Episode 1287: Why Once-a-Year Accounting Fails with Peter Holtz

Most business owners do not lose control all at once. They lose it slowly, one missed number, one poor structure, and one reactive tax decision at a time. In this episode of Sharkpreneur, Seth Greene interviews Peter Holtz, President of Peter Holtz CPA, who explains why traditional once-a-year accounting often leaves owners overpaying taxes, missing deductions, and making last-minute decisions that undermine long-term growth. He also explains how proactive planning, accurate books, smart business structure, margin awareness, and the right advisory team can help entrepreneurs regain control and build stronger, more profitable businesses. Key Takeaways: → Business owners need proactive tax planning, not year-end panic attacks. → Accurate books are the foundation for better tax decisions. → The wrong business structure can cost owners money. → A good CPA should do more than fill out boxes on a tax return. → Tax strategy should align with the owner's, business's, and family's goals. Peter Holtz is a seasoned CPA, entrepreneur, and tax strategist who helps business owners keep more of what they earn through proactive, year-round tax planning. With more than 20 years of experience, including time in Big 4 accounting and CFO roles for multiple companies, Peter has seen how traditional, once-a-year accounting often leaves business owners overpaying and underprepared. After recognizing the need for a more strategic approach, Peter built multiple eight-figure accounting firms designed to help business owners outsmart the IRS without relying on aggressive loopholes or unnecessary risk. He works with owners earning $500K to $10M+ to reduce taxes, protect wealth, and turn their CPA relationship into a true profit center. Connect With Peter: Website: https://peterholtzcpa.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peterholtzcpa/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PeterHoltzCPA LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/peterholtzcpa https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-holtz/

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Sharkpreneur Podcast with Kevin Harrington and Seth Green. Kevin Harrington is the inventor of the infomercial, one of the original sharks from the hit TV show Shark Tank, and has generated over $5 billion in TV and digital direct response sales. Seth Green is the world's first trusted authority on cutting-edge direct response marketing, a bestselling author, and the only three-time marketer of the year nominee. On the podcast, Kevin and Seth interview sharkpreneurs who share straight talk on what it takes to explode your business.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Forty-nine faces looked to him in triumph. Over the last 12 months, they had each taken turns and promoted his business for a week at a time, driving over $987,342 in revenue. What if you had a network of 50 centers of influence who promoted your business every week for a year? Grab your copy of the number one Amazon bestselling book, The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Business with a Podcast, at 33% off the Amazon price by going to ultimatenpodcastbook.com. Again, that website for 33% off the Amazon price is ultimatenpodcastbook.com. Welcome to the podcast. This is your co-host Seth Green. Today, I have the good fortune to be joined by Peter Holtz from Peter Holtz CPA. Peter, thank you so much for joining us.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  Thank you very much. Great to be here.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  It's our pleasure to have you. Let's go back in time a little bit. How did you get into the business in the first place?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  I got into business about 22 years ago. Started a CPA practice after spending some time at Deloitte and a couple of other firms, and actually was in industry for a while, CFO and CEO of businesses. And I realized that a lot of business owners didn't really have the help that they needed. The CPA business was not really geared towards integrating services to make sure that the books were right, to make sure that tax planning was right, and to make sure that the tax plan actually followed the tax preparation of the tax return.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  You talk a lot about helping owners take back control of their business.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  What are some of the warning signs that we've lost control of the numbers?

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, when you know, it's like when you the typical thing that happens with a lot of people in the CPA business is they go to their CPA once a year. Right. And like they're at the end of the year and they're looking at, they're looking at the numbers and go, okay. Oh my God, what am I going to do? It's December 31st. Do I need to buy another pickup truck? You know what I mean? Or, or do I need to do something to try to avoid some tax situations, whatever? And not having an ongoing plan. The key is not having a plan on the tax side. And then not knowing your numbers. I mean, you've got to get together with your accountant, your CPA every month. To understand what's going on with your numbers. To make sure you can adjust your margins accordingly and make sure that you're booking the profits that you want to make.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  What is one tax mistake you see business owners making repeatedly, other than not having a proactive plan?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Really, number one. I would say the number one one is accuracy. They don't write off everything they should. Okay, they, they spend stuff out of their personal account when it should be coming to business. Number two is structuring themselves. So it's something they think they're a sole proprietorship when they should be an S corp. They should be a C corp when they should be. Uh, or they think they're an S corp and they should be a C corp or they should be an LLC. That structure and not structuring it right is also a big problem.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Um, you wrote an article called where it all began, kind of about your personal story. Can you share a little bit of that with us?

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I sure can. Um, really, you know, I think my dedication to this particular market. Is, uh, and to the small business, small and medium business owner really relates to my dad. He always wanted to be in business. Uh, he was to me a very much of a hero. He served his country, World War II. And because he went off and did his duty in Patton's Third Army in, uh, World War II. He met my mom there and I really exist because of his, his duty and doing his duty. So, and you know. Really struck me as the kind of guy that like the old traditional John Wayne hero from the West. They come in, they ride in, they do their job, they ride off to the sunset.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  There's no fanfare, right? And for every single person that runs a business every single day, there is no fanfare, right? They're just there to make things happen. They're there to try to take care of their customers, to try to make a market happen and do good work. And, and doing that every day, day in and day out is, um, is hero's work, really, when you really think about it.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Amen. Well, we're biased here, of course. Um, what have you learned from your decades of working with business owners that accounting school would never have taught you?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Hmm, hmm, hmm. I think the most interesting thing that accounting school didn't teach me is what business owners, the types of businesses that businesses owners can create. The, the, the, um, unlimited creativity in terms of taking a market and twisting it this way or that way, whatever. From, you know, people that only want to, um, fix, you know? I'll give you a good example, somebody that, uh, they're a car repair business. The only thing they fixed are the head gaskets of Priuses. But they have an incredible business because these, these head gaskets break at about a hundred thousand miles.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  And if you fix them, the Prius is going to go another hundred thousand miles. So somewhere, somebody came along the lines of how to quickly fix these head gaskets. And they have like a multimillion dollar business. And turning it into with social media and everything, Mr. Gasket, right? And that's what they do. And it's just literally phenomenal how people can do that every single time. From restaurants, restaurants, creativity, right? You, you have all sorts of fusion foods and everything else like that. But, uh, it almost works in every, uh, I'll give you another good example. I've got that was a gas station also makes olive oil from his property. And he's selling it in the gas, doesn't sound, doesn't sound like it makes sense, does it?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  He really loves olive oil and he loves olive trees and he's like created this passion. That actually is a fantastic tax write-off because he lives on his olive ranch, right? And he's writing off the cost of all these trees that he have and um. You know, at the same time, he's making his olive oil. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  I've I've never seen a gas station on an olive ranch.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  So that is a fascinating story. Can you talk about and obviously if your client identities are confidential, just ABC Incorporated? Can you share a time when better financial systems change the direction of a business?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, lots, right? Uh, I had a client one time who um was in the used car business, second chance finance. Very rough and tumble business in one of the worst parts of town. And we sat back and and he looked and and the great news in that business to become a master negotiator, right? You have to figure out how to negotiate everything. And we realized when we really sat back and look at looked at his business and look at his opportunities, his opportunities were really in real estate. Right? Because he had these used car lots that other people wanted. He was going to sell them and he started tri- tri- kind of like. Uh, flipping these used car lots into other um uh.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Real estate developments that other people wanted um. And then he became a real estate developer. But when you think about it, it's actually like his his um, his skill set as a negotiator. It really was beautiful. It's just different numbers. And then he became like a county-wide political influencer. And got to know everybody, all the county supervisors and everything else, helped a lot of them get elected. So if you wanted to get something done in this particular county that he's in, and especially in the real estate world.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  You would you would you would want to go through him because he could make big deals happen. And then he became to bigger and bigger deals and became part of these bigger deals. Because other people wanted his knowledge and experience in terms of not only negotiating, but also how to make the deal happen. How to deal with the county, how to deal with the state and everything else like that. So, um, yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  It's fascinating.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, really, when you think about it, he was like working his butt off, you know, seven days a week and a lot of times. Trying to make $2,000 a used car, right? And like now he can do a deal and make millions in one deal.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  That's amazing. Your firm talks your promotes innovative tax reduction.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  What does innovation look like in a field where most people assume that, you know, it's rigid and rule bound and there's 50,000 plus pages of IRS tax code?

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Well, there's 50,000 page plus pages of IRS tax code. And there's a lot of loopholes in there that people don't know about. And a lot of and and really the worst thing that exists in my profession is what I call the box fillers. People will take your numbers, put them in the boxes and tax returns and tell you how much to pay and what to pay. Okay, how much to pay and when to pay. Okay, so these people are like, okay, pay this on April 15th, you're done, whatever. And a lot of times they'll say things like, well, you should be happy you're paying tax because it means you made money. Well, it doesn't always mean you make money. It just means you're paying tax. Um, and the thing is you've got to know the rules. You've got to understand the loopholes, use every single loophole. You've got to make sure you use every single accuracy you possibly can.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  And you does the structuring right in order to make it happen. And it's like a series of, um. Almost like a puzzle that you put together based on each and every person's individual business. Not only their business, it could be their family. Maybe their kids are in the business, maybe their kids are going to be maybe not in the business, maybe they're bro. I mean, it's so many different things. Uh, I really love it because it's it's it's absolutely fascinating to help people. Understand how to put together the business in such a way to benefit their family for the long term.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  What is one number business owners ignore that kind of tells you a lot about the health of their company?

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Margin.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Margin. They need to know, understand exactly what they're making on what they're selling. And that's the number one thing they have to understand. And then, um.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  And it can be tricky. It can be tricky, especially construction business and so forth. How much are you really making on each one? And then you not understand your margin and then your overhead. If you know how much you're making on every $10 that you produce, right? And sell, right? Then you know how much your overhead is, then you can easily figure out what your profit's gonna be. Right? And how big you need, how big you need to grow in order to make it happen. And so many people go out in business. This is a very interesting thing. They get started in business and they work their butts off to go get margin to pay their bills. Then they get to a point where they level off. And they don't, they don't make, grow any bigger because they're sometimes afraid. Right? Then their kid goes to college and they need to make another 30 grand a year. And you find it. You know what I mean?

• 11:29Speaker 02

  And not pushing themselves to make more and more each year. Not pushing themselves to make sure their family's taking care of retirement. Making sure that their, their medical insurance is taken care of. And, you know, making sure that everything else is in place to really help them. By getting the right margin to produce a good lifestyle for them is really, really important.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  You've been doing this a long time. You've helped so many businesses. What's your biggest challenge now?

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Um, I think sometimes my biggest challenge now is, is trying to bring as much value to as many people as possible.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  And it is training. Like I have a team of platinum advisors that are, that I worked with every week. Make sure we train them, make sure they understand what we're gonna be doing. Setting out the right tone. So really, more and more and more of my time has been geared towards developing the team. You know what I mean? And to deliver the value. And still sometime, like when it gets into really complex strategy stuff, I have to get involved. But a lot of the basics we can take care of and save people a ton of money. Typically, we save people 40% on their taxes, right? By just doing things right. And just by understanding what, what you can, what loopholes you can take advantage of, what structure you can take advantage of.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  And, uh, you know, getting them in the right frame, frame of mind for the business.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Your passion is obvious. What do you like best about what you're doing?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  You know what I say, it's really helping people and helping business owners. Like I said, you know, and it comes like I said, from my dad, because it is seeing those heroes, those everyday heroes out there every day, doing interesting things, never giving up. These people never give up and it's such a beautiful thing.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  And I love it and I think that's my favorite thing about it is just to to help those people and give them a different way of thinking. Sometimes it's like, well, did you ever think about like the olive business, right? I love olive. So did you ever think of turning it into the business? We actually had that discussion. It's like, oh, no, but yeah, that's the greatest idea. And then he bought, he bought his olive press and did everything and he's always selling it everywhere. So whatever, you know what I mean? It's just just a beautiful thing to actually help people go to the next level.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely. For our folks who are watching and listening and want to learn more, where is the best place for us for that to us to send them to go learn more about you?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have a special, let me make sure. I got a special link for you. It is go.peterholzcpa, that's P E T E R H O L T Z, CPA.com/shark. And it's a special exclusive tax strategy kit for people. They got a PDF. They also have a, we can also set up a special tax strategy meeting, easy for me to say, which we can give some people some ideas and advice on their business. So go.peterholtzcpa.com/shark and we will get them a PDF and get them a quick meeting to like go over what we can do and how we can help them.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Awesome. We will send everybody to go.peterholtzcpa.com/shark. The link will be in the show notes. This has been Seth Green for Sharkpreneur with Peter Holtz. Peter, thank you so much for joining us.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Thank you, Seth. Great meeting you.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Thanks, everybody for watching or listening. We'll talk to you or see you next time.

• 15:09Speaker 03

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