Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, part of the HubSpot podcast network with great shows like Being Boss. And today we are talking about the Entrepreneurs on Fire income report for April 2021.
This is going to be a little bit different than most of our income reports because I am actually leaving in very early May on a two-week wellness retreat up in San Francisco, specifically Santa Rosa, California, and we don't have the final numbers in. So our website will at eofire.com slash income 92. Those will be fully updated numbers, but we won't have it for this audio income report, unfortunately. But again, go to eofire.com.
You'll see the numbers at the top right of that website, and you can click on those numbers for a full breakdown of April 2021's income reports. All the income, all the expenses, all of the awesomeness. And today, Fire Nation, we'll be talking about some pretty cool things. Josh Bowerly has a pretty awesome monthly text that specifically your questions answered.
We're going to talk about the Tony Robbins Mastermind that Kate and I got to partake in in April in Florida. It was fantastic. And of course, Kate's going to have an amazing lesson learned to take us home. So make sure you stick around.
We'll be diving in as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. From tools that help with automated emails, increasing sales, gamification, and more, it's never been easier to create an online course than with the Thinkific App Store. Learn more and sign up for a free trial of Thinkific at thinkific.com slash firefree. That's T-H-I-N-K-I-F-I-C dot com slash firefree.
Hiring can feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but when you post a job on ZipRecruiter, their matching technology finds these qualified candidates for you and invites them to apply. So while other companies give you too many options, ZipRecruiter finds you the needle in the haystack. And right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash fire. All right, Fire Nation, we're going to kick things off with a bang because we have Mr.
CPA on fire, Josh Bowerly, with his March tax tip. And his tax tip this month are your tax questions answered. We reached out to you, Fire Nation. We asked for some questions you might have around taxes.
Josh is delivering today. So Josh, brother, welcome and take it away. All right, John, for this month's tax tip, we have part two of our Fire Nation and Podcasters Paradise question and answer session. And we have three more great questions to answer this month.
And for those who want to be featured in the future income report or tax tip, get those questions in. We're happy to answer them. It's a great way to get these questions answered because if you have this question, there's someone else out there that has that same question. And first up, we have a question from Sandy who wants to know if you have contractors or customers that are located all over the world, do you need an accountant that specializes in that?
And are there even accountants that specialize in that? Or is it better to find someone who serves your local community? And by an accountant that specializes in that, I'm guessing she means an international accountant, someone who knows about taxes in other countries. And the first thing to understand here is that you don't need an international accountant if your clients are located all over the world, right?
It's actually a little bit confusing and contrary to what you think, but it generally doesn't matter where your customers are. It matters where you are, where you're conducting business. And this is becoming even more important as entrepreneurs are going virtually in almost every field, every industry, right? So if you are located in, let's say, California, and you have a client in, let's say, Australia, you are generally not going to have to worry about Australian taxes.
All that's going to matter is the U.S. and California taxes, okay? So that's the first thing. Don't worry about where your customers are.
Worry about where you are. So unless you're traveling to different parts of the world, all you need is an accountant that knows U.S. taxes. Now, as to whether you should hire a local professional, I would actually be more focused on a tax professional or an accounting professional that knows your industry, right?
The state tax laws, they're mostly straightforward. There's not too much specific things in there that you need someone that specializes in, let's say, California. What I would say would benefit you more would be someone who knows your specific industry inside and out, meaning they know what types of deductions are typical for your industry. They know what your numbers look like compared to other people in your industry, and they can guide you accordingly there.
So don't necessarily worry about an international accountant, especially if you just have customers overseas. All that matters is where you are. And also, I wouldn't worry about someone local. Go with someone that knows your industry.
Next up, we have Jason, who wants to know if he can donate his income-producing properties, and by this, I'm assuming he's meaning his buy and hold rental properties, to his foundation without having to pay capital gains and depreciation recapture taxes. So this is a little bit of an advanced, a little bit of a tricky question, right? But the first thing is that when it comes to charitable donations, the first thing to always keep in mind is that it has to be an IRS-approved non-profit organization in order to be tax deductible, right? So in this case, as long as Jason's foundation he's talking about is an official not-for-profit, the IRS has approved it, he can deduct a donation to that foundation.
Second, donating appreciating property, which is what real estate is, does offer a unique donation in that you're going to get the value of the fair market value of the property as a deduction, right? So that's a lot of confusing tax words thrown out there, but let's just say that Jason bought this property for $100,000 and now it's worth $500,000. He's going to potentially be able to deduct the full $500,000 value of that property, even though he only paid $100,000, and he's also going to avoid all those capital gains and depreciation recapture taxes that you would normally have to pay if you sold the property, right? However, there's something very important to keep in mind here.
I use the word potentially because there are income limits on any donation. Most charitable donations are limited by 50% of your adjusted gross income, right? So if you made $100,000 that year, you can take donations, total donations all added together up to $50,000. But there's some donated assets, such as real estate, that in donations to certain organizations for that matter, they're limited to 30% of your adjusted gross income, right?
So if you made $100,000, those assets, you can only take up to $30,000 per year total, right? So depending on what Jason or anyone else's income level is, you may not get to deduct that, the full value of that house in any given year. It would be spread out over multiple years until you can take all of it, right? But the big thing I think Jason was asking, could you avoid the capital gains and depreciation recapture taxes?
The answer is yes. If you donated, you would not pay those taxes. Finally, our last question this month, we have Chris Ellis here that wants to know if you purchase a revenue producing website for less than $10,000, can you expense the full cost that year or does it need to be amortized slash depreciated over multiple years? And this is another advanced question.
I'm sure some people are just confusing with the word amortization, amortized, right? These are a little bit tricky tax terms. And unfortunately, it's hard for me to answer this question without using the phrase every accountant must use. It depends, right?
I would have to know the specifics of your unique situation to give you an exact answer. Typically purchasing any kind of asset results in the cost being either amortized or depreciated over multiple years. And all that is, that's fancy terms for spreading the cost over multiple years, right? So like real estate is a good example.
If you buy a rental property, you don't get to deduct the cost all at once. It's spread over 27 and a half years, right? Other assets are similar, usually over shorter terms, five years, three years, depending on what the asset is, right? But it depends on many things.
It depends on what type of asset you're purchasing. It depends on how the sale is structured. It depends on the cost. It depends on what you're using it for.
So there's a whole bunch of it depends that could make the difference between expensing it all at once. So taking, let's say you pay $8,000 for that website, making the full $8,000 this year, or spreading it out over three, five, however many years, right? So again, unfortunately, I can't give an exact answer on this question. It'll be, it depends.
What I will say is that you're going to definitely want to talk to your tax professional before you make this purchase so you can see what the most tax efficient way to structure this deal is, right? Because there are ways that you can plan ahead of time to make sure that you can do this the most efficient way possible, right? And that's true of any of these questions, any of these questions that we'll ever get, the best advice I can ever get you is consult a good tax professional before you make the move, not after, right? So that wraps up this month's questions.
Be sure to get them in. We'll do another one of these in the future. I love doing these questions and answer sessions. Any questions directly to me, you can reach out to me.
Josh, thank you as always. And Fire Nation, make sure you do head over to cpaonfire.com for all of your entrepreneurial tax needs. And now we're moving on to what went down in April, and we'll be focusing this episode on the Tony Robbins Mastermind that Kate and I got to attend in Florida. This is actually the second year in a row that we've gotten to do a very personal, less than 20-person mastermind with Tony Robbins.
Two years ago, it was in Fiji. This past year, it was in Palm Beach, Florida. Such an epic and amazing time. Obviously, you can handle Tony in such a small environment, but also to be surrounded by his other top promotional partners.
So we're really excited to talk a little bit about this, a little bit about the details of this mastermind. But of course, you haven't heard from Kate Lynn Erickson recently. So Kate, what's going on? What's up, John?
Hey, Fire Nation. Excited to be here to talk about, as you said, John, the Tony Robbins Mastermind, and also just kind of talk about our little unwind. I feel like April was kind of the calm after the storm of the book launch and everything that went on in March. But yeah, thinking about the Tony Robbins Mastermind, it almost is surreal that we get that time in a room with Tony, like you said, with less than 20 people there.
Wow. What an experience. Really is an experience. And I can tell you, Tony is used to presenting in front of 10,000 people live, sometimes even more, and of course, a lot, lot more when he does his virtual events.
And he still brings it to the same level when there's just 15, 20 people in the room. We were all blown away. This is the second time that Kate had been able to experience this, so we can definitely say this is just the type of person he is. And he shows up every single time on fire.
So Kate, why don't we talk about it a little bit? Yeah, for sure. So the termite actually happened at the very tail end of March. But as you all know, or if you listen to our March income report, then you know that we focus solely on the book launch because it was just so huge and such a toothy.
But right after the book launch, we hopped on a flight, went to Florida and checked into an incredible hotel. And pretty much the day after the book launch, we were like headfirst into this mastermind, which as you described, John, we secured our spot there for coming in top 10 for the Knowledge Broker Blueprint launch in early 2020. And it was a pretty, well, not pretty. I mean, Dean, Tony, their teams, they set up such an incredible event.
Like I just always feel so taken care of. I mean, we land Thursday evening, we drove straight into an incredible welcome dinner that was, you know, set up beautifully at one of the outdoor restaurants right along the beach there. The weather was incredible. We got to chat with a bunch of people, a very familiar face, from the previous year and just people that we've known over the years.
But we also got to meet some new people in attendance this year, which was really super cool. So that dinner was a great way to just kick off the event, get to know everyone who we hadn't met yet beforehand. And yeah, oh my gosh, it just, well, John, probably you even more so than me. Like, did you feel getting on that plane that you were just like letting out the deepest exhale ever, like with the book launch behind you?
It was just a fantastic feeling to know that we crushed book launch week, did over 24,000 book sales during that first week. And, you know, just really ended strong. Because like I said, I wanted to sprint through that finish line, which I mentioned before, so I won't go into detail. But, you know, have some fun.
And I mean, some of the other people that were there, you know, dear friends like Lewis Howes, who I've been friends with for almost 10 years now, Nick Unsworth, Brian Delaney, you know, we got to meet the Boss Babes. Jill and Josh Stanton were there, who are, of course, some of our dearest friends. Russell Brunson's there. Jenna Kuchar's there.
You mentioned Dean already. I mean, it was just an unbelievable crew. And we had so much fun, you know, starting with that welcome dinner all the way through. We just felt like we had enough time to hang out.
So we weren't like overscheduled. But at the same time, we had plenty of time to hang out because, you know, all of us don't get together very often. So when we do, it's nice to have hangouts. I'm actually looking at Pedro Adeo and Pete Vargas as well in the picture that we have, you know, getting to know Brad Hart, just an absolute blast of the time.
So it was it was great. And, you know, Kate, I mean, I'd say I could give those four days a 10 out of 10. I totally agree. You know, it was cool to have like because we were supposed to go back to Fiji again for this mastermind.
But due to COVID and restrictions and travel and all of that, you know, they pushed it out quite a way. So it was supposed to happen in 2020 or early 2021. I guess they really didn't like push the actual timeline of it out too much. But the fact that it was in Florida, I was really curious, like what to expect.
I mean, Fiji was such a like 10 star experience of being at Namali and like being introduced to an entirely new culture and climbing totem poles and jumping off from them and floating down dark rivers in the middle of the night. Like that experience was just so otherworldly. And going into Florida, I was like really curious what this would be like. But as you said, you know, we had that that dinner Thursday night.
Friday, we had an open morning to just kind of hang out, get together with people if we wanted to or just relax, hit the spa, hit the beach. I did beach runs every morning, which was incredible. And then Friday afternoon, we had into Tony's studio, which was so cool to see the setup that he has there and kind of experience that. But John, as you said, he just showed up in such a big way, like his heart for helping people and like genuinely.
Yeah, it's I don't even know how to describe it. I don't feel like words do justice to how he shows up emotionally for people. It's really special to to watch and to be a part of. And yeah, then we had a couple more great dinners.
But in terms of like activities and climbing and jumping off poles, we didn't do any of that this year, which honestly, I think both you and I don't were ready for kind of a little more of a chill scenario. So it was absolutely perfect. I took so many notes because I feel like there were so many things that Tony said that I was just like, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh. And so I wanted to share a few of those nuggets here.
And then, John, maybe you could share one or two things that stood out to you. So I'm just going to literally give bullet points. My biggest lesson learned for the month, though, we'll circle back to something that Tony shared. But real quick here, he talked about a concentration of power equaling mastery.
I thought that that was the way that he says things gives such a deep visualization into what that means. A concentration of power equals mastery. That really stuck with me. He also said in kind of conjunction with that, you will become great at what you obsess over.
And I really love that because, John, you talk so much about repetition and if you want to be do and all of these things, it's just like kind of wraps it up. You will become great at what you obsess over. He also talked about constantly reprioritizing what's important to you, which resonates huge with me. I talk about this a ton in my podcast, Ditch Busy, really being conscious about the actions that you take every day and how those actions are getting you closer to the life that you want to live, your perfect day.
The goals that you have set. So constantly reprioritizing what's important to you. Something big that he said that just like kind of knocked me back a bit is he talked about doing what serves, whether it serves you or not. So do what serves, whether it serves you or not.
And I thought that was really powerful. I'm trying to recall the exact conversation that was going on when he said that. But in that moment, it was just kind of like a very I mean, again, this speaks to just like his his mindset and his emotional abundance around like serving other people. Do what serves, whether it serves you or not.
And then he also another thing that I wanted to include here. He said there's no supplement to going all in. There is no supplement to going all in. Of course, as I said at the beginning of this, when we started talking about this opportunity that we have, we absolutely do not take this lightly.
The fact that we got to shake hands with and give Tony Robbins a hug, spend five hours learning from him and other incredible entrepreneurs, just like super high level, generous, caring, genuine people. As you said, on five out of five, this is definitely a trip that we will not forget. Yeah. One thing you did ask to those of us who did return, which was a decent handful from the prior year was, you know, hey, what have you guys accomplished over the past year or what's some big news?
And one thing I did share was the engagements of Kate and myself. And he yet genuinely seemed like thrilled like really happy and that's just the person he is like he was genuinely happy when he heard that and like gave kate another big hug and like it was a really cool experience as well that's you know i wasn't just like having to share a business thing with him but i was able to share something personal and you know i actually just interviewed tony on entrepreneurs on fire a couple days ago and it's like a video and it's like getting on with him now like my fourth time interviewing him now hanging out with him in fiji and then florida's like he really just like hey jlb like tell me what's up like give me the dates like he really knows me like he really cares and it's a really cool relationship and friendship that you know i've been able to build with him over the years which has been you know really powerful which i've definitely enjoyed and you can kind of see there's definitely a theme of what kate shared from the nuggets that she went through and you know for me to just add to it would be he talked a lot about investing he talked a lot about hey like a lot of people in this room have built wealth and now it's time for you to start using your money to make money like that's what the rich do the rich use their money to make money which is why the rich do get richer if you want to build wealth it's a powerful thing and people that don't think it's powerful don't realize what you can do with philanthropy with helping your loved ones with doing amazing things in this world so like no you don't need to like think about getting rich just to get rich you can think about getting rich to help the world and the causes that you believe in and he talked a lot about different investment strategies that he has which i thought was really interesting you know one of the things i really took away was that you know three to five percent of your overall net worth should really be invested in what he calls like tailwinds things that have the opportunity to go a hundred x or zero like those can be like your real risky but exciting high flyers and again if you lose three percent of your net worth it's not going to be the end of the world nobody wants to do that but it could turn into like you know the big score that allows you to go really big and whatever it is that excites you you know maybe it's buying a jet maybe it's supporting your favorite charity like you know it could be anything that you want to get behind so that was um really cool and you know i think did a great job summing up you know the really kind of business nuggets and again the financial side of things was really interesting to me and i made some changes after i got back based off that conversation and it was a really fantastic conversations and we have some more amazing conversations coming up as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors running a small business can be challenging you have to juggle so many things at once including operating your business hiring force and managing hr and payroll thankfully zip recruiter has teamed up with adp to be your hiring and hr solution and right now you can try zip recruiter for free at zip recruiter.com slash fire how does zip recruiter make hiring easier first zip recruiter sends your jobs over 100 of the web's leading job sites then zip recruiter's powerful matching technology scans thousands of resumes to find the right people for your job then invite them to apply no wonder four out of five employers who post on zip recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day plus if you are a run powered by adp customer you can access zip recruiter directly through the run platform so you don't have to worry about handling the nitty gritty details of running payroll hr and hiring you can just focus on what you do best and fire nation right now you can try zip recruiter for free just visit zip recruiter.com slash fire that's zip recruiter.com slash fire zip recruiter.com slash fire zip recruiter the smartest way to hire as entrepreneurs we have unique expertise and goals but one thing that we share in common is a desire to shape our business the way we want and if you've ever thought about online courses let me tell you from experience they need to work for your business introducing the thinkific app store the first app store for course creators that lets you build your courses your way if you're looking for an easy to set up platform that's built for entrepreneurs that gives you the ability to create an online course that will look and feel like part of your brand and that gives you an experience where you can pick and choose the right apps for you and your business as you scale then look no further than the thinkific app store the course creation options are nearly limitless create certificates coupons live lessons private courses and more information you're invited to try it out for free for 30 days right now visit thinkific.com slash fire free to sign up and get started on your online course today that's t-h-i-n-k-i-f-i-c.com slash fire free all right finance we are back and one thing that i want to mention that i also mentioned in the introduction we are not going to share our income breakdown today unfortunately because we're recording this before we get we're getting the numbers from our accounting team because i'm going on a two-week wellness retreat to the true north health center up in santa rosa california so make sure you check out my instagram and i'm also releasing a video vlog i should say that's going to really get into details about what i went through over this retreat to include a 10-day water fast and four days of supervised refeeding so you're going to have to head over to eofire.com slash fire income 92 where all the numbers will be up you'll be to see all the details um i can definitely assure you that we are over a hundred thousand dollars of net profits for the 92nd month in a row so we're really excited about that but the exact numbers will have to wait until um you go to the website eofire.com slash income 92 so okay why don't you kind of talk a little bit about the calm after the storm we have a little uh post about that on the income report and then take us home with your biggest lesson learned actually just to wrap up the mastermind part too saturday we also had the opportunity to do uh you know very intimate led by dean graciosi uh mastermind with the other attendees and john your piece on investing and stuff it was so interesting to hear and i was just so grateful for how open everyone was willing to be and transparent about investments and and just everything in general really um but that was really powerful too to hear about people's different investing strategies and um how they've gone about that so yeah big uh big hat tip to dean tony their both of their teams everybody who made this weekend happen uh i know it could not have been easy to put together such a fantastic weekend so huge shout out for that and then yes the calm after the storm so after florida you came back to pr john and i made my way across the country to san diego to visit my family and i was there for three weeks to enjoy camping trips and hanging out with some of my best girlfriends that i've known for almost my whole life get to see my parents uh it was just excellent spend time with my niece and my nephew i loved every single second of it and um again of course if you've been following our journey throughout the book launch then you know how much time energy and effort went into that all the interviews the pre-launch the marketing the bulk buys the bonuses the emails the lives uh we sprinted sprinted sprinted for that so post-launch our entire team oh my goodness i can't even tell you how integral our virtual team was in helping us make this book launch a success um tapu jess and jm just really came through in so many different ways uh throughout the entire launch and i've been working very hard behind the scenes on our massive recap post uh this morning after my two-hour focus writing session we are at 7 000 words and still got a ways to go so that will be monster we will be including a ton of details and we're really excited to share that with you so hopefully um i would love to get this post published in the next week so as you hit eofire.com forward slash income nine two make sure to head to the calm after the storm section and that is where i will have that recap linked up for you it could be some nice uh weekday or weekend reading for you that will be a little nice weekend reading for you fire nation i will say it's going to be one of those intense of intense posts that will live on forever that only kate can create so kate why don't you take us home i will take us home by talking about playing at the highest level of fulfillment this is another nugget from tony robbins and uh wow he just said it actually quite bluntly um that the game of life should be played at the highest level of fulfillment and it really got me thinking you know it's easy to hear things and say or think to yourself like yes i can completely agree with this playing at the highest level of fulfillment like i do that every day and i want that and i believe in that but it's not so easy to actually live those things like literally every single day to make them a part of our lifestyle even not even to think like oh this is consciously something that i'm doing but i believe in it so much that it's just a part of who i am and everyday life and stuff can easily get in the way before we know it another year has gone by two years five years we find ourselves in the same exact situation and a lot of times that situation isn't one that we're excited about it's not the situation that we envision for ourselves or for a family or for a future and that's why this nugget from tony really stood out to me because it reminded me of how critical it is to own your future and to own your actions which are actively creating your future every single day reminding yourself that what you're working on right now is directly tied to what you're creating in your life this is such a powerful reminder and if we can continue to bring this thought to the forefront remind ourselves of this as a daily practice then i believe we can start to cut the excess the busy tasks the projects that aren't truly important to us and instead start focusing on the things that bring us true joy and the things that will bring us one step closer to our biggest goals so fire nation i encourage you i challenge you to try it today every time you pick something up a task a project every time you spend your time working on something ask yourself is this what i want to be creating in my life and if it's not delete it or at the very least move it to the back burner for future like just because you're not doing something right now doesn't mean that you can't ever do it in the future or at a later date if it's not a priority for you right now then stop spending your time on it start spending your time only on what's most important to you as tony says if you play at the highest level of fulfillment then you cannot lose fire nation wise words from tony and kate lynn erickson play at the highest level of fulfillment and we'll catch you on the flip side from tools that help with audio emails increasing sales gamification and more it's never been easier to create an online course than with the thinkific app store learn more and sign up for a free trial of thinkific at thinkific.com slash fire free that's t-h-i-n-k-i-f-i-c dot com slash fire free hiring can feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack but when you post a job on zip recruiter their matching technology finds these qualified candidates for you and invites them to apply so while other companies give you too many options zip recruiter finds you the needle in the haystack and right now you can try zip recruiter for free at zip recruiter dot com slash fire