Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sa.
Foreign
[00:00:30] Speaker B: welcome everyone to tonight's episode of Pivotal Change. I'm your host William Kahn and we have a very special guest tonight. As you know, the show is all about leadership and helping people grow and change their businesses and their personal influence. And I have a man that has been doing that for a very long time. He's been very passionate about helping businesses and he's found a niche in helping Christian businesses, but not just helping their businesses themselves and the owners with the employees and everyone involved. I want to welcome from revenue return specialist, my friend Lee Baker. Lee, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Thank you Mr. William Kahn. It's a pleasure to be here. I appreciate the honor of being invited to your show.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Well, the pleasure is going to be all mine and something I haven't told you before is I actually want my audience to listen with a pen and paper so they can take away notes and all of the nuggets of wisdom that you're going to give us tonight. And the big nugget of wisdom I want us to to talk about tonight is you're doing something called submerp credits and I want you to tell us just a little background on how you heard about these, where they came from and what the heck does suburb even stand for?
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Well, it's kind of interesting because I spent over 30 years working in the with mega churches, connecting the businesses of a mega church, the members that were business owners with their congregation. And we had very unique product that we did at both online and we had a beautiful full color glossy directory we created for the church. Well, when Covid hit, obviously the churches for a period of time shut their doors and when that happened it made it difficult for us to continue doing what we're doing. So we kind of shut our doors for a period of time and in the course of that time we discovered the ERTC.
Well, of course most CPAs know all about the RTC and that was very profitable, very successful.
It was challenging at times because again you're going sometimes uphill with people that think that it's not legitimate or you know, well, I don't qualify and that type thing. But in the course of that, of course that had a, an expiration date and when it expired it was interesting because now all of a sudden our, our focus, if I can use your word, pivoted to well, what other things other than ERCs or ERTCs are out there for the business, the normal everyday business owner. And we discovered that the federal government literally has trillions of dollars in a multitude of different Programs that you can find, if you want to dig deep enough and dig hard enough and dig long enough that nearly every business owner out there would be shocked and know the number of things that they could qualify for, that many are quite substantial.
And so that's how we got into that. And then we discovered at that time what was referred to as the SMERP or the Self Insured Medical Expense reimbursement program, and more commonly known now as the.
The.
I went brain dead.
The, the Help Me Ryan.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: They took.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Sorry.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: So they took the E out. So like ertc, do you have employee retention tax credits? And then some people call it the erc and people don't realize you're talking about the same thing. And with simurb, there's sim R, E, P, then there's sam, rp. And so people, if they hear one or the other, they need to know that they're actually talking about the same thing.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Right? They're kind of. Yeah, the same thing.
But anyway, we got into that and found that that's very lucrative.
And it's, it's something that every business can qualify anywhere from one or two business employees all the way up to tens of thousands. And it can be quite substantial and it can be ongoing on a regular basis.
So.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Okay, and where did this concept originally come from then? Like, I figured that if there's a good program like this, you know, most people, business owners are definitely. Most CPAs would have at least heard about this or know something of it. Why have people never really heard of this?
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Well, you know, it's interesting and that's a really good question, William. I appreciate you asking that because we get asked that all the time. Well, why haven't I heard about this?
See, this is in the tax laws and it goes all the way back into the 1980s when the very first submerp was actually used or utilized.
And it's been used in a number of different ways over the years, some of which are now no longer valid.
But the way that it's being used right now was first introduced about 10 years ago and it was introduced as a preventative care management program.
The preventative care management form of this program is most CPAs will say, well, I don't think that's quality. I don't think you can do that.
They'll look at it and go, I never heard of that. Well, actually it's all based on IRS codes and IRS laws. So yes, you can do it. And that's the interesting thing. We always encourage business, business owners, you're going to look at our program, man, it's a great idea. Just have your CPA get on a call with you, you know, because most CPAs that will look at that and initially say, well, I don't think you can do that because they've been familiar with programs that were similar in some ways that are no longer valid, and in some cases they are correct. Well, you couldn't do that. But the way it's set up as a preventative care management program, you can do that.
And so in doing that, it creates not only a whole pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, so to speak, for the employer, but also for the employees. And that's one of the things that's really unique about this program is it's also a benefit for the employees as well as the employer. It's kind of a multi functional thing there.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: So those are really good points. So the other thing I've heard somebody say too is that when I was first introduced this idea, first talking with you guys about it, that a lot of those supposed big boy companies, they maybe have a team of CPAs and CFOs that have dug through the tax law and used it for themselves, but there was never any reason, initiative or desire to put it out there and let their friends or let everyone else know about it. So for about the last decade, you have the cookie cutter system that helps people become compliant and apply to everyone. And you even said just a minute ago you can have two or three employees all the way up to tens of thousands. So with the difference being, you know, two to three employees versus a 10,000 or more company, what type of companies tend to benefit the most from the suburb?
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Well, the thing that you want to look for primarily is stability. You know, ideally you like businesses that have employees that have been, you know, been around for a while. You don't want the revolving door type thing. You know, that's the thing that's not as easy to work with. But if you've got a good solid base of employees that have been there for a while and the base of this, I mean, in this day and time that we live in today, you know, with the cost of living and the cost of everything going up like it is, we could literally sit down with a business owner. And I don't care if you have 10 employees or 10,000 employees, what do you think of the idea of being able to sit down with your employees and say, hey, we've got a program that we've come across that you can increase, we can Increase your take home pay every month by up to about $200 a month.
So we're talking about a $2,400 a year pay raise for most employees. And the beauty of that, it doesn't cost the employer a penny because it's created by the savings that this program is generated.
Cause of the way it's structured with the IRS and you know, and a lot of people. Again, going back to your initial question, like, well, why haven't I not heard of this? Well, when you've got a program that's only been on the books about 10 years in the scope of IRS programs, that's a relatively new program. And it takes a while to get traction and get the word out there and get everybody learning about it and knowing about it. But it's gaining popularity every single day. You know, day by day, month by month, it's becoming more and more popular. More and more businesses are taking advantage of it and learning that it is legitimate is a real program that's out there that can save a substantial amount of money both for the employer and for the employee.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: I, I like that a lot. And I think. Your point exactly. I think I found for the first time, and maybe it's just because I've had conversations with you guys, the algorithm of my Instagram, finally I saw my first sub commercial or advertisement. So it's either become more popular, my phone's listening to me like everyone else. But tell me a little bit about like how this is really different from like a traditional employee benefits program or somebody going to try to say like saving for retirement or something like that. What makes Smart different in that traditional capacity?
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Well, that's a good question, William, because it's different in the fact that it doesn't replace anything that a business owner already has in place.
It doesn't interfere with, doesn't, it's not necessary to change anything. Even your providers, everybody that you, you have in place a program that runs what I call in sync right along beside your existing program. But what it does is it takes advantage of a pre tax using the 125 cafeteria plan that allows an employer to do a deduction for an employee pre tax. So that when you take pre tax out and you understand how that works, and probably most everyone on this call would understand that too, you lower the taxable base of that employee. Well, when you've lowered their taxable base, you've lowered the amount of tax that they owe. So when you combine the state, federal, fica, you know, everything together, it's going to be less. But the unique thing about this program is the self read the reimbursement, the self insured medical reimbursement. Part of it is that it being a preventative care program and the premium that we deducted under the 125 plan and reduced their taxable income.
But the submerp allows us then on the same paycheck to reimburse the money back into their check on a non tax, non accrual basis. So at the end of the day they take home the same amount of money plus the savings that was created. So we just increase their paycheck. And that's where that extra on an average 150 to 200 per month comes in that that employee is going to see on their paycheck as their paychecks go up on every single employee from day one once a company implements this program.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: So I like that and I know that that's going to be something that the employees like. And if the employees get more happy because of a decision made by the boss, then the boss gets more happy. And I'm actually going to talk to you a little bit about that after the break here real quick. But I want to reemphasize or make clear that, you know, I heard you say that. So this is a reimbursement. So what's going to happen is there's a pretty pre tax option. So they're going to take money for that option off of the paycheck, then you pay taxes on that lower amount. Then on the same paycheck they're reimbursing you for that more amount. So you're taking home the same amount of money but paying less tax. So really your, your paycheck goes up like you said, 150, $200 a month. And that's like kind of a low average. You guys showed me a report one time where somebody was saving $5719 a year and there's other people saving 4000, 3000. But on average people are saving 2500 dollars a year is what it sounds like.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: That is Cor. Is that what that is? Yeah, that is correct. We'd rather under quote and over deliver.
Yeah, sure. You know, over quote and tell somebody they're going to say four or five thousand dollars and actually they ended up only saving two, two thousand dollars, you know, so.
But you can feel right here.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: And we're going to cut to commercial break real quick and I want to talk about the leadership potential of this whole program in just a moment. Okay, everybody sit tight. We'll be back with more pivotal change and more Lee Baker right after this. Foreign we are back and we are going to keep rocking and rolling with my friend Lee Baker. I'm your host William Kahn and I just want to make sure you know where to find pivotal change. You can find us at NOW Media tv. That's probably the best place to go. But we have just bilingual programming in everything you can think of related to business, news and culture, even weather. And you can find it in English and in Spanish you can find it Roku iOS. You can go and listen to it in podcast version. If you can't watch the show, you can still listen to my beautiful screen scratchy voice when you're driving in your car running on the treadmill. So keep in mind that NOW Media TV is your access to live streaming, download on demand, any of the content that you want from this network. So Lee, thank you for waiting over the break with us. And let's jump back into this conversation you had tiptoed to talking about some of the leadership potential. So how would this, if I'm a business leader and I want to, in times that are tight, affect one of my employees lives in a positive direction? How does this program help me as the business owner accomplish that?
[00:13:45] Speaker A: Well, the big thing that that drives this program, there's two things that drive it. Number one is money. And we've already talked about the money side. We're going to increase the the employees take home pay. But see, you've got to realize too, and I'm going to circle back around in a minute and tell you where that money is basically coming from. I mean, we've already talked about that. But what drives that? What's the vehicle that allows us to do that?
But not only did we reduce, we created the savings for the employee because we reduced the amount of withholding or what we commonly know as fica. So we reduced that for the employee. Well, every employer here knows that when you have an employee that pays fica, the employer matches a portion of that.
Well, if we reduce the employees fica, then every quarter when the employer goes to pay the matching portion, voila, he discovers, well, his portions reduced too.
So in return for that, we have created for the leadership of the company a savings that just to give you an example, for most companies it comes out to be around $600 per year per employee.
And by the way, that's net because there are some management fees that are involved because this is a managed program.
But every figure that I'm going to give you is a net savings. So for an employer that is wanting to establish a benefit for his company and for the leadership of the company to say, well, what value is this to us? Why should we? Other than the fact, yeah, of course, every company wants to help their employees, but by the same token, it's always, well, what's in it for me?
You know? And so when the company can look at the fact that they're going to be saving around $600 per year per employee, well, you've got a base of 100 employees. That's $60,000 a year. I mean, what can you do with that? You can add another employee, you can add a vehicle, you can add, you know, any number of things, you know, more equipment in your company. But. And that's not a one and done.
Like many of your programs that you, you would find with the irs, you can apply for them, you get them, and it's done. You only get to do it one time. Well, this is every year, year in and you're out, going on and on and on. And often when I'm sitting with a business owner, and let's just use that example, if they have 100 employees, well, this program literally become law and came on the books about 10 years ago. So if you had been one of the lucky ones that, that discovered it right off the bat, you know, right now you would have over half a million dollars in your bank account that you don't have, because you just didn't know.
And so now we're bringing this to your attention that there's a lot of, for the management side, for the leadership side of the company, there's a lot of really perks and a lot of positive things there. And not only that, but from a management side, you're also providing a plethora of benefits which are preventative care benefits to the employees. Now, that's the vehicle that allows us, because you can't just arbitrarily, out of the clear Blue, tell the IRS, well, we're going to do a 125 deduction on our employees, let them save about $200 a month on their paycheck, and then put the money back in their paycheck. The IRS going to scratch your head and say, well, what do you think you're doing? You think you're now the IRS and you can just do whatever you want to do. But no, if you have a preventative care management program that offers telemedicine, it offers discount prescriptions, it offers chronic care, it offers a whole number of different. It's got. The Mayo Clinic has a whole plethora of plans and programs that they can participate in, addiction recovery programs. These are all things that are offered in this program that the IRS says, oh, well, yeah, this is going to make for a healthier business place. And if it's making for a healthier business place, the employees are going to be healthier, they're going to be happier, their paycheck's going up, they're going to be happier with the company. You've got a happier workplace. Because a healthy employee makes for a healthier workplace. And a happier workplace, employee retention goes up. So there's a lot of benefits to the employer that they're going to see as a result of implementing this program.
Does all that make sense?
[00:18:16] Speaker B: It does. So let me wrap my hand around it and see if I can accurately summarize, because if I were a business leader and I just heard what you said, you know, might be drinking through a fire hose just a little bit, but we've got our pens and papers out. So we're sitting here and say, okay, not only, yeah, what's in it for me? You're going to get the 600 per employee. What's in it for the employee? They're going to get the tax savings that we talked about on the first segment, but now you're getting this preventative health care maintenance. So if I'm sitting here and I say, I've always wanted to have better health insurance or better offerings, now you have the telehealth, you have the prescription mail order, you have EAP plans, those employee assistance plans for financial advice, marital advice, parenting advice, drug addiction. Like you just said, that stuff is huge.
And they get all of that just for. It's a managed plan. Like you said, all of that's just automatically included.
You know, how easy is it? For now, you have somebody that's a young mother and they can just literally call and FaceTime a doctor.
I think you mentioned. Did you mention, like, the scannings of your face and body?
[00:19:12] Speaker A: No, that's. Tell them about that. That's cool. That's.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: That's. That's the stuff that you guys told me about where I was like, man, I got to get this guy on the show, right? And so, so now if I say I want to be a leader and I want to comprehensively change the way my company thinks and looks, we get preventative health, which means, again, people are healthier before they're getting sick, so would there not be a back door where the health Insurance premiums don't go down, or at least they don't go up as fast. If my people are getting preventative health, they're saving doctor's visits. We're not paying urgent care and ER bills because people have to walk in on the weekends and they can just call a doctor and if I can save their health and save health insurance costs and then I can offer new benefits we never had before. Like, what's the downside to this? Is there a downside to this?
[00:19:59] Speaker A: There's really not.
And it's rare that you can find a program that's a win, win, win, win, win for everyone.
And this one literally is.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: I remember when PPP came out and we told people, hey, this payroll protection plan, this loan is free money if you follow the rules and use the way it says. And everybody's like, free money. There's no such thing. Sounds too good to be true. So we have so many hesitant people and guess what? PPP1 came through and it was exactly what they said it was true. And then PPP2 came by and bunch of people jumped on that one. Obviously then they said, ERTC came out. Here's free money that wasn't technically free because you had to pay like tax interest on it when you amended your filing, but it was super duper cheap money and a lot of it. Right then you had the Eidl loans, that was cheap money, was one of the lowest interest rates ever launched in history. And now you've got this program that's being put out here for the last decade of this preventative health plan. And it's literally free money. And you don't ever have a out of pocket cost because it's shaved off of your refund before you ever get it. So the employer is not out money, they only make money. The employee's not out money, they only make money. Everybody gets more health benefits and it reduces insurance costs potentially and all that kind of stuff. So that sounds too good to be true. But of course I've seen it in writing and you've convinced us to use it for our company. So we have the, we have the payroll side of things here where it goes on and off a paycheck. So do I need to like change my payroll provider? Do I have to change my cpa or do I have to change my healthcare company?
[00:21:31] Speaker A: No, that's another beauty of this program because we get asked that all the time. You know, one last thing an employer ever wants to do is put a bigger workload on their HR department or Their payroll department. And what we have done is partner with the leader in this whole industry who's considered to be the architect of the whole program. And they are the number one company. They're one of the fastest growing companies in America today.
And they're the management company and we partner with them.
They literally will get with your payroll people, your existing payroll people that you already have in place, and they will sit down with them, go over the coding, they'll help them set up the coding. Because once it's all set up, it's all set up in coding, it's automated from then on, and they do the heavy lifting.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: So, because I want to get into some of the actual AR HR stuff, maybe here in just a moment, but you're telling me one of the big misconceptions that, that we can tackle is that the owners are like, oh, well, there's going to be so much that I have to change, right. Like I'm gonna have to run it by my cpa, maybe change accounts, maybe change payroll, mess with my HR company or my HR people. But that misconception of like, here's all the heavy lifting. If I'm, I'm going to summarize, probably too slang, but you've got a cookie cutter approach where you just stamp the cookie cutter down. All the employer has to do is realize that this is legit, it's credible, hit the green button. And after the green go button is done, you guys come in and take over. Is that, Is that pretty much.
[00:22:59] Speaker A: That's it. William, you nailed it.
Yep.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Okay, so let me do this real quick because we're going to cut to commercial break here in just a moment, but I want people that surely there's some excitement about what they're hearing on today's show. How do they find you? How do they get a hold of you and ask you more questions or possibly, possibly sign up for the services and get these credits themselves?
[00:23:16] Speaker A: Well, the easiest way is just go to our website. The website is not designed to give you a lot of information, is designed to be able to bring you to us so we can give you the information tailored particularly for your business. But if you just simply go to revenue return specialists, that's plural, has an S on the end dot com.
At the very bottom of our website, you'll have a link where you can connect to a calendar, a calendar link, and that will connect you to one of our experts that will schedule about a 25, 30 minute Zoom call and then we'll make it personal for your company. And we'll look at all the qualifications, make, let you know what the guidelines are, what you have to do to qualify for this, which is very simple, only two or three steps to qualify. But then if you pull a trigger and say, you know, it looks great to me. And by the way, you can't just call us and say, I want to do this program.
The company that sets this up, that does all the work and they do the management of the program. They won't put anybody on the program until they run what they call a savings report. That's where they actually will get, where you give them permission.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Let's talk about the savings report in a minute because I want to go to detail on that and see that. So we'll talk about the savings report and the HR stuff in just a second. And Lee, we're going to come back because people are going to want to hear more right after this break.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Okay,
[00:24:42] Speaker B: you've made it past the halfway point. We're having a great time on this conversation with Lee from revenue return specialist. He just told you where to find them. And we just started getting into a little bit more of the details of how like, okay, this sounds good. We got over the fact that it sounds too good to be true. It really is true. And now we're talking about the information, the potential headaches of the employers. You were getting ready to dispel some of those and you were telling us just a little bit about kind of that onboarding implementation process. And you started with a savings report. Tell me what the savings report does and how that helps our process.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Okay, well, William, the savings report is the next step moving forward. So if somebody is interested in knowing more about this program, they're going to go to the website so they can schedule a call. You can snag a time, you know, for about 25, 30 minutes with one of our specialists.
Then we will explain in detail exactly how it fits with their company step by step. But they can't move forward until they give us permission to contact their payroll people or if they do it in house. Obviously, it's simple. We just connect directly with their payroll people in house. But then they give us the permission that we request. You know, we just need some basic information on the employees. You know, how many employees they have, you know, how much they, their earnings are, you know, where they're paid as an individual or as a family, paid Weekly, Bi Weekly, etc. Well, with some basic information that we can download, and most times that's with a payroll company that's you know, that's a matter of click but four or five buttons and run a report and download the report. So it's not a complicated issue at all. They do these things all the time. So they download the report. That's the next step. Because we can't do anything until we have a savings report and then we come back to the employer within about 72 hours max, we're going to have all the figures updated and it's going to show us exactly per employee. And you can go down and look at them employee by employee by employee. You know exactly how much each one is going to save.
And then when you look through all that, then they're going to give you an overall figure of how much the employer is going to save on an annual basis as well.
Then you have the information that you really need to get with your team to get with your decision makers and say, look this, you know, it looks like a no brainer. Like you said earlier, there's really no downside to it. You know, let's do it.
And it's not the beauty I was
[00:27:15] Speaker B: gonna say they learn about all the tax compliance and the first time they, they meet and talk with you, then they get before for free without ever there's no fees. Before they ever decide whether they engage with you or not, they get a dollar for dollar, penny for penny report that says here's the exact amount you're eligible and saving and it's fully IRS compliant. And then they get unlock all these benefits. So they take that exact information back and either they make their decision with it or they take it back to the big boss or whatever it may be and then they say go. Is that correct?
[00:27:45] Speaker A: That is great.
And the beauty of this, there's, there's no qualifying for it. This is a program that they just simply implement.
You know, once they pull the trigger and say, yep, let's do it, then they are assigned an account manager from the management company that will get with whoever they assign in their office. Said yeah, I'll get with Julie or get with whoever. She would be the one that knows payroll and she knows how to handle this stuff. And they would get all the information that they, they need.
Excuse me, in order to move forward.
And then, and, and like you said again, you got to remember this is a no obligation, it's a complimentary savings report. There's no cost to you, there's no obligation to move forward. We give you a savings report and you say heck no, I don't want to save any money.
That's the end of it, you know, but if you look at it and go, yeah, I mean we did Brian of them. We are actually, William, we're working on one right now that has over 16,000 employees. Of course, obviously you can't say any names, but this company's looking at saving up about $9 million a year.
So again, the limits are there's no limit. I mean, we could be working with a company with 10 employees or we could be working with a company with 15,000 employees. You know, there's no limit.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: It's just a whole new office. They could build a 9 million dollar office and expand and hire another 100, 200 employees.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: What couldn't they do with that?
Incredible.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: So what's the employee experience like? So everything goes through obviously people, they're, they decide, I'm not allergic to money, I would like more money. Let's hit the green button, let's move forward. What's the employee experience like? What's the employee on board like?
[00:29:26] Speaker A: You know, it's interesting, William, because the larger the employer actually the easier it is to onboard them because we have a program, a software program that we provide to the HR department and we just simply say, hey, if you would put this in a mass email and mail it to all of your employees and it'll go to each individual employee and then when they open it up, it'll be a portal that they open that shows this is a program that your company is implementing or our company is implementing. Click here to see how much your savings is. It'll go to their, their particular information and they will see how much it's is there. And it's what we call a negative enrollment.
As long as they look at it, it's a passive enrollment. They're enrolled. The only reason they would not be enrolled is if they opted out of it. Because it is a voluntary program, you know, and you think, well, why would somebody not want to be a part of that? You know?
[00:30:27] Speaker B: Yeah, why would they opt out? Unless you have some type of conscious objection, I would guess. But so they're going to literally open an email, they're going to see a portal, they click the portal, get their savings report and literally the employer just started saving them money.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: That's it. As soon as they open it up, they can open it and close it. It's assumed, you know, because we have, we've got a tracking on it that they open and look at it. They didn't opt out, so they're automatically opted in. It's just that simple do you have
[00:30:54] Speaker B: a, do you have a start to finish kind of timeline? Let's say again, somebody's watching here, they're taking notes frantically because they're like, I got to call this Lee guy, right? And they say, so if he contacts you today, they get an appointment. They say, yeah, the compliance is legit. This is 100%, I get it. So the day they talk to you to the day they're rolling out these credits to their employees, what's the timeline to this paycheck is now where you see the savings?
[00:31:18] Speaker A: On an average, about 90 days.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Okay, 90 days. So 90 days from point of contact to saving money. And that's pretty fantastic. I mean, I, I can't believe that people would be not interested in benefits like this. So I'm just going to ask you a real world example of kind of implementing the benefits you gave us, that 16,001. And what's your smallest client? What's. I think you told me somewhere in the past you have somebody that actually has two employees or three employees and they're using.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: We have a couple that have one,
[00:31:51] Speaker B: yeah, there is one. There's one set of exemptions to the rule. It's basically the same exemption as ppp, the same exemption as ertc, but the actual owner, and the owner is immediately family, like their spouse, kids, parents, whatever. They don't get the tax benefit, but they still get the health benefit. Is that correct?
[00:32:11] Speaker A: That is correct. Only because the management company gives them a complimentary suite of benefits so they can take advantage of all the benefits, which are all. No, no. CO pays a lot of benefits to all of that. And every member of their family can participate. They all have their own private login. But. Absolutely. But you're right, they can't participate in the monetary savings.
It's part of the 125 rules.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: Gotcha. So if there's 101 people working for it, the extra one that's the owner doesn't get it. But the other 100 people get the full financial benefit and the employee, the employer, gets the financial benef.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: That is correct.
And it's a good thing to mention here. It is only for W2 employees.
So if you're dealing with an employer that has a lot of 1099 contractors, those don't qualify. So, you know, just don't, don't even try. Those, those, those aren't part of the equation because we have to have the deduction to create savings. And obviously for 1099, you don't, you don't do deductions.
[00:33:13] Speaker B: On those and so come in full circle. You said in the beginning when I said, who would this potentially benefit? You know, me, I get into nerd mode and I read all the letters of the law and stuff. You know, I did some research on AI and I said about 90 to 95% of all American businesses that have a W2 employee would be eligible for this credit. That's astonishingly high. But you also said earlier that stability is important. So if you have like a really small part time employees or high turnover, even though they might be eligible, that's not going to be ideal. Is there like a minimum threshold people have to meet to receive this benefit?
[00:33:48] Speaker A: There is because we do a payroll deduction which is a premium to create the savings. And they have to have enough money to be able to do that payroll deduction even though it's reimbursed back into the same paycheck. So most usually part time people are seasonal workers.
Kind of a rule of thumb, if your employees are making $15,000 a year or more, they're going to qualify.
But if you have somebody that drops below that threshold, maybe they're part time, they only made $8,500 last year, then they just don't qualify.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: Got it. So big question here. So obviously if a business owner or one of the executives watching the show is interested in these credits, they're going to want to shoot information over to you. Can we get your information one more time before we we sign off to this commercial break? Get your information one more time, Tell us where to find you and do they reference if they saw you on the show or anything like that to speed along the process or anything?
[00:34:51] Speaker A: Yeah, please just go to the website, Revenue Return Specialists.com. go to the very bottom. You know, click if you're an employer or your employee, go to the very bottom, click on the calendar, select a time that's convenient for you. And on the calendar it's going to require you to put your name, your company name, how many employees you have and where you heard about this. So you need to tell them you heard about it on this show.
And if you don't put all those things on there, it won't allow you to see the calendar. They want to have that basic information. It's not a lot of information, just four or five questions. But as long as you put all that information in there, then they're going to boom. Calendar is going to pop up. You pick a time that's good for you and you'll be on a zoom call. Then at that particular time with one of our extra experts.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: Gotcha. So I'm going to put a timeline so within 60 seconds, somebody could go to the website, answer four questions, click an available time, and start the process today. So, Lee, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the show. We've got one more segment tonight, but this is the last we're going to see of Lee. Thank you again for what you're doing for American businesses and for helping the W2 employees. And I look forward to talking to you off camera at the next time we meet. My man.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: Absolutely. Everybody else, you sit tight. We got one last segment and one final stretch for the show. We'll be right back with more pivotal change right after these messages.
Welcome back to the final segment of the show. We had a fantastic conversation with my friend Lee Baker. I hope you took great notes. I hope you found out where to find that guy. And I hope you realize that there was a common thread through all of that available credits. This guy's going out there and changing people's workplace, and he is helping them with their leadership through identifying areas you don't normally look. And what I want to talk to you in this final segment is I went to a recent leadership conference where you had some of the best speakers, not only the United States, but in the world, come to this conference. It was the Ramsey Held Entre Leadership Summit, and it's one I go to every year because I need mentors. I need to change. My mentors have been giving me all kinds of advice in recent history, and there was a lot of great knowledge about it. And I wanted to bring Lee on the show today because he's a great example of how leaders need to be looking everywhere for ways that they can help. A leader can't just simply stare at the bottom line and hope that the arrow goes up and to the right and profits and things soar. There's so much that you have to do on so many levels, and that's why leadership is not for the weak or the meek. And you can be made strong and you can be made courageous as a leader because I fully believe that leaders are created, not born.
And you've heard me say that before. So some of the things I've drawn out of this leadership summit is a lot of good things that you saw today. First of all, are you really caring for and looking for the best benefit of all of those that you as a leader serve, which are your employees? And Your and your clients and your customers and your third party relationships and your vendors? And are you really lifting up and looking under every stone to make sure that you have done enough to make sure that you have provided the best work environment, the best opportunities, the best resources available to really help things soar?
Another huge theme that came in this event was the use of technology, not just AI that is obviously the cutting edge part of technology, but are using technology to its highest and best use. So the highest and best use of this thing right here that we all carry in our pockets every day is not scrolling social media. It's not, you know, looking up and doing random research, but it's actually connection.
And how are you maintaining connection with your loved ones so that you stay charged and energized? How are you maintaining connections with your staff, with your clients? Are you doing the very best, most hospitable services?
Two of the speakers that we had at this conference was Will Guidera, and then you had Mr. Horse, who started the Rich Carlton brand. And those two guys spoke entirely about hospitality and passion and looking for the overall creative way. And one thing that they both emphasized in was they said, have you ever really just sat down and been your own customer? Have you received your customer experience? So in my former accounting firm that I just exited, have I ever sat through and been a client and tried to get an email through to my staff and get into a meeting and join a calendar and share my documents and receive my own advice and calculators and advisory services and then have I ever tried to go implement them and had somebody follow up and make sure that that white glove concierge service was accomplished? And have you ever, if you run a fast food chain, sat and tried to order one of your own hamburgers? You know, have you sat on the other side of the table and experienced your own customer experience?
That was pretty profound to me. And then in that experience, have you ever taken the time to just sit with your team and go through a literal A to Z process to where you say, what is every single thing we have to do that is a touch point or an end point that the customer can experience?
And instead of just saying, like, for the restaurant model, we want to cook the highest source, best salmon there is, and here's the best piece of fish filet on Santa, on planet Earth? Or do you want to customize the experience when they call to make a reservation, when they show up and check their coat all the way to the time they pay their bill in a different way, the way their Food is served the way their chair is pulled out differently, or do you just want to concentrate on the best cut of meat? And so if you examine all of those things, you're running this common thread that strings, there's a wonderful. Carla did a great job saying about the eight pearls that she does in her business, but the pearl that strings through it all is this service, right?
And so can you lift yourself up by scouring the tax code to find one more advantage that not just benefits your bottom line, but benefits your people? Can you find things like the suburb credits? Can you find things like an extra healthcare plan? Can you find things like a cheaper, better software that a startup company is using and it actually helps you better than using one of the name brand softwares? Are there things that you are doing where you are sitting down and taking time to reflect from your team theme, giving them the open opportunity to speak back, to think back, to create.
And the theme was ultimately create. Are you going to create success?
Create a healthy and wealthy environment for you and your people. And so that creating theme was absolutely fantastic. And I really want to encourage you that as you are looking as a leader, as a person who has influence and wants to grow their influence to look in places you would not expect.
And in order to look in places you would not expect, you have to think differently.
Another one of the examples is one of the great CEO and founders of the modern Disney came out and he did a great presentation for us and he had us, the whole crowd, thinking differently. And he would do things like, I'm going to give you seven seconds, go draw a house. And so you draw a house in seven seconds. Well, guess what?
99 of the room drew the same house because they just did the quick, you know, two windows and a door, right, with a little roof instead of doing anything else. And some of the creative people did maybe something a little more three dimensional or a little cabin instead of your standard house. And he says, why are we all pre programmed to draw that house? And then he showed pictures of kids that drew a house in seven to 10 seconds and is drastically different than ours. They drew mushroom houses, fish houses, hamster houses, hobbit houses. But all of us, the adults in the audience, have lost some of our creativity, lost some of our way to see the world differently by going out and just allowing ourselves to be pre programmed in a capacity. So look for things like this, look for things like employee benefit programs, look for things like different ways to set up your office or different equipment to use to connect differently. Go to A different restaurant than you've been before. Do something silly, some activity, go to a different location and have your executive meeting, your client meeting, your whole staff meeting, and do something different to free up that creativity. Then another part that promotes leadership, promotes creativity, promotes getting over the hump of being stuck, was being bored. And once again we circle back around to these things right here we are never allowing ourselves to be bored. And boredom, what some people call these shower thoughts or something like that, is where your mind has nothing to do and then your best ideas pop into your head. You can't do that when you're binge watching Netflix. You can't do that when you're scrolling Instagram, tick tock, link, whatever it is. You can't do that when you constantly have a screen in your face and you need to put the phone down, have these sacred hours of no phone. You need to plan boredom into your life and then the creativity comes back. You can restore your creativity. You can now start thinking of a problem from last week that you dismissed or put on the back burner and poof, the solution appears.
So you have a lot of things that you can do. And again, out of a four day conference, I'm pulling out some micro examples. The other thing that you want to do is you want to identify how you think, what's your primary ways of motivating, what your primary ways of getting work done in the six Working Geniuses by Pat Lincioni is another great example where you may have people all across your organization that have these different working geniuses, which means some people are like super visionary, innovative, and they love coming up with ideas, but getting them to act on it, carry it out and ultimately finish the project is like pulling teeth. Then you have other people, they don't really want to be that creative, but if you give them a list of tasks, they're going to absolutely just have at that checklist and get everything done to the best of best of their ability and beat the deadline because they're finishers and there's everything in between. There's motivators and there's people that are connectors and relationship people. And if you have a whole place of people surrounded just like you, and you're all one of these cogs on the wheel, you're missing out. And you need to go be creative and find people that are different types than you and then plug them into those roles. So these are some of the nuggets.
So the last thing I want to kind of really drive this point home is what are you doing to make sure that you are growing your faith, keeping your systems, your disciplines in place. Do you have a network of family members or friends? This is a big emphasis too. Is that the higher you climb in leadership, the smaller your friend circle gets. Can you identify friends that you proactively reach out? And I thought it was really funny that one of the examples they said is if you sit here and tell somebody that, you know, I don't have a whole lot of, of friends. And I was looking at seeing if you wanted to be my friend or would be interested into being my friend, right? That person, nine times out of ten will be like, yeah, I could use some more friends and I'm interested in being friends. Or they'll be like, I'm too busy right now. And guess what? Nobody has to waste their time or do false expectations or small talk. If you will proactively go, say, hey, let's eat lunch. And then when we hang out, you don't just come over to somebody's house, eat a meal and sit in the living room, go do, do something, experience something. Go to a putt putt, go to a, you know, mini golf, go to a go kart racing, go walk a nature trail, go do something, an escape room. Don't do necessarily a movie theater because then nobody's talking and you're all looking at a screen, right? But if you can put activity into your hangout times, you will create more friendships. There's a caveat and a caution to this as well that you don't really need to have deep friendships with your subordinates and your staff. Your employees probably have plenty of friends in their life and they need a leader, not just another friend. And so don't mistake your leadership with your friendship opportunities. Get them outside of your workplace. And you should have a list of a minimum of three people that don't share blood with you. Okay? Not family.
Three people that you could call at 3am and say, I need you to come to my house and watch my kid. I have to go, right? So this, this midnight phone call is 3am phone call. You need three people in your life.
And if you eventually establish friends and you deprive them of that opportunity by not calling them, you might hurt their feelings. Because one of the purposes of being a good friend is being there for each other.
So owners and entrepreneurs and executives go out there and make a friend. Go out there and start turning over rocks in places you can't even think of. Because maybe another differently thinking person can help you find a place to turn over the rocks box to find the new software, the new system, the new game style of playing and challenging each other in the office and start creating the next level of your change. Maybe it's with these submerged credits, you create an opportunity for people there, but go out there and do that. So I'm going to end tonight's show like I always do. I want you to go out into the world and I want you to see the change and be the change. We'll catch you right here. Next time on pivotal change.
