Ep 391: How To Get Your Brand Protected | Heather Pearce Campbell Episode Recap

AJV (00:02):
All right, , let’s talk legal for just a minute. This is something that has come up so much in recent conversations with friends, my entrepreneur, community clients in our Brain Builders group, community and recent podcast interviews that I’ve been a part of. And I think a lot of this has been spurred by the AI conversation around IP and what does this new world order look like with the, you know, creator community and the amount of content that’s being shared and re-shared and duplicated and repurposed. So I thought this would be a good time to actually have a legal conversation with a bonafide attorney to an, some, answer some of the questions that I had. So I thought I would share those with you. So this is just some highlights that I think is really important. And the first thing that came up is, do you want it simple or do you wanna be protected?
AJV (00:59):
And I think that’s really important. And I’m not really a litigious person. And sometimes, you know, I can be pretty old school and just wanna do like a, a good old handshake. But when it comes to your ip, when it comes to the things that make your brand, your brand, or make you know, your content, your content, there are just some things you really do need to protect. So simplicity does not always equal protection in a legal sense. So you may think that let’s just make it a, you know, everyday language, one pa one page agreement. But do you want ’em simple or do you wanna be protected? And I think that’s just really worth sitting on for a minute of going. There’s just some things that we need to, like cash up, you know, some time, effort, and money on, and make sure that you, you protect the right things in the business and you should know what those are.
AJV (01:52):
So let’s talk about what are those things in the business that you should actually, you know, spend some time protecting? All right. Here are, you know, kind of high level the areas that you wanna spend some time on. So number one is entity structure. I thought it was a staggering statistic to learn how many small businesses, how many entrepreneurs actually never get set up as a legal entity. If you have not done that, stop listening, get off your computer off of whatever you’re doing and go do that right now. And so what I mean up by that is like, are you set up as a sole proprietor? Are you a partnership an L L C? Like how are you set up legally? Now, the easiest, simplest thing for most people to do in the United States, cuz not all countries have a limited liability company infrastructure for legal entities. But in the US we do, and that’s probably one of the quickest, easiest, simplest entity structures that you can set up. When it comes to the S corp conversation that everyone
AJV (02:58):
That I know is constantly talking about, that’s not an entity that’s a tax election. So you have to be an L L C and then you can fill out a piece of paperwork, check a box, and then have the export tax election, which it has some pretty awesome tax benefits. But you’ve gotta qualify for it and fill out a little bit of paperwork. It’s not that big of a deal. But not to get on a tangent and digress. Make sure that you actually have a legal entity set up, right? You need an operating agreement. You actually need to have legal documents stating what your business is. You need to have a business tax license, right? You need an an f e I N number, like you need those things. Like that is important. Step one basics, right? Step two is make sure that you’ve got the right business contracts.
AJV (03:49):
Now, do you need to spend tons of money on a variety of contracts? Depends on what level your business is in. It’s one of the reasons that at Brand Builders Group, we partner with Legal Website Warrior and Heather Pierce because she is an attorney who has been working in the personal brain industry for a really long time and has created an incredible set of contractually binding agreements in a templated form. Now, that’s not gonna work for every single type of agreement, but for some of your basic ones, it’s a great template to then customize and, and versus spending $3,500 on getting an agreement, maybe you spend a couple of hundred dollars of having an attorney just to review what you’ve done with a template, right? So that’s an easy workaround. That’s what we’ve done for most of the path at Brand Builders Group to be honest.
AJV (04:41):
But the first thing you wanna make sure that you have in place is just your service agreement. So whatever is your primary service, make sure that you have a legally binding service agreement for your primary service. Second to that is make sure that you’ve got your website and any digital online protection, right? So this is your terms and condition for your website, your privacy policy. If you, if you have any sort of financial information that is shared in terms of earnings potential, make sure you have your earnings disclosure. You can go to brand builders group.com at the very bottom in the footer to go, oh, that’s what she’s talking about, right? You should have all of those don’t copy and paste, right? Cuz those are custom to Brand builders group. Don’t do that. But this is again, an awesome template, the website kit at Legal Website Warrior, but you can go and buy and it’s pretty much 95% static and really good to use.
AJV (05:32):
But those are things that are required, right? You could get in a whole bunch of trouble and have to pay a whole bunch of money by just not having some basic things on your website. And so go pause right now, if you have a website, go make sure you have terms and conditions, a privacy policy and an earnings disclosure if applicable, right? So that’s the next thing after that, if you have any sort of referral partner or affiliate relationships, that requires a separate agreement, right? So you have your service agreements, which are for your products and services. There are two different types of service agreements to consider. You’ve got one that is for a more high dollar ticket offer. That’s going to be your service agreement. But then the other option, if you have just like courses or an app or a low dollar ticket or a low dollar ticket offering of like a a low dollar membership that’s like, you know, 20 bucks a month or something like that, you may want to opt to not doing a full service agreement, but you could just do a terms of payment agreement where you, you know, it’s like if you are on iTunes and it just says like, you know, terms of payment payment terms you just click on that and that’s kind of it.
AJV (06:46):
And it’s like it gives you a whole bunch of stuff to read through, which you likely never read through. So it’s like a click of a button that says, ah, I agree to these terms of payment. That’s another way of doing it, that you don’t have to have a full service agreement where you have to put your name in, date it, sign it, you just put a button. So that’s another option as you’re looking at, are you doing this for volume, right? Right. So low dollar, high volume, or is this high dollar lower volume where you need a full service agreement? I think that all just depends on what you need in that agreement. Ip, IP protection payments, subscriptions deliverables, the list goes on and on, right? Which is why attorneys exist. But also why templates are really helpful and we’ll save you a ton of money, okay?
AJV (07:34):
So you need service agreement you definitely need your website, online protection, you know, set up. Then you would have some sort of an affiliate agreement or referral partners if that’s applicable to you, but that’s the next one. Outside of that, you would need employment agreements if you have employees or if you want to, you have to have an employment agreement. If you’re hiring an employee, let’s just call it, you’re gonna need that. And then contractor agreements, right? So if you have 10 90 nines that work for you or vendors, you need a 10 99 agreement. And those are all the different types of business agreements. Now, we could go for partnerships, agreements, partnership agreements, and you know, stock agreements and you know, we could go on and on. We’re not getting into that. We’re just talking about the basics, right?
AJV (08:17):
Do you need an employee, have an employment agreement, you have some contractors, you need a 10 99 agreement, right? So let’s just talk about the basics, but you need those things right after that, it’s ip, right? And these are in no sort of chronological order, just fyi or I importance order. But ip, right? So I love the way that my friend Heather Pierce the creator of legal website Warrior defined this. She said the IP conversation is really around copyright and trademarks, right? And you think about a trademark that is your very high level, right? Think about it. It’s like that’s your, your titles and your subtitles. It’s the high, high level stuff. Whereas copyrights is for the body of work, right? So trademarks are for your business name, your logos, your tag, your taglines, what I would call like your headline statements, right?
AJV (09:05):
And then copyrights are really for the body of work, the content, the curriculum. Trademarks take longer. Copyrights can be, you know, done pretty quickly. I think I applied for and sent in and got several copyrights back within like a six week period where trademarks take a few months. Now, should you file for every piece of content? No. you could, but you don’t. But you wanna have your business name and your logo and your tagline if you have one that’s important. And if you have a very unique niche set of content, then yeah, you’re gonna wanna copyright some of your proprietary thought leadership in IP that’s in a course or a book or something like that. So again, this is a high level conversation. Yeah, we did an entire podcast interview on this with Heather Pierce, who’s an attorney. So if this was just scratching the surface, which it is, I encourage you to go listen to this entire hour long conversation and check it out. And don’t just learn from us, but get legally educated, make sure you’re protected, and make sure that you keep growing in a way that you’re never going to pay the piper down the line for the foundation that you didn’t set in the beginning. So go check out the podcast and stick around. I’ll see you next time.

Ep 390: What You Need Legally To Protect Your Personal Brand with Heather Pearce Campbell

AJV (00:02):
Hello brand Builders Community. Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden. Here I am one of your co-hosts, and I am joined today by not only a friend, but also someone that we happen to be a client of. So you guys are gonna get to hear from Heather in just a few minutes, but I wanted to as always, remind you why you want to stick around and listen to this episode. Now, there are some episodes that we do that are for very unique niche groups of you listeners. And there are some that are for every single one of you today is one of those episodes that is for every single one of you, because today we’re gonna talk about what do you need legally to protect and build your personal brand. So we’re gonna be talking about the legalese of what you need for IP sales agreements, contractor agreements, employment agreements, all the agreements, right?
AJV (01:04):
This is service agreements. We could go on and on, copyrights, trademarks, whatever the, wherever the conversation leads us. What I have found in my own business and in my own relationships through other entrepreneurs is people often just default to one of two things. They suck it up and go hire an attorney and then complain about it, or they do nothing. And Heather has created this awesome middle ground. And we’re a customer. We’ve been a customer for about five years. I’m a huge advocate, and we’re gonna learn all about the details of that. But ultimately, if you have any concerns around like, am I really protecting my business legally? Do I, am I doing anything to actually protect my intellectual property, which actually does have a lot of value, then this is a conversation that you wanna stick around to. Not to mention if you stick around Heather is also thrown in a really awesome free bonus for all of you listening, which we’ll also have in the show notes.
AJV (02:01):
So, okay, now let me formally introduce her, cause I could go on and on about why you should listen. But she and I were just talking about how we’re both moms of two little, so Heather is a warrior of mama, which I love that. Also you’ll find that her I don’t even think it’s a side hobby project, but your second business, a legal website warrior. I love that you call yourself a warrior mama. She’s a nature lover. She’s a dedicated attorney, attorney and legal coach for world changing entrepreneurs, which is all of you, right? She’s also the creators I mentioned of the legal website Warrior, which is an online business that provides legal education and support to coaches, consultants, online educators, speakers, and authors, which couldn’t be more perfect, perfectly aligned to serve the audience that we also serve. And so, without further ado, Heather, welcome to our show.
HPC (02:59):
Thank you, aj. It’s so great to connect. Oh my gosh, I feel like we’ve been in this very synergistic alignment for years now, and I was just telling you like just a couple weeks ago, right? I met Rory in person, which it’s always so fun, and I was really hoping you would be there. It’s so fun to meet people that I’ve either been connected to or have worked with or provided support to in person. It’s like one of my biggest joys. And so it’s really great to be here today and connect with you. And I’m super excited because your people are my people, right? My people are your people. We serve the same audience, and it’s a really important conversation.
AJV (03:38):
Well, and I would also say it’s like, not only is it an important conversation, I feel like with the way that the virtual world of business is growing at such a unbelievable rates and the content creator economy it’s, it’s kind of a necessity. And it’s one that most people, one, they don’t chalk up the books because they’re going, attorneys are ridiculous. Why is this so expensive? I feel that way often, and I’m, it’s such a blessing that we were introduced to you so, so many years ago. Or they’re just going, I don’t even understand what this means. So here’s my first question. Why a God’s green Earth? Do legal contracts and documents have to be so confusing? Like, why is there so much legalese that just makes everyone else feel dumb?
HPC (04:30):
Mm-Hmm. , it’s such a good question, and I will just say it happens to everyone. And here’s the interesting thing is like, I work with some really sophisticated clients who have dealt with many, many contracts. Like I’ve got a client on the East coast, and we literally, we put like 2.6 million advanced, like in advanced fee publishing agreements in place for him, which included a lot of international agreements as well. Anyways, for that client, a loan for that one project. And I’ve worked with him for years and years and I mean, it was probably 30 to 40 agreements that we had to review together, right? And, and I’ve drafted a bazillion agreements for his business, and they have ranged like a, a wide variety. And the way that I draft, like, yes, there’s some legalese in there because it’s essential, but I do also care that it’s accessible mm-hmm.
HPC (05:24):
. And even, even then I get questions of like, can we make this easier? Can we make this more simple? Can you reduce this down to one page, right? And I’m like, oh, I feel the pain. And my response is, do you want a one page agreement or do you want actual protection? This is the reality in the legal world, is that there is a role for some of that legalese because of the way language is interpreted. Hmm. And we have case histories and, you know, a, a gazillion interpretations of what language means. And it is, you hear those cases that make the news. There was a really big construction case, for example I can’t even remember when it came out a few years back, but it was like literally millions of dollars at stake over the interpretation of a single com. Was the comma misplaced, which totally changes, modifies the way that one sentence would be interpreted, or was it intentional?
HPC (06:32):
Right? So it’s interesting, yes, you, you will get court’s writing opinions because their job is to interpret contracts. And so there’s so much that people don’t see about what has gone into legal drafting and the current interpretation of, of legal language that is super relevant to this conversation. Yeah. And so what I typically do, the way that I approach that, especially with small businesses where it’s like, usually what we’re doing is getting a core set of documents in place for them, right? A core set of tools that are going to cover their primary services, protect their IP, support, their JV relationships, or some of the ways that they’re promoting and growing the brand, right? But it really is a limited set for the most part. And I’m a big believer that people should understand these tools and know how to use them in their business and have confidence using them in their business.
HPC (07:33):
And so what I will do, and, and even if you think about like the enrollment conversation, right? So you guys work with big names and big brands, and you help people build these amazing personal brands or do a huge, you know, book promotional campaign or whatever, right? That all started with an engagement of some kind, right? And hopefully legal language that supports that relationship. And what I will often do is like create the, the version that clients will use, and then if they need me to, in order to support those enrollment conversations, create a cliff notes version. Like, here’s what this section means. Here’s what we’re, here’s the goal and our objective for this section. Here’s so that they can have the conversation directly with a potential but everyday client. Yes. With a potential partner that breaks it down so they don’t have to feel intimidated about presenting that contract and actually enrolling somebody. Right. Or misrepresenting what it right means, right? Right. So there are ways to deal with it, but ultimately, you know, for folks listening that are like, oh, can I just have the one page contract? My question again is gonna be, do you want a one page contract? Like, are you so committed to that versus actual protection in, in your business? There is a difference.
AJV (08:57):
Yeah. Actually I wrote this down. I think that’s really, I think that’s really good because I hear this often of why does it have to be so long? Why is it so complex? Like, can we just make it simple? And you know, it’s like what you’re saying is, do you want simplicity or do you want protection? And those, those often can be the same, but often not. And I love what you said about this you know, lawsuit or whatever it is going on. And I always remember back in English class, the example, the simple example is let’s eat grandma versus let’s eat grandma. Right? Those are two really
HPC (09:31):
Different
AJV (09:32):
Statements all based on a comma.
HPC (09:36):
Yeah.
AJV (09:36):
Right? And I think
HPC (09:37):
That’s exactly it.
AJV (09:39):
Yeah. And what you really have me thinking is, shoot, I need to have you go back over all of our contracts,
HPC (09:44):
.
AJV (09:45):
And it’s sometimes I get frustrated because I know the US specifically. So for those of you who are based in the us, we’re way more litigious than many countries. And at the same token, you know, there’s sometimes you just gotta play the game even if you don’t like it a little bit. And so what is that game for people who are building their personal brand? So what are the fundamental assets? And when it comes to legal documentation for the, you know, author, speaker, coach, consultant out there, or one who is aspiring to do that. And I think that’s the first is, you know, I’ve just thinking of all the different conversations we can have around just ip, right? Just ip, we could have the next two hours. So we’ll just, you give us what you think this audience needs to hear, cuz I know you know it really well, but what do we need to protect our personal brand?
HPC (10:37):
Yeah. Such a good question. And I, I wanna comment really quickly on your reflection of the US market being very litigious. Yes. And part of that is we are a very commercial mm-hmm. based contr, right? There’s tons of commerce. There’s, which also means there’s tons of opportunity, tons of competition to like it all, it all goes together. So you have the risk and you have the opportunity, but in certain countries you don’t even really have the opportunity. Yes. So, so you have, yeah. So you just have to see the good with the bad. And, and with that, I will also expand and say, because my clients are around the world, the commonality is that they are reaching into the US for a huge portion of their business, right? Mm-Hmm. , whether they’re client bases there, et cetera. So we’re not just today speaking to the folks in the us.
HPC (11:34):
If you are anywhere in the world, this conversation applies to you in part because the concepts are really the same wherever you’re at. And most likely, if you are like so many of AJ and Rory’s clients or like the types of clients I serve, your business is international. You are not, not restricted to your geographic boundaries and you are reaching people all over the world with your message, your opt-ins, your email newsletter, right? So, so the, it’s really important for you to understand the framework because mm-hmm. , regardless of where you are, the concepts, the framework that I teach is the same. You may have different, for example, if you’re in the UK or Australia, you’re in Canada, different legal entities available to you than we have in the us for example, the L L C model, which is really, really popular, not available in certain countries, but they will have something either equivalent or an alternative, right?
HPC (12:29):
So you may have to swap the actual strategy or solution, but the framework is the same. So that’s a quick overview. And if you’re reaching into the US because a lot of international clients get this wrong. They, they don’t think about their, their risk from the standpoint of needing to understand u US laws u us i p laws as well, just from the fact of reaching it because they don’t know legal concepts. Why, how would you, how could you know legal concepts if you’re not an attorney based in the US that does business law? Right? So for example, I had one client, really gang buster’s business, very well known. He’s based in Canada, but probably 70 to 80% of his business comes from US-based clients, right? He does live events, he does online events, he’s a speaker, he’s an author, right? He does all the things that this audience does, and he’s advertising on Facebook and social media platforms to the US-based audience.
HPC (13:32):
And guess what? Get slapped with. Basically it was initially a cease and desist and then lawsuit from a US-based company who owned the trademark that he was using in Canada to reach into the US with. So even if you are established in your home base, if you have not done the research in the US around the phrases, the names, the things that you’re using, you could be in trouble. Right? And so for him, we ended up in this battle. It, it luckily, you know, I got involved early enough, we were able to keep the train on the, on the tracks, and we ended up buying out two registered marks from the US based company. And so now his brand can run wild in the US but that was completely an unexpected hurdle for him, right? And so, so it is just a reminder, I wanna set the context because it’s a reminder that if you’re listening and you’re in this audience, the world has become a lot smaller based on the digital age and online e-commerce. And you do have to really understand the rules of the road. So, okay. I know that sounds scary and people are like, oh crap, I just wanna turn this off right now. don’t stick with us, I promise. It’s, you know, there are some really powerful things that you can do that do not take a lot of money or a lot of time mm-hmm. that will help you really, truly be a better leader of your business.
AJV (15:05):
Oh, that’s, so, honestly, that’s such a great reminder of for all of us, of going, you know, I mean, most of us would probably love to spend our money in other areas. Oh yeah.
HPC (15:19):
Be honest. Oh yeah. However, being the outside of the vehicles, right?
AJV (15:24):
Yeah. But imagine building an entire brand around something and then to get a cease and desist. So it’s like, like everyone just let that like sink in for a moment. And that gives me a little bit of heartburn, , right? It’s like you build your entire brand around something and then one day, whew, you get a cease and desist because you didn’t file for that trademark and some other joker came along. So now you’re gonna have to try to prove and spend a lot more money doing it. And and again, a lot of this comes to when do you need to do things, which I know we’re about. Yes.
HPC (15:59):
And I wanna get back
AJV (16:01):
To your question. Yeah. That’s a good reminder to everyone of like, yes, you think it’s not, doesn’t pertain to you, but it it ultimately does
HPC (16:08):
It, it ultimately does. And it, the analogy is like we get into vehicles, most of us every day, right? We put on our seatbelt, we, you know, do certain things before we drive down the road to make sure that we’re safe. In the online world of business, people just fly into that space. No seat belts, no understanding of the rules of the road, and yet they are entirely responsible for understanding mm-hmm. all of the legal rules that apply to their particular business. Right. And people just, they don’t get that until they are like punched in the face with a legal reality that’s really painful. Whether it’s being shut down because they violated a marketing rule. Yeah. Or the F T C finds them and hunts them down, or they have to file bankruptcy cuz they didn’t have the right disclaimers in place or contracts for volunteers at an event or whatever. Right? But this stuff happens every day in this type of business. So it’s,
AJV (17:06):
I will just say, well, I’ll just second thought one quick thing is not to mention there not to frighten anyone, that’s not the point. This is helpful conversation, but I’m a part of EO at the Entrepreneur’s Organization here in Nashville. And about a year ago, maybe two years ago when everything was just going not so of everyone going digital and online, there were people out there intentionally hunting out websites that were not a d a compliant and then slapping you with lawsuits. Right? I mean, there are people that make a business out of your lack of policy understanding compliance and legalese. Yeah. You know, and you’ve got the whole thing with GDPR that, you know, it’s, there’s so much to learn. It’s like, it’s impossible for the everyday entrepreneur by myself to keep up with that just like taxes. Yeah. Which is why I think what you’ve created with legal website warrior is so, so helpful. Okay. I could get sidetracked five more times. So no,
HPC (18:07):
These
AJV (18:07):
Why
HPC (18:08):
Though though, these examples bring it to life, right? Yes. Because I think a lot of people sit back, I mean, before we went live, you and I were talking about how people just don’t look into this bucket, right? There’s so much resistance or fear or whatever. And, and I think there’s also what, what I see and have seen for years, cuz I’ve been practicing law for over 20 years now, right? It’s people discount themselves and the size of their business before they even get started. So I, I often hear like, well, I’m too small or I’m not really, I’m not really like that business that needs a A B, C X, Y, Z or whatever. Let’s be clear that 99.9% of all businesses in the US are small businesses. That’s right. We, you guys, we are the marketplace. We are the marketplace from a numbers perspective. Sure. You hear about all the big businesses, Starbucks and Nike and IBM and whatever those are, you
AJV (19:07):
Know, our few and
HPC (19:08):
Compare Microsoft. Yes. And of course they throw a lot of weight around. They’re big brand names. And when you hear about data breaches and stuff, it’s those big businesses that you hear about. But small businesses every day are battling the same battles in their businesses that they just don’t get reported on. Right. And, and it’s important to understand that collectively we have so much influence and so much sway and are responsible for such a huge percentage of, you know, annual G D P. I mean, it’s just massive. And so we also have to elevate our own thinking around where we fit and what our role is and the reality. And I’m a huge believer that a rising tide lifts all boats. The more of us that can get educated, especially in the mission driven, impact oriented business space, the better we can be at business. Amen. The better our peers are gonna be, the, the more impact we will all collectively have for good. And thi this is the whole point, this is the whole point of business of what I do, probably of what you do, right? I mean, I just feel it to my bones. It’s what I get up every day to do is elevate the level of business that my clients are in.
AJV (20:26):
I love that.
HPC (20:28):
So back to your question about like, where do we start? What do we really need? What are the essentials? Right? Especially as a personal brand or a, you know, different names expert based business, solo entrepreneur, right? But a lot of solos, like they end up building small teams over time as they build these businesses. So it’s not that we all stay there but what do we need and how do we not count ourself out of the conversation to begin with? So, and I have a framework and I think that’s probably what I will share at the end, right? That for people that wanna walk through and understand the whole framework, I’m laughing because in Rory’s live presentation a few weeks ago, , any question he got was like, I have a framework for that , I have a framework for, right? And I’m sure that people who literally live, we live in frameworks, , oh my gosh, I giggled so hard the entire, I have a frame and then he’ll go to this slide.
HPC (21:21):
I have a framework for that. So I have a framework for this map and I, I give it away for free and I teach on it and I speak to it. And it is the same framework that I give to free to clients who go through my legal basics bootcamp. It’s the same framework that I walk people through for clients that want a risk assessment of their business and they pay me a couple thousand dollars to do that. It’s the same framework that I implement for my Catalyst Club clients that are paying me $25,000 a year to do this work inside of their business. Right? It’s the same. So you are getting the same framework I teach to my clients that are making two and 3 million in revenue a year and are really in that scaling phase and are playing catch up on their legal needs, right?
HPC (22:04):
So, so again, you’re not too small, you’re not too small to learn this, you’re not too small to get started on this. So where do you start? Step one, and this is even before we get to like some of the essential business contracts, is do you have a business legal entity set up? Right? It is the difference between protecting your personal assets and what you’re building on the personal side of your life and not protecting it, like hanging that out to dry. And I, I spend a lot of time on this point and some people listening are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve had my entity for years. But understand 60% of the US marketplace of small businesses in the US marketplace, sole proprietors, 60%. It’s a massive number of people that never get to step one in my framework of actually setting up a proper legal entity.
HPC (22:59):
Whether that’s a C corporation, whether it’s an L L C. Yeah. So it is a really relevant issue. And if you’re listening thinking like, well, you know, I’m kind of an island, I have a home-based business, I’m just a coach or whatever. No, stop it, stop minimizing yourself because there is real liability that goes along with your business model, with your work. And even though the liability might be less than, for example, running a on location-based gym , right? With heavy equipment and whatever else, you still, especially if you’re in a community property state and you have a partner, you are putting your personal assets at risk through your business activities, you’re putting your partner’s assets at, like, it’s a much bigger conversation. You are not an island. Right? So I start there, obviously we could go deep into that bucket, but I will just say, if you are listening and you don’t have a legal entity set up, make that the very next priority in your business. And also understand when you handle that, it will shift your relationship to your business mm-hmm. , and you will show up differently in your business and you will be the difference between like saying, I’m ha I I’m launching a business or having a business or working in my, my business and really being committed to like, yes, carving out the space, the commitment of, you know, investing a little bit in that legal structure, in that protection and then proceeding the right way. So, right.
AJV (24:29):
So real one real quick question, I won’t derail promise. Do you have a entity preference for people getting started? Recommendation?
HPC (24:38):
I totally do. And it’s because most of my clients fit within this particular model right now. There’s always exceptions. So if you’re listening and you’re like, look, I’m gonna, you know, here’s where I’m starting, but my ultimate goal is in five years to, you know, build this mega machine and spin it off and sell it for a hundred million dollars. Like that’s a different path. You’re more of a traditional startup path. You need to start in a different place, right? Who I’m speaking to are the personal brand builders that are creating a business because through that business model, they get to fulfill their personal mission in the world. They get to do meaningful work that changes the lives of their clients, changes their industry landscape. So it’s about, it’s actually about being able to do the work. Mm-Hmm. creating a business in a way that allows you to show up every day and be fully into your work.
HPC (25:36):
That that’s who I’m talking to. And if you are there and you’re like, okay, great, and maybe you build a small team, maybe you do other things and your business doesn’t totally look like just a solo personal brand builder, entrepreneur for life, that’s fine. You’ve got flexibility. But I would recommend the l l C model because it’s easier to manage mm-hmm. , it’s, there’s less, there’s less scrutiny from the standpoint of like quarterly filings and stuff that you have to do with a C corporation. A lot of people ask me, what about an S corp? S corp is not technically a legal entity. S corp is a tax election status. And if you’re like, want w want like the Charlie Brown, you know, teacher voice, basically understand that to have an S corp, you either initially set up a C corporation or an L L C and then you make that tax election status.
HPC (26:28):
So it’s not that complex, it’s like filing a single form, but what it does is it results in some tax savings for you if you’re an L L C and you’re really starting to generate revenue. So this is also one of the benefits of setting up an L L C is you have some flexibility in tax treatment, you can make that election at any time and really bring some additional benefit into your financial life. Amen. So I know check, check six, check. Yep. So, and yes, if you have questions, get in touch, go visit any number of my past, ask me anything lives like this is something that I drill into people and cover a million times. So there’s more out there on this topic. But also if you’re like, well, does this really apply to me? Again, when do you hire an attorney? Is if you’ve got something really unique and you just need custom advice, right?
HPC (27:17):
Mm-Hmm. . So of course there’s always that caveat. Now that’s in my framework, that’s step one, right? Step two or bucket number two is business contracts. And this is a big bucket, right? And as your business grows, this becomes a bigger bucket. But for pe, for folks that are like, what are the essentials? Where do I start? I always say start by protecting your money maker. What is it that you’re doing to generate revenue inside your business? Right? So let’s pretend that you’re a coach or you’re a consultant and your primary revenue right now is through one-on-one consulting or coaching. Get a killer client services agreement in place that serves you really well with every client you work with, right? And make sure that you understand that agreement. It’s literally a working tool in your business. You’re confident using it. Start there. That’s one agreement that covers a huge majority of the work that a lot of coaches and, and consultants do.
HPC (28:16):
Right? And then let’s pretend you’re like, okay, I, you know, my next step is that I’m building out more of my online presence and maybe I wanna create my first digital course. Great. Going online, which a lot of people have had to do, right? Thank you Covid. I spent a huge portion of the first year of covid, like trying to help anybody in my database. Like, get online, get your stuff protected, get the website protection package, right? Whatever. It’s, it, the online hub, often as you evolve in, in these types of businesses, becomes like your home base for your business, right? You’re setting yourself up as an expert in the space. You’re publishing articles or blogs or maybe video tutorials or something that drives traffic to your website. Again, builds credibility, right? You might do other things as well as you evolve, launch a podcast mm-hmm.
HPC (29:09):
do other things that get hosted on your site. But these are all ways that you are actually technically creating IP in the world and exposing it to the marketplace, right? So website is super, super key, super important. And even through what is generally accessible to the public, you expose a lot of information. Yeah. And so that becomes another area of your business that you have to look at. Is that a huge focus? If it’s not, it should be or it will be soon as you continue to grow. Are you launching products, courses, online offerings? Great. You’re in an awesome, awesome place and time in your business to be looking at how to protect the online components. And, you know, I think, I think you are one of my website protection package clients, right? So that package is really designed to protect these kinds of businesses, right?
HPC (30:09):
So the difference, and, and you know, for folks listening that are like, oh, well I can just go get some free templates online, Yes you can. And let’s pause and talk a moment about the difference between free templates. Borrowing, I put air quotes, if you’re not watching the video, borrowing other people’s documents. Even going to a place like, like Rocket Lawyer or Legal Zoom, Uhhuh , right? Because one of the things that I spend a lot of time doing is educating people on their options in the marketplace. I mean, obviously as a service provider, I have strong opinions about this, but it’s also because I have such a big heart for entrepreneurs, which is why I built my whole second business to serve this specific group, right? Free templates. You know, people might be like, oh, that seems great, especially if you don’t have legal knowledge around what you actually need. Mm-Hmm. , for the most part, they’re not great. The number of times I’ve had to fix people’s businesses because they use documentation that was not a fit for what they’re doing, it’s one of the primary reasons why people show up to my door.
AJV (31:20):
Well, and not to mention on that note of borrowing with the bunny of other people, it’s like, I’ve seen other people do that. Like cuz I’m in a massive entrepreneur, you know, kind of group. And then they, they missed a couple of the edits they need to make because they borrowed someone else’s and they did not read every single word word for word. Yes. And then all of a sudden your own agreements have industry lingo that’s not yours.
HPC (31:51):
Oh, right. Or even worse, somebody else’s business listed in your like
AJV (31:57):
Yep.
HPC (31:58):
Oh, people. And, and this is, you know, I have to get on my soapbox for just a minute because on this point, whether it’s legal, whether it’s somebody else’s content, right? Like we all have different areas of expertise. The thing that I teach repeatedly and embed into my audience and my list and people that show up and engage in my life calls is if you did not create it or hire somebody to create it or pay for the right to use it, do not even for a split second, think about taking this off the internet. You can get in such hot trouble so fast. So for example, let’s talk about even just taking something legal related from somebody else’s site. One, if it’s truly worth taking, they paid
AJV (32:47):
For it, right? And it’s customized and it
HPC (32:49):
It’s customized. They hired somebody to do it. So tell me how you feel about showing up and taking something that they paid somebody else to create for them. It’s just unethical and there’s not Wow.
AJV (33:03):
You know, it’s like, this is like one of those things. It’s, it’s like what I tell my kids all the time, I’m like, at the end of the day, no one, not every mom specifically is not gonna know all the things that you do. So only you’re gonna know the choices that you make. And it’s like, this is like, you know, parenting 1 0 1, it’s like act like someone’s always watching and would you do this if mom was standing right next to you? And it’s like, I do that. I am a big believer in, in God and it’s like, I’m always like, nobody else might see this, but he does. So totally. What am I doing? And I think a part of it is, it’s like it’s gonna come to bite you in the tail. I literally read through other people’s stuff and I’m like pretty sure that’s not your company. And they’re like, oh crap. Missed that. So glad you saw that. I’m like, ok, you should probably go back and read that, please. Well, Anna, no, I have a quick question for you because I wrote this down as you were talking so I didn’t forget we would come back to it. So this has been an ongoing conversation in our own company because this is where I get free legal advice for two minutes. ,
HPC (34:05):
Happy to provide it, right? Better listen up folks, listen up.
AJV (34:10):
But like, we have like five different product and surface offerings, right? We have courses, we have memberships, we have Immersives, we have Mastermind, we clearly have products. So like we have all these different things. We do book launch fulfillment, we have lots of offerings. And the question has been to simplify, do you need a service agreement for each one of those individually, right? Or the complaint has been, oh, can’t we just like have one that mentions everything And our default has, like, I know it’s more annoying, it creates so much work when we do like company-wide updates, but we have a service agreement for every single thing individually. Mm-Hmm. Is that overkill or could we consolidate?
HPC (34:52):
Oh, this is such a good question. And as brands grow, this really becomes an increasingly important question. And if you’re listening and you’re thinking like, well, I just have, you know, two or three things right now that I am doing in my business, still super relevant. Because you need to be able to make strategic decisions as you grow. And the the key part of this conversation because there are multiple ways to, to do what you’re asking about, right? And yes, you can have a client service agreement that looks like an actual quote unquote traditional legal agreement. People either sign it physically or through like DocuSign mm-hmm. or Hello Sign, right? Or the alternative, which so many of us are familiar with are the terms of purchase approach online. Like think of iTunes or anytime you’re purchasing a digital purchase, right? Checking that box.
HPC (35:44):
I have read and agree to the terms of purchase whatever, which I have never done ever, but okay, right. , I have see the nerd in me. I mean even particularly like, don’t even get me started on this AI world and what we’re, what we’re doing wrong with our intellectual property by participating in it. But anyways, maybe a round two on that because AI is just opens a whole bucket of worms for people that are already established brands. Like how do you use it the right way and not sacrifice your ai? So I mean it sacrifice your I ip, sorry, yes, all these acronyms. But back to, you know, do I do traditional service or client service agreement or terms of purchase? Here’s what you need to think about. One, are you optimizing for numbers? Meaning that you, it doesn’t matter if you enroll five or 300 or 20,000, you, you know, you want the potential to do that, right?
HPC (36:43):
Mm-Hmm. , if you’re optimizing for numbers, you have to think about speed, ease of enrollment, right? And to some extent the user experience. But when you’re optimizing for numbers, usually the user experience is a little bit lower on that list, right? Mm-Hmm. Gotcha. So let’s pretend that it’s a digital course. It’s a pre-recorded workshop. It’s something that you’re like, you know what? I’m gonna put this online and I wanna sell it into infinity and it doesn’t really matter. Clearly optimize for numbers, put it under a terms of purchase, especially let’s also talk about price point if it’s a lower investment amount, right? So if you’re down in the range of you know, even close to a freebie, let’s pretend you’re one of the business models where you just have to sell that first thing and you’re ma you’re really minimizing and it’s a $29 template to do this particular process or whatever, right?
HPC (37:38):
Optimize for numbers, optimize for the ease of enrollment. That can, that can work all the way up to multiple hundreds, even a couple thousand, you can do terms of purchase with that process, right? And some people, even with higher dollar amounts are still gonna prefer digital because it’s better for their business model and their business system. Mm-Hmm. . So, you know, and you have to think about it cuz it really, the other thing I’m really passionate about is like build a business that you love being in. And if you don’t love dealing with paperwork or you’re not set up to provide great customer service cuz you haven’t built out team yet. Like you have to balance all those things. So it’s like what kind of business are you making mm-hmm. and what systems do you have to support the process balancing that with a user experience with the whether or not you’re optimizing for numbers, right?
HPC (38:35):
So generally what that looks like is memberships you know, any digital offers that are pre-recorded. So courses, you know, those kinds of things that are hosted on platforms optimized through terms of purchase, a digital click. You have to do it the right way. Let’s be clear, there’s lots of wrong ways that people are still doing this. Sure. So you have to do it the right way to have adequate legal protection. And that’s part of what I teach inside of my website protection package. But if you go through the effort of, and it’s not that much effort, I’ll be clear, it’s just about knowing where to put things, what order. A lot of people just do this stuff out of order. Mm-Hmm. , you can have a really well-built revenue generating machine that is totally designed optimally ease of use, lots of enrollment, and you’re covered.
HPC (39:25):
Right? Gotcha. Now if you’re running, let’s pretend like one of my clients is running to just launched like a $29,000 a year. Pretty elite. Like it’s invite only membership club for women. That’s combination like networking, you know, masterminds. She’s bringing in like really famous people in the business world to talk to these folks. So she’s very high level. Do people want to click a box and enroll that way? Probably not. Yeah. You really, if you have that business model, you are optimizing all the way for user experience and you’re optimizing to also create and ensure that you have very high level clients in that experience. Right? Optimizing for clicks for easy enrollment means you’re gonna have a few misfits mm-hmm. that get into your model, right? But if you are sending somebody a client services agreement and it’s a $29,000 offer and you’re really vetting people all the way you want a, a literal signed agreement or something sent through DocuSign that follows probably a pretty detailed conversation and Yeah. You know, process for enrollment. So it’s really about matching your, your client enrollment process to the type of business that you wanna build or the type of service that you’re enrolling people into. Cuz you can have different levels of people mm-hmm. That you serve in your business. And one level’s gonna be perfectly served by that terms of purchase model and the other level, like in my business is gonna be well served by that one-on-one client services agreement.
AJV (41:03):
Yeah. Super helpful. Really good. And I think that just even those little points of delineation just help so much of like, what do I need when, yeah, so totally. I’m watching the clock and we have like seven minutes. Okay. And so we talked a little bit about entity structure, super helpful business contracts, right? Mm-Hmm , protect that money maker first focus on your service agreement, make sure that you’ve got online protection for your website. So it’s like, I mean there’s just like, you’ve gotta have your user policy, you’ve gotta have your, you know, purchase policy. Like these are all things in the website protection, you know, kit that you offer. It’s like, that is nice cuz it is a template and it is like copy and paste our details in because it is really matter of fact
HPC (41:47):
Super easy to implement.
AJV (41:48):
It’s a no brainer. Like if you don’t have those things and you need to go to our affiliate link to have a legal website warrior which I will put in the show notes, but if you don’t use our affiliate link, just go cause it’s worth it. The website protection kit is just such a no-brainer because people are hunting people like us out online and going, oh, they don’t have this boom, I’m gonna sloppy you with a lawsuit or you can just pay me this amount of money and I’ll forgo it. Like I know that’s Steves, but unfortunately, like I know three people that happened to with the A D I A D A compliance issue. Yeah. so just do it, right.
HPC (42:26):
Just do it. And the final point I will add about that because it is kind of a templated package. You modify certain parts, but it is pre-built for this very, very narrow niche that I serve. It is not for the industry at large, it is not for bigger business. It is, it is not even for brick and mortar like, you know, mom and pop selling widgets, gidgets and gadgets, but like it’s for a very specific type of business. And so it’s literally pre-built to fit your business model right out the box. And that’s what I cared about doing with all of my documentation,
AJV (43:01):
Which means a lot. And just little things like you don’t think about like earnings disclosures and
HPC (43:06):
Totally thanks your privacy policy that’s required by law. And now we have all of these changing legalities with international privacy issues. Like there’s a lot to cover. You don’t have to do it yourself, but I want you to feel so good about being in your business and not wor like the, the way I’ve had certain clients describe getting the support that they need is like, I did not realize I was carrying around this 50 pound backpack. Yes. And I finally got to put it down. Yep. These are people who have made millions of dollars in their business, you know, and it’s like they finally got it resolved in a way that suited them. So anyways, that’s my pitch. Just go do it in regards to like what else you need because you did we, we talked about legal entity, we talked a bit about business contracts.
HPC (43:55):
Just understand like any exchange of value that you have in your business, right? Maybe you’re hiring independent contractors or employees or, or you’re working with JVs or affiliates or you know, any number of ways that you’re exchanging value through your business. Maybe it’s additional services or offerings. Mm-Hmm. , one of those should have a business contract around it because you’re disclosing IP and like, you know, you mentioned not having your documents in place and being on the receiving end of lawsuits. The other thing that happens massively and why people show up to my door is they don’t have their online documents on place. People get into their, their programs and services. Just copy them, just duplicate ’em and rip ’em off, right? They didn’t have any terms or anything protecting their ip. So so there’s that, right? It does, this does a lot of heavy lifting in your business when you get the right tools in place.
HPC (44:47):
The next bucket, and we won’t talk about all the buckets, right? And if you want more information on the other buckets, just go through my little freebie. It’s super fast. Five minute videos delivered once a day for a week, like five days. Yeah. So it’s super easy, very accessible. It’s gonna link you to other resources and things you can go take a peak at. But the third bucket ip, I really want to talk about ip, right? Because a lot of people are like, well what about ip? Understand you do a lot of heavy lifting to protect your IP in the contracts bucket. Mm-Hmm. a lot of overlap there, right? So if you’re like, oh, I don’t have a massive budget, maybe I’m not in the place of going and getting a bunch of registered trademarks or registered copyrights, start with your documentation and then get that in place and then come visit me and we’ll talk about the other things you can layer over, but IP strategies that are available to you if you are a personal brand builder or an expert based business trademark registrations, right?
HPC (45:46):
Yeah. Think of your brand or your business as a mountain trademark registrations protect what’s visible from the marketplace. So if you live close to a mountain, you know that like what sits above the clouds or your city or whatever is the Snowcapped Peaks the very top of that mountain. That’s what trademarks protect. This is gonna be your business name. Mm-Hmm. your tagline, your logo, like assets that are identifying your brand, right? So like, think of Nike, Nike as a trademark. The just do it. Their logo has a trademark and the Nike Swoosh has a trademark. That’s an easy way to remember. What do trademarks protect, right? The rest of that mountain, what I call the body of the mountain, is the body of your work. Your workbooks, your video tutorials, your blogs, your articles. Like all the ways that you expressed your ideas into the world, right?
HPC (46:39):
And all of the folks that I serve are massive information publishers. Like you literally need to think of yourself as a publisher, like even Rory of a framework for that, of a framework for that, right? We publish when we’re experts in our spaces, massive amounts of information. So registrations are available to protect that trademark registrations, protect the top copyright registrations, protect the body of your work. So if you’re publishing books, if you’re, you know, creating a video series, like I said, all the ways that your work is actually taking a tangible form in the world.
AJV (47:17):
I’m so good. And that’s such an easy way to think about it too. Yeah. Jessica, people get
HPC (47:21):
Those, yes, get them mixed up all the time. And I just want, like, I’m such a visual person, I just want you to remember that analogy of the mountain trademarks are at the top, which means also that they’re a little bit more of an investment. They take a little bit longer to obtain super, super powerful assets to have in your business. And then copyrights, you can be strategic about what you protect. And my question for you if you’re listening right now is like, where do you start when it comes to co copyrights are much more accessible. You can file them on your own and it’s like $45, very, very accessible, right? So whether that’s a video suit series or a workbook, or maybe you’ve self-published a book, ask yourself like, what is the best expression of your work or your framework or your ideas? And start with that. Like you have core assets in your work, start with those. You don’t have to register everything, but start with what you know to be core to your work, right? Mm-Hmm. . And that, that will be a like, will really set you on a good path because some of us can express the same teachings through writing, through video, through all these ways. And you may not need to protect everything, but you do need to choose very carefully what to protect and get started on those.
AJV (48:39):
Oh, this has been so helpful, y’all. Like we could literally go off and on and on talking about this. This is like scratching the surface as Heather mentioned. She’s offering a free little mini course. I’m gonna put the link to access that in our show notes. I’ll also put a link to her company legal website warrior. If you want to use our affiliate link, do it. . But if not, just go cuz it’s, it’s worth it. We’ve been very happy customers. We use her contract templates, her website protection kits, we use it for service agreements, employment agreements. We pretty much at this point I think we own most of all of the templates. We, all of them over should
HPC (49:22):
Check, right? I know there’s been, like I said, in parallel universes for so long. I should go check up and we can chat if there’s anything that you’re missing. But I so appreciate you. I what I want for people, cuz some people are probably listening and still feeling overwhelmed. Just understand. The thing that I love most about entrepreneurs is their grit. Like the perseverance, the willingness to like roll up those sleeves. Mm-Hmm. , put a little elbow grease into something just like you have to learn marketing or sales or information technology or team building as it relates to your particular business. You also just need a certain amount of legal chops so that you can issue spot, you know, when to get help in the right way and in the right timing. And you can be more strategic about that. And it, it can be very accessible and that’s my entire goal is to make it feel and actually be more accessible to you.
AJV (50:16):
Ah, so good. Heather, thank you so much for being here. Everyone else stay tuned. Check out our Cliff Notes version of this episodes and we’ll see you next time on the influential Personal brand. See you later guys.

Ep 383: How To Grow Your Business By Changing The Way You Think | Vinnie Fisher Episode Recap

AJV (00:00):
All right y’all. So I was having a recent conversation about growth and scale and which one do you need when, and I had kind of like teed up this conversation as growth is about growing revenue, but scale is about growing profits. And so when should you turn your focus from growth to scale? And in this really helpful conversation, that whole idea just kind of imploded in a really healthy way. And so I thought it was worth sharing is that don’t think about growth versus scale. We as business owners personal brands, entrepreneurs, all the same thing. We need both. We need growth and we need to be paying attention to scale when it comes to profits early on. But don’t confuse the two, right? Healthy growth means that you are not going to go out of business, you’re not gonna run outta steam, you’re not gonna experience burnout.
AJV (01:04):
You’re not trying to do it in some expeditious manner where you’re spending all this money before you’re making it. But you can grow and have a focus on profits too. And this kind of, this concept of you should always have a focus on profits even in the midst of growth or scale, even when you’re doing capital investments with personnel hiring or technology or real estate. It’s like that doesn’t mean you don’t have a focus on profits. You always have a focus on profits, even in the midst of growth phases. And scale does not always mean that there is a revenue growth and a scale growth. And scale means you’re growing profits. That’s not really the right way to think about it. And it was such a healthy conversation for me to come back and go, whoa, okay, I need to realign my thinking here.
AJV (01:56):
It’s like I always need to be focused on profits, even in heavy growth seasons. And it’s not that you can grow or scale, it’s like, oh, they happen together, they can happen together, but you gotta have a good plan. So that’s what the rest of this conversation’s about is how do you have a plan for healthy growth while also keeping keeping your eyes on profits, which should always just happen synchronistically, right? It’s not one or the other. So here’s a couple of things that came outta this conversation is that typically there are two phases of business. Phase one, get customers, phase two, improve operations, and they go in that order, . So I just know that it is easy to sometimes oftentimes get distracted by going, we need to create better services. We need to have better marketing, we need better this, we need more of this. We need to da, da da da da. And we take our eye off the ball, which is actually what keeps us in business, which is we need to get more customers
AJV (02:59):
And we need to keep the ones that we have. And that is a part of improving operations and improving systems. But you can improve on what you have if you don’t have customers coming in. So this is in order one, get customers, two, get more customers, three, improve operations. That’s in order, right? And often we spend all of our money doing the ladder too soon. And that doesn’t mean you don’t still have a heart and a desire and a passion for your customers, but in order to do all the other things, you have to have customers, you have to have revenue to then have expenses to do those things. So get customers, get more customers, improve operations. That’s the order that it goes in. Always keep a focus on profits. Even when you start, you don’t, don’t sell yourself on the bad idea that you’re in startup mode.
AJV (03:46):
So there are no profits. That’s bad business, that’s bad mindset, that’s a bad thinking. It’s like no, you can have a startup and still have profits. That just takes discipline. That takes patience. And those are things that are required for good, healthy growth. Good. It was a good reminder for me. It’s not growth versus scale. It’s growth and scale. And the reason that people don’t like to talk about growth often is because growth sounds like work and scale sounds like automation. . So like, but growth is work, but that’s what works, right? It, it does take effort and it takes investment of time, money and resources. Yeah, growth is work, but it’s also what works. The other thing is just this importance, like the radical importance of your mindset as an entrepreneur. That’s, and not just an entrepreneur, but just as a human being.
AJV (04:44):
The mindset is really important. And so these were some of like the key takeaways from this conversation around growth and scale, but more important of well, how do you get there? And the conversation naturally led lended itself to this important conversation on attitude and mindsets. And these are a few of the takeaways that really resonated with me. So I hope they resonate with you is number one, you need people. So don’t take advantage of them and don’t take ’em for granted. You need them. Do you need people as clients? Do you need people as team members? You need people as your friends. You need people and people are not a burden, they’re a privilege. And it’s not your burden to lead people. It’s your privilege to lead people. And that’s a radical mindset, right? I hear this term a lot. Like, I got people problems. No, you don’t not you have people responsibilities, right? And that’s just a slight mindset change. Now, I don’t have people problems. I have people responsibilities cuz it’s my privilege that I get the chance to lead a team of people who are committed to me and my company and my mission.
AJV (05:57):
That is a privilege that I get and it’s my responsibility to help lead these people. It’s not a burden to, to take care of problems. So, so powerful. Just really helpful of going the way that we allow ourselves to talk to ourselves and the way that we allow things to populate in our vernacular and our vocabulary, in our conversations. It actually does one of two things. It incredibly helps, is incredibly helpful or it’s incredibly detrimental and it’s completely the thoughts and the words that you allow into your mind that put you on a certain trajectory. You are rather gonna go down the path of I have all these problems, all these people, all these issues. And then you’re just, it’s Debbie Downer mode, right? It’s like I got all these things to go. It’s so crazy. Or it’s, I get the privilege of leading a group of people that have, are committing 40 hours of their life to me every week and they’re committed to seeing through a vision that they’re buying into.
AJV (07:04):
Like that’s a privilege. What a different even physical feeling that comes upon me of going, it’s my privilege, not my burden, right? It’s my responsibility, not my problem. Just those little things make a radical difference in how you view growth and revenue and customer acquisition and customer retention and profits and scale. Just those two slight things, majorly just in a 45 minute conversation can shift the way that you approach the rest of your day, if not your month or even your life. So your mindset matters when it comes to how you wanna grow your business, how you, how you wanna actually keep people, keep clients and retain profits. Your mindset matters. And then the last thing I was gonna share from this conversation is I asked a question. I said, if there was one common denominator of success of like when you see this and people are companies if there was one thing that you said, I know when I see this, that success is inevitable.
AJV (08:08):
It may not be around the corner, but it’s inevitable for this person in this company. What would that one thing be? What would that common denominator be? And I love the answer to this question. You said I know for a fact when people can actually see in themselves and their own companies the mistakes that they’ve made and they have the courage to change them, I know that at some point they’re gonna win it. Whatever they’re doing, it’s going to turn successful, it’s going to grow, it’s gonna have profits, it’s gonna make a difference. But when you’re able to look yourself and your company in the mirror and go, that’s not working, that was a mistake. And that’s okay cuz we can change it. And when you have the courage to do that and you actually do the, have the discipline
AJV (08:55):
To do the work that it takes to make those changes at some point down the line, it it could be quickly, it may not be quickly, but at some point you’re going to be successful. That was really humbling and enlightening of going. All it takes is for me to be honest with myself about what I’m doing in my own business, in my, with my own time. And that is the indicator of success of can I be honest enough and then have the courage to do the work that’s required to make the change so helpful. I was like this philosophical dream that happened in this conversation with so many nuggets in such a good way. So I took away so much. I hope that you grabbed at least something from my downloads and hopefully it helps you and your business and on your day and if it, if enough not today, that it helps you at some day in the future. So I’ll catch you next time. Until then, I’ll see you later.

Ep 382: Building a Profits and People First Mindset with Vinnie Fisher

AJV (00:02):
Hey y’all. Welcome to a new episode on the influential Personal brand. I have got a really special guest today because it’s not often I bring on a guest where I’m their client. But today I have a new friend, Vinnie Fisher, who is the CEO of a fully accountable, which is our bookkeeping controller, fractional C F O Tax Strategy Firm, , that’s all the things that we use. It’s basically the Financial Department of Brand Builders Group and Vinny founded and as the CEO of that. He’s also an author of two amazing books we’ll talk about and there might be more than two. This is just, I’m thinking of the two I know about. But before I introduce you to Vinny, I actually wanna tell you why you need to stick around and listen to this episode. So before we get into it, you’ll know if this is an episode for you.
AJV (00:53):
We’re gonna talk today about the differences between growth and scale, because they’re different and we hear from our community and our audience all the time. I hear this all the time. Well, it’s just time for me to scale. Why there, why? And most of us don’t have to, we think we should. And so we’re gonna talk about the differences on a business standpoint of what it means to both grow and scale. And then we’re also gonna talk a lot about the mindset that kind of comes around that. So if you’re in a particular season of your life or your business where you’re going, I wanna grow, but I don’t know how, or I wanna scale, but I’m not and you’re confused between what is growth and what is scale, then truly this is the episode for you. And if you’re really confused on if you should or should not grow or scale, this is also for you. This is a lot around that mindset around that. So this is an episode that you wanna stick around for when it comes to that. Now let me formally introduce you to Vinny Fisher. Vinny I already mentioned is the c e o and founder of Fully Accountable. But I also have here, and I love so much that this is in your bio cuz people never put in it’s like that, that you’re married, you’ve got, you married how long?
VF (02:13):
Almost 30 years.
AJV (02:14):
Almost 30 years. That’s one of my favorite things ever. Nobody ever puts that in their bios anymore. But my husband and I just celebrated our 16th date anniversary. So we’re, we’re nerds. We celebrate dating and married. So
VF (02:29):
Actually we’re 31 years if I add the three or I was slow playing the whole situation. So it’s me, .
AJV (02:35):
But I love that. I think that’s a testament to success both in and out of business. So I love that. That’s in your bio. Alright, so let’s talk about all the things. So Vinny, help our audience get to know you. Like what’s your background? Like how did fully accountable Star, you got these awesome books, like why did you write books? Like What’s your story?
VF (02:55):
First off, I wanna start with thank you aj, your energy. I got to listen to a show, but I also, like you said, I know from our teammates you are just a fun person to be around. It’s by the people who like to work with y’all and your team. So your energy’s great. I love what you’re doing for this community. So when you asked if I would be on the show, I felt very humbled and honored to do that. So thank you for having me. Oh, thank you. It’s easy to talk about me cuz I look at myself in the mirror every day. , you know, I I started early on, I’m a lawyer by training. Uhm not an accountant. I actually wouldn’t hire me to be the cfo. F I like you was our first client. I built this organization cuz I saw something that was missing that I needed from the marketplace.
VF (03:39):
So I fast forward to my story is I’m highly creative. Like I’m the one that starts something, right? So, you know, if I was a church person, I’d be a church planter. If I’m a business person, I’m a startup person, not necessarily go and join an existing business. So I highly creative. I had a eight figure health brand, lot of women’s face cream, fun stuff. Marketing. You don’t really normally hear a lawyer marketer, right? And so I like to write highly creative and I had no real capacity to understand all my high transactions. And so I saw a problem I wanted to fix it went to go buy it from the public accounting space and it didn’t exist. And so what I envisioned in my mind in 2014 was more like a 2020 version of our company and we set out the build it cuz the tech wasn’t there.
VF (04:32):
But that’s my story. Like when I look back through it, I have you know, I was trained early on in a big fancy firm cuz I did well enough in school and law school and got recruited in highly professional firm. But I, I look back, I always had like this little like chip on my shoulder because I would’ve come from an impoverished environment and not really like, just physically impoverished, more mentally impoverished. Like we thought small, we were always waiting for the shoe to drop, but there was shame always around our last name. And I just had this chip that I didn’t want that. And so I first phase of my career was always to outwork the next person near me. And I realized early on that there’s a lot of smart people and I’m not necessarily one of them, but my secret weapon is I just usually outlast and outwork most people.
AJV (05:21):
Hmm. I love that. And you know what’s so funny I literally, I’m not exaggerating. One of my my true, like if you were to ask my husband, he would tell you the same thing. It’s like, what is AJ just extraordinarily gifted out? And he would tell you just outlasting the competition. Mm-Hmm. , she just follows up and follows up. My personal sales philosophy is I never hear no, I only hear not right now. Just not right now. It’s gotta outlast the others. Right. , that’s definitely,
VF (05:48):
Well, you know, the opposite of that’s true for me, Rory, our aj it’s so funny you said that because I, I was, had a terrible relationship to the word no because I have a gift of of hospitality, so I wanna say yes to everything, including use of my time. So I had to learn to start saying not right now. That was a verse version of how to learn how to say no.
AJV (06:06):
Oh, that’s so funny. . That’s awesome. Well I mentioned these two books that you’ve got, I’ve mentioned ’em a couple times, but I didn’t tell anyone what they’re called. And we’re gonna kinda, I just, I think talking about false profits and I remember I got a copy of this book when I became a client of Fully Accountables. The firm sent this out and I remember I thought it was so fascinating at the time because I don’t think creative attorneys are typically terms that go together. Yeah. I would say, I would say the same thing with CPAs or financial people. Not to be offending anybody, but Yeah. But
VF (06:42):
It’s true
AJV (06:42):
Typically, right? . And I remember getting this book of going, well they don’t even know that we’re a personal branding firm and they already get the power of personal branding of content creation for their communities. And so I think that I would just love to know like, why did you write that book and what is false prophets?
VF (07:03):
Yeah. You know and by the way, I want all of your community to know we, we love giving out things, our stuff. We don’t really believe in kind of hoarding information. So we built a a page where later on you can get that, it’ll be in the show notes, but it’s just fully accountable.com/influential personal brand. And so the whole gist of it was honestly, I own that health supplement company that we briefly mentioned earlier. And I was making about 8% at the bottom line of a 40 million company. And it felt razor thing cuz we had to keep buying inventory and cash was tight and I knew we were doing something right. We had a really good product at the time, Ella. And it made it into Macy’s and all this fun stuff. And I’m making all kinds of noise on a lot of gross sales.
VF (07:49):
And I was really deflated that there was no money left at the end of the month. We were just big enough where it sucked actually. Like we were making a bunch and I was able to pay bills and have a lifestyle, but it wasn’t like there was accumulation going on. And you know, I one day was completely discouraged and I, I remember a friend being like, well what’s a business like in your space? Like, what’s it supposed to normally make as a profit? And I’m like, I don’t know. I I, I don’t know, I, whatever’s left. And that turned out to be obviously not right. Well, I did a little basic research and found out the type of business we had should have been profiting anywhere between 20 and 22%. And I’m like, wait a minute, I’m not making 8%, I’m losing 14% every month.
VF (08:36):
And then I said, why? And so I woke up one morning, AJ as crazy as this sounds, I’m already successful. This is, at this point this would be my third eight figure venture. Hmm. And I broke one of them tragically and wrote a book about it to kind of cleanse myself back to life. But I woke up and I’m like, wait a minute. It’s not how much revenue is on the top, it’s what we keep. And I was like, I think I know the title of this book I’m gonna write that I didn’t know I was gonna write. And that’s really, and the, you know, the first chapter, I say that every book has certain good principles and I’d say that solving for X was the game changer for us knowing what our business should make as a profit, looking at our direct expenses and then treating my cost to acquire the customer as my real variable expense, not my profit margin was a game changer for me. And actually it was the genesis that led to fully accountable.
AJV (09:30):
Oh, that’s so fascinating. And I, you know, it’s so interesting because like even when I approached you, I said I really want this podcast episode to really be about the difference between growth and scale and like mentally, like simply I just think about growth is revenue growth scale is profit growth, right? And to hear this idea of like you were, you know, I don’t even think people know what their profitability should be like they don’t even know what it could be, but they definitely don’t know what it should be. So just taking it like back to like the basics, like what are good goals for profitability of, and I know that’s like a loaded question based on business businesses, but generally speaking it’s like how do you know like, well what’s a good profit?
VF (10:16):
Yeah. So each, each industry has a standard, you know, and we can use some fun geeked out terms like the variation or the deviation of that standard. But each, each, you know, particular industry has a range that’s an appropriate range for a business model. So like in the public accounting space, a little bit different than where we live. It’s not unusual to think about a 30% profit margin. It’s actually quite reasonable. A lot of the digital world we live in, if you do digital ad agency space, they could live around 35% margin. The marketplace, Amazon sellers, depending on their blend between their own shopping cart versus the marketplace is probably 25 to 27% people like, all right Vinny, you know that cuz you studied a lot, honestly a little thing called the Google . And you could do real simple things like check in with trade associations of the type of work you do, ask some questions.
VF (11:16):
It’s actually much closer of an answer than you realize. You know, I subscribe to things like statistica and other survey things that allow me to extract some data for our data team and things. But even short of that, you there, that is a couple questions away. Like, like I’m not saying go put a Facebook post up of like, hey what should my profit margin be? Cuz you know, everyone’s gonna be a profit on that answer. So that may not be your best place. But there are things like that AJ that can give you a very clear, fair start to that so that you could have a, a base of something you can go after every company including fully accountable. Right? So we should profit about 25 to 28% if we’re in modes where we’re investing in something. That’s the next version of what we wanna add in this, in this case, we’re investing a lot in technology to try to remove some manual pieces to improve on error.
VF (12:13):
Well we’re gonna dip into the teens cuz I had another engineer to the team. Maybe I’ve staffed up a couple. So may right now we’re running at like 18% where we should be at 25. But I can explain to you where those seven points are because I have a baseline of knowing what I’m supposed to be. And I think that is one of the healthy things for a business is get a a a something to, to target after. So you have that and then you start looking at your leaky bucket. I’m not an accountant, I just started realizing where it was leaking cuz I was trying to shoot and needed to shoot for that number and now I can suddenly look at everything a little differently.
AJV (12:51):
Yeah. And it’s like that old saying, it’s like if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there . Exactly. It’s like you gotta, it’s basic goal setting, right? Set a goal doesn’t have to be necessarily legitimately what other people are doing. And I think some of that comes to the mindset that I know we’re gonna talk about a little bit of, it’s good to have perspective around what other people are doing and also go, but I could do it different. Like if this is what I really want, I could probably find a way to get there. So I am curious in a non-accounting perspective, how do you grow profits?
VF (13:23):
Yeah, so I, you know I I think one of the things that’s really amazing about our digital automation world today is that there’s tools that allow us to really get a bunch of stuff done quickly. I love that. One of the downside of automation is we wanna do that to every element of our business. And you know what, 83% of all companies in America are service companies. No. So if I were to say to our average client, Hey, what if I handed you 10 more clients right now, most of them was like, well no, maybe I’ll take four or maybe I’ll take three. Well then I’m like, well why are we using words like scale when you probably can’t even handle some of that growth? And we want, we’re so attracted to some of the automation pieces of growing our business that we get addicted to wanting to automate everything.
VF (14:17):
And so honestly, how do you build profit? I think you address, there’s two phase, probably three phases, but for sure two phases in business only about 7% of all companies America do 7 million of annualized revenue. So that means that the first goal is to actually acquire a customer that they, you have a, an offer that is a valuable proposition to them. The first phase of a business is to do that. The second phase is to improve its operations in its business process. A lot of us have that reversed. We have very little customers. We really want to improve all of it. When I’m like, no, you need some more customers and like, like
AJV (15:00):
Maybe
VF (15:01):
You should worry about that. So I think part of it is, is the phase of having a few more customers, but just a few more. Don’t hear. I need 60 more. Cuz part of my story is I worked really hard at my reputation in the market and mm-hmm. I cared and I still do about that. And so I think how do you build a profit one client at a time?
AJV (15:27):
I love that. I love that so much. As timely to this conversation as many people in the business community are talking about this bank run with S V B and the F D I C and government bailouts and rising interest rates and all the things banking. And it’s been really interesting to go. But if you look at what really happens, at the end of the day, it was a bunch of VC backed startups, really highly in the tech world. And most of them with most of their funding coming from investors, not from customers. Yep. And my husband and I had this really helpful conversation around, if you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business at some point, right? The funding will run out at some point. But you gotta have customers. So how much of our focus is really on sales, right? At the end of the day, marketing, but sales get more customers and once you have more customers, then improve operations, then upgrade the systems, but get the customers first. I love that.
VF (16:29):
Yep. And it’s really hard in fairness to everybody listening that habit switch of get the customer to then turn gears and cuz it’s at that point where I started to become the c e O, once I have a maturing operation, it’s at that point I have to switch gears from only worrying about acquiring a customer to now servicing them better, improving process, deliver efficiency. Like those are s you want those to be first things, but if we’re really honest, those are second things. Yeah.
AJV (17:00):
If you wanna survive. Yeah. If you wanna
VF (17:02):
Survive,
AJV (17:02):
If you wanna make it so good. I really love that. So onto this conversation of a little bit of this growth mindset versus scale mindset. I’d love to just hear your thoughts. They could be tactical, philosophical. Yeah, it could be whatever, but why grow? Why scale? What’s the difference between the two and which one should you do?
VF (17:23):
I heard a great quote. I asked the question at a conference. I actually was sitting in the green room, which, so that’s not a flex, it’s just true. Had a little one-on-one with one of the founders of Legal Zoom and then he was getting interviewed by the conference host. And so I was sitting relatively close and raised my hand and I said, Hey, when should a company worry about growth versus profit? And I loved his answer, it’s the way I think, so I’ll give him the credit. And I was delighted to hear a validation. He’s like, every company should worry about profit. The only ones that have a little bit of a different know the ones that are, are funded sufficiently to re worry about profit later. Hmm. And I’m like, oh boy. Okay, wait a minute. If that’s true, that sets the deck for everybody.
VF (18:14):
We’re all worried about pushing profit down the road Yeah. And worrying about like getting paid later, but building something and making all these excuses right now. So I think everyone is, has bought and sold a bill of goods that isn’t true. Businesses need to build the bedrock of healthy growth in place. Listen, I love these adages of 10 x and they sound super great. They do. They sound sexy. I want them all to be true. They just sound so good. I want all of that. And I’ve had some really amazing growth years, but things like two x two and a half x, three x are more in line with what looks like substantial growth for most of the marketplace. Mm-Hmm. unicorns are unicorns, which is why we call ’em that . But for most part, growth is a mindset of building out something stable.
VF (19:05):
That is at the point in my philosophy where scale starts to come discussion, like fully accountable has been in growth mode. It hasn’t only been recently with the breadth of clients we have and some of the technology we’re doing that I’m even starting to dream about the idea of exponential aspects of growth that could lead to things like scale. I can’t, I’m a growth person. I want scale to always be the thing it is talked about too much mm-hmm. as this thing everyone should do when honestly we need good, healthy, stable growth. And I suspect if more entrepreneur friends of ours believe that we probably could lower the breakage rate a little bit.
AJV (19:47):
So why do you think that is? Because I just know, like in my entrepreneur community and even in the brand builders group community, there is this tendency to go, it has to happen, it has to happen now and it has to be huge in order for it to mean anything. So like
VF (20:01):
Yeah, I think in the beginning, if you look at my story and look at my resume, my first good run was in figuring out the affiliate space in our web hosting company. And I realized, whoa, I just need like a bunch of people to send sales for me. And I remember in order to get affiliate to send me sale, I would always say to our, my affiliate managers, I want you to do everything for them. I want the link there. I want the creative there. I want you to deliver the creatives package the sizing back then I’m a little older aj, in case you didn’t notice. So the things didn’t always size well to the mobile phone. We wanted it on a desktop. Well I wanted all of that creative suite done for them. Mm-Hmm. and one of my young affiliate managers said, we’re doing everything. I’m like, the second it feels like work, no one wants to do it. So the problem with growth is it sounds like work. Mm-Hmm. And scale just sounds super fun, . And so of course I want scale, but growth requires an effort. And so we all want the thing that skips to the easy button line. We all want it. I’m guilty of it. We’re all guilty of it. And so it just sounds more enjoyable to scale than do all the work of growing.
AJV (21:05):
Yeah. It it is. It’s like, you know, that whole idea of like, build it and they will come. No, they don’t. No they won’t. . Maybe build ’em. You gotta tell everyone and then tell ’em again and again and again and maybe they will come. But I think there is a lot of that. I think the other, the other misconception that at least I see and experience in the marketplace and specifically the personal branding kind of like world right now is everyone talks about revenue. And they talk about how they had these, you know, six figure launch, how to make six figures in three days. How to, you know, 10 x your revenue, but yet no one talks about profitability. They talk where we know behind the scenes that a lot of these six figure launches lost six figures at the same time because of the amount of ad spend it took to get that. But that’s not the story being shared. And so
VF (21:54):
It doesn’t sound fun
AJV (21:56):
it
VF (21:56):
Just sounds way fun to say, I just put a hundred thousand dollars through the door even though I plus minus a thousand dollars left. Which is why I love that people like you are like, wait a minute, let’s really push into this subject because it is really what’s left. Not what comes, they have a correlation to each other. Right. You gotta drive revenue in order to be able to keep some revenue. I wanna be fair to that, but man, I, I had a big problem and I’ll be honest, I cared more about acquiring a new customer than keeping one.
AJV (22:28):
Hmm.
VF (22:29):
That was my big problem. That had to be fixed.
AJV (22:32):
Yeah. That’s a but that, that’s a big problem for a lot of people. So how’d you fix it?
VF (22:37):
Through a lot of medication and counseling now you know, school of hard knocks and honestly some personal development. I I had a lot of mindset stuff. I really had to take captive my thoughts. I spoke awful to myself. And I started to realize that I’m really good at acquiring a customer. And when I started seeing the metrics around what it costs to acquire one versus the reinvestment cost of keeping one, I’m like, holy cow, I’m working the same amount to work at getting a new customer. I could actually increase my runway of keeping a customer. And we took that health business breakage rate from like 15 to sub 10 and we were massively more profitable because we worried about keeping them buying a little longer. And it just slowly turned. It wasn’t this like cloud opening moment, but I just really got sick and tired of giving it all back.
AJV (23:34):
Yeah. I think that’s so important. It’s like if we spend as much time servicing, delivering and keeping our customers as we did getting them right now, some of us need to focus on getting ’em. Yeah. But once you have ’em, you also need to have a focus on keeping ’em, otherwise it’s just this, it’s exhausting revolving door. Now you kinda like tiptoed into this conversation around mindset. So I’m gonna just like, I’ll just blow the the door wide open on this conversation because I think this would be great. So you have a book called c e o Mindset. Yep. Right. And, and
VF (24:05):
They can have that free. All they gotta do is, we’ll, we’ll probably extort ’em an email out of ’em, but We’ll, if you live in America, we’ll mail you a nice fancy package. If you don’t,
AJV (24:16):
That’s awesome. That’s so awesome. But there’s a, a couple of things that I kinda like pulled out at, at a high level that I thought would be worth talking about. When it comes to kind of like the c e o mindset of first of all, what is a C E O mindset? Like what is the mindset that A C E O should have?
VF (24:37):
Yeah. So, you know, that’s really great. Right? And so first off, the title is used a lot in a lot of ways, right? And I, I wanna be fair with some of my presumptions of what A A C E O leads people. I, if, if you’re leading yourself, then okay, then wear two hats. You’re, you’re leading yourself in another role. I, I’m fine. I can have a c e O of one. I have personally never done that, but I can see where that doesn’t break down. But my C EShip and the way I see it is I have the privilege of being the leader of an organization of other people on the team. And so, you know, for me, my faith and who I am and what I stand in, and that’s important to me. Like obviously not every one in my company has a person of faith, but that’s super important to me.
VF (25:25):
And so I lead with attributes that I think of look to be really important. But I know someone mutual in your life that’s in mine, John Maxwell, and he did a study of executives and of all the traits that were most important to A C E O their integrity came out as the number one thing. And so I think first and foremost, I think the transparency and integrity of the C E O is hands down, the number one thing A C E O does, they leave people. And so since I’m left with the burden of leading people, depending on the complexity of your organization, I might be reading metrics and then conveying strategy and like helping to unblock blockages. But at its core, I’m helping to maximize the potential of the people on our team.
AJV (26:12):
I love that. And I love John Maxwell. Actually, our entire company is we have a book of the quarter club. Yeah. And so everyone has like, we kinda like all read a book and we’re actually reading how successful people think right now. And they’re easy, simple reads. But you, you said something there that really got me thinking and I was having actually having a conversation with a very successful entrepreneur friend of mine. She’s got wickedly successful med spas all over the west coast. And she was talking about just like, man, it’s like, ah, I got a a a a people problem. Right. A burden. Mm-Hmm. And we just had we’re both people of faith and we just had this conversation around like, what if we stopped looking at people problems as people problems and started looking at them like our ministry opportunities. Amen. Like, and it’s like, instead of looking at my business, like my job, it’s like, no, this is my ministry and these are the opportunities to per to minister. Not necessarily like I’m doing bathtub, bad baptisms at work meetings or anything. Yeah. I mean, I’ll, that’s not what I’m doing. But it’s this conversation around, it’s like, it, this isn’t a a problem, it’s a privilege. Right. This isn’t my work, it’s my ministry. And that just that those simple conversations that we tell ourselves of, it’s not a problem. It’s a privilege I’ve been
VF (27:29):
Given. Yeah. So take captive your thoughts, right? Yeah. So I think it is the battle of the mind and I think the c e o mindset around what it is, the privilege that I get to walk along other people’s burdens. Think, you know, I think one of the things that can be hard today is the world has the vision of humility backwards. Right? The world would say think of yourself like think less of yourself. Mm-Hmm. like you’re in a lower, actually, really, you should just be thinking of yourself less. Yeah. And so I’m always thinking about what our people, because I wanna be honest about something. I love it. I’ve talked to all these high principles. I, I need to admit something, Debbie, my wife knows I’m inherently lazy. I don’t want to do something twice . So I know if I invest in our people and I help it, I don’t want to do something again that I don’t think I should do again.
VF (28:24):
And so there are people who want to thrive in those positions. Hmm. And actually, if I can help them do that, I know that they’re going to be more satisfied in helping solve other people’s problems. So think about our CFOs and you work with one and if I can actually help him capture his strengths, his vision of what he can know that he can do to help you, I know that he’s going to have greater satisfaction which is going to impact him and his family, which will then ultimately impact you and will impact our team. I think the ripple effect of someone who understands the privilege to carry others’ burdens, now we have leadership and that’s the quote above my head, I think about every day without leadership, you know, no vision in people perish. Right? So I think that’s the burden of the privilege I get every day. And I love it. It’s super hard. I go home super exhausted when my brain is un empty from carrying others burdens. And when I’m done doing that or I’m tired, it’ll be time to tag out. Hmm.
AJV (29:23):
No, I think that’s, I mean, I think that’s, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if it’s about growing the business or, you know, it is, it is like both really. It’s like at, at the end of the day, as long as you’re focused on people, right? You’re gonna get more customers, you’ll keep more customers, you’ll get better employees and you’ll keep the good ones that you have. Right. But it’s about having this desired interest of like, I wanna invest in people. I remember, oh gosh, this was a long time ago. Don’t even, I can’t even give credit where credit is due on this. But I remember at some point in my life hearing this, and it has stuck with me and the conversation was around somebody had said like, I just don’t wanna spend all this time and all this money into all these new employees if they’re just gonna get up and leave. Mm-Hmm. , and I remember the speaker, author, whoever it was said, but what if they stay? Yeah. Like, what if you don’t do this? And they stay, like, where do you wanna be? Like, would you rather go through and invest and have the risk of them leaving, but have them high performing or have very average mediocre performance, but they stay a long time? What do you want?
VF (30:32):
Yeah. And so, you know, when we think about principles, you know, the CEO’s mindset, the principle there of that book is all about investing in people. So the best chapter in that is the people chapter not, and not actually that’s my favorite. The first two, the mindset and the people. And what I’m, why I’m saying that is I believe that small and medium as enterprises, importantly all of them, but really the smaller the enterprise, the, the key leader is really going to dictate the heartbeat and health of the company. And for me, my values, who I am, what I stand for are critically important. If I’m surrounding myself with people that I’m gonna invest in that don’t align with that, the organization’s most likely gonna have a heart attack. And so we only really hire for effort, attitude and ability. Mm-Hmm. And what we do is we think of competence, all things equal.
VF (31:27):
Great. We’ll take someone with a little bit more experience. Most people hire competence and then go try to train on the other items. Mm-Hmm. . And they’re mismatched and I, every one of us, including me, when we hire for competence first and, and don’t use our own elements of our scorecard or our core values, we can be very mismatched very quickly with people all the time. I hear people say, oh my gosh, Vinny, they, they all like sound like you. They act like this. I’m like, I hope they don’t all sound like me, but they all have common elements of the way we deliver. Because we work really hard at the people in this organization should be mostly aligned on those issues. And I can tell you there was times when I’ve shown up to one of my own companies where I didn’t even want to go inside. Mm.
AJV (32:15):
I’ve been there.
VF (32:16):
Yeah, buddy. That’s a problem that starts with me because I was building a, a culture of mismatched people who were highly competent.
AJV (32:24):
I mean, that is like, at the end of the day, it’s like people alignment is culture. Right? It’s finding people who already have alignment and then you’re just coalescing in this larger vision that is culture. Right? That is culture. That’s so good. I love that. So
VF (32:40):
I, the mindset around that, your question was like, where’s the mindset? Well, I have to be the custodian of that. Yeah.
AJV (32:46):
So,
VF (32:46):
You know, we have things about clients going too far. Well, uncle Vinny shows up and steps in between that if we have people taking plays off or they need a little bit of like love through a situation or somebody on the team commits some of the unforgivable offenses, well the vice principal shows up. Right. I’m the culture. If I’m part of the curation, I am at most definitely the top security guard.
AJV (33:12):
Yeah. The culture keeper. You’re the culture keeper. I love that. You said something that I wrote down that I thought would be worth exploring to just hear your thoughts. And I’m, I’m conscious of the time, so I only have two more questions. Very cool. Make sure we land it. But you mentioned earlier like you have to take captive your thoughts. Yep. How do you do that?
VF (33:35):
I, I, I’ll tell you this real quick. I, my daughter’s in the journey of getting serious with a young man and I asked her to come up with a list of the attributes she wants in a husband. And she’s like, God, that’s like a lot. I said, okay, I asked you an unfair question. Why don’t you gimme the list of things you don’t want? Oh, I can write that down. She was 10 down before she was even struggling. Yeah. Most of us know the things that don’t line up with us. Mm. And I ask people to create a non-negotiable list of the things that won’t work in their life. And so when you start getting things that sound untrue or not noble, or not praiseworthy, it’s like a, it’s like aspirin is to a headache. It takes the edge off. It’s like prayer is to anxiety.
VF (34:17):
It takes the edge off. Taking captive your thoughts is not getting too spiraling away in untruthful things. And you have these guideposts that keep you there. And then for me, the rest of that verse, which is super important, is then make ’em obedient to truth. What? Well, there is a truth there. So how do I make it obedient back to that? Well, I gotta be able to have this early warning system of where it, it gets all jacked up. And if I can’t do it, I hope and pray. I’ve got people around me who notice it quicker than me spiraling down. Debbie and I have a joke. If we’re in the pit, hopefully the other one doesn’t get pulled down in there with her.
AJV (34:52):
Oh, that’s so good. . That’s so good. They’re my, one of my favorite pastors who also happens to be an incredible author, his named Andy Stanley. And he did this entire awesome series a few years ago called Guard Guardrails. And I just remember, like my husband and I totally binge this on YouTube, this guardrail series. Cuz the whole thing was, if you don’t know truth, then you’ll never recognize lies. And it’s like, you gotta put up these guardrails to keep you on the, the straight and narrow. Right. And it’s like, but if you don’t know truth, then you’ll never recognize lies. And that’s so much of what I hear you saying. It’s like you’ve, it’s hard to take anything captive if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
VF (35:35):
That’s so true. And that’s why internal inventory, like, you know, we practice around my life, radical honesty. Mm-Hmm. , that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be kind. It shouldn’t be compassionate, it shouldn’t, you know, have a little more listening than, than less talking, which we’re not doing a good job of me on this show. Lots of talking . But you know, like all that’s personal inventory stuff. And the more that I’m growing in that everyone around us that I have the privilege to lead with and through grow as a result.
AJV (36:04):
Oh, that’s so, so good. There’s like so much wisdom in this conversation and I could probably easily have like 30 more questions to ask and then it would be like 4:00 PM and it’s a three hour podcast. However I’ll wrap it up to one last question. So in your opinion, because you’ve done this several times and you’re doing it now again, what do you think, if you had to pick one thing right now that you’ve done this a few times and you’ve had successful businesses, you’ve had growth, you’ve had scale, you’ve done it a few times. If you could look back and go, there is one common theme that I know across my businesses, your businesses business in general. When I see this one thing, I know that the likelihood of success is high.
VF (36:51):
So this is the easy answer. Statistically, almost no company has a an executed 10 year plan. And it’s funny, when I started to study that, I also noticed that a three year plan is really hard to do. What I noticed in successful organizations or successful people in life is that when they reach Crossroads, they’re honestly willing to take an inventory of the things that worked and didn’t work. Mm-Hmm. . And they’re the ones that make the necessary and sometimes really hard decisions on owning the things that didn’t work and choose to change those. I I can’t tell you how many of our clients, I could show you the roster who either know or get the advice and choose not to make those decisions. Mm-Hmm. and they’re definitely destined for mediocrity. But the ones who actually at that, that point of where you’re either leveling as a company or you have a tough situation or a person, the ones who, regardless of the amount of information necessary to make a decision, actually make those decisions you’re going to see evidence in breadcrumbs of a lot of success for people who do that.
AJV (38:01):
Hmm. Yeah. Let that in because it is hard to recognize mistakes and then actually do the hard work of changing those mistakes super hard. Y’all, I encourage you to check out this amazing gift that Vinny and his team has put together. I will put this in the show notes, but again, go to fully accountable.com/influential personal brand. They have offered up wickedly awesome free stuff. And yeah, you may have to hand over your email, it’s worth it. Do it. Also to learn more about fully accountable, which as a paying customer and a, a long-term paying customer, I would say I have referred them many times over. And so reach out to fully accountable.com. You can reach out to anyone at Brain Builders Group and we’re happy to do a handheld introduction in. But it’s been super helpful on so many different levels both at the bookkeeping accounting and the fractional side.
AJV (39:02):
It’s been insightful, it’s been helpful. It’s allowed me so much of my time back to do what only I can do to feel like I have a, a team that in the event something do doesn’t go right, there’s a whole company behind it to make it go right. Which you don’t always get that if it’s just your full-time employee. So there’s a, a real benefit of having a company behind that with a varied set of skills and so highly recommend them. And then of course, you’ve got two awesome books that you should also check out Co mindset and a whole bunch
VF (39:32):
Of other resources we threw in there for you too. So it’s great.
AJV (39:36):
So generous. Thank you so much. Thank you for giving us your time on this show. This episode was phenomenal and again, we’ll put it in the show notes, but go to fully accountable.com and slash influential personal brand and grab some of those assets. Benny, thank you so much,
VF (39:53):
Aj. Thanks for having me today. It was really a joy.
AJV (39:55):
Yeah. And everybody else, stay around. Stay tuned for the recap episode that will be coming out in just a couple of days. We’ll see you next time.

Ep 379: How To Keep The Money You Make | Shannon Weinstein Episode Recap

AJV (00:02):
All right, y’all, let’s talk about how to keep more of the money you earn, right? You’re making money now. Let’s talk about some key ways to help you keep some more of that moolah that you’ve been working for. Had a great conversation with a friend and a client, a brand builders group, and I thought I would just take some of these highlights of this awesome conversation around money and taxes and financial literacy and bring them to you. And a couple of like key points. So I’m so excited for this because I personally learned so much from this conversation, so I know that you are too. So here’s a couple of things. Financial literacy is a skillset that you must learn as a business owner and entrepreneur. That does not mean you have to do all of it. That does not mean you need to know everything, but it, it does mean that you have responsibility to know enough that you can make good decisions for your business without just going, Nope, I’m gonna hand that over to the professionals.
AJV (01:05):
Hope they do a great job, and none of it’s my responsibility. That’s not true. It is your responsibility. In fact, the number one reason that small businesses fail is a lack of funding. They run outta money. And that means that they did not have a good, healthy stance on when the money was coming in and when the money was going out, right? That’s cash flow, right? And so there’s a few things that you can do to better understand your financials and manage your cash flow to make sure that you stay in business and you keep more of that money. So here’s a couple of things that we talked about is one is just account dispersion, right? In light of all the things happening with like the S V B banking situation and the F D I C insurance and interest rates and all kinds of market volatility there are some things that you can really do to that makes a difference.
AJV (01:57):
One you need to have account dispersion. You need to have account that’s for everyday operating expenses. Then you have an account that is really your reserve. Used to people would say, keep four to six months of your operating expenses in a reserve account for emergency purposes. I e like covid the pandemic, right? If you didn’t have that am that amount of money in reserve, you likely did not end the pandemic still in business today. However, people are suggesting six to eight months, that’s a lot of money. That’s not a part of your everyday operating cash flow. But that’s a good necessary thing of going. You need that as that backup reserve, right? That emergency fund and the na or in the terms of Dave Ramsey, then actually have a tax account, have a tax savings account where every single month you take 20, 25, 30%, whatever you think you’re gonna end up in terms of your tax bracket, pull that out of your earnings every single month and stick it at a tax account.
AJV (02:57):
So you’re not surprised with a six figure plus bill at the end of a really successful year. And now you’re going, whoa, we can’t afford to pay that right plan for in advance. Now, this is not my money. This now belongs to America and put it in your Little America tax fund and keep it separate so you have a good accurate standing of the cash flow, not only of today, but where it’s gonna be in 3, 6, 9, 12 months from now. Then also have a fourth account that is your true like savings and fundraising for the business. So what are the things that you want to do in the business that you need to start setting money aside for? Maybe you want to buy a commercial building. Maybe you want to do a new website. Maybe you want to do this education or this course, or this mastermind, whatever it is.
AJV (03:44):
You have your reserve fund, which is for the operating functions of the business, but then you have a savings or fundraising fund to go. And these are things that we wanna do. So if we can’t afford them right now, we’re going to start putting money aside so that we can’t afford to them one day without impacting everyday cash flow, account dispersion. Simple, not easy, super important, right? Next is like mindset, right? Know the goal for your money, but you actually need to know like, what are the financial goals that I have for me and the company? Somewhat simple, but often we don’t take the time to go, what is the goal of what I’m doing, what I’m working for? Like what, what am I actually trying to do with this? Then you have to know where your money is going, right? I love this little saying of, I don’t even, I can’t even give credit where credit is due.
AJV (04:30):
It’s been so long, but before you expect you must inspect. So you have to know when your money is going out and when the money is coming in. Simple but not easy, right? You’ve gotta know like when every month or every week of every month, do typically expenses go out and when does revenue come in? That’s cash flow, right? But you’ve gotta do some inspecting before you can create any level of expectation of what’s going to help healthily grow the business. Then you gotta understand like the, the cadence and the sequence of that flow. Is there regularity to it or well, or do you work in seasons where there’s a launch and then there’s a long pause and a launch and a long pause? Are you in a recurring business model where there’s that natural cadence where I can expect that, you know, between the 15th and the 28th, most of all of my recurring payments come in during this time period.
AJV (05:23):
I make payroll on these dates and that’s when the money is going out on these periods. So some of it is just knowing the cadence and the flow of when the money comes and when the money goes based on the type of business that you have. Is it a recurring model? Is it a, you know, buy one at a time kind of model? Is it a launch season model? What does that look like? And then last but not least, it’s knowing how to save and reduce your tax liability. Okay? So that’s the last thing I’m gonna talk about some, some somewhat quickly here. Here are four quick things that you should go and research. I am not a tax professional, I’m not a financial professional, I’m an entrepreneur. So these are just things that you should go and research on your own.
AJV (06:05):
Talk to your CPA financial planner, a professional who’s accredited, who has a license in this. These are just ideas to bring to them, okay? Number one, if you’re an L L C, make sure you’ve got the s corp election. If you qualify for that that allows you to avoid much of the self-employment taxes. Also allows you to qualify for the 1 91 99 a deduction. Okay? So that’s the first thing. Just take that to your professional, right? Look it up, take it to them. Second is the Augusta election, right? So can you rent out your home that is not currently used in use for any sort of everyday business expenses for business events? So client gatherings, company gatherings weekly meetings, monthly meetings, annual meetings. But the Augusta election allows you to run out your home tax free for 14 days. It does require documentation comparison.
AJV (06:59):
There’s a lot of work that goes into it, but that would be worthy of going, do I qualify for that? Could be a really good strategy. Number three, home office deductions, right? The percentage of the square footage of your home that is solely dedicated that you can prove to actual business expenses. You can take that same percentage of your square footage and apply that to all of the household expenses that you have. Your internets electric utilities all the things, right? Maintenance. so do the work, have it documented and talk to your professional . The last but not least is are your kids eligible to be employees? Can you hire your kids to work for you? Previous years you could pay them up to $12,500 tax free. Now it’s up to $13,850 tax free. But you need to make sure that the age ma matches the payment and the payment matches the job.
AJV (07:58):
So you cannot the example my friend Shannon gave is, you cannot hire your two-year old to be your co your core here, right? Your driver that is not gonna work out. But do you have positions in your business? And I will just give this a quick example for me. I am a, I have a personal brand, right? I have a lifestyle personal brand about motherhood and entrepreneurship. I speak about it, I blog about it, I podcast about it. And so I hire my kids as child models so that I’m not renting children that aren’t my kids to be the child model. So why not pay my kids for that? So for photo shoots and all that, I looked up, if I had to hire an agency to hire child models, what would I pay per hour? You gotta do all the math. I created a contract, I did all the things. Then they could be legitimate employees even at younger ages. But you gotta have a legitimate reason with legitimate proof in order
AJV (08:54):
For these things to work for you, right? So that is super high level that is not even scratching the surface of all the things that you can be doing, should be doing to have a better grip on how do you keep more of the money that you earn. But those are some high level things from a recent conversation, and I know if it was that impactful for me, you’ve got to be able to take something from it too. So, hope you enjoyed it. Hope at least one of those gives you some ideas of how to keep more money that you earn.

Ep 378: 4 Financial Facts That Will Help You Keep More Of The Money You Earn with Shannon Weinstein

AJV (00:01):
Hey y’all, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand podcast. And y’all, let me tell you, this is an episode that you want to listen to. So before I formally introduce my friend, Shannon, I need you to know why you need to stick around all of you. And I don’t care how much of it you have, but all of you make money. I don’t care if it’s a dollar or a billion dollars. You got some amount of dollars in your banking account. And here are the three things we’re gonna talk about when it comes to your money today. One, we’re gonna talk about how do you keep more of the money that you’re making? Who doesn’t want that? So you’re making it, how do you keep more of it, number one. Number two, there is no minimum income level to benefit and learn from what we’re gonna talk about today.
AJV (00:53):
This is not for billionaires, millionaires, or thousands of errors, . This is for anyone who has dollars, all right? And it’s like there is no minimum amount. These are skills and tools and mindsets that you need to have when it comes to money. It doesn’t matter how much that you have. So there’s no minimum requirements to be a part of this conversation. And then number three, which is, this is just a precursor to just a little bit of what you need to know when it comes to keeping more of that money. The number one tool that you need to have in that toolbox of yours is understanding cash flow. You can have money on a p and l statement and not have money in your banking account. So how do we understand cash flow to help us ha, help us have a happy, healthy financial business?
AJV (01:38):
So without further ado, I’m going to give you a formal introduction of my friend Shannon Weinstein, and we’re gonna talk about all things money. But before we do that there’s a couple of things that you may want to know about Shannon. So I’ll give her a quick formal background overview, and then I will let her tell you guys a little bit about herself. So Shannon is a c p a. So, so she actually has credentials in this money conversation, always a bonus. She’s also a fractional c f o for growth minded business owners, emphasis on the growth minded. She’s a teacher at heart. Her real life relatable example, simplify, which I think is really important, help make easy the financial side of business so you can stop stressing and start scaling. She’s also the host of the most awesome, keep What You Earn podcast, which I got to be a guest on a few weeks ago. And I’m so, so, so excited to get to swap the roles today and be the interviewer, not the interviewee. So without formal ado, Shannon, welcome to the show.
SW (02:45):
Thank you so much for that intro. I really appreciate it.
AJV (02:47):
I’m so happy to be here and have this conversation because I think the best thing about being a podcast host is all this free training, free coaching. Amen.
SW (02:58):
Amen. Amen. Same here
AJV (03:00):
As host. And so to help our audience get to know a little bit about you, I would love for you to kind of just give, like, how did you end up doing this, right? As a C P A? It’s like, right, we know that the trajectory that you were on, but somehow something took you off course to get you to where you are today. So give us a little of the backstory.
SW (03:22):
So nobody grows up in like second grade, and when they ask you what you wanna be, when you grow up, you say c p a. So there’s always an origin story that that deviates from. Well, when I was a kid, I really wanted to work with numbers and spreadsheets. In fact, spreadsheets didn’t exist, I think when I was that age. So I, I lost a bet with my dad and ended up majoring in accounting wi willingly, willingly. But it was, it was fun because what I realized was numbers were a language that I spoke and I actually loved language. I wanted to be a Spanish teacher, believe it or not. And I I fell in love with languages and teaching languages and speaking different languages. And I was like, this is so cool. We can communicate through these different ways and people understand different things.
SW (03:59):
Hmm. So in learning all that, I was fascinated by it. And then I took an accounting class again, a dare from my dad. He’s like, take this and if you hate it, I’ll stop bugging you about, you know, taking over my firm and being my protege and all this stuff, right? And, and I took it and I was like, I actually love this. Hmm. And I realized that it was something it took to me easily, and my dad sat me down and said, this is the language you need to teach people. So that is exactly how it happened. I’ve always been kind of a teacher in the back of my mind and couldn’t wait to share knowledge, teach it. Every time I learned something, I go, how will I explain this when I pass it on? And that has been the, the kind of the anchor point for everything I do since then. You know, working in corporate, working in big firms, and then eventually starting my own practice.
AJV (04:43):
I love that whole piece about numbers is a language because it is like, it really is. And then the financial acumen of knowing what numbers are make up the most important parts of the language, I think is a really important thing that, I mean, I’m just going back thinking in my college days, like, you know, I had a business minor. I actually was a Spanish minor, so also love language. But there, you know, I remember those accounting classes and I’m like, I retained nothing. There was nothing of actual value, real world personal or professional value that I can recall from any of my college courses. Now, perhaps that was my college of choice, who knows? But I do think as we kind of enter in, I also believe that most people didn’t expect to be entrepreneurs, right? They developed into that without having developed some of the financial acumen to help them keep more of the money that you’re earning. And so, I’m gonna start with what I think is what you said. The most important kind of thing is understanding this language with the number one tool, being understanding cash flow. So walk us through, and let’s just like take it down to the basics. What is cash flow? How do you know if you have it? And how do you start learning the language of going, all right, this is actually something I should be looking at as a business owner.
SW (06:09):
So another fun fact about me is that I worked in fitness for about 10 years. So most of my analogies are related to fitness, but I think it’s something everyone can relate to cuz everyone has hated a workout or been on a diet or seen a diet or something before. So it, it’s really relatable and I look at cash flow as your business’s metabolism. Mm-Hmm. So it’s how, at what pace and through what timing are you bringing cash in and paying cash out and paying cash out comes in the form of both expenses. And when you take money out of your business to pay for things personally. So you have to be looking at, are you consuming what your business is producing at the rate that you need to be? Or are you consuming more than your business can produce? And you’re tapping into the back reserves and you’re actually at a sort of a deficit in terms of what you’re bringing out of the business.
SW (06:56):
And what you may not realize is that could be happening even if your bur business is turning a profit mm-hmm. because you’re just pulling more than what your profit is producing. And you may not realize, you just see the bank account and you see a certain number and that’s the metric. But that’s like looking at the scale on a given day and measuring your overall health. Yeah. You don’t know what’s behind that number. That is one data point. So unless you understand how rapidly that is changing, then you don’t really know what that number is telling you.
AJV (07:23):
Hmm. That’s so good. I love thinking about it like the metabolism, right? It’s like, you know, because it’s, it’s easy to think about. It’s like if you eat more than you burn, eventually you’re gonna gain some bees, right? Exactly. And if you burn more than you eat, eventually you’ll lose some bees. So it’s like being able to think about it that way really does make it easy. So what are some of the best tips of like, where, where should you start of going, okay, I don’t do this, haven’t been doing this, I get it, I should be doing it. Where do you start?
SW (07:53):
So I recommend anyone who’s brand new to the idea of cash flow, sit down with maybe a month or six weeks. I say four to six weeks of a cash flow forecast. Don’t get scared, but it actually makes sense when you break down the weeks across the top and let’s say a spreadsheet, or you can, you could even draw it, it doesn’t matter. But across the top you have all the weeks for about four or six weeks. And then you list out every way money comes in, every way money goes out. And you can look at your bank statements as a hint as to where things are going. And you can kind of figure out, Hmm, this is how much money I have now, this is how much I’m expecting to come in each month. This is how much is going out each month. And then the bottom is your cash flow.
SW (08:30):
It’s pretty simple. And accountants like to make it more complicated by throwing jargon in the mix and calling it different things and different labels and cash flows from operations. And it’s like, let’s just keep it simple to what’s coming in, what’s going out and what is happening at the bottom. Cuz I think most entrepreneurs will be surprised to realize that they actually have negative cash flow. Hmm. And that that can be, again, it’s not bad. One month of negative cash flow is not bad, but as a habit and as a consistent habit, it can actually lead to the downfall of a business. It’s the number one reason small businesses fail according to surveys is lack of cash flow or capital. But unfortunately a poor cash flow, you don’t realize until it becomes a problem. Yeah. Like a real problem. It’s kind of like how you don’t realize you’ve been eating too much until the jeans don’t fit. And by then you’re like, it’s kind of too late. I gotta go buy new jeans. So it, you don’t wanna get to that point where it becomes uncomfortable and those problems surface and you really feel the symptoms. You wanna be able to identify those before they become a problem.
AJV (09:29):
So this is, I think this is such a great conversation specifically for entrepreneurs and small businesses, small business owners. I, I think also in this, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and philosophy on this. Like one of our, you know, we’re, we’re Dave Ramsey people, so we’re net free livers. You don’t have to subscribe to all things Dave Ramsey to acknowledge like not having lots of debt isn’t a bad idea. If for no ever reason, then peace. So we’ve always kind of been of this, you know, belief that we self fund, right? We don’t have investors, we don’t have loans, we don’t, we don’t, we just, we self fund. And so one of the things, and I don’t know who taught us or where we learned this along the way, but it’s been, it’s been a true saving grace of we actually, and I’m just like, this is again, philosophical question. What is your take on the amount of money that a good healthy business should keep on hand? And both ordinary day-to-day operations, but then also in reserves. So kinda like your emergency fund above what you need on a daily operating level.
SW (10:37):
So I believe that you should have four to six months in a normal economy of expenses of what I call your monthly burn. So I think your monthly burn, if I were to define that, is anything that you’re committed to spending, whether you make a sale or not. So if that’s the rent for your building or that’s the subscriptions that you’re on or your software or whatever, where if you don’t bring a sale in, you still got these bills coming in, then I would say that could be your team, your management team, your operations, right? So I look at monthly burn and that cashflow forecast is part of that too is like, what’s the burn gonna be over time? Mm-Hmm. But it, it literally is calorie burn. It’s like, what are you burning if you’re doing nothing? If you’re not moving at all, what is the minimum amount you’re gonna be burning every month in cash?
SW (11:18):
Yeah. And I look at that and say that times, let’s say six is what I wanna make sure I have in the bank account at any given point in time. And right now we’re recording this amidst pretty much chaos in the financial industry and a lack of understanding of, of banking and what’s going on. And I go now, I would say six to eight. Wow. I would say six to eight because you just wanna make sure that in turbulent times that you feel extra secure. I mean, look what happened with Covid, that was definitely an evident example of who wasn’t keeping an emergency fund. And I think that you wanna be ready for six. I mean, we literally had six months shutdown. Like we, we’ve been saying this for years, six months in, in the bank. And then I think all the accountants looked around and said, holy crap we were right , like, like people literally shut down for six months and those who who had that advice were like, oh, we’re gonna be okay until August or whatever. And, and I think that you just wanna be ready, you just wanna know that you’re ready and you can tap into that if you absolutely need to. But I think having a good emergency fund of four to six months on a normal day and maybe six to eight if you wanna be a little extra safe is a good bet. And I think that’s reflective of what the cost to operate from payroll, to subscriptions to rent and so on. That’s what goes into the emergency fund.
AJV (12:31):
Yeah, I think that’s really helpful. And you know, you brought up something because we are recording this in the light of what an interesting time with S V B and the government and this bank run and volatility and interest rates and we could go on and on and on. So completely a side thought that just came to my mind because I called up our personal banker as probably the majority of small business owners understood on Monday. I’m like, so let’s talk about my account dispersion and coverage and all the things here. And so I’m curious to kind of get your thoughts. And you can be as vague or as specific as you like around just how important it is to even know the types of accounts that you have in the bank because we definitely are in the middle right now of going, oh, we need to move this here and move that there, and we need to close that account and open this type of account. And that all came in light of somebody else’s tragedy. But there’s great lessons for all of us to learn. So would love any thoughts or insights you would have to share on this really unique time that we’re in when it comes to money and accounts, what type of accounts you need and how many and all the things.
SW (13:48):
So of course it’s gonna vary based on your goals, right? Like the number, like the number of accounts you need, what types of accounts you need. It’s gonna depend on what purpose each account serves and what mission it has. So my, my philosophy on it is, there’s a couple of things. One, my husband and I specifically, if we’re talking about the personal end, and you can do this for your business as well, I do this with my clients as A C F O, but we go through every quarter and we take stock and inventory. Where’s our money? What accounts is it in? Is it doing its job? Hmm. So if we have too much in the checking account, I go, do we really need all that money in the checking account? Can we move it to a high yield savings, getting 4% interest? You know, can we move this over here?
SW (14:24):
Like, is everything doing the job we want it to do? And we just have a, a checkpoint every quarter at a minimum. We have that kind of on the calendar at the end of every quarter to just go through and do a quick update and to do our own little family balance sheet. Now, of course I’m an accountant, so of course we’re gonna do this. And Jason and I, my husband, we’re nerds. But it’s a good habit to just take stock of everything, be aware of where your money’s at. Because when this happened, we weren’t worried. We knew where the money was, we knew what it was doing, and we knew we were under the insured insured limits. So we got nothing to worry about. So we weren’t making any phone calls. We were, we were cool, but the most people get into panic mode and they go, I don’t know where my money is.
SW (15:04):
And I said, well, I think that starts with that. It starts with the awareness of where your money is and also knowing what the goals are. So if you’re in a business, for example, and this goes back to business owners, right? Of if you have everything in checking and you have like multiple hundreds of thousand dollars in checking, I would say if I were your C F O and I see that, I go, do you really need that much? Is that really six months worth of operating expenses, especially for service-based businesses who may have, you know, not that many expenses. Hmm. I say take some of that, put it in high yield savings, take some of that, put it in the tax savings account, take some of that, put it into like an investment account for like that rainy day fund, but make sure that that’s earning interest for you.
SW (15:39):
Make sure that you’re letting your money work for you and that you can call on it if you need to, if you need to keep it liquid. We call it liquid meaning ready access to it. So you don’t have to sell anything to cash it out. And, and that’s what I would encourage people to do is just be mindful of how you’re managing your money and aware of where it is and just make sure that you’re clearly defined on what goal every dollar has for you so that you know if it’s doing that or not.
AJV (16:04):
Yeah. So you just again said something that I wanna kind of like take this rabbit trail naturally here because this is, again, one of those like real simple but really important things of actually having different accounts to properly save for things like taxes. And it’s like we, I have just found like for both us personally and us professionally, it’s like, I don’t know if I’m embarrassed or proud to say this, but it’s like we have like 13 different banking accounts and I’m just like, this is the savings for this thing and this is the savings for that thing. But a lot of it’s not about, it’s, I I can’t, this is not money I can use for every day function. Like this is every single month I take, you know, basically 35% of our earnings and I just stick it in this tax savings account for a rainy day. Right. One day it’s gonna have to come out. But yeah, like I’d love to hear some thoughts and best practices around like, how can entrepreneurs, small business owners go, okay, I have everything in one or maybe just two accounts. What are some of those accounts that would be really good for me to really start developing as my business matures?
SW (17:09):
So I I bel I subscribe to this idea of I think it’s Parkinson’s law that like things will take up the space you give them. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s why we, it’s why we cram before exams and do our assignments the night before. Right? If you gave me two days, I would get the same work done as in two weeks. I just do it the day before . So the idea behind that law and why it relates to your bank is if you are a business owner and you open your checking account on your online banking and you see $200,000 in there, guess what you’re gonna think, I got money to spend. I can do all these things with that. That’s, I could pay for that mastermind, I can pay for, I can pay ahead, I can pay, you know, all these things. I’m rich.
SW (17:45):
You feel like you’re a scooch McDuck in the vault, swimming in the dollars . And then you realize, oh wait a minute, I got that money in the bank cuz I did a launch and I have to make that last three months. Oops. But you don’t realize, you see that money and it makes you feel something and it makes, it changes how you think. It changes how you say yes or no to things. It changes. It’s like I can afford it, therefore I will do it. And, and I wanna be careful with that. And where I’m going with this is when you’re, when you’re designing how you’re gonna organize these accounts, I would say these outta sight outta mind concepts of when you take the money, like as soon as it comes in, just like you said, aj, take a certain percent and put it to taxes.
SW (18:26):
And if you’re taking it out of pure revenue, you can round down a little bit. I say between 20 and 25% if you’re in California, sorry, it’s on the higher end of that, probably more. But it depends on your federal and state tax rates. But you’re gonna want to set aside that money and set it and forget it because your paycheck used to do that for you. They don’t do it for you anymore. So you gotta have the discipline to go move that money and say, that is not my money. I’m hanging onto that for the government, but that is not my money to spend. And then same thing, if you wanna save up I have a particular client right now who’s saving up to buy a license to be able to use certain imagery on her products. So what we’re doing is we actually created a quote unquote sinking fund.
SW (19:05):
So every time she makes a sale, a certain amount goes into that towards the saving. It’s almost like putting coins in that piggy bank when you were a kid and going, I’m gonna save up for my first whatever. Like I did that to save up for my PlayStation mm-hmm. . So it’s the same concept of throw a few here and there, here and there until you’re reaching that goal of like fundraising for your business mm-hmm. . So we actually do that with clients all the time. We set up multiple accounts under their bank account and we use it for different purposes for their payroll, for their savings, things like that. So when you give your money a mission and you have a way to measure it, you’re much more likely to be successful in accomplishing that.
AJV (19:41):
Love that. So good. So good. So, okay, so on the note of measuring it, what would you say, you know, on the topic of how do you keep more of the money that you earn? What are the things we need to be looking at? What are the things that we need to be measuring? What actually can we do to keep more of this money that we’re working for?
SW (20:01):
So as I mentioned before, it’s, it starts with the cashflow forecast or create the initial awareness of where is my money actually going? And then being aware to go, Hmm, well do I want it going there? Is that, is that aligned with my mission? And one thing I always do with my clients is we go back to their three goals or I call their components of their why goals. So it’s like three levels of why. It’s like why are you doing this business? What are you trying to accomplish with this? Like the, the why, why, why, right? And if these expenses don’t serve that or anchor to that, I ask all the time, is this something you really want to do? This something you actually need? Or is this something you think you need? Because so and so is also doing this. Like, do you need to be doing that?
SW (20:41):
And not to be the Debbie Downer, right? , but we wanna be able to to minimize extra costs mm-hmm. and be able to really hone in on what is actually serving the mission. And then I also look at keeping more of what you earn is also understanding the flow of when it’s coming and going so that you can plan. And if that launch brings in a bunch of money, you know exactly how long that’s gonna last you and what your goals are for that launch because you’re aware of what you’re gonna spend over the next, let’s say three or four months. So you’re going, in order for me to do this, I need to do this in terms of selling. And I think that’s a, that’s a big piece of it. The other part of keeping more of what you earn naturally every entrepreneur’s biggest expense is what
AJV (21:23):
Taxes.
SW (21:23):
Exactly. So when you, when you look at taxes, right, it’s saving for your taxes, but it’s also strategizing and it’s also figuring out how can I reduce my tax liability as much as possible using business strategies that maybe I wasn’t taught in school. Because if they teach you these things, they don’t make as much money.
SW (21:45):
Wait, imagine if, imagine if Target taught a course on how to use coupons at their store. Yeah. Right. That wouldn’t benefit them and welcome to our education system. Yeah. So they’re not gonna teach you how to use the coupons. What you have to do is figure it out. You have to start hunting for your own little hacks and and things like that. And to do so legally cuz everything’s in the tax code. It’s just that nobody wants to read that rule book. They want to find someone who read it who can explain it to them. And that’s what we try to do in, in our profession. And and tax strategy is probably the number one thing that can help entrepreneurs save money in taxes that they didn’t even know they were overpaying.
AJV (22:20):
Oh my gosh. This, I don’t know how accurate this statement is, but I remember I was on like a, a two year mission when we started Brand builders goo group to reorient myself to tax law, tax changes, all the things that had changed in the, you know, at that time there were new administration and Yep. And just also getting reacquainted with how do we want to set things up. When we started Brand Builders Group, and I remember in one of the courses that I had bought, they had said, just like most rules tax rules are also built with adjustments, right? And with I would say not that rules are meant to be broken, that’s not it. But it’s like, and this was like the example, and again, don’t quote me on this, but it’s like the tax code is like, I don’t know, I re easy math a thousand pages of which actual tax rules are like 30 pages and the rest of them are the different caveats to the rule. Is that true
SW (23:23):
? It is 5%. I’ll, I’ll say it this way. 5% of the tax code is how to pay taxes. 95% is how to not pay taxes. So the the, it is actually true. So there’s only about a, there’s only a, you know, a, a decent amount of afternoon reading of how the tax cut actually works and what is taxable. And then there’s a ton of stuff, hundreds if not thousands of pages of how to avoid taxes legally by doing, by doing behaviors. The government incentivizes. Yeah. Like donating to charity, owning property, creating jobs, retirement funds. So as the government decides they want their citizens to execute on these certain activities like buying electric vehicles, solar panels, things like that, they start offering these tax incentives to people to say, we want you to do go do more of this and we will pay you for it.
SW (24:15):
Essentially. We’ll we will make sure that you don’t pay taxes on that. So that that way you’re encouraged to do it. That is at the simplest level what it is not to mention this is gonna make it sound so less glamorous, but they literally write tax code to benefit the senators and the congresspeople. So for example, I’ll give you guys an example. When you sell a house, if you’ve lived in that house for two of the last five years, you don’t have to pay taxes on your profit up to a certain amount of money. The reason they did that, guess what the congress person’s term is two years.
AJV (24:51):
So Bo guess .
SW (24:53):
Exactly. But they did that so that they could relocate to another home because they were living in their constituency and then they would have to move so they wouldn’t have to pay the appreciation on their profit. So understand if you live like a congressperson
AJV (25:07):
good,
SW (25:08):
That was actually written for them,
AJV (25:11):
It’s really built to benefit the elected officials. Exactly. So we have to think in those, they wrote it Uhhuh , they
SW (25:18):
Wrote the rule book who, if you had access to the pen and paper to write the rule book, wouldn’t you write rules that kind of work in your favor? And that’s exactly what they’re doing. And of course they represent their constituency, but they’re, they’re also thinking, well I don’t wanna sign and get myself screwed with my, my real estate here. So think about that. Like it really is that simple and it’s like, Shannon, did they really do that? I go, wouldn’t you? Yes. ,
AJV (25:44):
I mean it’s it, but it’s just like kinda one of those things. I just remember being in that ring. Like 5% are the rules. 95% are the exception to the rules. Exactly. Come again, I need to really learn these exceptions. Right? Yep. And it’s like, and at the same time I can’t learn all of them. So give us some hacks. What would you say are like your three to five, like no-brainer, you must be doing this tax saving strategy if you’re in business.
SW (26:10):
So I would say just to, to make sure you guys know how accessible these strategies are. I think once you’re making about 50 K in profit or more, you have tax strategies available to you. So if, if you, if you immediately dismiss that and say, well I’m not rich enough to do strategies, wait for it. Because there’s always a way to plant the seeds now and then be able to take advantage later. I would say number one for me, and I just love it, is the S corporation once you elect to be taxed as an S corp, which is just an outfit we throw on your corporation or your L L C so that the government doesn’t make you pay self-employment tax on a certain part of your profit. And all that really is, is you’re saving so much money with every dollar of profit that you keep.
SW (26:52):
And as you grow, you’re just saving year over year over year. And if you’re not doing that, you can be overpaying so much money in self-employment tax. And it really is as simple as making an election and faxing four pieces of paper to the i r s to avoid so many thousands of dollars in taxes. And I think that many entrepreneurs aren’t even aware of this or they’re a little bit suspicious of it, like it’s too good to be true. And I go, it isn’t because a lot of these guys in congress started these companies and they started doing this. So so it’s absolutely legit strategy and if you’re in good shape with your bookkeeping and you’re compliant and you’ve paid all your taxes so far, you’re in great shape to implement that as well. That’s one of my favorite hacks.
AJV (27:32):
So on that note, so we are an L L C with, you know, the S corp tax selection. And one of the things I think would be great is going, you know, well now that you’re technically an employee of the business, what is an adequate salary to pay yourself so you don’t get flagged Yep. But also so that you are receiving the actual benefit of doing such. This thing.
SW (27:55):
I think the biggest mistake people make with this reasonable salary requirement on an S corp is they, they just kind of pull it out of thin air. We go through a comprehensive analysis where we actually look at comparables, we analyze your time, we analyze your region, we, we look at what people are getting paid to do your job and we look at how much time you’re spending in versus on your business. And we do a comprehensive analysis with our S corp clients twice a year to make sure that their compensation is reasonable and it can be backed up in the case of an audit. And this gets to the point of the strategy is only good as what you write down because if you can’t tell the story through documentation and evidence, your deductions will get disallowed. Yes. So it’s just as important to know the strategy and to go implement it properly with the right evidence, illustration, and storyline that that talks for itself. Then you don’t have to actually explain or you know, have to fight with an i r S agent in an audit you have all the evidence that backs it up.
AJV (28:50):
So what would be some of the evidence documentation that you would recommend?
SW (28:54):
So for, let’s say for the salary, right? I would want comparable jobs in my region. I would want to see maybe a calendar of like, show me how you spend your time. Show me a bit of how you work on your clients. Right. I would just say a lot of that can be proven just because it is the business owner, they are the expert. But a great example too is another tax hack, which is called the Augusta Rule, which Oh yeah, we may have heard about where you can rent out your primary residence to your business for up to 14 days a year at the market rate of rent for a meeting space. Yeah. But when you’re picking that rate of rent for the meeting space, you gotta have comparables. You gotta be able to show that that’s a fair rental rate. Cuz if you’re charging 10 grand a day for your house in Nashville, I’m like, well the Marriott doesn’t charge that, so we gotta figure out how you feel like you can actually, unless
AJV (29:45):
You are in Nashville and then they do .
SW (29:49):
True. But if you wanna host a like three person meeting in your space, it’s kind of like, well you don’t need, you know, the Gran Ole Opry to, to do that. So we actually look at, you know, what is a reasonable comparable rental rate. You know, what is what, what could we use as a basis to argue this is how much we’re gonna deduct and why that would be acceptable by the I r s. So there’s a lot of stuff that you have to do on the backend to prepare to make your case.
AJV (30:17):
Yeah. You know, that’s so good. This, you know, I think both of these are super helpful and it’s, and then it’s like, you know, I’m curious, I mean it’s, I think it’s, we still have like two years with a 1 99 a you know, business deduction with a passthrough, right? Mm-Hmm. , it’s about two years left on that. And it’s again, one of those benefits of an L L C with an S corp. If you’re not taking a salary, then it’s like you get this pass through benefit. But it’s good to go back and go, okay, to justify why I pay myself this amount, this is how much I work in the birth business on the business, this is how I could replace myself, this is what I would pay. Like just having that pre-planned so wise that’s so smart. And then the same thing with the Augusta rule. Like, I did a little BA background digging because I got bored one day and I was like, because also I’m from Dalton, Georgia and I’m like, like Augusta, like Augusta, Georgia. And it was like, yeah. Yes. Actually Augusta, Georgia, because the masters Yes,
SW (31:13):
The masters, yes. That’s how it started. So they wanted to go, let’s be real, the senators wanted to go to the masters.
AJV (31:18):
I mean, I want, it’s like so much of this is so crazy. So one of the things that I picked up, and I’m curious to get your thoughts on this to how accurate or am I just being completely O C D over here, but it’s like I go to like the crazy extent every single month I have like a little meetings template of this was the meeting that was held at my house. These were the attendees, this was the time that it was held. And then I have my assistant make one of those for every single month for our meetings. That did happen at my house, but we actually have meetings minutes from each of those meetings are, is it that level of documentation or is that like overkill?
SW (31:54):
No, no, that is perfect. That’s actually what we, we give templates for that as well. We don’t put in air quotes. They’re legit meeting minutes. They’re they’re they’re legit. They’re, but they’re like the meeting minutes. But also we think outside the box too, because you can use the house for other things than, than meetings. So for example, I have a client who used her home for photo shoots. Yeah, yeah. And that’s great. We have the photos to prove it. We have actually ba behind the scenes footage of how much of the house they were consuming with backdrops and cameras and lighting and, and the catering for the, the, the crew. Like it was a big deal. Like this is a large mansion in LA that happens to be where she lives. And I’m like, go figure. Like this is such a funny thing that I would never let slide for certain clients.
SW (32:34):
And I’m like, no, this is actually like really legit. Like you’re filming content all day in your house. Yeah. And like your kids had to leave, you needed to get childcare. Like this whole thing. I go, I, I can see how that could be, that could work cuz it was actually cheaper than going to another photo shoot location to use the home. Mm-Hmm . So we basically found a comparable rate that we could use that was pretty conservative and and it benefited them greatly to keep that cash flow in house because here’s how these things work, right? Tax-Free cash flow, it’s a deduction to the business. Meaning it lowers your profit and therefore lowers your taxable income. But also when you’re, when you’re paying that, that is not income to the recipient, it’s not income to you as an individual because of the Augusta rule because they give you a 14 day headstart, like a freebie. So basically until you cross 14 days of renting out your house, it’s not really rental income. You don’t have to claim it. So basically cuz of that rule, you get a tax free transfer of cash from your business to you personally if you use this rule the right way.
AJV (33:35):
Okay. So two things on that. This has come up in other questions that around this conversation in my entrepreneur community is one, do you have to give yourself a 10 99 on that?
SW (33:45):
Yes.
AJV (33:46):
Okay. So asking what’s really important to know, because again, auditors ask for it, document it, still gotta document it. This comes up so much in our entrepreneur community. And then the second thing, cause so many people now are working from home and it is your primary quote unquote business and it’s your home. Mm-Hmm. , does this still apply if you have a from home at home business?
SW (34:11):
It can, there, this is a very tight, I had to pay for research on this because this is such a, like a nuanced thing. So, so here’s how, if your home is your business location, there’s two things you’ll need. Now, can you use Augusta? Yes you can. But that would be a secondary thing. And I would start with figuring out what portion of your home is exclusively used for business and is the primary place you conduct business? I e a home office. So if you have a home office space, or let’s say you’re a product-based business, like e-commerce, I have clients who use their whole garage, uhhuh or maybe they have one car and a whole bay of their garage is storage. So I go, okay, let’s measure the square footage of the home office space. That’s exclusively business. I’m not talking about like I’m sitting here in a guest bedroom, I’m not talking about the bed and all the other stuff.
SW (34:59):
I’m talking about the desk area where I actually work. Then I add in like the storage spaces, whatever is like really just business use and divide that over the total square footage of your home. Now you have a percentage and that percentage is how much of your home expenses can be pushed through the business. Yeah. But this is done a very certain way depending on what type of business entity you have, this is executed a certain type of way. And we call this the accountable plan for my S-corp and c corp owners. We call this the accountable plan. And you can reimburse yourself from your business these types of expenses. So you can pay a portion of your mortgage interest, a portion of your rent, a portion of your utilities security, landscaping, cleaning, repairs and maintenance. Like it’s, it’s all over the place and it can actually really add up. And if you’re using a lot of your home as your business, then that’s a really big benefit. Beyond that, you could use the Augusta theoretically to rent space that is not part of your primary business use. But that requires a bit of map and that square footage and like I would definitely back it up if you’re gonna use both of those con conjoined, you have to have really good documentation to clearly separate the, the space that you’re renting versus the space that you’re using for your business.
AJV (36:11):
I think that’s, it’s so good to get double verification from a professional versus my coursework . Yes. But it’s like for, you know, like I’ll give you an example of like, something that we do that we started doing for this unique reason is we host quarterly socials, like quarterly social event for our employees and we do them at our home. They’re not in our home office, but we use our backyard, we use our pool, we use our kitchen, we use our living room, we use our dining room, we use all these non at home business locations that are a part of our residential property to then it’s like if I were to go rent out a rooftop pool and any place downtown Nashville, I’m gonna be paying easily 30 grand easily to rent out this entire rooftop or pay myself to have it here at the vaden villa pool. Well back out those windows. Right? Yeah.
SW (37:07):
I love it. . Yeah. That, that can be beneficial. The, and I wanna add on to this too, that like me saying this doesn’t just make it deductible. Ultimately every i r s agent is going to interpret things differently. Yeah. Be able to enforce them differently. This is just my interpretation cuz there’s nothing in the tax code and this is the burden of it that it’s so specific, it leaves a lot of stuff out, but it’s also so vague that it leaves a lot of stuff out. So there’s a lot of things that they don’t specify about how, how these things interact with each other. So until they put tax code in place, there’s a lot of gray area that isn’t really spelled out and this is one of those things. Hmm. So depending on how you interpret the law or how your professional interprets the law that you can potentially take advantage of this or you know, a a an auditor can easily come to you and say, I don’t think that’s reasonable.
SW (37:57):
I don’t think that entertainment should count. I don’t think this based on their interpretation of the law. And usually when I’m representing clients with an auditor, it’s me and the auditor reading the, the law and saying, here’s what I’m reading and them saying, here’s what I’m reading. And it’s different things. Yeah. And then you have to kind of agree on agree to disagree and agree on some type of like, negotiation, but there’s a lot of gray area and that’s part of why having a professional is key to help you kind of translate that because it’s not really all spelled out for you.
AJV (38:27):
Oh, I love that. All right. One last tax strategy, tax savings tip,
SW (38:33):
I would say. Okay. So we, we went through a little bit of the accountable plan, the Augusta rule. I would say, oh my god, my favorite strategy to implement, even though it’s the most work , is hiring your kids.
AJV (38:43):
Oh
SW (38:43):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the, here’s why it’s my favorite, number one it, number one tax savings straight up. Like you can pay them up to, I think we’re up to 13,850 this year. Oh, oh, up pay them. It went up and it keeps going up. So we increase the standard deduction so you can pay them up to that standard deduction. Now they can, I should say, they can make up to that standard deduction. If they got a job at Wendy’s, then that goes into the mix too. So you gotta make sure that they’re not making more than that limit, otherwise they’re paying taxes. But ultimately you can pay your kids to do age appropriate work and that’s the key to do age appropriate work. You’re not gonna hire your two year old to be a courier and drive you around. Like you can’t do that.
SW (39:25):
So you have to make sure that it’s age appropriate and that you have really good documentation of how they’ve spent their time, what they were doing, how they were doing it the hours they were spending, how much you paid them. And there’s a very mechanical way, which I won’t go into on how you have to pay them through payroll. That requires a lot of setup and infrastructure. But once you build that mouse trap, like once me and my team help entrepreneurs build that system, you can pay them up to 13,850 a year. And the beauty of it is they can also put that into, let’s say a Roth ira mm-hmm. meaning no tax on the way in tax-free growth and no tax on the way out. So if they’re young enough too, you can start this process. Next thing you know, you’re building tax-free wealth for your kids.
SW (40:05):
They graduate school and they have this, this whole amount of money to use to go buy their first place or to go on their next phase of life. So that one of the reasons why I love doing that is the tax-free wealth building. The other reason is I love teaching kids about money. I love having kids get a paycheck and like look at it and go, taxes taken out. Right. Or whatever it is. And understanding what it means to work and get paid. Yeah. Because I do believe that when kids understand that money, you know, isn’t guaranteed that you have to work for it in some way, whether that’s physical labor, being smart, being creative, whatever that may be, that you’re gonna be rewarded for that by being able to make money and learning that at a young age is so powerful.
AJV (40:46):
Yep. That money don’t grow on trees. drives me nuts when my parents used to say that and now I’m like, I’m that parent. I’m like, where do you think this money comes from? Yeah. So like on that note, like a couple of things I think would be great questions of like, okay, so let’s just say your kids are eligible to, you know, be employees with legitimate, you know, business tax Of course. Could you put ’em on a 401k?
SW (41:15):
Could you, could you, yes. It depends on the type of business you have. There’s a ton of questions that just popped into my head. So it’s like case by case possibly I’ll say,
AJV (41:25):
Okay. Because that could be a po potential thing. Again, like these are just all the things that I’m constantly like, can we do this? Can we do this? Can we do this? Mm-Hmm. is, do, is there an a minimum age for something like a four [inaudible] or Roth ira?
SW (41:40):
Oh, the minimum age for those I’m not aware of. That would be a great question for A C F P, but I was thinking you were gonna ask a minimum age to hire the kids. And I will add in that it’s ideal. Most of the SEC social security administration and others generally look at seven and up as like, just seven’s like a functional human that can actually do things. If they’re, if they’re really, if they’re like infants on your payroll, then they’re generally in marketing content. Like I had a, a client that sold baby clothes and I was like, that’s legit. She’s in every single photo. Yeah. So I, I would say that would make sense to me, but the it has to be, again, age appropriate and business connection. So if they’re just in marketing content, but your stuff has nothing to do with family, I would also kind of weigh the options of that. And if it’s worthwhile, it has to be pay that’s is appropriate and experience appropriate. Like you can’t pay your infant 10 k a month or whatever. . Yeah.
AJV (42:34):
So
SW (42:34):
I would not, I would not stretch that to the extent, if they really can’t work more than like 20 minutes a month, I would say, well, let’s be realistic on what you’d actually get paid to do
AJV (42:43):
That. So, and this is I think, really super applicable to a personal brand audience. And it’s like my whole personal brand is about being a mom and an entrepreneur. So I hired my kids as child models.
SW (42:58):
Yep.
AJV (42:58):
Because they were required to be in these big photo shoots for my website, for my social content or blogs because the whole, my whole thing is about like balancing both entrepreneurship and motherhood. Right. And so this is like, I literally went out and said, what would I be paying to go rent some kids , aren’t my kids for these like photo shoots? And it was like, I’m
SW (43:24):
Laughing at, I’m laughing at what agency you would go to to like rent it. Like I know it’s model agencies, but the, like, I need to rent to
AJV (43:32):
Kids agencies. And it was $180 an hour
SW (43:37):
Wow. For one
AJV (43:38):
Through these modeling agencies. Now of course the kids don’t end up getting that. Right. But I was like $180 an hour. Are you kidding me? Yeah. So my kids are child model employees. They are required to do all the photo shoots. I tell ’em to and they’re child models now they’re under seven, but it’s, again, it’s applicable work and it’s, it’s, they have contracts. So we made ’em a contract I had to sign as their legal guardian. Right. And it, there is like, when it comes to payroll, so much additional paperwork and I had to like file all this stuff and sign this stuff and all the things. It’s
SW (44:12):
Gotta be worth it. It’s gotta be worth it. And, and I think a lot of business owners, a lot of business owners have, like, they may do that, but they don’t do that many photo shoots or they may want to do that, but it may not be as applicable. And I go like, is it worth all the work to save a couple hundred bucks in taxes? Like is it, is it, wouldn’t you rather spend that time making more money than worrying about all the payroll documentation, the contracts and all that stuff? And sometimes the answer is it’s not worth it. Yeah. And I’m totally okay sacrificing a little bit of tax savings for a lot of time because it really comes down to is it worth it for you as a business owner, this is one thing I truly believe is that if anyone is just like throwing cookie cutter tech strategies at you, go do this, go do this, go do this without understanding how it actually benefits you or what it actually requires of you in terms of a commitment to your responsibility to maintain that, then I think they’re doing you a disservice because you need to make a co I make a conscious decision on, okay, if I do this, I get this result.
SW (45:09):
But if, is that result worth the work? Mm-Hmm. and the answer might not, maybe no, it may be no.
AJV (45:15):
You know, it’s like I get hit up, we use Gusto and it’s like gusts always like sending something and they keep being like, do you wanna qualify for $8,000 in the, you know r and b credits? And I’m always like, no, no, no, I don’t because the amount of work that it would take to apply and file for that stuff would cost me 20 to get eight. So I think that’s a really good thing. It’s like sometimes we see, oh, credit this, credit that, and you realize yeah, the amount of hours and time and all the things to get that is so much more than what the savings would actually be.
SW (45:49):
Yeah, I agree. And and it’s the same with tax deductions. People misunderstand tax deductions and think it’s like a rebate or a credit and I go, no, A deduction is a coupon, A credit is a gift card. So when a deduction comes in, you get a percentage off. So when I look at it, I like think about going to a store you go to, like I used, remember we used to go to the mall and go to like Ann Taylor and there was just sales everywhere. It was like every day was a sale or New York and Company in those places in the mall. And I’d be like, it’s only this much, it’s 20% off. And it’s like, it’s always 20% off. It goes between 20 and 40. It goes between 20 and 40% off. Like it’s never not on sale because that’s how they’re getting you to buy it.
SW (46:26):
Yeah. So instead of don’t spend a hundred to save 20 because you’re spending 80, you’re still negative 80. So when you’re, whenever you’re looking at tax strategy and deductions, you’ve gotta make sure that there is a benefit beyond the tax savings to the thing that you’re doing. Like don’t go buy a G wagon just to save on taxes because you’re probably not gonna save on taxes. You gotta pay for that in insurance. You gotta pay for the thing, you gotta maintenance for maintenance, you gotta pay for the oil changes you gotta pay. So you gotta be ready for the responsibility of those things. It’s not just a tax rebate as you know, the 15 second videos on TikTok would leave you to believe, but there’s a lot more that goes into
AJV (47:04):
It. I love that. I wanna make sure I wrote this down. Credit is like a gift card. Yes. But a deduction is like a coupon. Correct. That’s so good. Just simple everyday metaphors that we can kind of relate to because it is easy to get caught up in all the, whoever TikTok, Instagram, it’s like, you know, there’s a lot where it’s like, I actually need to verify your fi, you know, your credentials. Are you an actual financial anything? Who’s like, spouting out all this stuff when you actually, you go back and you get to the heart of it and you’re like, that is a lot of work. That doesn’t even apply to me. And you find it after hours and lots of dollars trying to figure it out. So just little simple ways. This is so helpful. There are so many things like we could continue this conversation probably for eight hours and still not cover even like, scratch the surface of things that you do. Shannon, where should people go to learn more about you?
SW (47:58):
So you can find me on my podcast, which is called Keep What You Earn. We have five episodes a week and I drop stuff. I have episodes on everything we discussed today. Much more in depth. And people like AJ on to interview them and learn more about business strategy and all dimensions of your business.
AJV (48:11):
Y’all go subscribe, download, comment, like, share, do all the things. Keep what you earn. Podcast with Shannon Weinstein, y’all, this is gold. This will help you keep more of the money that you’re making. Thank you so much, Shannon, for being on the show. For everyone listening stay in tune for the recap episode, which will be coming up next. Until next time, we’ll see you later.

Ep 371: 5 Things You Need to Know to Hit A Bestseller List | Esther Fedorkevich Episode Recap

AJV (00:02):
Have you ever wondered what makes a New York Times bestselling book? A bestselling book, ? And this has just been a question that has kind of plagued me over the years, because often we assume if it was a Wall Street Journal or New York Times bestselling book, or even an Amazon bestseller, like somehow this list definement makes it a better book than others. And that’s just not true. I mean, sometimes, right? That’s a very solid indicator. This is a fabulous book worth sharing. And other times you’re like, how did this book make the list? I’m, I’m not quite sure. And so this has just been a conversation that has come up so many times in my house, outside of my house. And so I actually just got finished having this awesome conversation with my friend Esther, about what really makes a bestselling book, a bestselling book, regardless of if it’s Amazon, wall Street Journal, or even New York Times.
AJV (00:58):
And so I thought I would share some of those tidbits with you because they were really important to me with the disclaimer. At the end of the day for anyone who is a writer, an author, a content creator, a thought leader, it’s like, I just think this should go without saying that. I do believe solely wholehearted wholeheartedly that knowing the amount of work that it takes to write a book and then edit it, and then rewrite it and then edit again, and then rewrite it again, like that’s no small feat. So I know that at the heart, most authors, most people who have a message on their hearts are not doing this just to hit the list, right? Because the real benefit is a life changed, a life transformed, sometimes a life saved because books have the power to do that. Words have the power to do that.
AJV (01:45):
And at the same time, we know that when you do hit a list, it creates a credibility factor, a shareability factor, a just a, a component to it that helps you share it more, get it into the hands of more people, thus impact change, transform save more lives. So I don’t want this to just be about, oh, like the only reason you write a book is if it’s only good if it hits the list. That’s clearly not the case, cuz lots of not so good books hit the list. and lots of incredible books never hit the list. Because at the end of the day, the end result, the most important, impactful thing is that you’re doing this to make a difference in the lives of the readers. And knowing that if you do happen to hit a list with some strategy and a plan, which is what it takes more people will get it, thus more people will be impacted. So let’s just let that be what it is. And I just like knock something off my desk with my hands flailing. And then let’s share some things around, okay, well, how do we then help it be a bestseller? Whatever that means to you. So here’s a couple things I thought were really, really good, is one, having great content is the prerequisite. It’s the
AJV (02:59):
you know, payment for entrance. You gotta have great content. But what is great content, and you gotta think about it like this and think about great content is content that you can remember, internalize, and then share. That’s great content. It’s simple in terms of its ability to be internalized and then regurgitated back out into the public. When it’s super complex, you’re like, oh, that’s really too hard for me to explain. Just go read it. Or you just have to go watch it, or you had to be there, right? It can’t be one of those things. It’s gotta be one of those things. I read this and this is what it meant to me and this is how it has changed me, and this is what I have done that has made such a monumental difference in my life. That’s great content. So let’s preface what is great content.
AJV (03:44):
Number two is you gotta have a platform. You’ve got to have people that are already coming alongside with you on this journey. And that’s a really important part of this because although not every author is in the business of hitting the bestseller book or selling millions of books, publishers are . So if you wanna work with a traditional publisher, a publishing house, they are in the business of publishing and making sure lots of books get sold. They don’t necessarily sell them, but they want them to get sold, which is why they publish them. So you’ve got to treat this like I am building a business, writing a book, launching a book is like building and launching a business. And that’s worth noting. If you’re not ready for that, you don’t have time capacity for that, then perhaps working with a traditional publishing house isn’t the venue for you.
AJV (04:37):
If you don’t want to hit a list and make this some sort of big part of your business, then self-publishing is an amazing route. And self-publishing today is extraordinarily amazing. Like, truly like it’s not the self-publishing that it was 12 years ago. Like you can’t even tell some of these self-publishing houses. You couldn’t even tell that this was done self-published. They’re really great. And so you’ve gotta think about the intent of that, of knowing that if you’re going after a traditional publisher, the intent is that you’re gonna hit the list and you’re gonna sell lots of copies. And in order to do that, you need a platform, right? You, you gotta have a platform of, of fans, followers customers that already know who you are and subscribe to the content that you’re teaching. Then I love this and I loved what Esther said, and she was like, you actually have to have a unique idea, right?
AJV (05:27):
Having great content is one thing, but it needs to be unique. It needs to be a creative idea or concept. What we would say is it’s got to forward thought leadership. It doesn’t have to be a brand new idea, but it’s got to be presented in a brand new way. So those are the three things fundamentally that are kind of like at the base, the foundation of if you’re going after a bestseller list to get this in the hands of lots of, or get this book in the hands of lots of people, those are like the prerequisites. Then there was a few other things that I thought was really important, and she was like, you just, the bestseller list, just hitting the bestseller list on Amazon alone is its own algorithm and its own beast of just knowing what category listings, not listing listings to be in.
AJV (06:15):
And I’m gonna tell you, go listen to my podcast interview with Esther. This is just like one of the most insightful interviews. So just go listen to it in terms of if you’re in that world of writing and publishing a book right now and your launch season or pre-launch season go listen to the interview with Esther. But this whole concept of Amazon listings, it’s like, think about it like this way, when you go look for a book in a retail bookstore yes, there are a few of those left , not many, but a few. It’s, it’s not like you’re looking for, you know, you know, let’s just say religion Christian, female entrepreneur, right? You’re not doing that. You’re just going and looking for like, what categorically speaking, I’m, I’m looking for some sort of entrepreneur book for females, for whatever, right?
AJV (07:07):
And I think it’s like, it’s like that but different when it comes to Amazon because you’re just typing in book names or categories. You’re not saying, Hey, I want to research kids books about turtles. Most likely you’re saying, Hey, I want to go kids books for five to seven year olds, boys, right? And it’s like, the thing is though, the category listings are really important and Esther told us awesome story about one of her clients who is a 17 year old who wrote a kid’s book about turtles and it hit number one on the Amazon bestseller list under the category of turtles. Turtles, right? It’s a kiss moment, it hit it under turtles. So it’s like being strategic with the marketing intent is a really important part of, you can’t just have a great book and assume you can just throw it on Amazon or anywhere.
AJV (07:55):
It’s like no, that there needs to be some strategy and marketing intent in order to get it to some of those credibility components like a bestseller’s list that’s then going to help it spread and help the message populate throughout, you know, your intended audience. So category listings actually do make a difference. I think that was really unique and very insightful. The other thing that I thought was really interesting is she shared with me that audiobooks audio sales are up 347%. Now, book sales are also up, but audiobook sales are up 347%. And what she said is that most people even though they listen to it on audio, they will also buy a physical copy because after they listen to it, they wanna go back and have something to underline or highlight or go back over. And so many people are doing both.
AJV (08:49):
But audio that’s huge. And then she goes, I make my author. So Esther is an agent, right? She is the owner and founder of the Fed Agency, but she goes, I say, if you’re gonna write a book, you must do an audio book. It’s a prerequisite, right? You’re doing it. And I would say I would throw that in there as the unsolicited feedback from a consumer books. If you’re gonna do an audio book, make sure you read it. You need to read your own book. Don’t hire someone else to read your book. You read your book. It makes it so much better for the consumer to listen to if you’re listening to the actual author. So just a couple of quick things about audio and the importance of not just having your book and words on pages, but having the audio version will actually help your book sales, audio sales help book sales.
AJV (09:35):
So make sure you have it on audio. Then we talked about a couple of other things that I thought were just really important. And some of them are just high level and, but worthwhile, worthwhile is that if you’re gonna launch a book you need to treat it like you’re launching a business because that’s what it is. And you need to be prepared to put in the time, resources, money as if you were launching a business. And because that’s what it takes. It’s gonna take a lot of sweat equity, a lot of actual equity, bro, dollars and cents like things cost money to prize. But a lot of time, and I thought this was really again, an important thing to remember. It’s like people talk about launch season. If you’re an author or an aspiring author, you know what I’m talking about.
AJV (10:20):
There’s a launch season. But nobody really explains like how long is a launch season. And what Esther said is she was like, A launch season is about a year, a year, not six weeks not three months, not six months, 12 months, let’s say year. And she goes, most of my authors begin their pre-sales and their kind of pre-launch season, six months before the pub date of their book, six months. And now that’s after they already have a plan in place. So think about how much time before that where they actually architecting and creating the plan to then actually go into launch season to start pre-selling. Then you have your launch season, right, which is probably the week before, week of week after your book launch. But then you’ve got your post-launch season, which is if you’ve spent years of your life writing, editing, publishing, marketing, selling a book, you don’t really wanna give up a week after it goes live. So there is an entire season of how do we build up all the anticipation and all the excitement for the book, and then how do we keep it going for six more months after, right? And one of the things that we say at Brand Builders Group is, if you’re not willing and interested and inspired to be talking about what you’re writing about for at least the next 10 years of your life, and don’t write it, it’s not the right topic. Find something else. Find something that you could talk about incessantly, naturally,
AJV (11:53):
Organically, or at least 10 years. Now that doesn’t mean you won’t write other books and talk about other things, but you gotta love it so much that for the next 10 years I would dedicate every conversation to this or for my life. Like, I could be talking about this until the day that, you know, I go to heaven, I God brings me home. It’s like I could talk about it forever. That is what needs to be in your book, is the things that people are like, man, like you always talk about that. You should write a book about that. And so just think about that. It’s like, this is not, I’m gonna write it and then for a couple of weeks we’re gonna market it and then it’s gonna spread. And no, it’s the, it’s not build it and they will come. It is you build it and then you go talk about it and talk about it some more and talk about some more and then some more and then a little bit more.
AJV (12:37):
And so it’s just treating it like a business that it’s like, it’s not something you write and it just sits on a shelf. It’s just like a business. It takes a continual process over the course of time before, during, and after to really make it successful. And then the last thing that I would just say I would just share is there is not one sales aha. In order to sell a lot of books, there’s a lot of sales aha movements and a lot of sales strategies. And there’s not one thing that’s a lot of things happening simultaneously that work today and that’s new and that’s different and that can’t feel overwhelming, which is why you need a good strategy and you need a plan that you can do over six months. So some of those things are making sure you’ve got a good social media plan.
AJV (13:22):
And some of the things that Esther and I talked about on our conversation I thought was so good is do fun things that create engagement. Like do a do a book cover reveal with your social media followings. Do a challenge from content in the book. Do different fun things like do a book launch party do giveaways, but create engagement with your social media months and months before it releases. You know, give tiny little sample excerpts outs, share stories, but create engagement all around the content that’s happening in the book. Other things were make sure you do a podcast tour, right? Make sure that it’s like you’re hitting every single media outlet in media venue. You can speaking, right? Speak for free, speak for money, go on podcasts. If you can get big media outlets to interview you, that’s great too.
AJV (14:12):
But it’s making sure that you’re just exhausting all of your resources. It’s not just sending an email to your list or just focusing on your followers. It’s how do I access anyone who I think could benefit from the message that are on the pages of this book? And that takes time and it takes a plan. And it’s not one thing. It’s lots of things happening simultaneously, which means you gotta have a sales and marketing plan. And I think that’s like the big overarching takeaway is that launching a book is like launching a business. And as the author, a huge part of your role is the salesperson. You, like, you are the sales team of the book. And if you are not a great salesperson, then you’ve got got to surround yourself with great salespeople who can go out and market and sell the book on your behalf.
AJV (14:57):
But again, like this is a really important thing just to walk away with, is we say this all the time that Brand Builders Group is, there is no such thing as a New York Times best writing author. There’s only New York Times best selling author. Highlight, bold, underline, whatever you need to do, which means that’s who is selling it, right? That’s who is selling the most. That’s who’s buying the most of that book. There’s not a lot of the best writing. That’s the, you know, that’s just what’s required. That’s the prerequisite, is it’s great writing, it’s great content that should be right. But then there’s gotta be the sales and marketing plan to get it in the hands of the people that you can help. So I hope this helps. You’re so insightful for me. Great reminders, new stuff. So hope this was helpful. Go check out the full conversation on our podcast, the influential Personal brand. I’ll catch you later.

Ep 370: What Makes A New York Times Bestselling Book with Esther Fedorkevich

AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody and welcome to another episode on the influential Personal Brands. AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. And I’m very, very excited to have a special guest and a new friend on the show today. But she’s new to me. She’s not new to Brain Builders Group or to my husband Roy Vaden, because Esther works with tons of our clients, lots of our friends, and also some of our team members. And I was just sharing this with her before, if we didn’t already have such a tight relationship with our literary agent, Nina, like there is no one else on the planet that we would even consider to desire to work with other than Esther. So before I give her a formal introduction, I just wanna tell you guys why you need to stick around for this show because as you saw the title of the show, it’s How to Write a New York Times bestselling book.
AJV (00:48):
And here are the reasons that you wanna stick around to the end. Number one, you can’t write a New York Times bestselling book surprise. So you probably need to stick on, figure out then, well, how on God’s green Earth do you get one if it’s not writing one? So that’s the first thing. Second thing is that this is an episode for you who are in the author space. It doesn’t not matter if you dream of being one, you’re an aspiring one, you’re a first time one, or you’re an established author. This is an episode of if you have a book that you want to get into the hands of other humans you need to listen to, because that’s what we’re gonna talk about. And then the third are just what are some of the ins and outs of actually making it work in the publishing industry today?
AJV (01:32):
Because it’s changing. It’s been changing, it will continue to change. So as someone who’s in that creative space and you wanna get your thoughts on paper and that paper into the hands of many, what do you need to know of how to get a book published and out into the world today? So that’s why you wanna listen and lemme tell you mainly why you want to listen. So I’m gonna tell you a little bit about Esther formally. So Esther is the owner of the Fed Agency. Esther oh my gosh, see better Kevin? Yep. I’ve been saying for Dork for Forever Better Kevi, I’m gonna like say this in my sleep now, but she’s the owner of the Fed Agency. She started her career in a lot of different ways, but some very I think important things to know is like you were part of the Dave Ramsey organization and really helped grow that to what it is. I think that, I think I read somewhere that you have helped more than 80 books become on the New York Times bestseller list a hundred.
EF (02:28):
We’re over a hundred now. We just hit 102.
AJV (02:31):
Woo. I mean, if that doesn’t inspire you to listen to the rest of this episode, then you can just go ahead and like hop off right now. But it’s like if you’ve helped more than a hundred people hit the New York Times list, this is just extraordinary. But one of the things that I loved most about your bio that you sent over is that you’re not just in the business of helping people get their books published. This is about changing lives helping dreams come true and really being a conduit of really good messages for people all around the world. And I love that you’re also a mom. You’ve got two kids. You live in Austin, Texas, and I could go on and on and on, but Esther, welcome to the
EF (03:07):
Show. Thanks AJ for having me.
AJV (03:10):
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I have like, genuinely been looking forward to this conversation. Four weeks ever since we got this scheduled because I, I wanna just be I wanna be like one of your customers today because I think there’s so much changing in this space and in the industry of what I’m gonna call thought leadership or the knowledge economy. That’s, I just, I think that we’re, if you’re not constantly having these conversations, you’re already behind. And so as we kinda like step into this and what does it look like today, I wanna know two things to help our audience get to know you is one, you could have done so many different things. Like you have sold millions and millions and millions of dollars through book publishing. You have worked with some of the largest names, household names out there. You could be doing anything you want. Why did you pick this space? So that’s my first question.
EF (04:04):
Okay. So I didn’t pick it, it kind of fell in my lap when I started working for Dave Ramsey. We were self-publishing and then publishing with publishers about 50 different products a year. And they were all financial products. So I was trying to think of like a new way to say the same thing with a new marketing. It’s all marketing guys, right? So new marketing idea, new way. And it was get, I’m like, I wanna do more than just finance books. And so I worked for Dave till the day I gave birth to my first daughter. I was 25 years old and I said, I’m gonna start my own literary agency and I think I could do this. I was good at sales. And I’m like, I love story. So what, it really fell in my lap. Cause I love story. I’m really a branding and marketing person.
EF (04:43):
A lot of literary agents come in this space because they’re literary, they’re writers. I came in this space as an entrepreneur and businesswoman, but coming in from the say I love story and I love helping people know how to market that story. Cuz there’s one thing about writing a great book and then there’s the other thing about getting it out there and selling it. So both things matter, but it kind of fell in my lap. And then I’m really good with people. I was a big Zig Zeigler fan growing up. I mean, I think I’ve listened to every Zig zeigler, you know, audio cassette back in the day. And like, I also just love people. So Dave Ramsey had us read a book. He made all of his employees read a book, how To Win Friends and Influence People. And then I did this Dale Carnegie course and I’m like, I’m really good with people. I love story and I can sell. So I kind of said, wow, that makes a good literary agent, someone who can sell Ari. Because most writers aren’t salespeople naturally. Yeah. Most writers are, you know, they have the ideas, they’re right, they’re, they don’t like bragging about themselves. So it’s perfect for someone like me coming in and helping get their message out.
AJV (05:42):
Matt, I love that. And you put in your bio statement that that’s your also your favorite book. Why is that your favorite book?
EF (05:48):
I think because it’s still relevant today. When he wrote that, think about it, it was no social media. There was no, I mean, I told my employees all the time, did you talk to them? Did you actually actually pick up the phone and talk to them? Right? Did you, so I love relationships, I love building relationships. And my whole business has been built on relationships, real genuine relationships. And I think a lot of times this younger generation comes in and they have, you know, a hundred thousand friends on Instagram or Facebook, but they couldn’t, they have never picked up the phone and talked to them. Mm-Hmm. . So that’s a big thing for me is in How to Win Friends and people like, like all those principles, if you haven’t read it, read it, it’s still relevant today.
AJV (06:26):
Oh, it’s one of my favorite books too. It was mandatory reading early in my sales career. And you said something that I think is gonna set the precedent for the rest of our conversation, which is, you’re, you’re in the literary field, but at the end of the day, you’re branding and marketing aka sales. And I think one of the things that we run into all the time with our podcast listeners to, with, with our Brain Builders Group community and just with everyday conversations is people somehow have forgotten that relationships are still the fundamental way that we do business today. And they think that you get enough followers, you get enough this and this is gonna figure itself out. And, you know, we are lucky to be behind the scenes of a lot of launches. And I’ll tell you what, lots of emails do not convert into lots of books all the time. And lots of followers do not convert into lots of sales most of the time. And so hence why I think this conversation, I’m
EF (07:23):
Glad you figured that out. Cause if there, if that was true, right? We’d all have the magic formula and no, just to sign someone if they had 10 million followers that they were gonna sell 10 million books. But that’s not the case.
AJV (07:34):
That is not the case. And so here is why we’re here today. Like what is it? Like, what do we need to be doing? So here’s my first here’s my first question which is kind of like, you know, part two of a little bit about your backstory is what, what do you think makes someone not a great writer, but a great candidate to hit a list? Because I think that’s like ultimately what so many people want is like, how do I hit that Personally, I don’t really care, but I know that it’s a big goal of most. And so I’m curious, what do you think it is not about the writing, but what makes someone a good candidate to have the list eligibility?
EF (08:16):
Well, I say like, as an agent, I look for three things, right? And you have to have two of these three things to be successful. And I think to have a chance to be a New York Times bestseller, and this is for me acquiring an author to go sell, right? But then I still think it’s relevant as when they go to brand builders and you’re helping ’em, or they’re doing it on their own. It, you have to have a great book. It still has to be a good book guys to sell. Like you can’t just write crap, right? And then think it’s gonna sell because you have 50 million followers, right? That’s, I mean, I can prove you over and over again people that have 50 million plus followers that haven’t sold a hundred thousand books.
AJV (08:53):
I, I agree.
EF (08:54):
So step one, have good content. Step one, the content’s gotta be good. And if you have the ideas and thoughts, work with a great writer or, or collaborator that can help you put those, read them in a way that you’re making the reader, you’re empowering ’em to change, you’re encouraging, you’re inspiring, you’re, you know, making ’em cry. You’re making ’em laugh, whatever the goal is of that book. But they really wanna, at the end, when they close it, they wanna get up and go their, their life has changed somehow. Mm-Hmm. number two is platform, right? And we always talk about this platform, platform platform. It’s easier for me to sell someone with a big platform than someone who’s the most incredible writer, right? But they don’t have a platform. And that’s sad. Back in the day, it was all about the writing or, you know, before social media.
EF (09:39):
When I started, I started in 2003, the only social media around was MySpace. So there was no Facebook, there was no Instagram, there was, there was no TikTok there. So think like I like started as a young agent, right? When social media was coming out and how the older authors were thinking that we’re selling, you’d actually go into retail and find their book. So I, a quote of mine is, with the death of retail is the death of discoverability. So there’s no retail anymore. So gotta get that outta your mind. And everything is our phone. I don’t have mine here or like the computer. It’s how people are getting to you to buy that book. So platform is huge. And when I can find, even if someone doesn’t have the biggest platforms, but they have a cultish engaged platform mm-hmm. , but where people really follow ’em and respond, that’s even more important.
EF (10:27):
If you, and you can look at that by like, what’s their engagement level, what’s their likes? How many people are actually commenting? That’s super important. That means they have a tribe that’s pretty, you know, dialed into them. And then the third thing, so you got, it has to be a good book, right? A good content. It’s gotta be platform. And the third one is gotta be a creative idea. It’s gotta be a good idea. That’s why when you see some of these books that they have a saying on it, like, make Your Bed Right? Or the four Hour We Work Week, I put them the four hour work week just cause I’m like, Ooh, that sounds amazing. Four hours a week, that’s all I would have to work. Right? And it’s not even about that. So it’s like having a really cool concept where idea or thought process that like actually makes your book different is really big.
EF (11:10):
The har like when someone has a great story, so many people have great stories. It’s finding that secret thing in your story and expanding off of that. Mm-Hmm. . And that’s what we do. Because I come from marketing and branding. When I sit with an author, I never go to an author and say, you should write a book. Right? If I’m talking to a huge celebrity, they hear that all the time. I go to them and say, Hey, I’ve been studying, I look at what they engage in. You should write this book. This is the type of book you should write. And that’s why I usually sign these big, you know, celebrities because I’m actually bringing them a really creative idea of why this is the type of book they should write. And I think a lot of times people wanna write a book and it’s not the book they should write, they actually should start somewhere else. And it, and that’s where it’s great when you’re talking to marketers or branders where you’re coming up in a network of saying, this is what really makes you unique.
AJV (11:59):
No, I love that. It’s not that you should write a book, it’s you should write that book that you need to write a book about that. So like, for any of you listening, it’s just, I would just sit there and ask yourself like, what do people actually come to you for? Right? And it’s like, that’s something we talk about all a lot, a lot even in like our own like family and our own personal brands at Brand Builders Group is like, what do people come to you for? Like, what’s that superpower thing? It’s not that you have a great story, it’s the stories, the launching pad. It’s what is something that you do so well, so uniquely different that you could write a whole book about it. Yeah.
EF (12:31):
And so like a lot of times like for a pastor by, like, I work with a lot of pastors of huge megachurches, right? And let’s say they wanna write on something and that’s the sermon that got the worst downloads, right? But that’s what they really care about. And I’ll look at them and say, what’s the message that everyone comes back? They remember 10 years? Like, what’s your core message? And guess what that core message is? Their biggest selling book. Like if you look at Warren with the Purpose Driven Life or Joel o with Your Best Life Now, or like, I could go on and on. All of those were those pastor’s core message that people remembered and kept coming back to them. So it’s not the other, the new message because why haven’t any of their other books sold with that book is sold. So it’s, it’s, I think it’s really kind of identifying what that secret thing is, why people love you and are coming to you, what content is that that they’re going
AJV (13:21):
For? Yeah, I love that. Cuz so many people do. It’s like, and there’s this, I’m not saying this is right and or wrong, you can say that, but I won’t. But it’s like so many people want to tell their story, right? And it’s like, that’s for a keynote, that’s for a blog, that’s for social media and that’s a piece of the book, but it’s not the book.
EF (13:36):
Yep. You got it. You’re exactly. So a lot of times people are like, oh, I wanna tell my story. Well, memoirs don’t sell that well, right? You have to have the secret in the memoir, right? Mm-Hmm. in your story. So I’m really big on my biggest space is it’s on the New York Times, it’s the miscellaneous how to, it’s the self-help space. So we do tons of memoirs, but when we tell that celebrity story, it’s a hook about how they live their life. What, what made them successful? Yeah. What made them not quit? What made them, so that’s the angle of the book with pieces of their story throughout. But I don’t like a book where it’s like, I was born here and then I went here , and then I like, that’s boring, right? And the only person you’re selling that to is your core, core crazy cultish fan base, right? Yeah. That’s the only people that are gonna buy that book. And that’s why lots of huge celebrities that do memoirs, they’re like a bestseller for them is 40,000 books and they have mm-hmm. millions and millions of fans. It’s because they didn’t like identify what that core thing is.
AJV (14:31):
Yeah. I love that so much. And I love this whole thing. It’s, you know, it’s one, one, I kind of wrote this down, it’s like whenever you’re saying it’s like clearly you have to have good content, but it’s like, make it sticky, make it memorable. Make it shareable, right? It’s like, it’s not like, oh, that was a good book and then you forget that you ever read it. Which I’ve done lots of those two platform, it matters. And I love what you said, it’s like death of retail is death of discoverability. So you’ve got to have a platform and what is it, right? And how many people are you reaching? I love that. Number three this is just what I wrote down is it’s about the creative idea, but it’s, it’s about developing true thought leadership. Right? You know, people always say there’s, you can’t say anything that hasn’t been said that may be true, but you can say it in a new way.
AJV (15:14):
You can say it in new context. And with that slight twist, so what is your version of forwarding this thought, this idea this thing. And I, I love that so much because I feel like people really struggle with how do I take these ideas from my head, get ’em on paper, but then translate them in a way where it’s not about me, it’s about the reader, it’s about the end audience, but then getting it from there to actually having someone buy it, right? Yes. So let’s assume we have great content. It’s sticky, it’s memorable, shareable. We have a good platform, we got a great idea, a unique, awesome idea. Where do we go from there?
EF (15:58):
Okay, so let me first say, if there was a magic formula, we would all be worth a billion dollars. Okay. , I’m just like, if there was a magic formula, cause then I would only pick the winners, right? So I think a lot of times you have those three things and you’re working it and sometimes something goes viral, right? That you don’t expect goes viral. Like, I did this, my daughter did, it is a good example. My daughter was doing a TikTok and she said, Hey mom I wanna let you know I put you in this TikTok. And we, it went viral and it went crazy and we had over 2 million views and 500,000 likes. And it was the dumbest video, right? And, but hot, like it went viral. So sometimes you get lucky, something goes viral, it’s the perfect timing. You get on, you know, the Today Show in Good Morning America and it’s just like the perfect lineup, right?
EF (16:43):
But I’ve had the perfect lineup of all the major shows and it wasn’t a bestseller, which it’s just like, oh, you get so upset, you’re like, what? That’s, and then that book you see 12 months later hit the New York Times. So sometimes you don’t know. It’s not like you, you, you have to do all the right things, right? And one of the things is what worked, and you, I know h i u would agree with this and Rory would agree with this. What worked two years ago doesn’t work today. It keeps changing because people are buying differently. Yeah. And they’re using different, like it was the day of the email blast was everything, right? And then it was the day of Facebook like it all, I believe you have to, you have to do all of the things and consistently. So I kind of think it, it’s like marketing you.
EF (17:28):
You can’t just talk about your book on book launch week and then not talk about it anymore. It’s, you can’t just be onto the next thing. You really gotta give a book time and make that your core message for the whole year and let people hear it, let people talk about it. That’s why if it’s a good book and it’s changing people’s lives, guess who what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna tell your friend when someone gives you a book and it’s not that great of a book. You’re not talking about it it to others. Yeah. So it’s about, I think, I think authors give up too quick. And I see this all the time. It’s like the ones that are persistent, that keep going, that keep working it, that keep investing because you have to look at an author. It’s like when you write a book, it’s a business.
EF (18:04):
Let’s get real. It’s not a hobby. If you wanna be successful, you’re starting a new business and that book is your new business. And a book can turn into more speaking dates. A book can turn into, you know, like you are opening into new audiences that you never were before. It could get you on podcasts, it could get you on media. I mean, a book, a book opens lots of doors. But, and it also makes you that expert in that topic. When you put a book out, what does everyone think? Oh my gosh, that you’re an expert. You, you must be, cuz you have a whole book, a book’s a lot of work. It’s not like, oh, you say I wanna write a book, and then you think it’s gonna be a couple hours a week of your time. Yeah. But I think authors spends so much time writing the book and then it comes to marketing and they don’t put the same amount of time into the marketing.
EF (18:45):
And they think an agent, I always say an agent is not a magician. I I’m not this, I can’t wave my magic wand and make all my books that I do hit the New York Times bestseller list. Right? It’s hard work. And so when you go in, if you can go into with that like, perspective of publishing and your book is, this is a business, I’m gonna grow my business. If you had any other business, you’re not gonna sit open up a retail store and never go work it and never go check, check out your competition and ev I mean, you’re consistently working it. And so I think authors gotta be looking at, you know, when they write a book, it’s part of their bus, it’s a business and it, or it’s part of their business and they’re gonna spend some time growing it.
AJV (19:23):
Yeah. I love that. I think that’s such a great reminder of if you, if you just wanna talk about your book, just so it hits the list, don’t even bother writing it. But it’s like, you gotta be able to willing to talk about this book all day long, every single day for years and years and years. And if you don’t wanna talk about it for a lifetime, don’t write it.
EF (19:41):
And AJ that’s why when it’s your life message, you’re always talking about it. So though, that’s why the, there’s always a book for every author that’s the one that sells the most. It’s because they’re, they love talking about it. So I, identifying that makes it big.
AJV (19:56):
Yeah. I think for, again, for everyone listening, it’s just, if you don’t want to talk about whatever is going on the pages of your book for a lifetime, then start over. Like start over. Because if you want people to buy it, you’re gonna have to talk about it incessantly to the point where you’re sick and tired of hearing your own voice and then you do it some more. Right? And I think that is a thing for all of us, is we move on too quickly.
EF (20:19):
What drives me crazy is when an author is on a, like they have a big break, they’re on a big show, right? Let’s say they’re on Joe Rogan and they never talk about their book. And I’m like, you’re on the big, like one of the biggest podcasts and you know, you’re talking about your book, but you never mentioned that you have a book. So like really working with authors too, and I know you guys do this like on a regular basis, but in my book, you know, here’s the title. This is what I talk about in my book. Like it’s really also training the authors. You want people, people to buy your book, right? So you’ve gotta talk about your book.
AJV (20:50):
Yeah. So that kinda leads me to the second thing that I wanna talk about, which is this concept of, to be a great author, in my opinion, to be a bestselling author anyways, you have to be a great salesperson. And we, we have this saying that brain builders group that, you know, editors edit, publishers publish, but Hoover, him sells, right? And it’s like the author does, the author needs to sell. So I’d love to hear your take on how do you get people to buy your book, right? Because at some point you get big advances for authors all the time, but that big advances don’t mean anyone’s buying it. It’s like at some point you gotta, you gotta put some hustle and grind into this and say, what am I gonna do to move some books? So what moves books? Like what do you see as actually moving books today?
EF (21:40):
A bunch of things, right? All together at the same time because people look and once you see things, you know, like on your, on your feed, when you get the same thing coming up then what do you do? Oh, I gotta buy that. Right? You can’t just do it one time. You gotta keep talking. Like, if I keep seeing something over and over on Instagram, guess what? I’m gonna finally click it and buy it. So it’s consistently talking. Get on line up your podcast, do 50 podcasts, right? Do like, make sure you’re always talking about it. But okay, so when you were, when you were talking about authors have to sell their book, if you’re an author, I’m just, that is not a good salesperson that can’t sell. You better have a freaking amazing team around you that can sell for you. So if your natural skill, like I’m probably, I would say the best salesperson probably I’ve ever met.
EF (22:24):
Like honestly that’s my one gift. I didn’t think that sales actually mattered. Like, but I’m like, oh, I’m really good at selling, so let me, but I can’t sell all my authors books for them. They have to. So if I can train them a little bit how to be at least a little better than what they are at sales. And if they, if they lack that, like the truly like the writers, the introverts that can’t sell, get people around you that can help you sell mm-hmm. because there’s lots of introverts that have sold millions and millions of copies of books, right? And have had bestsellers, but they have good teams around them. So if I’m just saying that in case you’re not a naturally born salesperson, that it just comes easy to you. But be authentic to who you are. And if you love the message, you’re gonna be authentic and you won’t even realize it, but you’re selling.
EF (23:06):
Right? So I think, and I mean you guys do this right? I think it’s putting enough time in your presales up. You have to, you can’t just start promoting your book a week before your book releases. The, it’s getting longer and longer. Six months before start talking, do a cover reveal, have your audience like build up this anticipation that your book’s coming out and why they need your book. So I think it’s the building up. You can’t just start a it, I mean you can’t just start week of release. You got, I mean the best selling books, I mean we’ve have planned six months, nine months ahead of time that we’re building towards that release. Hmm. Creating multiple products. Like I love it when we have a trade book and a devotional or e-course or a bible study or a gift book like, or a children’s book like actually building where there’s other products feeding into people wanting to buy the trade book.
EF (23:58):
So everything test leads back to the trade book. So if you have a children’s book that has a some little message that kind of gears you to the trade book, it makes you wanna read the trade book. So a trade book is your, your your main book. You know, it’s, it’s the, it’s the non-fiction self-help book. And then you can have all these little products that kind of leads you or are magnets to lead you to the trade book. So offering free content, doing some kind of challenge before getting people for free to get invested in something that they’re like, wow, this is so great that they have to buy the trade book speaking, setting up a speaking tour around your book. That’s huge. Cuz speaking, you’re, you’re getting a hundred people or a thousand or 10,000 people at one time, all motivated talking, putting it on social media, buying it on Amazon. So that’s why I say like, it’s multiple things going at the same time. Is all of our bestsellers have had that.
AJV (24:51):
Yeah, I think that’s
EF (24:52):
Had a plan. You can’t just go into publishing your book without a marketing plan. And so many authors go into books without a marketing plan. And the biggest, biggest mistake authors make is they think the publisher’s gonna do it for them Guys, I’m telling you, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. The publisher is not gonna do it for you. It’s all on. You have to go in, even if you’re with the biggest publisher in the world and you ha and you got a 5 million advance and every, yeah, they’re gonna put some more money into you. That’s really what they’re gonna do. But you still have to be involved and you have to work your butt off. Like it’s just how it is. You’re never gonna get a best seller if you’re sitting back and just thinking the publisher’s gonna do it for you.
AJV (25:34):
No, I, I think this is really, really important. Going back to what you said earlier about launching a book, writing a book is like starting a business. So it needs to be treated like one or at least a part of the business because like to that it’s like how many of us would’ve actually lodged a business without some sort of plan or some sort of budget with the money and the funds that we had? And it’s like, most would not do that most, right? It’s no different with your book. It’s no different. And
EF (26:02):
If you go,
AJV (26:03):
You gotta have a plan.
EF (26:04):
If you go the business mentality into it, you’re thinking, okay, like if I was gonna start a business and I’m like, okay, it’s gonna cost me $80,000 to invest and start this business and I’m gonna be working 80 hours a week, and I that’s your book. You should be thinking with that mentality going into your book, that is a business and you’re investing in something, however it’s gonna return. You know what your revenue returns gonna be on it, great. But it’s how much work you put into it. You cannot go into a book think you don’t have to invest any money, you don’t have to invest any time. You know, it’s not gonna be a bestseller then you’re just writing a legacy book. Like a lot of, like my rich billionaire clients do they just write a book so that their family can have it. They don’t care about sales, they don’t care about, they don’t wanna talk about it. It’s just for their, their kids, grandkids, great grandkids to know about how they started their business.
AJV (26:47):
All right. So that leads me to a question that I have for you. Something you said made me think about this. So what about for the authors who want an agent wanna go the traditionally published route and they don’t really care if they ever hit a list, they want a big advance and then they just want sales to happen organically.
EF (27:04):
That’s tricky cuz most, most big one, big celebrity clients, they wanna hit a bestseller list, right? The issue I see a lot AJ, is when an author comes in, they don’t have a platform, they have a really good idea, they’re a good writer, they don’t have a big platform. And I don’t work with the smaller publishers really because the smaller publishers don’t pay advances. You’re giving up too much, you’re not controlling your rights. So we have a program here at the Fed Agency where we, we pick a select few, right? But that we publish it for them where we’re helping them grow their platform so that when they’re at the point that they’re ready for a big New York publisher, we’re able to go sell ’em and they’re of value to them. But the days of the big advances, you have to have a big platform if you’re thinking you’re good or it’s gotta be a national media story where then everybody knows the story, everybody wants to do the book and there’s a bidding war on it. And I think, I think the mistake authors make is they don’t treat a book like a business. And that’s really comes down to, so an author comes in here and they don’t care about the bestseller list, but they want a big advance, then we’ll probably get them a big advance if we can. And then the publisher’s disappointed, everyone’s disappointed, and then they’re not really doing another book anymore.
AJV (28:16):
Hmm. So that’s around
EF (28:18):
Building a publishing enterprise. Like we want authors coming in and we do have the books that the authors that they’re only gonna do one book in their career and that’s it. But most of our authors are looking at building a publishing enterprise. They’re saying, I want publishing to be part of my business, part of my brand, part of everything I do. And then we’re mapping out what that could look like.
AJV (28:36):
And if you don’t want that, then probably don’t need an agent, don’t need a publishing house. That’s really the, this is the self-published route, right? If you’re not trying to do this to grow a and treat it like a business, because at the end of the day, publishers are in business to sell books. Right. And they’re depending on you to do that.
EF (28:56):
Yeah. So like, like I’ll take 2022, we did 200 million in sales in book sales. And when you think about that, like wow, that’s $20 a book that’s 10 millions books sold last year from the Fed agency of all of our authors. Right? And that seems like a lot, but at the majority of, if you look at how many of those books actually sold over 500,000 copies, I mean you, you it’s maybe six.
AJV (29:22):
Yeah.
EF (29:24):
Lot of ’em sold a hundred thousand. And so you’re trying to get that author that sold 50,000 in the first year to the next year, saw a hundred thousand of their next book. Mm-Hmm. , you’re trying, we’re all of our authors, were trying to grow their platform. We’re not like, so that each book they do is selling more and more. So that when you get to a, a point where you’re an author that anytime you put a book out, you’re selling a quarter of a million no matter what, that’s when you’ve really arrived and you’ve really found success because you have this following that’s gonna buy anything from you. And it’s a big enough number that every publisher wants you.
AJV (29:55):
And you know, it’s so funny, it’s like when you’re thinking of selling a half a million or a million books, in theory that feels like a lot. But then if you think about it in context of even just the population of the United States is like roughly 365 million and we’re talking about people are trying to figure out how to sell 100,000. That’s such a teeny tiny, I know minuscule portion of the actual just population in the US forget North America or you know, the remain the remainder of the world. But it’s like, it’s really small. So what makes it so hard to reach even such a small percentage of the population?
EF (30:30):
I think a lot of authors give away their content for free. So people don’t think they need to buy the book cuz they’ve heard it. And that’s a big mistake. I mean, you have to give bits mm-hmm. And pieces, but you have to make the book unique that it’s a, you need to read this, right? Don’t, like PE pastors do a sermon series. You walk in, you’ve heard it, you’ve seen you get everything for free, right? So why would you spend $25 for a hardback book? You already got it for free. So it’s making that urgency, right? That need that you need to buy it. And we try to help our authors build transactional audiences, audiences that will pay money, not audiences that just get everything from you for free. And that’s where I think if you’re in business, you’re gonna be thinking, I wanna give some things for free, but I’m not gonna give the magic away for free. Right. I’m gonna make them know that there’s value and that they’re gonna pay for that.
AJV (31:18):
Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. I’m just laughing and smiling because like, our biggest philosophy is always and forever give away the what but charge for the how
EF (31:28):
Good
AJV (31:29):
You can give away the what charge for the how.
EF (31:32):
I agree with that like that. And that’s why e-courses are doing so well, right? Because people want, but listen, it’s like if someone gives you a free ticket to a concert right? You’re chances are you probably won’t go right? But when you pay $200 for a ticket, you’re gonna
AJV (31:46):
Show up. It’s an investment. Yeah.
EF (31:47):
It’s an investment. And so I think like, I think the same thing when you, when it an e-course someone says, oh, here’s my e-course for 20 bucks join. I show up like it’s a $20 e-course. Right? But if I’m paying $3,000 for e-course, I’m gonna show up like it’s a $3,000 e-course, I’m gonna look nice. I’m gonna do my makeup, I’m gonna like, but if it’s 20 bucks, I’m like in my workout clothes with wall cap on saying, okay, let me see what the heck this is. You know?
AJV (32:10):
Yeah. Well, and like I’ll, I I tell you like last year I made this commitment that I was gonna read a book every month, right. And I did. I was like, so I, I read 15 books last year. I was so proud of myself. And so, let tell you what happened though is I was reminded of the power of a book and I had forgotten that because I had gotten away and just listening to podcasts and listening to short form contents. And I got reminded in the biggest, most profound way last year from reading 15 books that I even think about myself. Like the amount of time, like, you know, don’t take offense to this, but the amount of time that I took to prepare for this interview, right? That it’s, it’s minutes, right? It’s like 30 minutes versus the amount of time that you prepare, write, edit, rewrite, reedit.
AJV (33:02):
A book is months if not years. Versus I will throw out a podcast with 30 minutes of preparation. I’ll whip together a blog post in 30 minutes and I’ll do a short form video content with five minute prep time. And that is nothing compared to the amount of time, sweat efforts, just incredible resource to put together a book that we then only charge $25 for. Yep. And just a major shout out to when you think you listen to a podcast and you got it, you don’t, you don’t, like there is just, I’m so positively reminded of that last year.
EF (33:44):
Yeah. And there aj there’s something about highlighting in a book, right? It’s thinking about it like if you’re reading it that like I read it a lot for living. So I’m always reading but highlighting and saying, oh, this is really good. This is a sticky state statement of magic. Right? This could change someone’s life. It’s, you get to spend time and sit with it. Mm-Hmm. podcast, you’re on the run, you’re listening to it, you’re doing something like you’re not sitting with it and really thinking through it. So I, I feel like it’s a lot of value in a $25 book . And that’s why it’s so important that the marketing and branding of that book shows that value to the end consumer.
AJV (34:20):
I’m so on the same page with that because I just, I’m still reveling in the fact that some of these books, I’m like, this will change my life forever. And it was a $25 investment. I’ve spent 8,000, $10,000 on events that I’m like, I’m taking long lunch breaks and checking emails. And it’s like,
EF (34:42):
Yeah. So I represent this, this really famous therapist, right? And like, she doesn’t even do sessions anymore, but if you did a session, it’ll be like a thousand dollars an hour, right? This is here, you can get her book for $25 Right. And she can, you’ll read it and it could actually save your marriage, right? Or yes. You know, help you like deal with depression or whatever it is. Any mental health issue. And I’m like, it’s $25, right? Like that is like, that’s so amazing, right? That you could get that. You just have to read it and do the work, right? Yeah. It’s the same, like, same thing with any diet book, right? Or health book. It really can change your life, right? If you read it and apply it and it’s only 25 bucks cuz you get a personal trainer, it’s gonna cost you a hundred bucks an hour at least. Right?
AJV (35:23):
Or a coach or a consultant or counseling, all these things. Yeah. So there’s, there’s
EF (35:29):
A way, there’s a way a book, like if you actually use it, do it. You can save a lot of money and get the best value, you know? Heck
AJV (35:39):
Yeah. Cause I just, that’s part of why I wanted to have this call with you cuz I have had such a, I I’ve, I’ve re fallen in love with books and the written words because of my commitment to do this, you know, for a little personal challenge last year. And now I’m just like, I’m blown away that it’s like the amount of money I’ve spent on other things compared to the amount of money I spent on books is not even in comparison. But what I learned from the books versus what I’ve learned from all the other things I did is insurmountably bigger.
EF (36:06):
What was, okay, out of the 15 books you read last year, what was your favorite book?
AJV (36:10):
I have, well, I have to have two because one is the one that will forever change my life and my Eternity, which is the book Heaven by Randy Alcorn. And I read every single word and it’s long and it’s heavy and it’s dense reading, but I couldn’t believe that I had made it through 39 years of my life without hearing about heaven in this context. It will forever change the trajectory of my life and my family. So that, and then I discovered for the first time ever, Jenny Allen, who is now my favorite author. Awesome. And I read, I read four of her books in one year. Get Outta Your
EF (36:46):
Head. Did you read that one?
AJV (36:48):
I did. That was, that’s how I finished the year was with that. But the one that was my favorite book of the entire year is Nothing to Prove.
EF (36:55):
Good
AJV (36:56):
Book. Nothing to prove. Get out of your head, find your People. We’re all Jenny Allen books that were at the top of my list. But nothing to prove would’ve been my favorites last year. And I just like, I think that’s just a great reminder for anyone who’s listening who is an author. It’s like, don’t forget that in addition to hitting the list, you’re actually changing people’s lives. That’s ultimately, yeah, ultimately that’s really
EF (37:19):
Good. But you got one Jenny Allen booking, guess what you did? You wrote, you read three more after that. So
AJV (37:24):
I have her avatar. Like she, she writes for me
EF (37:27):
like when you read that, like, then you bought, and, and that’s the best thing is like when you write something and you, and put someone loves it, they’re looking for anything else from you that you have, right? Yeah. We
AJV (37:37):
You gotta have great content, right? Have great content.
EF (37:41):
Yep. We get thousands of letters in of suicides, not committed of people coming to Christ of marriages saying family’s reunited. And we, like, I tell my staff all the time, this is why we do what we do, right? Like we’re, we’re a part of this because we help get the book out. And I like, that’s really rewarding and I mean humbling and rewarding, but that’s, that’s why you write a book is you’re, the last part is what we were talking about is that these lives are changed, right? Mm-Hmm. that someone was overweight is now healthy, someone that was depressed is now happy. Someone that, like, as you go through the list, I mean that’s what you’re hoping you’re writing to a business that was failing is now successful, right? Because they read something from you. Yeah. So that’s why I do what I do. And like aj, I know that’s why you do what you do, but let’s not forget the most important part of why you’re writing a book. It’s not only just to sell a million copies, it’s yeah, to hopefully change a million lives,
AJV (38:31):
But you’ll never sell a million copies if you don’t have incredibly great content and you’re not willing to market and sell the pants off of it. And I think that is like two really big takeaways for everybody. All right. I know we’re almost outta time, but I have two more really important questions for you. Okay. When it comes to category listings, how important is that?
EF (38:51):
When you mean like on the what it’s the one category or are you talking about Amazon?
AJV (38:58):
I would say both, but we’ll start with Amazon, right? Because I know so many people who are obsessive of has to be in this very specific category because in this category I know that on this week that I can hit X, y, Z.
EF (39:12):
So I, we do a much categories as you can, right? Like on Amazon, because you can, we have a book that hit the okay, so our youngest author, she’s 17, she did a, a c book, a children’s book on like aquarium type of thing, right? And one of the categories we picked that we put her on at Amazon was Turtles. And she hit number one bestseller in Turtles Never. But now that helps the algorithm, right? So yes, I think authors the mistake they make is like, I wanna be in self-help. Great. Let’s be a little more specific because we want you, the algorithms start kicking in and it working and I could do a whole talk with you on Amazon how it works. Cuz doing this for years and years and actually working with people on Amazon are very high level trying to figure this stuff out. You wanna, you want the algorithm working in your favor. So you, you don’t wanna be so broad, you actually wanna try to nail down be pretty specific and that’s what helps you hit bestsellers in different categories. Yeah. And nobody looks back in the day for categorizing, like for Barnes Noble people cared if it was like religious religion, right? Or sell cookbooks or nobody looks at that anymore. Mm-Hmm. , that’s the thing. It’s like you’re you’re 90% of all books are sold online. You’re not looking at that little category.
AJV (40:26):
Totally. No one even pays attention.
EF (40:29):
No one pays attention. Just like no one pays attention to what’s on a spine of a book. Like who the publisher is really only people in the business like me and you and but like the general person doesn’t know the difference between what publishers, what publisher, they couldn’t tell you Penguin Random House was the largest publisher in the world. They have no clue. Right? So Yeah,
AJV (40:46):
That’s so true. It’s so true about nobody
EF (40:50):
Else cares about
AJV (40:51):
, but as an author you’re like, oh, is this publishing house? So somehow it’s gonna be like nobody freaking knows. They don’t care, they don’t know it’s just us. Do they like the cover category? Yeah. Yeah. The same thing for category listings. And I think that’s really important because I to what you said I love is that you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta niche down, right? And that the more specific you are like, and, and no one’s really taking a screenshot that you were number one in turtles, this is that you were number one, which a lot of times seller
EF (41:19):
And you, you wanted to say number one bestseller, right? It doesn’t, they’re not looking number one best seller in turtles, right? But our marketing director did a really good job of really narrowing it down to that niche of turtles, right? Cause there’s a turtle on the cover. I’m not laughing cause I’m like, that was kind of genius, right? Because this girl doesn’t have any platform. She’s like a high school student, but here you go. She just hit number one Amazon bestseller interns.
AJV (41:41):
You know, I’m telling you like that is just so important. Back to marketing, branding, selling, writing the book is just a piece of this puzzle. But it’s like you’ve gotta have a good team who knows what they’re doing to figure out these little nuances. And a part of that is like, and I, Rory always corrects me and he goes, it’s not that hitting the list doesn’t matter, it’s just, it’s a piece of the puzzle. But the more times that you can hit the list and the more you sell, the more other people will hear about it and then it spreads. So I have to remind myself of that. Cuz I’m one of those like, it doesn’t matter, but it kinda does. Cause when you do
EF (42:19):
Exactly rose’s, right, you’re both are right. But the other side is the best part is when you see it on the list over and over and mm-hmm. over and over because then you’re like, wow, it was really a good book. Cuz people keep buying it. It wasn’t just hit the list and then left. Right, right. The best part, right? See, oh, it’s up, been on the New York Times bestseller list for 54 weeks, you know, or Yeah. That’s like, wow. We really have a winner now.
AJV (42:40):
Yeah. Not looking for the one hit wonder. Okay, last set of questions and then I have a personal question for you. What, no, you told me earlier like kinda like three things, like make it sticky, have good content, have a good platform, it needs to be unique. That’s like generally speaking, but for you personally, like working with a 17 year old girl who has no platform, right? And I just also happen to know some of your authors who don’t have big platforms and all of that. So I know that’s not the only thing you look for and I just think it’s really unique to find an agent who is willing to invest in people who you’re like, no, I see something in you. I see something in this message and I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do it regardless. It may not get me the biggest advance and you may not this, this and this, but so I’m curious for you personally, what, what makes an author someone that you’re like, you, I wanna work with you.
EF (43:29):
Oh, okay. So I’m a sucker. Okay. Like, listen, like for story, right? So someone comes in and they have a crazy story. I’m like, oh my gosh. And I cry all the time. Like, I don’t know what happened in my forties. I just like . They’ll tell a story and I’ll be falling, crying and too emotional. So because we have this other publishing program where we can help, and actually more and more influencers with huge platforms are not wanting to go to traditional publishing. They wanna own all their own content and they don’t wanna wait two years for it to come out. Mm-Hmm. . So when we develop this program and we put millions of dollars into it, so it’s it, but it’s awesome. So when an author comes in and they’re looking at it like they’re, it’s a business and they really wanna get the story out, I’m like, I’m all for it.
EF (44:09):
If I’m touched by the story, I’m like, I wanna do it. I wanna help you get this message out. But that author has to wanna work. I usually, yeah. Like if an author is like, eh, I don’t need it. I really, I, I, I don’t have that much time in the day. Like, I like to help start businesses and empower people to keep going. I think the biggest mistake people make is they quit before their miracle. Like they’re right there and they just give up. So the best are the authors that are really in it. And so if I have someone that’s super passionate and really in it and know that this is a core message, it’s really hard for me to say no to that.
AJV (44:42):
Mm. I love that. So for you, it really does come down to two.
EF (44:46):
Oh yeah. I’m, I said, I was like, my whole team’s like Esther say no. I’m like, yeah, but this story’s so good and I think it’s got some legs and maybe this could be a movie or maybe we could do this. And so it’s fun like thinking through it. But yeah, like sometimes I have to bring my team in the, for them to be like, no, this isn’t,
AJV (45:04):
We all have to have people who are willing to say no in our lives. But I love that it’s like it’s, this is story, but also are you willing to work? Are you willing to work? Are you willing to work as hard as I’m gonna have to to make this come to life? I love that. I think that’s so cool. All right. Here’s a personal question for you in the group. So you kinda told us earlier what your favorite book was. Well I dunno if it’s your favorite book of all time, but How to Win Friends and Influence People. I would say, what has been the book that you would say, like, for me, heaven will be like forever change the direction of my life. But I would also say like nothing to prove and discovering Jenny Allen has been a life-changing event for me in the last 12 months of going, I’ve never read a book where I’m like, oh, I’m your avatar. It’s so clear who you’re writing to. It’s me. Hi My name’s aj. So I would say to you like, do you have a, an author or a book that you’re like, I don’t care who you are or anything, but if you read this work or read, read this book, or from this author, like, it’s gonna change your life?
EF (46:02):
I do. So everybody that knows me knows my book. Like it’s changed my life. It changed the way I thought about business. It’s changed everything. It’s actually Buck there. It’s by Mark Patterson, who’s one of my favorite authors that I have the privilege of working with. It’s called the Circle Maker. And I, I read the Circle Maker. I was agenting for seven years of my own company and I was pretty successful. And I read this book and it like, it, it just wrecked me. And you know how people are like, oh, I pray, or I, I do this right? And, and remember I get to read it before all of you guys read it. So I’m like, way ahead of thinking, you know? And I’m like, this is gonna be a bestseller. It was a New York Times bestseller. It’s sold over 5 million copies. It’s been unbelievable.
EF (46:44):
But what’s so cool about this book is this guy, it’s, we, we sold it as Hony the circle draw what’s called the Circle Maker. And it’s about praying circles, right? So I started believing God. I prayed circles around every office. I prayed circles around an office building I wanted to buy. I prayed circles like, God, if this is for me, prayed for every employee on every desk. And guess what? I started getting better employees. I started getting like more champions. I started getting bigger authors. And there was this guy, he talks about the end of the book, right? So it doesn’t ruin the book for you guys, but there was this guy named Gypsy Smith, right? And he was this evangelist that traveled all over the world. I think he did 45 trips around the world. And he was this amazing preacher speaker. And somebody asked him like, what was, was the secret?
EF (47:29):
And he’s like, was his prayer life? And he goes right away, he goes, these revival secrets were asking what was God like, what’s, how can God use me? And so when I was reading this book, I’m like, God, how can you use me in a bigger way? And he goes, go home, lock your door, kneel in the middle of the floor. Draw, take a piece of chalk, draw a circle around yourself and pray fervently and brokenly for God to do a revival inside that chalk circle. Mm-Hmm. . And that’s from this guy Gypsy Smith, this evangelist. But I started, I did that right? And I went home, I locked the door and I drew, took a piece of chalk and I drew a circle and I said, God, I want you to use me. Bring me the clients you want me to use. Bring me the employees you want me to work with. Bring me the team. Help me scale my company. Like, just use me to pick those right books or the ones that you want me to be part of. And that like totally forever changed my company. Mm-Hmm. . So it was prayer. And, and so re if you haven’t read the Circle Maker, you have to, every employee here has to read the Circle Maker and How To Win Friends With Influence People. Those are the two books that everyone, that works with me for me.
AJV (48:29):
Why? I just wrote it down. I wrote it down. Part of me is
EF (48:33):
I’m gonna send you a copy. So I’ll send you one today.
AJV (48:36):
. I’m always looking for really good books. And then, okay, last question. Do you read or do you listen?
EF (48:42):
Both. Right. So I’m a speed reader so I can read pretty fast obviously cuz I, I read like 300 books a year. But I listened to, so a lot of times I’m, I’m a big believer every book you have to do an audiobook. I don’t let my authors not do an audiobook. It really, yeah. Makes me mad if they don’t wanna do an audiobook. Audio is up to 347% in the last two years. Wow. So more people are listening than reading right now. Huge authors, and I can give you the stats. They’re selling more in audio than actual print. Print cells are still up by the way. So it’s, it’s like, it’s both, they’re buying both versions. Like I do that all the time. I buy the print version and I buy, I listen to audio and sometimes I read a little bit of books. Sometimes I listen to it. I think listening, like when I’m walking or working out or like in the car, it’s so much easier to listen. But I still love to read. So I read every one of the books I represent I or listen to it, one or the other. So I think it’s whatever, whatever your preference is.
AJV (49:41):
Yeah, I love that. I
EF (49:42):
Remember it better AJ if I’m reading it than if I’m listening to it cuz like, you can tune out or get too strong. But when I’m reading it, I feel like I really take it in more.

AJV (49:50):
Yeah, I’m with you on that. I always I always tease my husband. I’m like, you did not read that. You listened to that. That’s not, you can’t say I’ve read that. You can only say I listen to it.

EF (50:00):
I have to tell her when reading or listening. It’s the same thing, right? Because

AJV (50:03):
No, it’s not, it’s not the same thing. I’m so too, I’m so biased, but I’m, I’m very much like, I’m a speed reader. So it’s like I can, I can crush books. I crush books. But I love but I love to hold it. I love to like feel the pages fold ’em, doggier, highlight, underline. But there’s power in everything. Think

EF (50:21):
All women. I think all women like that, right? Like we like take those.

AJV (50:24):
I like to hold it. But I would also say as unbiased feedback for anyone who is listening, when you do your audiobook, at least from this one consumer’s piece of feedback, read your own book. Please do not hire someone else to read your book. I want to hear the author’s voice and connotations and I want to hear it from you. So piece of unbiased feedback. And Esther, I would just say, man, not only are you like repre representing authors that are truly changing the trajectory of this world, like the work you’re doing is changing the world. You are helping get things out there that are saving lives transforming lives. And man, it’s such an honor to get to meet you and have you on the show. Thank you so much. I’m so excited to release this episode and get it out into the world. So thanks for giving us your time today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right, everybody, stay tuned and listen to the recap conversation that I’m gonna do on my conversation with Esther. And we’ll see you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. See you later.

Ep 366: How Coaches Can Use Technology to Scale with Minal Mehta

AJV (00:00):
Welcome to our latest episode on the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. And I am uniquely excited about today’s interview because we have really chosen to do a super selective conversation, really built for the coach community that’s a part of our audience. So coaches, speakers, consultants, authors, trainers, like we serve all of you. But this is like really built for this unique piece of our audience that is growing and growing and growing. And it was a decided choice to do this. So if you are a coach, this is for you. So don’t tune out. Like this is the time to like double down and tune in because this is really built to help you be a better coach, better serve your clients, and do it in the most effective and efficient way possible, using some awesome technology.
AJV (01:03):
So that is what this is about. That is why you should stick around. Now, you should want to know who’s going to be talking about all this awesome stuff because it’s not me, , it’s not me. This is a newer friend of mine. Her name is Minal Mehta, and she’s the co-founder and c e o of All Takes, which is an amazing technology platform that we’re gonna talk about today, but we’re gonna talk about so much more. Before we get to this awesome technology, all takes, which if you are watching this this episode is not being recorded on Zoom like we usually do, it’s actually being recorded on all takes. So I’ve gotten the awesome privilege to be testing this out and going, wow, like, is this what it could look like to be a coach in the future? So it’s been a really cool thing.
AJV (01:52):
But Minal has also worked at so many of the powerhouse platforms and tech companies from Amazon to YouTube to LinkedIn. There’s so much, so much wisdom and smarts. She’s just really smart behind this conversation. But then made it, she made a decided decision to tailor to this unique coaching community, develop her own technology, which is what we’re doing right now. And really why, like why did we, why did you decide to do that? And how is it gonna benefit so many people in this coaching community? So I can go on and on and on, honestly, cause I think there’s so many awesome things that I have learned about you and this technology and why you do it. And I love the heart behind it as much as I love the technology itself. So, without further ado, Manal, welcome to the show.
MM (02:42):
Thank you, aj. I’ve really enjoyed meeting you. I enjoyed your mission and I’m really excited for this conversation.
AJV (02:51):
Oh, this is gonna be so awesome. So here’s where I wanna start, is I wanna just talk about the rise of the coach, right? We are in an era where in our last conversation I shared this like statistic that I just stumbled across. Like if you just go and do a super, a, a simple LinkedIn search and you just type in coach, right? There is over, I think 1.2 something million people just on LinkedIn mm-hmm. , who self-identify as coach. Mm-Hmm. , it’s the second fastest growing industry in the world right now. It’s forecasted in more than 20 billion just in the US this year. There is a ton happening in this coaching sector, which is for the size that it is, and the weight that it carries is completely unregulated. Mm-Hmm. , right? Which means no certifications are required, no education is required. Mm-Hmm. about may change, but there is this time that we live in where there’s a rise of the coach. And so I’d love to hear your thoughts about why that is
MM (03:52):
Awesome. And I think there’s just so many things that have come together to make this happen. So, on one hand, all of us just lived through one of the craziest fla swan events in our time. The pandemic and mental health became an imperative. And as we thought about our mental health, we started going deeper into who we are, what we care about, how we show up in this world. And there’s no better person to take you on this journey than a coach who’s been there, done that, been in your shoes, gone on that journey before you, it is tailored and targeted for you. And so I do believe that people are really excited about working with very specific coaches in this moment in a way that’s never happened before. We’re all very open to both taking care of our mental health, but also really going deep and understanding who we are and showing up in the way we want to show up because mm-hmm. , you only live once and this is our moment. And all of this became so evident during the pandemic On the other hand, sorry, go ahead.
AJV (04:52):
No, go ahead. I’ll, I’ll reserve my thought for a second.
MM (04:54):
I was gonna say, then on the other hand, people who went on this inner journey realized that they also wanna be entrepreneurs. That, you know, the era of being an employee I think is also changing. You know, I myself was an employee, as you mentioned, I worked at Google and YouTube and LinkedIn, and here I am an entrepreneur. Because I do think people are looking deep inside themselves and, and trying to figure out what kind of life they wanna live. And many people are choosing the route of becoming an entrepreneur. Many people are being called to serve and share their knowledge and their wisdom with other people. And I think, like no other time before, both of these trends are happening at the same time. So we’re in this like precious moment where people need the services of coaches, coaches are being called to serve. Many coaches use the services of other coaches because it’s so interconnected and we all believe in our own growth and the growth of the planet at the same time. So we’re in this unique moment where everything is building on each other. And as you said, this is the moment the rise of the coach. It’s happening.
AJV (06:02):
Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s so interesting because I hadn’t like quite connected the parallel of, you know, the rise of this coaching industry with this rise of the entrepreneur community, right? Mm-Hmm. , and it’s mm-hmm. it’s an entrepreneur solopreneur, right? It’s like, but these people who are going, yeah, I don’t wanna go back mm-hmm. to whatever that was. I don’t wanna go back to that. So do you think that those are really intertwined mm-hmm. , it’s like people are saying, Hey, I wanna become a solopreneur and the profession I’m choosing is coaching.
MM (06:32):
I think those are very intertwined because I do think a lot of people are also realizing the expertise they have to offer. And it’s a great way to get started on building out a business that is uniquely you, right? If you go back to owning who you are and being who you are, and showing up in this world in your truest, most authentic form, then there’s no better way to do it than coaching because you, you are your business and your business is you. So I do think people are choosing to live the life that they want, and many are saying, I’ll become a digital nomad. I’ll become a consultant, all of that stuff. But I do think being a coach and serving global audiences from the comfort of your computer is something that is appealing to a lot of different people right now.
AJV (07:15):
Yeah. That’s, that’s such a great insight. I hadn’t quite connected those two until you said that. And, you know, you said something else that made me think about this. And you know, I have been in the coaching, speaking, training, consulting world for a significantly long time compared to how old I am, . And, but I started really early, right? This, like, this was like the career I jumped into at 21 years of age. And I remember being in my late twenties when I, I’d been doing this already almost eight, nine years at this point. And I was at a b and I meeting, I don’t even know if they still have those, but a B and I networking meeting. And somebody had said so what do you do? And I said, oh, I’m a coach and a consultant. And they kind of gave me a wink, wink, oh, so that you’re unemployed.
AJV (07:59):
And I was like, no, no, I mean, I’m a coach and a consultant. And they’re like, like, you actually do that. And I remember like, I remember just hearing that and there was like such a assumed insignificant component of that. And then you fast forward to today, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a coach mm-hmm. mm-hmm. or who isn’t looking for one, and that’s over the span of like 10 years, right? It went from, oh, you mean you’re unemployed to, I don’t know anyone who isn’t looking for one. Mm-Hmm. has had one needs one want, one has one. Mm-Hmm. . So there’s been this like evolutionary change of the weight and the importance and the value that is on this industry. Mm-Hmm. specifically mm-hmm. . And so I would be curious to know, because this is the community you’ve chosen to serve with this awesome platform that you have built well, what do you think it is that coaches need to know or need to do to be better coaches today?
MM (09:01):
Mm-Hmm. , that is a great question. And I think some of the work that you guys do at Brand Builders group as well, I think the power of coaching versus therapy and all these other modalities that are available to you is that coaching can be super niche. Like, who are you going to serve is like super important, right? Because the power of coaching is I get to be with a coach who has been in the shoes that I want to be in in many ways. Like coaches go back and serve who they used to be. And so this, this industry is fascinating because there can be a coach for everyone, and it’s like, you’re not competing with each other because you are serving a very unique audience. So I think the first thing coaches need to be really, really clear on is who are they serving and how are they serving that person?
MM (09:48):
Because that is their unique edge. So that’s like table stakes. I know a lot of coaches work on that. I think the second thing that I’ve realized is being part of this, this movement almost at this point in this industry and this community, as you’ve said, is that there’s a difference between coaching and building a coaching business. And I don’t think people realize that upfront, right? That like some people said, I’m really good at mentoring them, so I should become a coach. And that’s great, you have some content that you can share, but going from, I have some content I can share to really becoming a coach and then like really launching a coaching business. Like, that’s a whole journey. And I don’t think people realize that you need the mindset, skillset and tool set to make that happen. Many of of us have been employees like to switch from an employee mindset to an entrepreneur mindset, to a solopreneur mindset.
MM (10:41):
Like, how do you run your business? That’s like number one, there’s a skillset set to building a business, right? I’ve spoken to so many coaches who are like, well, can you just market us? And I’m like, no, because you are serving your niche audience. You need to speak to your audience. I cannot speak to your audience for you. So you have to learn how to market yourself and how to sell your services. So like, you’ve gotta learn how to build that business, right? So that skillset in addition to the coaching work that you do, and then of course, there’s the tool set as a client of many coaches, I will admit the level of service varies not so much because the coaches are better or worse. Like most coaches I’ve worked with are excellent, but just the way they deliver their coaching is so different.
MM (11:26):
Like, I, I mean, I feel like I’ve gone through coaching programs where they’re like, here’s a zoom link. Oh, and the calendar invite is sent. People are scrambling to find the zoom link to meet after the zoom link. Where’s the recording? I can’t find the recording. Did someone take notes from that previous session that I can lean into? Where do I register for the next thing if I need to subscribe for your ongoing community? I don’t know where to find it. And like so much of my my experience as a client sucks because of the way you choose the tools, right? To, to kind of share your coaching expertise with the world. And so that’s your tool set. Like how do you actually create the right tool set to be able to build out your coaching business? So I think like anyone embarking on this journey today and say, find your niche audience and then make sure you do the work and your mindset, your skillset and your tool set to, to reach where you wanna reach.
AJV (12:24):
Yeah. I think that’s, that third thing is probably, probably the most common thing that I hear. It’s like, I love them and it’s like the content is great and they help me, but, but man, it’s like it’s a cluster. Mm-Hmm. , , it’s a cluster. It’s so disorganized that it makes me disorganized. Mm-Hmm. . And it’s like, I can’t find the notes. I never got the notes. I’m not sure if we’re on, I got the calendar invite, but I don’t have a zoom link in the invite. And it’s, it’s the disorganization that creates a little bit of chaos, even if the coaching itself is really awesome. Yes. and that’s what kind of comes back is being a great coach and building a great business aren’t necessarily the same skillsets.
MM (13:00):
Yes, exactly.
AJV (13:02):
Exactly. those are, that’s really helpful and insightful specifically for all of you coaches who are listening of going, man, it’s like, do you have the organized systems to put all the pieces together to make it easy and consolidated mm-hmm. for your clients mm-hmm. , right? And I think that’s kinda like where the technology discussion has been ever increasingly important to help improve efficiencies and effectiveness in this organization thing. So in your opinion, when you have lived in this world for a really long time, and I think this is like a, probably a good opportunity to share some of your background mm-hmm. and all the different technology platforms that you have been a part of and what you like, what is your background actually, because , like, you’re not just like building this in theory that you’re actually building it mm-hmm. . So you’re, that’s take, it’s an incredible skillset that is very rare.
MM (13:58):
Yeah. So I’m gonna take a little bit of a journey here with all of you. So I have a degree in computer science. I believe in the power of technology, right? Technology is my friend. I’m a technologist at heart. And the journey that I’ve gone on is a long journey and a short journey all at the same time. But I will start my journey almost from well after college. I, I worked at Amazon for a brief period of time.
AJV (14:23):
Well, you’re also being super humble right now. It’s not that you just went to college and got computer science degrees. It’s like you have a computer science degree from Stanford. Mm-Hmm. . And then you have an a d from Harvard. So let’s not forget those really important details.
MM (14:41):
That’s true. I will share the details. Thank you AJ, for helping me out here. So I have a computer science degree from Stanford. I actually came into Stanford thinking I was gonna be pre-med. I came from India. I chose Stanford because they gave me the most financial aid. I actually had no idea what Stanford really was. This was back in the day. And I came in 1999 and they gave me more money than anyone else. I’m like, I’ll try it out. And it was literally one of the best happy coincidences of my life. And I think that just taught me, right? Like, things show up in front of you and it’s up to you what you do with them. And I was very lucky to go to Stanford. I was very lucky to discover computer science at that period of time, right? The.Com era and all of that, and the power of technology and where technology can be used for good.
MM (15:22):
I then went and worked at Amazon where I, for those of you who you who used Amazon in sort of like the 2005 to 2010 timeframe, like everything before that buy button on the product detail page was managed by my team. So I’ve touched search on the product page and the homepage for a brief period of time. Navigation, I changed multiple times. And so I truly love making life easier for users online because I do believe in the power of technology. But when you think about how a user interacts, it marries, you know, technology, psychology, like our own feelings as we interact our own needs as we’re solving the problems. There’s like this very interesting moment that comes together when you deliver an interface to a user. So that was Amazon. I then went to business school. I went to Harvard as you mentioned, aj, and that was also a turning point in my life.
MM (16:18):
I, as part of my time at hvs, I really got involved in the career, the career community out there, the career center, like I was part of that. I led various programs for that. And so I don’t even think we’ve talked about this, but a couple years later I reached out to HBS and I’m saying, I said, you need to hire me as a coach. And they said, you are 25 years younger than any other coach we have on staff, right? Like, just go back to that time . And so we can’t hire you as a coach. We love you. We know what you’re doing. We know what you stand for. You know us, but we can’t hire you as a coach. And I said, every one of your students is gonna wanna be a product manager, and no one’s gonna want to talk to somebody who hasn’t been a product manager.
MM (16:59):
So you need me, I’m a product manager. I guarantee you 30% of MBAs are gonna try to be pro product managers in the next five years. And so they said, yeah, you’re right. Like we’ve looked at the data . So they hired me as a coach and they hired four more exactly like me after that. So that was, that was to your point, right? Like the coaching industry, it’s like going through such a change. And that was my first experience of coaching a niche because I’m like, I don’t wanna coach anyone and everyone. I don’t wanna look at your LinkedIn profile and your resume, and if you’re in interviewing a j and j, that’s not me. But if you wanna build a career as a product manager in tech, then I’m your person because I will work with you to make that happen. So that was happening in parallel while I also realized that I wanna help people with their careers at scale.
MM (17:45):
So I joined LinkedIn, and at LinkedIn I managed all of LinkedIn groups and LinkedIn messaging. So any member to member communication anything that had to do with building community like that was my area that I worked on. And you know, I think we’ve, we’ll talk a little bit about the power of community, but community is so important to all of us. And yet finding and building the right online community is really, really, really, really hard. And I got to learn a lot about that. Working on LinkedIn groups, the incentives that work, the incentives that didn’t work, all of that. From there, I went to Google. And at Google I worked on a different segment for, for the, you know, five years that I was there. Between Google and YouTube, I worked on what they called the next billion users, which is all of the high growth emerging markets.
MM (18:30):
So people who are rapidly coming online, getting their first mobile phone, don’t know what to do with the data, and how do we give them the best introduction to the internet possible. Because, you know, like these are literally baby internet people coming online. Never. Like we, we’ve been in the internet, we’ve been in the internet for like, you know, 15, 20 years by that point. And you talk about somebody like jumping in in this moment. Yeah. And how do we transition them online? So really got to understand the needs of these users. And at YouTube especially, it is the largest segment of users, the fastest growing segment of users and really understanding all of their needs and helping them with that. And all of this ties together because I was doing the career coaching at hbs. I was going through my own journey of inner growth.
MM (19:19):
Everybody has that moment. I think every coach has that moment that they deal with where they just go deep inside themselves and like turn themselves inside out and like, push forward. And all of this was happening as I was working on the next billion users. I had two kids around that time. It broke me in ways I didn’t expect it would break me cuz I have an incredibly supportive spouse. But it was a shift in identity, a shift in how I worked, a shift in how people treated me. And I found myself yeah, like really doing the inner work to stay true to me. It was hard work to just stay true to me when I worked in like from the outside, some of the best environments in the world, right? You work at Google, that’s incredible. Like, you know, 1% of 1% of people get into Google or whatever it is, right? Like, this is even harder than getting into HBS or Stanford. Like how can you complain about that? But there was a moment where I was like working so hard to keep the balance between the internal and the external. So pandemic happened early in 2021. I decided there was time for a change and I decided that I should go into coaching full-time. And I actually started this YouTube channel that no one can find right now. But I still my .
MM (20:36):
But the, but what was happening is all these women were breaking around me. 2 million women left the workforce during the pandemic in the US alone. And my friends came to me and they said, all I think about all day is, is this all there is to life? I put my kid in front of Zoom school, I cook lunch for them, I take care of them. I’m working, I’m working harder than ever before. People are expecting more from me at work. I have no time for me. Is this all there is to life? Highly educated, you know, very lucky women, like high achievers, very smart, very lucky women. Like is this all theirs to life? And they said like, you, you don’t seem to be breaking. Why is that? And I said, well that’s because I did my breaking and I did my rebuilding and I have like my center.
MM (21:22):
And they’re like, well, you should teach that. And so that’s what my YouTube channel in some ways started being about. And I wanted to become a coach to really help burnt out women in tech really find their center and their joy. And this will become relevant soon. But I wanted to do that. I started creating this content and then as I started doing it, the technologist in me reared its head again and said like, you are a coach for one type of person. There’s a coach for everyone. How can you use your skillset and tool set to make that happen? And that’s how all takes was really born, right? Like every coach should be able to connect with their clients deeply in an organized way, in a connected way, in a loving way, and really help them transform. And I wanted to make that happen. And and that’s the, the platform that you said today. I
AJV (22:10):
Mean, it’s like, this is why I wanted you to tell the story for anyone who is listening is, I think so often technology can be built, not, not from this standpoint, not from this usage standpoint and or not just technology, but businesses, right? Mm-Hmm. . And this was really built for, it’s like, no, I am doing it and I have this skillset and I know how to make this better because I’m doing it mm-hmm. and I need, and it’s like, part of that’s identifying the problems of, again, back to what you said earlier, the skillsets that often make you a great coach are not often the same skillsets that make you a great business owner or a business builder. Mm-Hmm. and the organization and the experience often is what keeps your clients and helps you get new clients. And if that part’s not working, the God-given talents and gifts that you have aren’t even being used because you’re spending all your time trying to figure out the stuff that you shouldn’t even be having to figure out.
MM (23:05):
Exactly. Exactly. And I find actually a lot of coaches use that as an excuse to not grow their business.
MM (23:12):
, I don’t know if you see that too, aj. It’s like, no, I need to create my mailing list. I need to set up my ClickFunnels, I need to do this, I need to do that. And all of a sudden they’re spending like more than half their day on just kind of like tying all this technology together. And in my deep and long journey, I realize that productivity or the illusion of productivity is its own form of addiction. And I see many coaches like doing that, right? I’m doing the work, I’ve created my Zoom account, I can now connect my email to my Zoom and like, I’ve just like, but they, they’re spending all this time doing that instead of sharing their gifts with the world, like attracting the right client and serving the right client. And it breaks my heart. And then I’ve talked to coaches who are like, I spend all this money on hiring a developer first, a designer, and then a developer to build my website or to build my, I’m not gonna name other tools here, or maybe I should, I don’t know, but like
AJV (24:09):
.
MM (24:11):
But like at a point where you need to hire a designer and a developer to take care of a software that is supposed to be quote unquote easy to use. So that, like I’ve heard coaches say, I have no profit because that’s what I’m doing. And I’m like, what is going on? This is not where you should be spending your time Definitely at all. Or your money. Like yes. Like you can always do with a little bit of help, but like, you shouldn’t be paying somebody a full-time salary to manage your technology stack
AJV (24:40):
The basics. Yeah. You know, there’s a, a level of this that we would say it’s, it’s what we would call creative avoidance. Mm-Hmm. ,
AJV (24:48):
We do, we do the work that needs to be done instead of the significant work that must be done. Or it’s a level of priority dilution. Mm-Hmm. , right? Mm-Hmm . It’s like you get caught up in the mundane and you lose sight of what is the real priority which is serving clients. Mm-Hmm. , right? That’s the priority. But we get caught up in the monotony and all the insignificant things cause they have to be done. So we lend our attention that way versus this. And I think this whole backstory, this conversation has kind of led us to this point of like, technology can be used for good and it can actually help you strengthen relationships, build deeper community, stay organized, and allow you to run a business that kind of runs itself because you don’t have to do 14 little things. And as a cotu coach, if I just remember my former coaching days, this is what it looked like and I know many of you can relate to it because it’s what it looks like for you today is I would get a client, then I would send out 12 monthly calendar invites all manually cuz they were on different days and different times due to schedule conflicts.
AJV (25:49):
I would set up the zoom link, put it in there, I would then have to set up a Word doc where I kept some coaching nuts and I would probably keep that Dropbox. Then when I did the Zoom, I would then have to download this link because they client wanted the recording and then I would have to store it somewhere on this Word doc because they would often lose it because I sent it in an email. And then I would have to keep track of this word doc and this thing, and then I’d have to keep all of the notes. And then they didn’t want the notes in an email. They wanted those in a consolidated document, but they wanted me to email that consolidated document every single time. So it was the top of their inbox. And that’s just a part of the list, right?
AJV (26:27):
And so you kind of go like, whoa, the amount of administrative operational work that it takes to even do one call is quite extraordinary. And that doesn’t even count if they reschedule last minute or cancel, but still wanna do it and on and on and on. I know that those, those of you listening can relate to some of that because I know you do it. I know some of you and I know you’re doing it. And there’s a better way. There is an easier way. So before we talk about all takes and the awesomeness that you have built and that you’re launching out into the world, I’d love to talk just about like how does technology or how can technology, and this is, you can talk about, I’ll take specifically here, but how can it actually make the coaching experience better for the coach and the client?
MM (27:15):
Yes, absolutely. And I think technology is a tool, right? Like, I know I’ve heard from many coaches that they just wanna throw their laptop out the window when they’re dealing with technology . So technology is a tool. Technology is a tool like any other tool and it can be used well or used poorly, I think in terms of being used for the coaching experience. I personally think one of the biggest differentiators is really finding something that takes care of all of your workflows for you, right? You don’t, you want something simple, you want one place to do, whether you’re doing a cohort or a community or a webinar or a workshop or a one-on-one. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was like one place to do all of these things versus I use YouTube live for this and I use Instagram live for that and I use Zoom for this and I use email for that and I use Dropbox here and then depending on what modality like I have to, so I can, I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t do group coaching because like that is a whole different tech stack that I don’t wanna, wanna take care of, right?
MM (28:11):
So that’s the first level because as a coach, we are all growing. Many coaches start out one-on-ones, but then they do groups like whatever it is that you’re doing, you want a platform that can handle all the things that you wanna do. The second thing I would say is then in the doing of those things, it needs to be really easy to set things up because if it’s not like then you’re going back to exactly what AJ described, right? Like that creative avoidance of like setting up your technology so it works perfectly and then feeling really good about you got that done, but you didn’t actually move the needle forward for your business. And so having something that you can do really easily to set up any of these modalities, in fact, the sign of truly great technology is that it all feels so familiar regardless of what you do.
MM (28:52):
And I think this is where all takes shines and where some of our, the other coaching platforms out there, it’s like depending on if you’re doing a community or if you’re doing a group, like the user interface is completely different. It feels like everything has just been tacked on and so you don’t know how to use it. And then you get to your clients, most of you probably have repeat clients, like they come to you for a webinar and then they join you for a group or they join you for a subscription and they need to relearn the language of the thing every single time. And so giving them a super, super sim simple language to start with, and then keeping that, that language of the website really consistent for them can go a long way in making sure, sure. Making sure that they engage with you.
MM (29:34):
And then the thing that is the [inaudible] the the icing on the cake is can you build connection online? You know, over and over again. Like people, coaches are like, I wanna live anywhere. I wanna work from my laptop. I want to meet my clients wherever they are. But I miss those days where I could see them in person, where we could talk to each other in a conference room when we could go for a walk with each other. And there’s something about that connection that’s really important. And I don’t, having worked on communities for a large part of my career, I don’t know that being online can fully replicate that energy exchange that happens in person, but at all takes, that is one of our guiding stars, is how can we make this online experience feel as real worldly as possible? And so if you see, if you’re watching this, you’ll see that we live in a white background, not a a dark background, right? Because when you’re sitting in a room, you’re sitting in a clean, well lit space talking to a person not in a dark room where it’s like, actually that would scare me if I was sitting in a dark room with a group of people .
MM (30:40):
You know? But you don’t, you don’t think about that when you’re there and then you leave zoom feeling, oh my gosh, like I’m feeling a little down, a little depressed. Yeah, you’ve been sitting in a freaking dark room, it makes no sense that you’re sitting in that dark room. So something as simple as that. Like other things are like, we have these like expressions that we share. We have this hard expression that I’m sharing this confetti. We’re building more, if there is more than just the two of us, like at all takes you sit in a round table and have a conversation. And I say that my kids sit in circle time. They’ve sat in circle time since they were two years old. There’s something about sitting in a circle that calms our nervous systems down. We understand it, we get it. And so that combination of the expressions, being able to emote with other human beings and sitting in a circle where, you know, where every person is sitting like people are really vulnerable and open in those settings, which is exactly what you want to build real world connection online, right?
MM (31:35):
So I think technology can be used in a, a variety of ways to not only make your life easier, but to make that connection with your client or client stronger. And then if you have a group, then even making the connection between your clients stronger, because that is a whole another level of unlock that you can, you know, you and your clients can experience. So I’ve spoken a lot about all takes, but I do think like those are the things like great ease of use for the coach, ease of use for the client, one place to do everything. Don’t manage your technology everywhere. Connection, connection, connection. Super important. And okay, my connection is unstable. I don’t know AJ if you can hear me. Let’s see. All right. I’m gonna hope we come back. Okay. So
AJV (32:24):
I, you pick it up where you said I, I’ve talked a lot about all takes, but
MM (32:29):
I think Yes, yes. So I’ve talked a lot about all takes, but I think really like the, the things you’re looking for in your technology are ease of use, ease of view, ease of use for you, for your client. One place to do everything. Not like, you know, 50 different softwares that you have to use and pay for by the way to do all the things that you need to do for connection, building that connection with your clients, even though you live in this world that is very like all over the place right now. And the last, last, last, last bit I’ll add because I do believe in the power of community is having a community of people that can help you. Because one of, one of the things I’ve heard from a lot of our coaches is that they feel very alone as they start their businesses. And I think with the brand builders group, aj, you guys are building a community of coaches that can go through this together. But you know, any platform that can give you the right community of people who believe that all boats rise at the same time, let’s help each other to make this happen, I think is really critical as part of this journey.
AJV (33:33):
I, I mean I think there’s all of that is so true and accurate and I would just say as someone who is using a bunch of different technologies right now as we try to consolidate, right? I think that’s like one of the big benefits that I have seen in all takes is it’s the consolidation of lots of different things that you’re using manually mm-hmm. and you’re consolidating them to make it easy. So it’s, it’s easier for you the coach, but it’s easier for your clients. And you know, it’s like I, right now it’s like most of our team does their coaching calls on Zoom mm-hmm. , but we have what we call these little file repositories, right? And these file repositories is a somewhat sophisticated way of, we’ve put all of our different frameworks together in a way that are editable for every single one of our clients, but those live on SharePoint, right?
AJV (34:25):
Wow. Then we create a client playlist in YouTube for every, a private playlist for every single client that we have, 600 playlists for every single client so that we’re not just recording something once and then letting it drift off into the, you know internet. But it’s a, we, we, we keep those for us, for to review for training for our team, but for the client and the coach. So it’s like even us at this stage of going, we’re trying to consolidate all of this, and that’s the nice thing. And I can only show, I will share this on my behalf of going, like, our team has been on the hunt for like, how do we make this easier mm-hmm. one for our coaches, and if it’s easier for them, it’ll be easy for our clients. Mm-Hmm. . But it’s like, if it’s easier for what we call strategists, it will be easier for the client.
AJV (35:14):
And it’s how do we consolidate conversations? I e chats. So not everything is going back and forth in email all the time because that’s exhausting. We have enough emails, we don’t need more emails. Mm-Hmm. the, the documentation, the notes that come from the call, right? Mm-Hmm. then it’s recording from the call and then it’s the scheduling of the next call and the reminders of that. And I think those are the things that I have, have all seen in all takes that they, that’s just not present in teams. It’s not present in Zoom. There’s, and that’s what most people are using, right? There’s what is, what’s the, what’s the Google space? Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, and people, I get those links sometimes and I’m like that it’s not present there either, right? And there’s like all these different things, but that’s really like this really cool consolidation effort that all takes has, so why don’t you just like walk us through, like as a coach, right? Mm-Hmm. to me it’s like what is all takes gonna do for me? Yeah.
MM (36:13):
Yeah. So I think all takes is gonna actually do with all the things that we talked about, right? And I’d say that we are in, we are like our coaches in the state of permanent growth. And so one of the things actually before I even go into the specifics is I will say that we are such believers in what all our coaches are doing, that if you give us feedback, you’ll see oftentimes that the platform is implementing that within the next few weeks. And so, like one of the things we look for is in our coaches is people who are actually willing to give us the feedback and build the platform that they want, right? So I’ll start with that as one of our key principles. But if you are a coach the way you would use all takes is you would come and we’d create for you what we call your business page.
MM (36:55):
It’s one place where all of your offers can be consolidated in one single place. Your offers can be one-on-ones with you know, with as many clients as you have. Each client has its own space. It can be a group offer that you have multiple group offers that you have. It could be webinars, it could be courses. No matter what you’re doing, you have a business page where all of these offers can live. Each offer can be public so visible on your business page or unlisted. So if I’m doing, you know, AJ’s coaching me and we have a one-on-one relationship and we have a space that only she and I can access with our playlists and our recordings and our chats and everything, that can be unlisted. So no one else can find it. She and I can find it and everything we have lives there, but no one else ever needs to see it or find it unless we share the link with that person. And so you can create any type of offer when you go into each specific offer. First of all, your clients can register for an offer directly from our website, so no more Eventbrite plus Zoom, which some of our coaches use, which is really weird cuz Eventbrite wasn’t meant for this use case, right? Event freight is great for, I’m organizing a meetup and I need to sell tickets, but not, not a
MM (38:06):
Coaching call. Not a coaching call, but a lot of our coaches I’m hearing use Eventbrite to manage their registration. So with all takes with any of your offers, the registration page is super simple. The client has all the information they need, images, videos, if you have videos when any meetings are gonna take place, the description of the offer register button, when they register, they can pay directly through all takes. And so you don’t have to build a separate payment processing thing out there. Once they are registered, they then get reminders for when their various meetings are happening, so you don’t have to send out reminders, right? And then once they register, they get into that space, that locked room that only people who’ve registered for that locked room have access to. And that locked room has three key components, which we believe actually constitutes the majority of coaching.
MM (38:56):
You have your live sessions, you have any content that needs to be shared between coach and client or clients. And then you have the conversation history that happens between coach and clients. And it’s really simple. There’s three sections. Anytime people need to attend a live session, they go to the live session area, they click on it, they’re in this round table. Anytime they wanna see content, it’s right in that content section, whether it’s like agenda or recordings, course content or anything in between. And then any conversation that has been had in that community is in that chat section. And so not only is there one space, just like imagine like if, if we had a coaching group meets at, I don’t know, green Library room 1 0 5, and we all end up there and all the information about all of our coaching is stored there, that is the feeling you get when you come into one of our, our spaces.
MM (39:46):
But that space, unlike, you know, green Library 1 0 5, like stays with you. So anyone who has access to that space has access to that space forever. And so your your clients aj, who want access to that playlist six months down the road, like they know exactly where to go to find it. And there is no email back and forth. It was just the space that we shared that has the memory of everything that’s happened. And so I think that’s where technology can be used for good, right? Like the real world is great to build connection, but to like have that history privately because I think the world has also gone too far in terms of what is shared publicly. Like that’s, that’s basically what all takes is. And I think we have a community of like-minded coaches that are helping each other learn and grow while while they use these tools and really grow their coaching businesses.
AJV (40:34):
Yeah, I think that’s like the, like I think that’s like a huge part of this. It’s where technology can really be such a super beneficial asset to you is going, technology’s never gonna replace the human element mm-hmm. . but yeah, it can replace so much of the chaos Yes. Like it can eliminate a lot of the manual things that are, are quite honestly sucking up a lot of your time. And, and I just think about, I remember, you know, in my thirties I would often have 40 coaching clients that I talked to on a every other week basis plus speaking plus consulting clients. And so I was forced to have just a super tight regimented system, but then I would be left after hours with all of the administrative operational things of did I get the email out? Where are the notes? Did I download the links?
AJV (41:27):
And it’s like at some point you’re going, I’m tired like I wanna do good work, but I’m tired. Like there’s a lot of stuff there. And that’s what I love about All Takes and why I wanted to have you on the show is part of our responsibility at Brain Builders Group isn’t just to teach strategy and introduce you to ideas and concepts. It’s to go here are tools that we have found that we think can help you. And all takes, just like Brain Builders Group is not meant, meant for everybody, but it’s meant for the person who’s going, oh, I didn’t know that existed. I’ve been looking for this. And that is why I wanted to introduce this to you, our community, our audience of going, this is a tool that can help. And it’s not the only tool, but it is a tool that does the things that I can’t think of other tools exactly like it.
AJV (42:16):
I can think of ones that do lots of these things individually mm-hmm. , right? So you’ve got lots of learning management systems that host your content, but you can’t host calls on ’em. Mm-Hmm. , you’ve got places you can host calls and recordings, but they don’t have the other piece. And this is, I think the benefit is it was built by coach, with the coach in mind. Mm-Hmm. , right? And that is the benefit of this, of taking the power of technology and going and how can I help this really niche group of individuals coaches build better businesses so that they can serve their clients better? And you probably wouldn’t do this, so flagrantly, so I will, and it’s like if you’re a coach, go to all takes.com, request a demo, go see it. Don’t just take this conversation, work for it. It’s like I, I don’t get affiliate fees, I don’t have a referral partnership with all takes, even though maybe I should, I’ll be a great promoter.
AJV (43:07):
But I don’t, I’m doing this because genuinely it’s like our, I’ve had our team request, like formal demos in addition to our conversations. It’s like we need tools that allow us to do better work and this is a tool that could really help you. So go to all takes.com, request a demo and check out the work. Now I will say, and I’m watching the time cuz we only have a couple of minutes left, there is something else that you’re doing right now that is also pretty cool. And before we bounce, because this is like so timely to when this is all happening, I want you to tell people what you are
MM (43:41):
Doing. Okay? So we are doing something really fun and a little bit scary for me. So remember how I said I wanted to become a coach at some point and then I build a technology, which by the way, in addition to everything AJ said, the role of technology is not to increase your cortisol levels. It is to decrease them. And so it’s not just all the work when you go to a place like you wanna feel like this place is taking care of you. And that’s one of the things we do at all takes, right? But putting that aside I wanted to become a coach and I’m starting this company and I was like, how does this all come together and how do I bring people along who want to build out their coaching businesses who are serious about making this change and making it happen?
MM (44:25):
So we’re doing this thing called the Making of a Coach challenge and our head of sales and you know, she’s also sales marketing and mindset coach. Her name is Mary Diaz, is gonna coach me into becoming a coach. We’re going to do our coaching calls on this platform live. We will share it with everybody. We will share my mindset shifts in addition to the tool set and skillset shifts that need to happen. And within eight sessions or 30 days, we expect the coaches that go on this journey with us and do the work to be able to enroll paying clients. And whether it’s a workshop or a cohort or one-on-one, whatever it is that you wanna do, like we’ll, we’ll guide you on that journey to making this happen. And you’ll get to see me do it with you and in front of you and share with you like how I’m feeling.
MM (45:12):
Cuz this journey is one of like great grit. And the, the more you can have the tools, the technology tools of course, but also the mindset tools to make this happen and the community that pushes you forward, that that’s something that can only be a superpower that you have. So sign up for the making of a code challenge. If you go to all takes.com, there’s a banner up top click on that banner, there’s a landing page with all the information. You click yes I want in and I’ll take you down that process. We’re looking forward to welcoming the right people with open arms on the other end and holding you and supporting you as you build out this business that you’ve always dreamt of building.
AJV (45:55):
Yeah. And I would just encourage that because this episode was really designed to tailor and to reach the coach community that’s a part of our audience. And doing this life, this thing called life. We were not meant to do it alone, right? And this is a great opportunity to come alongside other people who are doing what you are doing or what you wanna do and be a part of the evolution of what does this look like and how do I come along and be a part of this journey with a group of people who are doing what I do or doing what I wanna do. So highly encourage what a cool thing to get to be a first, you know, kinda like a firsthand seat too. And also get to do the work too, right? It’s what really creates this really awesome engagement and starts to build some really amazing community, which we all do need, we all need.
AJV (46:47):
And there’s additional competition here. There’s enough for us all. So come along for the ride. That’s what this is all about. So I’ll put all the links in the show notes. So you’ve got different ways to connect, but thank you so much for coming on and one, just the background and the wisdom and the experience you have. Like we didn’t even scratch the surface of all the things that you could be talking about. Because at the end of the day, this all has culminated in this awesome thing that you’re doing right now for a really unique group of people that we happen to get the privilege to serve. And this is an awesome platform with major benefits to everyone’s involved. So I’ll do one last call to action. Go check out all takes.com, request the demo, see if it’s a fit for you. And Manal, thank you so much. We are so honored to have you on the show and I cannot wait to talk to you again soon, everybody else. I love ya. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.
MM (47:47):
Thank you aj. Okay. All right. I’m gonna stop the recording and I will, yeah.

Ep 363: 15 Legal Strategies for Entrepreneurs to Reduce Taxes | Henry Yoshida Episode Recap

RV (00:02):
Well, most of the strategies that we teach at Brand Builders Group are strategies to help you grow your income, right? Obviously most of the time on this show we’re interviewing guests. Most of the teaching that we do is in our paid membership. Of course, that’s our core businesses, helping mission driven messengers to build and monetize their brand and become more well known and make a bigger impact in the world. So most of what we talk about is how to grow your income. What’s interesting though is the interview that I just did with Henry Yoshida, which if you haven’t listened to it, go listen to it. The first part of the interview is all about understanding a vehicle called a self-directed i r a, which is, it’s not a new vehicle, but it’s one that you most people haven’t heard of that’s becoming more popular, especially because of like a tools being created like the one that Henry has created.
RV (00:52):
Which is very, very affordable way to sort of transfer your i r a into more self-directed or non-trad, non-traditional assets. And anyways, that’s what the whole interview is about. But towards the end of the interview we started talking about just general tax strategy. And you know, there were a few things that came up that inspired me to go, you know what? I’m gonna, I’m gonna put together a killer episode here for you all and this on tax strategy, because this is not something that you normally hear. And I would consider, like when most people think of Brand Builders group, right? They think of like, oh, you guys help people, you know, crush book launches, right? Like, we’ve had at the time of this recording, 11 clients that we’ve helped hit the New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestseller list.
RV (01:43):
We’ve had four clients that we’ve helped that we’ve, that we’ve worked with where their TED Talk has gone viral over a million views. We’ve had five clients grow their business more than seven figures in a year. Like it’s, it’s, we we’re known for like those kinds of things. But when you are with us for a while, like a lot of our clients stay with us for many years. Like as your business starts to grow, our training gets more and more advanced. And one of the things that we talk about, but rarely, it’s more like in smaller rooms like our private Highland Masterminds and like our most experienced people is tax strategy. And, and we talk about things like managing your financial statements and, and you know, forecasting and, and just, you know, legal stuff that you don’t hear a lot. So anyways, what I wanted to go ahead and put out there into the world and just make this available for free is 15 legal strategies to help you reduce your taxes if you’re an entrepreneur. Now obviously I’m, I’m not a cpa, I’m not a C F P. I did, I did go to school by undergrad. I studied much about accounting and I do have an mba. But you should always, always, always, you know, consult with your local tax advisor.
RV (02:58):
You know, know. So I don’t consider this professional like legal advice officially, but I’m telling you, you wanna check into these things. And I’m not gonna explain ’em all in detail cuz we don’t have time. But I’m gonna rattle these off of 15 legitimate legal ethical tax strategies that you can, you can explore if you’re an entrepreneur. And this is important. And, and I would actually say part of why I’m putting this together, and no offense to CPAs, there’s some great CPAs out there, but in our experience, we have worked with a number of CPAs who actually aren’t very well equipped to offer tax strategy advice. Most of them just do tax returns. They’re not very creative, they don’t ask very many questions. And when I mean creative, I don’t mean creative, like they’re bending the rules. I’m saying they don’t even know what questions to ask in order to take advantage of many of the kinds of things that I’m gonna share with you here.
RV (04:00):
Right? And so the, the place to learn tax strategy is not graduate school. It’s it’s not, you know, professional training. Where you really learn it is from other entrepreneurs. And, and honestly, they have to be very successful entrepreneurs. Otherwise, this conversation doesn’t come up very often and very, very few people know much about it. And so, anyways, that’s why I thought let’s go ahead and just put this out into the world. This’ll be, you know, hopefully you’ll see an example of some of what our high level business training looks like. Yes, we teach, you know, all the other things. Copywriting and funnels and podcasting in the business of speaking and book launches and how to train your sales team and sell high dollar offers and, you know, build your content and write your book and your positioning and messaging. But our phase four curriculum gets pretty ninja and it gets pretty advanced on, on just general being an entrepreneur.
RV (04:54):
So here’s just like one example of a micro lesson. I’m gonna put this out here into the world for free. You know, take it with a grain of salt, but this is, this is stuff that we’ve learned by experience. So here we go. I’m gonna rattle through these again, I’m not gonna spend a ton of time on each one, but these are, I’m gonna say these are hints for you to go investigate and look because they’re very legitimate. So, number one is what came up in the interview with Henry and that’s what kind of inspired me to put this together for you is a defined benefit plan or a pension plan. So you can listen more to the interview cuz we kind of talked a little bit in, in detail in the interview. But the bottom line with this is that as a, as a business owner, you can create a, a mechanism by which you provide a, a retirement benefit for your employees, okay?
RV (05:46):
Typically, like you think of 401k, right? And but when you are an employee of the company, there are certain plans that allow, allow you as the owner to maximize or create, create large contributions to your retirement account. So it doesn’t pad your money doesn’t pad your pocket with money in the short term. In fact, it, it takes money out of your pocket because you’re putting it into retirement instead of putting it either into your checking account or or into the government’s pocket. But what it does is it allows you to have to, to, to contribute much more than you would normally be allowed to include with something like the r you know, there’s Roth IRAs and they have income limits, and then there’s traditional IRAs and they have total contribution limits, and then there’s four oh [inaudible] limits.
RV (06:40):
So, you know, typically, you know, 25,000, 20 to $30,000 ish somewhere in there is about what you can do. But if you’re an entrepreneur and you have a successful business and you start to make real money and you go, okay, what are other things I can do? I can provide this awesome benefit to my employees and it gives me a vehicle to sock away more money for retirement later. So, you know, pension plans, defined benefit plan, go, you know, investigate that and listen to the interview with Henry, you can check that out. Second thing if you’re making a profit the, the, you know, the entity, the legal structure of your, of your business entity dramatically affects your, your tax liability and your tax implications. So there’s, there’s more that should be considered into this conversation. But in general, okay, a a great place to look if you are, you’ve been a, an entrepreneur and you’ve got a fairly successful business and you’re making profit, is to look at the structure in L L C filing as an S corp, right?
RV (07:43):
So a lot of times a business starts as like a sole proprietor, then at some point you maybe become an L L C. But look into L L C filing as an S corp for lots of of entrepreneurs that are sort of in this maturing phase, starting to make money. There is a great opportunity for tax advantages. Now there’s some, there’s some other things that get triggered. And, and what I’m sharing with you, I’m not sharing with you unethical or illegal strategies. These are legal ones. Part of what makes them legal is that they have counterbalancing forces, right? So in order to take advantage of some of these, there’s certain other things you can take advantage of. But I’m sharing with you sort of like my, some of my greatest hits here. There’s, there’s a few that are not on this list that are more advanced really for like scaling companies.
RV (08:31):
Really, really like, as as you start thinking about selling your company that would come up. And there’s one on here. The last one, by the way, I’m gonna show you how to become filthy rich and never ever pay taxes in a completely legal way. That’s gonna be number 15 on this list. So, so keep staying tuned for that. All right, so number three specifically, this is something for training companies. So if, if you are a training company which means you train people, you, you train, you have like you know, a lot of times it’s, it’s some type of information marketing type business where you do professional training. There is something called a 1 99 a exemption. Okay? Now this is set to sunset currently, I think in 2025. But if you just go to irs.gov and just look up 1 99 A, this is qualified business income deduction and look for the FAQs.
RV (09:30):
This creates a major tax advantages that, you know, could, can be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. If you have a company that you know, is like, let’s say multi seven figures, that is a true, legitimate training company. And there’s certain things you have to do to qualify as a legitimate training company. Brand builders group, we’re a training company. We have curriculum and, and we have workbooks, and we have courses in systematic training and processes that we put people through. So look at, look up the 1 99. A number four is the Augusta rule. So the Augusta Rule, this is something that says you can rent your home 14 days a year. I, I, I believe, again, don’t quote me on all this, this isn’t what I do full-time, but I, I, you know, I’m, the things I’m saying shouldn’t be grossly out of out inaccuracies.
RV (10:21):
They, they should be pretty accurate. Off the top of my head, I think the Augusta rule says you can rent your home 14 days a year tax free. It comes from the masters tournament and people who live in Augusta who rent their home out during the masters and they make a bunch of money. So what the Augusta rule allows you to do is to rent your own home to your business. So if your business has meetings and you have to rent boardrooms or meeting space and that’s a legitimate business operation and function that you have whatever the market rate is that you would pay to rent somewhere else, can be amount that you can you know, the equivalent market rate of, of renting a similar property or space somewhere else you can rent to yourself and use your home for those meetings.
RV (11:08):
And, and 14 days worth of that can be tax free. So this is this is one of the things you sometimes hear on the internet and you’re like, is that real? Actually is real? A few of these are gonna be like that where you’re like, man, I’ve, I’ve heard, you know, I’ve seen Instagram and TikTok videos like have gone viral. A lot of times they’re over sensationalizing things and they’re not, you know, telling you about like the restrictions behind them, but some of them are, you know, they’re actually legit and you just have to sort of investigate. The Augusta rule is one of those. Number five is a D A F, which is a donor advised fund. This is a charitable, this has to do with charitable givings. And basically, you know, when you make charitable contributions, the government allows you to, to deduct that from your taxable income.
RV (11:55):
Well, the thing is, is you might, let’s say you have a bunch of money come in at, at one year or something, you have a big launch or something, g great happens. You just have a good year and you’re sitting on a pile of money and you’re not sure who you wanna donate that money to. And, and you don’t wanna pay taxes on it. So you go, I’m gonna start a d a f a donor advised fund, which allows me to put my money aside in ear market for charitable givings, and I can take the tax deduction now so that I don’t get taxed this year, but then I have to give that money later. So again, it’s not like it’s some magic way of, of keeping money in your pocket, it’s just saying, rather than paying money to the government, I’m gonna pay money to causes that I care about and, and I’m gonna give, and so I’m reducing my tax liability.
RV (12:44):
And the government does that on purpose. It’s not like you’re sneaking one past them, right? What they’re doing is they’re incentivizing business owners and people of wealth to invest into and give money to things that make the world a better place. You know? And they have to be, you know, actual nonprofit organizations and they, they have to uphold certain standards to, to classify what, whatever it is, a 4 0 1 [inaudible] [inaudible] and i, I think is what it is. Yeah, I think, I think that’s it. A 4 0 3 [inaudible] maybe, maybe there’s both of ’em. But anyways, they have to be a nonprofit organization. But the point is, you can take the deduction immediately now and not have to give the money until later. Also, the money inside of your fund can grow and grow and grow and earn interest while you’re figuring out who you want to distribute that money to.
RV (13:33):
So that’s a, that’s a cool one. Number six is a keep bonus, and that’s Q E A A P. It is a rule that allows you to make up to $1,600, I believe, per employee as a gift and a deduction for any gift. So basically, instead of paying them $1,600 in income, of which you have to pay payroll taxes on and they have to pay in income taxes on, you can actually get money to your employees. So it’s a way of getting them more money where neither of you, like you get the tax deduction and they don’t pay the income tax on it. And you can do that up to $1,600 per a year per employee using something called the keep bonus. So that’s a really cool way. Again, it doesn’t put more money in your pocket, but it is, it prevents you from paying taxes.
RV (14:29):
You, if you don’t do that, what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna get taxed on all that money, and the government’s gonna take a percentage of that. So it’s basically like instead of paying it to the government, you could pay it to your employees. And again, it’s the reason it’s not illegal. It’s not like the government is stupid or that they don’t know this. They’re, they’re doing it as going, Hey, there’s a vehicles and ways to increase the amount of money that you give to people. And this is why, by the way, this is why entrepreneurs get tax breaks, is because the government knows you’re stimulating the comp, the, the economy you are helping you, your, you’re helping stabilize the country. And b by the way, I should have said this earlier, these are all US based tax strategies. So I know we have a lot of you that are listeners that listen internationally.
RV (15:15):
This is completely US based. I apologize, but I’m not, I’m not well versed in international tax law, but what I would say is my experience has been many other countries have similar types of things, similar types of vehicles. They’re often called something differently. So still worth paying attention to this and then kind of investigating your local tax code or asking a C P A or asking a successful entrepreneur or investor about some of these things. But anyways, in the us you know, the, the government gives tax breaks to entrepreneurs cuz we’re creating jobs, which means we’re giving income to people, which means there’s a less dependency on the government for their, for their income and for their health and wellbeing and their family, and also for their retirement, right? And, and that takes pressure off of the government. And so that’s, that’s kind of why this works.
RV (16:03):
It’s not like we’re pulling a fast one over them, but it, it’s also, if no one tells you this, you’re not gonna know any of this stuff. And I went to graduate school, right? Like I went to graduate school and I don’t remember learning any of this. like virtually none of this you know, prepared me to be like the entrepreneur mindset at least when it comes to taxes. So that’s the key bonus. There are also employee expense reimbursements. So there’s things like travel if they’re traveling for work, if they have education, like if they go attend conferences, things like a cell phone and even I believe exercise programs and certain, like gyms like the Y M C A and stuff like that, you can reimburse your employees for those certain expenses. And then you get those as a tax deduction.
RV (16:51):
So you don’t have to pay taxes, payroll taxes on that money, but you’re, you’re transferring money from the business to your employees without having a, and it’s lowering your tax burden. It’s lowering your, your tax impact. So that’s number seven. Number eight, okay? This is another classic internet viral video One is something called the section 1 79 deduction. This is sometimes referred to as the Hummer rule. And you go, people are going and buying hummers and taking a hundred percent of that as a deduction. Is that really real? And the answer is yes, it was for a while, and it kind of is still. So section 1 79 refers to that section of the, the tax code, which says that vehicles that weigh over 6,000 pounds are they were, they were a hundred percent deductible. I think that’s trailing off.
RV (17:50):
I think it trails down a little bit year over year. But this, this is something that we actually took advantage of because when you have these, it’s the catches, it has to be a, it, the vehicle has to have a gross vehicle weight rating, G V W R, gross vehicle weight rating of more than 6,000 pounds. And if that is the case and you buy a vehicle that weighs over 6,000 pounds, that’s considered to be like a commercial vehicle for your business, you could take a hundred percent of that amount as a deduction in the year that you made that purchase. Now this was like a year ago, I think this is already factoring out, but and, and, and, and may, it’s gonna disappear at some point unless the tax law changes. But anyways, investigate the details of a section 1 79 deduction.
RV (18:42):
Number nine is vacations, okay? Business trip slash vacations. It is true, you know, to my knowledge that you can take deductions for vacations if more than 50% of the time is for work, right? So you have to be doing work related activities more than 50% of the time. So there are details around this that matter and that, that, that are important. There’s details around all of these things, like I should have mentioned. Going back to the Augusta rule, which was number four on this list, one of the things you have to do if I remember, is you have to take meeting notes and you have to produce meeting notes that say I had, I actually had this meeting in my house on this date. This is what we talked about. And this is a meeting that we would’ve had somewhere else at a hotel.
RV (19:32):
And I would’ve, I would’ve or could have had to have paid that money to a hotel. And rather than doing that, I’m, I’m taking it as you know, a tax deduction for on my taxes, but I actually had a real meeting. You have to actually have a real meeting and have, have notes. Now you know exactly how long the meeting is and what exactly do you cover. Those things are, you know, a little more gray area and a little bit depends on your appetite for, you know, how much you follow the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law, et cetera, et cetera. But on business trip vacations, a good example of it is, Hey, I’m gonna go to Miami and I’m going to, you know, set up work meetings on Friday and on Monday, and then I’ll just stay there Saturday and Sunday.
RV (20:14):
All now of a sudden that becomes a business trip that I can write off you know, in full or large portions of, or certain components of, so again, there are, that is a legal, legal deduction. Number 10, this one is interesting. I almost didn’t put this one on the list cuz we’ve, we don’t, we’ve never done this, but I’m hearing of a lot of people doing this. So I would approach this one with extra caution, but if you have a company and you own a video production company, okay, so you have to start a business. You, you know, which means there has to be some legal documents, right? And you create an actual business that is a video production company that does video work. Then anything that you buy that shows up in your videos, it can be a deduction because it’s considered a part of the set design.
RV (21:10):
I’m sure it’s not anything you buy, it’s probably not cars and houses and, and helicopters and things although maybe, but you know, just like certain other things, like anything that would appear in one of your sets, which again, there’s probably limitations to this, but a lot of times it’s much more flexible than you realize if you actually go investigate the details. And this is where I talk about, you know, CPAs aren’t super creative, they don’t think of this kind of thing. And you go, well, if you shoot videos as a part of what you do and you go, can I start a little side business that does this legitimately? Like it’s gotta be a business. You gotta have some other clients beyond just you. But how many clients do you have to have for it to be considered legitimate? You know, is is kind of a flexible conversation.
RV (21:53):
So and then you go, man, I’m gonna, I’m gonna buy a prop you know, and I’m gonna buy a $200 set of bows headphones, because I’m gonna use that as a prop in a video and it’s part of my set design, right? So yeah, there’s an ethical gray area that comes into this, but there’s a, there’s a legal component that is, is perfectly legal if you are abiding by certain things. So pay attention to that. Alright, number 11, another internet one. This one is often becomes, you know, one of these viral videos is to hire your children. And this is true, this is a, is a, is a perfectly legal strategy. As long as your kids have an actual job, I think they have to have a job description and they have to have certain, certain form formalities and certain things that establish them as an employee of the company.
RV (22:46):
So in this case, you can pay your kids up to, at the time of this recording, I think it’s $12,500 a year, and the kids don’t have to pay taxes. Why? Because nobody has to pay taxes on the first $12,500 per year. So how does this save you money on taxes? Well, it’s basically a way that you can get money to your children with pre-tax dollars instead of after tax dollars, right? If, if I were gonna, you know, buy something for my kids, I’d have to buy that with after tax dollars. Like I draw income, I pay taxes, and then I have money to pay, put give to my kids. If my kids are an employee of the company now I can pay them $12,500 every year. They don’t have to pay taxes. And now they have actual money that is theirs that they have earned.
RV (23:38):
Now that money has to, will go to them. It cannot be money that you use otherwise that is like, you know, illegal. But if it is money that is going to them that they’re using for their things, paying for schooling, paying for sports, paying for whatever I don’t even think there’s restrictions on like toys and things. Like I think they can spend the money double check that, but, but it’s their money. It can’t be your money. You can’t pretend to pay that money and then take that money and go buy yourself a car with it. But it can be money that they have and they can, they can then start to invest that money and use that money to pay. I think they can even pay for like private school and things that are of personal direct benefit to them. And you go, the reason it’s an advantage is you’d be paying that money anyways, right?
RV (24:22):
Like if you didn’t pay it to him, you’d be paying that out of your pocket and you’d be paying that money with after tax dollars. So look into the specifics again of exactly you know, you can’t just say they’re an employee, you have to give them certain duties and things, but it’s, that’s reasonable, right? And you’re the business owner. So you’re, you are within your legal rights to determine what you pay people for and what you hire them to do and how much you pay people, right? The, as, as long as it’s above minimum wage, there’s no, there’s no government mandate on what tasks you choose to pay certain money for. And so, you know, there’s a limit here, there’s a threshold, but again, this is perfectly legal. Number 12, anything with your logo on it is considered a uniform or advertising expense, including clothing, right?
RV (25:12):
So brand builders group, you know, I, I’m for some of you are listening to this, you can’t see me, but I’m wearing my brand, a brand builders group sweatsuit that we got. It’s got our logo on it, this is a hundred percent write off, right? So I’ve got this little tiny logo on here, and now all of a sudden this piece of clothing is a hundred percent write off as advertising expense and I would say is very legitimate, right? Those of you that are watching this video, you see the logo right inside the video. So it’s like very, very legit now. So considering put your logo on things now there’s probably some limits here. Like putting a logo on your car doesn’t necessarily mean you can just write off the whole car, but there are some things like that where people wrap their cars and they do certain things.
RV (25:57):
You should look at that. Number 13, number 13 is an H s a A health savings account, okay? A health savings account. Think of it like an I r A, it’s just an account where you can put money in. You know, kind of like how we were talking with Henry about the, this, our whole conversation in this last interview was about SD IRAs, self-directed IRAs. It’s just a, it’s just a special type of account that has special tax treatment in the eyes of the government. And HSA is an account. When you put money into your hsa, that money you don’t get taxed on the money you put in there. Now, here’s the catch. All of that money has to be used for health expenses, right? So that’s why the government, again, you’re not pulling a fast one over the government, it’s legal.
RV (26:46):
They, they ins they create this tax incentive and the whole tax system, right, is not about penalizing people, it’s about incentivizing people to use their money in certain ways, in ways that benefit the economy, the overall health and stability of a country and, and, and you know, a government, et cetera. Well, this, if people have money saved for their own health expenses, that reduces the dependency again on the government. It keeps you healthy, et cetera, et cetera. There’s advantages to the government and to the overall, you know, country of keeping people healthy. So when you put money into your health savings account, now you have money that is earmarked. You can only use that money for health expenses except once you are over a certain age. So if you put money into an HSA year after year after year, and it’s growing, right? It’s an, it’s, it’s, you can have that invested that is growing.
RV (27:43):
You at a certain age, which is probably 59 and a half or 62 and a half or 65 or whatever the number is. Now, if you haven’t used that money for health expenses at that point, I believe you can then take it. And you can use that money. You, you can, you can use that money as retirement if not, even if you can’t do that or even if the legislation changes around that. The advantage is you have money growing and growing and growing. So even if you’re gonna use it for your, you know, your to, to be in a retirement home one day and and assisted living home, the advantage is you’ve had money growing and earning interest and, and, you know, you’re, you’re saving on taxes throughout your lifetime. It’s growing. You’re not paying taxes on that. And then when the time comes that you need it for large health expenses, the money is there, right?
RV (28:34):
So that’s a huge advantage. And I actually think that once you reach a certain age, I think you can access some of that money as retirement money. In, now again, in the interim, it doesn’t put more money in your pocket. It, it’s, it’s all of this is allowing you to invest. Notice the theme here. The government is incentivizing you. The government is using tax law to incentivize you to use your money in certain ways, providing jobs, taking care of your health, investing in things, and providing for your own retirement and for the retirement of your employees. That’s why these things are all legal. It’s, it’s, it’s because they want you to use it in a certain way. So what a lot of successful entrepreneurs do is they go, ah, let me put some money. You know, if you max out your I r a and you max out your 401k, and you start to make real money every year in profits, every year you go, well, let me put all my money, let me, let me max up my hsa my health savings account, which is I think at the time of this recording, around $3,600 a year, you can put $3,600 a year in there and now that account grows.
RV (29:38):
And then if you have the money or hopefully then you just, you pay your health expenses with after tax dollars so that you can have this big thing growing as a nest egg that gets bigger and bigger and bigger over the, over over time. So that’s a great, a great legal strategy. Now, these last two are huge strategies and they, they are gonna, they will sound crazy, but these are ways that you can actually legally avoid paying taxes at all. Like and you know, or certain parts of taxes. Okay? So here’s what number 14 is, and you may have heard of this. The, the more successful you become as an entrepreneur, the more you’ll start hanging around people who are having these kinds of conversations. And you will start to hear about Puerto Rico Act 22, Puerto Rico Act 22.
RV (30:32):
We have several friends now at this point who have moved to Puerto Rico. John Lee Dumas was our first friend that did this. And now I can, off the top of my head, think of like five other friends who all live in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico Act 22 allows you to play a, a flat tax rate of 4% again, at the time of this recording. But you have to live, you have to be a primary resident of Puerto Rico. So if you like Puerto Rico and you don’t mind living in Puerto Rico Puerto Rico is a US controlled territory, right? So you’re under the protection and the, and the rule of the United States. But you, you, there, there are some caveats here. So you have to live in Puerto Rico, you know, one day more than half a year. So whatever that is, 162 or 163 days a year, whatever the number is.
RV (31:23):
You have to live there. You also have to do certain things to establish Nexus. Like your banking account has to be there, your place of worship your your, your primary mailing address, your your driver’s license, things like that have to be legit. You have to become a legit Puerto Rican resident. But when you do that, you then do not have to pay federal income tax of the us. You only pay Puerto Rico taxes, which are 4%. Now one of the other things to be aware of is that you give up your right to vote, as I understand it, right? So you can no longer vote in elections, but and you gotta move your family to Puerto Rico. So there’s some trade-offs, right? But you’re also going, you might be going from a 40% tax bracket or 50% tax bracket if you live in California.
RV (32:09):
And if you can set up your business and operate legitimately in Puerto Rico, you’re gonna go to 4%. So you could like almost double your income just by moving. And you have to stay there a certain number of years. I think it’s like three years or something. And if you, if you come back before then you have, you know, there’s, you have to like do back taxes or whatever. But so anyways, look at this. It’s a real thing. Puerto Rico Act 22 and then number 15, this is the grand finale, the Grand PBA of how you can literally become a millionaire, a multimillionaire, a billionaire even, and never pay any taxes at all. How does this work? How could you possibly, how is this real? Yes, this is real. Okay? This is how wealthy, wealthy, wealthy people think. How do we know we happen to know a lot of wealthy people?
RV (33:06):
Because a lot of, I mean, we’ve had four clients at Brand Builders Group who are billionaires in like the last 18 months, billionaires with a B, right? So we’re starting to see and hang out with some like really wealthy people. So what is the best way to create wealth and never pay taxes? How is this possible that you can have billions of dollars and never pay taxes? So here’s, here’s how you do it. It’s not easy, but it is real. Is you start a company as an entrepreneur, you grow that business, and then you take that company public. Once you take that pump, that company public, now you have stock that is actually worth real money. It has a, a real market rate. And what a lot of these billionaire founders do, and I’m talking big companies, right? Big time people like celebrity entrepreneurs that you hear about.
RV (33:59):
So what they do is they take their company public, they have millions and millions and hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars in stock. And then what they do is they take a loan against that stock from a bank and you never pay taxes, right? So, so, so they’re using their stock as collateral to take a loan from a bank. So that’s how they turn it into money. If they were to sell the stock, that would be a liquidity event. So they would then realize that as income and they would have to pay taxes on it. But there are, there’s plenty of banks who will look at a public, publicly, publicly held stock as a, as a strong collateral against alone. And so they’ll take a loan from the bank, they hold up the stock as collateral, they technically own the stock. They never have to sell the stock.
RV (34:48):
And what’s happening is the bank is giving them a loan against it. And now they’re just paying, they’re paying interest, they’re paying interest on that loan to the bank. But it is, it pales in comparison to what you would pay in taxes to the government. I found this, bam. That is how you can 100% legitimately avoid paying taxes and become filthy, filthy rich if you wanna do it. So there you have it, no gimmicks nothing illegal. Definitely some things that have some stipulations and some criteria that you want to pay, pay attention to. But these are the kind of things that happen if you hang around brand builders group, right? These are the kind of people we hang out with. These are the kind of conversations we’re having in addition to how do we change the world and how do we help you change the world?
RV (35:35):
And how do you add your service to more people and, and make an impact and make the world a better place? And a big part of how you make the world a better place is how you use your money to do that. So we have no problems making money, right? We love money. Money’s just not the most important thing in our life, right? For us we’re, we’re Jesus followers, we’re Christians. Like for us, we’re a hardcore Bible thump and Jesus freaks. So we don’t serve money, money serves us. Money is a tool, but we, we care about money, we’re deliberate about money. We like to make money, and we want to help you make a lot of money, and then use your money to do good in the world for you and your family and your employees and for the people around you.
RV (36:17):
So there you have it. 15 legitimate legal ways to save money on taxes. Investigate these, check these out. Hey, share this, share this episode with someone who needs to hear it and request a call with our team. Will you go to brand builders group.com or sorry, wrong number, wrong number go to free brand call.com/podcast. Go to free brand call.com/podcast. Learn about us. Read a little bit about the people we work with you know, the clients that we serve. We, we serve major celebrity clients, ed Mylet and Lewis, how, and Eric Thomas and Amy Porterfield and Peter Diani, and John Gordon and Matthew West, right? Like, we have major celebrity clients, but our heart is also for the people who are just starting out and who are real entrepreneurs trying to find their way and figure this all out. And we’re gonna guide you. We’re gonna guide you on everything, marketing, sales, positioning and then scaling your company with leadership and financial strategy that is legal and ethical and that actually works to make the world a better place. So check out free brand call.com/podcast. Share this episode with an entrepreneur that you know who needs to save money on taxes. So I want you to think in your head right now, who do I know that is an entrepreneur that needs to save money on the taxes? Share this episode with them. You might just change their life and the lives of their employees and maybe the people around him and the investments that they make. And keep coming back here every single week listening and in to the influential Personal Brand podcast. Bye for now.