 Let me add one more thing. If I can, if you're an insurance agent, hear me closely. This is an opportunity of a lifetime, right? You're in that your position to potentially get free money that you don't have to pay back. Hey, this is Vlad from the insurance sales lab. And with me today, I have AJ, he's the president of Hillcrest tax planners. And today we're going to cover a very important topic that specifically pertains to insurance agents. We're going to talk about how the PPP program can help insurance agents during these times. So AJ, thanks so much for jumping on this call today. Absolutely, Vlad. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. First things first, if you're an insurance agency owner and you have not applied for the PPP, would strongly highly suggest that you apply for it. What is that designed to do is really for things is to give people, you know, business owner support for your payroll, which is something you're paying already, your utilities, which is something you're paying already. If you actually own your building and you're paying mortgage interest that they're doing, they're going to pay that as well, as well as your rent. That's something that you have to pay for as well. So that's a beautiful thing because they're giving you a two and a half times multiple to really be able to cover that. And that also includes owner's compensation as well. Great. I had an agent who called me not long ago and he said, Vlad, I told him to apply. He's like, well, I haven't really been financially burdened. My staff is still here. They're still working. We're writing more business. We have been writing more business through March, April, May, and now in the month of June. So he's like, I don't know if I should apply. And I said apply because I don't want to call it free money because there are terms that you have to fit. But if you do things, if you get the funds and you disperse them correctly, you can get the entire loan forgiven. Let me read that. You can get the entire loan forgiven. So he later applied and got approved very quickly, had $30,000 deposited into his account, calls me up and says, okay, now what? How do I make sure that this $30,000 gets fully forgiven? So a lot has changed over the last few months as far as the eight weeks, 24 weeks, I don't really want to dive into the old terms. I want to discuss the new terms. What do agents have to do to make sure that 100% of the money that's given to them is fully forgiven? What do agents have to do? Absolutely. So the first thing I would recommend doing is giving with some affirm or an individual, we really understand the process. You know, something that's really interesting is that a lot of our colleagues in the tax and accounting industry, which is really interesting, really are kind of sitting on the silence right now and really are kind of with their heads down, not really helping a lot of business clients really kind of navigate through this and business owners kind of left to kind of figure things out for themselves, right? Which is not the best position to be in if you really don't have the time or the know how to really understand that. So right now there's 11-page application that people need to fill out to be able to do it. In short, what I would recommend, now again, reach out to a professional, but if you wanted to do it yourself first, the thing that I would recommend is that you separate the accounts. I wouldn't have PPP funds deposited into your operating account. It would be a separate account, maybe even a different bank, so there's no confusion. And then really make sure that you keep in proper documents, you know, payroll of utilities, you know, of interest, you know, rent, but also you want to make sure that you're doing a PPP forgiveness calculator, right, to really kind of show you on a month-on-a-month basis as far as how to break that down, because if you're a business owner and you're actually paying yourself too much, you actually have to pay that portion of it back, right? It doesn't cost you $100,000 for the year or $8,300 for the month that you can pay yourself as a business owner, okay? Correct. So if you're paying yourself $10,000, you're going to have to pay the difference back, right? You know, part-time employees, you know, they don't qualify as full-time employees, and what happened was some people have actually included that on the first application and got approved off of those numbers, but those numbers that went into that first application is not going to be able, they're going to have to pay that portion of it back for that part-time employee, right? Because they wrote it out so fast and someone that got it wasn't out as full-time employees, not part-time employees. So the thing I would recommend is, again, to really get with somebody, hey man, to make sure that, you know, to get with somebody to make sure that you're filling out the form correctly and that you have the proper documents to make sure the majority if not all of those funds are forgiven. Okay, so what I'm hearing you say, AJ, is number one, get in touch with someone who understands the terms really well and can calculate the math for you. So in the case of this agent who got $30,000 put into his account, he would reach out to someone like yourself or someone who understands this whole process really well. That's step one. Step two is if the funds got dispersed into his Wells Fargo account, which he uses for everything, what I'm hearing you say is maybe transfer those funds to- Maybe definitely transfer those funds because out of that account as soon as possible. At that point, you don't know the items that are coming out after that point. You don't know if it's PPP money. If you don't know if it was money that was in there previously, it's really confusing. Okay, so he takes that $30,000, puts it into a chase account, check in account that he doesn't really use for anything. So now it's there. That's the second step. And then what he needs to do is make sure that the money that now comes out of his chase account, the $30,000, is being put into categories that qualify for the forgiveness component. So payroll being the biggest one for agents, if they put 100% of that money into payroll, there's some stipulations like you have to put it into a full-time employee, not a part-time employee. You have to put it into a W-2 employee, not a contractor. If you're paying yourself as the business owner, you have to make sure that you're not paying yourself more than $8,300 per month. Little details like that or important details, not little details, important details that you have to watch out for. And if you fit that criteria, or if you do those things over the next, say, few months to 90 days, you disperse those $30,000, that $30,000 that was given to you will be completely forgiven. You do not have to pay it back to the government. Is that right? That's a strong possibility based off the application and based off the amount of following to the guidelines. And the reason I say that, and it's going to depend, because whenever you do the application, those funds were literally approved based off the information that was provided at the time. The reason I say that it depends, because things can change. Somebody can lose a team member. Something can happen in a time to where just out of your control. So the best thing that I would say is to have a plan to really use a calculator, month in and month out to make sure you're tracking, to make sure you have a proper good accounting of the funds. I mean, it shouldn't take that long, maybe 30 minutes to an hour for one month to really make sure it's done properly. Got it. Okay. So once someone applies and they get the money, say I got the money today deposited into my account, there's a timeline that starts where I have 24 weeks to disperse those funds if I want that to be forgiven. Is that right? Correct. And the deadline is what day? Like when is the last day? The last thing that you can apply is June 30th and the last day to really have everything utilized and turned in is December 31st this year. December 31st. The last day to apply for the PPP is June 30th. The last day to disperse the funds and submit your application where you disperse the funds is December 31st, last day of the year. Correct. So you have to have an application, which is 11 pages, by the way, 11 pages to make sure that the majority, if not all of those funds are forgiven. Got it. And for agents or business owners that applied previously during the month where the funds ran out and they got a notice saying your account or application got denied. What can they do? Can they apply again and possibly get approved? Yeah, so what I would do, number one, is call those companies back to see if they can actually reopen that application. A lot of time it's just really from, it may be for missing information, it may be because they're not no longer, they may no longer be accepting the application. You really just want to contact them first to kind of see what's going on. A lot of banks are using artificial intelligence to really kind of get through these applications and you actually have some banks that are actually using individuals that look at things went off. So sometimes a small bank is going to be more advantageous than a financial technology company. And sometimes a financial technology company may be a little easier to do business within a small bank. It really just depends on what somebody's needing. And that's why it's important to really have relationships with somebody who really understand what banks do what to really make sure they can position you to have the highest success at getting your PPP application funded. Great. We'll go ahead and include your contact information below so agents can reach out to you and schedule a call to have a conversation about this so that they can get any additional questions answered. Last thing I have here, there's another program that is not the PPP program but there's a SBA Loan Program that allows you to borrow money and then you have 30 years to pay it back at a 3.75% interest rate. And the first 12 months the payments are deferred so you'll have to pay it back. Can you give us a quick overview of how that program works and how it differs from PPP? Correct. So that program, when it originally wrote down the idol, that's the emergency disaster loan, that is directly through the treasure, directly from the SBA. You can't apply for that loan through a bank. You actually have to apply for it on the SBA's website. Okay. They're no longer at this point taking application for business owners only for agricultural businesses, right? Meat supply, sick cows, things of that nature, people in farming. That loan, like I said, is that the interest rates are 3.75, 30 year terms. I mean that is huge, 30 year terms. When it originally rolled out, it was up to 2 million and they quickly realized that there wasn't enough money to really run around so they reduced it to where the maximum loan is $150,000 to where again people don't have to make payments until a year they're deferred and then when they do make, when you start making payments, it's spread out over 30 years, no prepayment penalties and the payments are extremely affordable. Is that just for farming and agriculture, you said it, or can insurance agents also apply? Well, and if you've already applied for it in the past and you haven't got an application right now, you're in queue. I mean, you're having to have an approval right now, you're in queue. The last time that I'd set, they set it out and they may reopen it, but the last time I checked was three days ago, it was only open for agriculture businesses. So they may open that back up. With these types of programs, the PPP and the idle, things literally change daily about an hour a week. If you're an insurance agent, please don't get the scares that can completely change tomorrow because it completely changed about a week and a half, two weeks ago. So just know that if you've applied already and you haven't gotten your money, you're in the queue and if you have not applied, there's still going to be an opportunity for you to apply. They've already, the house has already proposed some legislation for them to open that back up to business and actually give more money to that program. So there's going to be changes that's kind of going out through this entire program. I mean, you got payroll tax credits that if you didn't get the PPP and you can take advantage of it or you literally can not have payroll taxes, I don't know if I would recommend that, but as far as deferring, though, but you do also have payroll tax credits, which is a little bit easier to kind of manage than deferring payroll taxes. Also in the CARES Act, people have, if you have a government-backed mortgage loan, a lot of people don't know this, you have the right to ask and they don't, you don't need to provide any documentation. So they're for mortgage payments for six months, actually up to a year. Is that personal residence or personal? Personal residence. I visit personal residence, right? So for those agencies who maybe things are kind of stayed the same, maybe they kind of taken a dip, maybe he lost a team, maybe they kind of free us with cash, you know, you have a government-backed mortgage, that's something that you can do. So hey, you know, everybody's been impacted by this virus. I mean, one way or the other. And you know, and if you request that, you know, according to the law, they have to give you a six-month extension. Sometimes they give it to you poorly, they'll give you three months, and then if you ask for another three months and you'll give it, and if you ask for another three months, they'll give it. And what you'll see is that, again, I can't speak for all mortgage companies, but the ones that I've talked to who have been willing to put the payments that were missed towards the back of the loan, it doesn't affect your credit. You know, taxes and insurance, they're paying that, they'll just attach that to the back end of the loan. So if that's something that if you're an agent and you think you could use some benefit for, definitely doesn't help to kind of give your lender a call, your mortgage person a call, whoever you're at home loans with to see kind of what your options are. What I'm hearing you say, AJ, is if my mortgage is $2,500 for my personal residence, I can have that $2,500 a month be tapped on to the back end of the loan and maybe take that $2,500 that I would have put into my personal residence and put that into my business to help grow that. Is that right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And let me say that when you go into forbearance, that's the proper term for it. Every bank is different. Some banks may be not willing to do that. They may be willing to let you defer. Maybe when you start making payments again, give you slightly a higher mortgage payment to where the difference is paid off over time. Every situation is different. But I would imagine that if they're going to give somebody an opportunity to defer three months, six months, a year, that they're definitely going to be some flexible options to where they can put people in a position to be able to make their mortgage payment. So let's not assume that they're going to put it on the back of the loan. That's a great chance that they will be able to do that. They're going to be flexible. So it's something that I know I personally, I reached out to and have my mortgage company do that for me. Thank you for clarifying that. I think that's a detail to get right. AJ, I can't thank you enough. I know we covered a lot on this call. And for everybody who is watching this video, if you're an insurance agent and you have not applied for the PPP, I don't want to call you an irresponsible business owner because I'm sure you're a great person. But make sure you reach out to your local bank, reach out to AJ, get your questions answered and apply for the loan. If you follow the terms correctly, you could possibly get all that money forgiven. So it's like you saying no to free money if you are declining the opportunity of applying for the PPP loan. Let me have one more thing if I can. If you're an insurance agent, hear me closely. This is an opportunity of a lifetime. That you're positioned to potentially get free money that you don't have to pay back. I'm going to say forgivable money because everybody is not free. Let's just say forgivable. And if you do have to pay it back for some people, a couple thousand dollars over five years, they've extended. It's not two years. You got to pay it back. It's five now. It's not the end of the world. The reason I said that you have an opportunity of a lifetime, if you get that PPP loan, and let's say it's $30,000, that's $30,000 that you didn't have to spend of your own money. Actually, if you're able to get that all forgiven, that you can use your money to put that into your business. So one of the things that's really not being talked about right now is that insurance agency owners are going to be overpaying in taxes. The majority of them. If you're profitable and you've never received the formal tax plan, if you're just giving your accounting, your QuickBooks to your tax advisor once a year, I guarantee you use a hundred percent chance you're overpaying in taxes. And why people are going to be on pace to overpay more in taxes, because there's a lot of you guys, life and health, PNC agents that are doing better now than you were probably pre-COVID-19, which means you're making more money, you're having more profits, then you got the PPP, that's $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 that if you're using it right, you're growing your agency, which means you're making more money, which means that you're going to have a higher tax bill. So now is the time to put some things in place to where you can, tax planning is about holding on to more money. Let me give you an example. If I had $100,000 profit and I'm paying $20,000, I got $80,000 left, or is it better to have $100,000, pay zero on taxes and have $100,000 left? The second one is better, that's tax planning. So if you're an agent and you got the PPP money, you're profitable every year, you definitely got to reach out to a firm that specializes in tax planning, so you can keep more of your cash and pay less than taxes. For some of you guys, that can be worth $50,000, $100,000 savings every year that's real tangible, that you can invest back into your agency to grow it, you can put it in retirement, you can send your kids to college, you can pay off debt, you can do a lot of things with the tax savings, so I definitely wanted to go ahead and throw that in your blackboard. Yeah, thank you for adding that. This is a different component than what we discussed earlier with the PPP, but I'm going to say something controversial, some people may or may not like this, but to illustrate what you just said with tax planning for insurance agents, a company that does this really well is Amazon. They pay no taxes. Zero, zero. And I know they have a bunch of exemptions and such, but they have a whole team in place that just focuses on that, not alone. So big businesses do that and insurance agents, small businesses should plan accordingly for the year as well. So regardless of what your belief system is and value system as far as taxes and paying taxes, I know as business owners, we're always looking to take as much of our hard-earned money and put it back into our business or spend it on things that we would like to spend that money on versus paying it to the IRS. So that all being said, what are your final thoughts, your AJ, as we wrap up this call? No, final thoughts again, encourage all insurance agency owners, if you haven't applied for the PPP, to to apply for the PPP. If you've already applied for it and you did get approved, definitely come up with a plan to make sure that's forgiven. And then the third thing I would think about is what you're going to be doing to growing your agency during this time, but also put some things in place where you can actually save money on taxes and really position yourself to really be able to grow your agency, to build your network, to really be able to put yourself and your family in your team members, which is so important in position to be able to thrive. And in order to do that, you need resources. In order to have resources, you need planning. In order to have planning, you need strategic partners who specialize in planning to make sure that planning comes to fruition. So that's really, that's really about it. Well said. Thank you, AJ. Talk to you again soon. Sounds good, man. Thanks, bud. Bye.