Mark Kohler and Ben Fraser discuss tax strategies, asset protection, and the political landscape’s impact on small businesses. They also touch on efficient business structures like the S corporation, the importance of revocable living trusts in estate planning, and the power of Roth IRAs for building tax-free wealth. Mark is the founder and board member at Direct IRA and Senior Partner at KKOS Lawyers.
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Transcription
The Secret of the Wealthy: Organization and Planning
Mark Kohler: This is the secret Ben that you asked what do the wealthy do? They’re organized. They have a picture. They have a plan and it doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated because a well thought out plan like this, we’re going to knock out multiple birds with one stone. We’re going to be doing our tax planning, our asset protection, our wealth building and our legacy, all four, taking them all into consideration every time we do anything.
And so when we meet with a professional, you’re the captain of the ship. You’re the one with the vision. You’re keeping everybody on the same page. Quit thinking people that you’re going to find this perfect accountant. That’s going to do it all for you or some financial advisor. That’s going to do it all for you.
It’s you’ve got to own this. It’s you. When you take control of this and you’re the captain of your own ship, you can say. Holy crap. I got to get rid of this guy or gal. They’re not helping us move in the right direction. You’re in control. You see it. You’re the one that signs your freaking tax return.
So own it and know what are my tax strategies? How can I make this better? And the teams are out there on fire. We are blowing up and have been for the last 15 years growing so quickly to help. Because people find that, oh my gosh, there is a way to do this. And it’s affordable.
Introduction to the Invest Like a Billionaire Podcast
Ben Fraser: Welcome back to another episode of the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast. I’m your host, Ben Fraser, and I’m very excited today to have our guest, Mark Kohler. Mark, I’ve been really excited to have him on this show. We’ve actually talked with one of his partners, Matt Sorenson, and a prior episode, it was just a jam pack episode.
And I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of information. So get ready. If you don’t know who Mark is, you’re probably under a rock, but two, you’re going to want to get your scratch pad out. He is a CPA. He’s an attorney. He runs a very popular YouTube channel where he talks about issues about tax and legal matters that are impacting small business.
Owners, individuals, and diving into those things that are keeping people back from their American dream. And so very excited to bring Mark on. There’s a whole thing, a laundry list of things I read out to him before we started that I want to talk about.
This is the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast, where we uncover the alternative investments and strategies that billionaires use to grow wealth.
The tools and tactics you’ll learn from this podcast will make you a better investor and help you build legacy wealth. Join us as we dive into the world of alternative investment. Cover strategies of the ultra wealthy discuss economics and interview successful investors.
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Mark Kohler: Oh, Ben, thanks for having me. Love your show. And spreading the good word. This is such an important topic, our American dream, like investing and business. Oh my gosh. So fun.
Meet Mark Kohler: CPA, Attorney, and YouTube Educator
Ben Fraser: Give us a little bit of a framework for kind of your background, how you got into doing what you’re doing now, right?
We don’t see a lot of people with all the things behind their names like you have doing education and youtube shows to help people out So what kind of drove all that?
Mark Kohler: Oh, thanks. I grew up always as an entrepreneur. I grew up on a farm in Washington state, picking apples or throwing hay bales and selling lemonade on the corner, whatever.
I just love the American small business farm, Main Street America. I think my high school graduating class was 60 people. And I just love that. That approach to life, working one on one with people. But in the 80s, I thought, hey, I’m going to go to New York and be Michael Keaton and, or Michael Douglas in Wall Street.
That’s what I want. I want to be a big city lawyer. That’s, I’ve got to get out of this small town and kick the dust off my feet. But I went to New York. I went to law school. I went to Portland, Oregon and worked there at KPMG and got my master’s in tax and did all this stuff. And one day I woke up, into my first law firm I was working at.
And I was like, I’m done. I can’t do this and work for big corporations. I’ve got to start my own gig and just move to a small town and help small businesses owners. And I got to figure out how to not end up divorcing and chasing ambulances. So I started writing books and an AM radio station and helping small business owners around the country.
And typically people with my credentials are men and women professionals, they’re working for big corporations and doing mergers and acquisitions and working for hedge funds and whatever. But we’ve been able to build a model where we’ve got a team of lawyers and our trust company and paralegals where we help clients all over the country and we Zoom call, phone call, whatever it takes.
And it’s just been so wonderful. And now I train other accountants and lawyers on tax strategies and get out on social media and talk about it all I can. I am based in Phoenix now and love it. And it’s exciting.
Ben Fraser: That’s awesome. There’s a lot to get into here, in a short period of time. So let’s dive right in.
Election Impact on Taxes and Small Businesses
Ben Fraser: It kind of is the first thing that’s on my mind and you just put a video out on this. But everyone is. Obviously, thinking about the election, thinking about 2025 and what’s going to happen 1 to the economy, but, the 2 plans being laid out by the 2 different presidential candidates are pretty different.
And can you give us just the high points, the quick bullet points of, as it pertains to tax, as it pertains to the legal side of impacting small businesses individuals, what are some of the big takeaways that you’re seeing between the difference of the two candidates?
Mark Kohler: You bet, it’s interesting seeing the vice president debate. Just yesterday was another enlightening moment to see how really we’re seeing the sequel either way. We are, we’ve already seen four years of vice president Harris and the administration. She’s going to keep doing what Biden did.
There was no tax legislation of any consequence passed during the Biden Harris years and nothing to help small business owners. That was significant in any way. And all of them. Tax cuts and jobs act provisions are expiring. And we also get to see a sequel of Trump. We saw what we got four years previously, and we saw the biggest tax legislation since Ronald Reagan.
And it wasn’t just tax cuts for the wealthy. It was tax cuts across the board for everybody. And small business tax provisions for real estate and so many other areas that were so powerful that are starting to expire. And so it’s pretty easy. You can say, do I want more of the same? Am I getting any help in my small business and the tax strategy, or do I want to look at the tax cuts and jobs act and what it did to stimulate the economy with bonus depreciation and better write offs for autos and all these different tax strategies ?
We need to get back on the books. They’re expiring. And so I think the answer is right there in front of us. And if you are a small business owner and you’re trying to keep the government out of your business and regulation and more headaches, you know who to vote for. If you want a tax credit, maybe some form of welfare system to help you and your family and that works for you.
That’s great. Then you know what to, who to vote for. So it’s pretty straightforward. And I’ve got their tax returns right here on my laptop, but, and we can look at Trump’s tax return right here and see what they’re doing. It’s fun.
Ben Fraser: Yeah obviously, for Vice President Harris and the Democrats, their focus is on, taxing the rich and taking more from those who make more.
And, one of the things they’re proposing is, it seems a little bit insane to me, actually a lot of bit insane, of taxing unrealized gains. I think a lot of people in our position that own a lot of real estate have a lot of appreciated assets. Don’t want to sell because we don’t want to take those gains if we don’t have to or at least try to do it in a timely way so that we can offset those gains.
How real is that? I just as one point of conversation here
Mark Kohler: I think you know it’s not easy to pass legislation like that because a lot of legislators, Republican and Democrats own property, own businesses, and they don’t want to pay taxes on something they don’t want to sell. And so I think it’d be very hard to pass that legislation.
But it’s scary that it’s even being talked about. They wanted to last year and build back better. Biden wanted to limit the amount you could have in your Roth IRA. There’s so many limitations on trying to become a billionaire. Your whole show is about this. And I know I’m not going to become a billionaire, but it’s fun to dream about.
It’s fun to think, Hey, if I got there, what would it be like? And I want to live my life and financial life in the way that Billionaires do or whatever. And so I want legislation that’s going to help me get there or at least part of the way. They’re not something that’s going to hold me back. And so that would be a scary piece of legislation.
And I just don’t think it’s a great thing. Vice President Harris also wants to give credit to home People that want to buy a home and give them money to go buy their first home or buy a home and that’s great on paper. That sounds great, but we already are low on inventory and we’re going to flood the market with more money to buy more houses.
What do you think that’s going to do to home prices? And we need to create incentives for builders and small business owners to develop and build real estate, not throw money at people to drive up housing prices. So it’s just a different concept. But again, some of you love the Democrat democratic approach to taxing and regulation and others of you, it’s the worst thing in the world.
So you’ve got to find what path you want and we get a vote. It’s exciting. All of you get out and vote, let your voice be heard. That’s
Ben Fraser: right. A similar vein here.
Tax Strategies and Asset Protection for the Wealthy
Ben Fraser: So you talk a lot in your content, your show about creating different structures whether that’s through trusts, LLCs, S corps, and protecting assets like the rich do keeping, hiding assets, legally maximizing your tax situation with the IRS.
Give us the real one on one here, right? Because this is a landscape that a lot of us are new to, including I’m really good at the investing side, the structure side. It all feels a little fuzzy. It’s like, when do I do this? When do I do that? Should I do this? Should I not do that?
Laid the groundwork for us of what you are seeing? The wealthiest clients that you work with, doing that’s working well, and things that we can implement at maybe a smaller scale in our own personal situations.
Mark Kohler: You bet. Great question. And this might surprise you.
And, but let me frame it in this way. No matter what client comes in our door, whether young or old, just starting out uber wealthy. Brand new little small business owner in their twenties. Either way, what we want to build for our client is what we call the trifecta. And any of you would like to Google that, try type Kohler on trifecta.
You’re gonna see plenty of videos on YouTube or it’s all over my books and our website for the law firm even has a diagram of it. But this trifecta gives us a visual rep representation. Of what our structure should look like. And if you’ll allow me to, is it okay if I just describe it, please do what we love to do is take any client that comes through the door, divide their life in half.
and put their operations on the right and their assets on the left. And we want to say operations might be a day job, or it’s going to be one of the 50 million Americans that now has a side hustle. It could be an LLC that’s going to evolve to an S corporation. We’ve got a tax strategy there. We want to have our own family board meetings.
We want to be writing off cell phones, home office, auto dining, travel, electronics, and equipment. All the goodies as we build that side hustle on that small business. And I don’t care if you’re making 100 grand a million or 10 million. It’s going to be the same layout I want the operations on the right side and I can start to build that cash flow for that operational side whether I’m in an online business, an influencer in real estate development, manufacturing, a restaurant, or a service based business.
That’s the right side.
Ben Fraser: The left side, this really encapsulates everything that you’re doing to produce income. Is that, yes, that’s going to be the W2 side hustle. All that kind of is lumped in on that, that right side of the equation. Exactly.
Mark Kohler: And when you can visualize that, you can say, okay, no assets over here.
Yep. There’s no asset protection needed except from the operations themselves. I don’t want to get sued by a customer or employee or something that could go bad, but that’s going to be the cashflow generation side of ordinary income. And it’s going to be taxed at the highest rate. So we want to implement great strategies there.
The S corporation as is in small escort, not escort escorts are in Vegas. S corporations are on the right side of the trifecta. I just want to make sure we’re clear there. Okay. Now. So the left side are our assets. That’s our passive income. We’re going to divide that into a couple of little buckets. We’re going to have our Roth IRAs, our health savings accounts, our 401k.
So we have a 401k at work and a 401k built by our side hustle. You can have three 401ks. You’re going to have three Roths. We’re going to, there are so many myths and misconceptions about who can have an IRA or a 401k or health savings account. You’re and start building those and maximize the write offs.
And then we’re going to have our personal assets that are not in a retirement account, rental property, notes, crypto stocks, and mutual funds, whatever we’re going to invest our money to try to create passive income. It’s gonna be on the left side. That’s our asset side. That’s where we’re gonna employ maybe some asset protection strategies as you evolve.
We don’t need elaborate crazy trusts or something offshore or something. Five, 10, $20,000. Crap. We can do very simple, easy asset protection strategies that I recommend to the same person, whether they’re a hundred grand, a million dollars, or $10 million, it’s gonna be the same structure, maybe just more of it, right?
Now all of that, the left side and right side flows down in the trifecta to our foundation. Which is our estate plan, our trust. And that’s where we do want a revocable living trust. We want to create privacy. We don’t want to leave a legacy. We want to start seeing all of that money flow to me, water flows downhill, money flows downhill into our 1040.
And we want all the write offs we can generate. From our passive side and our operation side and bring it all together and make a big smoothie. I want to make that smoothie on my tax return and save as much as I can in taxes so I can then redeploy my savings back up into my left side assets where I’m building more and more assets to create more and more cashflow and passive income.
And I’m, and now with that visualization, that trifecta, we build one, a diagram for all of our clients when they come in and get a comprehensive consultation, very affordable. Do you need a new entity? Do you need an estate plan? What is it you need, but let’s build it in a trifecta. So to answer your question, that picture gives us a roadmap.
It gives us a way to manifest where we’re going with our dreams. Where do I need to focus? Do I need to create more income? Do I need to create more protection for my assets? How are my assets doing? Are they getting the ROI I want? How can I better deploy my retirement accounts and self direct them or whatever?
And it all flows down to a well drafted and crafted 1040 tax return at the end of each year. And I have ongoing conversations with my team, a good tax advisor, a good business lawyer, a good financial advisor, and I’m bringing it all together and it’s manageable and I can see it and I can visualize it.
And when I can see my future and I can see my trifecta, holy crap that solves 90 percent of the problems and all the hocus pocus craziness that most professionals make about it is gone and you’re in control.
Ben Fraser: I love the approach, right? It’s a holistic approach looking at the whole picture, both the income, the assets and the foundation, the trust.
And in my experience, it’s. You have all these different professionals in different parts of your life, whether that’s, your CPA doing your tax return, you have an estate planning attorney, another financial advisor, and they’re all not talking to each other.
They all have very different philosophies on how these things should be done or shouldn’t be done. And you end up with a big mess that doesn’t work well together. And so you make it more complicated and you’re not actually solving the purpose that you’re trying to achieve by doing this, right?
Which, what is the main purpose, right? Is it multiple purposes, but asset protection, tax savings, like what’s the benefit you get if you can set it up, right?
Mark Kohler: This is the secret. This is the secret, Ben, that you asked: what do the wealthy do? Yeah, they’re organized. They have a picture.
They have a plan and it doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated because a well thought out plan like this, we’re going to knock out multiple birds with one stone. We’re going to be doing our tax planning, our asset protection, our wealth building and our legacy. All four. We’re taking them all into consideration every time we do anything.
And so when we meet with a professional, you’re the captain of the ship. You’re the one with the vision. You’re keeping everybody on the same page. Quit thinking people that you’re going to find this perfect accountant that’s going to do it all for you or some financial advisor that’s going to do it all for you.
It’s you’ve got to own this. It’s you. When you take control of this and you’re the captain of your own ship, you can say, holy crap, I got to get rid of this guy or gal. They’re not helping us move in the right direction. You’re in control. You see it. You’re the one that signs your freaking tax return.
So own it and know what are my tax strategies? How can I make this better? And the teams are out there. We’re on fire. We are blowing up and have been for the last 15 years growing so quickly to help because people find that, Oh my gosh, there is a way to do this. And it’s affordable.
Ben Fraser: I can tell your passion for doing this if you want to help people.
You want people to have ownership over this part of their life. And we’re seeing the same thing on the investing side where. So much of the time I see people work so hard, to get all the letters behind their names. Like you went to school for who knows how long you invest all this money, this time into education, to get ahead, to learn things, to create more income.
And then, these wealthy individuals, they don’t spend any time educating themselves on how to do things that they’re very well qualified to be able to learn, the, to hand the keys over the kingdom to a financial advisor or somebody else, To tell them what to do you’re giving up a lot in doing that and it’s a very expensive Transfer of ownership.
Obviously you don’t need to be a cpa. You don’t want to do your tax return. It’s good to hire people to do that, but to understand how it all fits together to understand the levers that you can pull to change different things in your vision in your picture. Like I love that taking ownership is so important.
You’re going to see, you know, maybe there’s a little bit of a learning curve in some of these areas, but it can be the difference between having the life that you want or being a slave to, running in the rat race that you’re waiting on someone else’s timetable.
Mark Kohler: Yeah. No, it’s so important that my friends and Ben are the secret sauce.
The secret sauce is. Constantly being engaged in the conversation, making sure your professionals are on your side of the table, not across from you. And you’re learning about tax strategies. Just a few tips, just some things that most people miss. The S corporation is absolutely critical for an operational business making more than 50, 000 a year.
That is the right side of the equation. Even if you have a day job in a side household, we might need an escort. You can take an LLC and turn it into one, but we want to save on FICA. And we want to have a family board meeting where we’re with our significant other and the family board. parents, the kids, our best friends, whoever is close to us.
And we’re having regular meetings, taking tax write offs for travel, tax write offs for dining and conferences. And we’re building a business with our best people around us and our friends around us and family. And then the left side is typically an LLC. LLCs don’t save taxes. LLCs, limited liability companies, are for protection and structure and creating partnerships and holding assets.
LLCs and Asset Protection
Mark Kohler: That’s generally what they’re used for. So we might take an LLC and convert it into an S corp, but it’s really just there until we start making more money and then we’re going to graduate. But the LLC on the left side is all about holding assets and making sure we’re doing our annual minutes and we have a good corporate book and we do our reports.
That’s real asset protection. I don’t need to set up some 5,000 trusts somewhere. I just need to have an LLC and frickin use it and use separate accounting and do my board meetings and do a good tax return. That’s asset protection 101.
Ben Fraser: Interesting.
Understanding S Corporations
Ben Fraser: Going back to the S Corps, you said on the right side, which is our income, and if you make more than 50, 000, then you should convert to an S Corps.
So talk a little bit about S Corps, because that, to me, went to business school, I learned all of the terminology, we use a lot of LLCs in our businesses. I’m familiar with the C Corps and how they work, but how does the S Corp fit into that?
Mark Kohler: You bet.
The Evolution of Business Structures
Mark Kohler: To put it in perspective, there’s four ways we could do business, everyone.
Four ways. The first one is just a plain old sole proprietorship. I go up and set up my lemonade stand tomorrow, I’m in business. And I don’t need an LLC to do that. I don’t need an S Corp to do that or a C Corp. I’m just a sole proprietorship. Option one. Total exposure is crappy taxes, but that’s your option one option two.
And this is what we all had 100 years ago. I could be a C corporation. I could be a corporation like Henry Ford or whatever and set up a big corporation and C corps are meant to be For big corporations, they are not meant for you and me. People. If someone’s selling you a C corp run forest, run, get away, fly away like a bird.
This guy, you do not need a C corp. They’re a nightmare. I will write about them. I teach about this. I stand behind it. And we help so many people get out of them because of the tax nightmare. But C corporations are, if you’re going to go public, you’re going to go big, you’re going to raise money. You’re going to have shareholders, blah, blah, blah.
That’s not 99 percent of small business owners. Your third option came around about 60 years ago and that was the s corporation and so s corporations I have fewer shareholders, a lot fewer. I’m only restricted to a number of shareholders. It’s for small business owners, typically one or two people. I just want a husband and wife or an individual to have their S corp.
And the beauty of the S corp is I don’t pay corporate tax and I don’t pay all the sole proprietorship FICA taxes, all the self employment taxes. The S corporation allows me to split my income, take a reasonable salary. It’s called reasonable comp and everything else is a K 1. Everything else passes through.
I can take all the same tax write-offs as an LLC, a C corp, or Solprop, but now I’ve just laundered the money through my S corp, and my S corporation is going to save me on the F word. We hate FICA. We don’t want FICA. We don’t need a self -employment tax. So every dentist, doctor, engineer, landscaper, realtor, broker, attorney, CPA, online influencer, restaurant owner, we’re all S corporations.
S corporations are where the savings are at. And I can take all these wonderful write offs, get asset protection and save on FICA. I can start setting up 401ks and have my own board and write off all the little goodies I’ve been rattling off. That’s the S corp. Now the LLCs came on to play in the last and since about the 1970s start.
The first one is in Wyoming and now they’re in every state. LLCs are great, but they’re a chameleon and LLC can be taxed as an escort. It can be taxed as a C corp. It can be taxed as a sole prop. They’re they don’t save taxes in and of themselves and LLC is for structure and protection and LLCs are simple and easy But we got to know where to use them and how to evolve with them And make sure we’re not just going online and click, you know I have three employees three full time employees that all they do is fix my legal zoom.
com That’s all they do because everybody thinks they can set up an llc and play lawyer on tv and they’re done And then we’re cleaning them up because I don’t even know what I have. Have you read your operating agreement? Do you have a corporate book with membership certificates? Do you have your tax ID number?
Have you made a selection? Do you even know why? These are the questions that people just think, Oh, my accountant’s going to solve it. Oh, someone else is going to think about it. No, they’re not. You’ve got to take ownership of these people and understand what the freaking differences are. And it’s not that hard.
This is why my YouTube channel has millions of views every year, 500, 000 subscribers, because they’re like, Oh my gosh, this guy makes it easy to understand. Holy hell, I can do this. Boom. I need a pen. I got to do a pen drop.
Ben Fraser: Place of the mic. Yeah, don’t drop your nice mic. You got yeah that’s so helpful.
The Role of Trusts in Asset Management
Ben Fraser: Let’s talk about trust for a little bit, right? This is. There’s a lot of different types of trust. Obviously, that’s the bottom part of your trifecta you’re talking about. Everything flows into that. Talk about what’s the purpose of the trust and how does that maybe evolve in retirement?
Because there’s, living trust, revocable trust, non revocable trust, all these different terms to get thrown around. What’s the primary purpose as you view it in this framework?
Mark Kohler: You bet. And I’ll make it easy for everybody. Everyone, every adult American. that has a nickel in their pocket and is trying to build any sort of wealth.
Every American should have a revocable living trust. They’re simple. They’re easy to maintain. You have no probate when you die. Do you know there’s a billion dollar, multi billion dollar industry of probate judges, probate courts, probate attorneys, because people won’t even have a will. They think they’re going to live forever, and a will still gets you on probation.
There’s entire court processes because people think they’re never going to die. But when you have trust, you have none of that. You can save possibly on estate tax. You can have a better organized format for your business succession planning, your investments, your real estate, everything you’re trying to build.
Where’s it going? Do you have a plan? How’s your family? You’re just going to 18 year olds, 16 year olds, maybe a 30 year old that acts like a 14 year old. What’s your plan? Your revocable living trust is your foundation of the trifecta. It’s your estate plan. That’s it. You’re for every thousand revocable living trust.
We do. I might do three irrevocable trusts. Maybe 10 will get over it. People. There’s so much crap out there in this asset protection industry That’s a scam and it’s a lie and they’re overselling strategies for asset protection that are completely unnecessary We love charitable remainder trust for tax planning or maybe a spendthrift trust for a handicapped child Maybe we need a special needs trust.
They’re both versions And maybe we do a domestic asset protection trust in one of eight states in a very unique situation That’s it. That’s it. Irrevocable trust and all these crazy other trusts that are out there. Few and far between. Save the money, folks. Get a consultation with someone that’s not trying to sell you one of these crazy things and you’ll have a revelation.
That is how straightforward and simple it is to focus on the revocable living trust. Your legacy can be used for privacy. Your estate plan is going to have all the pieces and parts.
Ben Fraser: And the great thing I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but a revocable living trust can change over time to fit your financial situation and if something changes over time or beneficiaries, trustees, all these things can evolve.
So you’re not locked in. My fear is always that I’m young and I’m going to live forever. But I have 4 kids. I got my 5th on the way right now. I’m like, okay, I gotta. I don’t want to create a mess, right? If I happen to leave a little early and my big fear is if I do something.
That maybe something changed five or ten years down the road that I wish I wouldn’t have done. Am I locked in right and that was always my just thing to hold me back other than laziness, but correct me if I’m wrong, but these can evolve with you, right?
Mark Kohler: Oh, yeah their keyword everybody revocable living trust while you’re alive.
It’s revocable and you can change it. And if you get married, we change it. If you get divorced, we change it. You have a kid going to rehab. We change it. You have a, one of your kids marries a loser. We change it, whatever. I had this guy, it was so funny. Every Christmas he would get drunk and then send me an email and go, all right.
Change my trust. This kid’s out this year. The other kid, he’s in. And then I’d be like, all right, come by and sign it. Then he signed his trust. And then next year he’d get drunk again. All right. The other kid, he’s back in that kid, he’s out. I’m like, all right, whatever. And the kids would be like, dad, just quit telling us.
We don’t care. So you can modify and change your trust anytime you want. And it’s such an important tool for your legacy and your wealth planning and keeping things private as possible and organized.
Ben Fraser: Love it. Okay, last topic. You have a lot of content on here, very clickbaity, but I want to hear it.
Building a Million Dollar Roth IRA
Ben Fraser: I want to hear how you get a million dollar Roth IRA? Oh, wow. I love it. Popular video. I went and looked at your YouTube. Most popular videos. People are interested, yeah. Roth IRA. Roths are great. We all saw Peter Thiel with his billion dollar Roth IRA tax free. So.
Mark Kohler: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
It’s no clickbait. It’s true. And it’s easy. Just got to follow the steps. It’s not a get rich quick scheme. It’s a get rich slow scheme, which I love. It’s like Warren Buffett, get rich, slow people. You can do it. And so let’s, but there’s some steps here. So the step one. is understanding the Roth IRA.
The Roth IRA grows tax free, comes out tax free, and you want to let it ride. You can take out contributions if you have an emergency for no tax, no penalty, but you want to let that snowball go down the hill and gather more and more snow as it grows and your retirement grows. So that’s point number one.
The Roth is the number one vehicle for tax Preferred growth. I want you to have a tax free atm when you turn 59 and a half and some people are like Mark I’m in my 30s or 40s. Yeah 59 and a half is right around the corner get your crap together. Do you know how many people I meet in their early 50s and they are freaking out?
And they’re like Mark telling more people to start now. Number one, you understand the Roth is a vehicle. It’s just like a car. You can have anything in the trunk. The problem is many of you have junk in the trunk. So step number two is we want to invest your, we want to invest your Roth IRA in what you know best.
So before we even put money in it, again, we’re learning that I can invest my Roth and you had Matt Sorenson on here as a guest on the previous show, you can invest your Roth. In real estate notes, crypto syndications, small business, anything. And now we can get 10, 15, 20% returns investing in what we know best.
Wall Street won’t tell you this. They won’t. So when you want, Peter Thiel started with five grand on a Roth IRA in 1999. Now he has $6 billion in a Roth IRA. You can do it too. You can invest it in whatever you want. It’s amazing. Okay third. We got to get our contributions in now this year You can put seven thousand or eight thousand in your little IRA That’s gonna just start building and growing and I have all sorts of models I usually show in my videos where a 15 or 20 year old just putting away five seven grand five six grand a year For the next 25 years, they’re gonna have a million dollars We’re gonna have a million dollars, a million dollar Roth before they’re even ready to retire because they start now and just make their contribution every year.
Now, the cool thing is you can do what’s called the mega backdoor Roth. So I can take your side hustle, create a solo 401k and ramp it together. Marriott to your Roth IRA. So now you’ve got a Roth 401k and a Roth IRA. This year, I could drop close to 70 grand in a Roth IRA. You start putting 50, 60, 70 grand in a Roth IRA every year.
You’re going to have a million in less than 10 years. So we’re going to start investing as quickly as we can and get rates of return that are 15 to 20%, because I’m going to invest it in what I know. Yeah. There you go. We’ve got at our trust company now with 2 billion in assets, we have clients.
I just want to say hundreds of them that have over 10 million in a Roth. And they started with five grand 10 years ago because they invested in what they know. And so it’s not that hard, people. It’s just learning the steps, learning the tools. We have a podcast on this, the directed IRA podcast. Check it out.
You people, you love it.
Ben Fraser: Awesome.
Engaging with Mark Kohler’s Content
Ben Fraser: Mark, what are the best ways for people to engage? You mentioned the podcast for directed IRA, which is your custodian self directed IRA 401k company. You got your personal brand YouTube channel. What are the best ways for people to engage? Do you have any content they can consume right away and get the one on one here?
Mark Kohler: Yeah, just what the first thing is, everyone, as you think about your learning style, What do you love? Do you like to read books? Great. I’ve got four books on Amazon, almost a thousand five star reviews on tax and legal playbooks. Get over there. Got a great book, all my little strategies in print. Oh, you like podcasts.
I have the main street business podcast, the directed IRA podcast, and thousands of viewers. Sorry. We’ve got three or 4 million downloads now and 500 600 shows. Go check out the podcast. You love YouTube. You like video. Go over to YouTube. Just type Mark Kohler. Any of these things we talked about small business, S Corps, tax legal, Roth, whatever.
You’ve got YouTube videos. And then we have a big event. Would you like to have me in person? We do have an event every six months. It’s called tax and legal 360. We look at it from every angle. It’s three days. We have parties every night. This is off the hook accountants and lawyers and business owners.
They’re crazy. Let me tell you, they’re crazy. The number one buyer of Harley Davidson motorcycles, accountants, I’m telling you, there’s a little, crazy in every account. So anyway, our three day event is early in December in Phoenix, 25 different classes, 20 different speakers, socials and cocktail parties and prizes and sponsors.
And it’s all about building the American dream https://taxandlegal360.com/. It’ll be virtually broadcast as well. So you can watch it from home, get the recordings. These are topics that actually move the needle in your life. Podcasts, videos, books, events. I got it all. Just get plugged in, find that tax and legal expert people out there that you can listen to.
Maybe I’m not the guy that’s fine. I can be annoying, but find someone because this is a, this is the number one cost in your life. Taxes. The number one cost in your life will be taxes. What are you doing about it? You learn about it or you’re just giving it to someone else to figure out. It doesn’t sound smart to me.
I want to be a billionaire. They love tax strategies. Oh, they geek out.
Ben Fraser: Oh yeah.
Mark Kohler: Awesome.
Ben Fraser: Mark. Thanks so much. Real Paul links in the show notes here. So be sure to click on whatever your preferred method of engagement is. And thanks so much for coming on. This is really fun.
Mark Kohler: Oh, man. Thanks for having me.
Great show. I’ll continue to listen to your show. I appreciate it. You keep living the dream, man. Thank you so much.
Ben Fraser: All right. Thanks.
Conclusion and Podcast Overview
Ben Fraser: This is the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast, where we uncover the alternative investments and strategies that billionaires use to grow wealth. The tools and tactics you’ll learn from this podcast will make you a better investor and help you build legacy wealth.
Join us as we dive into the world of alternative investments, uncover strategies of the ultra wealthy, discuss economics and interview successful investors.
