Focus On Money: From Tax Troubles to Financial Success, RE & Trust Planning with Sally Gimon

Welcome to The Amber Stitt Show!

In this episode, host Amber welcomes guest Sally Gimon to discuss passive income, trust planning, and navigating the world of finance.

Sally shares her personal story of how she got into passive income and trust planning after her mother fell ill, highlighting the importance of financial security in times of crisis. She talks about her experiences with real estate investing, facing challenges with the IRS, and eventually finding her specialty in trust planning.

Amber and Sally dive deep into strategies for saving money, including Spendthrift Trusts and tax savings techniques. They also discuss the impact of COVID-19 on businesses and how to adapt and innovate during challenging times.

Throughout the episode, they share personal anecdotes, financial insights, and recommended resources for listeners who want to take control of their financial future.

From tax breakthrough sessions to creating passive income streams, Sally offers valuable advice for achieving financial success. Join us as we explore the world of finance, passive income, and trust planning with Sally Gimon on The Amber Stitt Show.

Don't forget to subscribe, like, and share this episode, and check out Amber's resources at www.AmberStitt.com.

For more information about Sally Gimon and the services that she offers, please visit her website:

www.thetrustisyou.com

You can also email her at:

info@thetrustisyou.com

Transcript

Amber [00:00:00]:

Hello, and welcome to the Amber Stitt Show. I am your host, Amber Stitt, and for the Pathways audience, today, we're going to hit all five pillars, which is always exciting. And really, I was thinking about focusing on money. I wore my big green glasses today, like Money Talk. We're going to talk about saving money, being smarter with money. I know that you dabble a little bit about passive income, which is perfect because with my clients and my audience, I don't always that talk about retirement the traditional way. There's, I think a different way to go about life and our transitions and our pathways. So thank you for being on the show today.

Amber [00:00:34]:

Sally, welcome to the show. I'm so excited that you can be part of all five.

Sally Gimon [00:00:39]:

Well, thank you for having me, Amber. I'm so glad I can talk to your audience because most people have not heard of what I do. So thank you.

Amber [00:00:44]:

And I'm like a high input person. And I was going to tell you this. Before being a financial consultant, I was a corporate paralegal. So I was in these law firms learning all different ways about business entities and setups. I didn't like the litigation, the drama behind it. I like more of a plan, so I would geek out on trusts. And so when I'm meeting you and looking at your YouTube channel and just seeing what you're talking about, I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, this is perfect." So really, even if somebody's not a true self employed business owner, they can still be an employee with passive income as a self employed person.

Amber [00:01:20]:

So we're going to talk about a lot of that, and I think you're perfect for the conversation. So I want to start, though, at the beginning. I told you a little bit about being in a law firm and kind of being around this. And so focusing on talents is really starting with more of that, investing in yourself. How did you get into this world? Because you're dabbling with real estate a little bit and money. I want you to tell the audience about how that all shakes out. But how did you get here? Because not everyone wakes up and says, as a young kid, I want to do trust planning and help people transfer risk. So I'll pass the mic to you, my friend.

Sally Gimon [00:01:58]:

Well, my story starts back in October of 2018. My parents were living in Goodyear. They drove from Goodyear, Arizona, to Charlotte, NC for my oldest nephew's wedding. Along the way, my mom got sick. She got septic to the blood. She was on a ventilator for 13 months, in a hospital for 15 months. My parents had planned to be away for just two weeks. I was working as a Medicare broker.

Sally Gimon [00:02:18]:

Phoenix: I-17 and Thunderbird. I worked until 08:00 that night because it's open enrollment time. Drove to Sky Harbor Airport, flew out on the red eye. My nephew met me at the airport. We went to IHOP, and then we went to my mom's hospital room. The priest was giving her last rites. I knew she was sick but

Sally Gimon [00:02:33]:

I didn't know she was that sick.

Amber [00:02:34]:

I mean, right?

Sally Gimon [00:02:35]:

My world kind of stopped moving at that point. The wedding was at 03:00 that afternoon. Fantastic wedding. Family in from all over the place. Next day, we had lunch. I visited my mom. I had to fly out that afternoon because I had to be back at work at 06:00 AM on Monday morning because open enrollment, I was working Michigan hours. My dad and mom stayed in Charlotte for over nine months while my mom was recuperating to get strong enough to come back to Phoenix.

Sally Gimon [00:02:59]:

I had my house in Phoenix. I was going out to their house in Goodyear three times a week to do the mail. December of 2018, a letter about 27 pages thick was my mom's Medicare statement for the first month in the hospital. $172,000. My dad retired military, had TRICARE For Life (TFL). She was getting the best care possible. I'm standing in their kitchen going, "I have mortgage, I have student loans, I have credit card payments." You know, Phoenix.

Sally Gimon [00:03:26]:

I was going to work 7:30 in the morning. Indian School Road. Second car through the green light. Someone ran the red light. They had no insurance. I had two car payments. I'm like, "Yikes!" So I called my friend Glenn.

Sally Gimon [00:03:37]:

He had called me. I went to a real estate meeting in August, and I said, I can't do anything until open enrollment is over. We're still in the middle of open enrollment, I'm like, "Glenn, I have to change my life today." He's like, "Hey, Sally, we're having a Christmas party next Saturday. Bring a five dollar gift and food. Come meet some of my friends who are real estate investors." I don't know about you, Amber. Going to a party where you know nobody but one person.

Sally Gimon [00:03:57]:

Yikes.

Amber [00:03:58]:

Right?

Sally Gimon [00:03:59]:

Best decision I ever made. Got started real estate investing. And in 2019, still working as a Medicare broker. I wholesaled seven bank owned properties nationwide and was making great money. Got in trouble with the IRS. I made too much money. I went from 22% up to 24% tax rate, and I had to pay capital gains, get on a payment plan with the IRS. Kind of embarrassing, right? In my national real estate group, a gentleman named Garrett Gunderson who wrote a book called, "What Would the Rockefellers Do?" He changed the title. I had a copy.

Sally Gimon [00:04:29]:

I went back and read through it. My background, competitive intelligence. I researched and found the law firm that has a 72 year copywritten on this trust they've inherited a trust that's over 350 years old. When they were still following me, I became their client, and then I became certified to start teaching my real estate group, because if I'm in trouble with capital gains, other people are in trouble with capital gains.

Amber [00:04:52]:

Oh, yeah.

Sally Gimon [00:04:53]:

Fast forward. January 2020. I was doing a weekly mastermind in my real estate group. The gentleman who ran the real estate group, we had a real estate transaction happen. I'm still in North Carolina. I sent him a text going, "Hey, this is $5,000 less than what we discussed about." Next day, he gets on the phone and he turned on a dime. I mean, he was my mentor, he was my friend.

Sally Gimon [00:05:12]:

He ran the real estate group, and he's just like, "I can't trust you. You're calling me a liar? You're calling me a thief?" I'm like, "No, I just asked what happened to our agreement." He was going to put me on hold for six weeks. And I'm like, "I'm not a human yoyo." Do you know about the Bob Proctor Sandy Gallagher Institute? Have you heard of them?

Amber [00:05:27]:

No.

Sally Gimon [00:05:27]:

I'm a student of thinking into results. I contacted my coach and she's like, "You need to move. You need a new real estate group, and you need to start your own business." I'm kike, "Okay, can you give me something simple to work on?" March of 2020. I started the trust is you and now I'm speaking on podcasts, on stages. I was just down in Atlanta for the weekend talking to a real estate group, helping people. Two weeks ago, I was out in Las Vegas talking to they're all insurance agents who make 1099 income, and if I can save taxes, other people should know about this too.

Amber [00:05:59]:

All right, let's pause there for a second because, oh, my gosh, this is really important, Sally, because I think people don't realize with problems, there's opportunities, and it's not always fun. And I do a lot of talking about next generation, but I also talk about just the rising generation. It could be, what's, your next ten years or whatever you want it to be. Any age, we can find a new business line or as we become subject matter experts in one area, and then we experience some life changes that can then become our new business or a strategic partnership with somebody else. This is huge. And you mentioned Rockefellers. And so my firm and my colleagues do not treat retirement as this, like, throw money into this big bucket, and we're not going to touch it until that 65, 67. Just don't...just sit and wait.

Amber [00:06:47]:

That is not our M.O.. And we want people to have control over their lives and have opportunities and create passive income strategies and have cash flow. So there's lots of different ways to do that. So the fact that you were able to and you're still evolving, and we'll get to some of your other business lines, but I want people to know that this is, like, very exciting time, I think, for us to learn from the titans and what did they do with their money. As you study these titans, even like Walt Disney used life insurance, there's different things that people are doing that are outside of this the traditional banking institutional way. So I want to say that but give you kudos on just being brave. And also executive coaching is so huge and there's lots of different variations for different industries. But thinking that you are above being mentored, throw that idea out because it's a reciprocating thing where one person might be in your life for a season like that.

Amber [00:07:39]:

One person pushed you into that community and it didn't work out. You had to make a pivot and change. But it worked for that season to kind of give you the guts and the gusto and then you can kind of ebb and flow as things in life happens and you kind of get smarter with the process. And so congratulations on all of that.

Sally Gimon [00:07:56]:

Thank you. Exactly what you said. I was very complacent. I had my mastermind sold, 14 trust. I'm doing real estate now. I'm getting paid to be on stages and tell people about this. I don't want to say this, but it's a whole different stream of income. And down in Atlanta, people were taking me to dinner.

Sally Gimon [00:08:16]:

I'm like, "Okay, I'll go to dinner with you." It's amazing. Thank you for saying that because it has changed my life and I'm helping others change their futures and generations, Amber. So it's important.

Amber [00:08:27]:

Yeah. And there's something that kind of was weird. What happens in financial planning world, clients can complain about a fee for financial planning or estate planning. "Oh, $3,000 for an estate plan?" Well, but all the rules are set up and ready to go and no one can get dramatic. These are the rules. We've written them out. It's like such a cool way to plan and kind of get that outline.

Amber [00:08:48]:

Having that outline is so important while you are calm and having you're healthy and well, not reactive. So part of what we talk about is take action today, kind of take like little steps. Take action today, get your plan in order. It is not okay for your family or anyone that you love to just have a mess on their hands. And I know that we're going to speak to that a little bit more. But my strength finders top ten, I know those. And then my Enneagram one is kind of like a responsible perfectionist that can't get a little rigid. But when you work with teams and you kind of understand why that's important for my job, but then how I can counter that with other people on my team and my husband's a little bit opposite and he works with me so we can kind of counterbalance like plugging it all together but really focusing on talents.

Amber [00:09:33]:

Could be anywhere from getting that coach, doing personal assessments, really taking yourself seriously. And sometimes when you get out of all of that you realize, "Gosh, why was I not confident back there 5-10 years ago?" But when you have that "Aha moment" like it's okay to be confident and own it. It's such a cool feeling, and it's like, why are we not celebrating that more? It's not arrogant. It's like, if you are an expert, share it with people. And it's okay to charge for that, get paid for that. Because we can pay attorneys. We can pay CPAs. It's no different when we need that access to the information.

Amber [00:10:06]:

So focusing on money is really like, okay, not so much. Probably in your world, you have a systematic plan, but once you know how you incorporate, how you set goals or systems, different personalities are more rigid. Like, me, my husband's more kind of like, "It'll all be okay." But he knows he needs a system to keep him on track, and that's where you come into play. Can we talk about 2024 a little bit at this point? Did you know about that before you got into this? Or did it just kind of happen that things were changing that reiterated what you were doing? Does that make sense for me?

Sally Gimon [00:10:37]:

I did my taxes April 15, 2020. My CPA did the taxes. And he's like, you're going to have to get on a payment plan. This is how much it's going to be per month. I'm like, "Yikes." I was making good money. I can't complain. I'm doing well in my real estate group.

Sally Gimon [00:10:51]:

In July, the deal of the week was a bank owned reverse mortgage. My specialty is bank owned. It's going to pay $20,000 for the bank owned reverse mortgage. It's going to go to auction for $50,000. So the $30,000 spread in between, I knew my tax rate was 24%. Remember, July of 2020, middle of COVID. I had to wait 18 months. So a transaction like that, usually six weeks, I can do it very quickly.

Sally Gimon [00:11:16]:

So I had time to research this again, going back to the book, I started putting things into Google, going through things. It was interesting because when I contacted the law firm, they're like, "We don't know what you're talking about. We're a private law firm." So then I had to find a representative who was selling the trust because the law firm wouldn't talk to me directly as an individual. It's going to be a sad story. Richard, who is my contact, he got me set up. We had a conversation. I explained to him, I'm in a real estate group with about 800 investors.

Sally Gimon [00:11:43]:

So I do a mastermind. He's like that's great. Back in September, I sent him a message saying his website is not working. And I'm like, "Wow. I sent it on Thursday. I haven't heard from him." So I called him, like, on Tuesday, going, he's usually really good. He didn't pick up his cell phone. Over the weekend, his kidneys shut down, and he died very unexpectedly.

Sally Gimon [00:12:00]:

And because he has this trust and he had a trust successor, everything that happened, I mean, I had changed a few things, but all his assets, he too, was a real estate investor doing other things. Everything that happened for him, a very unexpected death. There's going to be no inheritance tax. It's going to go from a plan, from divorced with two grown children and had a favorite nephew. He had it all worked out, how it was going to be broken up between the three of them and everything. And I'm just like, "Wow. I never thought how the trust would affect somebody with something that happened so quickly." But it does matter.

Sally Gimon [00:12:37]:

I mean, because I had to deal with my parents'estate and everything, right?

Amber [00:12:40]:

Yeah, because you've had personal experience, too. So was he part of that law firm, or was he part of the real estate investor group?

Sally Gimon [00:12:46]:

He was living in Long Beach, California, so he was not part of my real estate group in Phoenix. But my coach had told me, join another group, that I'm in a national real estate group. So I joined another group out of Tennessee, and now I have more clients because I'm talking to more people, doing more things. I moved to North Carolina. They have a very strange rule here called an upset bid. So I'm not trying to crow, but I just won an upset bid. One of the first foreclosures since COVID went through. I got it for $260,000.

Sally Gimon [00:13:15]:

I'm going to wholesale it at the end of the month for $310,000. I'm going to make $50,000 on the split. And because of that, I'm going to save almost $9,000 in short term capital gains. The person who's buying it is going to rent it out. But I'm lazy. I don't want any renters, so I wholesale everything I get.

Amber [00:13:34]:

Okay. So, yeah, let's talk about IRMAA. Can you break that down for the audience?

Sally Gimon [00:13:38]:

Sure, IRMAA affects if you're on medicare 65 or older or if you got on early, IRMAA affects your part b of your medicare. Part a is your hospital stay. Part b are your doctors and medical tests. If you're making everything put together Social Security, wages, pensions, separate withdrawals, 401K withdrawals, capital gains, interest income, dividend income, rental income, or royalty income. If you're making more than $91,000, you'll have to pay more for part b. I believe this year I'm not a medicare broker anymore, but I believe in 2023, you're paying $166 from your Social Security for part b. If you're making more than $170,000, you have to pay all of part b.

Sally Gimon [00:14:25]:

And it affects a lot of people on Social Security are dependent on Social Security, but there are people out there who are making good money and aren't aware how much it's costing them and things like that.

Amber [00:14:35]:

Okay, so for the audience and a lot of my clients are 28 to 55. So let's pause here for a second and just hold that thought, okay. If you're listening to this episode and you're like, "Well, I am not medicare age, so this does not apply to me," pause for a moment. We are in November for Long Term Care Awareness Month. Part of Long Term Care Awareness is not like insurance products. It's actually talking about everything prior to so if you have parents that are alive, this is going to become your problem. If and we talked about focusing on money. Focusing on talents is really building for personality styles and how to build out your processes.

Amber [00:15:10]:

But focusing on money when we're talking about this, there's really no personality style to mesh with it. Get it done with a law firm that knows the laws of your state and it needs to be mapped out. This has nothing to do with personality. It's just a responsible thing to do if you have parents and they're not in the same state, which is very common. Right. You've dealt with that. Your parents were going from Arizona to North Carolina. This is not the first time I've heard of this, and I'm almost 44.

Amber [00:15:36]:

So this is happening in my friend group and some of my clients and colleagues do not ignore Medicare in that thought process of like, "Well, I don't have to worry about the rules because I'm not eligible for that." Your parents are going to be lost because most of them are and they don't know where to go. And you've witnessed that as a Medicare broker. Other podcast episodes on my podcast have talked about that with a couple of my other guests.

Sally Gimon [00:16:01]:

Oh, fantastic. Most people aren't aware of it, so I'm glad you're telling your clients about it.

Amber [00:16:05]:

Yeah. So let's continue on this and talk about focusing on risk, because, again, I'm an insurance planner and a business strategist, but it's not just about product. This goes back to understanding the rules, the regs, and let's keep more of your income in your pocket. And I think you touched on something here with tax brackets. And again, we're not tax advisors, but people assume, okay, if I make X amount, you mentioned 24%, that doesn't mean every dollar is on that. There's a stairstep along the way correct, of how your different income can be taxed. And so it's a little more tedious. There's luckily a lot of strategies you can do, but you're going to need some help to get them done, right? So let's talk about that with my clients.

Sally Gimon [00:16:46]:

When I offer them a 30 minutes tax breakthrough session, I take them out to Nerd Wallet, which is a website, and we discuss, hey, how much did you make in 2022? The calculator is there and I show them how to figure out their tax bracket with the business ben Thrift Trust, I can legally say they're going to save at least 70% on their federal taxes before they take deductibles. So just to give you an idea, most of my clients save up to 90% to 95% 2022 federal taxes. I've got 1099 income. I save 92% on my 1099 income. The reason we need to figure out the tax bracket. There's seven different tax brackets between 10% to 37%, seven different tax brackets. And it can affect you when you make too much money different ways. One of my clients, we know each other from a Mastermind.

Sally Gimon [00:17:32]:

His father passed away in 2021. He left his son a stock portfolio, 100 shares of the top 100 dividend paying companies. I thought that was a neat thing to do. Don's a coach, he was making so much money here at 24%, when he added every quarter, he was making about $37,000 dividends on these 1000 shares.

Amber [00:17:54]:

Every quarter dividends.

Sally Gimon [00:17:58]:

He was going on fabulous vacations. He sent me a postcard from Canada saying, look where I'm staying. Then he got the tax bill. Well, he went from 24% tax bracket all the way up to, I want to say 35% tax bracket because his coaching, 1099 income and his dividend income. He's just like, "Oh my gosh, no one told me this." We had to get his financial planner involved because she had to change the stock certificate from Don's name to the trust name. So we did this second quarter of 2022, he started the trust. Second quarter, 2022.

Sally Gimon [00:18:31]:

His financial planner had to change each other stock certificates when he got paid third quarter stock certificates, he paid for the trust. And every quarter he's saving at least $17,000 in interest income or dividend income on his taxes. He also got the business trust because he's a coach, a transition coach. He's saving money there too. I don't have the slide in front of me, but I want to say he's saving over $58,000 every single year he's in his 50s. But this is going to continue for the next ten years. That's going to be over half a million dollars saved in taxes. Legally.

Sally Gimon [00:19:06]:

I mean, that's life changing for people.

Amber [00:19:07]:

Oh, absolutely. And I know your YouTube has some of this information, and we'll link up a lot of that information. We'll talk about that at the end as well. But I know you mentioned a quote in one of your videos, I think it was a Rockefeller quote, correct. About what do wealthy people do to make sure they have more money.

Sally Gimon [00:19:24]:

The book is now called "What the Billionaires Do". The author, Garrett Gunderson, teaches in my national real estate group. It's a book about the Rockefellers. They have the trust. Most people are unaware the current tax code went into effect February of 1913 and was only supposed to be around for six years. So the Baron families, the Rockefellers, the Duponts, the Carnegies, the Kennedys put this into the tax code and the book discusses whenever you're an heir of the Rockefellers, you take out an infinite banking policy and make the trust the beneficiary. So if you want to start I'm making this up. You want to start a Baskin Robbins.

Sally Gimon [00:20:02]:

You take out an infinite banking policy, and then when you pass away, it goes back to the trust. So it's always increasing and growing and growing and growing.

Amber [00:20:10]:

And I mentioned like the Walt Disney biography. I didn't read it personally and one of my strategic partners in his study group, he talked about it most recently. So I want to read it at some point, but it talks about how no one really believed in his idea for Disney, so he just took it upon himself to find a way to get some money out of his insurance policy. So like you mentioned, I think a lot of people don't realize the tax code was not always here. Like we didn't have this madness always. So there's built in strategies around this. And this is why it's so important to work with tax advisors, not just a CPA that's putting data entry in to say, okay, you put this money in and then look at the tax situation because you're a little more complex the more that you have passive income plus maybe W-2 or maybe all self employment. But there's some beauty in it.

Amber [00:20:57]:

I mean, it's like you got to build out the systems with the people that understand the tax code and can understand your problems, like in a good way. There's so many things you can do and it's perfectly fine. And Sprendthrift was funny because when I was a paralegal years ago, I always thought the Sprendthrift Trust were for the naughty kid that would spend it all and get in trouble because I think there's a way to put some provisions in there that could spring in if something were to happen. But in my textbook learning, I always thought about Spendthrift a little bit differently, like, make sure that they don't receive all this money and just go to "Party Town". Exactly.

Sally Gimon [00:21:31]:

Who are the Hilton daughters? Exactly.

Amber [00:21:35]:

And so we're going to link up some of the ways that people can find what you're talking about too, and get that consultation. So my fourth step is really talking about innovating marketing and technology that's kind of like that one that's like, "Okay, I know that you have a podcast and I know that you are innovating through YouTube around 2020 with COVID, too." Sounds like you did a ton of research around that time because of family issues. And around that time I already had a virtual business. But I said, "Okay, how do I help people no matter what happens?" And we did a lot of study groups talking to business owners that if you did shut down, how are you still showing presence? Like your doors are open, especially if you are a shop, like a hair salon or something. And people were innovating like crazy. Let's do courses online, let's sell products online while we have to wait this out. They were figuring out another way.

Amber [00:22:21]:

So I was really always studying that and how do we innovate, too. And so what did you do with your business? Because you kind of started a business right in the middle of all of that.

Sally Gimon [00:22:30]:

I started in the middle of it. To tell you the truth, COVID really affected me when it started. I had twelve notes, which is, I was the mortgage on the house. I didn't have the paper. People are paying me their mortgage. April of 2020, all twelve notes stopped paying me. I'm like, "Yikes." I was purposely doing bank owned properties, things like this.

Sally Gimon [00:22:48]:

But when the courts shut down, a lot of things shut down. So I started different businesses online. One of my clients, true story, she got laid off because of COVID single mom with three children. She comes home going, "What am I going to do? I don't have a business." They had two dogs. And she's like, "I spend so much money on dog chew toys." She started Amazon Store selling toys. October, November, December of 2022, her business was making over $20,000 a month.

Sally Gimon [00:23:18]:

All of a sudden, it just keeps growing and growing. Because she got the trust, we're using those numbers. She's going to save over $45,000 a year and she's going to start putting it...her oldest child is twelve. She's like, I never went to college. And she goes, when I got laid off, she was working at a resort in California. She goes, COVID affected her. She wants her children to have exactly what you know, what if the world shuts down again? She wants them to have options.

Sally Gimon [00:23:42]:

That's the most amazing thing. People are using the money they're saving here to give other people options. I've got clients who set up charities and things like this because COVID affected everyone differently. I mean, thank God I had money set aside and I had to foreclose on my twelve notes. Three of them were in Tennessee, so it was a forfeiture, but I had to have money to be able to foreclose on them. And then I was able to get the property and resell it, but I wasn't ready for it. I'll be honest. COVID stuck me up because I thought I was doing well.

Sally Gimon [00:24:11]:

When everything starts shutting down.

Amber [00:24:13]:

Sally you don't know this, but that's where my "Pathways of Peak Performance" came from. It was originally called "Pandemic Proof Your Business". And it was in a different order, and I presented it in 2020. I was asked to speak somewhere, and it was, "Okay, let's get the fear of pandemic. Let's get rid of that. Let's have resilience, know who we are. Let's figure out how we handle our money goals, and if we need some help, build some systems, if we're really organized and great, great, not everyone's going to be financially sophisticated. Doesn't matter, just get to the point of building out the systems."

Amber [00:24:40]:

Either hire somebody, find the app, no excuses, just figure it out and do the work. Then focusing on risk could be getting organized. Think about like back in the day. You'd open up your cupboard and you'd have, like, those... I always talk, like, "back in the day." I'm, like, the oldest of seven, so I had the emergency contacts, and, like, who do you call if I'm babysitting down the street? Nobody knows that stuff about each other anymore. Most people do not know. I remember phone numbers from back growing up.

Amber [00:25:04]:

But if there's an emergency and there's going to be something, what's your game plan? Are there virtual documents for your people to grab and go as needed? And it's like, put down the Netflix, because people are like, let's be real people and get a little more organized. And once you kick it off and kind of clean it up, you just have to add on to it. And so that's where even trust can be like that. There's the standard approach, and then there's, like, a pour over and different things that I've done. I'm not an attorney, so I'm not giving legal advice, but there's things that you can do. So when there is a curveball, because there will be another one, what did you get accomplished in advance? And so sometimes, though, we kind of get hit from the side, and then we create opportunities, and then that's our story. And you have a little bit of that mixed in, and so do I, and that's okay.

Sally Gimon [00:25:48]:

For me, all of a sudden, I had income coming in through. So what I started doing you know where Litchfield Park is west of Phoenix? I went through people who had rental homes, did some research, who had paid off homes. I contacted a couple who lived in Litchfield Park, not making fun of them. They were in their 70s. They had two houses in what's considered New Litchfield Park that were paid for, and they weren't paying their rent to them. The wife, who was 76 years old, she wasn't sleeping. Her blood pressure was up. The husband says, "I know how much I paid for them.

Sally Gimon [00:26:20]:

Give me $150,000. You'll have both those houses." Those houses were worth over $260,000 each. I purposely talked to an attorney. I knocked on the door. I went up to each house, and I said, "I'm the new landlord. How much can you pay per month? If you don't pay correctly, I can foreclose on you." The one house said, I'll pay you $100 a month.

Sally Gimon [00:26:40]:

The other house said, $10. Literally, in three months, both of them stopped paying me. I was able to foreclose on them. I wholesaled them to somebody else. And I made, I'm not trying to crow, I made $60,000 on the wholesale deal on each house. So that's $120,000 that I could live off of during COVID which helped so much.

Amber [00:26:59]:

But you also gave these people a solution, correct? The owners, the original ones, because if they're stressed out and maybe having chronic illness because of stress, you gave them a way out through their equity and their assets. So that's the point.

Sally Gimon [00:27:13]:

I was trying to make a win/win for everyone. I mean, $100 rent, you could do something. You could do something during COVID for $100.

Amber [00:27:20]:

Sally, what you mean to say is there's no excuses, people. There's something you can do. Get out there and go do it. Clean a house, do something. And that's why I talk about with, like, not everyone's super financially sophisticated or wants to be a finance expert. That's okay, but you can't just not know what's going on. Participate up to your abilities. Work with your family or whoever.

Amber [00:27:40]:

More of like a team effort, but know where things are. You can't just go, well, he always or she always did that for me. That's not an excuse in my book. But again, I've already mentioned I'm a little more rigid, but I think you're reiterating that. Do not let these things happen to you. So just building that resilience. And then let's go into focus on community to wrap this up, because you started with some people that helped you around that original time to go meet with some of those investor groups, and then you found some better ones. And it's kind of cool as you get older.

Amber [00:28:10]:

I like the wisdom that comes with getting older and experiencing things because you can look back and almost give yourself a laugh of like, "That was a big deal a year ago. Oh my gosh." And then kind of move forward. And you're like, speaking. Not everyone can get on stage and speak and look at you go. I don't know if you were always great at that, but that's something that almost everyone has to work on on a regular basis. I think the worst fear for everybody, I don't know the statistics on that, but that's what I've heard. So really just like pushing into that community, who's going to help you but be reciprocating? And a lot of experts will talk about who's in your group, because if they're negative and they don't believe in that crazy idea, like you knocking on a door and going, "I'm going to go try this in Litchfield Park and see what happens."

Amber [00:28:49]:

Crazy ideas, try them out, see what happens.

Sally Gimon [00:28:52]:

I mean, I knew I had to find another solution because the solution I had failed. It didn't fail. I was able to make more money once I wholesaled everything. But all of a sudden, when you think you're going to be making $9,000 a month and it just dries up, find another solution. And they were not the only people I worked with, but they were the first people. And he was 78, she's 73. And he's just like, "That's all the money we want."

Sally Gimon [00:29:18]:

He's like, "For my wife to sleep well at night, that's priceless." And I'm like, "Let me do this." There's so many solutions out there. You just have to think about it. And your comment about Netflix, one of my friends who lives in Phoenix, she tells me I'm lucky. I'm like, "I'm not lucky. I'm doing something." And I had invited her before COVID to come to the real estate meeting, and she's like, Wednesday nights are good TV night.

Sally Gimon [00:29:40]:

"Chicago Fire" is on. Like, "They have repeats during the summer. Just come to a meeting" We're not friends anymore. I have to apologize about that.

Amber [00:29:48]:

Don't apologize for that. It's one of those things there's some clarity when people are building things with you, and it could be building things for income, but building things for charitable reasons or just donating your time, but doing something that's creating some positive result. And it doesn't have to be a metric that always monetizes to some financial return. In my experience, the more that you get out there and do things, the income just kind of comes because you're around people that will support you. And with women, we can be almost the most competitive against each other, and I have now a core group of girls, or women, for three years now. I mean, we're meeting on the side for different business opportunities and daydreaming. So we're now going and meeting each other in different states for different retreats and masterminds versus the traditional - what I used to do: happy hour or, maybe go on a vacation.

Amber [00:30:38]:

Now my vacations are kind of like a split vacation. Write-off, mastermind, opportunity, and then Sally, we figure out some business from that. To me, that's more rewarding versus, like, yeah, every now and then, chill, read a book, watch something to catch up. But, yeah, if people just don't want to help themselves off the couch, and you might have to move past that, and that's okay. You can't feel guilty about it.

Sally Gimon [00:30:59]:

I read a statistic that the average American doesn't read a full book in a year, which is I can't imagine that. I mean, during COVID the thing I missed most was the libraries were closed. I mean, they did curbside delivery. On all my presentations, I have a nonprofit and the with the trust, when you download the presentation, the second to last page is a series of books that I think everyone should read. "The Science of Getting Rich". "Power of Your Subconscious Mind". "Think and Grow Rich".

Sally Gimon [00:31:26]:

I mean, there's so much out there. I told you before we started this podcast I'm dyslexic and for me to learn...

Amber [00:31:32]:

You mentioned that really briefly. It's more common than people know from what I'm hearing lately, because my daughter's five, and then there's kids that I'm hearing from parents.

Sally Gimon [00:31:40]:

Oh, wow. Okay.

Amber [00:31:41]:

There wasn't a lot of resources back then. Like, back ten years ago.

Sally Gimon [00:31:45]:

My mom sat down with me, and I can remember the summer between first grade and second grade. I read my first book, Marty, the Mouse. It's a Dr. Seuss book. She gave me the joy of reading. I can't imagine someone not picking up a book and getting lost, reading for fun or reading for business. I mean, there's so much out there in the world. I mean, my mom, she would get lost in the book.

Amber [00:32:10]:

And that's how I grew up, too. I'd sit with Grandma, my mom, but some people, like my husband, don't love that hard book, like that book. But we have options. We have audiobooks, we can watch a video. YouTube, like, "You can do it." There's ways. So I want to link up that page for your books. And then let's wrap up talking about the most recent thing you have going on.

Sally Gimon [00:32:28]:

What I have going on right now. I have a real estate deal that's going to be wholesale next Friday. It's a three bedroom, two bath house I got for $260,000. I'm going to wholesale for $310,000. I'm speaking I was just down in Atlanta speaking to a real estate group about the Spendthrift Trust. Two weeks ago, I was out in Las Vegas talking to insurance agents because most insurance agents are 1099 income earners.

Amber [00:32:51]:

I got a few 1099, yes.

Sally Gimon [00:32:54]:

So you'll start saving. If the presidents and Rockefellers can save money on the trust, why can't we save money? Do you know I just got on a new site. Do you know anything about Owwl on your phone? I have a a speaking coach. She gave me a link to get on there today. I talked to a gentleman who teaches people how to invest in forex, and people don't realize forex investors get taxed twice capital gains and interest income. And he wants me to talk to his group next Tuesday. I'll do it for free because I have an affiliate program. If someone in his group buys a trust, he gets paid.

Sally Gimon [00:33:30]:

His people on his group, they'll save taxes, I get paid. It's just a beautiful win/win situation. I just want to teach people maybe it's not for them today. One of my clients, I talked to them about 18 months ago, she's doing a side hustle. And then she just sent me a text message this morning going, "I need to start talking to you about the trust in January." I'm like, here's my schedule. Get on it.

Amber [00:33:52]:

Get on that schedule.

Sally Gimon [00:33:53]:

I know my website, www.thetrustisyou.com. I have a free video on there. You can download and watch it at your own time, or you can set up an appointment. A 30 minute tax breakthrough session with me. You said you see me on YouTube. I got kicked off LinkedIn. I'm like the only person who I know who got kicked off LinkedIn.

Amber [00:34:14]:

Tell me, how are you a rebel and getting kicked off? Like, I was kind of a rebel younger. So how do you do that on LinkedIn? Let's talk about it.

Sally Gimon [00:34:22]:

I was going live. I had over 10,000 followers on LinkedIn. This is about two months ago. It's on a Friday. I was answering somebody on LinkedIn and all of a sudden the page changes and says, "You're being hacked. We have to shut you down."

Amber [00:34:34]:

Oh, no. So it wasn't like your content.

Sally Gimon [00:34:36]:

It was, so two weeks go by, I get another email saying, "We need you to verify the front and the back of your driver's license." I did that. There's several weeks. They keep sending me an email at 1:30 AM in the morning, so I don't get it until later. I'm asleep. So finally I had to give them a copy of my passport. It was six weeks, and they finally sent me an email going, you've had too many violations. Like, what violations? One of the things I did, Amber, that maybe it's a violation.

Sally Gimon [00:35:02]:

I love football, so when I watch football on Sundays I started this back in January 2022. I was going through all my contacts who met me that week, and if they had a personal website, I would go out there, I'd get their name, their email, if they had a phone number, and I would put it into my CRM system. So, yes, I lost all my contacts, but I have everything from August of 2021 all the way up until when this happened. In August of 2023, I have all those contacts in my CRM. One of my coaches, Casey Eberhardt, always says, Facebook, LinkedIn could close you down. It's not your list until you have that list to yourself. So that's why I did what I did.

Amber [00:35:41]:

Well, yeah, email lists are very important. Just kind of goes back to what I was saying. Know who your people are and know how to contact family, important documents. But also, if you are in business, you need to know who your potential prospects and clients are. And so it again goes back to the principles of really personal investing in yourself, but also being in control of things and not just assuming and just, like, letting people do things for you. So I really appreciate this is like a jam packed session today.

Sally Gimon [00:36:12]:

I really appreciate talking with you, Amber.

Amber [00:36:14]:

Thank you for having, you know, really let's have people really focus on reaching out, looking into the planning that you're talking about, and hopefully you'll need it. Because I think anyone's capable of having some passive income in different variations. It doesn't mean that everyone wants to manage real estate, but there is a variation of private equity that is so important for people to have.

Sally Gimon [00:36:37]:

A friend of mine, when she got laid off, she started selling all her things, clothes she wasn't wearing on Ebay. She made over $9,000. Just ebaying. I mean, how easy is that?

Amber [00:36:50]:

I think Gary Vee did this whole bit, something of just like, going and getting books from garage sales. And he's like, let me show you how easy it is to create a side hustle. Like, "Go do it. Go do something!"

Sally Gimon [00:37:02]:

One of my clients, unfortunately, he fell, broke his hip. He has to go to assisted living. His baseball card collection, he had all these baseball cards that weren't open. I don't know about baseball cards. I took it to somebody else to look at this. This gentleman who's going into a nursing home. The baseball card collection was worth over $12,000.

Sally Gimon [00:37:19]:

The guy who looked at the baseball cards took commission from it, but the gentleman who was...he needs this money to live in a nursing home and get his hip replaced and everything, so exactly. There's so much you could be doing out there.

Amber [00:37:32]:

Really we could close out our episode today, just really being mindful of having those big, crazy ideas and then being around people that can help you implement, or daydream about it together, because you never know where it can take you. But definitely put yourself out there and do the work, right?

Sally Gimon [00:37:48]:

Correct. I appreciate you spending the time with me, Amber. Thank you for having me on your show.

Amber [00:37:52]:

Awesome. Well, we'll see you soon, okay, Sally?

Sally Gimon [00:37:54]:

Thank you.

Amber [00:37:55]:

Maybe in Arizona one day, okay? Thank you. Thank you for joining us on today's episode of The Amber Stitt Show. For more information about the podcast, books, articles, and more, please visit me at: www.AmberStitt.com. Until next week, enjoy your journey at home and at work. Thank you for listening!