Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:33
100%. I think if anyone hasn’t checked out his books, they’re a must. I’ve listened to $100M Offers, $100M Leads, $100M Money Models. And when I was going through Audible, there’s like a separate one, which I found that is the non-published version of one of them. I forgot what it was. And so yeah, I’ve listened to all of them.
What about from mastermind perspective? I know being amongst like minded people is important. Ones maybe you are a part of, have been a part of or are heard are good.
Courtney Epps: 19:06
Yeah. So the mastermind platinum partnership, right? That’s a big one. Aspire. I’m also in a mastermind, they teach a lot about tax free accounts and alternative investments. And the big culture there is to create financial friends so we can all, you know, invest together and put our money into force, money into tax free retirement. The other piece I just joined Russell Brunson’s Inner Circle, so I’m super excited to connect with him and meet with him next week.
And then I’m going to meet Alex Hormozi at the end of this month. So if he does have a mastermind, I’m going to be a part of it. So I’m going to the initial meeting for the two days at his facility. But I just, you know, you learn and realize, oh, another one. I’m actually doing a mastermind at The Masters next month with David Meltzer. He’s the guy. I hired him as a coach. He is Jerry Maguire, like Tom Cruise and Jerry Maguire. That’s who he is in real life.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:07
What about, I know that you serve a lot of network marketing communities. Are there any in that realm that you have found that are good ones?
Courtney Epps: 20:17
So Rob Sperry, I’ve heard, is a great mastermind. I’ve not been to his mastermind. I think he only invites people that are in network marketing space. Eric Warren, who I’ve spoken to for 10 to 10,000 people. He also has a kind of beyond leadership. And I know he has a group that is just, you know, specifically for network marketers. And I think that those are the only two that I’m aware of that has like actual masterminds, but they’re great. Both of them have great content.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:47
I do want to say, yeah, David Meltzer, people can check out, we did an episode on the podcast with David Meltzer. He talked about the five daily practices. And yeah, he’s great to listen to just as an upbeat human being in general.
Courtney Epps: 21:01
I hired him because he’s happy all the time. And I’m like, I don’t know what you’re doing, but I need to be around you more. And so he’s, but he’s also an amazing connector and he loves that he does these special dinners. So, you know, I’m super excited that he’s putting together the whole master’s trip. And I think that’s going to be pretty awesome. And then I can talk about the Augusta loophole at the masters because that’s where it was actually was created, was Augusta for the master.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:30
You gotta whip out your cell phone and do like an actual video there, right? You know, I know you talk a lot about why taxes should be someone’s number one focus. Can you just go deeper on that?
Courtney Epps: 21:43
Yeah. So most people don’t know this, but taxes is our number one expense. You actually spend more money in your lifetime on taxes than you will on food, clothing, housing and transportation combined. 54.4% of every dollar you make in your lifetime is going to some sort of taxes. And then the next thing from there, the 45% that you have left over 0.6, then 34% of that’s going to interest. So we have to do everything we can to keep as much money as humanly possible. And if the lion’s share is going to the taxes, that should be the number one focus is how do I free up money?
Most people, sadly enough, think, you know, there’s two, you know, major things that are going to happen in your life. And that’s death and taxes. But it does not have to be taxes, right? It really doesn’t. You can there’s so many strategies that you can do legally, morally and ethically to keep most of your money, if not all of your money.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:44
Yeah. I mean, I am one of my couple of my favorite books. Richard Koch there’s an 80/20 book that he wrote, and then Perry Marshall wrote 80/20 Sales and Marketing. And this kind of falls into that camp, Courtney for me, which is like, okay, if we were to focus on the 20% of things that will move the needle, 80% or 5% of the things will move the needle, 95% taxes seems to be one of those things that is a focus point for like an 80 over 20 perspective.
Courtney Epps: 23:17
Yes. You know. Yeah. And, and I mean, if, when you understand like there’s tax free accounts as well, that you don’t ever have to worry about paying taxes, right? There’s just so much. And I think in the last year, I’ve spent over a quarter of $1 million just on one mastermind to be a part of that. This past year, I learned more in that one year time frame than I learned in 24 years prior. So it’s just I’ve learned that if you get around the right people, you know, the guy who head up that mastermind has spent ten years of his life just interviewing billionaires. Like, what are you doing differently? And there is truly a different system for the middle class, comparable to the billionaires.
And so what we’re taught in college or even or even in high school is not going to get you over here. So there’s just a whole entirely different system. And so we have to almost retrain our brain. So super exciting to be able to learn. I, you know, I, I love to learn and if anybody has an opportunity or a tax strategy out there that I can learn and I can help my clients implement, then that’s what I’m going to do.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:30
Courtney, we’re going to go through some specific examples in a second, but I’m so curious. The young Courtney, when you were growing up, what did you mean? You’re a very entrepreneurial go-getter. What were you thinking you wanted to do when you were young?
Courtney Epps: 24:46
So my whole life I wanted to be an anesthesiologist. Honestly.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:51
I see you that the opposite. Like you’re a people person. You’re talkative, like those people you’re putting to sleep. You don’t have to talk to anyone.
Courtney Epps: 24:57
Exactly. So I wanted to make a lot of money. And so that was the number one career, right? Is still to this day, I think anesthesiologist is the highest paying career. So I’m like, that’s what I’m going to do. So when I went to, when I was close to graduation, I fell in love with this guy. I ended up marrying him, but he told me he couldn’t be with me if I left and went off to college. So I had a full ride to College of Charleston, had a house, my parents bought me a house all, you know, all the things. And so I decided two months before that I was not going to go.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:30
At Charleston, you said?
Courtney Epps: 25:31
In Charleston, yes. I grew up in Myrtle Beach, so it was about an hour and a half away. And thankfully, I mean, I’m super thankful that he did that because I would have been miserable working for anyone. And so I was just seeking money at that point in time. And honestly, I only became an accountant because it was the highest paying career in business.
So I was like, I’m going to go get a business degree. And, you know, accounting makes more money, so I’m just going to be an accountant. And I hated it. Like, I still hate it. I hate doing paperwork, I hate taxes, I love helping people. So I’ve just figured out a way to take what I hate but what I’m very, very good at and be able to help people in a way that unlike anything else that I could ever possibly do.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:20
Sometimes I feel like if someone hates something, it’s an advantage in a sense, because then you won’t do it. You’ll hire other people to do it, and you’ll focus in kind of your zone of genius, which is kind of the strategic part, it sounds like.
Courtney Epps: 26:32
Right? Yeah. And that’s exactly what I’ve done. It’s like all the things, and thankfully it wasn’t me that did that. My husband did work in our practice for quite some time. And we fight, you know, when we work together because I, you know, we butt heads big time. But he said, Courtney, you have to build a system around you. And he actually is the one that started hiring all the people because I’m like, you are never going to find somebody to replace me and this, this and this. And he’s like, where we have to start. And so now we have, I think, 22 employees now.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:04
Amazing. Let’s talk about Alex for a second. So he can kind of, people can understand how does this all come into effect and how does it play out? Can you talk about Alex?
Courtney Epps: 27:15
Yeah. So one of the things we did for Alex is that when he came to me, his tax liability was going to be, I don’t know, three, $4 million. And so we went and did a $1.1 million charitable contribution for him. That was a 5x multiple. It’s just a strategy that we use. I do it every single year for myself. And so that turned into a $5.5 million tax deduction. And that saved him $2.8 million in taxes. So it cost him 1.1, saved $2.875 million. So $1.7 million swing the first the first year he became our client.
And so obviously we’ve done that every single year for him. So that’s just one. You know, most people think, well, you know, I’m going to give 100 grand to my church or charity or whatever. And you only get it if you do get to take advantage of it. 96% of Americans get zero benefit from charitable giving because they don’t have enough to itemize. But if you do, then you’re taking that number multiplied by your tax bracket.
But in this situation, there’s certain specialty tax laws that allow you to take a multiple. And so you can do that with a conservation easement, giving money to a program that buys land and gives to the government. You can also do it with several different opportunities that are in place for. So you, you’re essentially buying a product at wholesale. It has a fair market value. You’re giving it over to the nonprofit at that. And so you get a 5x multiple. And I’m actually working on my own right now. I give to a nonprofit called Manna Relief.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:49
I was going to ask about that because I see that on your website.
Courtney Epps: 28:52
Yeah, yeah. So for every dollar that comes in our accounting practice, we provide a serving of advanced immune support to medically fragile children. And we’ve been able to actually reverse over 10,000 children with sickness and disease. And so that’s what I’m really passionate about. That’s what I love to give to. So we’re actually working on a program right now to be able to do the same thing with Manna Relief.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:15
That’s amazing. And then what about Jackie?
Courtney Epps: 29:19
So Jackie came to us and was tore all to pieces. She owed a lot of money in taxes, a whole bunch of back taxes over the course of ten years. And so, you know, obviously it’s a lot easier to save people money this year for 2026 than trying to go backwards and save people money in prior years. But I said, hey, like, let’s go back and let’s amend tax returns, make sure we’re adding in business use of home, the industrial, adding in our health insurance, it wasn’t taken.
So it’s just a handful of other deductions like vehicle expenses and things like that. And we decreased her tax liability by $155,000. And not only did we decrease that portion, but the penalties and interest on top of that that she had been compounding every single year at roughly 15% a year, also went away on the amount of money that she owed less than, you know, what we wiped out.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:14
That’s stressful to think about. Yes.
Courtney Epps: 30:17
Yeah. It’s overwhelming. I think when, you know, when somebody gets into a rut that first year. And then when they go into the second year, it’s just a lot of times they just stop filing tax returns, which is the worst thing you could possibly do. You should file so you’re not getting hit with a 25% penalty for not filing on time.
And then you can just focus on, you know, getting that tax liability down. The goal is that making sure that you’re tracking everything possible and that we’re writing that stuff off. But even if you file it and we go back and amend it, that’s going to be a much better situation for people.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:51
And Courtney, I know, I don’t know if it’s available now, but at one point there was a toolkit floating around that people can get. And in that toolkit was a deduction template, how to hire kids, your two books. So I’m not going to make promises. You could search OTB Tax, but can you talk about maybe a few things on the deduction template that people should think about?
Courtney Epps: 31:14
Yeah, a lot of times people are missing out on meals like this year, meals are 100%. That’s actually through 2028. So that came back in with a big, beautiful bill. It was 50%. So anytime that you’re going to events, anytime that you’re traveling, anytime that you’re meeting people to discuss your business, that’s a huge that meals are expensive right now. So go eat, take your also, like if, if you have employees, you can have them and have food for them catered in. That’s also a tax deduction as well.
Then the other piece, I mean huge we already talked a little bit about it is hiring your kids. You can pay your kids up to $16,100 a year. That’s going to save the average family 4 to $7000 depending on their tax bracket. And you know, what state that they live in. So that’s huge. That’s on there as well.
Then you’ve got cell phone, you’ve got internet, you’ve got cost of goods sold, right for products. Most people know that. But I think one of the biggest things that really I love, my favorite deduction is continuing education. And so I spend a lot of money on continuing education. If there’s something out there that I don’t think I know, I’m going to spend money to try to figure that out, because I’ve realized condensing time and putting money into me is the best money that I could possibly spend, and then putting money back into my business.
So obviously advertising, marketing and things like that. But the business use of home piece is on that deduction spreadsheet that we use to map that out. And then also auto expenses like, you know, if your insurance, your property taxes and your interest on the car, you can write off the gas, the tolls, the, you know, everything, repairs and maintenance, all of that can be written off. Even car washes can be written off.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:05
I’m going to pull up your website for a second because I think what’s interesting is the way you provide value. And so I just want to walk through kind of how it works to work with you in the company. I think it’s instructive just from a business and marketing perspective, right? And if you go to the OTB Tax and we’ll get into Tax Rebels and what that is too, but I want to stick with OTB Tax for a second. There is a Book Your Tax Strategy session. At this point in time there is a discounted rate for that. I’m not going to say what it is because it may change, right? Because I’m like, Courtney, you should be charging more for what this is.
But to get in your ecosystem, someone can book a tax strategy session to save them real dollars. And it’s almost like a nominal, it’s a nominal fee, okay, to do that. So if you are interested in starting the process, I want to encourage people to go to OTBTax.com and you can book your tax strategy session. It walks you through doing that. And there’s a nominal fee involved in that. Talk about, okay, that happens. How does the process work from there?
Courtney Epps: 34:12
So essentially, once a book a tax strategy session or.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:16
Yeah, yeah, like this sounds good. I need, I know you’re going to find something. I need help. How does it work?
Courtney Epps: 34:23
So we typically will invoice the client. We will have a conversation with them. Tell them all the things. So if they want us to do their payroll, set up kids payroll, all the stuff, we’ll give them the prices, we’ll go backwards and get them money back if we can. So we love to amend tax returns. We probably amend 5 to 7 tax returns every single week in our practice. And so we will send them an invoice. They will pay that invoice. It triggers a job. The staff reaches out with the next step.
So they will typically fill out an organizer, sign an engagement letter, and then the staff. Once they get all the documents from the client, then they’ll do the work. I’ll review it. Then the client is typically going to get back on another call with me or one of my tax strategists to go over everything, and just to make sure that there’s nothing else that we can possibly write off.
What I’ve learned is that if you sandwich in the work inside of a tax strategy session, it’s like the information I’m saying, these are things that we need to do or my staff is. And then on the back end, it’s like, did these things get done? And is there anything that we can possibly come up with that works really well and we’re able to save the client a lot more money?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:33
Yep. And then all you need on your end is the previous tax returns. Is that typical?
Courtney Epps: 35:40
Right? Well, typically. So once they book the strategy session, it’s going to ask them some questions. They’ll upload that we’ll send them access to our management system and they’ll upload copies of their tax returns. We do ask if they have QuickBooks to send us access to that, or either at least a P and L and a balance sheet for the prior year. So we want to see, you know, as much real time as we possibly can get.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:04
And I’m curious, why did you start Tax Rebels? So I’m going to bring up Tax Rebels for a second here.
Courtney Epps: 36:11
Actually my children came up with the idea of Tax Rebels. I actually took them to a mastermind last June, and we gave them a contest and said, hey, we’re going to give either one of you that comes up with the best idea, a thousand bucks to what we can do to grow OTB Tax. And honestly, that’s how Tax Rebels stem. So we wanted a community so that we could bring people together so that we could talk about the taxes. We could talk about business.
I’ve got kicked off of social media quite often for the posts and the comments that I have made over the last five years. And so I’m like, we need our own social media channel, right? Then it was like one of the biggest things that we have. We have clients that come to me all the time and they’re like, Courtney, do you know an attorney here? Do you know a mortgage broker here? Do you know a real estate agent? And so I wanted a directory. And so almost like a chamber of commerce. And then I wanted an ability for us to come together, not only virtually, but also have live events.
And so Tax Rebels is the culmination of all of these things and where you get all of your education and then you become a better client. So we house new content in there every single month. It’s got a weekly Q and A, and so we just put all the things, all the bells and whistles. I’ll have a AI Courtney in there very, very soon. I’m hoping by next week, so that they can communicate and ask me questions all day long. So it makes them a better client for OTB Tax, but it also is just your one stop shop for business, right?
I want them to be able to go and find vetted people. And then we also have OTB or we have Tax Rebel mentors. So people that we’re bringing in that, you know, the hedge fund managers that I’m working with, the real estate syndications. I’m working with the car wash syndications, the estate planning, the asset protection, the legacy building, all of those things. They will be able to connect with the people there.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:18
It sounds like I’m curious. The initial idea versus what it looks like now, right? The initial idea was like, okay, there’s a curriculum involved, but it sounds like it’s expanded from there where there’s a live Q&A call. There’s also, you know, obviously your AI Courtney is going to be in there. There’s also an event.
Is that kind of how it evolved?
Courtney Epps: 38:42
Actually,we had all of the ideas at one time. It was like, these are the things looking at all the masterminds in the network marketing events and the things that I’ve been involved in. I saw the good and the bad and I’m like, I want to create all the good and I want it to be at this amazing place that we can all come to. And one of the biggest things for me is that I want to go to events that are half a day talking about content and the rest of the day talking like actually building networking, meeting with people and connecting with them. So I think that’s super important. And so I wanted to add in that live event.
And I also want to bring family, like I want you to be able to bring your family so that your family can hang out with my kids. And because you are the top five people you hang around with, and we’ve got to make a place for children, our children, to be able to connect with other business owners, children and people are going in the right direction. Otherwise they’re going to end up with the wrong people, right?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:46
I know you’ve helped a lot of different types of businesses. Can you talk about the different niches and how you think about specializing in a sense, even though you can help really anyone?
Courtney Epps: 39:57
Yeah. So I mean, we, I started speaking about eight years ago to the network marketing industry. So that was just a niche that I’d already been involved in. I understood the massive benefits of having a home based business, and so that allowed me to speak to leaders in the network marketing industry and their teams. They would put me in front of their teams.
Now I, you know, we have chiropractors, we have lawyers. We actually have clients who work for PricewaterhouseCoopers and for Deloitte Touche, which is kind of funny. A big four firm. They don’t know anything about taxes, right? They’re auditors. So, you know, we have a wide variety. Our largest client is a manufacturing company. We have Amazon stores, we have you name it. We have probably a client that does it. We’ve got a client that does some gyms.
But our focus is teaching people why they need a home based business. That’s literally what, that’s the presentation and the speech that I’ve done. I’ve done TEDx talk on it. And that’s what has led people. They make a lot of referrals to us. Other business owners are super, super busy. And so they don’t refer people typically, you know, unless you’re having, you’re not having a conversation with people every day about having a home based business and attempting earned income. Now go talk to Courtney about your taxes. So that’s essentially how we have grown.
And what’s so great about that is that someone like the wife may be in network marketing or have a home based business, and the husband is a contractor and or vice versa, right? So the husband’s in network marketing and the wife is maybe a schoolteacher. She may, you know, they, she may do something else. So that’s been, but our niche and people that attract to us are the network marketing industry.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:46
You know, Courtney, first of all, thank you. Thanks for sharing the journey. This is super fascinating. I have one last question before I ask it. I just want to point people to check out OTBTax.com to learn more. You can check out TaxRebels.com to learn more. And she’s got lots of content on YouTube and on, you know, the OTB Tax blog as well. So check that out.
My last question is just I know you mentioned some, some of your, the mastermind groups you’re a part of. I’m curious in your life, who are some of the influential mentors for you? And that could be distant mentors. It doesn’t have to be personal mentors. It could be personal mentors. It could be colleagues in the industry that you’ve learned from. Who are some of the influential mentors in your universe you want to give a shout out to?
Courtney Epps: 42:34
So honestly, there. Tony Robbins would be the only one. As far as a mentor for me, my parents did have businesses growing up. Like I, you know, ran a cash register when I was five. My parents, my mom had a video store and my dad had a construction company, but they never would work that full time. They always were. They worked full time. In the public sector, my mom was the secretary of a school and my dad worked at a utility company. So, you know, I saw them work really, really hard. So that definitely helped, you know, inspire me to, to, to see the, the hard work ethic. But I, you know, my dad was the probably the most successful person I knew until I was 32 years old and he made $100,000 a year.
And so I didn’t have anybody to, I read a lot of books. I, you know, Robert Kiyosaki probably very instrumental in my mindset, but I just grew up knowing that nobody was going to tell me what to do for a very long time. And I haven’t worked for anybody since I was 19 years old. Now, granted, it’s a whole lot easier now.
I understand that you pay for people’s time because it condenses time and it keeps you from paying the dumb tax because Keith Cunningham says very much, I love that or the stupid tax. And so and the less things that you can do that are dumb. The better that it’s going to be, the more money you can make faster and how that money compounds. So, you know, I would say Keith Cunningham. Now, I would say, I would say Tony Robbins, and then I would say Robert Kiyosaki, like those would be, but I, I met Robert. I actually had dinner with him last month. That was pretty amazing. And Keith Cunningham.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:22
Keith Cunningham, the Rich Dad and Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And he speaks of Tony Robbins stuff too.
Courtney Epps: 44:27
Yeah, he’s yeah, he’s so he speaks to Tony Robbins. That’s how I met him. Just a brilliant, brilliant human being. But yeah, I didn’t have anybody really growing up. Nobody in my family or business owners other than my mom and dad. I didn’t have anybody to meet with, and learn things from.
That’s why I probably, you know, put my business over for sale and sold it and stopped paying. You know, the guy stopped paying me. I lost everything that would have been, it would have been very good for me to have gone and got an advisory from someone else before I made that decision.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:59
There aren’t many people I’ve had on that have seven or more kids. One of them besides you is Ed O’Keefe, who wrote Time Collapsing. And what you’re saying reminds me exactly of his book. It’s one of my favorite books because it basically condenses, like whether it’s a book or someone giving you advice, that’s like 30 years of them going through trials and tribulations. And I get it in one second.
So yes, another shout out to someone who’s got seven plus kids out there. But no, Courtney, this has been fantastic. Everyone can check out OTBTax.com, you can check out TaxRebels.com and we’ll see you next time. Courtney, thanks so much.
Courtney Epps: 45:38
Thank you.
