sure that you have the right product.
And so going back to a question I asked, and I know we're getting close on time, but, and this is, this is not a sales pitch, but this is for something out there. Some people are going to have questions, are going to be like, I don't know if I'm set up right, where's the place to start? And start seeing if what they have now is as impenetrable or ready to transfer assets as they think it is.
The places to reach out to us, you know, and we're talking big. We're talking big. The things that sound really big and they are, but we are very affordable. When you look at the fact of. I would, I almost want to say that pretty much everything we do, it's not really an expense, which it is business expense, it's a write off, it's an investment. Because typically what we design is going to get you a return that as an investment and make sure you keep it. So, you know, we do initial consultations for free. So you can call and we will have that initial conversation to get to know you to see what the next steps are.
And that includes looking at the trusts or the entities. Are you in the right entity? I know that we just had a sole proprietor come in that we got him into three different LLCs initially. I mean he was going to go into an LLC anyway, but it's going to be a single member llc and then we put them into some other different things for structure that also helped with the transfer of a trust. That's getting done. So it's more of a holistic approach, again utilizing the legal team. Neither Brent nor myself, we don't offer legal advice. We offer legal strategy with the attorneys and same with the accountants. So that scenario works out.
30 years ago plant a tree or today plant a tree.
Which one's providing shade, right?
Yeah, yeah. Which one's providing shade? But just because you didn't plan it doesn't mean you shouldn't be planting it now.
And something you know too, we're not always adding onto structures. No, there's a lot of times where we're looking at pieces that people don't need and we're simplifying and making their life more manageable and providing more protection in some cases of, of what they have.
Well, we've definitely gone through that and I appreciate that because there are times that it's more complex and there's a reason and you've got a bigger team, but then you sell off certain portions of the business. It's like, oh, we don't actually need that. We needed that because it was doing this or this, you know, various parts. And it does sound funny that a multibillion dollar now trillion dollar value corporation uses these strategies. Why should an individual small business owner. Well, a small business owner still has a lot at stake. A small business owner in today's world can be a $10 million company which has a valuation at maybe 20, $30 million. It can be a $2 million company that's almost all the assets besides home. People start adding these things up and it's not everybody, but it's at risk.
What I would say the smaller, the small person has more to lose. You know, Microsoft folds, you are going to still have multiple billionaires walk away from a collapse. If Microsoft collapsed.
Right.
You a smaller. And when I say smaller, you know, a three million dollar business is still a small business in today's world. If you lose that three million dollar business or something happens, you're probably going to go back and you're going to probably end up renting an apartment. You're probably going to go buy a used car and you're going to start this journey over if you have the time to do it or the energy in some cases, right. So it becomes very imperative to have the right pieces in. So you can walk away whole or as we've said, right, sometimes you can walk away completely. The whole rebrand be up the very next day without missing a beat.
And that's an interesting part. It's for another show. But the next show would be the shit's hit the fan. It's not hit the fan, it's aiming at the fan and you know it's coming in. Is it too late? And the answer is no. Get stuff in place. Don't do anything improper or illegal. That's absolutely what you don't want to do. But you get it set up. But you can start your new life right away even while you're cleaning up the old messes. And that's an important part because what is fantastic about this country setup and you've got to think that even in what is the land of the United States, before it was the United States, debtors prison existed here, right? So you had entrepreneurs that swung for the fences, they missed, the economy changed. Whatever happened, they were put in prison until they needed to pay that back. Our founder said that's not cool. We need to have that entrepreneurial spirit, that free enterprise. And guess what, the economy changes, rates go up, rates go down, businesses fail and so there's not a debtor's prison. And that's why you now want to take this to the next stage, which is you don't just have the constitutional protections, it's through the entities and Nevada being one of the best states. Last question for you and we'll close out. Does it make sense that even if you live in Alabama and if you're running a multi stage company that has certain risks that you might want a Wyoming or a Delaware or Nevada entity for parts of the holdings that you're. You're having.
I would say if you had that scenario, it's going to be a must have Delaware, Wyoming or Nevada involved into your strategy and structure and we can open this up later. We have intellectual property which a lot of times people don't even realize how much intellectual property they have. You know, we were talking about a little bit today, as you know, there's intellectual intellectual property sitting everywhere. What do you do with that? How do you do it? You know, we've talked before, if I can just pick your brain and you said do this, this and this, could I become a millionaire in a month if I just followed every single instruction? Right?
Yeah, that.
We could do that right now. Right? You stay at my hip, just do everything I say. That's intellectual property and you're not leveraging it. There's assets that should not be a part of an operating company that could be strategically moved to these preferred states. Ownership, hold, holdings, management, company management, holding companies versus marketing, marketing companies that all could be branched out in strategic manners to protect everything.
These can be tax strategies. They're by no means a way to avoid taxes, but they are a way to manage the proper flow of where taxes should be or the best tax strategies, just like the ultra wealthy do. But at the same time, don't ever let an entity company tell you that if you're operating your business in Alabama that you don't need to have an Alabama entity because you do need to have an Alabama entity as well. It's these other structures that get beyond that.
But take it too. If you're with an Alabama attorney, he's probably going to tell you your only option is Alabama. He's giving you the one piece of the.
It is amazing still and having a doctor in law and, you know, law degree from Northwestern. It is amazing how many attorneys who are very professional and very knowledgeable, again, they had one course on entity and it's a hammer and a nail. And so they know this law and they're not wrong. It's just they're not diverse.
The book in front of you probably has more course material in it than they cover than they would cover in typically in law school. I would agree.
I agree. Well, Brent, again, Brent Busquet, Laughlin, Laughlin Black. They find you@laughlin USA laughlinblack.com laughlinusa.com or laughlinblack.com okay. And for those that aren't familiar with Nevada, it's Laughlin is L A U G H L I N. Right? Laughlin.
If you're from the east coast, it's not laughing.
Laughing. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. So, and I'm Tom Powell and this is the Powell perspective. And I appreciate you tuning in. Thank you and have a great day.
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