The Mark Perlberg CPA Podcast
The Mark Perlberg CPA Podcast
EP 55 - DIAL Formula & Carwash Investing w/ Chris Larsen of Next Level income
This episode isn't just about where to put your dollars—it's about making them work smarter. Chris breaks down his 'DIAL' framework—Depreciation, Income, Appreciation, and Liquidity—that'll have you assessing investment opportunities like a seasoned pro. We also dissect the unique investment prospects of car washes and mobile home parks, providing an eye-opening perspective on how these assets can align with your financial goals.
Venture into the world of value-centric business models with us into the lucrative car wash industry and draw parallels with Chick-fil-A's notable service standards. We lay out a blueprint for constructing a business that's not only about efficiency and customer satisfaction but also structured for a profitable future. Whether you're enticed by the promise of tax advantages or the allure of a solid business strategy, this episode offers the wisdom to navigate the complexities of real estate investments and entrepreneurial undertakings.
To learn more about Chris, go to:https://nextlevelincome.com/
If you're interested in joining the team or becoming a client, go to:www.markperlbergcpa.com
All right, so let's get into it. I'm super excited to be joined today by Chris Larson, but before we do, for any of you guys that are interested in our services, you can see a survey or just schedule a 10-minute intro call with us at markperlbergcpacom. Let's get into it, chris. Tell us a little bit about yourself, give us the overview of who you are and what you do, in 60 seconds or less.
Chris Larsen:Give us the overview of who you are and what you do in 60 seconds or less, mark. Thank you for having me on today. Yeah, chris Larson, next Level Income is our company, and I founded the company with the intent to help investors achieve financial independence through education and investment opportunities. I bought my first property when I was 21 years old at Virginia Tech, while I was still a student. I started out in the single family rental space before ultimately transitioning into a limited partner in syndications, and now we syndicate deals as well. We've syndicated over three dozen properties in the multifamily self-storage mobile home park, as well as the car wash space Mark in the multifamily self-storage mobile home park, as well as the car wash space Mark. And yeah, look forward to sharing a little bit more about what we do and providing lots of value and insight, hopefully to your listeners Awesome.
Mark Perlberg:So a lot of our clients here are always trying to think about First, we help our clients out with the tax savings and sometimes that is kind of tied into where they're putting their cash. So sometimes they'll invest in these syndication deals and they have rep status. They can group it in with their other rentals and we can create losses.
Mark Perlberg:Other times we help our clients put their money into stuff that creates tax savings, and then we got to figure out what are we going to do with the money now that we're going to get a refund or now that we're no longer having to make quarterly estimated payments? So what I'm wondering here is so you do a few things here Between the syndication, and so we talk a lot about syndication.
Chris Larsen:Tell me about some of the other investments that you're doing here, yeah. So, first off, I love what you do, mark. We've sent people your way and it's sexy to talk about investments and syndications and all that. But it may not be as sexy, but it's very profitable to save a dollar on taxes. If you can save a dollar on taxes, that to me is more valuable than trying to make a dollar in an investment. So I love starting with that and figuring out how to do that.
Chris Larsen:But I think you have to be careful of letting the tax tail wag the investment dog, so to speak. So focus on your tax strategy, take a holistic approach to do that. And I think really, the way I look at it, you can remember it with the word dial. So you have depreciation, income, appreciation and liquidity. So dial. I really like to start with the income piece. So we have things like our debt fund which are pure income they don't have. It's a liquid debt fund. You can put your money in there, you can get a rate of return and then you can raise your hand and ask for your money back. No tax benefits, no appreciation, but just predictable income. Our real estate investments, which would be our multifamily, our mobile home parks, our self-storage facilities all of these are going to give investors the opportunity to get income, to generate appreciation, but also, because they're real estate, to offset that income and appreciation with depreciation. And you mentioned rep status rep status, mark so there are some ways that you can really supercharge the ability to do that.
Chris Larsen:And then we also were talking about our carwash brand before the show. Car washes are really. You have a lot of business owners that you work with. I'm sure that maybe some of you here listening today I would think a car wash is more like a business than a piece of real estate. Now, mark, you could probably articulate this nicely. But the great thing about car washes is because there's so much depreciable equipment. Even the building is purpose built, so you get really good depreciation on that. But it's a business. People are like oh, look at these great returns, look at this great depreciation. It's a little bit different than buying, say, a class A 300 unit multifamily property. So we do a little bit of everything there. But I think as an investor, after you've solidified your tax strategy, you have to determine what are you really looking for out of that D-I-A-L in those quadrants.
Mark Perlberg:Awesome. So I'm glad you said to not let the tax tail wag the dog, because I've seen people and influencers in our industry say well, if you have a W-2, what you want to do is buy a short-term rental every year and I'm like hold up, hold up a second. First off, you don't want to buy a short-term rental to just reduce your taxes here. If you're going to do a transaction just to reduce your taxes, maybe if you want to put money in a 401k or traditional IRA, maybe that's something where you're doing it just for the tax benefits.
Chris Larsen:There's all these other implications to consider here Do you actually want to manage that short term rental Do? You want to be a short term. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I heard somebody told me that they're like. I actually heard a good friend of mine and he said Chris, this is our plan. I was like do you want to manage all those short-term rentals?
Chris Larsen:And he said, well, no, I'm like well, maybe you should have a different strategy. So, yeah, you got to be careful. You have to look at. We talk to our coaching clients about creating their three-year vision. Well, if it says in your three-year vision, I want to own 20 short-term rentals and that's what my business is going to revolve around and give me my ideal life, okay, but yeah, you got to be careful about where that tax tail leads you so to speak.
Mark Perlberg:I guess Absolutely, and we love short-term rentals. We talk about it all the time. It changed people's lives. But when the air conditioner is broken or they can't find out how to access the Wi-Fi, and you have to get that material participation, Are you ready and willing and able to do this and are you going to find a profitable deal? It's not so easy to always find a profitable deal. So you know it can't be just about the tax savings, especially if you're trying to find a way to build cashflow and create tax savings. You know, if you're, you know what? If you're a car guy, why not also look into Toro? Maybe that's your direction.
Chris Larsen:Yeah, there you go.
Mark Perlberg:Or maybe if you want to invest in real estate and you don't have rep status, it's not the end of the world if your real estate isn't reducing your taxes, Because there's a whole other world of tax strategies out there that will reduce your taxes if you're working with a specialist who understands tax reduction strategies for business owners and high paid W-2 owners. So there's so many ways to look at this equation. We don't have to simplify it. We don't have to put all these high W-2 folks in the STR box.
Chris Larsen:Yeah, no, I think that's a great point, mark and you build off that base of your tax. So you have your income strategy, your active income strategy, you have your tax strategy and then look at your investments afterward. I heard another friend of mine this was a couple of years ago he said I'm going to invest in this Opportunity Zone project and he goes Chris, I could not make any money for 10 years and still come out ahead. Now I said, wait a minute, even if you save 50%, I should be able to double my money twice in 10 years in a decent investment. So it's more of a complex equation, but always be careful.
Chris Larsen:If you say, hey, I'm making this investment just for the tax purposes, I think that's something you got to be really careful of. But when you are looking at investments, you should look at the after-tax return. So build your income base, build your tax strategy on top of that and then, when you look at an investment, say, hey, what is my return going to be after taxes in my specific situation? Because that is ultimately going to give you, I think, the clearest lens to evaluate those opportunities that are out there.
Mark Perlberg:Yeah. So tell me again dial, I believe you said is debt. Yeah, Invest in.
Chris Larsen:Well, I said depreciation, yeah, so it really. I started with it's I-A-L-D but I was like that doesn't really spell anything and I just moved the D. So depreciation. So when you look at investments, there's the depreciation component, there's the income component, there's the appreciation component and then there's the liquidity component and different. You have to ask yourself, hey, do I need liquidity, yes or no? Do I want income, yes or no? Am I looking for appreciation, yes or no? And then I think depreciation which I know it's first in dial, but it's really that's going to be icing on the cake when it comes to your investments, when you look at all those things.
Chris Larsen:But you really should decide before you look at an investment what are you looking out for? And I think I have an investor I talked to last week, mark, and he's really nervous about the real estate market today, but he's got his money parked in illiquid long-term investments. So one of the things that's great about real estate is we can't buy and sell it really quickly like we can the stock market. So we don't tend to lose a lot of money as fast as we do in the stock market. So that's a good thing. But if you want liquidity, if you need liquidity. Maybe your kid's going to college, maybe you're about to retire and you're not going to have any active income anymore and you need to be pulling money out of your portfolio more. And you need to be pulling money out of your portfolio. Maybe liquidity is more important to you than it is to somebody that maybe in their prime working years that's continuing to accumulate. So you have to be really considerate of each of those four quadrants before you make an investment.
Mark Perlberg:Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I find some real estate is not about cashflow, but that doesn't always kill your liquidity because you can refi and take money out tax-free as well there you go.
Chris Larsen:Great point.
Mark Perlberg:Yeah, love that. Yeah, well, let's talk about this car wash investment strategy, because we don't get to have a lot of conversations on this, although I've seen the numbers and they look really good. Tell me about you know. Obviously you know there's you don't have a crystal ball and you can't generalize on everything but tell me about some of the advantages and some of the cashflow and benefits that some of these folks are seeing with car washes.
Chris Larsen:So the number one thing is they have great tax benefits.
Mark Perlberg:I'm just kidding, so no that's the last thing, hey, part of the equation, though. That's the last thing.
Chris Larsen:That is part of the equation, exactly no. So number one when I look at investments, I think about okay, where are we in the overall real estate cycle? And right now real estate prices are high, interest rates are high, where do you find profitable real estate investments? And right now I'm a big fan of what I would call operating real estate. Things like car washes, mobile home parks, senior housing, assisted living facilities and communities. These all have not only the real estate piece but also an operating component. So you're kind of double dipping in a sense, in that you have operating margins as well as the cashflow from the real estate, so that helps to overcome the interest rates that we're dealing with today. It's also good, I think, you have rents are kind of flat, some markets are declining, some markets are slightly increasing, but having that operating revenue that's going to support the income coming off that property or business, I think is a real positive. So that's going to support the income coming off that property or business, I think is a real positive. So that's number one. Number two what are we talking about?
Chris Larsen:So there's different types of car washes that are out there. There's full service, there's in-bay automatics, which I actually have one of those here in Asheville. I would call it like a robo wash, where you pull your car in, you park it and the robot goes around your car and washes it. Ours is touch-free. It's pretty cool. Then there's what's called express tunnel washes. So if you see my hat, it says Hurricane Express Wash. If you're not watching and you're just listening, you can look it up hurricanewashcom. You can see all of our locations.
Chris Larsen:But I got to know car washes. Oh geez, it's been eight, maybe even nine years ago. Mark, my uncle, called me and was looking at buying a car wash. He's an accountant and he really liked the numbers. He liked the cashflow. We ended up not buying that wash, but then I ended up having a couple of coaching clients with some car washes and I was really impressed with the margins and the cashflow that they were generating. There's also the real estate component, so there's some really cool things you can do by utilizing the building, the structures and taking advantage of those things. So I liked all those components.
Chris Larsen:When my business partner came to me a couple of years ago and said, hey, we plan to get into the car wash space. Are you interested in joining us? I said yes, he goes, but I haven't really told you about it yet. I said I know, I know, I know this. I've been looking at this for several years now. So we like the express tunnel model, mark, because private equity is getting into it. It has the ability to create membership, so a membership model which is monthly recurring revenue, which a lot of private equity groups like.
Chris Larsen:And if you look into the future, you want to bet on long-term trends. So I like trends that are like 10 to 20-year long trends. That's kind of what I look for in terms of investment thesis and the car wash space. 2 years ago the industry said it's going to take 15 years to build out the express tunnel space in this country. So there's going to be 15 years before it's fully built out. So that's a nice runway. So we can enter the space, we can operate for 5 years, we can maximize our operating margins, we can look to exit over the next 5 years, maybe even a little sooner than that, and then still give 5 to 10 years of runway for a buyer to take our business and make money from it. So I like that long-term timeframe. So that's kind of an overview. I'll stop there and then I can dive into the specifics of what we do and how we're different in the space.
Mark Perlberg:So tell me about some of the advantages of the real estate component of this.
Chris Larsen:Yeah, yeah, and again, you can back me up here, mark, or correct me if I'm wrong. But one of the nice things about car washes from a real estate perspective is that there's a lot of bonus depreciation. It comes from the equipment, but also the building. And the thing about a car wash building it's not a house, it's not a storage facility, it's purpose built. So when we do our cost segregation analysis and we ask our accountants or we have our firms come in and take a look, we get very high levels of depreciation year one and we have very high levels of bonus depreciation that is kicked off. That offset a significant amount of the income as well as the first year investment that we make in this. So that's something. When I look across our, we have 31 locations now 32 if you count the one I own here in Asheville outside of our partnership but I've seen higher levels of depreciation in these investments than any other investment that we've had. Wow.
Mark Perlberg:Very cool. So you know, maybe we can't use the because this isn't rental income and you don't have reps or whatever it is. It's unlikely that these depreciation deductions can offset your other sources of income from your job or your business. But now everybody wants to see that. You see that immediate savings. But hold on here. We have a profitable, cash flowing business here. That depreciation is going to carry forward and you're going to get distributions, you're going to get checks and you're not going to be paying any taxes on it because of that depreciation that was unused and pushes forward. So, at least in their first few years now, because of this massive depreciation you're going to have, it's always great when you have money coming in and you're not paying taxes on it.
Mark Perlberg:I like that. You know what else is cool here, right? So you have your real. Let's say you're investing in real estate at the same time. Well, you're investing in real estate and you do a cost segregation study. Oh, I don't have reps. What's the point? Well, let's say, after a while, this thing is cash flowing and we've used up all our depreciation losses and now we have positive taxable K-1s coming in from the car wash taxable K1s coming in from the car wash. Well, you can take some of your earnings and save it from the car wash and other vehicles and invest into real estate to the cost seg. And even if you don't have rep status, those passive losses from the cost seg on your real estate will offset the passive income or what we call a PIG, passive income generator from the car wash. So now we're building our wealth, building equity and winning the tax game through these investment vehicles.
Chris Larsen:I love that. I love that and one of the great things that I've seen over almost the past decade here, mark, is we have a lot of business owners that are investors and their business is kicking off income. They may own their own buildings, so they have their own building. That's generating. We have a lot of business owners that are investors and their business is kicking off income. They may own their own buildings, so they have their own building. That's generating rental income for them. And then they also have passive investments that they've invested in that are generating passive losses that are offsetting some of their income from other sources that they're getting in their portfolio. So again, they're not letting that tax tail wag the investment dog, but they're looking at how they can blend those investment strategies together to maximize their after-tax income. We do it personally. It's saved us thousands and thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of dollars in taxes at this point in our career. But really that just underscores some of the benefits from the car wash space. What we love about it is it's a very high margin, typically 50% margin.
Chris Larsen:Business. It kicks off great income. Our investors are typically seeing yeah, our investors are seeing typically double-digit cash flows from their investments and what we are looking towards is the future. I mentioned talking about the income, but also the appreciation. We're buying these businesses, typically around an 8X multiple of EBITDA, and as you roll them up into portfolios, what you find is that larger groups so we're a number I have to check today, but we're a top 30, top 35 operator in the country after only a couple of years, our goal is to triple or quadruple in size. So our goal is to get to over 100 locations here in the next three years.
Chris Larsen:And when you get to larger portfolios, that exit multiple goes up. So if we're buying a business at an 8x multiple yeah, if we're buying a business at an 8X multiple and just putting it into our portfolio turns it into a 10 or 12X multiple, that's a 25% or 50% increase in valuation right there. We have seen portfolios trade at 18, even north of 20X for these larger portfolios. So this is one of those. It's kind of a roll-up model. So if you've read about this out there, you could look at our mobile home parks, you can look at our storage units, you can look at the car washes. By aggregating these businesses, you actually increase the value of each of the individual business units. So for an investor in these they get not only the cashflow and the tax benefits, but they get the long-term appreciation that we're generating by increasing the income, but also that exit valuation as well.
Mark Perlberg:Beautiful. Now here's something that you're probably not going to hear about from too many people here, partially because it's not always applicable. But for some of our business or clients, there may be opportunities to create spinoff entities where, let's say, we have multiple functions in the business. We may be able to break one out into its own entity and you're like well, why are we going to go through this? Well, two reasons. One, you get an extra level of asset protection by putting it in its own LLC. But there's also a tax benefit that, if we can say that for this other business that serves ours, now that we've broken out, we're not involved in this other business here. We oversee it, we own it, but there's other people operating it. So now we've carved out a piece of the income as passive income. So now let's say, we can create this other entity with, let's just say, $100,000 of passive income and now we can invest in the car wash and get these depreciation deductions and now offset our passive income that we've generated from our spinoff entity while getting additional asset protection.
Chris Larsen:I love that and I know exactly what you're talking about. I've talked to different investors and I said hey, you got to talk to a group like Mark's, because if you can take what you're already doing and just organize it in the right legal tax structure, you can save money just by the right organization. And it's basically like a good example. And you're probably better explaining this than I am, mark. But it's like pouring water into a bucket. Sometimes that water fills up, right, it fills that bucket up. But if you have two buckets and you put half the water in one bucket and half the water in the other bucket, now you have more room in those buckets. So depending on where your income is going, what bucket it's going in, you might not be able to do anything with it at that point. But if you just put it in the right bucket, it's the same amount of water, it's the same amount of money. Just put it in the right bucket, organize those buckets the right way and then you can really benefit from that.
Chris Larsen:And it's kind of silly in the sense that we have to play this game in a way, but it's like Monopoly. And it's like if you look at the cover of my book which, by the way, if you want to get a free copy, you can get it at our website, nextlevelincomecom. Beautiful, but it's like Monopoly. People are like, oh, that's not fair, chris, you're not paying enough in taxes. It's like, well, wait a minute.
Chris Larsen:If we sat down and played Monopoly and I read the directions and instructions how to play and you didn't, and then I beat you, would you say that's not fair? Or would you say I just prepared. And that's why I love what you do, mark, because you help your clients prepare for the rules that the IRS put in place. All we have to do is understand the rules, organize our income and our investments according to the structure that the IRS and the government suggests that we do, for whatever purposes they want to serve, and typically they're to help the economic activity of this country. And look, that's the way we do it right. If we can encourage business investment, we can encourage the economic engine to this country, and if you're a small business owner, small businesses create the vast majority, if not all, of the net jobs in this country. So I'm a huge fan of entrepreneurs and small businesses. I think entrepreneurs will save the world and you are an integral part in helping us do that, mark.
Mark Perlberg:Wonderful, and that was wonderfully said, because what the IRS, what the government wants us to do, is two things Invest in real estate, build real estate. The government wants us to do is two things Invest in real estate, build real estate, and start and build businesses. So you know, as a result, yes, you're getting tax savings. And for those of you who are now I don't really think any of my listeners are big fans of AOC they probably wouldn't listen to this. They're probably listening to something else. Oh, where's this going to go? I'm getting excited to this. They're probably listening to something else. Oh, where's this going to go, I'm getting excited. But for those of you who want to bash these tax incentives, look at what we're doing here. You're creating growth, you're building efficiencies in society, you're creating jobs, you're creating opportunities, you're enhancing profits. So that's why the tax savings is going to come along with this. It's not a coincidence Sometimes it is, but a lot of these things. It's not a coincidence why, when you do these certain activities, you're rewarded with tax savings, exactly, exactly.
Chris Larsen:And look, that's what bonus. Depreciation is right. The government is giving you a bonus to invest in equipment, say a new car, say new equipment for a car wash, computers, all kinds of different things to help not only generate income for the businesses that are out there, but also buy things that are going to enhance the business that you have. And I mentioned entrepreneurs. People are like well, chris, I see these car washes come up all over the place. I like to give the example of Chick-fil-A. So Chick-fil-A it's in. You're in Atlanta, mark.
Mark Perlberg:Oh yeah, One of the. I love the.
Chris Larsen:Chick-fil-A. I've been to the original Chick-fil-A down there, absolutely. We origination. I've been to the original Chick-fil-A down there, absolutely. We're not too far away in North Carolina, they're everywhere. My kids love Chick-fil-A but when you come up here to visit I'll take you here. There's a place around the corner. It's a brewery. They serve my favorite chicken sandwich in Asheville but it's like 15 bucks. That's not cheap for a chicken sandwich. It's a good chicken sandwich. It's got pimento cheese on it and that's why I said I'm going to wait till you come up, because it'll be a business deduction Then when you come up and I can go there.
Mark Perlberg:You just buy it?
Chris Larsen:Yeah, but it takes a lot of time to wait and get it. It's more expensive. Maybe I get a beer if I'm there. Next thing you know I'm walking out of there. It's $30, with the tip, for a chicken sandwich and a beer. Right, I can go to Chick-fil-A. It's five bucks for a chicken sandwich. But what's the difference? The difference is it's not the quality of the service, I'm sorry, it's the quality of the service and the quality of the sandwich. But why would I go to Chick-fil-A? I go to Chick-fil-A because it's a great value for $5. And that's what we're trying to create in our car washes is a great value.
Chris Larsen:People that go get their car washed in an express tunnel. They're looking for value, they're looking for convenience, they want predictability. So if I go to Chick-fil-A I mentioned, if I go to the place around the corner, it's going to take a while. It's probably going to take 30 to 45 minutes for me to order the sandwich and eat and get out of there. Chick-fil-a. I'm in and out in about five minutes. Some days it may be 10, some days it may be two minutes, but it's probably about five minutes. It's predictable. Great quality. And guess what? They always treat me nice. They're dressed nice. I don't know where they find all these well-mannered high school and college kids. They are amazing. I find they undersize their outfits. I don't know if that's because it's before or after they feed them all this free Chick-fil-A.
Chris Larsen:We're trying to do the same thing. We want to be the Chick-fil-A of the car wash space. We want people to feel welcomed. We want to provide a great value and we want people to feel good when they go out the other side with a predictable wash. We know you can get a better car wash by hiring somebody to detail your car for $100 or $200 or $300. We know that. But for $1 a day, $20 a month, $30 a month, it's really hard to beat the value that we provide and we want to make sure that you have a great experience when you come in there so you can check out the business at HurricaneWashcom.
Mark Perlberg:You know. What's wonderful about this, too that I want to highlight is how replicable this is Because yes, very scalable. Absolutely what we do as CPAs is hard to replicate. Yes, I had to go through a lot of training. I don't know how. If I had unlimited access to create Chick-fil-A franchises, I could build that a lot faster than our practice. The training is so intensive.
Mark Perlberg:There is such a small demographic of people who can intellectually handle the planning and the work that we do, and we had a prior podcast webinar on the topic it was maybe a few ago on exiting, with Randy Long and Ellen Long on building SOPs and systems, so you can sell this as an exit.
Mark Perlberg:Yeah, and how important it is to be out of the business as an owner, and this is incredibly hard for me as an advisor. For some of us listening who are in those knowledge workers, highly skilled professionals, surgeons, doctors, dentists I mean we all have our systems and we do, and I train my staff profusely. I mean we all have our systems and we do and I train my staff profusely. But the cool thing about these car washes? I mean here's a pun for it. You can rinse and repeat. I mean you can take an SOP and you can just repeat it over and over and over again and teach it to just about anybody. So the exits are really profitable on these things and is easy to develop these systems and scale it, and for some of us who want to invest and want to simplify our lives because we are professionals like myself, this is a great place to park our cash, where all these complexities and changes in the tax code and all of this stuff doesn't really impact these other types of industries.
Chris Larsen:Yeah, that's a great point, Mark, and that's one of the things we look for. And in my book I talk about how I'm always looking to scale. And what's nice about the car wash space is you can build one of these brand new. It's all the same equipment. You can put the same equipment in each location. You only need four or five people to run one in a very efficient, high-performance way. You can even put a sales associate in there to help sell these memberships.
Chris Larsen:So that's not complicated, it's a pretty straightforward sell. Hey, mark, we saw you here last week. You came here again. Would you like to buy a membership? You'll save money versus paying for a single wash, right, and you live right down the road. So it's like hey, that's a pretty easy sell. It's a good, it's a high value.
Chris Larsen:But the great thing is every location we add, not only is it easy to replicate the model, but it improves our margins, because we're able to decrease the cost per wash by about 30% when we take over one of these washes because of our national contracts, and we're able to increase the value of that location just by virtue of the fact that it's part of our larger portfolio. So yeah, mark, I love what you said. It's easy to replicate, it's easy to Well. It's not easy to build the systems, but once it's built it is straightforward to replicate, it's straightforward to scale and when you do it it's actually accretive to the business as a whole. It's going to bring value to every component. So it's a really virtuous cycle when you do that.
Chris Larsen:So the biggest piece is you just don't want to go and buy any wash that's out there. And we had two under contract in Texas last year and as we were doing our due diligence we found out that there was two more permits pulled for two more washes nearby and we felt that that would decrease the margins and the revenue in those locations too much and we ended up not moving forward on those. So if you can find good washes, you can find good locations, and you find good locations and you can scale your operations in an effective, efficient way. You can do well in this model, but it's highly operationally intensive, for sure.
Mark Perlberg:Very cool. Now we've talked to other clients on similar. I mean, there's a variety of things that you guys can do when you're accredited investors. So we have car washes, atm machine funds We've had two conversations on oil and gas investing and then, obviously, real estate syndication. So there's all these exciting and wonderful ways that we can invest in tax advantaged vehicles that are going to build our wealth and either reduce our taxes or we won't pay taxes on the cash that comes in for a number of years.
Mark Perlberg:And you know, like you said holistically, let's say, we're investing in all of this stuff so we can consider this year. You know we can combine and mix and match and talk about the implications of this strategy and how the losses or the income hits combined with this strategy, all these things working together. And we're looking at we really want to, like you said, holistically, we want to be looking at your W-2 income of you and your spouse, business income, rental income, stock portfolio income, interest income, retirement accounts, what's going over here. And then are we investing into oil and gas, real estate syndications, our own personal real estate, short-term real estate? How does this all come together and what type of tax plan is going to optimize the growth of our wealth.
Chris Larsen:Love that, love that. Yeah, I think that's how you have to look at it, and you got to really start with that, because when you start looking at these investments, you're like, oh, this is sexy, it's exciting, great tax benefits. But what are you really looking to set out to do? What's your vision? When do you need the money? And you really have to consider all those different things. So if you're looking for something that's got a little bit higher margins, it can supplement your portfolio. Yeah, we have car washes that are out there. You can learn about all of our different types of investments. If you go to nextlevelincomecom, you can click the Invest link and we can talk through all that with our team.
Mark Perlberg:Very cool Nextlevelincomecom. I think we'll have some listeners who are going to get pretty excited to hear about car washes for the first time. The numbers look really appealing here. Now what I'm wondering from you what are you most excited about in your business and investing career?
Chris Larsen:Yeah. So the car wash space, definitely. I'll tell you what I never thought I'd be going to the car wash show. We got it coming up here in just about a month and it's in Nashville, tennessee, this year. But I like going to these shows and hearing the industry experts that are out there. I mentioned operating types of real estate, mark. I think the car wash space is a cool business to be involved in right now.
Chris Larsen:I think if you look out the next 10, 20 years, I think senior housing and assisted living is going to be a big area of opportunity as well. From a demographics perspective We've heard about the silver tsunami 10,000 people a day turning 65. Well, those 65-year-olds that front end of them, they're about to start turning 80. And when you turn 80, you start to face an increasing need or increasing probability of needing either in-home care or some sort of assistance for your active, for your everyday, daily activities that you're facing out there. So I think that's going to be a great space for investors to look into in the future and we're working on some different partnerships for that as well.
Mark Perlberg:All right, very cool. So, chris, I think that our audience I'll put this in the show notes in case they're driving and they want to go back Lots of really cool and exciting insight here. Anything else you want to share, a call of action or resource you want to provide to the audience.
Chris Larsen:Listen. Today you want a free copy of my book, nextlevelincomecom? Just click on the book link. You can get a free copy there. If you want to learn about our investments, click on the invest link and please check out our podcast as well, the Next Level Income Show, also available on our website. We try to bring on professionals like Mark to help you optimize your income, your tax strategy and also look at the investment world out there to help you on your journey towards financial independence.
Mark Perlberg:Wonderful, chris. Thank you so much for being a guest. You heard it here. Lots of wonderful stuff and, as always, if you want to learn more about us, go to markprovercpacom. You'll see a link for an application or intro call, and also we're always looking for staff. So if you're a tax nerd or you know a tax nerd, send us our way, because we're hiring nonstop. You guys enjoy this. Hope you enjoy the show and stay.