Real Estate Tax Strategies: Stop Losing Money and Protect Your Cash Flow

Albert Corey (00:00)
Think is you just gotta you pretty much gotta go and a couple of things. One, are you every day learning? I you know, are you reading a book? Are you doing a YouTube video? Are you listening to podcasts? See, I think a lot of business owners, you know, I will tell you, success comes down to and I’m almost guilty of this knowledge myself, you know, cut half the Netflix in half. Take whatever time you watch with Netflix, because I’ll guarantee you. Call it Netflix, call it the World Cup, call it all these time stealers. listen, I’m just as guilty as everybody else.

Scott Bursey (02:09)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And today we have Albert Corey with us. Albert is the mastermind behind Corey and Associates Accounting Advisors. He has helped over 45,000 business owners not just survive, but truly improve their profits, slash their tax liabilities, and build financial systems that actually scale. He is a best-selling author, a seasoned speaker, and an entrepreneur who understands exactly what it takes to protect your assets. Pros, you can expect a master class today on how to stop losing money to taxes and start running your business like a real financial machine. Albert, welcome to the show.

Albert Corey (02:56)
Thank you, Scott. It’s a pleasure for having me on. you know, getting the word out and thank you for putting it out to the world because the world needs education. You know, the people aren’t who aren’t watching and watching your show, you know, there could be one nugget that’s going to change their business. And that’s what I’m here for. That if you can get one nugget of me speaking, being in business for 42 years, then that that’s a blessing and a win for everybody.

Scott Bursey (03:22)
It most certainly is, Albert. And to help our listeners get up to speed. Please give us the front row seat, if you will, on how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now.

Albert Corey (03:34)
Well, my career can I it’s funny. and you know, have you ever had a point in your life that just one moment changed everything? Right, Scott? Well, mine happened in August of nineteen eighty-four, where my mom called me in. I was working in my parents’ business and my mom called me and he goes, Albert, yeah, mom, you’re the IRS. And I go, Huh? What’s that? Because at that point I was a Lebanese guy who got paid cash. didn’t know what a checkbook was, balance sheet, didn’t know anything. Nobody ever taught me nothing. And this is how we started. this was the beginning of Corey & Associates Accounting Advisors and our online class, CFO in a box, where we’re gonna help you make sure now you’re gonna have somebody to answer your questions. Because when I got started and when I was moving up the food chain for the first 10 or 15 years, I didn’t have nobody to help me on anything. You just have to go figure it out. And I’m here to make sure all business owners got somebody who has their back that you can call and ask any question.

Scott Bursey (04:39)
That is awesome, my friend. And Albert, what really caught my attention about you is the way you’ve been able to help almost 50,000 business owners. That is a staggering level of impact. And I know our listeners are one gonna want to know, how did you do it?

Albert Corey (04:55)
It’s called, it’s very simple. One, it’s you don’t stop. You start meeting other people. And I think the biggest thing is you treat, you know, in my office, the joke I always teach people is is at the end of the office, I treat everybody as a friend. Because if you’re my client, get out of here. I don’t want you. Because friends love each other. I make you laugh and I make you joke. Listen, I can do most of your stuff pretty quick, but I make you laugh and answer all your questions. And you gotta be human. You know, you’re not out there to take their money, which we you know, we all gotta make a living. But if I make you feel good, then you’re gonna come back forever because the common denominators, we actually let somebody go like five or six years ago because he would do the return and literally kick out of the office without no smile. And I go, dude, that’s not how we roll here. You gotta make feel good before you take the money.

Scott Bursey (06:37)
The human element is so important.

Albert Corey (06:39)
that’s the number one.

Scott Bursey (06:40)
And Albert, curious to know, when you look at the financials of the clients you work with, what is the the biggest strength you see in the investors who actually succeed versus the ones who who struggle?

Albert Corey (06:54)
persistence. One is persistence. Two, a lot of them have systems in place to keep things going. I think the ones who struggle, who worry about you know, how to pay the IRS, how to pay their stuff, they did not put anything in place. You know, our CFO in a box class that we’re launching helps clients understand all that. Because I’ve seen I mean I could write a book and I wrote four of them. that that the ones that are struggling are the ones who don’t have no systems in place, aren’t doing bookkeeping, aren’t willing to invest in them. So then I wonder why they’re struggling.

Scott Bursey (07:32)
CFO in a box. Please take us down that path if you would.

Albert Corey (07:36)
Well that came about. So I have not only to have a regular accounting office, but I realized, and I speak on a I speak on stages all over the country, but I realized that that that there’s so many business owners. And I listen, I could write, you know, I have the surveys, in you know, involuntary surveys kind of deal where where there’s so many things business owners aren’t doing. Okay, they’re not doing it. From understanding CFO in a box will show you like stuff like cash flow. we we talk about cash flow and from the first part of the class is we used a you know stop light system, red, yellow, green to help you understand how you’re running your how you’re running your business and cash flow, to understanding that the wrong, you know, your address could be killing you, wrong bank, wrong credit cards. You know, the right credit card is helping you, the wrong credit card is killing you. Address makes a difference. Where what loc you know, you know, can I give everybody a simple tip right now, Scott? Simple tip is I will tell you, repeat after me, do not use your house as the business address ever. Dude, and don’t use a don’t use a post office box either. I mean, probably the easiest thing to go out do now is you gotta go out and use a you know a UPS Store.

Scott Bursey (08:55)
Absolutely.

Albert Corey (08:55)
Right? Mailbox USA, UPS Store, something like that. because it’s gonna give you a street address, right? It’s gonna give you a street address and it’s gonna give you a suite number. So so it looks like you got a real business. You can never to two the two worst things you could do is use a P.O. box and use your house. I mean a P.O. box, you could use a P.O. box, a post office box, they’re gonna ask you what’s your house address. Use your house address. We wrote in my book. If something goes south, they know where you live. Either a processor can knock on your door or a crazy client can come knock on your door. So if you use a UPS Store, they don’t know where you live. So leave me alone. You know, I mean, so you live like like secret agent style. I like that word, you know. Undercover. That’s a good word. I gotta use that on stage. Undercover.

Scott Bursey (10:20)
That’s some powerful stuff right there. Some great advice. And Albert, thinking about the tax traps that catch most people, you know, what do you consider the most common weakness or perhaps blind spot that costs real estate investors the most money annually?

Albert Corey (10:37)
I think most of them aren’t doing book a couple of things is aren’t doing bookkeeping and is not if you’re a real estate investor, you’re not tracking your expenses. You’re you’re doing if if if we were using my red light, you know, stop light analogy, most most investors are red lights. They’re just looking, shit, I collected the rent, you know, I collected the rent, I paid the mortgage. But where’s the money put away when when we just have one right now that we’re working on that you have to somebody moves out, the apartment is trashed, and you have to have the backup capital to go and and and flip you know flip it, not necessarily you know I’m trying to say, Scott, turn it back around. You know, the apartment had to be redone over, and that’s where my that’s where the team is today, the you know, the handyman and the painters and cabinet people to turn the apartment back around. So do you have the money put away? You know, I call it the winter time. You know, do you have the winter season for when things go south in the real estate in any investment? It doesn’t have to be real estate. If you’re in stocks and things go south and you want those dividend checks, well, you know, are you ready for when things go south or something breaks or tenants don’t pay or, you know, the winter time as as Tony Robbins would say.

Scott Bursey (11:58)
Be prepared to pivot, is what I’m hearing.

Albert Corey (12:01)
Not necessarily p pivot, Scott. Be prepared to have the backing, the money like the cash flow, the the money on the side, the bucket list is the exact answer would be, Scott, it’s not pivoting. It’s more of have the money aside to to get you through the bad times.

Scott Bursey (12:20)
Understood. And let’s dig into the current market here, Albert. Where do you see the biggest untapped opportunity for an investor to maximize their tax retention in this specific economic environment?

Albert Corey (12:31)
Well, I think to tap out, are you talking about investors as in real estate or just business owners?

Scott Bursey (12:38)
Let’s let’s focus on the business owners.

Albert Corey (12:40)
Okay, I think business owners, I think most of them need to be doing a harder look when you’re doing their income statements. Because it goes back to my red light system, you know, from CFO in a box, where we’re we’re now in June, right? We’re going into July tomorrow. Well, by now you know, you should know when your winter months are. Did you put money away? If you think you’re having a kick-ass year, Scott, are you figuring out? let me go. Let me go and invest in myself. Let me go learn something about outside my business and let the government pay for it. So you pay less to the government. So at this point, you need to do a state of your business, meaning that you know where you’re at and you already projected the next six months. So you you got the money, you know. If I’m you think I’m gonna get overpay the IRS, invest in yourself. You do you have the money away? Because I don’t know what kind of business you’re in, Scott, but most of us. Stink it up in December. December in the first two weeks of of January. Zero, you know, nobody unless you’re doing restaurants, right? Restaurants and holiday stuff. Most most businesses go to zero, right? From December 15th to January 15th. South Florida’s crickets those months. Crickets. Unless you’re trying to, unless you’re going out to dinner or having a party. Then then those businesses are making billions. But then their crickets are gonna happen on January fifteenth when nobody’s gonna do nothing till Valentine’s Day.

Scott Bursey (14:07)
I appreciate your perspective on that, Albert. And I’m interested in your perspective on risk. What is the biggest threat to an investor’s cash flow right now in your your view that they are completely ignoring?

Albert Corey (15:01)
Are they putting away for the winter times? You know, a couple of things. Are you run are you putting away? They’re not prepared. They’re heres one that I realized. We’re gonna go back to my stoplight system, Scott. what i in and you could be the best green light company. Everything’s going perfect. But what happens if, and the best sample, when I was walking the other day, I came up with this analogy for my green light people. What happens if like what happened in California, natural disaster? A wildfire. I mean, that fire wiped out everything. What happened to the people in North Carolina whose who whoever thought okay, wildfires, fine, I’m gonna get that’s California. Let’s okay. But let me go to a real, real life example, Scott. Whoever thought Raleigh, North Carolina would get hit by a hurricane, what’s the chances of that ever happening? See, and and maybe when I started talking about California, well, you could get a risk, you know, that’s different, right? But what do you think would happen? Remember, Scott, last year, when a hurricane hit Raleigh, North Carolina. You could have had the best, you had all the infrastructure, you had all the money put away, and then a hurricane hits and wipes the b wipes everything off. Are you prepared for that?

Scott Bursey (16:17)
That’s a huge distinction right there, Albert. Let’s switch gears to the how for a moment. Where are you seeing business owners fail to automate their financial tracking and how is that hurting their ability to make decisions?

Albert Corey (16:33)
I think they’re not part of part of that, you know what the problem is? The smaller business owners, they’re not willing to invest in themselves. They’re not willing to invest. So my analogy is if you’re making, let’s say, let’s go to the I mean, I can give you the great example of one of my customers. There they make because I saw the square, you know, the Square 1099-K, they make they make $400,000. I saw it on Square. Okay. But They’re not willing to invest in themselves to understand how to take their business better. They don’t, they’re not willing to invest to figure out, well, how to put better systems because in order to learn, you have to invest in yourself. And not necessarily invest in the business. You need to invest in yourself to figure out how to do stuff better. And most small business owners will not invest in themselves. It’s the weird and they’re making money. you know, and another thing they won’t do. A lot of small business owners, they refuse to pay for bookkeeping. I don’t understand that. The money you can spend, you know, you know, the money you can spend, you know, working on QuickBooks, hire a bookkeeper so you can make more money. I mean, our office, think about what I’m gonna say, Scott. We charge you like $200 a month to do bookkeeping, right? How long does it take you, Scott, to download the bank statements? Okay, once you download even if you’re doing QuickBooks Online, you still gotta go spend two or three hours a month to go sit there and and click all the boxes, right? On quick I mean, well, hire somebody to do that thing, dude. So you can spend those two hours either hanging out with your family or figure out how to make more money. It’s the most bizarre thing people don’t aren’t just don’t wanna pay. ‘Cause they think it’s a waste of money. I say, okay. Whatever.

Scott Bursey (18:28)
Thank you for that breakdown. And Albert, before we get to the big one, what does your professional network look like right now?

Albert Corey (18:35)
Well, I mean I I hang out. I mean, my local one could be better, but but I hang out like on a lot of like the the big speaking gigs, like the Power Team stages. so I hang out with some of the the I hang out with a lot of mid level speaking people. So that’s a lot who I network with. I can tell you for a fact that anything that’s free, you never nothing’s gonna happen. I mean. Nothing and all the free stuff, nothing happens. Okay. You’re not going to make any sales. Everybody’s always there to shove a business card in your face on all the free ones. You start paying a little bit. It’s a little better level. It’s a better level. It’s a better playing field.

Scott Bursey (19:18)
Sure. Now that is some real value pros. And Albert, if you had to distill your experience working with over forty five thousand owners, almost fifty thousand now, into one key piece of advice. What is the question an investor should ask themselves daily to ensure they are building real wealth rather than just chasing cash flow?

Albert Corey (19:42)
Think is you just gotta you pretty much gotta go and a couple of things. One, are you every day learning? I you know, are you reading a book? Are you doing a YouTube video? Are you listening to podcasts? See, I think a lot of business owners, you know, I will tell you, success comes down to and I’m almost guilty of this knowledge myself, you know, cut half the Netflix in half. Take whatever time you watch with Netflix, because I’ll guarantee you. Call it Netflix, call it the World Cup, call it all these time stealers. listen, I’m just as guilty as everybody else. But if you could cut half of that off, and I’m not saying, by the way, Scott, did I say negore neg negate, you know, ignore your family? No, ignore your friends. No, that’s not what I said. Okay. Cut half of the waste. I’m the first one to tell. I watched, you know, I watched a lot of the UI, I mean on the tomorrow night, I’m gonna watch the US play. It’s like, It goes back. Can I tell you the funniest story ever about business success? Okay. This story was amazing. probably the guy never came back since because of this, but that’s okay. So he had a project. It doesn’t matter what he was, he was making widgets. And you know, and he was and he had a good job with the county, which is fine. And then I said, did you ever want to get this, you know, get this building the widget? I don’t have time. I said, okay. And and I was by the way, I learned this from my dad, Papa Joe Corey. So it was Super Bowl weekend. I’ll never forget this. You know, he goes, I don’t have time. I got three kids. You know, he’s he works, I mean he he works for the government as a you know big end supervisor. You understand though? he’s a first responder up there, captain of the first responder. And he goes, No, I don’t have time. And and then I asked him the question, are you gonna watch the Super Bowl? yeah, you know, everybody’s gonna come over my house, you know, gonna come my house, we’re gonna, you know, watch the pregame barbecue, you know, which is fine. But then don’t say you don’t have time. Because don’t say you don’t have time, because if the if the business was important. You understand though? If the be you know, my dad did this all the time, meaning that we, you know, my dad was my he’s been gone for like 10 years, but And Sunday, if we had to fix or do something, it didn’t matter whether Super Bowl or going out to dinner, even sometimes five. No, it didn’t matter. If if we had a repair and something had to be done, it it was done and didn’t matter whether even it was mother, it didn’t matter. You know, if we had a leak or something had to be done in the apartments, right? may maybe it wasn’t a pain, but if it was something big had to be didn’t matter the time. It had to be the day and we’ll go do that later. But so that’s the difference.

Scott Bursey (22:25)
You just called the correct play on fourth and one with the game on the line. Albert, thank you for that. And you have given our listeners a lot of great advice here today. But can you leave our pros with any additional advice?

Albert Corey (22:38)
Well, part of my additional advice is listen, y this this is you know, you know, what the my buddy Bill always says from Power Team International is mm and maybe Hillary Clinton said it that that if you wanna go, you know, you wanna be rich, I mean you wanna be poor, you do it yourself. But if you wanna be rich, you gotta go with the community. You know, because it’s the community that that you’re gonna like You know, I go to I believe it or not, I go to a lot of the Power Team events and I probably heard the same speakers because they’re my friends. We all speak on the same stages. But every time I sit in the back of the room, I’ll I’ll like zone out and I go, dude, I gotta go do that when I get back to the office. Because once you’re around people that push I think you gotta be on also around people that when you listen to them, they’re gonna push your mind and that’s where your business is gonna grow and take it to the next level.

Scott Bursey (23:31)
Thank you for that. And for our listeners that want to keep this conversation moving, stay in your lane or collaborate with you. Albert, what is the best way for them to reach you?

Albert Corey (23:41)
Well, my best way is you can go let me see here. You can go to Better Call Albert. I have a cool app. Is by the way, is this gonna be I’m also gonna give you some. In fact, I probably should do this later, make a domain name for it. But you can go to Better Call Albert and has everything way to get a hold of me. How to find my books, how to find my books, YouTube, LinkedIn. almost everything there. I also have another way and part of learning. It’s so funny, Scott, that that there’s a new gimmick that it’s pretty cool that I met the owner of the founder and I’ve and I found out was so funny. I bought her first one in Orlando about a month ago. It’s called Weebly, where it was pretty cool where you can get all the information and then I can text you back instantly. with all my social media and everything is an instant. It’s like a high end Linktree, except it has you can text everything back and video it back to the people instant.

Scott Bursey (24:43)
The one and only Albert Corey Pros. Albert, thank you for joining us today. This has been an absolute pleasure.

Albert Corey (24:52)
Sorry, Scott. Can I give everybody a free gift as a thank you for showing up here today?

Scott Bursey (24:56)
by all means. That would be wonderful.

Albert Corey (24:59)
If you want, if you want our our newsletter, 52 weeks of business tips that we’ve been teaching our clients since the days of email, like 30 years, whenever email started, and eight systems to grow your business almost instantly. Text profits PROFITS Profits to 26786. That’s profits P R O F I T S to 26786.

Scott Bursey (25:27)
Albert, thank you so much.

Albert Corey (25:28)
Anytime, Scott.

Scott Bursey (25:29)
It has been just a absolute master class. Your information, your advice has been so valuable. And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you receive value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be filling your tanks with the lineup of elite guests, just like Albert Corey, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.