PODCAST EPISODE № 84

Candid Conversations with Phenomenal Executive Women: Rosaline Gordon

by Anita Charlot

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Hello, beautiful! Tune in this week to hear an incredibly informative candid conversation with the phenomenal Rosaline Gordon!

Rosaline Gordon is an entrepreneur, international speaker, and mentor. Rosaline has served as CEO and Founder of The Gordon Group Financial Services, Inc. since 2015. She holds a master’s in Legal Studies from Trinity Law School and a bachelor’s in Business Administration from Metropolitan College of New York.

With over 30 years of experience, Rosaline provides optimal strategies and financial solutions for entrepreneurs and high-net-worth clients at each phase of their business.

See you on the inside…

What You Learn:

Rosaline’s journey and what made her the queen of numbers
The difference between internal and external compliance in business
The services offered by The Gordon Group Financial Services
How you can reach out to Rosaline and consult with her

Featured on the Show:

Learn more about Rosaline and The Golden Group Financial Services on their website!
Check out Rosaline’s new page, Mastering the Business of Business
Follow Rosaline on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn
Learn more about how you can work directly with Anita
Love the show? Leave a review of the show on Apple Podcasts (click the link to find out how).
Follow me on Instagram!
Find me on Facebook!

As an Executive Coach for Women, Professional Speaker, Corporate Metaphysician™, Author of The 5 Phases of Dating – The Grown-Ass Woman’s Guide to Attracting and Maintaining Authentic Relationships, and the Creator of The Happy Executive Woman™…

Anita teaches women of color how to heal from past relationships and corporate trauma, increase their confidence and improve their leadership skills.

She is a board member of the Women Impact Network and Women In Technology, where she focuses on coordinating and creating professional development training for the members.

Anita also coaches White allies on how to ACTivate Your Privilege!™ and is hired to speak and train as The Corporate Metaphysician™ at organizations willing to begin reversing corporate America’s trauma by taking an honest look at their “unconscious DEI efforts,” all using practical and metaphysical concepts.

Upcoming Speaking Engagements:

No alt text provided for this image — Flourish Media Conference 2/17 – 2/18 Miami, Florida
Topic & Workshop: How To Heal From Workplace Trauma for Black and Brown Women

Recently featured in…

ValientCEO Magazine!

Speaker’s Magazine

For all coaching, media, or consulting inquiries, don’t hesitate to contact Anita at https://anitacharlot.com/contact.

To learn more about how to partner with Anita, go to https://anitacharlot.com/services.

To join the waiting list for the upcoming For My Black and Brown Sisters monthly membership community, go to bit.ly/formyblackandbrownsisters

Episode Transcript

Anita Charlot:
Good evening, everyone! Welcome, welcome, welcome to another candid conversation with phenomenal women episode today. You know who I am already. This is coach Anita Charlot, and I am here today with my lovely B2B cohort, Rosaline Gordon, and she is just… Can I tell you, we’ve been talking for about 30 minutes now, we’ve been doing some things together over the past couple of weeks, and I have really enjoyed getting to know her on a more personal level. I’m telling you that, to just be real, I’m keeping it real with you guys, which you know, I always do, people don’t like numbers. I don’t like numbers. I’m sitting here right now, and I’m telling you, I don’t like numbers. I don’t like accounting. I thought I wanted to be an accountant. I spent like three hours trying to find two cents in this, in this this form, in school, and I was like, That’s it, I’m done. I was so irritated, I had a headache. But for some reason, Rosaline loves numbers. So you are in the right place, honey, because I had questions for you today, and I know the audience is going to really be blessed by what you have to say. So knowing that most people run from numbers, before I ask you the first question, why don’t you share with our listeners who you are, what you do, and what led you to becoming a financial ambassador?

Rosaline Gordon: 
Okay, well, hello, everyone! Thank you, Anita, for having me as a guest on your podcast, and I just love what I do! Well, there are so many reasons that I chose to do this, but the pivotal moment was when I went to get my taxes done after my divorce. And I sat with the accountant, and he went through my items, and he told me that I had a tax liability. And I was very surprised. And the last thing I needed after going through a divorce was another bill. So, I asked him, you know, was there anything that he can do? And basically, he was saying no. So I told him that I wanted to file head of household, juxtaposed to filing single, and he was very adamant, you know, like, no, no, you can’t, you can’t do that. You’re divorced, you have to file single. So I didn’t file that day, I went home, and I said, You know what, I have to help myself because obviously, he wasn’t interested in helping me. And I did some research, and I looked up the term for head of household. So in order to be considered head of household, you had to be in your home, at least separate from my spouse at the time, at least six months, and have a dependent. So all of those boxes are checked. So I went back to him, and I told him, Listen, I looked it up, and I realized that I can claim head of household, which would alleviate that tax liability that, you know, he said I had. And you know, he was very rough. And he was like, well, where’s the proof? You know, now I understand all that. You know, but what my question is this, why do you want to do your due diligence now instead of doing it before? Because had he asked me, you know, specific questions, and he would have known that I could have claimed head of household. So, you know, he applied it, and I didn’t owe any more. But the thing is, is that, okay, well, I had the knowledge to go and look it up. But how many other people had come to him and had and didn’t have the knowledge and just trusted him, and as a result, they owe the tax liability? And so I said, You know what, I have to do something. I have to do something about this. You know, there’s no way that this could be an isolated incident. And, yeah, I just decided that I wanted to make sure that people had all the information at their disposal that they needed to get the best possible outcome.

Anita:
Okay, that sounds like… where did you grow up? What’s in?

Rosaline:
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. We were located… I went to Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers located in the center of Wall Street. So it was only right that you know, the businesses opened their doors to the students of the high school to get some experience.

Anita:
Oh, that sounds… okay. So that I can relate to that. Here in Chicago, there’s a program called Junior Achievement. And we have in Junior Achievement, like you learn how to run a business, you know, you learn all the aspects of running a business, setting up a business, all the things that you do now, they learn or they get hands-on experience in Junior Achievement. And then with internships, you know, the companies open their doors, and some companies have partnerships with Junior Achievement. There’s also a… what’s it called… Year Up, where high school students spend a year, you know, doing working for a company to get a taste of what it’s like and what they’re interested in.

Rosaline:
Nice. Nice. It’s very instrumental, and it was very instrumental in shaping my life. Yeah, I’ve been doing this since I was 17 years old. And to be honest, you know, growing up in my household, I was a single mom, you know, there were struggles. And you know, Anita, I didn’t judge my mom, but I didn’t want to live like that. I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be able… my mom did the best she can. She was a great mom, and she always wanted us to have the best. So whenever she could struggle for us to get what we had. And, like, you know, you grow up, you grew up poor, but you don’t realize you’re poor. Especially with the mom like mine who tried to make sure that you had everything you needed, and when she could afford it, have little treats, special things. But I wanted to try to do something a little different. I didn’t want to struggle growing up, and I did I wanted my children just to have a different experience. And, you know, I just worked towards that.

Anita:
Yeah. That is amazing. Rosaline, I see that you also hold a Master’s Degree in Legal Studies.

Rosaline:
Yes, yes.

Anita:
So when did the love for the law come in?

Rosaline:
Well, I have to say it was kind of forced. And to be honest, in my experience, they kind of go hand in hand because it wasn’t just straight flat-out accounting. I worked for a business management firm for 20 years, who the owner was a CPA, well, he is a CPA, and an attorney. And I understand how that can happen because they actually go hand in hand. So what happens a lot of times, is, for whatever reason, your clients trust you, they have complete confidence in you. And instead of going to an attorney, or a lawyer, a lot of times they’ll come to you as a business manager, hey, can you look over this contract? Well, I need to get this contract, or, you know, in business management, you handle accounting, they outsource their accounting and their HR to you. So in HR, you have to put those employment agreements in place. You have to create those employee manuals. And a lot of the clients have independent contractors. So you put all of these little contracts and things in place, and sometimes, you know, even though you’re not a lawyer, you’re the one that has to do it. And so what happens is that a lot of times, I never wanted to be a lawyer, but I decided to do this program because it gave a really good insight into the things we needed to look for to help our clients for all those non, you know, non lawyer things, and it gave us an insight. And it just allowed me to be better prepared for situations in business management. And let’s not forget all about the the DEI now. There’s so much legislation and rules around that, and you have to be prepared. And that’s what I’m all about, you know, trying to be sharp and be prepared for all the things that we have to get into as non lawyers.

Anita:
Well, that’s, you know what, though, that’s a bonus. Right? Because when you think about from a business perspective, you think about oh, I need to have a CPA, and then I have to have a lawyer, and then I have to have… and it’s like, to have a CPA or to have a person that is handling your business finances, who’s also very well versed in the law, it’s like getting to for one, right, and to make sure you don’t have to worry about, you know, the person that handles my books didn’t realize that this legislation just came into play. And so now, I’m out of compliance because they didn’t know, and I didn’t have a separate lawyer. And so that that makes things a lot easier, sort of like a one stop shop. Right, you’re like, you’re business anyways, you’re like a one stop shop.

Rosaline:
Yes, in many ways. And a lot of times, clients believe that they have a contract with someone, they’re just interested in the creative side of things, but they don’t necessarily – and this works with accounting as well as law – they don’t really make sure that all of their ducks are in a row. And in order to have a contract, you have to have things in place. And if one of those things are not in place, it’s not a contract. And you know, and it’s good that I can look at something and I can see, was there an offer? Was there consideration? What is there an acceptance? And if one of those things are missing, and there’s no contract. So, it’s good that I can spot certain things that need to be in place to even make sure that things are running along properly, in order for my clients to have the best outcome.

Anita:
Right. Well, that’s great. So thinking about business owners, right? So I’m gonna ask you a couple of questions, specific to people who are just starting out with just an idea, and then I’ll probably ask the same or similar questions for those that are already in business. So for someone that’s just starting out with an idea for a business, what are some of the things that they should be aware of?

Rosaline:
Well, one of the things that you want to make sure that this business is marketable. Is this something that could make money? And, unfortunately, like I said, people are more concerned about the creative aspect of it. Because here’s the thing, you can go on and feel like you have a business, and you’re doing something, and you’re happy, you’re doing things. The IRS can consider your business a hobby if you haven’t made any money. So there’s a thing where people will have something in place, and they have all these expenses, all of these expenses, right? You know, and then they fill out their tax return, you know, year after year after year, and then the IRS comes back and say, Well, I’m sorry, this business is not a business. This is just a hobby, you can no longer deduct all of those expenses that you are claiming on your tax return. Now, they give you some leeway to that. I think you’ll have up to about five years before they will look at it and say no, no, no, ma’am. So that’s one of the things you want to make sure that the business that you’re going to do is marketable, and that you can really make money from doing it.

Anita:
Is there a threshold that the IRS looks for, like if you’re… let’s say your business didn’t make any money for the first three years, or whatever, and then it made like $10,000 in the next year, and then the next year it made $4,000. Are they looking for a specific threshold? Or are they… No? They just want to see that your business is making money.

Rosaline:
Yeah, they just want to see that your business is making money because remember, you can have those deductions. So anytime you have a deduction, it decreases your liability. So they don’t want to just keep giving you freebies year after year after year, y’know? So that’s why they kind of put a stamp on it. So five years is the max. And it doesn’t have to be consecutive, like you can make money… Let’s say you have only losses the first year, only losses the second year. And then the third year, ding ding, you make some money. Okay, that’s good. And then let’s say something happens in that fourth year, you don’t. They don’t necessarily count that. Okay, in year one, you didn’t make money. In year two, you didn’t make money, but you made some in four. They don’t necessarily count those years that you did it. It kind of like starts over again. You know?

Anita:
Yeah. Okay. So make sure that your business is marketable.

Rosaline:
Marketable and profitable. At least making money!

Anita:
Now, what about… do I care initially, do I just file the paperwork for a corporation or what is the difference between… So I know this, but for our listeners, you know, what is the difference between a sole proprietorship and LLC, an S corp, a C Corp? Does it matter? Should I just go ahead and file an S corp because my friend told me I needed an S corp?

Rosaline:
Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no, there are rules of all of these things. So the most basic rules are, if you’re just starting out, it may be a good idea to start off as a sole proprietor. This way, you’re getting your feet wet, and then you can see if you’re making money. And if it’s something that you see, well, oh, yeah, I’m really doing good, and I’m making money, and I’m having a lot of interaction with clients, it may be beneficial for you to go ahead then and form an LLC. The LLC offers you a level of protection that you don’t get being a sole proprietor. And so the LLC, you know, there are certain deductions that you may not be able to take as a sole proprietor that you can take inside of an LLC. Okay? And then if you see that your LLC is making north of $100,000, it might be a good idea now to consider an S corp because with the LLC, what happens initially is that it’s considered a disregarded entity. And what that means is that the IRS doesn’t look at it as a separate business for tax purposes. The revenue and the expenses that you’d file on an LLC are part of a Schedule C, which is ultimately part of your individual tax return. Okay, so what happens is after your expenses, after you record your revenue, and you record your expenses, you’ll have hopefully, net income.So what happens is that on that net income, in addition to paying your individual income tax, you also have to pay self-employment tax. Okay, so now, if you’re making money north of 100k, and you still kind of have the those expenses, you’re going to need something in place to help you save in self employment taxes, and an S corp can do that for you. An S corp, because it is considered what they call a pass through entity, so that means that the revenue and the expenses in an S corp flow through the personal return of the individual, but it has its own separate return. Now there are hotspots with the S corp, of course, and the main one is something called reasonable compensation, and one of the reasons why you should consider it when you’re making north of 100k is because you have to run payroll in an S corp. So the IRS says, if you’re an S corp owner, you need to run yourself what is called a reasonable salary. And there’s a whole list depending on the industry that you’re in, what this S corp owner should make. And so you’d have to pay that salary. And then, you know, if there’s more, you can take that as a distribution. You save on self-employment taxes, you don’t have to pay that hefty self-employment tax that you want in the LLC. Okay, and the distribution that you take, usually, the tax on that is pretty forgivable with the IRS, providing it does not extend into a certain tax bracket. You know, so there are many advantages to having an S corp that an S Corp is actually a strategy that a lot of EAs and accountants like myself use to optimize tax savings for clients. A C Corp… a lot of people do that too, especially people who are looking for people to invest into their business, because investors like to see that. They like to see that they can have stock in a company. And then the S Corp, it’s limited as to how many shares because you can have, and so C Corp offers more freedom in that respect.

Anita:
Oh, I learned quite a bit today, and it’s only been 10-15 minutes. Wow. So it sounds like with all of these things that we just talked about, you know, how Cousin Linney does taxes for the family, and, you know, Aunt Martha does taxes for the family. My friend’s husband does taxes for the family. I’m wondering, like, now I’m thinking, do they know all these things? Does Aunt Linney and Aunt Martha know all these rules, and what happens when the IRS starts digging a little deeper?

Rosaline:
Yeah. And not even just the IRS digging deeper. It’s just the idea. If you don’t know, then you can’t really offer as much as the IRS offers to business owners, believe it or not. And I know it’s gonna be hard to hear… The IRS can be our friend.

Anita:
What?

Rosaline:
Yes. You know, people have this thing with the IRS. Yeah, they will come down on you if you’re not doing the proper thing. But there’s so many strategies that are inside the Internal Revenue Code that are available for business owners, that it’s unbelievable. It’s just about knowing that they’re there and tapping into them. And that’s one of the things that we do at The Gordon Group Financial Services. We use a holistic approach so that we can look at a client’s individual situation, and match it up with their business situation. We see what we can do to optimize their tax savings using those IRS strategies.

Anita:
Wow. You are the first person ever in the history of my 57 years that has said the IRS can be our friend. Every time I hear… the IRS is like the bill collector, right? When you think of it, especially in the Black household. It’s like, okay, don’t answer the phone if you don’t recognize the number, right? It’s like the IRS is in the same bucket. But okay, so that’s for the new person. Now I said, I was going to ask too, I have three scenarios. So now I’m going to ask you about the businesses that have already been in business that has been operating but may not have been operating with all of this knowledge, or, you know, about the IRS being a friend or the different types of entities. How would The Gordon Financial Group be able to help someone that is in business that thinks they’re doing things the right way, but just wants to check and make sure? How would you be able to help them?

Rosaline:
Well, it depends on what you’re looking for. So first of all, there’s something that I call CAS, that’s our client accounting services. So sometimes, you have people who, you know, very bright, very smart, and they feel that they can take on their accounting themselves, and I commend them. But here’s what it is. Sometimes there are certain expenses in accounting, that are worth more than others. So you classify those things differently. So case in point: a good example is meals and entertainment. Right? For many years meals and entertainment was 100% deductible. Right? Now, recently, it’s going back down. It’s going to 50%, depending on what it is. But maybe you had that meals and entertainment on your you use it, you had a meal, and you just said, Oh, this is office expense, because you did it with your office clients. Or you had something that could be misconstrued as something else, but the percentage for that, as far as deductibility, is way lower than if you classified it in another expense that was, you know, that gave you more deductions. So that’s one of the things that we do. We try to find the best outcome for our clients by using that method, you know, with the client accounting services. And the truth of the matter is, if you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business. And that’s one of the things we do with our client services. I can’t count enough times when clients say, I know I’m making the money, but I don’t know where it’s going. You know, so by using our CAS, our client accounting services, you get a detailed breakdown of all of the revenue, of all of the expenses that you incurred, and you can tell, and it’ll tell you exactly where your money was being spent. And then at the end of it, you’ll have either a net loss or net income. And then we worked on that looking back at the expenses to see do you really need X, Y, and Z? And you can figure out where you can make cuts and improvements on your financial statements. The other thing that we do is we have something called TAS, which is our tax advisory services. And basically, that’s what we do… basically what I explained to you earlier. We take a look at the business entity, we take and look at different strategies within that business entity that you could use to get the best tax savings, and we don’t only just say, this is you can do this, you can do that. We actually worked with you on implementing those strategies, right? Because it’s one thing to give a client a tax plan, you have a plan, but a plan is nothing until you execute it. Right? And a lot of business owners, just know how to do what they do. They don’t necessarily know how to execute that plan, right? And that’s what we do at The Gordon Group Financial Services. We help clients with their account accounting, and tax advisory services to have the best possible outcome.

Anita:
Well, this is all good stuff. What about the dual-preneur? The client that is working a full-time job and running a business on the side. How can you help that person to make sure that they are with their strategy and with their accounting? Because most – me included – most dual-preneurs are putting money into the business. Right? I think it’s called an owner contribution. So how the, and I can be fully honest with you all, this is just confusing. All I know is that there is money that comes directly from the job that comes up from that paycheck that goes into the business bank accounts like okay, I need to cover expenses until you know, something comes through. So how would you work with a dual-prenuer?

Rosaline:
We would work with the dual-preneur pretty much the same. We have clients who are, you know, running a business regularly on a day to day. In accounting, there’s something called forecasting. So what forecasting does is that it looks to the future and helps you determine what you can do differently so you’re not just contributing to your business, but actually earning revenue in that business, you know? So it kind of does that.

Anita:
Okay. Now, I know I opened with ‘most people don’t like to talk about numbers,’ right? And I think you and I have had separate conversations where we discuss the difference between, you know, somebody who is comfortable with numbers and can have those conversations openly and not feel any type of trepidation about it, and then someone who is not comfortable with the numbers, and, you know, they hesitate to actually hire somebody to help them. What are some of the reasons why you’ve seen entrepreneurs and business owners hesitate to hire someone to help them with their numbers?

Rosaline:
Number one, cost. If you’re going to hire someone to do that, it has to be a conscious decision. If you’re going to get someone really good, you have to be prepared to pay for that. That’s number one. But that shouldn’t deter you. And really, judgment. Judgment would be the next one. And that’s one of the things that we promise. And it’s easy for me to do that even though I’ve seen so many different scenarios, working in different types of industry, but I haven’t always had money. And I know what that felt like to be embarrassed to show people that I did it. And especially starting off as an entrepreneur, I know how it felt, you know, especially if you look a certain way, you know, people just assume certain things, right. And you have to now go and put everything on the table, it’s like, oh my god! One of the things we do at The Gordon Group Financial Services, is that we actually let people know it’s okay. You know, if you were sick, you know, you wouldn’t wait till you’re feeling better to go to the doctor. You know, so, if you’re not doing well with your finances, the best thing is to come to someone like myself and other accounting professionals so that you can get financially well, okay, and we do this without judgment. And that’s one of the things that my clients appreciate from working with me. You know, they can come and everything’s laid out on the table, they can walk away with some knowledge and feeling good and confident that we’re going to take care of them. One of the things that I always tell my clients is, I’m good, but I’m not gonna turn water into wine.

Anita:
You said, ‘I’m not that good!’

Rosaline:
But what that means is that we work together on your financial goals, to get to the place where you need to be. We have to do that together. And it also doesn’t mean that as your accountant or your business manager that I do the work for you in terms of earning your revenue. I don’t do that! I’ll manage the funds that you bring in as your business owner, and guide you. And because I’m an entrepreneur, and I have multiple businesses, I can give ideas on how you can make more revenue, but it’s not our job to do that for you.

Anita:
Right, right. Totally understandable, and I agree with you. The overarching sense of shame, right? Entrepreneurs already feel shame, they already feel like, okay, this is my thing. Some entrepreneurs go into business because they don’t want anybody telling them what to do. But actually, right, but then that’s the area one area where they need to have somebody tell them what to do, but because they’ve been operating without it since the beginning, it’s like, okay, well, I don’t know if I want to air my dirty laundry. I don’t know if I want, you know, can I trust this person? Are they going to make me feel guilty, or are they going to shame me? There’s enough shame as it is around numbers, and people taking an honest look at the numbers to have someone beat you over the head because of it, that doesn’t feel good. Why would I want to pay for that?

Rosaline:
No, it doesn’t. You know, you also have to be willing to surrender. It’s interesting, you said how, you know,people don’t want to surrender that control also. You know, but if you’re going to be well, you know, like I said, you go to the pros! You know, you let people help you who’s very good in that area. And a lot of business owners, they stay stuck because they don’t want people telling them what to do. I’ve had people tell me, well, that’s how you do business, and this is on simple matters, like compliance. And I’m like, Well, okay, you know, maybe we’re not a good fit. But you have to be willing to surrender and give that part of your life over. So that, you know, you can have some financial wellness. And you know, and doing it, it frees up a lot of time for you to do create new possibilities, and do the things that you do without worrying about that part of your life.

Anita:
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I promise you, not having to worry about that not having to, you know, not taking forever to file taxes, because you just don’t want to deal with it, you don’t want to look at it. You’d rather it go away, knowing that it’s not going away, but you got to psych yourself up for a year or two, to figure out when to get it done. To have somebody else do it, to have somebody else, you know, to be accountable to, right, because looking at the numbers as an organization, as a company, when you’re looking at the numbers, then you’re questioning, and you’re raising the questions to the business owner who’s like, Okay, well, I can’t get away with this, or I need to get this done. Because I know, you know, you’re gonna call me, you’re gonna ask me about it, or you’re gonna send me an email, and I’m gonna have to be responsive. So it’s a level of accountability, but I also see it in just my conversations and communication with you. Working with you, I don’t see it as just being a level of accountability, I see it as a partnership. You know, it’s just something your energy, just like, I’m almost willing to just give you a call and say, Okay, well, let’s talk outside of this. Let me just turn it all over to you. Only because you’re the energy that I get from you, it’s a very calming energy, right? It’s like numbers can be ridiculously nerve racking, but just having conversations with you, it’s just like, You’re so calm. It’s like, how could she be talking about numbers and be this calm? How can she possibly do that? So let some of that rub off. I’m gonna rub elbows with you through the video here. Guys, we see each other via Zoom, but you know, we don’t share the video, but I’m looking at her screen like, Okay, let some of that rub off. But I think that’s important, right? People need to be able to feel like they can be 100% transparent. And the same with, you know, coming to me for coaching, right? When someone comes to me for coaching, it’s like, I can’t help you if you’re not going to tell me everything. If you’re not going to give me the reality, then what are we working towards? Whatever I help you with, whatever we create together, whatever we go over together, if it’s missing a very important piece that you’re leaving out, then you’re not getting all, you know, the best of what you can get from me. So I totally understand that.

Rosaline:
Yeah, I always tell clients to think of our relationship the same way that they would think about the relationship with their clients. You know, in order for them to do their job effectively, you know, you’d have to have this level of trust and confidence, and they’d have to have the level of trust and confidence in them for them to be able to execute for them properly. So they just need to flip it around, and apply it to our relationship. And I’m very big on building relationships with my clients. I forgot to mention this early, but one of the reasons also is just some bad experiences that I’ve had. It’s one of the reasons why I decided that I wanted to get into doing this.

Anita:
So in addition to your tax and your tax advisory services, and your client accounting services, I believe you also help with retirement planning and focus on compliance.

Rosaline:
Well, as I mentioned, I’m a multiple business owner. So I do have my life insurance licenses, and with that, we do help clients get insured. And I offer free financial analysis, which basically looks at your life in a different way than it would with accounting. But it does help with that, but it looks at it differently. And maybe you might have some goals that you want to achieve, and you don’t know how to do that. Well with the financial needs analysis, we take a look at your financial position also, and we consider what those goals are, and then we develop a plan on how to get you there. So let’s just say someone comes to me, I was like, you know, want to buy a house. I want to save for college. I want to start a business. So we kind of put all the numbers in, and we kind of see… or I want to save for retirement! I want to make sure I have enough for retirement. So we put all the numbers in, and it develops another plan to keep you on track for those goals and show you where you can do it and how you can do it.

Anita:
Wow. So is that just… so the question that’s popping in my head right now is, is that just life insurance for individuals and families or in strategy planning, retirement planning? Or are you also helping with like succession planning for businesses and life insurance for the business owners and things like that?

Rosaline:
Yes. So those kinds of things, we do some of it. Like I said, you see how it borders on law a little bit? So one of the policies that I’ve had the pleasure of doing is something called a Key Man Policy. So what that does is that it ensures a key person that’s in your business, in the event something should happen to them, you will receive a benefit of payment via the insurance to keep your business going in the event something happens to that key person, until you can replace them. You know, so that’s one of the ways that we’ve helped business owners with insurance. And also, even as part of a strategy now, I don’t have the license to issue retirement plans, but of course, I have the knowledge with both the accounting and the tax, as well as being partners with people in the insurance industry. It’s another strategy that we do with some business owners, it’s helped them with retirement, you wouldn’t believe the amount of business owners who just work, work, work, and they don’t think about the future until it’s close to that time. So there are a whole lot of retirement products that they can use that can put them closer to their retirement goals. So we make sure that they’re aware of those, and if they can, we make sure that they take part of it. And if they can’t we make a way. We help them figure out, find the money where they can be able to do that. And all of these things offer tax savings. Just to put that in there.

Anita:
Yeah, wow. This is… I’m gonna go back and re-listen to this episode. This is so informative. And so I’m going to ask you, I know I’ve held you for quite some time. I do want to ask you a couple of more questions, and then I’m going to… I will definitely have you back to discuss, you know, finances and quite a few other things, if that’s okay with you.

Rosaline:
Absolutely.

Anita:
I know there are things, internal and external compliance, right? What is the difference between internal and external compliance?

Rosaline:
Well, external compliance with some of the things that we talked about when you start a business, you want to make sure that, you know, if you’re going to be incorporated, that you’re incorporated correctly, and you want to make sure that you’re incorporated in the right state. You have some people feeling as though… a good example of this is a lot of people you might hear, I’m going to cooperate in Delaware, because they want to, quote-unquote, save on taxes, right? Well, what they don’t know about Delaware, is that Delaware is not necessarily for small businesses. Delaware works better with the giants like ATT and companies of that nature. It’s not really the best state for small business. So you want to make sure that you’re incorporating… the only time I feel like maybe you should incorporate in another state, other than your own is with real estate. That’s a different beast. But why pay taxes to incorporate in more than one state if you don’t have to? So what it looks like is, I might incorporate, let’s say in Delaware, well, in another state to save on taxes. Let’s just say that’s what they say, but then you’re actually doing business in the state that you live. So now you have to pay taxes and/or registration fees in 2 states, and then still have to turn around and pay taxes in the state that you live. It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s just another way where you can keep that money in your income, you know, as part of your revenue, part of your cash flow. Why do that? That’s another part of external, you know, you want to make sure that LLC’s especially, they have that bi-annual filing, where you have, you know, New Jersey, New York, most everyplace has that. So that’s an example of external, you know, you want to make sure you’re compliant and that respect. Internally has more to do with what’s going on in your business. And that really would mean, are you doing everything up to the code? So case in point with the nail salon, the salon had to be clean. We should not hire undocumented workers, and shout out to everybody out there that’s undocumented. They’re still killing the game, but as a business owner, that could prove, you know, not to be beneficial for you, if you do certain things like that. You know, you want to pay your taxes. You know, if you’re in a business that that collects sales tax, you want to do that. You know, want to play your pay your employees on time, you want to, you know, those kinds of things are more internal, you know? And as a business owner, you want to be more objective, juxtaposed to subjective because it really does good for you, as a business owner, and for your team. So those are the differences between internal and external.

Anita:
Okay, so you have been dropping quite a few gems this evening, and I know that our listeners are going to be very impressed with what they’re hearing and may want to reach out. The question that I know many of them will probably have, will be can you work with people all over the US? Or do you specifically work with people just in your state?

Rosaline:
Absolutely. We work with clients nationwide. I have clients in California. I have clients in Georgia, New York, Texas. I’m just thinking all over the United States and the UK.

Anita:
Ah, I was gonna ask you. Okay. Let’s not leave them out. No, you can’t leave brothers and sisters across the pond. Right? All right. Oh, goodness. Well, I want to thank you so much for for being a guest for this candid conversation. And as always, you know, I’m sure we went over half an hour. But to me, it’s not about the time it’s about the quality of conversation, right? And the goal for me having these conversations is so that I can provide the listeners with information that they can use. And that is, you know, answers many questions that I think may come up. But if they have more questions, which I’m sure they will because I have more questions, but if they have more questions, how can they reach you? How can they get in touch with you?

Rosaline:
Oh, well, they can actually follow me on social media. On Instagram, my Instagram is Hello, I Am Rosaline Gordon. And on there, there is a link there for you to book on my calendar, and we can do a strategy session. We can do some tax planning. They can go there if they would like me to speak at an event or help with a workshop. There are also those options. You can also follow my company The Gordon Group Financial Services on Facebook. I also have a new baby that I’ve launched recently called Mastering the Business of Business. They can follow me for tips and questions that people ask similarly to today, and I’ll just give where I provide just a quick one minute explanation on some of the questions that come in on business and on different things like that.

Anita:
Great, and just so everyone knows we’re going to have all of Rosaline’s links in the show notes. So be sure to download the show notes. We’ll have every link where you can reach out, where you can connect with her. You can find her social media, the link for her website, all of that will be there in the show notes. Oh, this has been very, very, this has been a great conversation, a tough one in terms of numbers, right? I don’t want to talk about numbers, I break out in hives when I think about numbers. But it’s a conversation that we needed to have, and I know that others will benefit from it as well. So thank you so much for being a guest on the show.

Rosaline:
Thank you for having me!

Anita:
And yeah, well, I can’t wait to have you back. And for our audience, thank you so much for being with us. Again, you can download the show notes so you have all the links on how to get in touch with today’s guests. And as always, I appreciate you, and I will see you in the next episode!