IAM192- Certified Tax Coach and Co-Author Helps Clients With Techniques and Strategies on Tax Planning

Craig Cody is a Certified Public Accountant, Certified Tax Coach, Business Owner and Former New York City Police Officer with 17 years experience on the Force. As a Certified Tax Coach, Craig belongs to a select group of tax practitioners throughout the country who undergo extensive training and continued education on various tax planning techniques and strategies to become, as well as remain, certified. With this organization, Craig has co-authored an Amazon bestseller book, Secrets of a Tax-Free Life.

• CEO Hack: (1) Big glass of water in the morning and take some time to let my body wake up (2) Virtual assistant to keep me organized
• CEO Nugget: It's all about cash flow
• CEO Defined: Being able to do something when I want to

Website: https://craigcodyandcompany.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/craigc2742
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CraigCodyandCompany
Welcome page for IAMCEO listeners at the time of the interview: https://craigcodyandcompany.com/IAMCEO

Full Interview

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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 0:27

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 Craig Cody of Craig Cody and Company. Craig, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Craig Cody 0:36

Thank you very much for having me today.

Gresham Harkless 0:37

No problem super excited to have you on and what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Craig so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Craig Cody is a certified public accountant, certified tax coach, business owner, and former New York City police officer with 17 years of experience on the force. As a certified tax coach, Craig belongs to a select group of tax practitioners throughout the country who undergo extensive training and continued education on various tax planning techniques and strategies to become as well as remain certified with his organization Craig has co-authored and Amazon best-selling book Secrets of a Tax-Free Life. Craig, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Craig Cody 1:16

I'm ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:17

Let's do it. So 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?

Craig Cody 1:23

Oh, good. Well, my first career was in a police department. And, there's life after the police department. I was originally an economics major before I joined the police department. So I was interested in taxes. And then I was interested in doing financial planning figured let me get my CPA to kind of set myself above the rest of the guys that do what I do and retire and go into financial planning. And then I really fell in love with taxes and planning and estate planning back in the day. And that's no longer really a big issue. I started my firm after working for an international firm and slowly over the years, built it up to where we are today. And we serve clients across the country.

Gresham Harkless 1:59

Nice, nice, nice. And I don't think I've ever heard that on the podcast, I rarely ever hear that as I love taxes. So it's good

Craig Cody 2:07

I have a pocket protector too

Gresham Harkless 2:09

There you go. What is that? No, that's great to hear that you going fully into what it is you're passionate about in case you start to evolve there. But you also trying to help out other entrepreneurs and business owners. And of course, thank you for, serving on the force and all the great things that you did from that perspective as well. And I know you touched on a little bit, but could you talk a little bit more about like how you're serving the clients? And what kind of products and services.

Craig Cody 2:31

Yeah, sure. So we work with business owners across the country, thanks to the internet. And our focus is really on tax planning, looking for legal ways that could help the business owner keep more of what he makes, whereas the typical CPA or accountant is really good at putting the right numbers in the right boxes, but they're not doing any planning to help you save, some of that money that you're making.

So the law allows people to do things to structure things, so they can save taxes, where Donald Trump, Bill Gates, the Warren Buffett, have teams of attorneys, most people can't afford a team of attorneys to set things up for them. But we work with business owners, and we try and give them strategies that they can employ that, of course, the fact that we can help them keep more of what they're making because they're working hard. And as a business owner, there's a lot of risk out there. Okay, it's all on your shoulders. So if you could keep some of that money and do things with it, whether it's investing, or putting it back into your business, you'll be all the better for that.

Gresham Harkless 3:47

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I think a lot of times like you can have all the tools in the world that you at your disposal, but a lot of times not having that strategy and not having a way to be able to put it together and things that you're providing to help out these business owners definitely is huge towards you know, being able to be successful, like you mentioned that Bill Gates to Donald Trump's the people of the world that have been reached a lot of business success,

Craig Cody 4:06

Right. Because as a business owner, you're working on your business, you're building it, you're doing things you don't really have the time to kind of focus on what should I be doing, you're relying on your professional to do that for you. Unfortunately, most professionals are looking at this let me from the compliance side, let me make sure he's compliant and they're stopping there is what we do is we're complying but we're also looking for strategies that you could use to keep some of that money.

Gresham Harkless 4:29

Yeah, and that's definitely huge and that might be exactly, what I use the ask for, which is kind of like your secret sauce, what you feel kind of distinguishes you and sets you apart. Do you feel like that distinguisher between, doing that just making sure everything's in alignment, but also making business owners able to think long term about their business and how they're kind of taking care of their money?

Craig Cody 4:49

It's keeping more of what they make. So if we save a client $20,000 a year, in five years, that's an extra $100,000 that they've invested. What can that do for them and you take it out even further, it turns into a lot of money. So, unfortunately, people don't communicate with their accountants, accountants are probably not the best communicators, by nature. And if you're a business owner, you're running a business, you're not going to typically be reaching out to your accountant, you want that person to reach out to you, and you want to be on some kind of a schedule where you guys are both on the same page.

Gresham Harkless 5:17

That's a really great point. Because a lot of times, I'm from the tech world. So a lot of times people say they can't talk to their technology person, but I had never heard that. And that makes perfect sense where sometimes, being able to communicate, be able to understand from your tax professional, how important it is, or your accounting, how important it is for you to do X, Y, and Z and be able to communicate and be on the same page is something that is kind of rare, the fun.

Craig Cody 5:39

Yes, it's definitely there's a small group of us that do what I do out there.

Gresham Harkless 5:43

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And do you find that there are certain things or certain kinds of nuances that people always do when they're business owners that they should be doing better?

Craig Cody 5:53

Right, so that's why I wrote my book, and I'm going to offer to your listeners the 10 most expensive tax mistakes that cost business owners 1000s, and one of them is failing to plan. Okay, having the wrong business entity setup. All right. Are they LLCs? Should they be a corporation? Should they be taxed as a partnership? Are they structured the right way? And sometimes that can be a lot of money. Are they missing out on these new tax rules so the new thing this year is a qualified business income, which can be an additional 20% deduction? So that guy that next $150,000, he can actually be entitled to a $30,000 deduction from the government. Now, has he done what he needed to do planning-wise to make sure he's entitled to that deduction? All right. And like I said, it's not rocket science, it just takes a little bit of planning.

And then we go into other strategies, the right retirement plan, or you're hiring your kids or your kids old enough, the court says you could hire your kids as young as seven, I like to wait till about 11. But you could pay your kids $12,000 a year, and they're not going to pay any federal taxes. So basically, that could pay for hockey camp that could pay for a lot of different things that the kids are doing. And so you make a non-deductible expense deductible. All right, then we have another thing people miss is the home office. All right, are they doing it? Are they doing it correctly? What does a home office allow them to do, usually, a home office doesn't give you a big deduction, but it allows you to know your transportation from your home office to your other office deductible, it also allows you to deduct your home athletic facility, which could be a gym or your pool.

So these are things that people typically miss because the accountants got their heads buried down. And typically, it's both their fault. There's not a lot of communication, people gonna see their accountant in March and April when the guys's busiest. So I talked to people, you need to communicate, okay, and you need to talk about these things. And you need to save some of that money and keep more of it.

Gresham Harkless 7:40

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And definitely appreciate you for putting that together. And we'll find out exactly how to get a copy of that as well, too. And 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 habit that you have, or it might be even you touch more on your book, could you tell us something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner?

Craig Cody 8:00

Well, if for me, I think what I found for me is when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is have a big glass of water. Okay, I take just five minutes, I do nothing. And then in my case, I don't go to email or anything like that. I go for about 10 minutes, I go to Google News, just to kind of let my body because you know what? 24/7, right, we're always thinking about what we have going on. So take a little bit of time to kind of let your body just wake up. And I have found that's been very helpful.

Gresham Harkless 8:25

Yeah, definitely agree with that, to make sure that you're controlling your day in the very beginning and have it going the way that you want it to go. Rather than it being kind of ad hoc to your day is definitely a good CEO hack.

Craig Cody 8:35

And I think sticking to your schedule is very important. And about a year and a half ago, and actually, it's almost two years now I hired a personal assistant, and it was the best thing I ever did, keeps me organized, and makes sure I don't stray in those time blocks. It's very easy to pick up that phone call when you really shouldn't, if there are no accounting emergencies that can't be answered in an hour.

Gresham Harkless 8:57

Exactly, exactly. That's funny. Yeah, I just did that today. So yeah, definitely VAs are amazing as well. So that's another hack as well, too. So that's a great way to kind of remember it. 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 something you might tell your younger business self?

Craig Cody 9:13

Something I learned a lot. It's all about cash flow. Okay? It's all about cash flow. Doesn't matter how much you make. If you make it in December, it's all about cash flow. You need to, somebody you always used to say having a bad day, buddy, send out some bills need to get those bills out there. All right. And even better yet, put your clients on an automated schedule, automatic ACH or credit card, that's the lifeblood of small business.

Gresham Harkless 9:35

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you always hear that. So making sure that you're getting you're putting out those invoices, and you're getting paid is definitely an incredible importance to make sure that you're staying in business and you can keep the lights on. And Craig 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-unquote, CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners on the show. So I wanted to ask you what being a CEO means to you.

Craig Cody 9:57

Being a CEO to me is really having freedom. I'm doing the things that I want to do not always when I want to do when I want to do and but being able to do those things. So I may have to be in on a weekend to do something. But that also means I can go do something during the morning in a week or something like that. So for me, that's what it means. Flexibility.

Gresham Harkless 10:16

Yeah, absolutely, you can make it kind of like what you want to make it. So I definitely appreciate that. And Craig, I truly appreciate your time and appreciate all the awesome things that you're doing. What I wanted to do was passionate to Mike just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know about your book, everything that you're offering to us, and how best we can get ahold of you.

Craig Cody 10:34

Great. So if you go to my website, craigcodyandcompany.com/iamceo, there'll be a link there and you could fill out a form and we'll send you an actual paper copy of our book. If you need to reach us directly. The number here is 516-869-4051. And email is Craig@ccodycpa.com.

Gresham Harkless 10:55

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Appreciate that, Craig and we'll do is we'll have those links in the show notes just so that anybody can get a copy of that book also can call you and shoot you an email as well to anywhere across the country. So I truly appreciate you again, thanks for you know all the awesome work that you're doing and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Craig Cody 11:11

Well thank you very much and have a Happy New Year.

Outro 11:13

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

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