My clients owed millions. Now they're thriving

Somebody sent me a message. They had been hearing about Cummins Worldwide and the wisdom center we are creating, all the work we are doing with accounting and bookkeeping and financial wisdom, and they asked a fair question. How is any of that different from what everybody else out there in the world is doing?

I can tell you right now. Americans, just Americans, spend about 110 billion dollars a year settling up with Uncle Sam. And for seventy, eighty, ninety years, the whole attention of accounting and bookkeeping has been pointed at one question: how much do you owe the government?

Do not get me wrong, that question matters. The tax people are not gentle, and if you do not pay them what you owe, they can make your life miserable. But knowing what you owe is not the same as being in control of your money. That is the difference, and I want to walk you through it.

What I do every single week

Every week I look at where all my money came from, and I check it. Does that feel right? Does that make sense? Am I missing anything? Who owes me money? Is the income coming in as predictably as it should? I have many sources of income, so I ask those questions of every single one of them.

Then I ruthlessly go over where all the money went. And I will tell you a secret. Even when you make a lot of money, you are still going to grumble that you spend too much. For me that has never gone away, ever. Some of what I find are holes to plug, programs to put in place to spend less or spend more wisely. And some of it is simply, suck it up princess, that is the way it works. Certain things you just have to pay for.

Then comes the good part. Whatever is left over, what am I going to do with it? What good things can I get done? What philanthropic work can I do? How do I plan for more and have more, and be really, really smart about it? I have lived at both extremes in my life, and the trip from one to the other happened because I always monitored, always examined, always inspected exactly what was going on. Every week. Fifty two weeks a year. I never missed a week.

The client with the big fat tax bill

I would say that if you are making a couple hundred thousand a year, this is something you want to start doing yourself. And when people have massive amounts of things going on, we help them take care of it, manage it, and give them the data they need to protect it and stay on track for what they want.

Let me show you what that looks like. A client came to us one January absolutely losing their mind. They had made all this money, and then a tax bill landed for the previous year. Millions of dollars. To them it felt evil, horrible, the end of the world. So I started working with them, put them on our system, and got them set up so that they too confront their finances every single week. Where did it come from, where is it going. That is the system.

Twelve months later, they are one hundred percent caught up on their taxes, and they live a lavish, lavish lifestyle. Could not be happier for them. And here is my favorite part. They still spend a pile of money, but they never have to ask the question, where did it all go? They know exactly where it went, just like I do. They are in control.

Control is the product

The truth of the matter is that the way my client started out probably describes ninety nine percent of the people on the face of this earth. You have no control of your money. So back to the question I was asked. What is the difference between what we do and what everybody else does? We put you in control, for the first time ever, over your money, to where you totally understand what is going on.

Then we help you plan your way up into a higher condition. No matter how much money you make, that understanding brings stability. You see what is coming in, you see what is flowing out, you get through to the other side of it, and you go, oh, I get it. And you feel good about it.

And here is what happens next, every time. Once people feel that control, they start looking into the future and saying, well, let us go make more money. That is the real product of all this: a willingness to go out there and make more money, and sometimes the plain necessity of it. It is really beautiful to see what happens to people when they come through it.