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Building a Fence at the Top of the Cliff with R.J. Kelly | Financial Planner Search · Financial Planner Search

• Gregory Wilnau: Hey RJ, how are you doing today? R. J. Kelly: Hey, Greg, I'm blessed and grateful. Thanks. And I'm just so honored to be included with you today. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. I've been looking forward to chatting with you. ⁓ all right, so to open up, why don't you just take a minute, ⁓ and kind of tell us about ⁓ your practice, what you specialize in and ⁓ kind of how you ⁓ what you do. R. J. Kelly: Sure. Let me start here. 18 years old. I was my first month at university, and I got a call in the in the fraternity where I was ⁓ had ⁓ joined. And they said, Hey, RJ, there's a phone call for you, and it sounds kind of important. I said, I mean, ⁓ does anybody even know I'm here? And they said, Well, you better go check it out. And went over to the phone and found out that my father had died. And Just the shock of that. I mean, I can still picture what it was like sitting in that telephone booth getting the news that my father was was no longer with us. Now, my father was an enormously successful business owner. He had built a multi, multi-million dollar company. Unfortunately, because he had not done the things that we help other entrepreneurs especially do, but because he hadn't done that collectively, the business was bankrupt within 10 years after his death. And because of some other things that had conversations that I'd had with my mom especially, I was given permission to not have to go back into the family business, even though it might have saved the business. But it was, it might not have either. But for me, it would not have been the career that I would choose for myself. And I love to do what I get to do because of what I lived through, watching most of everything that my parents had worked a lifetime to put together disappear. Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. Wow. Let's go. Wow, that's heavy, man. That's one way that's one heck of a way to open up the open up the episode. Yeah. ⁓ may maybe we could talk briefly about some of the things that you learned through that experience, like maybe top one or two things that you and and how you apply that to ⁓ what what you do for your for your clients. R. J. Kelly: Absolutely. So we're a multidisciplinary practice and have got clients in 24 states now. And while the preponderance of our income and revenue comes from our assets under management, where we are working with wealthy, significant ⁓ clients, ⁓ affluent, and helping them to direct the assets on how to make it grow and be diversified. We also have in the last five years added another profit center that is in works with what we call alternatives. So there are situations where we can help literally cut someone's income tax in half through the use of certain kinds of alternatives. There's some new things out there for solar that also ⁓ carbon credits that give us tax deductions. There are also ways we can create income streams that are not taxed, at least at present. And so that's added a whole nother profit center. To our practice, we also have a tax mitigation group. So I'm working on a case today. three businesses that this family is selling back in Florida. And what can we do to reduce, defer, offset, and in some cases, even eliminate the tax on the sale of an appreciated asset, like a business or like real estate, in case we're not wanting to do a 1031 exchange. So that's a third area. We also have a very successful life and disability insurance practice for, again, typically by sell agreements. Or state liquidity issues and needs, or for very specialized forms of income. But so it's a multidisciplinary type of firm, but it comes from watching a business that had when the business was down here and the rest of the management team was there as well. Okay, not a big deal. But my dad, who was a visionary, grew the business. But when he died and the visionary drops out, and you still got your team down here. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. R. J. Kelly: It's not good anymore. So that's one of the biggest reasons why the business was bankrupt within 10 years. Because there wasn't the team in place to continue with the vision without the visionary. And that's what I've found again, that's what really launched me in doing what we do in our in our practice, which is again multidisciplinary with clients in 24 states and growing. But how can we prepare and look ahead, not just on the investment side, but what are their wills and trusts say? Gregory Wilnau: Right. Because the visionary was no longer there. Yeah. Well let's talk R. J. Kelly: What are they with insurance, all the other things as well? Gregory Wilnau: All right, I wanna d dig dig deeper into that and talk more maybe about your your ideal clients. ⁓ what are some of the ways like well maybe you could talk more about the person who comes to you, ⁓ what kind of situation they're in and maybe give me an example of a typical situation that you would help lead them through. R. J. Kelly: Sure. There's There is different every day is different, which is one of the things I love about my practice is that I'm not gonna see the same thing every day, that's for sure. ⁓ I'll give you a real simple one, maybe on the surface, but it really has some deep issues. And that was I got a call from someone I had met last year. ⁓ we we had gone on a date one time one date, liked her, but not not for me in terms of longer picture, but who's a very great person. But she Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. R. J. Kelly: Called me or emailed me the other day and say, hey, I've got an inherited IRA. My dad passed away. And I've had this for a few years. And I guess I was supposed to take income out and I didn't. What do I do? And she's a very smart, very bright woman in her space, but this area, you know, again, most people don't know what this stuff is, and the rules keep changing. So basically I explained and she said, RJ, I've talked to 15 different financial advisors, and none of them could give me an answer. So I gave our answers. You know, and again, that's that's part of what we do. We can get into the weeds if we need to from the tax code. I do have a master's with a subspecialty in taxation. So that comes in handy. I don't write, I don't do tax returns. We I use an outside CPA firm for myself and for the corporation. But it's so helpful to be able to understand the ins and outs of the tax code because today, whether it's a business owner, whether it's a successful professional, maybe it might be a franchisee, could be a family office, you need to understand how the implications of income, capital gain tax, federal estate tax, gift tax, and those things, how they apply. Gregory Wilnau: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very useful to a business owner. We were able to help them in ways and ⁓ and make recommendations ⁓ for things that they ⁓ weren't aren't even aware of because you have an intimate understanding. Okay, I wanna t I wanna talk go ahead. R. J. Kelly: Absolutely. Well in another case I was just gonna say that that's a simple one, but another one is I've got a business owner in Florida that a couple of other financial advisors have brought us in on. ⁓ there's a six million dollar company, there's a two and a half million dollar business, and then there's a two million dollar piece of real estate. Lots of taxes on these things that are trying to position the cell. So I got brought in to show them how they can again reduce, defer, offsate. And in this case, we're gonna defer the recognition of the tax for anywhere from 10 to 20 years and only have the tax to pay when we start taking the money out. But again, we're putting the timing back in the hands of the seller rather than having to write a big check when they sell the business. Gregory Wilnau: So you mentioned you mentioned a moment ago that you had a ⁓ a business owner come in ⁓ and she had spoken with a bunch of advisors who weren't able to answer her questions, but you were the first one who who did. What would you mind sharing maybe what some of those questions were that you were able to answer and why you think you were uniquely able to do that? R. J. Kelly: Well, for one thing it it's Her account size is smaller than what we would normally work with. Our typical client has a minimum of a million dollars. Our average client size is 2.3 million. And so this account is a little bit over 100,000, which for some people that's a meaningful number. And again, if it's well managed and invested over time, that's gonna grow. But most financial advisors simply don't wanna be bothered with helping someone that they're not gonna get paid for. And yes, I can't do the as the saying goes, the best thing we can do for the poor is to not be one of them. So, you know, I do have to to bill for my time, but you still, if you approach things with a how can I help you today. What's situation? Whether I get paid or not. And if we can't get the solution for you, who can we introduce you to that can get it done? I mean, I work with some of the best and biggest law firms in the world. One of our client, one of our favorite attorneys we work with, who is my own personal attorney, is back on the other side of the US. And he happens to be one of the top estate planning tax attorneys. literally in a firm called Denton's, it's the largest law firm in the world. And so we have firepower we can bring to the table, but we also have people right here in San Diego where my practice is and other parts of the country to be able to bring them into if for some reason we don't need Dentons and because every firm has its advantages, disadvantages. But point of it is is that what we were able to do was answer some of the questions like starting with well how what what age was your father when he died? Was he taking a distribution? I think he was like 84, 85 when he passed away. Was he taking distributions out of his IRA? Well, at the time he was old to the point where it was two tax bills ago. So it used to be you had to take 70 and a half, you had to take required minimum distributions from a retirement account. Then it changed to 72. Now it's age 73. So when you get an IRA from if you're an adult, non-spouse, there's a different set of rules and especially how old was the individual that you inherited the IRA from. So most people, if they're not going to get paid anything for it, if there's liability potentially, and they don't want to know the technical aspects of the code. So that's why she couldn't find anybody to give an answer. Now, in reality, she's also gonna need a CPA. So we've got some great CPAs to bring her to that will help her address the fact that she didn't take some distributions that she should have taken. But plus her heart, you know, she she didn't know. So Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. So you're kinda like a quarterback that has access to all the pieces, right? And you can kind of coordinate everything on behalf of your client based on their needs and situation. R. J. Kelly: That's it. ⁓ That that's it, Greg. But you know, again, the saying that nobody has a corner on all the good ideas. Nobody. Not us, not anybody. Now, I've got a whole bunch of credentials after my name, and that's just for me, because I love to learn. I'm a lifelong learner. ⁓ last year I read I read 56 books. The year before I read 56 books. I attended or spoke for 16 conferences, you know. So I love to learn. And that is for me, but it's also how we can help our clients by Gregory Wilnau: Wow Nice. R. J. Kelly: having answers to pretty much any question that comes up, whether it's in the world of finance or estate planning or tax or r you know retirement, if I didn't say that already, or ⁓ investments, alternatives, all that stuff. Selling a business, right. Gregory Wilnau: Selling selling the business. So let's talk about that a little bit more. Let's talk about some of the questions. So when your ideal client mit meets with you for the first time, or maybe they're not even a client yet, what are the some of the top questions and the most common questions that they have for you the first time that ⁓ that you meet? R. J. Kelly: Well, usually it's my questions to them is number one, what would be an ideal outcome for our time together today? You know, whether it's a a 20, 30 minute Zoom meeting, because again, we've got clients all across the country. But what's the ideal outcome? And how much time are they willing to invest and what are they willing to spend in terms of ⁓ you can't do the kind of serious planning we're talking about for free. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. R. J. Kelly: We we're not free. I mean, we'll do a 20 to 30 minute complimentary conversation with anybody that that kind of is somewhat in our target area, but typically that's a million dollars of investable assets or more. ⁓ anybody who's got a a ⁓ a liquidity event that's going to create a million-dollar tax bill or more. ⁓ and a lot of times our clients are eight and a half, ten million dollars or greater net worth. The largest family I worked with was 2.4 billion back in New York many years ago, and it was at a very narrow. ⁓ aspect. The largest family I worked with here in San Diego was 1.1 billion when he died. He'd been married and divorced four times and he hated his kids. So so there were some some things to work through there. But most of our clients, ⁓ if they're entrepreneurs, if they're business owners, which many of them are, they're gonna have a net worth of eight and a half to ten million and up. And but we work with smaller Gregory Wilnau: ⁓ that's never good. R. J. Kelly: But by smaller, again, normally they have to be an accredited investor, which means they have a million dollars of investable assets, not counting the equity in their home. So invariably all our clients we work with are accredited investors, which opens the door, Greg, for us to be able to use certain things called alts or alternatives, where most traditional investment advisors are going to just invest stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, exchange-traded funds, and that's it. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. You can do some more advanced advanced things, right? More more detailed, highly specific things. Yeah. Things that aren't available to ⁓ uncredited investors, right? R. J. Kelly: We we can do all that, but we do a bunch of other stuff as well. Yep. W right, because we're an independent registered investment advisor, so I I have a law firm that we have on retainer that takes care of our legal stuff, keeps us on the straight and narrow. But I don't have to worry about having a broker dealer because number one, they don't do anything for me. And two, they don't do anything for our clients. So the BDs that are out there, if they do have alts, Greg, they're very weak. ⁓ they're very limited. Some BDs don't even allow up any kind of alternative investments at all. And if they do, as I say, they're kind of meek and mild, ⁓ or some of them do have sophisticated ⁓ products and offerings that they can bring, but they're still limited. So we can go anywhere that we need to to get alternatives for our clients. Now, not every alt. performs as well as we hope it would because when a farmer plants crops, not every crop comes up. You can do the best you can and make sure the soil is prepared. ⁓ make sure that the fertilizer, whatever's being used, is is correct and but stuff happens, especially if it's at all in the area of real estate. Gregory Wilnau: Right. Yeah, I I mean this is this is great stuff. I primarily working with accredited investors, that's that's I could see how that would be ⁓ a very powerful thing to ⁓ to do. ⁓ R. J. Kelly: Well, ⁓ just like today I was on the phone with an on really great entrepreneur out of Minneapolis, or sorry, out of Minnesota. He I think he's in Minneapolis, but very successful business guy, developer, bu builder, and Yet he'd never heard of some of the things that we were talking about. And he's got a piece of real estate that he wants to sell, a lot of capital gains in it. So he loved the idea that we have tools that we can invest in. I'll give you an example of a client that had a $3.8 million apartment building and $600,000, $640,000 in debt. And he was tired of the four T's. If you own apartments, you know exactly what those are. It's tenants, trash, termites, and Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Yeah. R. J. Kelly: Taxes. Those are the hated four T's for if you own apartments. Well, he wanted out. It was time for him to get to the sidelines, enjoy life a whole lot more with his lovely wife and his great kids. And ⁓ so Gregory Wilnau: ⁓ wow, yeah. R. J. Kelly: If he sold the apartment building and didn't do anything strategically, he would have paid over $660, $760,000 in taxes. Of course, this is California, but between federal, state, and Medicare surtax, $760,000 on his sale. So what we did is we helped him invest in some other things that are generating more income than he was getting net. Gregory Wilnau: Wow, yeah. R. J. Kelly: Two-thirds of it's going into what's called investment-resistant real estate. So think of things like Walmart, ⁓ Cragen Automotive, ⁓ Sherwin Williams, paint stores. Those are kinds of businesses that are always gonna do well, even in recessions. So two-thirds of the portfolio we're able to put there. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. R. J. Kelly: One sixth of the amount of money we put into a Hilton hotel on a fractional interest basis back in the Midwest. And then the other one sixth we put into three different housing projects for successful seniors. By that I mean it they have places where the it is they can Walk up and walk away and go on a month-long cruise if they want. So it's independent living for some of the units, but there's assisted care for some of the other units if they need it. And God forbid, but they may need memory care at some point. So these the my generation is driving these kinds of the creation of these kinds of projects. So we invested into three of them, three different states to diversify but generate a nice income stream. So in doing so, we managed to defer 100% of the tax as well as any recapture from depreciation. So he could sell, diversify, get an income stream that he doesn't have to manage at all. It just shows up every month in his checking account automatically. Boom. So that's the kind of stuff we can do as well. Gregory Wilnau: Nice. Nice. That's amazing. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about ⁓ how your clients typically find you. So how do they find you and what are some of the ways you get to know them as individuals? R. J. Kelly: Sure. Great question, Greg. Well, I speak all across the country. You can also go to our website, wealthlegacygroup.com. Wealth, it's funny. Some people go W-E-L-L. No, it's W-E-A-L-T-H, like wealth. Wealthlegacygroup.com. Go to our articles, our newsletters, go to our videos. We've got tons of stuff on just about any topic you can imagine. But also click on the tab that says about us and go to our mission. Vision and values. That will tell you who and what we are, what we believe in. And we recite that mission, that visions, the values, the things we recite those every week as a tribe. We go around because we're reinforcing to ourselves what we believe in and that we care first and foremost for our clients above everything else and everyone else. So that'll that'll give you a lot of information. The second thing they can do is they can always call us or send us an email and go to the website and you can get that. But that's a starting point where we can sit down and have a 20 to 30 minute complimentary conversation about whatever they want to talk about. Now, most of our clients find it either because of my speaking, my writing. ⁓ people forward articles that we write or they'll put it in magazines. So that's kind of what we found. We get a great referral based. Mostly from our clients, because again, when you've got a satisfied client when you're just focused on taking care of them, they're gonna introduce you to their family members, they're gonna introduce you to some of their best friends or other co-business owners. So we do do a lot of different business across the country with which every kind of person, again, typically an accredited investor, oftentimes they're an entrepreneur. ⁓ Gregory Wilnau: Absolutely. R. J. Kelly: What our goal is is great is to build a fence at the top of the cliff. We want to again reduce, offset, defer, eliminate the tax on the sale of that appreciated asset. But half the time maybe, folks have already made the li had a liquidity event. I got a call from a gentleman who sold his company. He said, RJ, we just we sold our company in June. This was in like September. RJ, we sold our company for 40 million in June. And I'm just wanting to know, I've read some of your articles, what can I do to reduce the tax on my sale? And I chuckled and just said, okay, just to make sure I'm hearing this correctly, you sold your business for 40 million back in June, and this is now September, and you're wondering: is there anything you could do to reduce your taxes now that you've already made the sale? Well, ⁓ the good so those are people. Gregory Wilnau: Might be a little late, brother. Been good to talk a couple of months ago. R. J. Kelly: So we want to fence to the top of the cliff, but what do you do for folks that have already gone over the cliff, Greg? Well, the good news is we can show you how to pull in a very springy trampoline and an ambulance very quickly at the bottom of the valley. And so there actually are two different techniques that we can use to help to either defer the recognition of the tax. Or actually offset the tax. It would have been better to put the fences in place at the top of the cliff to start with, but we can still help those that are already over the cliff. And so there are a couple of different strategies. I can add now a third. So let's just say we have another client of ours in Florida who has a client of theirs in Georgia. He had a $33 million liquidity event a couple of years ago. Well, now too thanks to some new tax changes that President Biden started four years ago and then President Trump has enhanced, we can actually go back, Greg, up to three years ago and recapture the tax that was paid three years ago. Now it has to be a couple million dollars. So I mean there's got to be a meaningful amount of tax. But in this case, for this client that had the $33 million sale, you better believe you paid a boatload of tax on that. Well, so we're right in the process now of Gregory Wilnau: That's Wow. Absolutely. R. J. Kelly: the discovery process to see how much tax that could we recover for them going back up to three years ago. So it's yeah, it's not so there are now three things that we could do for the person who's already at a liquidity event and we can unring the bell. Gregory Wilnau: Wow. What are some of the things that you talk about when you're ⁓ doing your public speaking? R. J. Kelly: Well, we have a new book that's just coming out. It's it's been a labor of love. ⁓ Caitlin Taylor, who's the COO for our company, she's also been to start with, was hired to be a marketing manager and event manager. And she was so brilliant in that that we've moved her up into a even more important role. But she and I co-wrote the book. ⁓ it's called Radical Retirement Roadmap. ⁓ it will be out, supposed to be out for the publisher any day. But radical retirement roadmap ⁓ designing or sorry, creating your ideal retirement starting today. So that's ⁓ really focused just on the topic of retirement. I can give you the five hows. I'll send you a book for free, but ⁓ I can give you the five how questions that will get you to that ideal retirement. The first how is yeah, pretty pretty straightforward, how much? Gregory Wilnau: ⁓ congrats. R. J. Kelly: How much income do you want to have at retirement? Well, and is that a pre-tax or post-tax? Is that after taking into account housing costs, medical costs? And ⁓ by the way, Fidelity does every year a survey on how much out-of-pocket funds someone will spend for healthcare. You know what it is in the United States as of last year? Gregory Wilnau: Right. What is it? R. J. Kelly: It's a hundred and seventy-two thousand per person. So a husband and wife, it's gonna be expected that they will spend three hundred and forty-four thousand dollars out of pocket for healthcare. And it number gets bigger and bigger. And how many people are planning that? How many financial advisors even know that? I didn't, and to plan that into to budgeting for. So we've been doing that, but it took writing this book. Gregory Wilnau: Wow. R. J. Kelly: To even find out about the survey. So how much? And again, is that pretext, post-tax, housing costs, Medicare, all the other things? So that's the first question. Most people fail to even have an answer for the first question. Yet alone. So how much? How soon is the next question? And by that I mean I want to know the month, day, and the year when this person is planning on retiring. Because unless we know that, how do we have something to work towards? Because then we can start, you know, the rates of return, different rates of return and and such. but most people can't even do that. They can't even answer how much or how soon. Now the usual answer with they kind of stumble around and well, I guess, you know, 65, 66, 67. Well, what's up with that? What what what makes that age important to you? Well, that's when they were told that they're supposed to retire, they think, because that's what normal retirement age is, right? Sixty five, sixty six, sixty-seven. Well, Greg, do you know where we got age sixty-five as normal retirement age? Gregory Wilnau: Sure. I no clue. R. J. Kelly: Count von Bismarck in Germany, they decided that they were going to provide a safety net for their people. And so they were going to have a federally funded retirement program. And so they used, he wanted to use age 70, but his other advisors finally talked him into using age 65. Well, do you know what the equivalent age is today for age 65 back then? I shouldn't either. Gregory Wilnau: No no idea. What is it? Ho well That that math that math isn't mathing. R. J. Kelly: 110. So point of it is that they were Yeah, it they they put in this process because they knew no one would ever get there, but they used 865. So everybody else in Europe kind of looked over and said, well, the Germans are using 65. They're smart people, we should just use 65 too. So Europe adopted age 65 as normal retirement age. And we in America in 1937, when we decided to put our social security system in place, said, hmm, what should we do? Well, those guys over in Europe and Germany are using 65. We should too. So there was no actual design for this. But at the time, women were on average living the average life expectancy was 62 for a woman and ⁓ 58 for a Man, there's about a four-year age difference, and 58 for a man. Well, now, of course, if you and this is the fascinating thing is that if according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, at what age would half of a cohort of age 73, because age 73 now is the magic age when we are forced to begin taking distributions from our retirement accounts. So if you took a cohort, that's a fancy way of just saying, let's get a group of people, ⁓ 1,073-year-olds, at what age, Greg, would half of them be dead, but half of them still alive? The age 99.5. Now I'm gonna put that a different way because most people just don't even understand what I'm saying. 99.5, in other words, you better make sure that your money lasts to age 100. For let's just call it that, make it for all intents and purposes, age 100. Gregory Wilnau: Wow. R. J. Kelly: Because half of us will still be alive at age 100 or longer. And I plan to be in that group. In fact, one of my one of my goals is to die ⁓ at the at the finish line of my last race at 147. Because I wanna see a new century come in. So anyway, if you're having trouble sleeping at night, you can call me because I'm up probably working out. Gregory Wilnau: Really? Hundred and forty seven. R. J. Kelly: But anyway, ⁓ I work out seven days a week and so a bad day for me, bad week for me is if I only get to work out five five days. But Gregory Wilnau: Well, I know there's a lot of advancements ⁓ in ⁓ longevity and the science there. So we might have already achieved escape velocity. ⁓ so at least you want for a health health span. Say again. R. J. Kelly: There are tremendous Yeah. I'm I'm actually on a board of an organization called I'm on a I'm on a board for the Loya Institute of Immunology. It's a f amazing, fascinating organization. And their slogan is imagine life without disease. Imagine life without disease. And they are doing some absolutely incredible things to eradicate things like Zika, ⁓ Ebola, some of the things that are absolutely scourges for humanity, but they're they're breaking the code. ⁓ why do women live longer than men? What's the reason? Why do some diseases affect women either more or only? Why do some diseases affect men only? So they're they're breaking the genetic code. Code open to explore some of these things. So, yes, I interviewed a gentleman, Dr. ⁓ Craig Vintner, and he and his his co-business partner at the time were tasked with mapping the human genome. Now, they weren't the only ones. There were both in Great Britain as well as the US huge teams. Did it in about nine months. And it totally really upset the rest of the world, apparently in that part of the world, because they wanted the big gravy trade. And here Craig. But what Craig told me when I interviewed him is that within one to two generations at most, we will choose how long we want to live. Gregory Wilnau: Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ R. J. Kelly: In other words, we will reach the point of stasis where we can make the decision about how long we choose to live. Now that's a radical thought. So point is we want to make sure that the money lasts longer than our clients live, however long that is. But just, you know, pro tip, it's a whole lot longer than most people are planning on, Greg. So that's what we're working with them on. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. That is. This is one of the benefits of working with a guy who loves who reads fifty books a year, right? You can put all these pieces together. So we're getting close to time and I want to land this plane. maybe you could briefly explain your ⁓ how you onboard your clients. What like what is the first couple of weeks ⁓ look like when somebody starts working with you? R. J. Kelly: Yeah. Great question, Greg. Well, there's there's two different paths, of course. We're so some clients just want to hire us because of our expertise and investments. And particularly we're we get a lot of calls from accredited investors who are watching us on a video series that it's both on Facebook and Instagram and talk about what we can do to help folks with investing in supplementary ways to just not just stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and ETFs, but giving them some other types of instruments. So some clients just come in that way, in which case we find out, we look at what they have already for investments. We we do a risk tolerance profile to understand what. They can and can't ideally accept. You know, do they stay awake at night and that's why they've got most of their money in CDs? Or, you know, are they where are they in terms of risk-taking modality? But so once we're clear on that, we then can help them by understanding what the four different major buckets are of alts, depending on whether they're trying to reduce their income taxes, whether they're trying to sell appreciated assets and defer their tax. Maybe they're looking for more income that's not currently. taxable, ⁓ you know, two to three times the amount of income that they would normally get from a bond portfolio. Or maybe they're looking for more capital gains types of investments where they're investing in ⁓ self-storage. Maybe they're investing in other types of real estate. And so they're going more for a three or four year type of liquidity event rather than some of the other things I've mentioned. So that if for that person it's all about figuring out what where the holes are in their planning and then what we can do to fill them. And then going from there. So there's no onboarding fee. We are, we are, as an independent registered investment advisor, we are paid a fee basically from the sponsor of the program. And we get an amount, but what we have found is that we don't need all of that. We don't want all of that. We're grateful for the people we get to work with. We're very selective on who we choose to work with. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. R. J. Kelly: And so we actually take some of the fees that were paid and we put that back in the investment for them. So they actually right out of the gate ⁓ are making money. That's nobody else has done that we've ever been told ⁓ by sponsors and nobody does that for their clients. Well, we're Grateful just to be able to work with our clients that we do. And we we love our clients. But more often than not, whether it's right from the start, but most of the time, clients, when they realize how much we can do to help them in terms of the planning process, looking at their wills and their trusts, their insurance, their investments, their retirement planning, those are the four legs of the table, Greg. The estate planning, insurance, investments, retirement. Those are the four legs of the table. The tabletop is their philanthropy and their legacy. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. R. J. Kelly: What does that look like? How much do they want to get to the next generations and in what ways? And then the last thing is what holds that table together is tax and reducing taxation. Because the more you can make more money oftentimes by paying less tax than you can by making more money. can make more money by paying less tax oftentimes than by by making more money. So in that case, we do get we charge fees. And so we have a planning fee depending on whether they're buying us for a certain number of hours or they're buying us on an hourly basis. I don't advise that because you know again I'd much rather just be able to focus on them, not have them having their eyes on the clock. And we always bring the the minimum target for us is to bring 10 times the value for whatever they whatever we're charging them for our fee. And Gregory Wilnau: Wow. Wow. R. J. Kelly: Many times it's much, much, much more ⁓ that they receive back an added value. So those are the two things. Great, it's they can hire us and we can do the overall. Integrated holistic planning, or we can just focus in on the investments. I haven't talked even about our basic platform, but our basic platform has a built-in stop loss. So when the equity side, if it drops by a certain amount over a period of time, it automatically trips and sends the money into a nice portfolio of ETFs, exchange traded funds that are our various bonds, so that that money can sit there until the methodology would indicate that it's time to go back into the equity market. markets. And so sometimes that works not so well because of a certain timing incidents, but most of the time it works extremely well. So again, it's not how much we make on the upside, it's how much we don't lose on the downside. That's what will matter over time, especially because we're talking about age 99.5. We got to make sure that money lasts a very long time. And with that, Greg, I'm just honored, so honored to be with you here today. ⁓ hopefully we can keep this thing going, maybe come back another time. Or if anybody wants to reach us again, wealthlegacygroup.com and ⁓ our number is 858-569. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. R. J. Kelly: That's 858-569-0633. And we'll get back to them within 24 hours. That's part of the deal. Is that we want to be extremely responsive to anyone that's whether they're an existing client or they just want to kick the tires with us and find out how we might be able to help them. Gregory Wilnau: Well, awesome. Thank you so much, RJ, for coming on and talking about what you do and who you serve. It was an honor to speak with you. R. J. Kelly: Likewise, right back at you, Greg. All the best. And it's a wrap.