[00:00:00] Sa.
[00:00:26] Foreign.
[00:00:31] Welcome to tonight's episode of Pivotal Change. Got a special episode on the road and I want to cut this episode kind of in two parts. The first thing I want to talk about is I want to talk about strategy that business owners are constantly looking for and maybe one or two specific strategies that you can use as a business owner to increase profitability, reduce expenses and just really help yourself out overall. So we're going to get into that. We're going to start talking about kind of the opportunities that you're missing out on and maybe one or two big ones. So most business owners let's talk about are probably looking for things like how to reduce unnecessary expenses, how to recruit better employees, how to retain the good employees that they have and then just improve benefits overall to make things simpler and more efficient on your life and then really emphasizing and leveling up that take home value that you give your employees and that they receive from you. And of course that helps the bottom line, which is profitability without necessarily having to simply raise prices on your customers or your clients.
[00:01:35] Now, normally those goals are not complementary. They compete with each other. So that's what we're going to diagnose tonight. Hi, I'm your host William Collin, and as you know, this is a show about leadership tips and tricks and ways to make you more influential, more efficient and just better in general at running your company or your team. I want you to grab a pen and PA deeper as we cover these topics tonight and make sure that you know the takeaway that you can have tonight from this episode and where to go to get the enhancements that we're going to talk about and what you're looking for. So instead of competing goals, instead of this list that I just went through in that intro, I want you to think, how can I get, let's say, better benefits without increasing expense? Most benefits, especially any of those surrounding health or retirement, can be quite the arm and a leg in cost to your company.
[00:02:26] And if you want to just like higher compensation for your employees to offset benefits that may be partially covered, which modern times is very common for people to have 50% health care offering, 80% health care offering, maybe 100% of just the employee and they got to add on and take care of their family on their own. But there's things that you can do if you properly structure stuff like let's say a payroll tax strategy if you properly structure things like matching compensation on Retirement Office 401Ks, IRAs and Roths and things like that. So let's Break that down a little bit further and I want to maybe highlight one that you really are not probably familiar with.
[00:03:06] There is a type of medical reimbursement plan. It's a self insured medical reimbursement plan, which means the company elects to provide a new offering. The nice part about this offering is, is very similar to something that you already are familiar with, most likely, but you are probably not aware that there's a different version of something familiar. And so this self insured medical reimbursement does exactly that. It allows you to make an offering, but then reimburse your employee for it. So this will ultimately come out of like a payroll strategy because it'll be coming off the employee's check and then reimbursing the employee's check. But there's a secret sauce to how that is executed. All of this stems from, you know, different IRS publications and different tax strategies. As you know, I exited from an accounting firm where we specialize all over the globe, all not the globe, excuse me, the country, in offering these wonderful tax strategies.
[00:04:05] And this is a very specific one that I think is so beneficial I've decided to kind of create a niche company that specializes in this, plus a couple other things. But if you go into the IRS publication, which is Section 15B, it's going to define for everybody what a self insured medical reimbursement plan is, what qualifies, what employee reimbursements are allowable, the medical expenses that are not covered by things that you would normally think of like an accident or an already established health insurance policy.
[00:04:34] The other thing that you need to know is if you've ever heard of the section125, those are your cafeteria plans. Those allow employees to choose between all kinds of taxable and qualified non taxable benefits under a specific written plan. But the self insured plan that is a medical reimbursement for what we use as preventative coverage is completely different. Different category, different paragraphs in the IRS code. And when I ultimately explain this to people, I get two areas of either pushback or confusion. Area number one of confusion. This sounds too good to be true. And that will make more sense is why people say that when I start breaking down some of the numbers for you, people say it sounds too good to be true. And I just refer them to things like the PPP payroll protection program. If you remember, those were free loans. That was literally probably the first time in your life you got free money so long as you followed the rules and spent it the way the government Told you to spend it. So those PPP loans, everyone thought it was too big, too good to be true. And it happened not once, but twice. Another thing that people thought was too good to be true was not technically free money, but it was like super cheap money because they only had to pay a little bit of interest on it on a amended tax return. But it was the ERTC money, the employee retention tax credits or the erc, same thing.
[00:05:47] And that was something very specialized that was super convoluted, super complex, high levels of due diligence, both before and after the fact, tight scrutiny and thankful for us. We had a 100 pass rate on all of our clients.
[00:06:01] But with the PPP ERTC, these are things where like our firm got over 200 million, closer to $300 million back from our clients own money back into their hands, which is really important why one of these plans is the same thing. It's putting your money back into, back into your hands, your company, technically.
[00:06:20] So the opportunity comes from simply doing this, a properly planned and designed administration of this offering. It's effectively changing a payroll code, but with the backing, supporting documentation and offering. So I tell people, I say when all boils down to it, you're going to change technically two lines on payroll and you're going to simply download an app while having your administrative paperwork at hand. That's like the three prong oversimplification, but it is really something that you can do. And this is why a lot more employers are suddenly hearing about this. This has technically been offered since like 1978. It was completely redefined into its current formation in its amended formation in 1982. So before I was born, this tax hack has existed. But the main problem is only the big boys were using it. We're talking about these uber mega s and P500 corporations, excuse me for Forbes top 500 list, are using this stuff. And what they do is they Entire team of CPAs and CFOs and benefit providers and attorneys that are looking for stuff like this. They find it, they implement it, they use it for their company and then why the heck would they care about anyone else? So nobody's been out there saying, I'm looking out for the little guy and I'm going to put these opportunities into effect with my own people. So we've partnered up with a company, they've been around over a decade helping out the little guy. Now I say little guy, we have people on that are as far as down as two employees, all the way up to like 11,000 employees. There's 150,000 people using this in the United States right now today. It's been active for over a decade in the small business, medium business model. And it's been active since 1982 for all the big boys who have, you know, millions of dollars they spend on attorneys and stuff. And the funny part is the risk to this is so incredibly low, it's almost, almost laughable.
[00:08:11] But let me tell you why this is a really good place that I want to continue to build. Your curiosity. If you're an entrepreneur, you should constantly be answering that call for curiosity. Say, what can I do better? What can I do next? How can I improve working out my people? So as health care becomes increasingly expensive, you've probably had the thought, how do I offset this cost? How do I stop slashing the benefits as the costs rise and out of pockets rise and the premiums go up? Well, guess what? Payroll costs are also becoming even more extremely expensive through just the payroll companies charging you more to process payroll. There's increasing tax rate tax rates that have happened all across the country with new legislation. Even local governments are getting in on the action more aggressively. The other thing that happens is that you're like, man, how do I recruit people? You know, everything seems to be cutting into profits. My ability to take all the risk I want but establish a living for myself. So if you're looking into those deeper benefits, this is probably one of those really good opportunities for you.
[00:09:05] Technology has made administration much easier. It used to be having these huge enrollment periods in like November, and you had to do paperwork and call a rep down to the office, and they had to sit here and manually enter everybody in the system. But administration of employee engagements like this are extremely easy. And this one is automated. So once you're enrolled, the enrollment is done through processes. The automate automation is monthly. Automatically, the money just starts showing up on your checks and the benefits just continue to be accessible through the downloading of an app, Right? So sometimes you don't have to sit here and try to create something new. In fact, we recommend you don't. And you're not tapping into or creating any type of new law. The innovation you need to help answer these questions is finally just learning how to access and use the tools have already available to you and have been in the tax code for years. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more to each party here. So, employer, listen up. Your potential reduction in payroll taxes. On average, you get about 596 ish dollars per employee every year. For the rest of your life. So let's just do easy math and call it 600. Okay, so let's say you're 100 person company. You're going to get $60,000 put back into your bottom line every year for the rest of your life as long as you continue to be eligible and pay those employees. What would you do with 60 grand more?
[00:10:30] You could hire another person, take a load off of somebody. You could buy that new piece of equipment. You could revamp that software, huge investments into AI and automation. You answer that question for you. Now, that's actually the smallest benefit of a program like this.
[00:10:45] The next benefit comes into what you do for your employees. You're effectively snapping your fingers and giving the average employee about a $2,500 pay raise annually every year for the rest of their lives so long as they maintain eligibility and keep working for you. Who offers the benefit?
[00:11:02] So the average like $50,000 salaried employee takes home somewhere between 24 and $2,800 a year in extra pay through the tax savings, FICO reductions and eligibility that's offered here. If you're a higher wage earner, your savings in taxes or more, somebody making $100,000 might make closer to 4 grand in tax savings. And the highest possible savings you can get is $5,719 in federal tax.
[00:11:29] Now the cool part is you might save in local taxes and state taxes as well based on where you live. The next thing is that you get benefits package. This enhances and adds onto and I'll get a little bit more of that in detail, adds onto what your package is. You don't change your payroll provider, you don't change your accountant, you don't have to code, you don't change healthcare. Authoring any offering, this is stamped on top of it. And now you become more competitive and more retentive of your employees because they're getting these awesome benefits. And I'm going to crack the lid open on that in my next segment here in just a moment. So I want to take just a moment to wrap this down, put a pin in the conversation. We're going to continue how to enhance your business through these benefits with more pivotal change right after this. Sam.
[00:12:39] Foreign, Welcome back from the break. Thanks for sticking with us. Before we get back into the conversation and learning about ways that you can increase the benefits and save some money, I want to make sure you know how to go to NOW Media TV on the website that is like the one stop shop to find pivotal change with me William Kahn and so many other great shows, things that you can do from additional business, leadership, economics, news, relevant events. I mean, it is on there both in English and in Spanish. You got Roku, you got iOS, you can go anywhere, just about and find this. So go to NOW Media TV and you can even download the podcast version and find everything that you want and more. And you can get it on demand, anywhere, anytime, by downloading it ahead of, ahead of schedule. So I hope you can find the show and I hope you have your pen and paper ready because I want to go back into these benefits, right? This is something that you probably might have run across and seen advertised on maybe some social media post or something like that. And I'm always hesitant of those things as well. And it sometimes can be quite difficult to try to understand what is real, what is legitimate. And so I always tell people to try to like talk to one of those people. It's, you know, a little challenging to do some research. I'll just be honest with you. I use AI just like everyone else. And AI is pretty sharp, pretty good, not 100 accurate yet. One day it will be. And if you don't prompt or ask the questions just right, AI may not give you a truthful answer. So one of the things that I want you to do is understand that this is really more of a leadership maneuver. On what level of care am I going to go for in providing my people new opportunities, new chances to expand? And the other thing too is that you get a lot of pushback is I kind of jokingly say a couple of things. You know me, I like to tell stories, like to joke a little bit. But I sometimes let people say, hey, listen, I know something your CPA doesn't. Hey, look, I've got a secret your CFO doesn't know about. And I say that a little tongue in cheek, but it's also realistic for this capacity. I've never wanted to, nor have I ever insulted CPAs, CFOs, HR benefit directors and stuff like that. Everyone is really good at what they do and they get focusing on their job and they keep doing their, their job. And the average person doesn't have time for it's not factored into their job to seek out and explore new opportunities, new horizons and things like that. If you want to go back to Star Trek and saying, you know, seeking out new galaxies and new new horizons and things, but you have people out there that are doing just that, they are seeking as their primary benefit to say what opportunities are out there for Me, those are probably some of the really good people you need to lean on that are literally just seeking for opportunities instead of just being the best that they can sitting in their pilot se, steering their ship. You got people out there. So people like that are going to be ones you want to tap on the shoulders and they are probably going to have an edge up on knowing what additional Unknown benefits that CFO, CPAs, HR professionals and you know, fringe benefit type of experts may not have. So get that, take ownership, ownership of it and evaluate that situation.
[00:15:39] Don't implement it like I said, because you saw it on a social media post. Don't, don't simply say oh it's just another pre tax opportunity.
[00:15:47] It's not ideal for every employer. It's not an identical situation for every employer. I would say I'm just shooting from the hip on my own statistics. At 90 to 95% of companies out there with W2 employees that are not all specific family members are probably going to be qualified for this or be able to be made eligible. Let me say that.
[00:16:08] So make sure you understand the plan. Make sure you understand your eligibility. Make sure you understand what it is to have non discrimination or non exclusivity.
[00:16:15] Make sure you understand proper payroll administration, the documentation that goes into this and any other applicable healthcare rules that might matter into this. So one of the things that you should do is just keep it really simple. One, this is ultimately an employer problem that is being solved. It's an opportunity for both you and your employee to increase your benefit strategy, increase your employees take home value and increase your retention and recruitment. And it is all solidly founded on IRS regulations that are proven tested IRC 105, IRC 125, publication 15, publication 15B. Just a couple of them. And again you can go be your nerdy self and look those up. But that's, that's a big part of it.
[00:17:00] So one of the things you need to ask or somebody should be asking you is how many W2 employees you have. This does not count for contractors. What kind of workforce or industry are you in? Are you in like a really high turnover, let's say fast food or, or retail or something like that. We have a lot of part time employees or a lot of high turnover.
[00:17:18] That's probably not ideal for this situation. It's going to be for the more permanent type of employees. What benefits do you have that already exist and how does this enhance or complement those?
[00:17:28] How is your payroll currently structured? What problems is your leadership trying to solve? And does this step in and help one of them or do you actually have bigger fish to fry in the meantime?
[00:17:38] Do you have a retention problem because people got an offer where they're covering something better, the pay is the same or even less, but the benefits are better?
[00:17:45] Do you have healthcare concerns for your employees? This can solve legitimate healthcare concerns. We'll talk about the benefits of the plans here just a little bit, but that's really important. And does this materially improve your ability to run a better company with better employees? And ultimately does it help your net cost? Well, I can answer most of those for you that are not exclusive to your individual business or industry. But yeah, we don't take on anybody that it's not going to have a net improvement to their position. So I want you to hear that very clear. We have never taken on a client that has lost money. It is only a net positive. And that is tried and true. So one of the things that happens is you got to get into the numbers, understand why that works. So what we do is we get into your. And let's just say, let's use the 100 employee example. We may say somebody has 120 employees, we get their payroll census. It's literally a report like if you're on something common like ADP and QuickBooks and you know, paychecks, things like that, there are these reports that you can download.
[00:18:45] We put it into our analysis, our calculator and tell you exactly how many people are going to be eligible.
[00:18:51] We say eligibility for a couple of reasons. This is how you determine eligibility. If you are an owner of the company, let's say like a sole proprietorship with employees or you have a S Corp or something like that, you're an owner of the company partnership, you and your direct descendants do not get the tax payroll benefit. You can get the health benefit, but you don't get the tax payroll benefit personally on your take home pay. And that is standard across all kinds of IRS regulations and rules that owners and immediate family members, you know, like parents and grandparents, kids and grandkids, that that direct lineage is not going to qualify. And then the part time people, we kind of cut off our offering. The value of the reimbursements that you get is valued by the IRS at 14,000 and some change. Every, every year it's like $14,050. Okay, so you got to be making more than $14,000, which again that's a lot of part time employees, maybe some small seasonal workers, things like that are going to be taken off of that because what you do is you reimburse, which means you're taking money and then putting it back. So you have to have at least that $14,000 annually spread over 12 months to be taken off and put back on. So family members, and again, those high turnover or smaller compensated employees are not going to do that. The employer impact, however, for the people that do qualify is pretty significant. Now there are some hidden savings that we don't mention necessarily. So those hidden savings are like, if you get this plan, here's a little bit of what's offered in it. You get preventative health care. So you get everything from, you know, telehealth. You can sit here like on a zoom call like you're watching me on camera, talk to your doctor and get a prescription, get a diagnosis. You don't have to go to urgent care, you don't have to wait three weeks to get in with your doctor. And you certainly don't have to go to an ER after hours. 24, 7 support. You get something called EAP plans, employee assistance programs, fully anonymous employee assistance programs. And it is six, there's 12 categories and you get six visit per category. And even if you're the sole employee, your whole family gets the benefits, which means you can, your spouse can get marital advice or financial advice or your kids can use it. There's a huge program about addiction recovery. So like let's say you work in addiction, just an area or an industry or something where somebody's struggling with some addiction, anonymously, they can go get this help. There are no hidden costs, no hidden co pays, no premiums, anything like that. You get prescriptions delivered to your door. Now there's a caveat. I think they got to be the generic prescriptions. But instead of having to go pick stuff up at one of your local pharmacies, you can get it shipped to your door. And then you get like scans. You can sit here and you can take a phone and scan your face and it says, hey man, you're about to have a heart attack. And you go to the er. Hey man, you're a little dehydrated, drink some water. And it covers a whole section of biometric scans. So you're dropping this into, into your plan. And think about as an employer offering health insurance as well. You're this year's usage is next year's rates, right? Or next year's premiums. So if your people are just eating up health insurance all the time, working through their out of pocket, paying all of their CO pays, what if they use this first, that doesn't have a copay, doesn't ding the insurance. It's all this preventative care. And they start doing this and your usage rates go down. I can't promise that you're not going to get an increase in your health insurance, but it probably would be less. It's definitely going to help offset. And so that's another way to do that as well. And you're just giving more if you already have an EAP plan. And let's say there's just a really tough situation, loss of a family member, a really tough marital situation. They can get six through the health insurance and six through this plan as well. They get 12 visits now instead of six. So just all kinds of benefits and those health monitoring resources. Everything is anonymous. Right? The employer doesn't know anything and everybody gets to help improve their life, improve the culture, improve the economy. Okay.
[00:22:40] The other thing is the compliance with this is amazing. The compliance is fully formatted by the company. They drop in all the documents you need, the self insurance, medical reimbursement plan documents, all the IRS documents. And here's a really cool thing I want everyone to hear, loud and heard, using this tax code on our book of business. We got somewhere close to 12,000 companies enrolled in this program. And our book of business never once has this triggered an audit. Over a decade, there's been about 100 people that have been audited for completely different reasons. And 100% of the time that this was inspected, it was passed. The IRS gave it a gold star, thumbs up, green light, whatever you want to call it, it's past inspection 100 of the time. We can never make guarantees about anything. But Gu. 100% is pretty darn good track record. So this isn't double dipping. It's not something shady. It's not too good to be true. It's literally just education. It's something you didn't know existed. Which is why we want you to learn how to explore, not just this one specifically. It's great.
[00:23:42] You can find me at Five Talent Strategic Finance. That's the number Five Talents sf.com so go to that sign up. You guys can email me at
[email protected] it's super simple. I can connect you with the right people, get you going on this. But I just want you to be able to have the opportunity to take your employees, get all of this explanation down there, understand your situation, scratch your head and say, why is everybody not doing this? And then sign up and become a better version of your business, take better care of your people and find a way to be a leader that everyone desires and knows is looking out for them. So we're going to transition a little bit to some business travel, some business conversations and we'll be back for the second half pivotal change in just a moment. It's a tight.
[00:24:52] Foreign.
[00:24:59] Welcome back. You've made it to the halfway point and we still have really good stuff to go. So we talked about these interesting kind of more unique ways for you to boost up your benefits and get an opportunity for you and your staff and really just level people up in their health and care and total value. And now we're going to transition to a different way to capture value. And I'm going to tell you tips and tricks to what I do when I travel and I do a lot of traveling. You've seen several of these shows from various hotel rooms or balconies or stuff like that. I'm always traveling, always trying to network, make business and bring myself and my value to other people. So here's kind of some tips and tricks on business trips or even vacation as long as you don't spend too much time away from the family doing it. But your trips should not just end when the business meeting ends, when the conference let out, lets out or anything like that. So you've already got your airfare or your travel, you're already in the hotel room, you already got your meals per diem'd or comped or however you're going to do it and you're in another city, let's say for three days and it's related to business.
[00:26:00] Do not spend every hour in your hotel room. Take the opportunity to network. If you're in any types of sales or expansion of your industry or just looking to increase your knowledge as a business owner, try these couple of things instead. Number one, look for a better connected hotel. If you are going to a conference, do everything you can to stay in the hotel at that conference so you don't have to uber back and forth every morning and evening and things like that. And if you can get full service hotels, you know, again you're probably going to pay 150 plus bucks for a reasonably mediocre hotel and probably 2 to 300 for some of the nicer hotels that are offering the conferences or have some amenities. So go ahead and spend the extra 50 bucks per night, $150 total if you're a business person and it will pay dividends if you get into those conference hotels you have, the ones that have the free better breakfast. They have cafes, coffee shops, restaurants inside of them. You know, they've got various bars and things like that. A large lobby area, better quality fitness rooms, rooftop areas, more social pool settings. Those are going to be ones that you can really, really get corporate clientele at.
[00:27:07] So that's what you want to look for. You can go into a conference calendar for the hotels a lot of times and just say, hey, when do they have conferences there? And so let's say I take trips out of town with my family and I'll literally look at where we're staying and my kids and I will run and gun and do stuff all day and we'll look at what happens and when it gets later in the night and say, hey, I'm going to go down for an appetizer and I'll just slow play an appetizer.
[00:27:32] Kids are doing some kid experience or, or a movie or something like that. And while I'm sitting there eating my appetizer, I'm scanning, reading the room, I'm bumping shoulders with people to start up conversations. So look at those calendars, events, choose them on purpose, search for LinkedIn and other things like that where you can find these professional associations when they're hosting their meetings and go to them, chamber events, things like that. And start packing your schedule with things like that. Start being in proximity to those things when you get to the hotel, at a conference, a yearly training, an annual board meeting, whatever it is, do not just sit there and hide in your room. Don't sit there and order room service and sit on Netflix or just doom scroll for hours or just sit there and answer emails and type reports. We all understand you got projects, things are due, but you don't always have the week or weekend to be in a environment that is ripe with potential. Potential.
[00:28:26] Try sitting down in the lobby, go to the hotel restaurant, and again, if you're not hungry, you don't want to spend a million bucks, go order an appetizer or just slow drink your favorite drink. I go down there and I get these Arnold Palmers and I just drink Arnold Palmer's and eat French fries, right? And I'll eat french fries for an hour, then I'll sit here and talk to people. Go to the coffee shop, wake up early in the morning, go to the fitness room, that's a big one. Sit out on the patio or those little campfire areas that they have. There's an executive lounge and you've earned enough points. Get in that executive lounge and just sit there and Read, book and observe, and people watch. And again, if it's appropriate, if it's your lifestyle, you can go sit at the hotel bar and meet people.
[00:29:04] We like to do ones with live music and things like that. So you can get away from the music and have conversation. You can sit up front and put a tip in the jar of the person playing guitar, you know, whatever you want. But that creates an atmosphere of natural socializing and natural networking. So when you do that, make sure you're present, you're not buried in your phone, and start human conversations. Find the couple that's laughing and say, oh, where are you guys from? Problem, Right. Oh, are you guys here for that conference? And that's usually pretty obvious because people are wearing those lanyards. And you'll say, oh, what is Such and Such Incorporated? Hey, what is Such and such? That a software company? Then you start up these conversations, and you've probably heard this before, but pretty much everybody's favorite topic is themselves. So they're going to start talking about themselves and where they work. You know, I'll just use Nashville as a reference. I go to Nashville a lot. Probably my number one area to network and go down for conferences and stuff, Stuff. And I'll just say, oh, what brings you guys to Nashville? And they're like, oh, we're here for conference. We're here for a partners meeting. We're here for a training whatever. I say, oh, what are you training on? Blah, blah, blah. I said, hey, is that a convention as big or as cool as it looks? I've seen some of the signs. Or I walked by the door earlier and heard one of the speakers. And then you ultimately get to one of the big questions like, well, hey, what do you do specifically? What's your job? Oh, I own a construction company or I own a software firm, or, hey, I'm the executive and we're doing HR training, whatever, whatever. Break the ice. It comes a completely different conversation when you do that. And the secret to this is one, it's just more fun to be a human around humans and do them scrolling on the same old Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, whatever it is in, in your room.
[00:30:35] But if you become curious about other people, you become more interesting yourself.
[00:30:42] And what that does is you can talk about their current business development. And I guarantee you're going to very quickly start finding little threads that you can pull that you have in common. And when you pull thread, it's going to unravel some type of connection, some type of interest or a way for you guys to move forward a conversation. And when you move forward that under the conversation, they're going to let you behind the curtain just a little bit. They're going to tell you a little bit about their needs, a little bit about what can do better. They may complain a little, but they may be like, man, our company's great. Company's awesome. We're growing X amount per quarter and we're expanding. You know, you're going to get some of that really good stuff and just keep asking the questions like, well, what does your company specifically do? Or how you guys going to get there? Or what are you specifically working on? Oh, my gosh. So that's the expertise that you bring to the table. Wow, who's in charge? What's changing in your industry? And you just make a couple of default questions.
[00:31:32] You're in there, you know, and let me give you a real quick backup. I'm going to give you a little, little common secret here. One of the things that I have always done in my life, whether it was back in law enforcement, whether it was awkward social settings, whether I was the predominant person in the room, and I just had to somehow keep the conversation going, going. I always start with the feet.
[00:31:54] Let me make sense out of that. If I have nothing else to say, nothing else to say, I'll look down at the person's shoes and be like, hey, those are cool shoes. What kind of shoes are those? Hey, are those comfortable? I wore a pair just like that. What brand is that? I wear this brand. And you can have all kinds of conversations about somebody's shoes. And you know what, if you got somebody over there and they're barefoot, you say, hey, what kind of shoes would you wear if you were wearing them? Or hey, did you feel how comfy the grass was out back in your bare feet? Feet. And you can always start with the shoes because pretty much everybody has them as warm shoes. And then you work your way up from there. You talk about brands, you talk about comfort, you talk about exercise, and you slowly build. So, guys, my secret is if you ever find me in a social setting and I have nothing less to say, guess what I'm bringing up? I'm talking about shoes. And I'll work from the bottom up and the bottom up, always being up into their. Their business and their decision makings.
[00:32:43] And then what you can do is they're going to reciprocate, they're gonna ask questions about you, where you're from, what do you do, and you can kind of have your Elevator pitch ready. You know, you don't want to have an elevator pitch that sounds.
[00:32:53] And I'll tell you, you know, with. Let's just take one of the niche areas, like some of these credits we talked about. In the first half of the segment, I will say things kind of tongue in cheek. You know, I'll be like, well, what I do for a living is I kind of know secrets that your CPA doesn't know or, hey, I know stuff your CFO doesn't know. And I, I find people free money, right? And then, like, free money. I was like, yeah, I sell free money. When it all boils down to it.
[00:33:15] And nobody that works with me ever comes out net negative. And that really tweaks. And then you give it. And then you get a little bit more of your expert explanation. You can get your elevator pitch. Well, I do X, Y and Z. Boom. And that's how I add value.
[00:33:26] And in doing that, you have made yourself a real connection. And another thing that I like to do, this is personal preference, but I found it to be pretty successful is in these moments, like, you may eventually be working a room or like you may be talking to somebody, they're getting ready to go off and go to the show or meet friends at a restaurant, and they're just, whatever, sitting at for a half an hour until everybody gets dressed and changed and ready to head out. So you may have a. A shortened, shortened period of time with them. In that shortened period of time, there's something really cool that you can do.
[00:33:59] There's something really cool that you can do is you go and you say, hey, I don't have a business card with me. Can you exchange. Let me exchange phone numbers real quick. Or what's your Instagram? You know, Instagram and Facebook are like the least invasive, so you can hook up with them on there. But I always like to. Instead of giving a business card which falls into somebody's pocket, gets stuffed in a folder or left on a counter somewhere, I like to say, hey, let's, let's boom. And you reach out and you tap your phones. If you've got matching phones phones, then you swap your business card electronically.
[00:34:25] You swap your business card electronically. Make sure it saves right there while you're watching them. And then as soon as you walk away, I like to do within five or ten minutes. As soon as you walk away, I say, hey, it was great talking to you. Have fun at the show tonight. I'll shoot you an email in the morning. Or here's, you know, here's my email.
[00:34:42] Something like that. And they'll laugh and be great because right now they're walking away with a good feeling. So keep that hook just a little longer as they walk away way and reel in that connection. And if you do that, you don't ever have to wait for them to call you or contact you. And you can now take control of taking the relationship from the casual hotel experience to the professional experience to where you guys can hopefully work out mutually beneficial relationships following up quickly, certainly within 24 hours. If it's a business hours. I understand if you met somebody on a Friday night at the end of a conference that you might wait till Monday morning to reach out. But I still think link that first five to 15 minutes, that's another five to 15 minute rule I have. If you remember way back, One of the five to 15 minute rules is about how to research and find your own answers. Well, five to 15 minutes when you walk away from a new contact, hook them, send an email, send whatever that is and that walks. That works with like door to door sales. That works with just like introductions like, hey, you got to meet this guy. You guys are from the same area. Like you're both from Western Kentucky or you're both born and raised in Michigan. Whatever you get that connection, you send that, that link right away. And I learned that from a buddy of mine named Alec.
[00:35:53] I always did it, but he did it instantly and I watched him just rake in the clients. So take that little nugget home. Think about that. We're going to come back for a little more tips and tricks here in just a second. We're going to finish out this episode with something else you can take away and put in effect right away. Stay tuned for more Pivotal Change.
[00:36:14] Sam, we are at the final stretch of the night and before we go further, I want to make sure you know where to find this episode and every episode of Pivotal Change. Now Media TV on the website is the best place you can get podcasts, you can get the Roku, the iOS, you can find it everywhere. Bilingual, English, Spanish, all of your favorite shows and episodes just like this one with me, William Kahn and Pivotal Change to help form your leadership and influence in the future. So check that website out. You're going to find tons of content. You're going to love it. Now let's get back to some practical tips on how to kind of not close a sales pitch, but close a relationship and close a networking opportunity so that it turns into something. And what I really want to do is emphasize and just what we just watched over the last segment was don't rush the pitch. Don't rush and be so eager to tell them about what you do and how, you know, you may be able to profit them and, you know, give them a good service or give them a good product. Right. Somebody will naturally say, what do you do? Okay, don't give them a seven minute explanation. Don't give them a highly rehearsed elevator pitch. Do everything you can with your elevator pitch to make it sound organic. You know, maybe, maybe give them 20 seconds tops. And yeah, I primarily work with business owners. I help them identify areas they can improve. You know, you can go back to that, kind of sell free money because, you know, I get them to be more profitable, tax efficient, get them employee benefits, like literally win, win, win. Everybody wins. I basically sell. It's a too good to be type of situation. Just finding opportunities with businesses that they just never knew about. Boom, there you go. That was a matter of seconds. And then stop and let them think, let them decide whether they want to follow up. A lot of times they're like, well, how exactly to do that or what exactly do you do? And then you can, you know, pop the can open a little bit farther and get a little deeper if they're interested. And a lot of people, that's really interesting. Like, how do you do that? Well, I do it through boom and you explain just a little bit more. And of course, you've already seen that tonight. If not, let them change the subjects. That's okay, you can always circle back or you can just form a friendship. And you know what, some of the friendships I have, I didn't sell that person. And the other thing is too is let's say I find the owner of a company or I'm talking to a person who I think is the right role to be the decision maker. But I find out they're not even eligible for, for what I'm selling or they're not in a, in a place where I can really provide the value. They may know a guy, they may know a gal that's like, hey, I don't need your services, but this person over here might. And I've had some crazy introductions just keeping the conversation going. Here's another really good secret too. Meet the hotel staff.
[00:39:10] This is a big one. Okay. If you have the opportunity to meet like the front office manager, the general manager, anybody that's like over sales and stuff like that, the event manager, event manager. They're dealing with VIPs, high profile people Business owners, people that are booking large events, and those are probably going to be some of your higher ticket sales if you ever get the introduction and get in the door. Some of my best. His introductions have been again, down in Nashville. I know the manager of a hotel who's been on the show before, and he's introduced me some fantastic people and I've brought people to his hotel and we get a mutually beneficial relationship. But more than anything, we are now friends. We are lifelong friends. So much so that now my kids call him Uncle. Okay, so that's where some of these things can develop. And we've known this guy for five or six years now. So if you can do that, you might have an office manager, that one, who knows? Maybe the hotel help needs your, your product or your service, but they're going to start telling you things that are not confidential, but you just normally wouldn't ask or hear. It's like, well, do you host a lot of these corporate meetings? Oh, if you just, I don't know, let's say you have a niche in the legal realm. Oh, do you have a lot of conferences with attorneys and law firms and, you know, people in that realm? Well, guess what, like, yeah, hey, two weekends from now, we've got the largest attorneys association in America coming into our hotel. Well, guess what, you might want to book a room for that night and hang out and eat appetizers. You can meet a lot of people, people and they're going to tell you, what kind of organization did you work with? Who handles that? And I'm telling you, just treating everybody the same way. But most people don't see the host as an opportunity. And that's just as big as an opportunity as anybody you're sitting in the restaurant with. They can be tremendous connections. Think about this. The people they're talking to are those corporate level travelers, people coming in, flying in, doing the big wig things. The CEOs, those event planners, those HR groups, and again, convention organizers know a lot of people. Okay, then whoever you're talking to, whether it's the office manager, the person running the hotel, the people go ahead and get their card. I would still default that most business owners carry a business card and they're ready, willing and eager to give out that business card. So go ahead and snatch that business card. You be the responsible person and save it wherever you need to save it. And you might still send them your information. You might still do that quick five to 15 minute hook. Hey, great talking to you. Have fun tonight. Hey, save travels in the Morning XYZ Z and then the formal follow up where you pull that business card out and say, okay, now I'm going to send a formal text to Johnny and Sally. That's what I do. Double follow up is super great. Especially if there's going to be a gap in time like you got to finish three more days to your conference and you met them on day one or there's a weekend, you met them at the end on Friday at the final, you know, final banquet or whatever before they send everybody home and you follow up on Monday. So 90% of the time they're probably just going to hand a business card to you and be more than happy to do it. And do not be afraid to be the person that refers somebody else to them for no good reason at all if they are not the exact right fit for you. But you know somebody that's, let's just say looking for security software to be installed. You can be like, hey, my buddy's been shopping around for security software. Why not take a chance talking with this guy and giving them a shot. So again, super good opportunities that you can do like that.
[00:42:22] After you get the human interaction, you want to do something like try to get some technology interaction, right? That's where you might send over like hey, you know we were talking about this the other day and boom, here's a quick little 60 second 2 minute demo video of what we do or what we sell or whatever the product is. Hey, you might put that email into a newsletter, a monthly weekly newsletter and what's called a tending campaign. And you just tend that relationship, you know, the CRMs, these automated services services. And if you can just gather that information, you're building your network. Do not forget to use technology and go, if you met Johnny or Sally, go send them the hey, it's nice to meet you. Then go connect with them on LinkedIn. They're going to remember you. And you know what? I believe in doing everything in spoon feeding as much as possible, as much as of an eighth grade conversation as you can on LinkedIn. I'll go, hey, it was great meeting you at such and such convention.
[00:43:17] That wasn't that guitarist on stage. Amazing pleasure to connect with you. Boom. And now you've got the memory, they remember exactly who you are. If there's a funny event anytime that you can make somebody laugh, chuckle, without being a complete class clown, you know you can do something. Some self deprecating humor is pretty good especially for, for initial confrontations and I'll say something like, you know I've even seen ones where somebody kind of like tripped or stumbled, you know, and be like, hey, man, don't worry, I already did that twice today. I said, you landed it better than I did. Right? So now you're making fun of your yourself while sparing them from an embarrassing moment.
[00:43:53] You can even say, you know, you can even be like, I got lost in this hotel, something like that. Luckily, I followed you and it looked like you knew what you were doing or you knew what you were talking about. And so you're complimenting them, kind of making fun of yourself.
[00:44:04] You can also start things positive level, like, hey, what was the best thing that speaker said today? Hey, what was the best thing? Even if you're not there, what was the best thing you learned in that conference? Like, you were like, oh my gosh, I'm taking that home and doing that tomorrow. What was it? You're starting these positive things and they're going to step back and say, hey, positivity, maybe some humor. This guy or gal's got it figured out. And I'm going to imprint on them, which is the goal. So connect those human instincts with your technology.
[00:44:33] I have template emails I use all the time, but in my template email, I always reserve a spot at the top to change the first line into something personal. Like, hey, it was getting, Hey, I walked into your business. It was great to meet you today. Thanks for spending a couple minutes with me in the lobby. Lobby. I've driven past your, past your place 100 times. Never, never stopped in today. Had a few extra minutes. Got to learn about what you do. You know, that was awesome that I got to learn. I hope your business is great. You seem like an awesome leader. Boom, boom, boom. And then I say, by the way, this is what we talked about. You know, this is, this is what I mentioned in the lobby in case you're interested. And then you just follow up in the auto campaign. So complement each other with your human touch and your automation, your, your AI. If you're just AI all the time, time, I think you're going to have a hard time establishing relationships again. Something that you can do through automation is you can have like once a month. Just everybody in your book just gets a hey, how's it going? How's summer treating you? Right? Hey, school started. Has that affected business at all? Right? People be like, oh, no, but my kids are excited. Yeah, sports are started again. People without kids may be like, yeah, my employees are taking time off and planning, you know, the vacations already. So just, you know, seasonally, once a month, once a quarter. Just have an entire book of clients ask a human question. Right, Right. You can use AI to prompt it, but you may have to respond. And that also gives you a chance to spark something where maybe the. Maybe the deal and the sales pitch was going dead. Well, now you've resparked it with human connection. Okay, so now we're going to talk about the ability to compound things. Right? So every trip now becomes intentional. When you leave home, you're setting targets like, let's meet five new people. Let's walk away with five people's information on the phone that I can text and hook or more. Let's get genuine three LinkedIn relationships where we actually start a conversation. I want to meet one hotel executive that's like manager or higher. Right.
[00:46:24] And, like, I've even met, you know, like, directors of security and stuff like that. That stuff is great because the next time you go to that hotel, they're gonna be like, hey, you know, and you're just friendly with them. You know, maybe get one company that says, this is my primary target, and I'm going to try to push on this target and then just work out with or have coffee or brunch with somebody new. The gym. I didn't mention this earlier, but the gym is really great place because that's a place where you can sit over there and somebody does something cool. And the gym say, hey, man, that was a good set. That was a good lift. Or, you know, there's a woman over there on the treadmill. You say, oh, my gosh, you. You run like a gazelle. I hope I never have to run from a bear and try to keep up with you. And you use humor and stuff like that. You can even make fun of yourself and be like, hey, man, I'm getting ready left. You mind spotting me so I don't drop these on my face? And somebody comes over and spots you in positivity. Positivity.
[00:47:11] Um, but start compounding this. Maybe nothing happens on your first run at a hotel business conference network, but you start doing this every time and make a habit out of it. You're going to walk home with 5, 10, 15 contacts, and eventually just simple statistics are going to prevail. And out of those contacts, somebody's going to bite. Somebody's going to become a significant relationship. Somebody's going to be beneficial or mutually beneficial. So I really want you to understand the opportunity isn't always just something that you have to create from scratch, but sometimes it is sometimes already sitting in your payroll system. Like on the first half half of the episode, you just need to activate some eligible credits. Sometimes it's at a table sitting beside you and all you have to do is say, hey, what did you order? That looks pretty good. And then the conversation starts up. So if you're willing to see the difference in the tax code, the difference in how to build relationships, you're willing to learn, ask questions, talk to an expert, that's a great way to do it. You can find
[email protected] and that is a great place to start with all of this. So I hope you're able to take all this information, tips and tricks, apply it today. And I want you to remember as we end the show to go out into the world and I want you to see the change and be the change. We'll catch you next time on PIVOTAL Change.
