David Greenberg: How Entrepreneurs Protect Assets, Reduce Risk, and Build Freedom with Trusts

In this episode of the Passion Millionaire Podcast, Robert Roth sits down with David Greenberg to explore a topic most entrepreneurs overlook until it’s too late: how to protect what you’ve built.

David shares his journey from starting his first business at just 11 years old to becoming an expert in private trusts, asset protection, and financial sovereignty. What began as curiosity about how money, law, and ownership really work evolved into a deep understanding of how entrepreneurs can operate more privately, reduce risk, and structure their assets intelligently.

The conversation breaks down complex concepts into practical insights. You’ll learn what a trust actually is, how it separates ownership and control, and why that matters when it comes to taxation, regulation, and litigation. David explains how entrepreneurs and families can use trusts to protect assets, create long-term stability, and even structure businesses in a way that reduces exposure to common risks.

Beyond strategy, this episode challenges how you think about ownership, control, and financial freedom. It highlights the importance of being proactive rather than reactive, especially as your business grows. If you are building something of value or planning to, this conversation will give you a new perspective on how to protect it and scale with confidence.

Contact David Greenberg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-greenberg-educator-the-freedom-studio/ 

Podcast Website: https://rockandrollyourdreams.com/podcast/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Create a life of entrepreneurial freedom with insights from successful creatives, entrepreneurs, and investors. Discover how they overcame challenges and turn their biggest dreams into reality. They share their personal success playbook so you can build the business and life you truly want. Welcome to Passion Millionaire, the podcast by Robert Roth. Rock and roll your dreams.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Welcome to today's podcast episode from the Passion Millionaire Podcast with uh David Greenberg. Really excited because today we're gonna open the box of Pandora when it comes to trusts and how to operate privately through trusts as an entrepreneur. And we're gonna learn a lot about what you could do with trusts, how that could be useful from different standpoints, uh, family corp matters. That was one thing that we have uh just talked about a little bit. Then also, okay, how can you um asset protect? How can you do all kinds of things with trust, potentially also optimize taxes legally, etc. etc. So I'm not the expert here, but I'm excited to learn together with all of you in a second. And then um also to know about David Greenberg. There's gonna be interesting stories. He started his entrepreneurial career when he was at the age of 11. So you're even beaten me, David. I'm excited about that. And then you have international business matters behind you in Colombia, etc. So let's figure out what's behind all of that. Welcome, David Greenberg.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Thanks, Robert. It's really great to be here. I really appreciate you asking me to be on your podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

Excited. Yeah, feel free to add on, correct whatever I said, and uh reintroduce yourself real quick in your own words.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Okay, yeah, I'm happy to do that. Um, so I've like you mentioned, I've been an entrepreneur pretty much my whole life. When I was 11, uh it's kind of funny when I think back that I did this, you know, that I had the courage to do it, but um, this is before the internet. I just had a natural desire to get out there and earn my own way. I didn't like the idea of getting an allowance for my parents. So I just naturally gravitated towards asking myself, well, how can I just earn my own way? And back then it was, you know, Boy Scouts magazine uh opportunity to sell greeting cards for cash or prizes, just really appealed to me. So uh despite being somewhat of a timid uh young boy, not not considering myself to be very courageous, I went for it and I found myself knocking on strangers' doors and it kind of introduced me to the whole world of business, creating value, selling, creating relationships, and so forth. And I just kind of never looked back from there. It I always embraced that in my whole life. So uh gone through a number of different iterations over the years of different types of business, um, including, as you mentioned, international business. Um, when I lived for a few years in Colombia and South America, uh learning how to navigate all that. Um, and then finally, as you mentioned, more recently, starting the Freedom Studio, which is uh a private education organization, but also I would say a family of businesses. And we do focus very heavily on using private trust for asset protection, uh, learning how to bring equity in and out of the courts, to basically live more privately, to discharge public obligations, to protect oneself, basically just to experience more freedom so that we can do the things that we deem to be important in life, whether it's family-related or uh, you know, mission-related, purpose-driven, as as I think you and I are both very purpose-driven entrepreneurs. The passion behind what we do is important. It's not just earning a living, it's you know, the importance of what we're doing. So these these concepts of being able to protect and defend what you're creating are is important. I often quote Jim Rohn. I think everybody here probably has probably at least heard of Jim Rohn. He's a great, great coach. He was a great coach. Uh, you could still learn from his all his uh lectures. And he had kind of an odd quote, which was seems a little out of character for him, but he said uh all good will be attacked and all everything of value must be defended. And so I often go back to that over and over again when I'm talking to people about the importance of trust. You know, why is it so important to protect and defend that what we're creating? And it's just it's just the nature of reality, right? Everybody's been most people have been bullied when they were in the schoolyard, so we know that you know you're gonna be attacked one way or the other or your assets. So why would we not want to protect those things? And you know, when it comes to business uh or family, because again, it's all commercial, other than just outright theft, which you know we could agree can happen, there's really three things that you want to protect against. I call them the th the three Asians. So taxation, regulation, and litigation. Okay. And every business owner is going to experience that to some degree, right? Every business is subject to filing taxes and paying taxes. Um, most industries have some regul regulations associated with them. And then, of course, uh there's always the possibility of a lawsuit, whether it's from a customer or a competitor or or a regulator. There's always the opportunity that someone's gonna come in and make a claim. Um, and all three of these can impact the assets and of the business. Okay. So and feel free to stop me, Robert, if you want to ask a question or clarify. I tend to just kind of keep going here, but you know, if you want to ask a question all good.

unknown 6:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

Coming with questions whenever I have one, but that was important also to understand like the scope that you have, that you have earned also throughout your entrepreneurial career. And um, yeah, how how you got there? And that's probably the one thing I'd like to understand about you. I mean, starting at the age of 11, and then um you did not talk about those topics back then. So I'd be curious how did you get to where you're at today? You know that you're actually, you know, your life is basically yeah, talking and and and helping um setting up trust and helping business owners to solve their problems through trust. So what made you make that decision at some point to hop on that? Maybe help us understand the history behind that.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah, amazing. So I discovered my my interest in being kind of like an educator about eight years ago when I decided I wanted to start creating video content for YouTube. This was before I discovered some of these more recent concepts, but I I kind of liked the idea of putting myself out there and you know being being an educator, and that just evolved over the years. And then, of course, uh about five or five years ago when the whole world went into lockdown and a lot of strange and unusual things, kind of head scratchers for me, were happening around the world. I started asking a lot of questions like, why, you know, what is the nature of all of this? How did this all come about? You know, why is why are things unfolding the way they are? And what what can we do about it? And that kind of opened up a whole world to me of uh what I like to call natural law or the the you know or spiritual law, you know, the laws of creating or the operating conditions of reality. In other words, that reality is not just chaotic, there's actually uh operating conditions and things are the way they are, you know, due to laws that are actually in place. Just like gravity pulls down objects, um, and you can't stop that. I mean, you could delay it somehow, or you could work around it, but gravity is always operating. So just like there are physical laws that are always operating, the sun always rises in the morning and sets at night for everyone. Um, so there are there are certain spiritual laws that are in effect, and you know, things are unfolding on the world stage be out of respect for those laws. But if you don't know how it all works, you can be confused, you could be kind of trampled on, you could um essentially get yourself into a lot of trouble.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

And um typical troubles that you have seen in that period of of COVID that kind of triggered that.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Well, everything, everything is based on free will consent. I think this is an important point. You know, there's been a lot of debate about free will, but free will is something that we've been gifted, which means you always have you always have the choice. You could make a good choice, you could make a bad choice. But everything is based on consent, and everything is a contract. So when we use terms like mandate or you're required to do this, that or the other, that's all based on contracts. There has to be some underlying agreement that that that is the foundation for whatever behaviors you're agreeing to either do or not do. So I didn't really understand that or why that would even be the case until I started to study natural law. And what happens in life is you probably heard this expression when the student is ready, the teaching will appear. So it's like my whole life, even since I was a kid, I've I never take anything at face value. I'm just like infinitely curious. I want to get to the bottom of things. So I'm always asking questions like, how does this all work? What is the what are the underlying conditions that allow this to happen? And so in the modern world with so much access to knowledge, especially through YouTube and other platforms, just literally videos just started showing up in my YouTube feed, like, hey, you're gonna want to check this out. And this will explain how natural law works and et cetera, uh, objective morality. Um, so the the occult, where occult just meaning hidden. It's not like something evil, but people are kind of nervous about some of these terms. So I was just like a sponge. It's like, bring it on. I want to learn more and more. And then I started, and then I started to synthesize that with my desire to create content. I just started to teach. And um, and that so I I've been a student and a teacher. Right. And then uh the next layer was, well, why are why am I and many people struggling financially? You know, if there's if we live in an abundant universe, you know, why why is there so much uh, you know, poverty? Why is there like, you know, what people call debt slavery, where you can never seem to get out from under your bills or your debts. Um, so that was kind of like the next layer for me. So I know I understand there's natural law, but like what is perpetuating this kind of you know, financial struggle that you know I and others have struggled with. And that's when I kind of got into the whole world of different legal jurisdictions, and then eventually trusts, private trust law, kind of reveal itself. And everybody's heard of a trust. You've heard the term trust fund babies, that comes up a lot in movies. You've heard um antitrust legislation, um, and people have even heard about trust, but very, very few people go deep into it. Um so let us know.

SPEAKER_03 11:44

How would you explain what a trust is?

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Sure. That's a great question.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

That would be very interesting to learn.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yeah, let's definitely do that. So the trust obviously comes from the word trust, and that's important because trust is kind of like a currency between people. Like you never know what somebody else is gonna do, so you have to trust that they're gonna do it. Like you trusted I was gonna show up today, right? You didn't know for a fact that I was gonna show up for this podcast, but you trusted that I was a man of my word and I was gonna show up. So trust is this important currency that we rely on, right? So I trusted you were gonna run your monthly event, which you did, which was great. Uh so having this currency of trust, so then what is a trust from a legal perspective, you know, as a vehicle? Well, a trust is a special kind of arrangement where you have one party, we call them the grantor, that owns something, something of value, and they say, Look, I want to actually take this property, these assets that I own, and actually I don't want to own them anymore. I said I want to put them into a special vehicle to be managed by someone else for someone else's benefit. So the someone else who manages them, we call them the trustee. Okay. So the trustee is the one who takes those assets, says, Thank you, Mr. Grantor. I'm gonna put these in, you know, I'm gonna hold these assets. It's not for my benefit, right? You're not giving it to me for my benefit. I'm actually gonna manage them for someone else's benefit, like the third party, and that third party is called the beneficiary. Okay. So you have this, so you have some original value, it could be a property, it could be anything at all. It could be intellectual property, it could be a a home, like a house, it could be land, it could be business equipment, whatever it is, the grantor says, I'm putting this in a trust. The trustees are now going to have what's called legal title. So they manage it. And then the beneficiary has what's called equitable or beneficial title. In other words, they get to use it, but they don't own it. They don't, they don't have legal title over it. So we have what's called a split of title. Okay. Normally when you go buy a house, and many people have done this, you get a mortgage, you buy a house, you have what's called full title. You have legal and equitable title. Well, what happens is with the ownership comes liability. That means if you get sued, they could take your house to satisfy the claim. But if you don't have legal and equitable title, they can't, you know, if someone sues you, they can't come take that house. If you're just the beneficiary, house doesn't belong to you. You're still using it, you're benefiting from it, uh, but it can't be taken from you because you don't own it. Same thing with the trustee. The trustee has legal title, but the tr it's the trust that owns the asset, not the trustee. So if somebody sues the trustee, as long as they're acting in good faith, they they can't take that house to satisfy a debt owed by the trustee privately. So so this is where the idea of asset protection comes in in terms of protection from well, particularly litigation, but also other types of Asians, as we talked about.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

Yep, makes total sense. And what would you say are the most typical cases that you can personally see when you work with people and they come with problems to you? What are those problems? And then how would you help them solve those through trusts? Because what I understand, there's many, many different ways to set those trusts up for different purposes, right? Yeah, and I I also wanted to clarify and different jurisdictions where you could set those up, etc., etc.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

That is correct. That is correct. Um most people, uh many families have, you know, some people have hired an attorney to set up a trust. And it's important to understand that's what's called we call a statutory trust. So it's basically operating under the same rules that say a corporation would. Um, so it is a trust, but it also means that because it's statutory, the state, meaning the government, automatically has what's called a security interest in the trust. It's almost like the government has a pot has their hands in the pockets of the trust. So the kinds of trusts that we set up are called non-statutory. Okay. So the government does not automatically have a security interest. It doesn't mean that they can't end up in a court case, but it does mean that they're non-statutory. So they are more private as a result. Um, it also means that you generally wouldn't hire an attorney to set up that kind of trust. You would need to either learn how to set it up yourself, or you could work with, you know, we obviously teach people how to do that. And as you mentioned, Robert, there are different legal jurisdictions. So a private trust that's non-statutory would either be a common law trust, which is probably the most common, uh, or what we do is called an equity trust, because equity is also a legal jurisdiction. And in fact, it's pretty much the highest man-made jurisdiction that there is. It's way above statute, and it's also even above common law. So it just makes it more private, more protected. Again, it's not that it could never end up in a court scenario. It's not like a magic bullet, but it just makes it much more private and more protected. Um, now you asked about use cases. Uh let's let's talk about families. Every, you know, a lot of families own a home. But again, if anything ever happens, if some family member who owns that home ever gets sued, uh, or if they fall back fall back behind on their taxes, or if they have some other financial event that now they they're thinking of going bankrupt, for example, um, that house could be taken away from them to satisfy the claim, right? Or if they if it's under mortgage and they can't keep up with the mortgage payments. Um so what happens is because they own the house, the house can easily be taken. But if the house is in a trust, no matter what happens to them legally or financially, the house cannot be taken to satisfy that claim, right? The other beautiful thing about having a house and a trust is you can keep the same home for generations. Like families now can live in the same home for multiple generations if they should if they just should decide to do that. Okay. Yep. For a business, it's the same but different. I mean, businesses also have liability, right? We're conducting commerce. You know, there's always the opportunity that a customer could file a lawsuit based on some claim, whether it's a real claim or otherwise. Um, businesses, as you talk to business owners, they're always like, How do I reduce my taxes? How do I limit my tax liability? And then some businesses have regulatory, will be subject to different regulations. So normally the business would own all of the assets. So again, you have that kind of same exposure because every corporation, every LLC is co-owned by the state, it's a state-created entity. So the state could very easily come in and say, we're going to take any assets owned by this corporation to satisfy these claims. But when the assets are owned by a private trust, and then the corporation is just using them as a beneficiary or under license, the business no longer owns those assets. So if the business gets sued, those assets cannot be claimed to satisfy the lawsuit because they're not owned by the business.

SPEAKER_03 19:14

Yeah. Couldn't that be done also with another holding company where you just put the assets in and you license the assets to your operational company? And then as long as the corporate veil couldn't be pierced, problem solved?

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Up to a certain extent, but it the holding company, if it's a corporation, the state still has a security interest that it's not completely private. So I mean, using a holding company is a good idea, but it if it's a corporation, it's still going to be registered somewhere and it's going to be a state entity. And there's going to be some kind of registration. So any asset held by that holding company, the state's going to know about it because it's, again, it's a state registered entity. But if you have a private trust that's an unregistered, unincorporated entity, there is no state registration.

unknown 20:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

The only time there would be any kind of public title would be if it's land where there is a title, obviously. Um that's that is a point of exposure, or obviously if there's a bank account, right? But but the way we teach holding trusts is holding trusts do not have bank accounts, and every asset goes into a separate trust. So there's there's kind of like this silo effect where you don't put everything into one trust. Um, so you're again limiting your liability there. Um so holding companies are a good idea, and you could use you can definitely use them even in conjunction with trust, but trusts just provide that extra layer of protection.

SPEAKER_03 20:39

Yep. Okay, makes total sense. And probably there's also differences when it's when the state comes after you or when somebody else sues one of your companies. Um that's what I'm hearing. Is that is it right?

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Yeah, I mean, everything on the public, everything that's happening in the public side or in the statutory realm is basically a claim or an obligation. So in some ways, they're all the same, even though they come from different sources. I mean, everything goes through the court, the statutory courts, and everything is a commercial. You've probably heard the expression all crime is commercial. So, in a way, whether it's coming from the state uh or it's coming from an individual filing through the courts, it's kind of all the same. It's it's some kind of claim, uh, some kind of charge that needs to be addressed, you know, uh facing some public entity, right? Because even if you get sued personally, Robert, it's not you that's being sued, it's your public avatar. It's like your game piece on the public board that's being sued, your name in all capital letters, which is a person, which is a type of corporation. But if we're talking businesses, yes, the business could also be sued. And then indirectly, the owners of the business could be held liable because they're maybe listed as the president or the manager of the LLC. Okay. So that's why sometimes setting up a trust to be the manager of an LLC or to Have like a majority share in a business, it can also limit the liability. Um, but I'm not sure if I answered your question exactly, but um I took a stab at it.

SPEAKER_03 22:11

Yeah, thanks. Oh, absolutely you did. So basically, now we're talking about asset protection. Okay, you have built something of value, or you have bought something of it as a matter of a house, or you have built a business, or you bought the business, and um there is a value to it, and somebody comes after it for whatever reason, trying to claim the thing of value, or part of that thing of value, and then um either you have a way to defend against that or you don't, or you have an expensive way, or you have a less expensive way and make it more expensive for the other person, right? So that's that's what I understand. Please again correct me. But if you have a trust, then um you have a way basically to make it more expensive for probably a lot of those people that might want to come after you, then to say, like, okay, it's not worth it, and you basically deter the problem once people can see there is a trust, or maybe they cannot even see it because it's an anonymous, anonymous one, but they can maybe figure out I don't know what's going on, it's more work, we have to pierce this, and then we have to get to the next level and figure out what's behind that. That's part of the game as well. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

And also we what the way we operate as an organization is the trustees. We have a whole training program to train people to become trustees. And the only entry point, I mean, you don't have to come with certain credentials. The only entry point is you have to just be of good character. You know, you have to be someone who's trustworthy, uh, someone who can be counted on. That's really the raw materials that we work with. Everything else can be learned. Um, but we we train our trustees and we do a lot of training around equity. I mentioned equity is a legal jurisdiction. So the power of learning equity, whether you're a trustee or otherwise, is when you do go to court, you have now have a way to kind of rise above the tit for tat of the court and learn how to discharge the case, whatever it is. Again, it it could even be irrelevant if there's a trust involved, but you can learn how to discharge that public obligation and and just be left alone. So trustees would do that in the case of a trust. Um, and uh if you're a corporate officer or someone representing a company, you could learn to do that as well, or even if it's just a family member. So it is pretty advanced. That's why we're again an education organization, because it takes time. I wouldn't say it it doesn't take years. I mean, you know, with three to six months of study with what we teach, you're gonna level up your game significantly. But it is, it is obviously education. It's we could call it almost graduate level education. Um, but instead of hiring attorneys, which is fine if you want to hire an attorney, you can do that. But instead of hiring attorneys, you can become what's called an attorney in fact. So you're not a licensed bar card carrying attorney. Um you're not licensed to do to you know practice law in the state of whatever it is, um, but instead you're just an attorney in fact because you've got your, you know, you've got your Black's Law dictionary, and you know, you've you're learning the law, you're learning how the law works up to a certain extent, and then you're hiring trustees who are are also educated to kind of protect everything for you. Um, so it goes pretty deep, but asset protection is important because, like you said, Robert, we're creating things of value. So it's just like adding extra shields. So most people, um, like I said, you know, if we go back to the big three, most people would hire attorneys, you know, to file countersuits or to represent them in court. Um when it comes to regulation, I mean, really all you can do there is other than just trying to work around the regulations, just comply um or get professional license insurance. Um, yeah, or insurance policies. Those are kind of the three, three things. And I'm not saying people shouldn't do those things. I mean, those are all best practices. So if if you feel the need to hire an attorney, do that. If you get get professional insurance, right? And so forth, be compliant, hire tax accountants to limit your corporation's tax liability. But when you start to move your assets and your funds into the private and trusts, all three of those things are protected in an even deeper layer that may not require you to do those things.

SPEAKER_03 26:33

Yep. I'd be curious also. And maybe cut you off. It's all good. Like also, I could imagine listeners are curious about that. Like, how much of value would you need to have built, acquired in some way so that it makes sense to start thinking about setting up a trust? Like, do you need to have tens of millions of dollars? Do you need to have a couple of millions of dollars in value? Where does it start? Uh typically for somebody to literally, you know, become a profitable type of investment. Yeah. Does it cost time, money, et cetera, to protect something? So when does it start to make sense?

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Yeah, that that's a great question. So um, like let's just talk about like a solopreneur or you know, an entrepreneur is kind of like a single-member LLC kind of a, you know, they may have a virtual team, but it's pretty much them. You know, maybe they're making six figures, maybe multiple six figures. So a question would be like, so well, isn't this going to be really expensive to set this all up? And, you know, at what point has it become even valuable? So I would say, first of all, if you have something of value, it's worth protecting. You know, would you not uh do not people take out professional insurance? Right? Do people even even life insurance? Um so whatever value you have, it's worth protecting. Okay. And it's always a best, it's a best practice to think about it early. So the next question is well, this sounds it's got to be super expensive. You know, that's why only wealthy families use trust. Well, that may have been true up to a certain point in the past, but we have our organization has specifically made it as in as accessible as possible. I mean, for as little as, you know, around$33 a month, you know, we have memberships and programs where you can learn, you know, probably 50 to 80% of what you need or more. And then if you hire the right trustees who are also trained, whether by us or someone else, they're gonna be able to fill in the gaps anyway, the other, you know, 20 to 50%. And then over time you keep learning because it's ongoing. I mean, everybody's busy. So maybe you're just dedicating a few hours a week to study. You know, you're gonna get to 100% knowledge, but it's just it's gonna take the time it takes. So the only barrier of entry is the desire to learn, and maybe, you know, 30 to 70 bucks a month if you want to start something like that. Um, there are more expensive services. You can hire us to set up an entire ecosystem for you if you're really, really busy. And yeah, that'll set you back, you know, that'll be a larger investment of, you know, at least several thousand dollars. But for solopreneurs who are already investing thousands of dollars into different, you know, uh solutions, once they see the value of this, that could it could be a very valuable investment. It just depends. But you could just go the do-it-yourself route, which we obviously encourage because we want people to know how it works and educate themselves. So there is no lower point um where it could make sense. And it's it's all about being proactive because you never know what's the what the future is gonna hold. Just like you know, people don't buy insurance after something has happened, people buy insurance before something happens, right?

SPEAKER_03 29:56

Right, right. And if somebody did it, the do-it-yourself route. So there's okay, let's say you you have learned how that works, how to set it up, but still there's certain costs when you set it up, right? Um, with whatever entities that are involved, um, can you walk us through that as well? Like maybe there, I mean there's differences now, okay, whatever jurisdictions, etc. But what would be a basic use case if you want to set up the trust in in the USA, let's say, and have a basic idea what range that could cost if you set it everything up by yourself, or you know, if you change to foreign jurisdictions, right? And um what would cost be there? Yeah, just to get a basic idea.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Sure, that's a great question. Um, just like businesses, trusts do have some basic operating costs. So you would have a mailing address, you would have, you know, potentially a physical location that's not really required. It could be, you know, a mailing address. Um, you're probably gonna have a website, email, phone number, et cetera, et cetera. So there's gonna be some ongoing, very basic costs, just like with a business. Um, uh, some trusts will have bank accounts, some won't. So you'll have that banking relationship. I would say the biggest ongoing cost for trusts would be paying the trustees or having the trustees pay themselves. But the way that usually works is what the trusts, if you, especially if you have an LLC, let's just keep it really simple. Let's say you've been LLC. So the trust now man, one of the trusts will manage the LLC. So to do that, the trust charges a fee. Just like if you, just like if you're the CEO of your own LLC, you basically get paid to do that. Well, now the trust is getting paid to manage it, some fee that's that's negotiated. Um, so that allows the trust to earn funds that can now pay for the trustees and and the ongoing fees. But so trustees, uh, it's a profession, um, but trustees might only need to meet once a month. So maybe they're just getting paid a small compensation for meeting once a month. And you as the business owner are still you're running everything behind the scenes. This is how we teach it. So you're if you're already being paid a salary as the business owner, you're probably going to continue to be paid, maybe just in a different structure. And then the trustees, maybe, like I said, if they're meeting once a month, maybe you're just there's a small monthly fee associated with that, right? And it would only that would only get bigger if if if you start to deal with like a much bigger trust system. But for small trust systems, it maybe it's I mean, it's hard to give an exact number, but maybe it's just a couple hundred dollars a month to to start to operate everything.

unknown 32:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Okay, in terms of ongoing costs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:39

Yeah. But basically the costs can be very low, like to to kind of um yeah, put some numbers on it, like like you said, some infrastructure costs, like setting up email addresses, but yeah, and it's all reducing your tax liability. Then um you have the trustee, but it's really very low. So that's the entrance very low.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

It can be. Yeah, it can be. You have a lot of um, you know, the demand for trustees is gonna is skyrocketing. So you're gonna have a lot of like people who don't have like long track trackers, which is trustees, they don't have like a lot of credentials. They're not gonna be able to charge huge fees. They're not gonna charge like$250 an hour like attorneys do. They may charge, you know,$25,$50,$30,$50 up to$100 an hour, uh, depending on their level of experience. You know, so it's gonna be less expensive than hiring an attorney in most cases.

SPEAKER_03 33:34

And and and here you opened uh a point that I'd be curious digging in real quick, because you said if I heard it correctly, the trust is meeting with you know who whoever's set up the trust. The business owner, yeah. Yeah, the business owner in this case. And um there is this interesting thing, like there would also be like in some cases at least, if there's if the business owner doesn't have control over the trust, makes a difference versus when he has control. Like for example, there's something called irrevocable trust, right? Correct. You give you give you give up your okay, I don't own it and I don't control it, right? That that type of thing. It's in the trust, and now, but if you meet with the trustee, um, in certain cases, I could imagine that uh might cause problems because you might uh induce like indirect control over the assets, and therefore could the trust be pierced in some cases.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Not the way we set it up, because your name's not gonna appear anywhere on the trust. So you in a way you're kind of controlling things indirectly behind the scenes. This is what makes this strategy so powerful, and probably why the IRS doesn't like us doing stuff like this.

SPEAKER_03 34:47

So basically let's let's let's hop on exactly that point, because uh there could be an opening for some people to think, okay, I'm gonna save on taxes a little bit here, but then there are legal ways to do that, and there's illegal ways to do that, because it definitely don't everything we teach is legal. Yeah, so yeah, every every important if we're talking about the legal ways, but then um yeah, everything we do is legal.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

We d we would never violate any we never uh overtly or covertly violate any of the statutes. We're simply taking things out of the statutory jurisdiction and putting them into private. And if things do end up in court, we have ways to deal with that, you know, ways to discharge it in the courts, but we're not gonna ever challenge or you know do something illegal in any way.

SPEAKER_03 35:34

Yeah, and and and so I assume documentation matters and uh Correct.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:40

So that how would you also document that uh, you know, in case that makes a difference, that there is, you know, no control by whoever, you know, set the thing up?

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Yeah. So the simplest way that's a great question.

SPEAKER_03 35:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

Yeah. So first of all, when let's just let's just use you as an example, Robert. Um so I don't know how you have your business structure, but for simplicity, let's say we're dealing with an LLC and you're the manager. Um now you're setting up these trusts and you have trustees, not you. So maybe I'm one of your trustees, maybe somebody else is. Okay. So your question is, well, how do you make it so that you can't be linked back to control of the trust? Well, it's very simple. You're you're not a trustee. Okay. Oh, you can't.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

And if there is I could influence the trustee, I could say, eh?

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Yeah, but that's a private contract that that's not uh part of the trust, right? The trust itself, remember the trust is is declared as a as a legal document called the trust indenture. But your name doesn't appear anywhere on that document. Okay. So you cannot be linked. Now, I mean you could be a beneficiary technically. Uh but even that's not actually in the trust indenture, it's a separate document to protect your identity. So really we want to protect the identity of the beneficiaries as much as possible. But let's just say you weren't a beneficiary. Your name doesn't appear anywhere in that trust. Now, if if the trust ends up in court, the trustees will definitely need to appear in court to defend the trust for sure. But we're gonna we're teaching them how to do that through equity, but your name doesn't appear anywhere on there. So you can't be accused of being of indirectly controlling the trust. You have independent trustees who don't have a beneficial interest in the corporation. Okay. Very, very important.

SPEAKER_03 37:33

They act upon whatever has been written in the trust. Okay, these are the correct.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Yeah. And there's some, obviously, there's a some interpretation because you can't write down every single scenario that would ever come up. There has to be some discretion. Uh otherwise it would be impossible to do it. But um so there's there's some level of good judgment, but there's there's a lot of guidelines, right? But the trustees have the ability, like you're the expert, Robert. The trustees, you know your business better than they do. They just know how to protect the assets based on an indenture. So they count on you to tell them how to run everything and to actually to continue to run everything. So that's why they need to contract with you to be basically in it, we call it a trust advisor. You know, it's a private contract with the trust where you're now basically running everything behind the scenes indirectly, but you're not a trustee. So it's very uh it's very powerful when people wrap their heads around this. Um, and like I said, on the public side, they don't like this, uh, but they can't really stop it because we have an unlimited right to contracts. So as long as it's legal and lawful, um, it's okay. I mean, they're gonna they may still try to pierce a trust. I mean, that that does happen, but your trustees are supposed to be well-versed in equity so they can deal with that.

SPEAKER_03 38:56

Uh, quite interesting. Okay, I guess we we went down the rabbit hole quite a bit now.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

I could talk, I could talk on and on about this. I love this stuff. I mean, it's so it's so powerful. So, yeah, we could definitely go on for a which is which is awesome.

SPEAKER_03 39:12

I'd um rather for this podcast, I'm gonna be happy to you know find another opportunity at some point in the future to bring this topic trusts up again and and also bring you again on the podcast. But for for this podcast, let me ask you kind of a a closing question. Um like who would you say should um you know at least think about maybe talking to you or at least literally starting digging into the topic trust online? Um if that even if it's starting with Google or Chat GPT until you know, figure making up their mind, okay, I need help, potentially at some point because it gets too complex. So, how could a person let me specify it even more that potentially already has figured out okay, it could make sense for me to you know set up a trust at some point, and maybe the person has already Googled, maybe the person has already used Chat GPT, has figured out, okay, now there is a whole new world opening up uh of complexity, and maybe there is those five different paths, and then the whole complexity opens up in all of those paths. I need direction, and I need somebody who knows how this works, who went down all of those rabbit holes already, like somebody like you. When when is that point there that it makes sense literally to switch from the mode of okay, I'm gonna research this all by myself and I talk to somebody like you, David, and um, you know, take the quicker road to figuring out what I really need, and then setting it up myself or you know, hiring somebody to set it up for me, you know, whatever comes as a step after that. But what would be that point for that person to know, okay, it's time now to stop researching and uh rather contacting potentially you baby?

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Yeah, that's a that's a good question. It's it's challenging to answer that definitively because there's so many parameters. I would say there's certain indicators that it's the right time. One is you're you're experiencing a growth spurt, like your business is about to skyrocket, or you see like a sudden increase in business, like you know that it's about to grow faster than it has, and you know, you're gonna be taking things to the next level. Um, that would be one indicator. Another is if you've already been dealing with some issue, you've there's already been a lawsuit or a pending lawsuit, um, or you've been hammered with the taxes, or some some event has happened, or the regulator, some some event has already kind of opened your eyes to the fact that there's the potential of risk there. Um that would be another indicator. Um But like I was saying earlier, Robert, you know, the the entry level is is is I mean, you could be spending just a couple hours a week on this and it's gonna be, you're gonna be leveling up. So the barrier of entry is very low. Um but I would say, you know, the clients who hire us directly, they're either already dealing with a regulatory or lawsuit issue, um, or there's something big looming on the corner. It's like, you know, I better do something quick, or uh or this is gonna get really ugly. And what I'm trying to say is I want people to avoid that. So I want people to be proactive. Just like when you're setting up your business, you follow best practices. You open you get professional insurance policies. Um you make the best decisions as far as how to structure it. All right. You're careful about your spending. So it's the same thing. I want people to be proactive. So start studying this material early so that you don't have to rush at the last minute and it it's not going to cost you more because you've kind of been quietly behind the scenes, been educating yourself about how it all works. So that that's kind of why I encourage people to get in and start to study you know ear sooner rather than later.

SPEAKER_03 43:17

Yeah, absolutely. I I'd agree with you. And I'd be curious um for everybody who's interested in contacting you, what would be the best ways to do so?

SPEAKER_01 43:27

So I am on LinkedIn. I can share the I know you you and I are both big fans of LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_03 43:33

So put your LinkedIn link for the podcast also. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

And then we have a a link called um, we just call it the freedom.studio. There happens to be a.studio domain. So the freedom.studio is just links to everything we offer, all of our social media, our YouTube, our website, anything people would want is you can find it there.

SPEAKER_03 43:56

Okay. Great. Freedom.studio or looking for

SPEAKER_01 44:00

The freedom.studio, yeah. Or just connect with me on LinkedIn. I l I really enjoy LinkedIn. So if you're if you're like uh if people are like you, Robert, and they enjoy using LinkedIn, I'm always happy to connect with people there.

SPEAKER_03 44:13

Yeah, 100%. And we're gonna link everything on the show notes as well. And uh again, David, that was a super interesting conversation. Loved going down those rabbit holes together with you, learned a lot. I hope the same is true for whoever listened in. And um, yeah, feel free to contact David for more. I'm excited. David, we're staying in touch. Thanks for hopping on the podcast with me.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

You got it, Robert. I really appreciate you inviting me. And yeah, if people want to hear more, I'm always happy to come back and have another conversation. Really do appreciate it.

unknown 44:47

Cool.

SPEAKER_03 44:48

All the best. Cheers.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

Thanks, Robert.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Go to rock and rollyourdreams.com forward slash podcast.