Boss Your Business - The Podcast

Yvonne Heimann [00:00:01]:
What comes to mind when you think about retirement planning for your business? Do you actually think about retirement planning, because I haven't. Today, we're diving into the complexities that small business owners face when navigating employee benefits and retirement plans. First off, there's the issue to start. Then there's the challenge of understanding different plan types. And lastly, there's the daunting task of integrating these plans into your existing business. There's a lot a things that can go right, but also can go wrong.Joining us today is Courtenay Shipley, a retirement plan expert who has made it her mission to simplify retirement planning for business owners. Courtenay initially had a dream of being a musician but found her true calling in helping entrepreneurs secure their financial future.In this episode, we’ll explore Courtenay’s step-by-step methods for creating effective retirement plans, the various types of plans available, and how you make these options work for your business. Expect to walk away with clear strategies and renewed confidence in making retirement planning a seamless part of your business growth.

Yvonne Heimann [00:01:20]:
Guys, you definitely do not want to miss this episode today because Courtenay and I are on fire. We've had so much fun in preparation to this episode. Yeah, you don't want to miss this because you want to get some of that fire that's going on in this episode. Hi, Courtenay. How are you?

Courtenay Shipley [00:01:40]:
Hi. I'm good. How are you?

Yvonne Heimann [00:01:43]:
Look at all the smiles. If you're just listening, you need to hop over to YouTube. You need to see the smile. This energy, we need. We need to find a way to bottle this energy up and take it when we need it.

Courtenay Shipley [00:01:55]:
It's our new business, right? Yeah, we'll sell it. It'll be good.

Yvonne Heimann [00:02:00]:
We bottle up awesome, freaking amazing energy. Now, Courtenay. Tell me, was little Courtenay that same energetic? And did she know she's going to be talking about employee retention and retirement when she grows up?

Courtenay Shipley [00:02:14]:
No, definitely not. Definitely not. No. Little Courtenay would not have been able to predict anything of what has happened over the last 20 years, for sure. But here we are. I fell into this industry, and I loved it, and here I am today. So, yes.

Yvonne Heimann [00:02:33]:
How did little Courtenay envision the future? Did she have a plan? Teacher, doctor or something? Or was it just kind of like, okay, I'm just following the yellow brick road kind of thing?

Courtenay Shipley [00:02:47]:
I think it was totally yellow brick road. I would say that I had plans to be a musician that, you know, that's not as much fun when it's your job, it turns out. So, yeah. If we had to go back in time and ask little Courtenay, like, what? Where are we going? What are we doing? It was going to be on stage, and it was going to be, you know, playing music or singing or doing something like that. Performing, for sure.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:13]:
How much of that is in your life now, though, today? Are you speaking on stage? Are you?

Courtenay Shipley [00:03:20]:
Yeah.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:22]:
So you're still in that same kind of environment. It's just not music.

Courtenay Shipley [00:03:24]:
Yes, exactly. And it's more fun. I think there's connection with people and being able to explain some really difficult concepts about a subject that people usually shy away from. So, yeah, I think it's great. I have that impact. I still get that. I get to scratch that itch with the performing side of things, if you will. And, yeah, it's a good mix.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:45]:
I love that. Now tell me, because it's like, especially for, like, that small and medium size businesses, benefits are not necessarily on what we pay attention to, let's be honest. It's like, especially in the states, it seems to be such a vast collection of all kinds of things when, when it comes to benefits. And I'm like, me personally, I'm literally right now in a situation where I'm like, I do understand wanting to support my team. Yeah, but you are coming in as an independent contractor because I don't want to deal with it.

Courtenay Shipley [00:04:30]:
That's okay, too.

Yvonne Heimann [00:04:32]:
How, how can we change that perception, though? Because I see the benefits of it. I see the benefits, and what can somebody do that does see the benefits but is overwhelmed with all of it to, to just kind of get a start with it? Figure, figure this thing out.

Courtenay Shipley [00:04:55]:
Yeah. For micro businesses, especially when you're starting to hire folks, you have to think about how you're going to compensate them. Right. And part of the compensation package could be those benefits as well as their salary and everything else that we think about. And if it's a super small business, maybe you do start with contractors, and then maybe they, you know, maybe you move into some employees after that. And I would say the order in which you put benefits in place probably has everything to do with you and what you, as the business owner, want to. So if you think of it in those terms, it's like, do you need health insurance? Is it better to have a group plan for health insurance, or is it better to have everybody on the exchange? And what is the, you know, working with your accountant? Like, what's the best, the best way to accomplish that from a tax perspective, too, for the business? The qsera kse. Oh, I'm gonna mess it up.

Courtenay Shipley [00:05:55]:
It's a Qsera. I think it is where you have, like an allowance that you can give employees to buy health insurance. There's some interesting things there, and your accountant can probably help you with that side of things. Once you get health insurance covered, that's when people are like, okay, typically step two is like 401K or some sort of a retirement plan. And certain states have now mandated that small businesses, let's call it under 50 employees that can. Small is kind of a shaky, gray definition, but some states are requiring certain size businesses to have a retirement plan for their employees. And that could be something as easy as the state run IRA program that they have in certain states. I think there's like 13 or 14 now that have that in place.

Courtenay Shipley [00:06:37]:
Or you could go, you know, you could take a look at things and say, we've got quite a bit of profits here, and I want to share them with my employees. Or alternatively, maybe your employees are like, I really need to put money away for retirement. They're actually asking for that benefit. And that's when you can step into those different types of retirement plans to have a nice benefit on that side of things for your employees.

Yvonne Heimann [00:07:00]:
So if I just heard you right, when you were talking about the healthcare benefit in specific, if I heard you right, I theoretically also could just offer an allowance, so. Meaning I can support their charges rather than having to worry about fully covering it in the beginning.

Courtenay Shipley [00:07:25]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I. Because my.

Yvonne Heimann [00:07:28]:
Where my brain is coming from this, with this question, just to give you a little bit more of an idea. I often get completely overwhelmed and stressed when I'm looking at something, and I'm like, yes, I want to give this to you, but right now, I am not able to. I don't have it in the budget, whatever it is. So being able to grow benefits with, as the business grows, grows, that's what I heard from you, where it's like, okay, I can't cover all of this yet, but, yeah, I can give you a monthly allowance to at least cover part of it.

Courtenay Shipley [00:08:07]:
Yeah. So the health insurance part is not my 100% expertise, but just as a small business owner, I know this is an option that is available to us and to others as well. And so it's a relatively. The QSera is like a relatively new provision, maybe within the last five years or so. So it's a good thing to explore. And the basic idea is that you're giving them kind of an allowance towards health insurance, and you get the tax benefit being the owner of having given that benefit. So it's definitely something to look into, for sure. But like you were saying, you do oftentimes grow into different benefits at different times, and sometimes that has everything to do with who it is you need to hire.

Courtenay Shipley [00:08:55]:
So if it's just like, you need a super talented individual that's more on your level, so maybe more like, kind of closer to that, like, executive level versus someone who's just a support person. There may be very different needs in how you're trying to hire those people and what you need to have in place in order to make an attractive place for them to work.

Yvonne Heimann [00:09:15]:
And it makes sense to play around with those different levels of benefits and doing. And I'm like, when it then comes to those retirement plans, for example. So we got. Got the bases taken care of. We've grown our small business into more of a medium sized business, large business. Hey, multimillion dollar business. Why cut the gold short, right?

Yvonne Heimann [00:09:43]:
And it's, again, it's like I grew up in Germany. So for me, I know I need a retirement plan and I also want to give that to my employees. But it's like I have about that much knowledge, which why I was so excited to see a submission and bring you on to talk about this because there's a lot going on when it comes to retirement. And tell me if I'm wrong. There's even the difference then between what we decide to give employees as well as what we want to do with our own. And all the things I'm like, there's so much stuff going on when it comes to retirement.

Courtenay Shipley [00:10:22]:
It's true. It is super overwhelming. I will give you that for sure. The easy place to start, I think, is to ask yourself what you want this plan to do. If you just need a plan, start with the state plan or start with an IRA plan. Just something that's super easy to put in place. If it's more along the lines of like, I've got to have a really good plan because I need to attract people in, or I, as the business owner, really want to save my own money because I've spent all this time and effort building my business and putting my investment into that. And of course that is part of your financial plan later in life is probably to sell the businesses.

Courtenay Shipley [00:11:01]:
But if you want to start saving in a tax advantaged way, then maybe it is. Maybe you go for the 401K plan or maybe you start a little bit below that in a simple IRA. So either one of those is going to allow the employees to put some money away. It's going to give you some tax benefits as the business owner. And a great place to start is just asking your accountant, hey, I know there's like some different types of plans. Which one do I, what should I consider based on what you see with my numbers? You know, start from that, that perspective. And if you know that you want to be a really good saver and you want to put $20,000 away for retirement, then that solves the problem, too, because that guides you right to the 401K plan, because that's where that, that high limit of how much you can put away is, because somebody who is under the age of 50 this year can put away $23,500. So that's a pretty good amount of money, right? And then the employer, if you want to do a match or you want to do some profit sharing because you had a great year or something like that, you can do more on top of it.

Courtenay Shipley [00:12:11]:
So it really just comes back to probably two things. One is how much do you want to put away? And then what do you have to have in place in order to get the right talent, if that's what you're doing right now, if you're hiring people?

Yvonne Heimann [00:12:25]:
And I love how you brought personality in with this, too, because, again, there is, there's different variations and possibilities for us. And what do you want to do? Where. How does it, how does it fit your goals and. And your personality? Now, I'm gonna take you a little bit sideways here for a second.

Courtenay Shipley [00:12:52]:
Go for it.

Yvonne Heimann [00:12:53]:
How does one make, first of all, retirement and employee retention interesting? Because some reason you actually making this topic interesting to me. My head is off to you. You must be really loving this stuff. And turn it also in a business that allows you to have the freedom to live your life how you want. How? Because when, when I hear retirement plans, pretty much what I think is an employee of one of the plans we would be signing up for, that's. That's what the vision I have in my head. So I would love to hear how you turned this into a business that allows you the freedom to live the life how you want to.

Courtenay Shipley [00:13:44]:
I like it. Okay, so retirement plans, step back. What's the word retirement even mean? And then, you know, you think about that for a while, and I've surveyed people over 23 years and asked them, what does retirement mean to you? And we get answers that are all over the place. The biggest one we get is it means not working. I'm like, well, okay, but I know plenty of people. My friend's dad, for example, who's still working, he's in his well into his seventies, and he's like, what am I supposed to do? Sit at home and wait for the undertaker? I was like, okay,

Yvonne Heimann [00:14:16]
That's gonna be me, because it's like.

Yvonne Heimann [00:14:20]:
So we love what we do, right? So.

Courtenay Shipley [00:14:24]:
Yeah, exactly.

Yvonne Heimann [00:14:25]:
Maybe less of it.

Courtenay Shipley [00:14:27]:
Yes. And what does retirement mean? So we can all agree that it means it's the luxury of deciding how you spend your time later in life. Maybe later in life is in five years. Who knows? It's whenever you want it to be. And so I think that's a concept that everybody can get on board with. Like, how do you create your own paycheck if you don't have to rely on an employer? And for us business owners, I mean, we have created our own paycheck. And so it's, how do we create that paycheck with less effort? At some point in time, do we sell this thing that we've grown to someone else? And, you know, monetize our effort. And that's a big, you know, you get a big chunk of money in exchange for that.

Courtenay Shipley [00:15:08]:
Is it that you save money into investments? Is it that you buy real estate? Is it that you have some other asset that generates income over time? So it's, that's all it is. It's just, how are we going to put this paycheck together for later that allows us, like you said, the freedom to do what we want to do? And for some entrepreneurs, like, they're living it now, they have a great life. They have a great business that supports that life. So I think that's how it becomes interesting, is how do we craft that for everybody? And everyone's different. There's some people who want to go to work for an employer every day, and they're expecting some things in exchange for the time that they're giving to their employer. And one of those might be a retirement plan, a way to save for the future. And then I guess, you know, how do you make it entertaining? I just think that this is. It seems harder than it should be.

Courtenay Shipley [00:16:01]:
So I think that just getting it boiled down to its basic component of that and then, okay, what's our next step? What's the next step we take? We don't have to understand everything about it. Right? It's just, we flipped on the headlights at night. We can see just enough in front of us to keep going. So how do we take that next step to figure out what we need to do?

Yvonne Heimann [00:16:22]:
I love that.

Courtenay Shipley [00:16:23]:
Does that help?

Yvonne Heimann [00:16:24]:
Yes.

Courtenay Shipley [00:16:25]:
Okay.

Yvonne Heimann [00:16:25]:
And I think it's a lot of this is also just your personality where it's like, it's. It's easy to talk to you and with you about a subject that too many might just feel like too much, if that makes any sense.

Yvonne Heimann [00:16:45]:
So for our smaller business, because, again, the. The audience that's listening to the podcast can be quite broad for somebody that is in that moment of, okay, I built. I built this baby of mine. I'm ready. I'm ready to send it off and send my business off to college. We're getting to the point where we are actually bringing in full time employees and all the things.

Yvonne Heimann [00:17:12]:
What should they look out for when they are doing this step from. Okay, I'm not just a solopreneur anymore. I actually proved my concept. I scaled my business. We are ready to do this step of. It's usually when a founder becomes a CEO, when it becomes a. We have even just a handful of employees, but it's becoming a company. It's not just a business anymore.

Yvonne Heimann [00:17:37]:
It's becoming a company. What would you recommend to those founders? Do you have seen people in this situation? What are some of the things they might not know yet? Because I think that's often the biggest struggle. The things we don't know.

Courtenay Shipley [00:17:55]:
Mm hmm. Yes, I would. I think there's two things. I think one is cost, and I think one is operations.

Yvonne Heimann [00:18:00]:
Okay.

Courtenay Shipley [00:18:01]:
So cost. These plans don't have to be that expensive. There's some really nice tax credits in place. Now, if you start a retirement plan. So that is something to talk to your accountant about, for sure. But that helps to offset those fees of getting things started, because this is a little. I mean, you are absorbing some overhead when you put these types of plans in place. Right.

Courtenay Shipley [00:18:24]:
They do have an administrative cost from year to year, but those tax credits will help offset it. And the second thing is, how much do I have to give my employees? And without going into too much detail about how the plans are built and there's non discrimination testing and things like that, if you know in the back of your mind that you could give everybody a 3% raise and it wouldn't bother you, then you're good. You're good to go. So whatever 3% of your payroll is, and for many people, it actually ends up not being that much. But without doing the numbers, that seems intimidating, I think, sometimes.

Yvonne Heimann [00:19:00]:
And, okay, I love that you put that, that 3% number to it, because I'm like, when you said that, I was like, wait, that's it?

Courtenay Shipley [00:19:08]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yvonne Heimann [00:19:10]:
Because it's like when, when you hear retirement and benefits and everything. I would have easily thought about 10, 15 percent and not just 3%.

Courtenay Shipley [00:19:20]:
Right? Yeah. And most financial people will tell, you will tell employees, in order to get on track to save enough for retirement, you do need to contribute 10 to 15% of your paycheck, just because, in mathematically speaking, it usually works out that way. However, from an employer side, what's the minimum you have to give in order to pass a non discrimination test and make life a little bit easier? Again, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole here, but you can either do a 3% non elective contribution, meaning that you're just giving everybody 3% in that plan, or you can match them up to four. And if you can afford that, if you know what that number is, 3% or 4%, then you know, that's it. That's. That's really all you'd be on the hook for. You could do more if you wanted to. But that's what I'm saying.

Courtenay Shipley [00:20:08]:
Like, from a cost standpoint, these aren't as horrible, I think, as most people think. Like 10 to 15. Oh, my God.

Courtenay Shipley [00:20:15]:
Like, how much do I have to put away? How much do I have to give my employees? So that's a good starting point. It's not bad. It's not bad.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:20]:
And it's this whole perception thing where it's like, have I looked into it fully? No.

Courtenay Shipley [00:20:27]:
No. Yeah.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:29]:
That's why I have you on the podcast. I can pick your brain. So there is that. That perception that this is this huge, major ordeal with a huge additional cost on top of things. So I'm really happy to hear it's not. And it's actually. It can be really simple. Maybe not easy initially, but definitely simple to get started with this.

Courtenay Shipley [00:21:01]:
Yeah. Now, the operations side is the other thing. That's the other thing that people don't know about.

Yvonne Heimann [00:21:07]:
Okay.

Courtenay Shipley [00:21:08]:
So, all right. Money's going to come out of the paycheck. It's going to go over to the retirement plan. That doesn't sound hard, but it can be hard. It can be hard if your payroll company won't talk to your 401K company. So we're small business owners. Right, exactly. You want this to be an automated thing behind the scenes.

Yvonne Heimann [00:21:25]:
Yeah, I don't want to.

Courtenay Shipley [00:21:26]:
Anything you can do. Anything you can do to get those two systems?

Yvonne Heimann [00:21:30]:
I don't want to have to touch this every single month or even twice a month based on how you pay out.

Courtenay Shipley [00:21:37]:
No. Yeah, you don't want to have to. So that is my biggest piece of advice to all small to medium sized businesses is please make sure that whoever you choose for your record keeper, for your 401K or other type of retirement plan has some sort of connectivity with your payroll system. Yes. The end. Full stop.

Yvonne Heimann [00:21:55]:
And the bad thing is, I'm like, it's 2024.

Courtenay Shipley [00:21:59]:
I know.

Yvonne Heimann [00:22:00]:
We all should really.

Courtenay Shipley [00:22:01]:
There's no excuse for this.

Yvonne Heimann [00:22:05]:
But unfortunately. In the business that I'm in, I had to realize the bigger the companies get, the more trouble we have actually connecting your tool to something else.

Courtenay Shipley [00:22:15]:
It's terrible, isn't it?

Yvonne Heimann [00:22:17]:
I'm like, can we move into the 21st century place, please?

Courtenay Shipley [00:22:20]:
Yeah. The winners. The winners are going to be who can play well in the sandbox with others. We're back in kindergarten again.

Yvonne Heimann [00:22:27]:
Am I just thinking about the potential loss of time or revenue? Because I got to put somebody on this. If I have to do this manually once or twice a month, suddenly the 3 or 4% turn into 10%.

Courtenay Shipley [00:22:45]:
Yeah. No. Yes, you are exactly right. So glad we're talking about it. So people know what to look for.

Yvonne Heimann [00:22:52]:
Yes. So thank you for that. Thank you for that. Because I think the biggest downfall often is when. When a scaling like this happened, when a growth like this happens, it's. You never done it before. You've never been in the situation before. I'm like a year or two later, you're like, if I only would have known.

Yvonne Heimann [00:23:14]:
So having those. Those usually hear the things people usually don't know. Thank you so much for that. And with everybody that is ready to take action, to really use benefits as employee retention strategy and do something, it's like my community is a lot about supporting each other, supporting our team, and really passion and vision based. So I'm sure there is definitely a few in the audience that are ready to take some action now that they know it doesn't have to be this difficult. Where can they find you? How can they get started? How can they get more information?

Courtenay Shipley [00:23:56]:
Yeah. So there's a couple ways. One is you can find me on LinkedIn under C. Shipley, Courtenay Shipley. The other way is to go to our website. It's retirementplanology.com/learnmore. Easy breezy.

Yvonne Heimann [00:24:10]:
And as you all know, things are going to be in the show description. As always, I'm making it really simple for you. Courtenay, thank you for showing me and my audience that benefits. Really don't have to be this difficult. And even as a small business, you can start using them as a retention strategy.

Courtenay Shipley [00:24:31]:
Absolutely.

Yvonne Heimann [00:24:32]:
Thank you so much.

Courtenay Shipley [00:24:32]:
So fun to be here. Thank you.

Yvonne Heimann [00:24:34]:
And guys, you know what's coming. Go hit that follow button so you don't miss any other upcoming amazing episodes. I'll see you there.