Emotions of Money : Bob Wheeler
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Guest: Bob Wheeler
Release Date: 8/29/2022
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Steve Washuta: Welcome to Trulyfit. Welcome to Trulyfit podcast where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and wealth. I am your host, Steve Washuta, co-founder of Trulyfit and author of Fitness Business 101. One quick reminder here last week to get your free Trulyfit T-shirt. How do you do it? Well, you sign up for our sponsor, skip wish free account, go to skipwish.com It’s your registry for all occasions, you can build a wish list you can build a Christmas list, I know Christmas is coming up.
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Bob Wheeler is a CPA and he’s also the author of the money nerve. He describes the thesis of this book as helping bring to light the unconscious money blocks that people have by looking at the mindset behind money and removing the stigma around shame concerning financial literacy. The book also has a call to action throughout and allows you to work through your individual issues through those calls to action. In this interview, Bob walks us through how to build better money habits, how to price your services, tax advice, and how to have a better relationship with money.
Amongst other things. You can find his book and his services at money nerv.com. With no further ado, Bob Wheeler. Well, thanks so much for joining the Trulyfit podcast. Why don’t you give my listeners the background a bio on who you are, what you do in the world of finance your book, and anything else you want to talk about here?
Bob Wheeler: Sure, absolutely. Steve, great to be here. So I am a CPA, my bread and butter are I have a CPA practice that I’ve built up from the ground up. I originally wanted to go to law school and took accounting to bump up my grade point average. And then I made a few attorneys and thought not so much. Also the same time to supplement my income, I guess I was doing stand-up comedy.
Bob Wheeler: And so I have a lot of creative folks in my radar on my radar. I started doing tax appointments that turned into therapy sessions. So, it made me realize there was just so much more going on than two plus two is four or put away 10% for your taxes, realize there was a lot of unconscious money, blocks, money beliefs that I was also doing. So I come to this not having done it perfectly. I was giving out fantastic advice and not following myself.
Bob Wheeler: And just over time, I started making my adjustments, working on my mindset, working on the practical stuff, putting stuff aside for savings, having that emergency fund all that basic stuff, but also looking at the mindset of, Do I deserve this? Am I worthy, of all those things? And so I wrote a book, to really start the conversation around money to help remove the stigma of shame around financial literacy and let people know they’re not alone.
Steve Washuta: Well, there’s a lot we’re gonna get into concerning that book and some of the things you just mentioned. But first, I have to comment on the comedy portion of this. My sister is a stand-up comedian in New York City. And I’ve spent a lot of time at the comedy cellar in New York City. And I’m in love with comedy and everything to do with stand-up comedy. There’s, there’s only a handful of them, right, a few 1000 of them in America at least. But it’s amazing.
A lot of them don’t make a ton of money, but they’re willing to risk all of their time and energy, and effort just for that one shot. And they put so much effort. I see what my sister does as far as editing and producing shows. And sometimes she’ll travel to four or five or six shows in the New York City area and one night not making $1 just doing it because she loves it.
Bob Wheeler: That’s right. And here’s the thing in comedy, like in life, really, you’re as good as your last audience, right? You gotta reset and start over. That was yesterday. And you just got to keep hustling.
Bob Wheeler: I think the important thing with comedy, or whatever you’re doing, as long as you’re loving it, I think that’s so important. Because if you’re hating it, and showing up every day, putting in the time, it’s just not gonna be fun.
Steve Washuta
Yeah, that’s our wise words. I couldn’t connect with those thoughts more. So let’s talk about the emotions behind finances. I never really thought to put those two words together, right? Typically, people are talking about finances or a very sort of straight edge.
They’re saying you have to put 10% away you have to do this. Emotions and finance don’t seem like two words you would tie together. Can you explain how you go about talking about this?
Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. Well, most of us, if not all of us. Most of us have secrets we have to keep right. We’ve got to present Well, we’ve got to let everybody think we’re successful. And so internally we might be thinking, I can’t afford that extra drink.
Bob Wheeler: I can’t afford that vacation, but I need to have everybody be impressed that I’m able to do it. So I’m going to spend beyond my means. I’m going to overdraft my bank account and deal with it later. And I’m just going to hope that nobody catches me. In the in-between time.
Steve Washuta: Yeah, that is interesting. I think a lot of us do that. Subconsciously, we don’t want to admit to it, like you said, and you need somebody. So do you think as a CPA? Do you feel comfortable bringing that up with clients, whether it’s one on one or a business saying, hey, how much can you really spend? Are you overspending? Is that a topic that you can touch on? Or is are you overstepping your bounds?
Bob Wheeler: Oh, not at all. I totally feel comfortable challenging my clients because I’m there to help them financially. And if that includes mental financial health, that’s sort of in in in the realm of things. I bring this stuff up with people all the time, because they’ll come in, and they’ll tell me, Oh, I can’t afford to pay my taxes. Or they’ll tell me, this was the worst year ever when I’ll tell them how much they owe.
Bob Wheeler: When I push them a little bit. They’ll say, Oh, actually, we had a really pretty good year, and I actually have half a million dollars in the bank. I just don’t want to give up my money. Okay, well, that’s a different conversation, right? Other than this victim story that a lot of us get attached to my life is so sad, it’s so hard. And it’s really not.
Steve Washuta: What is considered an unhealthy or healthy relationship with money? What, outside of the example, you already gave, sort of starts that process in either a negative manner or a positive manner? How do we get on a good track? If we’re on a bad track?
Bob Wheeler: I think the first thing is to sort of know thyself, right? Get to really understand the history. What did I learn from mom and dad? What from what they said, from what they didn’t say? Was money a topic, an argument, or a conversation? Was their room for failure, and start to look at did I grew up a, in a culture or a religious or religious organization that had a certain belief around money, it was either good or it was bad, or I must be poor to be a good person.
Bob Wheeler: And all that stuff, starting to look at it money experiences, did I lose the milk money when I was six? And everybody shamed me? Or did I have my first dollar saved up and mom and dad took it from my piggy bank? Like all these little things that seemed like no big deal? start stacking up evidence to create our story.
Steve Washuta: Yeah, that is interesting. I don’t think people will naturally look inward, and think those things are connected. They just look at money, again, from more of a superficial standpoint, they’re not looking inward, as far as budgeting is concerned, because that is something we’re all told to do.
Steve Washuta: I imagine this sort of plays off your last answer that that could have some deleterious effects if you’re too into budgeting, right? Is there a place where we say, hey, then we have to not be so budget conscious? Because you’re driving yourself nuts?
Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. There’s always a balance. And we have to, I think we have to find the balance. I know people that will spend 10 hours a day working on their budget, making sure everything ties out and ties out and they’re not even actually going out and enjoying their life. Because they’re so busy. I have a friend who clips coupons, and he does this, and he does that.
Bob Wheeler: And he doesn’t have, you know, a couple friends with us, we were sort of joking with him, you don’t have much of a life. I mean, you’ve saved a lot of money. But like, fantastic, but are you average actually having a good time on the ride. And, and so I think it is definitely important to have some awareness. Even if it’s just having a notebook writing down money coming in, and money going out to help, again, dissipate the story that we have, you know, oh, I don’t make any money, oh, I got a gift certificate, oh, I just got $1,000 Bonus, we discount all that.
Bob Wheeler: And then ROI, Oh, I’m so poor, we have this habit of getting into a victim story when it’s not really true, at least I think in the US. And so the more we can find that balance of great, I’m living within my means I’m planning ahead. The spending I do today is integrity is in integrity with my life-term goals. And when I say that I want so that I can actually keep myself in check.
Steve Washuta: You know, Bob, I think this conversation is important, not just for, like personal trainers and business owners, which is a lot of my audience, but for us in so far is working with our clients, because we need to understand that everyone has different relationships with money. And when you’re asking when you’re a business owner, and I’m asking, let’s say, Bob, you’re working with me, and I’m charging you I’m just making up a price of $65 an hour for personal training.
I have to know is that considered a big hit for you, Bob? Right. Is that considered a small hit? Is it actually considered a big hit, but it’s not meaning you Bob thinks I’m spending a lot of money? I actually know Bob has $2 million stacked away waiting for this. Also think it’s important because there is I don’t like to coax people into this in a negative way.
I have to tell my clients sometimes and I tell my personal trainers who I would mentor that you have to convince people that their health is worth spending the money on. So you have these people who are like your friend who is cutting up coupons all day long, and it’s like, Well, why do you want to have the most money when you’re the He’s able to do it, you have to keep your body and mind healthy in order to be able to use that money late into retirement.
Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s so interesting because the relationship with a personal trainer and their client, I mean, it’s personal, right? And to be able to say, look, I’m not gonna be able to pay for this month’s training, or I’m in a pickle, or not being able to share that something’s going on.
Bob Wheeler: And then oh, I’m just going to drop you and not tell you what’s going on. And then the trainer’s like, what did I do? Being able to have difficult conversations because of money? It’s hard to part with sometimes.
Steve Washuta: Yeah, and those are really difficult conversations, especially for us. We’re not trained in talking about those sorts of things, right? You expect us a personal trainer to work for a gym, and maybe that money to be discussed between the gym and the client, right, and we will be a third party, just training and then cashing a check.
But that’s not always how it happens, especially if you go from a gym, to being an independent personal trainer, you’re eventually going to have to write out contracts. You’re going to have to have talks with people about money. That’s going to lead to my next question because sort of a new way thing for us as personal trainers is we make people now sign annual contracts.
And again, we’re not trying to get over on somebody, were telling them if your health and wellness are worth it long term, it needs to you need to buy into it. So you should sign an annual contract rather than doing that. Do you think that’s from a mental standpoint, talking about this emotion of money? Is that good for the client? Is that good for business? Do you have you heard of those sorts of procedures before?
Bob Wheeler: Yeah, I think something like signing an annual contract is a great thing. It makes me have skin in the game. Right? If I’m able to cancel and just not show up, whatever, it’s not that important. If I’m paying for it, I’m going to, at least for me, I’m gonna show up and I’m gonna get my money’s worth, right? Yes, I’m, I am frugal.
Bob Wheeler: So I think though it helps people set that mindset of I’m making a commitment, not just I’m thinking about it for tomorrow, I’m actually thinking about the long term. Do you have any,
Steve Washuta: I guess I would say macro thoughts on personal debt? Do you? Are you one of these people who say, Hey, you have to pay the smallest thing off first? And then the biggest thing? Do you? Is it something that is like an absolute must I need to budget and get this debt out of the way. What what is your sort of macro thoughts on personal debt?
Bob Wheeler: So I definitely am not a fan of debt. There are some times when it’s awesome. And it can help you do things that you might not have otherwise been able to do, and it might help you get a business started. In it, you know, in the beginning, yeah. But when people come to me they have debt.
Bob Wheeler: Yeah, there are two things I want to do one, I want to get rid of the debt. But I also want to create at the same time, a habit of savings. And so I’m not going to just fixate on paying off the debt, because then I’m just focusing on you have to do this task, and it’s gonna be painful. And we’re not learning a new task to replace it. So for me, I want to even if I’m putting away 20 bucks or 50 bucks, I’d rather pay a little less debt down. So that Oh, that’s right.
Bob Wheeler: And I’m building this up over here, so that I can actually see the fruits of my labor. Whereas if I’m just paying down debt, it feels like forever, especially if you’ve got five or six or 10 credit cards, it just feels unsurmountable. But definitely pay the small ones first.
Bob Wheeler: So you feel like you get a bounce, you know, some momentum, and then really look at which ones have the highest interest rates, which I’m surprised how many people will tell me, I don’t know what the interest rates are. Really, it’s right on the credit card statement. You’re paying 20%
Steve Washuta: As far as investing in yourself, right? One has a business one is planning on starting a business, or their theories about how much I should be investing in myself, let’s say if I’m taking in $100,000 a year, should I only be spending x percentage of that $100,000 towards my business?
Bob Wheeler: Well, it sort of depends on the business. I think it’s important when I’m sitting down to start a new business, or I’m talking to a client about it. What’s the amount of money I’m willing to budget for that, whether it’s over three years, a year, six months, I’ve got 50,000, that’s just earmarked for that I’ve got 200,000, whatever it is, I keep that separate.
Bob Wheeler: So that when I’m getting close to tapping out that money, I can stop and say, Wait a minute, am I almost there? Am I kidding myself? What do I need to do? And do I invest a little bit more money, I think it’s important to just segregate that money and figure out what your comfort level is. I’ve had a couple of clients or more than a couple of who they’ve wanted to start their own business.
Bob Wheeler: And we just slowly phased out their nine to five job. So they started working for three days. And then it took them about three years to make the final jump and let go of that security. So everybody is different. But for me, that’s a great way for those people that are a little iffy to find that way to bridge to your entrepreneurship.
Steve Washuta: Should we all have a financial advisor? Is there a situation in which you could imagine and I’ll make up a scenario let’s go ahead and say so? Steve is a personal trainer, he works for a country club. So I am an employee of said Country Club and all I have is one, you know, one document one W two they send to me, can I just use TurboTax? Do I need a financial advisor in that case? In that case,
Bob Wheeler: w two TurboTax going to work just fine. So there’s a distinction between financial advisors and tax preparers. Sure, and accountant. So if a financial advisor is going to be somebody that maybe is sometimes just a money therapist for you, you may just be making a W two, but they might be saying to you, what do you want to do long term? What are your goals? How can we help you achieve that?
Bob Wheeler: And so that may have less to do with? What do I owe on my taxes? And even a W two person that maybe doesn’t have a lot of tax deductions would benefit from at least having a conversation with a financial advisor. There are a lot of people that come to me, and I’ll tell them, I can’t help you. You’ve got a W two, you’re going to pay me lots of money.
Bob Wheeler: You’re going to overpay me and either probably have somebody else go do it. And they’ll get you the same result. Where I help people is because I work with entrepreneurs, I work with tax strategies, and we’re pre-planning. So when we get to April, there are no surprises because we already figured it out in November.
Steve Washuta
Is there a big difference in your profession, from one person to the next? And let me expound on that a little bit. So as a personal trainer, Bob may come to me with your goals. And I may meet those goals completely differently than another personal trainer, maybe these other personal trainers big on using kettlebells. And bodyweight where I’m big on using bands and doing more yoga, things of that nature. There are big differences like that in your profession.
Bob Wheeler: Well, there are definitely people that know entrepreneurs that definitely work with small businesses. I work with a lot of people in entertainment, which a lot of people don’t. And so they may not take the deductions that a client is entitled to.
Bob Wheeler: There are some people that just work for corporations that have no idea what goes on on a personal return. And so there are a lot of different types of accountants and a lot of different types of tax preparers. You want to find somebody that aligns with you or can fill your
Steve Washuta: niche makes perfect sense. And I tell that a lot to actual clientele. The general public, when you’re looking for a trainer, you should also try to find a trainer who understands your lifestyle, meaning if you’re a parent, and you have two toddlers, and you’re working with a 19-year-old who’s never had a kid, well, they don’t understand that you can’t set times all the time to work out right,
You should have somebody who understands the lifestyle and I’m sure the same thing you know, if I’m working with Bob, who’s been in comedy who understands the deal, you’re better off working with people in entertainment, who knows, hey, I might have a bunch of money coming in one year I signed a contract and then the next year, I’m just running around looking, trying to get my next job. So I need to budget differently than the average nine to five.
Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. And even talking about that with strategies. You know, if somebody’s working a job making $200,000 a year, I might just and they go want to buy a house? Yeah, go buy a house. I’m working with entrepreneurs. I’m working with entertainment, folks.
Bob Wheeler: I’m going to tell them to buy a triplex, go buy a duplex, and let somebody else pay their mortgage because their income fluctuates. You may not have income for two or three years. So yeah, it’s great to get a house but let’s do something that’s going to actually pay for itself.
Steve Washuta: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Can you talk a little bit more about the comedy? I know that you I don’t know if you’re currently still the CFO or the Comedy Store or Yammer. Can you tell me what brought you into that? Was it a financial decision, was it a love decision, was it a combination of both?
Bob Wheeler: Yeah, a combination of both I think I was actually doing stand-up at the Comedy Store. And a friend of mine who was also performing was friends with Mitzi, the owner of the Comedy Store. And apparently, she had said to them, Hey, we’re having some financial problems, we owe a bunch of payroll taxes, we’re in trouble.
Bob Wheeler: And so she got all caught up off, he’d love to do that instead of comedy. And I was like, thanks. So Mitzi called me up. She was like, Bob, you gotta help us out, we owe payroll taxes. Because I was doing comedy, I was running a show at the store. It have three rooms, as opposed to a lot of clubs just have one room.
Bob Wheeler: I was like, I gotta, I gotta help keep this place open. This is where my friends performed. This is where I performed. And so it was more begrudgingly. And actually, for a while, I didn’t even tell people I was doing all the accounting and stuff there. I just wanted to be a comic. You know?
Steve Washuta: Yeah, that’s funny. Well, I mean, it’s, it helps to make sure that your side gig and your other business is run by you in the background, at least you trust the finances now going exactly. So I want to talk a little bit about price setting for a service.
I don’t know if you have any, you know, information that you can give or advice but again, entrepreneurs have to price set a particular number based upon a ton of different variables. And if you have any advice or any thoughts on that, feel free to spit them out. But you
Bob Wheeler: know, interestingly, I have a lot of people that come to me and say, you know, I think I need to raise my rates or whatever. When I charge, and what I found out normally, I’ll say what do you think you should charge? And if they tell me 100, I tell them to charge 125 and 25%, or whatever you say.
Bob Wheeler: Because you’re probably undervaluing yourself by at least that, it’s important to find out what are other people charging, that is doing something similar to us so that you can get a sense of all that. But I do think it’s important to actually know that rate, feel comfortable saying it, actually maybe talk to a friend and talk it out. Because a lot of people, you know, oh, you’re great, I want to sign up with you what’s gonna cost me? Right, because now all of a sudden, we’re, we’re putting ourselves on the line, and now the price might be too much.
Bob Wheeler: And now they’ve judged us that we’re not worth it. And then we have to go through all that. So I think it’s definitely important to practice having those conversations about what you’re charging and saying it out loud. You know, my rate now is $450 an hour. And I was mortified when I was charging 275.
Bob Wheeler: And I had to just practice, oh, it’s gonna be 200 bucks, and nobody flinched. And when I raised my rates, nobody got upset. It was me that was having this internal struggle of Oh, my God, how can I do that? It’s easy. I love what I do, I shouldn’t charge so much. And I think a lot of us do that.
Steve Washuta: A Bob, I mean, you are preaching to the choir, personal trainers, a lot of us who love what we do, that’s the first thing we say, it’s not that difficult. I’ve been doing this for years, at this hour, I enjoy working with my clients. So I don’t need to charge that much. But it does come back to bite you in the butt. And I will also say that you know, price setting, again, is very, very difficult for us.
But one thing that I noticed that people do is fluctuate too much. So they’ll put a price up, and maybe they won’t get it right away. So they think something is wrong with the price. And then they dropped the price.
So they raised the price, they keep moving the price, it’s like, sometimes there are other variables than just the price not getting you what you want could be a time of year, it could be just that people are not working out at that time. It could be your marketing is bad, I wouldn’t focus on lowering and raising and lowering and raising to try to find the perfect price point, you have to leave it there for a little while before you manipulate it.
Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. And I think to your point, you might have the exact right price point. And the wrong audience. Yeah. And if you don’t slightly adjust the dial, you’re gonna just keep running up against a wall. So there are a lot of factors and having a financial adviser somebody to talk through some of that, or a coach to just really help you. laser focus on the pricing and who you’re trying to reach.
Steve Washuta: Now, personal trainers aren’t necessarily in the entertainment business. But now due to the pandemic, it’s sort of expedited our online fitness career. So you had a lot of people who are in gyms shut down. Now they have to do things like this, we’re working through zoom one-on-one with our clients.
So we have to buy different equipment when maybe it’s an extra laptop that we didn’t have before. Maybe it’s a microphone, so we can speak to our clients and video cameras and things of this nature. Do you tell your entrepreneurs who are doing this sort of thing that they can write all of this off?
Bob Wheeler: Absolutely, I all of my clients know, if you’re not sure put it on the list, the worst thing I can say is we’re not going to deduct it. So don’t be self-determining that that’s deductible. And that’s not deductible until you actually sit down with somebody that knows. So I tell all my clients, if it’s in the gray area, put it down, you know, clearly your groceries, unless you’re buying food for your customer, you know, your clients, that might be something different.
Bob Wheeler: But for most people, you know, if I’m going out and buying toothpaste and underwear, that’s probably a personal thing. Less I haven’t really a weird job. And so I just tell people, if you’re not sure, put it down, we’ll have a conversation about it.
Steve Washuta: But that is something very interesting that I did ask a tax professional once I believe is that if we are in the nutrition game, and I’m meal planning for a client, I could hypothetically go to the store, right? Buy this food, try it out myself, let’s say weigh it, measure it, taste it, and then recommended to my client to buy so then I could hypothetically retroactively write that food off because I am building my client’s diet. Correct?
Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. Research. Research. Yeah. And that totally makes sense. I mean, that’s the kind of stuff you want to be able to do for a client that’s gonna give you a leg up
Steve Washuta: over your competitor. But that’s why we have somebody like you, in order to bounce those ideas off of because you as the independent personal trainer have enough to worry about, you’re not going to know all the little nuances of what you can write off and what you can’t.
And you need a professional in some respects to make sure that you’re writing the right things often and I’m sure you could speak to this. It always pays itself off right? Have you ever had a situation in which somebody hired you? And you said, you know, you’re on the losing end of this?
Bob Wheeler: You know, I for the most part, there have been occasions where somebody will try to squeeze something in And, and then it’s clearly personable, personal. But for the most part, I think if you can advocate and there’s a good reasonable justification for it, the IRS as long as it’s a good story, not always nonfiction.
Bob Wheeler: That’s really what we’re looking for is it doesn’t make logical sense. If somebody else were looking at it at this third party, would it make sense that this is a business expense?
Steve Washuta: Tell us a little bit more about your book, what happened we talked about what’s in your book that you think is important for people to know, just the general population.
Bob Wheeler: So the book is really a combination of book and work workbook, there are calls to action at the end of each chapter, it’s really about starting to get conscious about what we say, I know a lot of people in LA, I’m broke, I’m broke, I’m broke, I’m broke, when in fact, they might just be cash poor at the moment, but they’ve got a $2 million house, they just went to Europe, they’re driving the newest Tesla, they’re not broke.
Bob Wheeler: Or I need I need, I need this new phone I need this is really starting to look at what I want. And so being really conscious and intentional around the words we pick, and the words that we use. And it just goes through the different emotions. So different things come up for different people, right, I might be coming from a place of oh my god, scarcity, there’s never going to be enough, I’ve got to save, I gotta save, I gotta save, I’ve got to get every scoop of peanut butter out of the peanut butter jar, because I could go bankrupt if I left out one scoop of peanut butter.
Bob Wheeler: And I’m a little obsessive, but that so trying to figure out those places, it doesn’t mean you always fix them, I still get triggered and can get angry about certain things. When I’ve talked to some of the IRS people, I get really angry. So rather than say Bob’s a bad person, he gets angry, I call a staff person, say finish this conversation with the IRS person, because I’m just not a place where I want to have it. And so learning strengths and weaknesses.
Bob Wheeler: Am I a saver? Am I a spender? And then how do I outsmart myself through automation? Or, or whatever, so that I can actually get ahead. But it’s just really going through the motions, what are my fears, so many people have a fear of success. So many have a fear of being seen or judged. Or, you know, it just goes on and on. But to explore all of those things through the book, and really get familiar with what your story is, and how that unconscious GPS is driving your life.
Steve Washuta: How did people react to the book right away? Have you had people come out? Say I wasn’t expecting to hear all of this stuff to be looking inwards? I was expecting more of just number crunching. Or do they? Do they really enjoy that part portion of it?
Bob Wheeler: You know, well, actually, the biggest comment that people say to me when they read the book is, wow, I felt like you wrote that book for me. And for me, that was a real compliment in that I’m touching on something that seems to resonate with everybody, even if we don’t go out and admit it.
Bob Wheeler: And I think for me, that was really important to start to admit to people, Hey, I have things I want to present. Well, I don’t want people to know that I failed on this. I’ve also found that when I admit those failures, it’s a lot less pressure. Instead of trying to be this magical, perfect person, just being able to say, Man, I made a lot of mistakes. And so I think the book gives people permission to look at themselves.
Bob Wheeler: One of the things I really stress in the book and when I do workshops, and when I do talks is to just get really curious. Well, isn’t that interesting? I love staying in debt. Well, isn’t that interesting? I never seem to get ahead. Wow, isn’t that interesting? What is it that I like about this that keeps me safe?
Steve Washuta: You know, the My first thought comes that when you read these like financial books that they always really sort of like objective things that you want to do. But I think by you having a little bit more of a what I would call like a zoom out approach subjective approach. Step back, and analyze yourself.
We learned so much and I have a book behind me fitness business one-on-one with the certifications don’t teach you that I wrote and, and I do the same thing. Funny enough is that I divide trainers into categories where some of us are direct, and some of us are demonstrative. So what I mean by that is Bob is some trainers are very scientific and math based where they can look at Bob’s body and say, You know what, Bob has some bad posture and knee valgus and his chest is too tight.
And he’s got tight hip flexors, and we need to do A, B, and C in order to get him into the right place. And some trainers are more demonstrative where they have sort of, I call them entra. Trainers like, they’re, they have big bold personalities, and they want to put on a good show in front of the class and make things fun. And part of being a successful personal trainer is knowing what style you are a little bit more and then catering your business to that.
So if you’re more math-minded, you want to do assessments, you want to assess people, you want to give them plans. If you again, if you’re a big, bold, dynamic personality. You want to have a big class in front of you. You want to present a show and be an entertainer. And I think it’s important that we know who we are To be successful, not only in doing the good things but in your case in avoiding the bad things.
Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it’s interesting as a CPA or I have legal liability, right? If I give you bad information, you can come back and sue me. So I think for a lot of accountants, there’s this, I better say it right or not saying anything. So don’t get in trouble. I was the guy in continuing education classes going, Hey, that’s a big word.
Bob Wheeler: Could you explain it? I have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s more than three syllables. And you know, everybody around him, he’s like, Thank you. Thank you, thank you. But nobody wants to ask the question. But I want to be able to talk to people in layman’s terms. And I don’t always understand stuff when you get real high-brow and really sophisticated.
Bob Wheeler: I’m just like, what’s the bottom line? And so for me, I want to keep it real for other people. Because I know that most of the time, I have like 1015 minutes before they mentally check out when we’re talking money.
Steve Washuta: I mean, that’s, that makes perfect sense. And then also, there is no point of using that jargon with the commoner because I’m not going to understand what you’re talking about. Yeah, maybe for the first 10 seconds they go Bob sounds smart. But eventually, you know, now I’m trusting. I’m trusting all of my business to somebody who I didn’t connect with.
And I’m just hoping they’re doing the right thing because they sound smart. So I even said, to the personal trainers, that it’s okay to hear them explain the anatomical parlance behind what’s going on to your client. But really, your goal is to break it down and simplify it so that they understand where you’re coming from, from a layman’s perspective.
Absolutely. So give me a mistake that you see in you can use entertainment, because I know that’s the people you work with. And I’m sure a lot of the crosses over as far as taxes are concerned that you see that you wish people didn’t do and that you’d like to pass on, what is it a common mistake that people do for people who own their own business or don’t do that you wish you can tell the public.
Bob Wheeler: So this, this is one that also is personal trainers as well. They’ll come in, and they’ll tell me their total receipts, right, they’ll come in and say I made $50,000. And if I just go with that, great, I pick up the 50,000. And then we do that stuff. But then I discovered that part of the 50,000 was $20,000, from a gym that they worked at, and they got a W two. And some of the money was from some capital gains on some stock they sold, and they get treated differently.
Bob Wheeler: But a lot of people Oh, that’s all the money that went to my bank account, that’s the money I made. And even entertainment, they’ll get a W two from Disney, but then they’ll get 1099 from something else. What they’re doing is they’re paying double tax. So it’s really important to really segregate out the different kinds of income. So we know this is w two incomes. This is 1099 income.
Bob Wheeler: And the other thing is a lot of times entrepreneurs, they want to, you know, not spend so much time running the numbers, they’ll just total their deposits, they’ll run through the bank statements and look at some of the ATM stuff. And they’ll miss the fact that somebody bounced a check on him.
Bob Wheeler: And down at the bottom, there’s a real, you know, a redeposit. And so they might have ended up picking the income up twice, or not deducting the fact that the client bounced check on him. So it is important to like look at all of it instead of just oh, let my ballpark. I feel
Steve Washuta: like I know this answer already. But I want you to say it so that they hear the experts say it. A lot of us in the personal training business, get paid through these New Age apps, Venmo Zelle, sometimes, you know, Pay Pal, all of these things. Explain why it’s important unless you believe it’s not to make sure that we’re also reporting this.
Bob Wheeler: Well, one main reason is now most of them are reporting it. So if you don’t pick it up, and pick up that 10 99k, that’s going to show up from Venmo, or PayPal and all that stuff. At the end of the day, if you’re putting money in a bank account, it’s traceable. And when the IRS audits you, they’re gonna say Did you get any Pay Pal? Did you get any, you know, Venmo, or Zelle, or all those different things.
Bob Wheeler: At the end of the day, if you’re making money, let’s find expenses to bring that down. But let’s pick up the income as an accountant. I think this is true for a lot of counts. We want to know exactly how much we made. So we’re going to report every frickin dollar so we can go look at that I made my goal. But then I’m going to try and find every expense that I can within the law and bring that number down.
Bob Wheeler: But it is important to report that money. They’re gonna you know, if you get audited, you’re gonna get caught on that. And then you’re just staying on the radar. Schedule C is the most audited schedule of all the tax returns and of all the schedules. And so you want to make sure you’re reporting information that is reasonable and is accurate.
Steve Washuta: Wow, this has been great information. Where can the listeners find more about you and your book and everything Bob Wheeler?
Bob Wheeler: Absolutely It’s the money nerve.com That’s nerve any RV not nerd. I’m a money nerd, but it’s the money nerve that has access to the book. I’ve got podcast money you should ask. I have an online course Mastering the emotions of money. There are resources there that are free, that people can read it read or download. Feel free to reach out to us. There’s email info at the money nerds.com
Steve Washuta: My guest today has been Bob Wheeler, Bob, thanks for your time. Thank you so much.
Steve Washuta: Thanks for joining us on the Trulyfit podcast. Please subscribe, rate, and review on your listening platform. Feel free to email us as we’d love to hear from you.
Thanks again!
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