Adam Williams: Maximizing Tax Strategy For Law Firms

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Adam Williams discuss:

  • Planning taxes proactively
  • Exploring creative tax strategies
  • Building a professional team
  • Implementing actionable year-end steps

Key Takeaways:

  • Most law firms wait until filing to address taxes, missing savings opportunities. Working with a tax strategist year-round aligns decisions with long-term goals. Proactive planning uncovers ways to reduce liabilities and strengthen financial outcomes.
  • Techniques like the Augusta rule, hiring family members, and royalty setups save money. Advanced structures such as captive insurance can provide additional tax benefits. Knowing these options allows law firms to tailor strategies to their unique situation.
  • Successful tax and business strategies require bookkeepers, advisors, and strategists. Delegating responsibilities reduces personal burden while improving firm performance. A strong team empowers owners to focus on growth and long-term success.
  • Year-end is ideal for accelerating deductions and making tax-advantaged purchases. Prepaying vendors or investing in marketing can reduce taxable income efficiently. Evaluating current practices ensures every opportunity for savings is captured.

“If they don’t bring you ideas throughout the year, you don’t have a tax strategist. You have a tax preparer.” —  Adam Williams

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About Adam Williams: Adam started this business out of frustration with accountants who congratulated him for having a large tax bill.

As a serial entrepreneur, Adam is inspired by entrepreneurship and small business, direct response marketing, non-traditional and unexpected solutions, mindset & personal development, helping create businesses that serve the owners, and high-performance driving.

Adam received his undergraduate degree in Business from Penn State Behrend and his MBA and J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. A Cathedral Prep graduate and active member of the community, Adam has served on the Board of Directors for the Erie County Bar Association, Lakeshore Community Services, the Innovation Collaborative, and the Erie Art Museum. He was named to the 2013 Erie Reader 40 Under 40, and has also been listed as a Pennsylvania Super Lawyers Rising Star in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.

Connect with Adam Williams:

Website: https://www.pennywise.tax/

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Instagram: @fretzinsteve

Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.

Website: Fretzin.com

Email: [email protected]

Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!

YouTube: Steve Fretzin

Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Steve Fretzin  [00:00]

Attention, everybody, if billing hours is your entire identity and business development feels optional, you may want to hit pause what follows might unlock clarity opportunity and the power to choose your own path. Hey everybody. Steve Fretzin Here, just having a little fun. Let’s do this. Enjoy the show.

 

Narrator  [00:22]

You’re listening to be that lawyer. Life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.

 

Steve Fretzin  [00:45]

Hey everybody. Steve Fretzin, here and welcome back to the be that lawyer podcast. Just so happy that you’re with us today. If you’re new to the show, you know, this is a show about helping you be that lawyer confident, organized in a skilled Rainmaker, 560 I want to say, in just under six years. So I don’t know if you would agree with that’s a pretty good tear. Adam, is that a good or reasonable number as the numbers guy?

 

Adam Williams  [01:07]

You know what? I recorded my 70th podcast this morning, and I was impressed by that.

 

Steve Fretzin  [01:12]

So yeah go all right, I got to close the gap. How many are you putting out? Like, a month? Do one a week. One a week. Okay, I was doing one a week, and what was happening was I have like, three months of like podcast done, I’d be like, oh Adam, I’m gonna have you on the show. And, you know, we’re in November, and it’ll come out in April. And you’d be like, April, like, I want to promote something now, or whatever. I was like, Okay, I have to do something about that. So, but it turned out great, because we’re just cranking out a tremendous amount of content, but really, really good quality. Okay, so don’t screw it up. For me, I’m on a good roll. All right, Adam. All right, you get it? I tease. I like to tease. Speaking of teasing, let’s start off with our quote of the show, because you’ve got an interesting one. This is not a famous quote by anyone other than the famous Adam Williams, you, and that is, defund the IRS. I would say, just keep them away from me, right? That’s kind of the story. But welcome to the show. And then, why is that? Your quote of the show?

 

Adam Williams  [02:07]

You know, it’s interesting, because I was telling you before we started, my assistant helped me prepare the questions before this one, and that is a battle in my household, because I own the business with my wife, who wants to take a different approach to our marketing, but mine is somewhat libertarian and anti government. We are on a mission in our business to help our clients save $100 million on their taxes, and that is the budget of the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, which is where we live, Rust Belt dying town. And we think it’s important to put that money back in the hands of business owners, of entrepreneurs, a lot of lawyers. The reality is that is like point 00, 1% of what the IRS brings in in a year. So lawyers. The only people I’ve ever heard use this phrase are lawyers. We are tilting at windmills, which is a Don Quixote quote, but yeah, it’s important to me, because I think the money is better spent by entrepreneurs and business owners than it is owners than it is by the government.

 

Steve Fretzin  [03:04]

Yeah. Well, the problem is government, obviously, like a lot of people, spend more money than they have, right? There’s a reason that we’re, you know, what is it? 32 trillion or 29 children or trillion into debt, 37 trillion. Oh, I was, well, 37 was that all? And I got a jar of pennies, maybe I can help.

 

Adam Williams  [03:22]

All right, yeah, you’re just like normal people, the government overspends, except with several zeros. Yeah, right, right. So yeah, we 37 trillion in debt. Our budget this year is 7 trillion, but we will collect in revenue 5 trillion. So you don’t need to be a numbers person to understand that budget isn’t very sustainable for long.

 

Steve Fretzin  [03:40]

Well, and so we want to be sort of sympathetic to, you know, the needs of, you know, the masses and the people. But also we want to be careful about how we spend money, how we save money, and how we protect our money, to not give more to the government than they should be getting. So I think, you know, I think that’s an area that we don’t talk about on the show enough, but I think we’re going to be taking a pretty heavy dive into it today with your help. So let me just introduce you to everybody that is. You’re Adam Williams, co founder of Pennywise tax strategies. Catch us up on how you came to be and why you’re going to eventually defund the IRS for us all.

 

Adam Williams  [04:16]

Yeah. So I am a lawyer. I’m a licensed attorney. I started my career coming out of law school the Big Four accounting firm. We were doing tax strategies for mega corporations. We would go save single clients $100 million in a year. And it was like, thanks. Now we’re going to bid this workout for next year. Went through the progression. I clerked for a judge for a little while. Started my own practice as part of another firm, where I shared office space with some guys and really through the pandemic, grew like crazy, helping businesses with all of the new programs that came out. So our law firm, Rust Belt business law has made it on the Inc 5000 list as one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the country. My wife is a CPA, and she’s worked. In our firm since 2019 and one of the things that we learned as our law firm grew is that we were having the same problem that a lot of our clients were having, where we’d have a good year and next year would even be even better, and the year after that would be better than that. Yet, every year, we’d sit down with our accountant in the first quarter, usually right before April 15, and he’d fill out a tax return and say, here’s how much you made, here’s how much you owe. Congratulations. This is what it means to be successful. And our clients were having the same experience, and we’re all sitting there go, going, Okay, I owe how much, but I don’t have that in the bank, yeah.

 

Steve Fretzin  [05:36]

By the way, like the worst feeling in the world is that last minute CPA conversation of, here’s what you need to come up with, like, the day of.

 

Adam Williams  [05:45]

And that’s it, right? So, like, true entrepreneurs, my wife and I had we got kicked in the face year after year after year, and said, There’s got to be a better way. And we didn’t invent the concept of tax strategy, and we didn’t invent it for small businesses, but we said, we’re going to go and do this because we’ve been working with our clients in their financials, helping them with all these other programs, these tax credits and these loans and things that are out there. So let’s go help people with this. And it’s super fulfilling. We’re having a lot of fun doing it. And unlike those corporations where we’d get them $100 million we save a client 30 grand, 50 grand, 70 grand. We have some that have saved seven figures. They’re grateful. They love. They want to invite us to their kids weddings, and that, that’s the part that, that we love is we’re helping. I mean, we’re mom and pops, right? And we, we love helping them.

 

Steve Fretzin  [06:29]

You know? I get that. And there’s, again, I think there’s a level of service that many CPAs don’t seem to understand, like there’s one thing about putting the numbers through, like, turn in your numbers. Fill this out. Let’s get it through. But they’re not like, how are they really stepping up and adding value and trying to help people actually figure out, you know, the strategy. So let’s take a step back to take a step forward. I mean, lawyers are not unique in that they struggle with the numbers and they struggle with, you know, accounting and just getting all the numbers to match. I mean, do you see that, not only being in law, but also with the lawyers and people at the firms that you may be helping?

 

Adam Williams  [07:08]

I see that in my own household, I have a business degree, I have an MBA. I’ve taken intro to accounting three different times. I then decided to marry a CPA solution for me. So yeah, we’re still as and I know that your listeners tend to be more entrepreneurial, whether they have their own firm or if they work for a bigger firm. They understand the value of rainmaking and developing these relationships. But still, at the end of the day, it’s really ingrained in us that this is a profession and it’s not a business as much. So we hide out from our numbers, and we don’t look at them, and we use the excuse that I just don’t know them and I don’t understand them. And the value of working with someone like you as a coach is you can help show them that they’re not scary. And in fact, the more that you look at this stuff better your life is, the better you sleep at night. So yeah, I mean, it’s not just lawyers. Small businesses everywhere have the same problem, because all business owners start out as those technicians. I’m a really good baker, so I’m going to go set up a bakery. I make great coffee. I’m going to start a coffee shop. I’m really good at mowing grass. I’m going to start a landscaping business. We practice law. We become very good lawyers, but nobody ever taught us how to run a business until it’s too late for many.

 

Steve Fretzin  [08:24]

Well, they didn’t teach me. This in law school has been said, you know, ad nauseum, you know, by every lawyer, 100,000 times. So I get it, and it’s unfortunate. The reality, though, is that we’re thrust into these businesses. I know, for me, day one, I hired a bookkeeper. Like, I didn’t waste any time. I’m like, I don’t want to send an invoice. I don’t want to deal with this stuff. I need someone. I could read a P L, a balance sheet, like I had the business skills going in to do the basics. But ultimately, I think it’s so important to bring in people to help you in those areas that we just don’t know. Because again, you know, bakers don’t know the business side, and they know how to make the cookie, and that’s about it. So what should lawyers be thinking about when they’re starting to realize that the numbers are a huge part of their success, and how they invest and how they save and how they, you know, balance things is critical to their success, and it could really be, you know, a reason why things would blow up. What? How are you meeting with them? And where does it all start for us? 

 

Adam Williams  [09:20]

It starts at the end of what are your goals and what do you want to do? Okay, and we will help get you there in a tax advantageous way. We don’t want our clients to spend money just to save money on their taxes. We don’t want them to do stuff that isn’t going to help them fulfill the reasons why their firm exists in the first place. We want to make good money. We want to build wealth. Many of us would like to retire someday. We want to raise families. We want to do cool activities. We want to support our families. And there’s ways to do all of that, using the tax code to your advantage. So let’s go and do it right. I have a race car that Uncle Sam helped me pay for. Not all of our clients want to go. Out and buy race cars, right? But if you want to take vacations, if you want to have the vacation house, if you want to grow your team, if you want to invest in new technology or other businesses, there’s ways to do that that can put a lot of extra money in your pocket just by being proactive on the tax side of things.

 

Steve Fretzin  [10:16]

Well, let’s but let’s take the deep dive then. So, so without giving away too much of the secret sauce. What are a few ways that you have helped businesses plan and save and do and be constructive in their tax planning so that they were able to do the things you just mentioned?

 

Adam Williams  [10:33]

Yeah, so I’m going to tell you what I think is a good story, and it teaches a it’s an example of the type of thing that we can do. This is not a super sexy example that it’s going to save you a ton of money, but it’s a good indication of, oh, this is something I can actually do. So I go on a lot of podcasts, do a lot of speaking, and love talking about the Augusta rule. And this was invented because people were renting out their homes in Augusta, Georgia for the Masters golf tournament, and the government said, Hey, you’re making a bunch of money renting your home. We want our piece of that. And these homeowners are saying, well, wait a minute, we incur expenses to do this, to fix it up and market it and stage it and get it ready, but we’re not a real business, so you don’t let us take those deductions. So the government created a rule, the Augusta rule, or the Eisenhower rule, that says you can rent your home for up to 14 days per year and not pay tax on it. Well, there’s a bunch of people sitting there going, well, I don’t want to rent my house. I don’t want weird people drooling on my pillows and going through my drawers. But if you have your entity set up in the proper way, you can rent your home to your business. So we do client events, we do team events, we do strategic planning. We shoot marketing content, and our home is the venue for that, and we send an invoice to our business, and our business pays us. This is money that we were taken out of the business anyway, right? But now we’re doing it in a way that we don’t pay tax on. It requires planning. You can’t do this going backwards. You’re going to select the days, you’re going to research reasonable rates to charge, you’re going to create the invoice, you’re going to write the check, you’re going to create the paper trade. Create the paper trail, or build the file. And if you do that 10 days a year, at 1000 1500 bucks a pop. I mean, you can save a few $1,000 over the course of the year. That’s not going to get me out of bed, but it’s one example of like, it’s money you were taken out already. So let’s do it in a way that the tax code allows you to do that. Okay?

 

Steve Fretzin  [12:21]

No, I love that. I love that. And what should people be thinking about in their current accountant and questions that they should be asking to, you know, the end, end of the year planning for, you know, wrapping up 2025 and moving into 2026 I mean, most people just meet with their accountant. The accountant says, is what I need. They say, Sure, they give it to them, and it’s kind of over, and then here’s what you got to pay. And like, there’s but there’s questions that should be asked that are going to help. Maybe, do have a better end of the year? 

 

Adam Williams  [12:49]

Every lawyer has had this experience. You’re at a cocktail party or Thanksgiving dinner or whatever it is, and somebody comes up to you and says, Can you help me with my traffic ticket, and they say, No, I’m like, a business transactions attorney that does mergers and acquisitions. I can’t help you with that. Or, hey, my like, how much weed can I carry in my trunk without getting arrested? And it’s like, I’m a personal injury attorney. I have no idea. Right? With accountants, you have to understand that there’s more than one type of accountant. So yes, you have your bookkeeper. This is the person in your QuickBooks doing your debits and credits and your journal entries and preparing your financial statements. But you’ve also got maybe a payroll company. You’ve got your tax preparer who’s looking backwards and putting those numbers on the form. Maybe you have some sort of managerial accountant, like a CFO, who’s doing your projections and your budget. So get really clear with what your job description is for your accountant, to make sure the role is being filled in every business. All of those roles are being filled. Somebody’s the bookkeeper, somebody’s the financial accountant, somebody is the managerial accountant, oftentimes it’s the business owner. But there’s one role that isn’t getting filled unless you’ve proactively put someone and intentionally put someone into that position, and that’s the tax strategist. So here’s if you’ve got your tax preparer and you’ve taken ideas to them that you’ve seen on the internet or you’ve read about, or other people have told you about, and they shoot them down. You don’t have a tax strategist. If they don’t bring you ideas throughout the year, you don’t have a tax strategist. You have a tax preparer. So you need to ask for it. You need to be meeting throughout the year. You need to be looking forwards and not backwards. We have a couple of law firm clients. One of them is going to buy another business, and it’s going to close by December 31 we’re very involved in that transaction to make sure that it’s done the right way. We have another client who is creating an app for her law firm and investing very heavily in this, so we need to make sure by the end of the year we’ve documented this properly so that she can get the research and development tax credit, which is going to be a huge chunk. Of money for her. If you wait until after December 31 to go and have those conversations with your accountant, you’re missing out. So it’s forward looking, it’s proactive, it’s meeting throughout the year, and it’s helping you. It’s helping to understand your goals so that they can be done in a tax advantageous way. And that relationship is lacking with most tax preparers. It’s a very broken industry. Depending on the mood I’m in, I either get really angry at tax preparers and blame them and say they’re ruining your life, or I just accept the fact that you know what. This is, the way the industry is built. Business owners dump that shoebox full of receipts on the tax preparer. The tax preparer works 150 hours a week till that April 15 deadline, and then they go to Mexico for two weeks because they’re completely worn out, and they’re getting ready to do it again six months later for the extension deadline.

 

Steve Fretzin  [15:49]

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Adam Williams  [18:23]

Could be huge, yeah, and again, if you plan it properly, it can be even more significant. Okay, so, yes, you’re right that every business has a tax preparer. It could be that business owner sitting there on the Turbo Tax, you know, app around tax filing season. Somebody fills that role. But I know you’re in Chicago. You’re clearly a Bulls fan with the jersey hanging there. You Blackhawks fan? No, but I heard they’re doing well, okay, so I’m a hockey fan, but doesn’t pick your sport, hockey, soccer, whatever you want. You’re playing right now without a goalie. Yeah. So what that? We’re not going to come in and replace your whole team. We want to work with the rest of your team to make sure that everything’s going in the same direction, and somebody’s there calling the shots on we love love working with businesses that have good bookkeeping. We love working with businesses that have fractional CFOs. We love working with financial advisors, because we can bring that one additional element. I’m fighting with a financial advisor right now because he doesn’t want his client to hire us. So I said, Do you want an extra $100,000 a year to manage for this client or not? Because I can get it to you by April 15. Well, sure. He was worried I was going to come in and throw we not me. I don’t work with the clients. But he was worried that we were going to come in and disrupt the whole financial plan. No, you want to start a new business, you want to launch an app, you want to create a course. We’re going to do it with you, with your team, not replace the team. We’re just another spot that’s getting filled on the bench.

 

Steve Fretzin  [19:53]

Yeah, so you know there’s law firm owners listening right now that are nodding their heads and going, Oh my god. And whatever. But like, what are the strategies available for law firm owners that might be different than traditional businesses?

 

Adam Williams  [20:06]

Ooh, that’s a good question.

 

Steve Fretzin  [20:09]

They are a little different, right? I mean, in the way that.

 

Adam Williams  [20:12]

Yeah so we can get from pretty straightforward and clear cut to much more complex. So let me start with a straightforward one. This is going to be more applicable to our small firms. You know, you try and do this in a 50 attorney firm with 20 partners, it’s going to be a challenge. But in our business, we have two children. One of them works in the business. He’s 14 years old. We have determined a reasonable rate to pay him, and he comes into the office, and he does thank you notes. He does mailing, he organizes files. He does our shredding, he does our photocopying, and we pay him a paycheck for that. Well, the standard deduction this year is somewhere north of $15,000 I think it’s 15,700 so we can pay him up to $15,700 this year, and he doesn’t pay income tax on it. Again, this is money I was taking out of my firm anyway, and I was going to do it at a much higher tax rate, because I make a whole bunch of money. Bunch of money, but now I get it into his hands at a 0% tax rate by paying 15 grand over the year. That might save me $5,000 and he’s contributing to the business. He’s learning how to work in a professional environment, and he’s getting a sense of fulfillment, of earning income. Now we take a big chunk of that to pay his private school tuition, but whatever.

 

Steve Fretzin  [21:20]

I was gonna say that can go right into a 529 too.

 

Adam Williams  [21:23]

Potentially 529 you can also double dip with an IRA. So you could pay a kid up to 22,000 Oh, my God, tax defer a big chunk of that. You take a 14 year old kid and put seven grand a year into an IRA. They’re millionaires by the time they’re our age, right? So little complex. You got to pay them a reasonable rate. You can’t just people want to get in and max out the 15 seven or the 22,000 don’t do that. You got to pay them a reasonable rate. But that’s a pretty straightforward one. Now let’s go a little more complex, a big fear. We work with a lot of single shareholder law firm owners, and I’m going to use the example with husband and wife. But interchange this however, you need to to make it work for you in our business, I was the attorney. My wife worked in the firm, but if I died, she’s not a licensed attorney. That’s problematic for our household income. So you could, as an example, set up some sort of marketing company that holds the intellectual property for your firm that pays royalt or receives royalties from the law firm for the marketing. So now there’s a source of income that she can earn as a non attorney from our business that protects her a little bit if something happens to me. Of course, we still have insurance and life insurance and disability insurance and things like that. So we can create this new entity and pull some income out of the law firm. We have done this with clients maybe that have operations in multiple states, or if they primarily live and work in a high income state, but they’ve got a residence somewhere else as well, we can move in come from California to Montana, and save them a whole bunch on their state taxes. Now this is way more complex. You need to be a firm of a big enough size to make this worthwhile, another really crazy one, and our PI lawyers love this because they understand how insurance works. We’re talking big firms, right? People making seven figures and up, probably a captive insurance company. You can create your own insurance company, and there’s rules and regulations and laws that you have to follow, but you could create a second layer of professional liability insurance. Or you could create a key man insurance policy. I pay premiums to that insurance company that are a deduction to my firm. And what do insurance companies do with premiums? They invest them, and then they pay dividends. So you can be you can pull this expense out of your firm, put it into a captive insurance company. It’s taken the 23,000 or whatever you can put into your 401, K every year, and pulling the lid off of that in the same idea, it’s wealth creation. It is tax deferral, and can really set up future generations for success as well. So, I mean, that’s like a really complex strategy.

 

Steve Fretzin  [23:59]

But it’s just, it’s interesting stuff that people, again, just left to their own devices, are not going to think of, and they’re not going to break, you know. But I, you know, I’m just sitting here kind of, you know, my brain is spinning because I’m, you know, I don’t, I feel like I’m doing I’m like, a professional saver, by the way, like, just to share, like, I max out everything I can max out every year, and that’s great. And then after that, I still have to deal with, you know, paying Uncle Sam, and I’m, do I invest? I mean, now it’s the end of the year, right? So you’ve got, you know, a big tax bill coming. I you know, do I invest in marketing? Do I invest in this community? Do I invest? Do I prepay? You know, before the end of the year, like, things that you would recommend people do.

 

Adam Williams  [24:43]

Yeah, don’t go out and buy more pencils and laptops. Don’t buy stuff. Yeah, you can do it, right? You’re gonna need those pens and papers anyway, fine, but we’re tripping over dollars to pick up those pennies. Yeah, there’s that you want a great strategy. There’s still a little bit of time left this year to do it. Go and buy a short term. Term rental. It’s different from buying a typical like residential real estate investment, but buy something that you put on Airbnb this year with the one big, beautiful Bill act, it brought back bonus depreciation. You can buy, for example, a million dollar piece of property and rent it out on Airbnb, and it’s a it can be a good investment if done properly, right, right? You get the cash flow out of it. But if you go out and do that, let’s say you put 10% down right, 100 grand, maybe put 20% down 200 grand, whatever you’re going to finance the rest of it. But if you do what’s called a cost segregation study, and you take advantage of bonus depreciation, and I hate just throwing these phrases out there, but we’re limited on time. We have clients that will buy a million dollar property and put the down payment down, maybe make one or two payments and get $270,000 of tax savings off of that in year one. That’s a killer investment, right? And by the way, you have a vacation house that you can use when you want to, so buy it in somewhere that you really like, and it’s a good investment, and can be a really effective strategy. So now, you don’t want to be in the hospitality business running an Airbnb. You don’t want to buy a vacation house, fine, but it’s another example of, all right, maybe this is something that I should consider, because it’s something that I’m really interested in well. 

 

Steve Fretzin  [26:13]

And again, I’m thinking about, like, marketing, right? Like I’m making an investment in my business through, you know, paying for some marketing, paying for, you know, a consultant to come in and help me set up the community. Things that I’m going to do, but I’ll do it this year, you know, even if they start next year, I’ll do it this year just to give them the money to set up next year, just to have that investment, that tax and that tax break.

 

Adam Williams  [26:35]

So, yeah, I mean, generally speaking, you want to accelerate your deductions. So yeah, if you can prepay a vendor, sure go for it. But if that’s what you’re scrambling to do at the end of the year, you may be leaving other big opportunities on the table.

 

Steve Fretzin  [26:47]

Yeah, that’s always the concern. Well, really great. So all this really great information, really creative ways and strategies, and I think you’re really demonstrating your value as a strategist. That being said, What’s Adam’s big mistake.

 

Adam Williams  [27:01]

Oh, man, that’s such a great question. I am huge on failure, like that. It is something that I speak about. Amazing at failing. I am, and that’s the whole point. So I struggle with this, because it’s like every time I screw something up, I call it a deposit in the tuition account. I would say I did not hire soon enough. I think, like, my biggest mistakes are, I do a thing and it’s like, Wow, I’m so glad I did that. I should have done it sooner. And I think for me, it’s growing the team I got along with one or two employees for the first seven or eight years of my practice. We’re somewhere around 20 right now, and life is better, the business is better, the clients are better served because I’m doing the things that I’m really good at. Yeah? So I think that’s the biggest thing, is it’s so scary. You know, the the first employee that I had where she was going back to school shopping, and it’s like her kids backpacks and boots are my responsibility. Now, it’s scary. It’s motivating too. But, yeah, once you can get over that. So yeah, that was, I would say that’s my biggest mistake, is not growing a team of really, really good people soon enough.

 

Steve Fretzin  [28:04]

Yeah, I think that’s just, yeah, the fact that we hold on to bookkeeping, we hold on to marketing, we hold on to, you know, how we delegate work down and lawyers, you know, just have this attitude of, I’ll just do it myself. It’s just easier to do it myself, or, you know, not the way to go. And by the way, great segue into one of our wonderful sponsors, hire paralegals.com. Also connected with lad hire. So again, if you’re looking for VAs to help your business and delegate down, you know that’s what you want to do, of course, rankings, IO, we mentioned personal injury attorneys. They are the the key player in helping personal injury, uh, attorneys around the country grow and law her podcast, Sonia out there, crushing it for women. Adam, amazing stuff. I know there’s going to be people that are going to want to talk to you, because they’re, we’re nearing the end of the year. They have no tax strategy at all. They’re just going along like every year else, and there’s money on the table. What are the best ways for them to reach you?

 

Adam Williams  [29:00]

Yeah. So our company’s website is Pennywise, dot tax. I am on just about every social media platform as the real Adam Williams. That’s where the entertaining content is not on the business stuff. Okay, so, yeah, I don’t hide out. I try to be pretty easy to find. So yeah, find me. Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, you name it.

 

Steve Fretzin  [29:17]

And we got it all in the show notes as well, everybody. So you don’t have to look too hard. Thanks so much. Man, this was great. I knew when, when we met initially and chatted, that this was going to be, you know, engaging for people. And I think it’s a topic that can be incredibly dry, but when we start thinking about strategy, and we start thinking about saving money and putting more in, you know, in our pockets, it starts to not be so dry. It starts to get kind of greasy and exciting. So try. Yeah, thanks, man. I appreciate you. Appreciate you coming on the show. Love it. Thank you. Yeah, awesome, awesome. Thank you everybody for hanging out. Be that lawyer for another 30 minutes of action packed great content. Hopefully you guys have a bunch of questions and things that you’re gonna be either talking to your CPA about, or you’re gonna be talking to Adam one or two or both. But look, we’re just here to help you live your best lawyer’s life. And in order to do that, to be that successful, you have to be that lawyer. Take care, everybody. Be safe, be well. We’ll talk again soon.

 

Narrator  [30:14]

Thanks for listening to be that loyal, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fredson.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends for more information and important links about today’s episode. Check out today’s show notes.