Getting Business Owners 200K with the ERC Credit with Josh Zieglowsky: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down getting business owners$200 ,000 with the ERC credits. To drop these value bombs, I brought Josh Zyglowski into EO Fire Studios. Josh has been instrumental in getting ERC potentially to a$30 billion valuation. In today's foundation, we talk about how ERC is not a loan. You don't pay it back. How it was designed to help business owners recover from the pandemic and owe so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Josh and our sponsors.

0:37Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies. Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software.

1:14Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Josh, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? What's up, Fire Nation? And I would say something that people disagree with is I'm always telling people to take your shot. And sometimes people don't take their shot and they continue to kind of stay in a shell for a long time and they don't take that risk. But what that builds is regret. And I always say we regret the things we don't do. We don't regret the things we've tried, even though it becomes a success or a failure.

1:57So I would say that's my top one. I love that. I took a shot 10 years ago, Fire Nation, and I'm still taking shots every day. And as I mentioned in the intro, we're talking about getting business owners$200 ,000 with the ERC credit. And I want to just start off by asking, what the heck is the ERC credit? I think the biggest overview is during the pandemic, there was the PPP and EIDL. This is the last COVID relief fund stimulus package that's available to business owners, yet I would say 70 to 80 % of business owners don't know about it. I would say that's probably the case. So let's learn about it.

2:36Awesome. Love it. How I even really discovered it is I was looking for stimulus money for another business I have or had per se. And Biden, I found out Biden amended this. And I talked to a couple of tax people, a couple of payroll companies, and no one could help me. And believe me, I thought it was too good to be true. And then I really dove into it and found out that there's billions of dollars, around$400 billion they've earmarked for this. Yet at the time, this is a year ago, 10 out of 10 business owners didn't know about it. And this has been amended a few different times where you may have been told at one point from your professional that you don't qualify.

3:16But because of the amendments, you probably do qualify. What about people in Puerto Rico? Do we qualify? You do. As long as there's W-2 employees, as far as businesses, they would qualify. Wow. I mean, Fire Nation, this is something that I would have to say is a no flipping brainer. So let's go back a little bit, Josh. I want to learn a little bit more about you. I mean, you said you've had businesses in the past and a couple of things along those lines before you got to what you're doing now and your main focus. Tell us your story. I was in mortgages before in my early twenties. And then I went to and learned how to be a real estate investor.

3:51Started flipping homes for a long time. And then about six, seven years ago, learned how to do commercial real estate, did multifamily. And then I got with a really good mentor where I learned how to do commercial real estate on the triple net side, the retail, flex industrial, medical and dental offices. And then I started, you know, kind of diversifying as an entrepreneur about two, three years ago. Started a few different businesses just as a minority owner and you know how i really discovered this one again is uh just trying to find extra stimulus because it's an oil business but in wyoming i live in utah and i don't know if you remember uh john but in 2020 there was a day that the price per barrel was negative 30 a barrel so my oil business was hurting and uh and i was just trying to find extra stimulus for them and come to find out this program is similar to PPP, but not so much.

4:46Where PPP was a loan that was forgiven later and you had to specify what you're using the money for, this is forgiven right when you receive it. And it's up to$26 ,000 per W-2 employee. And that's why I mentioned about people in Puerto Rico, they qualify as long as they have W-2 employees. 1099, unfortunately, this program isn't for them. Very fascinating stuff. Now, as I'm kind of doing a little reading through this and we chatted a little bit about the fact of employee retention credit. What exactly does this mean at the nuts and bolts? I mean, what are you saving on? How are you getting this credit?

5:20How are you qualifying? Let's talk about a little more specific details. Because it's been amended a few different times, where it started is up to$26 ,000 per W-2 employee. There's$5 ,000 available for 2020 if you had employees during that time. And the term means employee retention credit. And why they call it a credit and not a grant is in a grant, you have to specify what you're using the grant for, where this you can use it for whatever you want. And there's 21 ,000 available up to in 2021. The biggest qualifications is, do you have 500 employees or less? Because this is a small business type of credit.

5:56Then did you have a 20 % revenue loss or have you had a full or partial shutdown or have you had a supply chain disruption? And when that supply chain disruption amendment started in about November of 21, that's when what I always say is the barn door went wide open with this, where even Forbes in an article about two months ago saying 80 % of businesses qualify for this. Wow. Fire Nation, 80 % because of that third one right there, that barn door just flew way the wide open. Can you give us a specific example of a client who you've worked with, who this has been a real game changer for? We don't need specific names of the people or the company, but just like an overall gist of like a real life example of how this has worked for somebody?

6:39Two come to mind. And the reason why I say two come to mind is people say, okay, well, it's up to 500, but what's as low as? It's as low as one employee. As long as that employee isn't the owner, then you could have one other employee. And what has impacted me is two companies per se is one, basically she's a food prep company, probably about four or five employees. She got about$30 ,000 or$40 ,000. And she was ecstatic and said, man, this was a game changer for me, Josh, where I've had clients that, you know, even this is available to nonprofits, Baptist Church, we just did that was a little over$3 million.

7:21Not a huge impact. The other one is a local pizza joint, has about five or six locations. I got them about$400 ,000. And they were like, wow, we're actually talking about starting an extra store or two. And this helps with that. And what does that do, John? It really adds another 20 or 40 employees, because that could be one or two locations. And that's really what the program is for is to re-stimulate the economy and help the business owners get back on their feet based on what happened during the pandemic. Fire Nation, if you're not getting fired up about the possibilities of what this could impact your business and how this could impact your business, check your pulse.

8:00And we got some more things we're talking about with the specifics when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? Are you looking to learn the proven processes and success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories? See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee.

8:33Yes, it's month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Schedule your free personal 13 point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference, you will interact with Clay directly. See thousands of real success stories and learn about attending the Thrive Time Show two-day in-person workshop featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, today at ThriveTimeShow.com slash EOFire. Become the next success story, schedule a free consultation, and request tickets to join football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, at Clay Clark's next business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire.

9:16Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business, and they are also our featured partner, High Level. If you're an entrepreneur, coach, agency, or course creator looking to grow faster and smarter. High Level is the all-in-one platform that replaces your entire tech stack. Seriously, think ClickFunnels, Calendly, MailChimp, Kajabi, and even your CRM all rolled up into one powerful white label solution. You can build funnels, send SMS and email campaigns, schedule appointments, manage pipelines, run memberships, and even launch your own branded mobile app.

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10:21So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. All right, Josh, we're back. And I know you said the barn door has pretty much been flipped wide open and I get that, but let's get specific on who qualifies for this credit? You know, beyond everybody, below 500 employees, et cetera, who specifically qualifies for this credit? Well, I always tell people this, don't pre-qualify yourself. You know, the way we've had our system set up, John, is someone goes on our website, which is myercspecialist.com slash fire.

11:06It takes them about five or 10 minutes to go through a survey. And at that point, it tells them whether they're qualified or not. So we don't ask for a credit card. We don't ask for money up front. We actually only get paid if they get paid on the very back end, which is a percentage of what they get approved for. So we're working our tails off to get them the max amount of credit possible. The supply chain piece is really wide open. And again, I always say, don't pre-qualify yourself. I mean, I can tell you, plumbers, electricians, restaurants. What's funny is we've even had attorney firms say, well, our supply chain was courthouses.

11:40They were shut down. And so So we consider that our supply chain. When I first heard this, I'm like, oh, supply, that's probably what's sitting at the ports not being able to come in. No, it's whatever your supply is. And they weren't able to conduct business on a regular basis because courthouses were shut down. Fire Nation, again, this is something you can and should get really excited about. He did mention a URL that I'll say right now, myercspecialists.com. slash fire. So myercspecialists.com slash fire. So obviously that's where we're going to start. If we want to learn more, we're going to go to that URL, which we'll have linked up in the show notes, Fire Nation.

12:25We're going to fill out the form. We'll wait. We'll get contacted by you. But what if someone's listening right now and they're like, I want to know where to learn more. I want to know where to start beyond that first step, which you're going to do. What other recommendations do you have for our listeners? I always go back to when I started about it. I heard about it. I Googled ERC credit. Obviously, there's some advertising companies or whatnot. But after about two, three advertisers, you'll go to the irs.gov website and you'll see employee retention credit. And then you'll think, okay, this is from the IRS.

12:57I should have my CPA and tax professional go over this. Well, the reason why they haven't told you about it is because number one, they probably don't do it. But the other part is 90 % of CPAs or tax professionals, they do your 1040s and your 1120s. This is a payroll credit. So 90 % of them don't do payroll. Well, then why hasn't my payroll company told me about it? Majority of those don't amend your 941s. This program's technically expired. It expired at the end of quarter three of 21, but we can amend someone's return 941x for three years. So where can they learn more about it besides going to the irs.gov website our website myercspecialist.com slash fire we have videos we have anything you need really that kind of encompasses what this program is and so we've made it very simple you know we need to update i was gonna i'm laughing because i'm looking at the website we need kind of need to update it because we're we're about 1.8 billion dollars of credit achieved so far in our website right now is at 1.1.

14:01So we definitely want to help any type of business. You know, sometimes people say, well, you probably just want to, you know, work, help the people that have two, three, 400 employees, right? No, I told you the story about the person that had, you know, two employees, three employees, four employees to the pizza joint that had 20 to 40. Like those are the, those are the best stories because those ones, those companies, small businesses, very small business, were highly impacted by the pandemic. And it definitely gives us a good relationship with them to know that we can help them out and show them something that they didn't know about.

14:35Fire Nation, I'm going through this website right now too, and there's some really exciting stats. I mean, 6 ,030 businesses reached$1.1 billion in credit recovered. Of course, that number's almost double that now, as Josh has shared. Over 108 ,000 employees qualified. And of course, all these numbers are much bigger now. There's a really cool video that he has where you can kind of go through and get a nice little intro video of what's going on. And they kind of go with some details, you know, how it's up to 26 ,000 per employee available for 2020 and Q1 through Q3 of 2021. No limit on funding and ERC is not alone, which is huge to know.

15:14It's a refundable tax credit and so much more stuff. I mean, this is just frequently asked questions. You can fill the form out, of course, and learn all of that jazz. So, Josh, before we let you go, take the mic, take the stage, share with Fire Nation why you've made such a pivot and a focus into this as your main number one desire to get out to the world. and then we'll say goodbye. Thanks, John. And I appreciate you having me on. You know, I would say the last summary of all this is I'm a business owner. This was made by business owners for business owners. And I had businesses that did really well.

15:55I had businesses that didn't do so well. And the ones that didn't do so well, I had partners in those businesses because the pandemic, you know, we were having to shut those businesses down. If I would have known about this prior to doing something like that, I'd probably be in a different point in those businesses. And so this is definitely something that, like you said, it's a refundable tax credit. You don't have to pay it back. It's not a loan. And this is something that could help if you're a machinist, adding more machinery that you've been wanting to update. If you're a plumber and you want to add more employees or new equipment, it's just whatever it is that could help stimulate and help you get in a better situation.

16:38we want to be that. We have the team in place to get you the max amount of credit possible. If you're hearing this for the first time and you're thinking, oh, I'm going to go see if this person does it. I would tell you if they do it and they're a professional, they would have already told you. You know, we want to help as many businesses as possible. You talked about our website says 6 ,000. We just surpassed 9 ,000 yesterday. And so we want to get up to close to 40 ,000 business, you know, reach by the end of this. Like the credits recovered, the employees qualified, that's okay. But if we can get the most amount of businesses reached by this, that's our goal.

17:15And so we've made that a precedence that let's work on, it doesn't matter how many employees they have, if they have two, three, and four employees, if they have 499 employees, we have the team in place to help them get the max amount of credit. And again, we don't charge up front, We charge 15 % of what you get approved for when the money comes. The money does come in six to eight months from the IRS. That is their backlog. I can't control that. And again, John, thanks for having me on. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity. Josh, straight fire brother and fire nation. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

17:49And you've been hanging out with Jay-Z and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com. Just type Josh in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up with links to everything that we've talked about. One more time, that URL, myercspecialists.com slash fire. That's specialists with an S, myercspecialists.com slash fire. And Josh, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Josh and Fire Nation. Successful entrepreneurs are great at three things, productivity, discipline, and focus.

18:33That's why I created the Mastery Journal so you can master productivity, discipline, and focus in 100 days. And we're talking step by step. Visit themasteryjournal.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at Thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire.

19:13Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software, say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.