IAM302- Wealth Builder Helps Clients With Tax Planning and Preparation

Jeff Badu is a serial entrepreneur and a wealth multiplier. He’s a Licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and the founder of Badu Enterprises, LLC, which is a multinational conglomerate that owns several key companies. His marquee company is Badu Tax Services, LLC, which is a CPA firm that specializes in tax preparation, tax planning, and tax representation for individuals and businesses. Another key company is Badu Investments, LLC which is primarily a real estate investment company that acquires residential and commercial real estate properties in areas such as the South Side of Chicago in efforts to restore traditionally underserved areas.

• CEO Hack: Automation and Virtual assistants
• CEO Nugget: Get someone/coach who knows something more than you do
• CEO Defined: Leader who can inspire and help people develop themselves

Website: http://www.jeffbadu.com/

Twitter: @JBadu32

Instagram: @JBadu32

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:30

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jeff Badu of Badu Tax Services. Jeff, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Jeff Badu 0:39

Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely a pleasure to be on the show.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

A pleasure to have you on and what I wanted to do, which is read a little bit more about Jeff so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Jeff Badu is a serial entrepreneur and a wealth multiplier. He’s a Licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and the founder of Badu Enterprises, LLC, which is a multinational conglomerate that owns several key companies.

His marquee company is Badu Tax Services, LLC, which is a CPA firm that specializes in tax preparation, tax planning, and tax representation for individuals and businesses. Another key company is Badu Investments, LLC which is primarily a real estate investment company that acquires residential and commercial real estate properties in areas such as the South Side of Chicago in efforts to restore traditionally underserved areas. Jeff, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Jeff Badu 1:29

I certainly am.

Gresham Harkless 1:30

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to start your business?

Jeff Badu 1:38

Yeah, so I first started a business in general, when I was five years old. I was selling products mainly candy. And basically what happened was that my family is filled with entrepreneurs. My dad is a real estate developer. My mom is in real estate and also does some retail and she's also a cosmetologist specialist, aka hairstylist. So with that, in the blood, or in a family, I wanted to be in business, I wanted to be someone who was in the business field. So I chose accounting because accounting is the backbone of business. So to take it a step further, freshman year in college, that's when I started building my business planning and budgeting tax services. I just wanted a tax firm, I wanted something that I can have as a foundation.

Because I knew that working the whole corporate America corporate job wasn't for me, it just didn't feel like it was for me. So I started a business plan in my freshman year in college, and I kept building and building. And I was doing taxes on the side for free. And I was volunteering at tax clinics, family, friends, hey, I'll do your taxes for free. I'll pay to do the taxes, that's how dedicated I was. And then fast forward to September 16, 2016, I quit my full-time job. And then I launched tax services, which is now a tax firm that has 1500 clients or so across all 50 states in five different countries and is a very fast explosive company, which has led to other companies. So it's the breadwinner of the enterprise. But it's also led to other companies being started as well.

Gresham Harkless 3:26

Nice. And one of the big things that I'm happy about is I was young and selling candy, I'm glad we weren't in the same territory. So we didn't have any competition going on. But it's great to hear people that have those entrepreneurial seeds planted early, and then are able to blossom into the awesome company that you have. So I wanted to drill a little bit deeper. And I know you touched on a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you're serving the clients you're working with some of the things you're doing?

Jeff Badu 3:54

Yeah, so I'm a wealth builder. And I'm somebody who allows people to see that they have limitless resources when it comes to their finance. So what I do is I take a person, and I say, first of all, let's start with the basics. Let's start with the taxes. Tax is the base, that's why we'll save your money on taxes, the average American pays about 40% in taxes. So what we do is we try to capture that 40% And then we say, Okay, well, let's now build a budget.

That's where our financial coaching program comes in. So once we do taxes, we say okay, well, let's get into other things. We sent out a survey to the client. It's a needs-based analysis survey. And they say I need an introduction to so and so. Sometimes we are an introduction voters they know because they get introduced to the tax firm. So we do the taxes and then we start doing some financial coaching introduction.

And overall, what we do is we take a person for one who was overpaying in taxes, and then we started over-structure them financially in a way where they can leverage the resources that they have in order to grow multiplied into massive wealth. We're not just thinking small, hey, put in a mutual fund and let it grow. No, that's not what we're, we're saying you're building something, let's go out and buy real estate properties every year, even one property a year. And we're taking that, and we're also building that turn into multi-generational wealth.

So we also teach the kids well, so the person has kids, we usually want the kids to be in a meeting as well, that way they're learning. And so what we're doing is we take somebody due to taxes. And we ultimately turn that money that they save, or whatever money they have, and we turn it into wealth that can go for this amount of generation.

Gresham Harkless 5:48

I love that I appreciate that tremendously. Because a lot of times you have those one-offs, where you get your taxes done, but you're not really thinking long term about what exactly you are getting those tax savings for, but to be able to have everything kind of under one umbrella, or under a couple of umbrellas that you have, that allow people to not only just be able to take care of tax because literally, everybody has to do their taxes, but also ways that you can empower them in order to be financially empowered for themselves, but also for multiple generations, it sounds like

Jeff Badu 6:21

Exactly, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 6:22

Nice. And would you consider that to be like your secret sauce, or what you feel kind of distinguishes you and set you or your organization apart?

Jeff Badu 6:29

Yeah, it's definitely one of the secret sauces that we don't just do taxes. Our clients, know us for taxes, they know that I'm a CPA, that I run a tax firm, and we do taxes, but the letter that they know the back end, we do a lot of other things. I mean if you go to my personal website or my bio, and read that I'm the owner of an enterprise. So that's a rebranding tool that we're using. But at the same time, most people just know me for taxes. So that's definitely a secret sauce that a lot of people don't know. But what separates the tax services, which is the breadwinner, or the marketing company, is we have four competitive advantages. The first one is we educate our clients a lot. We do newsletters, podcasts, articles, and books, and we do a lot of stuff for free, we give it out for free, we don't even charge anything for it. So we're saying, hey, get the education you need.

And the reason why we do that is because we want to educate our clients and makes their lives easier and makes our lives easier. So that's one thing the firm was founded upon was education, we've seen that a lot of these tax firms weren't doing anything with taxes. They were just hey, come in, do your taxes.

And that's it, we'll see you next year. So we wanted to have a comprehensive overview of everything. So we do more than just the taxes, we train them, or we educate them on a lot of other things too. Second, we're very flexible. So we have 95% of our work done virtually, or we use mobile apps, we are primarily a technology company, really, that's what we really are. So instead of, going into somebody's office and sitting there for two hours, waiting, we just don't want that for the client to be comfortable with seminar stuff, they can go away for a few hours a few days, we send them via a secure portal, they get the results back, they send payment, taxes get filed, we send them after tax season survey.

And so we're very digital, very flexible, and we actually attract many millennials, that's our target market. The third competitive advantage is that we have access to a lot of people and a lot of resources, you need a real estate agent, an insurance agent, you need a mentor, a money manager, and an attorney, whatever you need, and your overall financial network or legal network, we can always provide that for you. Last but not least longevity.

The average age for a CPA or a tax owner, or whatever you want to call it is 60 years. I think you're approaching retirement age. So we don't want for me, I'm a 26-year-old individual that's been able to build a firm and even not to say knock on wood and all that stuff. But even if I was to leave this planet today, our firm would still operate and run the same way it is currently because I've taught other people how to do the same thing. You have about 20 to 21 independent contractors now who are taught how to run the firm, basically.

That's one of my other goals is to eventually be able to comfortable enough to where I'm not even running a firm. I mean, I'm still doing what I'm doing. But as far as the day-to-day I have other folks who can handle that. So those are the four main competitive advantages of the secret sauce. Plus, in addition to all the other things we do

Gresham Harkless 9:54

Nice, definitely appreciate that because it's important to kind of understand those competitive advantages because you understand what makes you unique. Because a lot of times when you build a business you are not thinking strategically about how to create the business or even have that tax refund, you might get back. So it's great that you have that built within your business, but also helps to empower those clients that you're working with as well. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Jeff Badu 10:30

Yeah, I'm known for automation a lot. I'm the four-hour workweek guy. So I use virtual assistants a lot. I use virtual folks a lot. And I really don't want people to get confused. They think virtual means a robot. Virtual just means that you're not sitting down with this person next to your office, it just means that somebody else that's in the Philippines, India, Vegas, wherever they are. So I have a virtual assistant who's in the Philippines right now, who's doing some work, she's sending out surveys to all of our clients, I have a receptionist who is doing a podcast like this, they're picking up my calls right now.

And then I also have remote folks in India who prepare some of the tax returns and come back, we review them, and make sure it's all good. They're very, very good at what they do. So what I do is utilize automation and virtual technology a lot. Just like our calendar-looking system uses counting, for example. For all of our clients who want to book a meeting, they just go on a website, and book and we don't have anybody that oversees it. It's all automated. Automation is definitely one of the CEO hacks.

Gresham Harkless 11:45

Yeah, definitely. That's a great CEO hack. And we're doing this interview, I'm right outside of DC, and you're in Chicago. So that's a Case in point, another example of virtual in the power of it. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can happen to a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self,

Jeff Badu 12:05

I would say get a coach as early as possible, get somebody who knows what they're doing more than you do. I mean, especially if you're starting out, you don't know anything. You might think you know the technical aspects of your business. That's why you're in business, but you don't really know anything. So for me what I know now like last year, I know 1000 times more than I did last year compared to this year. So I have a nice business coach who coaches me on a lot of strategic and tactical related activities, or functions.

So now I'm becoming more strategic, as opposed to the tactical day-to-day person. So if I was to tell anybody, and I do small business coaching, entrepreneurship, coaching, mentor, but get a coach, get somebody that knows how to do something better than you do. And then you can say, Okay, well, I'm gonna go out on my own even. That's why I like franchises a lot. I like franchise businesses a lot. Actually, my firm instead of franchising, we do what's known as licensing. So we licensed the rights of our firms under people, they can run our firm, they pay us a nice commission every month, or a nice percentage. So yeah, definitely get somebody on your side, who knows what you're doing?

Gresham Harkless 13:20

Absolutely dependent on whatever your environment is, that determines how successful you will be. So like you said somebody that is better at what you do at X, Y, and Z, whatever that might be, you're able to learn from them. And just sometimes by being around them, you just automatically step your game up and step your level up. So I think that's a great CEO nugget. And now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So Jeff, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Jeff Badu 13:48

Yeah, a CEO is a leader who can inspire others to perform their best at all times. A CEO is somebody who can put a team together and have everything running smoothly and in the right way. A CEO is not a boss, it's not somebody who just bosses people around, I actually hate the word boss actually,

Gresham Harkless 14:07

Absolutely, is the true definition and example of what a leader is, and a lot on the mind, or the mindset or along the lines of the E Myth, where you actually are empowering people to be leaders to be able to develop themselves because you are comfortable enough to do that. And you also are doing that. And I definitely agree with that definition. I appreciate you for sharing that with us. And, Jeff, I truly appreciate your time. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and our listeners know and then how best they can get ahold of you.

Jeff Badu 14:40

Yeah, so I would say just a few nuggets, five steps to starting a business. First and foremost, you have to know something that you want to do is tied to your purpose and decide on your passion. That's the first thing you got to start a business just to make money start a business to make an impact. So it has to be something that you really want to do. Second that is you do research on that industry.

The third step is you build a business plan around that and when research is established, you tested to a few clients or a few markets. And then last but not least, you launch a product or service to the mass market so that is just five steps, and then how best people can get in touch with me. Yeah, I mean, email is best. I mean, you can email me, you can also text me, I always put my phone number out there. 773-679-7198. That's probably the easiest way just shoot me a text or call me an email. jeffbadu.com is also my personal website.

Gresham Harkless 15:41

Absolutely. I would definitely echo that as well. And Jeff, I truly appreciate you again, we'll make sure to have that information, those links in the show notes as well, but you're rockin' and rollin'. And I appreciate you for the time and all the nuggets and information you dropped today. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Jeff Badu 15:58

All right. Thank you, sir.

Outro 16:00

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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