The Firm
A practice organized around one sequence.
Senior-led · Selective capacity · Nationwide
Odyssey Strategic Advisors LLC advises clients whose income arrives in a complicated shape. We run one method, in one order, across the whole picture rather than advising on a single slice of it.
Why we exist
The gap we were built to close.
A high earner typically ends up with three advisers. A CPA who files the return. Somebody who sells protection structures. A wealth manager who invests what is left. Each is competent, each is working from a partial picture, and none of them owns the order in which things happen.
So the sequence runs backwards. Money is invested before it is protected, and protected long after it should have been preserved. Every individual decision is defensible and the overall result is worse than any of them intended.
We built this practice to own the whole sequence, and to start it with a diagnostic deep enough that the advice actually fits the client rather than the other way round.
Before Anything Is Recommended
A deep diagnostic, before a single recommendation.
No strategy is proposed until we understand the whole picture. That takes longer than most firms spend, and it is the reason the work fits the client rather than the other way round.
Most advice in this field is offered before the adviser knows enough to give it. A single number is taken over the phone, a structure is proposed, and the facts that would have changed the answer surface months later when they are expensive.
We run a structured diagnostic first. It covers four areas, and until all four are understood we will not recommend a position, because the same strategy can be excellent for one client and actively wrong for another whose facts differ in ways neither of us has looked at yet.
The tax picture
Several years of returns rather than one. The character of your income, your entity structure and elections, prior-year positions and carryforwards, state exposure and conformity, and the limitations that will determine what you can actually use.
- Income character across W-2, K-1, 1099, and capital
- Entity structure, classification, and prior elections
- Carryforwards, credits, and prior-year positions
- State residency, sourcing, and conformity exposure
The wealth picture
What you own, how it is titled, what it is exposed to, and what it produces. This is where most plans turn out to be quietly broken, because titling on paper and titling in the owner's memory frequently differ.
- Assets, liabilities, and how each is actually held
- Concentration, liquidity, and lock-up
- Existing entities, trusts, and whether they are funded
- Insurance, guarantees, and contingent exposure
The personal picture
Family structure, dependants, marital arrangements, partners, and anyone with a present or future claim on what you own. Addressed directly, because it drives the protection stage more than commercial risk does.
- Family and dependants, present and anticipated
- Marital arrangements and any existing agreements
- Partners, co-owners, and buy-sell provisions
- Succession intentions and beneficiary alignment
The objectives
What the money is actually for, on what horizon, and what you are unwilling to do to get there. Two clients with identical balance sheets and different answers here should not receive the same plan.
- Horizon, liquidity needs, and known future events
- Risk tolerance, stated and revealed
- Constraints you are not willing to trade away
- What a good outcome looks like in your own terms
What you receive
A written diagnostic setting out where you stand across all four areas, what is available to you, what is not, and in what order we would act. You own that document whether or not you engage us further, and your own CPA is in the loop throughout.
Operating principles
Four commitments we hold to.
- 01
Diagnosis before prescription
No position is recommended until the tax, wealth, personal, and objective picture is understood in full.
- 02
Sequence over tactics
No single strategy is the point. The order they run in is the point.
- 03
Documented or not done
If a position could not be explained to a reviewer years later from the file alone, it is not finished.
- 04
We will tell you no
Including when the answer is that you do not need us, or not yet.
Representative engagements
The shape of the work.
Anonymised patterns drawn from real engagements. Identifying detail removed, and no figures attached.
Equity compensation
The situation
A senior operator at a public company holding several years of vested stock, under-withheld on every vest, with unexercised incentive options nobody had modeled against alternative minimum tax.
The approach
Multi-year exercise and recognition schedule built against the AMT corridor, offsetting positions sized to the years the vests actually land, and a staged reduction of the concentrated holding.
Business owner
The situation
An owner with substantial pass-through income across several entities, a structure unchanged since formation, and personal assets sitting alongside operating liability.
The approach
Entity classification and owner compensation redesigned, holding and operating functions separated, and asset positions sized against what the loss limitation rules permitted the owner to use.
Independent professional
The situation
A consultant with high margins, almost no depreciable asset base, no retirement plan beyond a SEP, and quarterly estimates set by feel.
The approach
Entity election reconsidered, defined-benefit capacity designed and funded, and outside asset positions introduced to supply shelter the practice could not generate itself.
Illustrative of work performed under specific facts and circumstances. Not a guarantee or prediction of comparable results in any individual matter. See our disclosures.
Team
Principals, advisers, and the bench behind them.
Strategy is set by the principals. The diagnostic and the relationship sit with your adviser. Specialist work is engaged from an independent professional network.
Matthew C. McClintock, J.D., LL.M.
Principal, Tax Strategy & Structure
Tax attorney, LL.M. in Taxation, and former IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent. He builds tax positions the way the government later tests them.
BiographyDr. Bryan Dutson
Principal, Client Strategy
Business operator and analyst who builds each client's tax plan around their goals, and models the tax and cash-flow consequences of a decision before it is made.
BiographyFirm status
What this firm is, and what it is not.
Odyssey Strategic Advisors LLC is a Wyoming limited liability company providing strategic advisory and administrative services.
It is not a law firm and it is not a CPA firm. We do not provide legal services and we do not issue tax opinions. Legal services are separate, require a separate engagement, and are not included in OSA services.
Legal services are provided by McClintock Tax Law LLC, a separate and independent law practice, under its own written engagement and after its own conflicts review. Engaging us does not create an attorney-client relationship with that firm or with any lawyer.
You can keep your existing CPA, who prepares and files your returns within that professional’s own engagement, or add OSA Tax Preparation & Optimization. Where preparation is included, it is performed through the designated provider named in your preparation engagement, and that document identifies the professional responsible for signing the covered returns.
Begin
See whether this is the right practice for you.
Thirty confidential minutes and a straight answer either way.
Engagements typically begin at $2M+ of annual income, or a comparable taxable event.