950 Sherry Peel Jackson:

Wings of Inspired Business Podcast EP950—Host Melinda Wittstock Interviews Sherry Peel Jackson

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Sherry Peel Jackson:

When you get older, you, you get a little wiser and it’s like, okay, I’m going to have that bird in the hand rather than the four or five in the bush, and I’m going to go with silver and gold. Gold has been a medium of exchange for over 5, 000 years. And you know, silver is using everything, your cell phone, your laptop. One of my mentors said that it’s better to get silver than gold because it’s used in so many things. And its value, even though it’s a smaller dollar value, its value has grown so much. But no, I don’t mess with the bitcoin. I think that the nations that are forming their own alliances are a real threat to our financial system. I think that at some point or another, if the dollar is no more the world’s reserved currency, we’re going to be in big trouble.

Melinda Wittstock:

Tariffs, rising inflation—from food to health premiums, a falling dollar, the rise of AI and crypto, and growing economic uncertainty… How should entrepreneurs and business owners best navigate a fast-changing U.S. and global economy to protect themselves and their businesses? Sherry Peel Jackson is a retired IRS agent, CPA, and Certified Fraud Examiner who’s helped over 100,000 professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs legally reduce taxes and build lasting wealth. Sherry is the creator of the KPG System—a proven method to Keep, Protect, and Grow income without risky investments, and today we talk about how you can build—and safeguard—your wealth in uncertain times.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who is on a mission to help entrepreneurs and professionals grow generational wealth—and protect it. Sherry Peel Jackson is a retired IRS agent, CPA, and Certified Fraud Examiner with a deep understanding of the challenges entrepreneurs face when starting new ventures. In her work, she often sees early-stage business owners racing to get their ideas to market, sometimes overlooking crucial foundational steps—whether due to lack of funds or unfamiliarity with complex regulations. Sherry draws on her expertise to guide entrepreneurs in making smart decisions from the very beginning, emphasizing the importance of sound financial and tax practices. Today we talk about how to avoid costly mistakes, plus how to focus your business to ensure you have diversified assets and ways to protect and build wealth. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Sherry will be here in a moment, and first:

If you’re enjoying this podcast and what you learn from all the inspiring women I interview every week, please go ahead, hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and share it with your friends. We really appreciate ratings and reviews on Apple and Spotify – it helps more entrepreneurs like you find the wisdom, tips, and epiphanies they need to grow their business. It makes a difference. Thank you. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Building a successful business is not without risks, some like economic headwinds are beyond our control. But there are many steps you can take to safeguard your likelihood of success—and build and protect generational wealth along the way.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today Sherry Peel Jackson pulls back the curtain on what the IRS doesn’t want you to know, breaking down the advantages the tax code gives to business owners over employees, and uncovering strategies for reducing your tax burden legally. But it’s not just about reducing your tax burden: We also talk business structure and asset protection, as well as the critical importance of proper documentation and keeping clean books.  We also go beyond U.S. borders to discuss the implications of global financial shifts, currency uncertainty, and why having a “Plan B” — including international real estate — is more important than ever. Sherry is also the author of How To Escape The Rat Race.

Melinda Wittstock:

Whether you’re launching your first venture or are a seasoned entrepreneur looking to safeguard your wealth, listen on for insights on how to keep, protect, and grow your income in uncertain times. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Sherry Peel Jackson and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Sherry, welcome to Wings.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Thank you for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

Melinda, there’s so much to talk about with you. You’re a retired IRS agent, and of course, we all want to kind of know the inside skinny. I’m curious what the IRS taught you about wealth and building wealth and maybe what they might not want you to know. Let’s start there.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Well, everybody knows the saying everything. Nothing, sure, in life but death and taxes. And they don’t want you to know that that’s not true. There was a woman, you know, back, I think, maybe in the 30s, Leona Helmsley, that said only the poor people pay taxes. And what she said was correct. They don’t want you to know that there are different methods that you can use to make sure that you don’t owe taxes. And another example during the 2016 election, where there was Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Donald Trump was there. And then Hillary said, Donald Trump didn’t pay his taxes, and everybody just sucked all the air out of the room. And I don’t have TV because I don’t watch tv, but everybody called me Sherry. Sherry, did you hear? And so, I went online because I wanted to see. I looked it up on YouTube and sure enough, she did do that. And he said, I’m a smart man. Well, Donald Trump is, whatever you think about him, he’s a smart man because he knows that the tax code is written for businesses.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And what don’t want you to understand is that when you’re an employee, you don’t have but maybe six or seven little bitty things that you can do to reduce your taxes. But when you have a business, you can write off everything but the kitchen sink, legally. And that’s what I learned looking at the small mom and pop businesses. They didn’t even know it. The corporations know it, but even the smaller businesses don’t know. There are. There are so many different ways that you can just reduce or eliminate taxes that most people don’t know. One example, a lot of people don’t know that you can hire your children to work for you.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

They’re between the ages of, let’s say, 6 and 18. They work for you, and you don’t have to pay one dime in taxes. Not federal taxes, not state taxes, not Medicare or any of that. And, you know, there are some rules, like you, they really got to work, you’ve really got to pay them. But that was a joy for me when I had a CPA firm. I’m a retired CPA now, but I had a CPA firm in my basement and my children worked for me. They swept; they did little research. And the biggest thing that they did was I allowed my clients to bring their children.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

So that was something that most CPAs didn’t do. But my children entertained their children and got paid for it. So, they just don’t want you to know how many write offs there are for businesses. You’re the low hanging fruit when you’re an employee because they already got the withholdings coming out.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s right. And then there’s different ways you can structure it. So, say if we’re talking about business structure, an LLC and the difference between say a regular LLC, an S Corp and a multi member LLC, how do you advise business owners to set that up? And then of course there’s a C Corp if you’re, you know, becoming a corporation, if you’re taking investment, that kind of thing.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Right. So, most people that I come in contact with don’t understand that an LLC is really not a thing. If you are a sole proprietor and you decide to put LLC behind your name, you are sole proprietor LLC. If they’re more than one, then you’re a partnership LLC. And of course you have the corporate LLC. I usually base what I tell the clients on where they are in their business. If they’re startup, I say hey, well you, you want to start out small, you want to start out being a sole proprietor, you can put LLC behind your name. But I, in my opinion it doesn’t help much.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

What really helps you, that makes your liability lower is getting liability insurance. For example, if you have Arizona Missions Insurance, if you’re in a consultant, that’s going to help you more than having that LLC behind your name. My clients that start out with companies like if they want, if they have a trucking company or something that has a lot of legal risk, I tell them to go get a corporation because of course, you know, that’s a separate entity. Anybody that has employees, I tell them to go get a corporation because there’s, this is the Sioux, United States of America. We have 5% of the world’s population, but we have 70% of the world’s lawsuits. There are more lawyers in Jacksonville, Florida than the whole of Japan. And your risk of getting sued is so high now. So, I tell people if you’re going to have a risky business like that, get insurance but also do it under a corporation.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Because I’ve seen people lose their whole businesses because they were their businesses and something happened. They got sued, whether it was rightful or not. And they Lost everything. So, I’m very, very careful in being attentive to the clients and making sure that the right structure is in place. And also, everybody always runs down to their secretary of state to get incorporated or start their LLC. And it might not be the right place for you. I have five businesses and only one has a footprint right here where I live. The others are set up in different, in different areas based on the need that I have.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

You know, I like Wyoming for real estate. You know, if someone sues, then they have to get a lawyer in Wyoming. People don’t know these things. If you want to grow a business and scale it and then sell it, Delaware might be your best place. So, people don’t know what they don’t know. And those are things that are very and very important if you want to actually thrive in business. Not just what you heard or what you were told, but seek out some advice from somebody that kind of is a business strategist. Right?

Melinda Wittstock:

So, say when we’re thinking about the lawsuit question. I mean, this is a very important thing for entrepreneurs to navigate because you have competitors that are maybe operating a little bit, you know, not above board, you know, might want to, you know, pull the rug out from under you. You may have employees that didn’t work out. So, when you were, you were saying a corporation with the right insurance, a C Corp. Protects you better than an LLC or a S Corp, right?

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Because you know, LLC is a flow through. If it’s a partnership or a sole proprietor. Corporation is a totally separate entity. It’s filing a separate tax return. And yes, people talk about the double taxation, but sometimes it’s worth it, especially if you know how to structure your salary correctly. But as long as you don’t pierce the corporate veil, then you’re protected because they’re having to sue the corporation. And your personal assets, which people don’t think about, need to be totally separate. When I was an IRS agent, most of the time, as maybe a junior agent, when I peeled back the onion, I could see who was there.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

But as I got to be a senior agent peeling back that onion, I found different entities. I found corporations trust and even international business companies, sometimes private interest foundations. So wealthy people know how to structure themselves to where they’re bulletproof, especially from the standpoint of their personal assets and their family business assets. There are a lot of family limited partnerships that may have been sued. One of the people may have been sued, let’s say he was in the middle of a divorce, and the wife couldn’t get Anything, because everything was inside of there. And if, even if she sued for the distributions, what if they just didn’t give any distribution? So, there are different things that people would have to research and understand that you ultimately need to protect your own assets, your personal assets, your homes, your businesses, your whatever it is that you need to protect. And you could be working very, very hard in your business, but if you’re not protected, you could lose it all in a minute concerning, you know, a lawsuit. This is the new lottery.

Melinda Wittstock:

It really is. I mean, the US is just so litigious. And then you also have different states that have pretty difficult employment laws. Right. Like, so for, for instance, for tech startups, if you think of the Googles and Facebooks of the world, Apple even, all those companies grew when they had no money, before they had investment by, quote, unquote, paying their employees with equity. Right. So, in other words, there was a lot of sweat equity.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s against the law now in California, and that’s actually a felony wage theft now. And the person, the CEO, is personally liable. So, like you, there’s so many things you have to know.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Yes, yes. And like setting up your businesses. There are a lot of people living, leaving California and moving to Texas, Florida and Tennessee, partially because, you know, the lower income tax, the state taxes aren’t in Tennessee and Florida. And, you know, there are a lot of different welcoming places, even international, Melinda. There are a lot of companies that will. There are countries that will allow you to come in and start a business and, and have very little regulation. So, people are looking elsewhere.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

They want to go where they’re going to be treated.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, a hundred percent, this is really true. So, what are the biggest mistakes? When you’re in that early stage of ideation and like testing, you know, building product market fit, you know, finding your first customers. There are so many things in that early stage of sort of rushing to just get into the market where you may overlook or you may not even have the money necessarily to hire the expertise you need in those early stages. So, talk to me about just from the genesis of the things that you absolutely must do. Like, for anyone listening who’s starting a business right now, or maybe they’ve started, but they’ve neglected some of these things, what are the first and most important things to do?

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Melinda? They absolutely must make sure that whatever it is they plan on offering is something that the marketplace wants. I’ve seen so many people that like to do something or want to do something or have a degree in something and they just want to thrust it out to the marketplace. And if the marketplace does not want that, then it will be a failure. For example, I had one woman, she came in and she just loved quilting, and she did beautiful quilts, all different sizes. But I told her sweetheart, this needs to stay a hobby because Target and Walmart have quilts and if she needed to make money, she, she needed something beyond a hobby. So, the biggest thing is testing out before you even go forth to make sure that whatever you’re offering is something that’s needed in the marketplace. Once you figure that out, then you need to make research Your best friend, AI, ChatGPT and YouTube University your best friend to make sure that you put in place something that’s going to catch the eye. It needs to be something that people are going to say I really need that.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

I can’t do without that. So, I think that’s where most of my people that I help failed. They for example, if you have a degree in sociology, you don’t just need to go out and start trying to offer classes on self-love. People already think they love themselves. So that’s one of the businesses that I’ve heard of. So just find out what people need. There are so many different things out there that people are needing in the marketplace. Find those.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

The second biggest mistake that I think that people are making is not structuring properly. And we already went over that a little bit. They just jumped into going downtown, wherever their capital is and setting up a business at the Secretary of State, not researching to see what type of business is best for them. Along the same lines, a lot of people want to help other people, and they’ll go and set up a nonprofit. Not realizing that you’re not going to make money in a nonprofit and you’re not going to collect money in a nonprofit if you’re not already making money. So wealthy people go out before, once they get wealthy and start nonprofits before they’re wealthy, they start building the business for themselves. I’ve had countless people come to me and automatically want to start a nonprofit, but you know they’re not making any money, they haven’t accumulated any wealth. So, you wait until you accumulate wealth, help yourself first and then help others.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And the third one, after they found something that actually is offering something that the marketplace wants, they don’t know how to keep up with Their accounting, they may not be able to afford an accountant at that point, and that’s normal and understandable. But you got to have books and records because the IRS does not listen to, well, I don’t know, the dog ate it or it, it flew out the window because I put it in the dashboard. These things are not going to work. So, if someone is starting a business and they, they can’t get an accountant right now, at least try to get something like QuickBooks and keep up with the expenses. There are also a lot of apps out there. I’m, I’m old school. I don’t keep. I don’t do the app thing, but keeping up with your expenses, there are some apps that’ll let you take a picture of the receipt as you walking out of the door of whatever store, and then it’ll put it in QuickBooks.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

So, at the end of the day, you’re running your business. You love what you do. You’re not keeping up with the books. And if you get that knock on the door or that letter in the mail that everybody dreads, then you’re not going to be ready. I have one client that has a nice business. I was supposed to do some training for her people, and we were setting that up for six months out. And then she called me, and she said that she got a letter in the IRS. This poor woman had just gotten home from the doctor and got an Ms.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Diagnosis. He went to the mail and there was an audit letter in the mail. And she called me, and she was in pieces. So, I calmed her down and I said, we’re going to get through this. And I asked her to send me the tax return. She sent me the tax return. Whoever did the tax return didn’t do a good job in keeping up with expenses. Here’s a golden tip for your listeners.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

The IRS has to prove income. You have to prove expenses. So, if the IRS is saying that you have, you know, tens of thousands more in income than you really have, they have to prove that, but you have to prove the expenses. And that’s where the IRS has most of their leverage against people. Whoever did her tax return, you can’t use debit and credit cards for your documentation. You have to have receipts. So, if you’ve gone to Walmart and you spent $174, that could be anything. You can’t use that as your documentation.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And she had a lot of debit and credit cards. So, her and her husband got together. I coached them through what they could do to make sure that they got as much documentation, even going back years. American Express is great at keeping your documentation and helping you at least know what you spent in prior years. But in the end of that, they had to give her a refund, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. So, like, document everything. And I think with QuickBooks, I mean, QuickBooks has really improved a lot. I’ve used it for years in different businesses. And now, I mean, you can set up all these automated rules from your bank account. You can do so many things that make it much easier.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Yes, it is. And there was another one out there. I keep forgetting the new name of it, but it was Peachtree Software. And that’s what the construction people use, because it’ll break it down by job. QuickBooks will do a little of that. You know, break it down by class. But if you need something heavy duty, that. That old Peachtree software will break it down not only into job, but it’ll.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

It’ll cost it out to see if you actually made a profit on the job. I like both of those. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And even knowing the rules in terms of what is deductible and what is not, especially if you’re a sole proprietor or you’re running a small business, maybe you have a couple of employees and contractors and whatnot, but a lot of your own expenses are actually business expenses or they’re maybe arguable, right?

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Well, you know, my philosophy is it’s tax deductible until it isn’t. So, people, you know, an employee can’t write off their cell phone. A business owner can. Your Internet, those bills now, maybe not 100%. I know a lot of people that have two phones. 

Sherry Peel Jackson:

I can’t see how they do it, but in this day and age, people have two phones. So, one of those could be the business phone. And if that’s the case, it’s 100% tax deductible. It’s. It’s. It’s not hard to justify a deduction. And I’ll give you another one. In 1994, there was a woman named Cindy Hess.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And this woman on her tax return wrote off a breast enlargement.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wow.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And got audited. And the IRS just laughed until they couldn’t laugh anymore at this lady for thinking that she could write off a breast enlargement. She got a lawyer and went to tax court, and Cindy has won her case to keep the deduction for her breast enlargement. Well, how did she do that? Cindy Hess, better known as Chesty Love, was a pole dancer and she justified that that expense was ordinary and necessary because the competition was coming and she was getting older, and she needed a breast enlargement. Internal revenue code section 162 says that you can write off all ordinary and necessary business expenses. And that’s common, helpful, and appropriate. And that was appropriate, common, and helpful for her because that was her profession. So, if Cindy Hess can write off a breast enlargement, our clients should not be afraid to write off whatever they’re using in business.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Business travel, for example, I don’t know. In the, in the CPA world, when I was practicing, there would be these cruises that you could go on, and they were tax deductions because, you know, during the day we would. You would have seminars on. On the cruise, I even went to Montego Bay, Jamaica, with a group of lawyers. And that was a. You know, we did seminars in the morning between 9 and 12, and then they partied all night. But it was tax deductible because the main purpose was for business and continuing professional education. So, people just don’t know that there are a lot of things to write off, and they shouldn’t be afraid to at least research and find out what they can and can’t write off.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

If you’re a business owner and you’re going on vacation with your family, but you have business meeting, like legitimate business meetings while you’re there.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Well, yeah, you can make it the primary purpose. For example, if you, if you want to take your children or grandchildren to Orlando, they want to go to Universal. Okay, well, what you do is you schedule several client meetings and a seminar, and boom, you know, that became the purpose of the, the, the trip. Now, you can’t write off their room if they’re in a different room. And what the IRS would like you to do is, let’s say, for example, if you have a suite, and the suite is $500 a night, well, they want you to write off how much a room would be just for you. And the thing about that, if your children are working for you, then their expenses are taken care of also, and you can get that suite. So, it’s a matter of knowing what you can get away with. Concerning the tax write offs.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And it’s so simple and I like to see my clients that are, you know, high income, even the smaller ones just get their tax burden down to as close to nothing as possible. Now one negative aspect to that is if they’re trying to get a mortgage, I’ve seen that happen where they have an income that’s great, but their net income is low because they’re good at deductions, they’re good at keeping the money in their pocket. Yet you know, the mortgage company or the bank or whoever doesn’t like the fact that their net income is low. So, people have to think about that aspect. Is it important for me to make sure that I have some kind of higher net income or I would just rather have a lower net income and keep that money in my pocket.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, yeah. This is, this is, this is, this is important. Or even if you’re buying something, I mean I’ve heard a lot of people talk about buying property with a trust or buying property via an LLC for.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Yes. Yeah. The properties that I have aren’t in my name, just the one and the other properties because it’s easier. I mean there’s certain things that you can do to structure but if you have properties where you have a family partnership and some something happens to you, well the paperwork says that the keys get handed to the children as opposed to probate because they’re already officers. So, I have property in Costa Rica, I have three properties there and my children are partners in that, my dad’s partner one of them. So, there’s something dreadful happens to me then we don’t have to deal with any of that in the States, normal now internationally.

Melinda Wittstock:

Ah, that’s so important to get this right. So, it makes sense for any business owner just to when they’re thinking about their startup costs and their ongoing costs just to budget this and of course your expenses I imagine for accountants and lawyers and things are also deductible.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Yes, that’s professional fees, even consulting. So, all of my clients already know that, you know, when they pay me it’s a tax write off and under professional fees. And it’s really worth it to not have to reinvent the wheel. I mean somebody can spend 10,000 hours trying to figure out certain things that they can find out in an hour from a lawyer or consultant or accountant.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. So, there’s been a lot of publicity about what’s in the “Big Beautiful Bill” in terms of how that’s changed the tax code. So, what are some of the things that have really changed that people should be aware of.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

You know, I have not looked at the big, beautiful bill. I am happy that the deductions that President Trump put in, in, what was it, was it 2016 or 2018 where the businesspeople get an extra 20% deduction on their net that was going to expire this year. And when he came into office, he let that continue. So, the people that I’ve been working with and helping them to prepare their own tax returns, because I don’t prepare them, they are still getting to take advantage of that. I really have not been paying attention to what has changed, simply because my focus is right now on wealth building. I’m looking at what’s happening in the United States as far as the political arena, the economic arena, and the wars. And a lot of my clients would rather me focus on a plan B for them.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And that’s what we’ve been doing. We have been focusing on kind of like making sure that if the excrement hits the portable cooling device here in the States, they have somewhere else to go.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right? Well, no, this is a very important question because we have so much uncertainty. And I just tick them off. I mean, the impact of tariffs on so many businesses and the unpredictability of it, like, for the types of businesses that are showing up at the port and suddenly have this massive bill and like, wait, what? And then there’s all the legal cases around this. And it’s just like uncertainty is toxic for business because it makes it very difficult to plan, very difficult to invest, very difficult to know. You know, so there’s a lot of businesses that are being impacted by that.

Melinda Wittstock:

You mentioned wars and the instability of that. And then you have a lot of different, you know, economic kind of headwinds just around interest rates. The fact that the Treasury auctions haven’t been going so well for the US lately, so, the underlying interest rates, rising, inflation, and then also just this underlying, kind of, ‘Is the rule of law the same for everybody?’

Sherry Peel Jackson:

It definitely is not. And although I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, I do know that this is a serious air of uncertainty. Those tariffs, I did some research on that, and although they will, you know, disrupt things for a while, I believe that eventually it’ll iron out. I think that most people aren’t aware that we have to pay tariffs on goods that are coming in, and we have to pay tariffs on goods that we send Out. I have a business associate, and we had this lawyer friend that was having a baby in Panama City, Panama, and we wanted to send her a car seat. And the tariff that we had to pay was more than a car seat. So other countries have been charging U.S. tariffs, and now we haven’t been charging them.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And now it is an issue. It is affecting businesses. I think that in the long run, there is threat of the dollar no longer being the world reserve currency. That’s more important than anything.

Melinda Wittstock:

Now, talk to me about that, because there’s been a lot of stuff about, you know, the BRICS countries and whatnot, but also in the context of, you know, all the people who say Bitcoin is, you know, there’s a lot of powerful interests that want to make Bitcoin the. The reserve currency. Right.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

That’s a whole lot right there. So first of all, let’s talk about the dollar being the world’s reserve currency. So, when after World War II, there was a meeting in Brenton woods, and they said, okay, the. The dollar is going to be the U.S. the U.S. is going to have the world reserve currency.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And what that means is that everybody has to trade in US Dollars. So, if Brazil wants to do a deal with Nigeria, they’ve got to convert that to dollars. Now with BRICS and other little allies forming, they’re cutting out that having to trade that dollar over, having to trade their currency over into the dollar, that exchange, which is an issue.

Melinda Wittstock:

The BRICS being Brazil, Russia, Russia, India.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

South Africa. I’m missing one, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

South Africa. So, they can just essentially bypass the US completely. This is momentous. And so how does that impact the average business owner, potentially in the United States?

Sherry Peel Jackson:

It’ll affect us with the Federal Reserve and the rates of interest and the money flow. It’s kind of complicated. But the money flow is going to be interrupted because the dollars are coming back. The dollars aren’t flowing that much because they’re using other currency. So that’s affecting the bonds and the stocks and all that. I don’t have any of that, Melinda. I don’t have stocks, bonds, mutual.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

I don’t invest in anything that can disappear in the blink of an eye. In September 2008, the stock market went down 777.68 points in one day, and Americans lost $10.3 trillion in savings. It didn’t just disappear. It went to the banks that were ‘Too Big to Fail ‘foreign banks and it went to golden parachutes for those who caused the problem.

Melinda Wittstock:

It was a gigantic wealth transfer was what it was.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Yes, it was. And people haven’t learned from that because they’re still. I have clients that lost over $200,000 in that fiasco. So, I teach people to invest in hard assets. Silver, gold, and real estate. What is China doing? What is India doing? They’re buying up all the gold. So that’s a clue. You know, gold and silver.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

I think gold is going up beyond $3,000 right now. When I started buying gold, it was $313 an ounce. So just pivoting away from the dollar as much as possible. I mean, using it, of course, in your everyday life, but not depending on it. People have their different thoughts about bitcoin and the other cryptocurrency, but with the United States talking about the CBDC, I don’t know that. I mean, I know that I wouldn’t trust in it because again, it’s not something that I can hold in my hand or put my place, my feet on.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, it’s also been completely deregulated now, too. Like, there was a ruling that a lot of these crypto assets are not considered securities anymore. So, they’re not regulated by the securities and Exchange Commission. There’s no sort of consumer protection. There’s like, it’s like wild west, you know?

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Yes, yes, that’s. That’s a perfect way to describe it. It’s like the wild, wild west. And, you know, everybody’s running around talking about I’m a bitcoin millionaire. And I’m thinking, okay, well can you just go and transfer that over into dollars right now and buy some property? And they can’t. So what good is that for me?

Melinda Wittstock:

You can’t just go to an ATM or you can’t. I mean, there are some entities that are, where you can purchase things with bitcoin, but, but, but, but very in small corners of the economy.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Right, right. So, I like, you know, when, when you get older, you, you get a little wiser and it’s like, okay, I’m going to have that bird in the hand rather than the four or five in the bush, and I’m going to go with silver and gold. Gold has been a medium of exchange for over 5, 000 years. And you know, silver is using everything, your cell phone, your laptop. So silver, actually one of My mentors said that it’s better to get silver than gold because it’s used in so many things. And its value, even though it’s a smaller dollar value, its value has grown so much. But no, I don’t mess with the bitcoin. I think that the nations that are forming their own alliances are a real threat to our financial system.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

I think that at some point or another, if the dollar is no more the world’s reserve currency, we’re going to be in big trouble.

Melinda Wittstock:

And especially with all the trillion, I forget that just the gargantuan nature of the national debt, like where the financing of it now is the same or more than financing the Pentagon, you know, the whole defense apparatus, it’s a huge amount of money that the US Owes. And then suddenly if you’re not the reserve currency and U S. Treasuries are not the safest investment, which they were for the last 80 years. My goodness, the knock-on effects of that are so huge. And I think a lot of people, just, most people probably don’t really understand this. It’s not something that the media really covers very well, at least in terms that are simple enough for people to actually understand how this could potentially impact them. So, I sort of get between the lines. The conversation here is, wow, okay, everybody needs to be really astute in terms of just protecting themselves, kind of shoring up, like as you mentioned, a Plan B.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, for all the business owners listening to this and the entrepreneurs, what’s a good plan B? Like, apart from gold and silver and all of that, in the context of your business, what should you be doing?

Sherry Peel Jackson:

It’s my opinion, Melinda, that they should be earning as much as they can. But it’s what they’re doing with those resources that counts Right now, I think is spending wildly.

Melinda Wittstock:

I mean, you should be. If you’re spending on anything, it should be on an asset that’s a reliable asset.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Pretty much correct.I always tell my clients, if you do what the wealthy do, you’ll have what they have. What are they doing? They’re buying property. And not just property here, property worldwide. I mean Oprah has a whole island. What’s his name, Branson, that owns Virgin. He has Necker Island.

Melinda Wittstock:

He’s got Moskito now as well, just next door.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Oh yeah, and the, the Rockefellers have a whole compound in, in St. Thomas, so they’re buying property. They have what you call flags in different places. So, setting up flags in different places, finding places that you feel comfortable that you could live. And yeah, have your place here, pay off your place here if you want to, but make sure that you have a place to go. For example, I chose Costa Rica. One of my clients called me and told me that his brother married a Costa Rican girl and her father is. Had a lot of land and he was cash poor in land rich, so he wanted to sell some.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And since I deal with the Plan B, they wanted me to help him and you know, get people to come down. And I said, I can’t sell anything I haven’t seen. So, I went down in 2018, fell in love with the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and have been telling people about it. I looked all over, all over the world, but I chose Costa Rica because you won’t starve to death. There’s at least there’s fruit or something to eat growing off of at least 60% of trees. You won’t freeze to death. When they blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, a lot of people, and they didn’t talk about this in the mainstream media, a lot of people froze to death. Lots of them.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Thousands of them. But you won’t. I mean, it’s a little warm, you know, it’s like Georgia, Florida all year round, but you won’t freeze to death.

Melinda Wittstock:

And, and it’s a beautiful place too.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

It is.

Melinda Wittstock:

It is gorgeous.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

It’s gorgeous. And, and you can drive there through Texas if necessary. So, I know, I know people that have literally driven all the way through Texas, down through Honduras and, and gotten to Costa Rica as opposed to trying to fly trans transatlantic when we’re having some kind of a crisis. So, I am more focused on that. I have two developments down there. I have one master planned shipping container community coming up near the beach. And then I have some property in the hills.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

My company, Middle of Paradise Hills. Well, my company is Middle of Paradise, Middle of Paradise Hills and Middle of paradise beach are in the works. Trying to get the permits and all that stuff done and dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s and we’ll be ready to break ground pretty soon. And you know, for people who want to have a Plan B, that’s what I’ve done. Other people may have selected other countries. Like if you can prove that you have some lineage in Ireland or Scotland or somewhere like that, you may be able to have residency and citizenship over there, even better or easier.

Melinda Wittstock:

And then there’s also all kinds of digital nomad things. Portugal is, is a good destination for this as well that is very easy to get a visa. If you’ve created a job for somebody or you have a, you just create a subsidiary for yourself and you have an EU passport within five years.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Right, right there, there are, right, so many choices, but we need to turn off the television and start paying attention to what we need to do to protect ourselves and our families 100%.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know what’s interesting right now, like say in the venture community, right. There’s a lot of great companies, a lot of great innovations, you know, at the moment and a very difficult investment climate, not least of which, it was hammered in 2021, 2022 by high interest rates because the entire venture community had grown up on like really cheap money and all of a sudden money was expensive. So that dried up. About a thousand VC firms collapsed, dried up. For a lot of really promising startups, it’s been really difficult to raise money. And the added complication now, it used to be like, if you want to be funded, you’ve got to be in Silicon Valley or at least sort of in the US. A lot of investors want to fund only US entities. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Whether you’re, you’re Canadian or European or whatever, you had to have some sort of nexus in the U.S. like you, you had to have a  U.S. company to, to accept American money. What you’re saying now about like if that whole BRICS thing happens or the US isn’t the reserve currency, all that’s going to change as well. Like there’s just so much disruption.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Yes, definitely. And that’s why I advocate people researching and finding some someplace else. There are other places that are welcoming that will, you know, enjoy the tech companies or any company coming in because it creates jobs for their people. So yeah, looking at Chile was one of the other, other places that one of my mentors set up business. And you, like you said Portugal and a lot of people are testing out the digital nomad thing. I’m looking for something that definitely wanting to be more permanent than a nomad. So, you’ve got the younger folks doing that and you’ve got the older folks that are saying, hey, I’m ready to retire, I want to collect my pension and Social Security in a place that is going to be low end cost. For example, housing, our cost here in the United States, although the income has dried up a lot for people, have continued to grow.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And so, people are looking for somewhere that they won’t struggle to pay their regular monthly expenses, their light bills and their mortgage or rent 100%.

Melinda Wittstock:

I mean this is, and there’s just so much, there’s just so much. I mean in chaos, right? There’s a lot of fear and there’s a lot of fear everywhere at the moment. Because in inherent change, I think most people really fear, fear uncertainty more than anything else.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And yet there’s always so much opportunity in times like this too, right? So, it’s like kind of having that resilient attitude. But yes, like as you say, do your research, you know, really understand people have to be really awake I think at the moment. And, and oh my goodness. But it, but it’s a lot, it’s, it’s a lot of people. Some people thrive in those sorts of circumstances, but I think a lot of people really do not. Yes, well, kind of shut down, right.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, so for your clients, because you have a very kind of innovative company, the KPG system, I want you to talk about that, right. Simpler path to building wealth without risk. And this is about keeping, protecting and growing your income. So, talk about your platform and your system and how it works and, and who benefits.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

So, it’s, it’s more for the start out people and people who are not used to handling money on their own. We still have a situation in the United States and the government schools where the kids aren’t taught how to even balance a checkbook and some of them are receiving credit cards when they graduate high school because they know the parents are going to be trapped with it. But KPG stands for Keep, protect and grow. As you said, keeping your money. In other words, decreasing your expenses and eliminating debt. So, I talk about ways to decrease your expenses when you’re starting out. Simple things like shopping at thrift store, not going to the grocery store hungry. Very simple things.

[PROMO CREDIT]

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Melinda Wittstock:

And, we’re back with Sherry Peel Jackson, creator of the KPG System—a proven method to Keep, Protect, and Grow your income without risky investments, helping business owners and professionals grow and protect their wealth. She’s also the author of How To Escape The Rat Race.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And how you can, you should eliminate debt. I use the snowball method. I like that one. Their avalanche method is different. But paying, paying the minimum on most of your bills while hammering the smallest one and you get rid of that one and you take the money and start paying off that. When I was young and, and inexperienced I had a lot of credit cards, and I ended up paying them off through that snowball method. And when I’d pay one off, I’d have this ritual where I’d go out in the garage and cut it into fours and, and dance on it and then start using that money to pay off the next one. Until I got down to having one credit card because we really don’t need but one credit card.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

And I. That’s the keep. So, keeping your money then protecting your money. Of course, you need to protect yourself from lawsuits with proper structuring and protecting your money from the IRS by making sure that you are. You have. Have a business. I recommend all of my clients have a home-based business. Home-based because you don’t have an extra rent or mortgage to pay in some separate building.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Some people can’t do that, but for the most part I like for them to start something digital or do something at home. So that’s. You have to protect that though. So, structuring it properly, getting the proper insurance for it and making sure that you’re protected from the lawsuits and then grow. Once you start making money, don’t start going out and buying big cars and flat screen TVs and whatever else people buy, but investing that in gold and silver and real estate. So that’s what it is in a nutshell. And my book, How to Escape the Rat Race basically goes into decreasing your expenses, eliminating your debt, starting a home-based business, growing your income and then investing wisely.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. Well, I want to make sure that everybody knows how to find you, Sheri, and work with you. What an illuminating interview. Thank you so much. And I’ll make sure that the links to your book and everything are in the show notes. What’s the best way for people to contact you if they want to work with you?

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Well, my email is connect@sherrypeeljackson.com and then they can contact me at my website, sherrypeeljackson.com.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Sherry Peel Jackson:

Thank you for having me, Melinda.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Sherry Peel Jackson is creator of the KPG System—a proven method to Keep, Protect, and Grow your income without risky investments, helping business owners and professionals grow and protect their wealth. She’s also the author of How To Escape The Rat Race.

Melinda Wittstock:

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Melinda Wittstock:

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