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Steven Jarvis, CPA (00:51)

Hello everyone, and welcome to the next episode of the Retirement Tax Services podcast. I am your host, Steven Jarvis, CPA, and I am so excited for this week’s episode because I am still riding high from the recent summit that we hosted in Phoenix, Arizona, Summit 2025. It was our third edition of the conference, and it was incredible compared to 2023, when this kicked off with close to 80 advisors. We had nearly 300 people in the room. So it’s so exciting for me to see how this has grown, how many advisors are leaning into delivering massive value through tax planning. So for this week’s episode, I’m going to give a recap of what went on this year, give you a little bit of a preview of what’s coming next year. And just to jump right to the end, we’ve already got registration open for Summit 2026, which will be back in Phoenix at the Scott Resort. You can go to retirementtaxservices.com. Get signed up. We still have our exclusive super early bird pricing. It’s the best pricing that we’ll do throughout the lead up to the summit. So go and get signed up. Whether you are there this year and can’t wait to get back and joining other people who have already registered, it’s crazy that we have people registered a full year in advance, or you felt like you missed out, or this is the first time you’re hearing of it. Whatever the case might be, if you want an in-person opportunity to interact with our team, to meet me, to have a chance to learn how you can really level up your game, get signed up for the summit. So, Summit 2025, I would have loved to hand this episode be everybody who presented so we could just give you the full details, but it’s hard to cram two and a half days and that many speakers onto one episode. So you have me recapping and giving you a few glimpses of what the big takeaways were from this year’s Summit. 

Steven Jarvis, CPA (02:44)

The summit kicked off, like I said, two and a half days of great content. I got to kick the whole thing off and it was incredible to walk on stage to, like I said, a roomful of almost 300 people really committed to this idea of delivering massive value through tax planning. We kicked the whole event off by talking about the value, the opportunity that tax planning really is for financial advisors. Quick exercise that you can go through as well, not if you’re driving, but next time you’re sitting in front of your computer, you can go to letsmakeaplan.org. It’s the CFPs website for looking up CFPs. CFPs are hardly the only financial advisors, but it’s the best resource out there for just kind of online searching. And the exercise we went through was having everybody in the audience look up their local area and look in a 50 mile radius of their address to say, okay, how many CFPs are in my area? And then if we assume that maybe there’s, there’s, twice that many, three times that many advisors as there are just CFPs and that many again CPAs in the area. That’s how many professionals are in your area that could be talking to your clients, to prospective clients about taxes. But then the question becomes how many of them actually are? And in my experience and the experience of most of the people I talk to, it is a very small number. I feel very grateful that we’re to the point where there’s thousands of advisors to listen to this podcast. There was 300 advisors in that room with me, but that’s still a tiny fraction of advisors who are really committed to addressing this opportunity that is tax planning. The other thing that we talked about in that opening session was really just reinforcing that tax planning is an opportunity for everyone. This isn’t unique to only people who make over X number of dollars or who have a certain type of business entity. Really, anybody who has money or makes income, which should be all of your clients has an opportunity to experience additional value if they’re working with someone committed to tax planning. And of course, we love it when that happens in the form of actual tax savings through proactive strategies, but that can also help happen through helping clients avoid surprises or minimize pain. And so there’s a lot of different ways that we can go about delivering massive value on tax planning. So that was definitely a recurring theme, throughout the summit, just like on the podcast, we place a huge emphasis on how do we take action.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (05:!0)

It’s one of my favorite things about getting together in person, as much as I love being able to record this podcast and share it with thousands of people every week, there’s something about being there together in a room where we can ask those more detailed questions we can have back and forth. You can turn to the person next to you and say, hey, how are you dealing with that thing that Steven just mentioned from stage? Those are all really powerful opportunitieS, to keep leveling up what you’re doing for clients around tax planning. So while this is a 30 minute podcast, not in two and a half day conference, really the challenge to listeners is the same as it was for our attendees, which is what are those actions that you’re gonna identify to do, whether it’s over the coming weeks, months, or this next year, to really elevate what you do on tax planning? So listening to the podcast is of course a great step, getting signed up for Summit 2026, go down to retirementtaxservices.com, looking at our other resources. But really what it comes down to is what are you gonna put on the calendar? What are you gonna delegate to your team? How are you going to do more around tax planning moving forward for your clients? So after a great session, setting the stage, the tone for the whole event, we went into breakout sessions. We had so many great people that were there speaking to the audience. We had Amy Kaiser there from TalentLink Solutions talking about how to recruit team members, how to train team members, how to retain team members. There’s so much of what we do as advisors, as business owners, as professionals, that we really rely on a team. It’s very hard to keep expanding your value proposition unless you have people on your team. So we were very fortunate that Amy was there and was able to share best practices around how we incorporate team in all that we do. While that was going on, we also had a session going over the updates to 03BA, which is exactly how I pronounced the Big Beautiful Bill Act. But one of the things that was really unique about how we’re able to share this there in person, Matthew Jarvis, my brother and a great financial advisor, host of the TPR podcast, actually just went ahead and demonstrated. He presented as if the audience were his clients.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (07:18)

how he’s been talking about this big, beautiful bill to clients, to prospects in a way that’s digestible for taxpayers, not just for other professionals. So again, it was an opportunity to not just learn something new, but to see how other advisors are doing these things in practice. And those are things that we always look out for as we’re curating content, is how do we make this different? Because it’s a big investment of time and money to come to an in-person conference. The last thing that what I want it to feel like is simply another podcast that happens to last a little bit longer. So we really go out of our way to say, how do we make this experience next level? From there, we were able to welcome Micah ShILANSKI, the other host of the TPR podcast, along with Brian Smith from Foundational Income Associates, to talk about the reality of how many annuity and life insurance products are out there, you incorporate them directly into your plan or you just have clients who already have these, there is a huge opportunity to be proactive with how we address, particularly the tax planning ramifications of understanding products that are out there and then what the opportunities, or as the environment changes and there’s potential for updates or stay in the course, whatever the case might be. Sometimes having a plan means continuing to do what we’re already doing, but to really be adding value to our clients, we need to understand what those options are and not just assume that the default is going to keep working. So, always love to hear those real-world examples of here’s what this looks like, here’s cases, here’s examples, and here’s how we can continue to elevate our client experience and outcomes by understanding the different things that impact them. To have a little fun over lunch that first day, we had our good friends from Jump AI, who did some demos of how you can use a tool like Jump to elevate your client meeting experience and to produce better outcomes by making it more efficient to not just take notes, to link things to your CRM to highlight action items

Steven Jarvis, CPA (09:27)

That was my favorite part of seeing that because so much of tax planning is about what we’re able to actually execute and get reported correctly to the IRS. so seeingJjumps’ capabilities with pulling out those insights from these meetings and saying, OK, here’s the things that need to happen and here’s who’s going to do them and when such a great way to continue to level up client experiences as we work through so many different areas of financial planning. Obviously my area of expertise and focus is on the tax side, but fully aware that taxes is hardly the only thing that a financial advisor is responsible for. So having great tools and great templates to use to make sure that we’re capturing all that can really be a game-changer. As we kept working through the conference, we were so excited to build a partner with my good friends, Micah Shilanski and Matthew Jarvis, the event, really the event was essentially co-hosted by the Perfect RIA, the TPR. If you’re not listening to that podcast as well already, you need to be. One of my favorite sessions, even just from that first day, was Matt and Micah talking about how taxes can fit into still running a hyper-efficient, highly profitable lifestyle practice, if that’s what an advisor is after. Doing these additional value adds does not have to be some black pit of time for you or your team. As long as there’s an intentional approach to how this gets done, we can keep adding more value without just endlessly punching the clock. Because there’s only so much that we can do. If we burn ourselves out and go out of business, we’re not delivering value really of any kind to our clients. And so…we’ve to make sure that along the way we don’t get so lost in the details, the technicalities of taxes or any other area that we forget that we need to run a profitable, successful business if we want to serve our clients for the long term. The next session on the agenda will not translate to a podcast well at all, but it was one of the highlights for me. I tell people all the time that I’m the least boring CPA they know and to prove that on stage.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (11:26)

I demonstrated my very limited, although maybe above-average compared to the typical person, ability to juggle. And the reason I took the time to do that is because we’ve talked about it here on the podcast, you’ve probably seen it on retirementtaxservices.com, or if you follow me on LinkedIn, but I’m all about checklists and resources. And one of my favorites is the 37-point checklist that we have on reviewing tax returns. And so to illustrate the overlap of tools and practice, I got up there on stage, and what I was most nervous to do, but it went really well. I not only juggled, actually juggled under my leg, which again does not translate well in the podcast, but as I was talking to the audience there and I said, essentially as I’m juggling up there and said, as you watch me do this, there’s really only one thing you’re going to believe when I tell you how I learned to do this. And that’s practice, and everyone there agreed, you know, and it’s easy for something physical or visual like that, to say, of course that takes practice. There isn’t some magic solution to suddenly be able to juggle. But the same thing applies to so many other areas of life, including tax planning, including specifically what we were covering in that session was reviewing tax returns. I get questions from advisors all the time of what software should I use? What checklist should I use? What class should I take? And there are great softwares out there. There’s great resources out there. But at the end of the day, you have to practice. You have to put in the reps yourself to really learn how these things work and to become better at them, to become an expert, to be able to really deliver value for your clients. Whatever area is your next opportunity to level up, whether that’s reviewing tax returns, that’s incorporating your team, that’s running a more efficient practice, you’ve got to make sure that you’re getting the reps in. That’s how you’re going to get better. Don’t wait around assuming that someday…That magical tool will be created that no longer requires you to put the hard work in. There are absolutely things that can make it easier, that can make you focus in the right direction, but the people who are doing the best work for their clients are the ones who are really willing to put the reps in, to put the work in that allows them to be an expert operator, regardless of what the tool is. 

Steven Jarvis, CPA (13:38)

We capped off that first day of the summit with a panel discussion with a few different advisors that we know who are just absolutely crushing it when it comes to prospecting, including taxes as a topic in their marketing and prospecting process. Because again, anytime we do an in-person event, we like to make sure that everyone in the audience gets to learn things that they can’t learn anywhere else. Because you all can listen to the podcast and I encourage you to keep doing that. But there’s something about…getting there in person, hearing from your peers of what they’ve done, what they’ve gotten wrong at times, how they’ve learned and how they’ve adjusted as they go along. And then opposite that breakout session, we had our good friends from Belay who have actually joined us for each of the summits to come and share the power of delegation, to share best practices when it comes to offloading those things that you don’t have to do as an advisor, but is easy to hold onto, and instead delegate those to a team member so that you can focus on those things that only you can do. Which to quote my good friends Matt Jarvis and Micah Shilanski, the things that an advisor should spend their time on are prospecting, meeting with clients, and vision casting, running the business. Those are the three things that you really should be spending time on, and anything else can be delegated to a team member if you have the right members on your team. So that was all just from day one. My list, even though I was speaking at these sessions and couldn’t really fully just experience it as an attendee, I walked away. I even knew what the agenda was before we got there. I still walked away with action items because there’s so much power in being able to learn from so many great people around you. Like I said, that was only the first day. As we kept working through the conference, we covered things like the actual detailed process that Micah uses in his in his prospecting how he’s been able to build his practice to the point that it’s at Alongside that to show contrast that there’s not just one way to do these things Matthew also shared how he’s using specific processes and systems in prospecting in Incorporating taxes into how he lands new clients and then again to make this a real very tangible experience for everyone there and not just another podcast episode. Matt and Micah walked the audience through here’s what it feels like to be a prospect.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (15:58)

So they went through a sales process together so that everyone could experience that side of it. Because as a service professionals, it can be really easy to only sit on one side of the table. And if you’re only ever on the side of the table of providing the service and you’re not ever experiencing it from the customer standpoint, it can be hard to really empathize to really to really know what a client is going through what a prospect is going through as they experience your sales process so that was incredible to see and to go through like you know other than kind of in my everyday life as a consumer had been a while since I’d sat through and experienced here’s what my clients feel or here’s my prospects feel when they go through a sales process So that that was definitely a highlight for me is watching Matt and Micah go through that and experiencing how that worked. We did a couple of other panel discussions, one around alternative investments and understanding the tax implications of different alternative investments. We had our good friends from Invito Energy partners there with us to talk specifically about the tax implications of oil and gas. But I get so many questions from advisors about how different tax strategies work. It was great to be able to answer some of those specific questions and really dive deep on a framework for here’s how you can do due diligence, when a new tax strategy comes your way. One of the things we talked about in there was just the right way to respond to a client when they bring you what you think is a terrible idea. It’s another great example of audience members being able to share with each other, here’s how I respond to a question without shooting the client down. We don’t ever want clients to feel like they can’t bring us questions, or we don’t want them to feel stupid for having asked a question that they didn’t know the answer to. So again, a great example of being able to share with each other, the audience share with each other, have peers learn from peers on how this stuff works in the real world. I’m gonna run out of time on the podcast here. I’m not even gonna make it through the whole agenda. But a few other things that I wanna highlight, just was really, really grateful that we got to experience. 

Steven Jarvis, CPA (17:56)

We had Shelby Nicol there from Muriel Consulting talking about how to evaluate the channel you’re in and whether it’s the right fit for you, especially when it comes to taxes, there can be very different compliance implications depending on if you’re independent or with a BD or just the nature of that setup. Shelby did a great job of laying out, okay, here are things to think about. And Shelby’s been on the podcast, you can go find that episode if you have more questions of how to think about where am I and is this the right fit for me, or do I need to be looking for another opportunity? And then we follow that up with our friends from JPTD Partners, helping advisors understand the value of their business and sharing real-world examples of how, of what valuations are right now for financial planning practices. And not just opportunities to sell and ride off into the sunset, but to partner, to get access to additional resources. They were able to share some really great wins recently for advisors in our network of people finding that next step in their career. Another session that we’ve done before but I always love because Micah does such a great job with it. But Micah went through business or tax planning strategies for business owners including advisors, especially for advisors. So it’s always fun to see it’s kind of that the Cobblers kids have no shoes quite often as advisors as tax professionals We can get so focused on serving our clients that we forget to do these things ourselves, or we don’t take the time to do them ourselves. So it was a great reminder of how important it is to make sure that we’re doing the things that we recommend and that we aren’t just waiting until some eventuality where we’re gonna have all the time in the world to do these things. We have to make a priority if we wanna execute our own tax planning, let alone tax planning that our clients really need to have done. Also want to make sure that I’m giving a special thank you to Sarah Brenner from the Ed Slott team. She came and did a great presentation on Secure 2.0 is a great reminder for all of us that even though O3BA has come along secure 2.0 isn’t done there’s still some provisions that are kicking in in 2026 including around catch-up contributions needing to go to Roth as opposed to traditional within retirement accounts so it’s some good things to be aware of and revisit if you haven’t looked at secure 2.0 recently.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (20:15)

It’s one we want to make sure doesn’t get completely forgotten. And then we capped off. We capped off day two, I was able to close out the day talking about mistakes that happen when it comes to tax planning, because similar to driving a car, where if you drive a car long enough, eventually you are going to get pulled over if you’re involved in taxes long enough.Eventually a mistake is going to happen. Sometimes that’s the IRS making this mistake. Sometimes that’s the tax professional making a mistake. Sometimes it’s you or your client making a mistake but eventually that that will happen and so we went through and talked about what to do when that happens some of most common mistakes that happened, and then we spend some time talking about the Resources that Retirement Tax Services offers specifically through our premier membership. There’s so many advisors I hear from who don’t get calls returned or emails returned from the tax professionals in their network and they’re looking for resources, a professional they can talk to to answer questions so that they can get a better answer than just sorting through Google or trusting chat GPT that still has a tendency to make things up, which is a big part of why we have our Premiere membership. And if you’re looking for resources for answers, more timely answers, better answers, more planning friendly answers on taxes. Be sure you go to retirementtaxservices.com check out the Premiere membership get on a call with SaUsha on our team. She’ll give you all the great details of that membershi.p The last day of the summit was a half day. We kicked off our first annual and we will certainly be doing it again Tax olympics. We had so much fun closing out the conference, doing a little bit more interactive adding a fun spin on reinforcing some tax knowledge that we learned. We did a combination of kind of full group participation, doing some trivia, and getting into some of the tax weeds. And then we had four very brave volunteers who came up on stage who had no idea before that day that they were going to be doing this. Came up on stage and gave an example live of how they would explain tax planning concepts to their clients. And so there’s so few opportunities in our profession to see other professionals at their craft.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (22:19)

It’s there’s just so, so limited chances to do that that we really work hard to create that at the summit. And we’ve already working on how that will be modified next year to give a different experience, hopefully give an even better experience, give people a chance to come a little bit more prepared to be able to not only showcase what they’re capable of, but really have that opportunity to learn from other people around them. And I don’t know where else you really have a chance to see how your peers deliver the great service that we’re all trying to do for our clients. How does that delivery massive value actually look in practice? That’s the very condensed version of Summit 2025. As we look at Summit 2026, like I said, we’ll be back in Phoenix. It’ll be September 27th through 30th, 2026. And the theme is really gonna focus around financial planning, with taxes at the center. There will be definitely some similarities in our focus on taking action, but we’ll have a whole new agenda. We’ll have some of the same great speakers back because they do such a phenomenal job, and we’ve already got new partners lined up to keep elevating this experience that all of our attendees have. One of the things I’m really excited about for 2026 is that we’re gonna put a real emphasis on doing hands-on work together. We’re working on the exact logistics of what that will look like. But the vision on this is that we’ll have smaller group sessions where it’s not just ideas shared from stage, it’s time to implement, it’s giving you time to implement those ideas while those experts are still there on site with you, so you can ask those questions. You can figure out where you’re gonna run into those roadblocks, and you can leave ready to conquer. So if you have questions on anything related to the summit, go to retirementtaxservices.com, reach out to our team at advisors@rts.tax. We’d love to see you there. Summit 2025, absolutely sold out. We’re gonna be at a bigger venue next year, but capacity will be limited, which is why we opened registration so early this year. We also just got notified that once again, the summit will be on the Kitces list of best conferences this next year. So our attendees, our partners, our speakers, the industry as a whole are recognizing the value of this conference. And we would love, absolutely love to see you there because the main theme of the entire conference, and this won’t change next year, was impact. Was how do we take these things and put them in practice in a way that’s going to benefit our clients, our teams, our families, our businesses.

Steven Jarvis (24:56)

And that will be the same going forward. We told everybody as we left the summit this year, hey, what we want to hear next year is what did you do as a result of what you learned here? And we’re so excited to be able to do that with even more of you next year. So, can’t wait to see all of you at Summit 2026, retirementtaxservices.com to check that out. And like I say on so many other topics, whether you have the chance to come to the Summit 2026, whether you’re taking advantage of RTS resources, or you’re finding resources somewhere else, just make sure you are finding resources. Make sure you are taking the time to learn from other people around you, to learn from people who are getting this stuff done so that you can keep elevating around taxes in every other part of your business. There’s too much opportunity to serve clients here to just assume the default is gonna keep working. It’s time to level up. It’s time to commit to resources that are gonna help you do that. So, as always, thank you for being here, and until next time, good luck out there and remember to tip your server, not the IRS.