In episode IAM302 of the I AM CEO podcast, host Gresham Harkless interviews Jeff Badu, a Licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and founder of Badu Enterprises, LLC, which is a multinational conglomerate that owns several key companies. His marquee company is Badu Tax Services, LLC, which specializes in tax preparation, tax planning, and tax representation for individuals and businesses. Jeff is also the founder of Badu Investments, LLC, which is primarily a real estate investment company that acquires residential and commercial real estate properties in underserved areas.
In the interview, Jeff shares his personal journey and how he started his companies after realizing the need for financial education and tax planning in his community. He discusses the services his firm offers, including tax preparation, planning, and representation, and emphasizes the importance of tax planning for individuals and businesses. Jeff also talks about the challenges of being a serial entrepreneur and the rewards of making a positive impact on the community.
Jeff shares his CEO hacks and nuggets, which include automation and virtual assistants to increase productivity and seeking out coaches or mentors who know more than you do. He defines being a CEO as a leader who can inspire and help people develop themselves.
Overall, the episode provides valuable insights into the importance of tax planning and financial education and the role of a trusted advisor in helping individuals and businesses achieve financial security. Jeff's experience and passion for helping his community make this episode a must-listen for anyone interested in financial planning or entrepreneurship.
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Transcription:
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Jeff Badu Teaser 00:00
First one is we educate our clients a lot. We do newsletters, podcasts, articles, books. We do a lot of stuff for free. We give it out for free. We don't even charge anything for it. We say hey, get the education you need and the reason why we do that is because we want to educate our clients. It makes their lives easier. It makes our lives easier.
Intro 00:21
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 are in search of.
This is the I AM CEO podcast.
Gresham Harkless 00:46
Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners. Or what I like to call the CB Nation architects, those that are looking to level up their organizations.
In this month, we are focusing on knowing thy numbers. I could hear the phrases from Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank, and if you understand or don't understand exactly what numbers is, think finance, economics, accounting, capital, investment, funding, bootstrapping, anything that's around numbers. So, we have to understand how important it is to know your numbers and how important that is for you to forecast, make decisions, and to be able to truly strategize around your business and do that successfully.
Things are gonna be a little bit different, obviously, this month. So look for CEO hacks and CEO nuggets and interviews that focus around this. But more than everything else, make sure that you know your numbers because they're extremely important to the life of your business.
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 02:12
Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely a pleasure to be on the show.
Gresham Harkless :02:15
Pleasure to have you on. What I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Jeff so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.
Jeff Badu is a serial entrepreneur and a wealth multiplier. He's a licensed, certified public accountant and the founder of Badu Enterprises, LLC, which is a multinational conglomerate that owns several key companies.
His marque 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 business 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?
Jeff Badu 03:02
I certainly am.
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Gresham Harkless 03:03
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 and what led you to start your business.
Jeff Badu 03:11
Yeah, so I first started a business in general when I was five years old. I was selling products mainly candy. Basically, what happened was that my family is filled with entrepreneurs. My dad is a real estate developer. My mom is in real estate, also does some retail, and she's also a cosmetologist specialist, aka hair hairstylist. So with that in the blood or in the 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 the business.
So, to take it a step further senior year, I'm sorry, freshman year in college, that's when I started building my business plan. I do 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 job just wasn't for me. It just didn't feel like it was for me. So I started a business plan freshman year in college and kept building and building and I was doing taxes on the side for free.
I was volunteering at tax clinics, family, and friends. Hey, I'll do your taxes for free. I'll even pay you to do the taxes, that's how dedicated I was. Then fast forward in 2016, September 16th, 2016, I quit my full-time job, and then I launched my Tax Services, which is now a tax firm that has 1500 clients or so across all 50 states in five different countries. It's 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 04:46
Nice. So, I wanted to drill a little bit deeper. I know you touched on it a little bit, could you tell us a little bit more on how you're serving the clients you're working with and some of the things you're doing?
Jeff Badu 04:53
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. What I do is I take a person and I say, Hey, first of all, let's start with the basics. Let's start with the taxes. The tax is the base, and I say we're saving you 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, let's now build a budget. That's where our financial coaching program comes in.
So once we do the taxes, we say, okay, let's get into other things. We send out a survey to the client, it's a needs-based analysis survey, and they say, oh, hey, I need an introduction to so and so. Sometimes we are that introduction. Little did they know, cause, they get introduced through the tax firm.
We do the taxes and then we start doing some financial coaching, some introduction. Overall what we do is we take a person who, for one, was overpaying in taxes, and then we restructured them financially in a way where they can leverage the resources that they have in order to grow, multiply it into massive wealth. We're not just thinking small, Hey, put in a mutual fund and let it grow up. That's not what we're doing. We're saying you're building something. Let's go out and buy two 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 as well. So if the person has kids, we usually want the kids to be in a meeting as well. That way they're learning. So what we're doing is we take somebody to do their taxes. We ultimately turn that money that they save or whatever money they have, and we turn into wealth that can build for an endless amount of generations.
Gresham Harkless 06:38
Nice. Would you consider that to be like your secret sauce or what you feel distinguishes you and sets you or your organization apart?
Jeff Badu 06:45
Yeah, it's definitely one of the secret sauces is that we don't just do taxes. Our clients, they know us for taxes. They know that, I'm a CPA they know that we run a tax firm and we do taxes, but literally they know on the back end we do a lot of other things. If you go to my personal website or my bio, it reads 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.
What separates I do tax services, which is the Breadwinner or the Marquee company, is we have four competitive advantages. First one is we educate our clients a lot. We do newsletters, podcast articles, books. We do a lot of stuff for free. We give it out for free. We don't even charge anything. For us, we're saying, Hey, get the education you need. Reason why we do that is because we wanna educate our clients. It makes their lives easier. It makes our lives easier. So that's one thing, that's what the firm was founded upon, was education.
We've seen that a lot of these tax firms weren't doing anything but 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 is, we're very flexible. So 95% of our work is done virtually, but we use portals, mobile apps, we're primarily a technology company. Really, that's what we are.
So instead of going into somebody's office, sitting there for two hours waiting, we just don't want that for the client. We want the client to be comfortable sending their stuff. They can go away for a few hours, a few days we send it via secure portal. They get the results back. They send payment, taxes get filed, we send them after taxes survey. So we're very digital, very flexible, and we actually attract mainly millennials. That's our target market.
The third competitive advantage is that we have access to a lot of people, a lot of resources. You need a real estate agent, an insurance agent, you need a money manager, an attorney, whoever you need in your overall financial network or legal network, we can always provide that for you.
Last but not least, longevity, average age for a CPA or a tax owner or whatever you wanna call it, is 60 years old. At 60, I think you are approaching retirement. So we don't want that. For me, I'm a 26 year old individual that's been able to build a firm and even, not to say, not calling wood and all that stuff, but even if I was to leave this planet today, my firm would still operate and run the same way it is currently because I've taught other people how to do the same thing.
We have about 20, 21 independent contractors now who are taught how to run the firm, basically. So that's one of my other goals is to eventually be able to be comfortable enough to where I'm not even running a firm. I'm still doing what I have to do but as far as the day-to-day, I have other folks who can handle that. So those are the four main competitive advantages or the secret sauces. Plus, in addition to all the other things we do.
Gresham Harkless 09:58
Nice. I definitely appreciate that because it's important to understand those competitive advantages because you understand what kind of makes you unique. Because a lot of times, when you build a business, you are thinking strategically on 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 helping to empower those clients that you're working with as well. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app, book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.
Jeff Badu 10:29
Yeah, so I'm known for automation a lot. I'm the four-hour workweek guy. So I use virtual assistance a lot. I use virtual folks a lot, and just so people understand this, 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 like next to your office. It just means that it's somebody else that's in the Philippines, India, Vegas, wherever they are.
I have, a virtual assistant who's in the Philippines right now, who's doing some work. She's sending out surveys for all of our clients. I have a receptionist who, while I'm doing a podcast like this, they're picking up my calls right now. 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 good at what they do. So what I do is I utilize automation and virtual technology a lot.
Just like our account booking system. We use accounting, for example for all of our, if a client wants to book a meeting, they just go on a website, boom. They book it. We don't have anybody that oversees it. It's all automated. Automation is, definitely one of the CEO hacks.
Gresham Harkless 11:38
Yeah, I definitely think that's a great CEO hack. And in case in point, we're doing this interview, I'm right outside of DC, you are in Chicago. So that's a case in point another example of virtual and the power of it.
Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?
Jeff Badu 11:58
I would say get a coach as early as possible. Get somebody who knows what they're doing more than you do. Especially if you're starting out you don't know anything. You might think you know something, you know the technical aspects of your business, and 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 a thousand times more than I did last year compared to this year.
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 a 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 merit or model. Then you can say, okay, I'm gonna go out on my own.
That's why I like franchises a lot. I like franchise businesses a lot actually. In my firm, instead of franchising, we do what's own licensing. So we license the rights of our firms to other people, they can run their firm. They pay us, a nice commission every month or a nice percentage. So yeah, definitely get somebody on your side who knows what they're doing.
Gresham Harkless 13:06
Absolutely. Depending on whatever your environment is, that determines how you know successful you'll be. So, like you said, you know 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.
Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote CEOs on this show. So Jeff, what does being a CEO mean to you?
Jeff Badu 13:34
Yeah. 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.
Gresham Harkless 13:52
Absolutely and that's the true definition. An example of, what a leader is and kind of like along 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. I definitely agree with that definition and I appreciate you for sharing that with us.
Jeff, I truly appreciate your time. What I want us 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 hold of you.
Jeff Badu 14:24
Yeah. So I would say just a few nuggets, five steps of starting a business. First and foremost, you have to know it's something that you want to do. It's tied to your purpose and it's tied to your passion. That's the first thing. You don't start a business just to make money. You start a business to make an impact. So it has to be something that you really want to do.
The second step is you do research on that industry.
The third step is you build a business plan around that, in that research.
The fourth step is you test it to a few clients or a few markets.
Last but not least, you launch a product or service to the mass market.
So that, just five steps and then how best people can get in touch with me. Email is best, you can email me, you can also text me. Always put my phone number out there. (773) 679-7198. Once again, 773 679- 7198. That's probably the easiest way. Just shoot me a text or call me email. jeffbadu.com is also my personal website.
Gresham Harkless 15:20
Absolutely. I would definitely, echo that as well. Jeff, I truly appreciate you, again, we'll make sure to have that information and those links in the show notes as well. But you're rocking and rolling 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 15:36
All right. Thank you, sir.
Outro 15:38
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.
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This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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