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: 1. The Contract Club 2. Speaking 3. Affiliates
What's Kind of Working 1. Threads (Great for business connections, not as much for sales) 2. Our quiz funnel (People are going through it, need to look more into conversion data) 3. Our blogs (They're a resource, the SEO could be better, I'm not putting more resources into this)
What's not working 1. Instagram, especially stories 2. Facebook group, engagement is down 3.Too many offers, too much we're trying to do
What I'm not sure about 1. This podcast
Our 2025 Core Offer Suite 1. Contract Club 2. Compliance Club 3. Unf*ck Your Biz 4.Alumni offers for Unf*ck Your Biz students
What we're doubling down on in 2025 1. Affiliates (if you aren't already an affiliate, you can become one at notavglaw.com/affiliate) 2. Strategic partnerships/guest speaking in programs 3.Core offer suite 4 Stage speaking/podcast guesting 5. Threads and Instagram 6. Quiz funnel
What's getting the cut 1. New offers, instead focusing on different launch strategies 2. Growing my business TikTok audience 3. Reddit 4. Our Facebook group - I started this in 2018/2019. I started it as a list builder and as a way to cross promote my offers in the group. The group is now mainly people who are/have been students or bought a program and has mainly turned to a place where they are getting support for the programs they've purchased. Providing this community can be done within our offers in Kajabi. And most of the questions I get on Facebook already are not community-answer questions, they're questions for me and my team. 5. This podcast - I feel uncomfortable talking about this because I really don't know if it's doing much for us from a business perspective in relation to the effort and with the time saved not planning and recording podcasts, I can nurture other areas of our business, like our offers, so that people naturally want to share them and affiliate market.
I've found that the podcast is very cyclical, people come for what they need to get answers for where they are in business. Do I talk about the same topics year after year so do I re-record that same episode about LLCs or direct you to a pre-recorded one?
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
Thursday, December 12, 2024 • Duration 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 • UYB: $0 → $0 (Doors were not open in November) • Compliance Club: $13,000 → $21,000 • Contract Club: $7,500 → $13,850 (We did a promotion before we increased the price and it closed December 2nd and we had over $15k those last two days so more will be reflected in our December report) • Trademarks: $2,500 → $6,750 • Other: $2.500 → $1,500
Total revenue: $33,500 → $52,000 (A record revenue month for me)
Profit
Total revenue: $52,000 Cost of Goods: $227 (printing my books) Expenses: $22,678 Profit: $29,000 Owner's salary: $5,300
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)• Contractors: $4,000 This brings my team expenses to $12,500 • Monthly tools: $1,900 (Higher than usual, but I have an annual payment of $1,500 for Kajabi)• Affiliate payments: $380 • Marketing: $800• Hotels: $1,600• Trademark client fees: $1,900
360 - What You Need to Know When Hiring Contractors
Thursday, October 24, 2024 • Duration 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
270 - Tax Pros - You Get What You Pay For
Thursday, February 16, 2023 • Duration 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.
269 - My Trademark Debacle
Thursday, February 9, 2023 • Duration 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.
268 - January 2023 Profit Report
Thursday, February 2, 2023 • Duration 29:47
On today's episode of the podcast I'm diving into my January 2023 profit report.
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
Consistent $20,000 months is the big focus. At the end of last year we were hitting $15k pretty consistently. I would like to be close in Q2 and hitting it each and every month in Q3 and Q4, but hopefully in March after my new announcement.
Get MRR to $20,000 by end of year. Monthly recurring revenue is different than payment plans. A payment plan is when someone will be paying you, let’s say $1,000/month for five months instead of $5,000 upfront. MRR is like a subscription, think Netflix or your cell phone bible.
Get expenses under 35%. I’m off to a bad start (blame this new project I’m working on) so I’ll probably need some 80% profit months to make up the difference.
267 - Reviewing My Personal Finances with Kristy Runzer of OnRoute Financial
Thursday, January 26, 2023 • Duration 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.
266 - Profit Report & Year in Review with Guest Host Claire Pelletreau
Thursday, January 19, 2023 • Duration 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.
265 - Preparing 1099s - Who Gets One, How to Send Them, and When They're Due
Thursday, January 12, 2023 • Duration 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.
264 - The Road to a Million Dollar Company - A Year in Review with Claire Pelletreau
Thursday, January 5, 2023 • Duration 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 outEpisode 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.
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.
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 • 35 Compliance Club lifetime memberships • ~40 Contract Club sales
Current Project Plans
• Wrap up Unf*ck Your Biz launch • Move into our Quiet Weeks • Run our clubs and programs to a higher level in 2025 • Doing less to do more in our business in 2025 (I'll dive into this on next week's episode)
Key Performance Indicators
• Bumps across the board on everything as a result of promotions • Instagram: +80 new followers • Facebook group: +50 new members • TikTok: -4 followers • Website: 40,000 unique visitors (about quadruple what we see in a normal month) • Quiz starts: 107 starts, 68 finishes • Email subscribers: Went up a bit despite higher unsubscribes due to promotion • Podcast downloads : down
December Projections
• Monthly Clients: $8,500 • Contract Club: $22,200 (we did $18k in sales at the end of our Contract Club promo that fell on December 1st and 2nd) • UYB: $35,625 (15 full pay, 25 on monthly payments) I think we'll be a bit below this goal of 40 students based on current data, but we will see) • Trademarks: $5,000 • Other: $2,000
Total: $70,875
YTD Revenue
• 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
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.
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.
Done-With-You services and support are available inside Profit Rx
Done-For-You bookkeeping - We offer this for just $400/month and which gets you detailed books, a monthly meeting with me to review your books, and that tax strategy I was talking about
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.
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.
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:
Other - one-off products that are deep in the website, tucked away in funnels
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)
Low ticket revenue - $2,790 ($2,200 came from Contract Club, $30 from Legally Launched, $150 from Bookkeeping Blueprint, $360 from Tax Toolbox)
MRR - $8,080 (about $6,000 from Profit Rx VIP)
Book sales - $70
Affiliate income - $283
Speaking - $500
Other - $800
Expenses:
Team $3,000, so almost 25%. Goal is 15%, but most of that was working with new PRx folks
My own wages (I don’t really count this, that’s a different conversation).
Monthly tools - $500. Gotta see if I can trim this some. Since growing my team and doing PRx onboarding I’ve been needing more accounts for my team like multiple Calendly users and Zoom accounts.
Payouts to our affiliates - $300 (a lower month since we weren’t promoting much)
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:
Brand Designer: $3,000
Trademark course (we’ll be getting into trademarks and I plan to eventually hire an attorney to do this in the firm so I don’t have to) : $2,500
Website (Squarespace, etc).: $500
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
Profit Rx MRR: $8,000
Low ticket stuff: $4,000 (including my $75 bundle)
Will likely have some other stuff but not counting on it
Law Firm:
$1,200 in MRR from current clients including bookkeeping and projects I haven’t started publicizing to everyone yet
Tax Returns: $3,000 (If you’re a Profit Rx member, stay tuned for this)
Grand total: $16,200 between both businesses
If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe in your podcast player and tag me on Instagram @bradenadamdrake
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.
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.
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.
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