GCM 128 | Save And Make Money

 

In this episode, Rodney Flowers is joined by Brett Swarts of Capital Gains Tax Solutions as they talk about what to do with your money and how to put yourself in the best position possible to make and save money. Get some lessons from Brett’s experiences as he shares his journey through his financial business career and $85 million in closed commercial real estate brokerage transactions. Rodney and Brett dive into what a deferred sales trust is and how this benefits you or anyone who’s looking to sell a business, real estate, or any highly appreciative assets. Learn how you can create your wealth plan and immediately start your journey towards wealth generation.

Listen to the podcast here:

Putting Yourself In The Best Position Possible: Helping You Save And Make Money With Brett Swarts

We have a special show for you. We’re going to talk about what to do with your money. Everyone wants to know what they can do with their money. What I mean by that is using the best possible processes and not only processes, but vehicles out there that can help you save money, make money, and put yourself in the best position possible. The guy that I have selected to provide this information to you also has an inspirational story. He’s going to talk about his journey. He’s going to talk about lessons learned along their journey that you can implement in your business even if you’re not in a position to do some of the things we’re going to talk about. Sit back and read it. You never know when you are may be in a position to do it.

You may learn some tools along the way to help you get to that place where you’re ready to pull the trigger on some of the things we’re going to talk to you about. Brett Swarts is the Founder of Capital Gains Tax Solutions and host of the Capital Gains Tax Solutions Podcast. Each year, he equips hundreds of business professionals with the deferred sales trust tools to help their high net worth clients solve capital gains tax deferral limitations. His experience includes numerous deferred sales trust, Delaware Statutory Trust, 1031 exchanges, and $85 million in closed commercial real estate brokerage transactions. The list goes on and on. We are ready to hear from this guy so let’s get him on the show. Brett, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I am glad to be here.

I’m glad to have you here. Before we get started, I would like to frame this up for the audience because some people may truly understand what it is that you do, but maybe the introduction post a few questions for people. Give us a little bit about who you are and what it is you offer to the world.

Most entrepreneurs, especially once they become successful or looking to make a sale of their business or their real estate, they struggle with capital gains tax. It’s somewhere between 30% and 50% of their gain when they sell, which can be depleting of their wealth. We use a deferred sales trust to give them tax deferral and liquidity diversification. The best part is the ability to start a new business or fund a passive real estate stream, all tax-deferred so they can create and preserve more wealth. When I first started in my career, I was at a company called Marcus & Millichap. I was out of college. I just finished playing basketball and I was looking for something competitive, something that was challenging where I could serve other people and work on a team.

I found a company that helped people buy and sell investments in real estate and offered all of those things in one package. They said, “Plan to make nothing for two years. No salary, no benefits, no health care, nothing. You eat what you kill. If you don’t close anything, we have other people who are ready to step into your position. Are you ready to take this challenge on?” I was. I started my journey. Fast forward, I was doing well, but then the ‘08 crash hit and everything hit the fan. I like to say with any entrepreneur, they’re going to be challenged with times where things don’t go the way they thought it would go, or they have some momentum and all of a sudden something happens.

It starts to test truly, are you going to stick with it? Do you love what you’re doing? Is this your calling? Are you going to persevere through it? I did what every good entrepreneur does. I told my wife at the time who is at home, “Honey, there are a couple of options here. I can get a couple of side jobs. We’re going to rake a little bit of money, but we’re going to have to move in with my brother to his house. The baby’s going to have to share a room with all of us. Are you okay with that?” She said, “I’m with you. I believe in you. I know you’re called to do this. I know this is a tough part of the economy and let’s go.” At that point wanting to be a father who could support my wife and support my child, I said, “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep this journey going.”

By day, I was working at Marcus & Millichap about 40 hours a week, making cold calls somewhere between 50 to 100 calls a day, trying to get meetings. By night, I was driving over to my favorite restaurant at the time. It’s called the Cheesecake Factory and I got a job there serving. I would jam over there after 5:00, 6:00. I would moonlight on the weekends and nights, serving Cheesecake Factory. I also would run basketball tournaments on the weekends for our local college. I did that for two years and I had two degrees in a minor. I was successful in college and basketball. This was a hard part growing period of not making a lot of money and just scraping by. I am learning through the fire what it means to serve people, to persevere, and to truly hone your craft. Along with that journey too, our clients got hurt because 2008 was one of the hardest-hit financial crisis. We are doing this interview during the Corona crisis and we’re seeing a lot of similarities. I can’t help but think about what happened then.

The government wants your money out and flowing and moving around. Click To Tweet

At that point, people were buying and selling investments in real estate. They had overpaid for properties via what’s called a 1031 exchange. For your readers, 1031 exchange is a vehicle in which you can sell a piece of investment in real estate and buy another piece of investment in real estate. If you do it within 180 days, you can defer the tax. Let’s say, Rodney, you bought a property for $1 million and you owned it for ten years and you sell it for $5 million. If you don’t do anything, the government’s going to take 40% to 50% of that, depending on what state you live in and how much depreciation recapture you have. You might say, “I don’t want to do that. Let me put it in something else.” They say, “As long as you do that, you can defer all that tax.” That’s what I help people do.

However, the challenge with that is people overpay for properties and when they did that, they got hurt. Back in the ‘08 crisis, people lost everything. I had friends, family, clients who lose everything because they overpaid for properties and they felt forced to take on more debt. They didn’t have any liquidity, they had too much debt, and they had too much pressure with the economy that some of them lost everything. Along this journey, I said, “How can I help as an entrepreneur? How can I solve a problem that no one else is solving and educate my clients to add value?” At the time, it was about how do I grow my business. It grew to something much more. Now, I’m out spreading the message and we do it not just through a 1031 exchange, we do it through a deferred sales trust. Our clear thing here is educating entrepreneurs and business owners and anyone who is looking to sell a business or real estate or any other highly appreciated asset, how to do this. It’s a topic that’s hard. People don’t even know about it or they think it’s too hard to grasp.

First of all, thank you for being someone that wants to provide that level of education because that’s needed, this power. We all know there’s power in education and you don’t have that. You make decisions and sometimes you feel like it was a dumb decision but if you don’t know, you don’t know. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. To have you as a person that’s willing to provide that level of education for people is commendable. The deferred sales trust, what is that and how is it a debt-free plan for real estate or business?

The deferred sales trust was known as a manufactured installment sale or your readers might know it as a seller carryback. The simplest way to think about it is, imagine you own a $10 million business and you own it free and clear. Let’s say, Joe wants to come and buy your business. Joe says, “I want to buy your business but I don’t have much of a down payment. I don’t have all $10 million but I have $1 million. How about this? I’ll give you $1 million for your $10 million business. Would you carryback a note or would you become the bank and lend me the other $9 million?” If you said sure to that, he buys the business for $10 million. You sold the business, but he owes you an additional $9 million. In that scenario, you haven’t received that $9 million yet but you’re getting interest payments.

You received $1 million. The government says, “You owe tax on that $1 million you received, but that other $9 million is in a deferral state.” It’s simply a seller carryback note, but it gives you certain tax advantages because you haven’t received it yet. In the simplest form, it’s an installment sale. The difference is these deferred sales trust that we have allows you to carry paper for as long as you want, and you’re not tied to the buyer anymore. The cool thing is instead of Joe giving you $1 million, you tell Joe, “Get a loan from a bank and bring me the full $10 million, but I’ll put my money in the trust.” By doing that, what you can do is defer all $10 million for as long as you want and save on tax.

You might say, “Why would I want to defer that?” If you didn’t do that, you would owe somewhere around 30% to 50% of that $10 million, depending on what your basis is. That’s somewhere between $3 million or $5 million. I would say, “Rodney, let’s do this tax-deferred plan to save you that $3 million to $5 million. Let’s put it all into this trust. What do you want to do with it?” “I might want to buy some real estate. I might want to start my new business venture. I might want to be an Angel investor in some of these other startup companies. I might want to put it in these stocks, bonds, and mutual funds when the prices are very low.” It’s flexible what you can do but the key is you have the full $10 million minus the fees that you pay us instead of having only $6 million. The next thing is you can defer those for as long as you want.

It’s a mathematical equation. You look at one side or the other. You either sell and pay the tax. We’d say, “Do you want to sell it $10 million and have $4 million or would you rather sell it $10 million and have $10 million minus a few fees? You go a little extra $3.5 million at least or $3.9 million more dollars.” Yes, I’d rather have that. The bottom line is you have to have a big enough game to defer and to pay for our fees. Our minimum is $500,000 of proceeds for every $100,000 of liability. Our average deal is $2.6 million. The cool thing is we want to get clarity for everybody about what it is, how it works, and then you decide how you want to build your wealth plan.

The worst thing we want to have happened is you paid the tax and it’s gone forever. The government will waste it away this quick. Both sides, no matter what aisle you’re on, they’re going to waste it away fast. We’d rather keep it with our families, our states, and our communities so that we can support those who are most in need or to support our families. The cool thing about this trust is you can pass it onto multiple generations. Your kids can stay tax-deferred and it can create an active or passive income stream.

GCM 128 | Save And Make Money

Save And Make Money: You have to create multiple income streams to diversify what you receive and when you receive it.

 

We did a deal in Cupertino. It is a $3.1 million sale. This client lived there for over twenty years next to Apple. She bought the house at a low price and she had this house rapidly appreciated. She felt that with this big house, she was a real estate rich but passive income poor. She had debt on this property. She was able to escape feeling trapped in this big house. She was able to sell the house, pay off all of her debt, but she saved about $400,000 in taxes that she would have paid. She put it all into the trust and now she’s living off a passive income stream. That’s good for her. It’s also good for the government because the government wants that money out and flowing and moving around. They don’t want it to sit in these houses that are not necessarily producing income or jobs. They want it out there in the economy which produces jobs and more tax revenue.

Does the trust pay interest on a monthly basis?

Yes. Whatever you want to set up. Most of our notes earn 8% and after fees, they net 6.5%. Let’s say it was a $1 million sales and 10% would have been $100,000. It’s earning $80,000 and after fees, it’s net about $65,000. You’re going to pay ordinary income tax on that $65,000. Remember, it’s on the full $1 million versus $600,000 if you want to pay the tax. That’s the Delta there. How much did we save you in tax? It’s like an interest-free loan from the government. The government says, “Rodney, you can pay that 40% to me now or I’m going to let you keep owed it to me, but you have a zero-interest payment to me. As long as it’s invested and spring the economy, it’s good for the government, for Rodney and everybody. As long as you pay taxes as you received the income, then it’s fine.”

That’s the neat part about this. It’s a 0% interest loan from the government for as long as you want, as long as you follow the rules and that’s where we come in. We help you to stay within the guard rails. We are like what a 401(k) provider might provide, an IRA provider or a 1031 exchange company. We’re like the custodian who’s going to help you stay within the guard rails, file the tax return, give you 1099. In the meantime, you’ve got more wealth and you’re happier.

This is an integral part of someone’s financial plan. Their way of outlining the future and wealth generation and putting themselves in the best position to prosper. A lot of times entrepreneurs were focused on getting their income. We focused on what we’re going to do after the fact or putting a process or plan in place. What are your thoughts with not only having a deferred sale trust but the idea of future wealth planning?

I started low income growing up. My parents were divorced when I was young. My dad had all the money. He was an entrepreneur. I live with my mom and she had none of the money. We would go to my dad’s and he would spoil us. We lived during that time with my single mom. Without my grandma, we wouldn’t have a car. It was very low income. That being said, God always provided and we were fine. I had to learn about wealth in a way that was going to keep my family and my future as secure as I could. That was my driving force for building wealth and being frugal. With that, I found that you have to create income streams and ideally multiple income streams to help to diversify what you receive and when you receive it. You’re not dependent upon one thing. Case in point, Coronavirus. The whole economy has shut down. Certain jobs may be gone forever or it’s going to take a long time to get back. If you’re dependent upon one income stream, you’re not diversified.

Even during my journey in commercial real estate or even now, I still sell commercial real estate for clients. I sell the deferred sales trust. I’m creating multiple income streams to help diversify anyone from taking from the other. That’s what I would encourage anyone to do. The first best way to do that if you already have your first day job or your first business is to invest in real estate. With real estate investing, you can do it on a small scale. You can do it with partners, and you can do it in a way that helps to produce some income. The best part about investment in real estate is what’s called depreciation or at least one of the best ones. For every $100 that is coming in for rent, you may be able to offset about $10 of that and what’s called depreciation, which means you’re only paying taxes on $90 instead of $100. Whereas other investments such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, they don’t have depreciation built-in.

I would encourage anyone who’s reading if they’re not in real estate yet to take that first step to either buy something on their own or buy it with a partner. Especially as this market shifts, we’re thinking there might be some opportunities in real estate and some values that drop like when the ‘08 crisis hit. All of a sudden within a couple of years or 12, 16, 24 months values plummeted and a lot of people made a lot of wealth by buying properties very low. Hopefully, that answers your initial question.

Real estate is the best risk-adjusted rate of return that you can get. Click To Tweet

It does. I want to bring up a point. If you look at the stock market, a lot of people are afraid and they’re pulling their money out. Where’s that money going to go? I have a feeling it’s going to go back into real estate. History has a way of repeating itself and this is unusual. Maybe the Coronavirus is a new thing but that’s debatable. The stock market isn’t doing well and I feel that what you’re going to find is this big boom. People are going to go to real estate because it’s affordable considerably. People are going to start putting their money back into real estate and a real estate market is going to start shooting up. You’re going to find high levels of appreciation. I feel that that’s going to happen over the next 5 to 10 years as a result of what’s happening. Real estate to me has always proved to be key when it comes to investing. I know the stock market may be debatable. I’m not knowledgeable when it comes to the stock market but from what I do know, real estate seems to be the safest, most effective way to invest your money, in my opinion.

I’m with you. Investment in real estate is hands down the best risk-adjusted rate of return that you can get. Especially if it’s multifamily senior housing or mobile home parks where people need a place to live. Those are the most recession resilient places to park your money. That being said, they’re also driven by rents, by employment, by several things that hold up the economy as a whole, and also the overall debt. You’ve got to make sure not to take on too much debt. Also, you’re going to make sure you’re buying at the time. We call that optimal timing. The stock market is down over 30% and we think it’s an amazing time to buy in the stock market.

It is because the prices are low. You want it to sell and buy when the markets are low. Eventually, it’s going to be a bottom here. If there’s not a bottom, then you probably realize that your money doesn’t make any difference. The point is the optimal time. When is the best time to buy? That’s when you become educated and you work with partners and you work with those who are the most skilled at doing all of this. One of the key things I’ve been learning as an entrepreneur is the idea of hiring the who instead of being the how. This is by Russell Brunson in Click Funnels and his coaching staff or team. Essentially, you have a vision. We all have a vision as an entrepreneur. We all want to get to this vision. Unfortunately, too often we hire the how. We try to be the how instead of hiring the who. The key is who is that team member, who is that specialist or who is that mentor that you can connect with that’s going to help you reach your vision that much faster.

That may cost you money and every good entrepreneur is going to write a check and invest in himself or invest in that team member to get to that vision faster rather than always trying to do it ourselves. That’s the thing that I struggle with most as an entrepreneur. I think I can do it better than everyone else. Give it enough time or give it a few YouTube videos and a couple of books saying, “I’m going to do it better.” It may take me 3 months, 3 weeks or 90 days but if I’m focused on that and I’m trying to be that how all the time. I stuck in what’s called a procrastination mode. I may not do it as well as someone else can do. I probably can’t because they’ve been doing it for ten years or that 10,000-hour thing. I’ve got to get out of my way. I’ve got to put my pride aside and say, “What are the highest and best use of my time and my energy and who can I hire? Who can I team up with? Who can I invest in to get to my vision faster rather than getting stuck in being in the how?” That being said, how you apply that to investing is who is that financial advisor who’s going to help you? Let’s face it, 80% of our decisions are based upon emotion and 20% is logic.

You could even say 98% is emotion, 2% is logic. Logic is what keeps us there. Emotion is what gets us there. We need someone in our life who’s been there before, who’s done that, who’s invested low in real estate and the stock market, and who can help us navigate these emotions and create a wealth plan. With that, do that with optimal timing in the most tax-efficient way. I’m not doing it by myself. I have the most brilliant tax attorneys and advisors we work with. I’m a commercial real estate broker. We’re commercial real estate operators. Building this mastermind team is what every good entrepreneur does and that’s what we’re constantly looking to build.

You mentioned the wealth plan. A lot of entrepreneurs, that’s a secondary thought. They focused on building the business. We’ll get to the wealth once we built the business. How important is it to start thinking about the wealth plan now?

Start with the end in mind. If you don’t have that vision of that wealth and where it’s going to be, it’s like not having a budget. Your money is going to go fly somewhere else. You’re not going to be prepared for these things when these crashes come. If you don’t have that wealth plan in mind, you can’t execute when opportunities come up. By wealth plan, I don’t mean passively investing into a 401(k) or passively putting into a SEP IRA. My goal is to define what I want when I’m 50 or 45 or 55 looks like. I shifted from investing in the 401(k) and investing and the SEP IRAs because of all of that’s 60 and above. I said, “I want to be able to retire if I could by 55 or 50 or 45.”

How do I get there? I reverse engineer, then I see real estate, passive income streams, and then I build that wealth plan. I would say it means everything. Why are you building your business? Why are you building your wealth? Do you want to be able to give more? Do you want to have more financial freedom, more energy freedom, more time with your kids? For me, I want to be able to coach all of my daughters and my son. I want to be able to coach college hoops. I want to be able to travel with my family and keep my wife home full-time. Defining that why and then realizing that the wealth plan is what’s going to be the what or the how. It allows you to do all of those things. It’s as important as the why and you’ve got to have both.

GCM 128 | Save And Make Money

Save And Make Money: Every good entrepreneur is going to write a check and invest in himself or invest in that team member to get to that vision faster.

 

What do you say to the entrepreneurs who are trying to get there, but it seems to be one thing or another? Here we go with this situation and it’s affecting their business. You seem to be very successful. There are some challenges along the way. What’s the secret sauce that allows you to get to where you are?

I was blessed with a mom and a grandma who sacrificed and gave, with older brothers, older cousins, coaches, and youth pastors. There are many people that built into my life, spoke life into me, encouraged me, prayed for me and in sports. The fire and the persistence was built into me growing up. Even though I came from a single-family home and it was tough financially. I was given so much. It’s hard to say what’s kept me going but what I do know is I was willing to do the things that maybe other people weren’t willing to do. Whether that be getting two side jobs and living with my brother, with my wife, with our baby, and cutting our expenses as low as we possibly could and not spending and saving.

When I started to make money, investing it and not increasing my spending level much. It’s doing the things that people aren’t willing to do and figuring out a way to be creative at the same time. I also know you’ve got to go all-in with what you’re doing. When I started in real estate, for five years, that’s all I did. I did the side hustles and the side jobs. My full-time focus was commercial real estate, developing my skillset, listening to the mentors and the training, and doing all of that. It wasn’t until after that, that I shifted into the capital gains tax deferral and launched my second company.

It does take a laser focus, Especially if it’s something that’s a very tough skillset to attain. It’s going to take that 50 to 60-hour weeks or it could be 6, 12, 24 months to attain that and have those mentors in place. The second thing I was at is masterminds and accountability. You’ve got to have masterminds, you’ve got to have accountability. You’ve got to have people who are running in the same circle, who are trying to achieve the same thing. Your environment is important and we’re all affected by our environment. You’ve got to be in a position where your environment is filling your why and it’s filling your passions for where you’re trying to go in life. If you don’t have that, it’s hard to do it because our emotions fade.

We may go to a conference, we may listen to podcasts, and we may have a real high experience emotionally but those emotions fade. It’s only the commitments that we make and those around us or the environments we put ourselves in that fuel those commitments. They keep us driving forward to reach our goals. We all need encouragement, no matter who you are, no matter how positive or optimistic you are. We are creatures who always need encouragement. You’ve got to be getting that encouragement. I’m a Christian so I get my encouragement straight from the Lord, from the Bible, reading the word, going to church, Bible studies. Also from my family, from my mastermind, and from my mentors. All of those are ways to encourage. If you don’t have those in your life, I encourage you to take that first step to get that first one going for you.

What were some of the critical things that you did that weren’t necessarily things that other people were doing that launched you into the success that you had?

The first one I told you about was getting those two side jobs and making that work. Moving beyond that, I went and joined a mastermind Bible study group of people who are older than me, who were ahead of me in life. I was looking for something. I was in my mid-20s, 24, 25. I felt like I was stagnant in my spiritual walk. I remember calling my church, Bayside Church here in Sacramento. I said, “Is there a little more seasoned or experienced group? I’d like to check-in on a men’s group.” I dove into this men’s group and I was the youngest guy.

That time I was 25 and most guys were 45, 55. One guy was like 75. I walked in intimidated, but at the same time said, “I’ll give it a shot.” The first hour was the Bible study, which had been a part of my whole life so that’s fine. The second hour was accountability and I said, “This is going to get scary.” It was encouraging, uplifting, and confidential. It was men speaking into my life. Over that next five years, I grew so much. I think it’s the one thing that’s missing in every single most church these days is encouraging accountability. If men had that, it can change the world. We have it in our coaches like you growing up in football and basketball.

Hire the ‘who’ instead of being the ‘how.’ Click To Tweet

I had the encouraging, accountability, and team environment. I had that with my teachers and professors in college. I had it at Marcus & Millichap. I went, “Why don’t we have this in a lot of churches?” These guys were doctors, attorneys, they were businessmen. They were all pastors, all different walks of life. There were twenty guys and I sat there and I learned. I soaked up their wisdom. They told me what not to do. They told me what to do. These guys had been divorced, have been married for 40 years, had failed in business and had made millions. I got to learn and absorb. I would say, get in with people who can teach you, who are ahead of you in life.

If you’re at where you’re at and you’re running with people who are at the same level as you and not ahead of you in life, it’s like the blind leading the blind. It’s good to have a fellowship. I’m not saying don’t lose your friends, but it’s also important to have mentors and people who are going to encourage you and hold you accountable. To me, what I believe is we’ve all been given God-given gifts. If we don’t have people pushing us, how are we going to get better?

That’s such a profound statement. I was listening to a training and it was a sales guy who was doing his training. He was talking about how to be a good salesman. He said the key to it is to have two types of people in your life. You need to have those types of people that you’re reaching after. You’re striving to be like them. You’re striving to accomplish the things that they’ve accomplished. They are the reachers or the people that are chasing you. They’re trying to take your spot. They’re trying to knock you off the pedestal. You have those types of people in your life. It keeps things in perspective and it keeps you moving along.

You can’t stay stagnant. You can’t stay still. You’ve got to get to a place where you’re always moving. Being in a place where you have people that are smarter than you, as comfortable as that may sound, it is one of the best places to be. I’ve learned much from being around people that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re probably in the wrong room. At least you can’t stay here. It’s good to be there for a while and hopefully, you have the mindset to help those people. For you to grow, you have to be in a place where you’re not the smartest one in the room. Maybe you’re the least smart and that’s okay because that means you have a lot of people around you, everyone else around you is in a position to help bring you up.

Not being intimidated by that but sometimes it is uncomfortable. I feel like not being the smartest person in the room keeps people from achieving what they want to achieve because they don’t want to be in that situation. It’s uncomfortable for them. Because we don’t do it, because we don’t allow ourselves to be in that situation, there’s so much that we don’t get. You don’t get the benefit of being in a place where you can soak up all of that information because you don’t want to feel uncomfortable for a little while. When you can open up your mind and have that level of vulnerability about yourself, where it’s okay and you’re not intimidated, then that’s your opportunity to soak it all up and learn. I didn’t know a lot about what you are offering and what you’re doing but you drop in some knowledge to me. You drop some things to me. I’m glad we did the show. There’s even more that I want to learn. I’m going to check you out a little bit more. That’s a piece of sage advice for those that are reading.

Thank you. I couldn’t agree with you more. I can’t think of anything except a book called The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni. He talks about three major traits that we should all strive for. The first one is humble and it’s the most important one. If you’re not humble, and that’s knowing what gifts you’ve been given, and then what your strengths are, and that’s also being coachable and willing to learn, get feedback and go into a room where you’re not comfortable. You are scared and vulnerable. You’re going, “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” This is why this is an opportunity for you to grow. I remember sitting down in that accountability, not knowing that was even going to happen.

I thought I was showing up for Bible study with some guys. They said, “No, we’re going to do this.” They start asking questions. I remember God telling me, “I’m not going to force you but here’s your chance to face some of the things that you’ve been challenged with. I can free you from it.” I remember going, “I believe you.” My chance came around and I said, “I’m struggling with that. I will pray for you. Thanks for sharing.” It was freeing and all of a sudden, I wasn’t the only guy in the room who struggled with it. These guys were leading because they were talking about their struggles.

My life got transformed. It’s God doing the work, but it’s doing the work through us talking, moving, connecting, loving, praying for each other. Being humble is the number one thing. Also being hungry is a second thing that Patrick Lencioni talks about. You’ve got to want this more than anything else. Your drive has got to fuel you. Where does that drive come from? I don’t know. You ask yourself, what drives you? What motivates you? What’s encouraging you? What’s going to keep you going? What is your why? I’ve always had the drive, but you’ve got to be hungrier than anything else and whatever’s going to take you to get there, get there.

GCM 128 | Save And Make Money

Save And Make Money: Logic is what keeps us there; emotion is what gets us there.

 

If you ever seen the Honey Badger on YouTube, it’s hilarious. You can learn a lot from nature. He’s going to find a way. He’s going to figure out a way and he’s going to keep going and he’s relentless. You’ve got to be hungry. The last one is smart. You’ve got to have emotional intelligence, the ability to connect with people. It’s not IQ. IQ is overrated in a lot of ways. Its EQ. Emotional intelligence connect with other people to empathize, to hear them, and to listen. If you can work on those three things. We’re typically good at one or maybe two of those or good at one of them. The goal is to be good at all three of them. To always be developing your humility, your hunger, and your emotional intelligence with others. You’re going to grow as a person and you’re going to grow as an entrepreneur.

How can people connect with you, Brett, if they wanted to learn more about you?

They can connect to me at CapitalGainsTaxSolutions.com. If you’re a business professional out there, financial advisor, business broker, realtor, we provide coaching. We provide this tool to help you grow your business with this deferred sales trust, a quick little plug as well. According to the American Bankers Association, there are about $17 trillion to $20 trillion that will pass from one generation to the next in the next number of years. This is known as the largest wealth transfer in the history of the planet. This is known as the Baby Boomers. There are about 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 every single day in the US and there are 77 million in the US alone. They’re faced with all the toilets, the trash, the liability, and all the huge wealth accumulation through their businesses, real estate, and high-end primary homes. They’re looking for ways to sell all of those assets and retire from it, but they’re stuck with the capital gains taxes.

That’s exactly where we come in. We provide a solution for that, but here’s the big why behind it. We don’t want them to pay the tax, not just because they can have a bunch of more wealth, but so that they can fund charitable causes of their own choice. They can help people who are in the darkest places have some light. Otherwise, if they give it to the government, the money’s gone forever. We have the solution for that and we want to help empower you, the business professional. If you’re the reader who is the high net-worth person, we’d love the opportunity to compete for your business. Go to CapitalGainsTaxSolutions.com. I’m also releasing my podcast, the Capital Gains Tax Solutions Podcast. Also, YouTube, LinkedIn, all of the major social media.

Congratulations on the release of your podcast. As we bring this show to a close, thank you for coming on. I enjoyed the conversation with you. We like to end the show with a game-changer mentality message. What is maybe something that is game-changing for the audience that they can apply to their life or their business that you feel would be a game-changer for them?

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite ones. It’s by Jim Rohn and he says, “Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job. If you work hard on your job, you’ll make a living and that’s fine. If you work harder on yourself, you’ll make a fortune.” Here’s the idea there. The idea is not to make a bunch of money, although that is good too because you can help a lot of people when you do that. The idea is to become more of everything that God’s created you to be. Why? That is so you become more valuable to your family, to your community, to building the character of your kids, to your team members, to derive inspiration. Life is given by the people or encouragement and motivation is built behind character and character is built behind learning to work harder on ourselves in our character.

That’s our health and finances. That’s our wealth plan. That’s our leadership and development. That’s our personal relationship with God. That’s our relationship with our family, our spouse, our kids. Work harder on those major areas of your life, rather than just building this business to make money. That’s important. Your career is important and entrepreneurship is important. That’s one area of your life. That’s one of 6 or 7 major areas. Work harder on all of those collectively so you can grow your character and you can become everything you were created to be.

Being everything you created to be is a game-changer. That’s what we need in this world. People being all that they were created to be. Thank you for being all that you are created to be. We certainly appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks for the dimes and the golden nuggets that you dropped on us. We are blessed to have you on the show. Let me know how we can support you and we love you.

Thank you, Rodney. I appreciate it. It is my pleasure and I wish all of your audiences God’s blessings and continued success in their endeavors.

That’s another successful episode. Do all you can to be where you were created to be. That’s a game-changer. Work harder on yourself than you do on your job. Take some time to meditate on that because that will allow you to put some things in perspective. What have you been working hard on? Sometimes we want certain things, goals and objectives. We worked hard on those things and we lose sight of what matters the most. Take some time, reflect on what you’re working hard on. Maybe you need to make some changes and start working hard on what matters the most. Until next time, peace and love.

Important Links:

About Brett Swarts

GCM 128 | Save And Make MoneyBrett Swarts is the Founder of Capital Gains Tax Solutions and host of the capital gains tax solutions podcast. Each year, he equips hundreds of business professionals with the Deferred Sales Trust tool to help their high net worth clients solve capital gains tax deferral limitations.

His experience includes numerous Deferred Sales Trusts, Delaware Statutory Trusts, 1031 exchanges and $85,000,000 in closed commercial real estate brokerage transactions. He’s an active commercial real estate broker and investor with brokerage experience and ownership in multifamily, senior housing, retail, medical office, and mixed-use properties. He is a licensed California Real Estate Broker who holds Series 22 and 63 licenses.

Brett was formerly an associate at the largest Commercial Real Estate Brokerage firm in the country, has his own Multifamily Brokerage Company now, and has years of experience and hands-on training from some of the best in the business.

Mr. Swarts is passionate about educating people in Capital Gains Tax Deferral with a Deferred Sales Trust, how to divest from a business or real estate, and gain freedom from feeling hostage to a 1031 exchange, then invest back in to a new business venture or investment real estate at any time [all capital gains tax deferred] which he calls optimal timing.

Brett is considered one of the most well-rounded Capital Gains Tax Deferral Experts and informative speakers on the west coast. His audiences are challenged to lean into multiple capital gains tax deferral strategies, create and develop a tax-deferred passive cash flow optimal timing wealth plan of their own, and execute on this plan so they can create and preserve more wealth.

Brett lives in Roseville California, with his wife, Melanie and their 5 children.

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

Join the Game Changer Mentality Community today: