Unf*ck Your Biz With Braden

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing my April profit report. If you enjoy the profit report episodes, send us a DM @notavglaw and let us know what you think! As we kick off every episode, let's recap my 2024 goals. • I set good, better, best goals of $300k, $400k and $500k in revenue. I was shooting for $400k, I think the $300k is still doable now despite the setbacks in the first quarter that I've talked about on previous episodes. I've now shifted them to $300k, $350k and $400k. What I'm not doing is any rushed promotions to try to hit these, I'm focusing on slow, steady growth to end the year strong. • Hit 60% in profit • Book 4 stage speaking gigs for next year • Consistently hit $25k months. Did this in January and February, not in March, probably not in April • Hit $15k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by the end of the year. This was the big goal to help us get to our revenue goals at the end of the year. We're a little bit less than halfway to this so far. My original goal was to get to 10k by the end of March but that hasn't happened yet. Projections vs. Actual: 1. Unf*ck Your Biz- $4,000 → $2,500 (A caveat to this is we had two more $1,000 payments that went through on the 30th but won't hit my account until May meaning we didn't hit the goal). 2. Contract Club - $1,000 → $1,140 3. Legally Launched - $500 → 0 4. Monthly Recurring Revenue - $7,000 → $7,500 5. Tax - $4,000 → $2,250 6. Trademark clients- $1,250 → $0 7. Other - $1,000 → $3,200 Total revenue: $17,000 → $15,000 Expenses Employee wages (this does not include myself): $4,000 Contractor expenses: $3,000 Owner wages (after my taxes): Monthly tools: $400 Affiliate payouts: $370 Marketing: $400 Client fees: $500 Other: $1800 Total expenses: $16,000 (we were in the negative by $1,000) A lot of this stems still from Unf*ck Your Biz clients because we are going back and doing several years of reconciliation for some clients. Profit (- $1,000) If you’re wondering how I'm doing this the answer is I don't have great business savings which we wiped in the month of March (yikes) and the business credit card is maxed. I'm not too stressed about it, I'm expecting expenses to go down and revenue to go up in May and it should start to even out. KPIs I want to start talking more about the KPI we track each month in Enji. We track: Sales (revenue): Tracked in our profit report Audience growth (Facebook group members and Instagram, TikTok and Threads followers): A lot of people call these vanity metrics and I don't get too into these numbers, it's just helpful to see trends in respect to how active and engaging we're being. Are we continuing to see growth even if it's steady. PR touchpoints: We track the number of podcast guest spots, summits, in-person speaking, bundles, etc. we do each month. This impacts our follower count and number of email subscribers and shows how our KPIs are all connected. Contract Club and Contract Bot Sales: I track this separately in Enji so I can have a line graph to see growth. December through April each month we had: 37, 38, 36, 32, 38 and it's interesting to watch it stay so consistent without promotion. For the Bot upsell we had 4 sales in February, 1 in March, and 7 in April (an 18% conversion rate is pretty good for a $70 upsell). May Projections 1. Unf*ck Your Biz- $6,000 We had 5 new clients sign up in April who are all on payment plans. Our goal is to bring in 4 new UYB clients every month to guarantee that revenue and then if half those clients continue to sign up for our monthly services we'll continue to increase our baseline revenue. 2. Contract Club - $5,000 I'm expecting a big increase because of our current affiliate promotion. May is the last chance to get the Contract Club at $30 before it increases to $50. If you aren't already an affiliate, you can sign up here to become one. We are paying out 100% affiliate commissions on Contract Club sales in May. 3. Legally...

On today's episode of the podcast we're chatting trademarks and what we've learned about the trademark filing process over the last year. In the past year we've filled 22 trademark registration applications and we've gotten back eight of those thus far. The way we kick off our trademark application process is through what we call Trademark Quickie Searches (notavglaw.com/tmquickie). A traditional law firm would charge you their trademark fee up front (typically $1k - $3k for smaller business, up to like $10k for big businesses like Procter&Gamble because there's a lot more that goes into it). Once you retain them they'll do a trademark search and chat with you about the likelihood of approval of your application and if you have over like 50% odds they'll file the application. Sometimes they'll also look into alternative trademarks for you. We do Trademark Quickie Searches first (these started at $10, then became $25, $50 and are now $100).We raised our price point to help with conversions because at $10 we were getting more people who were just curious about trademarks, not because they were interested in getting one. These searches are time intensive for us, it's not something you can just click a button to search. We are currently accepting five new TM Quickies. You can get started at notavglaw.com/tmquickie Registering a trademark at the federal level has several benefits including: • The right to exclusive nationwide ownership of the mark (except where it’s being used by prior users). • The right to put the ® symbol after the mark. This puts others on notice that you own the registered mark. • A legal presumption that the registrant owns the mark. Trademark rights are given to the person who first uses the mark in commerce, not the first person to file, although filing is still a great idea rather than relying on being first inuse. “Use in commerce” means you’re actually using the mark to sell a thing. If you rebrand, your new mark isn’t being used in commerce until you release it to the world. What we've learned from filing trademarks: 1. Likelihood of confusion is maybe not as big of a deal as we thought it would be, at least it hasn't come up in the eight marks we've had processed by the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). Likelihood of confusion means they can get approved of they're likely not to be confused with someone else's mark. This tells me we can be a little bit more aggressive with the terms we file. 2. People really need to stop filing their own trademark applications. This is because trademarks are more of an art and a science and the way you craft your application impacts approval odds and your ability to enforce the application. Even if it gets approved, you may find your application doesn't have many teeth to it when you try to enforce it. And if it's not approved and you get something back from the PTO asking you to fix it, hiring a law firm to fix it is going to cost a lot more than just hiring them from the get-go. 3. Nearly descriptive marks are a big deal and something most folks wouldn't inherently think about. Some marks actually are much easier to protect than others. Some can’t even be registered. Trademark law has invented a system based on the “strength” of a mark. Astrong mark is easy to protect, while a weak mark may be difficult or impossible to protect. There are five levels of strength with varying rules: Generic: No protection (ex: coffee) Descriptive: No protection unless you can prove secondary meaning. (ex: Coldstone Creamery) Suggestive: Protection (ex: Netflix) Arbitrary: High protection (ex: Apple) Fanciful: Highest protection (ex: Xerox) At a minimum we want it to be suggestive. I experienced this personally when I went to file a TM for the Contract Club. It was at first denied because it was merely descriptive of a club that you can join that provides contract templates. I worked with another attorney on this and we submitted a brief to argue against the refusal saying it's...

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing my March profit report If you listened to last month's profit report you may have heard me sounding a little bit defeated with my numbers due to some personal stuff going on. If you missed it, go back and listen to episode 330. Diving into the March profit report, let's revisit the 2024 goals I share at the top of every episode. • I set good, better, best goals of $300k, $400k and $500k in revenue. I was shooting for $400k, I think the $300k is still doable now. Last year we hit $270k so I'd really like to get that to $300k this year. • Hit 60% in profit. Probably going to be changing • Book 4 state speaking gigs for next year • Consistently hit $25k months. Did this in January and February, not in March, probably not in April • Hit $15k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by the end of the year. This was the big goal to help us get to our revenue goals at the end of the year. We're a little bit less than halfway to this so far. My original goal was to get to 10k by the end of March but that hasn't happened yet. Let's recap what happened in March: • I've previously shared that if all things went to plan, March was going to be a $40k month. That's what I was hoping for because of launches we had planned. Those didn't end up happening, • We had planned a couple of launches and they didn't really end up happening • We promoted our tax challenge and at the end of that I was planning to promote our services but I ended up doing the challenge while I was out of town, we didn't have many people sign up and I didn't get around to doing too much in terms of promotional emails. Projections vs. Actual 1. Unf*ck Your Biz - $4,000 → $1,000 2. Contract Club - $1,000 → $1,100 3. Legally Launched - $500 → $250 4. Monthly services - $5,00 → $7,145 5. Tax - $4,000 → $3,000 6. Trademarks - $1,250 → $1,250 7. Other - $1,000 → $1,010 Total revenue - $17,750 → $15,265 Expenses Employee wages: $5,200 (this does not include myself) Contractor expenses: $4,700 Owner wages: $2,900 (after my taxes. I paid $2,500 into taxes) Monthly tools: $500 Affiliate payouts: $650 Total expenses: $17,600 Profit (- $2,400) While I know a revenue of $15,265 sounds great, when expenses are $17,600, it makes it a lot less exciting. I then paid myself my salary of $5,300 so the total business profit was about (-$8,000). This is why it's good to have a little bit of cushion in our bank accounts. In April, I'm hoping to make a little bit more money. We're not really doing any promotions this month to make a lot more, but a lot of the team expenses were for Unf*ck Your Biz clients we were wrapping up and our bookkeepers were working on some clients' books that were several years behind and it's a project to really get them caught up. I'm probably going to need to readjust my profit goals because it's dawned on me that I've essentially built an agency. It's a law firm, but it's an agency and I may need to hire more bookkeepers to keep up with demand. Higher profit means more money in my pocket as the business owner, but I also am not looking to work 40-60 hours a week, for me ~30 is the sweet spot so if I can make less profit in order to bring on more people to do more of the client work, then that's okay with me. Because we weren't able to do our launches in March, my biggest issue right now is MRR (monthly recurring revenue). This is not recurring payments for courses, MRR is something you pay every month for until you cancel, think things like Netflix. My big goal is to hit $15,000 in MRR by the end of the year. If our goal was to get five people at $500/month that's $2,500/month times nine months would be close to $25,000 in revenue that we're now missing out on. If we can bring these clients on in May during our launch, that's two less months compared to if we had gotten in during a March launch. I thought about doing an impromptu emergency launch but I don't want to rush anything. We...

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing our commonly spotted contract red flags. I messaged MJ, our team attorney, to put together some of the red flags they've been spotting in contracts because they are the primary person responsible for updating our Contract Club templates and working one-on-one with our Unf*ck Your Biz clients to give them their full suite of contracts that can typically range from seven to 15 contracts to each client. If you're not familiar with the Contract Club, it's all the contracts you need, all in one place, all for one price, just pay the cover and you're in for life. You can pay your $30 cover and join the club at notavglaw.com/contract We have dozens and dozens of templates already in the club and we're adding more all of the time. We're always putting out new ones in response to contract requests in our Facebook group, Braden's Besties. 1. Repetitive, contradictory terms Repeating yourself in the contract might feel like emphasizing a term's importance, but it can hurt you. When a judge or mediator reads a contract, if you have two different versions of the same term, if there's contradiction in any way between the two, the judge has to decide which controls if they don't just toss them out altogether. If you do need to repeat in the contract, just say "refer to paragraph five for the cancelation provision). I the terms are repetitive but not contradictory, your duplicative terms just made it longer which is unnecessary for you and your client. 2. Inconsistent style of writing We love a patchwork - for quilts only. It does not belong in a contract, and when you're copying and pasting parts of your contract from multiples templates you've found here or there online, lawyers can always tell. What ends up happening, for example, is different contracts from different attorneys will use different terms to refer to the same person, such as "photographer" or "company" and it's confusing to the client. It's a bad look and tells a judge you weren't being very serious about your legal needs and that you might not know the legal footing in your case. 3. Unfair or unenforceable provisions If you put unreasonable shit in your contract, a judge or fact-finder is going to be very suspicious of the other stuff in your contract. There are certain things you cannot put in your contract which is pretty standard and varies a little by state. The way we typically draft our templates is if it's a red flag in some states we just don't include it. For example, non-disparagement clauses. You typically can't have these in client contracts i.e. in California you can't say a client can't write a bad review about your business. There are policy reasons why this is prohibited and suing people for being open and honest is not very good for the general public. 4. Language you don't understand If you can't explain what the contract says to your client, it shouldn't be in the contract. This is not only why it's important to get a professional contract, but that you take the time to read it and understand what's in your contract. Just because you don't understand it at first, doesn't mean that you should immediately cut it out, it just means you should take the time to understand it. It's okay if you don't understand it at first. We do videos with most along with most of our contracts inside the Contract Club to explain what each and every paragraph means. We don't want you to just buy a template and not know how to answer your client's questions, and they will have questions. 5. Formatting issues Like an inconsistent writing style, having an inconsistent format is a bad look. I don't think most people will have a problem with this because, working mainly with creatives, aesthetic is typically on your mind but if you aren't being careful, it shows that you're okay with shotty legal work. Make sure you use consistent spacing and standard fonts. It's not worth the time and energy to make a contract...

On today's episode of the podcast, I chat with Jodi Brandon about preparing for unexpected time off in your business. I'm hosting an open house! If you've considered working with me or aren't sure which service is best suited for you, register for the Open House on Tuesday, April 16th at 9am PST. I'd love to answer your questions and share more about the resources I have available to help get your legal and tax shit legit. Register at notavglaw.com/open-house Jodi and I go way back to a mastermind event in 2019 and have been in a mastermind group together ever since brainstorming ideas and solutions in our business alongside for other business owners. She is also my book coach for Unf*ck Your Biz. Jodi has one of the most streamlined businesses I've ever seen which lends well to taking unexpected time off, something Jodi has had to do. The streamlined organization is the product of the time off Jodi had to take when he husband had to have a valve replaced in his heart and what was supposed to be an easy procedure became unplanned open heart surgery that was much more complicated and required time off. At this time, Jodi was doing all one-on-one copy editing work with no subcontractors or SOPs in place. This wasn't something scalable and Jodi was out of work. This time off is what led her to diversify her offerings, including the book coaching she now offers. Subcontractors now on her team work on the copy editing. After her husband's surgery, they knew that in the future he would need to have this same valve replacement again. Jodi wanted to be prepared for the next time she would need to care for her husband so she got to work learning about systems and preparing for what happens if you can't run your business. She has a network of colleagues that she wanted do be able to line up work with in the event of an emergency so her clients wouldn't be out of luck. During this time Jodi had some clients who were okay with being moved off her plate to someone else she lined up, some who were good to paise the project until Jodi could work on it again, and some who were unhappy and wanted to stay on schedule because they'd had a contract. Jodi still discloses to all her clients that she is not always the main one to be doing the work because sharing your book can be a vulnerable project. Their contract is with Jodi Brandon Editorial, not just Jodi Brandon. If you aren't in a place to financially hire someone just yet, that doesn't mean you can't plan for the unexpected. You don't necessarily need to have someone on stand by or do doomsday preparation, but you would be surprised how often these conversations are happening to prepare for all sorts of scenarios like maternity leave or chronic illness or caring for a relative. To prep for this, you can charge the client more than you need to pay who you'll contract to. You may be making low overhead to keep your business afloat, but if you have long-term goals for your business, this is better than referring everything out and losing out on weeks or even months of client testimonials. Systems are also an incredibly important part of preparing your business. The clearer your standard operating procedures are and the systems you have in place, the less someone will need to ping you to constantly be asking for info they can't find. These are all things we should have in place anyway, especially if you have team members who take time off, planned or unplanned. Loom videos can be incredibly helpful to create your SOPs. If you need to give yourself unexpected time off, give yourself grace. Even when the business is still operating, it's easy to get caught up in negativity and frustration. It won't be forever, even if it feels like it when your life is in disarray. It's important to give yourself the mental space you need to not go down the negative rabbit hole. You likely won't look back and regret that time you spent during that unexpected time. Going back to preparing your...

On today's episode of the podcast I'm breaking down my February profit report and what's been going on behind the scenes of my business and personal life. I'm hosting an open house! If you've considered working with me or aren't sure which service is best suited for you, register for the Open House on Tuesday, April 16th at 9am PST. I'd love to answer your questions and share more about the resources I have available to help get your legal and tax shit legit. Register at notavglaw.com/open-house If you've listened to the podcast, you know I'm all about transparency and while I don't share every detail about my personal life, it felt like I should share what's been going on the last couples months because you'll also see my numbers are down this month and this will inform a lot of that. I took a few weeks out of office when my mom's health began to decline due to the cancer she was diagnosed with in 2020 and it was clear we did not have much time left with her and then a full week completely off from everything including email when she passed. I'm back home and back to work but it's still hard some days knowing I won't have my mom around for more than half my life. During my time away I've also had a minor business crisis because we had to skip two full launches and I had been planning for March to be our busiest month of the year with people wanting to come and work with us around tax season and everything that comes with that. Diving into the profit report, let's revisit the 2024 goals I share at the top of every episode. I set good, better, best goals of $300k, $400k and $500k in revenue. I think the $300k is still doable, the $400k that I really wanted to hit, I think might be a stretch. Hit 60% in profit Book 4 state speaking gigs for next year Consistently hit $25k months. This is going to be a struggle in March when I do my projections Hit $15k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by the end of the year Let's recap what happened in February: Not a whole lot We had planned a couple of launches and they didn't really end up happening We promoted our tax challenge and at the end of that I was planning to promote our services but I ended up doing the challenge while I was out of town, we didn't have many people sign up and I didn't get around to doing too much in terms of promotional emails. Projections vs. Actual: 1. Unf*ck Your Biz - $14,000 → $15,000 2. Contract Club - $1,000 → $1,080 (I continue to be surprised how predictably this falls between $900 and $1200 without promotion) 3. Legally Launched - $1,000 → $500 4. Monthly services - $8,700 → ~$4,000 5. Tax - $15,000 → $7,000 This and monthly services are the two biggest places where we missed the mark due to missed launches 6. Trademarks - $2,500 → $2,500 7. Other - $1,000 → $1,850 Total revenue - 4$7,700 (Projected to be our highest revenue month ever but I expected us to at least hit $30,000) → $32,000 I'm pretty happy with this, all things considered. Profit Cost of Goods: $48 (Our only COGs are the physical copies of my book) Expenses: $22,600 (very high for me) Owner profit: $9,300 My salary: $5,500 Profit: $3,900 Expenses Employee wages + team contractors (contractors I work with on a regular basis that don't need to legally be employees): ~$13,000 This is double our average. This is because I'm paying our tax preparer for a lot of tax returns and our bookkeeping team put in a lot of hours in February into March because we have a lot of clients who need 2-3 years of bookkeeping backlog Owner wages/owner tax (what I pay myself, technically expenses for the S Corp): $5,000 Monthly tools: $400 Affiliate payout: $650 Marketing: $300 Travel: $150 Other: $2,600 (included one large refund, a large office expense, a couple Ubers, couple online filing fees and a few meals). This came to 70% Expenses (need to work on these numbers) Profit margin: 30% These expenses are the main reason we're going to be increasing the cost of...

On today's episode I chat with Amber Anderson, Owner of Refine for Wedding Planners, about business acquisition and trademarks. We should all run our business with a long-term perspective of "do I want to run this thing until I'm ready to retire?" or "do I potentially want to sell my business one day?" Even if you think you don't want to sell, it's good for business to run it in a systemized way that it could one day be sold. Amber Anderson sold her wedding planning company, Heavenly Day, in January of 2020. She said it was easier to sell the company since it was not tied to her name directly, though the name was not trademarked. When she was ready to sell, it all came down to timing and who was ready to buy at the same time Amber was ready to sell. As for pricing, Amber calculated based on 3-4x annual revenue. Depending on your timing and if you had a broker and how much time you have will also play a factor in the money you will get and if you can get more. If you don't have solid bookkeeping, you won't be able to calculate this. Amber sold in a self-financed deal. Amber now owns Refine, an online community for new, aspiring and struggling wedding planners with coaching, retreats, and templates. When buying the business she received a flat offer and put in a bid above that offer since there were others interested. When evaluating a business, it's important to take a look at what the business owns, including intellectual property, courses that have been created, assets, and goodwill which is how well you are thought of by your community. In buying the company, Amber recreated the courses and assets to be her own. Upon buying Refine, trademarking the name was on Amber's radar immediately because of the numbers and trajectory of the business. Amber also saw other educators using Refine's first in use terms and was advised by her lawyer that she needed to protect her business each time because if she didn't protect it with the first person, it would be harder with the next. The USPTO is backed up and the first step of trademark applications can take up to a year, or longer if you mess up the application and have to start all over, a common occurrence if you try to do it on your own without the help of an attorney. It also depends on how layered and complex your name is, as was the case with a more commonly used term like "refine." Get in Touch with Our Guest Amber Anderson, Owner of Refine for Wedding Planners Check out the Refine for Wedding Planner's website Join the Refine Facebook Community Follow Refine with Amber on Instagram

On this episode of the podcast I share why going out and hiring a tax pro and a lawyer is not your best first step, and what to look for if you do hire someone. Which Biz Bestie are you? We work with so many fabulous types of business owners. Everyone is unique, but we can typically put each person on one of three paths when working with us to get their legal and tax shit together. Take the quiz at notavglaw.com/quiz We get different answers from different people because everyone looks at something from a different lens - an accountant and a lawyer will give you two different answers to the same question, even though tax and law are so related. It's like asking a contractor and an interior designer what you should do with your house. It's similar but very different. I often see bad advice from accountants and attorneys (more on that in my podcast episode "Three of the Worst Pieces of Legal Advice I Have Seen in Facebook Groups"). For example, accountants love to throw out arbitrary numbers for how much income you should have before filing for an LLC, because they're looking at it from a numerical lens versus how a lawyer looks at it with a protective lens. Between accountants, bookkeepers, and lawyers, each does not usually have a full comprehensive understanding of all business entities. This is why ideally you want to work with a lawyer and an accountant when you start your business, but that's out of budget for a lot of people when just starting out. My other beef is that tax pros and lawyers do not educate nearly enough. Lawyers charge hourly meaning you often want to avoid sitting down for a leisurely educational lesson. Accountants make more money the quicker they can move you in, out and on to the next customer meaning they lack incentive to spend time educating you. You want to find accountants that specialize in your specific field. Think of your family member that doesn't totally understand what it is you do. Imagine you ask them to create a list of all your business expenses. They couldn't. An accountant will have a general idea, but they may not have any idea about industry-specific expenses unless they are an industry-specific bookkeeper. You need to understand your compliance costs, how much to save for taxes and what will effect your savings rate. If you have someone who files your taxes ideally they should tell you how much to pay in quarterly taxes, but that can change based on how your business performs that month or if you file jointly with your partner and their job changes. You can't rely on your tax professional to check in on your specific circumstances regularly.

On today's episode of the podcast I'm joined by financial therapist Rachel Duncan who Rachel is a financial and art therapist who has combined her background in mental health with her background in personal finance to help impulse spenders learn to trust themselves. Her clients typically have a lot of emotions around money or have trouble sticking to a budget. Rachel is not a financial advisor, but says that after working with her, you could go to one and not cry. As a special treat for my Besties, Rachel is offering 10% off her signature program, The Healing Circle: An intimate 12-week therapist-led group container for those ready to kick impulse spending for good and learn to trust themselves with money. This program takes you through the nuts & bolts of money and the deeper emotional blocks that are holding you back from facing your money. Learn more at www.moneyhealingclub.com/healing-circle Use coupon code: NOTAVGLAW at checkout for 10% off I discovered Rachel when she became a prospective content who inquired about trademark services. Looking through her website I knew she'd be a great fit for the podcast. While I give people the technical skills to get their business finances together, if they are looking for help with the money mindset around that I want to point them in the direction of specific resources. I know that people need this because it would be hard for me to tally up how many people have cried on meetings with me, money is an emotional topic. Rachel and I work through an exercise that she does with her students to identify our, what Rachel calls "money scripts" which are things that we've learned about money that are intense either general senses about money or things that were taught to us by specific people. Make a quadrant on a piece of paper with each one labeled "Income," "Expenses," "Debt" and "Savings." Write down a phrase that immediately comes to mind for each of these words. What are your beliefs or what are the quiet voices saying in your head about each one? For me, my income quadrant was around hearing about our money tree as a kid. Needs were met and I recognized as a kid we were what I call "country middle class" because we could afford to go visit family in Florida every summer, but if I asked for certain wants like a trampoline I'd be told to "go pick the money off the money tree in the backyard." For expenses, I wrote "do you actually need that?" and also wrote, "treat yo'self" from Parks and Rec. I'm a big treat yourself person, I'm a spender. And I saw some of that growing up, so it's not coming from a place of rebellion because spending wasn't allowed. I feel like my parents preached the importance of savings, but I wasn't necessarily witnessing it. No one seemed particularly frugal, other than my grandpa who was also preachy about it. For debt, I wrote "cash only." This comes more from my dad who was the son of a farmer, and the only one of the nine children who didn't go into farming. A lot of the farming was crops that were paid for in a lump sum and they could turn around and buy something with that and then save the rest. My dad's not a farmer, but to this day he doesn't have a credit card. For savings, I wrote "save 10%" and I don't know why my mind went to church tithing. We were always told to save a little bit of the money we got like at Christmas time. From reading books over time I've learned that the reason I've never really been able to save is because it comes from a scarcity mentality. Like when you see money in your bank account and you want to spend it before it's gone. I have trouble letting money accumulate in a certain area. As you do these exercises, identify where these phrases came from in your life and how the people in your life came to believe that, was it war, the Great Depression, etc. Take a few of these, especially if one goes against what you'd like to be doing, and really break them down. For me, I've rephrased my money mantra and I say my...

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing how to build a profit plan designed for your business. If you haven't already, take our quiz to help determine your best starting point on your legal and tax journey. Head to notavglaw.com/quiz to get your results. When I started my business I was operating with a sub-500 credit score and I didn't have the greatest habits with money (still don't always, but I have the knowledge and know-how).I was in a cycle of churn and burn that was further exacerbated when I started making more money in the business. I'm not going to tell you that making more money doesn't help, but if you're not managing it well, what happens is you start spending more money on more expenses. That's why it's really important to stay off the "WTF happened to my money?" hamster wheel and get your profit sorted out sooner rather than later. When I was going through this journey I read Profit First and lots of other finance books to piece everything together. During this process I created my Unf*ck Your Biz course and wrote the first edition of my Unf*ck Your Biz book. Fast forward a few years and now we're running Unf*ck Your Biz as a signature 1-on-1 service and I'm seeing more than ever how much of a sticky issue cash flow is for people because no one teaches us these things. How do you pay yourself? Do I need a business bank account? Can I pay a business expense from my personal bank account? What if I'm an LLC instead of a sole proprietor? The list of questions goes on and on. I get asked a lot about Profit First and while I may be jealous of the brand recognition, I can't hate on the book too much because it has done a fabulous job of getting people to understand the importance of profit and to pay themselves first. It also gives a simple to follow system. The big thing Profit First has you do is open five bank accounts. I did this at one point in time and despite setting it up properly, it wasn't set up right with the bank on the back end and I was getting fined zero balance fees for zero-ing out the accounts as you're supposed to do with the Profit First method. I also found many people going through Profit First only end up implementing about half the system anyway. My biggest issue with Profit First is that while it helps with cash flow issues, it doesn't teach what you're required to do in terms of paying yourself or tax nuances based on tax and business structure. I understand why it doesn't from a legal perspective. As a tax attorney, I'm able to dive into cash flow in my book, which is a big piece of unf*cking your biz, but also dig into the nitty gritty that comes with it. If you're curious about how you should be doing all this, that's what I dive into in Profit Rx. The Profit Rx course dives into parts one, two and six of our Unf*ck Your Biz framework which is covered in the book. You can also work with us to implement the full framework 1-on-1, you can DIY it and use the book, if you just want the legal bits of the framework you can buy our Legally Launched course and if you want the tax, bookkeeping and money aspects you can buy our Profit Rx course. To give you a highlight of what's included in the book and what you can get in Profit Rx, let's look at an excerpt from the book in Chapter 18. I hate the word "budget." Ick. But creating a bucket system is like budgeting for non-budgeters. By separating your money into different buckets, you’re creating a budget for each category without sitting down and saying, “I’ll spend X on groceries this month, Y on eating out, etc.” Instead, your balance in any given account is your cap for spending on that category to make it easy. The basic system looks like: 1. Set up a business bank account - If you have a sole proprietorship, you’re not legally required to have a separate bank account. If you have an LLC, or any other formal legal entity, maintaining a separate bank account is one of your corporate formalities and is required. 2. Dial in the...

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing the lessons I've learned since re-opening my law firm last year. Head to notavglaw.com/quiz to find out which business bestie you are. The quiz will tell you what direction you need to go and what you need to be doing in your business when it comes to the tax and legal stuff. Last year I relaunched my law firm and rebranded it "Not Your Average Law Firm" in February 2023. After I did some soul searching and decided what direction I wanted to take the business, we launched the firm with an open house and kicked off the firm with our monthly legal subscription and had about 10 clients join in our first couple months. We then started doing tax return services and trademarks. In just the last year with our legal members, we had one client who we helped navigate the $50,000 copyright lawsuit they were served. We had a client who purchased a business ten years ago and they got hit with a copyright claim for a photo on the website from before they bought the company, we've also filed about a dozen trademarks for our clients and the first are on their way to being officially approved soon after going through the process. We've drafted dozens and dozens of contracts and terms of services for clients and sent emails on their behalf to their own clients who weren't paying on time. In December, we launched Unf*ck Your Biz as a done-for-you service and onboarded 19 clients. One big thing we learned from the legal subscription is a lot of folks get themselves into trouble because they don't take time to set themselves up properly. For example, I spoke with someone getting refund requests from two multi-thousand dollar projects but we had a hard time helping them because they had weak contracts. Same with the clients that come to us looking to file a trademark before they have an LLC. There's an order that things need to be done in order to avoid patchworking things in an unideal order that isn't systematic.. From our perspective, there is a step by step process we recommend going through to avoid these scenarios. Here's what I've learned: 1. It's hard to launch an offer without great systems, but it's really hard to invent great systems before you launch an offer. We've set up work flows and within a week of launching we're changing them because now we're getting a better understanding of what our client needs and what works better. For this launch we did 1-on-1 calls with each Unf*ck Your Biz client to see what they needed and then we took them through a custom roadmap. My lesson was that beta programs are great, but you need to do them with fewer people depending on the capacity of your business. 2. I decided we are going to raise the price after our first beta launch so a) I want to get more people and b) I wanted to give people an opportunity to join the cohort at that initial price point. This is where I learn a lot of my business decisions are clouded by the conversations in the online course space about beta programs, founding members and scarcity. But, when you have to deliver on a service, maybe not the best option. If I could do this over again I would do a quiet launch for about five clients as an initial beta to develop systems and then I would do a big beta launch. Clients have found it to be valuable, but we want a more organized system in place that's clearer to those in the cohort. Next time, we'll do it the opposite and do a five client beta program in March to test out our 58 step system to really test the process we've created. We still have three spots left for the March cohort. One of them can be yours. Send me a DM on Instagram @notavglaw and we can chat about if it's a good fit for you. This round will still be at the $4,000 price point from last year, and this will be the last time it is offered at this rate. For everyone who signs up for Unf*ck Your Biz, we: - Set up your bookkeeping and complete up to one-year of bookkeeping catch-up. - Provide tax strategy...

On today's episode of the podcast I'm re-airing a popular episode highlighting some of the most overlooked tax deductions that entrepreneurs are missing. Don’t forget, our Tax Season Workshop is back and it kicks off Tuesday, February 20th. During the workshop we will get you ready to file your taxes by wrapping up your 2023 bookkeeping, making sure the proper documents are collected and organized and getting prepped with video lessons from me and live Q&A sessions. At the end of the workshop you're ready to file on your own, hand your neatly buttoned-up package off to your tax preparer, or have us file. If you are looking for us to file, we are only filing this year for our students, members or anyone who goes through the workshop. Sign up at www.notavglaw.com/taxworkshop! Most overlooked tax deductions: Commissions and fees - This is the title of a category on a Schedule C. When I mentioned commissions and fees I want to talk primarily about processing fees. Let’s say I charge you $1,000. There is then, let’s say, a 3% processing fee that comes off the top from your payment processor. $970 enters your bank account. What a lot of people will do is report $970 in income but that is not correct, we got $1,000 in income. You want to make sure you’re taking your processing fees as a deduction, and they should be detailed in your bookkeeping. Education - Deductible if you can show the education maintains or improves skills required for your existing business or are required for you to maintain your current status. Graduate level courses are typically not deductible, this is more for things like required continuing education. For example, I have to do 25 hours of continuing education for my law license every three years. If I buy a busines-related book I include that as well. Same for in-person conferences you’re travelling to. Car and truck expenses - You may take a deduction for business uses of your vehicle. You have a choice of taking actual expenses or the standard mileage rate. You multiple business miles driven by the applicable rate. One requirement is you use the standard rate if you used it the first year you had the vehicle in business. You may take parking and toll fees in addition to the standard rate. Commuting miles are not tax deductible. Home office - The rules are strict. You may only deduct if you are in business, you use the home office exclusively for business unless you store inventory or run a daycare, and you use your home office for business on a regular basis (so no home office that doubles as a gym) plus one of the following additional requirements: your office is a principle place of business, you regularly use the office for work activities and have no other fixed location where you perform administrative activities, unique clients and customers, a separate structure on your property you use as an office, you store inventory/products in the space, or you run a daycare center. If you meet the criteria you can deduct direct and indirect expenses. A direct expense would be something like a desk chair. An indirect expense would be something like rent, utilities, HOA fees, even a portion of your house cleaning. You cannot deduct mortgage but can take a depreciation deduction. Much like the car/truck expenses, there are specific rates you can take that I highlight in the podcast episode. Travel - Deductible business travel is overnight travel away from your tax home. You can deduct travel, expenses incurred while there, internet fees, 50% of meals and 100% of lodging incurred while travelling. If you’re travelling within the US you can deduct 100% of travel costs if 50% or more of the travel is for business.

On today's episode of the podcast I'm diving into my January 2024 profit report. If you're new to the podcast, I do these profit reports for a few reasons. 1) It's good accountability for me to keep up with my bookkeeping every month. 2) It helps me do my projections for the next month. 3) It provides a good example of what is possible when you regularly do your bookkeeping, do projections and really look at the numbers. 4) It's one of my core beliefs that money is more taboo of a topic than it should be and if we talked about it more we'd have more realistic expectations of what it costs to run a business. Our Tax Season Workshop is back. During the workshop we will get you ready to file your taxes by wrapping up your 2023 bookkeeping, making sure the proper documents are collected and organized and getting prepped with video lessons from me and live Q&A sessions. At the end of the workshop you're ready to file on your own, hand your neatly buttoned-up package off to your tax preparer, or have us file. If you are looking for us to file, we are only filing this year for our students, members or anyone who goes through the workshop. Sign up at www.notavglaw.com/taxworkshop Diving into 2024, let's take a look at the goals we have for the year. We set good, better, best goals of $300k, $400k and $500k for the year. It's a big range but we've seen big jumps in the past. We're aiming for 60% profit margin not including my owner salary. Other goals are to book four stage speaking gigs in 2025, have consistent $25,000 revenue months, and end the year with monthly recurring revenue at at least $15,000. There wasn't a lot happening in January as we were heads down working with the 19 Unf*ck Your Biz clients we signed in December. We also resurrected Legally Launched from what it was a few years ago and brought it back as a $200 program that launched in January. If you purchased the $10 offer, this is different that that, we just really liked the name stole the name to use for this new offer. We didn't promote the launch much due to some family health issues and time I'll be taking off so I'll be doing 1:1 calls with the two people who joined instead of a group cohort as planned. That program is now evergreen that you buy at any time. We also launched our Contract Bot which will auto-generate your contracts and is an upsell to the Contract Club which you can get at notavglaw.com/club. Let's review our projected vs. actual revenue amounts. Projections vs Actuals 1. UYB - 14,000 → $14,400 2. Club - 1,000 → $1,140 3. Legally Launched - 3,000 → $500 (off-the mark but that's okay because didn't promote it as planned) 4. Monthly - 5,700 → $8,500 (includes monthly legal clients, monthly bookkeeping clients and monthly membership clients because we're restructuring our monthly offers for a clearer marketing message) 5. Tax - 5,000 → 0 (mostly because the clients we signed for this will role into February when I sent contracts and they're ready) 6. TM - 1,250 → 0 (Had someone sign up but that revenue won't hit the bank until February) 7. Other - 1,000 → $1,178 8. Low Ticket - 0 → $190 ($10 offers and my book, I projected $0 because honestly I forgot to make a projection) Total - 31,000 - $26,000 Expenses Team: $5,200 (about $1,500 more than I typically average which is because we're working with all our Unf*ck Your Biz Clients. This will be about double in February because our bookkeeping team is logging like 5x as many hours because we are doing full 2023 bookkeeping clean-ups for all our UYB clients and our attorney is logging a lot more hours working on contracts for clients). Non-team contractors: $1,200 (folks I hire for one-off projects) My wages: $5,600 Affiliates: $500 Worker's Comp Insurance: $45 Marketing: $905 (more than normal, included annual Squarespace renewal) Client fees: $250 (the fee way pay to file a trademark on behalf of the client) Other: $1,500 (I bought a new rug for my office and a few other...

On today's episode of the podcast I am going through the roadmap you need to get through tax season. This is the perfect episode for you if you're worried you're missing something when tax time comes around or if taxes don't come second nature to you at this stage of business. The Tax Season Workshop is back. During the workshop we will get you ready to file your taxes by wrapping up your 2023 bookkeeping, making sure the proper documents are collected and organized and getting prepped with video lessons from me and live Q&A sessions. At the end of the workshop you're ready to file on your own or hand your neatly buttoned-up package off to your tax preparer. Sign up at www.notavglaw.com/taxworkshop Taking a look at the Tax Season Roadmap, there are six steps to getting ready to file and implement systems after filing. 1. Wrap up your 2023 bookkeeping - The IRS wants to know how much money you made and you need to know how much money you spent because these deductions are how you save money. We need these deductions summed up by category for when you file. For tax time, you need an annual total, but ideally you're keeping up with these monthly to understand where our money's going and where we may need to cut expenses. Separate your income and expenses by category. 2. Send out 1099s - These were due January 31st. If you haven't already sent them, there is a penalty of $50 per late 1099 if it's less than 30 days late, after which it does go up. Better late than not at all. If you paid folks by credit card you don't usually need to send a 1099. Get answers to your 1099 questions at notavglaw.com/1099s 3. Collect all your documents - As documents come in the mail, collect them in an envelope or drawer to prep for tax time. Be sure to keep them for 10+ years after filing in the event you are audited. Also be sure to keep receipts and any other physical documents that go along with your bookkeeping. For your records, you'll also need a digital folder of email receipts/documents to go with bookkeeping and information on your home office space - the square footage of your home office, your home square footage to calculate your deduction, and any household expenses such as rent, utilities, and general upkeep like housekeeping or gardening. This is because if you rented an office space your rent for the space would go to this upkeep so the same goes for these services for your home office since they're like 10% business expense, 90% personal expense. You also want a note of business miles driven. Ideally you'll make a note of your odometer every January 1st for what you start and end the year with and then a record of how many of those are miles driven for business purposes. 4. File your tax return - This can be done on your own or you can hire us to help (we'll be offering tax filing services you can join after the tax season workshop). 5. Review your return and create a tax strategy - Specifically you want to look at the percentage of tax paid compared to the money your household brought in. We use this number in order to tell people how much we should be saving for quarterly taxes. You can also use this to determine areas of opportunity such as things you missed out on and things you can take advantage of this year and next year. We also want to do an S Corp analysis to see if you should file for a late election this year (ideally you want to file in January) or would 2025 be the year for you. This is a little hard to do on your own if you're not super savvy with reading your tax documents. We do this 1:1 for our clients and if you're in our membership we'll do a group call to help our members with this part. 6. Implement strategy and continue bookkeeping - Now that everything is set up you will ideally be keeping up with this on a monthly basis. To get into a good spot for tax season this year and moving forward, join the Tax Season Workshop at www.notavglaw.com/taxworkshop

On today's episode of the podcast, I'm sharing my Small Business Blueprint. I share this topic annually as a reminder for those of you who are new to the podcast or who need a reminder of the steps that still need to be completed. These are the steps you'll need to take if and when you plan to legally solidify your sole proprietorship, form an LLC and/or form an S corporation. You can get help with all of this inside our program Legally Launched. The doors are officially open and if you join by end of day Friday, January 26th, then you can get access to a live cohort of the program where we'll be doing three group Q&As on Tuesdays at 9am PST/12pm EST. Each one will be structured with the course, which is only about 20 minutes of videos each week. The biggest benefit to Legally Launched is you're going to learn what actually needs to happen with your LLC and S corp and how to maintain them moving forward so they don't dissolve. Join at notavglaw.com/legallylaunched While we use my home state of California as an example, these blueprint applies to all states. 1. Get registered agent 2. Choose biz name and check availability 3. Determine entity and file articles 4. Obtain employee identification number (EIN) 5. File for seller's permit 6. Get fictitious business name license 7. Obtain business license or business tax certificate 8. Draft operating agreement 9. Draft meeting minutes 10. File S corp election 11. File statement of information 12. Pay annual franchise tax 13. Open back accounts 14. Set up payroll Steps 1 - 10 are what cover your entity, 11-14 are post-formation requirements. Before we dive deeper into the steps, I need to remind you to stop paying for bull shit. Online filing systems are like car mechanics, if you don't know what you need, how do you know if you really need everything they say you do? The blueprint is going to tell you everything you need, and will vary based on your business entity choice. If you plan to stay a sole prop I recommend looking at steps 4 - 7 and 13. Do the same if you have a general partnership, but add a partnership agreement. LLC formation, go through the full blueprint but only include steps 10 and 14 if you plan to elect S corp status on your LLC. You can always form an LLC and elect S corp status on a future year. Even as a sole prop it's good to get your EIN and other business licenses now. If you do an LLC later you can update that then. Let's review the steps in detail. 1. Get a registered agent - This is the person who will receive service of process if you are ever sued. Every LLC and Corporation must have one located in the state where the LLC is formed. You can be your own registered agent with your home or office address or you can hire a corporate registered agent which usually happens under two circumstances - they don't feel comfortable receiving service of process because your home address or office address is publicized or your office is outside the state where you formed. 2. Choose biz name and check availability - LLC filings are rarely denied but one common reason for denial is using an already taken name. Google "(your state) LLC search" to avoid this before filing. The rules that constitute a similar name vary by state. Almost every state allows online LLC filing through a .gov address. Don't fall for the trap of filing through a third party and paying additional fees. 3. Determine entity and file articles - Entity means the legal ways to form your business. The options are sole proprietorships, general partnerships, limited liability companies, S corporations, and C corporations. The default entities are a sole proprietorship and general partnership. The most common options for small businesses are LLCs and S corps. Remember that an S corp is not a type of entity, it's a tax status therefore for most soloprenuers an LLC would be the best starting point. If you plan to make more than $60k-ish a year, check out the S corp...

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing what's considered a "reasonable salary" when filing for a S Corp. If you missed last week's episode, go back and listen to part one of this two-part S Corp series. In episode 319 we talked about how S Corps save you money, and the trick is you have to pay yourself a salary. The lower the salary is that you pay yourself, the more you save in taxes, but that salary has to be reasonable. So what is considered "reasonable" for tax purposes? Coming soon we're launching a small cohort of my program Legally Launched to help you form an LLC or an S Corp or even if you want to make sure your sole proprietorship is legally legit, this program is for you. You'll keep your access to the program, so it can grow with your business and you can revisit it when you're ready to become an LLC or an S Corp. We also have a S Corp Savings Calculator, available at notavglaw.com/scorpcalculator for $10. This will help you determine how much an S Corp can save you in taxes. The calculator is included in Legally Launched so if you know you're going to join the program you don't need to get it but if you're not sure if the program is for you yet, the calculator is a great stepping stone. In my book, Unf*ck Your Biz, I have a chapter on S Corps, including a section on determining reasonable salary. To do so, you can look at the market rate of pay for someone offering your services in your geographic area with your level of expertise. Alternatively, consider how much you would pay someone to do what you do. What would be a reasonable amount of pay to find someone qualified to fill your role? The importance of this is that S Corps are subject to fraud abuse so the IRS may look at this through a critical lens. The way we can start to determine this is with a simple Google search to give us a good ballpark. This is where it can get tricky. Often this can skew to the high side, and that's because we don't spend all our time necessarily doing that one thing. That's where the alternative Many Hats approach, a more popular salary calculation method for entrepreneurs. As a solopreneur you wear all the hats. You may start the day in your administrative work hat, then you put on your social media manager hat before another hat change into your core role. Consider the Many Hats approach a pie chart where each slice is sized by the time spent wearing each hat. This approach allows us to consider time spent on these tasks. We then calculate our salary by taking that percentage of the reasonable salary for reach job, for example 10% of your time on social media is 10% of the social media manager reasonable salary, etc. I learned this the hard way. I looked up the (high) salary of a San Diego tax attorney. But only about 5% of my time is spent doing tax attorney work. The rest of my time is spent podcasting, speaking, doing social media, etc. When you do the Many Hats approach it can help pull your salary down which will help save you taxes. It just needs to be reasonable. For example, if you have $100,000 in revenue and $50,000 in expenses you'll have $50k in profit. Let's say you wear four hats - web design (their primary), admin, social media and managing their team. If they spend 40% of their time doing web design with a reasonable salary of $70k, their percentage is $28k, social media, we'll say 20% of $50,000 for $10,000, for admin work we've got 20% of $60k at $12k, and management at 20% of $70k is $14k for a total salary of $64,000 which is $6k less than the $70k reasonable salary. This would save $918 in taxes. This is not fool-proof, the IRS will be doing the same types of calculations on their end if you were to get audited. The most important thing to do is document everything when you calculate. Hyperlink screenshots of the reasonable salary numbers you find, don't just include the source link as average salaries change and if you get audited in a few years it may be higher than it was when you...

On today's episode of the podcast we're talking about the way you can save possibly thousands in taxes through an S Corporation. This will be a two-part series. Part one today will focus on S Corps and how they really work. Coming soon I'll be re-launching my program "Legally Launched" which is a full course that covers LLC and S Corp formation and serves as an alternative to things like Legal Zoom or IncFile because I don't think they do a great job of helping people (hear more about that on episode 312). I also know Unf*ck Your Biz isn't for everyone and if right now you just want help with filing your LLC or S Corp, you can buy it on our site now or when we do a mini launch with live support in the coming weeks. During this episode I'm also releasing a new offer called the S Corp Savings Calculator. It's a Google Sheet along with a tutorial video where you can punch in some numbers using our directions and it'll help you do a rough estimation of how much you could save by having an S Corporation, letting you know if it would be a good fit for you. Get access to the calculator at https://notavglaw.com/scorpcalculator When we are self-employed, we pay income tax and self-employment tax. if we have an employer, we only pay income tax which is an employee benefit. An S Corp helps save us Some of that self employment tax is saved when you become an S Corp. As in escorp you are required to pay yourself a Reasonable salary regularly as opposed to paying yourself a distribution whenever you feel like Which I find is common with many people who are single member LLCs and not an S Corp. When you have a salary, it means you pay yourself through a payroll system instead of just transferring money from your business to personal bank account. Being on payroll means that money for taxes is taken out before you are paid at that money is sent to the IRS and your state tax authority. Fun fact: you cannot be on payroll if you do not have an S Corp. When you have an s Corp, you can also give yourself distributions on top of your salary. Non-S Corps (sole props and single member LLCs) pay income tax and self-employment tax on all profit. When you have an S Corp, only your salary is subject to both taxes and the remaining profit is only subject to income tax. You would calculate your tax savings by finding 15.3% of your net income after salary. That 15.3% is Self employment tax that you are not paying on that net income After salary, since we only pay a self-employment tax on our salary and income tax on everything when we have an S Corp. It really comes down to how much you pay yourself in salary because the lower the salary But let's tax as we pay, but remember that you have to pay yourself a reasonable salary. You also want to make sure you are distributing the money to yourself. That's left after salary that you don't need for business savings. Because that money left in your account is still considered business profit if it is not distributed to yourself. You don't want to leave it sitting in your account unless you are trying to build business savings. Another way to save money with an S corp is to run your health insurance through the business and not pay it out of your personal money. Learn more about the money you can save with an S Corp at notavglaw.com/scorpcalculator

On today's episode of the podcast I'm breaking down what my business looked like in 2023 and what that means for 2024. Over the last few weeks I've been chatting on the podcast about my business as we round down the year including KPIs, my November profit report and annual planning for 2024. I've also released a 2023 highlight overview blog at notavglaw.com/2023-yearinreview. My first full time year in business was 2018 and I did about $30,000 in revenue. 2019, about $70,000, 2020 we doubled the revenue and did $140k, 2021 took a step back and did about $90k, 2022 was a leap forward and we did $170k, and in 2023 we are YTD $268k (I recorded this with 11 days left to the year during which some recurring payments will come in) so I expect to hit about $270-$275k. To recap what led up to 2023, let's take a look at 2022. We launched the Contract Club (formerly the Contract Vault) which took off faster than I imagined with the help of organic word-of-mouth-buzz and more than 1,000 people joined in the first year. We also launched Profit Rx the end of 2021 and turned it into a 6-figure membership in 2022 by taking Unf*ck Your Biz from a coaching program into a monthly membership. We found that people weren't getting the results that they could get if it was a coaching model with accountability which is why we brought that back in May 2023 and then made it a done-for-you service in winter 2023. Profit Rx didn't go away though, it's now a monthly membership accountability program to help you get your bookkeeping and your cash flow ran. We'll be opening the doors to that in February again with a lot of fun updates with a new level of value we've never had before. The energy I'm trying to bring into 2024 is a lot fewer offers, each with their own very clear deliverable. In 2022 I also brought on my first employees instead of just a team of contractors and this allowed me to help more people because I had a larger capacity with a wider range of skillsets. It wasn't that I was always too busy, it was that I used to feel like I needed to have all the answers for every single client. But my friend Kira at Paradigm pointed out that's not how all businesses work. Look at other law firms, they have a variety of lawyers specializing in a variety of types of law. To recap 2023, we moved our membership back to our program Unf*ck Your Biz, we also brought in 700 new club goers to the Contract Club and added some order bumps which I recommend to other business owners. January was our lowest revenue month which was unsurprising to me, in February, we jumped when I launched the law firm which continued to grow until we dipped in July and then again at the end of Q4 we jumped which is typical because it's when we launch and when people want to get their shit together ahead of the new year. This year we made close to $23k from our eight low-ticket offers (under $50). Out of that, $17,000 was from the Contract Club. In 2024 we're going to scrap most of these low-ticket offers, add a few $10 offers to answer some big questions we have, for example an S Corp savings calculator because people always have questions about that. If people determine they won't save money starting an S Corp, we save them money from hiring someone they don't need yet. I've also decided no freebies this year, with the exception of talks and presentations, but we will be having a quiz on our website. The Contract Club averaged $1,400 a month in sales, Profit Rx averaged $6,000/month. We averaged ~$4k in tax services, $4k in legal services. Expense-wise, our average team expenses was $3,300 per month. When I tell people I have employees I think they think I have multiple full time employees which is not the case. I have five employees on payroll working about five hours a week give or take given launches or projects being worked on. Our monthly tools averaged $430/month and $950 in marketing/month. $300/month average in memberships and online courses that I took. $400/month...

On today's episode of the podcast I'm chatting with Tayler Cusick-Hollman, founder of Enji, about all things KPIs. Tayler has been a small business marketing consultant for nine years with a majority wedding professionals client base. She's helped numerous solopreneurs come up with realistic marketing plans that they can realistically do themselves. During COVID Tayler developed and released Enji, a software to support your marketing and brand efforts, so she could help more business owners. The software was inspired by the marketing system that Tayler had pieced together over the years to run her businesses really efficiently. She didn't want others to have to hack their own together while also wearing all the other hats that come with running a business. The idea behind Enji was that her clients needed support and were always coming to Tayler saying "just tell me what to do," so she created the software to provide them ongoing help. Enji is a marketing system like you use a CRM to manage your booking. Inside Enji you can track your KPIs (key performance indicators). They are data points, or metrics, designed to help you understand the health of your business and the impact of something, like the impact of your marketing. Depending on what you're focusing on you'll have a mix of KPIs. For me, the primary KPI is revenue and then since I can't track every data point, what impacts my revenue? For me it's leads and conversions. Below that KPI would be number of social media hits and website hits. And these evolve over time, for example in the beginning of my business I was heavily focused on Instagram followers, and that's not it for me now. For wedding vendors or anyone opening a high-level 1:1 service, Tayler recommends tracking where are your most highly-qualified leads coming from because that's a really strong indicator of where your time, money, energy and attention is well spent. Track your lead sources. Document how many leads per source you're getting. For example, maybe you're putting a lot of time and stress into Instagram but you don't need to put as much time into there. To really drive home what marketing channel is worth your energy, track the average booking value you're getting by lead source to really drive home what's worthy of your time, energy and attention. And some of the things we do our for nurturing versus organic attraction marketing, like this podcast for example. We want to track these numbers because marketing is experiments. For a fun experiment, every time somebody books you, go and see if they follow you on your various social media platforms. I highly encourage people with an email list, especially course creators with high ticket programs, to manually go and look at everyone who joins to see how long that person has been on your email list and nurtured by you before buying. How much warming up do they need? It's easy to be lazy about these numbers until you have a good tool which is why I'm excited about using Enji. As Tayler says, "The least lazy marketer is the one who wins." When it comes to social media KPIs, Tayler recommends understanding your audience size. Your follower number is a vanity metric, but you need to make sure your audience is growing and changing so you have new people to reach. She likes to track it to get insight into who she's talking to and then getting into the nitty gritty of watch times and engagement. For me, slower growth on social media shows that I'm not meeting that many people in real life that month or speaking at that many events for people to discover me. Tayler tracks 12 KPIs for Enji and she's only recently added a few of them as the business evolves. She recommends 10-12 is a good place to start and keep trying to find the thing that helps you understand what you're doing at a level that unlocks the thing you're chasing. KPIs for online educators with courses, memberships and folks with clients. In my business we have several online programs...

On today's episode of the podcast I'm walking you through my annual planning process as I prep for 2024. I love goal setting and business project planning so I'm excited for January planning. If you're familiar with the Strengths Finder assessment, Futuristic is my #1 and Strategic is always in my Top 5. When planning for the New Year rolls around, I always have to dial myself back a little and ask if I'm planning for the sake of planning, or am I mapping out something executable? I brainstorm all year long, but I created my 2024 planning Google Doc in October, did a lot of it last month, and then we do our company quiet weeks, end of December/early January, is when I generally wrap up my planning process. To start my planning I use the Vision Traction Organizer which comes from the book Traction by Gino Wickman. I've been using this since 2019 and I found it really useful for breaking down project management as an entrepreneur. You start with your core values, focus and goal setting. I also recently read Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz which has you come up with your Queen Bee role in your business which is what you hang your hat on, and also come up with your company promise. Our company promise is making things fun. I hear people tell me a lot that we make tax and legal stuff, a not very fun topic, as fun as possible and non-judgemental. Our core values are: 1) We make stuff fun. 2) We keep it simple. 3) We stay transparent. 4) We educate and empower. 5) We reserve judgement. Our purpose is making business fun again. What I mean by this one is that when we start our business it's an exciting idea and it's fun to work on our branding and website and getting our first clients but then we get weighed down with taxes and bureaucracy and the stuff you don't want to do. If we take the weight of that off your back, can we make business fun again? Our company promise is legal and tax solutions that don't suck. Clockwork also has you figure out your 10 year target, three year picture, one year goals so you're essentially reverse engineering your goals. This is something I share a lot about in my programs. In three years, my goal is to have $600k in revenue with roughly $330k in profit with about $25k in monthly recurring revenue. I think it's fairly doable based on the growth we've had over the last year. And this is what I need to hit to fund all my personal life goals. We also need to map out what this looks like. For example, if you're in the wedding industry how many weddings do you need to do to hit your goal? In Traction you also map out your marketing strategy. You create your three unique selling propositions, for us it's 1) Accessible for newbies because we have offers at all different price points, 2) Judgement free, 3) Fun for everyone. Most folks come to us through our lower ticket items or the podcast and eventually we want them to go on to join Unf*ck Your Biz and then they join Profit Rx or Legal Rx for monthly maintenance as we help them scale up a profitable business. Once we have our three year plan, we can move into our 2024 goal. For revenue, my Good goal is $300k, our Better Goal is $400k, Best $500k which may be a little extreme. Profit, my Profit goal is 60% and I have two specific measurables - 1) Get to $15k in MRR and 2) Book six stage speaking gigs for 2025. Then we ask ourselves what we need to do this year to hit our one year goals and set ourselves up for the three year goals and these tasks are called Rocks, which is modeled after this example. Our rocks are the core things that are important to your business that are big picture. I like to map out one or two big ones per quarter for myself and then one for each of my team members. In my opinion it should take someone 2-3 full work weeks based on how many hours they work a week. Here are a few rocks for me and my team: - Migrate our email to @notavglaw.com - Relaunch our Pinterest - Finish a state-by-state sales tax blog - Build out a...