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Steven Jarvis, CPA (00:51)
Hello everyone, and welcome to the next episode of the Retirement Tax Services Podcast Financial Professionals Edition. I’m your host, Steven Jarvis, CPA, and I am so excited for this week’s episode because I have a good friend back on the show. Micah Shilanski is joining me once again and…Micah, I’m just gonna start by immediately calling you out on something. So you ready for this?

Micah Shilanski (01:121)
Steven, I’ve been so excited about having this podcast. I thought it was going to be a friendly podcast, but that’s fine. Start lobbing the attacks. This will be even more fun. Go for it. What do you got? Okay.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (01:19)
I think we’ll get to the friendly part. you know, Micah, earlier this year, you probably noticed that a big tax law change happened. A big piece of that tax law change was that tax rates that were supposed to go up in 2026 are no longer going up. And my immediate thought was, hey, wait a second. How many times have I heard Micah explain to his clients that, hey, tax rates are gonna go up in 2026. We know they’re going up. Let’s do Roth conversions. You explained it more eloquently than that. But the general theme was we know tax rates are going up. Now they’re not. How are those client conversations going for you now, Micah?

Micah Shilanski (01:43)
I’m just confused actually, because that’s not what I told my clients at all. Like I told my clients very clearly that I knew what was going to happen with tax laws. I knew it was going to happen with the election. I knew what Congress was going to do in the future and that we were all planning for this because I knew exactly what was going to happen. No, I didn’t know any of that stuff. No, you are a hundred percent spot on. Uh, now one of the things that I tell our clients all the time is we plan for the law we have today and when the law changes. Great news, we’re to have the same questions, but now my answers are going to change because the laws changed. And that’s the same situation you’re in. Now I’m about ready to get into surge. No great news. I’ve already had several of these meetings, so I kind of know how they’re going to go, but I’m about ready to see all of my clients. And that is one of the things I get very excited to tell them is great news. Your taxes are not going up, but Steven, you bring up a good point. Does that advisor head trash? I haven’t found it with clients yet, but advisors now have this head trash thing. Holy crap. I told them the tax rates are going to go up. Now they’re not going to go up.

Micah Shilanski (02:52)
This is like telling the client that the market’s going to go down. Like eventually it’s going to go down and we need to have a plan for when the market goes down. Not if the market’s down. We need to have a plan for when taxes go up, right? Not if taxes go up. I don’t think in the next 50 years, we’re never going to see a tax increase. I would be elated to be wrong by the way, right? Which I have told my clients in the past of taxes don’t go up. I’m going to be jumping for joy. I have no problem with that.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (03:19)
Yeah, yeah, and jokes aside, because Micah, I take a very similar approach to you as I’m talking to clients, as I’m working with advisors of, hey, we’ve got to work with the law that we have today based on the information we know now. And then the other piece, I know you’re really big on this too, is we’re making long-term plans here. Now, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I would guess that similar to myself, you’ve never sat with a client and said, hey, we’re doing a Roth conversion because right now this year it’s going to save all of your taxes and it’s only this one year strategy so let’s go get it done. wait we better get it done right now because tax rates are about to go up like that. That was never the conversation. It’s looking at this long-term picture and saying okay, what do we expect your situation to be now versus in the future and does it make sense to get money into a tax-free bucket?

Micah Shilanski (03:59)
Steve, this is a diversification conversation, right? And I know you know that. So if you can, our listeners out there can picture in our mind those tax buckets that we draw out with our clients, right? The first one’s ordinary income tax, which is the worst type of tax to pay because it’s the highest. Then you have a tax-deferred account, and that’s your top level. Below the ordinary income bucket, we always draw the capital gains. And then below the tax deferred, we draw our tax free bucket, right? And this is really important because this talks about diversification. So when a client is doing planning and all of their income is in those top two buckets, that’s not diversification. And so we need to change that. So let’s bring a real-life example that shortly after the One big, beautiful bill act passed. I had a couple of clients reach out. Now these clients were one that I was pulling teeth trying to get them to do Roth conversions because lo and behold, taxes would go up in the future. And now taxes got extended. Well, what happened inside of there? There was a senior tax deduction that if you’re, if you’re a senior over 65 and your income is below 150, then all of sudden you get this bonus standard deduction. Well, lo and behold, I had a client that their income was over 150. Now, Steven, as you know, that bonus $6,000 deduction doesn’t stay around forever. That’s not a permanent thing.

Micah Shilanski (05:06)
So now that Roth conversion, we’re able to use some of those funds to get their income below 150. And so now they’re going to be able to use that $6,000 per person deduction. So the clients elated that we did a Roth conversion and that didn’t happen because I knew that was going to be in the bill. That happened because we wanted diversification and I wanted to be prepared for when changes happen.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (05:276)
No, I love that example because again, I know you’re really big on this too, but as we’re framing this to clients, the way I describe it to people is, hey, tax rates can do one of three things. They can go up, they can go down, and they can stay the same. And if they go up or stay the same, we’re better off in Roth because it creates flexibility. So, and I actually, I’m like you, I get really excited when I see these real world examples play out of why this is so valuable because… Yeah, I mean, sure, when we made the plan, was for an unknowable and unforeseen change that could happen. But just working with so many clients and seeing how these things go, at some point, an unexpected income need is gonna come up and having that bucket to be able to draw from and say, whether it’s tax planning, just cashflow management, whatever it is, like that’s a huge benefit to the client in that moment.

Micah Shilanski (06:10)
100 % right and having being there for the client, maybe they’re gonna sell a property. Maybe they get an inheritance. Maybe they need to pull a lot of money out in the future, right? All of those those reasons are still reasons we should be talking about Roths and the power of Roth conversions. Now, I’m not a huge fan of converting everything to a Roth IRA. I have heard some advisors talk about that. I just can’t wrap my head around that one from a tax savings. Maybe it fits for some clients, but having some portion in a Roth, there’s a good argument for that.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (06:386)
Yeah, I mean, to me, part of that goes back to if you have a year where you have zero taxable income, it’s probably due to poor planning. And that works in all directions. If you get into your retired years and you have zero dollars in taxable income ever, like, I think the only way that could happen is if you were all in Roth. And well, now we’re missing out on other potential deductions that would have happened that year. So yeah, I’m definitely with you on that. Micah, allegedly with this most recent tax law change, these tax, the, current tax rates that are lower than we’ve seen in the past are now permanent. So does this tax law change? Yes, very with very sarcastic air quotes. Does this tax law change impact at all how you will be approaching Roth conversions with your clients as you head into this next search cycle?

Micah Shilanski (07:19)
Boy, the concept is gonna be really similar, Steven. Now we’re gonna have updated tax proposals, right, or projections, excuse me. And so we’re gonna be able to show updated numbers. I am gonna show them a little difference. We were building it in our software, because I just like to geek out on that stuff about what the tax increase would have been and how much this saved us. And also we kind of kept our old code in there so we can see what the taxes were. under the current because of course some brackets got wider some things changed a little bit deductions changed a little bit so it’ll be really fun to shoot well I think it’ll be fun clients probably won’t care but it was I’m gonna enter it out for a little bit on that about what those tax savings are and then it’s still that question in the next 10 years because that’s a time frame I like to look on what income is the client gonna need and what are their taxes gonna be going forward. A lot of my clients pre RMD are still gonna see it increase in taxable income because of their RMD distributions. So we’re still going to have those same tax planning conversations about doing Roth conversions. Maybe it’s QCDs that we’re to do. Maybe it’s donor advice funds. Maybe we’re going to add some other elements into these conversations, but it’s still going to be there.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (08:18)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I saw what the bill finally came out at, it did not change my overall philosophy on Roth conversions. It didn’t change my excitement about them. It didn’t change, like you’re describing, my commitment to evaluating for a specific client situation, because it’s not every client should have all of their money in Roth always. Like, this has to be an evaluation on a client-specific situation. Micah, this is changing gears just a little bit, but a comment you made in there, made me wanna just highlight this for people listening because I think some people will miss this. You talked about wanting to highlight for clients the change that would have happened basically. We were on track for a tax rate increase this next year and so with all the headlines and talk about this most recent tax law change, most clients won’t really notice a change at tax time unless someone points it out to them.

Micah Shilanski (09:03)
Correct.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (09:04)
And so I’m really excited to have those conversations, but talk a little bit more about how you’re thinking about that, Micah.

Micah Shilanski (09:98)
Well, one thing I haven’t seen yet, but has often happened, whatever there’s a tax law change is W4s get screwed up from the employer from, Steven’s never happened. Steven’s laughing. He’s like, no, no, my God, that never happens. Like whatsoever. What are you even talking about? Um, so I’m using this as a great planning opportunity of saying, Hey, great news. Your employer, your Schwab, your social security or whatever probably didn’t make any mistakes with this. However, since withholdings, uh, because there was a tax law change generally with holdings change, and let’s review your withholdings and make sure you’re still on track for taxes. That’s a solid value add. Even if my answer comes back, great news, you’re on track for taxes this year. The client knows we reviewed it and looked over it. And Steven, as you and I know, this is something that gets screwed up all the times with the holdings. There doesn’t have to be a tax law change for withholdings to get screwed up. So I always want to review that. My why is because of this new tax act that changed. And I started talking about this, and I forgot your original question. So going back to that, it’s why am I still gonna have this kind of same philosophy that’s gonna, or why am I gonna show that the comparison of the tax savings that’s gonna be there is I wanna show them how much this law benefited them. This isn’t to get into political conversation, right? This is saying, hey, you were on track to pay X, but now you’re gonna pay Y because of the law changes. And again, we don’t get into politics, but I explain how the law works and how it affects them.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (10:27)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and Micah, I think that’s so important, political side of it, you know, setting that aside because taxes are so painful and confusing to begin with. And so, and we’re already seeing it. In fact, literally just this week, I got a message from one of our mutual clients who will not in any way be impacted by the conversations around social security and how it is or isn’t taxed, but they still have the question, right? And so this is going to be a surge cycle, a tax filing season where there are just a higher volume of questions that we either can proactively help address with our clients and help them understand, okay, here’s the planning we’re doing, here’s where you’re benefiting, here’s what things we need to be aware of, or you’re letting them figure it out on Google, you’re letting some other advisor potentially prospect with those types of questions. Like we need to take advantage of this as a chance to say, hey, this thing happened that everyone’s aware of, and then let’s get into the planning that’s really gonna make a difference for you.

Micah Shilanski (11:154)
Eventually AI will catch up with this, Steven, but so far AI is still wrong with tax advice. So wrong. Right. And I do love running it through there than actually doing the math and seeing how off it actually is. So this is something that it’s really hard for them to get clear information because whether they Google it and read an article and maybe that article is written about a proposal of the tax law change, not the actual tax law change. Right. And so this is a lot of value that we’re going to be able to bring up. And when we’re addressing this, got to understand that it’s even, know you know this and you do it so well with taxpayers is this is a real concern for clients. So we can’t undermine anything that they’re bringing up. Like, Hey, Micah, I heard social security is tax free. How come it’s not tax free anymore? Okay. Well, look, It’s not my fault. Social Security is taxed or not taxed, right? There’s nothing to do with me. I am just the source of the information that’s going to be here, but I need to address that. Like, I can definitely understand what a concern Social Security being taxed is. And I know there was a lot of talk about that in proposed legislation. and Mr and Mrs client, this is why we pay a little bit of attention to proposed information. We don’t focus on it too much. I focus on legislation that’s passed actual law because this is what’s actually going to affect you. So great news, we looked at it and this is how it’s going to affect you going forward. The reason I like to use that language, Steven, and I know you do the same, is because the next time there’s a proposed law, I’m gonna get a bazillion questions on it and my answer’s gonna be the same. Great news, Mr. and Mrs. Client. I pay a little bit of attention to proposed legislation, but we both know what’s being proposed isn’t actually what’s passed. Once it’s passed, we’re gonna read the act and we’re gonna know how it affects you.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (12:45)
I always like to slip in my jokes in that conversation of Congress doesn’t return my phone call, so I don’t actually get any input on the process either. I’ve got some ideas for them.

Micah Shilanski (12:54)
I get text messages from them all bloody time, but yes, they don’t return my phone calls.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (12:57)
No, no, I’ve got plenty of ideas for him. I don’t know that any of them will get implemented. But yeah, there’s so much opportunity to add value to clients here. And whether that’s our existing clients or we think about our prospecting process, taxes are top of mind when a tax law change like this happens. And for most people, it’s in a negative way, which means that as a proactive advisor focused on these things, you have the opportunity to come in and solve that pain and provide value. And even if it doesn’t change, immediately change, make some drastic change in what they’re gonna do with their taxes, you’ve provided clarity, you’ve helped them understand what’s going to happen next, you’ve given them a path forward. Those are all very, very valuable things.

Micah Shilanski (13:31)
Steven, I’m going to use it a lot, know, I’ve started to use it with some of the prospects that after this had passed and say, hey, has your current advisor talked to you about how to blend your distributions to make the most out of the tax law changes that have taken place? No, really. Now, this is also a week after it passed, by the way, so it was great for them to bring in. But it’s like, really, they hadn’t brought that up yet. OK, well, let’s make sure we’re reviewing that. So those are things that I’m absolutely going to bring up. The change in charitable distributions, right? That’s another thing. And I know this isn’t all about the one big, beautiful bill, but there’s a lot of little things that each one of them don’t make a substantial difference, but it’s all the client’s money. And so I’m very focused around every penny they pay in taxes and want to reduce that as much as possible. I cannot stand it when a fricking CPA comes out there and says, why can’t they make enough money? Just pay the tax. Screw you. Right? This is not your money. This is the client’s money. That is not an acceptable answer. They got to pay what they are legally required to pay. I have no problem with that. But our job is to help them pay as least as they have to legally.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (14:302)
Yeah, like it’s funny that you bring that up as well, because I feel like I’ve noticed that several times recently and it seems similar wording of, well, they can afford it. And it’s like, oh, that’s not your choice. Because for years now, we’re going to get off on a little bit of a tangent here. For years now, the language I’ve used with my kids is we choose not to afford that when we talk about spending money on things, because that’s how we look at it for myself. And I’m never going to make that choice for someone else’s money. And so you’re absolutely right. As we look at the changes in the big, beautiful bill. Most of them, all of them, they came with these phase outs and provisions. Like there isn’t just this blanket across the board, here’s some, other than the tax rates not going up. All these other, especially new ideas, we’ll take the salt cap deduction, which you probably don’t care about as much being in Alaska, but I know you have clients all over, so you’ll have clients. but I was having a conversation with a client not just.

Micah Shilanski (15:12)
We always have deducted our state income taxes, like 100 % we deduct. I don’t care if they’re itemized deduction, standard deduction, we always deduct those.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (15:20)
A weeks ago, we were talking about what to expect for this coming tax filing season. And they brought up the salt deduction because they’re in a high tax state. They were super excited. And I was as, as much as I don’t like being the bearer of bad news, I was so glad that we’re having a proactive conversation in the summer and not me telling them in March, actually that extra $30,000 you thought you were going to deduct, you make too much money, whatever the heck that means. And you’re not getting any of that. And so we do have to be really aware and not just get sucked into the headlines. We can’t just get pulled in of, well, now there’s an above the line charitable deduction, let’s all go benefit from that. It’s okay, pump the brakes, let’s make sure we understand what that means, because it’s not actually above the line, it’s not gonna affect your adjusted gross income, and by the way, that doesn’t come in until 2026. So we can’t just take the fluff articles that AI wrote for everybody so that they could get their social media clicks, like we have to understand how these things impact our clients.

Micah Shilanski (16:16)
Yeah, it really does. Steven, kind of fun, I was working on a business transaction a while ago and I did have one of the professionals on the call tell me, you make enough money, just pay for it. And I said, if you say that again, I will fire you on the spot. And it was like four people on the call and it just all got real quiet. said, no, but we’re really clear. Like, I will terminate you on the spot if you ever say that again. I was like, that is so rude to come out and say. And I get so passionate about it because I’m so sick of…professionals not doing their job and it costs clients money and they don’t care because it’s not theirs. Right? And at the end of the day, that’s what it is. Like, leaving tax deductions on the table because you are too lazy to bring them up is you not doing your job. And so understanding these things, but, but I love what you said about getting ahead of these things with clients about knowing how these deductions are going to work and, and having a realistic tax projection for them sooner, which is the benefit of false surge coming up, right? You’re going to have that tax projection for them. Hey, are they phased out of these deductions? Right? Are they not? What’s our charitable plan for next year? Everyone’s going to be talking about the extra whatever thousand, know, the dollar amount, whatever the extra charitable deduction you can have in 2026. Well, that doesn’t apply just yet, but I can guarantee it. Clients are going to come in thinking that applies. Now I don’t want to answer that question in April of next year. I want to bring that up now of what’s our charitable planning for the next several years. How to take advantage of it.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (17:31)
Yeah, as long as we’re on this topic of being proactive, it’s probably a good time to remind everyone that in general, most tax professionals are very rear view mirror focused. They’re very focused on what happened last year and how do we get that taken care of, in part because that’s what their clients ask them for. But why that’s particularly important in this conversation is that for most of your clients, if you aren’t proactively talking about taxes, their tax professional probably isn’t either until February or March, and then that’s just an opportunity to get thrown under the bus because something wasn’t already done. And so at RTS with the advisors that we work with and by extension the clients, I mean, as we start sharing communications for this upcoming filing season, which will happen before the end of the year, we are going to be covering some of these topics. We’re gonna make sure that people know that we’re addressing the big beautiful bill for them. Here’s things they do or don’t need to do, how we’re collaborating with their advisor.

Steven Jarvis (18:21)
But Micah, I mean, we work with a lot of clients together. So obviously we are collaborating on the ones we do work together, but you also have clients that work with other CPAs. So how do you think about those other clients who don’t work with a proactive CPA and how you’re going to set them up for success for this coming filing season or what you can do to kind of make that a little less painful for them?

Micah Shilanski (18:38)
Well, one of the things is we get a benefit, and I know a lot of your listeners do as well, is we are holistic advisor, right? We look at the entire client’s financial picture. Why is this so important? We get involved with their charitable giving. We get involved with how they’re spending money. We get involved with where they bank at and how they move money, et cetera. Why is that important? As we all know, all of those affect your taxes in some way, right? And what I don’t know about some things, that’s what pains me the most, Steven, is because that’s an easy way of missing it. But if I can see it on my radar, now we can plan for it. So number one, making sure your, your clients know you’re the four one one for anything revolving in dollar amount. And I always tell my clients before you move any large sum of money, make sure you pick up the phone and call me. And then I always get the question, well, what’s the large sum of money? Number one, anything you think is a large sum of money. Number two, if it’s a five figures, right? You know, or excuse me, six figures then you need to be picking up the phone and we need to chatting before we move the money. And that really ingrains clients to communicate a lot of these things with me where I’m not putting the burden on them to know the tax law.

Micah Shilanski (19:37)
I’m putting the burden on them. is, before you take action in these things, call me. And then we can figure out the best way to do it. Maybe it’s as simple as, a, as a donation, they’re going to make a $10,000 donation this year, which is fantastic, but they got some highly appreciated stock. Boy, let’s use a donor advice fund instead, right? So before they send out that money, there’s a better way to do it because I’ve ingrained my clients to communicate with us first before that money goes out. So I’d say that’s the biggest thing as advisors you need to do is that’s how you get ahead of it. And then to your question about how do I work with the non-planning CPAs, once I get ahead of this, then I can start communicating with the CPA. Hey, Bob’s CPA, I’m working with Jane. You know, she’s looking at making a $10,000 contribution.
I really thought a donor advice fund might be appropriate, but hey, you’re the tax expert. Here’s your basis. Here’s what I’m thinking. Here’s how it’s gonna work. I think this may be appropriate. What are your thoughts on this, right? Now, depending on my relationship, it’s gonna be longer or shorter depending on that, but I’m gonna reach out to the CPA in advance and try to get their blessing on it. Steven, it’s really hard though for CPAs to give a clear answer whether they like an idea or not. I don’t know if you’ve ran into this before, not being a CPA, but I generally get a vague answer back.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (20:43)
Yeah, that is the tendency that I see. A couple months ago, we started doing twice monthly office hours for all of our premier members, which has been great and has been really well received, in part for that reason that I meet so many advisors who can’t find CPAs who will have proactive conversations with them, who will regularly meet with them, or return their phone calls or emails. And that’s really what we were trying to solve, which is to help advisors be able to get more definitive answers on a more regular basis. And part of what that’s done has reinforced to me like I get why tax professionals are hesitant but to me that doesn’t mean it’s not solve solvable because as a tax professional since you’ve been trained to be very rear-focused you’ve been trained that hey there is a right answer And so if you ask me to think into the future What I’m gonna immediately start thinking of is all of the assumptions that I need to make all the other information I need to have so for for people listening that might have seemed super casual how you described that email But you I mean you were very intentional about some points you hit on.

Steven Jarvis (21:36)
You’re talking about what the value is, what some of the assumptions you’ve already made are, what the base, like you’re giving them all this information and then you’re asking for their input. You’re not telling them that you’ve already done it. And so ideally you would be able to build relationships with any CPA where you can say, okay, here’s the conversation I want to have and let me get a response from you and you can learn their preferences on what information you need to give upfront. Alternatively, you need to find a resource that you can go to more often. I’m a big fan of what we’re doing with our RTS Premier members. You can check that out at retirementtaxservices.com. As a financial advisor, unless you want to become a CPA yourself and really just go all in of, I’m going to give tax advice, you need to have some way to able to get that, have that sounding board, have that second opinion on what you’re doing.

Micah Shilanski (22:16)
You’ll see that it’s one of my pet peeves and it’s just, I don’t know why it’s annoying me more than not, but I’ll talk to people, you know, about what we do and oh, this, we give tax advice and we do tax planning, et cetera, like that. They’re like, well, are you a CPA? No. Well, how do you give, how do you give tax advice? not a CPA. Like most CPAs don’t give tax advice. Like most CPAs have nothing to do with taxes whatsoever. They’re, just the accountant side of things. They’re not the tax side of things, but you are correct. You need to be affiliated with somebody, which is why I love RTS. Because we have great news, we have a CPA on our team. It’s retirement tax services. You guys are part of our team and this is how we’re going to approach things and we’re going to coordinate with them and we’re going to make sure you’re getting the best deductions. Our job is to come up with a plan and the CPA is going to review it and bless it. And that’s the beautiful partnership with RTS. So thank you.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (22:55)
Well, of course, of course. mean, that’s literally why we created this business model. But I hope that someday I’ll mature enough that I won’t get just a little bit of pleasure out of these situations where you have a client that needs my approval on something that I already know that you know the answer 100%. And it’s never going away. And you’ll have to tell me if I need to change my, I think I do a pretty good job of handling that professionally in front of the client, but there is this part of me that’s, that’s right, I’m in charge.

Micah Shilanski (23:20)
That’s, I do see that little grin on your face, right? I absolutely do. Uh, and it’s okay, but you know, this is all about serving clients the most and making sure they’re taken care of. And it happens by the way, it must be my communication skills. My darling bride does it as well when we’re talking with the estate planning attorney or we’re talking with anyone else, she’ll ask questions and, I just, I won’t answer anymore. just immediately defer it to the other professional, but it’s really funny because they’re looking at me like, you, you know this. I’m like, Nope, I don’t know this. What would be the answer? Um, yeah.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (23:46)
Mike, it’s not just you. A couple months ago I was on a call with an advisor who was becoming a Premiere member and his wife was on the call because we were talking about their tax situation and he even said, know, I’m a financial professional with 20 years of experience but my wife needs to hear this from a CPA. Here’s what I told her. Can you please tell her that I’m right?

Micah Shilanski (24:402)
I really hope you said, you’re close. said, was, Bob was actually wrong and said the exact same thing. And I bet she’s like, see, I told you, you were wrong.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (24:10)
That would have been amazing. I said, hey, I just met you both, so I’m not gonna get in the middle of this. Why don’t we understand this a little bit better? And he was right, but sometimes, and we’re all that way in certain areas, like we wanna hear it from the expert who does it all the time. Yeah, so.

Micah Shilanski (24:241)
Yeah, which is, it’s the do what work aspect of it, right? So I have no problem with that whatsoever. So when we’re approaching this as a client, yeah, we gotta be okay with that. We gotta be okay with if they need someone else’s permission and approval, how do we approach that professional? Because at the end of the day, it’s all about moving the needle forward for the client.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (24:40)
Yeah. Well, and really this whole conversation we’ve been having is really around that point. But since you just said a lot more directly, so I do want to highlight it. All of these things we do have to be for the benefit of the client. Like I don’t get some sort of commission check every time I mention a Roth conversion. Like there isn’t some underlying play here that would be so cool. Maybe I should trademark it. Well, we’d probably have to agree what the acronym means first, right? Because everybody knows that Roth is an acronym.The underlying goal has to be go back to how does this benefit the client? And all these things we talk about, we get really focused on the logistics of how do we collaborate with other professionals, but it all does come back to how does this benefit our clients?

Micah Shilanski (25:13)
100%. And so that’s really as we get into the surge, I’m going to say there’s a giant takeaway, right? So hopefully you are running surge meetings, you’re doing those things. If not, you know, jump on theperfectria.com and learn about how this will transform your practice. But as you get into this, it’s not just enough to have the meetings is just not enough to know the information you have to role play. Have to practice delivering this information.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (25:33)
Yeah, I’m laughing as you say that, Micah, because especially early in my, as my career shifted and I started doing more public speaking, more podcasting, more engaging with advisors, like so many other people, I was really hesitant to do the role playing, to record myself and watch it back, all those kinds of things that all professionals do, right? Like if we think of any kind of performing art, which I know you don’t think you’re a rockstar on stage, but you get in front of clients and talk you. This is a performance you have to prepare. You have to practice. You have to rehearse. Do it with your team members. Do it with your family, whoever you need to do it with peers. Come to the summit. Do it. Do it with people who are crushing it. As this comes out, you’re probably a little late for the 2025 summit, but you can get on board for 2026. But yeah, Micah, that’s such a great point to wrap up on of you. If you want to be good at this stuff, you have to practice.

Micah Shilanski (26:21)
And you’re going to screw it up. And it’s not going to be as good as you would need it with in front of a client. Like, like I get that. Just, just get over it. Like, like when I have to role play in front of our peers, right. I do get a little like nervous when I’m going through it. Now I’ve done this tens of thousands of times with clients. Like I have deliverables underneath my belt saying I can do this, but I still get nervous when there’s other really sharp people in the room and I’m doing this presentation. But that’s the only way I’m going to get better.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (26:44)
Yeah, it’s the only way to get better. Micah, any last words of wisdom for people listening who are going into their fall client meetings or fall surge? What’s the biggest piece of advice you can give them?

Micah Shilanski (26:50)
It’s all about taking action. So your communication has to be driven down to actionable items for the client. Remembering the dishwasher rule, getting credit for the things that you’re doing, right? That the client may or may not see. And what action can you take to show the client your worth, the fee that you charge, right? And your worth more than your charging.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (27:08)
Yeah, Micah, I love that. What a great thing to wrap up on. So in the spirit of taking action, like Micah said, you can go out to theperfectria.com if you want to learn more about how Surge works, if you’re looking for other resources for elevating the massive value you deliver to your clients. Micah, thanks so much for being here. I always enjoy these conversations.

Micah Shilanski (27:23)
Stephen, the time flew by. Thanks so much. Thank you to all your listeners.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (27:26)
Absolutely and for everyone listening until next time good luck out there and remember to tip your server not the IRS.