I once owed the IRS $248,000… |
…and I didn't have it. |
Let me back up. |
I was just coming off my best year in business…a year when I FINALLY made good money… |
Not Lamborghini money…
Not popping-bottles money... |
…but good money for the first time in my life. |
And like a lot of accidental entrepreneurs, nobody handed me an owner's manual when I started my business, so I didn't know I was supposed to set aside money for taxes. |
I was doing what I thought was the smart thing: reinvesting profits back into the business. |
Except I was reinvesting THIS year's cash based on LAST year's profits… |
…the profits I hadn't paid taxes on yet. |
And I was about to discover why that was a problem... |
The Sunday Night Phone Call |
It was Sunday night...
I'm sitting on my couch...
My phone rings…. |
It's my CPA. |
(I now know it's bad when your CPA calls you on a Sunday night.) |
"Hey, I was puting together your tax return, and I was a little surprised. You had a really good year last year." | | | | -My CPA |
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(I now also know it's also bad when your CPA compliments you on what a good year you had last year.) |
"Have you been making quarterly payments to the IRS, because based on my calculations, you owe $248,000." | | | | -My CPA |
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(Long pause…) |
"What's a quarterly payment?" | | | | -Me |
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That's when I learned just how deep a hole I was in. |
I didn't know what to do. |
So I just sat there…and I cried. |
I thought I had ruined my family.
I thought we'd have to sell the house.
File bankruptcy.
All of it. |
My wife listened to me spiral for a while. |
Then she got up and said: |
"I don't know why you're so upset. You'll figure it out. You always do." | | | | -My Wife |
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…and she went to bed. |
(SIDE NOTE: That may sound harsh, but my wife knows me well enough to know that's exactly the "vote of confidence" I needed in that moment.) |
The tax payment was due Thursday…4 days. |
(FWIW: I didn't know at the time you could work out a payment arrangement with the IRS. I thought I just had to have all the money by Thursday.) |
So I did the only thing I could think of. |
I looked at my most valuable assets: |
My email list The offers and promotions that have performed well in the past 12 months
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I dusted off every successful promotion I had run across all my businesses and resent them… |
…all of them…
…all at once. |
Through a series of sales and offers, I generated around $330,000 in revenue… |
…and then I sent ALL of it to the IRS. |
It was enough to cover the taxes I owed from the previous year, plus the taxes I owed on the revenue I just generated to pay the taxes I owed. |
I was completely broke. A
nd it felt great.
Because I was free. |
I took away 2 main lessons from that Sunday night panic attack: |
Lesson #1: Maintain a Proven Promo Vault |
Every successful promotion.
Every email.
Every ad.
All stored. |
Because I'll forget what worked last month. And if you stack up your best months from last year and just repeat them, you start to have predictable sales cycles. |
My Promo Vault is just a simple Google Sheet that links off to a bunch of Google docs, but it's a system that's worked for 10+ years so I haven't found a good reason to change it. |
Lesson #2: Own the Customer Relationship |
Your customer list is your most valuable asset…period |
MORE THAN YOUR: |
Product Brand Clever marketing ideas
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…your list (and your relationship with that list) is the one asset you can leverage to create money out of thin air. |
Because when everything falls apart (and it will at some point), you can always go back to the people who already know you, already trust you, and already bought from you. |
That week, two things saved my family from financial ruin: |
A repository of all our promotions (a.k.a. a "Proven Promo Vault") and how they performed (so I didn't have to reinvent the wheel or try to be creative in a moment of panic), and… A list of customers and prospects I could contact without having to seek anyone's permission or pay anyone else for the privilege (like you have to do with advertising and other third party channels).
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I'll never own a business that doesn't have these two assets, and I would encourage you two follow my lead. |
I hope you never get your version of the "Sunday night phone call," but if you do, you'll be glad you have them. |
⚡️ Action Step: Grab a copy of my Proven Promo Vault template, save it to your own drive, and drop in the last 5 promotions that made you the most money. |
Remember: You're not just organizing for today…you're building a backstop for when you (might) need cash fast. |
Ryan Deiss
Co-Founder and CEO, The Scalable Company |
P.S. I'm looking for 5 business owners who want to work 1-on-1 with my team and me to install a custom "operating system" in 2026, so your business can scale and so you can exit the day-to-day. Click here for the details. |
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