From Passion Project To Protected Asset: Setting Up A Business For Your Book

Setting up a business for your book isn’t just smart, it’s essential. In this episode, Juliet Clark sits down with Aaron Scott Young of Laughlin Associates to explore why every author should treat their work as both a creative pursuit and a protected asset. Aaron breaks down how incorporating your book-related ventures—whether for speaking, consulting, or brand credibility—can safeguard your personal wealth, reduce tax liability, and position you as a true professional in the marketplace. Drawing from decades of experience helping entrepreneurs and authors build solid business foundations, Aaron explains how to separate passion from protection, creativity from risk, and hobby from enterprise. This conversation is a must-listen for any author ready to turn their intellectual property into a long-term business advantage.

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From Passion Project To Protected Asset: Setting Up A Business For Your Book

Setting up a business for your book isn’t just smart, it’s essential. In this episode, Juliet Clark sits down with Aaron Scott Young of Laughlin Associates to explore why every author should treat their work as both a creative pursuit and a protected asset. Aaron breaks down how incorporating your book-related ventures—whether for speaking, consulting, or brand credibility—can safeguard your personal wealth, reduce tax liability, and position you as a true professional in the marketplace. Drawing from decades of experience helping entrepreneurs and authors build solid business foundations, Aaron explains how to separate passion from protection, creativity from risk, and hobby from enterprise. This conversation is a must-listen for any author ready to turn their intellectual property into a long-term business advantage.

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Intellectual Property: Business Asset Importance

Aaron, welcome. Thank you so much for speaking to my audience.

It’s such a pleasure to be here and thank you for inviting me.

You are welcome. I want to talk about why it’s so important when you start becoming an author to get your own company set up. Tell us a little bit about what your company does and why that is so important.

The company Laughlin Associates has been around for 53 years. We’ve worked with hundreds of thousands of business owners. We’ve worked with everybody from the high-level construction companies to movie studios to authors to anything you can imagine. We’ve had those groups as clients. What we see over and over again is that most people don’t tend to value the things they’ve created as much as maybe the outside world might. They’ve been working on something. They’ve developed some program, a script, a book, a play or whatever.

They’re like, “I don’t know if this is ever going to be anything. I enjoy doing it. I want to use it in a book situation.” Maybe they’re using it more as a calling card than trying to sell lots of books. Unless you’re J.K Rowling, you’re not going to make a ton of money with books. You’re going to make a lot of money with what the book means about you. It’s a credibility stamp. It says, “I’ve done something that all these other people didn’t do. We all came to be doing the same thing, but I’ve documented my process. I’ve documented my stories. I’ve shown my expertise.” That’s what separates the author from the crowd.

Everybody that could be in the proverbial yellow pages or in your Yelp list. Here’s the one that’s got the bestselling book, maybe I should give them. They seem to be a little more serious about what they’re doing. The person that put it together may not value it very highly, so they go, “I need to do something with this.” I would say a couple of things about that. Does every single book need a separate entity? Probably not. If you made something as a legacy for your grandkids or something and you want to tell your stories. You’re trying to do anything commercial with it. Let it be a passion project.

If you’re using it for a business purpose or you’re trying to develop whatever it is, your coaching program, your landscape business, your architecture company, your manufacturing, your robotics, or your AI. If you’re trying to do that, then this becomes intellectual property. It becomes a valuable asset of the business and it’s a separate thing. It’s the reason why the Coca-Cola formula is in a separate company.

“Blame And Liability Concerns”

I’ve spent time with the CFO of Intel Corporation who told me that he was responsible for over 3,000 business entities because they have this patent and this little purchase or this database. All these little things in separate companies because every one of these pieces combined provide your competitive advantage and who you are. If you have any level of success, people might want to co-op your information or maybe they try something that they think you told them to do in your book and it doesn’t work out for them.

They go, “I need somebody to blame. I’ll sue the author because this is where I got the idea.” It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong as the author. It just means some people don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions. They want somebody to blame when it doesn’t work. Every time we build anything of value and especially if you’re dealing with the public. It doesn’t have to be millions of people. It could be dozens of people. There is always the opportunity for somebody to try to associate blame with the person they got the information from.

We want to separate your personal assets, your equity in your home, your savings account, the piece of art that you invested in yours ago, the coin collection you inherited from your grandfather or whatever. Keep all of that stuff separate from the project. I’ve got a number of books. Here’s Unshackled. It doesn’t have to be big businesses, but we’ve had big Fortune 50 companies and public companies. I told you that Amazon’s using the concepts in this book in a lot of their divisions. When you are giving out like, “Do this then do this.” If it’s instructional, there’s a liability risk.

If you’re an author, you want to limit liability. The book may not be your biggest thing or your biggest revenue generator. You’re doing great over here and the book is its own thing. If the book holds you into a lawsuit where tax benefits associated with the book are only for the book and not for the rest of the business. If there are trademarks or copyright issues or other pieces of intellectual property associated with what you’ve published. Should it be part of everything or it should be separate?

Let’s say we work with a movie production. They’ll have a corporation or LLC for the script, for the food, service, for different groups they’re going to hire third parties to do your role or second group or going to do special effects or whatever. They’re all in separate businesses because if there’s a problem with any of them, they don’t want the whole thing to be hurt. It’s so inexpensive to do it. When you just separate little chunks that have inherent value or may create inherent value or have potential liability, we just put those things in their own little bucket. Now, that’s a big answer for one.

Number two, a lot of people that I’ve met that are new authors, especially books because I see way more books than movie scripts or plays. If you’re a new author, you may not think of yourself as a business owner. You may not think of yourself as doing something commercial. It’s just something you wanted to do. You were excited to do it. Maybe you want to use it to get speaking opportunities or coaching opportunities or consulting opportunities or whatever.

The fact is, it’s like being a real estate investor. A lot of real estate investors have a W-2 job and they don’t think of their real estate investments as a business, but it is a business. There’s tax deductions, lawsuit risk, opportunities to make a lot of money and have a capital gains issue. It’s a business. When you write a book, that becomes its own thing. It’s going to create its own energy. You want to direct that energy to some good purpose.

Whenever we go out to engage with the public, we hope there’s never a problem but there is always a risk of a problem. To put in context, according to the US Chamber of Commerce. There is a frivolous lawsuit filed against a small business every 22 seconds. Not a fraud. Not harassment, but frivolous litigation. We have 93% of the world’s litigation, 5% of the population and 93% of the lawsuits. Of all places, the CIA did a study and it said, “What method would give you the greatest opportunity to become wealthy?” The three answers were, win the lottery, inherit it and win a lawsuit.

As a way to make a living.

Entrepreneurship And Misconceptions

As a way to get wealthy. Win the lottery, inherit it and win a lawsuit. None of which has anything to do with personal responsibility, initiative, risk and hard work. It’s just, how can I get something because they have too much? It doesn’t matter if you’re barely making it in business. It doesn’t matter if you’re holding on by your fingernails and you’re not paying yourself anything. You’re funding your business idea. When people think, “Look at them. They’ve done something different. They own a business.” It’s a coffee kiosk in the grocery store parking lot. You’re up at 4:00 in the morning making coffee and people think you’re wealthy.

Legal System Exploitation Tactics

If they think you’re wealthy, they may think, “They won’t feel it if I try to redistribute their wealth.” These are all very negative things, Juliet. Unfortunately, it is our circumstance. We have a president now. Whether you love him or hate him, one of his big tools is the courts. He’s going to fight. He’s just going to fight and he’s learned how to use the legal system to make miserable circumstances for other people. When the US Chamber of Commerce talks about frivolous lawsuits being filed, these are irritation lawsuits.

I’m going to bug you with my commission-based lawyer until you just say, “I give. What can I pay you to go away?” It’s legal extortion. If you are going to enter the world, you don’t need to be afraid of these things. You want to be aware of them and put up buffers or put up barriers around you so that commission lawyer, that contingency fee lawyer goes, “I don’t want to do this one on contingency because it looks like there’s going to be layers I’m going to have to go through. I’m going to have to work. There doesn’t seem to be a big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

The way this individual has organized their affairs doesn’t give me an easy target to redistribute wealth. That’s why we use business entities. It’s why you set up an LLC. You’re going to spend a few hundred dollars to get something set up and give you that first layer of protection. As some value becomes created, we can add other layers to pretty soon your bulletproof. You don’t need to do it all at first, but as there’s a justification for adding elements to your asset protection plan. Any level of wealth at all. I’m not telling Elon Musk. I’m talking about somebody that’s worth $3 million or $4 million or $5 million or that has the company.

Maybe you’re a dentist and you’re making $350 or $450 a year. You’re paying down your credit card bills, and you’ve got some equity in your house. You own your boat and you’ve got a second place somewhere. There’s a lot of stuff to protect. If you’re just getting started, you don’t need anything complex. As you are adding resources to your portfolio, your empire or whatever you want to call it. As you’re adding stuff in, we want to go, “What’s your tolerance for risk? How much are you willing to lose? And are you willing to lose the equity in your home over somebody who took a negative connotation from and decides to sue you because of your book?”

Do you want to lose the equity because somebody gets cranky over here? This is why inform an LLC or an S-corporation or whatever. Probably, an LLC for a book. It’s what I’ve done. All my books are in my intellectual property company that just holds it. A separate company does any promotional work and so on and gets paid. Money moves back and forth because the book I want to keep where nobody knows about it. Nobody touches it. Nobody can mess with it. It doesn’t do business with anybody. I can take the license and do whatever I want with the sales company.

The sales company has no value. It’s having to pay back to the publishing business for the rights to promote the book. There’s ways we can use entities as we get success to reduce your tax liability, reduce your lawsuit liability, give you all kinds of tax benefits and help you go out and promote whatever it is that’s your thing in a major way. To glom it all together to say, “I’m a nice person. Nobody’s ever going to mess with me. Nobody’s going to care. This is just a small thing. We’re hardly making any money.”

All these excuses have nothing to do with the realities of the culture in the United States. I’m not knocking the United States. I love my country. I’ve learned how to avoid problems. Stop them before they start by being organized properly for whatever activity you’re engaged in. Long answers. Do you have any more questions for me?

That was a great answer but just to recap for the new author out there. If you have a home, you have retirement accounts and all that. You want it separate from that book’s intellectual property and probably those costs that you incurred will go in that company as well as tax advantage.

All deductible.

Let’s say the average author sells 200 or 300 books. You’re probably getting $2 a book royalty. If someone sued that company that has little to no money, your other assets are protected.,

Perfect summary. The idea is this little thing that may be valuable and interesting, but not very financially rewarding yet. You don’t want it to have a negative impact on your personal estate, which is why we separate things. In all my talks, if I’m talking about these circumstances, I have the audience repeat, “I am not the corporation. The corporation is not me. I am not an LLC. The LLC is not me.” It’s pretty easy to think that the company is me and I am the company, because I put all the money into it. I’ve done everything for it. I’m the only shareholder. I’m the only person responsible. It’s mine.

“Protect Personal Assets Early”

It’s fine to say you own the shares, but when you forget that the company is its own paper person, separate from you. When you forget that and you co-mingle everything. That pierces the corporate veil. There’s no separation now. Any problem that happens at home can impact the business or with the business, can impact your personal estate. Only because this isn’t big yet doesn’t mean you don’t have value to protect. For less than a thousand dollars, you can completely protect all of your personal estate from this new project.

If you blow that idea off and you have a problem, you can’t fix the problem in the middle of the problem. You got to wait till it’s over. Unfortunately, many people come to us, thousands of people a year come to us. What I call event driven. They have had a terrible event and they’re like, “I can never let that happen again.” They come and say, “Now I need to do this properly.” It’s always a shame because there’s always significant loss. Better to be like the guy that stopped me. It was an event you and I are both at or maybe not. Not in Henderson. It was in Vegas in a big convention space. Maybe it’s the real hotel.

I’m walking rapidly to get backstage to speak and this guy stops me. He comes around the corner. You know how big those hallways are in the convention spaces. They’re almost like a hallway. There’s just a big open space. He comes around and he’s all huddled up. He’s on the crutches. They have the things around your bicep and he’s trying to get down. They’re all bent and broken, and he stops me in the hall, “Aaron, can I ask you a question? Can I tell you something? Can I talk to you for a minute?” I thought this was an event that had a lot of pop-up banners with all the speakers’ faces on it, so people were stopping me from time to time going, “You’re that guy from that place.” This guy stops me and says, “You don’t know me but I’m one of your customers.” I said, “Thank you.”

“Business Protected Personal Assets”

He said, “We only met once. It was a number of years ago. I didn’t look like this then, but I got in a bad car accident. Unfortunately, I was at fault. I looked down for a minute and I ran into these people and they got badly injured. I got badly injured. They got my insurance money, but then they were pretty badly hurt. They came after and sued us, sued me. They got our home, our second home, our savings, and our retirement. They got everything, but they couldn’t take my business because I was a customer of yours. I had followed all the corporate formalities and it separated my personal state from my business. I could rent a place to live, feed my family and take care of us. I don’t know how to put a value on that, but it’s got to be millions of dollars over time.”

He said, “I didn’t know if this would ever matter, but in that moment when I looked down while I was driving and I got in this bad accident. This thing that hadn’t seemed like such a big deal, all of the sudden became a big deal because this was protected from that.” I can tell you lots of those stories. The bottom line is, everything I do is preparing for either the worst-case scenario or the best case from a tax perspective, business sale perspective or whatever. I’m looking at extremes all the time. People in the trenches of the day are not thinking about the extremes. They never think about it much until there’s a problem. There’s an audit, a business breakup, a divorce, or a car accident.

Playing Bigger: Impact, Risks, And Rewards

That’s when people all of a sudden go, “What is safe? What is not safe?” To your authors, I want to say you are seeking some greater level of message to the world. You want to play bigger. You want to touch more lives and impact people. You’re going to get the vast majority of people who are going to love your message. What you want to be aware of is that one person who’s going to look for somebody to blame and they may focus on you.

There may be an opportunity to sell your business and you’re going to double the multiplier because you’ve got this other thing that you keep in your back pocket over here, this intellectual property that’s not part of the business but is valuable to the business, “Here’s the offer.” “What if you need the secret sauce? What if you need the formula? What if you need the thing that drives the leads?” “I’ll pay you more to get that.”

There’s a lot of reasons to take the step to be a real business and do like Intel does. Separate out all these little pieces because, or like a ski resort does. Anybody that’s ever been snow skiing and been on the chairlift going up, did you know that most resorts keep every chair lift in a separate company? Why? It’s because if somebody falls out of that chair lift, they don’t want to lose the whole resort. They just wanted to deal with the insurance on that lift. That’s it. New York cabs. Every two yellow cabs is a separate company because there’s a big chance of a wreck. There’s a big chance of somebody being hurt. They don’t want to lose a little company. They’ll lose these two cars and the insurance money.

Very interesting. When you think about it from a new author’s perspective, too. If you did happen to get sued, the attorney will probably come in and look at it and say, “This thing is worth a thousand dollars. It’s not worth it.” I want to move on to the next thing you guys do because of the reason that I purchased it. An attorney that sees that thousand dollars may get very aggressive and try to go in and pierce that corporate veil. You have a protection that I purchased every month where our corporate notes are expertly done, so that an attorney can’t come in and pierce that corporate veil and get to my personal asset. Talk about that a little bit.

We call the corporate veil protection service. A corporate veil is the legal term of art that says, “This thing is its own thing. It’s not part of anything else.” If you’re a sole proprietor, you don’t set up any business entity. You just go out and start engaging with the world. Everything you own is at risk. It’s simple. You don’t have to file anything. You have to pay the state anything, but everything is up for grabs. The reason we use business entities like corporations or LLCs is to create separate buckets that are utterly sacrosanct from one another.

You can form a corporation or an LLC, but if you don’t follow the rules that are associated with it. The legal and taxing authorities don’t acknowledge it. They call it disregarded. The other word they’ll use or the expression is alter ego. It’s not separate. It seems separate but it’s not, because you haven’t issued stock, held regular board meetings, kept minutes of those meetings and passed resolutions. You haven’t done any of that stuff. You never had an organizational meeting. You don’t have a corporate book. You don’t have bylaws or operating agreement if it’s an LLC. You don’t have any of that stuff. You’re not a business entity.

You pay the state every year, but that’s all you’re doing. That is not enough. That’s like buying a movie ticket and then not going into the movie theater. You paid the fee but you didn’t get what you bought. It’s like a building permit. The county says you can build that house and you pay them all this money for this piece of paper but then you never build the house. Did you ever get the value of the house? No. Did you ever get to see the movie? No. You paid the fine or the fee, but you didn’t get the thing that you wanted.

That’s what happens when you just pay your state every year. You’ve paid the tax, but you haven’t built the thing, the business, entity. The entity requires. If it’s an LLC, you need your operating agreement and your articles of incorporation or articles of organization. You need an organizational meeting, issue stock, and have at least quarterly board meetings, even though you’re the only member of the board. You’re the only owner, the only board member, and the only employee. It doesn’t matter if you’re Apple or NVIDIA or General Electric or you at your kitchen table. The rules are the same and the corporate veil that keeps this thing separate from everything else, this company, is substantially maintained by those corporate minutes, corporate resolutions, stock ledger management, etc.

Maintaining Corporate Veil Essentials

There are some other things like where you’re commingling money on a regular basis, personal money and business money without an explanation in your board minutes and resolutions. If you’re just going on, “Whatever. I’ll just pay for this thing with the company money. I don’t have the company card. I’m just going to pay with my personal account.” If we see a habit of co-mingling, that will also pierce the corporate veil because you’re not treating them as separate. You’re treating them as one. What we do for people, as you know, Juliet, we call. We interview stuff out of you or we ask you questions or you go.

After a while, you start figuring it out and going, “We’re going to start this health reimbursement for health insurance, or I want to do a car allowance, or hire a new CPA or I want to give myself a pay raise or I want to invest in this thing or borrow money from this individual.” All of that needs to go in the corporate book to maintain the corporate veil. Without it, it’s all just one thing. The business is just the alter ego of the owner. It’s all one thing. You’re paying a fee, but you’re not getting the value.

I’m going to guess, 95% of the people that are reading who have set up a corporation or a limited liability company, fall into the category of, you’re not doing it properly. You have not followed the rules. It’s not because you’re bad. It’s because you don’t know what to do. You don’t want to do it. You don’t want anybody involved in your business. You don’t want to go to a lawyer and pay $500 an hour to do a one paragraph resolution. Truthfully, by the second year, that’s about what you’re paying for unlimited documents from us through the year.

I think $50 a month.

Essential LLC Compliance Misconceptions

It’s $50 a month after you get through the first year. The first year’s $1,000 but we’ll go back five years. Plus, go forward for that first year and then it drops down to $49 or $50 a month. It’s super inexpensive. The cheapest Insurance you’ll ever buy. If you will engage with the team, we can’t do anything for you if you won’t get on the phone with us. If you will, that corporate veil will not be pierced. It will not be pierced if you follow the rules. If you get flaky about it or go, “I’ll get to it another day or that’s stupid, or I have an LLC. Somebody told me I don’t have to do it.” Which is understandable, but utterly incorrect.

It’s completely wrong. LLCs, originally were set up where you didn’t have to do corporate minutes, but now case law in all 50 states says even single member LLCs must have regular board meetings, keep minutes, pass resolutions, issue membership, etc. Case law supersedes statutory law. If you’re going, “I know the rules.” I’m going to say, “You don’t.” Take it from the guy who’s got hundreds of thousands of clients who just been doing this for half a century and a change. I don’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt your business. What I don’t want you to do is come to me event-driven and having all the bloody scars from just getting your butt kicked.

Instead let’s just do the prudent thing, follow the rules, understand how to engage in the marketplace and for that very inexpensive amount of money to file and then just keep it up. You’re talking about a few hundred dollars a year that protects everything else you have. If you have nothing, ignore everything I’m saying. If you have anything you don’t want to lose that’s worth more than, let’s say $1,000. I promise you this.

The retainer you’re going to pay for when you get the lawsuit and you call the lawyer to defend you who, by the way, will not take the case on contingency because it’s a defense situation. They’re going to ask you for $25,000 or something up front. It’s going to be more than you’ve paid for the last ten years of working with us. You can avoid it many times by just doing the right thing, following the rules and protecting your assets. You can keep stuff together for a while, but as you get anything of value or if you have anything of value at home. You start separating it into different buckets. Did I explain that okay?

You explained it perfectly. Aaron, if we want to work with you, where can we find you?

You can just send an email. Nobody will do it but I challenge you guys to write to me at AaronYoung@LaughlinUSA.com or you can call us and just say you heard about us through Superbrand Publishing or you’re working with Juliet Clark. We’ve known Juliet for a long time. We value our relationship with you. I’ve spoken on stages with you and so on for years.

Didn’t I beat you up once at an event accidentally?

Very possible. People like taking shots at me. That’s alright. I’ve been doing this for many years.

I seem to remember CEOs face events like the last day where we were like going for the same thing.

I don’t know what we’re doing, but what I will tell you is this. In business, even among friends can sometimes feel competitive even when we want to be cooperative. If you want to make money, there’s hardly any better way that I’ve ever found than to build something and provide value to the marketplace. You get to control your time, control how you do it, meet interesting people, and go on great experiences. I’ve been all over the world. Speaking for the most interesting audiences and hanging out with the most interesting people doing such cool stuff.

I pinch myself and go, “Look what I’m doing now. This is so cool. This is so fun.” It’s only because I started businesses and kept pushing to create value in the market. Once the market goes, “That’s a good one right there,” then you get invited to do cool stuff, to come to cool meetings and to have a sit down with this fascinating person. How cool is it to be able to introduce the chief medical officer at Amazon to the founder of Telemedicine, a $34 billion company? The biggest telemedicine company.

“Book as Unique Value Credential”

Here’s the founder and here’s the chief medical. These guys need to know each other and plugin together. The founder of one of the biggest gold bullion companies to one of the biggest tokenization people created a new cryptocurrency that’s tied to Gold. These are people that didn’t know each other, but I put them together because I’d been invited to rooms. I meet them and I go, “You guys need to meet.” What happens? I go up and their steam for me goes up and I get invited to the next place. This is what happens when you engage in an interesting and valuable way in the market.

Your book is going to be a very often the first major way that people begin to understand your value, your unique value proposition and a desire to work with you. That book is going to be the credential that separates you from the pack. What you decide to do with that and how you decide to create or to assign value to that by doing things like protecting it and using the tax laws to get the greatest benefit around that. Those little steps show those people that you want to be associated with your serious person.

That you’re doing real business. You’re not what you want to be. I’m just going to fake it till I hope I make it a person, but you’re somebody who’s being serious. By the time you get to this company and to Juliet, you’re starting to get pretty serious. Don’t miss the most foundational piece you can do, which is to get your company in order and to engage in the marketplace as a professional and not as a hobbyist.

Thank you. Very quickly, we got to wrap this up but you have a big event every year. Do you have it twice a year?

Twice a year, Magnify Your Wealth.

Where can people find that? It’s not where I found you, but I’ve been several times and there’s a lot of valuable business information there as well.

“Personalized Wealth Strategy Sessions”

The next one is on November 7th, 8th and 9th. They just go to MagnifyYourWealth.com. That’s the URL and it’s updated. Every time we finish an event, whomever the next group of speakers and the dates and everything get just get updated. Thanks for bringing that up. I appreciate it. It’s a tremendously interesting event. Some of it is the same every time and a whole bunch of it is new every time. Whenever it is your time to come and Juliet, I invite you back. Come back as my guest. We can talk about that separately.

It’s a way to not only get information and not be getting pitched from the front of the stage. Also, a way to sit down privately with the speakers in 30 minute conversations where they’ll talk about your situation. Not just general information. You can sit and say, “Here’s what I’m doing,” then go, “Blah, blah, blah.” If you need to talk to the lawyer but you’re afraid, “How am I going to tell my accountant?” We can sit down, “Here’s the lawyer. Let’s bring the accountant who’s here speaking and let’s get a comprehensive answer to your question.” That’s what can happen at Magnify Your Wealth. I hope people will come and join us there.

Thank you and thank you for doing this for us.

It’s a pleasure every time I get to be with you. Thank you.

Important Links

• Aaron Scott Young
• Aaron Scott Young on LinkedIn
• Aaron Scott Young on X
• Aaron Scott Young on YouTube
• Aaron Scott Young on Facebook
• Laughlin Associates
• Intel Corporation
• Unshackled
• AaronYoung@LaughlinUSA.com
• Magnify Your Wealth

About Aaron Scott Young

Aaron Scott Young is a lifelong entrepreneur, business advisor, and the Chairman/CEO of Laughlin Associates—a company that has helped over 100,000 entrepreneurs start, grow, and profit from their businesses in its 50-year history. He is known for empowering business owners to create companies that work for them, instead of the other way around. Over more than three decades, Aaron has built, acquired, and directed several multi-million-dollar businesses and has worked as an officer in a publicly traded, multinational company.

Aaron is also the creator of The Unshackled Owner, a program designed to help entrepreneurs build businesses that run independently, delivering both growth and protection. His career began early, launching a recycling company at age 18 and quickly scaling it, later moving into the cellular phone industry and other ventures. Throughout his career, Aaron has acted as a trusted advisor for thousands of CEOs and business owners across diverse industries, offering expertise in corporate structure, asset protection, growth strategies, and leadership.

He is also a published author, keynote speaker, and media guest, known for inspiring entrepreneurs to break free from the traditional “time-for-money” cycle. Aaron and his wife, Michelle, live near Portland, Oregon, and enjoy backcountry riding and family life.

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