31: Clean up Your Corporation With Garrett Sutton

05
Apr

Garrett Sutton is the CEO of Corporate Direct and the Sutton Law Center, an asset protection company that provides corporate formation and maintenance services. He is also an 11-time best-selling author and a Lifetime Achievement member of the Top 100 Attorneys. We discuss asset protection laws across different states, corporate formation strategies, and how to use your book to scale your business.

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Clean up Your Corporation With Garrett Sutton

Our guest is Garrett Sutton, who is the CEO of Corporate Direct and the Sutton Law Center that provides affordable asset protection and corporate formation and maintenance services through four offices across Nevada and Wyoming. Garrett, since 1988, has served over 12,000 clients, and he also has served over 900,000 readers of 11 bestselling books, of which three was co-authored with Robert Kiyosaki in the Rich Dad series. He is also a Lifetime Achievement member of the Top 100 Tourneys. So that’s pretty impressive. And he serves on the boards of the American Baseball Foundation and the Neveda Museum of Art. So welcome to the show, Garrett.

Thank you, Steve. It’s a pleasure to be with you today.

It’s awesome to have you. So Garrett, tell us a little bit about your journey. How did you become an entrepreneur and how did you build your business?

Well, I went to the University of California at Berkeley, got my BS in business administration and then went across the bay to San Francisco to Hastings Law School. And I practiced law in San Francisco and Washington DC and just wanted to live in the mountains. So I moved to Reno and I spent a lot of time skiing at Lake Tahoe. And Nevada is a great place to set up corporations and LLCs. So that was one of the reasons I located here. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial streak and you can be a regular lawyer.

There are all kinds of ways you can practice law, but I prefer to deal with many clients and assist them in setting up these corporations and LLCs and then most importantly, maintaining them so they can have continued protection. So that’s kind of the entrepreneurial journey is getting into law and then figuring out which part of the law I could be more entrepreneurial within.

That’s fascinating. And you see very few attorneys who really have this entrepreneurial streak. Often, attorneys more see themselves as the expert professionals, and they want to personally deliver the value, and you are doing it through people. So tell us a little bit about how you do that, what kind of systems you have, and how do you turn your personal practice into a thriving business?

Well, Steve, the key for me is having good staff. We have a staff that’s very well trained, that knows the ins and outs of corporate formation and maintenance. It takes a while to train these people. I value the staff more than anything, more than my expertise, the logo, whatever. We have a team here that works together. Everybody gets monthly bonuses. And so, you know, try and build a team effort here where everybody’s on the same page, working for the best interest of the client.

 So, tell me a little bit about this whole concept of asset protection. I mean, you know, I have been interested in this area for a few years now, and I’m coming out of the book and I wrote like a short chapter, maybe several chapters, just a few pages. But to me, what I understood it to be is essentially save on taxes and protect yourself against litigation. Is this what it is about or there are other things?

Well, on my side, the legal side is about protecting yourself from litigation, using corporations and LLCs, the limited liability charters that they offer to protect yourself from litigation. Now, as an entrepreneur, you’re gonna have a team of people. You’re gonna have a lawyer and you’re gonna have a CPA. And a good CPA can save you a lot of money. I tell people, if you’re gonna spend $5,000 for the CPA, hopefully they’re saving you 15,000 or more a year. So you really want a good CPA on your team as well.

In terms of taxation, the LLC is now the most popular entity choice, and an LLC can be taxed however you want. It can be taxed as an S-corp, a C-corp, a partnership. So you have a lot of flexibility with the LLC. You have great asset protection, and you can choose to have it taxed however you want. So they do work together, Steve. We want the asset protection and we want the best taxation.

How would you compare what’s available in Nevada and Wyoming and maybe other states in the US, Delaware perhaps, to other tax efficient structures in other countries and exotic islands and other places?

In the United States, if you’re doing business in the United States, you’re going to have to be registered in the state that you’re doing business in. So coming here with a foreign corporation doesn’t really work. I mean, that’s better when you have assets located offshore, and I don’t do the offshore asset protection. Robert Kiyosaki early on said, we’re not doing that. So I only do the US asset protection. And it’s interesting, Steve, in most countries, the corporate formation is handled by the national government.

But here in the United States, during the American Revolution, the states were very cautious about these corporations. And each state at the Constitutional Convention, each state said, no, no, no, we’re not going to have a national corporate law. We’re going to do it state by state, which is great for us because you have states that compete against each other to be the best. And the top three are, as you mentioned, Steve, Delaware, Wyoming, and Nevada.

They compete against each other to offer the best asset protection, the best protections that corporate law can provide. And when we give people the choice, a lot of people like Wyoming because they’re equal to Nevada and Delaware in terms of asset protection. They don’t list your name on the state website, so you have some privacy. And the annual fee is only $52 a year. So in Nevada and Delaware, it’s $350 a year or more. Wyoming is very affordable when it comes to the annual fees.

That’s amazing. I think Virginia is also fairly affordable. I think it’s also $50. But I don’t know how protective Virginia is of corporation owners. I definitely have my name listed there. So, Garrett, tell me about what it looks like. And how is it different to have a corporation in those three states as opposed to, you know, California and Virginia? How is it better?

The state law of, for example, Wyoming, the charging order is the key asset protection feature and Wyoming is constantly updating their laws to make it the most protective. As we said, they compete with other states. California, by contrast, has a very weak asset protection law whereby if you sue someone, you get in a car wreck and you want to go after someone’s LLC to collect, California law says have at it.

You can go right through the LLC and force a sale of all the assets. Wyoming and the other good states say, no, you can’t go in and barge in and force a sale of the assets. You have to wait for distributions to be made and you may not make distributions. So that is a very good type of law that you want on your side.

So for example, if you get in a car wreck, it’s good to have insurance, right? You want the car insurance. I always recommend that people get an umbrella policy, a personal umbrella policy of insurance, which for a million dollars of extra coverage, it’s only $400 a year. And so the attorneys can get at the insurance money, that’s what they collect on. And they’re not, it’s tough to get through these LLCs.

So if you have enough insurance money and then the good asset protection on all of your assets, your real estate, your brokerage accounts, certainly your businesses, if you have gold and silver, we wanna use LLCs to hold those assets. So in the car wreck, which is your greatest risk, the car wreck, there’s plenty of insurance to cover that. And the LLCs make it difficult for the attorneys to want to go after anything else. So that’s how we like to put it together, Steve.

That’s very, that sounds very logical and very smart. So what’s the flip side? So why would then everyone incorporate all their companies in Wyoming and ignore all the other states? What’s the flip side of being in Wyoming?

Well, let me clarify one thing. So let’s say we have a real estate investor and they have a property in Virginia and a property in Maryland. We would have a Virginia LLC on title to the Virginia property, a Maryland LLC on title to the Maryland property because you’re collecting rents, you’re doing business in those states. The two LLCs would be owned by the one Wyoming LLC. So that’s how we configure everything.

If a tenant sues over the Virginia property, that’s a Virginia court case, right? You’re going to be subject to Virginia law. And that’s called the inside attack, where the tenant sues the LLC that’s on title to the property. And that’s true in all 50 states. The outside attacks, with the car wreck, the outside attack is where the tenant has to sue to get at Virginia and Maryland, but they have to sue through Wyoming because that’s what you own. And Wyoming makes it very difficult.

So that’s how we like to structure. We’re always going to have the entity located in the state where the property is, and then that entity will be owned by a Wyoming LLC. I know it’s kind of complicated, but it’s in my book over here, Loopholes of Real Estate, all described in that book.

No, that’s cool. And I thought that this one was very highly rated. I saw five stars next to the loopholes of real estate. So that’s definitely something to read for your real estate person. So that’s the outside. So if someone wants to just sue me because maybe I don’t pay rent or whatever happens in Virginia, then they could sue my Virginia company? And then the company-

The tenant is renting from the Virginia LLC. Their claim is against the Virginia LLC, not against you, Steve, right? Not against you personally, because you don’t hold title in your individual, it’s in the LLC name. But their claim is against the Virginia LLC, that doesn’t give them a right to get into the Maryland LLC or the Wyoming LLC. So, you’re going to have insurance on the Virginia LLC. That’s your first line of defense. And then the entity is the second line of defense.

So, it’s basically, all it does is it protects me, my personal property from anything that happens to the Virginia property, it’s not going to reverberate over to my other holdings.

They don’t have a chance to get it, the equity in your house, they can’t get it in your brokerage account, they’re limited to what’s inside that Virginia LLC, which means we’re not going to put 10 properties inside that one Virginia LLC, because a tenant suing over the one Virginia LLC could get the equity in all nine properties. So we don’t want to create a target rich LLC. We don’t want to put 10 properties into one LLC.

That’s awesome. Are there other major asset protection strategies other than this structure that you explained?

Well certainly debt is a form of asset protection. I mean if you get sued on the Virginia property and it’s a million dollar property and you have a $900,000 mortgage, the tenant can only get the equity in the 100,000. The bank has first dibs on the 900,000. So debt is a form of asset protection. We also have a strategy called equity stripping where you have a line of credit offered to the Virginia LLC in exchange, the Virginia LLC gives the equity stripping company a second deed of trust. So someone looking at the property sees that it’s fully encumbered. It’s not really worth going after the property. And again, that equity stripping is covered in loopholes of real estate.

Is it similar to kind of a mezzanine structure where you have a second layer of preferred equity kind of instrument?

It’s similar, but not exactly. It would just be a second deed of trust or a first deed of trust. Say the properties, you hold it free and clear, you can do the equity stripping whereby you have a lien against the first line of credit to the property holding LLC in exchange for a first deed of trust. It’s a promise to loan money in the future. And so some people will use that strategy to protect the equity in these properties. Again, you’re always going to have insurance on these properties.

Now, Steve, there’s one little wrinkle on the insurance. When you buy the property in your individual name, you’ll have the premium in your name, and then you’re going to transfer title into the LLC. So you use a grantee to transfer the title into the name of the LLC so you have that asset protection. You’ve got to tell the insurance company that you’ve transferred title into the LLC. There have been cases where the insurance company says, well, geez, we thought the insurance was in Steve’s name. It’s in an LLC. Title’s in the name of an LLC. We didn’t insure the LLC. We don’t have to claim the property.

So the insurance company is saying, well, gee, Steve, the LLC is a business entity. We have to charge you a higher premium, right? Which is nonsense. The risk of a fire is the same, whether it’s in your name or the LLC name. But here’s how to skin the cat. You say, okay, leave the premium in my individual name, but list my LLC as an additional insured. And so that way you have the insurance. You don’t want to have an insurance policy in your name and title in the name of the LLC because again, the insurance companies will use that as an excuse to deny a claim.

That’s fascinating. So that’s when things get more complicated. It’s going to be hard for them to keep all of that in their head and not make a mistake. That’s when they go to you to make sure everything is covered. I come from, you know, my previous business was all about arranging leverage buyouts, management buyouts. And we, you know, for a while it worked well, and then there were different rules that kind of prevented companies to overborrow, thin capitalization rules that you had to have some equity and so on. What is this landscape look, what does this landscape look like now in the US and are you involved in this kind of transactions?

I don’t get involved in those types of transactions. You know, certainly we had issues with banks that would lend with 2% down. Here they are with 98% loan to value and the value is down 50%. I mean, that was a terrible thing. So the bank lending standards have improved. I think there’s still some lenders that don’t require enough of a down payment, but that’s their problem. In my experience, you’re going to want to make the numbers work. Typically, you’re going to put 20% down or you’re going to have some sort of carry back. Each transaction is a little different, but I will say, Steve, that I haven’t seen the crazy lending standards that we saw in 2006 and seven. Those have not returned.

So, talking about the ownership of these companies, LLCs have members, then you have different corporate structures have shareholders. What’s the real difference between a member and a shareholder? It’s still owned stock in the organization, right?

Both those words describe owners. A member is an owner of an LLC, a shareholder is an owner of a corporation. So it’s just, they mean the same thing, they’re owners.

So there’s no difference between them, it’s just a reflection.

It’s just terminology.

Just a reflection of the type of organization.

Right.

What about, one thing that really struck me, I was reading on your website about the certificated security and uncertificated security. What does that mean and how is that relevant?

Uncertificated security means just a statement in the operating agreement that you own X percentage, right? There’s no certificate. The certificate security means that there is an actual share certificate or membership certificate that says Steve owns 20% of this LLC. It’s a physical certificate. And what we do is we take delivery of that certificate in Wyoming for your Wyoming holding company. And if someone’s suing to reach that interest, they have to get the certificate, which means they have to go to Wyoming, hire an attorney to get the certificate out of our safe deposit box.

It’s just another roadblock that we put up for attorneys. This really is important in California because California attorneys would say, Steve, your Wyoming LLC certificate is here in California. It’s California property. It’s part of the California system. You would say, no, the certificate of ownership is up in Wyoming. It’s a certificated security and you have to go to Wyoming to get a court order to get that. Again, it’s another roadblock.

Right. Is it difficult to get this kind of court orders? Do Wyoming courts favorably?

We’ve had this program for a number of years and we’ve never had a case on it. It’s not something that the attorneys want to do because you have to hire an attorney in Wyoming to get a court order to get the certificate. Well, maybe there’s a way to settle this thing and have to go through all of those gyrations.

Another thing I was wondering about is you have the option to be a member-managed LLC or a manager-managed LLC, and I always wondered how is that different?

Well, LLCs are really flexible. And so the law in each state says someone has to manage it, right? Someone has to make it go. But the manager can be an outside person. You hire a professional manager to come in and do it. And so either one works, either one allows for someone to manage the LLC. We like manager managed because if you’re going to start out member managed and someday bring in a manager, a professional manager to do the work, you have to amend the articles.

You have to go back to the state and amend the articles. It’s just easy to start out manager managed, right? And so you have the flexibility of having the members be owners. They can always be, I mean, managers, or a non-owner be a manager. And so that’s how we do it. But again, LLCs are extremely flexible. They’re contracts really between the owners on how to run things. And you can set it up whatever works best for you.

And when you would start with the manager, manage them, you would have a nominal manager that maybe is a service that you could provide me to manage my company, or I would be both the owner and the manager, but I would kind of wear two hats. How does that work?

Yeah, I would rather see you save money. So you could be the manager of your own LLC. I do have clients that will set up separate management companies for various tax reasons to pay for medical benefits or whatever. But at the start, I think you just need one LLC to be on title to the property, maybe have the Wyoming LLC for the protection, but then you can manage both of those without having to have an extra management company.

Okay, that makes sense. What about the resident agent? Is it important? When I started in my first company, you know, I went to this lawyer who incorporated for me, and he became the resident agent. I didn’t even know that he was going to be that, and everything went through him, and eventually I got tired of chasing my mail, and I took care of everything, and it doesn’t seem to be a lot of hassle to do that, but maybe I’m missing something.

Well, there are a couple of little war stories to tell here, Steve. So you can be your own registered agent, right? So if you live in Virginia, you have a Virginia LLC, you can list yourself as the registered agent. There are a couple of little issues though. Let’s say you travel a lot, right? And you’re not home to receive service of process. The registered agent is there to receive notice of a lawsuit. That’s their main function. So instead of having someone suing, you have to track you down all across the state of Virginia.

They list one address on the website and the process server, the person bringing notice of the lawsuit can go to your home and serve you. But if you’re not there, right, if you’re traveling, then they can say to the court, look, we tried to serve Steve, he wasn’t there. And the court says, okay, the next step is to publish notice in the newspaper of the lawsuit in the little tiny two-point type in the back of the newspaper that you’ll never see. So then they go back to court and say, we published notice in the newspaper, Steve didn’t respond.

And the judge says, okay, well, you tried everything. You get a default judgment, meaning the other guy has just won the case. So if you’re traveling, we’d rather have you use a service that they’re going to… We provide this service in all 50 states. Someone comes by, they deliver notice of a lawsuit. We’re on the phone immediately to our clients telling them about this, getting the paperwork to them because you’ve only got 30 days in most states to answer a complaint.

So you got to get on it if you’ve been sued. So we like a professional service that is going to be there even if you’re traveling, if you’re not home that day or whatever. The second problem, Steve, is sometimes people will list their home address as the registered agent and people will go look up and see where they live, see if you live in a nice house. It can encourage litigation. We had a situation where a lady in Maryland used a Maryland LLC to own a mobile home park in Missouri. And the mobile home park was filled with meth heads.

And they went online and saw that this lady lived in a very nice house in Maryland. And they posted the picture of her house at the mobile home meth park and said, look, this is where the owner lives. You don’t have to pay rent. And so we just would rather not have your name and home address on the public record. So that’s another avenue in which a third party registered agent can help you, just gives you a little bit more privacy.

Yeah, no, I get that. That’s definitely important. So tell me about the other services. What kind of other services do you guys provide other than being registered agent, structuring the asset protection, setting up these LLCs and different corporations all over the place, maybe giving some tax advice. What are the kind of services, if I am super wealthy person and I want kind of the whole enchilada of different services, what other stuff could I buy from you?

Well, and you don’t have to be super wealthy for these services. I mean, if you call our office and mention Rich Dad, it’s $595 per entity. And then the state filing fees vary from state to state. But for example, Wyoming is only $100. So $695 to set up the entity. Then in the second year, it’s only 125 for the registered agent fee. But the other service we provide, Steve, is it’s really important that you maintain these entities. You’ve set it up, you’re doing business through that entity or owning real estate, you have to maintain it or else you lose your protection.

And so by maintaining it means you have a registered agent, you pay the fee to the state where you’ve set up the entity or where you qualify to do business. And then it’s important to have a meeting every year. So it’s called the annual meeting. And most states require that once a year, you have a meeting where you appoint officers, you approve all the things that happen during the year, and we provide that service as well. So we will do your minutes for your meeting for corporations or LLCs.

So we want to show the world that we’ve set up the entity. When you print up checks or business cards, you’re going to put LLC or ink on there. So people know that they’re dealing with a corporation or LLC, not Steve as an individual. You’ll have the corporate notice, you’ll do an annual tax return for the entity in most cases, you’ll do the annual minutes. You’re following the formalities that the court expects to see.

If you don’t follow these formalities and someone sues the corporation, let’s say the corporation doesn’t have any more money, they can come back to you and say, well, Steve didn’t follow the formalities and so we want to pierce through his LLC and get it as personal assets. It’s called piercing the veil. And by following the formalities, you keep the veil up, you stay protected. By falling apart, or you know, falling down, letting the veil go down, you’re giving them a shot to your personal assets. So we don’t want that. So formation is important, but just as equally as important is maintenance, maintaining this entity year after year.

That’s really important. And I don’t I mean, I haven’t thought about that. Obviously, I learned about it in business school that, you know, the veil and how do you maintain the distinctiveness of your personal individual and the legal entity and make sure that you’re protected. But I haven’t really thought about, if I don’t follow all the formalities, then it’s really not an LLC, then the liability is all mine.

Correct. And it’s really interesting, Steve, in 50% of the cases, courts pierce the veil. 50% of the time, people haven’t followed the formalities, they haven’t paid the fees, they haven’t done things the proper way, and the courts say, you’re not entitled to protection. And the piercing the veil means they go right through the corporation and go after your personal assets in 50% of the cases. So a lot of people are just not following the formalities like they should.

So if I’m a one-person LLC, which I am right now, then do I have to have a meeting with myself every year to maintain that this is distinct from me? Would that be the case?

I know, but I have to have a meeting with myself? That’s kind of weird. You should. Even though some states say, oh, the LLCs are informal, you don’t have to have the meetings. If you get called into court, I want you to have that minute book showing that you have the meetings because the judges, it just helps certify that you’re following the formalities. There have been cases where the LLC statute says, you don’t have to have the meetings and the judge says, I want to see the meeting minutes.

So I think it’s important on an annual basis just to do these meetings. Now, when you form with us, we give you a book that shows you how to do it. I mean, you can do your own minutes. But for people, a lot of people, it’s like going to the dentist. They just, it’ll never get done. So we offer a service where we’ll do it for you.

Yeah, that’s very smart. So if someone wanted to get into these topics, what is the number one book that you would recommend from your library? Which one of your books would be kind of the entry level for corporate formation?

Well, Start Your Own Corporation is about corporations. It also talks about LLCs and this applies to business owners and real estate investors. And then if you’re going to be investing in real estate, Loopholes of Real Estate talks about asset protection strategies for real estate, title issues. Title is very important. Insurance issues. So this is more focused on real estate. But those are the two key books that your listeners probably would find benefit in.

Are these concepts widely used? Do you have a sense of what would be the proportion of real estate entrepreneurs that they would be actively using these processes? Is it overwhelming or it’s just, you know, these people?

They don’t teach this in school, Steve. So, you know, people aren’t gonna pick this up on their own, but you know, if you go to real estate seminars, you watch YouTubes, people realize now that we’re such a litigious society that you just have to have this protection. So I don’t know, I would say that at least 75% of the people are using LLCs to hold their real estate properties. I think that probably 50% of the people are using LLCs to own their brokerage accounts.

Like Charles Schwab, they know how to transfer your stock account from your individual name into an LLC. It’s not a taxable event. You’re just changing how the stock is held. A lot of people with assets are using LLCs for brokerage accounts, certainly for real estate, for gold and silver. You can have an LLC hold your bullion. So, you know, these are fairly common strategies now. They weren’t 30 years ago, but they are now.

What about the C-corp. S-corp. dichotomy? I’ve heard different explanations, but I never really understood exactly how it’s different to have a C-corp where you basically write off your expenses and then you pay yourself a dividend, or an S-corp, but I thought it’s pretty much the same. What is the difference there?

Well, it’s interesting to note that they’re both corporations, right? So when you form the corporation at the state, you don’t say, I want a C-corp or I want an S-corp. The state will only issue you paperwork for a corporation. Once the corporation is formed, then you get to decide how it’s taxed, all right? And C and S, you’d think it would stand for something really cool, but it really stands for an IRS code section. So, code section C says there’s a double tax.

You pay tax at the corporate level. When you make distributions to the shareholders, you pay tax again at your ordinary income rates. So, you have double tax with the C-Corp, a tax at the corporate level, and when you make distributions, a tax at the shareholder level. Now, you don’t have to distribute the money to the shareholders, you could pay the C-Corp tax and leave the money in the corporation for growth, right? So C-Corps have their place. The S-Corp is subchapter S, it’s the IRS tax code number or letter. That provides for flow through taxation.

So there’s no tax at the corporate level. It’s like a partnership return. It flows through to the individuals. So two taxes on the C side, if you distribute, one tax on the S corp side. And each have merit. I mean, the S-corp is really good for minimizing payroll taxes. The C corp is good for building up cash so that you can grow the business. And you’ll talk with your lawyer and CPA to come up with what’s best for you.

But just know, if you’re going to be an S-corp, you have to file a form within 45 days after you form the corporation. So you’ll automatically be taxed as a C-corp unless you take steps to be taxed as an S-corp, and you’ll file a form 2553 for that. But again, they’re both corporations. They both need a registered agent, they both need the minutes, they’re both corporations.

And then the S-Corp, whether you take distribution or not, you get taxed on your share of the profits.

Correct.

So that’s a really great expression. I never understood that this is the idea that the C-Corp you can accumulate money that you don’t have to tax unless you take it. And for growth, that’s great. What I also didn’t understand is that, okay, the S-Corp, there’s no double taxation at the entity level, but the double taxation is going to be at the individual level because when I make my personal income tax and I didn’t pay tax on those dividends, I’m going to have to pay it as income, right?

Yeah, it’s income.

Yeah.

You’re going to, you’re not going to pay tax at the entity level, but everything that flows through is profit. You’re going to pay tax on it.

But if I take a dividend, then my tax is going to be lower because I’m going to pay just the dividend tax, 20% of whatever it is. So even though we’ve got taxed at the corporation level, my tax will be less at the individual level, whereas in the S-Corp, I have to pay full income tax. Or maybe I’m missing something there.

Well, the S-Corp, here’s the thing with the S-Corp is, the IRS says, someone’s got to earn a salary here. This doesn’t happen by itself. With LLCs and passive real estate, you can get by without paying a salary. But in a business setting, the IRS rightly says, look, someone has to make this go. And so we expect to see a salary somewhere. So you’re going to pay a salary first out of the S Corp and you’re going to pay the darn payroll taxes on that, which if you’re the owner and the employee, if you wear both hats, that’s 15.3%.

And so we don’t want to pay a huge salary and pay 15.3% and ordinary income tax on top of that. So with the S-Corp, you pay yourself a reasonable salary, pay the 15.3% and then distribute the rest through so you don’t have to pay all those payroll taxes. And again, working with a good CPA, you’ll be able to do that. But with the S-Corp taxation, you can save $5,000 a year easily by using the S-Corp taxation and paying yourself a reasonable salary, and then distributing the profits after that without payroll taxes.

Got it. Okay, now I got it. Okay, awesome. So, Garrett, that’s great information. What else should I have asked from the perspective of an entrepreneur that would be really interesting for an entrepreneur to learn that I have not?

Well, when we were starting, we were talking about books and you’ve written a book, Steve, and I think it’s the best business card there is. So for entrepreneurs that want to, you know, it’s not for everybody, but if you want to establish yourself as an expert in your field, you know, having a book is a really great business card. So I think that’s a strategy that some people should consider. There’s no barrier to entry now to getting a book out. I mean, you can get a book out very easily. Printing is not expensive. You can get it on Amazon pretty easily. So, you know, that’s a strategy for some entrepreneurs to think about.

So, when you have a book, because what I understand is there are 300,000 books being published every year. So a lot of people have this business card. How do you actually use that book other than just having it? I actually already have two books on Amazon that no one is reading because they are not very good books and I haven’t promoted them. The new one I think is a good one and I’m going to promote it, but how do you use it as a business owner to make it really work for you?

Well, you can have a book and you can charge for it, but you can give it away. I mean, I have clients that will write a book and have it edited and make sure it’s worthy, but they’ll give it away to get someone’s name, right? To get an email address. And for a lot of people, the email address is really important. I mean, that allows you to market to them. We have a newsletter. We don’t heavily market stuff because that’s just who we are. But plenty of people will give away the book and then use that email address to solicit business. And, you know, these are all strategies that a good marketing person would be able to tell you about.

That’s a great idea. I have not thought about that recently, but that’s that’s absolutely a good one that I’m going to work on. Okay, well, lots of good information and sounds like it’s not that simple that everyone can do it in their garage. So if someone would like some help with their corporate formation maintenance, fine tuning or the asset protection stuff, where should they turn to and how can they reach your team or yourself?

Well, two ways, Steve. Our website is corporatedirect.com. And we also offer a free 15-minute phone consultation with one of our incorporating specialists. So you can either schedule that at corporatedirect.com or you can call 800-600-1760. And we’ll be happy to get on the phone with you and explain our pricing and see if we can assist you. So 800-600-1760. If you haven’t done the minutes, maybe you’re worried that someone could try and pierce the bail, we can help you clean up the corporation. We can get you a good registered agent that appreciates the job of a registered agent. We offer that service in all 50 states. We help with the maintenance, the formation, and just make sure that you are adequately protected. Because again, we live in a very litigious society. People are suing each other all the time now. So we want to stay protected.

That sounds awesome and very useful. So Garrett Sutton, a best-selling author of 11 books, 900,000 people will be wrong reading him. So I recommend you check him out, corporatedirect.com. Thanks for coming to the show, Gareth, and for you, our listeners, stay tuned. Until next week.

 

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