Explore every episode of the podcast Unf*ck Your Biz With Braden
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 368 - Big Business Changes Coming | 19 Dec 2024 | 00:28:11 | |
On today's episode of the podcast, we're talking about big business changes that are coming based on what has and has not worked for us this year. One question I ask myself and continue to ask yourself is, "What can I do less of next year in order to spend more of time on what's working best? What's making the most impact and how can we do more of that?" Between multiple memberships, courses, social media channels, blog posts, podcasts, guest speaking, summits, bundles, stage speaking, I've been pulled in a lot of directions, especially as our business keeps growing which is fantastic, but comes with push pull. When you say yes to one thing, you say no to something else.
I've seen areas of growth, I've seen areas of decline, and I'm sharing today how that's impacting what we're doing in 2025. What's working for us: What's Kind of Working What's not working What I'm not sure about Our 2025 Core Offer Suite What we're doubling down on in 2025 I'm not ready to make a decision on the podcast right now and have decided the best thing to do is to take a 3-ish week hiatus to spend time with family for the holidays and think about the future of the podcast. I'll be back in January with an announcement of what will be coming next. Thank you so much for tuning in! I appreciate you all more than you know. I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a DM on Instagram @notavglaw | |||
| 367 - November Profit Report | 12 Dec 2024 | 00:40:12 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing Are you ready to unf*ck your biz? The doors are now open to our signature program, Unf*ck Your Biz, where we go through our six-part framework to get your legal and tax shit legit through our video course with group coaching support through weekly calls and a group Slack channel. You get access to our bookkeeping spreadsheet, quarterly tax estimator, contractor classification guides by state, our state-by-state business blueprints and so much more. The doors close on Monday, December 16th. Learn more at unfuckyourbiz.com November was an exciting month, we experimented with new strategies to lead up to the launch so we'll dive into the report but before we do, you can grab your free copy of How to Conduct a Profit Report for Your Business at www.notavglaw.com/355 to follow along with my step-by-step process and run your own profit report. November Projections vs. Actual • Monthly Clients: $8,500 → $8,900 Total revenue: $33,500 → $52,000 (A record revenue month for me)
Profit Total revenue: $52,000 Total business profit: $23,708 Notable Expenses • Employee wages: $8,500 (Pretty high, but I had two team members with me at Wedding MBA clocking extra hours at our booth) How am I feeling about the numbers? Prior to November I was not feeling great, we had a pretty bad spring and summer. But November slingshot us over our adjusted goal of $270,000 good goal. We got to $280,000 and with our UYB launch in December, I know we'll be able to hit my adjusted best goal of $300,000 for 2024. This was a big profit month, but we know I love transparency, so a lot of this is actually going to loan repayments. In October I took out a $15,000 Stripe loan to help get out of the hole of the summer and run payroll and make investments into our November launch. We went from our Compliance Club launch to Contract Club launch to Unf*ck Your Biz launch. We did our workshops to launch UYB as a paid workshop because there was more content in it than past years but anyone who had the Compliance Club, Contract Club or came by my booth at Wedding MBA had the opportunity to register for free so we had about 700 registrants between our two workshops. Compliance Club Debrief We offered a few price points - $10/month or $180 for lifetime membership to this monthly compliance newsletter, private podcast and additional compliance resources. I started the lifetime membership at $250 and offered it first to the 19 people on our Compliance Club waitlist but even as warm, interested leads, 8 people opted into monthly instead of the lifetime deal. I lowered the price to $180 as I found that interest in a lifetime deals is best when the price of lifetime is just under the cost of 2 years so people would price anchor that at $240 and psychologically under $200 is more attractive. Once I lowered the price, 70 of the next 92 people who joined were lifetime. I capped lifetime at 100 members and we had 101, one person snuck in as I was toggling it off. I then changed lifetime to annual and made it $90. The Compliance Club is not currently open, but you can get on the waitlist at notavglaw.com/compliance. The Compliance Club is also a temporary upsell on paid offers like the Contract Club. Total revenue: $20,800 Our launch goal was 50 monthly sales and 50 lifetime with a stretch goal of 100 lifetime sales. We surpassed those goals. Wedding MBA Debrief • 40 book sales Current Project Plans • Wrap up Unf*ck Your Biz launch Key Performance Indicators • Bumps across the board on everything as a result of promotions December Projections • Monthly Clients: $8,500 Total: $70,875 • On track to finish around $330k which would be very exciting considering, especially how the first half of the year went after my mom was put on hospice and passed away. If you're dealing with anything in your personal life that's going to make this holiday season or next year rough, remember that you can always circle back to your business goals and take a break for your mental health or to spend time with family. I've been there and many of us have all been there. Keep that in mind as you do your own goal planning and figure out how you're going to make it through. Business is a roller coaster and we can do our best to make it look like a kiddie roller coaster, but there are always hills and valleys and we are here to support your legal and tax goals. If you enjoyed today's episode, share it with your biz besties and tag us on Instagram and Threads @notAVGlaw | |||
| 360 - What You Need to Know When Hiring Contractors | 24 Oct 2024 | 00:30:41 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing what you need to know when it comes to hiring contractors. Get on the waitlist for our newsletter and contractor compliance resources at notavglaw.com/newsletter 1. Contractor vs. Employee You've heard me talk about legal layers of protection, and the base level is compliance aka not breaking the law like paying your taxes and not misclassifying your workers. The state cares about worker classification because they get payroll taxes. The state is also responsible for enforcing minimum wage requirements, worker's compensation, overtime, etc. The state is invested in protecting the people that work in the state. The IRS cares because you should be paying payroll taxes for employees. If you're misclassifying, they aren't getting their taxes and it's easier for them to get taxes from employees than tracking down contractors. The worker cares because if you're a contractor, your place of work and time/ hours of work can't be dictated if it's not within reason. This is also a problem when workers who don't have businesses and don't want to have businesses don't know about quarterly tax withholding and get stuck with tax penalties at the end of the year. 2. Determining employee vs. contractor All states use different tests, but generally the tests fall into one of two categories: the totality of the circumstances test and the ABC test. With the totality test the burden of proof is usually on the worker, and with the ABC test it's on the business to prove the worker could have been a contractor. If you feel like you are in a more relaxed state when it comes to this, know that there are also federal laws around employees vs. contractors to look into. Inside the newsletter you'll find our Contractor On-boarding Toolkit that includes our State-by-State Classification Guide and our California Contractor Compliance Framework Guide. Sign up for the newsletter at notavglaw.com/newsletter
3. What type of contractor are they? If they can be a contractor, before we onboard we need to know what kind of contractor they can be. Generally speaking, we can divide contractors into two main buckets: people who are working in our business (this is not typically common as they would often be employees but there are state-by-state exceptions) and people who are project-based contractors. It can come down to who is leading the conversation. For example, if I'm onboarding a contractor and they don't have a business or a contract, I'm sending the contract and leading the conversation. If they have a business, for example a brand photographer, they have their own contract and invoice process. If you're onboarding, you'll need a process (again, be very careful about those classification tests and how control and direction plays a part in that). You should always have a contract (we've got them in the Contract Club notavglaw.com/club) and there should be a contract per worker per event/project. For example, if they're a second shooter you'd need a contract per event with them. You'll also want a copy of their business license because some states have business to business carve outs and this will help prove if they're a business. We also recommend getting a W-9 before you ever pay them.
4. What goes into the contract? There are some basics, like a work made for hire agreement which ensures that you get copyright ownership for your business. There's also a provision that the worker understands they're not an employee, though this doesn't absolve you from any audit liability. Outline payment terms. 5. Training This is difficult to talk about in regards to contractors because one of the factors is we are not training people or dictating what they do because they should be equipped with the skills to do what you're hiring them to do, otherwise they should be an employee. I would consider this more of an orientation to a training so you're orienting them to your business and language. You're not training them how to do their job. | |||
| 270 - Tax Pros - You Get What You Pay For | 16 Feb 2023 | 00:20:19 | |
On today’s episode of the podcast I’m diving into tax preparation and what comes with hiring a tax pro. Don’t forget, Thursday, February 23, I’ll be hosting a launch party for my law firm at 9am PST/12pm EST. We’ll be sharing client horror stories and legal pickles you’ve experienced and we’ll dive into examples of how working with an attorney can help. Just in the past few weeks I’ve drafted some new program terms for a client who’s had issues with people sharing program content and leaving the program early. I’ve also worked on a demand letter for a client whose invoice is 6 months overdue. It happens to all of us and during this launch party I’ll be sharing how the law firm can help. Register to join the launch party at https://www.bradendrake.com/launchparty When it comes to hiring a tax professional, you get what you pay for. And often, you pay for a lot that you don’t get too. When it comes to actually filing your income tax, federal and state income taxes are due every April 15th (unless it falls on a weekend and is then the following Monday) but we also have our business tax returns. If you have an S Corporation, a partnership, or a corporation, then you have to file a business return by March 15th. If you have to file an 1120-S form for your S Corp or an 1165 for your partnership, you want to be reaching out to your tax professional like now. Sales tax returns are a whole different situation and we won’t get into that one now. When it comes to filing federal income tax returns, you have a few ways you can do it. 1. You could technically do it for free by finding all the tax forms you need on the internet, printing them, filling them out and mailing them. I don’t think many people are still doing this because nowadays taxes are just too complicated. I equate them to Russian nesting dolls because you fill out one form then it tells you you need another form which leads to the next one and it becomes a very large stack of forms. 2. Use a DIY software as your “inexpensive option.” You’re probably getting a lot of ads for these now that it’s tax season for services like Turbo Tax. All of these are for 1040s only and simple 1040s which essentially means that all you have is a W2 probably and your return is super simple. By the mere fact that you have a business and are going to need to do at a minimum a Schedule C, this means there isn’t a software out there that is going to be free. Your options become H&R Block Online which is comparable to Turbo Tax. You also have Tax Act, TaxSlayer and others. I’ve price compared most of these and for Schedule C tax returns, they typically end up being $100 - $200. I personally use H&R Block every year and it usually comes to about $150-$160. The way they kind of get you and you start to think the $70 one is all you need but then you start answering the questions and are then prompted to upgrade based on additional forms you need. 3. Pay someone at a branch like H&R Block or pay a program like Turbo Tax to do your tax return. This typically runs $300 - $500. I would say that this is probably fine if you have your business, your bookkeeping is pretty done, your taxes aren’t that complicated, and you really just don’t want to do it on your own with the software. If you go to a more traditional accounting firm, one that’s not a huge corporation, they may start around the top end of H&R Block. Most of them that are qualified and know what they’re doing will start in the $500 for a Schedule C and go up to around $2,000. The standard seems to be around $1,000 - $1,500. If someone is telling you they can do your business return for under $500, I’d probably run the other direction. At most places, the $500 - $1,000 range gets you minimal contact with your tax preparer during the process. If they have savvy systems set up they’ll have you answer some online forms to get your personal information, they’ll collect all your tax documents (often dropped off in-person), then they’ll complete your tax return and maybe (keyword maybe) do a quick call with you to review the return when you’re done before you sign it but I hear often that people feel pressured to hurry up and sign because preparers don’t have a lot of time to review because they want to get on to the next client. When you get to the $1,500 mark with your tax return, you should be getting all those things I mentioned plus more time, care and attention and I would hope some ongoing tax strategy throughout the year. This is where the title, You Get What You Pay For, comes from. If you email your tax preparer with strategy questions throughout the year but don’t really get answers, it may be because you aren’t paying for tax strategy as part of your tax return. I find that the tax strategy piece really comes into play when you’re over $200,000 in revenue. Most folks paying over the $2,000 mark for their tax filing tend to be paying in the $5,000 to $10,000 range for a suite of tax services which may or may not include bookkeeping. Bookkeeping service costs vary. The $100/month range is kind of a yikes for me. The popular bookkeeping software Bench used to charge $150 for a very stripped down service and now charge double that. More seasoned bookkeepers will start at $300 and up per month. My viewpoint is that if you’re not ready to spend at least that much on your bookkeeping, you’re probably better off doing it on your own or with one of our resources. Here’s what our process looks like:
This year, we’re also rolling out tax prep starting at $750 which includes a 30 minute wrap-up call to review your taxes and we’re offering half day and full day one-on-one Tax in a Day services. If you’re interested in learning about these one-on-one services, be sure to sign up for our launch party happening on February 23rd at 9am PST to learn how you can get first dibs on our one-on-one tax services. | |||
| 269 - My Trademark Debacle | 09 Feb 2023 | 00:17:02 | |
On today's episode of the podcast, I'm sharing a very exciting announcement and also spilling the tea on my recent trademark debacle and what to do if you find yourself on either side of an intellectual property situation. Two weeks from today I'm re-opening my law firm 🥳 My law firm has been closed for two years now and I've only taken one-on-one consultations in a limited capacity. In re-opening my legal firm I'll be taking more clients for one-on-one legal work, help you with client issues, and help you with tax returns. Register to attend my law firm launch party on Thursday, February 23 (9am PST) where I'll be unveiling the name of my new law firm, the fun branding, and what I'll be doing in the law firm. Come hang out and be sure to register here. When it comes to trademarks, I've run into a few trademark issues over the years with the names for some of my programs. If you do your due diligence when it comes to doing your research you shouldn't run into this issue but if you are little haphazard, you might run into this issue. On the flipside, you might have to send people cease and desist letters to stop using some of your intellectual property. Here's how to handle both sides of that coin. First, it's important to understand the difference between trademark and copyright. Patents and trade secrets are also big buckets of intellectual property but today we are mainly focusing on trademarks and copyrights. Trademarks protect brand identifiers like names, logos, and even colors and smells like the example of Tiffany blue when it is used in correlation with jewelry and luxury goods. Copyrights protect works of authorship, mainly anything you write or create, so it could be graphics, pictures, website copy, or copy inside of a book. The title of a book would be a trademark (though you can't really trademark books unless they're in a series but that's a story for another day) and then the actual content itself you would copyright. For example, my main website - www.bradendrake.com - has been through many iterations, having had two or three URLs before this one. I ended up going with this because it's my name so people already know me as this. Before this, I got a cease and desist for the business name I had been using previously. I remember being on my birthday trip in New York City when I got the email and I got super anxious and stressed. If you've ever gotten a cease and desist letter, I understand what that feels like. If you're feeling guilty sending one because it will cause stress to the person on the other end, know that it's a necessary part of business. I ended up rebranding and after I changed to BradenDrake.com, I came up with Unf*ck Your Biz which was a tagline for me at the time. I decided to use that name for my first course I created and then named this podcast with the same name (and I had it as my URL for a hot minute). So I got a trademark on file with this name which sometimes surprises people since there's an Unf*ck Your Brain book, but brain and business are not confusingly similar and we don't teach the same thing. Interestingly, I received what I wouldn't call a cease and desist (which is a legal letter that comes from an attorney) but more so the informal way, which can even be a text message if you know the person. I get this email from a colleague who was representing a client who said that her client wanted me to stop specifically using the acronym UFYB. Looking back, I really don't think I needed to do this, I think I was well within my legal rights to use the acronym. I didn't have a trademark for UFYB and I don't think this other person did either but ultimately I didn't really care and at the time I thought how Unf*ck I spelled as one word so really UYB would be a better acronym anyway. Since I wasn't promoting the course anymore, and I didn't really use the acronym for my podcast or book, I decided to stop using the acronym. This was a scenario where you get a letter or email and decide if you want to fight it. And sometimes fighting it can be just responding and saying no, I'm not dropping it. And sometimes, they might drop it because they don't have a plan to follow-through if you don't agree or they might actually fight it which can cost you some legal fees so you need to weigh what you think might go on there and whether you really care. If I had planned to invest more into Unf*ck Your Biz being the primary brand mark and that I would use that acronym more I probably would've pushed back more but since I wasn't promoting the course by that acronym, all I had to do was change a few URLs on my website. My most recent trademark debacle was the rename of the Contract Vault, now my Contract Club. Last year I created the vault and I promoted it all over the place and I got a very polite email from another lawyer over winter break who said they have a trademark to the Contract Vault and asking me to please change the name. This time I really didn't want to but I did go and look up this person's trademark and they had filed their trademark before I created the Contract Vault and their trademark was registered after I created the Contract Vault. If I had done some research at the time of naming it I maybe would have been aware and I could have chosen a different name. What I share with folks all the time when we're talking about trademarks and IP is that it's not practical for me to go and trademark every single thing I create. For example, I recently rolled out three mini programs on my website covering three areas that I teach and for all I know I may take them down next month and do something else. This is how I like to run my business to keep it fresh. In reality, I'm hoping these things do stick in which case I probably will file trademarks in the next couple of months. If I was advising you, I would tell you not to tell people that on your podcast so someone else doesn't rush to beat you to it. Since it's not practical to trademark everything under the sun, you need to base it off how pivotal this thing is going to be in your business and how much money you're going to invest into it. I did file a trademark on Profit Rx, my signature program, which is still pending. I have a few tweaks I need to make to respond to some office actions from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). I also have a few other trademarks up my sleeve that I do plan on filing. I have had another not so fun hiccup which I've debated bringing up but here we are. For awhile I was sending folks to one particular trademark attorney and long story short I ended up hearing from multiple people that after months and months, despite having already paid all the fees for this attorney, their trademark had never been filed and they weren't getting responses to emails. This is an extreme example of be careful who you hire. I was hesitant to share this story because I am a trusted resource who trusted them but the point is to do your due diligence and my point for myself is I'm beginning to trust people less and less. Luckily, I ended up working with another attorney last year that I started sending clients to and this attorney has been getting rave reviews. Because I've had multiple people come to me that I've had to refer out to trademark attorneys, I've decided that I myself would deep dive into trademarks so I bought a course that was made by an attorney for attorneys and my plan is to role trademark services into my new law firm. Eventually I will hire an intellectual property attorney to come into the firm but or now, if you want to learn more about this service and the other services I will be offering in my law firm, come check out our launch party on February 23rd at 9am PST where I'll be talking about the legal services, bookkeeping, tax prep, business formation, contracts and more that we'll be offering. If you have any questions about trademarks, send me a DM on Instagram @bradenadamdrake and if you loved the episode, as always please share it and give me a tag. | |||
| 268 - January 2023 Profit Report | 02 Feb 2023 | 00:29:47 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm diving into my January 2023 profit report. In lieu of a December profit report,I did my 2022 year in review. If you missed that, check out my recap with Claire Pelletreau here. These profit reports help me keep on top of my numbers as I prep and review them in order to record the episode. To quickly recap 2022, my big goals for the year were to have income consistency and building Monthly Recurring Revenue. My income stayed in the same few thousand dollar window month- to-month then grew toward the end of the year. The MRR didn't grow as much as I had hoped it would during the year and I need to go back and review this month's because my January 2023 MRR was about $2,000 less than I had expected so either we had a lot more failed payments than I expected or my math was off. Expenses for 2022 were 42.5%, higher than my goal of 30-35% however a lot of this is due to the money spent of starting Drag Tax. This is why I invented the term WTF Happened to My Money Hamster Wheel because the more my income increased the more my spending in the business went up so my take home pay never really went up. This cycle continued in 2023 as I've been spending to launch a new project (more on that later). What used to be a cycle of spending on courses and education became a cycle of spending on new businesses.
Big goals for 2023
This year I want to do a Profit & Loss breakdown. A P&L can be as detailed as you want so I have income in different sub-categories which are:
So let’s break it down…
January Income Total revenue: $12,500 (not including 1-on-1 income, that now gets separated. More on that in a minute)
Expenses:
Total Expenses (not including owner salary): $5,400 Owner Profit: $7,000 BUT, I didn't really feel like I made money this month because *drum roll* my big exciting announcement I’ve been hinting at is that we are going to be reopening my law firm next month. I used to run a firm called Braden Drake Law but as I moved away from one-on-one work and into more education, I decided the law firm would go away. I’ve been thinking about restarting it for about a year and we’ve been doing some work leading up to it like launching Drag Tax and one-on-one bookkeeping and I’ve been thinking of going back to more one-on-one work. To launch the law firm, I’ve had about $6,000 in expenses so far:
I use the money from my Braden Drake LLC business to pay myself and then use my personal money to invest in the new business expenses. So my business had a good month, but my personal bank account not so much. I’ll be talking about the lawfirm more in the coming weeks so stay tuned for that and for an announcement of my lawfirm virtual launch party. On the Drag Tax side of the business, this marketing channel is to speak to its own niche where we send folks both to the law firm and the education site. We’ve brought our first fabulous drag queen into Profit Rx and I had another promising call this week. Legally speaking I thought Drag Tax might be a DBA (Doing Business As) under the law firm, but what I realized is that a lot of the folks I talk to are a great fit for Profit Rx, it’s just a matter of growing trust in online education within the industry. What we’re moving towards is BradenDrake.com has my low ticket offers, Profit Rx, my book and my blog and the lawfirm will have one-one-one legal, tax and bookkeeping services. Drag Tax is a separate, industry-focused website that will drive people to BradenDrake.com or the law firm based on what they need. Goals/Projections for February BradenDrake.com
Law Firm:
Grand total: $16,200 between both businesses
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| 267 - Reviewing My Personal Finances with Kristy Runzer of OnRoute Financial | 26 Jan 2023 | 01:11:43 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I do a deep dive into the personal side of my finances, my income allocations, my financial goals and how my business goals can make this happen. Much like last week's episode with Claire Pelletreau, I'm sharing an interview in my podcast that I recorded for someone else's. Kristy has a podcast where she provides personal finance coaching to guests (often anonymously) on her podcast. With personal and business finances going hand and hand and transparency being one of my core brand values, I went on Kristy's podcast to share my own finances. Jumping into personal goals, I share with Kristy it's been a goal of mine for the last few months to pay off my credit card. I get into an up-and-down cycle of paying it off then buying something then having to pay it off again and I want to get back to paying it off every month and having a $0 balance. I am working my way up to paying 50% of our household expenses because my husband is the primary bread winner. My husband and I have an understanding that once I'm contributing that I can buy whatever I want, no questions asked. My husband and I each have our own things that we are interested in spending our own money on or investing in. For him, it's more spending money on work clothes and essentials. For me, it's more shopping and home decor. I can I also need to save for my self-employment retirement account and of course, student loan debt is the bane of my existence. Priority number one for me right now is paying off my credit card by March, which right now has about a $7,000 total balance which includes a lot of start-up costs for a project I haven't launched yet. I have a set amount of money that I contribute for the household expenses and that will stay the same for the rest of this year. After the credit card is paid off I want to increase my salary and pretty much all of that increase will go into a simple IRA and I'll need to balance that with student loan debt. How I have my payroll currently set up is I get the same amount paid twice a month. One payment goes to me and my stuff like my car payment and one goes to my husband toward household bills and then the business profit goes to me and some months that's $0 and some months that's $5,000. After taxes, I get $1,500 in salary twice a month so about $2,200 before taxes. I plan to increase it pre-tax by $500 a cycle so $1,000 a month and that will be what I put into my retirement starting around March when I pay the credit card off until student loan payments come back. My goal is also to build a business savings account and get that to three months of business operating expenses, so about $15,000 and then the same for personal savings account. I prioritize business savings because it means I'll at least have money to pay payroll if something goes wrong. Diving into retirement accounts, I ask Kristy what would be best. With a SEP or a simple IRA you have to contribute to employee retirement and now that I have employees, would I need to do that? Because my employees are very part time, I would most likely not have to. For example a Simple was $13,500 and is adjusted for inflation each year. My five year goal is to offer an employee benefits package. Right now the plan is for me to invest in my own IRA. Moving on, I ask Kristy her view on the Dave Ramsey approach of paying all debts off first versus balancing paying and saving at the same time like save $500 in retirement and put all discretionary in student loans versus paying the minimum on student loans and put all discretionary in retirement savings and other investments. Kristy says you need to consider the interest rates of the debt compared to investment payoffs. Looking at a credit card versus an investment account, maybe because credit card interest rates are so insane. Something like a student loan, the rates aren't as terrible and you'd earn more interest on investing then what you're paying in interest. With investing it's important to ask yourself about earning potential with compound interest. Five years ago I told myself I was going to have a seven-figure business. Five years later I certainly don't have that yet but I do see if happening in five years and as Kristy points out, I'm investing in unlimited earnings potential. Our future goals include moving to a new house in five years, my husband would like a vacation property, and I, instead of putting all my money into retirement, would like to invest in real estate either as land ownership or flipping properties and being able to decorate them. My five year goal would be to start saving for these and my ten year goal would be to start doing this. Kristy recommends I start looking into a brokerage account to make this happen because they are fully liquid. The tax rate on the growth is capital gains rates, making it a better version of a high yield savings account in a way. The game plan is: - Pay off credit cards in a month or two - Put $500 a month into a regular IRA account for the foreseeable future while I start paying student loans - Get three months of business operating expenses into business savings - Start contributing more to household expenses until we work our way up to 50% - Start feeding a brokerage account end of 2024/early 2025 For me, it's easier to save money to spend money even if it's on a fun investment like real estate because when things are fun I'm more likely to do them.
Get in Touch with Our Guest Host Kristy Runzer, Owner of OnRoute Financial Listen to the OnRoute to Wealth podcast | |||
| 266 - Profit Report & Year in Review with Guest Host Claire Pelletreau | 19 Jan 2023 | 01:21:21 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm recapping my 2022 with the help of my friend, and guest host for the day, Claire Pelletreau. I recently interviewed Claire in episode 264 about her year in review which was especially interesting because it also served as a one-year follow-up to see how her business had grown from when I had previously interviewed her in episode 204 about her multi-six figure P&L back in December of 2021. Now, Claire's flipping the script and interviewing me as I look back on my year. Looking back over the years, in 2019 we did $70k, in 2020 we doubled to $140k, I thought 2021 was going to be my $200k year but it was not, instead I ended with $90k in revenue. I spent the summer of 2021 creating Profit Rx and launched that at the end of the 2021 with one tier of the membership at a price point of $75 so my monthly recurring revenue was trending upward come January 2022. My plan for 2022 was to grow the membership and get as many people in the program as we could. In January, I invented the Contract Vault which was huge and I ended the month with $14,500 in revenue. which was $4.5k over my goal for the month. The Contract Vault became an acquisition product, modelled after The Boss Project who shared in their profit reports that buyers of their $40 product were more likely to buy their $2,000 program. I ran ads on the Contract Vault that never really took off but also never put in much testing. Instead, I relied on it being a no-brainer offer that people would share. I set a goal of 100 sales, hit 75 sales in the first two days, then increased the goal to 200 for January. February was the lowest revenue month and we did not have any special promotions or offers this month. In March, we soft launched the $30 content-only tier of the Profit Rx membership. We will not be offering this tier anymore in 2023 on its own, but only as a down-sell option when members are not utilizing all the offers of the VIP model. We had 36 people sign up in March for the content-only tier and by the end of June we had 121 members in the content-only tier after we launched in April. While it was successful, we don't plan to offer it moving forward because it was an confusing offer and people were often unsure what was and wasn't included in this tier. It was also part guilt seeing recurring payments come in from people who weren't using the program. In my current tier, we offer such a high level of support and tracking your progress. Profit Rx stayed on evergreen until the end of December and I would get sign-ups throughout the year but no promotional tests that we did throughout the year worked well enough to keep implementing them. I continue to think through ideas of ways to repackage the membership. Looking at the year as a whole, we got close to $170k so not the $200k goal I had hoped for, but still my biggest year to date. My biggest goal this year was income consistency and looking at my month to month revenue, it stayed pretty consistent. My salary had minor peaks and valleys but I do take my owner's profit out of the business instead of leaving it all in my account for savings. What causes my payroll fluctuations is if I run payroll a day late and the money hits after the start of the next month but it all averages out. This year I did my launch in December because I had new people on my email list after Wedding MBA in November so I wanted to give them time to breathe and get to know me before inundating them with sales emails alongside all their other post-conference sales emails. December was my A launch, my big launch of the year. All of my A launches are two webinars (I used to do four) that we start promoting one week in advance. The cart is open for seven days from the start of the webinars. We started the eight week prelaunch in October where we transition from how to content to mindset shift content. The webinar sign-ups were okay, attendance rates were a lot lower than normal, but the conversion rates were really good. The launch summary came to 42 total new students, six on annual pay and 36 in monthly payments. Our monthly recurring revenue will come to right around $10k now when combining them with current members. Based on sales page views, we had about a 10% conversion from the sales page. Right now on my list we have about 7,000 email subscribers which comes with lower open rates because I have spoken at large events that give you the full email list from the event. I tracked how the new students in Profit Rx first found meso I could track what was giving results. Moving forward, Claire suggests I also track how many people come from my podcast. During the onboarding to Profit Rx I ask where people follow us which gives better insight. In July, I launched Drag Tax. The thought behind it was instead of launching a new business, expand to a different niche. What I did was clone and rebrand one of my courses. A lot of expenses went into going all in to this launch. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but I was excited to work on the branding and working on the branding shoot with drag queens and having them on my podcast helps build a trust factor with drag queens. Looking at my income for 1-on-1 services for the year, Claire commented that it was lower than she expected, which is intentional since I do not heavily offer or promote it throughout the year. Profit Rx covers so much that you don't really need to spend $1,000 for a 1-on-1 unless you just really do not want to do it yourself. In 2023, I may be ramping up the 1-on-1 services in the form of restarting my law firm. I referred clients out this year to other law firms and had people refer services back. Also this year I am looking at restructuring the price of Profit Rx because right now for $100 a month you get a two hour call with our bookkeeper, a 30 minute intro call with me, multiple check-in touch points you can use throughout the week and access to all the resources of the membership, all of which Claire points out is wildly underpriced. Claire challenges my low prices and while we discuss the pros and cons of raising prices and the mindset around it, I also note that this year I lowered prices and it was my highest revenue year to date. To see my entire bookkeeping spreadsheet and profit pie from 2022, click here. My goals for 2023 are to hit $250k in revenue, with better and best goals being $275k and $300k and lower my expense percentage this year. Get in Touch with Our Guest Host Claire Pelletreau, Facebook and Instagram Ads expert | |||
| 265 - Preparing 1099s - Who Gets One, How to Send Them, and When They're Due | 12 Jan 2023 | 00:19:54 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm breaking down what you need to know about 1099s including the way to determine if you need to send them, who gets them, and how to send them. But first, a quick not. Now in my business we are now observing quiet weeks twice a year - Christmas time through New Year's and around July - to give myself and my employees a break from team and client meetings as much as possible during these weeks. We still will continue to check Facebook group approvals and our support email off and on throughout those weeks. While you might not be thinking about 1099s right now, you should be. In fact, right now is so much the time you should be thinking about it that I put this episode out today, ahead of my 2022 year in review episode so you can get started taking care of your 1099s. A lot of people don't think about it until their oh-shit moment happens the last week of January and then it's typically too late to get them out. Every year now I update my pillar blog post about 1099s to help you get ready to send them out in the New Year. If you need to send 1099s this year (or aren't sure if you need to) you'll definitely need to check out the 1099 blog post to get access to my 1099 flow chart to help you decide if you need to send them out, who gets one, and how to send them.
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| 264 - The Road to a Million Dollar Company - A Year in Review with Claire Pelletreau | 05 Jan 2023 | 01:39:28 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing my interview with Claire Pelletreau to discuss her year in review that was originally featured on Claire's Get Paid Podcast. I had Claire on my podcast last December to look at her 2021 year end review and kick off my profit and loss series where I've interviewed business owners to review their P&L numbers. Check out Episode 204 - Discussing a Multi-Six Figure P&L with Claire Pelletreau here. During this episode Claire talked about what wasn't really working in her business and what she wanted to change and here we are a year later reviewing 2022 and the changes she made that led to her having her best year yet this year. Claire does not typically do annual planning due to past thoughts that do not serve here around her ability to plan and execute a plan combined with last year when she was reevaluating her business and if she wanted to continue with it. That led to the end of last year when she launched The Get Paid Mastermind (not Get Paid Marketing) that resulted in seven members paying $9,000 each. In 2022 she focused on the program. Heading into 2022 she had the program on evergreen and didn't focus on selling anything in January since she didn't have content for the program, it was coaching with a custom marketing plan so she focused on the clients. She was having mindset problems around sales and results until she joined a mastermind. Claire made another sale of the mastermind in February of 2022 and parted ways with her mastermind around the same time due to not being a good fit for one another. In March, Claire started to make some changes and got some new students in but also made the decision to stop offering it on evergreen because she was not fully focused on delivery nor fully focused on selling. Claire's program, Absolute FB Ads, continued to remain on evergreen. With The Get Paid Program, Claire had her previous course content but the big thing she wanted to dive into was conversion optimization and talking to leads coming from cold traffic because that was the biggest issue for some students which was not something Claire had experienced herself. From January 1, 2022 to February 28, Claire brought in $25,000 which might sound like a lot but between what Claire was paying her team and herself, that brought the business into the red. Fast forward to the beginning of December 2022 when this episode was recorded and Claire had brought in $437,000. January and February made up just 5% of the year's revenue. In 2022, the only ads Claire ran were to her podcast and retargeting ads for enrollment periods but no ads to any sales funnel webinars. In 2021, Claire had been focused on doing all her launches in evergreen and not as part of a live launch but it didn't help with selling very well. In May 2022, Claire did two launches in one which she discussed with me in the episode Launch Postmortem: “I Didn’t Even Care At The End.” She decided to live launch with an enrollment cap to better serve her students and also with hopes to improve conversions. The enrollment cap helped Claire's mindset and found that bringing everyone in at the same time into the same cohort creates greater student bonding but doesn't mean those relationships can't be built with evergreen. The last day to join through the May launch was June 2, 2022 and the year-to-date revenue through June 2 was $158,500. Through the end of June it came to about $168,000 for the first half of the year. Claire did a second launch that ended in November but all the spots were spoken for by the end of October. Looking at the numbers between the launches, July and August were about the same. August through September 30, 2022 was $21,000 which is less than 5% of the annual revenue. Because most of the program members were pay in full members, there was not monthly recurring revenue coming in every month. Claire said having her business slush fund helped her better handle her down months. And in the slow season in the beginning of the year Claire was also paying $5,000 a year for coaching so it looked so unprofitable for so long. It was not until recently Claire had this business slush fund and got off the WTF Happened to My Money Hamster Wheel. For the October launch, applications for the 20 spots opened on October 20 and cart closed on November 3. All spots but one were paid by Halloween. Due to timing, some were not able to be let in. She considered taking seat deposits for next launch but isn't sure what she wants the price point to be next time. I recommend that Claire start a lead list of those interested for the next launch. Having hit capacity, I ask Claire if she's interested in bringing in additional coaches to take on more clients for future launches. For this current cohort Claire brought in a new ads coach to replace a team member who was leaving and adding increased hours to the position and to another member of her team. Next launch she is focusing on higher price point, lower student number. The October launch at $9,000 with 20 students brought in $180,000. With the payment plan it came to $186,000 with 16 members doing pay in full and for using the payment plan which came to about $158,000 cash in hand at the end of the launch. In the May launch she had 50% take the payment plan. Looking at where Claire spent the $158,000, she already knew she was going to re-enroll her in her mastermind which was a $25,000 investment in the beginning of November. Also in November she decided to go to Life Coach Live last minute using airline miles (which she said was not great choice since it could have been a business deduction) and spent about $1,500 on the hotel and $2,000 on the VIP conference ticket upgrade. While there she decided to join Life Coach Certification for $18,000. She also donated heavily and bought expensive gifts for others and herself. At the event Claire met enough people who bought her evergreen Absolute FB Ads which more than paid for the event. Claire said her takeaways from the event will lead to her making a million dollars in 2023. Looking at $50,000 being 30% of her launch revenue, $50,000 to make one million dollars was a great investment for Claire because she is someone who invests and makes money off her investment. Claire shares that she has to be really cognizant now of what gets spent to make it to the next launch which she says may be a scheduling issue to start the year with so many months of no revenue but knowing that the launches will be so big that it will make up for that. In addition to Claire's regular slush fund, all of which she pulled out during the year for the down payment on a house, what she also has is the EIDL loan for $150,000 that she has started to pay back but has very low interest which allows Claire to view it as additional cushion and allows her to take risk. With a goal of seven figures in 2023, to get there Claire will need to double her revenue from 2022. Earlier in 2022 Claire did a revenue projecting exercise now that she has the belief in herself to sell 20 slots each time in her program so she can do revenue projections around 20 people each time. Next year she projects the price may be $15,000 times 20 people times two launches comes to $600,000. She also plans to decrease the program from six months to five as she has seen decreased engagement right after month five. In addition to the $600,000, Claire did a very conservative estimate of Absolute FB Ads sales being $120,000. She plans for this to be the course that everyone considers for Facebook ads. This course also could make Claire $1,000,000 if she she sells just 400 of the courses currently priced at $2,500. Believing something is possible without yet knowing how is Claire's new mindset. Claire is also mentally blocking out time for a possible round of IVF in 2023 which she knows could impact her time and energy in her business. In 2022, expenses to date were $245,000 so round to $255,000 for 2022 for the year and includes Claire's salary through payroll. Taking the $437,000 year-to-date revenue and rounding to a $450,000 estimate for 2022 and $255,000 in expenses and the $60,000 from the business savings that Claire took out for the down payment on the house and then an additional $10 or 20,000 on top of her usual as an owner's equity draw. Also included in owner's equity is the small handful of expenses business owners run into when they accidently buy something on the business card. In Claire's case, this looked like a dry cleaning expense when she forgot she didn't have her personal card on her at pick-up. I make my personal credit card payments directly form my business bank account and classify them as owner distributions. Everything left in the bank after expenses and owner's equity draw would be retained earnings. In 2022 Claire's payroll was almost $38,000 bringing profit to about $230,000 making it Claire's best profit year which is a little over 50% profit. Ultimately, what most of us care about is what we're able to pay ourselves. The higher our profit before salary, the more we can pay ourselves. Going into the live event that Claire attended for her mastermind, she told people that she felt embarrassed about her revenue given how many years she'd been in business. Looking back at 2022, Claire shares that her people pleasing got in the way but with two six-figure launches in 2022 she sees that the money is now reflecting that she's saying "fuck that" and liking who she is more now. She doesn't feel fear about needing to repeat this success next year based on the current tools she has. Claire ends the podcast sharing that in 2023 or 2024 she will be hosting a life event, the details are still to be determined.
Get in Touch with Our Guest Host Claire Pelletreau, Facebook and Instagram Ads expert | |||
| 263 - The Ups and Downs of Growing a Profitable Business with David Schwartz, Founder of Orion Entertainment | 29 Dec 2022 | 01:08:36 | |
On today's episode of the podcast David Schwartz, Owner of Orion Entertainment, about his profit and loss for 2022 and how his business and finances have evolved since he started DJing professionally at 18. David is located in the Seattle, Washington area and has been a DJ since he was 18. While he started DJing at frat parties, he always DJ-ed and looked for opportunities on campus and for gigs with a private events focus. After graduation from the University of Washington, David found himself applying for jobs because it felt like the thing he was supposed to do. After receiving a few nos and looking at the money he'd be making and the time he'd be spending focused on the job, he decided to go full time into DJing since he had started building a client database and infrastructure for the business during college. While focusing on Orion Entertainment full time, David was always working other jobs to supplement his income until the business supported him fully beginning in 2018 when he did $132,966 in revenue. He had support from a few people working with him in pseudo partner-type capacities where David would book multiple gigs for other DJs in addition to himself, all under the Orion umbrella. David now works with his fiancé as the primary person in his company but is still a multi-op DJ where he has multiple DJs working with him. This year was the first year Orion moved everyone from contractors to employees. Right now, the company has six headlining DJs and can book up to four to five in a day during busy season. Looking at David's 2022 numbers (January through early December): Revenue: $459,000 Total profit: $112,000 (after salary)
When it comes to hiring, it's important that you are hiring people appropriately. Too often people are hiring contractors when they legally should be employees. For example, in a lot of states if you're a photographer or a DJ you can't hire a photographer or a DJ as a contractor in your business for work on an ongoing basis, they'd need to be employees. David began hiring, he shares that it's a lot of upfront work including new systems and payment softwares i.e. moving from Venmo to an official payroll system. David's small business HR consultant pointed out that the people working with him were not contractors because they were using his equipment and driving his car. With DJs, there can be two trains of thought - you hire someone that is trained and provides all their own equipment, deal with their own clients and all you provide is the connection to the client. That is how Orion Entertainment used to do it when it worked for the time and helped the business learn how to run multiple events simultaneously but it became difficult to create a uniform brand and loyalty to that brand and now they train the DJs from brand new all the way up to a DJ/Master of Ceremonies so they are molded into an on-brand Orion DJ. DJs are provided cars to travel to their gigs because the business now has three business vehicles filled with the equipment they need. Moving from contractor to employee also required changing pay systems from percentage to hourly. A common objection to hiring that many wedding professionals share is that when you start your company you are the face of the business and as it grows, people want to work only with you and not the people you've hired. One thing Orion Entertainment did to help with this so that everyone was not solely requesting DJ Orion was you can either book the Essential Package which comes with headliner assignment. You give us all your music requests and we give you the DJ who is the best fit for you and your event. Salary: $106,000 David pays himself $2,000 every two weeks to cover his expenses. Product sales: $16,500 (96% of Orion Entertainment's income is from DJ services but David estimates this 3.5% is from photo booth sales but that it needs to be double checked with his accountant because it does not feel correct). Marketing: $12,000 About 2.5% of revenue. David says this seems low because he spends $1,000/month on SEO services in addition to the $500 - $600/month for The Knot/Wedding Wire listing and sponsorship for events like NACE. Auto Expenses: $19,000 (Two of the company cars are owned by the company and one is owned by David himself). One is a branded vehicle that was paid for end of 2020. Bank fees: $2,300 Standard expenses Clothing: $2,000 What DJs wear to gigs Continuing Education: $2,000 Contractors: $4,000 David believes the discrepancy between this and sub contractors is that one covers the company's contractors that DJ and one is paying contractors who do services for the business and this year was when they moved contractors to employees so that expense does not exist for the whole year. Subcontractors: $19,000 Expensed asset: Anything that's considered inventory like cables, speakers, microphones, DJ controllers etc. Insurance: $7,000 Liability, worker's comp, etc. Internet: $1,500 Job supplies: $19,000 Includes duct tape, batteries, dollies, anything needed for the execution of the events not directly related to DJing Professional services: $9,000 Includes HR person, business operating services Meals: $14,000 Includes employee meals and working meals. This was 3% of revenue which is a little high but not astronomical Music expense: $8,500 Streaming services typically fall under the music research instead of music acquisition which is the cost of paying for specific songs that the couple requests and can be up to $50 - $100 per event. Downloading unlimited songs from record pools is about $20 - $50/month and are edited for DJs to mix more easily. David builds music costs into the expense because it's so rare that the music costs really hurts the overall income from the gig but David does reimburse his DJs if they need to buy music for an event. Networking: $3,000 Office furniture: $1,000 Office supplies: $16,000 Payroll fees: $7,000 Payroll wages: $40,814 Photobooth software: $1,300 Printing: $1,800 Reimbursable Expenses: $1,400 Taxes and licenses: $24,000 Orion Entertainment is an LLC-S, an LLC taxed as an S Corp. Phone: $2,800 This covers David and his fiance's phones and iPad data plans Travel: $11,000 Any gig over two hours away requires two nights of hotel. Travel for gigs in the San Juan islands are built into the package. Uncategorized: $4,000 Utilities: $3,500 Website: $12,000 (upon further review it's estimated this may include the SEO person and that they are not included in marketing costs) Other: $2,000 -- In total: Revenue: ~$460,000 Expenses: ~$300,000 Owner profit: $157,000 Salary: $45,000 In an S corp, the lower your salary the more you save in taxes. Business Profit: $112,000 Profit is more than just money, it's also about work-life balance and can't be accounted for in a spreadsheet. You also want to take a look at quality of life business expenses that are things you'd pay for regardless of your business but are deductible because of your business such as certain meals or travel.
Get in Touch with Our Guest David Schwartz, Owner of Orion Entertainment Follow Orion Entertainment on Instagram Book Orion Entertainment on their website.
Shop the Orion Entertainment Apparel Store. | |||
| 262 - Digging Into the Profit and Loss of a Brick and Mortar Business with Desiree Kelly, The Makery Cake Co. | 22 Dec 2022 | 01:18:02 | |
On today’s episode of the podcast I dig deep with Desiree Kelly, president and founder of The Makery Cake Co. into her bakery’s profit and loss. Desiree has a microbiology degree and got into cake decorating by offering to make her sister’s wedding cake with no experience (Desiree had only just made a cake for a BBQ that previous weekend). She took some cake decorating classes while getting her MBA. Her teacher noticed how much she liked it and advised she get into cake decorating. She went on to open her own bakery in 2006, The Makery Cake Co. shortly after graduating. She went to the SBA for a $250,000 loan she received. When applying, the she was asked if her husband would be working or joining separately, a poorly communicated way of asking if she would have supplemental income as she was building this business. To come up with her numbers, Desiree visited bakeries and was surprised how collaborative everyone in her Denver area was and how owners would share revenue numbers with her and she also used national database research. She got quotes on the physical space for buildout estimations and the landlord didn’t make her sign anything until she got the funding. Desire found a space that had been empty for about 3.5 years and the landlord tested it to make sure there were no residual chemicals from the previous dry-cleaning business. What made things difficult was Desiree received a buildout bid around $69,000 and when the project was completed it was $123,000. She was left with $13,000 in cash and wasn’t sure how the business was going to survive. Desiree didn’t have to pay taxes for a few years because she was not profitable and at that time there was loss carry-forward on her S Corp. About five years into the business, Desiree did away with her bakery case about seven years ago because it was not making good margins, only about 10% because things were being thrown away. She found people expected to pay less if it was in the case than they would if it was made custom for them even if it was the cake. She went all custom and it made people want it more when they couldn’t have it right away. On an occasion cake, the margin is about 30% and on a wedding cake the margin is more like 40%. Wedding cakes start at a base price bundled with delivery and upgraded flavors all for one set package price whereas occasion cakes (like birthday), have more choices. Diving into Desiree’s P&L, we are only covering January 1 through November 19, 2022 so these are not year-end numbers. Total income - $446,000 (projected year-end revenue $500,000). This is a typical year. compared to prior years, last year was similar to this year and 2020 was a crapshoot. Home consumption - $202,000 In Colorado, you don’t tax items you pick up from a grocery store and eat but you do tax items that are catered. Home consumption is a birthday cake you pick up but delivered is not considered home consumption. About 40% of total revenue Parties - $1,200 When The Makery opened it was heavy into hosting birthday parties. It got to the point where they could not support the size of the parties, sometimes serving up to 72 kids in a weekend, so they moved the parties to at-home parties, which reduced popularity because people didn’t want the mess in their house of the cake decorating and then with COVID it stopped until and moved to videos and kits which is what makes up the $1,200 Resale to vendors - $24,000 Venues in Denver will sell the cake to the couple and buy it from The Makery as wholesale and then send the couple to Desiree to design it. (In talking with wedding planners, some have shared with me that they want to offer all-inclusie packages including the vendors and then they would pay out the planners which makes your business model complicated and need to properly charge for all the admin work on the back end. I don’t typically recommend it because of all this backend work and also for liability purposes. Software mentioned during this segment: Maroo –An online payment platform that’s free for wedding professionals and their clients. Maroo offers a budget tracking dashboard for couples to keep on top of paid and scheduled payments in one spot and allows them to pay in all kinds of ways from ACH transfer to credit card and even Buy Now, Pay Later with 0% APR up to 12 months. Rock Paper Coin – A client management platform simplifies proposals, contracts, invoicing, and payment processing for businesses of all types and sizes in the event industry. Vendors, want to become a member? Sign up using code BRADEN.
Sales – This is a negative number and includes a few refunds to customers but mostly stand rental refunds of the deposit the couple paid up front and get back when cake stands are returned. Wedding cakes - $207,000 This is 47% of overall revenue. With smaller cakes and cutting cakes becoming more popular, this comes to about 200 cakes in a year with most income coming from May to September. Services - $21,000 This is delivery costs and wedding cake design sessions. When we weren’t charging for our design sessions/tastings there were a lot of no-shows. Deliveries are often done by one team member and are done mainly in-house because if something goes wrong, it can’t be fixed by a courier system. Cost of Goods - $53,000 Because it is so low, Desiree does not track her cost of goods very closely with a goal to stay under a certain amount. Instead of focusing on cost of goods to determine cake price increases, Desiree focuses on her team costs because she increases pay every six months. Talent (payroll) – $227,000 This includes Desiree’s team (made up of a customer service person who manages clients and frees up the bakers to work and bakers which can be up to eight people pretty much full time in the summer during busy season) and Desiree’s personal salary of $55,000. For the first seven years Desiree was not paying herself. Now as an S Corp, she is required to take a reasonable salary. Desiree tracks closely when the slow weeks will be to communicate with her team so they can plan accordingly if that requires another part time job for them or when they’ll be busier. Retirement funds paid – Desiree offers retirement to employees who have been working with her for over a year and it build per hour so it is both available to part and full time employees. Worker’s Comp - $5,000 Bakeries are classified as a dangerous environment which can make worker’s comp high. Desiree had to use it twice. Liability insurance - $3,000 This number goes up because of delivery. If the bakery did not offer delivery this cost would go down. Computer software - $6,200 Desiree loves automation and drip campaigns and having all her software integrated from payment to website so while this cost may be higher than it needs to be, she uses Infusionsoft and does not want to take the time or money to redesign it and move something else. Her email list is between 9 and 10,000 leads. Marketing - $23,000 total Under this is website optimization and social media, which includes the company Desiree pays to manage her Google Adwords and tweaking keywords on her landing page. Sales tax – Before opening the bakery Desiree took a class on sales tax with the Department of Revenue. When you deliver an item, you have to charge the sales tax at the delivery point so that is how states started getting their revenue from Amazon. Because Desiree is a vendor for 251 wedding venues in Colorado, she has 251 sales tax settings in her Square account for each venue so couples know the sales tax at their venue. Desiree’s sales tax for the state of Colorado was 146 pages long, then there is sales tax for Denver and sales tax for the Centennial municipality. It is a time-consuming process, even with the automated spreadsheet Desiree has in place. Net Operating income – (-$6,000) Last year was great because of backlogged 2020 weddings. This year, everyone’s wages went up but the cakes were being paid that were ordered at a 2021 price. 60% of the money that comes through the door goes out to the employees and Desiree. Luckily Desiree had business savings to help offset this. In years past, this was $80,000 which is where Desiree feels most comfortable. When there is a net positive, Desiree still does not usually pay herself profit distribution and instead keeps it for savings because she does not feel like $30,000 in the bank for savings is enough. Desiree found that when she stopped doing the baking and decorating herself it made the business run smoother and flourish when she didn’t have her employers waiting on her to give direction. She found that if she’s not taking care of the backend of the business and growing it she’s not doing the business any favors, even if it means not getting to work on cakes and do the part that she loves. Desiree still meets with couples, helps with the designs, especially of elaborate cakes, and works on the cakes that go to sponsorship events she attends. Get in Touch with Our Guest Desiree Kelly – President of The Makery Cake Co. Visit The Makery Cake Co. website | |||
| 261 - November Profit Report | 15 Dec 2022 | 00:36:48 | |
On today’s episode of the podcast I’m breaking down my November profit report and introducing my limited time offer to join Profit Rx. But first, some quick takeaways from my time at Wedding MBA. These may be helpful to you too if you attend live events.
Now, onto November’s Profit Recap. November Revenue Projections and Actuals
= $14,950 → But, we also had $2,500 in other income → Mostly from my "Braden Bucks" promotion in November which I may not do again and also annual renewals for Profit Rx from last year’s sign-up In total, we brought in (almost) $22,000 in November and was the largest month of the year by far. Yay! November Expenses In November, I had $8,600 in expenses. This was 39% of my revenue which is much higher than I like, I want it to be under 30% to help get me closer to the year end profit percentage goal.
=60.47% Profit Margin for November November Breakdown Revenue: ~$22,000 Year to Date I encourage my students to make a profit pie which is a pie graph with your expenses, salary and profit percentages on it. Expenses: My YTD expenses are 43.3% which is much higher than my desired 35% for the year. I did the math and without all of the Drag Tax start-up expenses we’d be at about 35% so I can’t claim that to be a success, but it tells me the recurring expenses for the business are not out of whack so I don’t need to fire anyone or cut any major recurring expenses. Salary: My payroll is 33.2% of revenue. That’s just my personal salary because employee salary is counted under expenses. Profit: 23.5% which is close to my goal of 25% My goal for next year is to spend a little less on expenses. In reality, we’ll be spending a little more but also increasing revenue starting in December with the big launch currently going on. On my webinar this week I shared my biggest launch of the year to help you get your bookkeeping wrapped up for the year, form your LLC or S Corp in January, get yourself on payroll and pay yourself appropriately, and other business tasks. My monthly membership, Profit Rx, is your prescription to building a healthy and wealthy business through tax, finance and legal trainings, live bookkeeping support, and support on managing difficult clients and sticky situations. If you join the program now, your first step will be to set up a meeting with our Client Success Coordinator to help you craft your success plan and what you need to complete in your business surrounding taxes, profit, business entity formation, bookkeeping, etc. Learn more and join at TheProfitRx.com. The doors close on December 21st and the bonuses disappear so if you’re looking for bonus bookkeeping help and the option to hire us for tax prep come tax season you need to get in before December 21st.
December Projections
= $33,350 in revenue. This is probably a stretch goal, but $25,000 would be fabulous. Have questions about Profit Rx? Send me a DM on Instagram @bradenadamdrake | |||
| 359 - Why You Need to Get Off the Carousel of Chaos | 16 Oct 2024 | 00:21:49 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm explaining the Chaos Carousel, why you don't want to ride it, and how you can get yourself off of it. It's no secret I love branding and cute names. You're all my business besties, my team is Team Besties, I teach about the "WTF happened to my money hamster wheel?" and identifying where our money is going when we make more revenue, the "oh shit cycle" of back taxes which is what happens when we don't keep up with our quarterly taxes and now we are introducing what I call the "chaos carousel of contradictory advice." The Chaos Carousel happens in all avenues to all of us. Stage 1: Not knowing what we don't know. Stage 2: Knowing what we don't know. Stage 3: Basic understanding. Stage 4: You're fully competent and can do it An example of this is BOI reports (check out episode 337 for all the details). This year, business owners when from not knowing what it is to knowing it exists and not quite understanding it to then getting a basic understanding. Getting to Step 3 can be a mixed bag because it starts with Googling and Googling has all kinds of results and how do you know who to trust? So then you think you might hire someone to help and people give you different answers and you're spinning round and around trying to find a clear answer. Getting contradictory advice from professionals happens for two main reasons: 1. They only see one side of your business Contradictory advice doesn't always mean one person is wrong. It's up to you to reconcile this and determine what is most correct for you. And what is most correct for you now may not be most correct for you later. A big example is forming an LLC. Even lawyers will vary on the answer. Some will tell you don't start a business until you form an LLC because it's your biggest barrier of protection. Some tax pros will tell you not to form an LLC until you make $30,000 or another arbitrary amount. They say this because LLCs don't have tax benefits so you might as well wait until you can become an S Corp, which makes sense from a tax perspective, but not a legal perspective because your business isn't protected. Same with bookkeeping and the conversation around QuickBooks or spreadsheet trackers and when it's the right time to move to a software. Same with contract templates. The reality of those is that ant lawyer you hire that's been in business for awhile is going to have all their client contract templates. They may not sell templates, but if you hire them to write a contract for you, the first thing they're going to do is duplicate and edit a contract from a similar contract scenario. And then some lawyers will take these and templatize them. Templates can also be extremely helpful to new businesses. For example, if you're a new wedding venue and you hire someone to draft you a custom contract but they haven't worked with a wedding venue before, you'll both be trying to predict potential issues that might happen to cover in the contract meanwhile a template has already addressed all the concerns from multiple wedding venues and worked with that lawyer. (You can get all our contract templates in the Contract Club for just $50 at notavglaw.com/club) I also see contradictory information about trademarks which drives me bananas. Why are business coaches giving trademark advice? That's something you want from a lawyer. The key takeaway is you want to know the legal and tax basics. My goal is for everyone to get to Step 3 so they have an understanding and know, when you go to hire someone you have the power of knowing if they're the right person to hire who understand what you're looking for. The chaos carousel is something that is going to exist in all aspects of life, but we, within our control, can hop off of it and stop the spinning by taking the time to educate ourselves and having the knowledge we need to have. If you want to get a baseline of knowledge, check out our book at unfuckyourbizbook.com and if you missed last week's episode, we offered a free chapter of the book which you can grab at notavglaw.com/358 | |||
| 260 - Your End of Year Action Plan | 08 Dec 2022 | 00:28:20 | |
On today's episode of the podcast we're creating your end of year game plan for getting the most out of your tax savings. Don't forget, Tuesday, December 13, I'm hosting two free masterclasses titled "7 Legal & Tax Myths: Busting Through the B.S. That's Costing You Money" to help ease your nerves before tax season whether it's the end of year stress around bookkeeping, filing your LLC or S Corp in the New Year, and overall transitioning your business into a new year. This will be the last time you can join ProfitRx until it reopens next year AND I'll be giving away some never-before-seen bonuses. Register to join at www.bradendrake.com/masterclass As always, I want to remind you that the end of the year is NOT the time to start making big purchases and increasing your expenses to get a deduction. If it is a necessary business expense, maybe. But spending to spend is not it because you will not save as much as you spend. I explain this in detail in my latest blog post that was inspired by this episode titled, Your End of Year Action Plan. You also need to consider your tax rate and rate changes before you make any end of year purchases. Will your business grow next year? Will you have additional income sources from you or a spouse? These things all affect your tax bracket. If you are going to go up a tax bracket next year, save your expenses for January. The higher your bracket the more you save with each tax deduction. If you expect an increase in income, spending in December isn’t the move. For more steps on getting maximum tax savings, check out the Your End of Year Action Plan blog post. | |||
| 259 - Stop Paying for Bullshit - 2022 Edition | 06 Dec 2022 | 00:23:56 | |
On today's bonus episode of the podcast I'm talking about the bullshit I see business owners paying for that you don't need to be. Next Tuesday, December 13, I'm hosting two free masterclasses titled "7 Legal & Tax Myths: Busting Through the B.S. That's Costing You Money" to help ease your nerves before tax season whether it's the end of year stress around bookkeeping, filing your LLC or S Corp in the New Year, and overall transitioning your business into a new year. We'll be talking about bad advice, overhyped tax strategies, and common misconceptions. It's a lot of what not to do because oftentimes the "should do list" is actually much simpler than we assume. AND you'll get access to new bonus resources. Register to join at www.bradendrake.com/masterclass
1. A fee from [insert name of well-known company I won't mention here] Helping a client with their bookkeeping I noticed fishy charges on her books. I called the company to ask about the $300 fee and they said it was their Registered Agent Fee. A registered agent is the person who's responsible for receiving service of process if you're ever sued. You can be your own RA if you live in the state where your business is formed and organized, but you have to put your work address (which may be your home office address) on the forms so if you don't feel comfortable doing that or you travel a lot, you might want to hire a RA. You can typically get one in most states for about $50/year. I tried to look, and there didn't seem to be an added benefits for the extra $250 for this company. 2. Similar companies are charging $80 to file your EIN. Like what? It's free. Your EIN stands for Employee Identification Number, it's like a social security number for your business. Any time a form asks for your TIN (Tax Payer Identification Number) they're asking for your EIN or Social Security Number. They ask for your TIN on W9s. You can do this for free on the IRS website by Googling "IRS EIN Application." Go ONLY to the IRS.gov link, you have to do it during IRS business hours despite being online. The questions you ask you may be difficult, but these websites that are charging you are asking you the exact same questions and charging you for nothing that you aren't already answering yourself. 3. Bad contract templates → don't buy ones that aren't for your industry A lot of companies out there are offering very generic templates and you'll end up with like wording for a construction project in your wedding planning contract. You don't need to be paying hundreds of dollars for these templates so maybe don't spend $100-$300 for literally every single contract you need and the issue of going to a local attorney is that they won't know the nuance of your industry to include. This is why we have the Contract Vault which has all the contracts you need for $30. Ethically I could charge $500 for this because there are contracts in there that every business owner needs i.e. a client contract, a contractor agreement and a privacy policy and then we have our cancellation, postponement and release agreements that are good to have on hand. If you need a template, buy my templates then if you want to have it reviewed then you can take it to a local lawyer and spend the money on that instead of more expensive templates. 4. You can form your LLC through the state website. Using an online service has little benefit, like the EIN. Again, paying a third party is silly because they're asking you the same questions your state website will ask. On the flip side, a lot of people think that an LLC formation is like an EIN, that it's just a form online. Yes, true, but it's all the things that go into it after forming an LLC like a new EIN, a new bank account, having an operating agreement, updating your business license, have meeting minutes, etc. These are a handful of the things you need to do. We walked through these steps in episode 257. A third party company should be giving you these resources along with the filing, but I've seen from experience that's not always the case and a lot of it can fall through the cracks. I also don't believe it's the responsibility of the companies to notify you about your annual fees and annual filings, and I've seen students have their LLCs dissolved because they did not keep up with these annual things because these third party companies did not educate them on what they needed to keep up with. Most of the filing steps you can do on your own and for those you can't our ProfitRx membership can walk you through them for $100/month. While we want you to stay for months and months, you could join for one month, form your LLC with our trainings, and then be done. 5. Trademarks → online services are generally a no. For some context, I hired an attorney for my Unf*ck Your Biz. That went through with no issues. I did my own for Profit Rx and had a couple minor hiccups that if I had hired a trademark attorney these would not have happened. I got an Office Action which is a letter you get back that says you have x,y,z issues to be corrected and sent back. Mine were only minor corrections I should be able to correct. Some Office Actions are much harder and would require you to hire an attorney, for example Likelihood of Confusion is a common one and you need to prove why there wouldn't be confusion, an attorney could tell you if this is a red, yellow or green on likelihood of proving this. Major hiccups can cost you major money. What I recommend to my ProfitRx students is that they do a general search for their business name. If they see nothing, you can file on your own but if you see something remotely similar or competitive, I would recommend hiring an attorney. Don't forget to sign up for "7 Legal & Tax Myths: Busting Through the B.S. That's Costing You Money" at www.bradendrake.com/masterclass AND you'll get access to new bonus resources. I'll see you Tuesday, December 13. | |||
| 258 - Revisiting LLCs & Biz Entities | 01 Dec 2022 | 00:12:24 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm revisiting LLCs and business entities. If you're new to the podcast, or need a refresher on LLCs, I'm diving into my small business blueprint during this episode and I've created a timeline of past episodes (listed below) where I dive into specific aspects of LLCs. Be sure to download the copy of my Small Business Blueprint, included at the bottom of these show notes. I was recently talking with my marketing manager, Emily, and she pointed out I haven't had an episode about LLCs recently. I've covered this topic several times, but I know that not everyone listens to the podcast all the time or you may have listened for 6 months to a year and then felt like you had a pretty good grasp of the content I cover. If I'm doing my job correctly, my hope is that at some point you will have fully implemented all of the things I have to teach and your business will be in tip-top shape and maybe you will have hired us for on-going bookkeeping and tax services. Rather than go back and rehash everything I've said in past episodes and make a new, long episode, I made a timeline of these past episodes and the order you should listen to them to essentially create your own free mini course on LLCs. Check them out in the order listed below. 078 - How LLCs are like a magic bubble - You'll learn how LLCs legally protect your personal assets 080 - How LLCs are like science - Like episode 78, these is also an audio version snippet from the LLC chapter in the first copy of my book. 083 - What are the tax benefits of an LLC - Learn what juicy tax benefits come from having an LLC. 116 - Can I Form My Own LLC? - Now that you're sold on LLCs, we'll talk about if you form your LLC on your own. 081 - Starting an LLC & Banking - How to form your LLC and the banking requirements that go along with it. 042 - When is it Time to Form an S Corp - An S Corp is a tax status, not a type of entity. You have an LLC first, then you elect for your LLC to be taxed as an S Corp. 231 - My S Corp Cost Me MORE in Tax Last Year - One of my favorite, most downloaded episodes ever, I talk about how having an S Corp cost me more in taxes for the year. 104 - Is There a Tax Advantage for a Corporation? - Most of you probably don't need to be a C Corporation, but if the thought has ever crossed your mind, this episode will answer your questions. 147 - Answering your tax and business classification questions - A Q&A that wraps up this mini LLC podcast series.
Now, onto my Small Business Blueprint, which is featured in Module 2, Lesson 4 in my Profit Rx curriculum. After we decide what your business entity should be, we go through the blueprint, which you can get here. | |||
| 257 - How to Pay Yourself Based on Business Structure | 29 Nov 2022 | 00:21:29 | |
On today's bonus episode of the podcast I'm sharing how to pay yourself based on your business structure. This episode is for you to get verification that you're paying yourself correctly, discover you're doing it incorrectly and learn how to change your system, or learn how to do it in the first place. Always a bit surprised about this question, but when I think about it, it is confusing and was something myself and my friends chatted about when we started our law firms, because we didn't even know. When I started my business several years ago, I joined an incubator as a solo practice with a group of six of us who passed the Bar exam at the same time and the law school has a faculty member that runs a six week incubator on how to start your legal business. So today, I'm breaking it down. What's the lingo and how does it work? On the next episode of the podcast I'll be going into greater detail about the different types of business entities so if you feel lost during today's episode, check out Thursday's when it comes out then head back here. For tax purposes, LLCs and sole props are taxed the same. We know LLCs and sole props are basically the same. These types of business are based purely on profit - you have income, expenses and profit. All the profit is your money because you and your business are the same and that is what you are taxed on. You pay your taxes on this profit whether or not you pay yourself. So what does that mean? You have income. You have expenses. You have profit. All the profit is your money. You pay taxes on it regardless of whether you pay yourself. Paying yourself isn't a "taxable event." This is why sole props can technically just use personal bank accounts, which we, of course, don't recommend. Instead, you have a personal account and can simply transfer yourself money from your business bank account whenever you want. That's paying yourself. And we love that. It's good to develop a habit of paying yourself because it forces you to be profitable. Paying yourself in a routine way breaks the habit of paying yourself when you need money for groceries or a car payment and helps you budget better when you have a set, routine income coming in. Inside Profit Rx I encourage beginner business owners to pay themselves every Friday because we do a finance Friday routine where we update our bookkeeping, pay ourselves, follow up on any invoices we're owed or payments we need to make, and check our credit score. With partnerships and multi-members LLCs, it's similar. You're taxed on all profits, but paying yourself is ESSENTIAL because otherwise, you have taxable income with no actual income to pay that tax. And yes, you should be paying the taxes personally. Let's say you have a partnership and your business makes $100,000. You have expenses of $40,000. Now let's say you leave that remaining $60,000 in the bank. Assuming you are in a 50-50 partnership, each partner is going to end up reporting $30,000 in profit on your tax return. You get a K1 that reports that. It shows you have $30,000 in profit and $20,000 in expenses. And let's say you have a 20% tax rate, you're going to owe $6,000 in taxes. If your business hasn't paid out any money, you're going to owe $6,000 in taxes but you haven't pulled any money out of the business to pay that tax and you don't want to wait until tax time to pull that money out. Ideally, you should be paying quarterly estimated taxes throughout the year so you want to pay yourself throughout the year as well. When you are in a partnership, the business should not be paying the taxes. A partnership is a pass-through entity meaning your taxes are based on your personal income, like an LLC or sole prop. The example I like to give is if Partner A is single with no other income, their entire income is the $30,000. Let's say Partner B also has a full-time job making $50,000 plus a spouse making $100,000 plus the $30,000 is $180,000 so that's going to put them at a different tax bracket than Partner A which is why the business does not pay the taxes. So it's really important you pay yourself in your partnership. Once you have an S Corp, you are going to pay yourself in two ways. You have to put yourself on a reasonable minimum salary under the law and ideally you want that to be on a routine basis, though legally it can be a lump sum payment. I like to run salary twice a month. I process it in my business on the 15th and the last day of the month and that's when I do it for my employees too. Once you pay yourself, anything left over is your profit and you can transfer additional profit to yourself and we treat that as a profit distribution. Salaries are subject to both income tax and self-employment taxes and your profit distributions is only subject to income tax which is how S Corps save us money. Ideally, you want to pay yourself these distributions on a monthly or quarterly basis though the vast majority of people, including myself, are not doing it in this ideal way. Not ideal, but I pay my personal credit card from my business bank account as the profit distribution. In the New Year, I'm going to be increasing my salary and I won't need to do this anymore. Want more information? Check out Episode 56 of my podcast, Paying Yourself in a Single Member LLC. If you have any questions, post them in my Facebook group, Braden's Besties. I'd love to chat about them. | |||
| 256 - My Finance Hot Takes | 24 Nov 2022 | 00:22:49 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm serving up some finance hot takes. I start off the episode talking about some wisdom tooth pain I'm having which, unrelated to the podcast topic, led me to my first hot take - The US insurance system is messed up and we should not need to pay separately for dental and eye insurance.
Hot Take #1 - Credit is sometimes worth it and debt is not a moral shortcoming. Not all of us have the luxury of having parents pay for our college so we have college loan debt. A lot of us need a vehicle and may need to take on a car payment. Also not a moral shortcoming if you have personal credit card debt, it happens. We live, we learn and we move on. When it comes to debt in business, it comes down to investing and the ROI. I shared on my October Profit Report that I racked up credit card debt last year to get ready to launch Profit Rx, which I was okay with because I knew there was a high likelihood that I would make it all back. I ended up making about $20,000 in the first two months of launching the program so it had a good ROI. I did the same thing again this year with branding and Drag Tax launch. I'm launching Profit Rx again next month and hoping to pay off those credit cards and fingers crossed also build my business savings account and slush fund so I won't need credit card debt in the future.
Hot Take #2 - You don't need a bookkeeper right away in your business A lot of bookkeepers might disagree. They might suggest you need a bookkeeper and an accountant right away. I disagree, especially if you're a sole prop or a single member LLC, it doesn't have to be complicated, you don't have to create your own balance sheet, really all you need to do is track your income and expenses to know how much money you're spending and making which for a lot of new business owners you can do on a spreadsheet. Exceptions to this are if you're investing a lot of money into your business, especially if you have a business partner and you're both putting a lot of money in and hoping to make this happen pretty quickly. Examples of this would be a wedding venue or a physical retail location, then it might make sense to have a physical bookkeeper right away because you're dealing with a lot of product as soon as it starts.
Hot Take #3 - Paying $0 in taxes isn't it If you're someone who believes that taxation is theft or unconstitutional you can log off and find someone else, that's not my vibe and not what I'm teaching. If your goal is to pay $0 in taxes, if you are running a normal service-based or product-based business, you're only going to pay $0 in taxes if you are not making profit, and who wants to run an unprofitable business? If you spend 100% of the money you have coming in on deductible expenses, you aren't making money from your business and the profit is what helps your personal finances and savings. Are you going to short change yourself thousands to stick it the IRS?
Hot Take #4 - Credit card fees are a cost of doing business I get it, they aren't fun, but it's a cost of doing business and we have to stop bitching about it in this modern era of doing business by the books. Unless you're taking cash under the table or doing big contracts over Venmo is not professional. Same thing with contracts - if you're someone who is regularly sending contracts you should be doing it electronically by now. Stop sending the PDFs. If you use a platform that has ACH capability you can tell your clients that you prefer ACH because you don't lose processing fees. If the credit card fees are really eating into your profit that much, it's time to raise your rates. DO NOT pass the credit card processing fees onto your clients. No one wants to be nickel and dimed and it's not legal in some states.
Hot Take #5 - Stop being mad at people if they want to 1099 you I got a DM recently from someone who was frustrated that a client was giving them a 1099 and could they go back and charge them more since they hadn't factored paying taxes into the price. I told them no, you already had a contract and in the future if you want to buy a house or show proof of income from something, you'll need tax returns. On the flipside, please stop sending 1099s when you don't need to. The rules are a little complicated but I have a thorough blog post on them here. You don't need to send 1099s if you pay people via PayPal, credit card, debit card, or if you are paying someone who has an S Corp or a C Corp. I get 1099s every year and then I need to print them out and send them to the IRS with a letter explaining why the 1099 is not reflected on my taxes. It's important to understand proper 1099 rules.
Hot Take #6 - You need to pay yourself from the beginning
Focus on profit from the beginning, at least a little bit. This is part of the philosophy of the Profit First system. Otherwise we get in this habit of allowing our business to not be profitable. Then we start kicking the can and don't get in the habit of paying ourselves. Before S Corps and salaries I encourage people to pay themselves every Friday or every other Friday as part of a finance Friday routine. Profit First is a system that encourages you to have five different bank accounts and separate your money across them. On the surface I like the system but in practice I've found many people use three bank accounts. What I teach in my book, is that I like to have people automate their tax savings into a savings account linked to the bank account. Having five bank accounts complicates your bookkeeping especially if you use something Quickbooks and have to link them all. I've also found a lot of people have trouble sticking to the five bank account system so if you're going to half ass it, it's not a good system for you. Stay tuned because I'll be having bonus episodes for the next three weeks AND the doors to Profit Rx will be reopening (with bonuses) in December.
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| 255 - Is Your Bank Account Leaking Money? | 17 Nov 2022 | 00:35:16 | |
On today’s episode of the podcast I’m discussing the topic, “is your bank account leaking money?” I gave a presentation on this topic at Wedding MBA last week titled, “Crunch the Numbers: The New Six Figure Benchmark for Wedding Pros.” I’ll be focusing today on one of the pillars from my talk – The Client to Piggy Bank Pipeline. The pipeline is the cash flow process of what happens to your money. You get paid by a client, the money goes into your business bank account, it pays for some of your expenses, it pays you a salary, maybe a distribution (these are all pipes your money goes down), it goes into your personal bank account, it pays some of your personal bills and then maybe it goes into your personal savings account to save for a purchase or pay off debt. You may remember about a year ago I launched my new message and program Profit Rx to shift the brand messaging to focus more on profit. In December I’ll be opening the doors to Profit Rx with some exciting bonuses and an open/closed door model instead of an evergreen model so we can offer additional support and more 1:1 services including tax return services for the first time in the business only available to people in the membership or working with us 1:1 so we can help you stay organized all year round to help us help you at tax time. During my talk I discussed the pipeline and dove into what the top of the pipeline looks like and I asked the audience how much revenue they thought they would need at the top of the pipeline to create a life fundable business to have enough money left at the end of the pipeline to pay for all the things you need in your personal life. I like to argue that you should aim for $200,000 at the top of your pipeline, with the caveat that you are single or the only income for your home and have no other revenue coming in. Expenses for a lot of people are about 30% of their revenue (though this can vary widely) and about 20% for taxes leaving you with about 50%. This would leave you with $100,000 which may or may not be what you need based on where you live and what your personal home and travel goals are. When you envision your pipeline, envision it has a few leaks. A burst pipe would be something like a lawsuit against your business and money is flowing out. So what comes first? Focusing on revenue or on the pipeline? I believe the right answer is the pipeline. Getting more money into the pipeline is marketing. I’m focusing on the tax side of things and fixing the pipeline helps you keep money in there. A few ways to fix your pipeline are:
Those were some quick tips for fixing your pipeline with tax strategies because taxes are one way that money leaks out. We can also fix it by maximizing profits. This is why I do my monthly profit reports and interview my business owner friends about their profits so we can get a better sense of what this means to different people and different ways to increase profitability. How can you increase your profit?
Diving into these can help you better understand what is making you the most profit and saving you the most time and then with your leftover time you can do more marketing to increase revenue. Protecting your profit margins is where your legalities come into place. This includes contracts, insurance, trademarks, and layers of protection. If you need contracts, click here. If you are looking to protect your business, start with my blog posts. Need a trademark attorney referral? Click here for the trademark firm I recommend. Prefer to listen? I talk about all of these topics in their own dedicated episodes and you can search podcast episodes here. Optimize your cash flow by segmenting it into the places it needs to go. You do not want it flowing from your client to your personal bank account! Cash flow management helps you get off the WTF Happened to my Money Hamster Wheel. In Profit Rx I teach you Cash Flow 1.0 to save for taxes and manage your income. I also go into 2.0, 3,0, and 4.0 that I recommend at different stages of business. My call to action to you is to start actually thinking about your cash flow in terms of this pipeline. Money comes in from your client. What happens to the money after it goes into your business bank account? Does it just sit there or do you pay your personal bank account regularly? We want our money flowing freely at a set schedule. Don’t just pay yourself when you need money for groceries. If you enjoyed this episode, share a screenshot of the episode and give me a tag on Instagram @bradenadamdrake. | |||
| 254 - October Profit Report | 10 Nov 2022 | 00:34:45 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm crunching the numbers from my October profit report. If you missed last month's profit report, check out September's Profit Report here. Tomorrow is the LAST DAY to get your FREE TRIAL access to the VIP Tier of Profit Rx. I'm not sure when (or even if) I'll do this again, so be sure to get your access now before it goes away on the 11th. Recording this episode of the November Profit Report is an exciting time for me because Profit Rx, my signature program & monthly membership, turns one year old this month! At the time you're hearing this I'll be at Wedding MBA, showcasing Profit Rx, the Contract Vault, etc. at my booth, and speaking this year! Wedding MBA last year was when I officially launched Profit Rx. Now that I have one year of profit report data on how Profit Rx has been performing, I took a listen back to last year's November Profit Report. During that episode I shared that I had gone into $7,000 of business credit card debt to prepare for the launch of Profit Rx. I don't always recommend doing that, it can definitely be scary. If you are thinking of doing it, it's important to focus on ROI. And now that I have a year's worth of data, I can share my ROI with you. My Year to Date (YTD) Total Revenue from Profit Rx during January to October of 2022 is $70,000. When I launched, it brought in $12,000 in revenue in November during its first month. A big chunk of this money was from annual memberships. December gave me a better look at the monthly recurring revenue I was making on Profit Rx. I brought in $5,000 in December, indicating my MRR would be about $5,000 and that $7,000 of November's revenue was from annual memberships. While November's revenue was enough to pay off the business credit card debt, I split it between November and December. From November of last year to October of this year, Profit Rx has generated $87,000 in revenue. That's roughly a 12.5x return on investment (ROI) from my $7,000 investment. 2022 was supposed to be all about profit because Profit Rx was supposed to be my one signature offer. And it has been in almost all respects because it's made up about 56% of total revenue. I've spent the past six months or so thinking about how I really want to grow and scale this business in a variety of ways.
This has meant making even more investments. October Goals - Projected vs. Actual Profit Rx: $12,000 → $7,000 = $17,200 projected/$16,800 actual | |||
| 253 - The Importance of Profit-Driven Systems | 03 Nov 2022 | 00:21:25 | |
On today's episode of the podcast we're diving into how different systems in your business can help you increase your profit and help you achieve your personal business goals. Don't forget, I'm offering a free trial of the Profit Rx VIP Tier. You'll get a 1:1 with me, bookkeeping help, office hours and so much more, all part of the free trial, a $100 value, free for 30 days. Hurry, the free trial ends November 11. Recently, I've interviewed business owners, like Haley Johnson and Rachel Greiman about their profit reports. Haley shared with me about how she was on a journey to make as much revenue as possible. Then last year, she felt like the script flipped and people were focused on profit. Rachel shared in her episode she didn't mind making lower profit as long as she was paying herself the money she needs to sustain her life and after that she is willing to spend whatever she needs to hire more and work less in her business to spend time with her family. These conversations got me thinking about something that's been on my mind. When I'm talking about profit-driven anything, I'm talking about it in the context of you. What are your goals and what profit do you need to support them? It's about optimizing your margins in relationship to how hard you want to work and it looks different for everyone. You have to ask yourself, for example, is a task worth saving time on by having a VA do it, or is it more worth them spending that same amount of time on a sales-generating task. Sometimes we sacrifice profit in order to have more free time. I teach this concept in Module 4 of Profit Rx (Your Profit Recipe) where I talk about finding your profit sweet spot where we compare hours worked to profit and revenue. Speed, cost, and quality - typically you can only get two of the three and I think the same applies to sacrificing hours worked for profit. What do profit-driven systems look like? 1. They can look like keeping track of your numbers (reflect back on episode 251) so you know what your target for expenses is per month. You can also look at your list to decide what expenses are saving you time and which you aren't using (or using enough) for them to help save you time and money. 2. Managing your time and spending it on what's going to make the biggest waves in your business. This can look like off-loading lower value tasks (tasks that will make you less money than other tasks). 3. Clear communication with your clients and team. A lot of profit falls through the cracks if you aren't clearly communicating expectations. 4. SOPs - Standard Operating Procedures make it easier to outsource and save a ton of time. When your team saves time, you save contractor expenses. 5. Tracking KPIs - Key Performance Indicators. These are your metrics and these numbers supplement your bookkeeping. Your books tell you what's happened and your KPIs tell you where there may be issues so you can anticipate your numbers next month. This might look like sign-ups, email opens, conversation rates, etc. Inside Profit Rx I teach this system to streamline your business. We set up your bookkeeping, then we set up your legalities to protect your profits, then we set up a cash flow system to pay yourself, your expenses, and track your profitability . Then we get into taxes, hiring and profitable systems as bonus content. Looking ahead, in December we are launching our first ever done-for-you service offering. It's going to be a launch because it's going to be a cohort because we are onboarding our clients at the same time so you are all at similar stages in the process at the same time and we can offer optional group elements like live training. If you join the Profit Rx VIP Trial now, at the end of your trial we can asses what you've completed, what your best next steps are, is it better for you to stay in the VIP membership, upgrade to done-for-you services or downgrade to the Profit Rx basic tier. If you enjoyed today's episode, tag us on social media @BradenAdamDrake on Instagram.
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| 252 - 7 Times to Ring a Tax Strategist | 27 Oct 2022 | 00:14:19 | |
On today's episode of the podcast we talk about the times throughout the year you should be hearing from your tax professional (if not, you'll want to reach out to them). Have you joined Profit Rx 2.0? You'll get a 1:1 with me, bookkeeping help, office hours and so much more. 1. At the close of every tax season We file our taxes (hopefully on time) in April and review them with your tax preparer. If your tax preparer isn't reviewing your taxes with you, red flag🚩. Ideally they will also give you advice on what to do in the upcoming year financially, both in business and personally, to better prepare for next year. 2. Every quarter You need to be paying quarterly taxes. If you aren't hearing from them during this time, you'll want to reach out. 3. Before the end of the tax year PLEASE do not go make huge business expenses at the end of the calendar year for the sake of deductions. This is not a decision you should be making without guidance. For example, if you're in the 12% tax bracket this year and expect to be in the 22% bracket next year, it's not wise to be spending a bunch of money in December when you can spend it in January and get more deductions. You'll also want to talk about if it makes sense to form an S Corp and back date it, what a reasonable S Corp salary looks like, etc. 4. Whenever you have big changes in your business model or business finances What should you do differently? How can you pivot during the year? When do you need to pivot? How does hiring impact your business? What about a big expense? 5. When big financial stuff happens in your personal life Examples include a big raise for you or your spouse, you have a child aging out of child tax credit age, you win a lot of money gambling, you inherit a lot of money, etc. 6. When tax laws change This doesn't happen as much as you would think. We haven't had any since 2017. There are minor changes here and there. When those changes impact your business, your accountant, tax preparer, or tax strategist should be reaching out to you. This is why it's ideal to have a tax person who operates within your niche so they stay on top of what will effect your business. 7. When you move to a different state This is a major life change and can impact your business because certain states may not have sales tax, some cities have their own tax, and you will need to figure out which state(s) you will owe quarterly taxes to. If you don't already have someone you can consult on the above, you might want to consider looking into having someone for when the above situations arise. A few more questions you want to ask yourself: 1. Do you need a bookkeeper, a tax preparer, a CPA, and/or a tax attorney? Bookkeepers track your business income and expenses and creating your financial reports. Typically they do not provide a high level or finance consulting nor do they usually give tax advice. A tax preparer is typically just paid to do your taxes. Oftentimes people are looking for a high level of tax strategy to come from them, but that's not often the case. Consider how much you're paying for your taxes. If you're paying $500 that's probably not going to come with anything else. If you want to find someone who does tax strategy. You're looking at $1,500 and up and can be $3-4,000 to get you continued support throughout the year instead of just at tax time. A CPA (certified public accountant) is trained to do lots of things and can be trained to do taxes, but oftentimes not. An EA is an Enrolled Agent and they are specifically certified in tax prep. A tax attorney (which is what I technically am) are who you go to typically for high dollar or highly complicated tax situations to work in partnership with a CPA to do the legal research on what is legally allowed in regard to the taxes. If you have a bookkeeper or do it yourself, fabulous. You can also do your taxes yourself or hire someone to prepare them for you. The third piece that's often missing is the tax strategy because not a lot of service providers provide it and not a lot of business owners are willing to pay for it but that's where the tax savings can come in. Consider if the person you're already working with can give you strategy and if not, are you ready to outsource or learn on your own? If you're ready to learn, you can get started inside Profit Rx and we can get your tax strategy basics started as part of the free trial. If you have questions, ask them in the Facebook group, Braden's Besties or send me a message on Instagram @bradenadamdrake | |||
| 251 - Become Your Own Business Fortune Teller | 20 Oct 2022 | 00:32:37 | |
On today's episode I dive into why diving into your bookkeeping numbers is so much more than just a compliance task done for tax time. Need help keeping track of all your numbers and setting up a bookkeeping system? Check out ProfitRx which includes:
Today's show notes have been turned into a blog post showing you screenshots of all my numbers and how I use them to predict the future of my business. Check out the blog post here. | |||
| 358 - Being in business requires you to be in the business of being a grown-up | 10 Oct 2024 | 00:17:00 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm talking about how running a business is a lot like putting on our grown-up pants. It's a difficult, but necessary topic to address. If we're going to reach our goals, both business and personal, that require us to do things we don't want to do. Grab the Quarterly Tax chapter for free from my book, Unf*ck Your Biz at notavglaw.com/358 Quarterly taxes are a prime example of things we need to learn and have to pay, even if we don't want to. We find in working with clients that even if you are hiring us to unf*ck your biz, there are parts of your business you still need to be doing and keeping track of, whether or not you hire someone to help. While there's no rules out there on how to be a grown up, there are rules on how to run a business. Businesses require paperwork. No matter how many people you hire, most of the mail is still going to be ending up in your inbox, meaning you need to know how to handle it - what is your responsibility and what needs to get passed on to the professionals you're hiring? If you can't afford to hire professionals yet, you need to know how to handle it. You also need to know what professionals are going to be able to handle for you and what they aren't. For example, we had a student come to us who owed four years of back franchise taxes. They had filed on LegalZoom who isn't the best about keeping people up to date on compliance requirements. Same with filing LLCs in different states if you moved. Even if you hire someone to do this for you, no one will know you've moved unless you've proactively told them. No one is going to care more about your business than you do. How can taking ownership over the thing you don't want to do positively impact your business and mindset? If you take ownership over your business from a legal perspective, it's going to help you know when to file the forms related to your LLC and avoid potential legal pitfalls. If you ever have legal issues, you or your business are going to be the ones to get sued. It sounds like a harsh statement but if you or someone who works for you makes a mistake, you'll be the one to get sued, not your lawyer or whoever you relied on to file for you. Same if you have intellectual property issues. Ignorance of someone's business name or ignorance about a law is never a defense so you need to be proactive. From a financial perspective, similar to the whole if you get sued thing, when it comes to your tax return, the ONLY person for your tax return, tax bill, penalties, fees, etc. is you. You're the only one because you signed the tax return. At a minimum, you need to know what your tax obligations are, how you owe tax, how their business income is calculated and how to read a basic tax return. You need to at least be able to skim it and know if it makes sense or not. When it comes to hiring someone, you're the person responsible for handing over all the financial documents. We have this issues over and over again. We can't do your bookkeeping if you don't give us your bank statements. We can't read your statements if they're co-mingled between personal and business expenses. We also need to put our grown-up pants on when it comes to knowing your numbers. You're the one who is making key decisions, like when to invest, when to save, when to do a new launch, when to hire, get a business loan, etc. These are all numbers-driven decisions. You should be able to look at your financial statements, know how much cash you have in the bank, how much revenue you have coming in, when your next big expenses are, etc. to decipher what you need to be doing in your business. Even if you have someone crunching the numbers for you, it's your responsibility to review those numbers. If you haven't launched your business yet, ask yourself if you want to do these things or if a hobby would be a better alternative. I know these sounds scary, but I would not trade the freedom by business provides me for not having to do these things any day. Put on your grown-up pants and download the Quarterly Tax chapter from my book, Unf*ck Your Biz at notavglaw.com/358
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| 250 - Finding a Business Structure that Works For You with Haley Johnson | 13 Oct 2022 | 00:57:10 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I chat with copywriter Haley Johnson about her P&L and income breakdown. Haley Johnson is an ethical copywriter and trauma-informed marketer. In her six years in business, Hayley has tried scaling up to an agency model and scaling back down to what works for her. She recently found herself best able to describe her business in the last six months. In addition to her copywriting, Haley has a DBA (doing business as) with another arm of her business called Propegy where she teaches people how to use LinkedIn to grow their business. Propegy brings in about 10% of Haley's revenue which she shares was helpful to know because the more she became okay with those numbers the better content she feels she creates for the brand. Currently she is revamping an offer for Propegy that had one buyer and they are going through the program together to fdeliver the offer 100% and see how it can be broken down into smaller pieces at a lower price point. The other 90% of her business comes from Haley's three offerings to help with customer journeys, email sequences and sales pages. Her offers are $800 for a half day, a full day at $1500 or a full week at $2500. These offers were not in place in 2021. In 2021 Haley was focused on making six figures because she felt like that's what all the internet coaches defined as success. She started the year with the intention of being a full service marketing agency doing everything from content to web design to social media with prices ranging from $1200 to $4500. She did this all throughout 2021 and it was too much and the expenses reflect that to cover the large team. Her revenue was $98,000 and she paid herself a lower hourly rate than any of her contractors or employees. Today, Haley no longer believes she needs to have six figures to be a successful business owner. Success is arbitrary. She does not want to offer hourly/retainer work again because she likes a tight turn around or being stuck in a contract. Looking at Haley's profit & loss statement, a couple of line items stuck out. Her advertising expenses are only $220 for the year, covering her attempt at some Facebook ads but stopped because the cash flow wasn't at a place where she felt she could spend the money on Facebook ads. Her education and training expenses were about $15,000 and included a mastermind, a course, and an HR membership with Kira La Forgia that helped her with her business. Of all the things Haley was investing in, she felt like many of the solutions for her problems were to invest in more things. She learned that she needed to take some time to be her own coach and find her own way to get to six figures instead of being told she has to get there. Currently she is on a coaching detox. Group coaching and high ticket programs can be great, but sometimes they can be competing and when you can't do A & B simultaneously, you has the business owner have to decide which way you want to go. Looking at Haley's 2022 P&L, she currently has one employee who does marketing and social media for Haley's business and podcast that isn't client-facing. She decided to hire an employee in December 2021 instead of a contractor because she knew the way she worked with people she needed to have some control of the employee's availability to work on projects. This year she still has contractors with a contractor expense of $8,000, part of which is her accountant and then also her one day branding intensive and a one day website build for Haley Johnson and a one day website build for Propegy because she wanted it taken off her plate. Get in Touch with Our Guest Haley Johnson, Customer Journey Strategist Connect with Haley on LinkedIn | |||
| 249 - September Profit Report | 06 Oct 2022 | 00:24:03 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing my September profit report to review last month's goals and set new goals for next month. If you missed my August profit report you can listen to it here. One of my focuses this year has been consistency. I feel I have been very successful with my revenue consistency. My expenses consistency, not so much. My highest revenue month had been $14,700 in January, replaced last month by August with $14,900 (so close to $15,000). My lowest month of the year was February with $9,400. For expenses, my highest spend month was July with $10,000 (a lot of Drag Tax bookings were made during this month for my brand photo shoot and lowest was $2,000 in January). January to May was between $2,000 and $4,000 each month. $3,000 was kind of my baseline and June, July, August was between $7,000 and $10,000. September dipped back down to $5,000. I'm ideally looking for at 66-70% profit margins in Q4 with hopefully $25k revenue months during my launch. September Goals - Projected vs. Actual Profit Rx: $6,700 / $9,000 (This increase was due to a last minute promotion of my VIP tier annual plan which helped me onboard my new bookkeepers who will help create systems and do bookkeeping office hours) Other: $2,500. → $1,000 (mostly affiliate income, more of the payments will be hitting my bank account next month) Total: $13,500 → $12,825, so about $600 off on the goal, but we had about a couple thousand that deposited on October 1st
Expenses
Total expenses: $5,399 Owner Profit: $7,169 (Profit before my own salary). This was 56% profit margin, 67% without the $1,500 expense for my hiring course so that's more like what I'm expecting in the coming months. I always expect to have some one off expenses, but I still like to do this exercise to see how I'm doing with routine operating expenses
October Projects Upcoming one-off expenses:
YTD totals → see photo attached October Projections = $17,200 Also, what's on the horizon...
If you're interested in joining as part of our promotion, reach on out in my DMs. At the time of recording this we still have available spots. If we're out of spots, message us about Profit Rx VIP. | |||
| 248 - Building a Business to Create Your Ideal Lifestyle - An Interview with Rachel Greiman | 29 Sep 2022 | 01:02:53 | |
On today’s episode of the podcast I speak with Rachel Greiman, Founder + CEO of Green Chair Stories, about her P&L statement and how she started her own copywriting business. A copywriter for photographers, Rachel started a family photography business in 2014 and from there, she started helping other photographers with their copy and formalized her process in 2016. In 2020, Rachel hired a second writer for her team which helped her workload at the same time she had a baby. Offering a productized service, Rachel offers website copy for photographers with a standard 5 pages of copy – home, about, contact, and usually experience and pricing. Every project starts with a call on a Monday. Coming into this call, the writer has already interviewed 2-3 of your past clients, they’ve looked at all of your social media captions, they’ve read your reviews, they know why you’ve come to us, and the team has reviewed the 40 question questionnaire. After this meeting Rachel’s writers write the first draft by Thursday night and Rachel reviews them on Friday by end of the day and deliver it by the following Monday. They have five business days to edit with the writer (one writer takes on only one project per week). Every 6 – 12 months Rachel’s company raises their rates as the industry prices raise, typically attracting clients that are shooting $5,000 weddings for example. Rachel recommends DIYing if you are a newer photographer, and she sells a DIY guide and an email template guide, bringing in an average of $3,000 a month. A lot of this is coming from podcast press, Google rankings from photographer template guides, social media inquiries and it’s just not time for them to pay for Rachel’s service, or her ~2,000 person email list. When doing her monthly financial review, Rachel likes to look at her income and figure out why it’s low or high that month and what she did differently and what the expenses are and how it’s impacting profit margin to make sure that she’s appropriately spending. YTD Rachel is at $219,000 for 8.5 months, coming in just below her $26,000/month goal. Reviewing the numbers, February and March were pretty high due to peak photography season. These clients typically booked in December and pay 50% up front and 50% later unless they’ve asked for a four-part payment plan. Slightly down in August, it’s a slower month due to it being photography season and Rachel slowing down that month for the sake of her and her team. Rachel is very focused on having $10,000 profit months. 10% of revenue is donated, and Rachel pays herself about $7,000 a month, the highest it’s been in her 8 year business. The donation money comes out of Rachel’s $7,000 because as an S Corp, Rachel makes her donation through herself to get an itemized deduction since only C Corps can get business deductions for charitable donations. Rachel separates her contractor payments from expenses to get a better visual, however contractor costs are also expenses. TYD it breaks down to about $45,000 in expenses, $85,000 to contractors, and $85,000 in profit. Rachel charges $4,500 for a website and the contractor gets $2,100. The opportunity to make more is if they write an additional page or edit another writer’s work. Rachel also has an hourly VA and a monthly Pinterest manager. Rachel pays her contractors through Zelle since she has an accountant. Braden recommends Gusto for when you run your own payroll. While Rachel could make more money by taking on more of her own clients (she had 5 this year), with a two year old and a four year old at home, for the sake of her work-life balance and ability to create the output she desires as well as the longevity of the business being able to run without her being so hands on, she chooses to make the amount that she’s making because it works for her and her family. She focuses on selling high-quality products that are in demand and is not looking to just grow a buck. Her current goal is to work less and maintain the revenue. One of Rachel’s monthly expenses is cookies. She sends Levain cookies as a client gift because cookies hold a special memory for her growing up. Rachel also pays for each of her clients to take the Enneagram assessment. Get in Touch with Our Guest Rachel Greiman, Founder + CEO of Green Chair Stories Follow Rachel on Instagram @GreenChairStories | |||
| 247 - From bankruptcy to a profitable business - An Interview with Luisa Alberto, Founder of People First Finance | 22 Sep 2022 | 01:03:35 | |
On today’s episode of the podcast, I interview Luisa Alberto, CEO of People First Finance about her profit and loss statement. People First Finance’s mission is to ease the financial burden and overwhelm that holds too many ambitious enterprising women back from achieving financial autonomy. Luisa opened a brick-and-mortar juice bar in San Francisco that closed its doors when Luisa had to declare bankruptcy for the business. The business was a partnership and was carrying a lot of debt. Luisa leveraged the lessons she learned from this experience to segue into 1:1 coaching. Going into the business bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, it wasn’t until filing for bankruptcy that Luisa and her partner realized they were personal guarantors for the business loans they had taken so it had to be a personal bankruptcy. Before this, Luisa was in an excellent personal finance situation with great credit, which did help applying for a credit card after bankruptcy. Bankruptcy does not have to destroy you and there are options to build back up your credit. A secured credit card (one where you essentially make a down-payment toward the line of credit) is one option to help build credit. There is no one way to structure your own financial journey. You have to focus on what is best for you. Looking back on the juice bar, Luisa shares that she while the location was chosen for the high level of foot traffic (second highest in San Francisco) the space at the food hall was small and did not have the infrastructure that allowed them to produce the amount of revenue needed to not only cover all overhead and debt but have any kind of profit margin. People First Finance offers done-for-you services for agency owners and service providers and advisory services for all kinds of businesses. We dive into People First Finance’s profit and loss statement (P&L) for this fiscal year through end of August. They have $161,800 in gross revenue. On the business’s P&L there are sublines for sales and for services, the difference being retainer clients versus one-off services. People First Finance is an agency made up of three bookkeepers, one CPA, a subcontracted tax professional, a director of operations and a virtual assistant. People First Finance is an S Corp and Luisa and her accountant are both employees. The rest are contactors with their own businesses with People First Finance being one of their clients and paying them an hourly rate. The team was built through Luisa’s networking. For her own business, Luisa uses Collective for her bookkeeping instead of a member of her team to keep a line of separation between her contractors and her own business as well as to get an insight into how their company works and because Luisa knows what questions to ask them. When getting her P&L there are a few things Luisa looks for. First, she looks to make sure revenue is captured properly with nothing double counted. Then, she makes sure all her contractors are organized and that it matches what she spent on billable contractors versus overhead and ops. She also checks the balance sheet for accurate journal entries. Breaking down the Contractor expenses, Luisa has accounting subcontractors, bookkeeping subcontractors and financial specialist. General contractors is an operations expenses and covers the Director of Operations and virtual assistant. Bookkeepers are billable work related to direct costs. The placement of line items on a Profit & Loss can be called a tax net neutral mistake if it is on your P&L accurately but listed in an improper category. At the time of recording, Luisa was approaching her first year in business this week. Starting the business, she pulled in clients she had from her personal coaching and consulting which set the baseline before adding additional clients. Luisa has focused on building a team in the last few months to support doubling revenue over the next year. Currently, Luisa’s at about $36,000 in contractor expenses which is about 30%. Her target direct labor cost is 40% or less of gross revenue and 20% or less of gross revenue for operating expenses. Other line items include meals, Luisa’s health insurance runs through payroll to save self-employment taxes on health insurance. Luisa went the HSA route for her IRA. When you have an S Corp, your salary comes through the business. The lower it is the more you spend on taxes, but it also needs to be considered reasonable. When looking at P&Ls for clients, Luisa often sees a lot of duplicated accounts where repeated expenses are getting categorized differently when they come in each month. Looking at Luisa’s P&L pie chart if we broke it into thirds, her YTD salary goal is $33,300. Looking at the expense total of $142,000 and subtracting $33,000, expenses other than salary would be $109,000 and then profit after salary and expenses is $19,000. Luisa plans to look at profit more strategically next year in a way to increase tax liability and therefore maybe not increasing her salary in order to max out her retirement account instead for example. Different methodologies work for different people, it’s not just about profit first and that may not be the one that’s best for you. Luisa shares that your finances “don’t have to be hard.” What we really need to focus on is the compliance piece. You don’t need to get fancy with your cash flow, you just need to know and organize what everything is that is coming in and out of your business. Your business decisions rely on the accuracy of this information being well-documented. Having a business bank account makes this all streamlined and more efficient and easy.
Get in Touch with Our Guest Luisa Alberto, CEO of People First FinanceVisit the People First Finance Website Follow and send a DM Instagram at @peoplefirstfinance Connect with Luisa on LinkedIn Join the waitlist experience happening now through October 12th | |||
| 246 - What Contractors Want You to Know About the Hiring Process - An Interview with My Team | 15 Sep 2022 | 00:55:32 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I chat with five members of my team about what my team looks like and tips for successfully onboarding contractors. Lili Enriquez - Lili is a general virtual assistant whose role has varied while working for me. During her time with me she has completed a variety of tasks including managing my Pinterest, uploading my podcasts to YouTube and still continues to edit and upload my podcast to its players. Shandra Cornelia - A wedding planner and virtual assistant, Shandra joined the team as Customer Support Manager after being a former student in Branden’s course. She works with Braden on student calls and answers customer emails. Emily Rochotte - A social media manager and content writer for creative small business owners, Emily manages Braden's social media, pitches him for guest spots on podcasts, and oversees calendar integration for Braden's involvement in summits, bundles and other speaking events. Juliet Peay - Juliet is a copywriter writing emails, sales pages, and websites for people with strong personal brands. For Braden, Juliet writes Braden's weekly emails and launch emails throughout the year. When Braden was hiring a copywriter he asked select candidates to write test emails that they were compensated for at their hourly rate. If you’re going to offer a test and will possibly use their work, you need to have them sign a work for hire contract and pay them for their work as you may use it in the future. Connie Hurlburt – Connie is a virtual assistant and she welcomes members into Braden’s Besties Facebook group , answers their questions and directs them to resources.
The team shares with Braden what helps them feel organized in the business, especially as part of a multi-person team. SOPs – Having standard operating procedures in place help team members to know that if they are taking time off and someone needs to step in to complete a project, Project Management System – email can be tempting, but keeping all info in a place that is accessible to everyone will be increasingly helpful as your team grows and other members need to reference information or see what stage in the process other members are on for projects multiple members are working on. Voxer – Have a communication tool in place so you know the best way to reach your client/contractor(s)
In Profit Rx we talk about micro and macro organizers when it comes to creating systems for your business. Braden is a macro organizer – he has a few project boards on Asana with details under it versus micro organizing Asana into a ton of projects. Shared calendars – Organize your launches and content in a calendar that your team can see
The team shares their tips for business owners when hiring a contractor:
To learn more about systems and how Braden runs his business, check out Module 9 in Profit Rx
Get in Touch with our Guests Juliet Peay: Connect with Juliet on LinkedIn
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| 245 - August Profit Report | 08 Sep 2022 | 00:27:49 | |
On today's episode of the profit report I'm sharing my August numbers to see if I hit last month's goals and setting new goals for next month. If you missed the July profit report you can listen to it here. One of my big focuses this year has been consistency. So far this year, my 1. Highest month: $14,700 (January) On the previous profit report, I projected my August goals. Below you'll find my projection side-by-side with the actual number I hit. August goals: Profit Rx: $6,700 / $7,500 Total: $13,500 / $15,000 (technically $14,926.30) making this my highest revenue month of the year. The differences in my projections versus my actual can be explained by the addition of one VIP day. In July I had booked two VIP days at the end of the month so the payment for those hit in August which made projections even easier. There was also one additional Profit Rx Live payment that fit into the monthly window. My other income came from affiliate sales including three $200 gift cards from Gusto's referral programs. Now let's talk about expenses: 1. $2,765 to team contractors (18% of my revenue. I typically want this to be 15%). $1,000 of this went to YouTube, I expect this is about $600 more than what I expect moving forward Total expenses: $7,760 Owner Profit (profit before paying my own salary): $7,165 (a little less than 50%. I'm typically looking for this to be about 70%) Without those 1 offs like YouTube editing, Peerspace and the Hiring Program I would have had: $10,565 → 70%. I always expect to have some one off expenses, but I still like to do this exercise to see how I'm doing with routine operating expenses.
Upcoming one-off expenses: 1. September: Hotel for Vegas + second payment of $1,500 for hiring program Hoping to offset these with one-off income: 1. September: $500 in bootcamp income + $3,000 in DCA affiliate income 🤞I'll be hosting my own DCA Support Group if you sign up through my link. YTD totals → see pie chart here.
September Projections Profit Rx: $6,700
Digital Course Academy is launching this week! To learn more about Digital Course Academy check out Amy's free Masterclass here. | |||
| 244 - 5 emails, $2,400, with a 500 person email list - How Brandi Johnson Sold Her First Course | 01 Sep 2022 | 00:39:20 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I interview my friend Brandi Johnson of Brandeis Nicole Style. Brandi is a personal stylist and confidence coach who works with clients to help them get dressed easily, quickly, and effortlessly without sacrificing comfort while promoting body confidence. In 2019 Brandi was a fellow member of Digital Course Academy to learn how to launch courses for her business. When Brandi joined she was working a full time job and wasn't sure if the time commitment was for her. For Brandi, she felt the content was paced out in a way that she could keep up with and catch up on the replays around her work travel schedule. Part of the process of joining for Brandi was developing her course topic. With a background in education, Brandi knew she wanted to create a signature course but wasn't sure how to get people to it. Brandi started really low ticket with her course, ran zero ads and sent it to her email list of 500 and her social media audience. She had 150 people open the email and 49 people purchase the course at $47. A notorious procrastinator, Brandi forced herself to have a short sales window of 5 days before cart close and to push herself to keep promoting. When coming up with course topics and brainstorming what you want to educate on, start writing down every question people ask you. What are people coming to you to learn about? Having a course does not mean you can no longer offer 1:1 services. In fact, having a solely course-based business is not often advised and can be a risk to make the immediate jump into that, especially if you're leaving a full time job to move into courses. Get in Touch with Our Guest Brandi Johnson, founder of Brandeis Nicole Style
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| 243 - 6 Ways to Integrate Courses into Your Business | 25 Aug 2022 | 00:21:03 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I share ideas for integrating courses into your current business. Before we begin, I want to clarify that a course-based business is a business whose income is centered around courses and is different from a business that creates courses to supplement your current business. Creating a course-based business is tougher than it looks than the outside. To get your toes wet, I recommend creating courses to help you break past your income ceiling. Amy Porterfield talks about 5 different types of courses -starter, spotlight, signature, workshop and certification courses. Ways to get started with a course: 1. Make it a list-builder: A starter course is created to help people get started. It gives a quick fix to a problem or the first couple of steps they need. This is something they can implement in a short amount of time. This could be a list-builder or you can offer a corresponding freebie to generate leads and then sell the course at a discount from the standard price if they buy it without opting into the freebie. 2. Make it a down-sell: This is great for spotlight courses, something that gives someone the full system in a very specific area. An example of this is my course Sole Prop to LLC which covers specifically how to go from a Sole Prop to filing an LLC. I no longer sell this in my current business model but I previously offered this as a downsell if people were not interested in paying for a 1:1 formation service with me. Ask yourself if there is any service you provide that you could teach if people do not want to pay the price for you to do the service. 3. Make it your cornerstone (signature) offer: This is what I've done with my signature, one to many offer, Profit Rx. I typically would not recommend pivoting to make a course your signature offer until you've done some of these other offers first. 4. Make it a summit/bundle contribution: I really like the option of having a starter course (or a splinter course which is taking a module from your course and offering it separately). This is a great way to make contributions to summits, bundles, etc. which is a great way to become a speaker, author or influencer in your business. This will only make sense for you if the buyers/attendees are in your market. 5. Make it a complementary supplement to your services: An example would be that a few years ago I hired someone to set up my Pinterest account. When she handed over the set-up account she had recorded three hours of tutorial videos for my to hand to my VA on how to run the account, create the graphics, do the SEO, etc. That's a lot of work on her end and she could turn that into a course. Complement the service you offer, for example if you design websites, with a course you can offer about how to create blog posts, troubleshoot FAQs, maintain your website, etc. It's a great way to help your current clients even if you don't have an email list yet. 6. Make it an upsell: What can you offer on top of an existing product, offer or service? An example of this is my contract vault that I offer on top of current 1:1 services to help people prevent contract issues in the future. To learn more about creating a course, check out Amy Porterfield's Course Confident: A 5-Day LIVE Bootcamp to Nail Your Digital Course Topic, Attract Your Audience, and Show Up with Confidence Online. Inside this private community, Amy will be going live to help you cement the foundations of your own digital course. Including: 1. What you might teach ALLLLL of that for $47. ( Are you kidding me?! ) Click here to join. Even better, I earn the entire $47 in affiliate commissions on all bootcamp sales with my link. | |||
| 242 - From Website Developer to Course Creator | 18 Aug 2022 | 00:52:53 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I interview website development entrepreneur Brenda Cadman about how she pivoted her business into a course model for additional income. After 22 years of running a website development company, Brenda is retiring that business this year to be 100% all-in on teaching all things Canva. Brenda joined Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy (DCA) in Fall of 2019 her plan had been to create a web development course. Brenda used Canva as one of her design tools regularly and as she got involved in the DCA Facebook group, she found herself regularly answering questions about Canva until people started asking if that's what her course was going to be about and she decided to pivot. Brenda advises that you have to get your ego out of it. You have to listen to what it is that people want instead of what you think they want so that you can provide it. Even when you think you have total clarity around what it is you want to do, it's important to have flexibility around it to create around feedback to sell what people need. It's important to get validation from your audience so you can create the course around these needs. Brenda shares that the validation she received also helped her craft her sales page messaging around what it was people were asking for in the course. When creating her first course, Brenda created a robust starter course. Deciding between a starter, spotlight and signature course can be a difficult decision for first-time course creators. Braden's advice is that it doesn't actually matter, meaning that the parameters of how much content is in the course matters in order to prevent scope creep in your own course, but you can offer one-off spotlight courses to address specific pain points of your audience. Courses gave Brenda the freedom of time that she did not have with her web development business. Eventually Brenda got to the mental bandwidth where she could not do both and decided to go the course route, one she does not recommend for everyone. Moving into courses full-time requires having savings and being comfortable making the transition from full-time work to solely focusing on courses, a transition that took Brenda over two years. If you think you're going to get to your business goals in six months, add a buffer for 12 months. You need to have a track record that what you are teaching is going to work for the people you are serving. An ideal time to create a course is when you get tired of answering the same question over and over. Creating a course takes work. To learn more about creating a course, check out Amy Porterfield's Course Confident: A 5-Day LIVE Bootcamp to Nail Your Digital Course Topic, Attract Your Audience, and Show Up with Confidence Online. Inside this private community, Amy will be going live to help you cement the foundations of your own digital course. Including:
And I’ll be there too, helping you and sharing my own insights every step of the way.
ALLLLL of that for $47. ( Are you kidding me?! )
Get in Touch with Our Guest Brenda Cadman | |||
| 241 - What's Your Income Ceiling? | 15 Aug 2022 | 00:26:20 | |
On today's episode of the podcast we're calculating your income ceiling and how you can increase the amount of money you make. Your income ceiling is a combination of how much you charge and how many people you can service at one time. For example, if you're a service provider like a designer or photographer, you're capped out at the number of people you can work with at any time the way your business is currently organized (i.e. how many team members you have, how much time you want to work, etc.) Remember that about 50% of your income goes to taxes and expenses and can vary. When it comes to raising your income ceiling, are you at your highest price point? Are you looking to raise your prices or offer additional revenue streams like upsells, affiliate sales, passive income, etc.? This will help you make marginal improvements. Another big way you can break past your income ceiling is hiring. This may look like hiring virtual assistants to help you with onboarding, sales calls, social media, bookkeeping, an associate team of photographers to take on more clients etc. Creating a one-to-many offer, like a membership or mini-sessions or educational courses, to maximize how many people who can serve in one day or at one time is another way to increase your income ceiling. Charging more is a solution to raising your income ceiling. There is a maximum amount you can charge to work with the type of clients you are currently working with. For example, doubling your price will attract different clients and does that still fit into your ideal client avatar and if not, are you looking to change the market you offer to? How you craft your offer will also impact what you can offer and how many people you can serve. For example, I was recently listening to copywriter Rachel Greiman on my friend Claire Pelletreau's podcast who shared that she has a team and they work in a 11 day window following the same system so they can get things done quickly in short notice to get clients' projects completed quickly. It's important to think about your income ceiling before you hit it. Too often I see people who are completely booked or feeling stuck because they are at capacity and now don't have time to hire and train a new team member. I suggest taking these steps at 75% capacity or whenever you can afford and want to do it. By afford I mean you can afford the time and you can afford it financially. This requires you to have solid profit margins so you can offload some of the work you have to a new hire and still be able to financially sustain your business and your life. If you're ready and aren't sure where to get started, here are a few resources: The first is a limited time private podcast series from Amy Porterfield - My (Brutally Honest) Road to Business Success and the Blueprint I Would Follow Today. The series has 4 juicy episodes you won’t want to miss! Or, if building a team seems like your next step forward, check out this Building Your Team Course from my friends Ashley and Dale at The Abundance Group. | |||
| 357 - September Profit Report | 03 Oct 2024 | 00:18:22 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm taking you through my September revenue, expenses, profit and goals. I'm using my downloadable guide, How To Conduct a Profit Report for Your Business, to record this episode. Get your free copy of How to Conduct a Profit Report for Your Business at www.notavglaw.com/355 and listen to episode 355 to hear me break down step-by-step how I structure my own profit reports. September Projections vs. Actual • Monthly Clients: $7,000 → $8,050 Total revenue: $31,000 → $24,000 Profit Total revenue: $24,000 Total profit: $9,000
• Annual revenue: $300k. This might be a stretch, because we'd need to exceed October, November and December's projections - Profit: 20% margins. I used to have a goal of 50% but I'm spending a lot more now on team expenses.
Expenses • Employee wages: $7,500 Total: ~$13,000
Current Project Plans • Deliver Unf*ck Your Biz group coaching
Key Performance Indicators Instagram: 30 new followers
October Projections • Monthly Clients: $9,000 Total revenue: $17,500 (need to do closer to $20,000 to match last year's October but ideally we want to do $25,000 as our best goal) If you liked today's episode, be sure to tag us on Instagram and Threads @notAVGlaw
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| 240 - July Profit Report | 11 Aug 2022 | 00:32:20 | |
On today’s episode of the Unf*ck Your Biz with Braden podcast I share my July profit report and let you know if I hit my monthly goals. Check out episode 236 where I give June's profit report and share my July goals. This episode is going to be a bit juicier than past ones because I had been behind on my bookkeeping. Oops. I spent about two full days revamping it all. I pull my profit report data from my payment processor, but I hadn't sat down to do full book keeping in awhile. I have a few big takeaways from the last year and a half of my business. One of my big focuses this year has been consistency. Last year I launched several cycles of my signature program, Unf*ck Your Biz, a $2,000 program and I did not have the 6 figure launch I had expected. While I still do launches, I now have Profit Rx as a membership with recurring revenue. This past spring I launched a new tier to the membership for $30 a month with just content and no live support in response to members' requests which led to more consistent revenue. This year:
58% of revenue has come from the membership. I would like to continue to grow this and see this go to 70-75% of my monthly revenue. One way to do this is to offer a free trial. You can get the free trial here. By next profit report I hope to have conversion metrics to give you.
My average revenue per month was also higher than I expected. I figured between $10k and $11k, but kind of forgot about January, which brought up the average. This brought the average to $11.600.
Last month, I don't think I shared a goal for July. I didn't have any big plans.
Here's the breakdown of what happened this month: Profit Rx: $6,800 (down from the previous month)
I view my business as: Gross Revenue - Business Expenses = Owner Profit (How Much I made from the business Wages: How much I paid my team Owner Profit - Wages = Business Profit
July Expenses:
Revenue: $11,800 Expenses: $11,200 not including my owner's salary Owner profit: $1,526 My S Corp payroll: $6,400 Business Profit: -$4,800 (part of this is because I ran one of my payments to myself late so I had an extra in July.
I showed an owner profit of about $1,000. Not great, but here's what my additional non-routine expenses included this month:
So that's almost $6,000 in non-routine expenses. Recall, this is why I did a push in June. I also have about $3,000 in remaining expenses for this project including Peerspace, models and props for the shoot.
Year-to-date: Revenue: $81,500, of which 58% is Profit Rx, 19% Contract Vault, 1% Book Sales, 9% 1:1 work (will increase in August), 6% affiliate sales Expenses: ~$356/month for auto-pay monthly/annual payments (Asana, Zoom, Kajabi, etc.), $1,300 on team contractors which is 8.5% of revenue and my goal is always to keep it down beneath 15% on the high end but ideally 10%. The dollar amount might go up but we don't want the percentage to go up because we want revenue to go up in proportion. View my Profit Margin pie chart here.
Here are my August goals: Profit Rx: $6,700 My August promotion is for Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy (DCA) however those affiliate payments will not come until September which is why it is not reflected in my goals. I took DCA in January 2019 and I built my business off of this program for all of my course launches. Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing my course creation journey and if courses are or are not a good next step for you for additional revenue. I don't want you to buy this if it is not a good fit for you. If you're unsure, check out the Discover Your Ambition Archetype quiz and learn more about DCA here.
I'd love to hear what you think about the profit reports. Send me a DM on Instagram or post them in my Facebook Group, Braden's Besties. | |||
| 239 - My New Business | 04 Aug 2022 | 00:22:14 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I'm announcing the brand new business I'm launching! I didn't want to do it until I was sure it was something I could commit to and stick with. I also wanted it to be something that made me money. I've had ideas of things I want to do, like becoming an AAU basketball coach or starting a new Instagram account about entrepreneurs who are also an Enneagram 7, but at this time, I need something that could bring in serious revenue. I knew I wasn't ready to start something new until thought my current business was ready to make it happen. For me, this meant my current business had hit a certain level of monthly recurring revenue so I can rely on it to pay my salary and the business can continue to sustain itself with the help of systems in place. My business is in a sustainable place without needing to continually reinvent the wheel. I've had this new business idea for awhile, and my current business is finally at a place where I feel ready to start a second business. Introducing, Drag Tax, the tax firm for drag queens, kings, professionals and LGBTQ+ entertainers. I am a huge fan of RuPaul's Drag Race and through research I saw there was really no one marketing their tax services specifically for drag entertainers. So I ordered some business cards and headed to RuPaul's Drag Con to network. I've alluded to the business throughout past episodes, so are some things I've been working on behind the scenes: - I spoke with entertainers at Drag Con to meet potential guests for my podcast - I hired Ally from Gizbow Creative to design branding for me (she did my Profit Rx branding). I gave her on-brand imagery and color codes and designed the branding through a VIP day - Started a YouTube channel and a podcast. - Scheduled my brand photo shoot for October with a Palm Springs vibe, lounging by the pool. The tagline is "Taxes are a drag, hire us to help," and this shoot will allow you to imagine how stress-free your life could be if your taxes were all set. - I worked with my first client on two years' worth of book keeping - I'm currently studying for the Enrolled Agent test. This exam certifies you to do IRS-related work like filing taxes and handling back taxes. I don't want to become an EA, but I always believe in having the knowledge of doing something when hiring someone to do it or so I can do it myself if someone were to quit. Now that I'm running a more service-based business I'll be able to give you even more details on this podcast about the business side of running a service-based business. I'm looking forward to share more (including all the financial details as part on our profit report). | |||
| 238 - The 2nd Edition of My Book is Here! | 28 Jul 2022 | 00:24:18 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I share all the details about the 2nd Edition of my book, Unf*ck Your Biz, available now! Get your copy of the 2nd Edition of Unf*ck Your Biz here. I released the first copy of Unf*ck Your Biz in the fall of 2020. Since then, there have been a few areas I've wanted to change. The biggest being my cash flow chapter. Also, the old book promoted my old program that I no longer offer. Now, my book references my current Profit Rx program. I've also included some lessons learned and infused my new branding for a book makeover. A few years ago I read the book Profit First and decided to teach that idea of cash flow management to students. I was weary to teach my own cash flow management system so in the first book, I directed people to Profit First. In this edition, I go back and share the entire cash flow management system I teach new business owners which incorporates some principles from Profit First. I added about 20 new pages.
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| 237 - A Chat with My Book Coach | 21 Jul 2022 | 00:40:29 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I share the conversation I had with my book coach, Jodi Brandon, about my book Unf*ck Your Biz. This interview was originally featured on the Write.Publish.Market Podcast. To preorder the 2nd Edition of Unf*ck Your Biz, click here. I always wanted to write a book and I remember back in elementary school I was really into reading and thinking that writing a book was a monumental achievement for smart people and I wanted to do it. I created my signature course, Unf*ck Your Biz and when I launched that I thought it would also be super fun to turn it into a book. Originally I thought I would wait for a couple years, but after interviewing Denise Duffield Thomas on my podcast, she suggested I start writing it now since I already had the material. Once I extracted all the material I had already written in my signature course textbook, I was sitting around 30-35,000 words and started cutting out, writing, and editing from that baseline, which was what allowed me to write my book in 6 weeks. Before I started writing anything from scratch, I combed through my blog posts and podcast shownotes for additional content. The book starts out with what I feel everyone should have learned about taxes in a high school class. Throughout the book I give examples based on different circumstances, for example, if you are an entrepreneur saving for taxes but are also married and filing jointly or separately. One of my goals has always been to get into stage speaking at events, and my goal with the book was to help me get further towards that goal. The main goal of the book is to help business owners get out of the feeling-stuck cycles they're in and take ownership of the CEO role of their business. It's super important to take ownership, even if you're the only one in your business, so you can grow. To preorder the 2nd Edition of Unf*ck Your Biz, click here. Get in touch with our guest host Jodi Brandon, Book Coach and Editor Check out Jodi's podcast, Write.Publish.Market Visit Jodi's website, jodibrandoneditorial.com Follow Jodi on Instagram, @jodibrandoneditorial | |||
| 236 - June Profit Report | 15 Jul 2022 | 00:18:40 | |
Description: On today’s episode of the Unf*ck Your Biz with Braden podcast I share my June profit report and let you know if I hit my monthly goals. Check out episode 229 where I give May's profit report and share my June goals. My goal for the year was to hit $15,000 a month in revenue. I hit that goal in January and have not hit it since. Doing these profit reports not only, hopefully, provide you insight into the profit of a fellow business owner, they also help me review my own profit and also get me a better understanding of my baseline revenue. To me, baseline revenue is the number we can hit by doing whatever it is we do consistently every week. I encourage every business owner to learn and track their baseline number. For me, these consistent tasks are putting out a podcast episode each week, sending out a weekly email, posting a social post for the podcast, a mild average amount of Facebook interaction, one speaking engagement a week average, and typically Instagram stories daily. A lot of my base revenue comes from my monthly membership. Right now it's close to $7,000 and then I tend to make an extra $2,000 a month from the other things I sell. Trying to go over my baseline of $9,000 requires extra promotion like a launch of some kind or an email promotion which requires me to work more than my usual default. Last week on the podcast I shared my interview from Claire Pelletreau's podcast where we talk about how I get paid and Claire posed the question of how special promotions impact or take away attention from the typical promotion of my usual products. I decided to make May a chill month. I was traveling and it was Memorial Day and I decided I wasn't going to do any of the "extra" or "bonus" work that goes into getting above the baseline.
Recap of June goals:
That should be a reasonable baseline: $10,350
So what actually happened: $11,400 from Kajabi $1,650 = $13,050
Profit Rx = $7,000 36 Contract Vault sales = $1,080 PRx Live Beta = $1,600 1-on-1 client = $2,000 Affiliate payment = $450 I'm a little behind on my books. I know tsk, tsk. But I'm in the process of turning it over to one of my VAs. But I can tell you that Profit was a bit down in June it likely will be for July and August as well. I'd love to hear what you think about the profit reports. Send me a DM on Instagram or post them in my Facebook Group, Braden's Besties. | |||
| 235 - Taxes for Digital Nomads Parts IV & V | 07 Jul 2022 | 00:14:05 | |
On today episode of the podcast, I wrap up my Digital Nomad Tax Series with Part III, which covers the Foreign Tax Credit, banking, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), and the Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts report (FBARs). Disclaimer: I am not your attorney. The rules outlined below apply differently to everyone based on each individuals’ facts and circumstances. This is not legal advice. For more information on the Foreign Tax Credit, click here. To read more about banking, FATCA, and FBARs, click here. This podcast series is based on my five part Digital Nomad blog series, which you can read starting here.
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| 234 - Taxes for Digital Nomads Part II | 05 Jul 2022 | 00:23:21 | |
On today's bonus episode of the podcast, I continue my Digital Nomad Tax Series with Part II, which covers the Foreign Housing Exclusion and issues regarding state tax residency. Disclaimer: I am not your attorney. The rules outlined below apply differently to everyone based on each individuals’ facts and circumstances. This is not legal advice. This podcast series is based on a five part blog series you can read here.
For more information on the Foreign Housing Exclusion click here. To read more about state tax residency, click here. | |||
| 233 - Taxes for Digital Nomads Part I - Foreign Earned Income Exclusion | 30 Jun 2022 | 00:20:15 | |
On today's episode of the podcast, I kick off my three part Digital Nomad Tax Series. Part I dives into the foreign earned income exclusion. When I started my business, I started writing a book and considered moving into the digital nomad tax space. Overtime I decided that was not the direction I wanted to move in to and leaned into the creative entrepreneur space instead. Throughout the last few years though I have spoken to digital nomad groups and have experience with it. I turned the book I started into a five part blog series you can read here. Disclaimer: I am not your attorney. The rules outlined below apply differently to everyone based on each individuals’ facts and circumstances. This is not legal advice. This episode is for U.S. citizens living and working abroad. For tax purposes, under most rules, Green Card holders are treated as U.S. citizens, so this guide should prove useful for these individuals as well. It's important to note the general rule regarding U.S. tax is that U.S. citizens are taxed on their worldwide income. For more information on Foreign Earned Income Exclusions and the tax lingo definitions to go along with them, click here. | |||
| 232 - Becoming a Chillpreneur with Denise Duffield-Thomas | 23 Jun 2022 | 01:11:33 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I speak with Denise Duffield-Thomas about becoming a chillpreneur. To hear Denise's previous episode of my podcast, click here for episode 65 "Money Blocks." Being a chillpreneur does not mean working beachside from a hammock. It's about creating a business that works for your and your personality. When you start a business, a lot of learning who you like to work with or what your boundaries are comes from trial and error. A chillpreneur business is one that is in line with your strengths, fits your lifestyle goals, fits your income goals and is personal to you. Creating an optimism that there is space for you is a tenet of the chillpreneur philosophy. Know thyself and prosper. Denise's third book titled Chill and Prosper comes out on July 19, 2022. It gives a fresh and funny roadmap to living a life of abundance without burnout. To pre-order the book and get access to Denise's free affirmations for business owners, click here. The book is a post-pandemic look at creating a business that works for you. Often Denise receives objections like, "this won't work for my industry," or "I can't do my business online," or "I can't create a passive income around this or write a book." An example is a pelvic floor therapist who said she couldn't do it online. She learned that when you charge win-win prices and don't feel the need to be affordable for every person and have time for every person, you have more time to create passive income in a way that works for you. Too often business owners are trying to build a critic-proof business with a critic-proof price and that's impossible. If you have no critics it probably means you're bending over backwards to please everyone, and that's not sustainable. When we go into an industry, we go in with a mindset that there's a certain way things are done and that's the way we need to do it too, but that's not the case For example, as an attorney that looks like carving out a specific niche and serving that audience through specific online services and products, as opposed to just 1:1 services in an office. When people niche down, so many people go through fear of "am I enough?" or "am I allowed to?" We focus on the bad thing that's going to happen if we set a boundary or if we have to live forever with the decisions we choose. A lot of times we over-deliver from a place of wanting to be generous. In a coaching space, Denise finds coaches frequently go over time when working 1:1 with clients or give more freebies along with their material. She found that her refund rate was going up on her own course and the feedback she was getting was people did not have enough time to complete it because there was too much material. Denise's generosity was causing other people overwhelm. "A confused mind says no," Denise shares. When things are not available at the time you're ready, for example calling someone to schedule an appointment versus doing it online, you will lose people when adding complications. Do your best to automate tasks so customers can act at the time they're ready. Denise discovered that having a chill business and automating parts of her business has helped her with her ADHD diagnosis. Automate, delegate or batch the parts of your business that are your highest pain points. Denise acknowledges she can go down the rabbit hole of shiny objects, and talks about the importance of focusing on the products you do have and how, in her case, they all lead to the bootcamp program that she offers. For many entrepreneurs, it's easy to get excited about so many projects at once, which Denise finds is common, but not always helpful, especially when you want to be the best at everything you try and have an itch that needs to be scratched. It's important to be consistent in your business. Even if you're the person who comes up with ideas all the time, you can find where that fits into consistency. For example, some people may hire someone to help them brainstorm or create space to do it themselves. The value of your service does not equal the value of you as a person. Chill is different for everyone. For Denise, something that helps her chill is that she likes to batch her podcast recordings in advance. She also recognizes she has to keep it in check, because she has a tendency to go overboard and you can get too into that intensity if you aren't careful. Get in Touch with Our Guest Denise Duffield-Thomas | |||
| 231 - My S Corp Cost Me MORE in Tax Last Year | 16 Jun 2022 | 00:23:25 | |
On today's episode of the podcast, I explain how my S Corp ended up costing me more in tax last year. To check out my podcast set-up or watch a video version of my podcast, check out my YouTube channel. Long story short, I should not have formed my S Corp last year because I didn't end up making as much money as I thought I was going to. Unfortunately, we can't always predict these things. I talk to a lot of business owners who have accountants that get them set up with an S Corp from day one. This is usually a bad idea, unless you're bringing a whole book of business with you from elsewhere and are starting your business at six figures. To exemplify this, I will use my own numbers, especially since 2021's revenue was less than I anticipated. I was about $50,000 under the minimum revenue I projected when I started my S Corp and I was $100,000 under my goal. I ended u making about $95,000 last year, and $140,000 the year before. I thought I would continue to double year over year, or at least hit $200,00. I formed my S Corp in January 2021 and immediately got on payroll so I had an S Corp for effectively the whole year. When you have an S Corp, you pay yourself a salary, through a payroll provider that holds your taxes for you and divides them out to the various government agencies. Only your salary in an S Corp is subject to self-employment taxes. As business owners, we are required to pay both income taxes and full self-employment taxes which is our share of Medicare and social security. When we're employed, we pay half and our employer pays half. When we're self-employed, we pay both halves. The S Corp allows you to split your payment into two types - salaries and distributions - where only one of those is subject to 15.3% self-employment tax. This allows you to save 15.3% tax on any profit you have above and beyond your salary but your salary must be reasonable under law. For example, assume you have $100,000 in gross revenue and you operate at 80% gross profit meaning you only have $20,000 in business expenses. That would make your profit $80,000. You do research and determine your reasonable salary should be $60,000. In an S Corp, you pay this salary through payroll and it is technically an expense, but doesn't mean you don't pay taxes on it. This leaves you with $20,000, I call this profit after reasonable salary which is the amount of money you have after all your business expenses and your owner's salary. This is also your distribution amount. You save a 15.3% self-employment tax on the remainder, which leaves you with $3,060 in tax savings. As this relates to my S Corp last year, I had $95,000 in revenue, but a slightly negative profit on my tax return. How does this happen? Previously I've talked about profit on your books versus profit on your taxes. This is correct, and totally normal. A big example is home office. We should not pay our rent or mortgage out of our business bank account because it is a mix-use expense so it comes out of our personal account and then have our business reimburse us for the use of our home office if you have an S Corp. Mine was about $5 or 6,000 which combined with a few other examples like this, took me to a slight negative profit on my tax return. It's important to note this doesn't mean you didn't make any money from your business, we're just talking about business profit. A S Corp saves you money by having profit after reasonable salary, which I did not have. It cost me about $600, which is the cost of my payroll. The biggest issue for me was the QBI (Qualified Business Income) deduction. This allows business owners to deduct 20% of their QBI (see line 13 of the 1040 tax form). We can simply this to say it's basically net business income with some exceptions. This only identifies to passthroughs. Income phaseouts and the rules for phaseouts differ based on the kind of business. To see the Qualified Business Income decision tree to see the rules and break down the limitations, click here. What I want you to know is the QBI deduction gives you a 20% deduction on your qualified business income which is most of your income unless you hit certain phaseouts at different levels of income which is what we cover in the decision tree. When you have an S Corp. you have less QBI because your salary is treated as an expense. QBI in an S Corp is the net income after salary. We can calculate the tax savings by multiplying the deduction by the marginal tax rate. If you file your S Corp at the right time (which I did not) then the amount that you're going to save is going to offset the amount you're going to lose in the QBI deduction. This year I should be fine, I'm on track to make $140 to $180,000. As a sales person, it's easier for me to say an S Corp will sell you taxes and you can pay me $X to set it up for you, but I'm not going to sell you on that. I want you to understand the nuts and bolts which is I have Profit Rx. You can join beginning at $30/month, upgrade to a VIP tier to get group support, or join our seasonal membership to get 1:1 support. | |||
| 356 - Where is your money going? with Keila Hill-Trawick | 26 Sep 2024 | 00:54:05 | |
On this episode, I chat with Keila Hill-Trawick, owner of Little Fish Accounting, about Listen to episodes 125, 129, 131 and 132 of the Unf*ck Your Biz with Braden podcast to learn even more from Keila Hill-Trawick. Keila believes that cash flow gets buried behind financial statements. Everyone wants to talk about their P&L and top line revenue, but that doesn't matter if you don't have any money. If the whole point is to earn revenue and keep expenses at a certain point so you have money in the bank account, but you don't, we need to talk about that. Why does it look like you should have profit, and you have it on the P&L, but you don't have it? For example, I met with a client recently operating at a $9k YTD loss, but they were still running payroll and running distributions every month so the question was, how are you paying yourself more than your business is profiting? For them, they had a built-up savings from the past few years of business, but that isn't evident on the P&L. People get caught up on payroll. You don't need to run payroll every week if cash flow is low. But payroll taxes aren't what's going to make or break you. And sometimes you have to take a lower pay if cash flow is low and your team needs to get paid. This leads us into a conversation about Profit First. Keila doesn't think it's a bad method, but she's found that people are often not making enough money in the beginning to meet the percentages you set up and you're robbing Peter to pay Paul. She recommends that when you start you should at least have two - an operating checking account and a tax savings account so you can visually see that money doesn't belong to you, it belongs to the IRS. Once it's in there, it's no longer available to you. I suggest adding a sales tax account as well if you collect that. When it comes to saving for quarterly taxes, these estimated payments are just you paying in advance what you think you're going to owe next year. Every time you get paid from a paycheck, only taxes for that paycheck are taken out, not the taxes for your other business. And if you rely on the voucher system, that's based on you making the same amount in your business that you made last year. If you made more, then you weren't paying enough by just paying the amount on your voucher, you're only paying the minimum. On the flip side, you could make way less than you made last year and not owe all of what's on these vouchers. Going back to talking about understanding how cash moves through your business, if you aren't sure where it's going Keila recommends starting with the basics of accruel vs. cash. Accruel means you are recognizing income when earned, so when you send the invoice you recognize you've done that amount in revenue even though it hasn't been paid yet. Cash method only counts when the money is received. Your baseline revenue needs to cover your fixed expenses, any expense you know you're going to have. You need a sense of what you need to always have in your account to cover your payments. Any time you have a fixed cost expense, it's easier to plan versus when you pay something, like a team member, who works hourly that can change month to month. Sometimes your answers are not in your financial reports. Sometimes they're in a spreadsheet that has a breakdown of how much you're paying each team member to work on each client project or how much you profited on each project. Your numbers are more than what you need to file taxes which is why there's no one correct way to do these things, it's about what systems are best for you. Don't stress about everything being perfect, instead ask yourself what you need to make better financial systems for your business. The whole point is you want to put money in your pocket so you want to be informed enough to know when cash needs to stay in the bank for things like payroll and when you can safely take an owner's draw to support the life you want to live. Keila reminds everyone that when you get debt to pay debt, you still need to pay it off. We see people get loans to pay credit cards, but when you use the cash to pay it off, that cash won't be there for you as the business moves forward.
Get in touch with our guest Keila Hill-Trawick, founder of Little Fish Accounting Follow Keila on Threads @littlefishaccounting Follow Little Fish Accounting on Instagram @littlefishaccounting Check out Little Fish Accounting's website Listen to the Fish Food podcast Follow Little Fish Accounting on Instagram Join the Braden's Bestie's Facebook group for answers to your legal and tax questions. | |||
| 230 - Becoming an Entrepreneur with Amy Porterfield | 09 Jun 2022 | 00:50:49 | |
On today's episode of the podcast I sit down with online marketing educator, Amy Porterfield, to discuss her business - how it started, how it's going, her team, her finances, and more. Before starting her business, Amy was in corporate and thought she would always be a corporate girl. She loved moving up the ladder, the accolades, bonuses and promotions. Working with Tony Robbins gave Amy the entrepreneurial bug and inspired her to give it a shot. Six and a half years into that job, Amy took the leap. Her plan was to create online courses and teach people about digital marketing, however she hadn't saved up a lot of money to start her business and didn't know how to start an online course so she started by doing social media for clients and working one on one with people and hated the business she created. Her first year in business on her own in 2010 she made a little over what she had made in corporate and thought it was all going well. In 2011, she made about $30,000 less than the year before after taking on too many clients and was maxed out and struggling to manage it all. She created a business she hated and let go of all her clients to create a course. The first course was a "huge failure." Amy went into debt early on in her business and did not get her first bookkeeper until the end of 2011. One of the biggest mistakes she says she made was having the mindset about her finances that if I don't see it, it's going to be fine. She also found herself unprepared for tax season because she didn't know what estimated taxes were and hadn't put any money aside. Because of all this, Amy takes her finances very seriously now. Near the end of 2011, Amy had her first successful course launch on her own and made $30,000 in that launch. Her first two attempts on her own she made $267 and a little bit more the second time around. To celebrate, Amy and her husband went on a staycation to a nice hotel. It's important to Amy to celebrate hard work to break up projects before jumping into the next thing. Braden likes to set launch rewards to celebrate when hitting certain milestones. Amy's first course was on Facebook ads. From there, she went on to become known for her education on creating courses after selling multiple successful courses on different topics. Her free content has always been about email list building. As the business has grown, Amy's bookkeeping process has evolved to a process that is now dialed in, but that Amy says did not need to take as long as it did. Currently, Amy has a virtual CFO. The virtual CFO And his agency create a P&L that Amy reviews each month. Now that Amy is 13 years in she has a team made up of different departments and, beginning two years ago, each department develops their own budget for the year. At first pass, each department submits their budget with everything they want and need. From there, the CFO takes all the budgets and all the revenue projections and comes back with revenue and profit margin information. Profit margin is a key metric that Amy has focused on for years. Her company is typically between 45 and 50% profit margin. If the calculated profit margin is less than 45% then the departments go back to look for where they can cut expenses or make more money. In February 2023, Amy is launching a book, "Two Weeks Notice: How to Find the Courage to Quit Your Job and Start an Online Business," which she says may require a little wiggle room in going below the 45% profit margin as she promotes the book. Get in Touch with Our Guest Amy Porterfield Stay tuned, coming in August, Amy will be doing her biggest annual promotion as she gears up for the launch of Digital Course Academy. Students of the Digital Course Academy who buy through Braden's affiliate link will receive special bonus resources. | |||
| 229 - May Profit Report | 02 Jun 2022 | 00:23:56 | |
On today’s episode of the Unf*ck Your Biz with Braden podcast I share my May profit report, breaking down my revenue, expenses, and if I hit my monthly goals. If you haven't already, check out episode 225 where I give April's profit report and share my May goals.
My goal for the year was to hit $15,000 a month in revenue. I hit that goal in January and have not hit it since. Doing these profit reports not only, hopefully, provide you insight into the profit of a fellow business owner, they also help me review my own profit and also get me a better understanding of my baseline revenue. To me, baseline revenue is the number we can hit by doing whatever it is we do consistently every week. I encourage every business owner to learn and track their baseline number. For me, these consistent tasks are putting out a podcast episode each week, sending out a weekly email, posting a social post for the podcast, a mild average amount of Facebook interaction, one speaking engagement a week average, and typically Instagram stories daily. A lot of my base revenue comes from my monthly membership. Right now it's close to $7,000 and then I tend to make an extra $2,000 a month from the other things I sell. Trying to go over my baseline of $9,000 requires extra promotion like a launch of some kind or an email promotion which requires me to work more than my usual default.
Last week on the podcast I shared my interview from Claire Pelletreau's podcast where we talk about how I get paid and Claire posed the question of how special promotions impact or take away attention from the typical promotion of my usual products.
I decided to make May a chill month. I was traveling and it was Memorial Day and I decided I wasn't going to do any of the "extra" or "bonus" work that goes into getting above the baseline.
To recap my May goals: - $6,300 MRR (monthly recurring revenue) - $400 in Speaking fees - $2,000 in affiliate commissions from my sales of The Abundance Group - $900 in 30 Contract Vault sales. I contemplated a price increase promotion, but decided against it.
So now let's talk about what ACTUALLY happened.
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| 228 - Flipping the Script - My Business Journey | 26 May 2022 | 01:28:35 | |
On today's episode of the podcast, we're switching it up! Hosting today's episode is my friend, and former podcast guest, Facebook and Instagram ad expert Claire Pelletreau. You'll hear an episode Claire recorded for her podcast where she interviews me about how I get paid. To hear me interview Claire on Unf*ck Your Biz, check out Episode 204 - Discussing a Multi-Six Figure P&L. To start the conversation, we dive into client gifting. What do we do with them tax-wise? For context, there is a difference between client gifts and expenses per client. For example, if you have swag bags at events, I wouldn't consider that a gift, but an expense. To get into technicalities, you'd need to look into the IRS instructions, and a lot of it has to do with the details - how and why you're giving these to your clients/students/friends, etc. If it's a standard gift/item that everyone gets, it's an expense. If you're sending a gift every holiday season or New Year's, I would consider that a gift. In the month of March, I received three different speaker thank you gifts for summits I was part of. I get paid mostly through online courses, speaking, and other general online things. I got started doing 1:1 work as an attorney and in 2019 I released my first course after investing in Amy Porterfield's course and pivoted my business into an online business. My first course was a spotlight called "Legally Launched" and taught you how to file an LLC or Sole Prop without using an attorney or LegalZoom. Around the time I had less than 400 people on my email list and got 14 students. My subscribers came organically, through efforts like speaking events for Tuesday's Together throughout Southern California. This course later became a module inside signature course. Through that launch I made $18,000 at a price point of $1,000. It's important to set up an EIN and business bank account so you can keep your business and personal expenses separate. When COVID hit in 2020,I had gone from $30k my first year to $70k to $140k in 2020, which made me think I would be doubling my revenue each year as the trajectory of my business. Instead, what had happened was during 2020 my primary audience was wedding professionals who were looking for help with their contracts, incorporating the force majeure clause, ad covering what to do to protect themselves when events were canceled due to COVID. In response, I launched a revamped membership that I tailored to the experience that people were having at the time, which was great until these wedding pros resolved the COVID-related issues they were having and then membership began to nosedive. Once 2021 rolled around, the people who needed the membership had already joined and were now back to doing so many events they didn't have time to join or do the work in my other programs which became my struggle. The price of the membership continued to go up about month after month from $39 to $69. My goal for 2021 was $250,000. I had a launch in April of 2021 and this was the launch of my $2,000 signature program. At this point in my business I'd had an $18k launch, a $35k launch and a $40k launch. My goal for this launch was 6-figures, however I only ended up making $10,000, which led a lot of self-reflection. I knew several of the things I'd done wrong. Even though my email list had been growing I hadn't been doing a lot of public speaking so I wasn't reaching new audiences. I learned not to be complacent. Evergreen can work, but it doesn't mean that you're not working. On top of that, so much of my wedding planning audience was now doubly busy with making up 2020 weddings but not making more money on these rescheduled weddings. So I hired a VA and we started pitching new podcasts to reach out to new audience like interior designers. I don't think I have yet to have a webinar with low conversion, it just comes down to how many people I can get to sign up for the webinar. That webinar had lower numbers. After this low converting program I treated this as my movie montage moment to review what the problem was and look for a solution. I spent a few months in processing mode and ended up coming up with my new program, Profit Rx, that I launched in November. I hired a messaging coach, brand photographer and brand designer. We're all in this entrepreneurship thing to get paid which was what my message came down to, educating on the legal aspects of our business and how they help us get paid. The message became more about how to run a profitable business and turned into a 10 module course inside a membership. It launched at $75/month. That price point is now $100/month but I have a VIP tier of the program for people who are looking for support and a $30/month option for people who are just looking for access to the content. When I launched at $75/month we launched with 80 to 85 members. I had a 35% conversion rate on the webinar I did to launch Profit Rx. The value proposition was good and I presell on my Instagram stories about my offerings that are in the works a few months in advance. In my promo emails, I explain what I'm going to be doing in my webinar. That I'll be teaching on a certain topic for 45 minutes, then inviting them into my new program on the webinar. In the reminder emails, I'll give them a little bit more information about the program and I'll also say I think you're going to be excited because it's going to be one of the most affordable things I've ever launched, or explain that it will be a high-ticket item, depending on what I'm launching. The MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) on the launch came to $5800 which included previous program members that were rolled over. That was in November. In March, when this episode was recorded, I did a second founding member launch with a content-only subscription available at a lower price point. In January, I released the Contract Vault, another point of Monthly Recurring Revenue. I used to sell a Contract Course, but realized no one wants to take a course on contracts, so I took the contract templates I included in that course and rebranded it as contract templates with course material if you want to take the course and sell it at a price point of just $30. From January to March I had 362 sales. The price point is very low because if I want someone to buy it it needs to be a no-brainer. For a bit I was running ads to this, but I was spending more for acquisition than I was getting for the sale. I was okay with it for awhile because I was also viewing it as an awareness ad, but then stopped running ads to the Contract Vault. My goal for the Contract Vault now is that it's also organically shared because of the price point and I continue to see it recommended in Facebook groups I'm in. Re: Facebook ads, Claire shares that it's important to identify the cost per acquisition because that is the cost per sale. Whenever you launch something, typically it does well at first as Facebook pushes it out to your warmest leads. It could be a tripwire on the backend, a lead magnet on the frontend, whatever it is you launch it's going to show your offer to the warmest people first, and then you need to figure out the cost per acquisition to a stone cold audience. When selling, it's important to add value and show that you are someone they know, like, and trust in a video, whether it's an evergreen webinar or a sales video, that's going to go toward people being interested in purchasing. This can be more difficult when you're asking someone to pay a monthly membership as opposed to a one time cost. The content-only monthly membership of Profit Rx gives you access to what you need at the time for $30/month, whether it's help filing taxes or forming an LLC. If you don't want to sit through a course, you can pay a much higher ticket price for 1:1 time, which is offered at a slight discount for Profit Rx members, to go through a very specific topic with me. My Facebook group is free and I accept questions in the group, and oftentimes former students will also chime in and answer the questions. For higher-level questions you can join the $100/month membership and ask questions during our weekly group coaching calls. When it comes to running a profitable business, I calculate my profit based on business revenue - business expenses, excluding your owner salary if you have an S Corp and pay a salary with payroll. Busines income - expenses I call your Owners Profit. Taxes you paid are not included in this. I would include that when calculating your Take Home Pay, which is Owner Profit - Taxes, which is your salary. What matters in a profitable business is how much you can pay yourself. And this can change based on planned sales for a month and knowing that a launch needs to cover a few months of salary and what is your plan if your launch doesn't perform the way you planned? Currently, I am working on more joint venture webinars and creating a new resource on back taxes to add into the membership. The goal of the membership is that there are resources for business owners at all points in the growth and evolution in their business. In my business, I currently have five team members, all contractors, each with very niche tasks. I have a tech VA, a community manager, a social media VA, a content writer, and a social sales person.
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