And good evening.

You've got More Than Money, you've got Gene Dickison, your host, your personal financial adviser, and for the next half an hour I am at your service.

We are here to answer your questions about all the important matters of finance within your life, whether it's an investment question, income tax question, estate planning or perhaps a business question.

Indeed, you've reached exactly the right spot.

And we're happy to share our many, many years of experience with you this evening.

It's challenging, absolutely.

out there.

Lots of you are getting vaccinated.

Maybe you've got your first, on your way to your second, maybe you're complete.

That's fantastic.

So, as our country reopens, we talk about the opportunities for businesses to reopen as well and perhaps hopefully have a much better year in 2021 than they did last year.

So we need courage.

We need creativity.

We need to meet the challenges out there.

And of course, along the way, we need to be courteous to our friends, our neighbors, our community.

They're going through the same things you are.

So take a deep breath, put on a smile.

It'll make it go easier for everyone.

Businesses are always challenged, always challenged.

In the best of times they're challenged.

in difficult times the challenges are simply exponential.

So it's not unusual that they may turn to some resource to give them some assistance.

And quite often that's a coach of some form, perhaps a business coach, a growth coach.

And our American story starts with that topic as we turn our attention and welcome Mr Rick Franzo.

Rick, welcome.

- Thank you so much.

I love what you said, Gene, about being kind.

I feel that there's always time for it and I feel that it's always has a place.

- It absolutely does.

And yet, sadly, too many people believe that to succeed in business, you've got to be hard nosed.

You've got to be rude.

You've got to be tougher than the next guy.

Has that been your experience?

- I have dealt with business owners and professionals who have felt that way.

However, I feel the pivot is relationship building, and I feel that that's really where the rubber hits the road.

It's really great to see businesses transform and not be so caught up in what they think that they need to do, because really, in reality, nobody teaches somebody who goes into business how to be a businessperson.

- That's a fact.

So tell folks the company that you've got and give us just a 30-second summary of what you do.

- Absolutely.

So, I'm a growth coach, and so we're a franchise.

I've been a business owner for about three years with The Growth Coach.

My back story kind of leads to that, but we'll get to that in a minute.

And so what I do is I help businesses level up.

I help them to get unstuck if they are stuck.

And so everybody has a definitive point A and a point B.

What I do is I help them to realize how to get there, because a lot of times, businesses, they don't know how to get bigger, better, stronger, faster and smarter.

So that's why you have a coach to help you along on that journey.

- You know, one of the smartest men that I've ever bumped into over my lifetime, in talking about business says that too often business owners work in their business, they don't work very much on their business.

I'm guessing that with the work that you do with your coaching, you teach them now's the time to work on your business.

- Nothing has brought this more into play than the pandemic did this past year or so.

You know, we can work in our business.

We're very good at the technical part of what we do in the business.

But very few times do we work on the business and so we don't learn how to market correctly or to leverage that out, how to do the backend stuff and how to do that.

So to work on things that build revenue, taking time on the training programs.

But 100%, Gene, not enough working on the business, more working in the business.

So that's where the pivot really is now.

- The word pivot is a pretty popular one right now in business.

And if you're talking watching Shark Tank, particularly, where was the pivot when we started this direction?

We had to pivot.

You've had a couple pivots in your life.

And for folks who are looking at a hale and hearty gentleman here today... - Thank you.

- Fantastic.

They might be surprised to learn that it wasn't many years ago, if my memory is correct, around 2009, you were paralyzed.

- Yeah, it hit me out of nowhere.

And so this is really, you know, why it's so important.

You know, we could talk about what we do, how we do it and why we do it, but really we start with the why.

So, in 2009, I was playing horseshoes at a barbecue when I lost all strength and coordination in the right side of my body.

It was really scary.

It scared me enough for me to go to my doctor and he sent me to a neurologist who did some physical tests and said, yeah, there's some weakness on the right side of the body.

We're going to put you in for an MRI.

So I went in for an MRI.

I finished it up, went home, had dinner and went to work the next day.

They told me that I would get the results in about a week or so and I wasn't really worried.

I was OK. You know, I felt better.

I thought maybe, you know, I was burning the candle at both ends and, you know, I just was, you know... - Dehydration... - A little dehydration, you know.

Sure, it could have been anything, but they called me the next day at my place of employment.

And so I took the call and they said, Mr Franzo, we usually don't make this type of call, but you have an enormous brain tumor.

And we have a neurosurgeon from a larger hospital in the Lehigh Valley up here - this is in the Poconos - here today.

And you have a one o'clock appointment.

And I just dropped the phone and I thought, I'm dead.

I knew nothing about brain tumors.

I thought all brain tumors were killers.

OK?

- Of course.

- I went home, I told my family.

It was shocking, to say the least, chaotic, to say the least.

That's really, you know, minimizing everything.

But I went to the appointment and they said, we feel that you don't have cancer.

What you have is a benign brain tumor because of the size of it.

When you were at the barbecue, it hit critical mass.

It had nowhere else to go.

It crushed your brain down as far as it could go and actually pushed your skull up.

And so you're going to need surgery from two teams of neurosurgeons and you're going to need it soon.

It was quite transformative, and so I had to, in a very short time, get my affairs in order, the things that I didn't have in order, and go and have this surgery.

Spoiler alert, I lived.

OK?

And so I had ten and a half hours of surgery, two full teams of neurosurgeons.

But because my cancer was benign, OK, there wasn't a chance of, you know, it being malignant and spreading throughout my body, but they couldn't save my skull.

So all of this from here all the way around is titanium.

And I'm still pretty.

So, I mean, you know, we still have that.

However, I came out and I was paralyzed from the waist down.

- It did affect your vision if you're thinking you're pretty.

- You think?

I don't know.

I'm looking at you and I thought, so pretty.

I thought this was a mirror.

- Very kind.

- Yes.

- Your judgment's iffy.

- Well, that's one of the things.

Brain injury, know what I mean?

- Goodness.

- When it hits the brain, it's never the same.

- Paralyzed.

- Paralyzed.

- And how long did it take from a physical therapy standpoint to get you back to mobile?

- It was about six, seven weeks until I became mobile.

Thankfully, things hooked up and physical therapy is like coaching.

Do you remember when you first started to walk?

- Not particularly.

- Nobody really does.

So the therapists, actually, they're the experts in getting you from point A to point B, OK?

And so they had to tell me how to sit and lean and shift my weight so that I could stand.

They couldn't stand for me, but they could show me the techniques and show me the strategy to do so.

So, after about six and a half, seven weeks, I walked out under my own power with a walker and leg braces, but I still walked out.

That was my therapy goal, months of outpatient therapy.

And so, you know, the journey really never ended, because two years later, I was diagnosed with another brain tumor, benign again, a word that I am not really fond of, but non-cancerous.

And in 2017, I was diagnosed with another type of brain tumor.

I'm very good at brain tumors.

I don't know if you realize that!

And that one took away part of my hearing and my balance.

- The Growth Coach - you grow tumors pretty well.

- I do, yeah.

- Is there a likelihood that there's more to come?

- There is.

Statistically.

But I always say, you're a statistic of one.

I'm very involved in the brain tumor community.

And so I started to mentor and coach people in the brain tumor community to get from their point A to their point B, no matter what the diagnosis.

And that really was my entrance into business coaching.

I did some light consulting.

And so business coaching is not unlike going through therapy in a lot of ways.

I can't do the work for the business itself, but I can show them strategies and proven processes where they can bring balance, they can bring, you know, success, whatever that looks like to them, to their professional and their personal lives.

- Fantastic.

- Yeah.

- Let's circle back to the first tumor.

Your wife, Debbie.

It had to be devastating for her to hear this.

- Yeah.

- What was her progression during all this?

We've heard about physical therapy, we've heard about your progression, but how did she progress, as she was going through the exact same thing you were going through, save the surgery, but she was going through all of that, maybe even more.

How did she do that?

- You are spot-on.

100% more.

Caregivers always have to endure more.

We have the easy part.

We're on the inside looking out, OK?

People that are caregivers are on the outside looking in.

So they have that different perspective and they only have so much control over so much.

And so it was really transformative for her to have to not only deal with it, but to move on past that and really have the faith that everything was going to work out OK. And you know, the hope.

It's definitely my favorite four-letter word.

Hope doesn't always mean you're going to survive, but hope is something very tangible.

It's real.

You can wrap your arms around it.

And so that's really where we ended up, is, you know, we kept moving forward.

My wife, strongest person I know, my mom was there, my daughter was there all through my therapy.

I had great support, but I felt incredibly alone, because I felt that I was the only one going through it.

And that's when I started getting involved in the brain tumor community.

And so business owners many times feel like they're alone.

They're kind of, you know, on Mars and there's nobody to help them.

And even though there's so many wonderful people and services and information around them, but they absolutely have to get past, you know, the pride and, you know, actually ask for help.

I had to be two things that I wasn't when I went through therapy, which I am now, which is patient and compliant.

I know.

Big sigh.

- What a challenge.

- Yeah.

- For any man.

Most women as well.

But goodness, to have to go through an experience that who knew it was going to end up being maybe the foundation of the balance of your career of learning patience and learning compliance and learning strategies and learning to be coached so that you can be a coach.

That's pretty powerful stuff.

I'm a big fan of physical therapists.

Our middle daughter went through college with half a dozen of her closest friends going through physical therapy.

I have to call them all doctors now and they're just 11-year-old girls, they're not...

But I have to call them doctors.

They're fantastic.

That that skill set, being able to know everything they need to know physically, biologically, but then to be able to communicate that with you, you have to have drawn something from that that's useful today.

- Absolutely.

So communication is absolutely so critical.

You know, it's even beyond the why.

Why is it important and valuable to you?

We can't really paint in broad strokes.

Success is going to look different to everybody, right?

So it has to be what's my driving... You know, really why?

And what's going to get me from point A to point B?

So it's really important.

And, you know, tons of respect for your daughter and for all of her friends and colleagues, because they're the real heroes.

I wouldn't be here without them.

- You're absolutely right.

Now, you're a Poconos boy, born and bred.

Pokenos Central Catholic.

- Yeah.

- And your family, raising your family where you grow up.

Is there somebody in your growing up years, either younger or high school, that maybe gave you a couple of lessons along the way that helped you as you were facing your challenges?

- I think that just we take all of our experiences and it's up to us to do with it what we will.

So I take everything kind of cumulatively and really that helped shape who I am.

Right?

You know, the good, the bad and whatever.

But, you know, there's no such thing as a problem, just an opportunity.

And, you know, definitely, you know, there's the good and the bad with whatever.

So nobody in particular, really.

My mom was always, you know, my driving force.

My father died when I was pretty young.

And so my mom took over and, you know, she worked in a tax office for many years, as you can appreciate.

She coached my baseball team to consecutive winning seasons, only losing one game.

And, you know, so, you know, if anybody's really my hero, it's my mom.

And my corporation is named Hannah HDA Corp.

Right, because I'm a C Corp. And so, Hannah, my grandmother.

H for Hildy, my mother.

D for Debbie, my wife.

And A for Amanda, my daughter.

So my corporation is absolutely named after all of the strongest women in my life and the most impact for me.

- Having a strong mother myself, an amazing wife myself, three amazing daughters, having strong women in our lives really does make a big difference.

- It does.

My two sons said, what about us?

I'm like, what about you?

You know, you're all right, but it's about the ladies.

They'll grow into something, I'm sure, Sooner or later.

Rick, I want to thank you so very much.

Your story's amazing, inspirational.

There's a lot of folks out there facing challenges.

Very few will add up to three brain tumors.

And yet here we are and here you are and making a difference in other people's lives and supporting other folks that have gone through similar things as well.

I want to thank you for spending time with us.

- Thank you for asking me.

- Folks, what an amazing story.

If you are challenged - aren't we all?

- there's a story that maybe puts things a bit into more perspective of, yeah, things are tough, not as tough perhaps as that.

And if Rick can stand tall and be there for his family and be there for his clients, so can you.

But what we are now standing tall and being there for you is to answer your questions on your emails that you've sent to me, Gene@askmtm.com is how they get to me.

I can't promise that your emails will be on a future show.

I can promise you that every single email will be answered personally from either myself or one of our amazing team members on our More Than Money staff.

So let's go to our emails.

Well, you're very, very kind.

Home, fixed annuity, Roth IRA.

Our goal is to get them to her son in the most efficient and effective way and not have them tied up for a very long period of time, not have him frustrated that maybe markets are going down or there's some other restriction that may end up negatively affecting his inheritance.

Wow.

I think this young lady is going to be very, very happy indeed.

Two of the three assets that she is mentioning, the fixed annuity and the Roth IRA will pass directly to her son through her beneficiary designation on each of those type of accounts.

There are many types of accounts that do exactly that.

They have beneficiary designations, naming a specific person, in this case, her son, to receive the funds.

When there is a beneficiary designation, whether it's a Roth IRA, an annuity, a life insurance policy, a 401K, a standard IRA and many, many other types of accounts, when there is a beneficiary designation, that goes outside of the will, it goes outside of the probate process.

It bypasses the probate process.

So as a result, all that will be necessary.

when this young lady has met her maker, is for her son to have death certificates.

They're often issued and supplied by the funeral home as many as is necessary, as many as the beneficiary needs, and they will provide one to each account that requires them.

Once that death benefit has been applied for, once the death certificate has been received, the Roth IRA and the fixed annuity will likely be transferred to her son in a matter of days or weeks, not months or years.

So very, very quickly indeed.

Let's turn our attention to the home.

Beneficiary designations are not appropriate on a home.

That's not the terminology that's used, but it is possible, if she wishes, that she can add her son's name to the deed to her home very inexpensively.

Name him as a joint tenant with rights of survivorship.

Often used with husbands and wives or married couples of any formation.

If you have a JTROS designation, joint tenants rights of survivorship, it means that whomever passes away, the remaining partner, in this case, her son, will automatically inherit the home again.

It does not go through the will.

It does not go through probate.

So if her number one objective, her highest priority is the simplicity, the ease of transfer, she can have all of this arranged.

Two pieces of paper for the Roth and the annuity, which is simply a beneficiary designation.

One project, so to speak, either going through a title insurance company or a real estate attorney to get the deed to her home set up as a JTROS.

And her son will have very, very little to do relative to probate, relative to wrapping up the estate, so to speak.

So I think we've got her where she needs to be.

I think far easier perhaps than she feared.

And, yes, while her experience with her mother's estate was sad and disappointing in terms of how long it took and how costly it may have been, she does not have to follow in those footsteps.

Her son is going to be well taken care of.

Gene@askmtm.com.

Send me your emails.

We're happy to answer those.

Everybody who sends us an e-mail gets a direct response from our More Than Money team.

OK, this is a challenge, unfortunately.

IRAs are typically set up so that the beneficiaries are individuals.

If your dad had been counseled, in my opinion, properly counseled, he would have been told to set up his IRA so that each of you would have been the beneficiary of one third of the IRA.

At his passing that would have happened automatically.

You provide a claim form and a death certificate, and each of you three children would have had your own inherited IRA and life became quite simple.

Unfortunately, it appears that what your father did was name his estate as the beneficiary.

That means the estate has to claim the IRA as both an asset and now, as from a mechanism standpoint, collect the IRA.

That will then be distributed by will, has to go through the probate process, has to obviously be included in the taxable estate.

If your father was in the state of Pennsylvania, 4.5% will be taken out, sent for the Pennsylvania death tax, and other accounting and legal requirements, including final income tax returns, final estate tax returns, etc.

Complications, indeed.

Sadly could have been avoided.

They weren't.

As it is, we simply need to, as they say, play the cards as you've been dealt and this will take some time.

The attorney, unfortunately, has to go through a bit of some hoops before you'll get your money.

And equally unfortunate, it is highly likely that you'll be getting a check that's after tax, and the taxes could be substantial.

Certainly make sure you're in contact with the attorney and perhaps your own tax preparer, maybe not right in the middle of tax season, but to understand what your tax liability may be in the future.

Let's go to another email.

Well, it's always nice to give an answer that folks are hoping for.

And in this case the answer is yup.

Not terribly sophisticated, but it makes the point.

The answer is absolutely yes.

You are quite correct.

In order to contribute to a Roth IRA or a standard IRA, a 401K or a Roth 401K, It requires that the taxpayer have taxable earned income.

Taxable earned income.

Earned income for most of us, for many, many folks, comes from your W-2.

You're an employee, you earned your wage, you earned your salary.

The reality is 1099 employees, they earn their income as well.

It comes in the form of a gross check.

They're responsible for their own income taxes, but retirement for them can still come through a Roth IRA, a standard IRA and, yes, 1099s will work perfectly well.

She shall have no trouble whatsoever.

Gene@askmtm.com.

Send us your email, just as this gentleman did.

Again, yes, yup, yes.

You can draw on your wife's account.

You could have drawn on it as early at age 60.

Because you are now 63, you're actually going to get a higher benefit because you've delayed it for those three years.

And, yes, it will affect your social security benefits because it will allow you to delay your own benefits, which from age 63 to age 70 will rise by about a third.

If you are expecting 3,000 a month, you will likely get closer to 4,000 a month.

So, yes, if taking her benefits allows you to delay your own social security benefit claiming, then you are in a very strong position to gain a tremendous increase in your lifetime benefits from social security.

And again, they will be lifetime.

You cannot outlive them, and they'll be cost of living adjusted of a fashion.

So, yes, using your widower's benefits is a very, very good idea, and hopefully gives you that opportunity to bridge the next seven years to the maximum social security benefit that you've earned.

Folks, speaking of earning it, we spent a very, very engaging show tonight.

Rick Franzo, The Growth Coach, very amazing story.

Three brain tumors.

And yet today still serves himself, his clients, his family.

Fantastic story.

Hopefully you were inspired by that and hopefully you're inspired by our questions and answers to have your own questions answered.

Make sure that you send those out.

Gene@askmtm.com.

Gene@askmtm.com.

We can't promise you that your email will show up on a future show, but we can promise you every single email will be answered.

It is our privilege to serve you in that way.

Thank you so much for spending part of your evening with us on More Than Money.

We'll see you next time right here on More Than Money.