Ep. 205 – Building a Tax Firm with Passion and Precision (with Pietro Canestrelli)

From the IRS to Entrepreneur: How One Lawyer Built a National Tax Practice Focused on People First

Ben sits down with Pietro Canestrelli, a former IRS attorney turned boutique tax firm founder, to unpack how he built a thriving national practice with one clear mission: take the fear out of taxes.

With a niche focus on tax controversy and strategic tax planning, Pietro’s firm now serves clients across the U.S. and beyond—growing from two employees to 20+ in under 10 years. He’s also the author of America’s Tax Defender, a story-driven look at his years inside the IRS and why he chose to walk away.

🔍 Inside this episode:

• How Pietro turned his IRS insider experience into a competitive advantage
• The 3 tax domains every business owner should understand
• Why passion and compassion guide every client interaction in his firm
• How to market a niche practice by cultivating long-term referral partnerships
• What solo and small firm owners are getting wrong about tax planning
• His firm’s 3-stage hiring process—and how it keeps culture and client service aligned

📘 Bonus: Check out Pietro’s book, America’s Tax Defender, available on Amazon.

🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com

What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?

In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers. 

One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.

There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.

Transcript

Humor, Books, And IRS Stories

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There is an art in for lawyers in making the book interesting versus the dry, sort of C L E type writing that we still see from time to time.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

You're not going to see a lot of, you know, black leather law in the book. It really is stories about kind of the craziness of the IRS. A lot of humor in the book. That's cool. I, you know, the there's all sorts of characters that work in the IRS, and I'm sure any government and all sorts of rules.

Show Setup And Guest Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business, and success. Hosted by Ben Glenn, attorney, entrepreneur, coach, and father of nine, this show is about more than just practices. For over 40 years, Ben has built something bigger. How does lawyers create practices that make good money? Do meaningful work that still make it. These are people creating full careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like renegade, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

Defining A Tax Boutique Practice

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Hey everyone, this is Ben Glass. Welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where every interview I'm interviewing someone inside or outside of legal who's dinging the world. And today I've got a little combination of both. Uh Pietro Canastrelli is a tax attorney out in California. Very interesting background. We'll talk about that. But I also want to spend some time because he has he has done a lot of thinking, like many of our listeners, about what do I want to build? You know, what kind of firm really will serve my life? What's my why? And he's also done a lot of work in developing curating referral sources. So it's, you know, near the end of January PHR, we're getting all these, I get all these tax notices and forms going by. Thank God I have people that help me with that. Um so we'll we will certainly do some tax sharing. Sure. But man, I always like to understand the background and the mindset of entrepreneurs, and you've got a niche practice, and so I think this is gonna be fun, my friend. Awesome. How are you?

SPEAKER_02 2:26

I'm doing great.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

I am we shared we shared temperatures. It's 15 here as I'm recording this, and 61 in Temecula, California here. There you go. Um Tell us a little, let's just start by telling us a little bit about the practice today, right? What it looks like, who you serve, and then we'll kind of work backwards through the marketing and practice building, and then we'll get around to the substantive tax law that business owners would benefit from.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

So what's it look like today? What we are today is a tax bow take firm. We do both what I call tax controversy, which is when you're in a fight with the IRS or one of the many state taxing authorities in California. We have a lot of them. Um and we do a lot of that. We also do tax planning. Tax controversy is, I should say, my first love in the in the legal world. It it's what I learned in the past 26 years. In the last five years, we switched to tax planning mainly because we saw so many people go down a bad road. Their tax planning meant, you know, cutting corners, making stuff up, hoping the IRS would not. And then where there are so many legitimate paths to save taxes that people can take advantage of. We really have gotten into in the last five years. Currently, we I have four tax attorneys that work for the firm. We are expanding. And we serve not only people here in Southern California, but nationwide and overseas. Anyone with a federal tax problem or want to say federal taxes, we could certainly help.

Marketing A National Niche

SPEAKER_01 4:10

You know, it's interesting. Uh, before we went live, you you uh I'll paraphrase, you said I start with the assumption the IRS is wrong in these tax controversies. And I said, well, that's very similar to my disability work where the insurance company seems to be always wrong in the cases that come to me. And it is, it it is fun like to be a subject matter expert. Talk to me a little bit about you know, both the good side and the challenges of marketing a boutique practice that isn't hyper local necessarily. Right. I get to talk to people all over the country, as do you, you're talking to them. We actually do have some clients that are American-based but work for in locales outside of the United States. Um, you've doing some international work. Um, so what are you doing to attract clients?

SPEAKER_02 4:59

So, what

Building Referral Engines

SPEAKER_02 5:00

I do is we do a lot of social media, but we also reach out to a lot of other professionals and specifically attorneys. Most attorneys, there are tax aspects to every practice, but they don't want to get into it at all. They don't want to know about it because they don't want to lead their client the wrong way. So attorneys are a great referral source for us because we are so niched in the tax world, they don't worry about us taking over their litigation or their bankruptcy case or anything like that. We're not interested in doing any of that. We just do tax. The other people in this might sound surprising, but CPAs and other preparers are great resources for us, referral partners. And the reason is a CPA and other preparers, they do what we call compliance, and that is preparing a tax return. And compliance is one of the three worlds of tax, and that's the most common and most what people understand about filing tax returns. But there are two others, and one is controversy, and the difference between compliance and controversy is compliance is a look back and make sure that all the lines are filled properly, and if you're doing a good job, you have substantiation, but they're not set up to defend those positions in either IRS appeals or U.S. tax court or federal tax. And the reason is they're not attorneys, they don't understand the procedural aspects, and they're usually very happy to hand over an audit or an appeals or a U.S. tax court case to someone who has that experience and skills.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

100% because you are you are giving that other professional relief. Correct. Call Pietra.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

It's not in their business model. You know, a preparer, their business and model is not to have a ton of audits. They don't want that. They want to avoid that, but when they do have an audit, they have not set up the systems to handle the audit, other than kind of just hand over everything to the IRS. That's the worst way to have an audit. It yeah. And so they don't know how they don't know how to charge their client either for this. They're like, they don't know what to do. So we come in, we have a fresh set of eyes. We're always very, we're not trying to steal them as far as do it, we don't want to do tax returns. Not interested in doing that. So it's a very good referral source. The other referral source is financial planners. Now, financial planners, tax why, you know, tax savings is a very important thing, but a financial advisor could only go so far. You know, they could talk about deferred compensation plans and that sort of thing, but they don't have a lot of wherewithal for like operating businesses and how to save at the business level. And that is kind of where tax planning comes in.

What Real Tax Planning Requires

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Again, it's not controversy, it's not compliance, tax planning, if you're doing it correctly, is really a forward-thinking plan. It is looking at what you did last year, but also what your plans are in this year and beyond, and really tailoring a specific plan where there's going to be real ramifications in the real world, transactions are going to happen, things are going to happen. Um, you know, you're going to pay for certain things and not pay for certain things and, you know, divert income here and there. So you could have a very efficient tax case, tax outcome at the end of the year. So when you do do your filing, you have everything necessary. It's not a December 28th thing. It is a January thing. Start now, and we can make a plan. We will make sure that you stay on that plan so everything's ready for next year's filing return.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

So this is uh it's very similar to our ERISA-based long-term disability practice in that a like ERISA scares people. Right. Because it's a whole lot of regulations and a whole lot now of cases that tell you how to do things. But we are always on the lookout and saying to ourselves, like, who else, like what other tribal leaders, be they attorneys or non-lawyers, have our future clients? Like, right, who's already serving them? And then how can I get in front of them, in front of the tribal leaders in an interesting way, consistent way, so that when you know, something in my practice area, which is usually so our version of controversy is denied claim. But we also do a lot of planning. So high wage earner gets a diagnosis, he or she knows that they're not going to be able at some point in the future to do what they were born to do. They've got these policies, they have complex business arrangements. Like, how do I

Caring For Gatekeepers And Partners

SPEAKER_01 10:29

walk through that? So I'm so talk to us a little bit, Pietro, about how you I what I call care and feed for these, care and feed these referral sources, either be the lawyers or non-lawyers. How are you staying in front of them?

SPEAKER_02 10:44

They are they are gatekeepers. Part of it is at a very personal level. You know, you reach out, you call them, you say, Hey, would you have like to have a virtual lunch or a real lunch or spend a half an hour? Or another part is being a resource to them. Hey, if this question comes up, if any question comes up, I am a resource. Email me directly, and I will try to answer the question. If we have to engage, I'll let you know. But I just finished up an interesting question about community property income and for a CPA, and I'm not charging him. I want him to look at me as a resource because I know he's going to give me, refer anything that is a a real case to me. So being a huge resource to these gatekeepers is very important. And part of it is being a nice person. Yes, imagine not being a jerk, not being a what I call a dog bowler where you want to just take everything, giving some of your time, talent, and treasure over to them, and you get a reputation to someone who is going to play fair, who's going to be helpful. And you know, it doesn't take a lot of those type of relationships to really grow your firm. And we've had massive growth in the last five years.

Coaching, Mindset, And Growth

SPEAKER_02 12:16

Part of it was that, but part of it was, you know, kind of what you do, coaching. You know, I think a lot of law firm owners, just like a lot of business owners in general, they don't get any coaching. And I think coaching is business coaching is the key key to success, both on the mindset level and you know, the kind of the practical stuff.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

100%. Yeah. So similarly, uh, you know, we we try to make ourselves a resource and we tell people like, we'll never surprise Bill. If you have a question that I can answer off the top of my head, great. If it's more complicated, I'll think about it. I'll tell you exactly what it's going to cost, and then we'll work on it if you or your client wants to work on it. Um one of the things, so in tax planning for you, you're you're, I'm sure you're when you're meeting somebody and getting to know them, you're like, all right, where do you want to go? Like, what what is the outcome that you want?

SPEAKER_02 13:13

That is that is the ultimate, not just this year, but what what what is your ultimate goal? How big do you want to do you want to grow this thing? Because there are tax opportunities at every level of business, from the smallest sole practitioner that is making $100,000 a year to somebody who's making tens

Goals-Aligned Tax Strategy

SPEAKER_02 13:35

of millions of dollars a year. There are different tax strategies. And part of it is a huge part of it because we could read your profit and loss statement, we could read your tax returns, and we could have strategies in mind, but they have to be aligned with your life goals. If you want to sell your business in five years, that's one strategy that we're going to be focusing on. If you want to try to keep it and pass it on to the next generation, that's another strategy we need to talk about. If you don't want to grow and you're happy where you're at, that's one strategy. If you expect a 10X in three, five years or whatever your time length, that is another tax strategy. So getting to know what, you know, their family. Do they have kids? Do they have grandkids? Do they have pets? Do they all that sort of stuff is really important to have a because the tax strategy has to align with what they want. I could I could have you pay zero taxes, but I don't think you're gonna like it very much because you know, you're not gonna have you're it's gonna affect cash flow. You're not going to be able to spend money on certain things. So we have to know what you want first.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

100%. You know, I I've I've listened to people and taken pictures from people that say, oh, I you know, I can save you tons, and these were not tax attorneys, tons of tax in taxes. And then when I'd hear the actual proposal, my head would explode because now you're telling me three new substantive things I need to go and at least be able to understand and wrap my heads around so I can assess my own like personal risk tax-wise and not tax-wise. Right. Um, and and I and I would always default back, Pietro, to like, I can just go get three more cases and end up with the same amount of bottom line cash on my side of the uh of the ledger that this proposal is. And so I always found that and and the problem was the problem was they never had a discussion with me about who are you, right? What do you want to do? Right, what's your comfort level, um, what what are you trying to build here over the next five, 10, 15 years? Never, never. Right. And and I, you know, it's it's like there's this whole industry.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Yeah, it's selling a product instead of selling, you know, being an advisor. Exactly. That is in almost every personal service industry. You you have, you know, people that sell a product. And that's a lot of our competition on on the tax controversy. They're they're selling a product, they're not actually looking at an individual's tax

Products vs Advisory In Tax

SPEAKER_02 16:23

problem on an individual level to figure out the best outcome for them. They want to sell a particular thing because they they know how to do that. You know, when you only have a hammer, everything's a nail, right? But that's not a great way to help people the most the best way, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:43

You're competing, you're competing with late-night TV ads. Yeah. Got tax problems? Question mark, give us a call. Yeah. To some extent you are. Although the reality is, much like our competition against these some of these 800-pound gorillas in the personal injury space, like their clients aren't our clients. Like they're attracting a crowd that we're not interested in attracting.

From IRS Insider To Firm Builder

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Right. Let's talk a little bit about your his your background, because um, I know you worked for the RS, I'm curious about that. But then you definitely, you know, formed your own vision of what kind of firm you wanted to build. And so our listeners will be interested in kind of how you thought, and then what you either had to go out and learn, what challenges you had to overcome to build something that's pretty cool now.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

Yeah, it's it's this is what my book is about. It's available on Amazon, America's Tax Defender. Stories of taxpayers uh fighting the IRS and winning. But I started out my career, brand new attorney, working for the IRS in Washington, D.C. It was very interesting. Spent six six years, 99 to 2005. So I was there for 9-11 and the anthrax thing and the sniper and a lot of obviously politics, it's Washington. So interesting time, but to tell you the truth, I hated the job. I hated the job, and I I was kind of surprised why I hated the job in that there, you know, when you're a government attorney, you're a government employee, there's great things about it in that you have job security. But to me, there was terrible things about it because you're not actually helping anyone. Um, you're you're defending the government's position, you're you're doing published guidance, you're trying to get create tax law. And I have nothing against any government employee or attorney or anything like that. That's a job, and we need them to do their jobs. But for me, I realize after six years there and and just really not liking it that I have to be passionate about my work. I actually have to care about the work, and that's that's not a government job. Okay, you you're you're trained not to care about the work in government. So I finally left after six years, and I work for various firms as a tax attorney um until 2016. And we're coming up on the 10th anniversary in exactly a week. It's the uh

Culture, Why, And Hiring Nationwide

SPEAKER_02 19:24

uh February 1st will be our 10th anniversary. And I finally opened up my my firm, and one of the exercises I did early on is Simon Senex Start With Why. And I really read that book and and we really focused on the why of our firm. Why are we doing this? And you know, we are doing this, it boils down to we're taking we want to take the fear out of the out of dealing with the IRS. And I was trained as an attorney to work on that fear with clients to to get them to sign. And I'm a hundred percent against that because I know people with tax problems are already scared, they are embarrassed, they are ashamed, and that is not what I want to prey on. I want to help them get past that because that is the mindset that is why they're in this situation. They're trying to hide it, they're trying to ignore it, they're trying to do all these things to to get away from it without actually confronting it. And what we do, we practice law with passion and compassion, and we work with the client to get through and get a resolution to this tax issue so they could have a big chunk of their life back. So, you know, as we grew the firm, and me and my wife Kristen were the ones that, you know, started employee one and employee two, and now we're up to employee 20 something, we really did that with our marketing, we did that with our hiring. All of the that passion and compassion was incorporated into our practice. And I think you know, if you have a good culture, if you know what why you're doing stuff, it makes life easier. It makes all the decisions on hiring and marketing and and and and helping clients that much easier. You you know your why, you know what you're supposed to be doing. So we've grown the firm in the last 10 years, like I said, from a a two-person team to a twenty something. I don't know exactly how many people we have, but I know it's at least twenty. I know it's at least twenty, and we're hiring two more this month. It all starts with finding your why, finding what you want to do professionally in your life. And what's

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Running the running the firm. For example, we we run our firm on EOS. And then how do you we're all curious about the owner, the founder has a vision

Stepping Out Of Legal Production

SPEAKER_01 22:12

and a why? And the whole thing works best when everyone on the team is behind that mission. Yeah. But that's can be challenging. How have you and your wife grown the firm and been able to attract people who do get behind the why of the firm?

SPEAKER_02 22:33

A lot of it has to do with, you know, the post, the job posting. We start there. You know, you have a job description of what you want them to do. Like if you're hiring an attorney, you know what you're looking at. You want a certain amount of years of experience in the tax controversy and tax planning arena. You want a certain education, that sort of thing. But we also, you know, set up on the on the first 15-minute interview, and we have a very long hiring process because of this. First 15-minute interview, we're really trying to get to see if their values match our firm culture. And we have a series of questions that ask about these things, sometimes directly, sometimes more obliquely, because you know, everybody wants a job, but do they want this job? Do they want to fit into this culture? And the nice thing about having a national practice, and you know this, is that you have national talent. And I'm not not limited to Southern California hiring attorneys in Southern California. I can hire attorneys anywhere in the country that are good tax attorneys. We focus on at the hiring stage, on the vetting stage, to really find the people that demonstrate this passion and compassion that we're all about. And it's relatively easy to find these if you've done it long enough. You could you could

The Book As Brand And Credibility

SPEAKER_02 24:06

you you could tell by the answers to their questions what they're what motivates them. Okay. And it's it's easy to find out the people that are not motivated at all by this. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with them. It's just it's not going to be a good fit. And then once they come on board, part of their initial training is again this. You know, we have them read certain books, we have them write an essay on, you know, what are they passionate about? What how do how do they demonstrate compassion? And then we have training. We do weekly training and about a half an hour training with the full staff. And this is a very big topic. You know, we do nuts and bolts training too, but a lot of it is directly on firm culture. And you better be able to say our internal mission statement. You know, we provide, we practice law with passion and compassion, educating and advocating for our tax clients so they could sleep at night. If I call on you, you better be able to say that. You better have that ingrained in you. And it's just constant training, constant monitoring when betting when you're hiring.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Today, in 2026, are you doing a lot of substantive legal work yourself or are you elevated more to CEO status?

SPEAKER_02 25:31

Yeah, I'm pretty much out of legal production at this point. I will take a project or two. One of the projects I've recently taken is being an expert witness. And that is something, you know, kind of motivates me. But I spend most of my time um on the marketing realm and the hiring realm. I don't even have a super strong supervisory role on the production side. We have a we have a director of operations that do it much better than I do. I am still mentoring attorney. So anyone, any of our attorneys, and they do this all the time, book time with me to go over a case and talk it out and figure out strategies, that sort of thing. Actual legal production, not a lot. But that's relatively new. Last year I did a lot more. This year I'm I'm pretty much phased out. Maybe one or two hours a week at this point.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

So we're we are aligned there again. My my goal for 2026 is to be out of any litigation work that imposes deadlines on my life.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

It's a hard mind shift mindset shift because my identity as a tax attorney was so strong, it was hard to focus on the ownership role. And probably two or three years

Government Anecdotes And Incentives

SPEAKER_02 26:52

ago, I would always be what I call hiding in the work. I would jump on a case and do something that I could do in my sleep because I I didn't want to, you know, develop and enforce our culture, the type of things that I was not good at. You know, I mean, we were trained to be attorneys, not business owners. We're not good at a lot of this stuff initially, and we feel kind of bad about ourselves that we're not great at being business owners after being a year or two in business, but it's new learning. It's right. I I'm over that, and I see the creativity in being an owner.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

And tell us about uh your book, America's Tax Defender. Um, I'm curious about how you got it published and how you use it today to build a brand. It was self-published. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

I um I I I published it last year, October of last year. We build the brand by basically, you know, it it's we have sold some copies, but it's basically a giveaway when we have a new referral partner that we're we're trying to, you know, get to know. Here is the book. Obviously, it's issued to all of our new employees. Here is that in many other books. We really focus on we we give them a big stack of books, you know, to read.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Yes. In most every practice area, even though you know we have learned over the years that it's easier and easier to get a good product out the door and available, still to most of America, like they think guy or gal wrote a book. That's awesome. They must be an expert.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

And the book is really, really looking at my time at the IRS and what goes on at the IRS. Yeah, but you had to do that. Versus versus versus looking at how we practice law. And in many ways, we're the opposite of the IRS. We we actually care about our client.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

And and the point, the point here though, I point out, is that the book is is meant to be interesting, right? So someone will look at it, they may read the front and the back cover, they may or may not ever read the inside, but it's hard for them to throw a book away. Correct. Now, if it's a prospect for you or or it's a new client, it reinforces that decision they made to reach out to you and to hire you, perhaps. Right. So it's powerful. But there is an art, there is an art in for lawyers in making the book interesting, yes, versus the dry, sort of C L E type writing that we still see from time to time.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

You're not gonna see a lot of you know black leather law in the book. It really is stories about kind of the craziness of the IRS, a lot of humor in the book. That's cool. I, you know, the there's all sorts of characters that work in the IRS, and I'm sure any government and all sorts of rules. The one I always point to is, you know, the rule is you're never gonna get

Profit Leverage Through Tax Planning

SPEAKER_02 30:04

fired. You could never even be reprimanded, basically, when you work for the government. And it doesn't matter your output, as long as you don't stab somebody, you're not going to get fired from the government.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

So I don't know if you've heard, so I think his name is uh Sam Corkos. He's a director of operations for Treasury now. And uh he gave a uh he did a long form podcast interview, and he said exactly that. He says inside the government. Now he's from the outside, but he was hired to be inside and to get the treasury straight. He's like, only thing you can do is promote them.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Yeah, yeah, you can't fire them. So there was uh just an example, there was a Swedish old lady named Miss Hattie at the IRS, and the the direct the director of my division, his secretary retired. And so Miss Hattie had seniority, so she got the job, no questions asked, no nothing. Automatically she's there. She had no desire to actually do the job. So she would not do the job, so they had to pull a secretary from each of the branches, you know, each day. They they made a workaround, and that person would sit next to Miss Hattie and do Miss Hattie's job, and Miss Hattie would sit there and read her novels all day. And the the to me, the amazing part was there was no discussion or is there any way we could get rid of Miss Hattie or retire her early? Or this was like just par for the course. This is perfectly normal and fine. We're gonna have someone sit there. And she probably got paid higher than any other secretary in the division, and she's going to sit there and just be retired in essence.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

And fabulous, nothing we can do. Yeah. Pietro, in the last couple of minutes that we have, talk to us a little bit about business growth through at least understanding some of the sort sort of I would call them philosophic trends in tax law or tax planning that might help some of our solo and small firm attorneys who'd be listening to this.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

Yeah, you know, the great thing about saving taxes, unlike all other things, is that if you save taxes, it goes directly to your profits. Meaning, unlike other expenses that kind of reduce your income, and then you apply a tax, and then your tax is really applied to profit. So anything every dollar of savings is a dollar more of profit. Now, what you do with that profit is up to you. A lot of people take that tax savings and and with a cash flow forecast, and hey, we're gonna save you know twenty-five thousand dollars of taxes this year. That means we we could hire more people or we could you know buy more inventory or do whatever we need to do. So

Who Should Do Your Tax Planning

SPEAKER_02 33:15

as a a cash flow um, or just take the money out and use it for personal reasons. It's it's a hundred percent up to you. I I think that that is and and unlike other things, like to generate more profit, you usually have to uh increase your expenses, meaning you have to hire more people to do the work, or you have to have a bigger marketing budget to bring in clients. That's not doesn't apply to tax planning, meaning it really is a bottom line change to your cash flow. And like I said, it's not saving just an expense, it's say it's increasing profits. So that is the most important thing to wrap your mind about. And the other thing to keep in mind is your CPA, usually, there are exceptions, but usually they're not interested in doing tax planning. They have their business business model of filing those tax returns every year, and they want a high retention rate, which means they and they want to do as little work as possible on those returns. Nothing I'm not saying they're not doing the necessary work, but they want to be efficient because they their profit margin is on per return, and that's what they make. So they don't want to spend a lot of time doing tax planning. They might tell you, buy a truck, you know, get the 179 deduction and all that at the end of the year if you meet with them, but they're not interested and they don't have the business model to actually sit down with you and and map out a plan. And most importantly, make sure that you're doing what you're supposed to be doing during the year. They're tired, you know. At you know, April 16th, they're ready to go on vacation. All right. And and they they work super hard that first quarter and a half, and they don't want to, you know, you you're not gonna see them in May, probably. And then they got to get ready for the extension season. So tax planning really should be done with a trusted advisor who understands the rules and actually is going to do a plan not kind of buying products. I love that. I love the way you that analogy. Yeah. So yeah, it's and I have never found someone a business in the five or six years we've been doing it. I have not done found a business that we could not save some taxes for. Now, sometimes it's not worth our time and and not worth their time to engage us, but most people are very inefficient on the taxes.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

I'm sure

Scaling Inefficiencies And Savings

SPEAKER_01 36:12

that inefficiency just gets magnified as they're good at the business, they scale the business, they generate more transactions, more revenue, more profit.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

Yeah. Say yeah, right. You know, paying $10,000 more in taxes than you owe is one thing. Paying $150,000 more than tax in taxes than than what you actually owe is a much bigger problem. And $150,000, even if you're, you know, you're you're taking a half a million, you know, take home total owner benefits, that is a big number. So yeah, it it it it does magnify the bigger you get.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Pietro, if uh folks want to find out more about you, they maybe have a question or a client to refer to you. Sure. What's the best way to find you?

SPEAKER_02 37:03

The best

Where To Find Pietro

SPEAKER_02 37:04

way to find us is two ways. One is our phone phone number, 951-319-7674. Other is our website. It's IE TaxAttorney. IE is Inland Empire. That's the part of Southern California I live in. Even though I'm in the Inland Empire, we take any federal tax case, and it's very easy to reach us.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

It's actually a very cool URL to have thought of and grabbed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

Yeah. Yeah. Not many people know it, but there's like six million people live in the inland empire in Southern California. It would be a decent sized state if it was by itself. There's there's quite a few people in Riverside and San Bernardino California.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

And America's tax defender is available on Amazon stories from my years at the IRS. Right. Well, very good, sir. Look, excuse me, thanks for taking some time to share with us today. I would encourage you to have to visit Pietro's uh website. Go get his book. It's got to be interesting. And most importantly, like just listen for these ideas, a niche boutique practice, um, relying on marketing. We didn't you mentioned social media, didn't get a chance to go back and talk to you about that, but uh also like cultivating referral sources, being an interesting person, being a helpful person. These are all fundamental, great-looking marketing principles. So it's been great to share some time with you today, Pietrich.

SPEAKER_02 38:28

Thank you, Ben.

Closing And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 38:30

That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies, and stories for the trenches? Visit GreatLegalMarketing.com or connect with BenClass and the Team Building. See you next time.