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Why Aren’t You Giving Your Clients Hope?
The Roz Report
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020
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Are You Congruent With Your Marketing Message?
There’s no better feeling than having a marketing message that gets your phone to ring off the hook. But more important than that, it’s essential that you deliver what you promise in your message. And that holds true in any industry.
The inspector gave us a 52-page report that listed eight different health, fire, and safety hazards and a mess of other issues. There was substandard insulation in the attic, the electrical was shoddy, there were cracks in the stucco, six of the downstairs windows didn’t latch, and the furnace
Case in point, for a while now, Roslyn and I have been searching to buy a house. In the past, we’ve liked buying homes that needed a little work done so we could fix them up to our liking. These days, we’re both far too busy with work for that kind of project. We’re looking for something closer to a turnkey situation. Finding such a house in our desired neighborhood, an
and A/C units were from 1993. There had been work done on the house, but it was far from the turnkey situation Roslyn and I were promised. Needless to say, we canceled the contract. This whole situation was a classic example of overpromising and underdelivering, which is one of the biggest mistakes you can make
“Your marketing message is the first place where people start to trust you.”
enclave of Los Angeles, has proven to be far more difficult than we initially anticipated. Even before COVID-19, there was a housing shortage; now there is a bigger shortage with multiple people bidding over asking price. But in July, we thought we’d finally found our new home. The owner was an architect, and the listing marketed said the owners completely remodeled the house “down to the studs” in 2016. The listing description (the “marketing”) ended with “for the most discerning buyer.” Even the listing agent told us the house was turnkey. Roslyn and I toured the house and found that it checked most of our boxes. It was a pretty house, so we made an offer that was well above asking price. We were up against five other buyers, so we were pretty excited when ours was accepted. That changed after the home inspection took place.
in your marketing. Your marketing message is the first place where people start to trust you. It’s the first promise you make to people. If you can’t keep those promises, it’s bad for your business and your reputation. Had the marketing on that house been more honest, the situation would have played out a lot differently. Rather than claiming that the home had been completely remodeled, it would have been more honest to list it as being “extensively remodeled, or 90% remodeled.” This would have given us more accurate expectations about the house. Roslyn and I wouldn’t have bid on it ourselves, but that means one of those five other offers would have been chosen. There’s a good chance that one of them
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LISTEN TO YOUR WHISPERS BY ROSLYN ROZBRUCH (FOOD FOR THOUGHT)
Have you ever had an idea, almost like it popped in your head, and as you start to execute it, one thing leads to another? I call those “whispers.” This happens to me all the time. I’ll get an idea in my mind of something I want to do, and as I start to work on it, there’s an invisible thread guiding me to take the next action. And this exact scenario recently happened to me. This past July, Michael and I put on a“5-Day to 5K Tax Resolution Challenge.”But to give credit where it’s due, while I came up with the idea, Michael did most of the work.
Then around March, Joe said he was doing a Zoommeeting with someone named Pedro Adao who had a challenge model, and I told Michael, “We’ve got to watch this because I want us to put on a challenge!”Michael and I went to the Zoommeeting, and right after the meeting, there was an offer to purchase Pedro’s course — so I bought it! I told Michael to go through the course with me! Did he want to do this? Not really. But after I went through it, I said, “You’ve got to do it too,” and he did. Well, after going through the course, it just so happened we had an in-person meeting with one of our mentors, Roland Frasier, in May, and when I shared my challenge idea —guess what he said to us? “I just did a challenge with Pedro, and let me introduce you to him.”
Pedro Adao with Roslyn and Michael
A whisper wants you to take notice. And when you listen to it and take action on it, it’s amazing the possibilities that will unfold right before you ...
How did this whisper come to me? Here’s the backstory.
It was late February, before any COVID-19 shutdowns, and Michael and I were attending an in-person (remember those?) Genius meeting, one of the mastermind groups
we belong to, when I heard Joe Polish, who runs the group, ask who in the roomwas interested in joining a five-day transform your life challenge. He was experimenting with doing challenges and wanted to start with the people in the room. Right away, I was in. Joe shared that there would be assignments to complete daily that would be easy and also hard—but doable. I thought, “Okay, I can do ‘doable.’”He didn’t announce prizes but said he’d figure it out. Every day there was a video to watch and an action to take. I showed up every day and wondered what the prize would be. Then COVID-19 and the pandemic hit and most of the country shut down for two months and no prize was awarded. But the real prize I received was with each new action I took from doing the assignments, I felt more empowered and confident. Every day, I implemented something new that transformed my life. And I’m still doing many of the actions, like meditating, every day. After going through that challenge, I told Michael, “You’ve got to do a challenge for people who want to add tax resolution services to their practices!”Did he say, “What a great idea, let’s do it”? No, he did not.
The rest is history. We met up with Pedro, and he showed us how to do the challenge, and even though it was scary and nerve-wracking and we had no idea what we were doing, it turned out better than we imagined. The point of the story is it all started with a “whisper.”The whisper that’s the small voice in your head that wants you to do something that will be good for you. A whisper wants you to take notice. And when you listen to it and take action on it, it’s amazing the possibilities that will unfold right before you, and how one action will lead to another. Here’s my question to you: Is there something in your mind that’s whispering to you that you are shooing away or shutting down? Maybe take notice —who knows what wonderful thing will be revealed to you!
–Roslyn Rozbruch
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PRACTICE CORNER FROM THE
Bankruptcy Tax Resolution Leads
With the tax resolution market poised to explode with new cases due to the economic devastation brought on by COVID-19, so too will bankruptcies. To put this in perspective, in 2010, due to the Great Recession, we saw the highest bankruptcy filings ever at 1.6 million. Last year, in 2019, there were about 775,000 filings. Already, in the month of May, there was a 50% increase in bankruptcy filings over the same period last year. We will certainly pass the high-water mark of 2010 in the next 12 months and beyond. It’s already projected that 40% of your mom-and-pop restaurants and brick- and-mortar shops will shutter their doors for good, not to mention businesses related to the hospitality and entertainment industries and others. And that leads me to the following: The folks who are filing chapter 7s and 13s now (and in 2021) have IRS debt that they and their attorneys think will get handled in the bankruptcy. Any 2017, 2018, and 2019 income (and definitely payroll) tax liability will not get discharged and will survive the bankruptcy due to the laws surrounding income tax discharge, meaning these people will need help resolving their IRS debts. As soon as the bankruptcy is discharged or terminated, they will start receiving aggressive collection notices from the IRS. They will need representation. They will need YOU! What if you could get a list (with all pertinent contact information) of names of people whose bankruptcy was discharged or terminated, and you knew that they had IRS debt that survived the bankruptcy? I am in the process of creating a database to obtain this information from all 95 bankruptcy courts in the U.S. I will also be able to see who the bankruptcy attorneys are who are filing the (most) cases in these jurisdictions. Now is the time to forge relationships with bankruptcy attorneys in your area, as most bankruptcy attorneys do not do IRS representation. Both the individual debtor and the attorneys themselves are an excellent source of tax resolution leads that no one (that I know of ) is marketing to. What makes these just- terminated bankruptcy cases “hot” tax resolution leads is:
• The taxpayer is already used to paying professional fees. • They were under the assumption the IRS would be handled in the bankruptcy. • They’re receiving threatening collection notices now from the IRS. I recommend doing a three-step direct mail campaign to these leads. I have created a new COVID-19 bankruptcy referral letter that’s on the Roz Strategies membership site, under the “Easy Template Library” tab. Start mailing these out with a copy of your Tax Resolution Times newsletter today!
–Michael Rozbruch
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Larisa Humphrey, Enrolled Agent, Certified Tax Strategist Member Spotlight
Motivation comes to each of us in various ways, and Mastermind Member Larisa Humphrey is no exception. “I started Abundant Returns Tax & Financial Services back in 1991 after seeing on TV that Ross Perot, then-presidential candidate and CEO of a multibillion-dollar corporation, paid less than $2,000 in personal income taxes. I just couldn’t believe it!” Larisa exclaims. “I made $35,000 that year and paid more than $4,000 in federal taxes alone! How is it legal for me to pay more taxes than a billionaire?” But instead of getting angry, Larisa got busy. “I took a local tax class, and then I went to work for the IRS, and I figured out that I could do this,” she says. “I did taxes for years and years.” While most of her clients owed little or nothing to the IRS using the advanced tax strategies Larisa had learned after becoming a certified tax strategist, she began to see people who had tax problems. So, she decided to branch out into tax resolution to help those clients. “That’s when I found out about Michael and what he was doing,” Larisa recalls. “It was great to know there was a way to help people. That’s how I got into tax resolution.” After listening to Michael talk about his strategies, Larisa realized he had a system that could help her build a business in tax resolution and help her clients avoid paying large tax bills. “I definitely didn’t know what to do to reduce what was already owed, and I hated to tell people they had to pay. That was horrible to me,” she says. “Michael has a system and a toolkit. When I looked at his information, I saw he had it all laid out, that he had a program. He explained how to do it and why you should do it this way. And I thought, ‘Wow, he figured this all out.’That’s what I needed. It’s a ready-made business to walk into instead of trying to figure the whole thing out yourself.” Larisa doesn’t take the word “abundant” lightly. When she’s in, she’s all in. Asked to talk about one thing she has implemented from Michael’s program, she interjects with “What haven’t I implemented?!” and she listed off a long list of strategies she has learned as a mastermind member. “I started doing some radio advertising and got some pretty good results from that,” she says. “It’s the way you do things, the methods, you know, asking people for the $1,500 upfront to do a transcript analysis and putting them on an
ACH recurring monthly payment arrangement for the rest, and giving them the information they need. The way I run my business is the way Michael says to run the business — because who has time to reinvent the wheel?” Larisa shares one success story where she helped a client who owed $587,000 to the IRS and ended up paying nothing. “It was all payroll taxes, and a lot of it was penalties and interest,” she says. “I just explained to the IRS agent that this guy could never pay, and they said okay.”Needless to say, her client was very happy with the results. Larisa says that satisfied clients are her main source of referrals. “Besides working hard to help those who owe the IRS, Larisa is mom to 24-year-old son Austin and has two dogs, Blue and Mocha. In her downtime she enjoys doing word puzzles, jigsaw puzzles & watching murder mysteries and traveling with her extended family. “My whole family goes on Caribbean cruises every year,” she explains. “It’s about 10 of us —my brothers and sisters, their spouses, and the kids. We were supposed to go to the Mediterranean this year, but of course, that got put on hold due to the pandemic.”
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Announcing for the first time ever! A New Mastermind Program It’s called…
It’s a Complete Immersive Experience!
As many of you know, over the past six years, I have been leading my exclusive Platinum Mastermind program. Acceptance is by application only, as there are strict revenue requirements, and I limit the size of the group to just 18 people.
But there are so many of you that have told me you want a mastermind experience but don’t meet the qualifications of my Platinum Mastermind Program. So, I decided to create the Founder’s Mastermind group. The Founder’s Mastermind, which now includes Diamond Membership and much more , gives you more access to me and my team of experts, including four full (virtual) days of immersive technical and marketing training, one-on-one calls with me, and group mastermind meetings, including “hot seats.” For more information, email or call the Roz team at Info@RozStrategies.com or 888.670.0303 . We will help you create: • The vision of your dream • The clarity to implement that dream • The confidence to achieve it
I’LL BE TAKING YOU ON A JOURNEY — Would you like to join me?
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S H O U T
... continued from Cover
would have been perfectly happy to put some work into the house.
This kind of misleading marketing can be found in any industry. For example, I have seen tax resolution firms run ads that promise to get levies released in 24 hours. The problem is that we don’t have any say over whether a levy is going to be released or not. You can do the work, but the IRS has the final word. Without a disclaimer like “if eligible” or “under certain conditions” on that marketing message, you’re misleading people. Be congruent in your marketing messaging. Don’t make claims that aren’t accurate and don’t make promises you can’t keep. The goal for your marketing should always be to under promise and over deliver. People only do business with those who they trust and like. The first way to build trust is to follow through on what your marketing says.
–Michael Rozbruch
Congratulations Patrick Noone on the publication of your new book, “Solve Your Tax Problem, NOW!”
Kudos to Patrick and Julie Sheehan for the purchase of your 2021 Grand Design 397th camper and for showing us that success also means you can follow your dreams, head out on the road, and work anywhere in the world!
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O U T S ! Congratulations to Charles Montecino’s firm, Montecino & Ciaccia, for being ranked as the No. 10 CPA firm in Southern New Jersey by South Jersey Biz Magazine! Way to go Sharon Moser Lewis for closing your first (but not last) $20,000 fee case! Congratulations to Dianne Jennings for being retained by your first tax resolution client! High fives to Robert Bills, Maurie West, Norlyn Michel, Robert Korpas, Joseph Kabamba, W. Scully, Jose L. Diaz, Al Malone, and Joseph Becker for mailing out your referral letters and brochures. Keep up the good work! Good job on sending out your newsletters, Evelyn Saunders! Nice touch on your personalizing the design! Kudos to Lillian Bowman for getting a New York State (NYS) offer in compromise accepted — which is very hard to come by — for her client who owed NYS over $114,000 and was approved to pay $22,000. Do you have a story or picture to share with us on something you’ve implemented, a client you’ve helped with a tax problem, or anything else you’d like to share? If you do, email it to us at Info@RozStrategies.com and we will give a shout out to you!
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11271 Ventura Blvd. #612 Studio City, CA 91604 Inside This Issue pg 1 ∙
Build Trust With Your Marketing Message
Food for Thought
pg 2 ∙ pg 3 ∙ pg 4 ∙ pg 5 ∙
From the Practice Corner
Member Spotlight
Announcing for the First Time Ever! A New Mastermind Program
Shout Outs!
pg 7 ∙ pg 8 ∙
IRS Terror Tale of the Month
Usually when people lie on their tax returns, they claim to have made less money than they actually did. In a surprising turn of events, this month’s Terror Tale features a celebrity who is accused of lying on her tax returns by claiming to have made more money than she actually did. Kylie Jenner, part of the Kardashian clan and the celebrity in question, once again finds herself in the midst of a scandal. But her current situation is way more serious than her previous one, where she denied getting lip injections and then finally fessed up to themon the reality show, “Keeping UpWith the Kardashians.” The reality TV star and Instagram influencer could face up to five years in prison, as well as pay fines, after being accused of lying to the IRS about her earnings in order to gain billionaire status. In 2019, tax documents Jenner provided to Forbes prompted the publication to name her, at just 21 years old, the youngest self-made billionaire and featured her on the cover of the magazine. Her wealth came largely fromher makeup company, Kylie Cosmetics. However, the young“billionaire’s”story started to fall apart after Jenner sold her company to beauty giant Coty. Reports fromCoty released after the sale revealed that Kylie Cosmetics was much smaller and less profitable than Jenner IRS Terror Tale of the Month Beauty Billionaire Caught Lying About Income — Faces 5 Years in Prison
had claimed. The scandal brought her billionaire status into question. Forbes journalists compared the documents provided by Jenner with the reports for Coty. After recalculating Jenner’s net worth, Forbes determined that she is not in fact a billionaire—merely a $900 millionaire. While Jenner is still more than well off financially, there is the question of whether or not Jenner filed fabricated documents with the IRS or merely faked paperwork in
order to get a top spot in the Forbes article. Even if her goal was to get a magazine cover and not to commit tax evasion, if Jenner is found to have falsified her income with the IRS, she could be looking at hefty fines and prison time. While many celebrities might be able to get away with lying about lip injections, even influencers can’t get away with lying to the IRS without paying a price.
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