Gary Scheer is a financial advisor in Morristown, New Jersey. He is a nationally recognized Financial Educator, Author, and Speaker, along with being a Certified Senior Advisor (CSA) and Registred Financial Consultant (RFC). He is the CEO of Gary Scheer, LLC as well as a managing director of RedwoodTaxSpecialists1040.
As co-author of Successonomics with Steve Forbes and Retire Abundantly with Scott Keffer, Gary was interviewed by William Shatner on Moving America Forward, featured on In America with James Earl Jones, and Shark Tank’s original “shark”, Kevin Harrington, on Business Icons.
Gary has built a team of tax planning experts at Gary Scheer, LLC, where they assist affluent and ultra-high net worth business owners, professionals, and executives with substantially reducing their taxes. They have also been helping their clients preserve, protect and pass on their wealth for over 30 years.
Gary is a Purdue University graduate and has been a Registered Financial Consultant since 2009 and a Certified Senior Advisor since 2003. After having gained experience at a couple different insurance companies, Gary found his way to a boutique financial planning firm in New Jersey. After about 5 years there, he had a falling out with the head, so he and a friend decided to go out on their own. In 1994, they formed a business named Financial Management Group located in New Jersey. They were successful together for 16 years before a mutual parting of ways. Gary then founded Gary Scheer, LLC, where he could stay on the cutting edge of the financial, tax, and other strategies to help high-income business owners, professionals, and executive business clients.
In March of 2021, Gary also became managing director of RedwoodTaxSpecialists1040.com. There, the goal is to help grow the advisory portion of CPA and accounting practices through proactive and holistic tax planning.
Gary was born in Brooklyn, NY and moved to Long Island at the age of 3. He now resides in Morristown, New Jersey with his wife of 38 years, Susan. He has 3 children and 2 grandchildren. They enjoy reading and traveling, but they enjoy spending time with their grandchildren even more.
As a complement to his professional achievements, Gary is past President and former Treasurer of a local private school board. Additionally, Gary has played trumpet with the acclaimed Livingston Symphony Orchestra in Livingston, NJ, for over 25 years. He is an avid runner, being in track and field and cross-country, and continues to try to take good care of himself.
Gary is very philanthropic and regularly contributes to charities including the Gottesman RTW Academy, Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest, Special Olympics, and Morristown Rotary Club.
Gary Scheer has built several successful businesses based on helping others. He always maintains this quality as a loving husband and father. He aims to continue to set the right example in compassion and generosity by impacting his community in a positive way.
Where did the idea for your businesses come from?
When I was in the hospitality industry earlier, I was not happy in that career profile and had this thought in mind that it was not meant for me. I wanted to change the industry and decided to go into finance due to my keen interest in the subject. In the early 1980s, financial planning had become more accessible to the middle class. So, I capitalized on this opportunity and began working for an insurance company as a Financial Planning Consultant. Then from there, I gained experience at different companies. And after gaining immense experience in the financial industry, I had gained enough confidence that I can provide my financial services to target customers by starting my own venture. Hence, I started with Financial Management Group with a friend of mine, which turned into just my own after many years. And so, now I have Gary Scheer, LLC, and I am a Managing Director at RedwoodTaxSpecialists1040.com.
What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?
My typical day begins around 6 a.m. Although I get up early, however, I don’t start working until 8 a.m. I follow a regular personal routine, interact with my family before starting work. The first thing that I do at work is getting in touch with my existing customers to ensure that they have optimum satisfaction level with our services. I do this independently as well as along with my team through virtual meetings due to the pandemic nowadays, by taking daily updates and follow ups with them on that front. After that I make it a point to interact with managers of all the different teams daily. I have virtual meetings with our Human Resource Manager, Marketing Manager, Finance Manager to keep a track of all the business operations. In the evening I go to work out in the gym. After coming back, I enjoy my dinner with a beverage. And before going to sleep, I make plans for the next day.
How do you bring ideas to life?
I put my thoughts on a piece of paper everyday about new business ideas. And then I implement them by discussing them with my team, working out different ways and strategies for those ideas that seem to be achievable and bring them to reality after doing the required testing, experimenting, research and development along with the team on those.
What’s one trend that excites you?
I am very excited to grow Redwood Tax Specialists. As I was speaking about earlier, getting really focused on one area and becoming an expert on that area is something we will continue to pursue along with bringing proactive and holistic tax planning services to CPA’s and their clients.
What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?
A major key to my success has been my open-mindedness to learning and implementing new technologies to better serve my clients. Also, I have always had this inner drive to help others. It was what I was originally looking for when I thought I wanted to go into the hospitality industry. Then I found a way to help others in the financial field so that drive to keep going, even when I was tired, or when I was having that hard time focusing, it beat out any other feelings to stop and I have kept going.
What advice would you give your younger self?
To take more chances early and not be afraid to fail.
Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
We need to start making kids financially literate from an early age. As I was given financial education in early years of life, those childhood values have helped me in making the right career choice.
As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
Going from trying to be all things to all people in the financial planning space and then trying to concentrate in one direction. You could call it a case of “Shiny object syndrome”. There are so many opportunities in the financial field that I’d want to get involved in, so I’d create a new division rather than focus on one particular specialty and be really good at it. I finally decided to have that focus I was aiming for with RedwoodTaxSpecialists1040.com
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?
Sending emails to clients works very well. Not in a spammy way, but in a way that keeps them informed and educated. You can even have fun with it. Send them emails that help them get to know the team too, when they have faces and stories to associate them with, it brings whole new level of human connection to your business that is going to help you gain clients that will also want to stick with you long term.
What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?
When I had started my entrepreneurial journey, I was not able to precisely approach the target customers who would be willing to avail my financial consulting services. I had instead approached low-net-worth individuals. As that did not provide me profitable returns, I had realized that something needs to be changed. And that is when I thought of investing more time and efforts into detailed research about target customers for such services. And I came to know that it is mainly the high-net-worth individuals who are on the lookout for such consulting much more than others. And by diverting to that route, my business has started generating great profits.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
I know this idea can be known by many, but I believe that to thrive and excel in today’s time, you need to increase your presence online. By online I mean not just Facebook and Instagram, but start running podcasts, develop online courses, distribute ebooks related to your specialized service.
What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?
As I do not prefer spending money on commodities to a great extent, I prefer investing my money into gaining knowledge to boost my financial prowess. I recently spent this money on buying one of the books I was longing to buy from a long time, Stress-Free Money by Chad Willardson.
What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive?
The software MoneyGuidePro has proved to be really very helpful for me and my team to run business operations efficiently.
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?
I would strongly recommend the book Atomic Habits written by James Clear. I would say that it is a must-read for anyone who wants to develop healthy habits in personal as well as professional life to become successful.
What is your favorite quote?
My favorite quote is by Robert Kiyosaki which says, “It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.”
Steve (Stefan) Junge hails from Germany and helps with the day-to-day publishing of interviews on IdeaMensch. While he and Mario don’t share a favorite soccer club, their enthusiasm to help entrepreneurs is a shared passion.