Are you ready to discover the key to building wealth, preserving it, and achieving ultimate freedom?
In this episode of the Exit Strategies Radio Show, host Corwyn J. Melette sits down with Joseph Lo Presti, founder and CEO of Arlington Wealth Management, delves into the critical intersection of wealth management and business ownership, emphasizing the importance of planning for personal freedom and business succession.
With over 25 years of experience, Joseph explains the concept of a “freedom point” and how understanding your goals can pave the way for achieving financial independence, purpose, and peace of mind.
Joseph shares how his firm helps clients develop personalized action plans, mitigate tax liabilities, and navigate the complexities of transitioning or selling a business.
Whether you’re a real estate investor or a business owner, this episode is packed with actionable advice on preserving wealth, maximizing opportunities, and living life by design.
Key Takeaways
- 3:04 – Bridging Business and Personal Wealth Planning
Joseph highlights the need to align business strategies with personal financial goals for holistic success. - 5:04 – The Freedom Point
The ultimate goal for Joseph’s clients is achieving freedom—financial, relational, and purposeful. - 7:19 – Developing a Personal Action Plan
Joseph discusses the importance of planning for business succession, transitions, and the future life of the business owner. - 9:25 – Tax Mitigation Strategies
Joseph’s team focuses on reducing tax liabilities at both personal and business levels. - 10:28 – Unique Perspective of a Business Owner
As a business owner himself, Joseph understands the challenges and decisions entrepreneurs face, making him uniquely qualified to guide them. - 14:47 – Achieving Work-Life Harmony
The right systems allow business owners to balance work and life, ultimately living a life by design.
BONUS: Listen to this episode and get your free copy of Joseph LoPresti’s Exit by Design! Choose between an eBook or an audio version and start building the financial future you deserve.
Connect with Joseph@:
- Website: https://arlington-wealth.com/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeloprestiria/
Connect with Corwyn@:
- Contact Number: 843-619-3005
- Email: corwyn@corwynmelette.com
Shoutout to our Sponsor: ROBYN COLLINS
Do you want something more? More Meaningful Moments opportunities, deeper relationships and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you say YES, a career and real estate could be the opportunity you’re looking for guiding people to one of the most important decisions they ever made, the purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative.
Exit Realty has a revolutionary compensation model training and technology that provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call me today ROBYN COLLINS with REDROBYN HOMES at 843-557-5003. Again that’s 843-557-5003 or visit RedRobynhomes.com/join.exit and make your Exit today.
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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/corwyn-j-melette/support
ROBYN:
Do you want something more? More meaningful moments, opportunities, deeper relationships, and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you said yes, a career in real estate could be the opportunity you’re looking for. Guiding people through one of the most important decisions they ever made, the purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative. Exit Realty’s revolutionary compensation model, training, and technology that provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call me today, Robyn Collins, R – O – B – Y – N Collins with Red Robin Homes at 843-557-5003. Again, that’s 843-557-5003 or visit us at redrobinhomes.com/joinexit and make your exit today
CORWYN:
Good morning, good morning, and great morning to you guys. Welcome to another fabulous episode of Exit Strategies Radio Show. Hey, I am your host, Corwyn J. Melette, broker and owner of Exit Realty Low Country Group in beautiful North Charleston, South Carolina. So guys, if this is your first time listening to this show, you are in for a treat, because our mission, our mission, it is what our calling is to empower our community through financial literacy and real estate education, guys. We are legacy building.
That is what we do. So guys, I’m super stoked, I’m super excited, I want to give a quick shout out, guys, to those who are out in the monkey’s corner and all those down there in Hollywood, what you know is good, and all the way up to the dog, that is our one dog, all listening to us. Thank you so much, guys, for sharing in this mission, in this quote unquote radio ministry, guys, of empowering ourselves, those around us, being with us, thank you so much for that. So guys, today, look, we got the money man, all right? I love it, I love it, because I’m so stoked, because we always talk about how we’re going to get it, so when we get it, we need somebody to help us to do what we need to so we can keep it and then have it multiply. So we have with us none other than Joseph, but we call him Joe Lo Presti, and he is the founder and CEO of Arlington Wealth Management. Joe, how are you doing today?
JOSEPH:
I’m doing well, Corwyn, how are you?
CORWYN:
I am incredible. I want to thank you, first of all, for taking time out of your busy schedule to be here on this show with us. So Joe, high level, tell our listeners about you and what it is that you do.
JOSEPH:
Yeah, well, thanks for having me. I am the founder of Arlington Wealth Management, and we’ve been managing investments and wealth for about 25 years now. We specifically work with business owners in helping them coordinate their personal wealth planning with the business strategy. We think there’s a big void there from business owner perspective, and really advocate for the owner and helping all of their advice be centered around what they want to get out of life and what they’re trying to most achieve, what’s most important to them, and achieve their essential life goals.
CORWYN:
So Joe, I like that because, see, most times, I talk about this oftentimes, we don’t plan. So I’m actually over here trying to work on mine as well. Oftentimes we fail to plan our, if you will, exit, pardon the pun, from whatever business enterprise or whatever it is that we have. So Joe, how do you guys do that, and what does that look like for, let’s say, a consumer or a client of yours that you’re working with?
JOSEPH:
Well, what it really looks like is, of course, we have to start with really understanding what’s most important to our client and where they are now, where they’re ultimately trying to go, what does that ideal picture look like? And from there, we could start to develop plans to help them, guide them down the right path, and move them toward where they want to be.
CORWYN:
So what are some of the things that, and how do I frame this as a question, but what are some of the things that your clients have ultimately as a goal? Obviously, you work with primarily those who are in business. And for those of you that are listening, watching, real estate, investment property, all that stuff, to be blunt, is a business as well. So don’t think this quote unquote isn’t for you. But Joe, ultimately, what kind of goals do you typically see from the clients that you work with?
JOSEPH:
Yeah, real estate investors, they do run their own business, right? Essentially. So really, when we see a goal, there’s a lot of descriptions around a goal. When you boil it all down, what we tend to find is that what our clients really want is freedom, is they want personal freedom. That’s why they started a business. That’s why they decided to work for themselves and not answer to somebody else. They wanted to call the shots. So really, it’s about personal freedom. And that’s what we ultimately, I think, help our clients achieve, is what we call that freedom point, to really know when they’ve reached that point and they can live the life that they want. They could spend the time with the people that they want. So it’s more than just financial freedom, Corin. It’s freedom of relationships, who they’re working with, the types of clients they work with, for example. It’s freedom of money, of course. And it’s freedom of purpose. But ultimately, it’s freedom, and that’s really what our clients want.There’s a lot of different descriptions of that, right, from one to the next. But I think a common thread throughout those goals is freedom.
CORWYN:
So we interviewed a lot of people, Joel, on this show, investors and things of that nature. Some of them were still, quote unquote, knee deep, definitely way more than ankle deep into running their businesses or building their businesses or what have you. And then on the other end of the spectrum, then we have other people that were basically hacking it. And what I mean by that is they built a system to be able to take care of the day-to-day, and they were, quote unquote, living life by design, which is ultimately the freedom that you’re referencing, to be able to travel the world or do whatever else they want to do while money is still being made. So your typical client comes to you and says, hey, guys, I want you guys to handle our management. Again, you’ve had the initial consultation of what’s your ultimate goals? How do you want this to look? How involved? I’m assuming that you want to be. You know, what becomes those next steps? Is it then our analyzation and then presentation to them? Or is it more of a, okay, let’s see what you got going on and where we can get started?
JOSEPH:
Yeah, I think there’s a few things involved there. One, when it relates to their business, we want to design what we call a personal action plan for that business owner. Because most of our clients are, I would say, in the sunset of their career. Let’s say they’re age 55 and up, and they are looking to maximize their potential over the next five, 10 years, whatever their timeline is. So designing that personal action plan is important because you want to start envisioning what a transition or a succession or sale of the company might look like, that exit, what that looks like on their terms. Who are the potential buyers? What will they look for in your company? Who’s the ideal buyer in your mind? Is it a strategic buyer, a competitor, a financial buyer? All those things. What will your role look like in the company after you sell or transition? Will you be involved for how long or not? How do you want your employees to be treated? All those things I think are really important to particularly founding business owners, people that have built a business and worked in it for, in some cases, decades. And this is their legacy. It’s almost like one of their children. They’ve built it from the ground up. It’s a difficult decision. And also what their life will look like. For most founding business owners, the business is their identity and it’s what they’re most proud of. And they have to be able to walk away at some point and have purpose and meaning in their life as well, which is very difficult for many of those founding business owners.
CORWYN:
So you guys as a company, and you may mention of this briefly, but we kind of went past it, but Joe, you guys manage or assist business owners. So people that have developed and built businesses, you also assist families that have large assets as well. And you guys focus on a number of different things, but preservation, tax mitigation, et cetera. So your average client net worth, what does this normally look like and how do you guys figure out what section to focus on? I’m assuming you take a look at taxes and returns and things of that nature to have an understanding if there’s an opportunity to work to mitigate tax liabilities and restructure. Is that sound correct?
JOSEPH:
Yeah. Tax mitigation is a big part of the wealth management that we’ll do with a business owner. And that, of course, depending on the type of business, it could be applied on the business level, could be applied on the personal level. Usually there’s a combination of the two. As far as net worth, there’s a pretty broad range. I would say our sweet spot is working with businesses that have, say, a million to 25 million in annual revenues where we’re not working with the super small businesses and we’re not working with the very large companies either. Our sweet spot is that kind of that mid-range business that where they, which is what we really find is they just don’t have a lot of quality advisors available to them that really understand what their needs are and what a business owner, the decisions that a business owner is going to go through in their life cycle. And that’s where we feel we’re uniquely qualified to do that because I am a business owner. I also coauthored the book with my daughter. I have a little bit of family business experience and transition experience. A lot of our clients are either they’re of the same vein or they’re searching for their own type of transition opportunity.
CORWYN:
That’s interesting. You touched on something there a moment ago about the decisions that business owners make. That’s something that I have a lot of that conversation here and some of my closer, if you will, colleagues, we share this, but the decisions sometimes that are necessary or unnecessary decision that you don’t make because sometimes it’s legitimately, especially family or the small mom and pops, if you will. Sometimes you make the decision with your heart versus your mind. There’s a time when you need to be downsizing or eliminating staff, but you look and you say, well, these people, your staff are like family to you. You want to make sure you take care of them because they have family to take care of. So you continue on when you really should just have eliminated the staff positions or otherwise downsize. Those are the hard decisions that business owners make. So you as a company, you guys, what I heard you say is that you’re able to understand that, hey, you may get to this point. So let’s, as we have the opportunity, let’s prepare ourselves as best as possible so that in lean times, we’re still able to manage. Does that sound about right?
JOSEPH:
Yeah, I think the focus there, the message is design the exit. If you let the exit happen, it’s not going to be on your terms. Much of a transition in a business is about the ultimate buyer, whether it’s the new owner, somebody who’s buying it, if it’s internal transition, family transition, because really at the end of the day, they have to carry on what you’ve built and find a way to make a profit on it, right? That’s what they’re buying. The way to make an exit about what you want is design it ahead of time and think through all the things that you’re going to be dealing with. And a lot of business owners we find don’t even really know what it is they’re up against because it’s the only one that they go through in many cases. It’s not like they’ve been through several other exits. So educating them and making them aware of what they’re going to be up against, what type of decisions they’re going to have to making sure that they’re not missing something important in their own thinking. I like to jokingly call that the dumb tax because a lot of business owners look back after they exit out of a business and they regret it a year or two later because they didn’t think about something fully through. It could be they learned about a tax strategy that somebody else implemented that they wish they would have known about. It could be they could have thought about a way to have their employees treated better through that transition that they didn’t think through ahead of time. So really thinking it through, designing the exit. And that’s why we call the book that we coauthored me and my daughter exit by design. If you don’t design the exit, you’re going to exit by default. We want to make sure it’s according to what you want most with that transaction.
CORWYN:
I love that. So let’s talk about the book. So you and your daughter wrote this book for our listeners guys exit by design. Okay. So Joe, let’s talk about it. What was the catalyst for you and your daughter in putting this together? What was the motivation in order to structure a book?
JOSEPH:
Yeah, it was a couple of things. First is that we feel there’s a big void in the advice that business owners get from their various advisors. So they work with an accountant, they work with a financial advisor. They may work with an attorney or insurance specialists, but they’re all giving them what I call siloed advice. The accountant talks to them about the accounting and the financial advisor about financial advice, and each one operates in their own professional silo. What we will, we really find is important is for advisors to reach across their professional silo and collaborate with each other. And by doing that, it creates synergistic advice and synergistic strategies that can enhance wealth for a business owner. So that was one motivation. The second is that we feel that very few advisors, let’s say financial advisors, kind of our background in the wealth management industry, really understand the unique needs of a small business owner and how all of their decision points can coordinate into a wealth management plan and being able to create a unified strategy. And, you know, we feel that we know that a little bit better than most, again, because we are small business owners ourselves. Number one, number two, that’s our clientele. So we have experience in working with small business owners and being able to coordinate their personal wealth plan with the business strategy and the advanced tax planning and making sure that it’s all going to fit together in a way that really speaks to the business owner and what they most want out of life.
CORWYN:
That is so, so fascinating. And it’s like the writing on the wall to me, Joe, because that’s some of the stuff that I’m always considering, especially the more, the longer that I’m doing what I’m doing. So I’m always thinking about that part in the pun, what’s the exit strategy? How are we gonna, what the transition and stuff is going to look like and what I want it to look like. So that is awesome. But then what you also touched on that I know is definitely advisable, essentially is develop or form your network, your tribe, your coaches, whatever you want it to look like, whatever you want to say it is, but assemble the people. So everybody communicates with each other. So there’s less opportunity for there to remain gaps in the strategy, whether it be again, from taxation, accounting, whether it be from legal structures or insurance or whatever else it is. So that is awesome. So that premise, that premise there, what was your experience or was there a particular experience that kind of said, okay, look, there’s got to be a better way to do this and we need to write a book about it.
JOSEPH:
Yeah. So it’s in working with our client group and many of our clients that we work with today came to us after they sold their business and we saw the disjointed advice that they received during that process and we take what has been handed to us and we help them from there and make their life better. But if we had gotten involved with that relationship, say three years before the sale, there’s so much more we could have done and creating a pre-sale personal wealth plan, for example, with the business strategy and coordinating that is crucial. I mean, wealth management is always crucial throughout your career, but it becomes especially important in the years leading up to the sale or exit of your business, which is often the most significant financial event of our client’s lives. So when we look at proactive planning in areas like building your cashflow, minimizing taxes, wealth transfer wishes, asset protection, all of that can significantly increase the money you and your family retain from a business sale if it’s thought through proactively before the transaction. And I think that’s just something that many owners overlook, that pre-sale wealth management, because they’re so focused on either the day-to-day business decisions and operating, or if they’re into the transaction of sale, if they’re into that process, that could be all consuming. And that’s where their focus is, that they miss crucial opportunities to enhance family wealth through strategic and advanced wealth planning before the sale.
CORWYN:
Exactly, exactly. So Joe, let me make sure we take this opportunity now. I’m sorry, I was going to ask you a question, but I want to make sure we get your contact information out for our listeners. So where can people reach you? How can they find you to connect with you, get more information, et cetera?
JOSEPH:
Yeah, sure. So I would be willing to offer any of your listeners a free ebook or audio version of the book. You can get your copy at exitbydesignbook.com. Awesome. And you could also connect with us there. My company website is arlington-wealth.com, arlington-wealth.com. And you can find me on LinkedIn and so forth, if you wish to connect with me that way as well.
CORWYN:
Awesome. Awesome. So Joe, let me ask you this one, and this is usually what our frame are referred to as the mic drop question. It’s a hindsight question, because if we had the ability to go back and look over our lives, a lot of us would have done at least a few things different. Some of us would have done a lot. So in this process, you have a tremendous resume. You’ve been doing this over 30 years, almost 40 years. What, if you could go back and look at all that time, if you would have known it back at the beginning, would you have done differently that would have either assisted you in catapulting your own business or otherwise furthered your endeavors now? Yeah, that’s a good question. There’s a couple of things that come to mind.
JOSEPH:
If I had to choose one, I would say I would have implemented what I call the freedom point concept in my business much sooner, I do that now with all of our clients and the freedom point is when you’ve accumulated enough wealth to do whatever you want, whenever you want, of course, within the bounds of reason. But when you can live your ideal life without worrying about financial constraints, and it’s more than just funding your lifestyle, like I said earlier, it’s securing your freedom of time, who you’re spending your time with, whether you want to apply that to business and the types of clients or employees that you’re working with, the relationships, your purpose in life, really having that freedom to live the life that you want. Most owners of a business value personal freedom above all else. Like we started the conversation off with one of my favorite quotes is from a Henry David Thoreau, and he said that wealth is the ability to fully experience life, and that’s what I think. And knowing that freedom point is so important because you make decisions differently when you know either you’re at your freedom point or you’re not at your freedom point. If you’re not at your freedom point, there are things to do to build the value of your business, to help you get to your freedom point. If you’re at your freedom point, you probably want to make decisions differently than you would if you weren’t at your freedom point. I think that’s important. True freedom comes from when he could step away from the business, not just for financial life wealth, but with your ideal personal life. And I think that’s a concept that really our clients resonate with the most right now.
CORWYN:
Awesome. Awesome. Well, Joe, I want to thank you for taking time out again to be on the show with us today and share your expertise, your knowledge, and most importantly, making yourself available and accessible to our listeners to connect with you and hopefully engage with you so they can have their money grow. So again, thank you so much for being on with us today. Um, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for taking the time I’m out to be with us.
JOSEPH:
Yeah. You bet, Corwyn. Thanks for having me so much.
CORWYN:
You’re welcome. So for our listeners, guys, look, you got to pardon the point. You got a wealth of information today. You got the man, you got the person who can help you, who can help you design your exit. I love it. Exit by design. I really love that. That’s going to resonate with me. So trust me, it resonates with you. For our listeners. Y’all know how I feel. Y’all know what I say. You know, I always put the two of those things together and I give it to you this way, which is to tell you, I love you. I love you. I love you. We’re going to see you guys out there in those streets.
