How to Protect Your Company's Secrets and Client Lists

Hello everybody. Welcome to your weekly dose of some good tax and legal planning. My name is Mark Kohler, best selling author, radio show host and a cpa. An attorney that can actually walk and chew gum and make this somewhat interesting. Don't go anywhere yet until I explain the topic today. Maybe you saw the title down there, protecting your company secrets and your client lists. You may think, Mark, I don't need to worry about that. And I know we're normally talking about some maybe cool tax strategies or some legal structuring. I will open it up for Q and a here after I get through the main topic. So if you're listening first, this webinar is for you. This live broadcast on entrepreneur, on my personal Facebook and on YouTube. So please get engaged, stay here for maybe 20, 30 minutes and throw out some questions. I'm live. Sometimes people make me hold up a newspaper to prove that I'm live. This has not been remastered and reshot and re uploaded. This is it. So I'm here for you. So, so type your name below the city or state you're from and a question on tax and legal and we'll hit the structuring or any current tax issues you might be facing. But the topic I want to cover first is how do I protect these company secrets? And I've got five threats that may surprise you. Five threats, and I wrote them down here and we're going to go through them and I have a solution for each one. The first one is say you're out there raising capital. So number one, I'm going to put five threats to you in your business that where you could lose your secrets or your client list. The first one is a potential buyer of your business, an investor or partner. Believe it or not, not everybody out there is maybe as honest as you. And they're going to look at your business and say, oh my gosh, this is so cool, I could do it better. They take your idea and your list and your contacts and go open up across the street. They can do that unless you lock them down with some protection for yourself. That's number one. Number two is your current partners. Isn't that sad? But it's true. Oh my gosh, I'm dealing with this today. The phone call I had before I came over here today was someone where partners are fighting and they've split up. And your partner may take some of those secrets, the secret sauce, the client lists, your data, your software and go compete with you. We got to worry about that. Number three are your employees. Oh really? I Might fire an employee and they're disgruntled and they actually might go compete with me and take my clients and secrets. Oh my gosh. Who thought that would ever happen? Then number four is the soon to be X. Oh no. This is my X. Ex husband. Ex wife. You mean there might be an upset marriage partner that wants to steal some secrets from your business and just out of spite cause problems in your business. Happens all the time. We've got to worry about that. And number five, fifth threat in this whole equation is contracts, relationships with others. So I'm going to just put contracts. JVs working with other people that are out there. Just wolves and sheep's clothing. They want to take advantage of you. So I'm going to talk about a solution for each one of these five and then I want to field your questions and we'll hit whatever. It's tax and legal day. Whoo. And I hope you're excited about this now. Also, I'm going to be giving away three different books today. I hate this. Rosalie says I have to do it. I'm cheap. I've got to give away a hundred dollar workbook. This is a big deal. Eight steps to start and grow your business. 60 little videos. You get it immediately and can start scanning your phone over QR codes or watching little videos, podcasts, webinars, and learn to build your business or start one and you get a business plan, a strat plan and a marketing plan with it. Lots of fun. And I'll tell you who our winners were last week for the drawing. The Tax and Legal Playbook 2nd Edition. The game has changed people. Donald Trump and the GOP turned everything upside down. There's new tax laws and new legal laws that you want to be aware of. That's the second edition, just came out last month. It's hot. And then the business owner's guide to financial freedom. What Wall street isn't taking you telling you. What are you going to. Where are you going to take the profits of your business? Where are you going to put them? So got three books. We're giving them away. All you have to do is share this video with your followers, your friends, your family. Rosalie in the morning is going to draw a winner and you'll get that wonderful email that says you won something free and I'll sign it free shipping. So, okay, let's do it. Let's talk about these five things now. Number one, if you're going to look for an investor in your business, partner in your business, you know, I don't like the I word, the investors kind of scary. A silent partner is equivalent an investor. And if you take money from a little grandma and make promises and you lose her money, you could end up in court or maybe even in jail. So we want to be careful with the I word. You want to have proper documentation whenever you have an investor. But you may be looking for a buyer that's going to buy your business. It's time to cash in. Or a potential partner that you can just in a 15 or 20 minute consult with one of my lawyers or we'll send you one for free. You can touch it up, use it over and over again and have us just go over it with you. I just don't want to give this out because it's kind of like a loaded gun. I want to show you how to cock it and pull the trigger, but we can do it quick. So the NDA is where you want to be. And all of you out there, if you're going to be taking money and sharing some of your client strategies, client lists, and you can even be in real estate saying, ooh, we're going to take down this apartment building and condominium is it we're going to be developing over here. Don't be telling people crap unless they've signed a non disclosure, which means they can't share that information with anyone. Or there is going to finish my. Or there is repercussions. They are called liquidated damages where you can go after them for real money if they break the agreement. So you want to have an NDA and have everybody sign it before you share your business plan, your strap plan or open up your kimono. You want to make sure you've got that NDA. Current partners, really? A partner would steal from me? They can. So current partners, it's really important you solve this in two different in one of two ways. You're going to cover it in your LLC operating agreement. In fact, let's do. Yeah, I'll just leave it here. LLC operating agreement or in your partnership agreement. And sometimes you have it in a buy sell agreement. Buy sell agreement. Now these are things that a lawyer is going to draft up for you and tailor to your needs. It's not something you might find perfect verbiage on your freaking legal zoom document. So be careful going online and just downloading what you think is going to work. What I like to put in a partnership agreement is hey, if we ever split up, here's what one partner gets to take from the business. Here's what the other partner gets to take. And there could be an automatic buyout. If one partner wants out, they have to buy themselves out. Or there's a non compete where that partner can get bought out but they can't go compete against the business. I mean, there's all different ways to handle this. But guys, here's the thing. If your partner's not willing to talk about it, you got the wrong partner. So make sure you've got a really good relationship where you're partnered with, where you can talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. It's easy to get around Denny's eating a grand slam and talk about, hey, we're going to make so much money, you know, but then when you go, what happens if we have to put more money in or what happens if we lose money? What happens if you want out? What happens if you've got to move? What happens if you're disabled? What happens if you go through a divorce? If you can't have that conversation with your partner again, you may have the wrong partner, but that's how you solve it. Okay, this is getting messy here. So I'm going to go to employees over here. Employees, what do we do over here? Now, for any of you watching, still write down your questions. And if it's on point, ladies, I want you to raise your hand and Mallory, Rosalie or Maria is going to pose that question from wherever you're at in the world. And if it's not on this topic, but on tax and legal, we're going to hit all that general Q and A here at the end. So employees, here's you got two ways to handle this. The easiest way to do it is an employee handbook. Everybody that works for you in your Office as a W2 on the, on the payroll, you want to make sure you have an employee handbook. We got three or four versions in our law firm. Depending on the type of business. They could range from 15 to 30 pages. You're going to talk about drug abuse, bringing guns onto the premises, time off vacations and non compete clause that if they want to leave, they cannot compete against you. And those can be hard to enforce, but at least you want to throw it in there. You also want to have in there the non disclosure and the non solicitation. So a lot of times in a law firm, let's just get real. I cannot have a lawyer in my law firm and say no non compete. If you leave my law firm, you can't be a lawyer in this town. Bull crap. No, no one's going to allow that if they want to go be a lawyer in town, they can. But I can require a non solicitation where I can say you cannot go after my clients. You want to go start your own firm, go do it. But you got to start fresh. And so you want to have some of those bells and whistles. And every industry is a little different for you lawyers watching right now, you're cringing because you're like Mark, you know, it's not a perfect world out there. I know every little sick case is a. It depends. But you want to have an employee handbook. And whenever you give raises and employee reviews is a good time to roll out the next year's annual handbook. And let me say this, make sure it is signed. You've got to have an employee handbook signed by your employee and they have to be given a copy. And when they sign it, it says I have received a copy. You can't have an employee handbook. An employee has never seen it. You can't enforce that. So get on it now. An employee contract is a little unique. I don't like employee contracts or employment contracts because I like the at will state, which is most states, which means you can fire them if you don't like what they're doing and they can quit if they don't like what they're doing. When you start signing employment contracts, I don't know if you're signing Matt Lauer to your new, you know, TV program, but you want to have an employee contract with some provisions, right? So let's be careful with employee contracts. But I really like the employee handbook. If they want to get a raise, they got to sign the employee handbook. Alright, now where are we at on our list? We talked about potential buyers, current partners, employees, the ex guys. I know how hard it is. I've been married 27 years. If you've been married more than two or three years, you've had your ups and downs already. It can be hard with over 50% of marriages ending in divorce. You've got to think about this. If you're building a business and your marriage is deteriorating, there's going to be a butting of heads at some point. How much is that business worth? What is the ex wife or ex husband get? Is it. How's it going to play into alimony or any sort of asset settlement if things are on the rocks? You want to be, I would say proactive about talking about protecting the business. Now this is not about screwing over your spouse. We want to be ethical. We want to have integrity here and A court, a court of equity is what a divorce court is. They're going to sit back and go, what's going on here? Is this yahoo been hiding assets or trying to hide the business real value so that this poor spouse gets ripped off? Male or female, they're going to do their best to make sure that doesn't happen. So don't get too. I'm not going to help you do that at our law firm. But. But could you sign maybe? I'm going to put marriage here as our next topic. Could you maybe think outside the box and sign a prenup? Would that be a smart idea? If you own a frickin business and you're going to get married. So let's talk prenup. Also. I just helped a client the other day do a postnup. That's what a Rod and Madonna signed. They signed a postnup. And a postnup is pretty cool. You're saying, hey, we've been married a while, it was kind of working. But I don't know, I don't want to turn into a fight about money. And so Madonna and a Rod said, let's sign a postnup. Let's split our assets up fairly and let's stay married. Let's not worry about the money. Money is one of the biggest causes of a problem in a marriage. So if you want to get it off the table, it's called a postnup. Very common. And you may want to do that with your business. Say, hey, spouse, if we get divorced, I keep the business. You get this, this and this. Are we cool now? You can go build the business and not stress about it. Right? It's an idea. So think of prenup and postnup and in your divorce decree. If you're going into divorce right now, you want to make sure. Divorce. Can I spell this right? The big D. And I don't mean Dallas. I'm a terrible handwriter. You know, people have told me, mark, I'm going to teach you how to write on a whiteboard so people can read it. I got to get better that. So the big D. If you're getting a divorce, make sure you talk about the business in the divorce decree. Non solicitation. Again, non disclosure. Do you want your spouse out there yapping about your business or competing against you? Again, male or female? This is, this is not a gender issue. There's many, many female business owners out there that have a deadbeat husband and vice versa. So be careful and make sure it's addressed in Your divorce. Okay, now, before we go to questions on tax and legal and any of this good stuff, the last thing is contracts. You want to make sure that if you're hiring the big one subcontractors, you want to make sure that your subs are waiving any interest in your business or they're going to release any claims to the revenue. Let me give you two examples. Let's say I'm working on a new book, and I've got maybe a ghostwriter or someone helping with editing. I make sure they all sign a release of any interest in that book because I don't want them coming back going, I wrote that chapter. I want a piece of the action. Oh, I didn't put that in the contract, did I? You got to be thinking of what people may be doing. Here's another classic example. True story. I won't even tell you the town. It was a massage and massage school. I don't know the best term. I was going to say physical therapy was massage. And this business owner hired this woman to run the business, and they were going to do a 1099. She was going to be a subcontractor and kind of run the business the first three to six months and see if they could get this. This school off the ground. Well, guess what happened. She definitely made the business a success. And he was starting to pay her, and she was getting paid. Some weeks it was a little less. Some weeks it was a little more and a little up and down because she was a subcontractor, she wasn't an employee. I didn't have to give her a paycheck. At the end of six months, she said, hey, let's work on our partnership agreement like we're not partners. You're a subcontractor. Really? What gave you that idea? We never signed a subcontractor agreement. Well, that's what we talked about at Denny's. We were having a grand slam. And you said you were going to run the massage school and I was going to bring you on as an employee once we got it off the ground. And I was just paying you as a sub. Now I remember you talking to business. Make sure it's barely very clear in a simple subcontractor agreement. We got two, three page agreements. All the time we can give to you, you can use them over and over again. But again, let us help you design it. We'll give it to you in word, and you're out there. And that's what a good lawyer should do, is help you have Documentation to protect you because you're going to have transactions happen over and over again. So there you go, people. Five threats to protect your business, to protect your secrets, to protect your client list. Be careful. Hopefully I opened your eyes a little bit. Five different parties that could really threaten you. Alright, so we're going to go for it. What do we got? Jethos.

Jethos. Hey, Mark. Just bought your new book and it's amazing. It's the fourth book. Things are starting to pick up in my business as a digital marketer. Is it normal for me to have an NDA with my current clients?

Great question. And since we're on the mic now, I'm not going to repeat that. Everybody's hearing it, right, Dylan? We're good. So the NDA is not going to typically be with your client, Jethos, because your client is in a relationship with you where you're providing marketing services. So they shouldn't know much about your business anyway. So I don't think an NDA would be typical because unless you're going to share something with your specific client, I would not worry about it. You're going to help that client build their business. Now here's where I am worried, Jethos. And any of you out there doing digital marketing. I was just here today talking with a new acquaintance and we were talking about our list list. Lists are very valuable if you go to a marketing conference and you go, hey, how many is on your list? How many is on your list? Because your list is very valuable when you're in information marketing. So you want to be very careful who you share that list with. Now I'm not going to share that list with a client who's on the list. But what I may do is share that list in some way with a joint venture partner. And so if I'm going to market their product or service on my list, or they're going to market my service or product on their list, we want to be really clear on who owns what names and where those names come from. And if we build new names, where do they go? That can be a big lawsuit issue. So, Jethos, I would not worry about your particular clients. I would worry about who you're partnering with and make sure that you have a non. And here's another term that you guys should know. Most NDAs are a non disclosure. This is how ours looks. It's kind of a big title. It's a non disclosure, non solicit, licit, non compete. So it's kind of a three legged stool. So you're getting the non disclosure. Don't tell people about what I'm doing. Non solicit. You can't go after my customers and non compete. You can't open a business like mine for 50 miles or whatever you decide. So those three pieces can be a part of a good agreement with again those who you're joint venturing with. All right, the Next Frontier fan. I'm a Trek. I like it.

Okay, this is has to do with self directed IRA and LLCs. You want to shift gears?

Okay, shifting gears.

If I purchase an SFR prior to setting up my self directed IRA and llc, can I transfer the property into the SDIRA LLC afterwards? I'm in a bit of a time

crunch, you know, only if we could wish it so. I hate to say the answer is no, but let me explain to everybody what this Next Frontier Trekkie is doing. That's what I'm assuming you know, is it the Next Frontier, The New Frontier? Okay, so let's say we're right here and I've got my small business, sole proprietorship, maybe an llc. I've graduated to my S Corp. I'm off to the races. This is my operations. Right. Everybody knows this if you're a Mark Kohler fan. So we got our operations on this side and I may have an LLC over here with my new single family residence. SFR stands for single family residence. So we got a little rental property, maybe you're doing a VRBO Airbnb and and you got your little LLC over here and down at the bottom is your family trust and you're off cranking and here's your trust that owns your S Corp, your home, all this good stuff. But now we're talking self directed ira. So what this caller has done is said I've formed an ira. I funded it out of my business. Maybe it's a 401k, a SEP simple, who knows what. But he said IRA and the IRA has formed an LLC and we took this money and funded the LLC of which you can be the manager of. Woohoo. Now this LLC could go out and buy rentals, but can it buy your rental? No, you've got to go out and buy a new rental from a third party because the IRS feels that if like if you go buy your own rental, the IRS is going to get screwed over somehow. You're not going to pay fair market value, right? And so we want to be really careful about a prohibited transaction. Now you can go out and buy rentals and bitcoin and silver and gold and we racehorses and cows and restaurants and hair salons and all this stuff. You can buy those in your ira, but you can't buy an asset you already own for your ira. Just go out and do a new one. So get out there. Next. Keyshawn.

Keyshawn wants to know, can I sue a trust company that holds an apartment unit?

For sure. Keyshawn. Anybody out there? You're dealing with a deadbeat landlord, kind of a slum landlord, and this trust owns an apartment building, and you've got some beef. Now, what I'm going to assume is you've been damaged personally and some personal injury or your property has been damaged, or they have breached a contract of some sort, or maybe this apartment building has violated some local code. That really ticks you off. So you've got to have a. So Keyshawn is go meet with a lawyer and go. I'm really pissed off. I. I don't like what this apartment building is doing. Do I have a cause of action? And they're going to say, yeah, but you don't have any damages. And so I'm going to tell a quick example on this. Another fun story. Last week, I was driving my car down to Salt Lake City to catch a flight. The tire tread came off my tire and it tore up the back end of my car, totally destroyed. It had to get towed away. I'm totally upset. This has happened twice in the last two months. Guess what the tire brand is. I don't care. I'm going to tell you. Pirelli and I get out on the web and come to find out. Pirelli tires are notorious for this problem, and people have gotten accident and got really injured. Well, we got a cause of action. They have a crappy tire, maybe, allegedly. And they got a faulty product. So I could file a cause of action because they have a bad tire. Hmm. But do I have damages? Do I run into anybody? Did I get killed? Did someone in my family get hurt? No. And Nationwide stepped up, and for the entire repair, $500 deductible. Hmm. So my only damage is $500. So if I want to go sue Pirelli, all I can ask for is $500 because the judge is going to go, what the hell's your problem? You got. You're only out 500 bucks. Now, if Nationwide wants to go after Pirelli, they can because they've got more damages. So, Keyshawn, find out if you have a cause of action. You have damages. Don't pay a lawyer for more than an hour. Get in, get Out. Don't make it emotional. Read my newsletter that's coming out in about two hours from now. I gotta go home back to the office and touch it up. And there's a phrase at the top of the newsletter titled, something is better than nothing. So, Keyshawn, read that article. You're going to love it. If you haven't signed up for my newsletter, go over to markjcohler.com I just print it out. I send it out every week. I've been doing it for 11 years. Markjkohler.com for any of you business owners and investors out there, there's always a little golden nugget in there that'll help you out. Okay? Ray.

Ray, Mark. How could I protect my business from an overseas developer helping build an app on a particular software development?

Wow. So, Ray, you want to stop. Let me restate this so I can process this. You want to stop an overseas developer right there. I'm seeing problems. You want to stop someone from overseas developing an app that competes with yours? Well, this is what the US Government has been working really hard to do, is to stop other companies for stealing our trade secrets and copyrights and redoing them in other countries. I have a good friend that's another lawyer, and he trademarks all sorts of general food products like, and I'm just taking a hypothetically here, like Snickers. He trademarks the name Snickers and Snickers with almonds, dark chocolate, Snickers, Snickers minis, Allah. All over the world in 150 countries, so they can enforce that copyright or that patent or that trademark. If someone's trying to compete with you internationally and you want to look at the treaty with that country and find out if you can enforce violation of your patent infringement or your trademark infringement. If they're going to compete against you, I'm telling you, you better have a deep pocket. Trying to litigate internationally. Are you kidding me? Come up with another app. Do it better. Do it faster. Put Made in the USA on it. Maybe that'll help. I don't know. Okay, what do we got? This is a caller from Hawaii.

From Hawaii, Mark. My daughter married in January. Her husband passed away in May. I want to help her navigate her estate affairs. Should we start a business with agreements to protect her and me?

Wow. First of all, my condolences. And number two, I was in Honolulu over the weekend. It was a tough assignment, but I got some surfing on the East Shore, not the North Shore. Many of you know the waves are not good right now. I got on the east shore, did some surfing. Love you guys over there. And I went straight to Zippy's before I got, I got run, I got off the plane, I went straight to Zippy's. And before I got on my last flight out of town, I hit Zippy's again. I know I'm addicted. So your daughter gets married in January, husband dies in May. Sorry about that. And the question is, should I start a business? I don't know if I understand the purpose of the business. Hawaii caller and so I'm going to put this on this whiteboard and then I really want you to comment to Mallory, give us a little more facts. Why would you start a business? What I'm presuming maybe is you inherited some money or assets from the passing of the husband. And so if you inherited money or assets, I immediately want to evaluate that and say, are we going to put them to work? And it'd be very common that you would set up an entity or entities, an LLC or corporation to manage those assets. So I think that's where you're going with this. We'll see if there's another comment or message. All right, what else we got? Mallory?

Taylor, does your office help set up the NDAs?

Yes. So Taylor, thank you for that little plug. I will send you your $5 after the show. Appreciate that, Taylor. Yes, we do non disclosure agreements. So you can make an appointment, call up, talk to Rosalie, she's right here in the room. So you can go rosaliekoslawyers.com or call up and Rosalie will make an appointment for you. I would schedule a half hour with an attorney, tell them what you're trying to do, make sure they give me the right NDA. We'll give it to you in word and go play with it. A lot of times we ask you to come back, let us review it again, make sure it's protecting you and then you can duplicate it and use it over and over again. So you should be in and out for no more than a one hour with a lawyer. And I would budget three or four hundred bucks max. And then you have an NDA that's tailored to your business and you can use it over and over again. So Taylor, thanks for that. Alright now, last point I want to make here. We're right on schedule. While we're seeing if any final questions are coming in, I want to announce our winners of the books. Last week, Dolce Luvano won the tax and legal playbook. I hope I said that right. Ricardo Montez won The Eight Steps Workbook. I remember signing that for you, Ricardo. Thank you. And Charisse Thier won financial freedom. We give away real books every week to help you build your business, grow your assets, and protect them. And, guys, that's the main thing here. It's not always about saving taxes. It's saving ourselves from a potential lawsuit. And I've said this time and time again. Do you know who my worst enemy is? It's not my partners. It's not my employees, it's not my subcontractors, and it's certainly not my spouse. The biggest enemy to my wealth is myself because I don't dot all the I's and cross the T's. Oh, it's not going to happen to me. I'm Mark Kohler. I know what I'm doing. And it only happens to other people that get ripped off. I am my own worst enemy. And I suspect that's the case with many of you. Take the time if you're going to invest $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, get it reviewed. Take a little extra time. I know many of you hate lawyers and hate accountants. We're not all that bad, and we're here to protect you. Just get a little consult. So that's the message today. Today was about protection and being cautious and safe with all of those little secrets that we have. So. All right, before we wrap it up with some final announcements. Oh, we got more facts from our Hawaii. Okay, so I got this. Death and inheritance.

Yes. House in Washington under husband's name.

Okay. Well, I love Seattle. Go Hawks. I wasn't wearing my Russell Wilson socks, but I will. Season's around the corner. Can you believe it? We're going to get through the summer so we can get to football. I will be in Seattle, by the way. Is it September 21st? Okay, so my annual workshop in Seattle. Get over there. See, look at. You can come from the mainland. See, everybody in Hawaii wants a tax write off to go to the mainland. Everybody on mainland wants a tax write off to go to Hawaii. I'm here to serve you. I do a workshop in Seattle so you can fly there. Do a workshop and take a tax write off. And all of you, I know it's hard, but I do it for you. I do my Hawaii workshop this year. November 23rd. I think it's the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Come on over. We're doing a luau at lunch. You will love it. And it's a tax write off to come visit. So I'm doing five workshops this Fall. Alright, sorry. Little self interest plug there. I apologize. Got to pay the bills. Okay. If you inherit a rental property, you're going to inherit it, what's called stepped up basis. So let's look at this rental property. Let's say that husband that passed away bought it for 300 grand. It's in Seattle, so that's cheap. That's a little meth lab. So I got 300 grand in Seattle, my little cheap little rental, and now it's worth 600 grand. Okay, so would have you pay tax on that if you sold that little rental property in Washington? Absolutely. But when someone dies and the recipient or the beneficiary receives the property, they get stepped up basis. So now the property in the hands of your daughter is now 600 grand and the fair market value is stepped up to fair market value is 600 grand. So the first thing your daughter could do is sell it tax free. Now that's not usually what Mark Kohler recommends. If you've got a little rental property in Washington, let's evaluate it. How is it cash flowing? How much equity is in it? Would we do better to sell it and maybe go buy three rental properties in Tennessee? Would I be better off to sell it, bring back the money to Hawaii and open up an Airbnb in Lahaina, in Maui? Should I maybe sell it and go invest it in my small business? Should I strip out equity and go buy two more rentals? I don't know. But I would definitely analyze it and if you're going to keep it just like our last diagram over here on the right side, this is where you put your assets. We're going to open up a Washington llc. We're going to transfer the property from the husband's name. You're probably going to have to go through probate in Washington. It's typical. Give me a call, we'll hook you up with an attorney out there. But we're going to deed the property from the deceased husband's name into the LLC upon the closing of probate. Now you're just sitting on a brand new rental property in Washington. Let's evaluate it and find out if we want to keep it, sell it or use it in some creative way.

Diego, Diego from Facebook says, which of your books would you most recommend?

Diego says, which book would you most recommend? That's tough, Diego, because every book has a different purpose. First I'll say this, and this is really not to be self serving. I really want to make this point. So much heart and soul went into these Books, hours upon hours at night and in the studio. If you're just starting a business or your business is not where you want it and you're trying to figure out how to break through the ceiling into the next level. I love my eight steps for even mature businesses. 60 little videos, workbooks, downloadable strap plan. And so if you're building your business, Diego, I'd start here. If some of you are like, yeah, I'm looking at investing. I've got a business. I got lots of different questions. That's the tax and legal playbook. I have so many. This is literally a resource book at the corner of my desk. I used it this morning. I went up and looked at the table in the back is to determine if Wyoming was, was a cope state. And I wanted to make sure what the rules were on that because I was writing an article on this. So I use this book myself as a resource. 28 different chapters on specific topics. So you can pull it off and go, oh, I'm going to pay my kids this year. How much should I pay them? How do I do it? I was on a phone call with a CPA out of Hawaii this morning at 10am talking about how much to pay our mutual client on salary. So I've got a table in that I recommended the cpa. They buy the book. Then finally, if your business is profitable and you're like, should I put the money in a 401k? Should I buy a rental? Should I fund my kids college? Should I go out and buy an I, you know, invest in a new ira? Should I do a Roth? Where do I deploy the money from my business? And here's what the problem is. So many business owners, where do they put their profit? Where they know best, right? They put it right back in their business. Is that the smartest thing? All of our eggs in one basket. My clients, as they start to make money in their business. I want to pull just what I can to keep the business growing. But pull out what I can and make that money work in a different industry, in a different genre. We've got to diversify. It's not a stock portfolio, it's a business portfolio. Where are the profits from your business going? And what is Wall street not telling you? Oh, your Merrill lynch stockbroker is going to tell you where to take your business profits. Oh, yeah, let's go buy an annuity or life insurance. They get a commission. So 95% of financial advisors in America are captive, meaning they do not have a fiduciary duty to tell you what's best for you. Just they can recommend what if you lost the money? You could survive. This is in Tony Robbins new book. Warren Buffett talks about this. It is a. It is a dangerous, dangerous thing. So be careful. And if you have a profitable business and where you're concerned on where to put that money, Diego, go to financial Freedom. Alright, one last question. No. Okay, we're going to wrap it up. I'm going to drop the pen. Boom. This is it, people. Thanks so much for being here. I'll be here next week on Thursday doing a tax and legal topic. If you have a topic you'd like me to cover in your small business email, Rosalie, get on my social media and she will pick it up and we will tailor the whole show to you. Don't forget to share this video. We're going to do a drawing in the morning. Subscribe to my newsletter. I already said that. We have a back to school special on all my education starting around Labor Day. Be on the lookout for that. I only do it once a year. Killer deal. And finally, the five workshops. Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, Orange county and Honolulu. Early bird special right now. 150 bucks all day continuing education certificate for those that need it. And I love the American dream, people. Keep doing it. Don't give up. Keep working hard. Slow and steady wins the prize. It's not a sprint. Thanks everybody.