In this YouTube presentation, licensed CPA and attorney Mark Kohler outlines four core tax‑wealth strategies that wealthy business owners employ to outpace the majority of entrepreneurs. First, he stresses that owning a business provides a powerful tax engine, allowing owners to convert personal expenses into business deductions across equipment, travel, family employment, and more. Second, he advises channeling business profits into real‑estate investments, leveraging tax‑preferred tools such as 1031 exchanges, opportunity zones, cost segregation studies, short‑ and long‑term rentals, and charitable remainder trusts. Third, Kohler recommends self‑directed retirement accounts (solo 401(k), Roth, mega backdoor Roth) to invest in alternative assets like syndications, notes, and crypto, seeking higher returns than traditional Wall Street products. Fourth, he presents a holistic “trifecta” family‑office framework that integrates ordinary income, tax‑deferred, tax‑free, and after‑tax assets, coupled with legacy planning via revocable living trusts and regular family board meetings. Throughout, he promotes his Main Street Tax Pro certification for advisors seeking deeper mastery of over 75 tax strategies. The talk combines instructional, persuasive, and motivational tones, aiming to empower both business owners and tax professionals to adopt these wealth‑building tactics.
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Welcome back everybody. Today we're going to walk through the tax strategies the wealthy use to get ahead of 99% of other business owners. I'm a licensed CPA attorney, best selling author and the owner of multiple tax and legal businesses. And I've helped hundreds, if not thousands of businesses grow their wealth through smart tax strategies. Most accountants don't even know or ignore. Now, number one, they're business owners. This is absolutely critical and why now we have over 50 million Americans with the side hustle. So because they know if they want to make more money, they've got to have a side hustle. And guess what happens to side hustles. They're a gateway drug to having a main hustle. And wealthy people get rich working for themselves, not working for someone else. Now can we transition to that? Can you work for someone else in corporate America and have a side hustle that builds massive wealth? Absolutely. You can invent something, you can have a trade secret, you can have a system or a strategy or something that you can sell even in the middle of the night. People. The Internet has made this a game changer for the average American to build their American dream. Now why do I say number one, it's having a business? Because what a smart business owner does is exploit all of the cool tax strategies that come with being engaged in the process, having conversations with the tax advisor that's going to push the envelope. Not illegally, not unethically, but together with a wealthy business owner. They collaborate. They're going to take advantage of a whole host of write offs that the average business owner thinks, oh, those are small, I don't need to do that. But they add up and they can add up big. And it could just be every little thing. From equipment to buildings to travel, dining, office, electronics, s corporations hiring family members, healthcare expenses and anything related to their business that they can convert from a personal expense into a business expense. And they're addicted to it, they're tenacious, and they want to find every strategy that's going to help them make money by saving money. And when they have a business, it becomes the goose that lays the eggs to go out and save even more taxes with strategy number two. Now, before I continue, unfortunately, the traditional advice you hear from most accountants only take your business so far. To really get ahead, you need to understand the more complex strategies that that really separate the top 1% of business owners from the rest. So what's number two? Real estate. Business owners take their profits and deploy in real estate. Real estate is one of the most tax preferred investments on the planet. And it comes with a whole host of additional strategies that a wealthy individual knows, at least to some degree, that they can talk about quickly and easily at a dinner party. 1031 exchanges, opportunity zones, short term rentals, long term rentals, cost segregations, real estate, professional and even charitable remainder trusts. That's when we can bring so many real estate strategies to the forefront with deferred or no tax at all. See, real estate is the second piece of owning a business that's generating cash flow because we're going to save taxes on that money. We're going to pay more tax working with the W2, but we're going to take that side, hustle that other main hustle, take better write offs and then deploy that money into real estate. That gives us to those other tax strategies that only come with real estate. Now, of course, it's hard to cover this topic with all the strategies that a wealthy business owner will employ. And I can only cover these in a small amount of detail here because we only have a short amount of time. But if you're an accounting professional who wants to learn more about these strategies, you've got to check out my Main street tax post certification. Even you business owners might want to up your game and be a part of a community of tax advisors where we're looking for every angle to save taxes. Which brings us to number three. A business owner is going to take their profit and deploy it into real estate and then turn to retirement account strategies. These could be tax free strategies, tax deferred strategies, and the vehicles we might use are going to vary as well. It could be a solo 401k, a group 401k, a Roth IRA, a Roth 401k, a mega backdoor Roth. You can fund a Roth at any income level. Don't listen to your professional. If they tell you otherwise, go check out one of my other videos on the backdoor Roth. But the strategy they all employ across the board is self directing. They know that they can invest their retirement account in syndications and in real estate, in notes, in crypto. And they don't stick to the normal Wall street product. They're called alt assets. Alternative asset investment is blowing up. This is what family offices do. They don't put all their money in Wall Street. Statistics show that over 70% of a family office's wealth is put in alternative assets. That's called self directing. Self directing is a critical strategy that the wealthy use to to get more wealthy because they're not looking for a 5 to 8% return. They're looking for a 15 to 25% rate of return or more because they're using their retirement account to invest in what they know. And number four, a wealthy successful business owner does not operate in a vacuum. They look at the big picture. They use my trifecta. They look at their ordinary income, their assets and within their assets, their tax deferred, tax free and after tax assets. They want to build a portfolio and a plan that leads to their legacy and their revocable living trust. They're involving their family in the business. And every one of you should have a family office. You don't have to be a billionaire to have a family office. What comes first, a family office or a billionaire? I'll tell you, the family office comes first. If you want to be successful as a business owner, you start with that family office and talk talking about money, talking about your business, talking about your investments. Because when you have to talk about with your family, you're going to get organized, you're going to be intentional and you're going to start manifesting the future and bringing together all of your strategies. And again, it could be a W2, a day job, a group 401k. It could be a side hustle, a business, a husband and wife working together in concert. And then it could be the real estate investments, the retirement account investments, and all coming together in that family board meeting once, twice or even four times a year to build that wealth together and leave a legacy. Now that you understand at least these four simple approaches of how the wealthy implement some of these seemingly complex tax strategies, you can start thinking about how these apply to you and or your clients. If you're an advisor, however, this video is only a small piece of the puzzle. To really learn about these strategies, I've created the Main Street Tax Pro certification that advisors to business owners can come together and learn over 75 different strategies and growing 12 modules. Weekly training sessions in an affordable program. If you'd like to learn more about this, please click below and you can choose to either have a phone call or book a demo right now. You could be learning these strategies tonight, people. This is real and this is what wealthy people do. And I've done my 10,000 consultations and seen client after client find success with getting better organized and just implementing these four general concepts and everything. They all include people. The American dream is true, it's real. And you can have it too. Don't give up.
