Deferred Sales Trust Made Simple With Jake Mellor

Jake Mellor is an Investment Advisor Representative (IAR) of Legacy Wealth Management, LLC which is a Registered Investment Advisory Firm (RIA). He’s a business partner of mine, and he has a wealth of knowledge. He’s had the great state of Utah, he trained CPAs. He’s got an MBA, MACC, and is a certified financial planner.

Jake has a well-rounded business, he has a menu of services. He started out having a wealth management firm, a tax firm, and two insurance agencies. He has been instrumental in coaching, teaching mentoring, accounting firms across the country, financial advisors across the country, and partner a lot with real estate professionals. A two-time president of the local chapter of NAIFA. Now since then, he has grown and been able to work very professionally with other professionals.

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Deferred Sales Trust Made Simple With Jake Mellor

Brett:

I’m excited about our next guest. He’s a business partner of mine, and he has a wealth of knowledge. He’s had the great state of Utah, I mean, but he has, it’s a financial planner, he trained CPAs. He’s got an MBA, MACC, and is a certified financial planner. He’s been in the business for quite some time, and we’re closing deals together. We are helping a lot of people together. I’m excited to kind of dig into his story. Please welcome the show with me, Jake Mellor. Jake, how are you doing?

Jake:

I’m doing very well, Brett, it’s a wonderful day, and happy to be here on your show.

Brett:

We’re talking about all things Deferred Sales Trust Made Simple here in a minute. But before we go there, I’d like our listeners to get to know you a little bit more. Would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

Jake:

I have a well-rounded business, I like to say I have a menu of services. Myself, we started out having a wealth management firm, a tax firm, and two insurance agencies thinking that in order to get all the client’s advisors on the same page, we had to get them all under one roof. Now since then, we have grown and we have been able to work very professionally with other professionals, and we have gone away from a lot of the hands-on work and gone more into the consulting arena, which has been very helpful. Because at the end of the day, there’s a lot of people who can do the work. But they may need for that special client of yours or that client with a highly appreciated asset, as we’re going to talk a lot about here on today’s show, they might need a little bit more advice, they might need a little bit more of a national or a global perspective with what they can do for this client so that they can keep the client so the client doesn’t outgrow them.

That’s what my firm now specializes in doing is helping you keep your clients retain them, and we come in and we help you provide those higher-level services so that your client doesn’t know to grow you, and that’s been very fun, very exciting. Because of that, I’ve been instrumental in coaching, teaching mentoring, accounting firms across the country, financial advisors across the country, and we partner a lot with real estate professionals to help them list property sooner to help their clients overcome, five different ways to sell the property defer or not pay the tax and do it all legally, morally and ethically. I’ve been a two-time president of my local chapter of NAIFA. Promoting more on ethical conduct amongst professionals, I’ve just done a number of different things to give back to the community, and I feel like you know, call it karma call what you will, when you’re serving others, it comes back to you in a good way, and I want to say that we’ve all been very blessed, and very fortunate because of that.

Brett:

I love that diverse background, and that niching down and focusing on consulting and helping, it’s like you’re the trooper on the ground, you became an expert in that, and then and then now it’s serving those experts so they can serve their clients on a higher level, and so that’s fantastic, and I want to take one other step back, Jake, and I want our listeners and myself to get a chance to know you a little bit better and more. Once you go back maybe to the high school days or the college days. I know you’re in the military as well. Thank you for your service there been I believe you’ve all been given certain gifts, some people call them superpowers, some people call them strengths, and I believe the God-given gifts they are given to us to be a blessing and help to others. I’m curious, what are those one or two gifts you believe you were given? How does that help you help and bless people today?

Jake:

A very, very good insight their Brett. This is something that I don’t really share with a lot of people. But back in school back in high school, let’s go that far. I had a very young age, I excelled in sports. But that was cut short, dramatically short when I fractured vertebrae and ruptured three discs in my back. I was told I’d never play sports again, and anyway, so that helped that forced me to think beyond sports at a very early age and to be involved in something else to create Participate to be with people, I decided to get into speech and debate, I decided to be in a couple of plays, I decided to do things that were outside my comfort level that I would have probably never experienced had I not had that. You call it a career-ending experience at an early age that later on led to. Time in politics later on in life and helped me achieve a lot of really great things, and I attributed that to the struggles that I had at an early age, and how I had to adjust how I had to take a few steps back and reconsider my life reconsider what I wanted to do moving forward. That that helps define me early on. I eventually graduated high school, I nearly had my associate completed, and I still didn’t know what I wanted to do.

After that, I did another year of the school decided that I really liked this business stuff. Here in Utah, culturally, it’s a very common thing that people eventually give two years of their life in service of others, and they sometimes do that in various parts of the world. I was asked to go and serve in Mexico, however, I came from an economically challenged family, and so I wasn’t able to afford to do that. Pay my own way, and so what I did is I became a truck driver. Here I was very much into sports, couldn’t do that anymore. Just didn’t know what I want to do with my life finally decided business was the thing. But I wanted to give back to the world give back to the community didn’t have the finances to do it within my own family. I became a dirty rotten truck driver for an entire year so that I could earn enough money and pay my own way. I went to Mexico for a couple of years Brett and then coming back from that. Coming back from that a big transition, I went to Iraq, I served in the US Armed Forces, and I’d been a member of the Utah Army National Guard since I was 17, and it just so happened or coincided, that four weeks after returning from Mexico, I went to Texas, where we mobilized and went to Iraq.

Coming back from that I’m married, we now have three wonderful children, and moving forward, it’s been like a snowball effect while going to school full time is, I think, 15 credits, 12 to 15 credits, something like that. I took 18, 21, 25 credits so that I could finish sooner. I felt like because of being a truck driver, because of going and serving for two years in Mexico that I missed out on time, and I wanted to catch up. I worked full time during the day did school at night had double the normal course load, and made it out alive. Quite an accomplishment for me. I just opened up a business in my wife’s hometown, was going to New York to go work for Goldman Sachs. But my wife’s father tragically passed away in an airplane crash, and so we adjusted again, young age I adjusted I thought I was going to be this athlete, had all these state rankings everything else had to adjust. Now later on in life as well plans to go to New York or for Goldman Sachs had to adjust again, and sometimes you just got to do what’s for the best. I came here to the small little community of price Utah, county population of around 22,000 people not very large.

Made a really big splash usually takes 1015 years for a financial adviser to establish himself and in a community, especially a small tight-knit community. I was able to accomplish that in a year and a half in 18 months. After that my clients talked me into running into politics and became a county commissioner and was responsible for helping to decrease Now this may be a conflicting subject, a decreased the county budget by 29%. Because our community was struggling. We were paying out a lot more than we were bringing in. We had to do that or we had to see services, one or the other. Anyway, it was a very tough time in our community I was able to get in, get out, make a few good things happen, and with that in mind, I always looked beyond my borders. I’ve always had clients and other states. Now I have clients in 27 states and seven countries. It’s pretty exciting, where my business has gone and how from an early on stage before Where the pandemic before everything else, I took my business remote, and call it another blessing to will, it helps me be well-positioned for the times that we’re having right now.

Brett:

Jake, there’s just so much there, and I just love your diverse background. I love how you use the gift of adjustment, I love how you, you, you took a challenging thing and you, you poured your energy into speech and debate, and there’s something a little bit out of your comfort zone, perhaps in plays, and then the time in politics, and it’s just such it’s been wonderful to get to know you the last about two years now year and a half, two years, and be able to work with you. Now let’s shift and focus a little bit now on the Deferred Sales Trust, and so I want to hear your story, and I think our listeners wanna hear your story, Being that you have an amazing background, you’re a CFP, MBA, all the other things that you’ve accomplished, as a financial a certified financial planner, and helping people and helping CPAs, you’re coaching CPAs how to grow their business. What was your journey to the Deferred Sales Trust, and walk us through, some of the challenges that help you had to overcome, and then where you’re at now?

Jake:

That was very interesting. While contracting with Corvi, or Andrew Argues Firm, he has 10,000 accounting firm owners across the country that subscribed to his services. I first was a client because I wanted to grow my tax and accounting business. I then, after participating in the group, and after always trying to give back and helping other people with financial services, how to combine them with tax and accounting, and I coined the term tax-advantaged wealth management within the group, Andrew eventually asked me to co-coach with James Rainwater, who is an individual that started with Andrew in the very beginning, and over the next year or so I, I did that every Tuesday, we did a q&a call, and I coached the top 400 of the 10,000 member group, those that paid the highest fees or membership dues to receive the most help, we assisted them with financial strategies that helped mitigate taxes or help decrease overall tax burden, while at the same time build outside assets, and within that period of time of me assisting them I would receive from CPAs all across the country, strategies that sometimes were good, sometimes were bad, and I’d have to vet them.

I’d have to do due diligence and say, is this something for the whole group? Is this something that we should warn people about? You know, sometimes you go to those dinner seminars with some attorney and ends up being kind of a kooky thing. Or maybe it’s just so new that the IRS hasn’t tested it yet, and it’s not something you can really give advice on if, if it hasn’t been through the filter, or through, if they haven’t done it 1000s of times, and IRS hasn’t tested it, is it a safe thing? That was my job, not only to answer the questions, but oftentimes to do due diligence on various strategies that would come across, and I was doing due diligence on one of these strategies, and in my research, I came across the different sales just it wasn’t even on the table at the moment. I came across it while doing due diligence on something else, and I looked into it further because it seemed very interesting. It’s like, well, this other thing I’m doing due diligence on, I just don’t think it’s going to work out but this thing, I mean, they’ve been audited a few times before, and they came through the audit with a no change. They came through the audit with no findings.

Finality and that was very impressive. Because, if I’m looking into monetized installment sale, if I’m looking into some of these other things, even though they’re credible strategies for some people, you got to be very careful, because it has been disallowed before, and I was just incredibly impressed that the Deferred Sales Trust, even though it’s there’s been 1000s of them, and even though people have looked into it, and it’s been audited various types, it’s always come out of a winner. It’s always come out without any issues. In essence, I mean, it’s hard to even say this, but the Deferred Sales Trust has a 100% track record with IRS to date, and that caused me to look into it first. Brett: was not the first trustee that I spoke to. I eventually ended up with Brett: because he was the very best at answering my questions and answering the questions for my clients, and so now we have this business partnership relationship where we bring clients to each other and we help each other out and we help people through this journey as they walked on through implementing the Deferred Sales Trust and utilizing that going forward, and it’s been a very successful thing over the last. Did you say two years that we’ve known each other Brett?

Deferred Sales Trust Made Simple With Jake Mellor

Deferred Sales Trust Made Simple: “Private property was the original source of freedom. It is still its main bulwark.” – Walter Lippmann

Brett:

It’s been about a year and a half, two years now. It’s kind of flown by we kind of met in the middle of COVID. We actually hadn’t met in person until about two weeks ago in Dallas, Texas, and so we had spent a lot of zooms, and a lot of clients and a lot of potential clients and folks looking at the Deferred Sales Trust. I love the way you put that. You were training and coaching some of the tops CPAs and financial planners, on how to grow their business and how to help them, and people would approach you, and with different strategies, but you had to vet them, and as you vetted them, you found out that. The Deferred Sales Trust, perhaps in comparison to all of that can stand on strong, stronger ground. Take us from that to becoming. Say a believer in the Deferred Sales Trust and feeling as credible, and it’s good. The legal parts behind you now, now take it to the transformational opportunity for clients. What about it makes it in your mind, one of the best strategies for selling highly appreciated cryptocurrency, businesses, real estate, what do you think your clients most like about it?

Jake:

Well, first and foremost, I’ll tell you that not any strategy is a sales strategy for everyone. The Deferred Sales Trust, we like the people to have at least a million dollars in some kind of taxable transaction, where there’s highly appreciate there’s a highly appreciated asset that’s being sold or turned over. With that being said, it obviously works and is a lot easier to explain when we’re talking bigger dollars for those people, whether it be cryptocurrency, and it might be short term capital gains, long term capital gains, it might be people who are selling their business interests, a stock sale or an asset. They might be people who are going to receive stock options, that they haven’t fully taken complete control over those options yet, but they have the possibility of receiving those. It could be people that are considering their legacy. They’re trying to understand do I leave the assets my kids are doing? Do I sell the assets and leave them with the money, or the purchasing power that that money could buy in a tax-efficient vehicle.

There’s a lot of different strategies out there, and a lot of cases where the Deferred Sales Trust really helps people. Case by case, the wonderful thing about the Deferred Sales Trust is that it can be sewn, it can be so flexible when it’s done correctly, that it can actually accomplish the desired outcome under several different scenarios. Case in point, we have a very humble plumber, who put his entire life savings into crypto, but he did it in a very methodical manner. I mean, it wasn’t just throwing it and forget it, throw it out the market and forget it. He put it there, and it grew to $10 million, and he was happy bread, he was happy to just walk away with half of that, after taxes, and it opened his eyes completely want to explain the Deferred Sales Trust, how if we did things appropriately, that he could actually walk away with a double what he was thinking, and it just blew his mind. Because he was planning and budgeting and mapping out the rest of his life on $5 million, and now acknowledging that he can work with twice that much he can start a foundation IE all these other things that he never thought he’d get to he can now accomplish. It became a complete game-changer in the life of this individual, and it can be in the lives of many other entrepreneurs and business people, and people that would otherwise have built-in capital gains.

Brett:

By the way can learn more about Jake Mellor at Alpha Mark Tax, aphamarktax.com. What’s the best one Jake?

Jake:

Well, so we have a series of professional service businesses. We have Alpha Mark Wealth, we have Mark Tax with Alpha Mark Insurance. We also have Alpha Mark Capital, where we do fundraising for people that are doing 10 million and above dollar capital projects. I would say for the consulting services, please go to AphaMarktax.com. There’s a book consult consultation link there at the very top of the page, feel free to jump on my calendar or member of my teams’ calendar, and we can definitely help you walk down the path. We can find out first and foremost if you’re eligible for a Deferred Sales Trust, and of course, eventually, we’ll be presenting you back to Brett Swarts should this be an eligible strategy for you? We can it’s a process we want to make sure that you get into with eyes wide open, that from the very beginning how things would end and everything else, and happy to help happy for you to bring your, your advisors, your spouse, your attorney, your accountant, your CPA or your Financial Advisor, anybody that is is considered your advisor, bring them to the table with you, we can explain it to the whole team, and we can make sure that you make a conscious deliberate decision about your future rather than leaving it to chance and taxes.

Brett:

Absolutely, and be early as of one thing, we always say a plan your exit plan now before you exit the actual asset, and because if you don’t have a clear plan for where the money’s going to go, and how you’re going to defer the tax, it can be too late, and that oftentimes means the buyer has moved all contingencies. But the deal is actually close and the funds are sitting in your personal account, or your past your identification or your pasture 180 Day or Day 46. We can save 1031 exchanges, but we’ve got to make sure we line up properly. You can go to AphaMarktax.com to learn more and book a time with Jake. That being said, Jake, are you ready for the lightning round?

Jake:

Let’s go. Let’s do it.

Brett:

All right, knowing what you know now, Jake, if you go back to your 25-year-old self, what’s the one Golden Nugget Make sure to tell yourself to do?

Jake:

My goodness, 25 years old, I would definitely tell myself to be a little more friendly to my classmates. I always felt like it was just important that I did well. But I found over time that when you lift everybody else up, even though it’s more work, in the end, everyone does better because of it.

Brett:

I love that second question, what’s the number one book you’ve recommended or gift at the most in the past year?

Jake:

This may be very introspective. There are so many books, honestly that I’ve sent out to people, Brett. But I oftentimes revert back to a really small thin book called As A Man Thinketh

Brett:

Next question. What are you most curious about right now?

Jake:

Right now, curious. I had a client yesterday. This client’s we were discussing asset class allocation. What to invest in had a lot of theories that a lot of fears about the market didn’t really want to be in real estate, and my approach to things like this is even when the market goes down, there are stocks that still go up, even when the market goes down. There are ways to invest to help it go up. It’s not so much when we talk asset allocation. Yes, it’s important to be diversified. Yes, it is important to have some real estate, it’s important to have some stocks, right. Nowadays, it’s important to have some crypto, it’s important to have some life insurance, all these different asset classes, they have their imports, they have the rule there have their time, their season. But the most important thing in managing your assets is the communication with your advisor or advisors and not just the guy who’s placing trades, but the person who’s helping with taxes, and someone such as yourself, Brad, I mean, Marcus and Millichap. I mean, we need that level of expertise to the table so that people know, when do I invest in a portfolio of real estate versus physical real estate and things of that nature, and so the communication is, is incredibly key, because money is still there to be made, whether the markets going up, or the markets going down, or politicians are saying things or doing or having tweets, or if there’s wars, rumors of wars and all that other stuff. There are opportunities. Whenever one door closes, one opens, and the people who are able to take advantage of it are those that are in direct communication or constant communication with their advisors.

Brett:

That’s part of our goal, Jake and I’s we work together to try to build a dream team, and our strengths complement one another, and our expertise complements one another, and I’m with ESP commercial, formerly Marcus & Millichap, but a multifamily expert, specialist, commercial estate expert specialist, and I’m an investor. That’s like my primary like expertise and some of the very young with my dad and rentals and family and building the business with my dad, and so we like to bring that to the table, and then and then Jake’s expertise in securities and allocation and, and even capital raising. I mean, there’s so much there, and our goal is to use the Deferred Sales Trust as that tool to connect all parties as you’re selling a highly appreciated aspect, and you can learn more about that at AlphaMarkTa.com. Next question, Jake is this number one quote or theme that you strive to live by?

Jake:

This is something that I use in my business marketing. This is something that I use in political marketing. This is something that I live by today, and it is it comes from a very, very old nonexistent life insurance company from like 50 years ago. But I really liked the phrase, and it just talks about making conscious, deliberate decisions about your future, rather than leaving it to chance and good luck, so that you can be in control. I mean it, there’s a whole lot there, Rather than being passive, or having decision paralysis and just letting life affect you, take control of life, make conscious deliberate decisions, don’t just make any decision. But and get the right advice from people. If you had 10 attorneys in the room, do you think they’d all agree? It’d be the same thing if you had 10 physicians in a room or 10 surgeons? Or would they not, they wouldn’t all agree necessarily, on the best procedure, the bathmat best method or the best diagnosis, based on certain things, I had a friend yesterday that just, wasn’t getting what he needed from his doctor flyers doctor went to another doctor, they found what was causing all the problems, and you know, at the end of the day, your advisors there’s nothing to say that they’re bad or that they have it wrong. But using the team approach gets you more, it should get you more, as long as we’re all professional and well willing to work on the same page for the client, and that’s what I’d highly encourage, especially if you’re doing something that is bigger than you’ve ever done before. I’m not here to say that you’ve outgrown your advisors, I’m just saying that you may need to add to your team in order to get the very best possible advice.

Brett:

Sometimes I feel like we’re those Roman Legion shoulders, each has our shield, and that little space that carves out for the spear, and the client or the family or the family office, it’s in the middle, each of us have our shields in our spheres, right, and sometimes if you’re if your advisors are too small, well, there’s a tax coming from, a lot of taxes, the political, estate tax challenge, there’s the capital gains tax that could be doubling, there’s an elimination of the 1031 exchange, there’s the elimination of carried interest on certain deals and basically these, this attack is coming more and more frequent and stronger and stronger, and as you’re adding each Legion or Roman Soldier, let’s just say with our spears, it just gonna make it stronger. Not that you Yeah, eliminate your groups add to that group make it a bigger circle so that you’re protected in the middle. Last question, Jake, is this how do you say centered in your values, and stay encouraged reach in charge forward for new heights? Given all the challenges of life, having to adjust over the years? What’s what helps you keep you centered?

Jake:

Well, Brett. I am a little bit extreme in the sense that I like to garden which has nothing to do with anything that we’ve talked about. Other than I help people through sometimes very intense situations. Sometimes when there’s a legacy left to seven children, they all want to go in different directions. It can be hard to get everybody on the same page. Perhaps somebody hasn’t passed away yet, but they’re not able to make financial decisions. They may have dementia, they may have other things, and so I usually, some people say I’m really good at crisis management. I’m really good at helping somebody who told me the other day that I’m this master dealmaker, Master negotiator, I bring people together. I’m the eHarmony between projects and fundraising or whatever, I’m the glue that helps people. But at the end of the day, that is a lot of stress on me, I started planting trees, fruit trees, and I think I planted like number 214 last night. I definitely like what do I do with 214 fruit trees, I give the fruit to my neighbors, It’s just something that I like to do something that I enjoy doing. I like to see things grow. I like to see things green. I live here in Utah. We’re commonly known as a desert, and I like to make make, whether it’s people or plants, I like to see things grow.

Brett:

Jake Mellor, thank you so much for being on the show when encouraged to keep using your gifts of speech and debate and as well as being able to adjust right and being able to persevere through challenges and help your clients do the same or other business professionals do the same. That’s an amazing gift that you have, and you’re making me better, I know I’m better for it since I’ve been able to to be with you the last year and a half or two years now, and so for our listeners who want to get in touch, would you remind them one last time what’s the best place for them to find you?

Jake:

You can give us a call at 1-800-773-1848 again at 1-800-773-1848 or visit us at our website, AlphaMarkTax.com.

Brett:

Jake, thanks for being on the show. I also want to thank our listeners for listening to another episode of the Capital Gains Tax Solutions Podcast. Also streaming 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, we believe is the best way for you to exit highly appreciated assets also save or eliminate the state tax right when selling cryptocurrency a business as a real estate primary residence and if you are a business professional listening as well you can help your clients please please get with us. Connect with us. We would love the opportunity to work with you. Thanks so much for watching this please rate review subscribe.