208: Simplified Tax Savings Strategies for Entrepreneurs w/ Ibrahim Mohammed

Monique:
Glad to have you on the show. So welcome.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you for having me. Super excited to be here.

Monique:
Yeah, I’m excited for you to be here because we are talking all about some simplified tax strategies, tax saving strategies for entrepreneurs. And I know you’re the guy for that. But before we dive in, I like to kind of intro my guests and let my audience know who’s on the podcast. So if you could just share briefly a little bit about your background, how did you get here, and what is it that you do in your business?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Families from Nigeria. Born. So, actually, I was born in Chicago, ended up living in Nigeria for about four and a half years. So at a young age, I think I was, like, four or five years old. Both my parents are both immigrants from Nigeria. Ended up moving back, lived in Lagos, Nigeria, for about four and a half years, till I came back when I think I was, like, nine years old, and really just started.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
You know, I was really an athlete. I played soccer, then I transitioned into football around my junior year in high school. And, you know, I grew up in a traditional household to where my parents are very big on, like, my mom, a strong accent. She’s like, you’re gonna go to school. You gonna get an education, right? She’s like, you’re gonna be a doctor. So I have a. If you know any Nigerians out there that typically, they either go to school for engineering, they go to school to be a doctor. Along those lines, a lot of.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
A lot nurses, that was what was poured into me. But I did well, and I did. Did pretty good in football. Went to my senior year, actually was able to start. I transitioned from soccer to football. Did really well there. And I got a scholarship to actually play at Ashland University out here in Ohio, which is a division two. Then I transitioned and transferred to the University of Akron, where I ended up graduating from, and I decided to play.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
I was able to play division one football at the University of Akron. And while I was there, I just knew I couldn’t be studying anything crazy. It had to be something along the lines of what my parents would be proud of, and it was accounting. So I studied accounting and did really well while I was in accounting. Ended up graduating straight out of college, went straight into the corporate arena, worked for a lot of Fortune 500 companies, went back to my master’s in business because I wanted to go, be able to sit for my CPA exam, become a licensed professional, and get into the accounting industry. But, you know, I found myself, seven years into my career at the corporate level, bouncing from position to position, and just realized that I wasn’t. The reason why I ended up with five different companies within, you know, a seven year timeframe was because I was thinking it was going to get better by me going company. Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
And it did. It. I realized I was on the inside. I was burning as a burning desire to become a, you know, an entrepreneur. And that was. That was the route that I ended up taking. Right. I had.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
I had that hunger for it. And long story short, I ended up, you know, started up my own accounting firm and started scaling it. And it was. It was. It just felt like it was where God was putting me. To be able to actually have influence on my community and be able to actually help teach people about ways on how to be. I mean, it’s a universal language is money. Right? So how can I eat money? And that’s what I got excited about, being able to help people in that industry.

Monique:
Yeah, I love that you shared that story, and I think that even I personally can relate to that, and I’m pretty sure many listeners can relate. It’s like no matter what you do or what career you go into, it’s like, with deep within you, you know, this is not what I’m meant to be doing. And I think that as entrepreneurs, we always kind of know, like, this isn’t going to be forever for us.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yep.

Monique:
Yeah.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
It’s battle on the inside. You’re just like, I think I was called for more.

Monique:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So thank you so much for sharing that. And I want to go ahead and dive into today’s discussion at the Blackfit business podcast on the Blacks of business podcast. We always like to break it down and understand the basics. So for many entrepreneurs that are listening, I think we always hear about taxes. You know, don’t let the IR’s come from you. And so for more people that they’re scared or they’re like, okay, what should I be doing? So before we get into all of that, let’s understand the basics. So what are some of the basic principles of tax saving strategies that every entrepreneur should know that you think?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it can’t get as basic as just proper documentation. Every business owner needs to be documenting something, right? And it’s crazy how I, you know, I talk with entrepreneurs and, you know, I say, well, how much money you making? Well, I don’t know. Well, how much money? Like, what’s your net profit? Well, I don’t know. And it stems back to proper documentation. Right. So many, so many business owners don’t have an accounting system. Like they’re not documenting their income.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
They don’t know their expenses, which means you don’t know what your net income. And that’s the, that’s the bottom line on how you get taxed. Right? So really it starts off with documentation. You want to, you have to understand, like how to track your income, how to track your expenses so you can be able to leverage and start to claim, you know, different deduction, deductions and credits. Right. Because you know where your money’s coming in and out from. And then I know we’ll get into the discussion, but then I believe, you know, tax planning, right. Being proactive and learning different strategies that fit your business needs to be able to put you in position to save a lot of taxes.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
And then the last foundational one is like, how is your business structured? Right. Do you, do you have the proper legal structure for your type of business that’s giving you opportunities to be able to lower your tax liability and give you more opportunities for savings?

Monique:
And they have it. Yes. And speaking of, one of the things you mentioned was deductions and credit. So can you explain the difference between deductions and credit and how they apply to small businesses?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yes. I love this, I love this question because a lot of people don’t understand. They both have, they have both have benefits, okay? And you want deductions, you want credits. But the way tax deductions work, tax deductions, for example, they lower your tax, your taxable income, okay? They lower your taxable income and you, you, based on that taxable income and your tax rate, based on the tax bracket where you are, whether you’re filing individual, whether you’re filing married, filing jointly, separately, whatever, right? That’s what you’re going to be taxed on. For example, just say you gen, your business made $100,000 and you had accumulated a bunch of deductions from, you know, your vehicle, you know, your, your rent, utilities, things like that. And you had deductions of $20,000, okay? Now $100,000 minus $20,000 deductions. Now you’re at $80,000. That $80,000 is what you’re taxed on based on where you’re at, on the tax rate.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
So it just reduces the amount that you’re taxed on, whereas a tax credit is like, almost like a discount. It reduces your tax liability dollar for dollar, right? So let’s say, okay, just in that same example. Okay, let’s say you had to, you know, $20,000 deduction. Now you’re taxed on 80,000, and you get a tax bill of. Let’s just say it’s 10,000. Right? You get a tax bill of $10,000, but you find out you qualify for a tax credit that’s worth $2,000. That means that $10,000 that you owed after the number was calculated, minus that $2,000 tax credit, now you only owe $8,000. It immediately reduces your tax liability.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Right. So credits are like, it’s a dollar for dollar comes out immediately, whereas deductions is lower the amount that you’re taxed on.

Monique:
Plain, simplified. Love it.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yes.

Monique:
All right, so how can people who are very new, early stage start to identify those tax saving opportunities within their businesses?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
It’s. It’s 2024 education. You can find it anywhere, right? That’s one of the things that I pride myself on as a tax professional is all over my social media. My whole goal is educating on new tax law, updates on different ways you can save, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars on your taxes. And you go on YouTube, you can find education everywhere. There’s a lot of courses out there. Now, granted, it might be a little bit saturated. You want to make sure you’re careful on what information you get, you know, that’s out on social media.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
But there’s a lot of information out there. There’s a lot of credible people that are out there, and it’s for you to get, and it’s also for you not to get. Right? It’s very easy to find is also very not easy to find. So that’s the first thing. There’s a lot of education out there. But the biggest thing, I think more people, they need to. They need to find a tax professional sooner than later. Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Most people wait. They want to do a lot of things on as entrepreneurs. That’s, we want. We want to do so much things on our own. Be that solopreneur, and then we get burned out and it leads to some negative thing. Right. Like you potentially losing your business. So I think new entrepreneurs, as soon as you can talk with a tax professional, whether it’s a CPA, an enrolled agent, a tax strategist, whoever they are, the sooner they can provide you that.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
I mean, that’s their specialty. Their specialty. Understanding the tax. So understanding finances, how to account for things. So why not? Why not you focus on what you’re good at, whether it’s your restaurant, business or your physician, why don’t you focus on that and let a tax professional manage the numbers and provide you the right guidance? And that’s probably the number one thing, is more people should seek tax professionals sooner than they can. And then really at the end of day, it goes back to tracking your expenses. Tracking your expenses and understanding when you need to be reviewing whether it’s quarterly, whether it’s weekly, monthly, yearly, maybe it’s all the above to understand what your true, you know, what does your business look like and what’s your projections for the future?

Monique:
And I like that you said sooner rather than later. So we have a lot of early stage, a lot of people. I myself was a first generation entrepreneur. I had nobody in my family that was a business owner. I didn’t know half of this stuff. So somebody like me when I was just starting out, what is sooner when you got the idea, when you got some money, when you could. Because there’s also the thing about people, a lot of people running hobbies versus businesses and all those things. So what’s.

Monique:
So.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s, and that’s, that’s a great question. And I think soon is your first year. Okay, your first year. Because I think a lot of people say, well, I’m just not making money yet. But most people don’t realize that you can write up 5000, up to $5,000 in your startup cost and you can amortize that right over the next 15 years. So they, they don’t track anything. Maybe they’re still, maybe it starts off as a side hustle that that’s what the tax code is almost like a cheat code for people who have w two income.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Right. Because now you can offset all the taxes that you paid out throughout the entire year with your, your expenses from your business. Carry that over and now you can knock all up. That’s how they, people get big refunds. So I say sooner because once you start a business, honestly, I think, I believe that first year, you need to, you need to contact a professional. Definitely before you file, let’s say you started your business in January per se. I would hope you contact the tax professional by July just because now that’s the next season we’re going into to where you can actually start to see, okay, what are my plans for the next year? What can I do to able to, what’s my strategy going into this next tax season to put me in a better position. So that’s why I consider soon.

Monique:
And for a lot of people, they are, like you said, a tax professional stressing a tax professional versus your local maybe won’t name the business. But what is the benefits of? Why is it so important to seek out a tax professional versus going to these one stop shops? And also on top of that, budgeting for seeking a tax professional?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, I think it’s so much. A lot of people, again, they can do it on their own. They could go to the terrible taxes of the world, h and r blocks, the tax free USA. And just to give you perspective, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve run into who they’re doing stuff on their own, and it’s because they’re, and I look at the returns, I’m like, well, why didn’t you take this deduction? Why don’t you take this one? They don’t know, right? Because the platforms, granted, they’re set up to help, you know, they ask you questions to be able to help you try to figure out what your situation is, right. But they’re pretty standard questions. And everybody’s business is not the same. Everybody’s business is different. Your situation is different from the next.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Whereas these platforms are geared towards the overall population. Whereas when you talk to a tax professional, like my clients, I want to know. I want to know the whole entire situation, like, what is, and what are your goals? I want to know history of your business, where you’re trying to go. Right. And now we can implement it. And I want to understand your industry. Let’s do some research on your industry and what are other people utilizing. But it doesn’t go into that level of detail when you do it by yourself, for one, and you miss out on stuff.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
And when you go to a platform that at the end of the day, I mean, there’s millions of millions of returns that get filed between January and April. So you could become just another number and miss out on stuff and diaries. Don’t care. Like, oh, you get, you missed out on that. Okay, we’ll take the money. Right. They don’t keep their money. So you have to do your due diligence.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
And I recommend finding a tax professional who has, who has resulted and is actually detailed because there are some tax professionals out there and they do, like, there’s some cpas that they just want to get the returns on. They’re doing so many returns. They’re getting, you give them paperwork, they get it done. They’re not doing any sort of tax strategy. And granted, the tax strategy should come before the year end. So your tax professional, January, February, like, what can you do. I mean, it’s too late now, right now, it’s more reactional versus being proactive.

Monique:
Yeah. Yeah. I love that advice. And speaking of being proactive. So, still sticking to the basics. So, in your experience, what are some of the specific tax considerations people should be keeping in mind? Like, things that people aren’t thinking of, but they should be thinking of?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, I think we. Again, it’s 2024, right. Ever since COVID things have changed. There’s more and more entrepreneurs that are working from home. There’s more and more people working remotely. The biggest thing that the old school accountants versus new school are noticing is the fact that you can utilize, like, a home office deduction, right. You can take advantage of a home office deduction where you can get a portion of your home, and you can. You can write off a portion of that area in your home as a.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
As a. As a tax write off. Right. And there’s. There’s a couple methods. There’s a simple. There’s a simplified method, and there’s an actual expense method. Simplified method.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
You take $5 per square foot of your home, and you can. You can get up to 300 sqft as a tax write off. Max is like $1,500, whereas you can do the actual expense method, where you can be able to write off direct expenses and indirect expenses. So you can write off things like your utilities, you can write off things like your mortgage interest, things from home improvements and home expenses. So you have to weigh the cost and see, okay, what makes the most sense for you and talk with the tax professional and see what’s the best strategy based on your situation. Uh, but. So there’s a home office deduction. There’s, uh, there’s retirement.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
I mean, we’re entrepreneurs. We don’t want to work forever. That’s why we wanted to be entrepreneurs. Right. Have our own terms. So, okay. Just because you’re not working for an employer anymore doesn’t mean you don’t need to save for retirement. Like, typically, they have, you know, employer plans, but there’s different things, like a SCP IRA, right, that you can invest in.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
There’s things like a solo 401K with retirement that you can invest in, and they’re geared towards self employed, self employed individuals. And those are, like, the two simplified ways that. Where I believe people are missing out on the. And there’s a couple that I’m sure I’ll talk about here soon, but those are a few that just stand out to me off the jump.

Monique:
Okay, that’s good. That’s good. And so we always are about how can we avoid some of these mistakes. So let’s get into the common pitfalls and misconception. So Ibrahim, what are some of the common tax mistakes or pitfalls that entrepreneurs should avoid?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah. Number one is mixing your personal and business expenses. Like, I need you to go and open up a business, a business bank account. Like as soon as possible. Stop. Stop using your personal credit card to your personal business card to purchase all your business stuff. Now granted, can you still write those things off? Yes, business. But from a, from a record keeping perspective.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Right. Well, like you don’t want the IR’s to come in and start to question anything, right? Just like, well, how you mix it up with this, like, well, what the, what was this purchase? Oh, you, you got, you got your hair done here. How’s that relate? Like, you start to make up so many and now you have to start to question. Yeah, like spend my money on. Whereas if you have a dedicated business bank account or as I recommend, a couple business bank accounts, you can start to know where your money’s coming from. And that’s how you budget, where you don’t overspend on specific things. And now you can track and see, okay, how am I tracking on my deductions, right. How am I tracking on making my estimated tax payments? How am I making sure I’m not missing out on tax deadlines? That’s another thing.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Right. Most people, if you’re paying estimated tax payments, do you know that those dates. Right. And vary every year to year, but do you know when you’re supposed to make those payments? Missing those deadlines can lead to some more charges or penalties. Right. But with their overlooked, because again, it starts off, I’m going to beat the dead horse. But you’re just not tracking your stuff.

Monique:
Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
And you’re so busy you don’t have the time to do it.

Monique:
Yeah.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
So hire a professional to do it for you.

Monique:
Yes. And the great thing about a lot of online banks or just banks. Well, online banks, I know for sure they do buckets now. So you can put a lot of your money into different buckets and categories. So that’s good.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah.

Monique:
And what are some of the common misconceptions about taxes that you feel that many entrepreneurs have?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Oh, that’s a good question. I think most, most entrepreneurs believe that they’re, and it goes back to what I talked about before, but they believe that hiring an accountant is really only for big businesses. It’s for people who are actually making money. Right. That’s what, that’s what they. That’s, that’s the biggest thing I hear. It’s like, well, I’m just not making any money. I was like, well, you’re probably not going to make any money if it’s all going to taxes, right? So that, that, that’s the biggest.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
It’s like, oh, it’s only. I have a small business. I’m only made, you know, net profit, $10,000. Like, I’m not ready. I’ll just file my taxes on my own. I’ll just take care of it on my own. And that’s great. You might save a couple dollars in your mind.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
But then if you would have gotten with a professional sooner, he could have showed you potentially something that you might have overlooked. Right. Because he studies that. He studies it and he can, you know, guide you through the, through the path. And so that’s a number. That’s, that’s. That would be the number one thing. And then I would say the next thing is the is.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
And I run into it a lot, but a lot of people think, you know, they can write off anything. There was it like, can I write this off? Can I write this off? Like I want to write this off? Like, what do you think about this? And at the end of day, I’m always gonna throw the section 162 a at them. Okay. And as you can write off anything that is ordinary and necessary for your business. Okay. For in the pursuit of income. Okay. So in whatever case you were doing, if you were in the pursuit of income, it makes sense.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
But again, I stress ordinary and necessary. It may. If you’re. If your business made $10,000, it might not be necessary for you to go buy a vehicle so you can write it off. Right. Off. That don’t make no sense. Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
So let’s, at the end day, your goal is you have to be able to. If in the case of an audit, right. And there’s an audit, is nothing to be afraid of. If you’re properly documenting your stuff, it’s really just you showing and approving what you did was ordinary and necessary. And if you can legitimately make that ordinary necessity for your business, then you’re in the clear. So that’s the biggest thing is understanding and stressing. And one of my, my phrases, like, I help business owners say five to seven figures legally and ethically.

Monique:
Right?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
So let. I believe whatever you, whatever you give is what you get. Don’t try to, you know, take the shortcut of, you know, trying to write off a whole bunch of things that, you know for sure probably is not going to put you in a bad position. It’s probably not tax. Right. Right. I mean, just be reasonable with how you would actually go about explaining it.

Monique:
I love that advice, and I love the fact that you talk about, like, in that, the risks of not properly managing some of these obligations. So let’s get into that. In your experience, I’m sure you, I know you worked with a lot of clients, so talk about the potential risks of not properly managing tax obligations.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah. So when you don’t, like, this could lead to some penalties.

Monique:
Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
It could lead to major penalties and interest and a lot of people, when they realize, oh, I screwed up and I didn’t manage it the right way. Typically, they file extensions. Right. They’ll file an extension and you’ll have to October to file, to file your extension, or September. And now you have to. You’re looking at your situation, okay, what do I got to do? And now it’s accruing interest, right. If you owe money, it’s accruing it and you’re getting all these penalties. And most business, depending on your structure, there’s, there’s several different structures, from sole proprietorship to an LLC to s corporation to a c corporation to where if you’re, if you’re structured a specific way now, you have to be compliant with that structure type.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
I mean, if you’re not, you know, if you’re not managing it in that proper way, you can face some tax obligations. Right. You. And honestly, that could even throw some red flags to where you do get audited. You have to understand your business structure. You have to understand how you’re managing your, your, your taxes to put you in a position to where you don’t get flagged for an audit, right. Because you do have the good record keeping. And now you’re not afraid.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Like, I’m not afraid of an audit because I know what the work that I’ve been doing and how I put myself in position for my business to be represented. And then at the end of days, it’s like, what do you want your reputation to be as? Right when you’re meeting grow your clientele or when you’re trying to get access to funding, right? That’s what a lot of people I run into. They want to get access to funding. So now they run into me. It’s like, well, I got to get my financials together and I got to do all this stuff. So let’s do the proactive work to stay compliant. So we. When, when the time comes, we’re ready, right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
We don’t need to, we don’t need to look around. Hey, just call my accountant. Get done.

Monique:
Right. Stay ready. So you don’t have to get ready.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yep.

Monique:
Yes. And we’ve talked about tax professionals, and one of the things I love that you speak about is that educational aspect of things. I want to talk about why understanding these things for, for ourselves as business owners is important, although we’re not tax professional. So how can, for example, understanding IR’s guidelines and regulations benefit entrepreneurs?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, I think it’s very important. It’s almost like I’m not gonna go see a doctor if I know he didn’t, like, you know, educate himself on how to perform surgery or how to diagnose me with something. It’s the same thing of just doing due diligence with, you know, whatever it is you’re doing to stay compliant. And even if you think about it, most professionals, they have to take different classes to stick to keep their certifications. Right. I almost want. I believe every business owner should almost have that mindset to have that continuing education. Like, the worst.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
The worst thing I’ve heard before is when somebody’s graduated high school or graduated college, I’m just like, yeah, I don’t, I don’t even want to learn anymore. Like, it’s like I book anymore. I’m not, I’m not trying to. That’s. That’s the worst advice. I want to die learning, and that’s that. That should be the mindset you have with your business to where you’re always trying to stay compliant, right? You’re always trying to stay compliant. You’re always looking for different ways to improve to make sure that you’re, you’re staying with it within you.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
When we talk about the tax perspective in the IR’s, the guidelines, because the tax code changes every single year, we’re getting ready to go into elections, there’s going to be some changes that potentially happened. So always staying updated with what is going on because it could affect your business. And that, that is, in a very important part to where you want to be. You want to be involved. You want to understand the risks that can come with whatever may be going on in the economy to your business and you being you understanding that, and the stakeholders of your business or investors in your business or whoever, whoever the case may be, you now are aware, you’re all aware, to where you can make decisions to actually help you grow your business.

Monique:
Yes. And now I want to get into some of the strategies and step by steps for minimizing tax liability, what are some practical steps entrepreneurs can take to minimize their taxable income?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Absolutely. Let’s start, let’s start with some basic, let’s talk about a vehicle deduction. Okay?

Monique:
Okay.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
So one of the things that you can, there’s a section 179 deduction.

Monique:
Okay.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Section 179 deduction, you’re able to actually, it allows you to write off the full purchase price of a qualifying equipment, vehicles and software in the year that you purchased it. Okay? So typically when you, there’s an average life and there’s, when you talk about different depreciating properties, like, like vehicles, because it’s a depreciating asset or real estate, those are depreciating assets. They typically have a useful life. Right. So equipment, vehicles, software, those typically have a useful life of about five to seven years. So you, you get to the doctor a portion of that for a total of five years. So if it was $5,000 of a piece of equipment that you got and you have five years to depreciate, you take a portion of that $5,000 every single year. But with section 179, if it qualifies, you’re able to write that off in the first full year to help offset some of your business expenses.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Right. You can qualify to make that year. So that’s why you see a lot of people who, you know, there’s vehicles that qualify for section 7179 are vehicles that are over 6000 pounds. If that you purchase a vehicle, even if you finance it, that purchase price, let’s say it was $100,000 if it’s over 6000 pounds and you have the opportunity to accelerate that depreciation and take the $400,000 100,000 deduction in that first year. Right. So that can, you can, that this can be, that’s why you see people towards the end of the year where they’re looking for, you know, g wagons. Right?

Monique:
Yeah.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
The Mercedes that are, that are, you know, that over, that qualify. Right. So that, that’s, that’s one of the biggest ones to where, again, I’m not, I’m not in the business of saying let’s just spend a bunch of money, but if it makes sense, okay, let’s not just give it to the IR’s, let’s utilize it. If you’re going to utilize that vehicle for business purposes over 50% of the time. Okay. Let’s figure out what makes the most sense for your business. That’s ordinary and necessary. Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
It makes the most sense. Right. So that, that would be, you know, that’s. That’s one. Okay. I think another one that a lot of people are not familiar with, and I think it’s maybe getting some more attraction to is. It’s called the Augusta loophole. You ever heard of it?

Monique:
No, I haven’t.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Okay, so the Augusta loophole, it’s pretty much in a bigger version of the home office deduction. Okay, so what the. The Augusta loophole is, is you’re allowed to actually, it allows homeowners to rent out their personal residence for up to 14 days per year without having to report the rental income on their tax return. Okay. So you can rent out your home for up to 14 days. So this actually started off, I don’t know if you. If you watch golf at all, but this actually started off in Augusta, Georgia. So they’re.

Monique:
Yeah, I’m from Georgia, but I know Augusta. I don’t watch golf.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
So they host the Masters out in the Augusta, Georgia, and the Masters is a big deal. There’s like. I think it’s like 46 to 48,000 spectators per day that come out to watch that. So, I mean, the. The hotels are where are overloaded with people and visit. So what. What the government allowed was people in Augusta, Georgia, to actually rent out their homes and to people who are coming to visit for the masters, they were able to not have to report that rental income on. On their tax return.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Right. And now they can rent it out for a reasonable price. So if they’re charging, you know, in the area, like your hotels, they’re charging a day. Okay, you could take a rent it out, and if you did it for 1414 days, that’s $14,000 of a tax deduction that you can have that you don’t have to recognize income on.

Monique:
We are learning today all the things. I love it.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
So, yeah, I have some steps on how to actually go about it and doing it the proper way, but it’s one of the biggest ones that I think most people, most entrepreneurs can leverage. And if you want me to dive into it, I can.

Monique:
Yeah. That’s so good. Oh, wow. That’s all the tea. So, any other things we should know about?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, let’s see. I think if you’re a high income earner, okay, you’re a physician, you’re a doctor, you’re a professional athlete, or you’re just. You just make. You make a lot of money, right. I think the biggest way to actually help you build wealth is through real estate and help offset a lot of your income, because there’s there’s things from accelerated depreciation. Depreciation like we talked about, because typically there’s, let’s say you want. You want to buy a property, right? You could buy a property. There’s residential and there’s commercial.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
My residential. You can. You. You have a depreciation where you can write off a portion of that home, whether it’s for half, let’s say, was half a million dollars. Right. You have. You have. For a residential, you can.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
You can have a deduction of about. I think it’s. It’s depreciates over 27 and a half years. Okay, 27 and a half years. And you take a site, things like $18,000 per year as a deduction, okay, that you get automatically for 27 half years, but. And then on the commercial side, it’s 39 years. So now you’re getting that deduction. I mean, for 27 and a half years, 39 years.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
But with the accelerated depreciation, you can accelerate that so you don’t have to wait 27 and a half years. How can we accelerate it and take those that. That, you know, $500,000 within the first five years. Right. So you can take advantage of that. And there’s different ways on, on you to be able to qualify for it because there’s a difference between the land and then the building. And let’s say it’s $500,000. Okay.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
There’s another strategy called the cost segregation study. And with the cost segregation study, you can actually take the components of the building, the land improvements, the personal property, you know, the lighting fixtures within the. Within the home or the property, the. Just all the things within it. And now with that study, you have an engineer come and do a study for it, and we can break it down. Now, they found some equipment. They found some land improvements within that. So it’s not just $500,000 that you can use as depreciation.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
You have, you know, a $5,000 fixture in there that you could appreciate. You have all these different things that qualify. And now that’s more deductions that you can speed up and accelerate to take a deduction sooner rather than 27 and a half or 39 years. So cost segregation studies is a really, really big thing. That’s that a lot of accounts are starting to implement to be able to help a lot of high net individuals offset their income.

Monique:
Yeah. That is free game. So much free game there. I love it.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Oh, yeah.

Monique:
And, yeah. So one of the things I love that you also mentioned earlier is the business structure. So making sure you have the right business structure, all of those things. So how does choosing the right business structure impact tax liabilities?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Oh, man, this is a great question. I wish more people would understand this, so I’m gonna try to help it make sense. Okay? We have. We have sole proprietors. Okay? So, yeah, riders like, oh, you just wake up one day, you want to start lemonade stand. Okay, open up the lemonade stand. You can. You can go out today, be a.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
And just start. Start making money. Right? You can. And you’ll be considered a lemonade stand. It’s easy to operate. There’s. It’s that. It’s all taxed at the individual level, which is.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Which goes on your 1040. Okay? And I’m. I might talk some tax terms, but everybody has filed a 1040. Everybody who has a pulse and can breathe. You file the 1040 before. It’s your individual tax return. Um, and sole proprietors it is. That’s.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
That’s what they’re. It’s going to end up moving through. Okay, if you go on a schedule c, but then there’s partnerships. You have partnerships and partnerships is. Okay. That lemonade stand that you had, you want. You went on. You went in on it with the buddy, and.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
And y’all wanted to split the profits 50 50 or 41, you know, or 49, 51, whatever. Whatever the case may be. But now you have to file at the end of year at 1065 form that now issues you a schedule k one. So let’s say it’s 50 50. You guys made ten grand, okay? That’s ten grand in profits. That now you’re gonna split between your partner, okay? So he takes five grand. You take five grand, you report that on your individual tax return, okay? And then there’s llcs. And llcs offer the most flexibility in how you’re taxed, because you can, I like to say you can upgrade or you could downgrade.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
You can. You can be elect. You can be a tax as a sole proprietor, or you could be a partnership, or you could be a corporation, right? A lot. There’s a lot of strategies of people electing to file as an S corporation, okay? But it has the most flexibility. Plus it provides with you that. That liability protection. There’s no liability protection when you think about sole prior. Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
You run into business and something bad happens, you could get sued, and they’re coming for your personal stuff. Right? Whereas you can separate it with a. With a limited liability company, and based on your net income, you can decide what makes the most sense for you to file from a tax perspective. Sometimes I see people are too soon. They’re set up as c corporations way too soon, or as corporation way too soon. Right. So understanding when is the right time for you to make that shift, LLC, provides you the most flexibility. Then you have s corporation where, again, income is passed through to your.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
To the shareholders. So you have shareholders at that level. And the reporting is a little bit different. You have to do, like, annual reports. You have to, you know, you have to have annual meetings and whatnot. So the reporting is a little bit different, but it’s still. It avoids what we call the double taxation that I’ll get to in here in a second. But pretty much you have to fill out 1120s form.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
It’s a different form. And that form, whatever the profits may be or the losses may be, they get distributed to the shareholders via k one. And now that’s what you have to report on your personal tax return. Okay? And again, that’s. That’s how we can avoid some double taxation, because the last one is a C corporation, and a C corporation is. Is tip is double tax because they have to automatically pay income tax at the corporate level. So if your business made a net income of $100,000, I think the corporate level rate right now is 21%. You have to pay 21% on your net income.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Plus you also got to pay at the individual, individual level based on your distributions or your dividends that you had. So that’s where you get double taxed. And sometimes I’m seeing people, they’re double tax. I’m like, like, you shouldn’t, you should not. Your structure should not be this way. You need to understand, this is what I recommend. Okay? So when you start a business, right, just start the business. That’s why.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Just start the business. It started. So start the business. Start to collect some of the write offs. But I say get that LLC. As soon as you possibly can, get that LLC, get Incorporated. So you have that protection. But once you.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Once you start to generate a net income, and I’m saying this net income, not your revenue, you have to know what your net income is. Once you get that ballpark of anywhere from 40 to, like, $60,000. Okay, maybe you want to consider electing to file as an s corporation, right? Get an upgrade to an s corporation, because you’re gonna. You’re gonna avoid that self employment tax, that 15.3% self employment tax that is coming for you. Right. And it does. It doesn’t. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense for you to still be an LLC, if you’re between that 40, 60k net profit.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
So then upgrade to s corporation. And now we can manage it that way. But then once your business is exploding and you’re generating 400,000 to half a million dollars of net income, it’s time for you to become a c corporation. Right. You. And again, this, it could be different from different businesses, but that’s typically my, my framework, a little bit of when I started need to upgrade based on the structure to be able to lower the tax liabilities.

Monique:
So that was just a master class all the within itself, right? Yes. And Ibrahim, what is income deferral and how can entrepreneurs use it to manage their tax liabilities?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So income deferral is pretty much you practicing of like postponing your, the income that you’re going to be making into a future year to reduce your taxable income in the current year. So entrepreneurs, they typically, maybe they want to delay some invoicing, right? You have some invoices that, that your clients typically make. So maybe you date them into the future year. You delay getting that, receiving that income, working with your clientele and your customers, and delaying it to the new year. So you’re not getting all that income in December or in November. Right. So you can utilize that, that stat, that strategy.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
But then also, some of my clients, they’ll even do some, they’ll even accelerate some of their expenses. Right. So they have some expenses coming up. Okay, let’s get those expenses and move them up into, into, into the 2024, right. How can we move them up to where we have more expenses in the back half of the year and we delay our income as well. Right. Also, like retirement contributions, you can contribute to your plan as much and max it out. Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
So you can actually have more expenses in the current year versus it fall flowing through and starting off the new year where you have, you know, you’re making those contributions. So that’s really what income deferral is being strategic with when you’re receiving that income and maybe pushing it out to the following year or maybe accelerating some expenses and some contributions in the current year to lower your taxable income so you don’t have to pay as much in taxes that year.

Monique:
Got it. Got it. Now let’s get into some planning. So why is it important for entrepreneurs to start to plan for tax efficiency throughout the year rather than just waiting for tax time?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yes. I love this question. So that is, that’s the area in which I am very, very focused in helping entrepreneurs today. Success is a planned event. Okay? You’re not just gonna show up if you don’t have a plan. And the reality of it is there’s, there’s really two to three tax seasons. Okay, I’m gonna start with two, and maybe I’ll talk about the third one later. But the two sassy tax season from January to April 15, when the, when the deadline is to file your taxes, that’s the first tax season.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
But the second tax season starts from May to the end of the year. Right. That’s tax planning season, where you need to be putting yourself in position and understanding what your liability is going to be going into the next year. And how can you lower that? That’s proactive saving.

Monique:
That’s.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
That’s you being able to put yourself in position to where you understand your cash flow. You’re managing it the proper way to know that you have enough to be able to pay that tax bill. Maybe you’re making estimated tax payments, or maybe you know that you’re gonna have a significant amount of expenses that you’re purchasing today that we can plan out for it. But tax planning is gonna look at the overall perspective. Do you have kids? Right. Maybe we wanna put the kids on payroll. Right. Let’s.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Let’s. Let’s find them a job to where you can write off up to the standard deduction. Wait, I think it’s. Which is $14,600 to be able to offset some of your income. Okay. Let’s find them something. Let’s give them a job description. Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Let’s plan that out. Or maybe you. How many kids, how many do you have? Okay, how are you going to file your taxes? Are you going to be single? You’re going to be married? Are you going to be head of household? Okay, let’s plan that out. What are your retirement goals? How much money do you want to have saved up? Let’s look at those. Okay. Let’s look at some loopholes, like we talked about, the Augusta loophole. But it’s, it’s tailored to you, to where we figure out what makes the most sense for you in your job, in your position, in your, your age, your life, and how. And how much do you want to live comfortably at the end of time when you decide to retiree.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Right. What does that look like for you? That’s what tax planning looks like. It’s an overall perspective where you get what the tax planning, tax strategist, to actually walk you through all those different things.

Monique:
And since we’re on that, so you mentioned the seasons, the different seasons. So how often or when do you recommend business owners file? Is it recommended multiple times a year, just once a year or at a different stages?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, that’s it. That’s a, that’s a, that’s a good question. And I think it depends. Yeah. So I typically say the faster you, you file your tax return, the, the less chances of you. You’re probably going to get audited. Okay. So why do I say that? How? If we, if we think about it at the January, I think we.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
The IR’s opened up January, I believe 20, maybe 16th. It was, it was the end of January. I forget the date, but so many returns. That’s when the majority. Because a lot of people want the refund. Right. I. They want the refund immediately.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
So they’re filing right there. So I, I typically have to go through a process first where if you’re applying with the millions, I mean, the chances of you getting audited during that time with the rest of them is, is less likely than if you’re trying to do them right now.

Monique:
Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
IRS is already. They, they’ve passed. You haven’t even filed yet. They have. There’s probably more eyes to be able to watch what you, what you, what you got going on. Right. So I 100% recommend well before the deadline. Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Well before the deadline of April 15, because obviously you don’t want to, you know, you don’t want to accrue interest. You don’t want to get any penalties. But in between that timeframe from, from February or February to about February and March, those should be the times where, and again, it should be seamless. If you have, if you’ve been tracking stuff throughout the year, if you’ve been taxpaying year, it shouldn’t take long time, different times. Where it has to take long is because we’re playing catch up now. We’re being more reactive. We have to go backwards. We gotta look at all your bank statements.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
We gotta look at. Okay, was this a deduction or was that a deduction? Were we missing this? And then it’s re, is you’re way reactive and it takes too much time. Right. When you can be more proactive and it could just immediately happen once you get with your tax profession or if you do them on your own.

Monique:
Good. And so back to the planning part of these. So what about some tools and resources that you recommend for entrepreneurs to kind of simplify this tax planning process?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, I recommend. Everybody has an accounting software. Okay, so an accounting software that could be Quickbooks, that could be, you can utilize quickbooks. You can utilize zero. There’s wave, there’s fresh books. There’s so many different things where you can actually keep track of your income, your expenses. You could generate some financial reports to see your income and your profit and loss statement. Right? You can see your income statement.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
You see your balance sheet. You can see all these different things utilizing these platforms, and they have so many different packages to where you can get. It’s very cost, cost friendly software. And the thing. I utilize Quickbooks a lot of my. For myself and my clients. But there’s ways where you can track your mileage with it, right? That’s the one. That’s another thing.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
When you’re trying to write off your vehicle, there’s. There’s the actual expense, and then there’s the mileage expense. Great things about, like, apps like Quickbooks is they actually have a tracker on there to where as soon as you get in your car and you’re driving somewhere and you get to that location, you may be meeting with a client. Okay, you could. It literally tracks it to. You can swipe right. It’s almost like a dating app. You can swipe right, but swipe left.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Business or personal. And now you have it, because that’s a 60. It’s $0.67 deduction this. This coming year for your mileage. So now you’re tracking your vehicle stuff, you’re tracking your business expenses, you’re tracking your income, your cash flow. So I highly recommend utilizing one of those apps, whether it’s QuickBooks, whether it’s zero, whether it’s wave or freshbooks. And then when going thinking about that from a mileage tracking, I have all my clients tracking their mileage. So whether utilizing quickbooks or mile iq, there’s another app called driver’s note that those are different things where you can be able to track your mileage and then from different, you know, receipts.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Obviously, you could track all your receipts through quickbooks or expensify or receipt, bank or shoeboxed. So I like to say, okay, once you get that receipt, okay, let’s write the purpose of it. Maybe on that receipt in the front. Right. Put it at the bottom. Sign it. Just take a picture of it. Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Immediately. And now you don’t have to keep it. Right. You go put it in a box if you want to. Right. And just have it all, because really, the receipts. The receipts are there in case of an audit. Right, to where you actually prove everything.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
So as soon as you spend that money, okay, let’s just write the purpose of that? Take a picture of it. Snap it now. Now it’s saved away and you can go about your day. But again, it’s very easy to do and it’s very easy not to do, but you have to, you have to, if you want to lower, if you want to lower your tax liability, if you want to start to build wealth for yourself, these are the things that you have to either delegate it to somebody or start to pay really a good attention to it. And that’s a part of the tax planning. Tax planning strategies that go about when you work with a professional or when you’re thinking about doing it for yourself. And there’s a lot of different opportunities for education out there where you can learn about tax planning. A lot of my, I offer some different spreadsheets and templates for a lot of my clients and my audience just be able to have access to, and now they’re not, they’re not out there alone trying to figure things on their own.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
I explained a lot of it through my templates and through my spreadsheets and whatnot.

Monique:
I love that. And one of the things that’s so important that you’ve mentioned throughout the conversation is record keeping. So how long should people be keeping their records?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, I typically recommend anywhere from three to six years, if, if you have. Because they can, Iris can go back. So you want to make sure that you’re putting yourself in position to where you have. You just have, you have it all there. But I would say if you have it in again, that’s a beautiful thing about going online and cloud. I know I still have clients who, they want to give everything to me in paper, which is very hard to find, but there’s different clouds where you can do a quick search and you can find things from 2020. Right. And you can go, be able to go back and find whatever it is that you need.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
But I typically recommend anywhere from three to six years in your situation may defer, but that’s, that’s a good rough, rough ballpark after that. I mean, at that, I would have hoped you would have filed by then, or the IR’s for you, but I would say that’s a, that’s a good, that’s a good range. Be able to make sure that you’re staying, you staying efficient, you’re staying accurate and you’re ready, you know, in the.

Monique:
Case of any audit, yes, silent Ibrahim, this has been amazing. So I want to get into the work that you were doing and some continued support that you have for our audience. So if you could talk more about the services that you offer to help entrepreneurs with their tax and accounting needs.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, I actually run a full service tax and accounting practice to where we want to help business owners in all areas. And that was my whole goal. I wanted to be able to meet people where they were at and help them whether it’s actually getting incorporated. Maybe you need to set up your business. You’re just getting started. You don’t know if it’s LLC makes the most sense for me.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
If s corporation, if seed corporation. Right. So we help, we assist with the business formation things. We assist with the accounting and the bookkeeping of actually taking it off your hand, help you focus on what you do best, which is growing your business as we focus on the day to day, the accounting and reporting. Right. Helping get the reports ready so you can go get access to the capital, get access to the funding, things like that. And then we do the tax planning. Let’s, let’s strategize and see.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Okay. How can we put you in a position to build wealth, to be able to lower your tax liability and put you in position to where your financial health is very strong? And then guess what? Since we, since we did all that, we can also do the tax filing, right? So where we actually file for the taxes and we represent you in front of the IR’s and we do all the filing for you. And then we also do some of the tax, we do the tax resolution as well. Right. So if you have any issues and you’re looking, you’re seeking debt relief and things like that, we can, we can help strategize and work and work and represent you in front of the IR’s to be able to help put you in position to where we can clean off that debt. We can help put you in position to where now you can move forward and you don’t have to worry about Uncle Sam, you know, on your back and trying to figure out where’s his money at. So, yeah, that’s pretty much my firm in a nutshell.

Monique:
Yeah, I love that. And when you think about some of your clients, like what is one of those stories that stand out in terms of like a transformation?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, I think it goes back to when I talked about when is the right time to seek an accountant and then honestly, when is the right time to seek a different accountant? Okay. So I remember I had a client, Patricia, and she, she had an account family friend going to this person for years. And I mean, I think there she’s even she’s even in charge a couple thousand dollars for her tax returns. And when I, when I got, when she came to me, you know, I was like, well, let me, let me just take a look. Right? So I looked at a couple of tax turns, and I was, I was confused. I was like, you made a hundred. You went from 123,000 to now you’re. And you talk to me.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
You’re at 1.3 something million, right? And, you know, then you grew to 3,000,003.2 million. And at first she started 123,000. She was following as a C corporation. I’m like, why are you a C corporation? Why’d you file as a C corporation? You’re being double taxed. You just overpaid by close to $46,000 for the past couple years. And, and she’s like, well, I did, I don’t even, most people, they didn’t know what their, what their structure that this would be your tax form, I can even tell, is 1120. Okay. You follow the C corporation? 1120? Yes.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Okay. S corporation. And I know she had been overpaying for about $20,000 per year and to where we, again, we can go back and amend some things. She found me. We’re able to look back. And now, okay. Not just go back, but okay, what’s the way forward? As you’re about to grow from 123 to 1.3 to 3.2 and grow, which is what we want, how can we lower your tax liability? We were able to come up with a tax strategy plan where we have a, we created a tax plan over a five year period. She was going to be saving well over $197,000 in taxes.

Monique:
Wow. Okay. Ibrahim, so many people are like, okay, I’m switching over. How can they, they’re going to switch over to you. How can they connect with you, work with you, and talk about some of the people that you typically work with? Are they at different stages or a particular stage?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yep. So I think I typically, my team and I will have an initial call. You can go to imaccountingllc.com and, you know, go to the services, and there’s a lot of different places where you can hit. Just contact us and schedule a call. We’ll have just a 15 minutes call just to be able to understand what, what your current situation is, whether you’re just getting started or whether you’re seasoned and you just want to, you want to reevaluate things. You want us to take a look at that. We kind of, we work with, with majority businesses. Not guaranteed that we’re going to work with you.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
But, you know, I like to have the conversation and give free education. That’s the biggest thing. I’m a big educator and I want to provide value to where you feel comfortable with where you’re going. So, yeah, you go to I am accountingllc.com, and then I’m on all the social platforms. So on Instagram at I am accounting. You can find me on TikTok, I am accounting on Facebook, Ibrahim Muhammad, and even on YouTube, you can. Look, I’m putting, I gotta get more consistent. But I went with the, you do the videos? I do the video.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
I went to a spurt where I was going week every week, and I’m getting back into it. It was obviously busy during tax season, but you can, you can follow, subscribe on YouTube, look for the tax huddle. And we were giving out tax strategies and tax advice on a week to week basis.

Monique:
Love it. And what advice would you give to an entrepreneur who’s listening, who might be hesitant about seeking their professional help with their taxes?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
I mean, I didn’t I just say bet on yourself. Like, if, if you, the worst that will happen is you’re going to learn to. Right. I like to fall forward. Right. I rather, I rather you fall forward than fall backward. Right. And wanting to deal with yourself.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
You’re on the fence. Well, I like to keep it simple. If you’re on the fence, just jump off, get off, get off the fence and start to start to move forward in your life. And it comes by making those uncomfortable decisions. You have to, you have to get uncomfortable doing, doing. Get comfortable doing what’s uncomfortable. Right. And until you do that, as an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial journey is not easy.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
It’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a hard road. There’s ups and downs. It’s a roller coaster. So why not find a professional? Why not get, this is, I believe, and I might be, I might be biased, but I believe accounting is probably the single most important thing that you need in your business.

Monique:
Mm hmm.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Don’t delay. That’s how you’re accounting, is how you get access to more money and how you keep your money, how you manage your money. Right. It’s not about how much money you, you make, it’s about how much money you keep. So seek a professional, get off the fence and start to move your business forward.

Monique:
Love it. And as a leader for you, how are, what are some of the tools that you use to stay organized on tasks maybe some books that you read. Resources, what would you recommend?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, so I’m a big reader. I think readers are leaders. Um, so one of the, one of the books that I recommend, every business owner needs to read. Any entrepreneur, go and read profit first. Um, read profit first. That’s a phenomenal book. Most people know this book, but if you’re just beginning your entrepreneur journey, maybe start off with rich dad, poor dad, very simple, easy read. Uh, he has a sequel, is like, cash flow quadrants, another phenomenal book.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
But then as you start, it’s like, once I started reading that, those books, I was like, okay, I think you grow rich. I started listening to, I started listening to a lot of Napoleon Hill, but I think getting started, the two main books that most entrepreneurs should read would be rich dad, poor dad, and profit first.

Monique:
Love it. And my final question is, what does it mean to you to be black in business?

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Yeah, absolutely. I think I wear it as a badge of honor. I wear it as a badge of honor. And I’m super excited for our community being able to show that we’re not one dimensional. Right. We could do all things right. I’m a believer we could do all things through Christ, who strengthens you. Right.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
And I firmly believe it might be cliche sometimes, but I’m like, we were chosen for something great, but the biggest thing is people. People live in that potential phase, and there’s just a mentality sometimes to where it’s going to come to you, right. Just by you just being. But we have to get access to what we were called to be able to get access to. So we have to step out our faith and just get our feet moving, right. Faith without works is dead. So we have to get moving because we were called for something, something greater. And I accepted that challenge.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
I wanted to be one of the people that’s out front, and I can bring along people, and I say, hey, come on, let’s go make this happen. Because we were called for something bigger.

Monique:
Ibrahim gave us the tax word and the word word. We appreciate it. Thank you so much for all the things that you share with us today. I’ve learned so much. I got notes and just thank you so much for the work that you’re doing and being a true educator, and thank you for being on the Black to business podcast.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
Absolutely. I do have an event coming up, coming Tuesday. If you go to www. Tax freelifestyle, dot in fo backslash Masterclass. I’m hosting a masterclass, so I’m going to dive in. If some of the information stood out to you today. There’s going to be even more in that masterclass on this coming Tuesday where you’re going to get a lot of information just from your business in general. And I can get diving a little bit deeper with some of the conversations that we had.

Ibrahim Mohammed:
And then I do have a bunch of resources in ebook. If somebody’s looking for it, they can go to smallbusiness, playbook, dot in fo backslash order. And I give a lot of free game, all ebooks, if you’re a reader, if you’re a listener and you want some of the resources in the templates and the spreadsheets that I talked about, you go there and you’ll be able to get access to that.