Zero To A Hundred – Episode 42: Creative Tax Strategies To Build Wealth And Achieve Financial Freedom With Ishali Mulchandani

Accelerators! 🚀

What if taxes weren’t just an expense but a strategic tool for wealth creation? This week, we’re joined by Ishali Mulchandani, founder of IDM Chartered Professional Accountants, business coach, and tax strategist. She’s qualified as a CPA in the US, Canada, and the UK—and she’s here to flip your mindset on money, taxes, and business growth. If you’ve ever felt stuck with tax burdens, financial constraints, or limiting beliefs, this episode is your wake-up call!

What’s on the Menu:

💡 Why “There Is No Box” When It Comes to Business and Money.

📊 How tax deferral strategies can keep more cash in your pocket.

🏦 Leveraging multiple income streams for wealth building and financial freedom.

Why Tune In?

Ishali doesn’t just crunch numbers—she helps business owners think outside the box to create real wealth. From creative tax strategies to shifting your money mindset, this episode is a game-changer for entrepreneurs who want to thrive.

💬 Gem from Ishali:

“You finance everything you buy—either you pay interest to someone else, or you lose the ability to earn it. Take control.”

Get in Touch with Ishali:

📧 Connect with her at TaxAccountantIDM.com or call 905-567-0706 for expert tax strategies.

Don’t miss out—hit that subscribe button and let’s take your business from zero to a hundred! 💥

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Creative Tax Strategies To Build Wealth And Achieve Financial Freedom With Ishali Mulchandani

I’m excited to introduce our guest, Ishali Mulchandani. She is the Founder of IDM Chartered Professional Accountants. She’s a business coach and tax strategist. She’s qualified as a CPA in three countries, the US, Canada, and the UK. She’s also the author of Achieving Business Prosperity. We’re going to talk about some interesting topics that I want you to key into. One that we dive deep into is how an abundant mindset can lead to success in your business finances. We’ll also talk about the power of compounding and leveraging your losses and get deep into strategies around tax deferral.

Ishali, thank you for joining us on the show.

Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Thinking Outside The Box

I am very excited to have our discussion about thinking outside of the box. One of the first quotes that you said to me is that there is no box. It’s unique to hear from a CPA who is seasoned that there is no box. Will you talk to us a little bit more and tell our audience of entrepreneurs and business owners what that means and what that should mean to them?

I find that a lot of the time, people have a lot of limiting beliefs. Business owners are running their business and they’re great at what they do, but they listen to what their accountant is telling them or what they read online. Accounting and tax are all about rules. I respect rules but I also value creativity. Most accountants are trained to say, “You have to do this like this.” You follow the rules and report everything. There are so many things that get missed.

That is why I say there is no box because possibilities are endless. Why do you have to stop at one source of income? You can have many sources of income. Why do you have to feel as a business owner that if you make a lot of money, you have to pay a lot of taxes? There are such cool ways that you can leverage different losses against your earned income and you can get some deductions. There are some expenses that you don’t realize you’re leaving on the table that are business deductible expenses that you can write off.

I’m not saying that we get aggressive and we go on and claim things that are not legitimate. This is all staying within the lines but using creativity. When it’s creativity, there is no box, which is why I said there is no box. You can have a happy dance between following the rules and being able to get the most out of your business deductions, the most out of all the credits you’re entitled to, and the most out of the efficiencies you can have internally.

There’s the number one rule we learned when I studied tax. There’s a difference between tax evasion and tax deferral. Tax evasion is illegal. I do not recommend that. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t pay them if we have mechanisms that can defer it because a dollar is better in your pocket today than it is tomorrow. If you defer it, you can take that money, repurpose it, and make it build more wealth. That is what I’m more in favor of. When I say there are no boxes, there are limitless possibilities when you have more cashflow in your hand to do that.

Tax Deferral For Business Owners

You might be one of the first CPAs I’ve heard say tax deferral. I’ve heard CPAs talk about tax avoidance but never deferral. What do you mean by tax deferral?

Let me help you understand. For example, the cost segregation study. Here’s a real estate person you’ll understand. When you are doing cost segregation, you are segregating the different asset classes into a 5-year, 10-year, or 15-year, thereby allowing you to write it all off in the same year, a big chunk of it. When you write it all off in the same year, it doesn’t translate to more money unless you meet those conditions.

You are converting passive loss into active and offsetting it against your active income, thereby getting the ability to write off tax and get a refund or pay lower tax. When you reduce this tax burden, it will come back to you later on when you sell your property. That’s where it’s a tax deferral mechanism. You are not completely avoiding paying that tax.

Two things are certain. Death and taxes. They’re going to be there. It’s leveraging this saving. If you have an extra six-figure number, which could be as much as we’ve saved our clients and more in some cases using multiple different strategies, they can take this money and buy more real estate or stocks. You see the power of compounding when that money is growing.

Later on, when you have to pay that tax, you have more money in your pocket. You can absorb that cost later on. Plus, your dollar’s worth less. Plus, who knows what rules can change in your favor? I’m not going to go political on this, but I know that there are some talks in the works of reducing taxes in some sort. The rate drops in your favor in the future. It’s a total win-win. Hence, tax deferral makes sense.

The Power Of Multiple Income Streams For Taxes

Tax deferral for any business owner or anyone who has substantial income can be compounded because you’re able to reinvest that money in other assets. For example, real estate where you have even further tax deferral mechanisms so you can continue to grow your money at a higher rate. There was something that you said, which I thought was great. It was the multiple income streams. Our audience of business owners and entrepreneurs love to hear that.

We also know that there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors when it comes to that because people who are the wealthiest and have 8 businesses made their money in 1 business first, and then they invested in other things to diversify. Talk to me about what you mean by multiple income streams and how that relates to taxes.

Multiple income streams could be many different things. I have a lot of clients who are medical professionals. They’re artists at heart. They love their medical professions, so they make a lot of money, but they don’t know where to park their money to make the money work for them. Even if they do, they usually are not clear on how they can do it in a more optimized manner.

A lot of them love real estate. They buy real estate. They’ve got W-2 income. They’ve got a 1099 income. They’ve got real estate. They also like to partner in a fund so it’s more passive. Their involvement is next to nothing. They put the money in funds, and those funds could be in real estate projects, a commercial, a multifamily residence, or whatever that is. That’s the extent to which they will go because they’re busy with their job.

I have business owners who have many different kinds of businesses. Sometimes, those businesses are not related. I have a client who does windows, and then they do blinds, and then they do real estate, and then they do cars. It’s exciting. What happens is when your business is at a stage where it’s mature, like it’s got a lot of cashflow, then it’s birthing another baby that takes that cashflow. Any business that you birth initially takes a lot of your money.

What then happens is it gives the business owner an opportunity to take those losses and offset them, reducing the tax burden. When that business grows, you do that again. One is feeding the other. Sometimes, that’s the case. Sometimes, they have other investors. Either way, how we structure the businesses and how you leverage active versus passive becomes a game on how you can eventually end up saving tax dollars. There’s no joy if one is active and one is passive. You can’t offset.

How do you properly leverage active versus passive investments?

These are done with detailed conversations during the year with the client, especially when they’re trying to get another business set up. We understand the end goal, the outcome of what the client wants, and say, “If you are looking to do this business, what is your intention for it?” We see the nature of the activity as well and then advise the client accordingly. “We set it up in this manner so we can do this, that, and the other with it.” These are planning things that we do. There’s no one-size-fits-all.

Alternatively, if somebody’s expecting a huge amount of passive loss, then we like to offset the passive income against that to neutralize it and decrease the burden. It’s all about the timing. Let’s say somebody is exiting. We’ve got a client who wanted to sell a lot of real estate. We told them, “Do you want to defer the tax to use the 1031 exchange?” It may help them use the 1031 exchange, and then the tax could be deferred.

Before we did that, we asked them, “When are you looking to sell the new properties?” We have to keep in mind what the client’s trajectory is. We need to understand that. One of the clients took advantage of the depreciation. One thing to remember is when the depreciation recapture happens, which means when you sell a property, there is a capital gain component that is charged anywhere between 5% to 20% depending on your income.

The capital gain is very simple. It’s what you sold it for, less what you bought it for, plus any costs that were incurred in the property to make it better, like improvements. That’s to attract capital gain tax. Any depreciation that you got deductions for before, that portion will attract your marginal tax rate of tax. There’s a differential. To be aware of those liabilities is very important because that throws off investors a lot of the time. They think it’s cap gain on the whole thing. It’s not.

That’s something very important. I’ve done cost segregation in real estate projects before. Typically, unless you’re holding it for a very long period of time, there will be depreciation recapture from the depreciation that you took upfront. Unfortunately, you can’t take that depreciation upfront, go sell it the next year, and not have to pay the government. Those are things to think of when you’re calculating your numbers as well.

If they say, “We’re going to sell it again next year,” then we need to keep in mind that this is going to come back next year. If you’re expecting a lower income next year, then that will still be a good strategy because you’re spreading it. If you’re spreading your income over multiple years so that you are staying below the highest tax bracket, that could be a good strategy to use.

Even if you do buy a property, do cost segregation, hold it for two years, and go sell it, and your intention is to reinvest that, you can still defer those taxes. You’re not going to have depreciation recapture. Correct or incorrect?

Whenever you sell it, there’s depreciation recapture unless you do a 1031.

That’s what I was saying. As long as you’re buying another property in place, you are still deferring those taxes. I want to make sure that I’m clear. People, especially those who aren’t as versed in real estate investment, buy a property, do cost segregation, and sell it two years later or even a year later. If you were to keep that gain, you will have depreciation recapture. If you are to reinvest that through a 1031 tax exchange into another real estate asset, you are still deferring the taxes so you will not have the depreciation recapture.

Can I add? You are deferring the capital gain. The depreciation recapture will happen at that. The capital gain will go on but the depreciation recapture will happen.

Depreciation recapture and capital gains are two separate things. No matter what, you will have that depreciation recapture. What if you have a big loss that year? Will you still have the depreciation recapture?

What happens is that the loss is utilized. It’s a passive loss in its nature. It depends on what your activity is. Is it passive? Is it active? When you talk about losses, if your real estate activity is active, then it’ll offset against that active loss. If your loss is active and so is the real estate activity, it’ll offset. If the loss is passive and so is the real estate activity, it will offset. That’s how it usually works.

Maximizing Deductions As A Business Owner

I know a lot of our audience, because I know many of them and have worked with them from a business standpoint, own their own real estate, whether it is a landscaping company, a nursery, or a doctor’s office. They own their own real estate. These are things that are incredibly important. What I’d love to talk about is something you mentioned earlier, and that is expenses. As a business owner, how should we be looking at our expenses to make sure we’re maximizing our deductions?

First of all, clear and good recordkeeping is very important. Secondly, keep an eye on it because a lot of the time, business owners will spend out of pocket and they don’t even realize it. Helping yourself to understand that anything that has to do with business, let the business pay for it. If the business doesn’t have its own funds for whatever reason, you can put money in the business, and that money you can take out anytime tax-free.

Alternatively, if you don’t do that and you are spending on behalf of the business, make sure that you have a proper paper trail to say, “Here are the expenses I made. Business, you owe me this money.” If you are able to clear that separate distinction, it’ll only serve you great in the long run. A lot of business owners make a mistake and think, “I didn’t make much money. It’s okay. I don’t have to record it.” Please do not think like that because if there was a loss, it allowed you to offset it. If not this year, then later on. It sits there until it’s utilized.

Especially in the initial stages, a lot of people have this myth when they’re birthing a new business. They think, “I didn’t make much money so I can’t do deductions.” You can do them. We all know that when a business is starting out, it upfronts a lot of its money. Whether it’s R&D, operational costs, marketing costs, or training costs, whatever those costs are, they’re upfronted at first by the owner and they should be deducted. These are the common ones I see that are being missed all the time.

The second one is the use of the home as an office. There’s something called an Augusta Rule that a lot of companies don’t take advantage of. You do use your home for the most part, whether you realize it or not. Some intentionally use it, but some don’t realize when they’re using it. It’s important to be able to offset those expenses as well.

Plus, when you’re traveling and you will be spending some of your own money, make sure you keep all the receipts and deduct all those costs, whether you’re going for a conference or whether you’re going for networking. Sometimes, family members help you but you don’t put them on payroll. You should. This way, you are also equalizing your money income for the household, reducing your overall tax burden as well.

I have a question specifically about the Augusta Rule. We entertain a lot/ I know it’s fourteen days out of the year. You can talk the audience through this. Your company can lease the property from you. How do you make sure you’re documenting it properly? I’ll have clients and business partners over, and even though we’re having a nice dinner and connecting personally, there is a lot of professional conversation that happens. Is that something that would count towards the Augusta Rule and I could use that as a write-off or not?

If you’re having a business conversation, you can. The key is the documentation. Do your homework. Have three comparatives to see how much your place is worth if you’re renting that space out to someone else. You have your per-day rate anyway. You are having these meetings, so it has to be documented. It’s like, “I had a meeting on this date. This is what happened.” Those documentations are saved so if ever the IRS asks you, “Do you have a backup for this?” You have it. You can make this adjustment at the end of the year. You don’t have to do it when it happens. If you do it when it happens, it’s even better because you’re not forgetting. Fourteen days is the max.

Preparing For Tax Season

That’s incredibly helpful because I hosted a handful of dinners that were all business-related. A lot of times, they were connecting one business relationship I had with another business relationship and also some offsites that I had at my house where we would do a whiteboard session for an afternoon. Those are great tips. I believe a lot of business owners overlook that and don’t realize it. It’s not just having a big party in your mansion in the Hamptons. It’s having a meeting in your house. We’re in the thick of tax season. Thank you for taking time in the middle of tax season to have this conversation with us. How best can an owner prepare for tax season?

I’m a big believer in not just preparing in February, March, or April for tax season. I would encourage every business owner to have a proactive approach rather than a reactive approach. Preparing for it now is a very reactive approach in my opinion. If you’ve got a business, you have to have a conversation with your CPA before and say, “This is how much money every quarter ideally. This is what I’ve done. This is how much money we’re likely to make. How much estimated tax do I owe? Is there any way I can save this money? If so, then how? Let’s implement those things so that later on, everything is easy and we know.

What you don’t want is to find yourself in a position where, when your extensions and your returns are filed, you have a big tax bill because then you’re incurring interest. You don’t want to tip the IRS that you pay enough tax. I see a lot of leaks in our clients’ funds when they have to pay installment interest or interest for late payments. Being prepared is key because it’s there. It’s not going away anywhere.

I have a client who is so averse to tax. Whenever I talk to her, she says, “You’re going to say the T word again.” I tell her, “It’s here to stay, so you may as well be prepared, understand what it is, and make contingencies to pay for it.” One day, I added up all her tax interest and penalties. I showed her that number and she looked at me and said, “What is this?” I said, “This is how much you have paid over the last two years for late filing.” She could not believe it. I said, “You could have taken your family on vacation with this money.”

One of my biggest pet peeves is when you want to pay them on time. You don’t want to necessarily overpay and hurt your cashflow, which is why I said to have those conversations with your tax professional. I’m helping a client and they paid an extra $200,000. They didn’t need to. If they’d had a handle on their optics, they would’ve known that their one business made money but the other one did not. They did not have to pay that much money. They were struggling with cashflow all year and could not make hiring decisions that hurt their business growth. You see how it compounds that effect.

It’s so important. It’s something that I’ve learned to embrace over the last couple of years where one of my mentors said, “You’re paying taxes because you are earning money.” It’s like saying, “It’s another year I’m getting older.” There is another option. If you’re not getting older, you’re what? If you’re not paying taxes, you’re what? You’re not making money, or you’re making so much money that you have every deduction under the sun.

Somebody said every day above ground is a good day.

Taxes and all.

They’re running the country and they need their taxes, but let’s be smart and proactive. Pay only what you need to, not more than you need to.

Commonly Overlooked Deductions

Are there deductions that a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs are missing in general?

Some business owners are very savvy and already know that, but there are a lot of deductions that I see people missing. A lot of business owners, when they buy commercial property, they don’t know about the cost seg rules. They don’t take advantage of it. It’s surprising how many business owners don’t do it because they don’t know and their CPAs are not aware of it.

Research and development claims that there are some hiring credits that people miss. There are a variety of different things. The common one is if your family member is helping you, to be able to plan and give them a salary, using your homeless office, travel, and even your car. I see two ends of the spectrum. I see people get aggressive and claim the entire car expenses, and I see people claim none of it. Rarely do I see a happy medium.

The happy medium is when the client or the business owner is informed, “This is the car. I use it for business. I need to keep a log.” You’ve got to keep a log and claim it all because if you are using a vehicle for business, you should be able to get compensated for it. A lot of clients don’t do that. Owners don’t do that. They don’t get compensated for their business. If you learn to treat yourself and the business as separate, that you are you and your business is your baby, and you can have as many babies as you want but you keep that separation, then you’ll be disciplined about the money part.

Can we get a bit more granular about paying family members? I realize I have my partner help me with social media at times. Let’s say your kid is helping you with social media and they’re doing it on a weekly basis. They’re spending five hours helping you with social media. How do you calculate that?

You have to pay them. You have to have an employment contract or some sort of paperwork saying, “You are doing this service for this company,” so it’s all documented. Put them on the payroll if you can. I would strongly advise that, because there’s a paper trail that the money’s leaving your business and going into their account. Whatever needs to be given to the IRS is being done on a regular basis. At the end of the period, they’ve got a W-2. There is no argument about that. It’s done all onboard. If, for example, it’s five hours, what is each hour worth? You can do that.

It should be a W-2, not a 1099.

It can be a 1099 as well. If you’re giving over $600 in the year, which you are, you do a 1099, what might be useful is if they’re doing other gigs for other people, that would be fine. For the most part, tax authorities like to see if this is exclusively for you, then it’s more like an employee. If this person is doing it for other people also, then a 1099 would be fine. If you started out and you’re testing it and it’s a contract, then a 1099 is fine. If it’s a regular thing, then it could be argued that it looks, smells, and behaves like an employee should be an employee.

Creating The Right Mindset Around Money Management

Talk to me a bit about entrepreneurs and business owners. I suffered this at a time earlier on in my business. I did not have any financial acumen whatsoever. I’ve also seen it with some of the merchants that we work with on the payment side. They don’t know anything about finance. They’re good technicians or salespeople at what they do and they make a lot of revenue. How do you create the right mindset around managing your money and releasing fear, shame, frustration, and anger? All these things pop up the deeper you get with people when you talk about money and their business owners. How do you create the right mindset?

Finances are so personal. It’s very individual. A lot of business owners do have shame and guilt when they don’t have their act together. They put that pressure on themselves thinking that they have to. I have a lot of compassion in that situation. I’m like, “You are doing so well in your business. That’s what you’re good at. This is what we are here for. We are here to guide you,” but they’re afraid of the tax authorities. They’re afraid of looking at numbers because, in their mind, they feel that’s bad news.

I had this one client who came over. She’s a fractional CFO service offering. When we have clients with a fractional CFO, we go through their numbers, their projections, and their budgets. Numbers excite me, and I realize they do not excite everyone. I said to her, “Repeat after me. I love numbers, numbers love me.” She looked at me like I was crazy. I said, “For fun, repeat after me. I love numbers, numbers love me.” She started to say that and we went and giggled about it like little girls. I then said, “Now I’m going to show you some numbers and we are going to love them.”

She completely enjoyed that meeting. She lost the resistance because it was playful. We would play with numbers and say, “What if you did this? You’ll have this.” It gamified the situation. It lightened the burden. It helped her go to that next level because she was going to buy another location. I was telling her, “This is how you can make that possible.” Taking that monotony away from numbers and including fun in it can remove the resistance.

The client, who I said doesn’t like filing the taxes, we joke about it. I said, “I’m going to mention the T word again.” I play with them, and then I get into their minds to think, “What will work to make this more effective?” That’s why I showed her the tax interest and penalties that she was paying. That worked because then she wasn’t late.

Everybody’s different. I am a believer in not giving them technical jargon because people don’t understand. It’s like doctors when they say fancy words to us. What would be a simple thing like, “You have a stomach,” they’ll say a big long word for it. It’s exactly the same in the accounting world. I want to meet the clients where they are so that they lose the fear, frustration, and shame.

We can be on a level playing field where we can understand, “Here are the facts. Let’s make decisions based on these facts. There is an activity. It resulted in these numbers. Do you like these numbers? If you don’t, let’s twist and turn the activity a little bit by two-millimeter shifts to give you the outcome you want. When you have the outcome you want, let’s work on how to save you some taxes.” It’s that simple.

I love numbers and numbers love me. Not only do I love numbers and numbers love me, but I love money and money loves me.

That’s another one. I love cash and cash loves me.

Bob Proctor says where energy, “Where your mindset goes, energy flows.”

It is, “Where focus goes, energy flows.”

Managing Cash Flow And Overcoming Financial Fears

There we go. For the first time, I have been looking at my numbers on a daily basis. I’ve gone through fear, shame, frustration, and stress. Even when I have money in the bank, I’m like, “It’s not enough,” or, “I’ve got to pay all these bills. We have to close these deals, XYZ, or whatever.” It has been a comfort being friendly with my money, giving it attention, and looking at it on a daily basis. How would you suggest our audience look at making sure they’re managing their cash and managing it appropriately?

First and foremost, this fear is very constricting. Money is energy and it flows. My first suggestion is more spiritual in nature, where we need to shift the focus to more abundance to understand that it is coming. There are plenty out there. When we approach it with that mindset or that feeling, then we have a better outcome. We are not approaching everything with a sense of fear and constriction in that mindset like, “This may not come.” We’re not giving out that energy that’s serving us.

I truly believe that a cashflow projection is very necessary for every business owner. Look at the past trends. See what you did. See how things went. What is your growth trajectory in terms of the percentage of your expenses? Project your next twelve months and then keep a close eye on it. Did it meet your projection? If not, what else do you have to do to make sure it meets and catches up in the following month to get the results you want?

If you go to the gym once, you are not going to get the results you want at the end of the year. If you go consistently, you will. It’s consistent work that is going to give you the outcome, not worrying, not stressing, and not constricting. Be open and do the work consistently and you’ll get the outcome that you’re looking for. That’s what I believe in.

The abundance mindset when it comes to being a business owner truly has been a game-changer. There are days when I’m not feeling abundant but I have to push through it. I realize that staying focused on what goals we set financially, what the money looks like, and making sure that I’m working closely with my team and communicating are the things that move the needle for you to keep pushing your business forward, and for that money to flow to you. That is why we do what we do.

Honestly, it is very easy to get in that state. If you look at those ECG monitors where the heart rate goes up and down, this is our business. It goes up and down. When it goes down, we need to know it will go up. We are not going to flatline. We don’t want it to. It doesn’t go all the way because you breathe in and you breathe out. Everything is a balance. It goes up and it goes down.

Overall, even if you look at any chart, it goes up and down but eventually, it moves up. It’s the same as your business. In those down moments, know that it is going to get better. You have to take some deep breaths. It’s easier said than done is what I’m saying. I have been through that pain myself where things did not go as planned. I had to say to myself, “It’s okay.” We’re responsible for our own state. We’re responsible for our own energy. The entire business depends on us. Our teams depend on us. Guarding our minds and our state is so important. When we turn that energy around, then everything starts to roll better.

I’ve experienced this in such a big way in my life, where I’ll get into these funks and I’ll think negatively. When you’re thinking negatively, you’re not taking that phone call. You’re like, “I don’t want to talk to this person right now,” but it could be the individual who’s going to be your next opportunity to close into this. You’re like, “I don’t want to go to dinner and drinks with this person tonight.” That’s where you’re going to meet your next client or your next investor.

Shut your mind off from, “I’m so stressed. I’m never going to be able to raise this capital for a deal or expand my company.” Do not listen to what the people around you are saying. I’ll give you an example. One of my business partners for a year asked me, “Is there anything we can do to help you get this project over the line for a year?”

One day, I finally said, “You’ve asked me this several times. If you want to be a 50/50 partner with me, put up the capital and co-sign with me on this loan and build this project.” He came back to me 24 hours later and said, “Let’s do it.” He asked me for a year. I wasn’t listening. He asked me a dozen times and I finally was like, “Why not?” You don’t have anything to lose.

Listen to when people are talking. When you’re in that negative space, you don’t necessarily hear that opportunity for yourself and your business, which could take you to the next level. o I love that you went down that more spiritual energy journey because those are the moments where you move the needle in your business.

When we are in that space, we’re constricted. It’s like you’re tying a knot. Things are not going to flow. You need to open up. You can only listen and receive when you’re open. When we have all that chatter, our inner guidance will also tell us. Your gut instinct will tell you. When you’re making deals, there are millions of dollars at stake. You need to listen to your inner self as well. There are facts. There are numbers. You have to pay attention to those and be aware of your downside, but also listen to your inner guidance. It is always telling you what to do. We get so wrapped up in the external chatter that we don’t listen to our inner selves often enough.

These are the little things that are most soft in the approach to the business side, but they’re also very important because there are game-changers. In your situation, you were not open and you were focusing on the things that were not working well. We often do that. Our human brain is designed to look for problems. It sees a problem and it focuses on that. It is mindful work to shift your focus and not focus on that and focus on what is working well. When you do that, when you focus from fear to love, when you shift your focus from negative to positive, great things happen. That is our responsibility as business owners to do that.

There was a moment when I’d been very negative about my payments business and the growth. We weren’t hitting our numbers. I went and had lunch with a friend. I was talking about what we were going through and venting. At that moment, he said to me, “You’re not asking the right questions. You’re not looking at this the right way. It is, “Where is the opportunity in this place of struggle?” The place of struggle was the opportunity for me to say, “What’s wrong with my systems that I’m not achieving what I want to achieve? Why is my clientele base not growing? Why are we not closing the number of deals we were closing before?”

Internally, we had an in-depth conversation about that and realized that there was miscommunication going on. We were so focused on the numbers that were on the paper and our cashflow projections that we were missing that internally, two divisions of the team weren’t communicating. They were upset with each other because they weren’t getting the information that they needed.

As the leader and taking extreme ownership of that, I realized I wasn’t facilitating clear communication between them. When we fixed that, we 3X what we were expecting for our returns because our clients were getting what they needed and our team was able to provide that. As business owners, we typically don’t have this type of conversation, which I’m enjoying. As business owners, we have to step back and go, “Am I the cog in the wheel? Am I providing a platform so my team can grow this business successfully?”

You are so right. Most of the time, the chokehold is the owner. This person who told you, “You’re not asking the right question,” is spot on. Sometimes, when everything else is there, it looks right but something is not making sense. It’s usually something a few layers deeper. Only by asking the right questions from yourself and others around you who are affected will you get those answers.

You can’t be doing the same thing and expect a different result. You’ve got to change how you’re doing things to get that different result. In this case, you were able to dig deep and figure out that it was a communication issue between two departments, and then you 3X. Look at the compounding effect of that alone.

Increasing Revenue And Decreasing Costs Systematically

It’s hugely important. Before we get into the Rapid-fire section, there’s one question that I want to ask you. How do business owners look at creating a system where we’re increasing our revenue, we’re decreasing our cost, and we’re improving our bottom line? How do we approach that systematically?

This is a case of fully understanding what your growth structure looks like. First of all, increase your revenue. What systems do you have in place for that to happen? The most important part is, are you going to be able to sustain that extra workload with what you currently have? That’s another mistake people make. They’re not set up for the extra business and then they’re scrambling. There’s something called economies of scale. If anything, an extra business could end up resolving into a lower per-unit cost as well. Be mindful of that. When you’ve got that down, you are going to reduce your overall cost as well.

There’s something called variable costs in most businesses where the more revenue you have, the more that direct cost goes up. If you’re selling one product, you only have the cost of one product. If you have two, then it doubles, and so on and so forth. They move in line. Understanding what that direct cost is and understanding your gross profit margin is very key. Understanding if it is industry average is also key because if you are below average, then you need to know why. Are your vendors charging you too much? Do you need better terms? What is going on there?

Start at the top. Top is your revenue, and then it’s your gross profit, and then it’s your operational cost, which is fixed in nature. That’s your rent, administrative costs, insurance, whatever that is. That doesn’t change your revenue as much. If you think about how those costs are going to be there no matter what, you need to expand the revenue in a sustainable way so that your gross profit margin doesn’t get affected. If anything, it gets better. These fixed costs are there anyway. Automatically, your bottom line will get bigger.

I love that you’re saying that. I had a merchant who owned several restaurants. He said to me, “We haven’t increased prices in about eight years.” I looked at him with this stare. I was like, “What?” I said, “Considering inflation was 20% total in the last couple of years, plus or minus, that’s insane. I know that your cost of goods has gone up, so have your margins continued to shrink? He goes, “Yeah.” I was like, “That doesn’t make sense. You’re not even in line with what’s in the marketplace. That’s hindering you from generating the revenue and the profits to be able to invest in your business to continue to improve and grow.” You hit the nail right on the head with that. That’s incredible advice.

It’s very important to pay attention to that number. Things do get expensive. A lot of business owners are afraid to increase their prices because they’re afraid of losing business. It’s a common fear, and I see this all the time. There is a client of mine who provided dental supplies. She was always working so hard. She was making a decent profit, but compared to the amount of work she was putting in, she wasn’t.

I was telling her, “Your gross profit margin doesn’t look very healthy. It continues to decline. Why don’t you raise your prices?” She said, “If I do that, then I’ll lose business.” I sat her down and did the math. I said, “If you raise your price from this to this, how much business will you lose?” She said, “At least 20%.” I said, “Let’s say you’ve got 10 clients and you’re making $1,000 per client. You’re making $10,000. If you’re going to raise it by this much, then you lose 20%. You will make more money even after you lose the 20% of clients than you’re making today.”

When she saw that on paper in numbers, she got the confidence to do that. She did lose, but her gross profit increased and her bottom line increased. She takes four vacations a year. She’s so happy when she comes and sees me. Her quality of life has changed for the better. It made me so happy. What we do goes beyond numbers. It improves the quality of people’s lives. It improves the quality of their mind. It affects their family. That is where my passion is. That is what drives us to do what we do. It’s not just, “Give me your numbers. I’m going to file them.” It’s so much more than that.

Rapid Fire Q&A

This was incredible. Before we have you tell everyone where they can connect with you, we’re going to go through our Rapid-fire section. Are you ready?

I don’t know what that is but go for it. I’m ready.

Don’t worry. Quick answers to these questions. Coffee or tea?

Tea.

If you had the opportunity to have dinner with anyone this evening, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Tony Robbins.

Why?

I adore him as my mentor.

Is there a book that you could recommend to our audience that had a big influence on you in your business?

I do have several books, but Keith Cunningham’s work, The Road Less Stupid. It’s a good book. It helps business owners avoid dumb mistakes people make all the time and they don’t even realize it. I read a lot of spiritual books. My favorite is Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now and Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul. For me, I find it’s a very good balance for an inside-out. For business owners, typically, a lot of Tony Robbins’ books are great as well. Unshakeable is good.

I have every single one of those on my shelf. The Power of Now is downstairs, but I have all of them. They’re very good books. I have not read The Road Less Stupid, though. That is coming. That is on my list of books to get to.

Keith has written another book. I can’t remember the name. It’s not coming to my head at the moment, but there are two books of his I liked. Jay Abraham’s books are good as well, the one where he talks about increasing revenue sales. Jay Abraham is good with the growth of business sales.

Next question, what is the number one thing that business owners are doing that’s killing their revenue?

They are coming in their own way. Their limiting beliefs are coming in their own ways.

Let’s say you are a business owner. You’re doing $10 million annual revenue and I walk through your front door and I hand you a $300,000 check. How would you suggest that they invest that $300,000 to grow their profits?

It depends on the business. Some people will say, “I’m going to buy more equipment for production. I’m going to hire more people to do that.” It depends on business to business. A lot of the time, people struggle even at that level of revenue with cashflow. It’s surprising that I say this, but they do struggle with cashflow in that.

It will be very easy for the business owner to get sucked into the operations of it. Whereas if they can step back and say, “This is the money I wasn’t expecting. It’s coming. What did I always want to do to improve?” If they’ve got their heads in the game to always grow and improvise their bottom line, then they will already know what needs to be done with that money.

My last question for you is, what is the biggest obstacle that you had to overcome in your life to build the success that you have?

It’s all of the above. It was the mindset shift of, “If I accept more clients, it’s going to mean more work for me.” That was the biggest one that a lot of people can relate to. I’m going to share that more. Taking on more work does not have to translate to more work for me. If I’ve got the systems in place and I’ve got the team adequately trained, and they are following certain standards, it does not have to mean more work for me. I’m proud that I have overcome that.

We are growing beautifully. We are growing organically. A lot of our new clients are referred to us. We’re not advertising as such or marketing in any way. We provide such excellent service that people hear of us and they come to us. We’re accepting new work. I also spoke to a client of mine one time. I said to him, “You can easily 2X.” I went through the numbers. He said, “I don’t think I can cope.” I looked at him and was like, “Why not? You have a team.” He was afraid of the growth.

Within 1 year or 18 months, he 2X. He did exactly what I told him he could do. We were able to do that because I did it for myself. Even when it came to pricing, I was so underpriced when I started out. It was my limiting belief as it is a lot of my clients. Every pain point that I see my client go through, most likely I’ve been through. I’m able to relate to that. That is why we have a very good relationship when you can relate easily to the other person. You relate to their pain point, understand what they’re going through, and tell them, “It can be this way because I’ve been there and I’ve done it like this.”

That’s beautiful. Please tell the audience where they can connect with you if they’d like to do so.

They can reach out to us on our phone number at (905) 567-0706. They can also visit our website www.TaxAccountantIDM.com. These are the great two ways that they can reach out. On the website, they can send us an email and we’ll be in touch with them.

Thank you so much for joining us on the show.

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. You are right. I did have fun. I did what I’m most passionate about, which is helping business owners.

Thank you.

You’re so welcome.

Important Links

• IDM Chartered Professional Accountants
• The Road Less Stupid
• The Power of Now
• The Untethered Soul
• Unshakeable

About shali Mulchandani, CPA, CGA, CPA (CO), FCCA (UK)

Founder, IDM Chartered Professional Accountants | Business Coach | Author | Tax Strategist

Ishali Mulchandani is a powerhouse in the world of tax optimization and business strategy. A CPA qualified in three countries—the UK, USA, and Canada—she is the visionary founder of IDM Chartered Professional Accountants, where she helps entrepreneurs and business owners legally reduce their tax burdens through proven tax optimization strategies.

With a passion for empowering business owners to achieve financial success, Ishali goes beyond numbers. She is also a business coach, mentor, and soon-to-be author of the highly anticipated book, “Achieving Business Prosperity.” This transformative book delves into the connection between inner harmony and external success, offering entrepreneurs a roadmap to align their mindset, leadership, and financial strategies for lasting wealth and fulfillment.

Recognized for her expertise and holistic approach to financial success, Ishali has built a reputation for helping clients retain more of their hard-earned income, scale their businesses with confidence, and navigate complex financial landscapes with ease. Her mission is simple yet powerful: to turn tax savings into business growth opportunities and help her clients build financially thriving enterprises.

A thought leader in her field, Ishali combines her deep financial acumen with strategic coaching to guide entrepreneurs from financial chaos to clarity, from uncertainty to confidence, and from stagnation to unstoppable success.

Whether through one-on-one coaching, expert tax planning, or her upcoming book, Ishali is committed to helping ambitious professionals achieve financial independence while cultivating a life of balance and purpose.

Connect with Ishali Mulchandani and discover how to take control of your finances, optimize your taxes, and unlock your full business potential.