Healthy N Wealthy N Wise

From Suicide To Soaring High On The Naked Truth Of Wealth – powered by Happy Scribe

Welcome to the Healthy and Wealthy and Wise podcast with global sales trainer and professional speaker Lois CofI each week, it is her goal to share inspiration and education for you to be to have the best health and wealth and wisdom for your life. Hey, hey, hey, welcome back, this is Lois CofI here for a special edition of Healthy, Wealthy and Wise podcast. And I’m so excited. I have Jonathan Mengel from Phoenix, Arizona, back with me.

He is the naked tax business coach extraordinaire. He helps keep the IRS off your assets, knows all the loopholes and is a phenomenal speaker. And I just love you, Jonathan. I’d love to just turn it over to you. Sure. More of who you are, how you got where you are, your story and all the good stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me on your show. I’m so excited to be here. I really am. Lois, thank you so much.

So, you know, I guess I guess I’ll just go with an introduction. I think that’s probably the best place to start. But before I can get there, though, I’d like to ask a question.

It’s a rhetorical question, but the question is, is where do we believe the root of evil actually comes from? In Annapolis, the money was the root of all evil, right? Is that that’s not where you’re going now? That’s what we’ve been told. That’s what we’ve actually been told. Right. That’s what we’ve been programmed to believe, that money is evil. And the reason for that is because most people don’t know about how to get it.

But more importantly, though, the root of all evil actually goes all the way back from the time that we’re born. And it’s in that moment where people place upon us, we’re how we show up in the world, how male, female, gay, straight, you know, are we going to be teachers, architects, you name everyone puts all this pressure on us to be something that we don’t even know what we’re going to become or what we’re going to be.

And so I call this the root of all evil, which is the shame and the guilt that comes from trying to live up to other people’s expectations, whether it’s on a personal level, a business level or a money level.

So I’m Jonathan Bengel, the host of a show called Naked Tax Talk, where we bear down to the naked truth about our taxes. And we do that by talking about personal lives, business, I mean our personal lives, our business lives and our money lives.

I am also the founder of a of a business called JBI Financial, which is my tax planning firm. And I’m also a number one author, a number one best seller, Amazon number one best author and a number one best international author for a book that I wrote called The ABCs of Deductions and Entrepreneurs Guide to Tax Write Offs.

For the past 18 years, I’ve created a multi 60 year company that still kind of that just like blows my mind still. But I created a multi six figure company.

I’ve created jobs and I’ve saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes for my clients. Year after year. I’m an IRS enrolled agent, the highest license one can receive from the Internal Revenue Service themselves. I’m a certified tax coach and a certified tax planner. What that means is I’m one bad ass tax coach.

And of course, as I just mentioned, I’m also an author of my book, My Biggest Claim to fame, helping my clients save hundreds of thousands of dollars, literally hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight.

And we do it almost like in our sleep, you know, saving one hundred and fifty one hundred sixty two hundred thousand in savings.

Today, women and LGBTQ owned business owners hired us as their elite naked business tax coach because most fear the IRS and is out of that fear that they overpay and they deduct. What that translates into is over a billion dollars of taxes that are unnecessarily paid. So what we do is we help to unlock the mystery of taxation, uncover those legal loopholes, and reveal missed opportunities to create more tax savings. In essence, we take our clients from the sleepless nights of worrying about their taxes, their tax bills being caught, being audited to the rhythm of financial success.

That’s amazing. That’s a lot. I mean, having been through financial challenges, arrests and man, they were harsh back in the day. When they garnish my wages, they’re just they’re just greedy. And I didn’t have the right person in my life like you. How did you even become to decide? Did you just wake up one day and say, I want to be an enrolled agent?

No, no. This was not what I would.

I was a little boy and I wanted to be a teacher. This is not what I had anticipated, you know, so a little bit about my background. So I actually am a child of extreme poverty. And most people who know my show, they know me. They know this about my background. So I actually am a product of extreme poverty. And I define that by a single mother who raised two boys on a fixed income of five hundred dollars a month.

And so oftentimes we didn’t know where we were living. We didn’t know well, within reason our food was oftentimes we didn’t have the luxury of all these cool things like fast food and nice foods and stuff like that. It was always like, I we have enough to have enough rice saved up so she could continue feeding us for the whole month, you know, stuff like that. Clothing was an issue, you know, holidays, what holidays? They didn’t exist because there was no money there to have holidays, really.

So I grew up with a sense of my mother always telling us that we are wealthy and love, but we’re poor with money. And this is what this is kind of what she would say to us a lot.

And I’m glad she did, because my heart is so huge and so massive full of that love. And it comes from me really wanting to help others. And so when I was a young boy, my mother would always say to me, you’re you’re my maestro, which is Spanish for teacher, like you’re my teacher, you’re my teacher. And I really, truly believed that. That’s what I really wanted to do. In fact, the test came when I was 12 years old and my mother, it was Christmas.

I was twelve, twelve years old, Christmas nineteen ninety two. And under the Christmas tree, which normally were four items, two pairs, a pair of socks and a pair of underwear, and they were wrapped up. That’s always what you got for Christmas. That’s all we ever got. But one Christmas day, nineteen ninety two, there was this massive Christmas present under the tree and it had my name on it and I had no idea what it would be.

And when Christmas came, I tore it open and to my amazement, it was a blackboard. A chalkboard. And my mother had found this chalkboard, who knows where, but she gave it to me as a present, and so instantly I ruined my brother’s and my cousin’s life by turning them into my students.

And we said, oh, my God, this is adorable. This is the good stuff.

So I had him play with me. I was the teacher. They were my students. And to this day, my brother talks about that, which is ironic. But I became the teacher. And so when I went to school, school was extremely easy for me. I mean, I was always almost a 4.0 kid. I was a three point nine eight student, graduated number four out of four hundred kids, honors student, AP, you name.

And I was the total nerd and I loved it. And my work was I going with all that jazz and teaching.

So because school was so easy and it turns out it’s not just school, it’s taxes too. And accounting and cash and money and everything else that comes easy to me. And so I realized that I could go to school and instead of learning how to write a five paragraph essay or instead of having to learn about quantum physics, I would study my teachers and I would write down little critiques of I would do that differently. I like how they did that.

I like how they did this. And so I was creating my own what I want to be as a teacher, because that’s really, truly what I wanted to become. And so when I graduated high school, I would end up at university with my originally I was supposed to get a bachelors degree in education and I wanted to be an elementary school teacher. That’s the truth. And it would turn out that that’s not how things were going to pan out, because I met a gentleman that was many years, my senior, and he became my mentor and he was a financial adviser.

And he had said, you know, I know your past. I know where you’ve come from. He goes, but do you want to be poor your entire life? And when he posed that question, it scared me to death because I come from poverty.

And so I said, what am I supposed to do? And he said, well, go work with money. And I said, well, what does that mean? And he goes, Well, we’ll take an accounting class, first of all, if you like that, and then go from there. And so I went I took a night course at a college, actually, I took Accounting 101 and I loved it. And again, it came easy to me.

I understood debits credits. I got A’s in it, of course. And so it just took off. And so I end up changing my major from education to accounting. Then I would find myself working for CPA firms. But here’s the catch. While working as a CPA, I mean, I was working as an accountant in these firms. They had a problem with an open gay person in their workspace. And so we all know just recently the Supreme Court finally recognized that sexual orientation is a protected class.

Well, before then it wasn’t. And so I got fired twice for being an openly gay person on the workforce. The first time it happened to me, it was a shock. The second time it happened to me, it was because I was systematically discriminated against for three and a half years until I was basically forced out. Now, the thing about this is working with CPA is, of course, it gave me the experience. It gave me everything I needed to do to do what I do today.

But I got burnt out and I decided in 09 that I no longer want to be an accountant like I was done with it, you know, Tootles Noodle’s and so, ironically enough, found myself getting my master’s degree in secondary education. So finally, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was building my dream, my passion to become a teacher. And so I did. I entered the teaching world. I met my lovely husband now three eleven years coming up on 12 and everything else.

And he, too, is a teacher, which is fantastic. And so but I would be forced out because I was an openly gay teacher and so I didn’t know what else to do. What else do you do? My dream, my passion of being a teacher was crushed. And so I found myself going home to commit suicide because what’s the purpose? What I discovered in that moment is without purpose, there’s no life. And that’s how I felt.

And so I drove home the day that I had resigned essentially as a teacher and decided that what there’s no point in living. And so I actually went into the bathroom, grabbed my bottle of sleeping pills that were prescribed to me again because I was under so much so much stress. Sure. And as I began to pour the damn bottle in my mouth, my husband, who’s not supposed to be home, shows up because, again, universe is like JBI.

You’re not done yet, buddy, like rescue. And so my husband showed up and he caught me in the act, of course.

And he goes, you’re crazy. Like, oh my God. Like and he started flipping out, of course.

And that’s when we got and went and got help and hired attorneys to help me fight. The best we could and anything of the day we ended up settling, but not because I was gay was something completely different that the school had did. Now, what’s interesting is I sat there for a year thinking about what I really wanted to do in my life. And at that time I was in my third year, my Buddhist practice, and I thought, well, fantastic, I’ll teach people how to be how to how to meditate and make some money that way, you know?

But then what happened is my accounting brain kicked in and said, well, that’s all great and dandy, but meditation is like a luxury. What happens if there’s a recession? What happens if things start to tumble? You know, what a critical skill that you have that you possess. And so I was basically fighting myself back into the accounting world again. And because I listen to things, death and taxes. So I knew I would be doing taxes.

And so I found recession proof mikovits happening.

And people literally are losing their jobs, are losing their businesses, and I’m flourishing. So it’s one of those things that just is so I got out there and are doing it. But what I did not want to be was an accountant that worked from January to April 15th, Monday through Monday, and still made no money. And so I set out to change my life.

I set out to change who I was, and I started to discover and fall in love again with who I am. I started to really, truly embrace my soul, myself as a person. And when I started to do that, what I discovered is that my business really began to take off. I didn’t hit my six figures until three years in business. Just within three years I hit six figures. But I didn’t do that until I started looking at myself at my inner soul and started looking back at the shame and the guilt that I mentioned earlier, which is going back into time and looking at that and saying, man, I was told that I had to be straight.

I was told I had to be a Christian. I was told that I had to have a wife and kids. I was told I had to be a teacher.

I was told all these things right, all these things I was told.

And so I, of course, did not realize. But I was holding on to all of that guilt, all of that shame. And as you know, you heard me speak before, you know, it was at 14 years of age that I finally accept, begin the process of self acceptance.

But it isn’t it doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen overnight.

And I’m at the time of today’s film, I’m thirty nine years old, soon to be 40, and I finally embrace me. For me, we’re talking decades, decades, decades of working on self. And so, needless to say, I finally accepted who I am and stepped into the power of the authority of who I am in this industry. So that’s how I got started. And this was kind of like you’re kind of thrust into it. And here’s the thing.

I don’t want to become a CPA. Why? Because I didn’t want to be a stuffy CPA with no personality that wears suits and ties, that has this judgmental thing that looks down on you because your books are out of order, because you haven’t filed taxes in ten years, because you’re being audited, because you have a tax bill. I don’t want to be that person that judges you for your financial life, because that’s not who I am.

I want it to be the support. I want it to be the inspiration. I want to do it.

And I’m going to I’m going to interrupt you really quickly, because I want you to keep going. I’ve got a really quick like that. I’m sure I have one interruption, so I’ll be back. But I want you first of all, I love you. Thank you for that story. I have a huge heart for the LGBTQ community, authenticity. I went through a lot of that B.S. you did in a in a different way of self-loathing, shame, judgment.

Have to you should be a good girl. All of that. And there was like forty years of my turning point to to really realize that. So I think that’s a powerful message, especially right now when all this loss is happening and this trauma, it’s I think it’s bringing that stuff back up to the surface. For a lot of people, it’s like a wake up call for all of us to just release the baggage and be your true, authentic, beautiful self shame.

Free, guilt free. Yeah. So thank you. I’d love for you to talk about your book, like for the next five minutes, if that’s OK.

I’m going to look at the clock. Yeah. And then I’ll, I’ll, I’m going to put the spotlight on you and I’ll be I’ll be back in just a few minutes.

OK, this’ll do that. Let’s do that. Fantastic. So as I was saying a second ago. Right, it’s about the it’s about I didn’t want to be that accountant that judges. And so what I slowly realized over time is that the reason why people are so afraid to come talk to accountants is because you guys are afraid of being judged. You guys are afraid of being told. Shame on you for not keeping your books in order. Shame on you for not following your taxes.

You know, like you’re a terrible person, right? Without actually saying it. Just the verbal the non-verbal cues that we all pick up on. And so I thought, you know what? There’s got to be a solution to this. And so about a year ago, I thought of the idea and I began to work on my first book, which is called The ABCs of Deductions and Entrepreneurs Guide to Tax Write Offs. I wrote this book because I realized that for even myself as a tax expert, pre IRS agent, pre certified tax code, pre all that, I too was afraid to deduct.

I was afraid to write off things that I knew that really were part of my business, but they kind of were fuzzy a little bit. But I was like, I’m not going to do it. I tune know what it’s like to actually have a surprise tax bill at the later. And I hate that so much so that I monitor this on a monthly basis and I actually do this with my clients. But the point is, is I said, man, there’s got to be a starting point to all of this.

And so I wrote this book, The ABCs of Deductions. And what I discovered is that it’s the foundation to all entrepreneurship. It’s one of the stepping stones. It’s one of the layers of a foundation. My book basically are kind of these pillars that will help to hold you up, because here’s what I discovered. My clients who come to me, who are afraid, who are scared, who are just straight up fearful when they’re done working with us, they walk out with confidence, knowing the things they can deduct, knowing the things they can write off when they can deduct it, how to deduct it.

And so I went ahead and wrote a book. Why? Because I want every single one of us entrepreneurs to be successful. I want every single one of us to understand and believe in our heart that the IRS is actually our friend. And I wrote this book so simple, the ABCs. That’s the elementary teacher in me, because I want you guys not to fall asleep. I wanted you guys to get a lot of value. And I wanted you guys not to be afraid to look at a tax book.

I promise you, there’s no legal talking there.

There is no citations to crazy laws in the law book. There’s no what I call accountants speak or lawyer speak. I tell you guys letters of the alphabet and connect it to common deductions and write offs that every business owner is entitled to. And I tell it in a story format so that it’s simple to grasp, it’s easy to understand, and more importantly, it’s extremely easy to comprehend.

Awesome. Thank you so much for taking the taking the stage center stage where you belong. That was awesome. Awesome. And how how could they access the book? I’m going to show it up on the slide right now. But if you want to explain that, because it just released just released it July 7th.

Twenty twenty. I’ll never forget that date, my friend. Seven seven twenty twenty. I launched this book. It’s in preorder status as of today of today’s recording, July the tenth. But the way to get it is you text one word, get the book. So get the book to triple five, triple eight. There you’re going to meet my virtual employee. His name is Nonsupport and he will show up half naked just like I do, except he’s more remote and he will give you information about how to get the book.

And when you do when you sign up with him, he’ll guide you through the process and then he’ll send you to the link to get the book. It’s on preorder and it’s ninety nine cents. So that’s what you get it for. That’s our gift to you guys. And then if you guys are interested in going beyond that, Sensabaugh will also give you a link to connect with me through what I call my tax opportunity discovery session, which, by the way, Lois, for you and your listeners, I’m going to gift this half hour.

Normally, I charge five hundred dollars for a half hour consultation. I’m going to give this to anyone who listens. So, by the way, if I talk to you and you call me up your schedule, you better say you’re camera for Lois. So you will get it. You’ll get to gift it to you guys. It’s a half hour tax opportunity discovery session. And there we’re going to get naked, figuratively, of course, and we’re going to talk about your tax life, your personal life and your business life.

And what we’re going to do is we’re going to come up with a basis of where we’re going to take you your next step. Lois has actually been through this, ironically enough, so she could share her own personal story behind this. But at the end of the day, you guys are going to know what your tax bill is going to be at the end of the year. You guys are going to know what it could be at the end of the year.

You’re going to be able to determine if your audit risk this is something we’re also offering is your audit risk analysis, and we’re also going to offer you a whole bunch more. But it starts with having the tax optimization discovery session with us.

I want them to just reach out to me or have them reach out. How do you want them to call you? Or they can reach out to either one of us.

And I’ll make sure that we both have the links. If you guys really, really want if you want to bypass censoring to want to meet Senser. That’s OK, Lois. What I’m going to do is I’m going to. Oh, I can’t give you can’t give you the link publicly. So, Lois, but I’m going to do right now is I’m going to go get the link and then I’m going to put it in the private chat and then you can put it on the public chat.

That’s perfect.

And so I had a question. I do go outside of the USA. If they wanted a consultation, like let’s say, for example, they’re in Mexico or Canada or Europe, the answer is yes.

If you’re a long as you have income in the United States or you’ve got something in the United States, I can work with you. If you’re strictly in Canada or you’re strictly in France or Alaska, Republicans say don’t buy the problem from the community on your to get is one of Espanol. I mean, I’m familiar with the hint that average Borucki is the crucial one we know from Russian, but needless to say, multiple languages, multiple ways to get old.

But yeah, still, if you have income based, if you have US based income, I can work with you. As a matter of fact, if you are in multiple countries, the United States has tax treaties with multiple countries. The strongest ones are between us and Canada, US and Mexico, US and Europe. So there’s a lot of very strong tax treaties that plays into where we pay taxes and how we pay taxes. Oh, that’s powerful.

I also had a question for you before we wrap it up, but this is a question that I asked of everyone, even though I know today with your interview, we are more focused on the wealth because my show is healthy and wealthy and wise. And you’ve already shared some of your journey about health and wisdom. But if you had to summarize it for us, Jonathan, what is healthy and wealthy and wise mean to you, healthy, wealthy and wise?

Well, for me, healthy is letting go of the fear, letting go the fear, because we all know that fear manifests itself in many ways. For me, it manifests here and it feels like someone sitting on my chest and I can’t breathe. That’s called anxiety. So health, right? If I if this is clear, then I can make clear decisions about where I spend my money and my business. Right. I’m clear about how my deductions work wise comes from our ability to tune in to an episode called Cockroaches and Wisdom.

And what they taught me, that’s what WBAY is, is. But what wisdom is really when we become aware and multiple things that play into that so wise is really about our experiences and looking at them and saying what what did those experiences teach us? What is the lesson that we’re learning?

And the more in tune we are with that like having this cleared up, the faster we can ask those questions to get at. What is the less like right now? Loess with you. What’s the lesson I’m learning in here? I’m going to go back and redraft some of my I’m going to grade drop some of my key points in my talk. Right. So like in my head, I saw some things that I want to do differently. Right.

What’s the lesson so healthy, wise and money set wealth. So wealth is about our opportunity. Wealth is opportunities.

Wealth is the ability to believe, to have faith, which is called interest, which makes money.

It’s about having faith that everything in your life is meant to be and that you’re headed in the direction you’re supposed to head into. And here’s something really important about every single one of us. Fear simply is something we imagine ourselves, because for whatever reason and experience taught us this, and so it latches itself to it. But I always ask myself this question. The last time I worried about money, when was the last time I could not pay my employees?

When was the last time I could not pay my rent, my mortgage, everything else?

For me personally, when I used to think that way, money seemed to be very difficult to acquire. When I let go of that and just went with the flow and monitored that on a daily basis and just said, oh, I see some money coming in, I see yourself coming in all the time.

What I realized is that I’ve never had to worry about that and that releases this fear. That was powerful. Thank you so much. I knew you’d have some additional nuggets for us as we close it out with just you in that answer. And I have to say, I don’t know if you noticed this, but you’re not wearing a shirt and I’m wearing like a new top. So like I was I didn’t even plan that, guys. So we both got naked today.

Awesome.

So. Yeah. And the entrepreneurs, by the way, that would love to get on to my show as a guest as well. My own show, like Loess. Like I think I’ve had you out of my show as well. As a matter of fact. Yes. So yeah. And if you guys want to do that, then what you would do is send an email to us and it’s really easy. It’s let’s get naked at naked tax talk dotcom, so let’s get naked at naked tax talk.

Got my gosh, if I’ve been doing my show for so long, I almost subscribe to my channel, but I subscribe to Lois’s show and they come to mind.

It’s all good. It’s hey, I come from an abundant mindset, so I’m here to share the wealth and that’s it for me. It’s it’s friendships. It’s relationships, it’s social capital. It’s ideation. It’s masterminding. It’s all of the above. So what mi casa su casa.

Something amazing for them. Amazon own. Yep.

I love it so. Well as always I spelled that right. Right. Let’s get naked. So please guys, don’t hesitate to reach out. Jonathan, we do got to wrap it up here. But I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart to you viewers that are tuning in to really be equipped and empowered to live your best life now. And want to thank you again, Jonathan, and look forward to many years of you helping us save money on our taxes.

Thank you very much. And Catherine Borro, I see ya. So get on there. Click on that link. Go put that appointment. Let’s get Chang. Yes, she’s amazing, so I’ll I’ll make sure anybody that wants to get connected is connected to you, the man, the naked truth tax coach.

Oh, I used to have that. I can coach you on that. All right, everybody, thank you.

Thank you. Until next time. Here’s to your best health, your best wealth and your best wisdom.

Bye bye for now. Hey, guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this, please subscribe, refer a friend and please drop me a rating or a review. If you do that, I’ll reward you with a free 20 minute free coaching session on crafting your journey to your best self. Reach out to me at Loess, at Loess, CofI Dotcom to claim your 20 minute slot until next time. Be healthy, wealthy and wise.