Turn your income into lasting wealth. Start with your number.

Derick Van NessThank you. Appreciate it, Edwin. Excited to be here.

Derick Van NessAll right, I'm gonna… share my screen.

Derick Van NessYeah, so if you… yeah, if you don't have something to write on, I would suggest that you grab something a piece of paper, ideally a notebook or something, and I would suggest that for any webinar. I have a set of notebooks I use just for that. But tonight, we're going to be talking about the Wealth Gap, right? How do you turn your high income into lasting wealth? This is a problem that A ton of people. struggle to solve, and we're gonna go through that. We're gonna help you figure out what your wealth gap is, and exactly what you need to do. And I'm going to show you guys a system to ensure that you will get there, or you can get to nearly anywhere you want to. So I'm excited about that. And… As we said, first thing is. you know, I'm not a CPA tax advisor. This is for educational and entertainment purposes. I don't know your situation. I'm making the assumption that everybody here has a reasonably high income. You're interested in building wealth, that's why you're here. So we're gonna talk about some concepts. Obviously, if you do anything with these, please work with, financial professionals. Who understands your situation and can guide you in what's appropriate.

Derick Van NessOkay, so having said that. This whole thing is about you. Right? And I want to talk about the business of you. I will use terms like high-income earner, business owner, because I know some of you are business owners, some of you are not. It doesn't matter, even if you're not a business owner. you are the business of you. You make an income, you have expenses, you run your own little business inside of your own world, so we really want to think about it when it comes to money and finances. We want to think about it that way, and we're going to go through exactly how to do that, but I'll use these different terms. Also, as I said earlier, this is an interactive session. If you have questions, pop them in the chat. or raise your hand or speak up and we will answer questions because I want you to get real and genuine value. You know, at the end of this, of course, am I going to say, hey, you know, if you want help with some of this, does my firm do that? Yes. But the real thing here is I want you to walk away more well-educated. learning new things and better off for having been here. So that's the real goal. And please don't hesitate if you need some help with something. Okay. So let's Let's ask this question. I think this is a great one to start with. How many of you have ever had your best year ever?

Derick Van NessBut still felt broken. I do this, ask this question in tons of rooms all over the country, and it is amazing how many hands all go up, right? We've all had this experience, I made all this money. Where did it go? This is a huge problem, and this is why a lot of people don't turn income into wealth, is they're not sure what's happening. So we're going to address that and really get into it tonight. And I want to tell you a little story. How many of you know who this is? If you don't recognize him, you're probably on the younger side, but this is Mike Tyson, back in the 80s. And at one point, Mike Tyson was actually a bigger name than even Michael Jordan across the world. He had deals with Toyota and Pepsi, and he had the Nintendo video game, and he had all kinds of things, right? Very famous guy. He earned about $300 million in the ring, fighting. And he actually, with endorsements and everything, he made about $650 million. In… in his career. His last professional fight was in 2002, and after earning $650 million, one year later, in 2003, he filed for bankruptcy.

Derick Van NessIs that wild? $650 million flushed down the drain because he did not understand How to turn income into wealth. And I see this same thing happen to high-income earners and business owners every single week as I talk to them, as I explain these things to them, and as I go through real scenarios, coach, and work with people. I see it all the time. Lots of money coming in, no plan for it, and it disappears. I don't want that to happen to you, okay? And just so you're clear, like I said before, I'm not a CPA or a CFP, but I have worked with 2,500 business owners. I've helped people save over $50 million in taxes. a tax and wealth strategist, so I work with CPAs, I work with financial planners, I work with insurance people's attorneys. all of those kinds of people to help put these plans together for people. And I think it's all about having a life adventure, right? Like, the point of all this, and the reason my company's called Big Life Financial, not Big Money. financial, is it's about creating a life that you love. It's about the quality of life that you want to live and experience.

Derick Van NessWith the people that you care about, right? Now… if you would have told me I would have been a tax and financial guy coming out of college, I probably would have told you I'm gonna jump off a bridge and save myself the trouble, right? Doesn't sound super exciting, but I'll tell you why I'm passionate about this. I had a client early on in my career, when I got into this. And I'm just a teacher. Like, what I realized is. even though I teach financial stuff, what I really love is teaching. I've taught dance, I've taught people how to race sailboats, which is something that I love to do. I've taught people so many different things in life, and that's really what I do around money and finances, is just teach people. But I was teaching one of my clients, and the reason I'm so passionate is This guy had, a clinic. He was on the West Coast. He was earning really good money, but he was having the same struggle as a lot of people. He's like, I make, you know, half a million bucks a year. And I'm just not getting ahead. And I'm… I'm working hard and everything. I've been at this 10 years, I've kind of paid off my student loans, but that's about it. And it doesn't feel great. So we started working together. And as we started working together, there was a lot of things he was missing, but the guy had the right attitude, he was a hard worker.

Derick Van NessOne of the things we started working on Was working with something with some life insurance to protect his family. And for some reason, he he didn't get approved, which I was kind of surprised by because he seemed like a pretty healthy guy and and everything. As it turns out. And, you know, I hate to drop this on you, but he had cancer, and they told him it was terminal, and he had about 6 months to live. Well, he was pretty shocked when he told me that, and when I was asking him. You know? how he was feeling, what he… what he was working on. The conversation wasn't about leaving something behind for his family, it wasn't about legacy, it was, I have to divorce my wife, I have to take all the debt on my own name so that when I pass away, my family isn't stuck with any of it. And it was all about how to… Mitigate the problems, because he had very few assets, he owed more for his practice. Then he… then he could sell it for. And it was horrible and it just broke my heart to see such a wonderful… Spirited, you know, this guy really had the light in his eyes, guy.

Derick Van NessWho… Hadn't been taught about money and finances, and now he was gonna spend the end of his life just trying not to destroy his family's life. And that really crushed me. And… I see people making decisions like he did all the time. And I just don't want it to happen to other people. So, I'm really on a mission here to make sure that you understand what does it really take so that you can build a legacy, and no matter how long you're around. you leave something behind that really matters, and you're able to enjoy the life and the time that you do have. So, that really lit a fire in me, and has really fueled me ever since, and I've had, obviously, tons of clients with tons of different situations. In the past 15 years as well. But… but that's really what got me on this. So, what I want to help you make sure you learn today is the gap between where you are now. and where you want to go in the future. I find that if you don't know where you are now, or where you want to go, it's really hard to make decisions, because you're… you don't have a starting point or a destination, so we're gonna define that probably more clearly than you ever have in your life.

Derick Van NessWe're gonna talk about how do you turn business income into personal wealth using systems. Systems are the key here, because if you have systems, it's a lot easier than if you have to do everything manually. And we're gonna talk about what nobody ever tells you about building wealth as a high-income earner. It's a special category in life, and it's something that a lot of people don't understand, and after having worked with thousands of people. I have a really interesting perspective on it, and we're gonna talk to you about that, okay? So… Let's just jump right into it. Here's what nobody tells you about when you're earning a lot of money. Just like Mike Tyson, Wealth is not determined by how much you earn. That's a factor, and it's one of the things But it's really determined by the financial systems you build around what you earn. In other words, it's not what you make, it's what you do with what you make, right? And if you don't have this right. You're really going to struggle to ever get where you want to go. So the first place is, we want to figure out where are you now? And where do you want to go? So… I want to ask you, what do you really want out of your life? Now, I know that's a huge question.

Derick Van NessBut the reason I want that is because. If Z… Is what you want out of life? We need to look at what is the X and Y, what are the inputs we're putting into life to get the result you're currently getting, and how do we change those? So that you get a new outcome. Right? Every one of us, whether we want to admit it or not. Are getting the output? That is perfectly aligned to the inputs we're putting in. Right? And we may say, well… you know, I should be getting… making more money, I should have better health, I should have better relationships, I should have X, Y, and Z. The reality is, you're getting exactly what you deserve. And the only way to change that is you've got to change the inputs. So, the trick is, if we don't know what we want. then how do we reverse engineer it and build it out, right? And so I'm going to ask you to do a little exercise with me here, and we're going to write this down. Okay, and what we're gonna do, because we are talking about money and finances here, which ultimately leads into your life. Is we're gonna have you come up with a number, an income number, that you think would change your life Into the life that you really want.

Derick Van NessOkay, so here's a simple fill-in-the-blank, and this is why… one of the reasons we asked you to have a piece of paper and pen to write things down. I want to make X income. by… a certain date, could be a year, 2, 3, 5 years, I wouldn't go out more than 5 years. Working X, under what conditions? Working less, not working at all, working in a certain type of job. Spending a certain amount of time. We want to create this simple statement. that will give us an answer. So, here's an example. I want $600,000 of income per year. By September 2028, so about 2 years from now. Working less than 15 hours a week. Right? And so, once you're clear on this, your brain starts to figure out, hey. Path I'm on's not gonna get me there. Or maybe it is. If it is, you can stay on that path. If it's not, your brain starts to bend things around and say, wait, we've got to change the rules here. I've got to do something different. If I'm working a W-2 job, and it's not getting me close to that, and that's my goal.

Derick Van NessMaybe I've got to find other income sources. Maybe I need a side hustle. Maybe I need a different job. Maybe I need more education, right? But your brain's gonna start figuring this stuff out. Because the brain's very much like a computer. You put things in, or you ask it a question, it will generally spit out an answer. Now, if your brain's short-circuiting right now, and it's saying, I don't know, I'm gonna teach you a little brain hack here. instead of you saying, 600,000 of income by 2028, working 15 hours a week, like, I can't do that, and your brains just can't come up with an answer. Switch the question and say, if I knew I could earn $600,000 of income by September of 2028, only working 15 hours a week, what would it have to look like? Alright, so if I knew this was true. What would it have to look like? When you do that, you give your brain room to go out and bring in new elements and break out of the box, okay? Now, I want you to be clear. Some people just make up a number here. This 600,000 number, maybe it's made up. Maybe it's from a study group you're in with other doctors or anesthesiologists.

Derick Van NessMaybe this is a number you heard online, you thought, well, that'd be cool. I want you to actually pick a number. That means something to you, and I want you to ask yourself, why that number? At $600,000 of income. What does that change in my life? Does that mean I can go… I can work less hours? Does that mean I can go to my kid's baseball game or dance recital? Does that mean I can give money to my church? Does that mean I can have a second home? I'll tell you, for me, I'm working on buying a second home in San Diego, because that's where my wife's family is. And… I want to buy a 40-foot sailboat, because I love sailboats. So, I already have a house in Utah. which is where my family is, we want to have a second one there, but if you know anything about San Diego, it's expensive. I have figured out, for me to do that, and to retire my wife. I need $1.2 million of income. So my number is $1.2 million. And the reason is, not because I just made up a number, but because that's what it costs for me to live the lifestyle I want, having both homes, having the sailboat, and being able to support my wife.

Derick Van NessIn the way that we want to live, right? I know that's my number, so I have a why. It's not just a random number plucked out of the air. So I want you to really look at that number and say, is this number going to accomplish, or what do I really want, and what's the number that's going to get me there? Right? Now, you may not have this perfect, but I really want you to do your best, because this will give you something to hold onto when you're trying to make these changes and figure this stuff out, right? So, what does this outcome really mean if you were to get to that number? The reason this is so important is people who have a clear vision are exponentially more successful. All of you who are here are highly educated, you've gone through some really hard training and a lot of schooling to get here, so you're totally capable of just about anything that you want to accomplish. I just find that if you don't know what you want to accomplish, your chances are a lot less. So we wanted to help you get at least a little bit clearer by going through that. And the bottom line is this. Without a plan and a system, you're running your personal finances by accident. In other words, if you don't have a plan of where you want to go, or a system of how you're going to get there.

Derick Van Nessyou're going to be like a boat that has no rudder. You can turn on the engine, but there's no steering. And it just kind of putters around, and it's probably stuck in the bay. It's not taking you. Wherever you want to go. Right? So, that's why I think it's so important. Okay, so… now, I kind of say this You know, as a little bit of a joke, but honest question. How many of you want to rely on your kids for income when you retire? I mean, I definitely have people who raise their hand, and they're like, actually, that's why I have kids, so that I can retire and they'll take care of me. But most of the people who are on this call, it's probably not the case, right? Versus how many of you would rather you leave something for your kids or your loved ones, rather than the other way around? And I say this because some of us are really working toward number one, even though we're not planning on it. And I want you to ask yourself, which one are you headed for? Your kid's taking care of you, or are you leaving something behind for them? And I want to acknowledge, everybody who's on this call. You're way ahead of the average person. The reason you're part of this group, the reason you're here on this webinar, is because you probably are headed toward number 2 versus number 1.

Derick Van NessBut you gotta be honest about your results so far, and make sure that you're making decisions aligned with that. You're not just kidding yourself. So, I want you to do a quick self-assessment here. On a scale of 1 to 10, how good are you at these 3 things? Number one, how good are you at making money? Right? Just rank yourself 1 to 10. How good are you at keeping money? And I would say that this is… tax strategy. Keep paying less taxes, because it's a huge, huge expense. In fact, for most of us, it's the biggest expense in our life. And, how good are you at growing and protecting your assets? Alright, this gives us a good starting point. How good are you at making money, keeping money, and growing the assets? And then you want to ask yourself. Do I like my answers? Now, truth be told, if you're here on this call, maybe you know there's some room for improvement, and I want to acknowledge that. But we want to get these much closer to 10 for you, and so before we're done here, you're gonna know how. But before we get to that, we need to figure out your wealth gap. So what's your wealth gap? That is the difference between where you are now.

Derick Van NessAnd where you want to be in the future, and we want to understand what is it going to take for you to cross that bridge. Right? So, if you haven't already. There's a link in the chat, or you can just go to biglifefinancial.com/your-number, and we're gonna fill out this little worksheet. And the reason I created this worksheet, I'm gonna go through it section by section with you, so don't worry, I'm just giving you guys a sec to download this. It should be a fillable PDF. But the reason we're going to go through this worksheet is I want to make this tangible and real for you. I find that when things are tangible and real, we can work with them. Right? It's like the scary monster in the closet, and you go in and you turn on the lights. And even if it's still scary, you can see how to attack. turning that into the dream rather than the monster, okay? So, biglifefinancial.com/your-number. And I'm hoping that everybody will grab that. And then we're gonna start going through this. So the very part, top part. is where are you now? So we want to very quickly put in here, in number A, box A.

Derick Van NessWhat is your current net worth? So, what's your net worth? I don't want you to include your home in this, but everything else, if you sold all your stocks, all your investments, cashed out of all your money, and had it all as a pile of money, so this is… Cash, retirement accounts, investments, real estate, everything. If you cashed out of all that, paid off all your debt, how much is left? Okay. That's the first thing. And this is gonna give us a good… a good shot of where you are. So let's say it's $500,000 that you've got when you cash out of everything and pay off all your debts. The next thing is, if you own a business. I want you to, you know, put down the amount that business is worth. Now, if you're not sure what your business is worth, I'm gonna say this. Take your… how much you made from the business last year. And multiply it by 3, and let's just put that down as your number. Okay, so let's say you made a little over, About a little over 200,000, 250 times three, that's gonna put you around 850. Right. So, business value, net worth, besides the business and your home, and the reason I would include your home is you still need a place to live in retirement, right?

Derick Van NessSo we're gonna count on that. So you add these up. And right now, where you're at is you've got 1.35 million. in assets. So this is your where I am right now spot, right? And I like to make the comparison that, like. Have you ever been at the mall? You look at those little kiosks that say information, and you're trying to figure out, how do I get to… Bloomingdale's, or Nordstrom, or whatever. And you look at the map, and you look up Nordstrom. You've got Nordstrom, and then there's this huge red dot that says, you are here. This is your huge red dot of you are here, and once we figure out where you want to go. What's neat is, once you know, then when you come up to the intersection, you know, you start walking forward, you know, I need to turn right here, I need to turn left there, and you have a very clear path Because you know exactly where you're going, and where you're coming from. If you're missing either one of those, it's very difficult to know, do I turn left or do I turn right? Alright, so this is your where you are right now number. We're gonna bring this back in a minute, but we're gonna go into something else here.

Derick Van NessSo, box D here is… How much do you want to live on, your ideal lifestyle? But this is in today's money. I realize retirement might be 5, 10, 20, 30 years out. We're going to adjust for that. But like in today's money, how much money do you want to have after taxes to spend in retirement? Alright, so in this case. I came up with the number $350,000 as an example, right? So $350,000 that we can spend If… when you get to retirement, you're probably going to be somewhere in a 25% tax bracket, that's just an easy number to use. So to figure out how do we end up with $350,000 after taxes, we're going to multiply that times 1.33. So pull out your calculator on your phone. Or on your, computer. And multiply 350, or whatever your number is, times 1.33. In this case, we would end up with 465,000. So you have to make 465, Give 25% to Uncle Sam to end up with 350. Okay? So that's that number.

Derick Van NessAnd now what we want to do is we want to adjust for inflation. I hate to break it to you guys, but we've got some inflation coming. We already had some, we've got some more. And so what we want to do is figure out. In… in the future, how do we have the equivalent of $350,000 worth of spending power? Right? You'll need more money in the future to buy the same amount of stuff. So that's what these multipliers are down here. Five years from now. you want to multiply this number times 1.18. If you're going to retire in 10 years, 1.41, 15, 1.67, you guys are very smart, so you can kind of run the numbers out here. But you want to take this number and multiply it. So I'm going to use the example of 15 years here. So we're gonna multiply 465,000 times 1.67. And that gives us $777,000 per year. Now that seems like a much bigger number, but 15 years from now, that's gonna buy the same amount of stuff. It's $465,000, and after we pay taxes, we'll end up with the equivalent of today's 350,000.

Derick Van NessSo, big number, right? This is part of what we want to get… start getting real with. And just so you guys know, I base this on a 3.5% inflation rate, because we're currently running about that. I actually think we're gonna be higher, and then I think there'll be times where we're lower, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves that Inflation's not gonna run at 2%. So… $777,000. So, the next thing we want to do is figure out how much money do I need to have to have $777,000 of income, right? And so we have to go over this concept, it's called your distribution rate, which is… How much money can you take out of your investments in order to get that $777,000? And depending on how your money's invested, you can pull different amounts out. And I'm gonna say something that might be a little controversial for people. We're gonna go through these numbers in just a minute, but I don't want this to scare you. But if you have money in the stock market. And this is your, your primary, where all your money is, your primary asset class.

Derick Van NessThese are the percentages that have been shown over 35 years. to help you to be… successfully keep that money growing, right? So, if you pull 3%, So, let's say you have a million dollars, that's only $30,000 a year. you have about a 95% chance of success, of not running out of money, right? In other words, you're not depleting it. If you pull too much money out, you're gonna run out. If you pull 4% out. You can see here you're at like 75% chance that you're going to be successful. Now, once we start pulling more than 5% out of a pure, stock market account, right? No other assets, just that. Because it all goes up and down together. You've got less than a 50% chance of that money lasting you long enough. And when we get down here to six, seven, eight percent, you've got a 20% chance or less. So why do I bring this up? I bring this up because. It's not about how much you have, it's about how much what you have can create in income. That's your distribution rate. How much can I distribute? out of the stock market or other investments to create income safely. Like, that's a really important number, and we're gonna see the difference here. So if I go back here, we're gonna look at what if you take 4%, What if you take 6%, and what if you take 8%?

Derick Van NessNow, if I go back to this chart. 6 and 8% are down here. We're gonna talk about how to get there. But, right now we want to run it for all three, so you can kind of see the difference this makes, because this is really important. So, what you want to do is you want to take this number. And for the 4%, if you were able to take 4% out of your investments, and that's all you could take safely, I want you to multiply Your number, 777 in this case, times 25. Right, you need to have 25 times that to be able to take 4% out safely. So that's $19 million. Go ahead. Did you have a question?

Derick Van NessYou need to be able to, if you have this much money, $19,000,000. You can take out 4%. And that's gonna get you $777,000 a year.

Derick Van NessVery high. Yeah, it is a very large number, and part of the point of… you bring up a great point. The point I want to make here is…

Derick Van NessYou're okay, because I like the honesty. I want… I really want this to impact people, I want you to see it. But it's like, if you're… if you can only take 4% out of your investments, which is not great, I just want to be super clear. then you… you have to have $19 million to create that kind of income. And it's a lot of money, right? But I also want people to see if you can do better, and we're going to talk about how to do that in just a minute. This is the scary part, is like, holy cow, these numbers are big. We're gonna work back to exactly how you can do this. But… yeah, we want to talk about, if you can do a little better, what does 6% look like? What does 8% look like, right? So we're going to do the same thing on those. Multiplying by 17, and multiplying by 12 and a half. And so, if you can take 6%, Out of your investments as income, you only need $13 million to end up with the same amount of income. Right? I want you to do the math on your end. And if you can take 8%, Now we're looking at $9.7 million, which is a lot less than 19, right? It's basically half. To end up with the same amount of income, so distribution rate is really important.

Derick Van NessSo, how much money you can take out of your investments, or turn into… or your investments turn into income safely. Is a really important thing to figure out. Right? And I feel like a lot of people oversimplify it by everything being in one place. The stock market's the easiest thing to pick on, not because it doesn't grow money, but because from a distribution rate, it's tricky, because it has the ups and downs to it. So we want to be able to do better than that. And I want to remind you that this $9.7 million, even on the low end. If we do the math on it. $9.7 million in the future is about $5.8 million of today's money when we factor in inflation, okay? So just to give you some perspective. It's not that 5.8 is a small number, but for a lot of you here, over the next 15 years, this is an attainable number with a good strategy, and I'm going to show you exactly how. So 9.7, don't let that totally scare you, because it is more like 5.8 in today's million… er, today's dollars, okay? So, if we take the high and the low, 19.4 and 9.7, and then we pull out… What is… what have you already have, which is your $1.3 million?

Derick Van Ness1.35, this is your gap. On the high end, you need to come up with another $18 million. On the low end, you need to come up with $8.3 million. Now, like I said, this is the scary part, because these are big numbers, and they're scary. But they're also real if you really want that kind of income. These are the kind of numbers that you're going to have to have built up, once again, in future dollars. But if you think 2 million bucks is gonna get me there. you're in a world of hurt. You're going to be surprised, and I want people to realize that. So this is the shocking part. That I want people to see, because nobody ever goes over this, because it scares the heck out of people. Now… now that I've scared you. Are you guys ready for some good news? You ready to hear how this actually works? Okay, so the good news is the Wealth Gap is smaller than it appears for a couple of reasons. The first one is. the inflation factor, right? As you make the same amount of earning power as you do now, it's gonna be more dollars in the future, so you're gonna have more. But also, there's an opportunity here.

Derick Van NessAnd most people don't know what opportunity cost is, but it's the idea that Every dollar today can be worth a whole lot more than a dollar in the future, right? Just like this little chart goes up right here. your dollars will go up if you put them to work, and there's a lot of value in investing in growing money over time. And you guys know this, that's why you're in this group, right? Like, you're looking to grow money. And so we want to be really clear that opportunity cost is going to help do a lot of the heavy lifting. If you start to talk about, or take advantage of some of the things that we talk about tonight, right? So let me explain. If you just put $50,000 a year. Into an account over the next 30 years. At 7% return, that turns into… $5 million plus. Right? So, theoretically, if you put a dollar… every… for every dollar you put away over the next 30 years, you're gonna end up with 100. But the interesting thing here is you put in 1.5, And $3.5 million of that is growth. So that's that compounding, that's that opportunity cost of every dollar you don't spend, or you get to keep in taxes, and that you put to work.

Derick Van Nessgrows quite a bit over the next 30 years, right? And some of us might have 20 years, or 15 years, but I want you to get that every dollar that you create now is worth a whole lot more than a dollar in the future. In this case. 30, $100 in the future. Right? And so that's your… that's your cost of missing out on $50,000 a year in a bunch of different ways that we're going to talk about in just a sec here. Right? So, if this is what we're trying to accomplish, what's the solution? The first thing is working harder. Isn't isn't the answer right now. Does effort help? Yes. Can you do things, get more skills, get a raise? Yes. Those things help. But just that alone isn't going to be enough, and I'm going to explain why in just a minute. And nothing great's ever done by accident. You actually have to have a plan for this. And that's the point of what… of me doing this today, is to scare you enough that you're like, holy crap, if I don't have a plan, I need to get a plan. And if I do have a plan, is it really going to get me where I need to go? Because if I was shooting for 2 million bucks by retirement. That ain't gonna cut it, right? And I want you to be clear about that, unless… You've got everything paid off, and you can live on 50 grand a year.

Derick Van NessSo… Now, here's the key. You can't just have a goal, right? We were talking about Let's say your goal is $10 million, just for an easy round number. Just having a goal isn't enough, and I'll prove it to you. Every single team, we're in the U.S, Football is a big deal, right? At the beginning of the NFL season, every single team has the same goal. We want to win a championship. Funny thing is, at the end of the year, only one team gets to win the championship. So was it that goal that got them there? Or was it something different? I would argue that it's not the goal. It's the system. What is the system for these NFL players of how they eat, how they train, how they work on mobility, how they sleep, how they hydrate? Mindset, all of the other things that are pieces. that create the goal as a reality, right? In the financial world, we call this the financial operating system, right? And it's a system That allows you to actually hit the goal.

Derick Van NessBecause you can have a goal of, I want $10 million, but if you don't have a system for it, you're not going to get there. Okay? So… So, this… This, situation is what I call a leaky bucket problem, and this is why effort alone is not enough. When I talk to smart people who earn good money, and we talk about this, what they almost always say, and maybe these words have come out of your mouth, I know they used to come out of mine years ago. I'll just earn more. I'll just make more money. And we think that by putting more water in the bucket, more money into your financial bucket. That you're going to end up there. But here's the thing. All the money in the world, or all the water in the world, doesn't fix the holes. If you're making more money, but you've got a whole bunch of holes in your bucket. You're never gonna get there and it doesn't matter how much you put in there, it will all flow out, it will all get wasted, it will all go away. Right? And so we want to be… Clear. That this isn't just about earning more. Earning more absolutely can help. However, it's like, you guys are medical professionals. I know you're… you know, you know enough about the body that you can't out-exercise a bad diet. If I eat cheesecake and ice cream every single night, doesn't matter how much I work out.

Derick Van NessNot gonna work. Right? Same thing here. If you're putting more money in the bucket, but the bucket just has a bunch of holes, doesn't matter how much you put in, eventually it will all leak out. And when we're talking about something like retirement, or some of these bigger financial goals. That's a big cost, right? So… What we're here to build today is not a bigger treadmill for you, and the treadmill is, I work hard, all my money goes out the window, and I'm running and running and running, and I'm not going anywhere. We want to help you get off the treadmill. Okay? And the financial operating system is how we do that. So we're gonna go through this. Because… you're… the business that either you own or the one you work for is successful because it has systems, right? How you treat patients, how you show up, how you take notes, how you… have to dress, how you have to do procedures, the whole thing. There's systems to every single bit of it. But. In your personal life, Almost everybody has no systems. Your system is ask your CPA how much you owe in taxes. Your system is, whatever's left at the end of the month, we try to save. Your system is, well, when I can, I try to put some money in a 401K. Like, those systems.

Derick Van Nessaren't very good. They're systems, they're just not great ones, so we're going to talk about how to do better systems here, okay? And there's gonna be 5 pillars. So the first pillar here for high-income earners is the tax strategy pillar. And like I said earlier, depending on what state you're in and how much you earn. Like, if you're in a high-tax state, you can pay up to 51 cents of every dollar you make to the government. Which is wild, right? For all the work that you put in, and all the blood, sweat, and tears, and debt you took on, and everything else. Taxes are the biggest lever to pull, especially if you make a really high income. Now, we all talk about working hard to make money, but how much time did you spend keeping money last month? Most people don't spend any time keeping money. And what do I mean by keeping money? Not losing it to the tax people, right? To the IRS, to Uncle Sam. If you didn't do any tax planning, and you haven't done any this month. you're probably not going to do super well, right? Most people, and I'm going to show you what this looks like, most people don't really understand how powerful tax savings is or how to do it, right? And and honestly, the only guaranteed rate of return you'll ever get is not paying taxes in the first place.

Derick Van NessEvery other investment, every other thing that you do to earn or keep money. You have to take a risk. With taxes, you don't. A dollar you don't send to the IRS today, you get to keep, for sure. Right? And that is really hard to outdo when you're talking about risk versus reward. So… Let's look at tax planning. If we look at this as a calendar year, right? January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December. How do most people do tax planning? They finish eating their turkey dinner, and they think, I'm gonna be ahead of the game, and I'm gonna tax plan, and they do it in December. I'm here to tell you that if you earn more than a couple hundred thousand bucks a year, that is not good enough. Right? There's only so much you can do. Every CPA, every tax person is absolutely slammed after Thanksgiving. Because everybody eats their turkey and goes, oh my gosh, I should plan for taxes. I don't know if it's a chemical reaction or what, but my phone starts blowing up every year after Thanksgiving, even though I've told people they should plan sooner. Right?

Derick Van NessWhat's even worse than that? The people who start tax planning here in March. They're like, oh yeah, I owe taxes on April 15th, I wonder… I wonder what I could do to reduce that. At that point, it's way too late. You really need to do things before December 31st. But you want to do it a lot sooner than December. December is too late for anything that's significant. So, let's look at what real planning looks like. This is a revised version, and this is how wealthy people do it. This is how people who run the biggest companies in the world do it. This is it, okay? First thing, January. Forecasting and planning. So forecasting is, how much money am I going to make this year? How much should I be saving for taxes? And what can I be doing to reduce that? Right? If you… I do a lot of this for business owners, and it's like, oh, are we gonna buy equipment? Are we gonna remodel the office? Are we gonna… do certain investments that create tax breaks, and I'll talk about some of those in a minute. But making a plan in the very beginning of the year, so you know how much, and honestly, I would tell you to do the same thing for savings. How much do I want to save and invest this year? Set the money aside every single paycheck for taxes, for savings, for investments, for vacation, for anything else, so you have a plan. And if you don't have that, your chances of accomplishing what you want are a lot less.

Derick Van NessNow, second quarter, over here in June-ish. Is probably the least important one, but you do want to do a check-in. Did you change jobs? Did you get a raise? Is your business up or down if you own a business? Just doing a check-in to see where you're at, right? And that's probably the least important one, but you can make adjustments at that point. Third quarter is the most important part. This is when you actually do big tax planning, and I'm doing this for my clients right now. We've been meeting for the past month, through most of September, going through, okay, how much money did you earn all year? And based on where we're at right now, where do we think we're gonna be in December? okay, I've got 8 or 9 months under my belt. I have a pretty good idea where I'm going to be by the end of the year. Now I can do the tax moves that are going to allow me to optimize my taxes this year, because every year could be a little different. Depending on what's going on in your life and how much money you're making. But this gives us plenty of time. To execute the tax plan, which is stage 4 here. is, for the last 3 months of the year, executing what you planned over here, right? Now, this may be totally different than what you thought it was gonna be, but you've been saving along the way. I'll tell you where people get in trouble, especially business owners, is they don't plan.

Derick Van Nessand then next year, they get over here to April. and they say, well, let's do an extension, because I don't have my money to pay my taxes, and they save. for this whole rest of the year until October 15th here to pay their taxes. And… they're paying… they saved all this year to pay last year's taxes, and now they haven't been able to save for this year's taxes. So they're in the same boat, and they end up a whole year behind on taxes. If you own a business, there's a way out of that, but please don't. don't fall into that. If you start doing side work, or you have a 1099, or anything where you're not paying taxes as you go. don't fall into that. So this is… this is what real tax planning looks like. Make a plan, check on it. Once you get closer to the finish line and can really project where you're gonna actually be, that's when you do the real tax planning. Right here's the meat of when you do your tax savings, and then you wrap everything up in November, December. Okay? Makes a huge difference. And here's why people don't do it. Most people's tax pro or CPA, it's probably a tax recorder. Not a tax strategist. So what's the difference? A tax recorder is someone who tells you what you did and what you owe. They're looking in the rearview mirror, they are not looking forward, they're not proactively bringing tax strategies to you, they're just doing your taxes, right? At your income level.

Derick Van NessThat's not good enough, and a lot of times, one person isn't good enough. You may need an investment advisor involved. You may want to have your estate planning people involved. You may want to have insurance people. There are a lot of things you can do to offset taxes. And most of it isn't just from one person or one tax. professional. Right, once you get into higher income stuff. If you make 75 grand a year, one person's probably fine, because you're not really paying that much in taxes. And the last thing to be honest about is most tax pros are focused on compliance. They are not focused on saving you money. Now, this is shocking to people. But when these people go to school, Their job isn't… It isn't to save you taxes, they want to file accurately, and they want to file on time. That's their main focus. For you, as the taxpayer, that is not what you're focused on. You really want to pay less taxes, but they haven't been trained that way. Right? Unless somebody really has taken upon themselves to figure out tax strategy and be proactive, they're probably just focused on compliance, and that's very typically costing people a lot of money.

Derick Van NessRight? So… so what are the types of things that someone who was proactive might bring? Things like tax-smart investments, and there's a lot of versions of this, right? But investments that you do that give you big tax breaks. Accelerated depreciation. There's several versions of this. You guys are, you know, I know some of you looked at real estate, things like cost segregation and bonus depreciation, short-term rentals, and being able to do accelerated depreciation there. Those are the types of things that make a big difference. Strategic donation structures. There's lots of ways to do charitable giving that actually are a positive cash flow on taxes. And some pretty neat things that you can do to impact the world there. Entity structuring and other income structures, how you pay yourself and take payment, there are different kinds of tax. You guys probably know there's passive income and active income. If you're in real estate, that really matters. Or if you have real estate professional status, that really matters. How you pass money through entities. C corporations have completely different tax, taxation. There's a lot of pieces here, but if you have a team helping you navigate this, you can really optimize it.

Derick Van NessAnd then, especially for people who own businesses, incentives or credits, right? Like, a huge one is we do research and development credits for a lot of medical professionals. Have done it for some anesthesiologists. And it can be huge. I mean, a lot of these people, it's $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 a year they save just in tax credits. Because they're doing work that qualifies for certain things. And this is also your child care tax credit, this is ADA, you know, Americans with Disabilities Act credits. There's a lot of different stuff. I find that for a lot of the medical professionals we work with, if they own their own business, research and development credits are huge, and it's one that gets missed 95% of the time. When you add all this stuff up, this makes just a massive difference on how much you make. When we do tax reviews, we find That typically, $57,000 or more is what we find for high-income earners, of what they're overpaying. So just let that sink in for a minute. Remember how I showed you that $50,000 turns into $5 million if you invest it and just let it roll at 7%? We see this every day for people.

Derick Van NessSome people are much higher. Some are a little lower. But it's pretty typical, right? And this is every single year. It really, really adds up. This didn't ask you to not go get your latte, or not have cable TV, or slow down your internet speed. This is just money you're giving the government. That you don't have to. Right? So what's possible? Bigger example, we had a client that we just did for 2024, you know, last year, saved over $175,000 just through being Proactive, and with guidance. And using 7 advanced strategies. I just got off the phone a couple days ago with one of my clients. He has about a $5 million practice. He's a dentist, and… two years ago, when we started working together, he was behind on taxes a whole year, like I said, and he was unsure how much he owed. He was totally scared. He had a bunch of money in the bank, because he was at least saving for it, but he didn't know what to do. Fast forward 2 years, now. because of this tax strategy, he was actually getting back $100,000 that the IRS owed him from last year, from 2025.

Derick Van NessAlready had a quarter million dollars saved for 2026. And didn't have to pay quarterlies, because he's already so far ahead on his taxes, because he planned and has been saving and doing some of the strategies proactively, the difference between being negative a couple hundred thousand and being $350,000 ahead in 2 years, just on your tax piece, is a massive swing. Probably a half million dollar swing for this guy. Just by having a plan and executing it. So it's… It's such a huge difference because it's so expensive to not understand taxes. Now, I don't have time to go through all the tax strategies, but I did write a book with 17 tax strategies. We don't have time to go through them all today, so I wanted to just at least give you guys a chance to download this. You can either use the QR code here, or you can go to the bottom here, biglifefinancial.com/tax-strategy-book. Either one of those should be able to get, get a copy of that. And it'll give you a bunch of things that you can go to your CPA with, or anybody if you want to. and we'll talk about that in a minute, but… So I'm gonna pull this down.

Derick Van NessBut if you guys… Need a copy of it, let me know. Okay, so, second thing here, high-income earners. It's your growth and cash flow plan. So we talked about cash flow and how important that is, because when you get to retirement, it's about how much income you can take, right? everybody… has different needs, but your typical W-2s don't have the same things as you guys as high-income investors and earners, right? You have different needs. You probably need more liquidity than people, so you need a plan that accounts for that, because when you're… You know, you want to keep your money working for you, but you also want to be able to use it for syndications or other types of investments and different things that you're involved with. You want to have higher tax efficiency, because taxes are more expensive for you. And you want to have advanced strategies. How do you get things that coordinate with your overall plan? In a lot of cases, you want to get your dollars doing more than one job. If you can have dollars that create cash flow, grow for you, and create tax breaks, all at the same time, that's way better than just doing one, and it takes some advanced understanding to do that, right? This is not stuff that your typical Lower income earner would have to deal with.

Derick Van NessSo, it's important to learn this stuff, because you're gonna end up as a professional investor, whether you realize it or not. At some point. You're gonna stop working, you're gonna not have your W-2 income or your job when you sell your business. And you're going to be a professional investor, and your ability to turn those assets into real income is what's going to dictate how the rest of your life goes. So you want to build this skill set as you go, right? We talked about that, so… how do you increase your income safely? We talked about the 4%, the 6%, the 8%. How do you go from 4% up to 6 or 8, right? So I want to show you How the big dogs do this with their money. The wealthy people, the professional investors. you know, you've heard the term, you want to diversify, right? And this is an example of what we… what's called the endowment, endowment model, or what Ray Dalio would call his all-weather portfolio, or you know, the new Tony Robbins book, if you guys have read that. He talks about it, but it's really about how do you have money in a bunch of different asset classes.

Derick Van Nessthat are not tied to the same thing, right? So here, US equities. Is. is a category that's like the stock market. This is foreign stock market. These are things like hedge funds. Leveraged buyouts are like mergers and acquisitions. This is investing in private companies, real estate, things like oil, gas, gold, silver, bonds, and cash. These things are all different, right, and the idea behind it is Let's say you, as one of your pieces of real estate, you have, an avocado farm that you're invested in in Panama. And then you also have money in the stock market. So, does your avocado farm that's in real estate here care if the stock market's up or down? No, it doesn't, the avocados still grow the same. Now, on the flip side, if your avocado farm gets wiped out, does the stock market care? No, it doesn't. Everything's going to have its own up and down cycles. We just don't want them all running together, and the idea of diversification, which you used to be able to get just in the stock market. has changed, and so when you look at historically what's happened.

Derick Van Nesswith how these big money investors, so this is… this is the Yale University target allocation. If we go back to the 80s, you can see back in the 80s. this dark blue is U.S. equities, right? So this is the stock market. They had about 70% of their money in the stock market, because you could get really good diversification there. Coca-Cola was not tied to IBM, it wasn't tied to Procter & Gamble, it wasn't tied to… you know, Polaroid, or any of these other publicly traded, or Toyota, any of those companies. But what happened is we got into the 90s here, and mutual funds got things bundled, and then index and ETFs started to happen, and people started to day trade. The smart money realized that, hey, less and less of the stock market. Is diversified, it's all getting traded, like, especially as we've gotten more modern day here in the 2010s and beyond. Everybody buys index funds or ETFs, S&P 500, it's all very bundled together, and the whole S&P 500 moves up or down based on 5 or 6 companies. Right, so suddenly it's not nearly as independent as it used to be, and so what these guys did was they started adding things like private equity, right? This blue category here, which is investments in private companies.

Derick Van NessThey started adding, absolute return, which is like hedge funds that work counter to some of that to create diversity, or diversification. And then these other things kind of stayed the same, and then they added in real assets, and this is more like real estate and some of the other things, right? That increased to help offset this. And what you can see here is there's just been a change, and the reason they do that is they're trying to get more like that 6% or 8%, and as this became less diversified. You couldn't pull out as much money, because everything's kind of bundled together. And so, this is… this kind of diversification is what allows you to have Things that are non-correlated, in other words, go up and down opposite of one another, or don't tie into the same things. Right? So when you… when you put that together. And you're trying to create more income. The layers that we want to have as a business owner are a diverse growth portfolio, like we talked about. This means you're not gonna go up and down with just one asset class. If you're all in real estate, you're gonna go up and down with real estate. And you guys may know this, but a ton of real estate investors are getting smashed right now because of investments they made back in 20… 21, early 22.

Derick Van NessBut people who are really well diversified, that's only part of their portfolio. Right now, the stock market's done really well, but You know, if it were to crash and you have everything in there, you're going to feel that, so you want to have some diversification. Liquidity. You do want to have money to deploy, especially if you're a business owner. This is really important to have for ups and downs, but also for opportunities and emergencies. So you want to make sure there's a certain amount of liquidity in your investments. You want to layer in tax strategy. I love that you guys are looking at real estate, because it's one of the best Tax-efficient types of investments there is. And it does a great job. Right? Customization and control. A lot of this is about your own mental well-being. You need to be invested in things that work for you, and that you like how they work. If you have an investment that makes you money, but you can't sleep at night, I'm telling you right now, it's a terrible trade-off. And then you do want to have things that have guarantees. This can be things like bonds, a lot of people buy bonds, could be things like CDs. I really like cash value life insurance, because you can get tax-free growth and liquidity at the same time, but you want to have parts of your portfolio that are guaranteed to go up no matter what's happening in the world.

Derick Van NessThat's super, super valuable. And when you put all these together, just like a bunch of pulleys, it allows you to get greater returns or create more money than if you had any one of them all by itself. Right, and so the goal here This is, just so you guys know, this is like a 5-hour presentation that I'm squeezing into a little over an hour here. So, there's a lot more depth to this. Systems and automation. So, you guys work hard. The more automation we can have, the better. If you have to remember to do every single transfer, every single dollar saved, every single investment made, it's going to… it's going to be hard, and you're not going to get consistent results. You know. The business you work for or own works, because it has good systems. Your biggest system that you're missing is how do I systematically extract money from your business or your income? A lot of people miss that transition. It all goes into your spending account. And then it never gets put into building more wealth. And if you do that long enough, you just learn how to spend every dollar you make.

Derick Van NessBecause you never got this system, right? So this is the… Number one thing to automate? Is saving money, getting… setting money aside, automatically extracting it from your income. If you don't do that. It all stays in your spending account here, right? But if we have a system. Like this financial operating system for extracting money from your income. Through saving taxes, investments, and growth, and some of the other things we're going to talk about. Then it gets funneled into building personal wealth, and it's all happening in the background. We really want this to be happening without you having to think about it. You make the plan at the beginning of the year, just like I talked about with the tax forecasting. You do investment and savings forecasting. And then you automate it, right? And the most powerful thing you can do is automate everything. Savings, transfers, investments. Everything you can possibly think of, the more you automate, the more consistent you will be. And let's be honest, you guys work hard enough, you don't need to be spending your nights and weekends doing this stuff. Software today can do nearly everything for you.

Derick Van NessAnd everybody's set up for it. So, we want to build our life Such that if you don't do anything special, everything you want to get accomplished is accomplished. So… If you need to save for taxes because you're a business owner and it's not coming out of your W-2, automate it. Building Wealth. Saving for your kid's college. Automate it. a sinking fund. This is like an emergency fund, but it's also for things like, oh, the water heater's gonna go out, we need new tires for the car, the roof needs to be repaired at some point. Things that we know are coming. And then lifestyle needs. Automate saving for vacations or big expenses that you want to do to fund your lifestyle needs, right? But you just want to build all this stuff into autopilot. And this is an example, I won't spend a ton of time on it tonight, but you can automate saving for taxes, saving for the needs that you know are coming up, paying your real estate company if you, you know, own the building that your business is in, into your family wealth account, into tax strategy, into investments, into family banking, which is… One of the things we teach people is how to build their own family bank inside of a life insurance policy, so that every time you buy something, you collect interest instead of paying interest.

Derick Van NessAnd there's massive advantages to that. But you want to automate all of this. So… . The 4th component here is protections and safeguards. This is the most unsexy yet important thing there is. Because what good is it having gold in the treasury if there's no castle to protect it? So many people build wealth, and the first time something happens, a health thing, a relationship thing, a family thing, all the money goes away. Right? You guys probably see it all the time in the medical world. Where people don't have health insurance, or they don't have certain things in place, and the second something goes wrong, they lose it. I broke a femur back in 2008. I was snowboarding. I managed to get hit by a snowmobile. Don't ask me how, took a lot of planning to do that, but when I got knocked down. It cost a couple hundred thousand dollars, about a quarter million dollars to get through that. If I didn't have health insurance, that would have wiped me out. As it turned out, 08 wiped me out, because I was a real estate investor, and I learned a lot of lessons there. But, you gotta have protection. So ask yourself, what if you or your business or personal partner passed away? Is there a plan for that?

Derick Van NessWhat if there was a disability or chronic illness? What if you went through a divorce? If you own a business, what if you lost a key employee or you got hacked? Right? Do you have plans for these things? And if you don't, Maybe you should, because… The reality is, everybody gets a few curveballs in life. And how you handle them makes all the difference. Something is going to happen. It's just part of life. If you don't have the right cash reserves, you don't have the right insurance, you don't have the right structures in place, the right backup plan. You could lose everything. And so it's not really cool to talk about, and I won't spend a ton of time on it, but if you don't have this in place. All the investments and everything else you do are at risk. And then the last thing here, this is for those of you who own a business. If you don't, hang with me for three minutes here. But business independence is really, really important. So, you have to know what your business is worth, and not just what you think it's worth. But what your business is worth to someone else. Why do I say that?

Derick Van NessBecause someone else is who's going to buy your business, so how much it's worth to you. Is not nearly as important as how much it's worth to someone else when they pay you for it. So… Why is that so important? Because business owners, or people who buy businesses, and for those of you who don't own a business yet, but want to buy one, what you really want to buy is a money machine. You do not want to buy a J-O-B, right? If it requires you to be there, it is not a money machine, it's a job. And I see this all the time, where doctors go out and they buy a new practice, and then they plug themselves into the practice. They now have a job. They don't have a business. A business is a thing that would work without them. Right? And so what's the difference? A business works without you, and a job requires your time and energy, so you're really limited by how much you can earn. And… Once again, when you go to sell it, what's it worth without you? So it's not worth nearly as much. The business that needs you. Owns you, so if you have a business that needs you. I want you to consider the idea that at some point you need to work yourself out of a job.

Derick Van NessAnd have a business that works without you. Otherwise… It's not worth very much to someone else. So, quick self-assessment. How would… how well would your business run? If you left it for 30 days. Right? For some people, that's a pretty scary prospect. If you're the only… Only person working in your office. And all your income relies on you, you don't have a business, you have a job. Right, a glorified job, but a job. Okay, so we talked about business value, and this is just good for anybody to know. But how much a business is worth? is EBITDA. If you don't know what EBITDA is, this is your earnings. Before you take out all the tax stuff, interest, depreciation, taxes, and amortization, how much did you really earn? times… A multiplier. And that multiplier, like I said, 3 times what you earned, right? That is going to be determined by what we call intangible capitals. So… Every business has a range, right? So let's say… In a particular industry. it's two and a half times income to four and a half times income, right? So if this is a business that earns a million dollars a year, that's the difference between $2.5 million and $4.5 million when you go to sell it.

Derick Van NessSo what's the difference? Between these two. It's your intangible capitals, right? Umm. As you get bigger, it's worth noting that the multiples get bigger, right, if you own 3, 4, 5, 6 locations, you might get closer to 6 and a half versus 4 and a half. Because a bigger one, if you lose a doctor in one location, you can transfer from another location. You get to share the marketing department, and the HR department, and a lot of other things, so a bigger business is more stable, and you can get a higher multiple on your income. And this will be important in just one minute here. And then if you have a really large group, you can get 10 times or more sometimes. So what determines… where you're… whether you're a 2.5 and a 4.5, are these, intangible capitals. So this is… Your human capital, how good is your team? Right? How many other providers do you have, or doctors, or how good is the team at running the business without you? The better the team. The more the business is worth, and I would say this is the single most important thing. The second thing is structural. How good are your systems? If you have really good systems.

Derick Van NessThat create consistent, predictable results, you're going to get a lot more than if you don't. Who are your customers? Are you reliant on one or two big customers, or do you have a lot of them? Or if all your business comes from one hospital, and that relationship were to break down. Would that affect you? that makes your business worth less. Whereas if you're getting business from, like, lots of places, then your business is going to be worth more, and your social capital. This is your reputation. How are your reviews online? How is your… how does the community view you? How… How good are your relationships with vendors? All of that stuff. But these first two are definitely the most important. And it can determine up to 70% of your value. The difference between two and a half and four and a half is almost double, right? And what… if you guys have ever wondered. how big, big business makes a lot of money. This is just a bonus. What they do is they go and they buy out… buy up single locations, and let's say they pay 3 or 3.5 times value. They pull it into their larger group, and now it's worth 7 or 8 times. What it was, so they might… buy something at 4 times value, and then when they go to sell, they sell at 10x because they have it in a much larger group.

Derick Van NessSo, this is called valuation arbitrage, where you buy low, add it into a portfolio, make it worth a lot more, and you can sell high. And this, if you're ever wondering how people do 50, 100 million, $200 million exits. This is how they do it. They start with a couple locations. Turn it into a small group. From the small group, they buy up single locations, and then turn them into a larger group. And suddenly they went from 1 million of EBITDA here to 10 million here, and they sell it at 10x and get $100 million for it. Right? So, and it only takes a couple of years if you get good at it, so it's pretty wild. So… Just to kind of start wrapping this up, Building your business takes a team, but so does building wealth. Most people think they have to do it themselves, but you do need a goal. Which was that number we talked about. You gotta have a plan and the systems to execute that. And then you need a team to help you. The truth is, you're not going to be a tax expert, you're probably not going to be an investment expert, you need people We're going to be able to help you to make good decisions.

Derick Van NessAttorneys, CPAs, et cetera so I want you to look quickly. at who you might have on your team. Do you have a tax strategist? Do you have your CPA or your, tax filer? Do you have a bookkeeper? Do you have an attorney? This could be an estate planning attorney. This could be a business attorney. This could be a lot of things. Do you have a wealth strategist? Someone who understands insurance, there's actually two kinds of insurance. Like life and health, and then also, property and casualty. And then do you have a banker? Right? Which of these rolls are empty, and you want to take note of that. So, the idea here is to have a system in each of these categories that helps you, and if you just follow the rules. This will start to build it on autopilot for you, and it's what turns your business income into that long-term, lasting wealth through growth, protection, strategy, efficiency. It all really adds up. And so, we like to take your income, run it through the financial operating system.

Derick Van NessAnd build that lasting wealth. Right. So… I told you I would show you how to get where you need to go to hit those numbers. Here's what that looks like. Let's say you can save $20,000 to $50,000 a year in taxes. I already showed you guys that we typically find $57,000 plus for our clients. When we do a tax review. So we're being conservative here. What if you could save $2,000 per pay period on autopilot? Most of you probably wouldn't even notice it. $1,000, $2,000 a pay period. That's socking that money away, but $2,000 a pay period is gonna get you an extra $50,000 a year. What if you were just $500 per week more efficient with your business? Or for a lot of you, if you just looked at a few things financially, I have people sometimes do a financial purge where you go through your apps and your credit cards and all of that. You get rid of all those automatic expenses. It's not uncommon for people to find $500 to $1,000. Per month, that they're overpaying on that. And then if you were to invest in a safer, more efficient, and diversified, effective way.

Derick Van NessSo you grow your money faster. If we just did that, just these couple of factors here. are over $100,000 a year extra. And you didn't have to tighten your belt, ruin your lifestyle, stop living the life you love, and this doesn't include money you were already saving. And I know a lot of you already are. So, it just takes these little things all adding up. And like I said, at $100,000 a year. In 30 years, that would be $10 million in your pocket. You guys have already seen the math, but… It's a huge amount of money. Just by being more efficient, and a little bit smarter, and having a system for it. So, this doesn't require you to be a rocket scientist, even though, as doctors, you guys are probably smarter than rocket scientists in some cases. I am not. But… It's too easy to put this off and say, yeah, I'll get to that one day, I'm not sure. Please don't fall into that trap. Now remember this question. This is what's at stake. Do you want to rely on your kids for income? In retirement? Or do you want to leave something? For your… for the people who you care about most.

Derick Van NessDecisions like this really matter if you're gonna take action, right? So, you have two choices. You can keep doing the same things that you've done, and listen, you guys are on a better track than most. You're here. You're working on looking at investments, a deal flow. You guys are ahead of the game, which is really, really good, right? Or you can take, take action and change The way that you do taxes, the way that you save for money, the way that you forecast and project. Honestly, this only takes 1 or 2 hours a month to really get it right once you're set up. It is not a crazy amount of work. But it does take a little bit of building in the very first year to kind of get it going. If you're interested in something like that, this is the part where I say, hey, we do a free Wealth Gap assessment for people. And that includes a tax break, you know, and to be honest with you guys, just the tax piece alone is probably, for a lot of you, worth 30, 50, $100,000, depending on how much you make. It's crazy, and if you're not sure. I would suggest that you sign up. Get the Wealth Gap Assessment for free with my team.

Derick Van NessWe go through all the different pieces with you, ask you a bunch of questions. We make it super easy, I mean, it's like… a 30- or 45-minute phone call, we gather some information about your situation if you want us to. We do a whole analysis, give you a whole breakdown of taxes. What's possible and where you could go? And then you can decide from there. But honestly, if you don't already have a team in place, something like this can show you what's possible. And you can begin building the life that you want today, right, rather than putting it on hold. Living for someday, I'll, you know, but I'll figure it out later. I'm telling you guys, part of what that opportunity cost shows is just how valuable time is. So, I know you guys have been here for quite a while. I don't know if anybody has any questions, but I would be happy to answer any. And I appreciate you guys taking some time to be here today, but we really would love to do this. If you own an office or a business. Definitely do this and get the research and development credit. Estimate as a bare minimum. That is such a lucrative credit and for so many people it makes such a difference. Even if you don't think you qualify, it's worth a 10-minute conversation.

Derick Van NessMy team's done a lot of those, and it's amazing what can come out of that, so… Anyway, questions?

Derick Van NessYeah, so depending on what you're trying to automate, some stuff is easy, right? You can automate transfers with your bank account, or money automatically going into your brokerage account if you're… if you're doing, investments. Also, if you're trying to do cash flow management. We… we use a software called Sequence.io. And you can go in, and they will move… you can go in, and it's like a little flow chart, and you can say, if I have more than X amount in this account, transfer over here. Or when money comes into this, I want to save for taxes, so transfer over here. And you can set up a lot of automations that way. I mean, traditional banking these days, you can do quite a bit. But sequence.io is… Is the one we use for… for a lot of that.

Derick Van NessI personally really like whole life insurance, and I like it because you have a guaranteed rate of return and a guaranteed cost of insurance. I work with multiple companies. Certainly, from time to time, insurance policies change, so we're always looking at, like. What's the best for clients? There are some companies that are better… you get more death benefit, but less cash value. Others where you get more cash value or less death benefit. So it depends a little bit on what the client's trying to accomplish. Some of you are going to hate me for saying this. I'm generally not a huge fan for, IULs, or indexed universal life. Not because of the growth component, but because the cost of insurance changes over time, and a lot of people are unaware that as you get older, that cost of insurance gets quite high, and can really eat up the cash value in a policy. So I try to stay away from those. Once again, if you disagree with me, I'm happy to go through and run the numbers and just kind of show you how I see it, because I know those are really popular. And they… they kind of are because they… the commission on those is about double what they pay for whole life. They're very lucrative to sell.

Derick Van NessBut, I think unless they're set up perfectly, they're really, really dangerous. So, I'm, I'm saying that as a licensed insurance professional, that's my professional opinion, having run the numbers. A lot of times, but I generally stick with high cash value. whole life insurance companies that are mutual companies, because they also pay a dividend, so I hope that answers your question.

Derick Van NessYeah, I think the easiest way to say it, if we're looking at, you know, should I use… Taxable accounts versus tax-deferred accounts, or things of that sort. The idea behind deferring taxes is if you're in a higher tax bracket now than you will be when you take it out. then you could end up with a, you know, in a better situation tax-wise. The biggest thing is you have to lock your money up, right? And so, when your money gets locked up inside of a qualified plan, you can't get it out without penalties until 59 and a half. And so I think we have to weigh out the opportunity cost if my money's stuck in there. what else am I missing out on that I might have been able to take advantage of elsewhere? Now, there's self-directed IRAs, and there are other tools that will allow you to do different things, but to me, that's the biggest thing, is you lose control of your money, or you can. And so, a lot of times, what I would look at is… Having enough liquidity that you can take advantage of opportunities. But also, if you like the… like, if you're… especially if you're in a really high tax bracket right now, maybe you do fund some of your money in there, and keep that as your… your tax-deferred bucket. I don't love people putting every dollar in there, only because I feel like it… they'll miss out on other opportunities.

Derick Van NessBut, but yeah, it can be a really effective tool. It's not my favorite tool. Like one of the things I do love about cash value life insurance is it grows tax free like an like a Roth. As long as you use the loan provisions. But it's also liquid, so you can kind of get the best of both worlds, where you're getting the tax advantages of that growth. But you're also able to use the money if opportunities like apartments come up, or you want to do venture capital, or private equity, or other kinds of things. It allows you to ebb and flow with that a little bit. So… I think if you're in a very high tax bracket, it can be a nice tool. If you're in a lower tax bracket now than you will be in the future, I would say pay the taxes now.

Derick Van NessSure.

Derick Van NessTwo things. One, they make enough money that there's no pain. And so they… they think they're gonna be fine, and they don't… they don't start saving money. I really think that once you make more than $150,000 bucks a year. Like, up to $150,000, I think people should reinvest in their education, their business, their income earning power. Once they start getting over that, I think… starting to take chips off the table and save on autopilot is really important, and I think a lot of people just don't do it soon enough. They have a tendency to spend every dollar they make. And so their lifestyle creep follows their income. That's probably the single biggest thing is people wait too late to start saving. They say, Well, when I make more money, then I'll save. But as soon as they make more money, then they buy the fancier car, get the fancier apartment or house. And they just keep chasing their income up. I think… automating savings as soon as you can, even if it's only 10% in the beginning. I think it's best to get to where you're automatically saving 20-25% of your income, but in the beginning, if you just start with 10%, I think that's… That's what a lot of people miss. And then the jump from 0 to 20% is just too big and they never do it.

Derick Van NessOne or two things. One is, get really good at taxes. Taxes, they don't change that much every year, so when you first learn them, it can be a little confusing, but once you know it, you know it forever. And it will pay you every single year forever. And the second thing is, truly, automate savings somehow. And when I say savings, it can go into an account that will be invested later, but just get it out of your spending account. Just do that on autopilot. If you're bad at that, set up an account at a separate bank, have the auto-save, you know, the auto-transfer go to the other bank so you don't see it, you never log into it. But those two things, get really good at taxes and automate savings. If you do that, you're gonna be miles ahead of a lot of other people.

Derick Van NessYeah, so… Not rocket science, it just takes a little setup, but man, it makes such a difference, especially over a couple of years.

Derick Van NessSorry, you guys.

Derick Van NessYou got it. Really appreciate you guys having me, and I appreciate everybody's time for being here. It really does make a difference.