Financial Planning for Sellers with Andrew Van Dyke

In this episode we are joined by Andrew Van Dyke, a financial advisor with Modern Woodmen in Meridian Idaho. Andrew shares his wisdom from working with business owners to manage their financial assets, both within the business deferred compensation plans and outside the business with their own investments. Andrew was born in raised in beautiful Northern California, in wine country. From the time he was young, he had a passion for numbers and people. From the get-go, it has made this career a natural fit for him, but that's not why he works as a financial advisor. His biggest passion is time freedom, and his goal is to teach and pass on that passion to his clients. 

Andrew specializes in developing tax strategies for business owners and the self-employed to minimize their tax bills today and tomorrow. He helps to create passive income streams for business owners once they have transitioned out of their businesses.

Selling a business is the American dream, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the reward for years of hard work. Successful entrepreneurs make countless sacrifices in hopes that they would someday reap the benefits of their labor and live a new life of vacations, recreation, and prosperity.

You only exit your business once, so you should feel confident passing this milestone. A successful business exit reflects the preparation done beforehand. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

The owner of a privately held company has several alternatives on how to exit their business. In the absence of an exit strategy, events will inexorably dictate the final exit plan. A costly involuntary exit may be caused by death, disability, divorce, disagreement, or distress.

Selling Your Business with David King will help you take control of the sale process and make it positive one.

Transcript

 | Speaker 1:  [00:00:30] | Welcome back to Selling Your Business with David King. I'm David King, author of Selling Your Business. Begin with the end to in mind. It's available on Amazon. Today I am joined by Andrew Van Dyke with Modern Woodman. He is a financial advisor in Meridian, Idaho. Welcome, Andrew.  
 | Speaker 2: | Thanks for having me, David. I, uh, appreciate the opportunity  
 | Speaker 1: | And being a financial advisor, he's gonna give us a little bit of, uh, legal caveat to preface his Go ahead.  
 | Speaker 2:  [00:01:00] | So anything I say today is not financial advice. Um, leave that to me when we speak one to one, and we will at that point dictate a lot of this stuff. Today is just going to be my general thoughts and opinions, but nothing I say is financial advice.  
 | Speaker 1: | Perfect. Well then let's go ahead and lead into this, um, education. That's not financial advice. Tell us about yourself. How long have you been working in financial advisory services?  
 | Speaker 2:  [00:01:30] | Yeah, so I've been doing this for about three years now, a little bit over now, and, um, started when I moved up here to Idaho. I, uh, originally was from Northern California. I called myself a little bit of a refugee, and, um, yeah, been doing it for about three years now.  
 | Speaker 1: | Have you been with Modern Woodman the whole time?  
 | Speaker 2: | Yep. Been with them from day one. I did a good amount of research before I picked a firm to make sure that, um, they had the, you know, the things that I wanted to be able to do and could do what I wanted to do long term through them and talked to a few different firms, couple independents, but this was truly the way that I wanted to go.  
 | Speaker 1: | So tell me about your client base. What type of people do you typically serve?  
 | [00:02:00] Speaker 2:       [00:02:30] |  Yeah, so my predominant client right now is small business owners, you know, ranging anywhere from the solo entrepreneur all the way up to about 50 employees. Usually my business owners have been in business for about five to 10 years. They're at the point where the business side of what they're doing, you know, they have something that makes them a consistent income, and they're either at the phase where they're bringing on employees or they've brought on employees and they start offering benefits or, you know, maybe they're just long-term trying to think about if they're smart, how they're gonna exit plan out of the business. And so most of my clientele are business owners that have been in for about five or 10 years, and like I said, clients or employees of about, you know, one to 50, um, employees.  
 | Speaker 1: | I see. And, and with those business owners, do you help them both with, say, setting up a deferred compensation plans for themselves and their employees and their own separate, uh, savings, uh, to, to plan for their retirement and their exit?  
 | [00:03:00] Speaker 2:      [00:03:30] |  Yeah, I think there's kind of this like con like perception that as a business owner for a lot of people that their business is their retirement. And in a lot of cases that can be, you know, in a certain capacity, very true. But a lot of times I think people put too much weight into the idea that their business is going to just take care of them their entire life. Um, and so offering, you know, defined benefit or defined contribution plans to not only yourself but your employees is one way for you to have guaranteed assets when you retire, to make sure that even if your business doesn't go the way you want it to, or even if your business goes the exactly the way you want it to, you're gonna have a passive income there to rely on outside of that business sale. And then your employees are gonna be happy because a happy employee is a productive company. And that's never been more true with all of the turnover that we're seeing in society right now.  
 | Speaker 1: [00:04:00] | And w when you are working with them and, and helping, helping them set up, uh, retirement plans, uh, and I, this is more of a legal issue than a financial issue, but the two are definitely intertwined here. Do you impress upon them the fact that the money that they set aside in their retirement plan is a safe asset, meaning it's safe from creditors? If something terrible happens and you get sued above the limits of your insurance policy, the money that's in your retirement is staying there?  
 | [00:04:30] Speaker 2: |  Yep. And that's also the case too, with cash value life insurance policies. And so that's something to also take into account. But yes, that is absolutely a conversation that we have. Um, and it's something super important to be thinking about as the more assets that you can protect for yourself mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if stuff were to hit the fan, that's, yeah, that's absolutely a conversation we're having with people. And one that should definitely be thought about  
 | Speaker 1: [00:05:00] | H how many years in advance of their exit? Do business owners typically bring it up with you? Hey, I'm, I'm thinking of, of selling, getting, getting out of this, I'm exhausted or I something else to do, or just for any reason they they're ready to exit the business?  
 | Speaker 2:    [00:05:30] | Yeah, I most commonly, and this is where I think, and we'll talk about this here in a little bit, but we're a little bit of the disconnect is, but I will most commonly get a business owner that says, I wanna sell in the next 12 months to max, like three years mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And I think that's kinda the perception of like, oh, I only need like a year, a couple years to get everything in order. Right. Um, but on my end, the way I would say is like if I've met a business owner, and let's say they're already operational, they're doing well, they don't have a, you know, sell date in mind. This is somebody in, maybe they're mid thirties, mid forties, then I'm gonna say at least 10 years is going to be the amount of time we need to start planning for. Because in order to build passive income retirement accounts, if you're gonna use cash balance plans, you need a decade plus for the compounding interest to even make sense for you to build something.  
 | [00:06:00] Speaker 2:       [00:06:30] |  Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And on the flip side of that, as I said earlier, a lot of my, you know, business owners I'm working with are pretty new. And so it's a discussion from day one. You know, you touched on it in your book where yeah, sometimes you can't always do it from the get go, but if you're not thinking about from day one of your business how you're gonna have one, a passive income stream for yourself, but then two, how to take yourself out of the business. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, so many of my clients I work with, and we're helping them with this, but they start out as their business is them, or their business cannot operate without them, which means the value of their business when it comes time to sell is very minimum because without said person, then what, what is someone buying? Most people that are buying a business right now mm-hmm. <affirmative>  
 | Speaker 2:    [00:07:00] | Wanna have something that's a little bit more turnkey, that they can add some more automation to, they can add a little bit more higher prices, maybe add a subscription model, and then they can package that up. And it's another passive income source. No one wants to buy a business that one guy in an assistant has done plumbing work for 40 years, and all they have is a list of clients. Like, there's some value in that, but that's not going to relate to getting you a quality sale for your business. And so planning that from day one of not only one, putting money away into these 401ks, mega backdoor Roth cash balance plans, that's important, but also trying to make yourself an owner of your business and not an operational manager of your business.  
 | [00:07:30] Speaker 1: |  Right. You wanna be an owner and not an operator. If you couldn't go on a vacation and sail around the world and have business going without you, you're not in a position to sell.  
 | Speaker 2:    [00:08:00] | Exactly. And I think a lot of people don't associate the fact that their business could do 5 billion a year in revenue mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but if it needs them, their business is worthless. And the idea of being sold, and I'm mean that with quotation marks mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but in comparison to like, you know, let's say a carwash, a fleet of car washes that run on automation, have a couple employees and owners haven't been there more than once or twice a year to make sure everything looks fine. That's a business that's gonna sell really well. Um, and so yeah, getting people to make their businesses closer to that instead of, like I said, a guy in a work truck for 40 years and then wondering why no one wants to buy his business out for you.  
 | Speaker 1:  [00:08:30] | Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, well, there's a lot of size, uh, you know, businesses of the size where they're naturally gonna tend to be an owner operated business. And you, and you will, you know, if, if you wanna be able to sell that as well, but you wanna be able to have it structured well enough that you could make it transition to a new owner. And I think you, you nailed it with, you can't have all the customers dependent upon you. You can't have all the employees gonna scatter the moment you leave. It has to be able to transition to a new owner.  
 | Speaker 2: [00:09:00] | Yeah. No, absolutely. I think there's a ton of planning that needs to be done. I'm gonna tell a business owner, if I've met 'em off the bat 10 years, if I'm starting 'em from the get-go, we're gonna talk about that I, those ideals from day one. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but it's, to answer your original question, I feel like most business owners only feel like they need like 12 months to a couple years. And I just don't feel like that's accurate.  
 | Speaker 1: | No, no. That's barely enough time to even put it on the market and get it sold,  
 | Speaker 2: | Honestly. Exactly.  
 | Speaker 1: [00:09:30]      [00:10:00]     [00:10:30] | And, and I always say to people who own a business and like, congratulations, that, how do you know how you would be able to sell your business? And if people don't have a plan for it, I'm like, if you can't visualize how you would be able to sell your business, you don't own a business, you own a job. Yep. And, and so there's a, that, that's the difference here. How would you, you know, exit people will assume that some of their key employees want to take, take the business over, and if you've sat down and asked these key employees, they'd be scared to death to do it. And it's often not the most lucrative way to exit. So it, it, the, there's a lot of planning and it's good that you push people in this direction and push them early, um, outside of the business and building the value and having the business in a condition to sell and, and, you know, what are you doing with their other finances? What are you looking for to make sure that this whole thing dovetails together and the people retire with the assets they need to retire comfortably?  
 | Speaker 2:     [00:11:00] | Yeah, so for me it's a year to year balance of what's a lot of times needed for the business tax wise. So my most common recommendation plan that we're going to do for a business is a 401K or a solo 401k mm-hmm. <affirmative> for business owners. And because of it, the reason, because of this is because you can do post-tax deferrals and you can do pre-tax deferrals. And so the nice thing about that too is you can do different amounts in different years. And so my most common investment vehicle and tax strategy we're gonna use for a business owner and their employees is we're gonna offer a 401K plan to them. And what this is gonna do is it's gonna allow the business owner in years that they need more write-offs. They can write up up to $67,000 a year. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> 62,000 if they're under 50, I think the numbers are going up for 2023, I have to learn 'em for next year.  
 | Speaker 2:  [00:11:30]      [00:12:00] | But, um, but essentially they can write off X amount and then we can attach what's called a cash balance plan on top of that. The constraints on those get a little bit trickier, but I'm working with a client right now where she's able to write off another $150,000 a year into a cash balance plan on top of the full pre-tax contribution she's doing into her 401k. So she has almost $200,000 a year that she's not paying taxes on. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it's completely being inferred because that's what she needs right now. Because the way her business is set up right now and how long, how short she has the retirement, her tax bracket is going to be almost the third of what it is right now mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so we play a lot more benefit into that business owner going into pre-tax type of accounts to minimize that tax bill a day because she's in a 30 something percent bracket, and we'll have her pay taxes down the road when she's in a 15 to 20% tax bracket.  
 | Speaker 2:   [00:12:30]       [00:13:00] | The flip side of that is the other business owner, and kind of in my opinion, the more ideal situation is the, their business is able to come off with a lot of the writeoffs and deductions they need. And so they don't actually need to use their investments to make pre-tax deferrals. They, they're actually okay making post-tax. And one of my favorite things to do is called a mega backdoor Roth mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And what that does is, as a, let's say you're the business owner right here mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you're gonna contribute, and you're o I wanna say you're over 50 years old too, you're gonna contribute $27,000 into your post-tax Roth 401k as the employee mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and then you're gonna make a non deductible contribution into your 401k is the business owner, and come tax time, you're gonna convert that into a Roth ira mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And what that's gonna do is every single set of growth moving forward, assuming you wait till 59 and a half and five years, is going to be tax free.  
 | Speaker 2:    [00:13:30] | And so if that business owner doesn't need the ride off up front, then we can literally be doing about 60 to $70,000 a year into post-tax Roth accounts mm-hmm. <affirmative> and look a little extra work in paperwork. I mean, there's, there's stuff that comes with that, but I have business owners that come to me or W2 employees that make too much, and they don't even think they can have a post-tax Roth account. They, they think they're over the income limit. And so that make the back door Roth is an awesome way for a business owner if they don't need the write-offs on the investment side. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> to be having a tax-free income on the retirement side.  
 | Speaker 1: | What percentage of business owners, um, who would you say have re retirement plans with both, um, you know, the conventional deductible contributions and the, the Roth, uh, aspects of their, of their retirement accounts?  
 | [00:14:00] Speaker 2:      [00:14:30]      [00:15:00] |  I think more commonly we've seen the pre-tax deferral mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but I think that's a little bit more because of this, there's been a lack of knowledge. And honestly on the advisors though, it's su on the advisors side, it's, uh, slightly easier convinced to say, Hey, I can save you taxes here. We can reduce your tax bill by X amount. And so unless you really explain the advantages of that post-tax Yeah. Most people immediately associate more positivity to that pre-tax deferral, which is why we see that more. Um, for my clients, I'd say it's a pretty equal split. If I need, if I, if we only need the deferral, I'm probably honestly gonna go with closer to a simple ira, maybe a 401k if the income's not quite there and we need to be able to have a hundred percent, um, contributed. But at the same time, like most of my clients that have a 401k, we have it set up to do post-tax deferrals. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they can pick whether or not they wanna do post-tax or pre-tax. And it really just depends on the year and what's needed for this, this tax year. Do we need write-offs this year or can we put money and save for taxes and not have to pay taxes down the road? Mm-hmm.  
 | Speaker 1: | <affirmative> speaking, uh, those two terrible words right there this year, <laugh> 2022, um,  
 | Speaker 2: | That taxes was one of them.  
 | Speaker 1: [00:15:30]      [00:16:00] | Yeah. Yeah. Well, <laugh> taxes is the least. Um, you know, there's a lot of people out there present, speaker included that is, uh, you know, I've looked at my 401K and said, well, retirement is a few extra years down the road, um, you know, people looking to exit. Um, the, the market is cooling a bit. It's still, you know, it's possible to sell. Right now it's not nearly as hot as the market was in 2021, but are you seeing, uh, more people who saying, well, I need to hang in this game, I gotta play a few more hands of poker before I'm gonna be able to cash my chips in because I just lost a few chips without even playing them.  
 | Speaker 2:      [00:16:30] | Yeah. I think one, I'm hearing that, um, two, there's a little bit that can be done on the advisors side that, you know, you're having an advisor that's paying attention and you want your stuff actively managed to mitigate a little of that. Um, but if it's as far as you're kind of just buy and hold 401k, here's what I've kind of been telling people. When you look at a stock market, let's just say like the s and p 500 s index, and it's like average returns mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it follows a fairly steady process where it goes up and then it goes down. But, and there's not too many extended periods where it just goes like this. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, there might be blips or months or couple months that it does that, but not for extended periods. What we saw in 2020 was an extension of people being at home with too much time on their heads, an influx of government cash that people weren't used to having.  
 | Speaker 2:  [00:17:00]      [00:17:30] | And really just an, a more accessible way to invest than we ever had through, um, apps like Robinhood, TD Ameritrade, where the average 18 year old with an extra 50 bucks could go not day trade, but essentially play around with stocks and, um, round. And so what that did was create, and then also combined with the fact that our government spent 16 trillion in 11 years, it created a, in my mid opinion, like a fake stock market mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So for two years, this entire market was built off returns that quite frankly shouldn't have been there. A lot of the businesses that did super well did really well because they did well during covid, i e like Peloton, zoom, Netflix, these are obviously businesses looking back that yeah, people are home, they're just automatically going to do better. And so they had un disproportionate returns. And so a lot of those things have pulled back now mm-hmm. <affirmative>,  
 | Speaker 2:    [00:18:00] | So we're basically sitting at 20, 19, 20, early 2020 prices for whether, whether it's general stock prices or funds. And what I try to tell people, people is like, you, you got the gate you shouldn't have, and now you're taking a loss you shouldn't have, but you're gonna start right back to where you kinda were in 2020 because mm-hmm. <affirmative> this, none of those returns really should have happened. And if our government had probably done a little bit of a better job and we weren't in this exact environment, we might have just had a regular couple years instead of the environment we're in right now. But the only reason your account got so high in the first place was because it wasn't supposed to do 20, 30% over two years in the first place. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> should be doing 10 to 15% is a, is more of a long term average instead of 20 or 30, you know? Yeah.  
 | Speaker 1: [00:18:30] | Yeah. It, it, it feels like it's been a huge sh shark to the system because we've been so spoiled with incredible returns and free money, you know, oh, okay. I have to refinance my house at, uh, 2%. Oh boy, that's so expensive. I have  
 | Speaker 2: | Have some clients in the ones,  
 | Speaker 1: | What's that?  
 | Speaker 2: | I have some clients in the high ones, like, they paid 1.9, 1.8. It's like, that's just mind boggling.  
 | Speaker 1: [00:19:00] | So, I mean, this is honestly just a dose of reality here that, you know, we are, it is a, it is a shock that they have to do so much at, you know, at the Fed. And we're seeing the markets, um, take a beating and, and everything's falling, bond stocks, you name it. Um, but it, it, it's more of a correction than I think a long term sort of, you know, I, I don't, I don't expect that over the long term, the US stock markets are gonna be a, a bad place to have your money.  
 | Speaker 2: [00:19:30] | No, I, I don't, I don't see that either. And yeah, we'll get into a little bit more of the data in a couple minutes, but there's some data, I think that's starting to back up too, that if we really look at this from a 10,000 foot view mm-hmm. <affirmative> things aren't quite as bad as, as a lot of things are being made out to be.  
 | Speaker 1: | Good. Go ahead into it. Okay.  
 | Speaker 2:   [00:20:00]       [00:20:30] | Okay. I got, I'll start my stuff. Um, so here's a couple just stats right off the bat. Since we've had midterms since World War ii, we have never had a negative year in the stock market after midterms. And here's why. First year of presidency, they're trying to appeal to voters. Same with the second year, third year of presidency is where you get the people's vote. The people's vote comes from the middle, whether that's right or left, it's, it's the middle is where you're gonna win your presidency. Right. And so the middle is most influenced by how the economy is, what are gas prices, how are you, how's your 401k doing? Things that people can directly look at and make positive or negative associations with. So throughout history, and basically the last hundred years, every time we've had a midterm election, the market's gone positive the year after and it averages 15%. Another thing to be thinking about too is that we have never, ever since, I believe it was World War, I not had a positive market year following right after, um, or I'm sorry. I combined my, I combined my two points right there. That was,  
 | Speaker 2:  [00:21:00]      [00:21:30] | Yeah, but third, third year of presidency mm-hmm. <affirmative> and then right after midterm. So those are the two big things right there. Another thing is we look at fund prices, we're right back to like 2019 levels. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if we look at the inflation, it's fallen on running average now three months. Technically it's 0.1 higher than it was a year ago, but it's a rolling 12 month average. It's gone LA down the last three months. If we look at what the fed's been saying, they just decreased their rate hike to 0.5, they were doing 0.75. Um, I do think we'll continue raising rates into next year. I don't really see a scenario that past quarter two of next year we're gonna be raising rates because it just, right now we're at the highest level since oh seven. Like we're already starting to peek into that realm. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,  
 | Speaker 2:    [00:22:00] | Uh, one of the other big things that the Fed looks at in that I kind of am a little bit in personal disagreement with is the labor market right now. And they're still using that as an indicator. So basically one of the biggest things the Fed has said is we're not going to stop raising rates until we see the labor market get crappy, essentially, until people are feeling the constraints of not being able to find a job. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we're not really worried about continuing to raise rates. And that historically has been once that unemployment rate, it's a number they're comfortable with. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that's when they, that's when rates stopped going up. I think we're in a little bit of a different environment for a couple reasons right now in Covid, we shut down so many jobs mm-hmm. <affirmative> that the unemploy or the, uh, unemploy, the unemployment rate right now is very skewed.  
 | Speaker 2: [00:22:30]       [00:23:00] | The second piece of that too is we also have a gig harder harbor economy right now mm-hmm. <affirmative> that we've never had before. That being like Uber, 10 99 contractors, social media drop shipping, and I mean Amazon Prime workers, there's, there's, the list goes on and on now where people aren't technically W2 employees mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they're 10 99 contractors and they do, and I think part of this is because we have such a short-term attention span right now in society. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, people aren't doing 1, 2, 3 different things, but they're not employed at a job, which is skewing the numbers mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so I think once you take that labor market number out, a lot of the other things are indicating that, are we at a bottom yet? No, we're not gonna bottom out to the feds done raising interest rates, but as an overall economy, are we doing okay? I think so. Like we've seen gas trend down now for the last three months, pretty much consecutively. Like we are not in the economy. We were a year and a half ago mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but we're definitely not where we were this summer too. And I think that's an important distinction to remember  
 | Speaker 1: [00:23:30]     [00:24:00] | Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And would this market insight apply any differently for, for people who, who have, who are business owners, and they do have a lot of their net worth wrapped up in their business and you know, it's, it, you know, they, the certainty of selling a business and getting the full value of what the enterprise is worth, that's, uh, more questionable than the certainty of being able to draw down your, your, you know, your retirement account. Do you, do you see different advice for the business owners doing they need to be in sa uh, safer investments?  
 | Speaker 2:      [00:24:30]        [00:25:00] | Yeah. I think if there's less, oh, it's part that, and then it's also most, like the biggest part's gonna be timeline. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> if, if a business owner is 20 plus years out mm-hmm. <affirmative>, realistically that aggression level is not gonna be much different just because they're a business, just because they're a business owner. Right. That part comes down to timeline. So let's say they're five years out and I, I gotta get somebody to retirement because, and they need X amount of passive income, whereas the business owner needs a little bit more of a safety bucket over here, and the business is gonna predominantly fund that passive income in retirement. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, then yes, we're going to be much more conservative in a time like now try and protect profits even if that means moving to money markets earlier last year mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, moving into, you know, I did this with a lot of people, but moving into maybe a little bit more energy sectors mm-hmm. <affirmative> things that we know are gonna do well mm-hmm. <affirmative> during a recessionary environment, or at least not lose money during a recessionary environment. Um, so yeah, biggest things timeline, but I would say at a certain, you know, if you're under 10 years, we're gonna treat the business owner's money a little bit different than the person that I need to get to X sum of money to actually create an income for them.  
 | Speaker 1:  [00:25:30] | Now, when you're working with a business owner and they are getting closer to that exit date and they're gonna have a big capital gain event, uh, and some of it may be, you know, even recaptured as ordinary income, um, do you work with them and with their tax advisor on, on ways to do tax planning? Uh, is it kind of an integrated effort where, um, you work together to, to realize that Absolutely. There's gonna be a big go ahead.  
 | Speaker 2:   [00:26:00] | Um, I think the C P A drives that bus and the estate planners drive that bus a little bit more than I drive that bus mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but there's absolutely a team coordination that's going on to make sure that we can minimize that tax bill in the biggest way possible. Whether that be, you know, you're setting up that business to be sold, that you're taking up passive income for a while, or that you're getting the amounts in chunks so you don't get a, a singular big capital gain event. But while I'm involved in the process, I do feel like that's a, that's something that the CPA's gonna drive the bus on a little bit more, um, to be totally honest with you.  
 | Speaker 1: [00:26:30]     [00:27:00] | And, and that's absolutely right. That's the perfect advice. You, everybody needs to know what's going on. The right hand needs to know what the left is doing so they don't screw anything up. Um, and they do know that you need to know, okay, this is the advice you've, you've received from this other advisor and everybody needs to stay in their lane. Uh, people ask me tax wise, you know, I was a CPA before I went to law school and I'm literate in issues, but I say, your tax, uh, advisor, your CPA knows where the rubber meets the road. They've been preparing your tax return, they're gonna be the ones to prepare your tax returns the year you sell your business thereafter. That's the one you need to talk to.  
 | Speaker 2:    [00:27:30] | Yeah. And I think just to throw this out there for, you know, the business owners listening, if your CPA and your especially financial advisor are not connecting on a yearly basis, and ideally for what joint conference calls with you on, you're seriously missing a level of service because I can't do my job without a good cpa. And a good CPA can't do their job without a good financial advisor. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so if you're not getting that kind of one plus one equals two service, then you're, you're generally whether it's gonna be on the back end or year to year, you're missing out somewhere. And so that's something to be thinking about for, you know, the people's listenings and their relationships with their advisors.  
 | Speaker 1: [00:28:00] | Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, how is the, the local business climate there in the Meridian Treasure Valley area? There's been so much growth, um, in a, you know, just how are things going there economically  
 | Speaker 2:     [00:28:30] | On? Okay, so two points to that. I think on one hand, we're becoming a little bit of a booming tech economy. We've had Micron here for a while. We've had Amazon move facility out here. We're now having Meta build a fac an 800 acre, um, facility out here mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so because of the relative cheap cost of living, but still very fairly central to other major metropolitan areas mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you're actually seeing a lot of smaller tech companies start up underneath the big umbrella that Meta and Amazon and Micron have kind of created, um, here mm-hmm. <affirmative> as far as on the, you know, the town economy, I actually think there's a little bit of problem we're seeing right now where we have a ton of influx of money, um, coming in out of town, going into Boise Eagle and Meridian, and they're wanting to start building up or continuing to expand residential, but they're not, I was actually just talking to one of my clients that owns a automotive shop.  
 | [00:29:00] Speaker 2:       [00:29:30]       [00:30:00] |  Like they're not really giving permits to build more body shops in Boise right now. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and all of the auto shops right now are already pretty tapped out because of the influx of people that are coming. And I've heard this in the restaurant business, a lot of like the coffee shops are struggling to staff because they have these coffee shops in the middle of suburban Meridian, but they don't have anyone within 20 minutes that can afford to go work at those shops unless they're like a high school living at home. And so I don't think it's gonna ruin us, but it's before Idaho was able to run on, you know, you just hire the high schoolers and you hire the youngins and then, you know, there'll be enough service people to take care of the suburbia and the city here. But with all of the influx and all of the people working from home and working outta other states, it started to limit the amount of service that's being created in the restaurant world in, uh, car industries, in retail. And I know it's in other cities, but there's tons of, you know, looking for help. There's businesses closing Monday, Tuesday cuz they can't staff mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, to stay open. And so that's something I'm noticing on the local economy that even with all the, the, almost a lot of the growth is harming the local business growth because they're pushing so much to get more residential people in.  
 | Speaker 1:   [00:30:30] | Okay. So it sounds like there, there might be some issues with the main street economy, uh, the, the, the tech startup, uh, economy is, is thriving and it, you're seeing much in the way of early stage funding. Do you have, uh, very many angel investors or VCs that are, that are funding startups in Boise and Yeah, and there's, I'm not  
 | Speaker 2:      [00:31:00] | Meridian, I have a couple clients that do that personally, to be totally honest, I'm not like super connected into like what deals they do and all that sort of stuff, but there's a more than a couple programs right now, like there's Boise Entrepreneur Week, um, there's a few different programs right now that if you have a business idea mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you can easily go sit in front of a panel of angel investors. In fact, there was just an event last month in Boise mm-hmm. <affirmative> that you can present your idea, your product, whatever your, you know, your whatever your ideas. And if people wanna invest in it, they couldn't. So I think, I think there's a massive boom here for that in Boise. And then you look at like, facilities like Kiln that was just built in Meridian and that co-working space. Um, there's a lot of kind of more tech and automation software based businesses that work out of that, um, development space.  
 | Speaker 2:  [00:31:30]       [00:32:00] | It's also like a really new way for those of those listeners that don't know what kiln is, they basically got a big building together. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> put a bunch of offices, conference rooms, seating area snack stations, and you can rent out a room for a month or a day, rent out a conference room for an hour. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it's become this co-working space that I think society will continue to trends trend towards with this Gig Harbor economy. Um, I feel like we're, you know, as a, you asked earlier, you know, as a business owner, how can you be paying attention finance-wise, but just as a business owner paying attention to trends of like, you know, the gig harbor economy, you know, co-working spaces, maybe you don't need to rent and lease out a space all month. Maybe you realize you only actually need a space for team meetings a few times a week, and you just need somewhere you can work out. And so, um, I think Boise is really creating opportunities for business owners that are starting something to have the opportunity to not have to go buy a building and have employees, like there's a ton of automation and a ton of ways that you can, um, build a business that in non-traditional ways here.  
 | [00:32:30] Speaker 1: |  Well, Andrew, we're running at a time here, but I have to commend you here. You you've definitely understand the issues that, that business owners confront. Uh, your, your knowledge of the the markets, uh, is extremely sophisticated. Um, so you've found your calling and you've found a niche for yourself that seems to suit you perfectly, and it seems like you, you definitely enjoy it. I I wanna have you back on the, the podcast again and, and let's just share more with the business owners.  
 | [00:33:00] Speaker 2: |  No, I, uh, really appreciate you having me. Um, happy to give any information as I tell everyone I'm an open book. I'd just like to give knowledge.  
 | Speaker 1: | We'll see you listeners again next time on Selling Your Business with David King.