In this financial episode, Jill interviews Lesley Batson, who is the founder of Rebel Rock Wealth, a company that helps six and seven-figure women founders and CEOs save hundreds of thousands in taxes and fees and grow their assets and passive income to exceed their active income in 10 years or less without getting overwhelmed.
Discover more at Rebel Rock Wealth
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Transcript
Hi. Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we are speaking with Lesley Batson. Lesley is the founder of Rebel Rock Wealth where she helped six and seven figure women founders and CEO's save hundreds of thousands in taxes and fees and grow their assets and passive income to exceed their.
Active income in 10 years or less without getting overwhelmed.
By minimizing risk, using her protect and expand wealth building system, that sounds really exciting to me, so welcome to the show and tell us your story.
How did you get started in all of this?
This is sounds super exciting, like I said.
Well, thanks for having me, Jill.
It's really.
Exciting to get to.
Chance to talk to you on your on your show.
So a little bit about me, so I.
I worked in IT for 20 years, about 10 years ago.
I actually got a divorce.
I was married for a short time.
I got a divorce and.
I thought, OK, I've got to figure out my money.
I you know, love IT.
It's a great career, but it is extremely demanding, great pay, but it's exhausting and I'm not going to.
You know do this till I'm 65. So I thought, OK, I've got to figure out my money, get my stuff together.
So I did what probably most people do.
I went online.
I started looking up, you know, just different things on YouTube.
I was looking at blogs and I was just trying to figure out, like, you know.
What do I?
And I just kind of found like people were kind of all sort of saying the same thing, like in general basically just, you know, put your money in these index funds or put your money in the market kind of thing.
And I was like, well, I I'm.
Not that's not.
Exactly what I want to do, right?
I thought you.
Know what?
Let me just go to.
A professional.
So I sought out a financial advisor.
And so I did settle on one.
I went to them, you know, and paid a nice you.
Know little fee.
And when I came out of that meeting, they gave me a beautiful, slick little, you know, book with my, with my, with their plan for me and all this stuff, but.
In general, they basically were telling me the same thing that I was seeing online, right?
It was just like, OK, we'll make it look better, but basically just put your money in these different buckets in the market.
And I thought, OK, this this is not what I want to do, so I'm going to just find out what to do on my own and be.
And, you know, years prior, I had done some real.
Estate investing.
When I lived in Chicago.
And I thought, well, I'm just gonna go back to real estate investing.
That's what I know that's.
What I'm comfortable with.
That's what I'm going to do.
And so I started to listen to different podcasts about real estate investing.
And in one of those episodes, it was a real estate investing podcast.
But one of the guests they were talking about creative ways to fund your deals and things to do, you know, with those with your, you know, with the funds that are your like, the cash will coming off of those deals.
And I thought I've never.
Heard anyone talk about this before?
And so that guest himself had a podcast.
So I went to his podcast and basically binged that and just was soaking up as.
Much stuff as.
I could and his whole focus was really, you know, very similar like how to grow your wealth outside of Wall Street.
And so I asked him.
And like well.
How to share this and more people need to understand this.
How do I you know how can I help people you know implement this for themselves because I just immediately went ahead and started working with him.
And so he said, well, you know, he basically told me the steps, right.
He's, like, needs to get licensed needs do this needs to that followed his steps and found a community of folks who were doing the same thing.
And so this is this is pushing us to, let's say this is like 2017, when I found him, it's hard to do this stuff.
And so from then I realized, OK, this might be my way out of IT, you know, because I can do something fulfilling.
I can, you know, still keep a roof over my head and help people explore other ways to grow their money, right?
I mean, there's just so many different opportunities to earn money, but we don't.
Learn about all the different ways to grow our money, especially to keep as much of it in.
Our pocket as possible and so.
I started Rebel Rock
Wealth in 2017 and I was still.
And if, while I was still, you know, making.
Sure that I.
Was able to implement the strategies myself.
I was like slowly start to slowly start to bring on other you know clients and I was doing it part time while I was still working in.
IT consulting. So in April 2020 is when I transitioned full time my IT consulting contract.
Ended and so I was able to just do this business full time.
And so it's.
Been phenomenal since then.
And you know, really just working with different people.
Who kind of just?
Have the similar values right, like, not that the market is evil or anything like that, but certainly should not have all your money in the stock market.
It's just entirely too volatile, and so we I basically help them to learn these different concepts, learn these different strategies, help them implement it.
And figure out OK how do we get things set up to where your passive income is going to now start to meet and then exceed what you're actively doing?
So if you love what you're.
Doing you can keep doing what?
You're doing because you love.
What you're doing, you don't have to keep doing.
Doing and if you don't like.
What you're doing, you can start to.
Pivot and do.
Something else, right?
So that's really the whole goal, cause I tell people you.
Know wealth is.
How you define it, but ultimately it's the freedom to be able to do whatever you want whenever you want, and money isn't everything, but it's certainly.
Affords you to have those choices.
Yes, it does give you choices and that is.
You tell me.
That is the big thing about it.
So you help people save money on taxes.
Does that work?
Well, it gonna vary by each person.
Right, because it depends.
On what are they already doing right now?
But a lot of times like so for example, most of us have been encouraged probably from the time.
We got our.
First job was to you know.
You know have a 401K and or a 403-B if you're in the nonprofit side and to put as much money.
In there as.
Possible for the Holy Grail of retirement, right?
And it's not that 401K.
'S are bad.
But most people don't understand how they work.
And once they do understand, they realize, like, oh, wow, especially if you're a higher income earner, you realize, like how much more you're going to end up paying in taxes later than you would had you just paid the taxes along the way.
And literally for several of my clients.
It can be 10s if not hundreds of.
Thousands of dollars.
That they are going to end up, you know, owing essentially, you know, to the IRS if they keep all that money inside of a 401K and we're talking about pre tax contributions.
Right.
So we look at So what we do when we work together is I will look at what they're.
Currently doing and.
Help them figure out.
OK, how do we break this up?
How do we, you know?
Make sure that you're not going to have to owe, you know, hundreds of thousands dollars, or at least have to pay out.
That amount over time.
And let's like minimize or optimize, let's say optimize what your tax bill will be.
So what we do when I work, when I work with my clients is we look at tax efficiency, we're we look at what I call money multipliers, which is essentially.
Investment opportunities or lending opportunities like that could be some of them might be private money lending type opportunities, but they're just different money, multi money multipliers.
Again, outside of the stock market, so you're really having opportunities to diversify what you're doing overall.
And of course initially laying a strong solid foundation that's making sure you have the proper protections in place.
Right.
It could be, could be life insurance.
Could be what I call income protection.
It could be mortgage protection.
There's all kinds of different things that we want to have in place so that in the events that life keeps lifing, you know, we are prepared.
We're not going to be kind of broadsided and not able to do things whether you're
You know in your mid sixes or earning, you know, high sevens people tend to underestimate the cost of illness, the cost of injuries, the cost of income interruption.
You know, even if you're just a business owner, I mean, if you're a business owner today, in most cases, you know you, you've experienced the volatility of.
Month to month, right?
Your cash flows can be great one month and then.
Down the next.
All those types of volatilities, how do we make sure that we have certain things in place so that when those revenue you know that revenue roller coaster is occurring, you're still OK, right?
Whether you're sick or not, so we want to make sure that we are.
Looking at cash flow
Make sure we're looking at protections.
Make sure we're looking at all the money multipliers.
And making sure that all of those work together to be the most tax efficient for you.
So most of your clients are business owners or are they business?
Yeah, they be business owners cause you need to.
Yes, I work with business owners and I.
Also have a large a.
Large chunk of my clients are real estate investors.
But they also have some of those real estate.
You know what some of their, the work they're doing is within a business, like an LLC or something like that.
But yeah, so definitely working more and more with small business owners because they're really the ones who can take advantage of some of these, you know, tax strategies.
Or the different strategies that we implement, they can take more advantage of it because when you're W2.
There's only so much that you can do to minimize your taxes, and that's why we want to make sure that we're exploring, you know, whether it's from a capital gains perspective, you know, paying 15 to 20% in capital gains taxes instead of your ordinary income tax rate.
Or on a.
Business side because obviously businesses get to deduct a lot of expenses.
We can do.
There's a lot more creativity on that side.
So we look at essentially, you know sort of everything that you're doing and how can we make it more efficient from a cash flow perspective and from a tax planning perspective.
Do you use trusts at all?
Well, I I'm not an attorney, so I cannot implement.
That is one of the tools that we can, you know, incorporate inside of the strategy.
Again, everyone's going to be different, so it's not like there's one plan that everyone does, right?
If you're like, you know, a single woman in your 50s with no kids.
Your plans can look very different from, you know, a 30, something married with two young kids, right?
So everyone's going to have a personalized plan based on their particular situation, but yes, but trust is trusts are a tool that we could potentially use revocable trusts.
Charitable remainder trust like there's different types of trusts that we can implement for different situations.
Was talking with Sally Gammon and she does spendthrift trusts, which are around real estate and entrepreneurial people.
It's a way to and you can use a whole family, can be part of it.
But it's a way to kind.
Of protect your assets with.
It was a fascinating conversation.
I know these are like out on the fringe of what people think about normal day-to-day, but it really shouldn't be.
You need to think about your finances and what you're doing with your money instead of just like.
You know.
Ignoring it, it's there are so many people that just like ignore it.
And I think that's a great point, Jill right.
I mean the whole.
Thing is, is.
Like we literally are born, we go to school and we are trained or conditioned to go get a job and earn money or we start a company and earn money and we have so much emphasis on earning the money and so little.
Education about what to do with that money once we get it.
And so some of us are very fortunate to earn more.
But of course, when you earn more, you can owe more.
So why aren't we taught how to?
Keep as much of that in our pocket as possible.
It's like, you know, there's a reason, right?
It's like a whole systemic thing.
And so we do kind of hear kind of over and over similar some similar things, so.
Whether it's a 401K or an IRA, or you know whatever.
It is because.
You know who, who?
Pays for a lot of the advertising that we see.
It's the big banks.
It's you.
Know it's the.
You know, it's the fidelities of the world.
Like, you know, those are the companies who are putting the ads on TV, which for most of us is our financial education is commercials.
Right.
If we think about it, it's a it's just marketing their products and services.
And that's what we know.
So we say, well, that's what I need.
But there's all these other alternative types of ways to, you know, to manage your money and grow your money and build wealth
But they're not, you know, necessarily offered by these larger institutions.
So because we haven't heard of it, we're unfamiliar.
And so we sometimes question it, we're not sure, but we should explore all these other ways that we can, you know, at #1 have more liquidity, have more control, right? I mean ultimately it comes down to control. So you want to understand what?
Are all of your different options?
And then make an educated decision for yourself what makes sense for you and your family, and not just for today, but for the long term.
And going into the future with your.
Is your legacy cause you know I'm? I'm dealing with old parents and I have. I have two interesting dynamics. On the one hand, my husband's father has a house and is.
He's.
Not able to really maintain it and.
He doesn't have a lot of assets.
And it's like.
With pulling teeth to try to get him to do any kind of estate planning and we're looking at it going, you know, it's just going to go to probate and back to the bank because he doesn't have the money or the resources to actually fix it up or do anything with it.
He can't hear and he barely can see communicating with him.
It's difficult to begin with.
And on the other side, I've got my dad.
He's 87. He lives in a community. He's got a trust, he's got all his ducks in a row and he has a lot of assets.
But my sisters and I are like, yeah.
And he talks to us, you know, if he has to be taken care of, he's got all of that set up.
He's got all of these things in place to make it simple to.
Just enjoy the relationship with them without feeling like Oh my God.
When you die, it's just going to be a huge nightmare and I don't want you to die because I love you.
Man, it's yeah.
And I don't want to be that way for my kids.
I don't want them to.
You know, if I just drop dead, they're like, Oh my God, what do I where?
Where are all her assets and how do we take care of them and.
You know, even little things like closing down your business.
Yes, cause it's my business.
Yes, that's OK. Yeah.
It's not a little thing and my husband doesn't know really anything about it, so.
It's like if I drop dead tomorrow.
Are the pieces in place that can systematically help to transition over to somebody else to take over it or to just?
I don't know.
It's just, yeah.
People don't think about those things as like.
Well, people don't want to think about.
It right that that's.
The problem so I'm so glad you mentioned that because that's another huge component of the program is the whole everything around estate planning.
And to your point, it could be something just as simple as cause.
Some people say well, I don't have a big estate and I'm not really sure what they consider a big estate.
Like if you have kids, you have an estate, right, if you.
If you, if you if you have a car, you have an estate, right.
Mean you still need to get.
Have an asset.
Able to say.
I want this person to be the beneficiary of this asset that I hold and you should ohh everyone should have an a health advocate designated, right?
If you're married, it may be your spouse.
But it may.
Not be.
If you know that your spouse is extremely emotional and not able to make good decisions under duress.
Maybe it's your best friend, or maybe it's your like it's someone else, but decide.
Who is that health advocate?
If you are unable to speak for yourself and there are medical decisions that need to be made, who is that person who you give permission to make decisions and communicate that to the medical staff?
Power of attorney.
For me.
You know, thankfully, your father-in-law has you and his and his son. But what if he did it right?
It's like who's going to be able to speak on his behalf or make decisions on his behalf if dementia sets in or anything like that.
You want to have someone who you trust to, you know, continue to pay.
If you're in the hospital from extended an extended period of time, who's going to keep paying the mortgage or something to make sure you don't?
Fall into foreclosure like there's all these different things that that we have to think about.
We don't ever want to think about that doesn't happen to us.
It happens to other people
But you know, like I said, life keeps life in and we need to be able to have certain things in.
Place so you're.
Right.
Just understanding who will get what from your business.
Do you have business partners?
If you have business partners, we have a whole, you know, piece around that because if you got business partners, you want to have something that we call a buy, sell agreement in place.
What is that it means?
You and your partner or partners sit and decide all the terms of your partnership.
What happens if partner A were to get, you know, very sick and could no longer really contribute to the business.
What happens in that situation? What happens if partner A dies? What happens in that situation? Does do partners B&C now want to be in business with the spouse of partner A?
Probably not.
So we want to have documentation that an agreement in place and usually it's funded with life insurance because typically what would happen is partners B&C would buy out, you know, partner A's estate.
So that they just maintain the ownership partner a can, you know their beneficiary can move on and live their life and that kind of thing.
So there's so many different things that you.
Want to talk about?
When you're healthy.
Your mind is right, you know.
Typically the sooner you do it, the better cause it's going to be the younger.
The younger you.
Are the better you want to have all those kind of discussions?
So we talk about all those different things.
You can talk about succession, right.
If you're a small business owner or business owner, what is your plan?
You might think you're leaving it for junior, but Junior is not even thinking.
About that right.
What kind of discussions have you had?
Have you talked to, you know, parents?
Have you talked to your kids about, like, do they understand what they could potentially be inheriting and what your expectations are of them with those with those funds?
Maybe education is very important to you and you want to.
Set up a, you
Know, in your trust you want to set up certain things so that.
You know your children's, children's, children's children, education is always paid for and that's what the priority is with the dollars that you leave.
I mean, there's so many different things that we do inside of the program to make sure that, you know, once you're no longer here, that your, you know, your beneficiaries, your, your loved ones are still able to carry out your dreams.
Or they know what is expected of them and not just after you pass away. But even while you're alive, I mean, you could be having this discussion now and still be here for another 20-30 years, and so at least your kids and the whole family understands this is our family's mission, right. These are the things that we're working towards. So. So this is a big component.
And it's never.
It's never too early to start having these conversations, even if you're just thinking about starting a business.
These are the.
Other parts of being an entrepreneur that you really need to consider.
It's not just I got my coaching certificate and I am off to the races, it's.
And there's so many people that think that they're just like, oh, or maybe they get an LLC because they heard that's what you're supposed to do.
But that that's just like, the beginning part.
There's all of these other aspects.
OK.
Just to protect your family.
Yes, exactly.
To protect your family.
And again, just like you said, some people were like, OK, I.
Want to start a business
I'm going to get a LLC well.
Depending on what your business is depending on, you know what exposure you might have, like liability, that type of thing, and an attorney might say, well, you might want a C Corp instead of an LLC.
Or they might say, OK, yeah, you have an LLC, but then your CPA is going to say, OK, but we need to set your LLC to be taxed as an S Corp you know, something like that.
So you need to have discussions with the right.
People you know, you want to have.
People who are strong with tax law, Cpas.
You know, just business attorneys like have those conversations now, again, depending on what type of business you.
Have and even.
If your business is already established, you know you maybe you revisit some of these things because you want to make sure that you can be set up for success.
Again, part of the program that we'll do is we'll I have strategic partners because like I said, I'm not an attorney, but I I have you know.
Folks that I work with and as part of the program and so they can do an assessment and determine like, OK.
Maybe you're currently?
You know, being taxed as an Scorp
But you know, maybe we should, you know, restructure things for you.
So those are the kind of decisions that we.
Make the other thing I wanted to touch on quickly, Jill, because you mentioned it with business owners is oftentimes, especially if they've been in business for a while, you know their, you know, their retirement plan is their business, right.
So they they're just thinking, you know, they've worked all these years in this business and they're going to just be able to sell it.
And then that's what they're gonna live off in their retirement.
And that's, you know, that's.
First of all, it's always good to think positively, but you don't know necessarily what your business is going to be valued at when you are ready to leave.
And that's what matters.
Just like selling a house, you may have put all these beautiful features and what beautiful to you inside.
Of this home.
And if it was up to you, you'd value it at a billion dollars.
But the market says, well, it's only worth, you know.
700,000.
Something like that.
Right.
It's the same thing with your business if you don't.
Have this.
Certain things in place.
You may think it's worth something.
You may think it's worth one thing, but you know, we could do a we have a free business valuation service that we can do or provide that's going to give you a ballpark of what you could.
Expect to be able to get.
And so if it's lower than your thinking, then that's where you and I start to have discussions about, OK, what do we need?
To do, to start to increase the value.
You know of this business or you just have now a realistic expectation of what that's going to be.
And so how do we also create something on the separate to that to supplement what's going to be your?
Retirement or, you know, long, long.
Term living right because.
Maybe there's not going to be anything you can do with your business because maybe you don't have more time or you don't want to put more time or more effort or more investment or something into the business to make it an increased value.
So all of those are discussions that that we would have you.
Know as part of the program.
And the tax bill?
That people don't think about when they think they're just going to sell their business.
And live on that.
Just block that number in half.
Well, how do you script?
Well, well, it depends on how you structure the sale, right?
So again, so we talked about maybe you maybe you take you know like you'll take a stream over a period of time.
So maybe you take a chunk up front and then there's you know going to be some scheduled payments
Maybe we pay directly into, you know, your paid directly into a tool where it's more tax efficient.
So all those kind of things we have to discuss and that's where again do you have business partners or not, if it's you're, you're the sole you know owner it makes it a lot easier than when you have business partners, right?
Because everyone has different goals, so ultimately most people like we want to keep as much of the money in our pocket as possible.
But sometimes people are looking for that huge lump sum up front because they've already got, you know, Plan B, you know, ready to go.
And they need that lump sum.
Others are willing to, you know, kind of take you.
Know payments overtime.
We would just look at all the different options with the team, right?
So again, I'm not an accountant.
I can't provide tax advice, but we have a team of professionals and you know that's what, that's where we would help.
And really, that's what hiring a coach or a professional coach is just another name for professional in my in my mind, especially when it comes around things like this, you.
Have you know you have a health coach? Sometimes we call them doctors. Sometimes we just call them coach. We have financial advisors. Sometimes they're called CPA's. Sometimes they're called tax attorneys. Sometimes they're just.
Attorneys, attorneys, sometimes their life insurance agents, you know, all of these people come together to help you form a team.
And it when we have teams, when we're building businesses, you know?
At the lower levels
It's just, you know, the teams that keep you going.
But you also have this other team.
That isn't involved in.
Your specific day-to-day running of the business, but they help shape how your business is going to go and those.
Those are people like you, where you can say what are your long term goals?
What are you hoping to accomplish with?
The energy and the life force that you're putting in to receive back compensation and how are you going to use that to move it along to achieve the goals that you want to achieve with it?
Money is nothing.
It's just this.
Ethereal thing that offers you the opportunity.
To make choices and.
If you don't take control.
Of those choices, life will make them for you. Absolutely.
And that's and that's really important to say, Jill, right.
I mean, a lot of people just think.
Well, I can ignore it.
You can ignore it, but it.
Will still happen.
Right.
So you can either take control.
And you know, be proactive and how things will, you know, happen for you or you just let them happen to you.
And usually it it'll work out better if you take control.
If you get informed and make informed decisions right.
Another big thing I find is, you know, people in my program.
They lose the FOMO right, they lose that whole fear of missing out.
We're always conditioned.
Like you must do this.
You must see that you must do this and if you don't do it, you're missing out and it's just not that way.
You know, in in most cases it's just not that way.
For most people we want to do certain things, you know, in sequence before we start to take notes before we start investing or taking bigger risks or whatever it is, we need to have certain fundamentals in place.
It's OK if you've missed out on, you know, whatever was, you know, the trend of the week.
There's always going to be.
UM.
Opportunities where there's predictable outcomes, right?
No, I'm not saying that everything is guaranteed, but there are certainly.
There are certainly outcomes where you have some guaranteed income, but then there's opportunities where it's just more predictive and but you want to set yourself up to then take advantage of that.
Don't feel like you have to be part of every little thing.
Like when you know.
Bitcoin came out and crypto.
I'm not saying those are bad, but that should not be the foundation.
Of your investment strategy.
Right.
Like there's so, so much unknown and so much volatility and look.
At where we are today, right?
You know, if you're you.
Know reading, listening to this six months from now, it might be very different.
But right now, at the time of that recording this, it's not a great time to be in Bitcoin.
Or crypto right?
So you just.
Have to understand all these different things.
Like surfing, there's always waves coming in and a surfer doesn't catch all of the waves.
It's just not possible
It looks for the wave that he thinks it's going to Crest just right.
Going to be the perfect.
By and then he paddles in and takes advantage of it.
But before he does that.
But Jill before?
He does that.
He's got the right equipment, right?
He's got he knows, you know, he knows.
First of all, he's he understands how to surf.
He's got the right board, he's got the right wet suit.
You know, he's got some.
He's had some training, some learning it in place and then he's going to do it right.
And that's the difference.
So it's like just get a little don't, don't rush out and just grab a board and.
Run out into.
The ocean, right.
You want some lessons?
You want to.
Be a little bit prepared before you just take.
Action and that's what we really fetched.
And then you sit out.
There for a long time.
And you watch those waves.
Yes, yes, exactly, exactly.
Before you pick one.
So you're prepared.
You're in the pool or in the ocean and waiting.
Yeah, exactly.
And watching and you know what you're looking for.
Exactly, yeah.
He doesn't just follow the.
Other folks because it's because they go.
Out there and pick.
That wave, if he's he got to.
Pick the right wave.
For himself, yeah, absolutely.
All right.
Lesley, what's the one thing?
You would like to leave the audience with today.
Well, I guess it would be that, uh, you know, I'd love to have you in my program if.
It if it makes sense for you.
Excuse me?
I'd love to have you in my.
Program if it.
Makes sense for you, but if it.
Doesn't just make sure for yourself.
That you understand exactly what is happening with your money.
So if you're working with a financial advisor.
And they've made some recommendations.
Ask them why they've recommended those things right.
Make sure you understand why they recommended it and what are those recommendations costing them if they've just kind of just move your money into some refunds or something like that?
Well, obviously they're getting paid for that.
So make them earn their money.
Have them explain to you why did they choose to do these things with your money.
What other options do you have?
And then you can decide for yourself which makes more sense.
Also, I would say make sure that you have protections in place.
Excuse me.
Make sure you have protections in place, whether it's life insurance, you know, critical illness.
Long term care insurance.
Make sure you have protections because you don't want to have done so well, earning all this money along the way and then you lose it all to medical expenses or nursing care home stays.
Or something like that.
You want to make sure that you protected yourself as long along the path while you're building wealth.
And it protects your offspring and your beneficiaries, everybody.
Protects everybody. Absolutely.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Ohh, I need to ask how can people get in touch with you?
Yes, you can go to my website rebelrockwealth dot com you can connect with me on LinkedIn as well.
Just search for my name, Lesley Batson.
Or just search for Rebel Rock Wealth
I'd love to speak with you.
That's great.
And I'll put the note or the links in that show notes below.
Thank you so much for joining us.
This has been.
A riveting conversation about finances and preparing, preparing your state.