Karen Quintanilla

Kevin Daisey (00:32)
Welcome to the show. Everyone we are recording and I’m here today with a friend, someone I’ve met probably over a year ago at this point. And, Karen’s with me here and we met at 8 Figure Firm in Chicago, actually, Luis Scott’s a friend of mine. He’s been on the podcast a few times. And so for any of dedicated listeners out there, you’ve, you’ve probably seen Luis on the show. but he invited me out to 8 Figure Firm.

If you don’t know who they are, would definitely take a look at that group. And that’s where I met Karen and her husband and, excited to bring her on here today. Cause we’re going to be talking about tax strategies and things that law firm owners should be aware of things you can take advantage of, common, you know, mistakes and things that Karen here sees that law firm owners are not, not doing. so

Karen Quintanilla (01:04)
Thank

Kevin Daisey (01:17)
I’m going to learn a lot too, because I’m in businesses and I’m excited to see what I can learn. And Karen’s a client of ours now as well, which is very exciting. So Karen, welcome to the show.

Karen Quintanilla (01:19)
Yeah.

That’s exciting.

Thank you, Kevin. I’m so excited to be here. And yes, it’s quite, we met up and met in Chicago last year. So, you know, really grateful to be here as a guest in your podcast. And yes, it took a year to be here. So quite an honor. Quite an honor. You know, we’re really excited to talk about the big, beautiful tax bill that, you know, a lot of changes just happened.

I mean, this is going to be incredibly amazing, especially right now for all law firm owners to have understanding and give firsthand experience on tax advantages and planning and strategies, how to save, keep cash, and have control of your cash flow and predictable businesses. We always talk about that. So thank you, Kevin. A little bit about our time.

Kevin Daisey (02:17)
Yeah. Huge. Yeah. Huge, huge.

Karen Quintanilla (02:19)
Yeah, you know, we do business and tax advisory. We’ve been in business since 2012. I’m here in Georgia. Our office is located in the heart of somewhat close to the heart of Atlanta. You know, my experience and background, because you did ask this earlier in our conversation off camera today. And I was like, you know what? I got to say this on camera, because a lot of our clients are like, how do you know so much about firms?

So I started my career back in OA when recessions, I don’t know if you remember those times, those dates were hard dates. So I started my career while I was a paralegal in a law firm. So my experience comes from way back in the day, way back in the day, understanding the ins and outs of a firm, how they actually operate the cases.

the research of the law, understanding, creating all of those pleadings and stuff like that. So that’s where all that CFO KPIs and now, I’m a tax strategist with more than 16 years of experience in the legal field. Growing law firms from being just 22,000 a month, very small firms to being more than 22 million a year and so forth, right, and have more predictable sales and growth.

creating those dashboards in the businesses. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (03:39)
That’s awesome story. so, you know, coming from being inside a law firm to starting your own tax practice and, you know, really leaning into the law firm experience. And then, you know, being part of 8 Figure, again, if anyone’s not familiar with them, it’s just an amazing group of mostly law firm owners. Everyone in the group is a good person to know and a good person to meet.

Karen Quintanilla (03:58)
Thank you.

Kevin Daisey (04:01)
And again, I’m excited I got to meet Karen and her husband there.

Karen Quintanilla (04:03)
A lot of driven

individuals, a lot of driven, driven business owners with growth mentality.

Kevin Daisey (04:09)
Very driven. and

that’s the, you know, this podcast is about managing, growing, scaling your law firms, running it efficiently. And that includes, you know, your books and your taxes and planning for, for those things to make sure that, you’re keeping as much as possible in your pocket. and, I think that’s always a challenge for, for a lot of business owners is that tax planning piece versus.

Karen Quintanilla (04:22)
And.

Kevin Daisey (04:31)
it’s taxes again. Let me, let me see what I owe and what do need to gather for to process my taxes versus proactively planning well in advance. So, so obviously, you work with firms all around the country, correct?

Karen Quintanilla (04:33)
you

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yes, we work with firms all around the country, Kevin, and I would like to say a little bit about there’s different type of laws, right? Some firms are more in the flat field or in the billable hours, and obviously we have the contingency fees. Every firm needs to have their own type of system in place or an accounting method, right? How they do things in office to understand their books. And I was having a conversation earlier today with

with one of the law firm owners that came to our office about a month ago. And it’s like, know, my firm, it’s our goal is to have $6 million in, you know, in predictable sales. And that got me like, this is exciting. You know, you’re in a growth mode. You’re already in 4 point

plus. it you know, we’re half a year in. So yes, this is very doable according to your marketing plan and according to, you know, your KPIs and everything that you’re showing. So it’s like, you know, do you mind if I have access to your QuickBooks? Let’s look at your P &L. Let’s look at, you know, everything else that you have in house. Sales, not a problem. They were making sales. Problem AR. No systems in place for collection. No system, no billing system in place. That aligns the chart of accounts in the, you know, the

you can call it like the boring stuff or that for me that exciting things, but the lines in the P&L didn’t make sense. And so those are the shadow of accounts. And I’m like, how can you make your payroll and benefits predictable? When you know, I have one line here, there shows me wedges and salaries and other line that doesn’t even show me bonuses, benefits for employees or 401k or vacations or whatever, you know, your company’s offering to stay competitive in the market to attract

talent because if you’re growing, you want to grow your team. You don’t want to be the one driving sales, having to go to court and do another work. And if you’re going to do that, then you need to have an administrator that’s going to be growing your business. And obviously, you know, making sure that things are not breaking in systems and all of that in your budgets in place, right? And having the right numbers, understanding the lines of the P &Ls is critical. And so we couldn’t determine that. Then when I looked at overhead,

Kevin Daisey (06:27)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Quintanilla (06:48)
overhead what’s off the roof. So they had over $60,000 just in office expenses. So people were ordering, she’s like, oh, well, we do Starbucks, we do Celsius, we do all of these other benefits. I’m like $60,000 just for office expenses on a monthly basis. Then I’m like, your sales, great, but your take home, you’re in the red. You’ve been in the red for the past five months.

Kevin Daisey (07:03)
Wow.

Karen Quintanilla (07:11)
I’m like, you have no cash flow predictability here. And I’m like, yes, you’re closing all of these cases, but you’re literally not making money. So, you know, that’s a common mistake that I often see. Another one that I often see is that, you know, we have these cases that, know, if we’re a PI, we already anticipate or can kind of estimate.

when it comes to settlements. And we kind of know our average value case when it comes to that. But we do have these outlier cases that we have to plan for because otherwise you’re going to end up paying thousands and hundreds of dollars in taxes if you don’t prepare. What we did with one firm, they settle a catastrophic case and they’re just settled for, you know, this case settled for $25 million. We obviously defer some of this money into some portfolio investments.

Kevin Daisey (07:37)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Quintanilla (07:59)
and the rest was invested in their own commercial location, which we closed for $3.5 million, and their down payment was about 5%. So they still were able to keep all of this money, all of this cash, and we did something that is called cost segregation study. Now we’re riding off over $1.8 million in taxes. Otherwise, they would have to pay in taxes. So this is the beauty of, you know,

Kevin Daisey (08:22)
That was awesome.

Karen Quintanilla (08:23)
doing all of these tragedies with anticipation and reviewing your books, especially right now that we’re in the middle of the year. And bonus depreciation is back, Kevin. So 100%, we get bonus depreciation 100%, which I’m so excited for.

Kevin Daisey (08:37)
Yeah,

I heard about that. Yeah, well, I was just looking at cost segregation I think this morning early before before I was at my desk because I own some Airbnb properties and things like that. So Yeah, there’s You know, it’s just funny. It’s like taxes are it’s

It’s an art form, right? There’s, there’s, there’s ways you can, but it’s all legal. It’s just, you have to understand it and you have to document and you have to plan ahead. You can’t go back, in time, you know, you have to look at what you’re doing today and how you’re doing it and how you’re documenting, how you’re doing it is, is really what it’s all about. so yeah, bonus appreciation is coming back. you know, yeah, real estate investing in your, your building versus leasing and renting.

Karen Quintanilla (09:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Daisey (09:18)
There’s

all kinds of things like that with this big, beautiful bill. You know, what are some of like the key things that you’re seeing that, you know, law firm owners, especially ones with say PI getting large settlements, large sums of income coming in, know, what do you see?

Karen Quintanilla (09:33)
⁓

Array Digital (09:42)
Thank you for tuning into the show today. I have taken things to the next level and I’ve started the Managing Partners Mastermind. We’re a peer group of owners looking for connection, clarity, and growth strategies. So if you’re looking to grow your law firm and not do it alone, please consider joining the group. Spots are limited, so I ask for anyone to reach out to me directly through LinkedIn and we can set up a one-on-one call to make sure it’s a fit.

Now back to the show.

Karen Quintanilla (10:12)
So one of the ones that I see is that, you know, mainly the shareholders, the owners, don’t have a plan in place where they’re benefiting their family. So in a lot of the firms, not both spouses are licensed attorneys. So one of those spouses is and the other one is not. And oftentimes, you know, we don’t plan for our family towards the future.

So meaning that the firm is the one right now that is obviously generating all of these cash, all of this money directed and distributed to the shareholder. So I’m the law firm owner, I’m the one taking distributions, I’m the one taking salaries, but my family, I don’t have a management company in place or I don’t have a plan in place to benefit my family in the event that something were to happen to you, what happens to the firm.

Do we have an excellent plan in place? That’s one of the first questions that I often ask. The other question is, is your spouse does have any retirement plan, any benefits to your children? How are we benefiting our family from the firm? Is a family involved in the operations of the firm?

as administrators or if we have children, are the children participating in any activities related to the firm, right? So a lot of the benefits that we oftentimes, we’re overpaying in taxes. When we take vacation, Kevin, what do we do when sometimes you’re just looking at the beautiful weather or beach or you’re at a place and you’re like, man, this is beautiful. And I was thinking of the business or we want this case, you end up talking about the business either way.

So what conversations are you having? Can you document and do meeting minutes so that that vacation can be reimbursable to you, can be benefit to you as well and in your family members and things like that. So one of the key strategies that we implement for law firm owners is an accountable plan for your management company where you get to reimburse certain expenses legally, right? And when we make sure that we stay in compliance on everything that we file because we got to document our processes.

in that event or in case of an audit, but you give reimbursements from the firm to yourself and your family members for any related activities that you have according to the firm. The other strategy that we often implement or overlooked is a Augusta Rule, the 280A. So this is, know, renting your, your, your primary residence or your home to your business up to 14 days a year. And, know, you get to take this money home tax free.

Kevin Daisey (12:18)
Hmm. I love it.

Karen Quintanilla (12:33)
And you know, everything is reported. We do obviously a 1099 miscellaneous rental for that. We document meeting minutes on, you know, the events that happen in your house. So like in my personal, just celebrated my father’s birthday not too long ago. I invited, you know, my in-laws, I invited my family member. But guess what? My children are employed in the firm. So I had other friends that happened to also be clients of the firm.

So not only my primary residence to the firm, and the firm got to sponsor my father’s birthday because I have my banners all over and they were listed in the pictures, right? So I’m also promoting my business while having a family gathering event. You know, I own a boat. I love to spend my weekends in the lake. And you know, it’s a beautiful boat. We have a cabin. We get to stay with the family. We do cookouts, friends, and all of that.

Kevin Daisey (12:59)
wow.

huge.

Karen Quintanilla (13:26)
But guess what the name of my boat is, Kevin? It’s called Tax Naughty. So this past weekend, I got two clients, two doctors. We invited them as a guest. And then they’re like, we’re to do a tax plan. So I have a law. And so now my vote, it became materially participate, and it creates me business. So I get to write it off for purpose of businesses. So there’s so many things that we can do.

Kevin Daisey (13:31)
I love it. ⁓

Karen Quintanilla (13:51)
to legally benefit our family. Because we’re business owners, we’re always doing business wherever we go. So you’re a licensed attorney, you’re speaking with someone and then they’re like, you know, I have a friend of a friend that has a case. And I was thinking about you the other day. You’re talking about business while having the conversation, right? So you take business wherever you go.

Kevin Daisey (14:11)
100%. I talked about it everywhere. I have a boat too. didn’t think about that. I need to, I need to take some clay. You want to go my boat? can bring you out. So for the Augusta rule, for the Augusta rule real quick, is that I have three properties. Is that per property 14 days?

Karen Quintanilla (14:15)
Oh, we’re to get the and you’re get internet the and you’re going to and and and you’re and and going get the internet and and and

No, you don’t get to do it for properties per entity. So it’s up to 14 days of the entity. So if you have a boat, then we can do it on the boat or the entities. Yes.

Kevin Daisey (14:40)
I can record the podcast on the boat. ⁓

Karen Quintanilla (14:43)
Exactly. And

you need to pay rent or otherwise, know, imagine, think for two seconds, you would do it on my boat. I will charge you rent, right, for that day. So then you’re paying rent to yourself.

Kevin Daisey (14:53)
Makes sense. I love the Augusta Rule. that’s something I’m just engaging in this year. Finally, something that I learned about it, 8 Figure Firm actually from, Adam Williams, who’s, does tax stuff. And so, and he’s an attorney actually.

Karen Quintanilla (14:55)
Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, there is something, you

know, for the attorneys, there is one, one of the other rules that we often, you know, depending on how many people on your team are still continuing education, right? So you get to give them, you know, incentives. Sometimes, you know, we think that incentives are just bonuses or pay increase. But if I’m paralegal and I’m getting my certification or, you know, I’m having some sort of other program or I’m going to school,

There certain strategies that if I’m, there’s two different ones, right? So let’s assume that I’m just taking a temporary certification for the next year to become a certified paralegal. If I’m doing that, you can sponsor up to 5,250 to that employee. And that becomes obviously a deduction to you, but you also get even a refundable credit from that.

So that strategy is one of the strategies that can do for employees. The other one is called employee reward program, where you can give up to $1,400 to an employee. can’t be cash. It has to be some sort of tangible, like a gift, like a property, or sometimes like an office cell phone, or like an office tablet, or things like that. And you get to obviously depreciate and take that as an expense in the firm. And sometimes we have people that are remote.

Kevin Daisey (16:15)
Okay.

Karen Quintanilla (16:22)
right? And are we sending them equipment or things of that nature? Then we get to even write it off. The beauty of these strategies is that you give refundable credits. So sometimes we just write it off as an expense in the business, but we’re not maximizing the part of we can even give refundable credits on such strategies. Another one is like right now in the student, the summer, if you’re employing college students.

Kevin Daisey (16:45)
Interns

Karen Quintanilla (16:45)
people that are actively,

you know, that are studying and they took a break in the summer to, it have to be less than 300 hours a year they have to work for you. But you give back a refundable credits up to 14,600. So imagine if you were to employ two interns in your firm or three interns in your firm, you’re not only getting to pay them,

for obviously the hours that they’re working in your firm, but you also can claim those credit back. yeah, it adds up, it adds up, trust me. it was Tuesday or Wednesday last week, we received a $69,000 check for a client on some of the strategies that we implemented about 45 days ago. So, tax planning is not just…

Kevin Daisey (17:15)
Wow, that adds up.

Karen Quintanilla (17:33)
reducing or expensing out a lot of things in your tax return. It’s knowing what to report and how to benefit and continue to grow your business and invest in your business and in your family. mean, the beauty of this is that you get compensated for investing in your team and for investing in your family.

Kevin Daisey (17:51)
Yeah, it’s all about, you know, again, to me, it’s, it’s stacking all the things you can do, right. And taking advantage of much, but it’s all there. It’s written in the bill, the, or the tax code to take advantage of. And I think, um, the biggest problem I think is people are organized and they don’t take advantage of it. They don’t take the time to sit down and plan. Yeah. A lot of people have just terrible P&Ls you know, we spent, we spend every, you know, we have internal financial people, but

Karen Quintanilla (17:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (18:19)
You know, we’ve been really going through our P&L every single month. We make a change or a tweak or we, make it better. Um, and we look at it in detail at the first, you know, about the third day of the month, every month. And we plan accordingly from that. So, um, think having a good P and L is super important. sounds like that one firm we met with didn’t do a very good job.

Karen Quintanilla (18:30)
Yeah.

No, I’m

having a clear understanding. One of the firms that engaged with us, they were so funny. Every time I see him in our meetings, I remind him of, he engaged with us December 31st at 5 PM. It’s like, Karen, I got to do this because I was just told by my friends that if I don’t, this is a PI firm, very successful here in Atlanta. They’re like, I’m going to end up paying

all of this money on that day we spent about two and a half hours on the phone. I saved him $843 thousand. I didn’t even like finish. Yes, you know, it was just a hundred and change to a million dollar in tax savings that we did. We processed payroll on a last day for the administrator and for the shareholder because only one of them is

Kevin Daisey (19:19)
thousand.

Karen Quintanilla (19:36)
is a licensed attorney of this house of the couple. We process an ADP right in there. I said we’ve got to process your payroll. We’ve got to contribute to your 401k. We’ve got to do this benefit for your children. So at last minute, last day, we were running on these strategies and saving money and making sure the transactions were happening before midnight.

Kevin Daisey (19:59)
Wow.

Karen Quintanilla (20:01)
When I came to find out they had overpaid the previous year in taxes about $1.2 million. And it was all because the bookkeeper didn’t categorize advanced clients’ costs correctly. So you know how as a law firm owner, you have all of these expenses related to the case. All of the cases that they had as a bad debt didn’t show in their P &L.

All expenses that were uncovered from cases, all of this money that was just sitting in their CRM or the CMS case management software, it was not showing in the actual financial. So when they were filing the returns, it was just, when you file the returns, Kevin, you just grab the return that a bookkeeper or somebody is giving you or your own CPA, and you’re not looking at the lines and you’re like,

is are we doing three-way reconciliation? You know, that’s something that we proud of ourselves because we do every month look at the case management software and make sure that, you know, your lines and your financials align with your case management software. Because you can look at your P &L all day long, but that’s not what’s actually happening in the business. It’s only what’s happening in the bank.

But if you’re not doing three-way reconciliation, then you’re missing out on so much more.

Kevin Daisey (21:13)
Right.

Wow, that’s crazy.

would have told him I was like, I need 10 % of what I saved you today. We’ll get this done.

Karen Quintanilla (21:24)
Yeah, yeah,

that’s not legal, but I can’t do that. not, you know, I’m not, I can’t do contingency. Yeah, according to the new changes, maybe in the future.

Kevin Daisey (21:27)
Bye.

That’d be nice though, right? Hey, how much, if I save you this much, then I keep a percentage. ⁓ That’s amazing.

Karen Quintanilla (21:36)
Yeah. No, I mean,

one thing I always say, you you got to partner out with the right partners. And you know what stage you’re in in the business. That’s conversation that I always have with the clients is like, you know, trying to go higher. You got to make sure that people you listen into, you know, are also that at least above you many steps.

because otherwise, you’re guiding them. If you’re the one having to ask your CPA every time, what should I do? Hey, I’m about to settle this case, and what should I do? There’s no productivity. You’re not receiving those emails. In our firm, everybody already got emails according to the new changes. How will that impact them? Because we already know what’s going on with that firm. We already know what they have, and we already know what plans they have.

So how are these changes going to impact you in a good way and in that in such a good way? So they’re already getting all of this information. And like right now, the last week of July, first week of August, we already have it completely booked on tax planning appointments for existing clients only because

We want to make sure that everyone is getting this information firsthand and that we’re implementing this information before the end of the year. That will be important.

Kevin Daisey (22:56)
Yeah, that’s the

thing. Yeah, you got to be come December 31st. You don’t want to be trying to get Karen’s attention.

Karen Quintanilla (23:01)
Yeah.

No, at least that one did it at 5 p.m. though. In 2023, I had another firm that did it 30 minutes before midnight. And I was on the phone with the fireworks on my, okay, we’re going to do this. Get into your case manager. It has happened. year it happens. Don’t do that to you guys. Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (23:11)
Aw man.

Don’t do that to Karen. ⁓ Lord. That’s crazy.

Well, yeah, it’s, feel like that’s, you know, my history with my CPAs as, we have almost 50, we’re over 50 employees. you know, we’re always, we have masterminds that we’re part of, my business partner is part of, and we’re always learning and then bringing stuff to our CPA and going, Hey, can we do this? Can we do that? And, you know, we’re always bringing them in the past, the information. And so we switched CPA firms not too long ago.

Karen Quintanilla (23:37)
beautiful.

Kevin Daisey (23:44)
but I still feel like maybe that’s what we’re doing. So it’s, it’s frustrating. I think, you know, it’s like, what, what should we be doing? What can we do based on all the things that we have going on? And unless be as proactive as possible so that we can fit it into our schedule so that we can change up our habits or documentation or whatever we need to do. but I feel like I’d say most CPAs I know, or have worked with.

Karen Quintanilla (23:56)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (24:06)
but not very proactive or very creative.

Karen Quintanilla (24:07)
It’s more reactive work. Yeah, I always

say it’s more reactive, not proactive. And, you know, one of the things that we, it is, you know, an actual plan. This is not just communication, which another firm that came to us is like, no, I have tax planning meetings every quarter. And I’m like, okay, that sounds great. I love it. I would love to see, you your plans that you have in place, what implementations are we doing and things like that. no, we’re discussing the Zoom meetings. We said we’re going to do this. And then I don’t know if it actually happens.

I’m like, no, that’s not how we work. We’re going to give you an actual visual, an actual plan. And we’re going to have our quarterly plan according to your case pipeline. Because one of the things is what you want to score, and the other thing is what we have in the business. So everything has to align right with how much you’re taking home. Because regardless of not, if you only have losses or you’re tying cash, you can’t make certain type of investments, right?

So we’ve got to make sure that your plan aligns to your business goals as well and your family goals. So we actually do an actual plan for three years. Doesn’t mean that the plan is not going to be adjusted and improved and things are going to be changed. And Kevin, I do want to say something. We have something for LaFrance that we’ve been doing for over a year. It’s a guarantee. Within seven days, we’re going to uncover $50,000 or more

that you’re going to have and obviously that we’re going to help you save or you already have losses. If we don’t find that, we’re going to give you $1,000. That’s guarantee that we have because that’s how confident we are in the work that we do. If your audience, if somebody wants to take advantage of that, we do a free assessment.

Kevin Daisey (25:36)
All right, sign me up wait I’m a marketing firm

That’s awesome.

Karen Quintanilla (25:53)
a full dashboard and within seven business days, we’ll give you that and we’ll show you what you have and what you are. Obviously, no obligation to sign up with a firm or not, but at least you have an idea of what things you can improve. If we don’t find $50,000 or more, then we’ll give you $1,000.

Kevin Daisey (26:11)
Man, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. If everyone’s listening, please connect with Karen.

Also, I’ve forgotten to mention the beginning Karen’s firm. Obviously it’s in the notes on the show and, tagged here probably, but King of Kings firm. If you look them up, King of Kings, you’ll find them and make sure you connect with them. that’s an awesome offer. I like a confident CPA firm. And, would you call, well, do you call yourselves a CPA or more of like a tax?

Karen Quintanilla (26:29)
You

Business and tax advisory firm, because we’re heavy in the advisory side. Yes. So we do a lot of tax planning. majority of our clients that come to us either refer word of mouth or they find us somewhere is because they want the one tax plan, not just compliance based. But we do compliance based work, which is tax filing.

Kevin Daisey (26:36)
Yeah, advisedly.

Karen Quintanilla (26:54)
We have come across, know, last year we were in previous years, we were doing a lot of collaboration with other CPA firms that, know, let’s say, you know, you have a CPA in place, we’ll do your tax plan and your CPA will file that return. We came to find out that many CPAs are not up to speed with the strategies. And so we were having to teach a lot of other folks on how to actually do that compliance work. So now, you know, we have taken more on that compliance work.

Yes, a tax filing, a tax plan for you. And obviously we have, you know, CFO services in the firm and we have, you know, the bookkeeping services if necessary.

Kevin Daisey (27:32)
Yeah, the CFO services is amazing. Um, know, any of the firms that are listening, you know, that you’re, know, you’re not, not the size that you can handle hiring a CFO and most of you probably aren’t. you know, maybe you just have an in-house bookkeeper, fractional CFO, free CFO services is, uh, is going to be amazing for you. Um, but what a deal. So you kind of wind in the way if they, if she finds 50 grand, then you save 50,000 and she doesn’t.

Karen Quintanilla (27:50)
Yeah.

Yep,

Kevin Daisey (27:57)
You get a thousand. it’s a win-win.

Karen Quintanilla (27:57)
it’s guarantee. If you’re going to find 50,000 or more, then you’re overpaying in taxes or you have uncovered. Yes, that will save you 50,000 or more within seven business days. If not, we’ll pay you.

Kevin Daisey (28:11)
I guarantee if you’re a multimillion dollar firm, that’s easy to do for her. So I would take her.

Karen Quintanilla (28:15)
Yeah, super

easy. And even if you’re in one or two million, you know, yeah.

Kevin Daisey (28:23)
Yeah, I mean, the more you make the easier it is to have money slip through the cracks, right? So, you know, marketing.

Karen Quintanilla (28:26)
Yeah. Sometimes it’s as easy as

just looking at the chart of accounts and I’m just like, okay, we have line items and our balance sheet that should be in our P &L or vice versa. It’s a lot.

Kevin Daisey (28:39)
Well, Karen, I appreciate

you throwing that offer out. That’s awesome. I love that from a marketing perspective too. How you’re, how you’re doing that. And you also do around Atlanta, at least for local folks, you do like in-house workshops a couple of times a year as well. Yeah, they’re pretty successful too.

Karen Quintanilla (28:54)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, we do a lot of, you know, we call it a wealth creation. It’s a one-day event. It starts from 8 a.m. all the way to 5 p.m. and it’s all about asset protection. We have one of the state planning attorneys that teaches that class. We have, you know, all about strategies, compliance, you know, what documentations you’re going to need, how to take advantage of certain things, and investments.

you know, a lot of the firms, you’ll be surprised how they’re not, the banks, they’re not approvable. They’re not, they’re not lending approvable. And so they sometimes want to apply for lines of credit or want to apply for something else and they can’t go above a hundred thousand. And, you know, we had a firm that came to us that were making $7 million and their take home had been about 1.8, which, you know, it was good.

but they wanted to buy a building and it was only $750,000. And they’re like, we can buy that even cash. Why are the banks not approving us? I’m like, yeah, your financials do not look that you’re approvable. You have taken all of your money out of the business. So, you’re now a bank approvable. So we do think a lot about that, how to utilize credit and take advantage of good debt, bad debt.

Kevin Daisey (30:09)
⁓ wow.

Karen Quintanilla (30:15)
I mean, it’s trading your cash flow, you know, your free cash or investment cash and your operating cash, which is huge, especially if you are in the personal injury, in a personal injury field, you know, practice that’s, that’s, that’s something that you have to know how to, you know, manage your cash flow. Cause you’re going to have those highs and those lows. So what do you do when the lows? Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (30:37)
Yeah. And then you you know, the cases that you know, you have going on and, and yeah. So yeah, that’s a place to be. I mean, it can be rewarding too, but you got to make sure you’re taking care of everything and planning ahead. That’s for sure. Um,

Karen Quintanilla (30:40)
Mm-hmm.

No.

Yeah,

mean, when you make things predictable and you take the time to proactively design what to expect and what problems you want to be solving, things become less stressful and less of a chaos and you have more control.

Kevin Daisey (31:06)
huge stuff. Well, Karen, I appreciate you sharing all of this. There’s so much more we could just dig into and go down the rabbit hole of, ⁓ I want to do a quick rapid fire around. just have a few minutes left here. big, beautiful bill. it was like one main takeaway from that, that we can take advantage of here.

Karen Quintanilla (31:14)
you

Well, there’s so many, right? But one simple one that you can take away is that you get to pay overtime to your employees for those that, you know, we sometimes want to have, or we have a lot of employees that they’re overbuilding over time, or we want them to stay and they don’t want to stay. You know, they’re now, they don’t get to pay taxes and overtime. So that’s a plus.

The next one, I will say, for all of those business owners that want to take advantage of bonus depreciation and buy an equipment, this is not just for cars. My friends, please don’t just go and spend hundreds of thousands of cars. What I told one of my clients is, I want a G-Wagon. I’m like, yes, you’re to get a G-Wagon, but let’s get two rentals that will pay for your G-Wagon. And guess what? We did. So the G-Wagon was about $180. That two rentals in Texas are given a cash flow of

Kevin Daisey (32:09)
Bye.

Karen Quintanilla (32:14)
$3,800. So they’re paying for the G-Wagon. And we only invested in the rentals about $70,000. it was, know, the savings is not only from the rentals. We’re doing cost segregation study plus bonus depreciation. And this law firm owner gets to keep the G-Wagon. And the G-Wagon is being paid by the rentals. So you get to keep the cash, tax savings, properties and a car. Yeah. So that’s

Kevin Daisey (32:35)
Cash flow.

Karen Quintanilla (32:38)
It’s a wand that you want to take advantage of. Yes.

Kevin Daisey (32:41)
Huge. All right. I’m gonna have to talk to you about some of this stuff, too.

Karen Quintanilla (32:43)
You do want a G-Wagon as well?

Kevin Daisey (32:46)
I don’t really care about that, but, I do have rental

properties and I’m trying to buy more. and, ⁓ then I could get, you know, something cool to drive, but, I’m a truck guy, so I’m always working on my rentals. Use a new truck, maybe a new truck. don’t know. and then one final question before we go, a law for, say we got a law firm owner listening or a new law firm owner, which I have a lot of folks that I talked to that.

Karen Quintanilla (32:49)
Yes.

⁓ you want to talk, okay.

Kevin Daisey (33:09)
just started or they’re about to start and they haven’t even started yet. Any tips for someone listening that’s just bootstrapping, they’re trying to start their own firm. They don’t really have, you know, the capital at this point. Any tips for what they should do out the gate to be in the best position possible for their accounting and things like that.

Karen Quintanilla (33:26)
So

yeah, when it comes to your accounting, you want to make sure that you set up budgets in place. A lot of the times we just overlooked that. it just like, I remember when grandma used to say, we’ve got a budget for this. We’ve got to do this stuff back in the day when I was a kid. But coming to find out over 20 years working in the profession and

businesses that actually make it to the next level and make their businesses predictable is because their budget is one of the things that they don’t sacrifice and it’s not overlooked in the business. So, you know, I said starting up, will say, you know, set up your goals straight, right? Meaning have a clear vision of what you want and what to expect and, you know, what services are you going to offer? You know, when it comes to that,

If you’re going to go in the PI, then you’re going to need cash. You’re going to need accessible cash because you know you have to pay rent. You’re going to need software. So there it goes back to it again, planning and budgeting. It’s going to help you.

Kevin Daisey (34:23)
Excellent. Great advice. think, yeah, I think starting out, it’s, you know, a lot of people are thinking, well, you know, hopefully this will work. And, know, I’m all in, but, know, they kind of just see how things go. And the next thing you know, a year’s gone by and then, you know, haven’t really taken care of those things. You maybe don’t have QuickBooks.

Karen Quintanilla (34:39)
And don’t take the money

out. Because a lot of the business owners, the big problem is that they want to take all the money out, all the profits. Don’t. Not in the first two years. You’re not going to get a reasonable salary. You’re going to get crumps from the business. You’re going to get little bainy tiny bits. But then if you leave your profits and you continue to reinvest, your business will down in the future.

Kevin Daisey (34:49)
you

Karen Quintanilla (35:06)
Yeah, for sure.

Kevin Daisey (35:07)
best

investment I’ve ever made is in the business, back in the business, not taking out profits, putting it back in. Um, me and my business partner track how much we’ve invested if you count it in profits back in, plus our initial investments and the return that we get on those. it’s higher than anything else we’ve ever done, whether it’s stock markets, rentals, real estate, hands down the best. So.

Karen Quintanilla (35:12)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yeah, you become your own bank.

Kevin Daisey (35:31)
right. Well, Karen,

thank you so much. What’s the best way other than your website’s any social media? What’s the best way for folks to find and connect with you?

Karen Quintanilla (35:39)
So, email, my email is karen@kingofkingsllc.com and then our direct line is the 678-249-899. You know, our website kingofkingsllc.com and you know, LinkedIn, it’s the same King of Kings Firm and social media King of Kings Business and Tax Advisory. You’ll find us.

You can look us up and again, we do free assessment. So there’s no obligation to become a client of our firm. And if you’re just wondering or curious, what will our tax plan look like or what is the dashboard, what my P &L or shadow accounts designated for my field industry specific when it comes to, I’m just doing immigration, I’m doing billable hours or I’m contingency fee firm or I’m a mix of both.

you know, and I’m looking at this P&L and my understanding, you know, because that’s all the things that we have practices. We have law firms that they practice many different type of areas. And so they do like civil immigration and PI and, know, in the P&L, it’s just one line payroll. I’m like, but my it’s, you know, is it immigration more profitable or is it PI more profitable? And how many people do I have on each department?

or type of area of law that I’m practicing or stuff like that. So it’s understanding and breaking it down per sections where you are. So you can actually understand those lines in your P&L.

Kevin Daisey (37:06)
Yeah, you need to understand. We do this in my company, yeah, is the criminal defense, is that losing money or is it flush with money that where, you know, you can hire more staff on that team and paralegals and, know, do you not know that if you don’t know that the PI could be carrying you and you’re putting more people in the criminal team, but that team was losing money the whole time. So.

Karen Quintanilla (37:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Daisey (37:30)
Yeah, you really have to have that clarity to understand where you can staff up and bring in more resources versus where you can’t. ⁓ so yeah, super important. Well, everyone, thank you so much for tuning in Karen. Thank you so much for sharing. Again, I know I could talk about this kind of stuff all day. There’s a million things that we could cover. If you got any questions, anyone put them in the comments. I’ll tag Karen, have her connect with you and answer those questions, but I would definitely take her up on the offer of.

Karen Quintanilla (37:37)
Yeah.

Kevin Daisey (37:55)
$1,000 if she doesn’t find $50,000. That’s pretty cool. I like that. So reach out.

Karen Quintanilla (38:03)
Thank you, Kevin. It an honor being in your podcast.

Kevin Daisey (38:05)
Thank you so much for coming. stay on with me. I’m going hit done. It takes a second to upload everyone else. We’ll see you soon on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. See you soon.