Build Wealth Like a Shark with Barry Spencer & Kevin Harrington

Barry Spencer is one of the CO creators of the wealth with no regrets planning process that allows a process that shows financially successful professionals, executives, business owners, and independent women how to live more confidently by having a custom-tailored financial plan, income plan, tax plan, legacy plan, and legal plan.

Barry is a registered investment advisor of a boom fish wealth Group LLC, where he’s been a co-founder since 2010. They act in the best interest of their clients. He acts as one of the best inches of the clients as a fiduciary for there for his clients.

Kevin Harrington launched over 20 businesses that have grown to over $100 million in sales each, have been involved in more than a dozen public companies, and have launched over 500 products generating more than $5 billion in sales worldwide with iconic brands and celebrities such as Jack Lalanne, Tony Little, George Foreman, and the new I-Grow hair restoration product on QVC.

A successful entrepreneur over the last 40 years. Involved in numerous projects including being: An Original Shark on the ABC hit, Emmy winning TV show, “Shark Tank.”, The Inventor of the Infomercial, As Seen On TV Pioneer., Co-Founder of the Electronic Retailers Association (ERA)., and Co-Founder of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO).

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Build Wealth Like a Shark with Barry Spencer & Kevin Harrington

Brett:

I’m excited about our next two guests today. In fact, I’m joined by Barry Spencer and Kevin Harrington. Guys, how are you doing today?

Barry:

I’m doing fantastic. Great to be with you, Brett.

Brett:

Absolutely.

Kevin:

Excellent. Thank you.

Brett:

Thanks for being on the show. Yeah. And so they are coming out or have come out with a book called Build Wealth Like A Shark. And it’s really an interesting time, to consider all of these different things that are going on in the world. And so we’re gonna dive right in. But for those who don’t quite know you, Barry, would you share a little bit more about your story, your focus, and then we’ll let Kevin dive in as well on a little bit of what’s going on with the book?

Barry:

Yeah, absolutely. I’m a, I’m a co-creator of Wealth With No Regrets, which began and started back when the financial advisors my dad had hired didn’t do their job and help my family successfully transition wealth to my mother when my father passed away of cancer at 62 years old, and so stuffed into the place with my business partner to audit everything and find tax opportunities that were missed. And in the course of that found other ways to help other people. And that was the creation of Wealth With No Regrets. And then creating opportunities for sharing resources and materials that can help people benefit in this area to sort fact from fiction. And that’s what I joined up with Kevin Harrington and Build Wealth Like A Shark.

Brett:

Amazing. Thanks, Barry. So Kevin, for you? What was the vision for the book? And what’s been the best, most rewarding part of working with Barry? And what are you hoping audiences will be able to glean from the book.

Kevin:

So thank you very much. And by the way, maybe for those that don’t know all about my background, just maybe take 30 seconds to do that. Way back in the early 80s. I was watching television and found a channel Discovery Channel that was only was an 18-hour day channel and went dark for six hours a day. I tied up that time started putting products on there. And this is now almost 40 years, I’ve been selling products, building businesses using unsold media all around the world and had a couple of public companies and that along the way, so and then I worked with some amazing people Jacqueline and The Juicer, George Foreman, Billy Mays, Tony Little, 50 Cent in his headphones, The Kardashians, the Hilton’s had a lot of fun with all that kind of stuff. And then I got a call to be on Shark Tank. And so that’s where the title build wealth like a shark comes from. I had a number of seasons on Shark Tank and a lot of fun, but I am not a sophisticated financial guy. I started as an entrepreneur, 11 years old working in my dad’s bars, and 15 years old, started my first business and I was good at knocking on doors and, and selling things in the early days. And then when I got into this, as seen on the TV business, I took my sales skills and molded them into selling on television. So we created very powerfully messaging through systems and tech and really following formulas. And so in a 30-minute infomercial, people would watch it and say, Well, that was pretty cool. Well, you know, we had 310-minute pods with very sophisticated technologies occurring through there with a call to action every eight minutes and testimonials and you know, this and that. So that was my skill set. I created businesses and public companies that did billions of dollars in sales and made some money in the process as I took some chips off the table and sold my equities along the way. But what when I got involved with Barry, this was when I get a chance to learn from some of the top guys I mean, yes, I’ve been investing for now for 30 plus years and develop some of my own ideas and formulas but when it comes to like CapitalGgains and exercising certain really kind of like some special tech, special ways to save money, etc. It’s Barry Spencer who came to the table and brought some great advice and he’s part of the book and we’ve had a lot of fun together. Plus, he also was a lightning fan I think when Tampa Stanley Cup lightning guy now so I got it when Barry’s nice to me about my team I got to be always open to being a partner with him in different things.

Barry:

Well, you’ve got Steve Yzerman, you know I’m a Detroit guy that has D’Yzerman. And so it’s a love relationship there. You know what I’m saying?

Kevin:

I like it. Thank you.

Brett:

Well, good to be with you. Both Kevin and Barry. And I appreciate you shared that that background. And I think that you say it well, right, Kevin, you know, finding a dream team. And find those who are players and who can complement what you’re doing to build your business. To build it, I have to say it’s only we’re just about cash flow. It’s about tax flow. Right. And so I love that Barry has that approach and that focus and for so many years? And so, will can we dive into a couple of the concepts, Kevin, and what was it about? How you’re building your business? What’s the best, I guess, secret of the book to help people Build Wealth Like A Shark?

Kevin:

Well, for me, I like to get involved in ventures that are in the earlier stages. I like to look at investments mean, I’ll give you an example of some things I’m doing right now. So here’s a company, I sit on boards and help companies gain value. So here’s a company that I got involved with, it’s a company called Celsius, it’s an energy drink. And 18 months ago, this company on the stock was trading at about $4 a share. It was it had, hundreds of millions of dollars in value. And as we’re in a lot of stores, but we weren’t happy with the multiple, we were trading on an 8 month, eight-time multiple on sales. So and that’s what the market with the monsters, the red bowls, where trading in a similar fashion sales times eight gave the market value. But Celsius was a huge, fast-growth company that was doubling sales on a quarterly basis. So it didn’t make sense for this to be trading at an eight-time multiple. So as we were able to communicate with the marketplace, and change the multiple, the stock has now gone to over $60. And it’s trading on a multiple of 20 times sales. Why? Because the market realizes we showed the market that we had the ability to accelerate sales go directly to the consumer during COVID, our sales, we’re just going through the roof, and we went from number nine on Amazon. We were the number nine energy drink behind Red Bull and monster and bang and all that well, we went to number two ahead of Red Bull ahead of a bang. And these were things that help the market understand this acceleration, and then the multiple. And so like, right now I’m negotiating with the company to join the board. They’ve got it’s $100 million a year in a sales company, but they’re trading at $100 million market value. Unbelievable. One to one, they’re in an industry that trades at a more like an eight, eight-time multiple. So there are issues there are reasons why that’s there. But I see this as, as a company that is way undervalued and potentially has a great opportunity. So valuations are one of the things that I focus on.

Build Wealth Like a Shark: “I still think buying a home is the best investment any individual can make.” – John Paulson

Brett:

Very good, Kevin. So Barry, and now when you’re looking at that, from your perspective, and you’re saying, Okay, how do I help Kevin or folks like Kevin, create a plan that just in case they’re selling, they bought it for $4 a share? They’re selling for 60? And so talk about some of the tax flow and the strategy to build wealth on your side.

Barry:

Yeah. And I think that’s something that someone misses. I mean, Kevin is an absolute expert genius when it comes to building businesses and launching them, and taking them from here to here. And then they put this amount of money in, and then they grow the business and have this much money in the business. And then they figure out how do I unlock the capital in that business. That’s always the challenge for the folks that we work with. And they’re 70, over 73,000 pages of tax code. And in that tax code are landmines and also gold mines. And so what we like to do is look at and say based on your situation and your overall structure, what you need to see happen and how you want to take your business to the next phase, and how you want to capture the value out of that business. What can we use from that tax code where there are gold mines to unlock that potential and capital in the most tax-efficient way. Because when you think about it really this way, that the money that you’re paying Capital Gain Tax on, is money you’ve already paid tax on. Because you’re putting after-tax dollars into an investment, you’ve already paid tax on it. So it’s like the government is double taxing you on your own money. So I’ve always heard people say that I want to pay my fair share, but never more than my fair share. So my question always is, if you’ve already paid the tax, why should you pay it again? And if there are ways in the 73,000-page tax code for you to unlock the gold mines in there, wouldn’t you want to do that? And what I find most of the time is most people don’t look to an expert, if I’m going to launch an energy, drink business, or anything like that. Kevin’s an expert, if you’re going to unlock capital, in your business, in your wealth, you should find someone to help you unlock it. Why? Why would you try to do it on your own?

Brett:

Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. And Kevin, speak to specialization and help how you build your wealth by you know, by building a dream team, like a Barry Spencer. Maybe give us another analogy? And when did it really click for you that look, I can’t do this alone? Like, I really got to lean on industry experts, and they also touch on what you’re looking for in those folks.

Kevin:

Yeah. So I mean, like, for example, I used I lived in Pennsylvania, I lived in Philadelphia, and we had big issues with taxes, city taxes, state, etc. Just you know, so now I live in Florida, so there’s that, you know, there are some obvious situations in where you live, and then how you record incomes and so on, I deal with capital gains situations, every year for many, many of them. And so, I’m so having in my world, I say that I need the best of the best as an entrepreneur when I first started, I was a little ego-driven and thought, okay, I can make the sales, that’s the important thing. But I didn’t realize, I needed a good CFO. In fact, we were even dealing at one in one time, we were actually collecting sales revenues in about 35 different countries, our own operations in London, in Germany and Holland, and in literally, the Middle East, in Latin America, we had offices in Japan, so we had to employ some very smart people. And one of them was a money analyst that traded currencies and hedges them for us because we were dealing in so many currencies because we could make profits. But if we didn’t hedge, we were in trouble. So could you could lose all your profits with the money in currency disruptions. So I learned, I had a full-time guy on my staff that did nothing but hedge currencies. And so this was, this is part of my dream team. Barry is a guy that that deals with tax situations. And I mean, as you say, you got to pay what you owe, but you don’t have to pay more than you owe. And so when you’re looking through the 1000s and 70, some 1000 pages. That’s not what I can do. That’s what Barry does. And that’s why I look for experts like Barry to give me good advice like that.

Barry:

And, Brett, you make a great point. And Kevin accentuates that by saying and he brought a CFO to his business. And one of the things that people don’t realize is when you get to a few million dollars, you know, whether you’re managing 2 million 20 million $200 million. You know why these people just kind of try to go out on the road and be their own CFO will the smart business guy brings in a CFO, the CFO sees the situation differently than they do. And a lot of times, that is exactly how people see us, smart executives, smart business owners bring us in as their personal CFO that runs their multimillion-dollar personal business. If I have asked that, that I now own that’s my personal property. That is your multimillion-dollar personal business that you run. So would you ever run a private business without a CFO? No, you would run that with a CFO, you’re smarter saves you money makes you more efficient, just like Kevin they find needles in a haystack. If it’s hedge currency, or whatever the case is, there are those opportunities in your personal business as well. So when you start to see your wealth, and your retirement as personal wealth and a personal business, you should have a CFO that knows what they’re doing to make that happen for you.

Brett:

It could remorse It was like there’s a blind spot sometimes for us entrepreneurs, I mean, I wouldn’t even consider running an apartment complex that says 50 units without a like a property manager and onsite property manager. But for some reason, yeah. Either the ego or it’s, it’s we’re so close to it. We’re not you know, We can’t see outside the bottle that we’re inside of and but getting out of your own way, hiring the who not being the how. It’s like, Hi, my name is Brett, I’m a controller haul like, like I need to, exercise that every day. So Kevin, what’s been the best way for you to exercise that right being so successful? And being so passionate about what you do? What’s been the best way for your mindset to do that on, a daily basis?

Kevin:

Yeah, so that in the old days, I would hire what I could afford, meaning what our sales were and the size of the business. But what I didn’t realize, because, we were growing, and we had $100 million business going to 500 million, so you don’t hire somebody that you can afford at that 100 million dollar level, because that’s their experience. I wanted somebody and this was what is good advice. Because if you want the best of the best, somebody that maybe has run a billion-dollar business is what you should be looking at, at that point. Certainly, somebody that’s if you’re looking and you’re going to be I mean, we knew as we saw our quarterly growth was crushing it. And we were opening a new market. So these were, these were add-on sales, we knew we were going to be at 500 million, we needed to hire people that had the skill sets to run a billion-dollar company, not 50 to $100 million companies. And, I can tell you horror stories of people that we had in places that because we could afford them, they were costing us 10 times their salary in mistakes. And so I always go for the best that I can get. And they’re gonna bring more value more savings, more experience to the table, and is way better that way.

Brett:

Yes. So it’s so clear when you put it that way. I wouldn’t hire someone to do my brain surgery. If he’s ever done brain surgery. My general practitioner and they may have done a good job there. But if I’m looking to go to 1 billion, I need the person who’s already been there and has taken companies to 1 billion to have that experience. Is that a fair summary? Kevin?

Kevin:

Yes. Very good. Thank you.

Brett:

Yeah, Barry, anything out of that?

Barry:

Yeah. And I would say I think it’s really smart. What Kevin said, I mean, it’s just brilliant that most people don’t get in. And I feel like they get stuck in this dichotomy, cost or value. And when you what Kevin was saying, I in early days, you make decisions based on cost. And when you start to make a decision based on cost, you miss out on the value creation that someone who’s smarter, wiser, more experienced, can provide. And whether it’s true in the business of hiring that CFO, or in your personal business, hiring someone that really knows what they’re doing. income, investing, tax legacy, charitable giving, and the like, when you have someone that can put all those together, you’re adding value to your situation. And that is not a cost. It’s a value. It’s a multiplier effect that has exponential results for you. And that’s value, I think about value not cost. That’s a big mindset shift that makes everything better for folks.

Brett:

Excellent. Kevin, anything to add to that, and then remind people where they can find the book, and then we’ll wrap it up.

Kevin:

Yeah, I mean I agree. I mean, I even like we’ve talked about CFOs we, I can talk about I’ve got three full-time lawyers that are part of my team. Now, these lawyers are that I bring them into the deals they get a piece of the deals, I don’t get bills from any one of these three guys like I’m not paying hourly. I’m like, you guys are smart in your respective areas. One of them is a franchise guy, one of them is a money-raising guy and another is a deal guy and so, I want them all to get chips to take off the table along with me as we do these deals because they’re protecting all of our interests. And it creates a camaraderie-type situation. So in I mean, if I think of how I started 40 years ago when I wasn’t willing to hire the right people pay them decent salaries because they said, I’m not making real money yet. But it doesn’t matter if you’re, you know, if you’re growing the business, you have to get the right people and in the right place. So so that’s why I like to incentivize the folks that are part of my team to participate in the upside also, and that keeps my keeps my costs in line. And my downside, very minimal because I got people that are participating in the upside. And so as far as the book goes, Barry, you’ve got the the the place to send it, let’s get some folks taking a look at our book.

Barry:

Yeah, I mean, wealthwithnoregrets.com gets you a signed copy. We’re really trying to provide some real value that people can use in their real situation and ultimately point them to someone that can be of value to them that’s smart, that successful that knows what they’re doing. And we’re here to help people do that and so they’re not having to recreate the wheel or guess and when you when you’re dealing with money, you don’t want to guess.

Brett:

Perfectly well hey, Barry and Kevin more than a pleasure to have you on everyone go to wealthwithnoregrets.com. Check out the book Build Wealth Like A Shark. And I want to thank you guys for being on the show and giving back to the community sharing, building businesses, helping your teams I encourage you to keep keeping an inspiration for all of us. And I also want to thank our listeners for listening to the episode of the Capital Gains Tax Podcast, we’re also streaming on expertcresecrets.com, where we believe most high net worth individuals and those who help them they struggle with clarifying their Capital Gains Tax Deferral Options, not having a clear plan is the enemy and using a proven tax deferral strategy such as the Deferred Sales Trust is a great way for you to sell highly appreciated public stock private stock cryptocurrency, a business primary home, you can go to different you can go to capitalgainstaxsolutions.com to learn more about that we so appreciate you guys watching this in YouTube land and listening to iTunes please rate review, subscribe. Thanks, everybody. Take care.