Elevate Article

The Freidel Family: A Legacy of Innovation and Hard Work

The Freidel family has never been short on curiosity and innovative ideas. With ten siblings—seven boys and three girls—there was always an entrepreneurial spirit buzzing among them. From a young age, they found ways to create customers and improve the lives of their neighbors.

“We would put up tables at the end of our driveway and make all kinds of crafts to sell. Anything we could do to get a customer, we would do it,” recalls Paul Freidel, the second oldest of the ten siblings.

This entrepreneurial mindset, combined with the strong work ethic their parents instilled in them, has carried through long after they left their childhood home in the western suburbs of Chicago.

“We certainly learned the value of hard work and education,” Paul continues. He exemplified that lesson by earning his bachelor’s degree and taking the CPA exam, scoring within the top 50 in the nation—all by the age of 17.

Eight years ago, Paul and his wife Rebecca, along with their eight children, relocated to Rapid City after visiting the Black Hills during a family trip to Central Iowa. “We just fell in love with the area. This is a paradise with all the outdoor opportunities and open spaces,” Paul reflects.

The move to Rapid City wasn’t just a lifestyle decision—it also opened up new opportunities for Paul to expand his accounting firm, Freidel & Associates, LLC, and launch a new venture with his younger brother, Tim.

In the spring of 2023, Paul and Tim, an IT expert living in Chicago, co-founded Secure Compliance, a software program designed to help professionals and business owners comply with the Federal Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). The duo’s entrepreneurial foresight positioned Secure Compliance as a frontrunner in an important market niche.

The CTA, enacted in January 2021, requires most businesses operating in the United States to report detailed information about their owners or controlling individuals to the government. Paul explains, “This is the brainchild of my brother and me. We saw this regulation from FinCEN coming down the pike and knew it was going to be a compliance headache.”

The U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which enforces the CTA, collects and analyzes financial information to combat money laundering and other financial crimes. Until the CTA was enacted, the U.S. was one of the few developed countries without a system for beneficial ownership reporting.

“We’re late to the ballgame,” Paul says. “There was a lot of pressure that we might lose our standing in the international banking system if we didn’t implement beneficial ownership reporting.”

While the law was passed in 2021, this year marks the first time companies are required to file beneficial ownership information reports.

“It was kind of a sleeper,” Paul admits. “The effective date was far enough in the future that people weren’t paying attention. The deadline kept getting closer, and most people didn’t even know about it.”

All companies created or registered before January 1, 2024, have until the end of this year to comply or face steep fines. Companies created or registered this year have 90 calendar days after the company’s creation to register. Secure Compliance’s main focus is providing the technology for professionals like CPAs and attorneys to help their clients comply with the CTA. “We work with them, and they do the BOI filings on behalf of their clients,” Paul says, adding that the legislation affects nearly 33 million entities created before this year.

With Tim’s technical background and Paul’s decades of accounting experience, the duo recognized an opportunity to create something that would simplify the lives of professionals.

“We like to say what we do is built by professionals for professionals, and it really is. We know how the business world works, and we know what people need,” Paul says. “We’re bringing that as our special sauce when creating these products.”

Secure Compliance provides an easy platform for making modifications or updates to ownership information, and the hope is to expand their patent-pending software to address other impending regulations. “We would love to continue to build it out,” Paul says of Secure Compliance.

“We have a lot of ideas. Rapid City has a lot of opportunities for growth, so we’re very excited about that. There are a lot of talented people moving here who bring so much to the business community. The DLAB provides a fabulous space and encouragement for tech startups like ours,” Paul concludes enthusiastically.