Ep688: Brady Slack – What to Look For in a Coach or Mentor

Andrew Stotz 00:01
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risks but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives to join me go to my worst investment ever.com and sign up for my free weekly become a better investor newsletter where I share how to reduce risk and create grow and protect your well fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests. Brady Slack. Brady, are you ready to join the mission?

Brady Slack 00:39
Let's do this. Thanks for me. I'm Mr. Stop.

Andrew Stotz 00:42
Yep, I'm looking forward to learning from you. So let me introduce you to the audience. Brady is the owner of High Country finance, LLC, a full service tax and accounting firm based in Utah in mighty U. S. A. 's purpose is to be a resource that helps everyone experience wealth, all while paying the minimum amount of taxes possible. Brady, take a minute and tell us about the unique value that you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Brady Slack 01:13
Yeah, again, thank you for having me on. I'm excited about our conversation that we'll have today. As far as a little bit about me, and what makes me unique, or why I do what I do. To be honest with you, I got tripped and pushed into taxes, I never thought I would be delivering the service of tax advisory. But I knew that accounting was the language of business, I knew in some way, shape or form. I wanted to try and make as much money as I could in business seemed like a good way to do it. And so well, while I was studying accounting, my father in law said, my tax guy needs some help. He was paying a good amount of money. And I was like, sweet, let's let's do this. And I fell into it. As I've gone along my journey. As I've opened businesses, as I've invested money, I've realized that most of my comrades, most of my counterparts are much older than I am, I am 27 years old. And that's one thing that makes me unique. Another thing is I'm doing what my clients are doing. I own real estate, I have other business ventures that I'm a part of I love syndication deals. And it was hard for me to grow into this advisory position, not having the experience of what my clients are going through. And a lot of other individuals who are in the position that I'm in who are accountants who do on firms, I found very rarely do what their clients do. And it's hard for me to understand what grounds they have to speak on or advise on. And so I like to think that that separates me from other people in my industry.

Andrew Stotz 03:00
And in your bio, we talked about full service tax and accounting, I think of those things kind of differently in the sense that okay, accounting is kind of that the infrastructure, the flow of information in a business, whereas taxes, how do you, you know, as you say, you know, try to figure out how to pay the minimum, but be legal in that. When someone comes to you like, what's the core? How would you describe the core service that they could buy from you.

Brady Slack 03:28
So I really have to give credit to my partner, Mike scicluna, because he loves the debit and credit, debit and credit, financial advisory, you know, budget analysis, he loves that aspect of accounting, and that is true accounting. And what I've come to learn is that a tax return is only as good as the financials and planning that go into that tax return. And so when a client comes to us, we want to understand what do the financial stay and if they don't have good financials, we've got to get on top of that first. So really, what we're saying by full service tax and accounting is, let's make sure the financials look really good, especially for our investors and our business owning clients. Because that will predicate the outcome to what our tax return says. And really, it makes my job a lot easier with the tax return and with our planning meetings, because we know what our numbers are, we know how much disposable income I have to invest into different opportunities. But if I didn't have that information, I probably wouldn't be able to make as good of business decisions as I do. Now.

Andrew Stotz 04:37
You know, I have a part of my business I call outsourced CFO, and in that part of the business, we do two things. Number one, we take a company that has good accounting, and we try to help them to become financially world class. And we do that through a benchmarking system that I've developed. And then communication and goal setting over a 12 month period. And that's really exciting. Being uninspiring for those management teams that pick that up. The other part though, we find some customers that come to us and say, Look, my accounting is a mess, I don't even have the financials to produce to then benchmark our company. And what we do is we don't do an accounting service. But what we do is we fix accounting. And we basically I like to say we fix accounting messes. So if it's a small business, and you know, the accounting is not too complex, we don't get involved. Well we get involved is when there's 10,000 transactions a month, they're overwhelmed with reconciling those transactions, there's maybe manufacturing work in process, they're losing inventory, there's just so much complexity in a software like zero or something may not be able to capture all of that. And so we come into those types of situations, and we fix the accounting. I'm just curious, like, when someone comes to you, what's the typical issues that they're facing with accounting? And how are you then fixing it? I'm assuming you've got some software that you use, like zero, or whatever other one is going on in the US, and then you help them get their infrastructure right, or tell us a little bit about that?

Brady Slack 06:13
Yeah, yep, a lot of our focus. And a lot of our clients are in the, they've kind of surpassed that startup phase, and they're entering the growth phase, right, adding on new team members, the offer might be expanding ever so often. And so what we found is in this, in this weird, awkward period, from startup to grow, the business owner is trying to get through this phase of, I didn't have the funds to pay for someone to do my accounting beforehand. So I had to try and figure that out to where now it's trying to figure out what better use of my time do I have? And how can I, how can I put my best efforts, whether that's sales or marketing, or a CEO position, so that I don't have to worry about more of a menial task like, like transaction reporting, or bookkeeping, or payroll, things like that. And so we find these clients in this in this startup phase two growth phase, where they've been doing the accounting, it might not be done in the most optimal way, their chart of accounts might be just a little bit off, or we could integrate some functions into the chart of accounts to make it look better, and be more productive for what would be a projection and analysis or a budget, right. And then we make sure that the balance sheet looks correct, you know, no negative account balances, make sure that the equity and the Capital Partners are all correct. And then we take them in, and then we're able to work them through this growth phase, to a point where now we can really turn on the burners and look at projections and analysis and talk about what it would take to hire another team member and what that team member could potentially produce for the business and how we could continue to grow. That's kind of where our specialty is up to the point in some instances where we're now talking with clients about okay, here's, you know, here's what it's gonna look like, if you want to go sell, or if you want to go through a merger, or, you know, if you want to bring on other Capital Partners, those are kind of the conversations that will, we'll start out having, and then the end product of what that looks like.

Andrew Stotz 08:11
So it sounds like professionalizing, your accounting and finance.

Brady Slack 08:17
Yeah, and really adding in the processes and systems to streamline a lot of the accounting. I. It's funny because business owners in my opinion, they should understand well enough to know what's going on in their Xero or their QuickBooks account, right. But they shouldn't be doing it. And so that's kind of the weird dichotomy of that business owners mindset.

Andrew Stotz 08:39
Well, that's a great introduction. For the listeners out there, I'll have all the links in the show notes. So if you need to learn more, just go there and click on link, and you can learn more and also find out about the services that Brady offers. So now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment, and you will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story.

Brady Slack 09:03
Well, like I highlighted before, I am quite a bit younger, in my industry. And I I had the opportunity when I was just turned 24 years old. I actually just turned 23 years old to start my own business. I left an accounting firm, where I was at. And at the time, I to be frank did not have the expertise or the experience to probably start an accounting firm, I had the opportunity and I thought I'm going to take advantage of it. There'll be things that will go wrong as every business does. You know there are going to be growth pains, there are going to be things that I'm going to have to learn and I'm going to have to implement on the fly. And a really close friend who was also pretty successful a business told me that the quickest way to learn and to grow is to hire someone to help you learn and grow quicker. Right. And so I started to seek out mentors, coaches, development opportunities, because I understood that if I were able to use their knowledge and their expertise, I would be able to rocket ship my business, and I would be able to grow much quicker. And so this is funny because it's kind of been a constant theme in the conversations that I've had recently, including on my own podcast. But the conversation is, well, how do I find a good mentor? How do I find someone who does know what they're talking about? Or how do I get past the appearance of social media? So anyways, I kind of go back, I apologize. I got connected with a group on social media, they had reached out, I had been doing some speaking engagements, and they were hosting an event and they asked me to come speak at their event. And I thought, Great, this is a great way for me to get in front of some more people, you know, get some more be film and add it to my social media. And come to find out, they had an offer attached to the back end of the speaking engagement, which would include some coaching, some aspects of marketing and advertising and websites. And, and for me, it appeared on the front end that it was gonna be a good opportunity for me to kind of boost that business, I could have used a lot of that. And I was young, and I probably wasn't as smart as I am now. And I purchased this coaching package. Now mind you that like this was well over $50,000 as coaching package, there was a lot included into it, and I, I have gotten some great benefit from that coaching package. But I have also come to realize that that was not a great investment. I. And the reason was because in the beginning, they pitched it and they were great salespeople, they told me that they would, you know, execute on X, Y, or Z and that I would have a certain outcome on this, that or the other. And what I came to realize was, they didn't necessarily align with where I wanted to go. And I don't know that I realized that at the beginning, that I didn't necessarily want to go where they were at. And the opportunity that has come from that. I've never asked for a refund. I've continued to move through their coaching program, I've continued to go back and speak to them. I, you know, I have great conversations with them. I think the world of them, I think they're doing a really great job. It just didn't fit for me, right. And I know that up to this point in my career has pressed. Sure I've made some bad business decisions. I've had some awful partnerships that haven't done well. But the reason why this particular coaching program was the worst experience for me, or the worst investment for me, is it's also become the best opportunity for me, and I've learned who I should really look for in a coach, you know, what to look for in a coach and a mentor or in an advisor. And that, that lesson alone has, has blessed my career as a business owner.

Andrew Stotz 13:19
So why don't we go through that let's go through the lessons that you learned from this, and how, because I think this is a great story, because everybody is looking for help. And you know, you talked about leveraging the knowledge of others. And we hear about that we know we got to do that in one way or another we can do it alone. So Ken, what are they going to see? They are going to see the companies and the individuals that promote themselves the best and the most. And we need to learn from you. So tell us, what did you learn from this experience?

Brady Slack 13:58
There were a couple of lessons. I think one of the first lessons that I felt that I should have executed on was that if I didn't have the money, I probably shouldn't have paid for it. Yeah, like I said before this this was a very substantial monetary investment. And at the time, I did not have the funds to be able to pay in full cash for that opportunity. And that that should have been one of the first things that I recognized and I thought about it but then I thought okay, this is what I could become. And so that kind of overtook my first initial thought about it. So that was Lesson number one if you don't have the financial resources to pay for the opportunity. First come up with the financial resources. Right. I think the another lesson that I learned was to vet the individual that I am going to or the coaching or the advisory before I engage with the coach or the advisory. And the reason I say that is because I now have other mentors, I have one specifically for accounting and tax. And these individuals that I pay, again, substantial amounts of money to are individuals who are advising, extremely high net worth, and very public individuals here in the United States, best selling authors, professional investors, celebrities, and, and the reason why I'm using them as a coach is because I also want to continue to advise very high net worth individuals with complex entity structures and, and detailed investment strategies. So I learned from them because they're already doing that. I have another coach right now, who is an incredible example of their relationship with God. You know, that's something that I do hold him in importance to, he's a wonderful father. You know, and, and on top of that, he's a very successful business person, but I'm using him because I want to be a better dad, I want to be a better husband, I want to look physically fit, and I want to become closer to God. That's important. You know, I have another coach, specifically on mergers, acquisitions. IPOs, because we've got a software product that we're growing very quickly that I want to understand how to implement and how to grow and how to sell and how to exit that company in the next three to five years. Right. But the people that I hired, in this worst investment, hadn't gone through any of those experiences that I wanted to get. They were great coaches. They were great marketers and branding experts. But that wasn't necessarily the right fit. So I think those are kind of two overarching lesson.

Andrew Stotz 16:55
Okay, so let's review those. The first one is don't buy if you don't have the money. And I think that what's the challenge there is how do you overcome the selling pressure? In the moment beyond all of those guys know that plenty of their potential clients don't have the money, and they know how to get you to think that this is worth it? That's the first one that you talked about. And the second one you said, is vet the individual or company before you engage. And I wrote down, do they embody what I want to be? Individually, right. And then I also wrote down kind of maybe another thing is pick a very specific area, like you mentioned, m&a as an example. The idea being that, you know, you may not get as much value from a generalist, who you don't really know and all that. What, what I take away is, you know, this is such a very, this is a very challenging situation. I think everybody's looking for a coach, a guide, a mentor advice, looking for a book to read, they're looking for some kind of solution, and, and it's so hard to find the right one. And also, I would say that maybe the first thing that matters most is to try to stay away from the ones that are just all sizzle, all sales, but not the delivery on the back end. And so I you know, think about how do I do that? You know, and I'm thinking to myself, I often tell people when it comes to investing, don't buy any stock, or anything that somebody calls you and tells you about. Because you know, then there's a marketing machine behind that. Because nobody's calling you out of the goodness of their heart to bring you an investment idea. Now people say, well, Andrew, how the hell am I supposed to find anything to invest in? If I, you know, don't get that information from, you know, what am I supposed to do? Yeah, well, that's the point is that you do have to do your research, you do have to do your work on your own. So one of the things is that, you know, try to avoid getting sucked into the 10 coaches or whatever that are hitting your Facebook feed or whatever it is. Because those guys, you know that they're great at selling, you don't necessarily know that they're great at coaching. They may be they may not be, but I'm just curious if you would add anything else to that as far as kind of how I think the first line of defense is trying to make sure you don't get in that room.

Brady Slack 19:41
Again, this is something that I I struggled with early on as an entrepreneur as a business owner is was saying no, only because I think like I was partially desperate. I needed to make where I had to pay my bills. You know, at the time, my wife and I just Buying a house, we just found out we were expecting our first child. And so there was always a pressure. And so I knew I needed to have revenue, I knew I needed to generate sales. And I knew I needed to generate growth within my business. And this to me seemed like it was an easy opportunity. But with the monetary, I just I should have said, No, it was hard, there was lots of pressure. But I should have said no. And as I've grown in business, I've learned that my ability to say no, actually gives me the opportunity to look at other opportunities that might be greater. You know. And, and I think, to your point on, who to look for, or how to look for someone, I think it comes back to defining your goals, defining your intentions, and defining what you want your outcome to be. And I didn't really have those very clear, when I started, I just knew I knew I wanted to make a lot of money, right. And, and I think the more clear a goal, or an outcome is for an individual, the likelihood of success to that goal they will achieve.

Andrew Stotz 21:13
So I've, I've added to number two, that the individual or company and make sure that you've defined your goals and your outcomes in that process. And then I've added a number three, and I saying don't make a decision out of desperation or pressure, which is what you just described. And I have a little trick of how I do that one of the great places where you know, there's pressure is when you go to a fitness place, you know, they're gonna sit down, and let me show you the plan. And you know, there's a hard sell, and there has to be, they got to sell. So what I always do is when I go out to look at a new gym, or whatever, I don't bring my wallet. And I know that most of these guys get people into a room, and they have a whole build up to a final sales pitch, where people go to the back of the room, and then they sign up. And they sign up with their credit cards. But if you don't have your credit card with you, you can't sign up. And so I would highly recommend that if you end up getting sucked into something that you think is going to be good for you just need your credit cards at home, or in your car or wherever that is just don't take them. So that would be something else I would add to this discussion. Anything else you would add? Keeping in mind, right? We're thinking about people who are at the early stages of seeing something on their Facebook, they got the desperation, they'd feel like I need help. The price tags huge, but you know, like, it's just, you know, I gotta, you know, anything else you would say to them?

Brady Slack 22:46
I think the only thing is, and this happens when you go to a new place, and you're trying to figure out where to eat, you have kind of your, the main restaurants that you normally always eat at your chain or your fast food restaurant. But when you're trying to find some hole in the wall restaurant or something authentic, you always go to the reviews, the Google reviews, what are others saying about the restaurant? How many stars does it have? And, and so, today, in today's world, there's lots of flash. And there's lots of glamour because of social media. And I myself, have social media, I myself push sales through social media, that's how I work business, you know, and it's a great revenue source for me. But what I would say look at the reviews, who else? Are these individuals coaching? Or mentoring or advising? And what are the results that those other students have come up with? Right? Again, like I mentioned, I'm a firm believer in God, I like the scriptures in the scriptures, it talks about the fruits of their labors, you know, and a good tree will bring forth good fruit, you know, and so look at who these coaches have worked with, or mentored or advise. And if the product or the outcome that they have is successful and something that you want to achieve, then odds are it might not be a bad idea, you know? So that would be another kind of tidbit, if you will,

Andrew Stotz 24:20
okay, so that I'm going to add that to point number two is that the individual or company part of that is looking at reviews. Also understanding of reviews can be faked, so be careful. And then I've added something on that I would say get on a video call or a call with a prior client and no referrals. Yep. And say hey, could you connect me with a couple people who have used your service and have gained from it and then that's another waves. Part of what you're trying to do is slow down the process to them what they're trying to do is speed up the process.

Brady Slack 24:54
Yeah, give you less time to think about it. You know, whenever you whenever you one thing that my dad always Tommy was if you're, if you're gonna go make a decision if you gotta go buy something, or if you're gonna go spend money, go to bed first. Sleep on it. Yeah. And then if you wake up and you still feel the same, you still have the same thoughts. Sure, I'll do it. But if anything's changed, rethink it. So yeah, slow, slow down, take your time. And, and odds are, is you will walk yourself out of the deal.

Andrew Stotz 25:23
And I'm going to add one last thing that you, you know that you, it's harder for you to add this one, but I'm gonna add it. If you spend, and you get buyer's remorse, or you realize, maybe I just couldn't actually afford that immediately demand a refund. Yeah, you can immediately demand refund, now, they may refuse it. And you know, they may try to play some games. In America, there's a lot of protections for a cooling off period for contracts, and things like that, but anywhere. And I have had some situations that I've been in where I knew that it was, I'll give you a great example, my mom and dad came to visit me in Thailand. And I told him don't spend anything more than like, $100 on anything, you know, because there's plenty of scams out there. And my dad and mom came back one night, and my dad said, I think I made a big mistake. I said, I spent a lot of money buying a ring for your mother. You know, it was beautiful. And I just thought, wow, we're on vacation, let's do it. And I was like, give me the information. I called that place. They had been bused into this particular place. And they were, you know, sold the pitch. And they spent a lot of money on a ring that was probably worth a lot less. And I asked them, when are you open to? And they said, Yeah, we're open to seven. But if you come, you know, later, we'll stay open. I said, Great. Please do. I'll see you soon. And I took my mom and dad with their credit card and my best friend Dale, and we went back, we went to that place that night right away. And I said, we want our money back. And they refused, and they didn't want to do it. And we pushed and we pushed and we would not relent until eventually the amazing they refunded the money. And we gave the ring back. And it was probably about $700 or something like that. But it was something that we were, you know, sometimes you gotta get up and fight for that. And the time to do it is right, right away. So if you get that feeling like Oh, shit, then you need to act at that moment. So that would be my fourth lesson we've gotten Number one, don't buy if you don't have the money number to vet the individual or company. Number three, don't decide out of desperation and pressure. I mentioned, don't bring your credit card. And number four, if buyer's remorse and you're feeling it, then demand a refund immediately. So I think those are great, you know, great way and argue with those ones. Yeah. So it's a great one out for everyone out there that's looking for coaching and advice and all that. So let's go back in time, based upon what you've learned from this story, and what you've continued to learn. Let's now imagine a young man or woman is in the exact same position as you. And they're facing all of this, what's one action that you'd recommend that they do to suffer to avoid suffering the same fate?

Brady Slack 28:15
I think before, if it were me, and I were putting myself in those shoes, I, I would do a little bit more time in defining what I want out of the venture I'm in whether that starting a construction company or a landscape company or an E commerce business selling merchandise online, or maybe I want to be a coach, I want to be a fitness coach, or I want to teach people how to cook or something like that, or whether that's in taxes, right, I would I would get really clear on what do I want out of this? Do I just want to make as much money as I can? Is there a certain number of people's lives that I want to impact? Is there a certain timeframe that I want to be involved with this venture? And once I'm very clear on that, then I would look for someone who has already done that. And that is most likely the person that I would ever reach out to

Andrew Stotz 29:12
great advice. Now what is a resource that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Brady Slack 29:19
The first resource that I would recommend is the free resource, which is kind of funny because we talked about social media being flashy and how you can never trust it. Look at multiple different resources online. There's lots and lots of free education on YouTube. There's lots and lots of free education on Google, you know, and you can review lots of trusted sources, like a Forbes, you know, like a government website. You know, like, you can look at university studies, you know, those are all very good free resources. I don't know that I would necessary really say go to tick tock or Facebook or Instagram, because I call a lot of what's on there financial porn, you know, not all of it is true or might apply directly to your situation. But that would be the first place that I would go is go to institutions go to go to YouTube, go to Google, and try and get as much information and education as you can. And then when all else fails, or once you reach a certain point, then start to vet someone out, that can accelerate the growth within whatever venture You're

Andrew Stotz 30:34
fantastic. And just to mention that you've got your podcast slacking off, you've got your Twitter, Twitter, which I'll have a link to, you've got your Instagram with Jump following in. Also, you've got I'm gonna put a link in here for a consultation, if somebody's got an issue related to accounting and finance or taxes, or accounting, feel free to check it out. So we've got all kinds of resources there. So they're all there. Let me ask you the last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Brady Slack 31:15
So we mentioned this software product that we're working on it is a software product that automates the calculation reporting and payment, or contractors or companies that have commission or contracted employees. And our goal, we had a hard launch about two weeks ago, our goal is to get that to a point where it's paid all capital back to investors, and profitable. And within the next 12 months, we've got some specific goals on how we're going to reach that. So that's kind of that's our main focus right now.

Andrew Stotz 31:52
Fantastic. All right, listeners, there you have it another story of laws to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. If you've not yet join that mission, just go to my worst investment ever.com and join my free become a better investor newsletter that I do every week to reduce risk in your life. As we conclude, Brady, I want to thank you again for coming on the show and sharing your story and joining our mission. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. You've done it. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Brady Slack 32:36
No, I again, thank you, Andrew, this, this has been a fun conversation. There's a couple of little tidbits that I've learned that I'll take into it. But for those listening, just keep going. You know, I always say that the road to entrepreneurship or becoming successful is 75% hard work, grit and determination. And the other 25% Sometimes it's just a little bit of luck and, and make it up as you go. And I promise you if you just keep at it, good things will happen.

Andrew Stotz 33:06
And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.