Ep. 54 | Reflecting on a Year of TTF
Download MP3Welcome to the Teaching Tax Flow podcast, where the goal is to empower and educate you to legally and ethically minimize taxes paid over your lifetime.
Speaker 2:Today, we are jumping into episode 54. That's right. 54 episodes every single week. We knock these things out. This week, we're doing things a little bit different.
Speaker 2:We're mixing it up a bit. We're gonna talk about all things teaching tax law. So a little bit look back into history, kind of where we started, a lot of the stuff we've implemented over the past year and couple weeks, and as well as some stuff that's in the pipeline. So get ready. Hang on.
Speaker 2:Let's jump into the show. Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Teaching Tax Flow podcast. I got this guy with me. He won't leave me alone. He keeps following me around like a puppy dog, but I don't wanna get rid of him.
Speaker 2:Chris, how's it going, man? How are you?
Speaker 3:Oh, I am awesome. We let the dogs out. Right?
Speaker 2:You know, I get we need we need a theme song. We're gonna pop it in there. So we're gonna talk about a great topic today that I would I won't even say is near and dear to our heart because I think it is our heart. Right? We're gonna talk about ourselves.
Speaker 2:Isn't that sounds like a party. But Sounds great. Before it's kinda funny because I literally I've lost my voice today. We just wrapped up an awesome awesome master class with a very large group of people. I was happy to see so many people there for one thing, but we talked about tax planning.
Speaker 2:So we're gonna talk today about teaching tax flow. So if anybody's listening to this, which obviously you are if you're hearing a voice right now, you probably realize that we just turned one year old and and not teaching tax as an entity, but our podcast were one. So bust out the birthday candles. Let's give an update of this. So, Chris, I'm gonna get us started here.
Speaker 2:Going back a year, right, when we said, you know what? We're building out teaching tax flow. Let's do a podcast. How crazy did you think I was?
Speaker 3:Well, I was obviously so when we started building out teaching tax flows, obviously, on our goals list of do doing a podcast. You know? And we were actually down at our we'll call it our corporate retreat in Panama City Beach, Florida about a year yeah. A year and a week ago right now. And we we should do, you know, yeah.
Speaker 3:Let's do this podcast. Alright. And we started thinking, let's start at January of twenty twenty three. Next thing you know, we ended up get grabbing a microphone, putting it on a pizza box, and recording our first episode. And and literally, we were sitting on a couch with a pizza box recording the first episode, and now, I mean, it's it's really humbling and overwhelming, the growth of it.
Speaker 3:We have sponsors. We have thousands and thousands of listeners, and we have people act most importantly, people actively connecting, doing business together, and legally and ethically reducing the tax they pay in their lifetime. So the message of teaching tax flow, building this community of of people that are committed to being very tax savvy has really worked out. So it's a, you know, it's exceeded you know, the the podcast has far exceeded my expectations. You know, that being said, I I see so much more coming into the future, moving into the future rather.
Speaker 3:And I'm so excited about not just the podcast, but other parts of Teaching Tax Flow, that, gosh, if you if you and I would have been able to see where we're at right now a year ago, we we definitely would have made some different changes, would have made some different, you know okay. I feel like we got to a good place. We just didn't take the direct path. And, but gosh, I'm excited about the future. But, yeah, happy way to hear it.
Speaker 3:The podcast. Hey. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I feel like we sing happy birthday to ourselves, but and it's kinda funny. If anybody you could almost audibly witness. If you go and listen to our podcast and just go back and randomly pick one, you can kinda hear these points that Chris, I think you're talking about. Right? I mean, to kinda spill the beans on ourselves, we are absolutely not kidding that we did our first I think, our first episode we did and then another one and I think another one on the same day.
Speaker 2:It was a Yeah. The top of a pizza box folded into a triangle with a little lavalier mic clipped on it and be like, let's just do this right now. Whatever we got, let's just do it. We're recording it in, like, Apple audio notes. Good.
Speaker 2:And and we just let it go. And and I think from that point too, it it kinda set the the tone, I think, for TTF as a whole. And and, Chris, to your point too, like, we hit these marks, and I wouldn't even necessarily say, you know, it was a fail forward. We just we started obviously to build our community. So more people got involved with it.
Speaker 2:We've hit I think it's 50 some odd countries just with the podcast. And and I say the podcast because really that's our widest reach is that we now are in a great position that it's not just us as a team going, hey. Let's get out, a course on cost segregation studies or, you know, tax bracket versus marginal tax rate. We have people that are asking questions. And so what basically, what I'm trying to say is our community really is driving the organization, not the organization building content to see what people are engaged with.
Speaker 2:So would do you feel that that's a pretty good
Speaker 3:That's true. Representation? We've got so many opportunities for people now to to engage with the community. And, we had just so fortunate to have an amazing guest because one of the things we want you know, I mean, gosh. We we started this on a completely different platform.
Speaker 3:Pivoted, you know, you pivoted it pretty relatively early, a few months in. And then just the quality of guests that we've had has been amazing because they're real people. The people that that people from the community reach out to and, they they help them, you know, and Mhmm. One of the things I think that sets us up differently than a lot of other people that talk about tax planning is that we're living it. We are helping people implement the strategies that we talk about.
Speaker 3:In in the community, the Teaching Tax Law community is is only gonna be as strong as the people in the community. Right? I mean, so from from the podcast, we were getting such great response. We said, alright. Well, gosh.
Speaker 3:Couple pivots. Right? One, we launched a basic membership that's free for teaching tax. So when it first when we first started, everything was a paid subscription. We're able to offer that to people, so there's there's that base that base free, you know, subscription to Teaching Tax Law as our tech as a as the online community, as the website.
Speaker 3:Changed changed website platforms. We created a tool now that's self guided that takes about thirty seconds to figure out where are they on their tax where someone in their tax planning journey at and how they should work with us. It's called teachingtaxflowback.com backslash first step. You know, it's and and it's it really helps people say, okay. That that's where I'm in, that's who I need to work with.
Speaker 3:Just thinking I mean, I think it was right in the beginning of twenty twenty three here, we started the private Facebook group. Honestly, that was January 2023 called Defeating there. Right? Mhmm. Which has been amazing that the defeating tax taxes Facebook group is in the, you know, four four figures of people, and and it's not about how many people are in the group.
Speaker 3:You know, it's that is a that's a good barometer in some ways, but it's the amount of engagement in the in in for us, we listen to the people in our community to guide us in what type of, content we we create. So, you know, we like you mentioned, we just had a very successful master class. Well, if someone said, hey. Let's do an hour master class on tax planning. There's 45 strategies we could pick from.
Speaker 3:But the community the defeating taxes Facebook group, that community, really reached out, which and and said, this is what we wanna hear. This is what you want we wanted you to go through. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And it's it's great. I mean, it's you know, we'll say it makes my little marketing heart flutter. Right? Just watching and people that are engaging at it. And, you know, there there's so many opportunities to have people's questions answered.
Speaker 2:And, you know, myself, you know, speaking personally, not being in the tax world every single moment of every single day for so many years, it is very overwhelming. And then almost when you feel like you get kind of a handle on it, you know, there's a change or something shifts and, you know, you it's almost like the fear of uncertainty and just kind of the always being uncomfortable with it, which it's it's very I wouldn't say it's unfortunate. I won't use that term at all. But for a taxpayer say is also a small business owner, you know, we'll say providing for a family. It's not only a lot of responsibility to provide for a family, but also run that small business and then have to worry about taxes.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, it kind of falls by, you know, off the off the rails a little bit or something you just don't wanna deal with. So our goal is to not make taxes sexy by any means. Our goal is to, like, literally just take the information that's there and provide it in such a way where it's so simple and so easy to find, like, a no BS, no fluff answer and just get it to people, which is really our big shift to basic being free. Right?
Speaker 2:I mean, this is I I mean, like any business that starts. You look at your competitors, you look at the environment, you look at supply demand, etcetera, etcetera, and you figure out how to price something. I wouldn't even say that was a mistake of ours in full honesty saying, oh, well, you know, how do we price this? Obviously, we have to price something to sustain. But going to free has opened up the floodgates with people engaging with what we do.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, I love it. Even if people don't get on our Facebook group and publicly post a question that's very personal to them, we get private messages, anonymous messages, emails, people reaching out to us. It is absolutely fantastic, the amount of people and just the the questions we get. So and for anybody that's listening to this, we appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, frankly, make our job easy.
Speaker 3:Three to you, and thank you. We're so proud because of our community. We've been able to create this basic membership. We've also been able to launch a personalized tax planning offering to people that, you know, doesn't take them away from their their trusted tax tax preparer. You know, they might be working with a tax preparer that's very talented, but that preparer doesn't, engage in tax planning and strategy.
Speaker 3:And now we have the opportunity to meet different taxpayer needs, different community member needs where they are instead of them meeting us where we're at. The other thing I'm really proud of is that we have a ton of tax professionals in our community as well. I mean, a ton. Right? But, so we've got we have, we have several corporate sponsors.
Speaker 3:We have, you know, companies that that say, you know what? It's important that our team members are empowered and our clients are empowered with having this knowledge, so they we have opportunities for those those those, businesses, to provide their their team members with a premium membership for a fraction of the cost of a one off too. So having those opportunities and meeting people, the people that are listening to this, people that make up this community. John, you and I aren't a community. We're just two guys.
Speaker 3:But the community is the people that put the headset on, put this on in your car, put it on your phone. We are humbled by you. We appreciate you, and we we wanna hear from you. You know, we want this, you know, this this really helps us help you the more the more feedback that we receive. Abba.
Speaker 3:And I see and I really like that we're not only engaging, you know, taxpayers and our private CPA practice clients, we are also engaging, you know, other tax professionals. We've got several other tax professionals, on the show as special guests, And we actually have an episode, episode 23, my favorite number of choosing the best tax professional, as one of the episodes. That's that was very important to us. And, and, also, we're allowing people in our community access to people that they wouldn't typically have access to when it comes to implementation partners. So that could be, do doing a ten thirty one exchange, doing estate planning, doing LLC formations, financial advising.
Speaker 3:If you know, we we had some we have some content on getting prepared to have a mortgage, self directed IRAs. So there's just so much now that some were what we find what we're finding that really surprises us is that sometimes people find us and and, you know, maybe they just maybe this is the first episode they ever listened to, which would be kinda interesting. But let's say they listened to last last week's episode about federal energy tax credits. A lot of times what they'll do is they'll go back and say, that is really interesting, and they'll go back and start listening from the first episode. Kind of like when you binge watch TV, sometimes you come across a show that you like and you're like, oh, gosh.
Speaker 3:This has been on for three seasons. Where have I been? And you're gonna start, you know, you're gonna start from scratch. So Absolutely. That's a
Speaker 2:that's a great analogy on how it all works. Right? So that's so, basically, this show, I know it's a little bit it kinda has a different tone than what we usually are. It's a I mean, in Humbled, I think, Chris, as you had mentioned, is probably the best way to put it. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, yes. It's it's been a year. A year for any organization really isn't that long, but it is fantastic to see, what the community does. So I'm actually gonna put put it out there to, and we'll make the post on our defeating taxes on our on our private Facebook group. Just really what I'll I'll pose that question exactly what it is.
Speaker 2:You know, what is your favorite part about teaching tax flow? So I will post that on there. The day that this podcast launches, I would love, love, love, love, love feedback when we do post that. Just get on there, post anything, you know, we'll start a couple
Speaker 3:a couple polls. Absolutely. And thank you to all of our guests. I mean, I'm so proud to say that we've had several other tax professionals on. We've had implementation partners on from the wildlife partners, 10 or or or self directed IRAs and and ten thirty one exchange.
Speaker 3:And and when we say implementation partner, really, it means that they're just part of our community, and they and they, you know, they help our taxpayers out. We've had the highest of high performing real estate professionals out there, real estate brokers and agents, talking about different market spotlights. And, you know, gosh. I'm just I don't wanna just roll through all of our guest list, but we're gonna we really appreciate them, and I'm just thinking about, you know, even someone from from a state's, CPA society talking to us about how tax laws are made. Like, I feel like we've got we've been able to provide so many different angles on things.
Speaker 3:So I'm very proud of that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. It's it's been awesome to see this whole organization community grow some wings. So that being said, I will post some links in the show notes of this podcast as well as posting that on the Facebook group.
Speaker 2:Again, it's please, yeah, give us your feedback and be honest. If you think we're missing something, let us know. We we don't we don't know what we could do better unless people tell us. Right? It's almost like what they tell you Totally.
Speaker 2:You know, in school or or what but player reviews. But, but, yeah, take advantage of that. Again, Chris, I know I know you like a brother. I've known you for so long. I really enjoy this.
Speaker 2:I mean, this this is, like, the highlight of my week is doing these podcasts. And, I mean, to be totally honest, I actually have learned a ton myself just from doing these and meeting our guests. So as I always like to close it up, as cheesy as it may sound, we will see everybody next week as always.
Speaker 3:The content of this podcast does not constitute an offer of securities. Offerings can only be made through an offering memorandum, and you should carefully examine the risk factors and other information contained in the memorandum. The content provided is for educational purposes only. We encourage you to seek personalized investment advice from your financial professional. For all tax and legal advice, please consult your CPA or attorney.
Speaker 3:Investment advisory services are offered through Cabin Advisors, a registered investment adviser. Securities are offered through Cabin Securities, a registered broker dealer.
