IAM614- CPA Writes About Useful Advice on Tax Strategies

Riley Adams is a licensed CPA working as a senior financial analyst at Google in the San Francisco Bay Area. Originally from New Orleans, Riley focuses on strategies for reaching financial independence and often writes useful advice regarding tax strategies, investing, and financial decision-making on his website, Young and the Invested.

His site targets like-minded young professionals who have an interest in financial independence and also a desire to learn more about entrepreneurship as a career ambition.

• CEO Hack: 1) Setting new year goals 2) Waking up earlier
• CEO Nugget: Be more proactive
• CEO Defined: A managerial role more than a visionary

Website: https://youngandtheinvested.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/youngandtheinv
Facebook: https://facebook.com/youngandtheinvested
LinkedIn: https://linkedin/in/riley-adams-cpa

Some of my most popular site content:
https://youngandtheinvested.com/macrs-depreciation-tables-calculator

https://youngandtheinvested.com/millennial-retirement-financial-independence
https://youngandtheinvested.com/pay-zero-tax-passive-income
https://youngandtheinvested.com/should-you-invest-or-pay-off-student-loans

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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 0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Riley Adams of youngandtheinvested.com. Riley, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Riley Adams 0:39

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you taking the time to have me on the show.

Gresham Harkless 0:43

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you for taking the time to be on the show of course, and all the awesome things that we're gonna hear from you and learn from how you got started. I wanted to read more about Riley so you can hear exactly that too to kind of set the stage.

Riley Adams is a licensed CPA working as a senior financial analyst at Google in the San Francisco Bay Area. Originally from New Orleans, Riley focuses on strategies for reaching financial independence and often writes useful advice regarding tax strategies, investing, and financial decision-making on his website, Young and the Invested. His site targets like-minded young professionals who have an interest in financial independence and also a desire to learn more about entrepreneurship as a career ambition.

Riley, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Riley Adams 1:25

I am, bring it on.

Gresham Harkless 1:27

Let's do it. So to kick everything off I wanted to hear a little bit more on what I call your story. What led you to get started with your business and all the awesome things you're working on?

Riley Adams 1:34

Yeah, I wish I had a more inspiring story. But just to be frank, it kind of came about from, I got my CPA license, in the spring of 2018, and for four years before that, I had been working a job like an investor relation with a pretty big time commitment. Then on top of that, I was going to night classes studying for these exams. So I just had a huge amount of time I was dedicating towards getting this license and trying to further my career. Thankfully, I finally got it. When that happened, I had a huge amount of time that was now unaccounted for. I wanted to do something productive with it and it was happenstance. My wife, she's now a physician, but at the time she was in her residency, and a lot of her co-residents tended to ask me personal finance questions.

Because I had a new CPA, they wanted to know about tax strategies and how they could avoid paying taxes on retirement funds, and all kinds of different things. My wife kind of got a little tired of me saying the same things over and over again to all our different friends because they would all ask me seemingly at separate times and she's like, you know, it might be more efficient for you just to write this down and put it on a website. When someone asks you about backdoor Roth IRA conversions, just tell them to go read your story. She had a lot of encouragement to get this thing started. I was a very entrepreneurial type of person, and I wanted to build something that at first was going to be more about just purely sharing information. But I saw that there was an opportunity to grow this into a business.

So over the past year and a half or so I've put a lot of time and effort into growing this community trying to share these different tax strategies or different ways you can reach financial independence. Part of that is, I think a lot of people who are, you know, young professionals like yourself and my myself, we are more inclined to want to try to get ahead. That in many ways means being entrepreneurial, and either starting a side hustle or a business that's above and beyond what you're doing just like your day job. I just noticed a lot of people who I hang out with and associate with have that same mentality. So I thought that would be a great subject to focus on as well for my site. So that's kind of where I've come from where this site came to be, and really what I'm trying to do with it going forward.

Gresham Harkless 3:57

Yeah, well, that's definitely awesome and it's so funny, because I usually say, a lot of the best ideas are sometimes from things that are just happening in our lives and sometimes we overlook them. We all need to have smart wives or spouses so that they can say, hey, you need to go do X, Y, and Z and that's when that teamwork makes everything come to fruition.

Riley Adams 4:14

Make no mistake, there is a very great woman behind it, and she is more or less leading us in the right direction. I'm so thankful to have her as my wife.

Gresham Harkless 4:22

Yeah, that sounds awesome and I'm sure you're gonna get kudos for mentioning that during this episode as well, too. But you're absolutely right. I mean, I think that when you're able to find that you're getting certain questions, or maybe you have certain problems on a regular basis that you're getting, and you're able to put it on a site and not only scratch the itch for yourself but scratch the itch for so many people, that's when that snowball moment seems like it happens and you really start to get some momentum towards something really awesome.

Riley Adams 4:47

Yeah, I agree.

Gresham Harkless 4:48

Awesome. So I know you touched on it a little bit, but I want to hear a lot more about what we can find on the site and you touched on that entrepreneurial piece as well too. So what kind of information and resources are available on the site?

Riley Adams 5:01

So for the first probably year, a year and a half, a lot of my content has skewed a bit more towards personal finance. So investing strategies a lot about taxes, because I found that a lot of content on my site because I'm a CPA, the tax and accounting information, words sort of resonates more with the people. Like I get a lot more interaction, a lot more people email me direct questions about it, like, what is this maker depreciation stuff, what's the section 1231, properly, just very niche type things. But those are the topics that I get, probably the most interaction with from people who visit the site.

So for a while, I leaned in and talked a lot about different tax topics, and not that I'm getting away from that. But I do want to focus it a bit more on something of my own interest, which is this entrepreneurship lens. Lately, I've been talking a lot about personal branding, how I just recently published a post on networking tips before an event at an event online, different ways to either network to get ahead in your career, or for your own business, really, just to generate opportunities for yourself. Because networking really, it can lead to so many unexpected benefits there's no one necessary angle you should be looking at for it. Just always looking to grow that network for different opportunities.

So I've sort of branched out into that and talked about personal brand statements, how you develop a leadership philosophy, some information around leadership, and how leaders compare to managers. So it's a lot of different things that there are honestly topics that come up while I'm having conversations with co-workers or friends that just seemed like this would be a great topic to go a little bit more in-depth on and try to flesh it out in an article so people can read it online.

Gresham Harkless 6:45

That makes so much sense and definitely correct me if I'm wrong, it kind of sounds like maybe I'm coming from the same lens as you are being interested, obviously, in the tax aspect. But also, obviously, the entrepreneurship piece, kind of sounds like those are not like two, I guess, dissimilar topics where a lot of people that are probably in entrepreneurship or thinking about doing it probably are looking at it or want to know more about the tax benefits and things like that.

Riley Adams 7:06

Exactly. If you're trying to start your own business, you need to learn about how when you invest money, how makers depreciation affects that for your income purposes, and you need to know about section 1231 property and all of these wonderful things. Because those are all important if you're looking to if your goal is to at least optimize profits, you want to be able to control the tax bill that you're paying. So those are all wonderful things to know about trying to plan ahead and account for.

Gresham Harkless 7:31

Absolutely, and I love that phrase optimize profits, and just being able to make sure that you are able to get to what your goals are. Because I think a lot of times when you start a business or you're trying to build a personal brand, or trying to figure out how to best leverage networking, usually, you may have some vision of where you're going to be in to have, obviously that information along with the tax information of section, I don't know what number you said, 135 and you want to make sure that you have those things in your arsenal and have a place to go to get that to be your best self and to reach your goals.

Riley Adams 8:01

Right.

Gresham Harkless 8:02

Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce and it can be for you personally, or your brand and everything you're building. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Riley Adams 8:13

I guess it would have been New Year's resolutions I set for myself in 2019. Unfortunately, it's kind of fallen to the wayside now that I've got a four-month-old son, and he kind of dictates my schedule. But for all of 2019, I set a goal for myself to really cut down on each day I would have between like, eight to 10 pm would be just, I hate to say it kind of like mindless TV watching or just nothing productive. It was just wasteful time that even as I was sitting there doing nothing, it was like I needed to do something else with this. So what I decided to do is, instead of going to bed at 10 or 11, or even midnight, I set a hard cap that I would go to bed by eight. I would wake up at 4 am and yeah, it was a little jarring the first, certainly the first few weeks.

But that first month, it was an adjustment because yeah, it gave me a lot of energy in the morning. I didn't exactly know how to channel it until I really put purpose to it. So I usually would, at the time I was working on the blog and trying to grow that. So I would dedicate a couple of hours each morning to writing content, and doing research promoting that, or I would exercise by waking up earlier and then just cutting out that dead time. I found that during the day, I had so much more energy and I was that much more focused that the benefits just kind of seep through every part of my life. I did that all of 2019 and it was fantastic.

It was one of the best decisions I've ever made in terms of productivity being more efficient, being more focused. I loved it and I tried to do it now obviously it just depends my son will kind of dictate schedules if he sleeps through the night. Wonderful. I'll do it but it's honestly like a life hack that I never expected to have such tangible value in the rest of my life. I very much intend to go back to that way of life as soon as I'm able.

Gresham Harkless 10:06

Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO, nugget and that could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or something, you might even tell your younger business self.

Riley Adams 10:15

Coming from it, or answering the question from the perspective of my site, there were so many things that I just didn't know. When I was getting started, I was really hesitant to kind of jump in and there were very low costs. For me jumping in and trying to discover new things I was hesitant. That's probably the best way to say it and as I've gone along in this journey of learning how to do web development and content creation, I've experimented here and there. As I do these little experiments, it's just why didn't I do this sooner. Why didn't I just get over this fear, jump in sooner just act. What I've done, I've taken that 2020 was my New Year's resolution of if there's an idea that I have for trying to grow the site, just go at it.

I mean, what's there to lose, and just going at it with an attitude of, I don't have a lot to lose, I would learn from doing this. If not, I know not to do it in the future, just be more proactive. That would be my CEO nugget, I'm sure that's a very general thing to say. But just don't be afraid to make mistakes. Because as long as you learn from those mistakes, you really can improve yourself, improve your career, your business, whatever it might be, because you're eventually going to iterate to where you are on that path to success. I think the word that they use at Google is you failed to fail. Once you kind of get to that point, there's only success left as an option. It's a little tedious but sometimes, it's the only way to get to the right path.

Gresham Harkless 11:46 

I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on the show. So Riley, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Riley Adams 11:55

Yeah, that's something that I've actually been thinking about since you sent me the questions ahead of time. I was thinking about the different CEOs I've known because I've worked for three or four different companies now. Each CEO has been different because each company has been different, the place I've worked longest was at a public utility. For anyone who doesn't know utilities aren't exactly growing at a Gangbuster rate. If you have a 1%, sales growth year over year you are industry-leading, it's a completely different world, a very mature industry. To be effective as a CEO in that role, you don't need to necessarily be a visionary, what you need to do is be a good corporate manager.

So how to allocate capital, how to rally the troops towards some new project, it's more managerial focus. You're really not trying to set the industry standard, because at the end of the day, you're generating electricity, transmitting it long distance, and then you're selling it to some retail customer. Obviously, it's a little bit of a simplification, but it's not an industry, that's just right, with innovation, there are lots of things that are changing, but it's not necessarily being led by utilities. So that type of company requires a manager, whereas my current company. It sort of seeks to organize the world's information in a universal and accessible format for people to empower their lives and just improve life in general.

That's a little bit more visionary, I would imagine like, you're trying to help people filter information, understand different questions and the answers to those questions. That is something that takes a lot of contemplation of what you need to do to be effective, not only as a leader of the company. But as setting that industry standard, you need to be very well thought out, you need to make sure you understand all the different trade-offs and decisions you make, whether it's privacy, whether it's advertising revenue, whatever it might be, you need to be very conscientious of you leading an industry forward, and how that impacts society, that's major.

So I don't know if what I'm trying to say is, I don't know if there's one unique or universal should I say definition of what it means to be CEO. I think each company really has its own needs for someone who's leading it. But at the end of the day, you need to be able to lean your troops so to speak, that is a universal characteristic. You also need to be able to manage a company. From there, everything else is different. It just has different needs for different companies and different industries. There are lots of good characteristics that are shared, but there's no one true definition in my mind.

Gresham Harkless 14:36

Definitely appreciate that. I appreciate your time even more, what I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and then of course, how best they can get a hold of all the great content and information and things you're doing.

Riley Adams 14:49

Yeah, I think we've covered a good bit of the reason why I'm on the show. I really enjoyed being able to focus my interest on writing and connecting with like-minded individuals who are interested in furthering their careers following their business ambitions and really just trying to improve themselves in every measure. It's a great journey. It's very, hopefully very early on in my journey for this and it's been fun just doing something that's very enjoyable, and I'm passionate about and having the support of my wife and hopefully my son getting ready to do this. I mean, it's honestly like, I feel like I have got a dream job. I've got a dream hobby sort of business that's, I finally get to go out there and just follow through on some of my entrepreneurial pursuits and it's been great.

I just thank you so much for having me on. I'm, you see me as a worthy person to have on the show. I guess the best way to reach me is like you were saying earlier, it's on youngandtheinvested.com and I'm on Twitter and a similar handle. But yeah, that's the best way to get in touch with me and I can't thank you enough for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.

Gresham Harkless 16:02

No problem. I definitely appreciate you and we will have the links and information in the show notes as well and definitely reminds us that if we do the work and do the time and look at those things and test out things, we can also have just a little streams as you have laid out as well too, that you have in your life. So definitely appreciate that and I hope you have a phenomenal rest today.

Outro 16:21

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Thank you for listening.

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