Bryce Keffeler brings a rare combination of deep financial expertise, entrepreneurial insight, and a proven track record of helping high-growth businesses scale and stay wealthy. I’m thrilled to welcome Bryce Keffeler, Managing Partner at Dew Wealth Management — a firm that’s not only been named a Great Place to Work, but has also made the Inc. 5000 list four years in a row. Bryce specializes in helping business owners grow, manage, and protect their wealth using family office-level strategies — think M&A, investment consulting, and financial structures designed for 10x growth. Before Dew, he worked in corporate M&A at Intel and has since become a serial problem-solver for founders navigating complex exits or aggressive scaling.

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Bryce Keffeler, managing partner at Dew Wealth Management. They discuss essential financial strategies for e-commerce entrepreneurs, including business structuring for tax efficiency, balancing profitability versus growth, and advanced tax-saving tactics. Bryce shares insights on preparing for business exits, optimizing cash flow, and the importance of working with fiduciary advisors. The episode also highlights practical tools, recommended resources, and Bryce’s new book, offering actionable advice for entrepreneurs aiming to build, protect, and maximize their wealth.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Bryce Keffeler 00:00:00  What’s our goal with this business? I know, Josh, you and I were kind of just talking about this. Are we building this business to sell, or are we building this business to harvest cash flow and building our personal, balancing our wealth from the profits that it made? So I think that’s the first critical determination that needs to be made. And it needs to be made off of, like, what are we actually trying to do here? Because that’s going to change the entire structuring of the business. And so specifically what I’m talking about there is that most business owners, most of the common business owners start as an LLC. And then generally they make the S Corp election because making the S Corp election allows you to essentially pay yourself a W-2 income, and then you don’t have to pay self-employment taxes on all of your profit, so you’re saving up to 15.3%, which is your self-employment tax. So that’s really smart. In order to minimize self-employment taxes, if you are dependent and want to really cashflow your business personally.

Bryce Keffeler 00:00:49  But if you’re really building your business to sell, you may actually want to.

Intro 00:00:52  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business. You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level.

Josh Hadley 00:01:06  Are you tired of making millions in revenue on Amazon, but looking at your bank account and wondering why you don’t have any money left in the bank? This isn’t just about making money online. It’s about creating a financial strategy that could set you up for life. And today’s guest knows exactly how. Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley. I scaled my own brand from 0 to 8 figures in sales, and now my mission is to take it to nine figures on my journey to nine figures. I bring you unfiltered conversations with the smartest minds in eCommerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael Gerber, author of The Myth, and Brandon Young from Cellar Systems. Today’s guest brings a rare combination of deep financial expertise, entrepreneurial insight, and a proven track record of helping high growth businesses scale and stay wealthy at the same time.

Josh Hadley 00:01:56  I’m I’m thrilled to welcome Bryce Koffler, a managing partner at Dew Wealth Management, a firm that is not only been named a great place to work, but has also made the Inc. 5000 list for four years in a row. Bryce specializes in helping business owners grow, manage and protect their wealth using family office level strategies, think M&A and investment consulting and financial structures designed for growth. Before Du wealth, he worked in corporate M&A at Intel and has since become a serial problem solver for founders navigating complex exits or aggressive scaling. Welcome to the show, Bryce.

Bryce Keffeler 00:02:35  Thank you. Thanks for having Josh. I’m excited to be here. And, as I said, that’s the best introduction I’ve ever had, so I feel good.

Josh Hadley 00:02:41  Well, hey, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show, Bryce. You and I have worked together for. I think it’s going on like, six plus years at this point. we met at a previous mastermind war room back in the day, And to me, this has been something that I’ve just kind of like nerd it out on for the longest while, which is this I want to pay as little taxes as I possibly can.

Josh Hadley 00:03:07  I want to keep more money in my own bank account, and I also want to be able to set up my future children and for and just my posterity for future success and wealth. And and I think like being able to structure that appropriately starts at as early on as it possibly can. And I think that anybody that knows anything about financial investing, the earlier you start, the better things are able to compound over time. And so even when we got started working, we weren’t we weren’t even making what we’re making now. But like it got us the the fundamentals and the foundation that we needed to today. So in full transparency, everybody knows I’ve been working with Bryce for the last little while, and truly it’s been like game changing enough so much that it’s not sponsored by them. But I wanted to bring him onto the show to share with you guys, like what has been found, like really game changing for our business foundational. And it actually allows us to be more competitive in the marketplace because of the financial structures and systems that we have sitting behind us, so that a we don’t have to take out loans for our business, we’re able to not worry about like, hey, the only way that we actually make money is if we have this big exit someday.

Josh Hadley 00:04:26  Like, because we have very smart ways where the money is flowing that allows us to build wealth. Whether or not there is a big exit that comes in the future. So, Bryce, I know you’re going to be talking to all these e-commerce entrepreneurs. What, you’ve been working with a couple of ecommerce brands right now, and you have them as clients. What are some of the bigger pain points and challenges that you are seeing in that e-commerce space and anybody that’s trying to exit right now.

Bryce Keffeler 00:04:54  Yeah, I think first and foremost there, like you mentioned, the the cash, cycle is very difficult in any e-commerce business. I run a, you know, service based business. It’s a lot easier to run than anyone who’s dealing with inventory. So I respect any type of business. An entrepreneur who’s got inventory because of how brutal is on a cash conversion cycle. And so really, when I when I take a few steps back, I think really starting with the iOS 14 update, a lot of our e-commerce clients, we’re really doing hyper targeted apps through the meta platforms and through iOS.

Bryce Keffeler 00:05:27  And obviously, once that iOS change happens, several years ago, we really saw a deterioration of return on ad spend. And so we saw a lot of clients really trying to push their revenue growth higher by purchasing ads. But they were actually the LTV was less than their customer acquisition cost. So they were actually underwater and they were eroding their margin structure. So we’ve seen a steady stair step down over the last several years of margin structure for most E-com businesses, part of that due to the acquisition costs going up, but part of it also doing going to just margins being compressed and more competition overseas terrorists, there’s all these different variables. And so I think that when I think through what the biggest challenges are in these businesses, a lot of them have had to figure out how to remarket themselves in this new competitive landscape or redesign their supply chains in order to get their margin structure back to where it was to be healthy. So they don’t fall into that cash crunch cycle that you mentioned. So kind of tying it all back to that.

Bryce Keffeler 00:06:23  And so I think those are some of the big issues we’ve seen. I’ve seen some entrepreneurs have navigated that better than others, but those are some of the headwinds that that I’ve been seeing just across our client base. For those that are in the e-commerce space.

Josh Hadley 00:06:35  Yeah, I love that. And I love that you get to approach business at a totally different level. You have clients and service based businesses. You have clients that are in e-commerce and other industries. So I think what what’s going to be unique about our conversation is like you’re able to apply other principles and things that are working in maybe a service based business that you could apply into an e-commerce based brand. Brice with all of that being said, are you recommending your clients like, hey, if I’m you, I get out of e-commerce. Like, these headwinds are like, these are too much. What what are your recommendations to your clients that are in e-commerce right now? And what are the strategies you see them employing in order to stay afloat and to still be like gain market share?

Bryce Keffeler 00:07:20  Yeah.

Bryce Keffeler 00:07:20  I mean, I definitely would not tell any entrepreneur to get out of the space that they’ve, you know, built a very successful business in. And all of our clients are at the stage where they’re very successful, seven, eight, nine figures. You know, entrepreneurs. But I think the one of the big coaching, I would say, is really pushing the entrepreneurs to come up with a model PNL. And what I mean by that is what percentage of revenue are we going to pay for cost of goods sold? What percentage are we going to pay for SG&A? Sales. General and administrative costs. What is our target profit margin and what’s acceptable there? And then let’s use that as a framework to then make business decisions, to make reinvestment decisions. And if we’re not able to hit our model PNL, then what can we do to change our our supply, you know, our supply chain? Or maybe can we look overseas to reduce our overhead costs or some of our labor costs? And that’s the same approach that I use for within our business here that I have a model PNL.

Bryce Keffeler 00:08:14  And so as we look to grow, we’re only going to grow within the model PNL, because I don’t want to chase growth that may not come and then jeopardize my profit margins, because I think that puts you just at a high degree of risk. And so I think the most successful entrepreneurs have analyzed and determine what their model PNL is, and then they made strategic business decisions that allow them to grow within that framework. And so giving you a specific example there, there’s one client that I’m thinking of right now that their digital marketing and really client acquisition spend was 15 to 25% of revenue. Which, I mean, we’ve seen some clients that spend 40 to 50%, you know, in terms of client acquisition costs. But once they took a step back, they realized that it was actually they were acquiring clients and customers on profitably, meaning they were buying new revenue, but their profit margin was actually going down. And as we tie this into exit planning, the market no longer values you based off of a revenue multiple.

Bryce Keffeler 00:09:08  They’re going to value you based off of a EBITDA or a profit multiple. So this client actually pulled back their marketing and advertising spending as a percentage of revenue. They started to invest in a more organic and kind of grassroots marketing campaigns. And a lot of that 10 to 15% fell to the bottom line. And so the profit margins went from, you know, low mid-single digits up to 15, 20%. And, yes, revenue has slowed from high teens down to high single digits, but now they’re actually way more profitable as a business. So that means the owners are making way more money, way more profit. Right. It’s about. About what we keep, not what we make. And on top of that, the value of the business is substantially higher, too. Because again, your valuation is driven from profit and EBITDA, not from revenue. So that’s just kind of an actual case study of someone digging in and say, hey, what can I do? My cost of goods sold are going up.

Bryce Keffeler 00:09:59  What if I pull back my marketing spend, change my model PNL, and then I can actually make more profit, which then again creates more wealth. So that’s that’s a quick example. And some frameworks I’ve seen again, not just in the ecom world, but as you said, pulling from service based businesses and even my business and what we’re doing here.

Josh Hadley 00:10:14  Yeah, Bryce, I think that is so, so important. And to all of the listeners, if you are not looking at your PNL on a monthly basis, and actually, as Bryce talked about being able to like model things out, if you don’t know what like your contribution margins are right, like you need to have hey, how much should I budget for my cost of goods? Sold, right? Is it 1015? Is it 20%? Right. And then what are you what are you budgeting for? Your fulfillment costs? Right. So how much are you budgeting for Amazon transactions with their 15% commission plus all the FBA fees? What is that percentage need to be at? And then last but not least.

Josh Hadley 00:11:00  Well I guess there’s two other things. Number one, what’s your marketing spend. So for those in in this in the Amazon space tacos right. Total advertising cost to spend what your tacos percentage and then finally your SG&A. So any of your overhead that’s your salary. That’s your team salary. That’s your software expenses etc. what it takes to just run the business day to day. And then you have finally like your net profit margin numbers, right? There’s like really like five numbers that you’re trying to model off of. And these should just be like percentage targets. And as soon as you start going above or below, you can start asking yourself the right questions, but I love that you talked about like, first have a model PNL that you’re like in an ideal state. This is where we’re at. And so when you look at your numbers on a monthly basis, if you’re above or below it then drives the next business decisions that you’re making. but I’m a big, big proponent of like the actual planning is where the magic happens, because if you’re just looking retroactively at your PNL statements like that stuff’s in the past, right? But it’s in that planning stage that happens 12 to 18 months beforehand that actually ends up with the results that you’re looking at in your current panels right now.

Josh Hadley 00:12:21  So Bryce, love that. Now, you mentioned earlier that you’re you’re helping some e-commerce clients like actually go through the exit process right now. So what are you seeing from your side of if you’re planning for an exit. Here are some things you should be considering to a protect your wealth. What does it look like in terms of multiples? it kind of give an overall synopsis that way.

Bryce Keffeler 00:12:47  Yeah. So I will say I’ll caveat there’s a huge range of outcomes and, and a big determinant of what I’m about to say is based off of your revenue, your profit. Right. That’s obviously going to drastically change. kind of my, my answers. But just to give you context, this, this, e-commerce client I’m going to be talking about here is going to be doing, well into the eight figures of revenue here and mid-single digits in terms of profit, of millions of dollars of profits. Right. And so within the context here, we we interviewed over and talked over 15 bankers and investment bankers and an investment banker is going to be the professional who’s going to help market your business, to then sell your business to a private equity company, a strategic buyer or someone else.

Bryce Keffeler 00:13:26  And so they get paid a commission based off of a, which is generally a percentage of the total value of the business that they sell. So think of it like a real estate agent, but for your business. And we interviewed all of these different bankers I heard profoundly, which when I asked one of the bankers what is the optimal kind of demographic or the psychographic psychographic demographic, I guess, really look like for a business. And he told me $100 million of revenue, $20 million of EBITDA and has one third distribution through Amazon, one third distribution through your Shopify account, one third distribution through retail. So he said that is the Nirvana state. Now the Nirvana state doesn’t make, you know, doesn’t exist. Right. But you have at that size, you have the size and the scale of the nine figure revenue business doing 20% profit margins. And you’re diversified across Amazon, Shopify and retail as your distribution mechanisms. So you’re insulated. So although that that’s probably not you anyone listening to this, it’s definitely wasn’t the client that we’re talking about here that I’m thinking of.

Bryce Keffeler 00:14:27  But I think there’s there’s some things that can be taken from that of that okay. First and foremost size matters. The larger your revenue and the higher your profit, the more valuable you’re going to be. And a lot of these businesses trade based off of profit multiples. And so I think that if you’re in like the six figure range to low seven figure range and you’re highly dependent on Amazon, a lot of the multiple feedback we got is you’re maybe three 4 or 5 X in terms of profit is your is your valuation. Now for this client doing several million dollars of EBITDA, we’re looking closer to 8 to 10 times. Again, 8 to 10 times that profit number as the valuation and those multiples can get up closer to 12 to 15. If again, your profit is closer to that $20 million mark, you have 20% profit margins and again, you have wide distribution. So that’s kind of the lay of the landscape. And as we talk to again interviewed 50 different bankers before hiring, the one that we’re going to go work with.

Bryce Keffeler 00:15:21  It was pretty common that that’s kind of what we’re seeing. So again big variables size matters. Focus on profitability not on revenue. You want to get 15, ideally 20% profit margins, 25% is kind of best in class. And then you want to try to diversify your distribution channels if you’re wholly dependent on Amazon. Since you know Josh and everyone listen to this. It is such a tough business and you have so much competition overseas. The multiples have really compressed on Amazon driven businesses.

Josh Hadley 00:15:50  Yeah.

Outro 00:15:51  Do you see?

Josh Hadley 00:15:53  Is there kind of like a magic point of if you cross 5 million in EBITDA? I think that’s where like private equity gets involved. Right. Like is that is that still true? Like 5 million in EBITDA.

Bryce Keffeler 00:16:08  exactly. And that’s why this client just had just crossed the $5 million Ebit threshold. And so that opens up a lot more demand. And the reason why is private equity who’s one of the main buyers in this space. If they buy a company that’s doing $100 million of profit or $2 million of profit, it’s the same amount of work they have to do, the same amount of due diligence, reviewing your financial statements, all of your agreements, you know, etc. and that costs them hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in due diligence from attorneys, from bankers, from CPAs and accountants.

Bryce Keffeler 00:16:40  And so they want to make sure they’re buying a company big enough that they can honestly just amortize their cost over time, over that transaction. So that’s why the $5 million threshold is kind of the first magic threshold, where all of a sudden a lot more private equity companies will be interested because sub 5 million, it’s oftentimes just too small for them to even like, you know, look underneath the hood. So you’re spot on. Josh, that 5 million is the first big target you want to hit. And then kind of 10 million cents tends to be like the next big threshold that again, you get a nice little step up in valuation.

Josh Hadley 00:17:14  Yeah. And I think I think what you said was right. So if you’re below 5 million in EBITDA, right, you’re probably looking at multiples somewhere around like a 2 to 3 to maybe A4X from what I’ve gathered right now, like it’s that’s kind of where you’re at. Would you agree with that?

Bryce Keffeler 00:17:30  Yeah. I think if you’re dependent on Amazon, is your main or only distribution channel? Yes.

Bryce Keffeler 00:17:35  It is. Is is tough. Yep.

Josh Hadley 00:17:38  Okay. And then you’re saying if you cross 5 million you’re now looking into the what the multiples of 8 to 10 range.

Bryce Keffeler 00:17:46  Yeah. But I think another a big caveat there is what is your distribution channel look like. So if you’re all Amazon I don’t think you’re going to get the 8 to 10 x. You’re probably at maybe A6X, maybe eight x at the high end, but you want to then if you can diversify through Shopify and you know, other distribution channels depending on your product, then that’s how you’ll get kind of that 8 to 10 X range. So in this specific case that I’m I’m thinking through, about 50% of the distribution was through Amazon. The other 50% was through other channels. And so that’s why we were able to get to that 8 to 10 x. Whereas if we were a little bit more heavy on Amazon, the feedback was we’d be maybe six seven, maybe eight x. Best case scenario.

Josh Hadley 00:18:23  Awesome. Okay. That was it.

Josh Hadley 00:18:25  Look like when you crossed ten, 10 million?

Bryce Keffeler 00:18:27  Yeah. Well, at that stage again, and you go 10 to 20, then you’re really going to be solidly in the double digit multiple spread. And then again, depending on the makeup of the business, you know, in that ideal scenario, right. You can be 15, you could be 20 acts. You know, just really depends on the growth profile, the growth rate and the different factors. But you’re I think solidly 10 to 15 x if you’re above the $10 million EBITDA threshold and assuming you’re widely diversified across different distribution channels and growing.

Outro 00:18:54  So give me your.

Josh Hadley 00:18:55  Take on this. So you had mentioned earlier, like what if you pull back on the ad spend in order to make your net profit higher. Yeah. But that also slows your growth, right. Because now it’s like they’re looking at both numbers. Right. They want to see good growth. They also want to see good EBITDA. So how do you manage. Like how would you advise clients that way.

Bryce Keffeler 00:19:15  Yeah. Good question I think first and foremost it depends on where you’re currently at. So if you’re at low single digits profit margin I would be cutting back ad spend to push up my profit margin, because you’re going to be valued again based off of your profit or EBITDA. And so yes, growth rate is important. And ideally you’re growing at 20% per year. That’s kind of like the top echelon that I’m going to get you the highest multiples. But if you’re growing at 20% per year and you’re unprofitable, well, you’re getting value to a ten x on what. And maybe that’s ten x on nothing. So you’re really not worth it because there’s there’s no profit there. And so in 2020, 2021 when capital is really cheap, there are tons of M&A going on. A lot of businesses were being sold based off of revenue multiples. So everyone was just chasing revenue growth, right. Throw money into your client acquisition costs and your ad spend. Grow your revenue and then private equity and strategic are buying you based off of revenue multiples.

Bryce Keffeler 00:20:08  But now with the cost of capital a lot higher, with interest rates a lot higher, that which really makes private equity, they borrow money to buy your business. So that’s why interest rates matter in this equation. And we all know interest rates have gone up a lot. They now want cash flow and profit because they need to be paying back their debt, because the debt cost is, you know, three x. So but so I would say first and foremost get your profit margins to 15% minimum. And then once you have 15% minimum I think that’s where okay can I maybe charge my growth a little bit. There’s some I think at that stage there’s some trade offs there. But everyone wants kind of 15% is like a floor from a profit margin perspective. And that helps you along the way. Right, Josh? I mean, if you’re a business owner, it’s all about what you keep. It’s all about your free cash flow. It’s all about your earnings. And so yes, maybe you’re not growing your revenue as fast.

Bryce Keffeler 00:20:58  Maybe it’s, hurts your ego a little bit. Maybe, you know, you’re not as cool as the conference is saying that you’re growing your revenue. But I know for me, I care more about what I keep and what’s coming through in the bottom line, not the top line. So I think it’s just also a reframe of what really matters. And for whatever reason, I think in our entrepreneurial space, a lot of people talk about revenue growth. And even inc Inc. 5000. It’s all revenue growth. But what really matters is profit growth, right? Like for for businesses like ours that aren’t SaaS based businesses, it should be like, well, what’s our year over year profit growth? That’s what we should all be trying to brag about.

Josh Hadley 00:21:30  Yeah I love that. Really. Well said. So let’s now transition. So with that being said it’s all about having money at the end of the day right? It’s all about your profit okay. Revenue is vanity. Profit is your sanity. All right.

Josh Hadley 00:21:44  So with that being said, Bryce, walk me through what are some of the strategies like day one, let’s say you have a new e-commerce entrepreneur that signs up there a new wealth client, and they’re like, I feel like I’m paying way too much in taxes. Yeah, give me like a hit list of like here, the easy, low hanging fruit that we walk into with every business, say like, are we doing this, this, this, this, this puts more money back into your pocket, less in the government.

Bryce Keffeler 00:22:14  Yeah, I love it. So I want to answer I will give you a hit list of all of these. But before we jump back, I think the first question is what’s our goal with this business? I know, Josh, you and I were kind of just talking about this. Are we building this business to sell, or are we building this business to harvest cash flow and building our personal, balancing our wealth from the profits that have made? So I think that’s the first critical determination needs to be made and it needs to be made off of, like, what are we actually trying to do here? Because that’s going to change the entire structuring of the business.

Bryce Keffeler 00:22:40  And so specifically what I’m talking about there is that most business owners, most of econ business owners start as an LLC. And then generally they make the S Corp election because making the S Corp election allows you to essentially pay yourself a W-2 income, and then you don’t have to pay self-employment taxes on all of your profit. So you’re saving up to 15.3%, which is your self-employment tax. So that’s really smart. In order to minimize self-employment taxes, if you are dependent and want to really cashflow your business personally. But if you’re really building your business to sell, you may actually want to choose a C corporation. And the reason why is there something called qualified small business stock under section 102? And what it essentially says is that if you if you are a C corporation and you qualify and you hold your stock for five years, when you sell, you get a $15 million exclusion from the sale price or ten times your original investment basis. If you hold it for four years, it’s just 75% of that amount.

Bryce Keffeler 00:23:36  You hold it for three years, it’s 50% of that. And this was all enhanced as part of the new one big, beautiful bill that President Trump passed on July 4th, 2025. So we’re seeing a lot of entrepreneurs that are reinvesting a massive amount of their cash flow back into the business, and they’re paying 37% taxes as a as a pass through business, where instead they can pay 21% taxes as a C corporation. Take the difference. That’s 16%. That’s less going to the government. And they’re just reinvesting that business, that cash back in the business. And now they’re set up to to grow and really prepare themselves for an exit. Now the big downside here is that C corporations are subject to double taxation. So you don’t necessarily want to go down the strategy. If you want to harvest from your business from free cash flow, because you pay that 21% C Corp rate, and then you have to pay another layer of taxes when you pull the money out. It’s called a dividend tax. And that can be as high as 23.8%.

Bryce Keffeler 00:24:32  So if you add the 21 of the 23.8, that could be 44.8 versus just 37. So that’s why this strategy doesn’t make sense for everyone. But we’ve got multiple entrepreneurs that after this one big beautiful bill came out, we did something called an F reorganization to flip them from an S corporation to a C corporation. And then that started the clock where they can hold it for three for five plus years. And then if have that liquidity event, they’ll look at that again 15 first 15 million or 10 times their investment basis tax free. So I’ll pause there. But I think there’s like that was backing up a little bit of like structuring and like what are our goals. but see what your thoughts are Josh on that. I know we were just talking about that a little bit.

Josh Hadley 00:25:10  Yeah. No, that that’s the that’s exactly where you need to start. Like what is your end goal for this. Which on that note price. I mean what do you recommend. What do you.

Outro 00:25:20  See.

Josh Hadley 00:25:21  With your clients.

Josh Hadley 00:25:22  You’re you’re you’re dealing with very successful business owners. What would you recommend to the general population of people listening to this that are ecommerce entrepreneurs are. Would you recommend hey, really the best way to maximize value is like an exit. Like truly that is, everybody should be pushing towards an exit. And I know there’s going to be a lot of nuance in this, but. Or would you recommend. Like, honestly, I love the strategy that, you know, we’ve been doing, a lot of which has been like taking chips off the table all along the way in order to allow us to just make better business decisions along the way. Give me the way you would maybe like. What are your recommendations in the way you would walk your client through that?

Bryce Keffeler 00:26:08  Yeah. is a really, really good question, Josh. And it’s a very loaded question. So I’ll start by saying that all of our clients who are mid 8 to 9 figures in net worth have sold their business. So I will say that the most obvious path as a business owner to having a substantial amount of wealth is to sell your business.

Bryce Keffeler 00:26:30  Now, is that your goal? Right? For everyone listening here? Do they want to be worth 50 to $100 million? Because if the answer is no, well, then it’s not as important. There’s that of that. For those entrepreneurs who would want to, you know, be truly, truly wealthy nine figure if not billionaires, you need to have that liquidity event that needs to happen. And I think look at Bezos. Let me look at anyone they IPO, right. They’re billionaires or they’re worth nine figures that it’s all through a liquidity event of the business. So I think that is undeniably true. I think there’s also a massive amount of risk, because most businesses and some of the data will show you about 80% of businesses won’t even sell like they’re not even sellable. Like nobody even wants that business because they’re just buying a job. So in a way, it’s kind of. I think of it as the venture capital world, right? If you think about the venture capital model, you put a bunch of money into a business, and the only way that those guys make money is they sell.

Bryce Keffeler 00:27:19  They sell to a a different company or they IPO. And so you’re making a huge levered bet that it’s going to go to zero essentially, or you’re going to hopefully get like a ten x or 100 x. And that’s one approach to building wealth. And but it’s a little bit it’s higher risk, high reward. What you’re talking about Josh and I’m actually a little bit more in your camp Josh, which is I don’t have that high of a personal risk tolerance. And so from our business, I went back to kind of going back to that model PNL, we have a certain profit margin target that we will always hit, and that is enough. That’s profit margin. That then can be right distributed out to the owners. And so I think from my perspective, I believe in taking chips off the table along the way because that de-risk you. Because then if you do not have that liquidity event and you’ve been, you know, busting your butt for 15 to 20 years, below. In this business you actually have wealth to show for it.

Bryce Keffeler 00:28:07  But that to me is a very personal decision. And that’s also about like really determining like what does make rich real look for me. And so I think for most of our clients that are doing that seek work that qualified small business stock, most of them, if I’m thinking about them, have a very good foundation already, or they have other side businesses that are cash flowing really well, or they’re paying themselves half 1 million to 1 million a year of W-2. And so they’re like, I can live a great life just based off this W-2. I’m never going to get super rich, but that gives me the abundance mentality to now just build, build, build, build, build for the exit. So in a way, I think they’re they’re doing it, they’re hedging or they have different paths of income in a different way because I think it’s hard otherwise to just eat rice and beans for a decade and reinvest all the money in and just cross your fingers and hope you’re having a liquidity event. So again, risk tolerance, season of life.

Bryce Keffeler 00:29:00  What are your other income streams? I think all of those are factors that play in that I’d want to dive into. But but you’re asking a profound question, which is which goes back to like, what are we trying to do, you know, and like and it starts with like, what are my wealth goals and why? And then let’s figure out a path to get there.

Josh Hadley 00:29:16  Yeah, I love that. I think you did a great job explaining that. And I would say that most people are in that’s corp camp right now where they are taking chips off the table. But to your point, I do think like as you mature as a business, it is worth looking into the C Corp structure as soon as you’re confident, like, no, we are going to exit and the business is already producing enough net income that I can take a half $1 million type salary. And it’s all good in the business, right? Everything’s running smoothly.

Bryce Keffeler 00:29:51  So I agree. Right. And I think just to build on that.

Bryce Keffeler 00:29:54  Right, I think something maybe is like you take chips off the table to an extent where you can have passive income streams that can sustain your lifestyle essentially forever. So you’re essentially financially free at that stage and you’re taking a healthy salary. Well, then maybe at that stage you’re like, okay, I feel pretty good. Like, let’s just go for this, right? Let’s do the conversion, do that for your organization. Let’s just build this thing and sell it 3 to 5 years, and then that’s what’s going to get me from maybe being worth 5 to 10 million, you know, wherever you’re at to 50 to 100 million, right. Again, if that aligns with your goals.

Josh Hadley 00:30:24  Yep. No. Fantastic I love this and I know some of the strategies we’ve already talked about that. Like I’ve already got my mind turning up, how we how we would do this ourself. Bryce, let’s let’s now dive into let’s say somebody is an S corp, right? Which means you have a lot more flexibility of tax levers to play with in order to really reduce your overall tax burden.

Josh Hadley 00:30:50  It’s not a flat 21%. It’s really whatever your personal tax bracket is all the way up to that 37%. So Bryce, now walk us through what’s kind of the hit list of tax strategies.

Bryce Keffeler 00:31:02  Yeah. So so first thing is if you’re an S corporation, you should be paying yourself W-2 salary and the rest of your profit. Really. Then you’re going to have profit that’s going to come out to your distribution. So the first thing is figuring out what is reasonable compensation that I need to be paying myself as a W2 business owner. And that’s important because you’re not really incentivized to pay a lot of W2, because if you pay yourself W2, you’ve got to pay self-employment taxes, right? The business is going to pay 7.65%. You personally need to pay 7.65%. So the first thing is what is my reasonable compensation and my reasonable W2? Now most of the time you can kind of end up again depends on the size and the profit of your business. But usually we see entrepreneurs end up around 100 or 80, maybe on the low end to maybe 150,000, maybe up to $200,000.

Bryce Keffeler 00:31:46  And again, it just kind of depends on the size of the business, but that will help mitigate self-employment taxes as a W2 business owner. So I think that’s that’s the first thing. Another strategy and we’ll just. We’ll. Quick. Interrupt me. Josh, I’m just gonna. I’m just a quick fire.

Josh Hadley 00:32:01  Just go down the list here I love this. Yep.

Bryce Keffeler 00:32:03  Go down the list. All right. I think the next thing I would look at is depending on your labor base, is there any type of retirement plan that could make sense for you. And so there’s 401 K’s, there’s Sep IRAs, there’s cash balance plans. I mean, I’ve got a case study of a service based business owner who put $1.2 million away in a cash balance plan. So fully deductible in that year, it’ll grow in compound tax free. And then when they pull it out, they’ll pay taxes. But again, they were able to it was over half $1 million of tax savings up front. So these plans can be super powerful.

Bryce Keffeler 00:32:34  But you need to watch out for how many W-2 employees you have, because there’s really stringent ERISA rules, because the government wants to make sure, hey, business owner, is this helping just you or is this helping all employees? So if you don’t have a whole lot of employees, if you’re using 1090 nines or offshore labor, these can be super powerful. But just be careful. If you got a lot of W-2, you know contractors or sorry, W-2 employees? So that’s one thing that I would say and that’s basic, but I think it’s very important. Another one that I know, Josh, we talk about all the time is is putting your kids on payroll. I think it’s it’s a brilliant strategy. You need to make sure your kids are actually doing legitimate work. But if they make less than $15,750 in 2025, that’s going to be adjusted for inflation every single year. Here, you don’t even have to file a tax return for your child. And so ideally you want to pay them, you know, some amount that must be substantiated based off of fair market rate.

Bryce Keffeler 00:33:29  But what we love to do is you can put the first $7,000 into a Roth IRA. And so what a Roth IRA does is it allows that money to grow and compound tax free, and then your child can pull it out tax free after the age of 59.5, but they can also access it for college. you know, there’s there’s rules down payment on the house. They can access it, but you have to have earned income in order to put money in a Roth. Well, by your child being employed, they now have earned income. So we really strive to push our entrepreneurs to try and get at least $1,000 of earned income for each child. Deductible. From a business perspective, your child will have to pay payroll taxes because they have to be a legitimate W-2 employee. But again, because that standard, as long as you pay in less than that standard deduction, they they don’t need to pay any taxes. And so and there’s good tax court cases like McMinn versus commissioner that really substantiates this.

Bryce Keffeler 00:34:19  As long as you do it right.

Josh Hadley 00:34:22  Right. That that one is probably one of my favorite ones now. You know, if you if you look at it, let’s say you have just a couple kids and you’re like, oh, I’m like $14,000 of tax savings, right? You’re like, yeah, okay, maybe, maybe that in and of itself isn’t like game changing for you. However, the what you do to set up your children for future success, if you can start at a young age, imagine that kid. Like, could they be a model for your products at the age of like 1 or 2. If you can start at that young of an age, and that money compounds tax free for 59.5 years, you’re well into the millions of dollars just by having it sit in an index file.

Bryce Keffeler 00:35:07  Yeah. Let me give you some numbers, Joshua. This is a this is a case I memorized. If you contribute $7,000 a year from age 8 to 18. So just ten years, right? Your child just works in the business for ten years, age 8 to 18, and you do seven grand a year.

Bryce Keffeler 00:35:20  Then to your point, yeah, I get a $7,000 right off through my business. Not changing the game, but I’ll take a few thousand bucks here or there. But if you never add another penny at age 18 and that money grows at 10%, just put in an index fund grows 10% per year. That child will have over $5 million in the Roth IRA at age 58. So if you just let that thing run for for at that’s age 40 years, over $5 million tax free at age 58. Right? So again, it sounds like not that much. But Einstein says, right. The eighth wonder of the world is compound interest. And that’s just letting your money make money for itself. So I agree from a tax savings perspective on the front end, not massive, but for setting your child up. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’d love to step into a $5 million account. When I were 58 years old. You know, I probably spent a little bit more money today if I knew that was coming 100%.

Josh Hadley 00:36:10  And that’s the exciting part, too. It’s like you don’t even have to get into complex like trusts and giving money away gifting and all of that. And like, it’s just like that’s their money. And and it’s also I love the aspect that it’s like my 20 year old kid doesn’t get access to that right now. You can talk college, but they don’t get access to that. Sorry, it’s in your Roth IRA. so anyways, I just love that strategy because of the compounding effect if you start early.

Bryce Keffeler 00:36:40  So yeah. Spot on. Right. Another strategy. Josh, I know you’re well aware of. It’s very popular out there. It’s called 280A or the Augusta rule. And it comes out of Augusta, Georgia, where there’s the golf, the Masters golf tournament. And really, they lobbied back in the late 70s. They said, hey, let’s build something in the tax code that says, if we rent our house out for less than 14 days a year, we don’t have to pay income taxes on that, because these were all the successful rich people around.

Bryce Keffeler 00:37:04  The Masters Tournament wanted to rent their mansions out to the golfers. And so they had some influence and that got passed through. And again, that’s to Ada. And so what it says is again, is that if you rent your house out for 14 days or less, you do not need to pay any income taxes on that. So that’s nice if you want to just Airbnb it out, you know, etc.. But where the strategy is more powerful is that if you instead want to host business meetings, business events, client events, you know, whatever it may be at your home instead of renting out a resort, then that’s a deductible business expense because you’re not paying rent to yourself as the homeowner. And so if you do that for up to 14 days a year, you don’t have to pay any income taxes on it. So again, you get the deduction on the business side. Aside, you recognize the income personally and you pay no income taxes on that. But you got to make sure you do this right.

Bryce Keffeler 00:37:52  So there was a tax court case in 2023. Sinopoli versus commissioner. The IRS essentially blessed the strategy, but they essentially made clear that you need to have a document. Why did you host the business meetings? Like what was the purpose, who attended, what were the dates? What did you discuss? You had to prove that you actually did this. You also want to try to get a lease agreement in place between the business and you personally, just so it’s again an arm’s length agreement. And then most importantly, you need to get comps. You need to find out what are the third party comps to substantiate the rent that I’m going to charge my business to rent my home out, document all of that, put it in a folder, and you want to make sure that you can. You do this right? Because I think too many people maybe just make up a number. And so doing it right is very important just in case you get audited.

Josh Hadley 00:38:37  Yeah, 100% that that truly is like a really powerful tax strategy if you do it correctly, just like Bryce talked about.

Josh Hadley 00:38:45  And again, like don’t do the basic thing of how much could I Airbnb this thing out for? Go along the lines of like what Bryce is talking about? Like, what if I were hosting some type of business gathering that I would normally do at a resort? You know, we all know what resorts costs. Like, those aren’t cheap. Like, that’s that’s the leverage of that rather than a couple hundred bucks for somebody to Airbnb my home per day.

Bryce Keffeler 00:39:09  Yep yep. Next one I’ll go into Josh I see this is a little bit more complicated. It really stands for an interest charge domestic international sales corporation. So that’s a mouthful. But it’s for anybody exporting any of your products overseas. So we don’t see a whole lot of this within our business owners. It’s mostly domestic US base. But even if you’re going to Canada or Mexico and generally you got to have over $1 million of sales internationally for this to make sense. But what it says is that you can take either 50% of net export profit or 4% of gross export revenue.

Bryce Keffeler 00:39:42  And you can run that through this icy disk, which essentially is like a C corporation. And so what it does is it allows you to deduct that you’re essentially going to be paying 21% taxes on that amount of money instead of the full 37%. So again, we see this really being applicable only for doing over $1 million, because it does cost several thousand dollars to get this set up. And it’s an extra tax return. But again, an icy disc really just you can take that as a mental note, if you’re doing over $1 million of revenue to overseas, that’s where you may want to look into that strategy. So a little bit more complicated, but just kind of planting the planting the seed there. another one that I think Josh would be interesting to go through with, with your kind of audience here from an ecom perspective, is, is the research and development tax. so really, when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed in 2017, this was the original tax bill that President Trump put into place.

Bryce Keffeler 00:40:35  There were really punitive parts of this that said, starting in 2022, if you’re doing domestic research and development activities, despite paying these engineers and these software costs up front, you have to write them off from a tax perspective over five years. So imagine paying $1 million a year to engineers doing research and development. That’s cash out the door. But on your tax return, you only get a write off $200,000 of that. It was just so brutal. And then, especially in a world where we want to be competitive from a research and development perspective, really, really bad policy, in my opinion. And so with the new one big beautiful bill, they’ve rectified that you can now fully expense all of your domestic research and development activities, which is good news for a lot of people who are getting hit by this. But on top of that, you can also qualify for a research and development tax credit. And so we had a lot of entrepreneurs that were doing research and development. And so think of it.

Bryce Keffeler 00:41:32  If you’re an e-com and you’re doing maybe a proprietary supplement blend, if you’re doing any type of proprietary product design, proprietary design formulation, etc.. Well, all of the W2, all of the costs associated with developing the proprietary blend is most likely research and development costs. So now you actually are looking for research and development in your business because you can now fully expense it. But on top of that, you can get a dollar for dollar credit up to around 8 to 10%. It kind of shakes out for those research and development costs. So for example, in the example I gave, I’m spending $1 million on engineers a year for some research and development. Now I can of course write that full million dollars off, but I’m also going to get a dollar for dollar tax credit worth about 80 to $100,000. Right. 8 to 10% of those qualified research expenditures. Again, credits are worth way more than deductions. A credit is a dollar for dollar wipe out of your taxes. So I encourage everyone listening here.

Bryce Keffeler 00:42:28  If you’re doing any type of proprietary design formulation, see do you pass the four part test for for R&D. Because again it’s very, very attractive. Now, after one big, beautiful bill. And then the last thing I’ll say is that, hey, if I was doing research and development from 2022 through 2024, what happens? I got screwed, right? Well, it’s part of the one big, beautiful bill. They said, you can now go back and amend your prior year’s tax returns, and you can now write all those expenses off and get a refund. And that’s applicable for what’s called small businesses, which are less than $31 million of revenue. If you’re above $31 million in revenue, you can essentially take all of those expenses you didn’t write off of the prior two years and pick them up in 2025, 2026, so those can be a lot of big losses coming through, which will help you kind of current your tax planning. So again, section 174 A is the code research and development.

Bryce Keffeler 00:43:19  Right. You know planning to plant a note there and maybe reach out to your CPA on that one if you think that qualifies.

Josh Hadley 00:43:25  Bryce this is awesome I love it. There’s there’s a lot that goes into this. So I guess my question to follow up on this is like doing this by yourself. Like it. There are thousands of pages of of this tax code. Right. And CPAs are supposed to know it, but CPAs are, you know, every single one’s different. so how what would be your recommendation to these entrepreneurs that, like, get excited about these things? But they’re like, how in the world do I actually implement these?

Bryce Keffeler 00:43:55  Yeah. Good question. I think the way that I like to frame it up is that if you think I love Charlie Munger, write Rest in Peace, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s old partner, and he always says, show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome. And so CPAs and tax preparers are brilliant, smart professionals. But if you think through the incentive model, they charge you based off of tax returns that they spit out, and they’re focused on what I’m calling tax compliance, just making sure there’s not mistakes and that, hey, we’re doing everything by the book now that’s very important.

Bryce Keffeler 00:44:25  But they’re not incentivized to try to proactively minimize your tax bill. And so we call those tax historians, which most CPAs are tax historians. But again, they’re incentivized to make sure there’s no mistakes and they get paid based off of every tax return. They spit out the door. It’s really a volume game, so you need to make sure you’re working with a tax planner. Now some CPAs have the ability to do tax planning. There’s other professionals that do tax planning. It’s the service that we provide for all of our fractional family offices. But you want to make sure that someone is going on the offense and they’re not just on the defense. So I think the first step is figure out, hey, can my CPA be a tax planner? And maybe it’s just a conversation of like, hey, can we do some tax planning? Like, can you just sit down and what’s going on offense? And maybe if I even, you know, pay you by the hour or like, what would this look like? But some CPAs honestly don’t have the skill set or the ability to go on offense.

Bryce Keffeler 00:45:16  They’re trained on how to plug stuff into the tax software, make adjusting journal entries help you sign your tax returns, and then they see you again next April. So not every CPA is even capable of being a tax plan about start by asking that conversation and having that conversation now. If not, you want to, then make sure that you’re looking for a tax planner and I encourage you. Then you can Google. You can work with ChatGPT, you know, figure out, hey, what what does a tax planner look like? But the biggest thing you want to make sure you avoid is what what are sometimes some of these tax strategists are actually looking to charge a percentage of the tax savings. And so I would really encourage you to avoid anyone in that type of model. Because as you can think about it, their interest is now to save you the most amount of money because they’re going to get a percentage of that, but they’re pushing all of the IRS risk and audit risk to you because you’re the one who signs your tax return.

Bryce Keffeler 00:46:06  They get a commission upfront. And if the IRS audits you in three years, well, they’re long gone. So I think make sure you’re looking again, even if you are going to look for a tax planner, how are they incentivized? How are they compensated? Make sure you think through that a little bit. So those would be the again ChatGPT can help get you going on some of these strategies. But eventually, I think a lot of entrepreneurs want help with the implementation because we’re all just super busy. And so I think those would be some steps I would use or encourage your listeners to use.

Josh Hadley 00:46:35  Yeah. And Bryce, one thing I think that’s really important is people maybe they maybe they don’t have a wealth planner or a wealth advisor on their team right now. And they’re like, yeah, all of this sounds good. I need to have a professional like this on my team. Then as you talked about, like what’s their incentive? What’s how are they incentivized? How are they compensated? And so one of the things that I think like meant the most to me is like, you know, we first work together is like, you have to be find somebody that’s a fiduciary, which means this, it means that they’re not incentivized by, hey, I don’t have to pay more.

Josh Hadley 00:47:16  If you find more tax savings for me, you also aren’t getting a cut. If you recommend. Hey, I would really you should really get into this new venture capital deal structure. They’re asking for 100 K like, because if they’re a fiduciary, you’re not getting kickbacks from whether it’s investment opportunities or tax savings or things like that. You you pay your monthly rate, whatever it is. And then they’re in your corner and they are not. And I think that in the world of finance and money and wealth advisors, a lot of times it’s a percentage of something. And I feel like that’s where the incentives and the alignment start to really get hairy and they really start going in in scary directions. So I just think that what you guys have done is very, very unique to entrepreneurs that need need the help and guidance to to be able to do that. How common is it that there are fiduciaries for wealth advisors, or is it like, no, it’s it’s pretty rare. And you do have to like seek them out pretty hard.

Bryce Keffeler 00:48:19  Yeah. Great question Josh. So I think that this industry is broken and that a lot of people assume in financial services that if I’m working with someone, well, yeah, they have to make recommendations that are best for me, right? The answer is actually no. The general default is that they have to make a suitable recommendation for you. So as long as they can defend that that was a suitable recommendation, not fiduciary, which fiduciary means I’m legally obligated to put your needs ahead of my own. And I must disclose all conflicts of interest. So that’s one of the first things that a lot of people don’t even understand, that most that financial services by default is a suitable standard, not fiduciary standard. The other thing that I think is even worse is that there’s something called dual hat. People can be a fiduciary sometimes and a broker and have that suitable standard other times. So if someone says, hey, are you a fiduciary? They say yes. The real question is, are you a fiduciary at all times? Can you ever be fulfilled with a broker dealer? Are you ever subject to the suitable standard? Yes, that’s a key question because and this is the part that really frustrates me.

Bryce Keffeler 00:49:21  I would go on a tangent here, but you would think that you have to be one or the other because there are uses of when people should be getting paid to sell your business and getting a percentage of that cut. That’s a broker. They should be getting paid a cut of that, and they’re incentivized to drive that. And we all know they’re getting paid a percentage to do that. But when you’re looking for day to day advice, you want to minimize conflicts of interest to the fullest extent. And so what what it is common that people are a fiduciary, but it’s common that they’re a dual hack. There’s sometimes a fiduciary, sometimes they’re a broker. And you think they’re going to tell you which hat they’re wearing at the time they’re talking to, you know. And so it’s really broken. It’s because there’s a lot of lobbyists because like everything there’s a lot of money behind, you know. But I think that there’s there’s definitely an issue from the incentive and a disclosure perspective. And so I think that that’s a key question.

Bryce Keffeler 00:50:08  Are you a fiduciary at all times. And then also in our industry in financial services, there’s a bunch of documents that do need to be disclosed to clients. But it’s the kind of stuff that like typical government stuff, no one actually reads the documents. But I would encourage you, if you’re working with a wealth advisor or any type of professional. Just go to the fee section and just see all of the different ways that they can get paid. That’s really what’s most important. And then ask them, like, what are all the different ways that you can get paid? I think that again, going back to Charlie Munger, show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome. And so there’s pros and cons to every business model, right. You can have the commissions, which, hey, every time I sell you a life insurance policy, they get a commission. They have you invest in this deal, they get a commission, they percentage of tax savings or hey, even hey, you need to move $1 million in all investor stocks and bonds and charge you 1%, right? An asset gatherer like there are inherent conflicts of interest.

Bryce Keffeler 00:50:58  And again, no model is perfect. But that’s why we’ve gravitated towards the fixed monthly fee, because we think that that minimizes all as much of the conflicts of interest as possible. So again, it’s not, to be honest, the best business model because everyone wants to get a percentage because it’s a lot easier. But, you know, we believe in doing what we think is best and minimizing the conflicts of interest to the fullest extent possible.

Josh Hadley 00:51:21  Yeah, Bryce, I think really well said there, Bryce. Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you think like our entrepreneurs and e-commerce need to hear before we sign off?

Bryce Keffeler 00:51:32  You know, I, I think we covered a lot of ground. I think we we rattled with a lot of tax stuff. We hit them on on how to prepare, think through their liquidity events and how they want to set themselves up for the liquidity event. I think the last thing I would just want to add in is all of these tactics are just that. They’re just tactics.

Bryce Keffeler 00:51:49  They’re just strategies. And I think the biggest thing that entrepreneurs sometimes miss is a compelling vision on what they’re trying to actually do with their wealth. And so we just call that make rich real. Like, what does make rich real mean to you? And I think that’s a very important thing. And it’s nebulous. But but I think that needs to be defined because I think all of these tactics and strategies and structuring like, yeah, these can all help achieve different goals, but start by thinking through. What am I actually trying to achieve here? Because I think the game gets a lot easier when you can run it through the filter of what am I actually trying to achieve? What does make Rich real actually mean for me? Am I trying to be worth 100 million? Or do I just want my kids to go to college? Or do I want to give $1 million to charity? Do I want to have a private plane like whatever it is? And maybe it’s a lot of different themes. I think I encourage everyone to start with make Rich real, because then that is a filter or a lens through which they can look through all of these different tactics and strategies.

Bryce Keffeler 00:52:45  Otherwise, I just see a blind collection of random good acts that’s like, well, why did you do this? Why do you that? Well, because that’s smart. But but it’s like but that’s kind of contradictory to what you just told me. Your goal is that you’re trying to accomplish. So I think that’d be the only last thing is just like within the frame of this, what are you trying to accomplish and why? Get very clear on that? Because then it becomes easy to figure out which of these tactics, tactics and strategies I mentioned today are even worth pursuing or researching.

Josh Hadley 00:53:11  Yeah, yeah, really well articulated there, Bryce. I’d love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. So here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. Number one, if you’re an e-commerce business owner, one of the most important things you need to be focused on is that cash conversion cycle and how much money you have sitting in that bank account. So how do you lose that money? It your biggest expenses in the business are going to be the following.

Josh Hadley 00:53:39  You have three. Number one it’s going to be your cost of goods okay. It’s your inventory and how much inventory you just sitting on in the warehouse right. That’s number one. Number two is going to be your ad spend always one of the most significant expenses on any e-commerce PNL. Last but not least, this is the one that gets overlooked all the time. And nobody’s talking about it. But it’s taxes, right? If you made over $1 million, right. And your effective tax tax bracket is at 37%. That’s figuratively Hundred and $70,000. Imagine if you can reduce some of that to where you get to keep more cash in your business and reinvest it in. Maybe it’s another ad campaign, or maybe it’s a new product launch. Those will compound over time. And so I think the the everybody’s pretty aware of, like you’re already looking at your ads. You’re already looking at your cost of goods sold. That’s fine. But what are you doing to optimize for your taxes, which is another very significant expense that doesn’t necessarily show up on the PNL all the time, but it is a huge hit to the business if you’re not actively planning towards it.

Josh Hadley 00:54:50  So that’s number one, is having that mindset and understanding of like where your money is going. Action item number two is to begin implementing some of these tax strategies. So set up a plan a system to where you are like we didn’t even talk about this. But like accrual versus cash accounting can have very different impacts to how you’re paying your taxes at the end of the year. there’s all the tax strategies that Bryce just talked about that you can implement in hiring your kids, setting up 401 K’s. Things like that. That can just reduce your overall tax burden. And especially with like the R&D credit, that can literally wipe out some of that money that you would have to pay for taxes. So that’s action item number two. And then my third and final action item is that see this portion of your business as tax planning and advice is like just as well as you would hire somebody to manage your PPC campaigns in advertising campaigns on Amazon or any other e-commerce channel, would you not want somebody managing what is the third most biggest expense in your business with your taxes? So who is your partner? Who is your team member that is actually in charge of helping you mitigate and reduce your overall tax burden.

Josh Hadley 00:56:11  And which goes back to the recent conversation we just had. Make sure you find a fiduciary that is exclusively a fiduciary that actually cares about you, and will put your needs first, rather than just trying to pitch you the latest life insurance policy, because that’s how they get compensated and that’s how they get their kickbacks. so I would say like, that’s the third and final action item. Go find somebody to actually be your your gatekeeper, your backstop, somebody that actually has your back to ensure that you are being able to take off chips off the table, set yourself up for future success and wealth, and make rich real and whatever terms those are for you. So, Bryce, anything else you would add there?

Bryce Keffeler 00:56:54  No. Brilliantly sad.

Josh Hadley 00:56:56  Awesome. Bryce. Well, final three questions. we ask every guest. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Bryce Keffeler 00:57:05  Yeah, I’d say recency bias is coming in, but last year I read Radical Candor by Kim Scott, I believe, and it was an amazing book.

Bryce Keffeler 00:57:12  And we’ve incorporated that within our DNA here in our organization. so that would be my answer. Radical candor, more of a leadership management, book. But that’s that’s been really impactful for me.

Josh Hadley 00:57:26  Love it. Great recommendation. Question number two. What is your favorite AI tool and how have you been using it?

Bryce Keffeler 00:57:33  Yeah. So I switched over to the comet web browser. which is by perplexity and I love it. It has a the ability to summarize YouTube videos, articles. I’m not reading anything anymore. Just use the summarize functionality with the built in AI assistant. And then I’ve essentially replaced Google with perplexity and I’ve gotten way better results. So, gone is the way of Google for me. And now I’m using again comment built by perplexity with my web browser, and I’ve been a very big fan.

Josh Hadley 00:58:01  I love it, I have heard about that as well. Need to need to take that jump as well.

Bryce Keffeler 00:58:07  It is. They help make the transition. I will say Josh from Chrome very easily.

Bryce Keffeler 00:58:11  They map over all of your favorites, like right, because there’s a lot of, friction moving your web browser. But their engineers have done a very good job because they actually API or they actually connect somehow and they like it looks the exact same as Chrome, but it’s, I like it a lot.

Josh Hadley 00:58:26  That’s good to know. That’s now that’s my action item.

Bryce Keffeler 00:58:30  There you go.

Josh Hadley 00:58:32  Bryce, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in whether it be e-commerce or just kind of the business area as well that people should be following?

Bryce Keffeler 00:58:40  Yeah, I think it’s a cliche answer. So I’m embarrassed to say if I think Alex from OSI, I think just I respect what he says, the truth. and that doesn’t hold anything back. And I what I really respect is with all of his book launches, I know he just sold $100 million worth of books for his most recent one, but he actually applies all of the strategies and tactics, like he eats his own cooking and he shows you like literally the application of everything I’m teaching you.

Bryce Keffeler 00:59:06  I literally just did this to achieve this. And so that’s what I respect the most about Alex Hermosa is, is he’s not just a coach who hasn’t done their like, he literally applies all of his tactics and you see them in real time being applied. So I know it’s cliche, but everyone listening to this podcast already follows Alex from Ozzie, but I just respect how real he is and also how much like application and implementation forward he is instead of just kind of guru status.

Josh Hadley 00:59:32  100% excellent recommendation. All right, Bryce, you also have a book coming out, right? Maybe hopefully you’re selling $100 million worth of copies of your book. But tell us about this book. If people want to reach out to you, they want to learn more. give us the details.

Bryce Keffeler 00:59:50  Yeah, I’ll. I’ll say I will not sell a $100. I will not sell any because we’re giving this book away for free. Literally. So it’s do wealth comm. That’s d w w. Dot com backslash book, and the name of the book is Billionaire Wealth Strategies for entrepreneurs.

Bryce Keffeler 01:00:07  So all of the tax strategies I mentioned here are literally in the book. I’m like, we’re giving it all away. Here’s the asset protection strategies. How to get your insurance cleaned up. Estate planning. Preparing for an exit. We really just wanted to produce and give it all the way to our entrepreneurs. We’re not in the business of making money. Buy books. And selfishly, what we want to do is really just push this out to the entrepreneurs and use this honestly as a marketing tool, right? Like selfishly, which I love about Alex Mosley, he’s very transparent and he gives away everything for free because a small portion are going to be portfolio companies. We believe that a very small portion of entrepreneurs are going to read this book, and they’re going to say, you know what? These are great ideas. I don’t have the time, nor do I want to actually implement all of this stuff. And that’s where that’s where our fractional family office business comes into play. But there’s nothing held back.

Bryce Keffeler 01:00:53  There’s. And so again, it’s all in there. The book is for free on that URL. There’s an audio version in there, and we have a tool at the end of every chapter. So that way it pushes entrepreneurs to actual implementation of everything we go through to. That would be the the giveaway. Again, I’m going to make $0. And I was we were talking about ahead of time. Josh writing this book took way longer than I thought I was going to.

Josh Hadley 01:01:16  Well, I think it’s amazing what you guys have put together. I can’t, I can’t recommend you all enough. So if if you listening to this are, like, truly serious about having somebody in your corner, like, this is somebody that I trust as well. So, check out their book. Go listen to it. go read it and, reach out to Bryce. It do? Well, if you want to learn more. So, Bryce, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Bryce Keffeler 01:01:43  Thanks, Josh.

Bryce Keffeler 01:01:43  I appreciate you so much.

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