All right, welcome back to The Daily Mastermind. George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. And I'm excited to have a guest in the house today. Peter Culver, how are you doing today? Excellent. I'm excited. You know, we got to talk a little bit before, but today we're going to be talking about wealth. And you know, as you guys know, when you join me daily, we like to really focus on everything you can do to really create your best life. And Peter, I'll just give him a quick introduction, was a former senior wealth director, managed portfolios exceeding $2 billion, number one client advisor for eight years, Yale graduate, host of Thrive Talk podcast. He's written books. He wrote the book, Exit Rich Beyond Money, which got my attention. But he's a speaker and high profile guy. He's got a lot of trust, a lot of experience. And we're just glad to have you on the show today, Peter. It's a good way to begin to close out the week, talking about my favorite subject. I love it. I know. And you know what? It's most people's favorite subject when you start talking about wealth. So tell us a little bit about your, you know, I don't worry so much about background because I kind of set you up, but tell us what shaped your perspective on wealth and wealth management, because it encompasses so much of what you do right now. So I would say, So I've been fortunate to work with all my career. I basically work for entrepreneurs. So I've worked for business owners by definition, wealth creators, and I've been an entrepreneur myself. So I've watched them be successful. I've watched myself and a lot of them be unsuccessful. and I've worked with a lot of wealthy families where an interesting subject in that realm, of course, is the transfer of wealth from generation to generation, which is a major league challenge. So I think we were talking before, just I've been fortunate enough to be knee deep in a lot of entrepreneurial wealth creating activity and some of it not so successful. So you just try and accumulate lessons from that. And I obviously, I love the whole subject. Yeah. Well, and you've had so much experience on different angles of wealth and wealth management, wealth creation. What has really kind of shaped, because you have kind of a holistic approach to wealth and wellness and legacy overall. Tell me a little bit about that. So I think I would, if I had to boil it all down, I'd kind of boil it down to two different themes. So whenever I give a presentation, I'll say at least once something like there are two great ways to create wealth in America. One is to start a company, grow it to some significance or, you know, prominence and either turn it into a cash cow or sell it to somebody. Take your chips off the table. What a lot of people underestimate is the value of not paying taxes in accumulating wealth. And if I'm doing a live presentation, I put a slide up and basically everybody's heard about compound growth, right? If I, yes, the dollar in the bank and it earns 4% this year, well, then it's 1.04. And then if it's another 4%, it's whatever the math is. If you do that same math around not paying taxes, it's even more powerful because think about it. whatever your compound interest rate is, is it four, is it six, is it's 10? Income taxes, say in the state of California, are 50%. So I don't pay, if I pay 50% less taxes or 25% less taxes every year, the compounding effect of that is phenomenal. And so one of our main areas of modestly expertise and helping clients is showing them interesting, creative ways to reduce their taxes and use that as an augmenting way to grow their wealth. So that's X's and O's. And it's such a common theme, right? What's crazy to me, and I've been doing events and education for decades now, and this idea that there's one of the simplest, easiest ways to create wealth is to pay less taxes. And yet most people, maybe it's the topic is so complicated. Most people don't prioritize it. Why do you think that is? So I think there are two, well, there are two things that lead into that is we make a distinction in our business. We call what we do tax strategy. We're tax strategists. Yep. Those are people who like to swim in all of the gray areas. No one's going to jail for what we do, right? There's a whole other group of people called CPAs who, not being critical of CPAs, but they're tax preparers. They take the numbers that the client gives them, put them in the right places, add them up correctly, file them on time, all that kind of stuff, an important skill. What we're trying to do is before you ever go to the CPA is make sure that the numbers that you give the CPA are a lot smaller. And so one of the reasons I think it happens is because most people, when they say tax, think CPA, but CPAs don't think about tax strategies. Yeah. We have a little one pager that we distribute. It's called 23 game changing tax strategies that your CPA never told you about. So. So, well, and not only that, but most, I mean, because I've mentioned this many times. And if you're listening to this, you've heard me say there's a difference between tax planning and tax preparation, strategy and execution. But that's because even your planner or your CPA doesn't have that specialized knowledge that's needed for your business to be strategic. And I think that's where you've spent most of your career now, right, is being strategic. That the world that we work in And then I would say so that X and O that dollars and cents that the tip of the iceberg whatever you want to call it that gets everybody jazzed up I mean another little part of our business is paying less in taxes, great. Accumulating more wealth is great. But what are we doing that for? And most people don't necessarily jump out of bed and think, well, my life mission is to have more money than, you know, whatever it is. And so So part of our overall process is about quality of life. You know, we go through a whole process with a lot of our clients is, you know, it's five years from today, it's 10 years from today. Paint me a picture of your ideal life. Most clients don't answer that question by saying, I have 100 million in the bank. It's about where am I going to be living? Who am I with? What am I doing? How am I spending my day? So it's wealth creation is wonderful. Most people become entrepreneurs, not just to become wealthy, because they know that it leads to a life of freedom that is probably going to be a more fulfilling life than without that both economic and lifestyle freedom. Yeah, it's crazy to me that whether it's wealth planning or life in general or business, people don't realize the power in having clarity of your future vision of where you want to be. And I think you're right. I think that's the solution that drives their motivation to create a better strategic plan because it's it's what it's it's about family, legacy, clarity, freedom, financial freedom. And do you find that that's why your clients are more motivated to create a more proactive plan rather than just responding to taxes and wealth? I think so. I mean, obviously, look, most many entrepreneurs by nature, they're numbers people, right? They like little math problems and stuff like that. I also think most successful entrepreneurs at I mean, look, there are some of them that get lucky as heck, right? We all know. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. But most of it, it's nine yards in a cloud of dust. It's having a plan. It's being strategic. You know, the good ones. they're all members of some organization like EO, IPO, Tiger 21, whatever it is. Yes. The gap is they have a plan for their business, but often because they're so busy or they didn't acquire the skill set, they don't have a plan for their personal finances and personal life, but they get the concept, right? They immediately, oh, that's interesting. Now, I'm too busy to do that myself because I'm running my business. I need a guy or a gal or a company to be that resource. Sometimes we describe, we run our own company on the EO system. And so sometimes we're like your EO coach for your personal and financial life. And most people do outsource. They kind of put that as, even though it's one of the most core important things for your life, your lifestyle, your business, they push that off. And so that is interesting. I'm curious what made you decide to write a book, you know, Exit. Now, by the way, just so you know, his book is Exit Rich Beyond Money. It's funny because one of my good friends wrote, co-wrote The Millionaire Next Door. Oh, of course. Bill Danko. And they wrote the follow-up book, you know, Richer Than a millionaire, right? So rich beyond money would imply it's not just about money. So tell me about why you decided to write the book. So given the fact that we're kind of broadly in the planning area and the money area, and most of our clients are entrepreneurs, we've been active for years and years in helping clients get ready for, execute, and exit. And an observation that we've made along the way is most of them, a lot of them don't even prepare for the exit itself far enough advance. That's a separate topic. But definitely they don't think about their life after the sale. It's like, okay, I got to do the sale, get the money, and then I'll figure all that stuff out. And we found that that not beginning with the end in mind when you're doing your exit led to a lot of bad results. What are the statistics that the business owners that sell their business a month later, they wish they'd never sold their business because they didn't think about what their life should look like? Or they start with this idea in their mind. Oh, my company is worth 20 million because I Googled it and it says I'm in this such and such a industry code and the multiple is whatever. And they don't know about taxes. They don't know about getting traded down by a private firm. Then they go to the closing and let's say they get a check for 10 million instead of the 20 million that was in their head. And they go, oops, I'm not sure that's enough money. And then so that's the financial part of it. So we do a lot of pre-sale coaching of clients to do that post. Because think about it, you know, the car, the health insurance, it's all that stuff is not going to be paid for anymore. Right. But that sort of, you know. Well, that's just the money part, but there's this whole lifestyle part too, right? Yeah. We had a client about three years ago, in your neck of the woods, in Arizona, had a very valuable company. He sold that company. And, you know, I think after the, he did all the things that were probably on his bucket list. He went hunting for a month. He bought a bigger house all of a sudden. Yeah. And we kept regularly in touch with him just because we wanted. And he basically said at one point, and he's a very, this would not be a guy if you sat next to him in a bar would tell you his deepest thoughts, right? He's not. Yeah. Very close. Yeah. Yeah. And he said, I did not realize how invested my sense of self-worth, my ego, my identity, all wrapped up in the business, you know, and the way he said it was you know although he did almost always wear a T that had the name of his company on it When I walked into the company I did not have to wear a hat that said CEO right Everybody knew I was the boss. Well, so I sell my company and I go to Walmart. Nobody knows who I am and nobody cares except me because now I don't, I don't have that sense. So we try and help them get ready for that new life and make sure they build it in a way that it creates a new ego and sense of self-worth and stuff like that. But you have to do that before the exit even. So you're helping them to do that. What are the things you focus on? I mean, are you talking like personal development, fitness, family? Like what would you recommend? I think there's all of that. It's if I go back to we have them we have an exercise we call ideal life. So it's a very simple little thing. We would send the entrepreneur a couple of questionnaires. One is sort of paint me a picture. If you could wave a magic wand of what your life looks like five years, 10 years. And some of that is economic, but a lot of it is non-economic. Where do you want to be living? What do you want to be doing? You know, we have another exercise that we call a wheel of life. It's very simple. It's a circle that looks like a pizza pie. I think it has eight pieces of pizza on it. And it has geography, relationships, finance, health. I can't remember them all right now, to be perfectly honest. And you rate yourself one to ten. And most people don't rate themselves a ten in every area. And then we have a dialogue around them. So you're telling me you think you could do a better job. We unpacked that a little bit. Why? And everybody's different, right? It depends on what they don't have. Got it. And so what do you need to do to get to that 10? Well, that starts to begin to develop a framework. It could be health. It could be relationships. It could be where you're living, all that kind of stuff. look most entrepreneurs are pretty sharp people they they need somebody to tell them to think about because they're not going to think about it themselves and they get sucked into a sale transaction their mind is just completely inundated well look at most look at most high you know high level athletes there's a reason they have coaches and experts in areas because they're so focused and driven with what they're doing they just need that objective feedback and I think you're right. Most entrepreneurs I've talked with, they just forget. They're so busy making money in a business, they forget to make a life. And if you don't make a life, pre-exit, post-exit, right? And it's about living your life. So I love the idea of that. Well, I have to put some links to some things that you guys have resource-wise for that as well. That's where the book came from. Most of the book, to be perfectly honest, is about, okay it's whatever day it is 9 11 sad day obviously historically uh but um i'm thinking i might want to sell my business in five years well don't wait until a year from that you know before you got to start now and sometimes just sensitizing them to the issues and making them aware whether it's us or many other great resources out there, just like you might have a business coach that's helped you grow and expand your business, you need some kind of resource like that to have the same level of success in your life. Yeah, I agree. And I think that's what the book is about. How do I not only have a great exit, but have a great life after my exit, which is not going to be defined by how big the check is. Well, and what you said was, if I'm hearing you correctly, not just after that. In other words, you got to have a great life now. And if you're planning for it now, it will help you later. And you also talk about what keeps the rich rich. And so tell me, because how do you help clients apply that mindset, right? How do you help them to shift their mindset when they're so driven to success things versus life and lifestyle and quality? How do you get them to shift the mindset because entrepreneurs are very practical, strategic, tactical people, right? I think some of it is just educate. You tell a hard-charging entrepreneur, they may never have heard the statistic that 50% of business owners regret that they ever sold their business. Well, that's interesting. Why is it? What could I do to be in the right 50%? The other thing I would say is part of this is just, I think, the natural evolution of life. If I start a company, however many years, I just got to survive. I got to get to profitable. Maybe I want to be on the Inc. 1,000, 2,000, 5,000. Okay, get to that. Now, do I want to scale my business or do I just want to kind of motor along? Right? But I think at some point in that journey, it's not just about the business. It's not just about the money. It's about the quality. I'll give you a good example. So my business partner, Noah, today he's in Oxford, England, and that's because he decided that something he always wanted to do was take a trip around the world. And, well, how can I take a trip around the world if I have to help Peter run the company? So we thought about that and we've concocted a system for now running the company where he works four hours a day during the four hours of the day that line up with our schedule. And it's kind of interesting. He's actually, I think, being more productive for the company by working. For sure. The things that he likes doing. The Pareto principle, too, is like you're going to focus on the important things. He has a son who's in college. So that part works. the guy the sons of college They have a young daughter They have her all set up with a perfectly official homeschooling plan And he and his wife they going to be in England France Germany And then they come back around the holidays end of the year. And then they'll go off to Southeast Asia. And of course, the best part of the education for the daughter won't be the stuff she's doing online. It'll be in all the... So, and my partner's unusually good at staying focused on the important things in life that aren't just about money. Yeah, that's great. It's good to have partners that kind of keep that on the focus as well. And so, you know, that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is not just, look, I'm going to put a lot of links in here for both of you that are listening so that you can get more practical, strategic, tactical tips on taxes and wealth planning. things. But one of the reasons I wanted you to have you on is just this idea that people need to transition from just running businesses to creating a life and building long-term wealth. So I know this is a big kind of general question, but I would love for you, you know, before we take off to just what advice would you give a business owner, entrepreneur, someone that is really active, running, does a lot of, maybe a lot of income revenue, has some wealth that wants to transition from just running a business to being and becoming and building long-term wealth. What is a piece of advice you would give them? I would say one, which is a good overall piece of advice, but comes into play in the sale of a business. So one of the things that we go through when we talk to an entrepreneur thinking of selling his business is we say, think about selling your business from the perspective of the buyer. What does the buyer want? You want it. It's just customer service 101, right? What do I want to create that the buyer wants to buy? One of the things most buyers want to buy is a business that does not rely on the founder from the business, right? They want that guy to go away and not pay him as a million bucks or whatever. So it goes on in a lot of businesses, therefore, is, well, how do I, the guy who started the company and used to do everything and work 100 hours a week, build a new structure where, and the phrase we sometimes use, when you start out, you're the owner and the operator. Right. I want to get to the point where you're the owner, but not the operator. Now, that has financial benefits for the reasons that I just described, because that's the kind of business a buyer likes, right? Yeah. That has business benefits from a life perspective, because if I have that in place, now my 100 hours that I used to work maybe goes to, to use my business partner's example, 20 hours a week, right? So now you've got time, build out those other components of your life, get involved in other activities, spend more time with your family, whatever it is that's not directly related to the business. But in that circle of life thing, now you're knocking nines and tens on all those quadrants, not just the one that says business. right and yeah that's and that's a you know to coin a phrase you know from Stephen Covey is you know begin with the end in mind is not just a great strategy for exits but it's to create a great life and to free you up so I love that I think that's we that's what we tell them look this will help you sell your company for a higher price but it's going to make your life a hell of a lot better because it's freeing up your time and a lot you know again I think somewhat instinctively a lot of people are drawn to the entrepreneurial world because of freedom. And one of the freedoms is freedom of time, right? Yeah. You give up a lot when you start a business. Oh yeah. You want to get it back. You got to even up the balance sheet there because you missed a lot in the beginning. Yeah. I love that. Well, so where can people hit you up and where can they connect with you? Give me the best place for them to find you. Yeah. A couple of things. We have a WealthThrive has a website. It's just wealththrive.com. That's super, super easy. And there's a bunch of links and information there. Maybe what I should do it, you're probably going to post after this. As I said, our kind of key area of expertise is helping people minimize their taxes. And I have, I think it's two links I could share with you and you could share with the audience where literally they just put in some super basic information. We'll have a complimentary call with that person for 20 minutes or something like that to see if we can be beneficial. So, and I will- I love that. What I'll do is I'll get with you and we'll make sure we put those in the show notes. And so for those of you listening, obviously you can go to wealththrive.com, but we'll put a link for the tax kind of evaluation and consultations. I think it's something where you just don't realize how many benefits you can have to grow in your wealth until you go through that. So I'll put those in the show notes. I mean, we were talking with a lady this afternoon, just before I got on with you, entrepreneur in California. Well, income taxes are 50%, and we can show her some ways to cut that to like 10%. Wow. Yeah. And that adds up big time when the compounding effect gets in. So awesome. Well, I appreciate you being with us today, Peter. This has been great topics. And for those of you that are listening, listen, you know, I always talk about the fact that it's never too late to start living the life you're meant to live. If you want to make that transition, you want to focus on more wealth and more growth and more lifestyle, you've just got to prioritize it. So the awareness is what we're trying to do here. Give you that awareness. And we want to hear from you. So make sure you hit us up on the Daily Mastermind on Facebook, Instagram, pretty much everywhere. We'll have some good contact in here. But thanks again, Peter, for being here. I really appreciate you. Great. It was a pleasure. Thank you guys for joining us. I appreciate you being on this episode. We'll look forward to talking with you tomorrow.
