Carlos almost lost the business twice. This episode is about the second time.

He is joined by Ben Kotch, co-founder of AccrueMe, who has been active in e-commerce since 2018 and has looked at close to ten thousand potential investments across hundreds of seven and eight figure e-commerce businesses.

Carlos opens with the story he does not tell often. Early on, a lender offered him thirty thousand dollars on the strength of his Amazon sales. He took it, sent it to China, and waited four months for inventory while the repayments started immediately. Then came the offer of sixty thousand, which felt like rescue and was actually the trap closing. He stacked it four times. What saved the company was his wife putting in personal money. Somebody told him afterward: you are really good at moving money, but not at making money.

This is not an episode about businesses that deserved to fail. It is about the ones doing everything right that still go down.

WHAT'S COVERED

Why a ten percent fee is not a ten percent loan. Ben walks the math: borrow one hundred thousand with a ten thousand dollar fee, pay it back over six months, and you average only fifty thousand of usable capital. That is closer to a thirty or forty percent APR than to ten. E-commerce specialty lenders do not advertise APR, and there are specific reasons for that.

How to compare offers apples to apples. Not the marketing page and not a screenshot from the website. The actual funding documents, run through AI, with three numbers on the table: your real APR, your average capital during the life of the loan, and your monthly payments.

The red flags, in order. Anyone who opens with "we help businesses like yours" has done no research on you. Anyone industry agnostic who wants your car and your house regardless of credit. And the one most sellers read as a feature: if it is extremely easy to get, you are paying for that convenience.

Why the cheap money is expensive. Lenders writing ten and thirty thousand dollar loans carry heavy defaults, so the good operators subsidize the bad ones through higher rates across the whole book. AccrueMe moved its minimum from ten thousand to one hundred thousand for exactly this reason.

The reason type that predicts failure. Sellers who want capital to scale what already works tend to be fine. Sellers who want to take an eight figure baby sock business into gourmet honey do not. Carlos gets honest about being a thousand things guy, and the coaching line that reframed it: you do not split your attention evenly, you pour it all into whatever is struggling most.

Why the fee is not the real problem. The cash flow is. You borrow because cash is tight, and by day two the repayment schedule has made it tighter than before you borrowed.

Plus: what AccrueMe actually does now, which is not what the internet or AI will tell you. The profit share model is gone. It is traditional asset backed credit lines, one hundred thousand to five million, borrowed against a real time borrowing base, with no required payments while you stay inside the loan to value.

Ben's book pick: The Magic of Thinking Big.

CONNECT WITH BEN AND ACCRUEME Apply for funding at app.accrueme.com. You will get a call with Sam, Ben's fraternal twin and business partner, for a high level look before anyone digs into your numbers. Free education on funding lives on the AccrueMe blog. Questions on this episode: ben@accrueme.com. Follow on Instagram at accrueme.

AccrueMe is a proud sponsor of the Wizards of Ecom community.

Part two of Tax Hacks That Save You Thousands, and this is where it gets e-commerce specific.

Carlos is joined again by Rachel Phillips, entrepreneur, founder of Fully Accountable, and Senior VP of Financial Solutions at Belay, for the back half of the list. These are the three hacks aimed squarely at sellers who carry inventory, buy equipment, and pay vendors all year long.

You can start here without hearing part one. Go back for it afterward, because the business structure conversation is what makes everything downstream actually work.

WHAT'S COVERED

Hack 4: Section 179 bonus depreciation. Equipment, vehicles, computers and office furniture written off immediately instead of phased out over three to five years. Rachel walks the math on financing a 100,000 dollar machine and taking the full deduction this year, and why the 2026 ceiling matters most to anyone whose cash is tied up in inventory.

Hack 5: Prepaid expenses. How to look at next year's costs in October and November, go negotiate with your vendors and software providers, prepay in December, and walk away with a better rate and a lower taxable income off the same dollars. Carlos gets honest about why he has never done this well, and what it actually feels like to send a CFO after relationships he built himself.

Hack 6: The old faithfuls. The small ones that only work when you stack them:

• HSAs, including the distribution rule almost nobody knows about
• 529 plans, even for a child who has not been born yet
• Employing your kids without putting them in your Facebook ads
• The home office
• The 6,000 pound vehicle rule
• Keeping a clean chart of accounts so you are not reconstructing a year of expenses in April

Plus where AI genuinely helps with your books, and the exact place it falls down for sellers juggling eight different kinds of Amazon transactions.

Rachel's book pick: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.

CONNECT WITH RACHEL
Find her on LinkedIn, or reach her by email at Belay.

CONNECT WITH BELAY
Text WIZARDS to 55123 for resources and a direct line to their team.

Belay is a proud sponsor of the Wizards of Ecom community.

Carlos opens this one by admitting taxes are his blind spot, so he brought in someone who has built a career on them. Rachel Phillips founded Fully Accountable, an accounting and CFO firm that served e-commerce brands exclusively. After BELAY acquired it, she stayed on and now runs the entire financial solutions division as Senior VP.

Her core point: tax hacks are not something you find in a shoebox of receipts in April. They work because they are a plan you put in place inside your business strategy. This is part one of two, covering the first three hacks, the ones at the top of the stack that make everything downstream work.

In part one:

• Why "just be an S Corp" is bad advice. An S Corp is a tax election, not a business structure, and most people passing the advice around cannot define it. Rachel walks the real options and explains why the C Corp still earns its place when you need to raise money or take on debt.
• How you get paid changes with your structure. Guaranteed payments versus a W-2 salary, and how the wrong entity can quietly put you out of compliance.
• When to actually build a tax plan. The profit and revenue marks Rachel uses, why inventory-heavy sellers should start earlier, and who belongs in the room. Your CPA and your CFO, not your bookkeeper, and not a business lawyer who does not do tax.
• Retirement plans as a retention tool. The SEP IRA most owners have never heard of, how matching turns into money you never paid tax on, and the question every employee asks: what happens to my balance if I leave in five years.
• The Augusta rule. Rent your own home to your own business up to 14 days a year, tax free to you and deductible to the business. Carlos asks the question everyone asks at the bar: can nine businesses each run it against the same house? Rachel shuts that down and explains the one narrow case where it works.
• Setting fair market value on your home without overthinking it, and why your mortgage payment has nothing to do with the number.
• The best months of the year to do this work, plus the retirement funding deadline that is not December 31.

Part two lands next week and goes straight at the e-commerce specific hacks: Section 179 bonus depreciation, prepaid expenses, and Rachel's checklist of old faithfuls that everyone forgets.

Our guest: Rachel Phillips is an entrepreneur, a lawyer by training, founder of Fully Accountable, and Senior VP of Financial Solutions at BELAY. She is most active on LinkedIn.

Connect with BELAY: text WIZARDS to 55123 and they will send resources and connect you with their team. BELAY is a sponsor of the Wizards of Ecom community, and as our listeners know, we say no to far more partnerships than we say yes to.

This is a conversation between two business owners, not tax advice. Limits and rules change year to year. Take anything here to your own CPA before you act on it.