48 - Alton Bell: His Family's Success Story in Entrepreneurship and Accounting Firm Growth

Transcript

welcome to the conier CPA I'm Jackie Meyer founder of the concierge accounting program and tax NQ software

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next guest let's go y'all welcome to the coner CPA podcast

I'm Jackie Meyer and I have Alton Bell with me today and he is one of my top

favorite students when it comes to coaching in the past he's also a tax IQ user and I'm currently coaching him

again actually in Advanced Tax planning so we get to see each other quite a bit almost weekly and it's really fun to

interview real accountants that are in the trenches have a family you know have

real life stuff going on and so I'm really excited to talk to you today about all of that so welcome fill

everybody in a little bit more about you your family I know you work with your sisters you're in Chicago right yes yes

uh thank you Jackie for inviting me on year um as you mentioned uh found the dis fire back in 2008 bail tax

accountants and advisors I'm here on the souths side of Chicago just south of H

Park um that's where the University of Chicago is um I co-founded it with my sister Andrea and I also have um another

family member my sister Angela who is a accountant as well we specialize in in

small business accounting doing the bookkeeping full service all the way to the

tax return um also now that I'm in tax plan IQ we do the tax planning to help

them save because you know with the business owners one thing that you can't provide is is tremendous value helping

them build wealth you know um they depend on us to or they depend on their

business to live out their dreams retire send the kids to college buy ownes all that good stuff and obviously we do tax

returns we still do 1040s I know the industry is Shifting away from that uh but I still think there's a

tremendous Market especially uh in the minority Market to to to provide great

service in that area I mean you still have a multi-billion dollar company that's traded publicly that still does

that so I still get a uh want to get a piece of that bu there you go um M yep

married be married 14 years October two boys six and 10 I love me wife danan who

is a State Farm Insurance agent U so our businesses like kind of complimentary

she's actually next door so that all works out and then L and Levi my six and

year-old very busy uh I'm a overpriced show for basically taking them to travel

right to travel baseball practice you do love to travel yourself too I mean I know y'all just did where did y'all go

Hawaii or was it somewh yes okay yes we went to uh Maui um last summer we went

to Munich in Greece wow so yeah did I mean this industry this industry is

tough yeah was it just y'all or the did the kids come with you on the

trips the kids didn't come for the Oh yay that's even better that's what I thought but just

like sure yeah okay so so many questions has growing this accounting firm been a

smooth ride has it been super bumpy like how would you explain your experience

and kind of like Lessons Learned along the way uh any entrepreneur tells you that

it's been a smooth ride I'm not sure if that's really telling the truth

um it's just hard to believe uh so yeah um you know my you know my County degree

you know I majored in obviously I majored in the county but you know my

first career path was in audit um I didn't have the passion for it uh

I knew I need to do something better um so you know during that time I started

you know my sister was graduating college uh and I'm like hey you know let's start a Kelly practice um so when

she first came home from school to Blu College um she you know she was one of

the first employee number one obviously ni and um you know we started off just

doing 1040s 104 and we grew it to that and then you

know as business Contin to grow and as we your colleague start to grow and get

you know earn more money start businesses they start looking to you for that expertise and that's why I moved

over to the bookkeeping and providing that full cast as everyone says client County service um to my business okay so

how much did you charge for like your first 1040s I'm always curious yes oh wow

uh man back in those days 2008 it was probably like I mean anything over $200 was a lot

then oh yeah oh yeah okay so I'll admit I'll admit I charged 150 for like the

first tip fores I ever did so yeah it don't be embarrass you buy $25

175 $25 yeah I know right it's like you got

to do what you got to do as an entrepreneur uh so what pequ your interest in tax

advisory and like how do you define tax advisory because I think most people not even accounts understand exactly what we

do you know well it's a lot that goes into it but

right you know but really from the tax advisory standpoint I I I try to look at

you know their income and how they're gaining their income and then they lifestyle because you can build a tax

plan around the way they're living if they have kids you know can you incorporate the kids into the business

yeah do they like real estate do they own real estate can we tie that in to do some type of uh cost segregation or

something something of that matter that is it a es Corp is it a C Corp I mean all these things to help save on taxes

um can help grow your wealth you know um we forget about this you know

or a lot of people forget about this when it comes to just entrepreneurs they retire you have a lot of entrepreneurs

that retire with just a lack of adequate savings and retirement yeah and I just

feel like we're the heroes when it comes to that because every entrepreneur I speak with I'm like hey you know when

you come on board with me when we do our quarterly meetings or our annual tax planning meetings I'm going to ensure

that you have some type of retirement plan in place like I'm going to do the tax agents but I want to make sure when

you finish doing all this entrepreneur stuff for the years that you have some

money saved up so you can retire safely yeah I mean the statistics are pretty awful especially for Millennials now on

how much savings people have I think it's like under like $500 average or something it's really crazy um I

remember some clients even high at worth clients I worked with at my firm would be like retirement planning I believe in

retirement planning and I'm like uh what does that even mean like you're not

going to retire or what like what's the deal but yeah there's a lot there so um

what do you enjoy doing the most in your

practice um what I enjoy most

is one is the biggest thing is is the business

clients you know helping them once you see that once you show them the actual

dollar amount that they saved and that's the big thing that I like about tax tax

plan IQ is you're able to pull out this report say this is how much money You're Gonna Save over the next five to 10

years yes and some of the looks on their face they're just like you know they're just so great for it and I I mean I've

gotten great gifts for that um you know so that's one of the most impactful

things and then the second thing I would say is developing my employees you know I love employees that come on board

that's tied in with your vision and Mission it just helps you and grow love it yeah okay

so showing the tax savings all right I get that I get that um and working with

business owners I love it okay do you Niche it all or do you just kind of take General General businesses across the

board we do we sit our Niche um and and it's

helpful so some of the industries that we majority if I look across my businesses is mental health therapist oh

dayc carees okay dentist and State Farm agents because my wife is a State Farm agent so yeah I hear that I mean I know

that business standing out people we talk and just going over to her business and everything else so yeah cool so I

didn't realize you did mental health I love that um oh I remember when that

industry has skyrocketed since yeah yeah I had I think I had one

or two before covid and then you know their businesses just kind of took off

and you know they all within the same center of influence and you know the referrals were crazy after that um and

it's pretty straightforward you know they you know it's it's and they're they're great to work with because

mental Health uh clinicians they're trained to listen right list

to and so you don't have like this arrogant whatever type of corporate exe

or whatever executive how that work I love that they really listen and take heed to whatever advice you you're

giving and the next time you meet with them they're actually took place you know they put it in place so I'm just

like man these these these ladies are great to work with that's cool yeah there's certain industries I kind of

refused to work with just because I had one bad experience like with an attorney or a doctor you know because yeah they

can they can be a little into themselves and think that they know better than everybody else but of course that's we

we know everything so they need to listen to us um yeah but circling back

to uh the tax savings you can show the taxpayer and client I do want to mention

I'm really excited about this um I'm working with aicpa right now to kind of mass relase the ROI method of value

pricing which is the visualization that we do in tax when IQ and this is really I think revolutionary for our industry

because uh it's pricing upfront to align the results for the client and

accountants have so much going on it's so hard to get them to focus on this value added proposition around tax

advisory clients are so scared about the word tax and planning and putting those

together and so the method is just makes things so easy like you said I mean they're like well why wouldn't I do this

right so I'm really really excited about that I'm hoping we get something out this year but uh you know the aicpa is a

little slow so we'll see I mean CPA EA account

we're you know uh we're we're difficult to shift so that that mindset mindset of shifting

is very difficult I mean I mean and I was one of them you know uh it before I

got into increasing my prices or charging my value or just realizing that

the value that I bring it it takes you a minute to go from that mindset set shift

to say Hey you know this is what I got to charge I I can't charge you know I have people call

asking about 200 tax $200 tax return I'm like no that that's impossible that's

that's something we we don't do even if I have an intern they're not doing a $200 tax return for you right it's just

not happening and even with the business owners like you know they try to come in

and want to do it once a year Quick Books clean up and all that I'm like you're not there's no value in this so

let's try something else sff yeah for sure do you use a lot of interns

I typically have one every year nice okay I I had I had two a few years ago

and love them they bring like such a fresh perspective to the work um and

then I totally forgot about it and then we tried to recruit again and couldn't really find anyone local have you had

trouble recruiting for interns yeah well it's always difficult

but you have to plug in with the local University and see um one thing I do

like about him is they I guess in this era they kind of grew up um taking classes on Zoom so I

pretty much recorded on Zoom how to do a 1040 for them nice and it was amazing

like like wow like this is this is great like this you know this one intern she

was pumping them out like like just pumping them out like candy wow that's awesome yeah like you just giving it to

her and she was scanning them pumping them out and I'm just like look I'm like wow like this really does work um so

that was one way I was able to manage it to keep because you know 1040s will distract you from the big thing of tax

planning of what you try to provide to some of those High Network clients and also the business owners so sure yeah

they're like a necessary evil for all of us but it is what it is and there's really cool ways to identify the Tax

Strategies from the 1040 so I appreciate the 1040 for that side of things I suppose um now I saw on your LinkedIn

that you were involved and probably still are with a particular Community organization um around like minority

stuff what what are you doing with that so um it's prty Callahan Foundation I'm

a scholarship chair I'm the scholarship chair there I've been a scholarship chair for 11 to 12 years I want to say

wow so we ra yeah yeah so we raised money for any inner city students uh to

provide College support I love that I love that yeah so how many students have

y'all been able to help oh my gosh I think we're up to over 80 students now

wow that's amazing okay it means a lot to me um

because I went to I graduated to Southern University in B rou which is H HBCU and I was a first generation

graduate and when I went to school um I didn't know I hadn't even filled out a

financial aid the fast f I hadn't filled that out I just you know I thought it was for like high school you know you

put on the payment plan and you're in school I TR went all the way to Baton Rouge

and they didn't have any money to enroll so basically um you know I stopped the the

the vice Chancellor financial aid um for a couple weeks and just let them know

like hey I'm not going back to Chicago that's I have a degree and they figured out a way to help me get through college

and I'm like you know once I have the opportunity I'm GNA help any person who

who has a need to go to college who has the dreams so oh wow I love that I love that and I love like the courage that

you had to you know stalk them I stalk I semi stock people all the time I'm like

you're either with me in this idea we're going to innovate together or you know I'm going to do it without you whatever

but I mean that's what you got to do to like get your dreams to come true right you got to ask and you got to have the

courage so that's cool um yeah I I worked I just realized the other day

like I was thinking back I've worked full-time since I was like 18 and I started working when I was 15 at marbles

SLB scooping ice cream and so I'm about ready to retire Alton I'm not ready to

retire this is a lot but yeah I mean I I feel your pain I got a ton of student loan debt ended up

with like 80 to 90k student loan debt uh in college and then so lucky when I

started my CPA firm I was able to pay it off within one year it was amazing and

like I just felt like I was on top of the world with the opportunities that you could get in our

industry nice nice yeah congratulations man that's amazing to be able to do so

like that thank you thank you but just as cool you sold you sold the firm now

right yes I did I sold in 2022 I decided to create this you know tax planning software and now who knows what the heck

I'm doing so I just keep getting new ideas every day I love innovating and

it's so hard for me not to like run with all these ideas and but then I get burned out you know and so it's I have

to balance myself my husband keeps me so balanced I don't know does your wife help keep you

balanced yeah I mean my wife I mean I'm not sure where I'll be I mean you know

this entrepreneur roller coaster I mean you feel like you're the smartest person on earth one day and then the next day

you're like what what was I thinking when I did this

right yeah so yeah yeah my wife is is just

definitely um been supportive and just been the sugar in my coffee a say yeah

oh that's sweet I say that Mark like my rock I feel like he's like always just

been stable when I'm like kind of like all over the place you know and so it

just keeps things moving in like a positive direction the other day I asked him like Hey do you think I'm doing

better with like work life balance I think I'm doing better and he's like no you're not you just came up with this

new spin-off business idea and you're about to like waste a ton of time on it I was like

crap well you you need to give you the the real right exactly oh yeah I need

that transparency for sure uh yeah yeah so do you feel like you have balance

between like work and life and the kids are you like you said you're a chauffeur are you doing tons of sports or

what yes um I mean the two boys I'm very

involved with them I I coach their flag football teams um and then with the with

their travel baseball I couldn't really I had to stop coaching that because the younger one got

involved so now the family our family are split going each way but I wouldn't say balance I would say integrate Jack

there you go yeah you have to figure out how to integrate like and that comes

with communication between G spouses to know what's going on and like we you

know we have this technology of calendars and so I'm like hey I just put it on the calendar what's going on what

we got going on we check cross reference and my kids know what I do for Liv uh

they know what their mom does for1 and we we integrate this and you

know uh I make sure that we get um that balance you know as you

mentioned earlier about us you know the travels that we took we always have travels um just me and my wife we have

travels with the with the boys as well um and then one thing that I like that I

do here in my firm is I'm not sure if you ever been to Chicago or to winning City but in the

summertime it's fabulous downtown Lakefront yeah I when it's cold and

windy but not in the summertime but you know our our salesperson at tax on IQ Brandon he lives in Chicago so I I

should hook up yeah yeah we need to connect defin sure he's awesome yeah

yeah we don't work on Fridays that's good we don't work on Fridays uh only

during uh tax season we have Fridays we but after that may

through November we're closed on Friday um because I

remember you know going to this corporate job and I used to see people on the lakefront like riding bikes and

running and walk I'm like man that is so nice I wish I could do that in a week yeah and now that I have that I'm like

you know what you guys work hard doing the taxis and give me y you don't have

to work on Friday that's it and so I mean the client know it everyone know it

um and it's just good and healthy I mean I'm not sure if you read articles or

listen to podcast about how unhealthy busy season can get for um CPA and

accountants but it can get ridiculous and I just want everyone to be in a great space mentally and physically and

emotionally for sure yeah I just saw on LinkedIn um Logan graph posted like how

toxic is our industry when you are planning when you have children around busy season and I was like

guilty cuz you probably heard this story like I literally planned both of my children to have them in December so

that it wouldn't like be right in the middle of busy season um and I was like

oh this is genius right but then when he puts it like that you're like oh gosh this was awful like awful idea but hey

they still came out they're good did y'all do in planning like that

or was was your was your wife like like Hey we're gonna do our own thing here I think I had it in the back of my mind

both my boys are summer babies July 30th and August 30th so I'm like okay well it

does a fall between January and April so I'm good to go um but I mean it doesn't

matter that I once they're here at infants and toddlers I mean it never ends right yeah yeah they're GNA be sick

something's going to come out this yeah yeah for sure so tell me a

little bit more about um what you like to do with your family and how you

integrate the personal stuff with busy season what are like some tips that you've learned along the way of like how

to make sure you have good boundaries

um well one thing I did learn it uh the first course I think I took with you and

Chu is just is you know scheduling out your day yes um and putting out like

some hard times like I'm a person when it comes to in the morning I I like to do my deep work or deep thinking in so I

don't do like Zoom meetings in the morning into like after two o'clock um

yeah because before then it's just like I need to be flushing out something in my mind I need to be reviewing or

whatever it is that's kind of a model that I stick to when it comes to that um

so that's one boundery uh and then like now I I take the understanding of like

we only have our kids up until the 17 and so I'm just like this is the season

of my life that I'm just gonna have to take some knocks and spend as much time

with them as possible yeah and we can figure out the rest later when it comes to this business because I don't want

them uh hating me right yeah I'm starting to feel that pressure a lot too

like even way more so than when they were babies because yeah I you know my kids are a similar age seven and 10 and

they're forming their own personalities and they're doing their own thing and like last night I like wanted to hang

out and they wanted to do their own thing and I'm like oh my gosh have I lost them already like so but they're used to Mommy

working a lot or sleeping or you know all those crappy things they say about you on the Mother's Day cards like my

mom sleeps a lot or takes a lot of baths or works a lot you know and it's like very like damning but um yeah this is

the definitely I think the time to like make sure that you're connecting with them um okay so time blocking tell us

more about that like if people are like what does that really mean what does your what does your daily schedule look

like uh my daily schedule I get I try to get up about 5:30 uh in a

uh you know you know say a prayer check the phone it's

almost a habit of checking the phone out which is probably not a good thing go get a workout come back um drop the kit

drop the kids off get dressed get to the office um check emails you know for the

first 30 minutes um I have a hard cut off for that email oh good yeah yeah if

it's busy see I probably don't even check it to the end of the day because it'll throw me off what I had planned

for the day oh exactly yeah it always does right yeah yeah and so different

day like Mondays I do no meetings at all um because you know whatever took place

the prior week I need to plan or what I want to get accomplished for the week going into it um and then like during

busy season I have a day where I just pretty much do all reviews well I'm reviewing uh you know business tax

returns 1040s or profit and loss statements for our business clients or

something like that because I'm still in production um and then I use Callen Lee

a lot Callen Lee it has been very helpful and just and just making sure

that things are time blocked so you know if people just have like you know everyone has a quick question on inquiry

that's a pay uh that's a pay session like to get on my calendar you have to

pay for for sure yeah I saw on your website like you're like that letter

that you write at the bottom of your homepage it's like let's be real here you're like I'm gonna be direct I love

that because I love being direct too you're like taxes are hard but you're

overpaying and we can help you and I'm like yeah genius I love it so what would

you say like your competitive advantages are compared to like the firm down the road

saral so I mean one I still have I have kind of like a Comm a retail space where

people can walk in up the street and so when you when you look at those in the community those places are not even

opening around and when it comes to the m and pop shops they don't have this

person to act as a CFO or a trusted advisor to help them Reach their goals

all the quas quote unquote CPAs or tax planners are downtown in Chicago they're

in these high-rise buildings hard to access it's hard for clients to get

there in park or just even meet with them right so and they're probably servicing some big corporations that I'm

only Main Street so I'm here to provide those Mar pop companies to help them get

from you know 100,000 to a couple million along the way with saving uh

with saving taxes along the way to build wealth so that's one great competitive

advantage that I always pride myself off of and then when it comes to just TI 40s

I mean I see so much uh throughout the year you always we always get these

people where we need to clean up or fix something we're here um but they also

have a realization that you got to pay the price to get the proper Service as

well and so that's another a battle that I that I that I fight um but at the same

time I have no shame about it yeah well I mean do you get I'm sure you do

because we all do you probably get a lot of people that come in the door and say oh everybody's a tax planner I thought

you know my my old accountant was doing tax planning for me for $200 and you're like yeah no that wasn't tax planning so

there's a huge like education component to the value that you bring to the table versus you know anybody down the road I

was trying to come up with like a statistic around how many us taxpayers we have what like 170 million us

taxpayers how many are probably overpaying in taxes and I think it's

probably like 95% if not yeah I think it's over

90% uh that's overpaying in taxes yeah so and one thing in the last class that

was very F and was going over you know the high

earners of W2 because a l i have clients that are these tech jobs engineer

computer science and they pay well and they don't have like other side businesses or real estate or things of

that nature but going through tax plan IQ and looking at some things of taking

advantage of the employee benefits that they have nice and digging deep into there and seeing like oh wow they can

save about five grand a year times seven years yeah it's

$35,000 plus put into the S&P 500 it's like okay so we typically give

this away you know um and talk about it but like you know when you can actually

show this value and put it in front of Law's face and say this is the reason

why you know um the 1040 is $1,000 compared to right um 250 whatever right

um somebody was doing out of their house yeah for sure now those are great points um I'm trying to remember how we

originally met was it add engage or did you just find me online or how did how

did we originally get connected do you remember I I think I

just signed up for the course Jackie okay so just like we just saw each other on social or something okay

AFI I think the county eners yeah then

you probably got my email and uh you're a Guerilla marketer no no no no no no

well we did have a bad marketing hire and there were some too many emails that

went out at one point but not for you not for you not not back in the day yeah um so yes I I like your website

I like how direct it is and I like that you've got kind of a family business I think that's super cool um do you think

your kids might get into this or do you think they're going to do something totally

different I don't know um I know my oldest at one point um my wife was like

you know he's gonna leave that business to you and he's like bail tax all that is gonna be for me a it's like yeah yeah

so I don't know I mean I had my son you know Doris uh these different breaks and

things like that the oldest um he comes in here you know he fils documents whatever paper files we

have he does some shreddy nice uh preparing folders uh so I put him to

work I mean education is expensive and so I'm like hey you need to be your pero and you

need to pay your own tuition exactly yeah so you come on in here sir let's let's get the work well yeah I mean you

you can't just preach to the clients to hire their kids you got to do it yourself right I mean I do the same so

why don't you just in case people are listening that don't understand all the benefits of hiring your kids in your business you want to tell them a little

bit about that uh about the ins and outs of it or

like what are all the benefits like why why should someone hire their kid what all can they do with that like how does it help

them oh man it's so there's so many tremendous things um so from a dollar

standpoint you know uh you you can hire your kid up to I mean you can pay them

what you want a reasonable salary so let's just say that I know on social media everything else everyone goes for

the $13,000 for the standard deduction that's great and all you would get that

deduction and it's actually a tax savings to whatever your tax bracket is

um and then from a federal standpoint they won't owe any federal federal taxes but it depends on our state UN in if you

have to pay state taxes because here in Illinois that thresholds over 4800 so

once I go beyond that my son does have kind of have a state tax liability okay

um which is small bet at the same time while you're

saving um on your tax bill you could be saving for their retirement you can

start a rough for a rough aough IRA or tradition IRA and put that money in

there for themselves if you have private if your child is in private school you

don't get that great deduction as you should praying that out personally so if the child's getting paid have them pay

their own tuition have them pay for their own travel baseball feeds anyone

who has a child that plays travel baseball knows how much power expensive it is right if they could be an employee

and pay for it wouldn't that be great yeah that's that's that's a that's a pitch that I put there and then you know

as they get older it can teach them um some Financial discipline you know U

let's not give these kids everything let's teach them some Financial education along the way so that's what I

like about it do you worry that like your kids you know you said you're kind

of like first generation college is that right is that what you said yeah okay

are you worried that like your kids aren't going to ever really feel the pain pain of like not having money or

like stuff like that how do you like deal with that I'm worried about that

myself yeah me and my wife we had these conversations about like are they gonna have the same grit that we had yeah you

know we both came from humble beginnings um are they going to appreciate going through uh the difficult times of the

humble and choices to get to where they are and appreciate um the F of things in lot in life you know my both my children

you know especially my oldest he's 10 he's only living in one house by the time I was 10 I I mean we probably moved

at least like seven times um okay yeah that's a good point I hadn't thought about that aspect of it yeah yeah so

just they're living in totally different worlds but you know we we have discussions about it about making wise

decisions with money instead of saying like no I don't have any money for that

I said you know that's not a good reason to to to um make that purchase and you

know I watch CNBC with them and I the ticker is going across I'm like what

what is that he's like oh Roblox went up $2 today I'm like all right great

job okay okay cool oh wow I love that you know if there was a show that I

don't know if anyone else would be interested in this but I love like seeing the intricacies of like how we

interact with our kids how people do their holidays different like the little things about it you know like I would

have never thought to watch CNBC with my kids they would like be very upset with me but that's probably a problem in

itself because I've spoiled it so yeah we got I gota get they're not

watching full episodes like I have it on every morning when I put the breakfast for obviously you know I try to limit

the iPad so before they eat and all the good stuff you know let's watch this for a few minutes before you get into this

app or whatever else device that they're about to get into and you know they you

know by default they just you know if they're not paying attention it's in their ear and background noise or

something yeah Cramer or somebody yeah okay so before we kind of wrap up I

wanted to talk a little bit about what how you feel like the economy is going because I hear like the randomst things

from being in industry and just people that I mean on the street um about

there's like it seems like there's a lot of like midmarket kind of layoffs right now um and it's really still hard to

find people and so I don't really know what to make of it what do you think what do you

seeing um I I'm hearing some Rance about that um one thing I am seeing is margins

are getting tighter with some of my clients um so they're just figuring out how to operate more efficiently and

making wiser decisions because I think uh you know as things came out of Co

that everyone so cash flush and B business went up so fast that they

really wasn't paying attention and like now inflation with salaries and things of that nature has made it very

important that you watch uh what you're doing from a financial standpoint so we'll see I mean as a as a

you know in our industry I think you know our we we're gonna be good yeah oh

yeah Way It Go um as long as there's the election every four years we're going to be in business because the code is g to

change yeah um if business is GNA up or down people are going to seek us out for

advice you know business is up how can I save them my taxes business is down what

what's going on with my numbers and it you know from a profit from a revenue standpoint

to an ex expense standpoint that I need to consider so either way go we still

will be there to to provide value you know um the biggest thing for me I

always ask uh watch the interest rates oh okay just to see so yeah yeah what

are interest rates like these days Mr CNBC they're like 7% which is high so

it's like you know being me and the wife we we we thought about you know getting

new house or building a new house it's like you know we refinance in 2021 at

2.8 like uh I don't think we really want to give that up for s% like exactly you

know and I think that's you know I think that's the sentiment Across the Nation U

when it comes to that so yeah I mean home values are soaring like our home value I think doubled here in South Lake

Texas but of course our real estate taxes are also doubling um so you're like do I sell like make

some money off of that but then everything else is so pricey plus the new interest rate it just it doesn't

seem to make a whole lot of sense um but I mean people that have lived a lot

longer than us say that interest rates were way higher than 8 n% back in like the 80s or something right like I think

they got up to like 15% and they thought that was normal we just got spoiled with

like 2 3% right but yeah we we did um

yeah I I don't want to give that Mor that mortgage rate up I mean I did to I did a whole matric of how much interest

I would paid okay and I'm just like no I'm like this now that's a good

accountant right there see y'all anyone watching listening this is a good accountant right here he's got his

Matrix awesome all right well is there anything else that you wanted to discuss today or share before we wrap

up uh well yeah um we talked about it in

class um we're I just purchased a business location um is nearby so we'll

be moving in the early fall yeah um it's a great location uh it's a real estate

in tax play yeah so let me say that uh so it's a commercial space where I'll be able to put the office in because I'm

reading now and then also I have residential units on top where where they basically be covering the mortgage

and we have an additional cash flow so that helps with the overhead and then also we'll be in a position to be able

to C do with cost segregation to save some money on taxes so that's the big thing that we got going on I can't wait

to uh show that to um my clients and new potential customers so that's what's big

that's going on how about you Jackie because I know you're busy how do you balance all this you know I we're just

chugging along we it's now our busy season because tax people are like

looking into planning now we just had a virtual Summit were you did you able to were you able to hop onto that or no no

that's that was my f I'm like Jackie doing this summon of on Friday yeah like the day in Chicago I'm just like as much

as I want to yeah you gotta take advantage of the nice weather I get it I get it but yeah we had over a thousand

people register for the summit which was really exciting because you know just

the the feeling that like people are ready and willing to dive into tax planning and really give it their all

for their clients is just exhilarating so um we've got so many changes coming

in the software it's crazy like automations and whatnot and then of course I have all these spin-off ideas

but I'm going to just try to keep it to myself because I've got like six speaking events in the next two weeks

that I need to plan for are you going to engage this will come out after engage but are you what conferences are you

do I don't have anything F oh look at you f only thing I got planned is Pasa I'm a

m of Pasa so okay yeah yeah yeah so you you've been in Pasa for a few years now

is that right okay yeah what would you if accountants are listening like how would

you describe Pasa and like the benefits it brings to the table um paswa has been awesome they're

very open went was sharing ideas of the how tos

right so um you know those very unique

questions of how to make sure you meet production from an accountant just there have been very very open and sharing

those ideas it is you know different organizations I've been in that talk

about what they're doing but they may not show you how or tell you how and so

that's one thing about has has been very helpful for me from that standpoint um

so you know I I I spent a lot of money in professional development I don't have no shame in that yeah uh I went from

initially I read uh the EMF with Daren root and that jar root works and that

kind of helped my mind ship and then I took the coaching course of you and Chu and that pretty much gave me like this

is whatever you're thinking in your mind this is how you do it when it comes to

you know emails with DARS and it how to sell um blocking off on your calendar

and things of that nature how to carry yourself how to conduct yourself when it comes to that um then pasas like you

know from a big ongoing Revenue servicing standpoint they've been

they've been very open with that and then to tie all in with tax plan IQ is just been you know I just see the skies

to Ling it from this point and it's just been great oh that's awesome I love it yeah it's it's been such a pleasure to

kind of watch you growing in that in your path um in the advisory side of things um it's always fun when you know

we get to work together for many years like this um so hopefully I continue to

to get to be a little piece of your journey because you have an amazing practice you have an amazing family

family you're an awesome person and you know so it's a blessing to be a part of your life for sure thank you same same

to you I appreciate you Jack thank you thank you all right well we're gonna wrap up for today Alton how do people

contact you if they have a question or want to reach out or connect with you oh they can always go to my website

which is ww. bx.com we're on um on the

socials uh Instagram Facebook Bell tax accountants uh they can always call the

office I got a 855 number it's 855 tax Bell oh yes 855 829 2355 so U I got that

brand 855 tax B so there's numerous ways to reach out to us social media phone

call website don't hesitate uh if there's something that we can't help you

with uh we can direct you to that person but we be sure to serice isue when it comes to income tax it is tax planning

accounting and bookkeeping love it the place to be yep awesome all right cool

well thanks everybody for watching or listening today we appreciate you and have a great day bye for now bye have a

good one thank you for listening to the coner

CPA hosted by tax plan IQ we believe that every person has a unique neat

message that can positively impact the world if you are a successful accounting firm owner or influencer who would like

to be on this program please visit Jackie Meer cpa.com j a c k i m ye R

cpa.com to apply please share this on social media and rate us so we can

continue our good work join our Facebook group called accounting firm influencers

or connect with me on most platforms under Jackie CPA thanks for being

accountable to Transforming Our industry today

48 - Alton Bell: His Family's Success Story in Entrepreneurship and Accounting Firm Growth

alton@bell-tax.com

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