Fred Dunayer: Welcome to the SCORE Small Business Success podcast, Been There, Done That! To get free mentoring services, as well as to see the wide variety of resources available for small businesses, visit our website at www.score.org or call 1-800-634-0245. Now, here’s your host, Dennis Zink.
Dennis Zink: Episode number 26, Tax Strategies for Small Business Owners. Fred Dunayer joins me today in our studio as co-host, SCORE mentor, and our audio engineer. Good morning, Fred.
Fred Dunayer: Good morning, Dennis.
Dennis Zink: Our guest today is Bert Seither. Welcome to Been There, Done That!
Bert Seither: Thank you, Dennis. Good morning. Good morning, Fred.
Dennis Zink: Bert Seither is a certified SCORE mentor. He’s also Vice President at 1-800-Accountant, which is a national accounting and business development firm. For over a decade, Seither has assisted thousands of startups and well-established small businesses with business development needs. He has gained the knowledge of tax reduction strategies, compliance, bookkeeping, payroll, and business planning. He has been featured in expert interviews on television networks such as ABC, NBC, and Fox. Seither is a graduate of the University of Florida. Again, welcome to Been There, Done That!
Bert Seither: Thank you so much for having me.
Dennis Zink: Bert, why should taxes be a concern for a small business owner?
Bert Seither: That’s a great question. Of course taxes probably makes most people cringe when they hear the word. It’s something that either you can approach head on and really tackle, and if you do, you can actually pay your fair share and not a penny more in taxes. It’s just one of those inevitables of life that we have to address. I think most people don’t realize that for, depending on the resource, 8 or 9 out of 10 people in the United States actually pay more out in taxes annually than any other expense, more so than our mortgage payments, rent, food, insurance, groceries, what have you.
The question should be not just how much money am I making but how much money am I actually keeping. Over the years, I’ve found that not a lot of people think like that initially when they’re starting a business. After they’ve been in business a while, they realize they’re stroking checks to Uncle Sam. Then it’s time to do something.
Dennis Zink: Didn’t one of the Supreme Court justices say that is the taxpayer’s right to pay as little taxes as possible?
Bert Seither: Yeah, more or less. Many, many decades ago, Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland found in a ruling that’s actually still honored today that it is the right of the American taxpayer to decrease what would be their tax bill or, and I almost quote, avoid their taxes altogether, by which means the law permits cannot be avoided. Yes, we can pay our fair share and not a penny more, as long as we’re following the law. It’s all about understanding the tax law and what our options are.
Dennis Zink: Different forms of businesses will inevitably lead to different tax structures. What type of legal structures or entities should a new business owner consider?
Bert Seither: Great question. While I’m not an attorney, and I don’t want anyone to think I’m giving them direct legal advice because we’re just doing this show today, there’s a lot of options. Initially I found that a lot of people end up doing nothing at first, meaning they’re a sole proprietorship by default. I think they tend to do that because it’s probably the easiest to do, to get started in running a business.
In the long run, it could end up being the most costly. Of course it doesn’t cost anything to set up a sole proprietorship, but when we are a sole proprietorship, our taxes actually get really, really high, depending on what state you’re listening in. Of course you may have state income taxes, federal income taxes. Then you have self-employment tax on top of that, which is currently levied at 15.3 percent. It can leave you scratching your head at the end of the year saying, “What happened to all my money” when you’re paying 30, 40 percent or maybe even higher out to taxes. Yes, there are other options, things like an LLC.
LLCs tend to be very common with business owners these days. S Corporations as well, especially for small businesses. There’s really not a one size fits all approach. If your neighbor has the same type of business that you have and they have a certain entity structure, that does not mean that you should follow suit in doing the same thing. Definitely get some legal or tax advice when setting it up. Yeah, the LLC is a very, very flexible entity because it’s got the least amount of paperwork involved. You don’t have to have corporate minutes and meetings and what not as you would with say a corporation. It’s sort of known as the hybrid entity.
It’s actually a cross between a sole proprietorship and a corporation. The interesting part, it does not come with an inherent tax structure. You actually get to set it up or build it. What I mean by that is we actually get to choose which set of tax forms we prepare our LLC’s taxes on at the end of the year. The interesting part about it is you don’t choose at the end of the year, when it’s time to file your LLC’s taxes. You actually choose in the beginning. It actually has to be done within 75 days of forming your LLC. You do this by making what’s called an entity classification election. It’s a mouthful.
Dennis Zink: Does that only occur once or could you change your tax structure of your LLC during the existence of the LLC?
Bert Seither: Phenomenal question. You can change but, once you pick something, you have to stick with it for 5 years. Now if you’ve actually missed that 75 day window, which I found a lot of people have because they just didn’t know that they had an option, then you can actually, there’s a revenue procedure, rev proc (procedure) that can be done to change it between January 1st and March 15th of the following year. Basically by doing so with the LLC and making an entity classification election, we see it most common where small business owners will elect to be taxed as an S Corporation.
I want to be clear. That does not mean that you’re actually setting up an S Corporation. You’re always an LLC. You have the phenomenal benefits of asset protection, liability, et cetera, but you can get the tax benefits of a corporation. It’s all about the reduction of self-employment taxes. That’s a little bit about the LLC. The S Corporation, it’s another very, very common structure because it is a pass through structure, meaning we’re not having to deal with the double taxation that a C Corporation would bring to us. With the S Corporation, there are basically 2 ways that we can take money out of the business.
We have to pay ourselves what’s known as a “fair and reasonable salary.” That would be you, even if it was just a one owner S Corporation. You would actually be an employee of your company and have a W-2 from your company come the end of the year. Your company is actually paying half of those taxes for you, which is a deduction for the company. Then you pay the other portion. A lot of the money, and a fair ballpark is about 50 percent, can actually be distributed to you via a K-1 form. The beautiful thing about this is there are no self-employment taxes at all on any money that’s distributed via a K-1.
In essence, if you have an S Corporation or, if you have an LLC taxed like an S Corporation, generally speaking you can reduce your self-employment taxes by about half. If you don’t mind, I’ll give you a quick example. These numbers are very, very loose. Let’s say you had a profit of $100,000 in your business. You were a sole proprietorship and you didn’t do anything. Let’s just say self-employment tax, 15.3 percent, times $100,000, is $15,300. Again, very loose numbers. If we have an LLC and we tax it like a corporation, an S Corp, or if we have an S Corporation, we could take some of the money out as a salary.
Call it $50,000 as a salary. The other $50,000 is distributed to you. Remember, there are no self-employment taxes on the distributions because it’s through the K-1. In this example, we just cut our self-employment taxes in half, so we’re saving over $7,000. The bottom line is a little bit of paperwork and a little bit of understanding and proper structuring in the very, very beginning can actually save you a significant amount of money. I like to use the old truism, don’t trip over pennies to get to dollars.
Dennis Zink: I like that. Interestingly enough, you could also, if you had the LLC, you can also tax it as a partnership. Correct?
Bert Seither: You could.
Dennis Zink: How would that affect it?
Bert Seither: Phenomenal question. That would be as long as you have a partner. If it’s a single member LLC, it’s defaulted to a Schedule C. If it’s a multi-member LLC, it’s defaulted to a 1065. In essence then, it’s treated tax-wise, the same. If you have a partner, you can still elect to tax it like a corporation to reduce those self-employment taxes.
Dennis Zink: Boy there sure are a lot of forms and a lot of numbers. I remember they go in order from low to high and all that. How many pages are in the tax code these days?
Bert Seither: I think the instructions for the most simple tax return that we know, the 1040, I think is 189 pages long last time I looked. I’ve heard anywhere from 70,000 to 100,000 pages of tax code. It is what it is. Our country, as we know it, was really built off of taxation. Where there’s complexity, there’s also opportunity. I think that’s what Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland was referring to.
As long as you understand what the law is, you just have to play by those rules. If you play by those rules, you can find that, even if you’re a small business owner, you can absolutely take some of the same deductions or implement some of the same tax strategies that very large corporations implement for their shareholders.
Dennis Zink: A lot of times companies that startup, they expect to have a loss or they often do or mostly do, probably in the first year at least. Can you comment on that in terms of tax implications?
Bert Seither: Sure. When you have a loss of course I think for any successful, profitable, or veteran business owner rather, it’s kind of a bummer. We’re losing money. When we’re starting a new business, of course there’s going to be an initial investment out of your pocket. It takes money to make money, as they say. Losses are absolutely normal for the first year, or sometimes even a few years, based on the type of business or industry that you’re in. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not successful or you’re not making money because lots of times, you’re just reinvesting that money back into the business to lay a solid foundation and to ultimately grow.
Losses can actually help those who are starting a small business if they have a W-2 or day job because, if you have an LLC or an S Corporation, something that’s going to pass through to your personal return, that loss would actually pass through to your personal tax return. I’ll give you an example here. Let’s say you had a day job and you made $50,000 per year. That’s W-2. Let’s say your business has a loss of $10,000. That negative ten is going to pass through to your personal tax return when we connect the two together.
Now 50 minus 10, we’re taxed on 40. The catch is your employer was withholding taxes as if you should be taxed on 50. When the returns are connected come the end of the year, the IRS recognizes this and essentially you’ve overpaid in taxes by $10,000 worth of income. You get a much higher refund or you would owe less, whatever the case may be. The goal is I think and the reason they allow us to do this is so we can reinvest back into our business, get our bills paid for our startup costs, so on and so forth.
Despite all the negative things that I know a lot of people say about the IRS, believe it or not, they actually do want you to succeed because if you do and you can turn your startup into a profitable business, they’ll be making money off you for as long as you’re in business.
Dennis Zink: Let’s look at a company that’s making a profit. Maybe 2nd year, 3rd year, whatever. How is that taxed differently than the loss?
Bert Seither: If we have a pass through structure, like an LLC and we don’t do anything in terms of making an election or, if we have a sole proprietorship and we never set up a formal structure, that profit would actually just pass to the personal tax return and you would be taxed at your regular income tax rates, based on your adjusted gross income. Now if you have an LLC taxed as an S Corp, or if you have an S Corp, that profit will pass through to your personal tax return and will be taxed of course at regular income tax rates.
Again, we get those benefits of the distributions for the reduction of self-employment taxes. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, and I know this goes against traditional wisdom, you don’t want your business to be ridiculously profitable. You want to be successful. You want to make money. You want to live a great life, but you’re taxed on your profits. One of the things that we do as a business owner, we have the ability to spend our money prior to it getting taxed.
Money comes in as income. Then we spend it on legal business expenses, deductions. Whatever we don’t spend, that’s our profit and we’re taxed on our profit. We want to spend the money we make by reinvesting it back into our business.
Fred Dunayer: If you have losses, can they be carried forward or, given that they’re being passed through to the personal return, I assume then that’s not relevant?
Bert Seither: Yeah. Another great question. Let me throw a quick piece of information before I answer that. A loss cannot pass through to your personal tax return unless you have income coming into your business. Lots of times, that’s a big eye opener for small businesses who say, “Well I invested ten, twenty thousand dollars” whatever the case is “into my business this year.” Then when their accountant or enrolled agent, CPA, says, “Okay great. We’re not going to be able to use any of that.” It hurts at first.
Try to earn some income, whatever that may be, if you’re starting a business this year prior to the end of the year. Yes, to answer your question, the losses can carry forward for up to 20 years. We can go back. Let’s say here we are in 2015. Let’s say you have a loss of $10,000. You didn’t earn any money this year. That $10,000 loss would carry forward to next year. Next year, you make income. Let’s say your profitable. We get to use the expenses for 2016, but then we also get to carry forward that $10,000 in a loss carry forward and use it against our 2016 income.
Fred Dunayer: The point again being that make sure you know what those losses are and probably have some accounting advice to make sure that they’re tracking that and they know how to apply it in the subsequent years.
Bert Seither: It’s a little bit of planning of course is going to go a very, very long way. I think every business owner should have a business plan of some sort together, whether that’s in their head or on paper. Of course I encourage on paper. Then you can actually see your projected financials. Then you can stick to your plan and you ultimately know what’s going to happen.
Dennis Zink: You mentioned enrolled agents. A lot of people, our listeners probably don’t know what that is. What is an enrolled agent?
Bert Seither: Sure. The best analogy I think I can give is think of a totem pole for a moment. At the bottom of the totem pole, you’ve got an accountant. In the middle, you’ve got a CPA. CPAs are licensed at the state level. Just like a doctor, they cannot practice outside of a state that holds their license. An enrolled agent is licensed at the federal level, meaning they can represent a taxpayer in any state, in front of any tax authority.
There’s a very, very difficult test that you have to pass. Enrolled agents specialize specifically in tax whereas I know a lot of people think CPA, the first thing that comes to mind, is actually, “Hey, taxes. That’s my tax preparer.” Actually most CPAs don’t even touch tax here in the US. Only about 25 percent do. Enrolled agents specialize in tax and can do it at any state level, as well as the national level.
Dennis Zink: Okay. That’s interesting. I didn’t know that. What are some commonly missed red flags for deductions that a business owner might come across.
Bert Seither: Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, definitely want to make sure you’re reducing your profit by claiming legitimate business deductions and expenses. One that a lot of people might forget about would be something like a vehicle deduction. Of course I drove here for business today. I can write off either a portion of my actual expenses, meaning your gas, oil changes, tolls, repairs, insurance, maintenance, et cetera or right now the vehicle mileage allowance is at 56 and a half cents per mile. You can’t do both of course. You can only choose one.
It really just depends what approach is best for you. In that case, I encourage people to look at their current vehicle. How long are you going to be in that vehicle? How long until you upgrade or get something different? How often you’re going to be using it for business.
Dennis Zink: You used the term write-off. That, in my opinion, is probably misunderstood by a lot of people. People think, “Oh I’m going to write that off.” Can you explain that and also can you explain that any deduction basically, any legitimate deduction against the business, is really the same. In other words, it’s an apple for an apple. If you deduct advertising expense or you deduct your rent, it’s a deduction. Can you explain that?
Bert Seither: Sure. A write off, tomato, tomato, write off deduction. That’s the best way to look at it. To write something off means you’re able to write that off against your income. We want to reduce our taxable income by claiming write offs or deductions. Yes, deductions sometimes can be an apple for an apple, as you said. Other things may not be an apple for an apple where you might have to write it off or depreciate it over a period of years. It’s important to know what the tax implications are going to be, either from an income or expense standpoint, prior to that activity taking place.
Dennis Zink: Would that be like a Section 179 deduction?
Bert Seither: Phenomenal example. Section 179 has, it was actually coined probably about 15 years ago. The SUV deduction, if anybody remembers that. Yes, Section 179 has to do with purchasing equipment for businesses. It’s fluctuated over the years as the economy ultimately evolves and changes, which can allow a significant amount of deduction immediately, without having to depreciate it over a period of years. I’ll just give you a very, very basic example here. Let’s say there was a certain thing that you purchased for your business. That thing cost $5,000. It was an ordinary and necessary business expense. It was an asset, something tangible.
Normally any sort of thing like this, in this example, would be depreciated. Let’s just use the depreciation schedule as an example of 5 years for easy math. That means we purchase. We spend the $5,000 this year, and we write off only $1,000. Next year, we write off the other $1,000, so on and so forth. Fifth year, now it’s completely written off. I don’t know about you, but I would much prefer, if possible, to take that entire $5,000 deduction this year so I can reap the tax benefits immediately because who knows what the tax code’s going to say in 5 years or there are depreciation schedules of 15 years and in some instances, almost 30 years. It’s important to understand how things are going to affect your big picture at the end of the year, prior to you dishing out money.
Dennis Zink: Can you talk about a home office deduction?
Bert Seither: Home office deduction is another one of those phenomenal opportunities. There’s a lot of question and speculation and really arguments about the home office deduction. You do need to have an exclusive space for your home. If so, you can actually write off a portion of the home’s bills, based on the resources that the business is consuming in the home. There’s an old, I’m assuming an old wives’ tale that I’ll share with you here just to illustrate a point. Exclusive business use. That’s what it says in the tax code.
Now the story is, back in the day, an auditor audited a small business owner for the home office deduction. If you do get audited for that, they will be coming to your home. Okay? Of course you’ll have an opportunity to prepare for the investigation. The auditor came in and everything looked great. He claimed only the portion of the room that was being used by the business. He didn’t claim the entire room. However, he found a pair of snow skis behind the desk. He was using it for personal storage. Completely disallowed the home office deduction. It really can open up a can of worms for a lot of time and a lot of money because the average audit actually lasts approximately 6 months. It can be extremely time consuming and very costly.
Dennis Zink: Can you describe recapture?
Bert Seither: Sure. Another phenomenal point that a lot of newer business owners don’t generally have to worry about immediately. If you claim the home office deduction and let’s say you own your home. If you ever sell that home, there’s a recapture tax that you’ll come back and pay the year you sell your residence. A lot of accountants and CPAs, and there’s a million good ones out there too, but a lot of them will just tell you the tax benefits. “Of course, take the home office deduction. It’s going to be able to save you X amount of dollars this year.”
They don’t tell you the consequence when you sell your residence. Best advice I can give is to lay it all on the table first. Pick and choose your deductions wisely and understand not only the benefits of writing off or claiming a deduction but also the potential consequences.
Fred Dunayer: Boy that’s real good advice. I wasn’t aware of that myself and I’ve had a home office for years and years now that’s been deducted.
Bert Seither: If you own your home, you probably might want to stay there for a while.
Fred Dunayer: Okay. I’ll keep that in mind. When I took my accounting and taxes courses back in the late 1800s, they spent a lot of time talking to us about the difference between avoid and evade. What kind of things have you seen over the years that are questionable or have been questioned and are basic mistakes that people think they can deduct that they can’t?
Bert Seither: Yeah, good question. Yes. Tax avoidance, perfectly legal. Tax evasion, you can end up in jail. Of course, I’m a huge advocate of tax avoidance. Yeah, as long as you’re following the letter of the law, throw the spirit of the law aside for the moment. It’s going to depend what you should or shouldn’t or can or cannot claim as a deduction or write off that could potentially trigger something that could be perceived as tax evasion.
Tax evasion is normally something that’s done with intention and purpose to withhold the IRS’s money and keep it into your pocket. It’s just a matter of time before you end up getting caught because the people that pay you the money are also reporting how much they paid to the IRS.
Dennis Zink: Are there any other red flag deductions that you wanted to mention?
Bert Seither: There’s meals and entertainment. I’ll throw that out too. Meals and entertainment is another one. I know that’s always a favorite for at least newer business owners because I think it feels like you’re really living the corporate lifestyle, using your business card, taking people out to a ballgame or a play or for a nice meal. A lot of people don’t realize it’s only a 50 percent deduction. They end up filling out their own tax returns or their forms and they try to get a dollar for dollar. Will they get caught? Perhaps. Perhaps not. That’s another one that you have to tread lightly on and be very careful with.
Dennis Zink: What kind of record keeping do you recommend to track the meals and entertainment deduction?
Bert Seither: There’s a lot of systems out there. I think the most primitive and probably one of the most safe bets is, at least when you’re first getting started, is to write on the back of the receipt who you’re with and what was discussed that makes it business related. Always keep track of receipts, if possible. That is your last line of defense in the event of an investigation or an audit.
There’s a million things that you could do. You could take a picture with your smartphone. Then that way you have a digital record of it, because receipts fade, as we know. Ultimately all of these sorts of record keeping activities will be funneled into some sort of a business management or a record keeping system.
Fred Dunayer: I only use a particular credit card for business expenses. Are the credit card statements generally sufficient for the IRS?
Bert Seither: No. That’s not a safe bet. The reason I say that is because think of a gas station that is by your home, whatever company that may be. Let’s say there was a $30 charge on your credit card. To probably most of us, we would assume that $30 charge, with say Exxon Mobile, was fuel for business. Who’s to say it wasn’t Slim Jims and Mountain Dew or whatever the case may be inside? You always want to try to have more documentation than less because unlike the regular court of law, where you’re innocent until proven guilty, when it comes to taxes and the IRS, it’s actually reversed. You’re guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.
Documentation, documentation, documentation. Does it take a little bit of extra time to do? Sure. Somebody’s going to do it. The IRS leaves it up to you as to how you’re going to do it. How you’re going to stay organized, whether you use an Excel spreadsheet or just a legal pad or use a software like QuickBooks or something along those lines, but it has to be done. In a perfect world, if you can, outsource it. Record keeping is really one of those things that personally, I despise. To all the bookkeepers that are out there listening, I do apologize. It’s just one of those things that is not an income generating activity.
Any business owner, or rather a successful business owner, will tell you that your time and your best use is spent on the income generating activities for the business. You want to make sure you’re spending your time on the income generating activities. Anything that is not directly making you money and bringing money into the business, outsource it.
Dennis Zink: You mentioned gas stations. Let’s talk about the mileage deduction. Is it better to just look at your log, log your miles and know how many miles were used for business and take a deduction that way or are you better off accumulating your receipts for gas and oil and maintenance? Which is the better way generally to handle that?
Bert Seither: Just like I think any attorney or CPA would probably answer this question, it depends. The reason I say that is because it’s going to be based on the type of vehicle you have, year, make and model, how long you’ve been driving it, how often you’re driving it for business. Let’s say you do take the mileage approach.
Say 10 years ago, I know a lot of people had little binders or books that they would put in the pocket of their car door to put their starting and ending odometer total miles driven for the trip, et cetera, multiply that by the mileage allowance come the end of the year to determine how much you could write off. The beautiful thing is with technology now, we’ve got smartphone applications where we can just say start trip and then it locates our GPS coordinates and in trip. Then it’s all basically done for you. There’s a lot of different ways to do it now.
Dennis Zink: Okay. Are there any tax strategies that you could recommend to our listeners?
Bert Seither: Absolutely. Before I get into that, the structure of your business, that’s really where you want to start. Once you have the infrastructure established, and what I’m referring to is say a corporate structure, like an LLC or corporation compared to a sole proprietorship. Then you want to move into your deductions. What can I deduct? What can’t I deduct? What should or shouldn’t I deduct, et cetera? Once you have that in place, that’s when you want to move over to the tax strategies, which is probably a little bit more fun and a little bit more glamorous.
Yes, it is a little bit more complicated but where that complexity lies, that’s where we find the opportunity. I’ll give you an example here. As a W-2 wage earner, non-business owner, you’re only able to write off your medical cost each year, if your medical cost exceed, it’s now up to 10 percent of your adjusted gross income. Most people don’t qualify to write off their medical costs year after year after year. If you get sick, get hurt, what have you, have a bad year, sure it maybe be possible. It’s not probable that you’ll be able to do it each year.
Certain legal structures would allow for something called a self-insured medical reimbursement plan. This is not an actual insurance plan that you’re paying a monthly premium on, but rather verbiage in the bylaws of the corporation that states in better terms, the business is able to reimburse the business owner for their medical costs. Now those reimbursements that the business pays to the business owner are actually deductible. It’s a way to circumvent that 10 percent of your AGI rule. That’s I think an example that most of us could relate to. There’s another strategy called income shifting, sometimes referred to as income splitting.
Income shifting is basically when you pay other businesses or other individuals with different tax ID numbers or social security numbers and spread the profits or the money out so they get taxed at lower rates. The example I always give here is something that I personally went through when I was probably a young teenager where my father actually paid me to work for his business. At the time, I didn’t understand it, but I never got an allowance. I got a paycheck. The money that he paid me was a deduction for his business because of my age, because of the nominal amount that I received, and the standard deduction, I didn’t have to pay any taxes on it. Did I have to file? Yes. In the long term, it ended up saving my father I assume thousands of dollars each year.
Fred Dunayer: Obviously this subject could go on and on. We may end up wanting to do another follow-up session at a point in time. As we close this out, is there one thought that you would like our listeners to come away from this session?
Bert Seither: Yeah. I think the biggest take away that either small business owners or anybody who’s thinking of starting a small business is to plan. It’s to speak with professionals, people who are licensed to do this stuff, prior to you pulling the trigger. There’s a lot of options out there in terms of say tax preparation software. That’s really geared towards individuals, where you’re dealing with it once a year, a lot of retail locations that may only be open for 4 months out of the year.
You should have a very, very close relationship with your accountant, CPA, or enrolled agent, so that you could very easily pick up the phone, send them an email and say, “Hey, I’m thinking about doing this. What should I do?” Then trust that person to give you the best possible advice because they have a huge motivation to make sure you’re happy and successful and that’s you paying them their fee every year. A take away should be don’t view the money that you’re paying that CPA, accountant, et cetera, as an expense. View it as an investment because it can ultimately save you a lot of money.
Dennis Zink: Bert, thank you for being our guest today on Been There, Done That!
Bert Seither: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Dennis Zink: Thank you.
Fred Dunayer: You’ve been listening to the SCORE Small Business Success podcast, Been There, Done That! The opinions of the hosts and guests are theirs and do not necessarily reflect those of SCORE. If you would like to hear more podcasts, get a free mentor, view a transcript of this podcast, or would like more information about the services we provide, you can call SCORE at 800-634-0245 or visit our website at www.score.org. Again, that’s 800-634-0245 or visit the website at www.score.org.