Skip to content

Search Interviews:

Escape ‘Tax Jail’: A Roadmap to Lasting Wealth With Michael Uadiale of SMEED CPA

Escape ‘Tax Jail’: A Roadmap to Lasting Wealth With Michael Uadiale of SMEED CPA

Michael UadialeMichael Uadiale is the Managing Partner at SMEED CPA, where he helps entrepreneurs reduce taxes and pursue financial freedom through proactive planning. A seasoned CPA and master tax advisor with more than 20 years of experience, Michael specializes in serving home health and social service providers, healthcare professionals, real estate investors, and technology service businesses. He is known for translating complex tax rules into actionable strategies for wealth building, asset protection, and generational planning.

Spotify
Apple
Amazon Music
Tune In
Stitcher
PlayerFM
Deezer

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [02:05] How an unexpected six-figure tax bill inspired Michael Uadiale’s approach to serving business owners
  • [10:37] The “tax jail” created by high marginal tax rates and insufficient planning
  • [12:19] Why proactive tax planning differs fundamentally from annual tax preparation
  • [16:17] How AI and more sophisticated clients are pushing CPA firms toward advisory services
  • [17:51] The DECIDE framework for tax savings, wealth growth, legacy protection, and generational planning
  • [21:41] How the BOND rule determines whether a cash outflow may qualify as a business expense
  • [24:17] Why tax credits can be considerably more valuable than deductions
  • [37:00] How virtual service, electronic documents, mobile tools, and technology support SMEED CPA’s clients

In this episode…

Tax planning can be one of the most powerful yet underutilized tools for helping entrepreneurs convert business income into long-term wealth. Rather than treating taxes as a once-a-year compliance task, business owners can align entity structure, deductions, credits, investments, and documentation with a clear financial vision. How can proactive tax strategy help entrepreneurs reach financial freedom sooner?

According to Michael Uadiale, a tax and wealth-building strategist, entrepreneurs can accelerate financial freedom by defining a specific end goal, measuring the gap from their current position, and reinvesting legally created tax savings. He frames the tax code as a set of incentives rather than a punishment and encourages owners to ask, “How can I deduct this?” instead of, “Can I deduct this?” His DECIDE and BOND frameworks help clients evaluate deductions, entity structures, credits, income shifting, deferral, documentation, and legacy planning. The process requires year-round education, disciplined implementation, and collaboration among tax, legal, insurance, and financial professionals.

On this episode of the Top Business Leaders Show, Chad Franzen welcomes Michael Uadiale, Managing Partner at SMEED CPA, for a conversation about using proactive tax strategy to build financial freedom. Michael explains “tax jail,” the difference between preparation and planning, the DECIDE and BOND frameworks, credits and deferral, year-round advisory meetings, client fit, virtual service, and the value of mentorship.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

  • “Financial freedom means having the option to do what you want, when you want, without money being a deciding factor.”
  • “Our tomorrow is a function of what we choose to do today and the marginal things we do every day.”
  • “Tax planning is not changing your taxes; it is changing your facts to align well with the tax code.”
  • “Income is earned, but wealth is engineered, and engineering tax savings is both a skill and an art.”
  • “Investing and wealth making is a team sport, and every adviser’s guidance should align with the client’s goals.”

Action Steps

  1. Define your financial freedom destination: Document your current assets, liabilities, and cash flow, then describe the specific “Point Z” you want to reach.
  2. Replace annual-only tax preparation with year-round planning: Meet with a qualified tax adviser at least quarterly to review decisions before opportunities expire.
  3. Apply the BOND rule to potential business expenses: Confirm the business purpose, ordinary nature, necessity, and documentation for every expense you plan to deduct.
  4. Reinvest tax savings into wealth-building assets: Treat every legally saved tax dollar as capital that can generate additional income and shorten your financial freedom timeline.
  5. Build a coordinated advisory team: Align your CPA, attorney, insurance professional, and financial adviser around the same tax, investment, protection, and legacy goals.

Sponsor for this episode…

At Rise25 we help B2B businesses give to and connect to your ‘Dream 200’ relationships and partnerships.

We help you cultivate amazing relationships in 2 ways.

#1 Podcasting

#2 Strategic Gifting

#1 Our Predictable Podcast ROI Program

At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 200 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.

We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.

What do you need to start a podcast?

When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.

The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.

We make distribution easy.

We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.

Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, FreshBooks, and many more.

The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.

Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.

Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?

Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.

#2 Our Comprehensive Corporate Gifting Program

Elevate business relationships with customers, partners, staff, and prospects through gifting.

At Rise25, thoughtful and consistent gifting is a key component of staying top of mind and helps build lasting business relationships. Our corporate gift program is designed to simplify your process by delivering a full-service corporate gifting program — from sourcing and hand selecting the best gifts to expert packaging, custom branding, reliable shipping, and personalized messaging on your branded stationary.

Our done-for-you corporate gifting service ensures that your referral partners, prospects, and clients receive personalized touchpoints that enhance your business gifting efforts and provide a refined executive gifting experience. Whether you’re looking to impress key stakeholders or boost client loyalty, our comprehensive approach makes it easy and affordable.

Discover how Rise25’s personalized corporate gifting program can help you create lasting impressions. Get started today and experience the difference a strategic gifting approach can make.

Email us through our contact form.

You can learn more and watch a video on how it works here: https://rise25.com/giftprogram/

Contact us now at support@rise25.com or message us here https://rise25.com/contact/

Powered by Rise25 Podcast Production Company

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:04

Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show. Powered by Rise25 Media, we feature top founders, executives, and business leaders from all over the world.

Chad Franzen: 00:20

Hi, Chad Franzen here, co-host of the Top Business Leaders Show, where we feature CEOs, entrepreneurs, and top leaders in the business world. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. We help B2B businesses reach more clients, referrals, and strategic partnerships and get ROI through done-for-you podcasts. If you have a B2B business and want to build great relationships, there’s no better way to do it than to profile the people and companies you admire on your podcast. To learn more, go to rise25.com or email us at support@rise25.com.

Michael Uadiale, am I pronouncing your name right? Michael.

Michael Uadiale: 00:53

You did. You got it.

Chad Franzen: 00:55

Nice, nice.

Michael Uadiale: 00:56

I was waiting for that.

Chad Franzen: 00:58

My guest is Michael Uadiale, a seasoned CPA and master tax advisor with over 25 years of industry experience, including 18 years running SMEED CPA. As the founder of a seven-figure-revenue firm with 15 employees, he has developed a proven system that helps entrepreneurs achieve financial freedom within 5 to 7 years through strategic tax planning and wealth-building. His expertise has helped clients save over $15 million in taxes over the past seven years, with an average tax savings of $31,426 per client annually. He is also a successful entrepreneur who has founded six other businesses, including investments and innovative telehealth software. Hey, Michael, thanks so much for joining me today.

How are you?

Michael Uadiale: 01:43

It’s my pleasure, Chad. Thank you for having me on your show.

Chad Franzen: 01:46

Yeah, it’s great to talk to you. Hey, as I mentioned, you’ve spent more than 25 years working in accounting and tax, nearly two decades leading your own firm. How did your early experiences in accounting shape your decision to start building and, you know, continue to build SMEED CPA?

Michael Uadiale: 02:05

Thank you for that question. I think my experience personally really, really informed my choice of how to run our practice. As you can tell from my accent, I’m not originally born in the United States. And, when I came out here about 28 years ago, I worked in a high-tech company, got a bunch of stock options, and had no clue what all that meant for taxes. I just passed my CPA test.

I had not gotten my CPA license, or somebody told me it was CCPA, so as to be able to figure out your taxes. Well, I took their advice and I did hire a CPA. The whole idea was, hey, help me reduce my taxes legally and ethically, because I knew I was getting a whole boatload of money from my stock options. Right. Well, he, I got a big bill from him, but nothing was done.

All right. The long and short of it was when my taxes were filed, I owed some very significant amounts of money, close to $100,000 in taxes. Right. That really set me off thinking. So when I was ready to get out of corporate America, I said to myself, I do not want any other person to be able to experience that bad taste that I got in my mind.

So when we started our CPA practice, we were hyper-focused on ensuring that business owners only pay what they need to pay. Okay. So that’s been my driving force. And when people talk about me having run Smith for the last almost 20 years, it will be 20 years next year. It’s just gone so fast because I just enjoy continuing to do that over and over and over again.

Yeah. So that’s been my personal story. And that’s what drives me.

Chad Franzen: 04:03

Very nice., a central theme of your work has been helping entrepreneurs use tax planning and wealth building strategies to maybe gain a little bit greater control over their financial futures. What to you does financial freedom mean, and why do you believe some entrepreneurs can reach it within 5 to 7 years?

Michael Uadiale: 04:23

Financial freedom is different for everybody. So the first thing, let’s kind of get the right framework of what financial freedom is, right?Many times when I use that language, I’m very quick to let my audience understand financial freedom does not mean you are retiring and going fishing for the rest of your life. Financial freedom only means to me, you give yourself the option to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, how you choose to do it, with whom you choose to do it, and not have to allow money to be a factor, right? So you could be in your 30s, you could be in your 40s, and you can be financially free, but still very active in the marketplace.

However, you can afford to take one week, one month, three months off, and your financial income building is not compromised by the fact that you are not in the game. Okay. I have a client from 2022. He’s been out of the United States. He’s traveling all over the world.

The young man is not even 45 yet. Right. His business continues to grow. He’s. He retired?

No. Is he financially free? Absolutely. When he came to me in 2020, he was very clear. He said, look, I want to be in a position where I am able to generate $50,000 every month from my real estate portfolio.

And so as he was making money from his cash cow, his cash cow being his commercial cleaning business, he was building his real estate portfolio. All right. So from 2022, he was able to hit what he wanted to hit. The commercial business of cleaning is still running. He has business managers running that enterprise, but he’s literally living off his real estate portfolio.

He’s traveling all over the world. He told me he wants to be able to go through, I think, 40 or 50 countries before he comes back to the US. So that is financial freedom. It just means you have the option, the option of being able to say, I’m taking one week off. I’m taking one month off.

Right.., not to kind of put my personal stuff there. I’ve been out of work in the last four weeks, right? Because I just did some medical procedure.

Right? I wasn’t stressed about me not being on my desk. Okay.. I wasn’t, because all of the enterprises are running independently of me.

That’s the word freedom there. Okay, so that’s what financial freedom means. Now to talk about, okay, how do we achieve that and help people be able to shrink that runway between where you are today and where you want to get to? Right. It’s a clear financial vision.

Unfortunately, in America, many of us, maybe up to 85% of people, spend more time and energy planning for a two week vacation than planning what their financial freedom is going to be. Okay. Because the reality is, our tomorrow is a function of what we choose to do today. Every of our tomorrows is an aggregation of all of the marginal things we are doing daily. So if people are very intentional as to say, here’s the goal I want to get to, there is clarity between knowing this is where you are today.

Point A, and if this is your goal point Z, you can see what the gap is. What our practice is really excellent at doing is we make our clients. We force them. In most cases. Unfortunately, we force them to give us that vision map financially.

It’s easy for us to extract from them where they are today because it’s all about assets and liabilities. And what’s your cash flow? We can do that any day because that’s what we are. Accountants, right? But I have no clue what the heck are you trying to get to?

When do you want to get there? So when you come in as a client, we want you to give us that point Z. And so once we know where that point Z is, then our game plan is to say we know how you make money. We know how you spend money. The idea now is to be able to really use the tax profile, to really shrink that gap, because anybody who knows how to do great tax planning legally, ethically and morally- what you are doing is you free yourself from the tax jail by at least 18 years.

So that’s how we do it. Yeah. Because think about it, for most high-income earners who are making a boatload of money and are not very intentional in their tax planning, do you know what they’re doing? They literally give maybe close to three, four hours of each of their working days to the tax guy. And the unfortunate thing is the tax man is not asking you for this money.

Okay? Really. Most people have just come to think, oh, this is how it has to be. It’s the cost of doing business. Now, the tax code is just a whole incentive to make you behave the way the government wants you to behave, to make you invest in the industries and the areas the government is trying to make private citizens push capital into.

So all of those are the totality of what we bring to bear. And so we free up client cash flow, allow them to be disciplined, and continue to reinvest those tax savings. So if it’s supposed to take you 12, 15 years to get to your point of financial freedom, yes, you can shrink 5 to 7 years of that very easily in 3 to 4 years. That’s I mean, there’s nothing magical about it. It’s just that we’ve gotten disciplined on doing what we do with our clients.

[continue to page 2]
Pages: 1 2