1050 – Try your best to avoid this: Tom talks Bankruptcy

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

🎙️ Episode Overview
Tom Antion discusses bankruptcy — its pros, cons, and why it should be a last resort for entrepreneurs. He shares personal experiences, practical advice, and ethical perspectives on handling financial trouble without defaulting on obligations.
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🔑 Key Points
1. Bankruptcy Should Be the Last Resort
• Tom emphasizes that bankruptcy carries serious long-term consequences.
• He advises business owners to communicate early with creditors before things get out of control.
• Most creditors will often work out a payment plan if you’re honest and proactive.
2. Tom’s Personal Story
• When his nightclub business failed after the legal drinking age rose from 18 to 21, Tom refused to declare bankruptcy.
• Instead, he met with every creditor, explained the situation, and paid them back over time.
• This built a strong reputation and long-term respect — “the guy who didn’t screw us.”
3. Pros of Bankruptcy
• Stops all collection efforts immediately after filing.
• Eliminates unsecured debts, offering a financial “fresh start.”
• Protects basic assets like your primary home, car, and tools needed for work.
4. Cons of Bankruptcy
• Severely damages your credit for 7–10 years.
• Legal and attorney fees can be expensive.
• Does not erase all debts (e.g., child support, taxes, or student loans).
• Loss of luxury items (boats, watches, second homes, collections, etc.).
• Public scrutiny of your assets — hiding anything can lead to criminal charges.
• Can affect employment and housing opportunities, as many employers and landlords check credit reports.
5. Business Structure Tip
• Keeping business and personal assets separated via corporations or LLCs helps protect personal finances from business failures (if operated properly).
6. Ethical Perspective
• Tom stresses moral responsibility — bankruptcy should not be taken lightly or used to “walk away” from debts.
• Taking responsibility, even for circumstances beyond your control, builds trust and integrity.
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🧭 Tom’s Advice
• Act early: Don’t wait until you’re behind — talk to creditors right away.
• Be professional: People are more likely to help if you’re honest and responsible.
• Avoid moral shortcuts: Bankruptcy may be legal, but it can still damage your reputation and self-respect.
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📢 Promotions Mentioned
• Free Automation eBook: screwthecommute.com/automatefree
• Mentor Program: GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com
• Best Seller Secrets Summit: screwthecommute.com/bestseller – free registration includes a $500 email marketing masterclass.

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Episode 1050 - Bankruptcy
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1050 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about something I kind of hate to bring up negatives, but, it's part of business and it's part of things you need to know about if you get in trouble. And it's called bankruptcy. So we'll talk about the pros and cons of that here in a minute. Hope you didn't miss episode 1049. That was the pros and cons of discount phone services to see if it's right for your business can save you money. Or maybe it wouldn't be right for you. Let's see. Pick up a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Just one of the tips in this book has saved me over 9 million. And we actually estimated that 9 million keystrokes. Okay, it saved me from carpal tunnel. So grab your copy at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Make sure you get version 3.0. That's the latest. And then check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org. It's the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world. And it's distance learning, quality distance learning. So you can work it in if you are working now or if you're in another school. But this is going to give you hard core skills that are in high demand to either start your own business or work for somebody else, or both. So there you go. And I always have to say this when we advertise a school is that it's certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But like I said, you don't have to be in Virginia because its quality distance learning.

[00:02:11] All right. Let's talk about this bummer of a topic called bankruptcy. Oh, before I tell you that we're right in the middle, you still have time to go to the best seller, Secrets Summit online. And just for registering, you get a $500 masterclass from me on. I believe they're using my email marketing masterclass. It's 31 top people authors that are best seller authors telling you all the tricks of the trade. And I got to tell you, my session is way more than just your book. I mean, it's like, I think it's 13 different ways that you can build an empire on one thought of one book. In fact, some of my students won't even write a book because they can make way more money taking the same information from their book and selling it in all these different ways that I outlined on the summit? But anyway, check it out at screwthecommute.com/bestseller.

[00:03:12] All right, let's get into this crazy topic of bankruptcy. First of all, I got to tell you, this should be the absolute last resort. If you are in deep doo doo and deep trouble. All right. You do not want to do this. There's long term ramifications of it. There's all kinds of personal scrutiny.

[00:03:35] You got to go under, or you can get thrown in jail if you lie about your assets. I mean, just all kinds of bad stuff. And I got to tell you about, you know, when I went out of business in the nightclub business because the drinking age went up from 18 to 21, wiped me out. I was on my way to be a millionaire by the time I was 30. And then the drinking age went up, wiped me out. So instead of going bankrupt, which would have been perfectly acceptable by anybody that was looking at this from the outside, because it wasn't my fault. It was just something that happened in the world and caused me to go out of business. Well, I refused to go out of business because of a lot of the negative things that I'm sorry. I went out of business, but I refused to go bankrupt because of all the negative things. And just from a moral standpoint, I did not want to screw over the people I owed money to. And I was taught that by my dad years ago. So I did not go bankrupt. What I did is I went to all the creditors and that was for, oh, you know, all my inventory and my, what do you call it? The pizza delivery vehicles and the pizza ovens and all this stuff I owed money on. I went to everybody immediately before I got in trouble, before I got delinquent on payments.

[00:05:01] And I told him the situation. And every one of them said, okay, you can pay us off over time, which I did. And and I could go back to that town today. And they would say, that's the guy that didn't screw us. All right. So it's a great reputation builder. When you get in trouble and you handle it professionally and own up to it. So anyway, that's what I would do first of all. All right. But as a last resort, you could file bankruptcy. Now, there are some positive things to file in bankruptcy. So what it can do, it can eliminate some of your unsecured debt. You can wipe that off your slate if you go bankrupt. All right. And as soon as you actually file, it stops all collection efforts. It all stops everybody chasing you around and boom, they can't do it anymore legally. And it kind of gives you a fresh start and wipes out some things. Again, I hate to fall back on those kinds of things because I'd rather you fight it out and win rather than just give up. But but sometimes you're in that situation, so it gives you a fresh start and it can keep some things out of the bankruptcy. I mean, they're not usually going to take your your basic home or car, your ability to make a living. But that doesn't mean you can have vacation homes that they won't take, or Rolex watches or a bunch of luxury items, and they're going to be put into bankruptcy.

[00:06:37] And if you lie about it, you can get in deep, deep doo doo and possibly go to jail. So but anyway, it does protect certain assets of yours. So so that's kind of the pros of it. Now the cons of it, this is the ones that I just didn't want any part of. It can ruin your credit score for Either seven years or ten years, depending on which kind of bankruptcy you file. I'm not going into all those in depth, you know, this is what your attorney would, would talk to you about, but it is going to screw up your credit score, which is going to make it difficult for you to get loans and everything in the future. And some people say, oh, well, they filed bankruptcy. They can't do it again. So we'll go ahead and lend them money. But I don't find that to be really the case. People don't want to lend money to people that went bankrupt. Okay, now there are costs and fees that go along with filing bankruptcy. You're probably going to have to get an attorney to do it, to advise you on which one to file, how to do it, and to actually do it so that you got attorney's fees. And most attorneys are at least 100, or in the bigger cities, $400 an hour for this stuff, and you're going to have court fees involved.

[00:07:57] So you're going to pay out money to go bankrupt. All right. And it doesn't really eliminate all your debt. All right. You could have if you had child support or student loans or taxes that are due, then that's usually not included in a bankruptcy. And you can lose a lot of your assets. Like I said, if you had a gun collection or watches or a boat, things that are non necessities in your to keep you from not being a welfare recipient. So you can at least go to work, but you're going to lose all those others. And like I say, if you hide them and you get caught, I mean that's a criminal thing. All right. So you can't do that. And it's time consuming. It can go from as little as a few months to 3 to 5 years to to take care of a bankruptcy. Another thing you get talk to you about your assets and don't hide them and everything, but you've got intense scrutiny on your assets. Believe me, the creditors are going to be looking and saying, well, geez, he was just at the. At the business meeting the other day with a $20,000 Rolex on. They're going to be watching because they. Anything that's that's not in the bankruptcy is divvied up by the creditors and they get. At least some of their money back. See. So you're going to they're going to watch you like a hawk. Any fancy cars or car collections or motorcycles? Anything not involved in basically being able to go to work and earn a living is, uh, is fair game.

[00:09:36] And and this is another thing you can, uh, a really big thing. It can affect your employment if you go to get a job. A lot of people that are hiring are very antsy about hiring somebody that's gone bankrupt because they feel you're not a good risk financially, And which means, I mean, some of them are going to be thinking, oh, well, they're they're going to be likely to steal if they get desperate, you know, just all kinds of negative connotations to employers. If you have gone bankrupt and housing, if you go bankrupt and you and you, you go to apply for a house and that shows up on your credit report, the people are going to be reluctant to, uh, well, first of all, you're going to have a hard time getting a mortgage and you're going to have a hard time renting places because of a bankruptcy. Now, the other day, I think I talked about, um, corporations and keeping your, your business away from your personal assets. So that's one way to, to shield your personal assets is to do a proper job of having corporations or LLCs and operating them properly so that an attorney doesn't cut through and pierce the corporate veil. They call it to your personal stuff. I don't know what episode I had that on was the last couple ones.

[00:11:03] So anyway, Last resort is bankruptcy. But you should know about it if you're in deep doo doo. Uh, check out and you're probably going to get an attorney to advise you on which bankruptcy makes sense for you wherever you're at. But again, as soon as you get in trouble, have the guts to go to the people ahead of time before they start chasing you. That makes all the difference in the world if you just do that. I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm not saying everybody will go along with your plight, but I'm just telling you from experience, most people will because, I mean, and you actually have a little leverage on them, which I hate to talk about that too, but the fact is, they know if you go bankrupt, they're not going to get anything or few pennies on the dollar. So I wouldn't lord that over them. I mean, a smart business person that you owe money to is going to know that. But if you just go act professional, do it sooner than later. It's going to be way better. Because I can tell you damn sure the longer you go with a problem, the worse it's going to get. Okay. And people are going to be way less likely to cut you any breaks. They're going to be looking at you like a magnifying glass to see if they can get it, you know, suck any assets out of you that you're hiding.

[00:12:25] It's just a mess. And and morally, you should feel like crap if you're screwing all these people over. I don't care what they say about you. Shouldn't feel bad about going bankrupt. Yeah. You should. All right. Because you're hurting a lot of other people that don't deserve it because you messed up. Now, like I said, in my case, it wasn't my fault. But still, I took it on myself so that they didn't get screwed over. All right. And then that's why I got a reputation that I have. All right, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com but make sure you immediately go and sign up for that bestseller secrets. screwthecommute.com/Bestseller, because even if you miss some of the sessions, they have a really cheap deal. I mean, you basically are getting $1 million worth of training for free, but if you can't be there that week for the sessions, then you can buy like a $97 or 67. I don't know how much it is, but to have 31 or 32 sessions from people that are all best sellers telling you the tricks of the trade and my session alone is worth another 500 bucks. Not only the masterclass that you're getting for just signing up. So. So get over there and sign it up. screwthecommute.com/Bestseller and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.