Hello, hello. Happy Thursday, everyone. Hope you're doing well. Anton Anderson here. It is April 18th. You should be able to see my video at this point, hear my audio as well as see my screen, if you want to go ahead and confirm for me. Thank you, Jim. Happy Easter back at you. Landon, appreciate that. Good afternoon. I see a number of people here plugging in right at the top of the hour. It's 2:00 Pacific, 5:00 Eastern. This is our weekly CIQ review call. CIQ, client information questionnaire. Hope everybody is doing well today. I am joined by Kristie Schlossberg, which many of you have either met over the phone via the Tuesday webinars, or even in person if you've been out to some of our events. Kristie, thank you for being on here today. I appreciate it. Everybody else, thank you for your time here today.

 

Let's talk about the client information questionnaire. I got three today that we're going over. Let's see. One from Joesph, one from Landon, and the last one from Michael. I haven't reviewed them too much. I like to do this live with everybody on the phone here, take a look at what opportunities we see. Before we get into that, let me just ask: anybody here for the first time? Anybody on the line for the first time to do a CIQ, client information questionnaire review? If so, let me know. Michael. This is your first, huh? And we've got one of the CIQs to review from you, nice, man. Good. Looks like everybody else is veteran. Jack as well, good. Good to see. Quite a few additional people on. Lupe, wonderful. Douglas, first time. Awesome. Okay, good, good. I'm just looking at the list here. Helen. It was great seeing you last week. Nice meeting you in person. Everybody else on the line, great to have you.

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So since we have a number of people who are not familiar with the client information questionnaire, let me take a minute and just tell you a little bit about it. Again, you should be able to see my screen, hear my audio, see the video at this point. I will talk to you a little bit about the client information questionnaire, and where to get the information on it if you haven't already. So when you join the training, ideally you follow it systematically, weeks one through really six. They're laid out intentionally in order. Once you get into seven, that becomes just a pretty big library of planning strategies. Eight and nine are really supporting material and next steps.

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So when we take a look at the CIQ, it's all about week three. CIQ stands for client information questionnaire. It's probably created, the first version, maybe five years ago, six years ago. It really started from a CPA relationship I had that I'd been working with for over a year. We were at a conference, and I realized we were at the same exact conference, sitting generally in the same place a year prior, and we had done zero business together over that year. So at break I said, "You know, let me just ask: what's going on here? I mean we know you have the clients. We know they have the needs. You've told me you like the model. Is it something about me that you don't trust, the specialist you're not comfortable with? What's going on here?"

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The CPA said, "You know, I love the concept. I think I'd enjoy working with you in general. The problem is I'm so busy I don't have time to look through my book of business, look at all my clients, look for the types of fact patterns that you and I have discussed, or the types of clients that need these types of opportunities you've been educating me on," and so the light bulb went off that afternoon where I thought, 'there's got to be a better way. I've got this CPA. He likes the model, wants to work with me. He's got over 500 clients, about 40% of them were business owners, but yet we've done zero work together over the last over 12 months, probably 15 months.'

                                            

So I thought, 'what if we had a standard process that he could take all of his clients through one by one, and that process would actually do some of the heavy lifting for us? It would ask questions, provide the answers, and ... Well, ask the questions. The client or prospect would provide the answers, and then we'd use some algorithms to identify potential planning strategies based off the information provided.' That's what we created, called the client information questionnaire. I worked with some programmers out of Minnesota, and basically built a fairly simplistic questionnaire that uses some algorithms, and pulls from a list of about 40, 45 planning strategies based on the information the client provides.

                                            

Again, two minute overview of the CIQ. We've got a 21 minute training video here in week three, as well as different types of ad templates, demos, case studies, list for the specialist to contact based on the opportunity report that's created. You can see all types of additional information here. Very simply, what happens is you get a unique PIN number. When you hit week four of our training, you should get that emailed to you from our office. If you don't, just email support@eliteRT.com. We'll get that out to you. You send your client an email. We have the templated email right here for you. You could send it to your client, your prospect. Likewise, when you get a CPA partner, they're going to send it. Their client, their prospect.

                                            

Client clicks on the URL. They enter the PIN number that you include in that email that we created for you. As soon as the client hits submit they go through, they answer the questions, hit submit. You get emailed a copy of the questions and the answers, as well as the opportunity report, which is using those algorithms to identify potential planning strategies based on the questions and answers they provided. A simple idea, and it's a good tool. It's a really good tool. The main thing is it's a process or a door-opener for you to use to start having a conversation with somebody about their concerns, their priorities, their current situation. We understand their current situation, and then we start asking questions to get a better understanding of their desired situation, and then obviously the communication is okay, we can help you move from your current situation to your desired situation.

                                            

So with all that said, good, I see three or four other people commented that this is their first CIQ review call too. Glad I went over that. With all that said, if you are not familiar with where the CIQ fits into the overall process, take a look at the flowchart training video. You'll see it here in week one. Click there to access a PDF copy of that. Just very quickly I'll show you where it fits in. Page one here is all about building that CPA relationship. Here you go on page two. You can do this with your own clients or prospects. Actually, we strongly encourage you to. Obviously, you can do it with a CPA. You start sending out the CIQs. You start getting a couple CIQs back. Then that leads to the internal review of the CIQ questionnaire results and summary.

                                            

That's basically where these three CIQs are today. Many of the advisors, once you've done three or four of them, you notice you see the pattern. You see the opportunities. You don't need us to help you review them anymore. No problem. But for the first couple times where you're going through it, if you want us to review them on a Thursday afternoon call like this, you just send them over to support@eliteRT.com. What we can do is go over them live like this. We do the internal review, and then I'll give you the directions on where you would take it from here. All right, let me see if there's any. Okay, cool.

                                            

All right, so let's take a look at this first one. This is with Joseph. Joseph, I believe you're on the call, so what I'd like to know, Joe, if you could just type in the chat box there. I'll start going over it, but just let me know is it a client or a prospect. If it's a client, what have you done for them already? Meaning sold them insurance, managed their money, anything else you've done. It's a client. Very good. What have you done? Meaning what kind of client are they. I'll give you a second to type that in, and then the other thing once you're done typing that in, let me know what motivated them to fill this out. How did you position it?

                                            

All right, so the client's first name is Carl. Carl is in his 50s. He didn't say anything about a spouse, but two kids, 21 and 19. Expects his income to stay the same. Looks like he's making between 100,000 to 250,000. Total taxable income is 50,000 to 100,000. He's got a net worth of three million to five million, so pretty strong net worth. The way I'll structure this on each of these CIQs ... the first one will take a little bit longer. I'll go into more detail. The second and third one you'll see the patterns. But what I'll do is I'll just go through the information that was asked, and that he provided, and then we'll circle back to the top, talk about the potential opportunities and look at next steps.

                                            

Carl's got a three to five million dollar net worth. Here's the breakdown of that net worth. It looks like one to five million in stocks, 250 to 500,000 in personal real estate, 500,000 to a million in alternative investments. It looks like he does have some cash money market, less than 250,000, and the business is 250 to 500,000. "How do your tax returns get done?" "I have a CPA." "How would you rate your CPA?" "Average." "Are you interested in having a CPA on my team do a free tax return review?" He says, "Yes, I am." "Do you currently own life insurance?" "No." Interesting, okay.

                                            

I'm going to take a minute and see what you said. "They have managed money with me. They have a couple LLCs." Interesting. Okay, so you manage their money, but clearly you haven't sold them any insurance. Got a 21 year old and a 19 year old, as a reminder. Does not have longterm care, and has never needed to provide care to a family member. Just as a side note FYI, the CIQ is what's called logic-based, which basically means that the questions that will be asked will be dictated by previous answers provided. For example, if somebody said they had life insurance, then it would ask these questions 14 and 15, but since they said, "No, I don't have life insurance," it actually just skips over those. The client never even sees those.

                                            

"Do you currently have longterm care?" "No, never needed to provide care." "Any other services or areas you wish my office helped with?" "No, thanks." "Do you have any of the following types of accounts?" "IRA, Roth IRA, 401(k), investment account," so some type of qualified account, and an investment account. "What is the total value in these accounts?" "Over a million." How much of that million do you manage, Joe?

                                            

"Are you maxing out the contributions?" "Yes." "Do you have a business?" "Yes." "How many companies do you own?" "Two." "Please check the entity type," so the LLC, and no business partners, so therefore it would skip over 27-28, which is what percent of the company do you own and do you have it by sale. "How many employees?" "Less than five." "In one sentence, what does the company do?" "Engineering and management consulting." Cool.

                                            

Never had a company evaluation done, has a SEP IRA at the company level. Gross company revenue is less than 250,000. Net company revenue is 100,000 to 500,000. Tax liability 50 to 100,000. Interesting, okay. "What are your main business concerns?" "Reduce taxes and healthcare costs." "Are there any other areas or services you wish my office helped with from a business perspective?" "Commercial insurance agent." "Are you currently looking for any other professional relationships?" "Attorney and banker." "Please provide any other updates or details that you feel would be relevant in our planning efforts moving forward." "Interested in understanding more about charitable LLC formulation and strategies."

                                            

Okay. Joe, is that something you discussed with him, or was he aware of that outside of your relationship? Let's see. In terms of my previous questions to you, you told him you were expanding the services your firm offered with a niche to focus on small businesses. Perfect. "I don't have the qualified money. I have the account worth roughly two million of non-qualified, and yes I discussed with him based on your extensive review of the five million." Okay, cool. Okay. All right, good. Yeah, it looks like a good client. Obviously, a good client to you with the amount of AUM you manage there. I think you teed this up nice.

                                            

Before I go into some potential next steps, why don't we just take a look at the opportunity report that Joe received? Here we see the top strategies that came up. Tax return review, CPA introduction, life insurance, assets under management, premium financing, employee benefit review. Okay, so let's talk about each one of these. You can see two things, for those of you who haven't looked at a lot of CIQs. The first one is you'll see this list. In this case, it's six strategies. Again, these are the strategies that the algorithms identified. It doesn't mean that every one's appropriate, and it certainly doesn't mean that every strategy that's potentially appropriate for this client is listed here. It's really just designed to give you a little bit of guidance.

                                            

If there's any strategies that you're ever not familiar with, you can scroll down, and you'll see each of these strategies is listed here. Tax return review. It will tell you in a paragraph what that means. These strategies, because it's not a client that has a really large income, it's not going into a lot of advanced tax planning strategies. You won't see anything mentioned, but if they did have something that was more tax planning related, it would have the tax code section listed, and it would also, like you see here, list videos that our specialists have done to give you an hour overview of what that strategy is. In case you want to dive into some additional education, that's what that would be.

                                            

Okay, so we got the tax return review, the CPA intro, life insurance assets under management, premium financing, employee benefits review. Cool. It will also tell you the question that triggered that potential opportunity. What I'm going to do is just go back to the CIQ now, and I will remember those six opportunities. Then I'm going to talk about the opportunities that we potentially see here, and then also what the next steps would be. Thanks, Ann. I like it. All right, Ann says this is her first I think CIQ review call, but this is kick ass. She likes it so far. All right, cool.

                                            

Here's basically what we would do. 98% of CIQs ... Again, they're just used to open the door to a conversation. If this was a CIQ with an accountant, it would say CIQ accountant up there, in which case your followup conversation would be with the accountant. In this case, it's an advisor CIQ. Joe works with this client, so the followup conversation is going to be with the client.

                                            

Once in a while, a CIQ comes back and there's nothing listed on the opportunity report. There's really no strategies that we see here. Typically, it's just maybe somebody who's at a lower income range. There's not a lot of moving pieces. Maybe they're younger in a simpler situation, in which case we just say, "Thank you so much for taking the 10 to 15 minutes to fill it out. Glad you did. I've updated my files accordingly. At this point, it doesn't look like there's anything you need to be concerned with from a planning strategy perspective, but I'll be in touch with you to do this review again." You can do it once a year kind of thing. However, like I said, 98% of the time we're going to find something. In this situation, I think there's certainly some things that's worth a followup conversation.

                                            

My next step would be, if this was my client, I'd send an email to Carl and I'd say, "Carl, thank you so much for taking the 10 to 15 minutes to fill out the client information questionnaire. I'm glad you did. It provided me a little bit of additional information on your circumstance. I think there are some things that my team and I should look at. However, before we roll up our sleeves and get to work, I think it'd be a good idea for you and I to spend 15 to 30 minutes on a followup phone call, as I have a few questions I'd like to make sure I fully understand. How's next Tuesday at 10:00 AM work for you?" Then you can just do a followup phone call.

                                            

The purpose of that phone call is not to sell anything. It's just to have this in front of you. If it was me, I'd have it digitally like this, and I'd make notes, or if you want to print it out, have it in front of you, that's fine too. But basically I'm going to go through, and I'm going to start asking questions about anything that is interesting to me that represents a potential opportunity, or anything that's a range of information. So in this scenario with Carl, two kids, you probably already know this already, Joe. I'd just make sure there's no spouse in the picture there.

                                            

Expects the income to stay the same. I'm not going to ask about that. That's fine with me. Gross household income, 250 to 500. I'm sorry. 100,000 to 250,000. Great. Carl, where does it fall within that range? Are we talking 150, 200, 208? Where does it fall within that range? Just like to get a rough estimate on that. Same thing with the taxes. Where does it fall within that range? He can estimate. Personal net worth, same question. Any idea between the three to five million? I mean if you were to estimate, what do you think that would be? Okay, four, four and a half? Good. Okay. Then we just make a note of it. 4.5 million. I'd probably use the text box here, but I like this for now.

                                            

We already know about the stocks and bonds because we manage two million of that. I'm going to ask about the other investments later. I'd be curious to know, if you don't know already, Joe, what are the alternative investments and how much is it. To me, that's probably at this point all that I'm going to ask there. I see you have a CPA. How long have you been working with them? Oh, good. 10 years. That's great. What's your CPA's first name? Oh, Lisa. Okay, cool. Tell me. Out of great, average and poor, you rated Lisa as average. Why is that? Then the client's going to give you a little bit of information on why.

                                            

Any time a client or a prospect comes back with a CPA that's average or great, we're going to dig into that a little bit. Ultimately, what we're looking for is, since I'm going to assume everybody on this call ... Well, no, no. I shouldn't say that. Yeah, I'll make the assumption. Everybody on this call may still be looking to partner with more CPAs, okay. Now if Joe told me, "I've been working with you guys for a year and a half, and I've got three solid CPAs. I can't handle any more CPA relationships," then we don't want more introductions at that point.

                                            

However, Joe probably still wants new introductions to CPAs. So what Joe is going to say here is, when the client says, "My CPA is average," Joe's going to say, "What I'd like to do is shoot you an email as soon as we get off the phone, and all I'm going to need you to do is forward that email to your CPA and CC me on that introduction, because some of the planning that my team and I are going to look at really should be discussed with your CPA to make sure that there's nothing that we suggest that conflicts with what your CPA is looking at doing in 2020 or 2019. Really, we also want to make sure that we're creating synergy between what my team and I come up with, and what your CPA is looking at. All I'm going to need you to do is forward that email to your CPA, and CC me on the response."

                                            

That email is going to be templated for you. It's going to be in week four, and under this contacting accountants tab, top nine ways to generate CPA introductions. Open that up. One of those ways is going to be your current clients. Okay, so that's going to be templated for you already. You're just going to copy and paste that into an email, send it to your client. Again, have your client forward it to the CPA and CC you. You're going to respond to that email introduction, say, "Carl, thank you so much for the email intro." Let's say the CPA's name is Lisa. "Lisa, I look forward to connecting with you. How's next Wednesday at 11:00 work for a quick phone call?" That's it.

                                            

At this point, we're not going to try to have a full meeting number one with the CPA, because this client represents enough opportunity. We don't really want to muddy the water yet, but we do want to just plant the seed with Lisa about the potential working with one another after we finish our work with Carl. By the end of this, I'll come back up and I'll role play that, that verbiage as well. But that's how we're going to handle that with Carl on the phone here. Let me see. Any more? Okay, cool.

                                            

All right, so now question 12. A lot of advisors get hung up on this. Are you interested in having a CPA on my team do a free tax return review to see if there's any other ways we can save you taxes? 90% of the time clients are going to say yes. However, because Joe potentially wants to work with Lisa, we really don't want to muddy the water by bringing in a CPA to do a free tax return review at this point. What we want to do is we want to see if Lisa is somebody that we want to potentially work with. If so, then Lisa and you will do the free tax return review at a later date.

                                            

I would just skip over this question on my followup call with Carl. If Carl says, "Oh, what about that free tax return review?" I'd say, "Good question. What I'd like to do first is have a call with Lisa, find a little bit more about her business, her practice, and really her desire to go from average to great for you. If she has that desire, then my team will work with Lisa, and we will do a free tax return review with her. If it turns out that she's not a great CPA, then maybe I'll introduce you to another CPA on my team, but I think that's a conversation for down the road," and then I would leave it like that at this point.

                                            

The only other thing I would say about that, Joe, is every client and every prospect that you're using a CIQ with, and they say, "Yes, I'd like a free tax return review," you want to create an Excel document. You can use the one we templated out in the training for you, the KPI document. A little tab at the bottom there that says, "Clients interested in a free tax return review." Carl so and so. The best thing you can do is, by the time you get your first CPA partner, you've got four clients that are interested in free tax return reviews. Then you can bring these clients to that CPA partner and say, "Listen, I've already got four clients lined up that say their CPA is average or poor, and they're interested in doing a free tax return review." In essence, what you've done is you've brought something to the party. It makes it a lot easier for your first CPA partner to get comfortable with you in the model.

                                            

All right. So because they're a client, Joe, I'm going to assume you've discussed insurance with them. They've got a 21 year old and a 19 year old, worth three to five million, and no insurance. That's very perplexing to me. What I would say, and maybe you've already had this conversation with them, Joe, but for everybody else on the line, I'm going to assume you know nothing about that. So when I get here, I'd say, "Tell me a little bit about this. You've got a three to five million dollar net worth. You're a business owner. No spouse listed. So that 21 year old and 19 year old, at this point rely, I assume, on their father, at least to a degree. Why no insurance?"

                                            

Now almost guaranteed the client's going to say, "Because it's not worth the money. I don't want to pay the premium." Interesting. Okay, so it's not that you don't want to leave insurance to your kids, but it's that you don't feel like it's worth the money. If there was a way to secure permanent insurance on you, but do it where there was very little, if any, out-of-pocket expense to you at all, would that be something that my team and I should look at further? I don't know right now if it's something that would work for you or not, but it is something we've done for other clients with high net worth like yours.

                                            

Obviously, he ... Well, he should say, "Yeah, I definitely would be at least open to hearing more about that." Okay. Like I said, I don't want to talk about it too much right now, because I'd really have to dig into it a little bit more in your circumstance, but I'll just make a note here that this is potentially something that we will circle back to. What I'm touching on there is obviously the premium financing, right? He's got a three to five million dollar net worth, in his 50s. Unless there's some major health issue, there's no reason he wouldn't qualify for premium financing. So far we've talked about the tax return review, we've talked about the CPA introduction. Now we're talking about the life insurance and the premium financing.

                                            

Okay, so let's go back to the CIQ here. "Do you own longterm care?" "No." "Ever needed to provide care?" "No." To me, I don't think I'd even ask anything about this. He's never needed to provide care. You don't want to sell him on something that he doesn't feel like he needs. Any other services, no. I think I would just skip that. You know you've got the two million that you manage, and then I would ask just a breakdown. What type of qualified account?

                                            

It looks like he has a SEP IRA, you said. How much is in that? Where's it managed? Are you happy with them? Any concerns there? Is there any other account that we haven't touched on, apart from the two million that I manage? Anything else there? Just ask for a breakdown. How much is in those accounts? Any concerns about them? Where are they currently managed? I wouldn't try to sell him too hard on this at this point. We're not trying to sell the AUM or the insurance on the followup CIQ. We're just trying to gather information. I'd just like to know a little bit more, if you don't already, about where that money is managed.

                                            

"Do you own a business?" "Yes." It's that company we talked about, two companies. I'd be curious to know what's the other company. I think you said you knew a little bit of information. There was a second LLC, perhaps. But I'd be curious to know what does that second LLC do. Let's see here. There's not a whole lot going on in the company level. I would ask, "So the gross company revenue is less than 250. Where is it? How long has it been at that level? You expecting any major changes there?" I'd ask a range on the net company revenue. Where does it fall within that range? Same thing on the tax liability.

                                            

I'd just be curious to know, because primarily the only thing he's given you here is 37, 38, 39 and 40. He's motivated to reduce taxes. What does that mean to him? To me, how is the LLC taxed? I'm guessing it's not an S corp, because that would be a pass through entity. What does it mean to reduce taxes? What is his CPA currently doing? What have they done in the past? How much would be significant? Are we talking reduced by 3,000? Are we talking reduced by 15,000? Are we talking 50,000? How motivated is he to reduce taxes?

                                            

Healthcare costs. What are the healthcare costs? He has less than five employees. I'm guessing he's referring to his own, in which case it's tough, but it's worth asking. What has he done with this in the past? Is he looking for anything else right now? Commercial insurance agent. What does that mean? What does he have in mind? What is he currently looking at? Same thing with the attorney and the banker. All of these are just open-ended questions. Tell me what kind of attorney are you looking for. What kind of work would they do for you? Have you worked with anybody in the past? Same thing with the banker. Then I'll just make a side note on the attorney and the banker here.

                                            

Joe, for you or anybody else on the line, there is a handful of relationships that are really good to develop locally. Business attorney, tax attorney, estate planning attorney. Those are all really good local relationships to develop. Same thing with business banker. Now if it gets into a really advanced tax planning situation, there's probably more specialists on a national scale that we have relationships with, and we could introduce you to. But when it comes to something like an estate planning attorney or a business attorney, most areas will have good attorneys.

                                            

It's much better for you to have local relationships with an attorney and a banker, and here's why. You have this national team, and then you want your local team. Your local team should be made up of your CPA or CPA partners, you, if you specialize in AUM but you're not in securities or insurance license, you should have an insurance person, if you specialize in insurance and you're not AUM licensed, you should have an AUM person, then you should have an attorney, a banker, and then you have some secondary like a payroll specialist maybe, a property and casualty agent.

                                            

Ultimately, what you're looking to do with each of those relationships is help them understand the team-based model, help them understand the uniqueness of working with you in this model, how you'll be bringing them cases like this. Then what you're looking for in return is introductions to CPAs that they have a relationship with. So for every business attorney, that should be two or three new introductions to CPAs. Every business banker, two or three introductions to CPAs. That's how this just snowball starts growing, and you get the momentum where you have 40 to 50 CPAs that you're reaching out to. Again, open-ended questions on 39 on what they're looking for specifically with the attorney and the banker.

                                            

Then the charitable LLC. Joe, to me, this isn't a large enough client for the charitable LLC. I don't think there's enough revenue being generated and taxes being paid to motivate this individual. It's going to cost, on the low end, 35 grand plus to set that up. So if somebody's paying 60, 70 grand in taxes, and you've got to look at purely the fees plus funding it, usually it's not there unless somebody's paying half a million in taxes. 300,000 to 500,000 in taxes is what we're looking for. That's 750,000 to a million of top line revenue. That's where it, to me, it becomes a really no-brainer. But below that, a lot of times it's just it's hard. The client's going to balk at the fees, and the costs, and the complexity.

                                            

However, there is an option here, or a scenario I think. We've talked about the AUM. We talked about the little bit of insight he's given you on the healthcare, the commercial insurance, the banker, the attorney. The CPA introduction to me is always the most exciting or motivating aspect, because it's ... If you look at the goose versus the golden egg, that's the goose. But what I do think we have a potential opportunity here for is that premium finance policy, and the specialist I would suggest you reach out to after you have a phone call with him would be Josh Tipton at Aurora Capital, and you might be able to look at doing this through the company using a split dollar arrangement, which we may be able to create some tax reduction from, which is why I was curious to know what reducing taxes means to him and how much he's done. Okay. I think there's that premium financing opportunity. I think we might be able to do it through the company.

                                            

Oh, and then the last thing I was going to role play, I see the reminder on this, is ... And then I'll move onto the next two. The last thing I was going to role play is this followup meeting with the CPA. The followup phone call, I should say. Give me a second. Again, you asked the client for the introduction. Not even really asked the client. You told the client you're going to send them an email. They're going to forward this email to their CPA. There's no reason they shouldn't do it.

                                            

Client forwards the email to the CPA. They CC you. You respond, "Carl, thank you for the introduction. Lisa, how's next Tuesday at 12:00 work for you?" In this response, it's all templated out. If Lisa responds and says, "Tell me what is this regarding," or something like that, all of those responses are templated out for you. Then what you're going to do is you're going to set up a phone call for you and the CPA. On that phone call, it should really just be a 5 to 10 minute phone call. What you're looking to do is ... What did I do here? Nope, I'm going to close it.

                                            

Anyways, what you're looking to do on the followup phone call with the CPA is say, "Lisa, looking at a couple planning situations with our mutual client, Carl. I work with a group called the Team-Based Model, and we have top national specialists across the country that help anywhere from tax mitigation, to risk mitigation, to expense mitigation for business owners. Carl asked us to look into a couple things, and I told him before my team and I do any work, what we would like is an introduction to his CPA to have a brief conversation.

                                            

"The reason is because we know," meaning your team and you, "We know that after working with a lot of CPAs that one of the things that you hate is when other professionals get in there, whether it's an attorney, or a banker, a business broker, a financial advisor. Any other professional gets in there, starts making recommendations to your client, and they don't consider the potential tax ramifications of those suggestions. I wanted to let you know I'm aware of that. I completely respect the relationship you have with Carl, understand you've been working with him for seven years," whatever Carl told you, "and I wanted to let you know that my team and I will come back to you before we pull the trigger and put anything in place. I'll let you know what we're considering, make sure it's not contradictory to anything you're looking at from a tax planning perspective for 2019 here. We'll be in touch, and if you have any questions or concerns I look forward to having an open dialogue with you."

                                            

That's it. You can say during that meeting or a followup conversation, "As I mentioned, I do a lot of work with CPAs. I spoke with Carl about your practice, done a little bit of due diligence on your firm online. At some point I think it'd be worth you and I getting together for a quick lunch, because I'd like to find out a little bit more about the type of services you offer business owners, and see whether or not there's any additional synergy that we should consider between our two firms." Then that's how you set up a meeting for the meeting number one. But at this point you've got enough opportunity in the CIQ. Like I said, I wouldn't muddy that water.

                                            

Okay, so let me take a look here. Hopefully that was helpful, Joe. I see a couple questions. The training includes these general bullet points, scripts in finessing the transition via verbal interaction with the CPA and the client. Yep. Much of it, and if there's anything that you heard me go off of, all that was obviously just off the top of my head. But all of these calls are recorded, and we post them in week eight underneath the webinar recordings tab.

                                            

All right, Landon. "Just to give you a heads up for the next CIQ, it's a client of my coworker, but we're working on it together. My coworker can give you more details than I can. I'll just need to be unmuted so he can talk, because he's on the phone, not sitting here." Okay, no problem. Yeah, let me just start reviewing it. We'll see where we go here. Boom. Yep, here it is. The only thing, if you know, Landon on Landon's coworker, I would like to just know is it a client or a prospect. If it's a client, what work you've done for them. That's it.

                                            

All right, so we've got this client, first name Shalim. Between 30 to 39. The spouse is 37, and a one-year-old. Very cool. They expect their income to increase over the next three years. So because I've already gone through one CIQ from top to bottom, what I'm going to do now is just tell you what I would be looking for if this was my client, and what I would be discussing with them in a followup conversation. So first thing I can already tell looking at the income, it's going to be a followup conversation. I'd like to have 20 minutes on the phone with them to ask some followup questions before my team and I roll up our sleeves and get to work. That's the kind of language that I like to use with clients.

                                            

The first thing I want to know is increase. Why? Sometimes the client says, "We're both early on in our careers, and we get a two percent raise a year." Okay, great. Other times though they might say, "I just landed a major new contract. I'm expecting my income to increase by probably 50% next year," or, "I'm looking to sell a business. I'm looking to sell an investment, or I just had an inheritance, and we're probably going to sell the house, and that should net me some 600,000." We want to know is there something that's changing how much you're paying in taxes. That's ultimately what we're looking for here. Increase, why?

                                            

Same question as Joe and every other one. Give me an idea where it falls within this range. This client's making between 250,000 to 500,000 a year. Where does it fall? Without looking at your files, how much do you think you pay in taxes? Same question. Where does it fall within that range? Estimated personal net worth, same question. Between the three to five million range, where is your net worth? We've got one to five million in business, 500,000 to a million in commercial real estate, 250,000 or less in stocks and bonds, personal real estate of 500,000 to a million.

                                            

Okay, cost [seg 00:43:11] didn't come up on the CIQ. I'm jumping ahead. But it didn't come up because that 500,000 to a million range is probably a little bit low for cost segregation. It's a depreciation schedule study when you have commercial real estate. I'd like to know what the value of this property is. If it's closer to the 750,000 to a million mark it may qualify, and if so my question would be, "What's the valuation of this commercial real estate?" If it's closer to that 750 or north, what type of property is it? I'm not going to mention anything about cost seg, I'm just going to make some little notes to myself here. Right, that's what I'm doing. It's just gathering some potential information for opportunities. Put a little star next to that one.

                                            

Let's see here. "How do your tax returns get done?" "I have a CPA." "Okay, how would you rate your CPA?" "Great." Wonderful. Right here I'd stop and say, "I see you have a CPA. Tell me a little bit about it. How long you been working with that CPA? What's your CPA's first name? Good. I see you said your CPA is great out of great, average or poor. Tell me a little bit about that. Why did you select great?" "Oh, they're phenomenal. They always get the returns done on time. They don't overcharge me. They seem to come up with good ideas." "Really? Very happy to hear that. I'm so surprised how many clients I speak to about their relationship with their CPA, and they say their CPA is average or poor even. There's definitely some planning that I think my team and I are going to potentially discuss on what we see on the CIQ here, but it's going to be really important for me to get an introduction to your CPA."

                                            

Same language as Joe. There's one little pivot here, though. The same thing. You're going to send the client the followup email. They're going to forward the CPA ... Sorry, follow the ... Forward the email to the CPA, CC you. You're going to respond to that, set up that initial phone call. The only pivot is, in addition to saying that it's going to be important for you and your team to talk to the CPA because you want to make sure that any of the suggestions or planning you have doesn't contradict the CPA's planning for 2019, you're also going to say, "The other thing is by far, the majority of clients are unhappy with their CPA." Let's say the CPA's name is Bill. "If Bill is as good as you say they are, I think I'm actually going to have quite a few clients that I'd be willing to introduce to Bill." You add that one little extra layer on top of your request for the CPA introduction. It makes it a no-brainer for the client.

                                            

"Are you interested in a CPA on my team doing a free tax return review?" Again, yes. I'd skip right over it. CPA is great. If they ask you about it, same situation as Joe. Otherwise, I'd skip right over it. "Do you currently have insurance?" "Yes." "Has a beneficiary review been done?" "Not sure." "What type of insurance permanent?" Let me take a look at Landon, what you've done with them. Some permanent life insurance. Talking to him about premium financing now. Okay, cool. Followup question. "Do I wait on providing the client a tax review until I have a CPA on deck? I don't have any CPAs now, and was wondering if ERT offers a tax return review."

                                            

Yeah. No problem, Joe. I think I briefly touched on that, but maybe I went over it too quickly. You don't want to do the tax return review. You don't even want to discuss it. If the client asks you about it, you don't want to do it until you've explored their relationship with their current CPA. The reason is because if the current CPA finds out that you're doing a tax ... a free tax return review, what does that mean to them? Whoa, whoa. You're potentially stealing my client. Not only am I not going to work with you, I'm going to get in the way of the planning you're trying to do.

                                            

That's why you don't want to do a free tax return review until two things happen. One, you have closed the business that we are discussing with this client, and two, you've had a meeting number one with this CPA and determined that you don't want to work with them. As soon as that happens then, yeah, we have ... we could help you with a free tax return review or introduce you to a CPA that could. But the best thing is wait on that until you have a CPA partner onboard, and then you bring that new CPA partner that client to help jumpstart that relationship by doing a free tax return review with your new CPA partner.

                                            

All right, Landon, let's see. The client has five million dollar term in place. Okay, good. They own 60 franchises. Paid 100K for financial guidance similar to what we're doing, and doesn't think they're doing a good job. Yeah, that's not uncommon. Paid 100 grand for financial guidance. I mean I'm just going to pause on that for a moment, because everybody on the line should understand people pay those kind of fees. We had a business owner in Florida. I talked about this last week at the event. Paid 150 grand to our advisor and CPA. Yep, and they split that. Now they are doing a good job, but people pay those kind of fees because it's either help them make a lot more money, or it's going to help them save more on taxes, more than that 100 grand.

                                            

All right, let me keep going. I see a couple more questions, but I'll circle back to those. "Do you have insurance?" "Yes. Not sure it's permanent." They have a five million dollar term. "Do you currently have longterm care?" "No. Never needed to provide care." They're in their 30s, no problem. "Any other areas of service that you wish our office helped with?" "Retirement planning and estate planning." That's interesting because you've already helped them with insurance. Now they're saying they want retirement planning, and they want estate planning. Obviously, some big opportunity there.

                                            

"Do you have any of the following types of accounts?" They skipped it, so either they don't have them or they skipped over it. I'm going to guess they don't have them because their net worth breakdown was really low when it comes to stocks and bonds.Here I will pause on these. I'd like to know what does this mean to you. I know we're discussing a couple things, Landon. You already said you're discussing premium financing. But to you, Mr and Mrs client, what does retirement planning mean? What is your ideal plan look like? What have you done so far? Same thing with estate planning. What does that mean to you? Now in this case, they're married, right? Married in their 30s, and they just had a one-year-old. My guess is they haven't done much with that one-year-old now, but we just want to ask open-ended questions around that.

                                            

Then I'd ask here too, "Just to make sure, you don't have any investment accounts, any retirement accounts? Why is that?" Then just silence. Why is that? "Do you own a business?" "Yes." "How many companies do you own?" "15." Main company is an LLC. "How many business partners?" Ding, ding, ding, seeing some opportunity. "We have 15 companies, one business partner. 50/50 ownership." "Do you have a by sale in place?" "No."

                                            

Married, one kid, no by sell with a business partner. What happens if something happens to him? His business partner gets a new business partner and it's his spouse, either if he's severely disabled or obviously death. Terrible situation, but you'd want to plan for that. Same thing with the business partner. How is he going to pay his business partner's estate? Unless they addressed that. I know you're discussing premium financing, so I'm seeing hopefully that's where this is going.

                                            

"How many employees?" You've got 50 employees, restaurant and real estate. Gross company revenue at 10 million plus, net company revenue at five million plus. Tax liability at the company level, 250 to 500,000. I don't get that. Why is that so low? That looks too low to me. Why is his personal income 250 to 500 when the net company revenue is five million plus, and he owns 50% of the company? Okay, he has a by sale agreement signed, but it's not funded. Same difference. Okay. They're young, so maybe their net ... Well, they did say they expect their income to increase, right? Yeah, expects the income to increase. I mean this is a pretty great client. You're getting them young. Somebody like this, that net worth, that income, those are definitely growing.

                                            

Okay, so then we get into 37. Same thing as the last one with Joe. Just open-ended questions here. Your main business concern, reduce taxes. What does that mean to you? What has your CPA, who you said was great, done to help you significant reduce those taxes? Is that CPA also doing the business returns in addition to the personal returns? Does the CPA also do the business partner's returns? Succession planning. Why is that important? You're in your 30s. What do you have in mind there? "Are there any other areas or services you wish our office helped with from a business perspective?" "Succession planning and business expense reduction."

                                            

Oh, man. Cost remediation on this thing all day long. You said it's a franchise. They've got over 50 employees, 10 plus million gross revenue. Yep, that's a great one. I would definitely dig into this. Tell me what you have in mind when you say business expense reduction. What have you done so far? What professionals have you come into analyze your different expenses? What are your top expenses, besides payroll? Franchise, credit card fees, materials, E&O insurance, or property and casualty, or any type of insurance, commercial insurance. Oh, this is cool. You're going to have some good stuff come up on this opportunity report.

                                            

Then I love this one. "Are you looking for any other professional relationships?" "No." Well, I can tell you there's probably three to four other specialists that we'd want to get involved if we really want to knock this one out of the park, but most clients don't want other professional relationships. They want you and their CPA to help, and no other details. That's cool.

                                            

Let's take a look at the CIQ. Yep, as I said. 10 different opportunities that came up here. Here's what we're trying to do in this followup phone call. We're trying not to list any potential strategy names. I know you're already looking at premium financing. It makes sense to me. I think that's probably a no-brainer for this client, but what we're trying to really do is out of basically this 10, what are the top two to three priorities for this client. That's where we start. Everything else we put in a parking garage. I like that term, because visually you can understand. Okay, you're putting it into the parking garage. That means at any point you can bring it back out. Right now, we're focusing on the next three to six months. That's the top two to three priorities. After that, we're going to bring up the next priorities. We've got probably a year worth of planning opportunities here, plus a good potential CPA introduction.

                                            

Let's take a look at this. Cost remediation. That's the first one that came up. Anybody on the line that's not familiar with cost remediation? It is a way to reduce the expenses for a business. That's it. Okay. You can scroll down, see more information on what cost remediation is. Tax return review. We talked about that. CPA introduction. We talked about that. Life insurance, no-brainer. Married, kid, no insurance. Premium financing, the by sale. You got three things here that are tied to the by sale, premium financing, life insurance.

                                            

Again, I think it's a no-brainer. If you need any help with that, we do tons of premium financing business. I don't know if you're talking with one of the specialists that we work with, Landon, or not, but more than happy to give you some guidance on this one, because what you want is not only to help this client. I mean, one, you should help this client put a premium finance policy in place for the by sale. Two, you should help the spouse. Three, you should help the other business partner, and I think your message told me they have two business partners. He's the 50% owner, and then he has two minority partners. You should be looking at four policies in total, at least. Him, the spouse, business partner A, business partner B. No-brainer, okay?

                                            

Annuity and assets under management. I think probably too young for the annuity. Yes, it's under management. Again, he doesn't have anything right now. Why not? Should we put something in place? Qualified plan probably makes sense. We can look at that from he said retirement planning is a concern. He said reducing taxes is a concern. We could look at doing something like that. We could even look at funding it with something like a 412(e)(3), which is going to allow him to put more money in than a traditional 401(k), and it's going to be funded with a combination of permanent life insurance and annuity. Maybe that's where we get the insurance for the spouse in addition to by sale. I mean there's a lot of ways we could play that.

                                            

What else? Then we got captive and the ESOP. Both of those were things that came to mind as I was looking through this. Both of them are potential strategies, to be honest with you. With the concerns they listed, again, I think the key is going to be here, what are the top two to three concerns for this client, and addressing those first. The succession planning and the reducing taxes, the ESOP is really a succession planning tool. It also does have some positive tax mitigation characteristics.

                                            

The captive is really more used to reduce risk, reduce business expense, reduce insurance costs. It does have some tax reduction ramifications as well. I wouldn't push either of those. They're more complicated, and they're more expensive out the gate. Since he didn't say those were the main concerns, I think that probably would, on the list, go in the parking garage, I'm guessing. Then the other one is the business expense reduction. I think that one's going to be pretty easy to knock out of the park here. Scott Grosjean is the specialist we work with. You can find all of the specialists' contact information in week eight. There's a document called "ERP specialist contact info." Any of the strategies that are ever listed on the CIQs, or you ever hear me talk about, you'll find a specialist for each one of those, and a video from that specialist on here and in week seven.

                                            

All right. Joe, that's not a silly question. Joe said, "We don't show the opportunity report to the client." No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't show the opportunity report to the client. I wouldn't show it to the CPA. The reason is because you don't want them to get triggered by something that you don't know that they have some exposure to or issue with. Yeah. No, you just don't. You want to keep this information to yourself. You want to talk about it. You want to ask questions, but really this is just your tool behind the scenes.

                                            

Jack. "Why not a retirement plan, I.e., tax-free or minimal taxes?" Yep. I think I just touched on that one. There's a number of different retirement plan options. Like I said, the 412(e)(3), the 401(k). It might be tough with the number of employees. Yeah, but you did say, "I think that they're a franchise," so I don't know if all of those are owned by the one company or not. But there's the same play potentially here as well. I mean you could do SEP IRA or something like that, but there's also the same play with the life insurance, the premium financing, doing that through the company, using some type of split dollar regime, which can have an impact on the taxes. Yep, lot of options. Again, main thing is what are the priorities here? Boom, boom, boom, boom. Start with that.

                                            

Let's see what other questions. "So we focus on the answers, and the problem determines the top three strategies, and keep it general?" 100%. That's exactly right. Yep. We ask clarifying information. We dig a little bit. We identify the top two or three pain points. We don't name strategies. Once we identify the pain points, we ... If there's something we specialize in, we start doing the work on our side, preparing the numbers, analyzing the situation. If it's something we need a specialist, we reach out to the specialist, ask a little bit more about what information they would need, tell them about the circumstance, get them to do as much of a free analysis as they can.

                                            

Then we get back to the CPA or the client and tell them after discussing it with our ... Well, I'll show you. All mapped out here in the flowchart. We do the internal review, discuss the CIQ results, and in this circumstance it's with a CPA, but otherwise it's with a client. Prioritize the top three strategies. Do you need more information or does the CPA need more information on the specialists listed? If so, watch the videos in week seven of the training. Let's say, for example, Landon didn't know what premium financing was. Never been exposed to it. There's a five minute video on premium financing. If you want to do a deep dive, there's a 60 minute video as well. Premium financing.

                                            

After that, you can reach out to the specialist, ask any questions. Again, ideally it's with the CPA, so we're completing a pre-joint-client meeting template with the CPA. If we need the specialist to be involved in the actual conversation with the client, they will be. Then especially if it's a specialist, they will tell us exactly what the next steps are, what information would be needed, and lead you and the client through the process.

                                            

I see a couple questions. Ann, that's a really good question. Let me just get through this last CIQ. I want to cover it for ... Let's see here. Michael. Then I will stick around and answer. I've got until 3:30 Pacific, so I'll stick around and answer those last questions. You're going to start seeing some patterns. Kate and a number of you that have been a number of CIQ review calls, you're probably already seeing these patterns. But yeah, this is the third one. It's starting to look pretty similar, right? It's an advisor CIQ. This client's 50 to 59. They've got a 47 year old spouse. George ... Gregory, sorry. 19 year old, 17 year old, 15 year old, 11 year old. Expects the income to stay the same.

                                            

Same thing. I'm not going to go through it from top to bottom, I'm just going to go through ... I'm sorry. I'm going to go through it from top to bottom. I won't circle back. But Micheal, I can already tell enough moving pieces we're going to have a followup phone call. First question. Tell me a little bit about your income. Where does it fall within that range? Tell me a little bit about the taxes. Where does it fall within that range? Now less than a million is not going to ask them to break down their net worth, so you'll see the questionnaire automatically skip question nine. Over a million or more, it's going to ask them to break down their net worth.

                                            

"How do your tax returns get done?" "I have a CPA. CPA's great." Wonderful. Same scenario here. We're going to ask the CPA ... Or this client for an introduction to the CPA by forwarding them an email. They're going to then forward that to the CPA, CC you. You're not only going to reference the fact that you and your team need to talk to the CPA before you really get to work, but you also, with a client that says their CPA is great, you potentially have clients that you would bring to this CPA as well. Then same followup phone call that you have with a CPA, that Joe had with the CPA that I role played earlier. If anybody wants any of that language, again, we have the recording there in week eight.

                                            

"Are you interested in a CPA doing a free tax return review?" "Yes." Same scenario. Don't offer the tax return review, or don't bring it up at this point because you want to explore this potential CPA relationship first. If that doesn't work out, ideally you get another CPA partner, and you bring this client to do a review with that CPA. "Has a beneficiary review been done?" "Yes," and they own term and permanent insurance. Michael, if you could just type into the chat box there what you have done with this client before. Former business associate prospect. Okay, so a prospect, so no work. Then I'd ask a little bit about ... Tell me about the term and permanent. I'd just like to know what's the death benefit of each. What's the premium of each?

                                            

Currently does have longterm care. "Are there any other services or areas you wish my office helped with?" Okay, so this is interesting. There's less planning so far that the client has because of the net worth perspective, but they just gave you a whole list of things that they're saying I wish your office helped with. Retirement planning, social security maximization, stocks and bonds, college planning, estate planning. So when we get to 18 here, Michael, on our followup call with this client, with Gregory, same thing as I've done with the last couple. We're just asking clarifying questions.

                                            

Tell me a little bit about retirement planning. I see you wish our office helped with retirement planning. What does that mean to you? What have you done already? Who are you currently working with, or have you worked with anybody in the past if you're not working with somebody currently? Social security max, same questions. What are you looking for there? What is it that you wish my office helped with? Same thing with the stocks and bonds. Where is it invested? Why are you looking for somebody else to help? Same thing with the client planning. Same thing with estate planning.

                                            

It looks like they have some type of investment account, retirement account. They've got 250 to 500,000 in it. It's a prospect. I'd ask them a little bit. Well, first of all, where does it fall within that range? Oh, 425? Good. Who's managing that 425 currently? Okay, and how would you rate their performance, great, average or poor? Okay, why? Okay. They've already told you they're interested in your office doing helping with retirement planning. That's a softball. They own a business. It's a construction company. One company. It's an LLC. No business partners. Six to nine employees. They've got some type of qualified plan at the company level.

                                            

Gross company revenue is one to five million. Net company revenue is zero to 100,000. We got some major expenses. I can see here they said business expenses is one of their major concerns. I'd like to know where does the gross company revenue fall within that one to five, and then what are their major expenses? Outside of payroll, what are their major expenses? Do they have any idea annually what that ... what they pay? They're a construction company. That's a lot of risk. I'm guessing there's a lot of insurance expenses in that, but I don't know what else they do, what type of construction they do, et cetera. That's a good question just in general.

                                            

Then we get down to 37. Now they're giving you now a whole additional list of things that they are saying they are concerned with from a business planning perspective. Reduce taxes, company growth, succession planning, business financing, business expenses. How old were they again? 50 to 59, 47. Yeah, so I can see where these concerns come in. Open-ended questions again on 37. Tell me a little bit about this. We talked about reducing taxes on a personal level, but from a company level, you said your CPA is great. What are they doing from you? Does your current CPA also do your business returns? I'm going to assume so since he's the only owner.

                                            

Why is it such a major concern for you? Tell me a little bit about company growth. Why is that a concern? What do you have in mind when you say that? Same thing with succession planning. Same thing with business financing. Same thing with business expense. We've already talked about the business expense a little bit. I might even ask this individual something like what happens if you don't get your expenses in line? I mean is this potentially jeopardizing the health of your company? Because that's a lot. One to five million gross revenue, and then the net company revenue is zero to 100,000. He might be intentionally reducing his net. Six to nine employees. Anyways, but there's some stuff to dig into there.

                                            

"Are there any other areas or services you wish my office helped with from your business perspective?" "Business succession planning, reviewing additional financing options." Same thing. Open-ended questions. What do they have in mind? Banker, great local relationship the have, just like I talked about with Joe. Why are you looking for a banker? Where do you currently do your banking? Are you looking for an individual to have a business banking relationship with? Then ideally, form a local relationship with a business banker, get two to three introductions to CPAs from that banker. Explain to them about the team-based model, why it's worth him introducing, or her introducing you to CPAs. Then when situations come up like this you've got somebody locally you can introduce them to.

                                            

Let's take a look at the opportunity report, and then we can circle back to that. Cost remediation. We talked about that. It makes sense. Business expenses are one of his major concerns, and he's got some pretty hefty expenses. Tax return review. We talked about that. CPA introduction. We talked about that. Life insurance. We talked about that. Remember, he's got the term and the permanent. We're just asking about the breakdown of each, the premium, the death benefit, et cetera. He doesn't have the net worth that's going to qualify for premium financing, so unless you see any glaring opportunity as you're reviewing the life insurance, like maybe he has term and it expires in nine months, or maybe he purchased a policy that's ... You could do a policy review on it and figure out that it's really a poorly designed policy. There might be something there for you.

                                            

The annuity and the assets are in management. 18 and 19, what did we see here? Okay, so they have these investment accounts. That's right. They're concerned with stocks and bonds. They're concerned with estate planning. They're concerned with retirement planning. They've got this 250 to 500,000 there. Obvious opportunity. I'm guessing that's going to be at the top two to three of the priority list here. Yes, that's under management. Estate planning. Open-ended questions around why they selected estate planning as one of their major concerns.

                                            

Business financing, asset evaluation, social security planning. Social security planning came up, same reason. It's in the list that they said here. If there's anything that, Michael, you don't do, like social security planning, and he said ... the client says, "Social security planning is one of my major concerns," what I would suggest doing is going on the Facebook group. We've got almost 700 other members across the country. There's a number of members that specialize in social security maximization. Make a post. Ask somebody who would be willing to do some joint case work with you on that, and they can become your specialist when it comes to social security max. Same thing with college planning. Those kind of things can be done virtually.

                                            

What else do we see? Okay, and then the business financing and the asset evaluation. To me, asset evaluation, I don't really see a need for it. We don't really have any change coming up. We're not funding a by sale. I don't see that. I'd cross it off the list. Then the business financing. We talked about that right here. I would just ask him, "Tell me a little bit about what that means to you, business financing. Why is it a concern? What have you done? What would you do with the money?" We have business financing specialists listed in week eight.

                                            

Again, whether or not it's one of the client's top two to three priorities is the main question. I think, out of this, my guess is going to be he thinks for you introduction to CPA, followup phone call and meeting with ... followup phone call with the CPA. Let's see here. Reviewing things that the client listed in question 18 for you. Then followup questions that the client listed, or concerns that the client listed in 37. My guess is going to be it's going to be the CPA introduction, it's going to be retirement planning, which is tied to the insurance, and the stocks and bonds, and the estate planning, and it's going to be business expense reduction. But the client might surprise us. There might be something else that's really pressing on their mind.

                                            

A lot of times on the CIQ followup calls like this with the client, the reason we do it is we're not selling. We're digging more for information. Then there's additional things that come up as you're talking to them. It's like, "Oh, I forgot to say this, or I forgot about this. You know what? Now that we're talking, here's actually something that's even more of a concern." That's how you want to handle that.

                                            

All right, let's see. I had a few more last questions, and then I've got to jump into my next meeting. Let's see. Okay, so Ann. "Does this work for existing AUM client who has a corporate job, but on the side has a million invested in their own portfolio of local residential real estate?" Yeah. No, I mean the process is the process. I would suggest getting in the habit of taking two to three clients a week, or prospects, through the process, because that's exactly what you want the CPA to get in the habit of doing. Okay.

                                            

"Will the CPA be sending a CIQ to his clients, and does the question "Are you satisfied with the CPA?" show up?" Good question, Jack. Yes. This is just step one of using the CIQ within this scenario. It happened to be today that there was three advisor CIQs. Usually we have one or two that's a CPA or an accountant CIQ too. The reason I would suggest you use it with your own clients and prospects ... I mean obviously there's some planning opportunities. We talked about some things here.

                                            

All of these three represented a good opportunity for an introduction to a CPA, but probably most importantly, you're getting comfortable and familiar with it, so that way by the time you form the CPA partnership, you can tell them, "Yeah. I had that concern too before I used it. Once I started using it, I found this," or, "When I was using the ... I used the CIQ with my own clients. Here's what I've discovered. Blah, blah, blah." You're speaking from experience.

                                            

Now to your last question about, "How do your tax returns get done? How would you rate your CPA?" No, it does not ask those questions. It's a slightly separate, or slightly different version. Right here it asks, "Do you have a trust in place?" And it asks, "When was the last time it was reviewed?" It does not ask about a free tax return review, or who does your taxes, et cetera. Those are the only questions that are different.

                                            

Oh, okay. He's interested in the business valuation because he's thinking about selling the business. Well, in that case, then absolutely. I mean you've got two options with the business valuation. We've got a business valuation specialist listed on the specialist contact sheet, or if he's just exploring that, you might want to look at BizEquity. It's software that is going to be significantly less expensive to do a valuation. If you don't work with them, they license their software to advisors.

                                            

You can look at licensing their software, or, unless you really are passionate about that, I wouldn't suggest you do it. There's a number of advisors in the community that are already licensed and use BizEquity weekly with their clients, and it would be 25% of what a business valuation would cost with the business valuation specialist. It will usually be more than sufficient to cover things like by sale agreements, exploring selling. Usually the buyer is going to want their own third party valuation done, so they can do that. But at least it gives you a ballpark of ... Well, not a ballpark. It gives you a good idea of what the value of the company would be, and whether or not it would be worth selling. Okay.

                                            

"Are there any question template we can use to ask during reviewing a CIQ with a client?" No. There's no question template. All of the CIQs are the same, right? Well, I mean the clients are different, so the answers are different, but they're all laid out like this. It's exactly what I just did three times. If you want to get more comfortable with how to review a CIQ, you can look in week eight of the training here. Take a look at webinar recordings, and then you'll see all of the recordings. We do obviously the two group Q&A calls of the week, and then we do one CIQ review call. You can look back. I mean obviously there's tons and tons of recorded calls.

                                            

I'm telling you, once you attend a couple of these calls, you're going to see it's just a process. What we try to build, whether you use it ... do it using our machine or you create some of your own machine, business should be a machine. It should be a process that we are creating. Similar actions upfront. The machine works, and produces similar results, right? The CIQ can just be part of that machine. You're asking the information. You're getting the additional detail. You're doing a review with them, and then it's spitting out potential opportunity. Take a look at any of the CIQ reviews. You'll get more comfortable with it. Yeah, BizEquity is what that's called. You'll see that information in week eight on the specialist contact sheet as well. Okay.

                                            

All right, very good. Very, very good. Almost an hour and a half. I see a lot of people have still stuck around on these calls. I hope that was helpful. Those are three good CIQs. Thank you for submitting those Joe, Michael and Landon. A couple last questions coming in. "How do you get access to the how to grant CIQ access to a client or a CPA?" Watch the training in week three. We break that down for you.

                                            

"Can we approach business owners as warm leads, and get their okay to send them a CIQ? I've always specialized in inherited wealth AUM, so I've stayed away from business owners because there's issues typically outside of my wheelhouse, but I know a ton of business owners and have never approached professionally." 100%. That's the idea. Yep. I would suggest use the conversation about the team-based model as a unique value proposition with those business owners. Talk about how a team of advanced planning specialists ... You're one specialist on the team. You have your own areas of expertise. In addition to you, you have advanced tax planning attorneys, business attorneys, expense mitigation specialists, risk mitigation specialists. You have a team of national specialists that can look at almost any business owner and help them identify ways to either save taxes, reduce risk, or reduce expenses, and in some situations two or all three.

                                            

The first step of your process is to take 10 minutes to complete a free client information questionnaire. You're going to send them a URL with your PIN. They're going to complete that, and you're going to get it back. You're going to take one to two weeks to look over it with your team. Get back to them with some questions. Typically it's obviously not going to take that long, but we always buy ourselves time. We're not needy. We have plenty of business. We're not rushing. We're not selling anything. We're diagnosing. We're asking questions and we're diagnosing. Once we do the proper diagnosis, we speak with our specialists, just like a general practitioner would, and then we get back to the client with the potential strategies to address their problems and concerns.

                                            

Jack, "Does the CPA video work with the tax season end letter?" Yeah, you can use that. Ann, "I need a script. Which week would I find all those phrases? So excited to have support to dive into this new market." Yeah, so watch week three on the CIQ. There are templates in there. Week four there's the templates on email and phone scripts with reaching out to the CPAs. Week five is all templated for you for the meeting scripts. Okay. We have talking tools. We have meeting scripts. We have role play videos for you. Download it as an MP3, et cetera. Cool.

                                            

All right, very good. Thank you, everyone. I really appreciate your time today. I hope this call was helpful. It is Thursday. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend. If you have any questions, post them in the Facebook group. Tag any of the specialists, or us, or other members. You will see tons of feedback in there. Yes, you're very welcome. I see a number of comments coming through. Any questions at all, just go ahead and post them in the Facebook group. Thanks, everyone. That's it for now.