This Clean-Energy Tax Pro Knows Your Deepest Secrets [Special Content]
Energy Gang
Wood Mackenzie
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2019
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is a branded podcast made in collaboration between CohnReznick Capital and GTM Creative Strategies.
Sheslie Royster is the person that big companies turn to when making an acquisition, investing in real estate, or finding a creative way to use tax credits. She’s a tax expert, focused mostly in wind and solar.
Those deals include a lot of numbers and math, of course. But Sheslie says the math isn’t as important as it seems. It’s the interpretation of the math that matters.
“I'd say a minimal amount is math. I'd say in the deals that we have where we're discussing tax issues, the numbers play a part but it's a smaller part. It's more the theory behind what's going on behind the numbers. What does this mean? What was the intent of the law? What is the intent of the deal?”
Sheslie is a tax partner at CohnReznick. She works on some very complicated projects that require a deep level of trust and intimacy.
“It's a personal relationship. People are telling you things about themselves that sometimes their spouses don't even know. Intimate details that people just don't tell when you meet them at a cocktail party,” she says.
So how does Sheslie get people to tell her things their spouses don’t know?
In this episode, we’ll uncover the the secrets of one of the best tax experts in the business.
This episode was produced by GTM Creative Strategies in collaboration with CohnReznick.
CohnReznick serves a wide range of industries, from tech to government to entertainment. It’s a leader in cutting-edge fields like renewable energy and cannabis. To learn more about how people like Sheslie can help you get the most out of your deals, visit CohnReznick.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Can you hear me, Steveo? Oh yeah, I can hear you. Oh, wow, you're high there. |
| 0:04.4 | Loud and clear. All right. Am I a little bit loud in your ears? |
| 0:07.6 | Yeah, I had to turn it down, so. Okay. |
| 0:21.0 | Shessley Royster is the kind of person that big companies turn to when they want to make an acquisition, invest in real estate, or find a creative way to use tax credits. Most of her clients today are in wind and solar. So I find that very interesting. I find it more exciting from a tax perspective than the other areas that I currently practice in. |
| 0:33.3 | Renewable energy is definitely the more exciting sectors that's taking place today. |
| 0:39.4 | Those deals, they include a lot of numbers and math of course but Shessley says the math |
| 0:44.1 | isn't as important as it seems it's the interpretation of the math that matters. |
| 0:48.4 | You have to know what the numbers mean because the numbers have meaning as |
| 0:51.9 | opposed to calculus where you have to know |
| 0:55.0 | you know for me as soon as they drew that big F up there and said DYDX I was |
| 0:59.2 | tapping out of calculus I was like okay I'm done with that I can't I can't deal but all you do is need simple |
| 1:04.0 | subtraction and as long as you can work an adding machine or nowadays |
| 1:09.4 | Excel or do it even on your phone you don't really have to be a math whiz. |
| 1:15.0 | So you have to have good instincts then? |
| 1:17.0 | For sure. |
| 1:18.0 | And that means an instinct not just for reading spreadsheets, but for reading people, knowing their motivations and |
| 1:24.4 | figuring out why they're making certain decisions. |
| 1:27.1 | It's a different kind of calculation. |
| 1:29.2 | True, like our business is truly a relationship business. |
| 1:33.0 | When you meet people and you start advising them from a tax perspective, |
| 1:38.0 | it's a personal relationship. |
| 1:40.0 | People are telling you things about themselves that sometimes their spouses don't even know. |
... |
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