The pre-call sequence

Hey {FIRST NAME},

You're booked. You'll be talking with one of our tax strategists at the time you picked, and your details and link are here: [CALL LINK]

I want you to get as much out of this call as possible, so here's what to have ready.

1. Your last two years of tax returns. The full returns, with all the schedules, not just the summary page. A lot of what we find is in the schedules.
2. A list of every income source. Your W-2s, any business income, and especially any K-1s. If you're not sure how a K-1 is being reported, bring it anyway, because that's one of the first things we'll want to look at.
3. Your rental property details, if you have any. What you paid, when you bought it, whether it's rented long-term or short-term, and roughly how many hours a year you spend on it.

If you don't own a rental yet, that's fine. Part of the call is figuring out whether one even makes sense for you.

Sometimes the call pays for itself before anyone decides anything. One client, Erik Solverson, wrote that our team "quickly noticed a five-figure error in my latest tax return," and that "that 45-minute call generated a 2.3x Return on Investment."

Over the next couple of days I'll send you a few short notes on what our strategist will look at, what working with us costs, and the questions most people have going in. Give them a read if you can. You'll walk into the call already knowing the answers.

Hey {FIRST NAME},

I want to show you what our team actually does on a call like yours, using one real client, because it'll tell you more than any description I could write.

Tyler is an orthopedic surgeon. He earns about $750,000 a year, and when he came to us he was paying over $232,000 a year in tax.

He'd asked his old CPA about real estate. The answer he got was that he made too much money, and there was no benefit to him owning real estate.

So Tyler did what a lot of high earners do. He kept working, kept paying, and figured that was just the price of doing well.

Here's what our strategist looked at, in the order they looked at it.

How his income was classified. Tyler had invested in an imaging center, and it paid him through a K-1, about $280,000. That K-1 was being filed as active income. But Tyler was a passive investor. He wasn't involved in running the place.

That one detail matters more than it sounds. Passive income can be offset by passive losses, like the depreciation from a rental. Active income generally can't. So as long as that K-1 was filed as active, a rental really couldn't do much for him, and in that narrow sense his old CPA wasn't wrong. He just never asked whether the K-1 was filed correctly in the first place.

His real estate. Tyler already owned a rental in Arizona. We did a cost segregation study on it, which breaks the property into parts that can be depreciated much faster and pulls a big chunk of the write-off into the early years.

What else could fit. With the K-1 classified correctly, there was room to use more passive losses, so he added some real estate syndications.

His tax bill went from over $232,000 to just under $130,000. That's more than $102,000 saved in one year.

He didn't quit. He didn't become a real estate professional. And there was nothing in the gray area about any of it. His income just got filed the way it should've been all along, and he started planning before the year ended instead of after.

Your call follows the same shape. Our strategist will go through your income piece by piece and look at:

• How each piece is classified, and whether that's right
• Where it's routed: to you personally, through an S corp, through a partnership
• Anything on your last two returns that looks off
• What you could still change before December 31

Then, if planning makes sense for you, they'll walk you through what your plan would look like and what working with us costs. I'll send you those numbers ahead of time, so nothing on the call catches you off guard.

If you'd like to hear Tyler's story from start to finish, I recorded it here: [CASE STUDY VIDEO]

Hey {FIRST NAME},

Matt here. I'm Amanda's husband and her co-founder at Keystone.

Before your call, I want to take two questions off the table. They come up constantly, and I'd rather you spend your time with our strategist on your own numbers.

"Is this aggressive? Is it going to get me audited?"

I understand the worry. Look at what's out there right now. "Pay zero tax." "Write off your Lambo." "Have your trust buy you a supercar." I've spent a lot of this year debunking that stuff on my Instagram, because it gets people into real trouble.

That isn't what we do.

Everything our team recommends is written into the tax code. Cost segregation. Bonus depreciation, which the One Big Beautiful Bill made permanent at 100% last year. Defined benefit plans. S corps and the PTE tax. The material participation rules for short-term rentals.

Congress put those rules there on purpose, to get people to invest in property, build businesses and save for retirement.

What separates a strategy that holds up from one that doesn't is almost always the facts underneath it and the paperwork behind it.

If you're using the short-term rental strategy, you actually have to put in the hours, and you have to be able to show it. If we reclassify a K-1, it's because you really are a passive investor, the way Tyler was.

That's what Amanda means by "change your facts." We don't change how your facts are described. We help you change the facts themselves, legally, and then they get reported accurately.

Amanda and I put our names on two BiggerPockets books about exactly this, The Book on Tax Strategies for the Savvy Real Estate Investor and The Book on Advanced Tax Strategies. Nothing in the gray area has been the rule at Keystone for over 20 years, and we're not about to change it for anyone.

"My CPA is good. Wouldn't they have told me?"

Maybe. But think about what you've actually asked them to do.

Most people hand over their documents in March and ask their CPA to file. And most CPAs are trained to do exactly that, accurately and on time. That's real work, and it matters.

Planning is a different job. It happens before the year ends, and it means asking questions your CPA may never have been asked to ask.

When people bring their returns to us, we find things more often than you'd think. Tarek and Heather El Moussa wrote in their review, "They saved us big time when they found some errors in our old tax returns."

Another client, Adriana Braciak, wrote that our strategist "identified key mistakes in my previous tax filing that my current CPA had made."

And about 40% of the roughly 1,400 people who've called us said the same thing in the same words: "My CPA never told me any of this."

So your call isn't about judging your CPA. It's a second set of eyes, from people whose whole job is planning, on income that's probably a lot bigger and more complicated than it was a few years ago.

Your call details are right here whenever you need them: [CALL LINK]

Hey {FIRST NAME},

I want to be upfront with you about price before your call. I don't think anyone should have to sit through a whole conversation before they hear a number.

If our team thinks planning is a fit for you, there are two ways to work with us.

Custom Tax Planning · $19,995. Our tax advisor team, a review of your tax returns, unlimited private advisory calls and emails, and a personalized tax savings plan with both the immediate moves and the long-term ones.

Comprehensive Tax & Wealth Planning · $39,995. Everything above, plus access to Matt and me, our outside advisor network and real estate thought leaders, and unlimited consulting across your business, real estate and retirement, with generational wealth in mind.

Tax return filing is a separate fee.

Those are real numbers, and they're not small. So let's run the math the way I'd want you to.

"That's too expensive."

Tyler's plan saved him more than $102,000 in the first year. Against $19,995, that's about five times the fee, in year one.

The physician couple I've mentioned saw their bill come down by over $237,000, and they moved an extra $196,000 into retirement instead of to the IRS. Against $39,995, the tax savings alone come to almost six times the fee.

The W-2 couple earning over $746,000 saved $155,873 with one short-term rental.

I can't promise you any of those numbers. Every household's different, and some people just aren't at the point yet where planning pays for itself. That's what the call is for. Our strategist will look at your income and your returns and tell you honestly whether the savings look like a clear multiple of the fee.

If they don't, you'll hear that. And if the full program isn't right for you yet, we also have a self-guided Tax Savings Playbook for $1,495.

"I'll do it next year."

This is the one I'd gently push back on.

Most of the moves that matter for this year have to happen before December 31. A rental has to be bought and placed in service. Payroll for your kids or your spouse has to run this year. Planning that starts in December is mostly too late.

So waiting until next year doesn't pause anything. It means this year gets filed the way last year did, through the rearview mirror.

I know that feeling because I lived it. I watched wealthy clients plan every single year at my Big 4 job, and I still told myself it was for someone else. I paid a lot of tax I didn't need to before I stopped saying "later."

What the call is like.

Our strategist's job is to look at your numbers and tell you what they see. You'll leave knowing how your income is classified, what you could still change this year, and roughly what that's worth. The decision's yours from there.

One client, Nick L., wrote, "From the very first conversation, they showed me strategies that made an immediate difference in my tax savings."

Your call details are here: [CALL LINK]

Hey {FIRST NAME},

Before you sit down with our strategist tomorrow, here's ten minutes of prep that'll make the call a lot more useful.

• Your last two years of tax returns, the full versions with the schedules
• A list of your income sources, including any K-1s
• Your rental property details, if you own any

And one question to think about tonight: if you could change one thing about this year's tax bill, what would it be?

Say that in the first few minutes of the call. It helps our strategist spend the time on what you actually care about.

If something's come up and you need a different time, you can move it here: [RESCHEDULE LINK]

Hey {FIRST NAME},

Today you're talking with one of our tax strategists. Here's your link: [CALL LINK]

Have your returns open, find somewhere quiet, and if you can, don't book anything right after it.

For a lot of people, today's the first time anyone has looked at their taxes through the windshield instead of the rearview mirror. That's the whole reason Matt and I started Keystone.

If you only ask one thing, ask this: "Is my income classified the right way?"

I hope it's a really useful call.