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Leaha Crawford and Rhonda Nolen are business consultants that discuss the current struggles of small business owners and entrepreneurs. Each episode covers steps necessary for smaller businesses and business owners to grow and prosper.
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This is a que un the studio's original program. The following is a paid program sponsored by Crawford management group and smart time consultants. Please be advised that the voices and opinions you hear do not represent the views of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of Nevada System of Higher Education.
Unknown Speaker 0:27
Hi, my name is Leah Crawford. And I'm Rhonda Nolan. And you're listening to the let's talk with Leah and Rhonda show for all the beautiful entrepreneurs out there. This is for you.
Unknown Speaker 0:37
Good morning in Las Vegas, hey, we
Unknown Speaker 0:42
are 756 days after the Superbowl who they all went home. I hope you had a fabulous time. Got to enjoy some of the events because it was a bunch of events for children. Those breakfast lunches, dinners is a whole bunch of stuff so you can really enjoy the NFL. I want to send a special shout out to Rhonda I want you to keep her in your prayers. She's away today is her father's funeral. So I want you just keep her keep her in your prayers. And let's keep her uplifted. But today I have West West is going lessons in here with me. Hey guys, what's going on? How you doing? Now? What's this? Our engineer and when I tell you the most amazing engineer because not only does he get things done, but whenever I need him to step in and work with me on the show. He's like, of course, impromptu. Let's go do it. Let's make it happen.
Unknown Speaker 1:33
That's what's happening right now.
Unknown Speaker 1:34
Right. Right. That's what's happening right now. But I guess I'm your special guest today.
Unknown Speaker 1:39
I guess so.
Unknown Speaker 1:40
Yeah. Um, your special guests was Rhonda was gonna interview me today. So now your interview? Your answer, you get to interview me. So do you have any questions
Unknown Speaker 1:46
for me? So I know that you're in tax and accounting business, so only thing I can really think of off the top of my head because it's tax season. What a businesses need to know for this year as we're entering the entering the New Year.
Unknown Speaker 2:02
Okay, so we're in the new year, the new year, we're in the new year, beneficial ownership. Okay, so been talked about January 1 2024, FinCEN, Financial Crimes invest Enforcement Network. There's a new form out there for business owner. So if you have an LLC, C Corp, there's a form you have to file. There are some exemptions are there's a form you have to file talking about who the beneficial owners are, okay. And if your business was in business prior to January 120 24, you have a whole year to complete this form open. Okay? If you meet the exemptions, of course, you're not required to and the businesses that meet these exemptions have a whole bunch of other filing requirements. That's why they don't have to file
Unknown Speaker 2:48
I was gonna say, is there anything perhaps any notable exemptions Do you want to throw out for
Unknown Speaker 2:52
accounting firms, finance firms, companies that have a whole bunch of other reporting requirements, they don't have to, but it's a list of exemptions on the site. The other thing is, is that if you are in business and you start a new business this year, you have 90 days to complete that form. Now, if you don't complete the form, the penalty is $500 a day, a day.
Unknown Speaker 3:18
Day, wow. A day and I'm sure that doesn't have a cap to it
Unknown Speaker 3:24
doesn't have a cap to it. And and we were in those money laundering. So is this is a way Transparency Act to basically corporate Transparency Act to to stop money laundering, right? So what I what I tell people is people like wait, no, I don't want to do just do it. It's not a it's not a complicated form, and it's for your charge. Oh, that's now if you contact an attorney or an accountant, because the AICPA just gave accountants the okay to go ahead and do these forms in the past week. Gotcha. If you contact an account or an attorney, because you're not sure, yes, they may charge you a fee. Oh, there are services out there that are charging a fee. Is the form costly? No, no, it's free of charge. There are some information you need to have like you need to have your current driver's license. Of course, you need to have the company name company Social Security. I mean, the company EIN number, you have that information, you have your driver's license, you have the company name, you have your EIN number, you know, simply and you can is Google trouble, right as I say it's Google everything's X Google X Siri, I need the beneficial ownership form. And when you do that, you know the form will come up. You know, take some just look through it. We're computer savvy now sit there you can get the form done. You want to get it done they send you a confirmation that it was filed. And just note that when you're when your driver's license because you have to create a username and password as well of course all right. With everything like that with everything. You have to create a username and password. What you want to do this, you want to do this. And I know for me, I will be talking about this all year long because compliance As is one of my favorite things, it is one of my favorite things. Just
Unknown Speaker 5:04
I don't want to take away from what you're saying. But I'm curious why compliance specifically is something that you're just,
Unknown Speaker 5:10
you want to know why. Because if the, if the role is out there, and this is what we need to do, just do it, just do it and just do it. And if there are ways that we can, if there, there's a gray area, then let's understand what the gray area is. And let's make sure that whatever we do, we have documentation to back up why we did. I'm big on documentation, paper trail, gotta have a paper trail, whatever, you just have a paper trail, you know, you just can't pull it from the sky and say, Well, I thought that I couldn't. Yeah, let's figure out what the rules are. Because in order to change the rules, right, you have to know what the initial rule is. And how do you change rules? Well, Congress meets every year to talk about the tax law, you know, and they sent that they changed the law, change the rules, and you can lobby, if there's something that you don't like you lobby to get something changed. But to know, the rules, you know, just know the rules. Let's know the rules of the game, before we can change the rules of the game. Right? Right. So that's why I like that's why I like compliance. You know, let's figure out what the rules are interest. And if we don't like the rules, then what do we need to do to change the rules?
Unknown Speaker 6:12
Right, exactly. I that made me think, what are your thoughts on I think a lot of people be the, you know, your everyday person, but also perhaps that your business people as well, that how well organized or perhaps redundant is a lot of stuff to do with compliance or just code in general? And like, what are your thoughts on the organization of how how effective it all is, at the end of the day, you're talking about being able to change things if if necessary and necessary.
Unknown Speaker 6:40
So what I can what I can tell you, is this several things, oh, let's take let's take a real life instance. Absolutely. So some years ago, the Nevada State Department of modified business tax, that's a form that all employers should have to file. Gotcha. So when I first started my business, I had to pay the tax on my employees, it's an employee tax. And there were conversations about changing it. So we got into conversations, and we were like, well, most small business owners don't have payroll more than $50,000. A quarter. So let's come up with a threshold to say that we can help save our business owners some money. And it was lobbying, working with some local chambers lobbying to say that this form needs to be changed to say this, you are changing the form, changing the tax requirements, but let's help save our business owners some money. So that's a prime example of understanding what compliance compliance right understanding it so I knew what I had to do as a business owner. And when the conversation came up, I'm like, okay, so how I mean, I know I don't, my payroll is not 50,000 A quarter, you'll save me some money. And even though it's not a lot of money, but you know, a couple 100 Every bit help every bit, every every little
Unknown Speaker 8:03
bit helps are coming at the cost of anyone you will be helping with your business, it seems to be a rising tide raises all ships kind of situation,
Unknown Speaker 8:10
right. And it was, especially for small business owners that do payroll, you still have to complete the form. Of course, they have to complete the form. But you don't have to pay the tax. Yeah, so it was a way for us to help business basically to help business owners save money. And then I work with when we talk about compliance, especially in the state. I am, before I was a CPA, I was enrolled agent in 2017. This is another another year there was a doc prep. So in order to prepare tax returns, if you are not a CPA attorney or an enrolled agent, you should post I have a doc document preparation license. And no state legislators so when they came down from session, I'm like, okay, okay, so you're just gonna charge me I mean, I gotta pay some more money, because the first law didn't have enrolled agents included, but Enrolled Agents lobby to get them part of that, that that bill to say, look here, you know, and, you know, we already are we have a compliance we're office. I mean, we IRS regulates us. So if IRS regulates us, yeah. Why are you trying to regulate us as well? You're
Unknown Speaker 9:14
all connected already. Right? redundant, right. And
Unknown Speaker 9:17
then with CPAs, you have the you know, the board of CPAs. With attorneys, you have the bar. So why are we Why do we have to have this additional license to do this, when we're already governed by an agency? So what does that was if you if you prepared any legal documents, and you're not these licenses or do anything and you don't have the license to do it, then you have to have this license? It's called a doc prep license. All right. Now with that license, of course, there are fees involved, you have to have a bond and if you have this license, and if there is a complaint, of course you have the bond file, so that you know when people complain, they complain to state or whatever, that you didn't improve Warm your services or whatever, they have some kind of retribution they can go in contact someone. Just curious about that bond. Yeah. They contacted that thought prep services. So we're I am the CPA, my office staff is not, but I'm, you know, compliance. We all have dot prep licenses, we have to renew them annually. I let my lapse one time, I had to go back and get re fingerprint, you know, get re fingerprinted and start the process all over again. Because I let it lapse. Yeah, one day, but
Unknown Speaker 10:30
that wasn't $500 a day it was I didn't No, no, no, no, no, that was
Unknown Speaker 10:33
$500 a day, right? Was it $500 a day, but it was me understanding what the what the law was and making sure that our office was in compliance. Nothing every year to prepare taxes, you'd have to have a pizza number. Okay, so as soon as the IRS opens up, paetynn. Everybody in the office, come on, y'all. Let's go here. Let's apply, let's go ahead and get our pizza numbers. And with that, we have to make sure that our taxes are filed. We don't have any outstanding IRS liability and different things like that. So when I talk about compliance, it's just making sure not saying that you can't have IRS debt, but you have to be in an installment agreement. Yeah, if you have it, that'd be you. You got to handle your business. So when I say I like compliance, yeah, just handling your business. When I get a notice in the mail, I'm responding to the notice. Right. You know, so you talk to me, I'm gonna speak back. Yeah. So compliant, you know, compliance. Correct. And, well, the thing is, I don't know everything, right. I don't know everything. And I am blessed and humbled that I've been in business for 17 years. Yeah. And the business has evolved, right, of course. And as things changed, I pivot. Okay. COVID, just pivot. This is what we need to do. Okay. accounting services were deemed necessary businesses, right. So we were able to keep our doors open. I didn't know I had to call the board to say, Can we stay open till we close? Yeah, but because of the services that we provide the tech services, we were able to stay open. But I work from information to not fear. Okay. Right from information and not fear. And that's how you can ask Siri anything. ask Siri. Okay, Google, you know, you say that, like my phone just went on? They
Unknown Speaker 12:09
probably just said it all.
Unknown Speaker 12:10
I just said it. All right. It did like, you know, how can I help you? Ask, don't operate in for these picking me up right now, in fact, and don't operate with information? I'm sure it is like, How can I help? You probably have a whole lecture. Right? So you can tell me how to help us. But I'm big on if like someone called me and they have questions about bankruptcy. I'm not an attorney, I'm going to send you to the bankruptcy attorney. Someone else called me. And they'll ask me different questions. They want to buy a house. Okay. I don't I know enough information about mortgages, but I'm going to send you to the professional that handles that to tell you what kind of mortgage product you're eligible for. Right? Someone calls me asked me about credit and different Okay, you want to I don't handle credit. I know enough about credit, but I'm gonna send you to the people that that's what they do such a specialty. Yeah, that's their specialty. I'm big on you know what I know, I know, the tax arena. I understand tax, I understand small business tax personal taxes. I understand that you call me for that offering compromises. Call me for that, you know, you got a big tax bill, you want to get it resolved or see if you even qualify, right, because you have to qualify for offering compromise. You know, I'm gonna have those conversations with you. And people call me Well, Lee is somebody has a tax bill, they want to Okay, fine. So it's a referral network. And I understand what I don't know, but I know who's the expert, I
Unknown Speaker 13:30
was just going to kind of say the same thing is you you know, enough to know your your limitation not even your limitations, but you know, your area of expertise, you know, what you bring to the table and then refer out to others. That's and
Unknown Speaker 13:44
I do refer out to others and initiate you know, we are taking new clients. So hey, 70238257377023825737, but the beneficial ownership information for you want to file it, if you haven't heard about it, now you're hearing about it while you're sitting around talking to friends that you know, a business owner, ask them about it, let's start having this dialogue. Because what we don't want to have happen is January 120 25, it's not filed. And you start having to pay that fine. Now, if your business went out of business, and I know businesses this year that went out of business on that tax return, click final return. Okay, make sure that the box is checked that it's a final return. So that that deactivates that EIN number, so they're not looking for any more information on that form. And you have the documentation if someone challenges to say, Well, you didn't file this form for this business and I went out of business so therefore I'm not required to because I'm no longer in business right but what i For me it is teaching us how to handle our handle your business, right handle your business now sometimes No, I have I have one business that I you know, I do their stuff once a quarter Okay. And I got a call, like, I need this today. I'm like, Oops, I got to do it before the end of the quarter. Okay, got it. But have your documents understand what type of business you have? Understand your business because you can work in your business and you can work on your business. And it's okay not to know as a business owner, right? Because a lot of things I didn't know, right,
Unknown Speaker 15:22
still don't know, I was gonna say 17 years in and there's still plenty of stuff.
Unknown Speaker 15:26
Oh, my God. Seven, let me say this for and I am blessed. God carried me for 10 for 10 the audit because sometimes I'm like, how did you stay in business? What did you it's a blur. But it was a very interesting time in my life. But what I but now that I am in it, I am past COVID We're working. And we are providing not a perfect service. But an excellent service we try to meet our our customers need, we understand that you didn't you might not know. You don't know. That's okay. I don't expect you to come into our office knowing everything. But what you learn and how we treat you. Because it's very important for us that we are respectful. We listen. And we understand because we don't listen to respond, we listen to understand exactly what our customers needs are, so that we can give you a good return. We can answer any questions you may have. And we dialogue back and forth, whether it's email, we're doing Google meets, we're doing zoom meetings, telephone calls. And then if we have a telephone call, we try to follow up with an email, just to make sure that it's clear what we discussed, so that there's a small chance of miscommunication, right? Right. Very small, minimize, minimize it on every aspect. And what I love about our team is everybody understands what function they bring to the table, what their, what's their job requirements, and how they play a part. As team, I give you an example. We had someone else that was supposed to be here today, and miscommunication. But my the person that handles this, it has been out for the past couple of days. And we're both like, Oops, we forgot to do that. Okay, so we'll handle that we'll figure out what to do. But just being kind in our interaction, because when you tell someone that they potentially have a six figure, tax bill, you know, anxiety, right? And, you know, let's figure out how we work through this and
Unknown Speaker 17:32
help them understand that you're there to help. And you're also not a guy, you're also not a right. And you're also not like there's no assumption of malice as well, even if it is bad news a lot of times, a lot of times
Unknown Speaker 17:45
it's not well, it's not that good. You know, what you did during the year were how much money you made, right? So if you had that type of tax bill, you made a bunch of money. You made a bunch of money right now what you do with the money is something different. But having those conversations even when it's smaller amounts, just being able to explain to someone when they're like, you know, well. How much do you charge for taxes? And my thing to people is, don't compare pricing with me and someone else. Compare credentials. Okay? So when you compare credentials of what we have in our office, to who you're comparing me with, then let's talk about if you're gonna compare me, compare me to the CPA firms, right? compare me to the small CPA firms, compare me to them, or compare me to somebody that has the licenses that does what I did. And we do the same thing, right, but don't just compare me to somebody else does taxes exact because they could have just started I got 30 years in this game, right? I understand it a little bit different. And I got a whole bunch of certifications
Unknown Speaker 18:42
you do and you've also gotten plenty of recognition as well. I understand that. You're had some kind of an interview into Vegas recently. Well,
Unknown Speaker 18:51
not interestingly enough. Lanta. So I am a member of lambda. And I did a presentation for them in January and someone from Q Vegas was there. And they were like, you want to know what we're going to put you in our magazine. I am. I am friendly. So that community I appreciate I appreciate the members of lambda. They're friendly. They are accepting and they welcomed me in I'm also a part of their um, Toastmasters club now on just, you know, iron sharpens iron being around a bunch of people that are amazing speakers that can help me to become an even better speaker. Community community building can be because our community is made up of so many different people, so many different places, so many different things. Right. And I think that the prejudice is inherently that we have sometimes hinder us always and I want to come from a place of love. My my staff is diverse, very diverse. We're all women, right? Tried to get every time we tried to hire man. It doesn't work. I guess it's too much estrogen in the offer. But we've tried I mean, we keep on trying, right? All women all different ethnic backgrounds and we work well together absolutely work well together. I appreciate on my team with Brenda you know, Brenda Garza, Brenda has been with me now for about, we counted eight years, eight years, eight years. And Jen has Jen is going on her second year, okay. And we work well together and getting our stuff done. I couldn't do half the things that I do if they weren't in the office doing what they do. And right now we're working on team building. small company, we're working on team building, how
Unknown Speaker 20:34
many people in this team that you're building? Well, right now we
Unknown Speaker 20:37
have five to, to just do little little things that they're not part of the production team, they just support, they clean the office and make sure everything is in the office, but three actively work in production and working to get to nine. Okay, now, my goal is my goal is my goal is to get to nine and I'll probably be at nine. In the next year and a half. Okay, in the next year and a half. It is onboarding people, right. And making sure we had a space for him. Because when I get I think the current office I have, we believe that I can 12345 I can go up to five, maybe six. Okay. And with the, if we do it, right, some, some might work from home. Okay. And yeah, some might work from home, but just working on the type of structure I want to have. Because I want to grow people and I want to, you know, I want the same product,
Unknown Speaker 21:35
right? It's all a work in progress. You're looking a year and a half, it's a medium to long range goal depending on
Unknown Speaker 21:41
and that's the medium goal, whatever the medium goal for you. That's the medium actually, that's more that's good. Because meet is not short term, okay, almost short term, because in June, it'll be a year. Okay. So it's medium, because it's almost short term, the long term goal is to get this functioning, where I'm working maybe three days a week, oh, God, but I have a good team in place that has the structure and we're paying people and we're paying people a wage that they can live a living wage, a living wage, living comfortable wage, that's awesome. But that's one of the goals, you know, and then as I sit down and work through my business plan, because I tell people as a as an entrepreneur, when I started, I didn't have a business plan. I just jumped out there jump, I just jump. And I backed into the business plan. Okay, backed into it came here because I was I mean, I'm out here, because I was just doing taxes and bookkeeping. And I'm just admin automating companies since the 90s. I automated my first company in 99. And what does that mean when you say automate a company? So automating companies, okay. In the mid 90s, most small businesses were not want No, first of all, all of us didn't have desktop computers and things like that, right? So we didn't it wasn't normalized. It wasn't normalized yet. So I was about to graduate from college. And I met as a madam I met a gentleman that had a small business and he wanted to automate. He wants to he had to automate to customers. So he had me pick out two different software's was it intuit or one, right? Plus, I chose one, right plus over QuickBooks, okay, at the time, and I had to basically take their checks and deposits and put it in the accounting system. Gotcha. And I did payroll, and that's when I understood that payroll was complicated. Even. Yep, entering payroll was complicated, small stuff, even even for small stuff. From that. I went on QuickBooks. So in the 90s, I was automating companies, automating small businesses, teaching their employees how to use QuickBooks. I understood accounting, but now I was understanding QuickBooks, right? I've been doing this. So when people ask me, Can you can you enter my stuff in QuickBooks? I can. I've been doing this for 30 years. And that skill set is deep. That skill set is very deep. I mean, and I've trained people, they've come into my office, they wanted to learn after about three or four lessons in our office, they're off doing their own thing. And never wanted to do it on a big scale. Because I'm like, That's not I do more than just that. But understanding finite because I understood accounting. So I knew what I was looking for. I can look at your QuickBooks and quick glance and tell you, you didn't do this. You didn't do that. This is off that. But that's, that's the skill set that I learned over over time.
Unknown Speaker 24:27
And so how many how many years total? Not just 17 of this business. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 24:32
my God. So you're talking about automating my first company in 1993? Okay, and 1993 All right. Well, I was 23 years old, so people can do the math on that one. Yeah, you can do the math on that one. So 9303 1323 He's talking about 30 years. Yeah. 30 years. Wow. And when we were even looking at our, we were going through our files yesterday from the 17 years and because we have our files organized a certain way. And Brenda was like You know, you know, we need to purge some of this stuff. I was like, Yeah, we do. Yes, we do. Because just looking at it now, yeah, we've serviced a bunch of people. And I'm grateful. You know, some people moved out of town, you know, I mean, I've watched this industry evolve now, you know, now electronic stuff, we're doing stuff a lot electronically, of course, you know, back then, you know, you had to meet with people, they had to hand you their documents and different things like that people weren't really okay with sending the documents through faxes and an email. We weren't really emailing. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 25:32
I was pretty familiar, right? Yeah, it was pretty well, yeah. Because
Unknown Speaker 25:35
I remember the first time I had to use the mouse, yeah. And I was sitting, I was like, I can't do
Unknown Speaker 25:40
this. You mean, the ball on the bottom of this thing moves a hole.
Unknown Speaker 25:44
So what I can tell you is, I truly appreciate my journey as entrepreneur, I've been like, yeah, even having this radio show was taking me out of my comfort zone. Right.
Unknown Speaker 25:54
Right. I kind of felt that when you first coming in, from what I recall from back then,
Unknown Speaker 26:00
yeah, from back doing this radio show every week was out of my comfort zone. Right? Because but what I love is, is that we introduce the valley to different entrepreneurs, wrote different entrepreneurs. But if you are in need of a tax home, you know, we are you know, we are taking new clients now. So I am I'm excited, we finally got some good things in place. And our client, like I told you before our clients come first, right? And we want to provide an amazing tax experience. I know you'd like amazing tax experience. Yes, we want to provide even no matter what the outcome is excited about this, we want you to be excited about these taxes, we want you to feel like hey, I'm going to get my taxes done, you know, and she's crazy. But we want you to be excited and we want to empower you with information so you understand you know what you're doing, why you're doing it and how to do it in a way where you're not worried about what's going to happen you sleep that at night I
Unknown Speaker 26:51
thought I liked I liked that. I liked that and power through information. It seems you just kind of like you're coming across like an educator, which is which is excellent that we're coming through it like through the airwaves out of college right now. Yeah, you're you're right where you belong, right?
Unknown Speaker 27:05
We have a new in the USA you got makes no mistakes, makes no mistakes. And if you don't understand the journey, or you keep on walking, you'll get through it. You'll have an understanding for it. Again, our numbers 70238257377023825737 Until next week, I think I got some good guests coming on next week. I can't wait. Wes, thank you. You're welcome. Appreciate you.
Unknown Speaker 27:29
Thanks for Thanks for having me having me on I guess.
Unknown Speaker 27:33
Are you been listening to the less awkward Liana Rhonda show until next week, peace and blessings Las Vegas
Transcribed by https://otter.ai