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Saving Entrepreneurs a Billion in Tax with Pat Lonergan | Financial Planner Search · Financial Planner Search

• Gregory Wilnau: Patrick, thank you so much for joining us today. How you doing, man? Pat Lonergan: I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited about our conversation. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, absolutely. Is it Pat or Patrick? Which do you prefer? Pat Lonergan: actually either's fine. My a lot of my friends call me Pat so we can we can we can be friends today if that's okay. Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: All right, that sounds good, Pat. Just make it let me make an update to my to my notes so that I don't forget. Pat. Pat Pat Pat. All right, dude. Okay, well to get started, maybe you could just take a moment and tell us a little bit about your practice, kinda what you specialize in and maybe how you got started. Pat Lonergan: Yeah, we we serve entrepreneurs. entrepreneurs that have a a net income over a million dollars. So they're they're taking home a fair amount of of income out of their business and they're they're frustrated by their their tax liability. That's why most of our clients call us, is they're they're upset by the tax. They don't feel like anybody's solving that problem. And so we we have a framework that we install in their lives to to help with with that. But we got started. I was I've been an entrepreneur my entire life. I was late for my very first class in law school buying a piece of real estate. had a had a full ride and I I dropped out to go be what I'll I'll just call a real estate entrepreneur. I recruited my wife into that business. She runs it currently and it's still it's doing way better than I ever imagined that and anywhere I could have taken it. And then a with her leadership. but 2008, 9, 10, it was my job to find the deals and raise the money. And then my wife was the operations brain behind the thing. 2008, nine, 10, the real estate market was melting down. Nobody wanted to put any money in, and there was hardly any deals to be had. So I started looking around, going, okay, who are people that I know that are doing creative things that look interesting? And I had a couple of people in my life. One, we bought our house from the largest money manager in town. And the second I was on a superintendent search committee with another advisor, and I'm like, huh, this financial advisory world seems interesting. but I had I had advisors come talk to me that didn't understand me. You know, they they, as an entrepreneur, they were like, hey, let us show you how to make more money in the S P 500. I'm like, that's cute, but I'm my opportunity is in my business, and I need somebody to help me like manage liquidity. I need somebody to help me save money on tax, and nobody seemed to be. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Pat Lonergan: To be in that space. And so when I entered the arena, I was like, well, we're gonna, we're gonna focus on the entrepreneur and just solving the problems that that they have. Gregory Wilnau: Awesome. Okay, so maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what inspired you to do this. What what made you think this was a good fit for you? Pat Lonergan: Yeah. you know, I I looked at it from a a very much a business point of view. You know, I we had taken on tens, if not a hundred million dollars of debt during our real estate and we were still in that that boat. but there's a lot of risk associated with debt. You know, the the scriptures warn us, warning slave to the lender. It doesn't say don't take on debt, it's just like, hey, if you're not careful, the debt can own you. And we we experienced some of that. You know, we had a number of real estate projects that we had to figure out how to get out of those deals. And I remember at one point I had about a half a million dollars that I was still paying banks that was no longer tied to to real estate. And I was like, well, this isn't a whole lot of fun. but financial advisory allowed us to s bring value to the marketplace and create this recurring cash flow model that we didn't have to take on a lot of debt to do it. So I was like, well, that that looks more appealing. We're gonna keep the real estate, we're gonna keep that business going, but we're gonna diversify. our infrastructure and and head that direction. Gregory Wilnau: Nice. That's awesome, man. I love that. I love that background story. how many clients do you guys do you have now? Pat Lonergan: Yeah, that's a great question. So we've got about a hundred clients. we've got clients that fall into really two categories. We have our consulting clients that we most of which we meet with on a monthly basis, somewhere on a quarterly rhythm. most financial advisors hear that and they're like, what are you talking to your clients about? But we can we can get into that in more detail. And then we have some of the more traditional, I'll call it investment under management clients that we're we're just helping manage the portfolios and we're we're meeting with them on a semi annually, quarterly basis, depending on, you know, what's going on in their lives to just make sure that's that's all happening the way it should. Gregory Wilnau: Nice. Nice, I really like that cadence. A lot of advisors I talk to will just meet once a year, but it sounds like you meet twice a year or even or or or even more. Is that right? Pat Lonergan: Mm-hmm. It is. And and really if you come to us and you're a high earning W two employee, we're not a great fit for you. There's other advisors out there that are better. almost every single one of our clients. And we've we've been transitioning some of our legacy clients to other advisors here. other advisors just that are a better fit. just because it's like we we know our lane, we know where we can drive value for people. And so if if you're an entrepreneur, you've got a lot of things going on in your life. you don't just have your personal financial situation. You've got, you know, the business finances. And there's so much so much going on in an entrepreneur's life, you know. it's not like I've got a W-2 paycheck that just, you know, I get cost of living increases year over year. you know, with everything going on in the world from tariffs to conflict in the Middle East, you know, that that that all creates new opportunities. And opportunities can also be problems, you know, for for our entrepreneurs. And it's like, well, we're Gregory Wilnau: Absolutely. Sure. Pat Lonergan: We just have things that we need to help them help them navigate. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, sure. Well I think that's the nature of it. You have to figure out the best entrepreneurs entrepreneurs capitalize on on situations that drive value in the market and capture that value. and ideally make it profitable. So it's a r rare and valuable skill set for sure. So having somebody like you to help them on that journey seems like a really valuable thing. Let's talk more about the people that you serve, maybe. We could take a moment to explore kind of who you work with, maybe what they're struggling with, what makes a good fit. Pat Lonergan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: W we wanna make sure that people who are who fit that profile kind of see themselves in the story. So maybe you could take a second to describe the the the pers the kind of person who who comes to you and maybe a typical situation that they need you to help them lead through. To help lead them through Pat Lonergan: Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It it it's typically somebody that from a worldly perspective is is having a ton of success. you know, if you look at the number of people out in the United States that have a a net take home income over a million dollars, it rounds to zero, you know, as a percentage. So so it's a very small list of people in the United States that we we serve. But they come to us and they they typically have great advisors. They've got Really good CPA, they've got a good financial advisor, they have a good attorney, their insurance people are are are dialed in. But what they don't have is a framework that is designed to help steward those resources wisely and intentionally across all those those avenues. And and most clients, I would say 95% of our clients that come to us are frustrated by their tax liability and they're like, why isn't anybody helping me solve this? And and they they often look at their CPA as the Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Pat Lonergan: You know, hey, why aren't you why aren't you doing something to fix this? But they they don't understand the CPA business model. The CPA business model is compliance. It is get the right numbers in the right boxes, look back what happened last year, and say we're going to record all this in the most tax efficient way possible, but they're they're not helping you with strategy and framework that is gonna go well beyond what their capabilities are. So that that's that's most clients come to us because they are. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Pat Lonergan: They're very frustrated by the the tax liability that they're paying and it all their advisors just seem to be saying, Well, this is just the cost of being successful. We don't think that's true. Gregory Wilnau: I like that. I like that. Why don't you think that's true? Let's dive into that a little bit more. Help us understand your thought process. Pat Lonergan: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So when we when we look at the the entrepreneur and their their tax problem, there's really four areas of planning that come into play. For us, it all starts with cash flow. we understand their cash flow from a macro level. We understand the dollars flowing into them from the business. We understand money coming from other investments. They might own real estate, their spouse might be a W two employee somewhere. And then we understand like what does it take to run your lifestyle? You know, is it 30K a month? Is it 20K, 10K, 50K, 100K? I don't know. I don't really care. I'm just interested in how much money is sort of flowing through net after all of your expenses that you can you can allocate to investments. So we understand the cash flow really well. We've got levels to all of that that we like to to dig through. And then once we understand the cash flow, now we can move to tax strategy. And we have four levels of tax planning that we'd like to talk about with our clients. Level one is the IRS gives us guidance, but it doesn't take any investment. This is the good administration and bookkeeping. Most of our clients are missing a lot of these things because they need to be done before December 31st. They're not talking to their CPA until after the new year. If anything, their CPA is giving them a tax forecast, but they're not saying, hey, do these things to make sure they're they're taken care of. So level one. IRS gives us guidance, doesn't take any investment. Level two, IRS gives us guidance, but now we have to invest dollars. So now we're allocating capital to get a tax deduction. and I'll say the level one strategies are the what we'll call tax magic. You know, that's where people come to us and go, hey, just make the tax bill go away. It's like, well, we can do what we can here, but those run out pretty quickly. There's not a not a ton of opportunity there. level two, we can we can start implementing strategies like a cash balance plan. oil and gas investments, that type of thing, we might be able to save, I don't know, two, three hundred thousand dollars in tax with with level two strategies. Then once we get to level three, the IRS is not giving us any guidance. We're combining sections of the code to create tax efficiency. An example that we like to bring up is the the insurance premium that a business pays are tax deductible. Okay. But when the insurance company that those premiums are paid to receive those dollars, they're not taxable. because there's potential claims out there. And it's just clearly spelled out in the IRS code. So there's this thing called an 831B micro captive that if I've got enough revenue and enough liability inside of my business, I can start to self insure some of those. And I I pool this insurance with other business owners. It's managed by a third party that administers all the insurance company, the claims, managed by the State Department of Insurance. So there there's a lot of infrastructure around this, a lot of complexity around it. But now I can I can offset some of that risk by paying dollars into my own captive, get a tax deduction for that. And then those dollars can can grow and they are you know, I'll say very tax efficient because when I unwind my captive, I I take money out at the dividend tax rate, not the income tax rate. So I just went from thirty seven percent down to twenty percent, which is a nice tax arbitrage. So yeah there's a lot of a lot of opportunities there in in level three we could get into those but yeah and yeah go ahead and I was gonna say level four let's just wrap this up level four is tax fraud tax evasion and the reason we bring it up is clients will come to us and say hey I saw this thing on TikTok or Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah, no yeah, y no, you're you're a legend, man. I can see why your clients would want to want to work with you. All right, let let's let no, no, go ahead. Yeah, let's do it. Pat Lonergan: Hey, I heard about this this friend that invested in, and I'm gonna give you actual real examples, cantaloupe seeds, volcanic rock. there was a sovereign nation, one of the Indian tribes was selling tax credits. They took a hundred million dollars of tax credits and the IRS came and unwound all of that. And so, those are all like, you know, if it if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You know, if I if there's no economic substance to this investment, like you should. You should you should run away. So we we we pay a lot of attention to those strategies and we make sure that we're we're into wealth building. Like I'm not interested in s investing a dollar into a strategy just to get a tax deduction. You know, spend a dollar to get 37 cents doesn't make any sense to me. I'm very much interested in we put a dollar in and it it can compound our wealth. Gregory Wilnau: Sure. Sure. So let's talk a little bit more about how your clients typically find you and maybe some of the questions that they ask when they meet with you for the first time. Bring us into that world. Where where's their head at? What are they doing? What motivates them to reach out? And what do those conversations initially look like? Pat Lonergan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of times our clients are referred to us by our current clients. and then we also we get in front of a lot of entrepreneur groups and this this topic of tax is very high on entrepreneurs' list of things that they're they're concerned about. And so we'll we'll walk through in in detail like, hey, here's our four levels of tax strategy, here's how you implement those. And people, you know, we're not trying to sell anything. They'll just raise their hand and go, I how do I get in touch with you? So so those are those are the two, I would say, main main ways that that people connect with us. We also have a podcast that we we put out that people find us. Yeah. Yeah, it's Vital Wealth Strategies. So our website is vitalwealth.com. You can go there and find the podcast. But Vital Wealth Strategies, if you search on Spotify, Apple. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. What what's the name of the podcast? Give it give it a plug, man. Nice. Pat Lonergan: it's it's on all the platforms. we put episodes out every week and we're we're talking about the things that impact entrepreneurs all across the board. So Gregory Wilnau: What what are some of those things? Top three. Pat Lonergan: Yeah. obviously tax and wealth building are are big, growing our business is big and then also what it looks like to just live a great life. You know, at the end of the day it's not about putting another zero in the bank account, it's about what that money can do for us and it's it it doesn't look like burnout and divorce and having kids that don't know us. So Gregory Wilnau: What are some of the things you think that you that you find most of your clients are putting off as entrepreneurs when it comes to like living life? Are there any patterns? Like and how do you give them permission to pursue that? Pat Lonergan: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. This is this is great. And it's it's something we we've seen more often than we would care to. We see the burnout. We see the stress putting people out of the game for a while. You know, they'll they'll have a for lack of a better term, a mental breakdown. they'll get sick for a period of time. Gregory Wilnau: That's a pretty good at that's a pretty accurate description, I think, a mental breakdown. Yeah. Pat Lonergan: Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, okay, this this isn't healthy, right? Like we can we can look around and go, man, it looks like I've I'm I'm succeeding from a worldly point of view, but you know, there's there's obviously some things that that aren't working out. and so one of the things we try to help clients with and is we talk about the most valuable things in life. It's this acronym called REACH. So R is for relationships, E's for experiences, A's for advancement and growth. And that's that's on the personal level, that's with your kids, that's on the business level. Let's be growing in all those areas. C's for contribution. it's better to give than receive. The scriptures tell us that. And H is our health. We think there's three components to that that matter. Our physical health, right? Can't give me cancer for any amount of money. My mental emotional health, if I'm, you know, depressed and can't get out of bed or so anxious, I can't function. Again, not not great. And then we think there's a spiritual health component of that. So we think I would much rather have our dollars support that framework that we have some control over. And, you know, I I die with zero dollars versus have a hundred million dollars and I'm always pursuing things outside of my reach, a bigger, faster, shinier, fill in the blank, and all of that seems to be empty. So we we we get into those conversations with clients on like, hey, let's let's take a step back and figure out why we are pressing so hard, you know. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Pat Lonergan: We've already shown you that you're effectively financially free. You know, if you never make another dollar, you'll be okay. Now, I I think there's a lot of value in being productive. I don't think we should just sit around on the beach. I think, you know. Right, yeah, right. Yep. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Idle hands or the devil's whatever, whatever that quote is, right? Yeah. We were we were made to to work and to feel useful and to have meaning and purpose and I I live in the villages, so I s I talk with a lot of retirees and go to Publix, which down here in the south in Florida is the main, you know, grocery store, not Piggly Wiggly or Kroger. And man, everybody employed in that place is a retired. Pat Lonergan: Yeah. Yep. Totally. So yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Right. Gregory Wilnau: And I'll talk to them and they g they're like, I needed a job because I was sick of sitting on the beach and eating bonbons all day, you know? you you gotta do that. You gotta exercise your brain. You gotta feel useful. Otherwise you might as well be dead. Pat Lonergan: Right. Yep. Yep. Yep. Totally. Yeah. And we'll find clients that'll have, you know, eight, nine figure exits from their business. And they don't they do not need to work another day of their lives, but they are within a few months getting the next thing started because they understand that thing you're saying right there is like we we need to have some purpose, we need to have some intention with our days, and if you don't, it it's not not great. So, yep. Gregory Wilnau: No, this is really great. I'm seeing this this pattern of, you know, like like intention and purpose and working with entrepreneurs on that as well. You know, the money I think figuring that out is kind of like a given, but a a lot of the this other stuff that is equally important, if not more important, is oftentimes kind of swept under the rug. And it's cool to see that you put as much of a priority on that as as as the money. So I think that's really cool. anything else you want to say on that? Pat Lonergan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I don't I don't think so. I I think there's you know an another reason that clients come to us again, they have that great team in place, but they don't have they don't have the framework that brings it all together because it's all actually integrated and coordinated. if you want to drive the tax bill and really build your wealth, you need all of those pieces working together. And again, I might have a great internal finance team, great CPA, you know, great legal team. And it's like That doesn't, you know, that doesn't create tax strategy. You know, you you have to you have to understand the cash flow, the tax, the investments, the legal structures, all those come together to create an infrastructure. And so that's why our clients come to us. We we're effectively a a fractional family office, you know, that that helps bring all those pieces together and coordinate it for the advisor or for the client that can move a lot of those. Just move their wealth forward, give them peace of mind. Their complexity doesn't diminish. Life does not get easier when you start making more money. It gets way more complex. And so it's like, our clients are regularly trying to, they've already outsourced their housekeeping, their lawn care. Like they are trying, they're buying back their time. And this is another way for them that they they feel stuck. Like there's no way for me to buy back my time with these financial concepts that nobody seems to be able to figure out. And that's where. That's where we solely live. Gregory Wilnau: I love it. I love I love the deep integration between the two. I think that's really important. All right, let's talk about let's talk more about what you're working on, your vision, where you where you see your practice in the next couple of years. what's your vision? Are there any goals that you're working on? Pat Lonergan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. you know, we're we're passionate about what drives this country forward. And it's not paying more tax. It's the entrepreneur that's building businesses and hiring people. And and and so with that being true, our thought process is let's save a billion dollars in tax. Let's put a billion dollars back into the hands of the entrepreneur so they can continue to drive this country forward. so with that in mind, we are Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, I completely agree. I completely agree. Pat Lonergan: You know, we're on the front edge of of tax strategy and planning and bringing all these pieces together. We're working with I'll say the best minds in the nation on on these things. And we're also, and maybe it's even across borders. You know, we we've got some you know, we're doing some work with some Canadian advisors for clients that are moving back here. And it's it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun understanding all of those. We've got clients moving to Puerto Rico. we've got clients moving out of Puerto Rico. Some don't like living in a third world country, which parts of Puerto Rico are if you've spent some time there. So you know, so that and then we're we're looking at regularly hiring and building out our team. The problem with trying to hire for the work we do is a financial advisor doesn't understand the work we do. because the the tax piece, you know. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah. Mm. Interesting. Pat Lonergan: a CPA also doesn't understand the work we do because of the financial advisory piece and the business side of the equation. And so yeah, we do. And so there's a lot of training that that we look at somebody that is excited about new opportunities, learning growing. And so we're we're bringing people in that have experience typically in the financial advisory industry. And then we we train them up on the a lot of times we'll we'll ask what's a P and L, you know, a profit and loss statement, and they don't have a clue. Gregory Wilnau: So you're kind of blending you have to blend the two together, right? Pat Lonergan: when we're interviewing people. And so we're like, okay, cool. We're gonna have to, we're gonna have to like train you on what it means to be right. Yep. Yep. So so yeah, we're we're trying to just continue to grow our our pipeline of advisors and love our current team. We're actively trying to hire right now about every six months we're looking to add a new advisor to the mix just because we found that our capacity is about thirty clients per advisor. Most financial advisory firms are about a hundred and twenty or so. Gregory Wilnau: Wow. Yeah. Some some education is needed. Right. Yeah. my gosh, that's so many people. That's crazy. Pat Lonergan: Yeah. and they have a support person. And but to your point earlier, they're they're meeting once a year. And you know, that that rhythm works. We're meeting pretty much every month with all of our clients. So it's like you've got 30 clients, you've got an associate advisor that's that's helping manage all that that complexity. But you know, we we're we're filling up those. And there's there's two capacities. There's 30, which is a total, and then there's about two a month that you can onboard anything. And if you did that for twelve months in a row, you'd be you'd probably be burnt out. But so we're we're trying to just make sure we can onboard and then fill up the team with those those capacities. So we're we're we're trying to hire on a very regular basis. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, definitely. It. I love it. You gotta do it, man. Especially as you're growing, you want to keep up the level of service and the attention to detail. It's hard to do that when you have more than a hundred people that you're responsible for. So I like that you've chosen to be more focused, put a little bit more, put more emphasis on you know, that human touch interaction. And if an advisor is gonna do a really good job, they have to be able to think about the person that they're serving, right? And it's hard to have that much space in your mind to think. Pat Lonergan: Right. Mm-hmm. Gregory Wilnau: in about somebody's situation in a way that you you have the capacity to do so when you've got a hundred and thirty people in there, you know? So just having thirty is feels like a sweet spot. Especially if there's co they're complicated situations and cases with a lot of nuance. So Pat Lonergan: Right, right. Yep. Right. Yeah. And and to that point, with the entrepreneur, like on a retirement conversation, like I I know all of the the directions that can go. With an entrepreneur, there's so many new things. Like we are operating right on the edge of what we're capable of almost constantly. And but but the reality is we have a broad enough network that when we run across new things, we we can go lean into that network and help us figure those things out. So Gregory Wilnau: Every day, yeah. Pat Lonergan: so it's it's a lot of fun and somebody an advisor needs to be okay with a a dynamic work environment. If you like the static, you know, I I worked with an advisor when I first started in the industry. You know, he his his ideal client was somebody retiring from the factory that had a pension and a 401k. And it was just like the same conversation day after day after day. I'm like, this is killing me. I need to go. I I I want I want new problems, new problems to talk about. So yeah. Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Yeah, that would get really boring. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's one of the benefits of working with an entrepreneur, right? Is everything every situation is individual, unique. There might be common themes or frameworks that you might be able to kind of operate creatively around, but you're it's it's incredibly dynamic because all those problems are new. Pat Lonergan: Yep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. And and we're looking at things like buying businesses, selling businesses, setting up new entities, trust and estate planning, you know, capital gains tax planning, income tax planning, like all of these factors are are at play out there. And it's like, okay, how do we how do we take all of these major financial decisions and bring them into one unified framework that just brings peace of mind to the entrepreneur? Gregory Wilnau: Right. And that's why you need an an advisor who works with no more than thirty people at a time because it re it takes a lot of thought, a lot of intention and a lot of energy. So I love that. All right, let's talk a little bit more about your actual process and what it looks like to work with you. So let's say an entrepreneur's going through some of the stuff that you shared, they have a lot of the questions and th this the the scenarios on their mind. They're actually going through what and they reach out to you. Pat Lonergan: Guys, yeah. Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: And they decide to become a client. What was on what does onboarding look like? when somebody if somebody were to come become a client today, what would happen the first couple of weeks? What does it look like to work with you during the course of a calendar year? maybe you could explain kind of that process to us. Pat Lonergan: Yeah. So we actually have a a very it's a no-risk process to to start working with us. And here's what I mean by that. So clients come to us, they they sort of raise their hand and I it's like, check out our website. and and even clients that are referred to us, they they they know a little bit about us. They know we only deal with entrepreneurs that have a big tax problem that they're frustrated by. So so the first thing we do is we we have what's called our kickoff meeting. Where we sit down and we understand your your goals and objectives. and at that kickoff meeting, you sign the engagement that it's 10K for us to do the roadmap. Okay. But here's the cool thing about that 10K. It's completely refundable for any reason in the next 60 days. So we're we're done, we get that roadmap completed that outlines we fully understand your cash flow, we've built out a balance sheet, and we've created a tax strategy for you. And we'll on average our clients save $280,000 in income tax. So it's like, okay, we get done with that that roadmap and you're gonna see exactly what the tax savings are. You're gonna see the strategies that it's gonna take to get there, and you can decide, hey, this is not for me, and we'll give you all your money back, and that's that's totally fine. Most people are like, that sounds incredible, let's go. And so then from there we we quote our ongoing engagement. So we we have a a monthly engagement that that Gregory Wilnau: Wow. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Pat Lonergan: runs twelve months for the first year and then it goes month to month after that. It just takes us twelve months to get everything plugged in. So we're like, hey, it's either going to be sixty thousand dollars up front or six thousand dollars a month, however you want to do it. And you know, we're gonna save you the three, four, five million dollars. We had one client save nine million dollars in tax last year. So this is what it's gonna take. and it that that pricing is based on the complexity. So it could be Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. Wow. Wow. Pat Lonergan: Could be less than that, could be more than that. You know, if partners are in the mix and they've got an exit coming up, you know, we've had partners pay us, you know, $15,000 a month to get all the work done. And we still provided a multiple of value. That's our whole goal is however much money you pay us, we're going to deliver a multiple in value in the form of of tax savings and wealth building. So yeah, so that's what it looks like. People get the roadmap, they get a fully understand what it looks like to work with us. Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Pat Lonergan: They get the opportunity to ask for their money back, or they get the opportunity to go, yes, let's go. And then we start implementing. And then we we have you know monthly meetings. And and that roadmap process looks like this. We have the kickoff meeting where we understand their goals. Like it is a very much not a tell me all your financial data. It's like what's important to you 12 months, two to five years, five year plus. And then we ask this key question. At the end of 12 months, what three things need to happen for you to feel good about your planning? And they tell us those three things. And that's kind of our north star to drive the planning forward. then after that, we're gathering all the data. So it's it's kind of like the going to the dentist part of the the engagement. but once it's all together, it it becomes a lot easier. So we understand the cash flow, we're getting PLs, tax returns, balance sheets, and we're building out all of that for the client. And then then once we have all that, once we know what's important to him, because really the there's an unlimited number of planning strategies out there. Gregory Wilnau: Nice. Pat Lonergan: so if I don't know your goals, I'm just guessing at the best opportunities for bringing the tax bill down. So if I know your goals and I know where you're at on the map with cash flow and and assets, it's like, all right, now we can we can build something that aligns with with all of that. Gregory Wilnau: I love it. oftentimes I'll ask this question, you know, what's it look like to work with you? And it sometimes it's it's hard for people to you know, it's I think it's challenging for an advisor to to to articulate what that looks like in a way that's simple, clear, and specific. And I love the h how you how you've described how you work with people over the course of a calendar year. It makes a lot of sense. especially considering, you know, the types of people you work with and what you do. So so that was great. Pat Lonergan: Yeah. Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: All right, anything else you wanna say or mention before we land this plane and talk about how to get in touch with you? Pat Lonergan: Yeah, no, I I think there's, you know, the four areas of planning that we work on cash flow and tax, that's all built out in the roadmap. Then there's the investment piece. You know, we we've just found that there's great investment advisors out there, but we're we're pulling a lot of the levers for clients. So if they're not a part of what we do is just implementation on the the cash flow and tax side of things. And so we're we're managing the money. We've just found when there's other advisors in the mix, they're like, hey, we've had clients actually hear this from those advisors. Like, just pay the tax. You've done well. It's okay. You know? And it's like, well, you write the two million dollar tax bill. And so, so we do the investment management on top of all of that. It's a it's a key piece of the engagement. We're we're not doing the engagement if we're not managing the dollars just because there's so much friction in the process. It's like, we would love to keep your advisor. It just doesn't doesn't seem to work. and then we're we're also plugged into all the legal counsel and insurance and making sure all those those pieces are are in place and properly structured. And so and then we just reorder those things to what's sort of most important has the biggest impact right now. And we're just making sure we're we're chipping away at those on a monthly basis. And then then annually we kind of fall into a similar rhythm year over year. We've got We're forecasting the tax liability in June and July. It's like, okay, we got six months of data. Let's let's come up with the tax liability and create the strategy to bring that down. And then we're we're just running through whatever pops up on that that advisor's radar is a most pressing issue and make sure we're tackling those things. Gregory Wilnau: Awesome. I love it. All right. So for anybody who's interested in getting in touch with you and exploring what it might like be like to to work with you, what should they do next? Where should they go? Pat Lonergan: Yeah. Yeah, I think there's I think there's a couple of things. VitalWealth dot com is got a lot of resources. It's got our podcast on there. If you want to just understand more about how we think, just scroll back through. We've got a hundred and fifty some episodes, I think. or close to a hundred and fifty that every every week we're putting stuff out. So you can you can scroll through those. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all the all the places you listen to your your podcast. And so I think that's a great way to just learn more about who we are and how we think and all that other fun stuff. if you're like, hey, this is interesting, I I I don't need to do any of that, you go to our website, VitalWealth.com. We've got a a box you can check. let's talk tax and we can we can set up a 30 minute meeting and just understand more about your situation, figure out if it's a fit for us to work together if we can help you. So those are those are probably the best ways for people to get plugged into what we're doing. Gregory Wilnau: All right, Pat. Thank you so much for coming on, sharing your insights, your perspectives, and appreciate what you're doing, man. We need more support for entrepreneurs because they're the engine that turns the world. So thank you so much. Pat Lonergan: Absolutely. Gregory, thanks so much for having me. I I appreciate what you're doing here. I think it's really challenging to find good advice. And so the fact that you give us a platform to to talk through these things and get our message out there and what what niche we're all trying to lean into is for advisors is is valuable. So thanks. Gregory Wilnau: Absolutely my pleasure. Thank you, Pat. Pat Lonergan: Thanks.