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Today, we have an insightful guest joining us, Brett 
Swarts, capital gains tax deferral expert and the founder of Capital Gains Tax Solutions. Brett’s unique approach to wealth management focuses on enabling high net worth individuals and entrepreneurs to defer capital gains taxes while preserving their wealth. His innovative strategies offer flexibility and open up new opportunities for reinvestment, without the pressure of immediate decisions.
In this enlightening episode, Brett shares his journey of discovering this groundbreaking approach, born from personal experiences during economic downturns. His dedication to solving the frequently overlooked aspects of exit planning for appreciating assets like real estate, cryptocurrency, and businesses has made a significant impact on wealth management strategies.
Brett elaborates on the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and investors, stressing the importance of planning for strategic exits rather than just focusing on growth. He discusses the deferred sales trust (DST), a powerful tool for achieving tax efficiency with the flexibility to navigate across diverse asset classes.
Listeners will find Brett’s approach transformative, especially those looking to sell valuable assets without losing a significant portion of their hard-earned wealth to taxes.
In This Episode
- Brett’s origin story and early experiences with real estate investment advising.
- The pitfalls of 1031 exchanges and the importance of flexible exit planning.
- How a Deferred Sales Trust (DST) can optimize wealth management strategies.
- Techniques for eliminating estate taxes and ensuring smooth wealth transfer.
Brett, welcome to the show.
Dave, good to be back.
Yeah, always good to see you and connect. I thought this would be a great opportunity to bring you on the show again. I think it was over a year ago that you were on previously, but you’ve got a really unique solution that solves a very big problem many people have when they’re trying to exit and avoid and defer capital gains. I think your expertise will be really eye-opening to the audience. But as we begin, for those who aren’t familiar with you, why don’t we just talk about your origin story a little bit and how you got here?
Yeah, so thanks, and great to be back again. I started out helping people buy. I actually build—my parents, mom, and dad build the real estate. I kind of got way back in the Bay Area of California many, many years ago. I fell in love with real estate and wealth and entrepreneurship at that time. Fast forward, my brother and I, the first to graduate college—he was the first, I was the second. I started to practice multifamily brokers, helping people buy and sell real estate.
That helped me to create what I call a real estate investment advisory mindset and practice, which is helping people make strategic moves within real estate. At that time, it was mostly 1031 exchanges until we really learned the hard way that 1031 can be not just your friend—it could be kind of your enemy. It can be the Achilles heel that puts you in a position that’s over-leveraged, not diversified, not liquid. That’s where people can get in trouble, as we’re seeing right now within commercial real estate.
That was 2009 when the market crashed. I went from making a little bit of money before that to like nothing overnight. If you’ve ever been there before where you’re trying to figure out how to put food on the table—that’s where I was. Married, baby on the way, and scrambling down to the last $5,000. I went back to it. I’ll never forget, I needed $5,000. I had to call my dad and say, “Dad, I need a loan. I’m out of money.” I go and work these side hustles. That’s what I think every good entrepreneur does—you get a side hustle to keep the dream alive.
By day, I negotiate with banks and help my clients keep their properties, and by night, I would work at Cheesecake Factory to keep the lights on. That was kind of the two-year journey financially. But I got to grow a lot, which I’m really grateful for because otherwise, I wouldn’t have learned how to help my clients who are going through losing half or all of their wealth. I was going through trying to just keep a couple of dollars coming in to keep the family able to live, keep my wife home full-time with our baby. So that’s the background.
Fast forward, I learned about something that helped my clients escape feeling trapped by capital gains taxes, escape the 1031 exchange, or overpaying for properties. This works for businesses, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, stock—any asset of any kind. What we learned is how to unlock what’s called truly passive income, which gives the person the ability to sell, diversify, and then free up their most valuable asset, which is time.
Time to be able to spend with their families, time to be able to make an impact, time to maybe start that new entrepreneur journey that they feel called to start without having to feel trapped by the capital gains tax. That’s what we do now. We unlock passive income plans. We unlock new entrepreneurial journeys and we do it through a tax deferral strategy when people have these big, massive multi-million dollar exits.
Yeah, something you said there really resonated, which is the life of an entrepreneur. It’s the time that you actually become completely responsible for your financial independence, becoming an entrepreneur and moving out of that W2 role. It’s in times like that, that you actually learn what type of resourcefulness and resilience you have. I keep trying to teach that lesson to my kids right now that failing is okay. You need to fail fast, and you need to learn.
But I will tell you, you will learn so fast when you’re in that position of running out of your last amount of capital, or when that income is not coming through. As challenging as that might be, that’s where the growth lies. The growth lies in the biggest challenges that we have.
Appreciate you sharing that story, and obviously, you’ve had a tremendous amount of growth. I think it’s really enlightening and illuminating what you’re doing for clients today. So, I think why don’t we start with breaking down the problem? Who is it that typically has the problem with capital gains? You mentioned a couple of potential clients that might be a fit—different asset classes. Who is really a good fit for this, and what is the primary problem that they’re looking at?
Yeah, the primary problem is people make mistakes when they don’t plan for their exit, and they don’t define what it means to have to pay 20, 30, 40, or 50% of their proceeds in tax. They just don’t typically think about it. They’re so busy building the business, investing in Bitcoin, and building a real estate portfolio or empire. It’s so much about the building of it. They don’t stop to build what’s called a capital gains tax exit plan.
The mistake is they spend so much time on growing and not enough time on the landing. Like the plane has been cruising at a great altitude, and it’s more like a rocket ship—it’s taken off. It’s a big company success. Well, how are you going to come back down? You saw Elon Musk, right? About six months ago or so, he showed that his technology, that robot, can grab the rocket and put it safely back into the dock in Florida. How incredible is that? Think about that.
You could have been that rocket that’s been up in space, just making all the millions of revenue, and you have this huge exit. This rocket needs to come back down to orbit, and that being your capital, your wealth. Without a robot to grab it and put it safely back, it’s going to lose a lot of it. It’s going to lose a lot of its wealth. That’s the problem—20, 30, 40, or 50% of the total proceeds upon a sale is going to be taxed. This is known as capital gains tax and depreciation recapture, depending on what state you’re in.
As an example, we just helped a client with an $8 million exit in Massachusetts. They exited an automotive business that they had built from $100,000 of revenue to multimillions of revenue. They exited about 60% of it and have another 40% for another piece of the pie at a later date. Upon that, we were able to defer and have an extra 30, 35, maybe even 40% more proceeds working for them. We’re kind of like that robot that helps to catch the rocket and put it safely down so that it doesn’t have to get cut by the tax.
So the mindset here to focus on is having what’s called a tax flow mindset, not just a cash flow mindset. It’s not just about building it up and selling it—it’s about looking at this tax challenge that’s going to happen so that you have this extra amount of proceeds to work for you. The method we use is called a deferred sales trust.
That’s our specialty because we believe it’s the only proven, legal, flexible strategy that gives the purpose-driven entrepreneur investor what they really want, which is truly passive income and the ability to also go back and be an entrepreneur, which is what they’re really good at. When you combine those three things, you have a framework for where we can take this conversation today.
Got it. What are some of the other solutions? You talked about 1031 as one of the big ones that people know about. What other options do people have?
Yeah, so exchange is one of them. People might have heard of opportunity zones. People might have heard of the poor man’s 1031 where they’re doing partial, they’re doing cost segregation, accelerated depreciation on assets they’re buying. They could be doing oil and gas, something there. These are all different mechanisms to do deferral or offsets in a given year. So, those are some of the ones that people might consider and look at. Delaware statutory trust is another.
Got it.
Form of a 1031 exchange that people at times get confused with our strategy of deferred sales trust. We also help people with 1031s and Delaware statutory trust exits as well. You just have to realize that 1031 world, focusing on that for a second, only applies to investment real estate. It doesn’t apply to business sales or Bitcoin or primary homes, right? It only applies to investment real estate.
Opportunity zones apply to everything, but it’s typically a 10-plus year hold. They’re typically building from the ground up. If you have a great deal, you can do that. But a lot of our clients are ready to redeploy their capital somewhere for six to 12 months into something else that they want to go into. They want to be able to diversify into multiple things without any timing restraints, which is back to the proven flexible strategy that we have. That’s what people really want. They want the flexibility to make adjustments as they take off this next rocket and they’re going to go somewhere with that.
This is kind of why we like the Deferred Sales Trust. Out of all of them, typically we find that to be the best fit for most of our clients.
Yeah, can you unpack that just a little bit more? We have a lot of real estate investors here who have looked at 1031s and opportunity zones as well. Can you just talk through some of the limitations of both of those vehicles?
Yeah, one of the biggest mistakes is we’ve been taught that the 1031 exchange is basically the end-all be-all for building wealth within real estate where you sell and you trade. Then, when you die, you get a stepped-up basis in people and us. I’m included, I’m a real estate broker by trade, and we’ve closed over half a billion dollars for clients in real estate and DST transactions. We see it every single day. In fact, before I met and understood the Deferred Sales Trust, what it was about, how it worked, I was doing 1031s—that’s all we were doing, right?
The mistake is that when you trade assets, if you’re buying something that you normally wouldn’t buy, if it wasn’t for the tax—let the tax tail wag the investment dog, you’re making a mistake. That’s the really big challenge with folks. You have poured blood and tears to buy this deal that you had bought to improve the property, to hold onto the property, be disciplined. One mistake within a 45-day window when you have to identify can cost you another decade of having to build the wealth back up or losing the asset.
So understanding that, what are you solving for? I think it’s really a three-step mindset: tax flow, cash flow, and debt flow. In a 1031 exchange, you have to replace equal or greater debt. In this debt flow piece, the mistake is, I’ll just go into more debt, and I imagine that debt interest rates are gonna stay low forever.
I had a client telling me, “Oh, they’re never gonna go above a certain amount.” Obviously, that’s a wrong mistake to think that. Where the streets have gone, now the debt is sinking these ships. The water of debt is just flowing over the top, even though the ship was cruising at a good speed, had good occupancy. Yeah, had some increase in insurance costs, but overall the asset class—let’s say it was multifamily—was doing great. But now the debt is just sinking the ship because the debt has readjusted and now it’s sinking the ship.
Debt flow is so key. In a 1031, you have to stay equal or greater debt, which again is not great when the market’s really hot. We knew, I think most of us knew that the market was probably at a high point in real estate a couple of years ago. But again, if you’re in a 1031 exchange, because of this 45-day, you’re selling high and buying higher.
The worst part is you’re selling and you’re having to replace your debt, and now the interest rates go higher. Now everything you’ve worked for for five or ten years to get to this point is lost or you’re fighting with the banks to negotiate. The whole thing is really the mistake of taking on too much debt with the 1031 exchange and the timing restriction again.
Success isn’t just about building wealth; it’s about building a life with purpose and time for what truly matters.
The way to solve this is to not use the 1031 exchange, to just go a different path. 1031 is not the hammer that hits all nails. It is a hammer that hits a nail when everything lines up and makes sense. Whereas the deferred sales trust is kind of like a Swiss Army Knife. It can do all those things. You can go into debt if you want to. You can go into real estate if you want to. You can go to oil and gas. You can go into Bitcoin. You can go to stocks, bonds, mutual funds.
You don’t have to go into debt though. You can also just be out of debt. That’s key. Maybe you want to be more conservative while you wait for the market to shift or like we’re in a new election. We’re in a new administration from the election and things are changing.
What we did, our method was we sold high, got people out of debt, got them diversified, got them liquid, got them in a lot of debt instruments that are paying double-digit returns. We’ve been waiting basically for the last couple of years. We’ve been also buying as the market’s gone down, we’ve seen opportunities, we’ve been dollar-cost averaging. That’s the key. How do you get time back on your side to be able to execute in a way that just makes sense? It’s not rocket science when you have time on your side.
Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense, Brett, and I’ve talked to so many people that have thought the 1031 was the great strategy, but as they got into it, they really found themselves in a pickle, right? Because they’re trying to buy an asset under a short timeline. And that was well said, right? Which is the tax tail wags the, you know, wags the dog and you definitely don’t want to be leading with that.
Right? Because you’re taking the strategy and you’re dismantling it right from the beginning. It doesn’t make sense. So, you know, heard of a lot of investors who’ve had challenges with that on the opportunity zone side. I totally agree. You know, these are typically in markets that you may not want to be investing in real estate. And that long term hold, you know, of 10 years is, you know, anything can happen in 10 years. Right. So it’s much longer. So why don’t you
First, before we really break down the DST and actually how it works and functions is where I’d like to go with that. But before we do that, I do want to have you explain the distinction between a lot of people will talk about Delaware Statutory Trust versus a Deferred Sales Trust. What is the difference?
Yeah, so Delaware Stash Troy Trust is a form of a 1031 exchange. And let’s use an analogy of Blockbuster is 1031 exchange and Hollywood Video or the local video stores that Delaware Stash Troy Trust. It’s all a part of that old school family of ways of selling and exiting and deferring capital gains tax on real estate. By the way, they have their place. They have an amazing place.
One of the best things about them is they can, for certain deals, you can replace what’s called debt over basis. And debt over basis is a big challenge for a lot of folks who have done cash out refis on their properties and have little to no basis remaining. And they’ve tax free in the year that they do to cash out refi, but upon the sale, it’s gonna be recaptured as ordinary income taxes. This is the highest rates. This is a big challenge with these cash out refis.
And so we do use the Delawares and the unique strategy. In fact, what we offer at Capital Gains Tax Solutions is all three options, the Delaware statutory trust, deferred sales trust, and 1031 exchanges. We have a whole best 1031 exit plan that gives you the options. And we work with advisors who also execute on those Delaware Stash Choice Trusts. We work as a team there.
But the whole point of it is you’re basically trading your investment real estate property equity, and you’re moving into an interest into a portfolio typically of maybe one, two or three properties. It could be larger apartment complexes.
It could be an Amazon warehouse, it could be industrial buildings, it could be student housing, it could be a number of different asset classes within real estate, but you’re 1031 into a passive, non-recourse debt, no control, no liquidity, no diversification, okay? And it’s tied up five, seven, 10 years, just depending on the deal. Now, most of these are paying around 5%, maybe get some of it six, maybe seven, I’ve seen most of them around like 5%.
Which for a lot of folks is not really a game changer for them, right? It doesn’t unlock the truly passive income. It unlocks no more toilets trash, termites liability on their own, which is important, right? This is a part of it, but we’ve found that you need to be getting to 10, 11, 12%. And when you can do that within your cash on cash return on your equity, it starts to increase not only your monthly cash on cash, but your ability to obtain what’s called a TPI number, which is your truly passive income number, where you can retire, no toilets, no trash, no termites, no problems, and you just have the money coming in and you do nothing for it. You don’t have to trade any of your time for that.
So that’s really the key distinction for the Delaware statutory trust and the deferred sale trust is we can achieve such higher returns, okay? So that’s the Delaware statutory trust. It only works for investment real estate, does not work for Bitcoin, business sales, primary homes.
Whereas our deferred sales trust works for any asset of any kind and we can achieve double digit returns. We have total flexibility. And by the way, if you like that student housing property, well, the deferred sales trust, we can invest into that same deal, right? We just might on a $10 million exit, we’re not going to probably put all 10 million into the one deal. We might put a million into that deal and we might choose five others, an industrial and mobile home park, multi-family, maybe some debt. We might diversify within commercial real estate. So, that’s the beauty of our strategy is it doesn’t have to go all in all at once into one deal.
Time is your greatest asset. Passive income buys it back, so you can live, give, and create your own terms.
Yeah. What’s the threshold for setting up a DST, right? If someone’s having a capital gains event, is this something they should think about at the million mark or the five million mark or what is it?
Yeah, million dollar net proceeds, a million dollar gain is a great way to look at this for the Deferred Sales Trust. When it makes a lot of, it makes it really easy to do the math as long as you don’t need or want to spend all of the money all at once on your personal stuff. So most of our clients will set it up. We just recently helped a client a $16 million exit out of Oregon. They sold a dental practice, multiple practices, and they’re setting up in small incremental payments starting in about year two.
But all of the amount, have an extra about 30, 35 % more working for them, which is really neat. And so we defer their income, further capital gains tax, we’re deferring their income tax, and then they’re going to slowly pay payments along the way. So that’s a good example of how the deferred sales trust works and why if it’s big enough, it has enough gain for enough tax to defer. So a million dollar net proceeds, million dollar gain.
Got it. I want to really walk through the process and let’s go, let’s take the example that I’m exiting a business right now for $10 million. That’s the actual gain. What would the engagement look like in terms of working with you guys? How would you set it up? How would you structure it? What’s the process?
Yeah, so first of all, we’re gonna conditional engagement basis, meaning you don’t pay anything unless and if you use the deferred sales trust at the closing. For any reason it doesn’t close or you decide not to use it, you don’t owe us anything. So we take all the pressure off of that.
We do have the best 1031 exit plan by the way, which gives you a regular 1031 exchange option and also the deferred sales trust. That’s around $2,000 upfront one time. again, that gives you the 1031 service as well, which is important.
Okay, so step one is simply a discovery and understanding what your dreams and goals are for your exit, right? If you don’t have clarity on what and how, where and how you want the funds to be invested and what the intent of that cashflow from that is going to be, then we’ve got to start there. We’ve got to really craft and start to build out based upon your unique goals and your challenges that you’re trying to overcome. And then we’re going to step two.
Look at the deal itself. Understand obviously your tax liability. Understand what the debt over basis is or just kind of the, I call it the x-ray of the entire sale, right? Next step would be simply setting up the trust and the trust being inserted into the language of your purchase and sale agreement, asset purchase agreement or whatever, however you’re selling it, depending on how you’re selling it. And we’ll work with your legal team, &A advisors or real estate brokers and agents.
We also have title companies that we’re working with for all of these kinds of things. And that’s all of the back, back in legal work and process. Another part would be just invest in allocation and understanding like your risk tolerance and where and how you want to invest the funds.
What are your cashflow needs? What is your vision for your, what’s your mission, vision, values for your family and for your wealth? What does this look like in one, three, five, 10 years? What are your perfect life numbers wealth wise and cashflow wise one, three, five, 10 years. And how, how can we structure in an architect, in architect this entire plan to serve you for those goals.
And then from there, we close, we close with funds typically at Charles Schwab. And you’re issued a promissory note and an interest rate on that note. So if it was like a $10 million exit and you were selling in New York, New Jersey or California, you would have paid 4 million of tax. You have the trust has 10 million and owes you the 10 million. And then it simply pays you back over time. And we would say you said an interest rate at 9%.
So it’s $900,000 per year. We’re gonna go invest the funds and our goal is to try to earn, know, net of fees about 900,000 per year, not a guarantee, we gotta go earn it and then pay you out per the promissory note. And you might take partial interest payments or full interest payments and then you’ll pay tax on what you receive. And you might also take some principal payments and pay some tax there. So everything is dependent upon how and where.
The client wants to invest the funds and how and where the client wants to receive payments back from the trust. And then we dial it in and once we dial it in, we just follow the plan.
Is your team made up of CPAs and RIAs?
Yes, so our team, I want to say our team, we know there’s multiple parties here. There’s a tax attorney that does all the legal work. We are the trustee and then we work with third-party groups that are RIAs or financial advisors. And so we really build a team and we help to quarterback on behalf of the trust, the entire team to serve it. Our one company is a trustee company.
Got it, but it’s really a collaboration with the experts to put the whole thing together. Yeah, and how do you guys make your money? How is that structured?
Yeah, so as a trustee, we make money based upon the AUM into the trust. So it’s about one and a half to 2 % on a recurring basis. And that typically involves and includes the financial advisor as a part of that.
Got it. Are there any good asset classes you’ve been following or people have been requesting as we head into 2025 here?
Before I answer that question too, there’s also a one-time legal fee that’s paid to the tax attorney at closing and it’s about 1.5 % of the gross sales price. As far as the assets in real estate or the stuff that we like, we like what our clients like or let’s put it this way, we’re agnostic to asset class in the sense that clients who’ve showed up typically know how to make money on their own businesses or on real estate or their own stuff, which is great.
And we are the facilitator of the trust to make investments. Personally, I like real estate because this is what I grew up in. I like mobile home parks. I like multifamily. I like industrial. I really like debt these days though and loaning on real estate and getting double-digit returns 10 to 16 % depending on what we’re going into. Some of these are two-year lockups. Some of these are 30 or 60-day lockups if you want the money back and paying either monthly or quarterly with groups that have never lost a dollar, that have excellent track records.
So those are some of the things we like on the debt side of things. And then we’ve been buying some multifamily because we’ve seen some distress here the last six months, especially with some assets that are 20, 30 % off of the market peaks. And of course we always like value add or something that we can come in and enforce some appreciation through improvements of the property and the community and to drive up the rents in a fair way to increase the value for the investor.
Those are some of things. Nothing really changing there. I have clients that go into Bitcoin. I’ve seen them wanting to go into Bitcoin a little more recently here as a shift. We’re looking at some oil and gas opportunities as well for maybe kind of the first time. But yeah, those are the main ones.
Actually, that brings up a good question is how do the tax benefits work inside of a DST? Can you still get those active income offsets to the person individually or is that aligned to the trust and then the trust takes advantage of it?
Yeah, it all depends on how we structure it. You know, if the trust is joint venture partnering with somebody on an investment opportunity as opposed to the trust going directly into those investments. And so each individual deal and circumstance will vary. But we do like the strategy where if you have clients, you know, build multifamily or buy multifamily and, you know, let’s say there’s some depreciation that can flow through the way that we can structure it.
They can receive some of the, some majority of the depreciation the way we structure it, which is pretty neat by partnering with the trust. So yeah, we have some unique mechanisms that unlock the ability to make more than just the promissory note of 9% as well as to get the depreciation to flow through to them on a personal level.
Yeah, cause unique to oil and gas, you, you know, you have to be a general partner, in, in the deal to have those active losses flow to you. So got it. How about how are, since your background, right? Is in real estate as well. I mean, can you give us a little bit more of your feel for 2025 in terms of the real estate market interest rates? What are you thinking right?
Yep. Last year was Extend and Pretend. A lot of people were, you know, the tide had gone out and they were skinny dipping, but they were able to, you know, grab a towel from the bank to just, you know, hold their spot and act like, you know, things are okay. We saw a lot of capital calls. We saw a lot of people, even hear people giving keys back to the bank. Not a lot, but some. And we think this is the year where there’s no longer any Extend and Pretend. Like banks will be pressing forward, capital calls will increase or properties will go back to banks and the distress will be there and opportunities are going to be around.
Multifamily, especially, there’s a ton of people who overpaid for multifamily. That’s when we’re keeping a real close eye on for opportunities. So that’s what we expect. We expect debt to continue to be a great, excellent way for cash on cash return. We had a client exit a $2.5 million asset right before interest rates jumped high a couple of years ago. And we were able to increase their NOI from 120 to 190 and diversify. And we most of what we do is we went into debt instruments.
Their ROE was about three to 4%. And we were, you know, eight to nine net of fees with what we were doing. And so that was just a huge win for them and their family, unlock their time. So yeah, so debt is going to be a big focus. Distressed opportunities or discounted real estate is a big focus. And I think they’ll be excellent opportunities, especially in multifamily.
Yeah, any other tax strategies that you’re preferential to?
No, I love a 1031 exchange when it actually works and the deals make sense and you can buy a deal that you want to buy. Our 2.0 version eliminates the state tax, without any charity life insurance or gifting required. The other thing we’re focusing on is not just capital gains tax. It’s the death tax, which is a big challenge. 1031, the stepped-up basis doesn’t solve for that. You want to find ways to eliminate the estate tax. We have a way to do that.
It’s not just capital gains tax solutions, it’s really estate tax solutions and finding creative ways to offset and eliminate the tax through structuring and sales using our 2.0 version versus our 1.0, which has some slight differences there. People need to focus on this because there were 84 to 100 trillion transferring in the next 15 years. The largest wealth transfer in the history of the planet by the baby boomers, 10,000 turning 65 every day for the baby boomers in the US alone. There’s about 80 million in the US alone, and 50% of all wealth in America is tied to high-end primary homes, businesses, or commercial real estate.
There’s this big challenge with this wealth that’s transferring and people are going to get crushed with the tax or they’re not going to do the planning. It’s going to be inside of the taxable estate, and then they’re going to be forced to sell and pay 40% within six months of passing. These are all the things that you want to be aware of and solve now while you’re still alive or your clients are still able to make sales now because once you pass the death tax is triggered and you’re going to get hit. We want to solve that for people right now.
Dave (What are you most excited about this year personally or professionally?
Yeah, I’d say the time that I can spend with my family traveling. I’m going to Guatemala in two weeks with my daughter. Then we’re going to Uganda a few weeks after that with the whole family. We’re going to be helping some MVPs, putting some clean water wells in, and making these memories with the kids before they’re all 18. Our goal is to get a thousand extraordinary days and a hundred unique locations before our kids are 18. These are the best times to be doing it and not waiting. You plan it and go do it.
Regardless of the business and all the demands that growing a business and being an entrepreneur has, we just focus on doing those things. So for sure, my family and spending time with my kids and my wife.
Awesome, yeah and I know you have a big family, Brett. So how do you manage your greatest asset, which is time?
Yeah, great question. Be very intentional, right? I’ve got some amazing coaches on this that have done and really have a roadmap for how to be intentional with time and planning and accountability along those lines. One thing that’s helping me take a mindset of time is a short little Billy Graham five-minute sermon on YouTube.
It’s called “Time is Short,” and you can look it up. Every single day this year, I’ve listened to it, just about an hour ago for five minutes. It talks about time and how short it is. What is your life? It’s a vapor that appears for a moment and is gone. He talks about how when he was 20 years old, if someone had told him how short life was, he wouldn’t have believed it. He just wants everyone who’s 20 to know how short time is.
It’s a constant reminder that the things we should be doing, we should do now. That really helps with the mindset and the reminder. I would say just actually planning. Planning beyond just the week and the month and the year, like planning next year. We’re already planning our next year’s trips.
We’re mapping out our entire family calendar and what we’re going to be doing. We’re planning things around what we’re going to be doing with the family. We have goals around those kinds of days. It’s more focused planning, intentional planning.
The more you can do all of those things, the more you can actually achieve these things within life, and you can have success and significance together. You can be an entrepreneur and have a thriving family. I also bring my kids with me everywhere as much as I can. I went to a veterinarian conference about a month ago and at the last minute, I said, “Why don’t I bring a daughter with me?” I have four daughters, so I sent a message to my friend who had an extra ticket.
She spent two and a half days at this 25,000 people veterinarian conference in Orlando, going around, meeting the vendors, talking with them, petting the dogs, looking at all the different technologies and stuff. She’s 11 years old, and it’s a core memory.
Then my daughter going to Guatemala, we’re going one-on-one, it’s my oldest daughter. I had a video shoot with Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank. I brought two of my daughters to my video team to take social media pictures and all the stuff. You gotta figure out ways to incorporate. We’ve been able to do that on a high level because we homeschool our kids. We don’t have the traditional school system or the schedule or all of those things. We really plan and build our life with our family.
School is secondary. Most people think school is the number one thing and it’s the end all be all. We educate through an entrepreneurial approach, and it’s turned out phenomenal. We’re public school kids growing up, my wife and I, but we found that this homeschooling is probably the single best thing for our family, dynamic, our time, our energy.
We also do jujitsu, right? That’s a big thing for us as well. I do jujitsu, all my kids do jujitsu. It’s a big part of mental discipline and emotional discipline and working out and extending beyond. I call it the little mini grit factory. Talk about resilience and resourcefulness. There’s nothing like jujitsu.
A few other sports offer it at a high level, but jujitsu for me and our family is an incredible way to build that grit, build that resilience, and be in the moment. I think that’s another piece of this tier too, right? When you focus intensely, you exhaust the body to tame the mind.
How do you exhaust the body? Well, part of that’s working out, but if you can do it on another level with competition, playing basketball growing up was a great way for me to do that. In about an hour, hour and a half, you can really get a super intense way to exhaust your body and tame your mind to be even more present.
I guess it’s a hundred things I can keep going, right? Read, pray, meditate, pray more than you think you need to, go to church on Sundays, make sure you’re feeding your body the right things. I’m on a health fitness program now where I have nutrition laid out for me every single day of what I’m eating, tracking the macros, have a coach for that.
There’s not one single thing. It’s probably 10 key things, but all of these things help to get the family all lined up.
Yeah. No, love it, Brett. I’ve got a big family as well, and it’s such a great point that you threw out there by getting your kids involved. We got our kids involved at early stages too. Our first single-family rental that we did, they got involved from everything, from painting it and fixing it up to understanding how it works and sharing the business financials. To your point, it was interesting actually just in December.
I brought one of my daughters to a conference that I went to, and she got to walk around, meet some people, and help with some of the social media. Then we went to visit one of our properties, and she met the real estate broker there who was a completely kick-ass real estate broker that was just doing really well and inspired my daughter so much that she’s actually getting her exam and her certification right now. Sometimes they just get that spark when you put them in the right environment. Not to mention, you get to have time with them.
Spot on. Love it. I love that she’s getting her license and getting going on that. Taking action, right? You’re exactly right. Just put them in the right environment. It’s not rocket science. Put them around great leaders, make it a community effort to build into your kids. It’s actually simple. You just have to be intentional about it.
Yeah, 100%. Well, Brett, really appreciate your time. And if people want to learn more about capital gains and how they can defer those, what is the best way for them to reach out to you or learn more?
Yeah. So a couple of things. You can go to bretswarts.com and access all of our links to the best-selling book “Building a Capital Gains Tax Exit Plan,” Capital Gains Tax Solutions, the best 1031 exit plan, and all of our social media. You can also go to Amazon and pick up the book as well. It’s called “Building a Capital Gains Tax Exit Plan.” Again, if you have Bitcoin, business, real estate that you’re selling, we’d love the opportunity to sit down with you to see if it could be an amazing fit.
No cost and obligation consultation call. Just go to capitalgainstaxsolutions.com to apply for that call. Download our free eBook there as well. We have an eBook on all of this. Appreciate everyone out there and thanks for having me today.
Awesome. Thanks, Brett. Appreciate it.
Bye, everybody.