Got Family

Carey talks about the pros and cons of being the "superman" in your business

Carey talks about cash reserves for your business

This is Got Family and I am Carey Berger. As you know we tell stories from the crossroads of business and family. We tell each of these stories from one of three points of view, or hopefully all three if we have time. That is personal, financial and structural. We’re going to talk about the personal side of one piece of this and I’m going to call it the family board for lack of a better word.

Hello, this is Got Family and I am Carey Berger, and we are telling stories from the crossroads of business and family. As you probably know, we’ve talked in the past about boards. You've heard about a Board of Directors, or Board of advisors, and we’ve talked about a family board. What is a board, okay, and how you pay them? Why do you pay them?

Hello this is Got Family and I am Carey Berger and today we’re going to talk about alternatives to ownership when somebody wants to be your partner. What happens here is somebody comes in and they say, “I’ll loan you money and you make me a partner.” Okay, great. What does that mean? Well, sometimes what that means as we’ve talked about in other settings, is a whole bunch of baggage and potentially misunderstood relationships. How do we clarify those relationships? By calling them what they are. There are different levels of “ownership,” and let's talk about that. I bring in money and I want to be at no risk beyond that money and I want to get a steady amount of interest and I don't want to have to worry about drinking behind anyone else, I get to go first. I'm a banker, okay? So, I'm putting my money in and I get out first before anybody else. I'm not really at risk anybody else is behind me and I get interest rate that is banking. That's a loan. Second status, okay fine, I bring money in and I only want to

Hello, this is Got Family and I am Carey Berger and today we’re going to talk about entity choice, and we’re going to talk about just two. We’re going to talk about the differences between an LLC and an S corporation, because that's the most common one we think of. The difference really is this, the difference between a C Corporation and an S Corporation is simply one of taxes, they are otherwise identical, and a C Corporation has its own tax life, and an S Corporation is a pass-through entity that passes its tax experiences on to the shareholders. Same thing goes for an LLC. You can have a pass through or a non-pass-through LLC, and so thus, they are the same. Now we’re back to the first question, LLC versus C Corporation, and here's the funny answer; they’re both about the same. What's the difference? the difference is this, the C corporation or the corporation of any form has been around for a long, long, long time as in, let's just say, hundreds of years, and let someone prove me wrong. In doing so, the w

Carey talks about how to unwind a partnership

Carey talks about Life Estate

Carey talks about the family bank

Carey talks about having one business and multiple children

Carey talks about retirement

Hello this is Got Family and I am Carey Berger and as the theme song says, we are talking this time about Johnny Cash and “I've Been Everywhere.” This is just about travel. What it means to travel for business. For those of you who do travel for your business, that list of cities, you may have your own list of them. It's interesting because a lot of folks will have this perception of one of two things. They’ll either think, man your life must be some sort of dream you're constantly traveling, on vacation, it must be wonderful, or they’ll have this idea your life must be some sort of hell. Constantly on the road and never home, it must be just terrible. Truth of the matter is, as those of you who travel know, it's neither. It's just life. It's different. It is not the same as people who don't, but it's just your life. The same thing goes for those of us who are family business, whether we travel or not. Again, lots of folks have perceptions of a business owner that all of it must be wonderful because you are i

Carey talks about an alternative to the prenuptial agreement

This is Got Family and I am Carey Berger. You know, George Carlin so many years ago talked about the 7 dirty words. For some folks there's another one, there is an eighth and it is called nepotism. Isn’t nepotism a dirty word? And it kind of is in one setting to the extent that nepotism means that we’re going to advance somebody for no reason of their own that they've earned but simply because they’re a member of, sorry it sounds gross, but the lucky sperm club. If that's the only reason why they got advanced then yes, that's a dirty word. It helps nobody, it disenfranchises the employees who are working hard, it dumbs down the capability of the organization because you’ve got someone that is really not able to do the job and it gives a sense of the really dirty word that I am most offended by which is entitlement. That's all a dirty word absolutely no question. However, it is not always a dirty word because there is another way of looking at nepotism and that's this: assuming that the person we’re talking ab

Carey talks what is equal vs what is equitable

Carey talks being an entrepreneurs vs employee

This is Got Family. I am Carey Berger and again we’re telling stories from the crossroads of business and family. We always talk in terms of personal, financial and structural. This one is structural again, and in this particular case we are going to talk about a specific type of trust known as a dynasty trust. The word dynasty you can kind of picture the 70s TV show, it used to be called many different things but the general idea is it goes on for more than one generation. Generation-skipping transfer trust is another term that we use on occasion. The dynasty trust, what it does is it says theoretically when I give this asset to this trust I'm giving it forward in generations potentially, depending on state laws and other details for many, many generations going forward. There may be people who are as yet unborn that in that moment if I did this today, this year, this moment, that's the day I signed the paper and the day I put that asset in there, that asset went into that person's name today even though the

Carey talks Charitable Donations

Carey talks Business Valuation

On this episode of Got Family: Momentum with your business Wills and Trusts: Different people with different needs and taking care of them equally--personal/financial/structural