Ep 397: 2 Customer Service Secrets that Will Grow Your Sales | Brittany Hodak Episode Recap
RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions, and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to, to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do [email protected] slash pod call brand builders group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:52):
The customer experience, customer secrets, customer service secrets so much to be said about that. And I have to tell, tell you that one of my favorite people ever on this topic is Brittany Hodak. And it’s not just cuz she’s a friend, and it’s not just because she’s a B B G client. I genuinely love her book and I love her experience and I love her take on customer experience and creating super fans. And she’s just awesome and so smart. And like I said, I read her book cover to cover and I fully endorse it. I did endorse it. And I, it’s, it’s, it’s phenomenal. So I hope you got a chance to go back and listen to the interview that I just did with Brittany and that you got some takeaways from that. Separate from that, it inspired me to share a couple of my favorite customer service secrets.
RV (01:47):
You know, this is, this isn’t something that I necessarily would con, I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on this. You know, I consider my expertise on the psychology of influence though, and moving people to action. And so what I wanna share with you in this lesson is two customer service secrets that will grow your sales. Two customer service secrets that will grow your sales. So customer experience, customer service, whatever you wanna call it. But specifically in the context of if you do these two things, it will help you actually grow your revenue which is definitely right inside of my wheelhouse. So number one is the concept of secret service. And I have to blatantly and boldly attribute this to John De Julius. John de Julius would be probably the number one person that I’ve learned the most from in terms of customer experience, customer service.
RV (02:46):
We love John’s philosophy of Secret Service in their whole company. We’ve, you know, I, I originally met John, I spoke at his event and then we became super fans of him and his work, and we’ve tried to incorporate that into our culture at Brand Builders Group and, and all the businesses that we’ve been a part of. And, and so here’s the difference between Secret Service and, and good customer service. Okay? Good customer service is doing is basically like being nice to people, doing things that are nice for them. But Secret Service is about doing things that are tailored for them. So it, it, secret Service requires that you learn and pay attention to the hyper-specific interest of each individual prospect or customer that you are interfacing with. All right? So a good example of this is, you know, giving out a rose to every woman who comes into your store or, you know, on Mother’s Day or to, on Valentine’s Day, let’s say it could be good customer service.
RV (03:51):
That’s a good thing. There’s definitely nothing wrong with that, that’s a great thing to do, but you’re doing the same activity for everybody, right? I mean, if, if someone comes and you say, Hey, how can I be of service today? That might be considered good customer service, but you’re doing the same thing for everyone. What’s next level though, from that is Secret Service and Secret Service is not doing good things for people. It’s doing tailored things for people and we we try to pay attention to what is going on in the lives of the people that we care about, right? So for example, one of our clients is Kiir Weimer and Kiir, if you know anything, he’s incredible. A incredible guy has an amazing story. But Kiir got into a boating accident when he was in his twenties. He ended up going to prison for it.
RV (04:44):
And then, you know, he has this, this massive turnaround story for how he transformed his life and became this very wealthy, successful real estate agent. But he couldn’t never, he, he couldn’t get accepted back into a university for years. He came outta prison. You know, he had, now he had a criminal record. He couldn’t get a job, he couldn’t get, you know, schools to accept, and he ended up getting in real estate and becoming very, very successful. And very wealthy. But like, he didn’t actually you know, he struggled to get kind of the formal things, and one of ’em was a formal education and, and finishing college and graduate school. And so it was a really more of a personal thing for him. Kira eventually got accepted into N Y U and he’s going, you know, went back to school years later and he got his degree and we sent, we saw him post about it, we heard about it, and so we sent him an N Y U sweatshirt, right?
RV (05:36):
And I mean, you would’ve thought that he won the lottery. He was so touched and so moved by that. That is Secret Service, okay? That is Secret Service. We also try to pay attention to when, when people have deaths in their family, right? We try to often do something that’s honoring to their loved one, whoever that is. Or, you know, sometimes it’s a pet, sometimes it’s a grandparent it could be a friend and just trying to be there for people. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit weird to even call this customer’s service. And it’s, and it, and its definitely weird to think of this as like, oh, this is what will, you know, you do this to grow sales. You don’t do this to grow sales, and you don’t do this to have great customer service. You do this because you care about people and you wanna make them, you wanna let them know that they’re important to you.
RV (06:30):
And so when someone’s important to you, you wanna go out of your way to make them feel special, to make them feel important, right? If they’re important to you, you wanna do things that help them feel important, that, that help make them feel important. That’s a, a part of what creates relationships and bonds, right? And, and if you know anything about Brand Builders Group, like our vision is what we call a thousand messengers. It has been since day one. We’re not trying to have, we’re not trying to be a company that sells for hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, right? Like Brand Builders Group is not a profit maximization endeavor. It’s not. We are in impact maximization endeavor, and we said we want a thousand clients. That’s what we want a thousand clients who choose to be in our monthly program that we can work with, that we can know in, in, in an intimate way that we can serve in a, in a, in a, on a deep level and that who we can be a part of their life.
RV (07:24):
And we feel like we could build a team of maybe 50 people or so that feels manageable, where we could know our team and we know them well, and we all know the clients and we recognize them, and they’re not all, you know, just strangers in a crowd, but that we’re doing life with our clients and we’re helping them succeed. And that their wins are our wins, right? We’re not going, oh, just bigger is better. That that’s just not our game. And so our clients matter, and so we wanna celebrate their wins, right? When they have a win, we wanna celebrate them. I, I, when Amy Porterfield we worked with Amy Porterfield, and I remember when she hit the New York Times bestseller list, she post, she made this awesome post about, she showed her calling her mom, telling her mom on the phone that she was a New York Times bestselling author.
RV (08:10):
And it was like such a moving moment. It was so inspiring, and it was such a great win for her. But it was a great win for us to feel like, hey, we had a part in somebody’s journey, you know, building their brand to where they, they become a New York Times bestselling author, you know, a a small part of it, but a part of it. And to go that win, her win is our win. And that moment of her sharing that with her mom is our win. And so we sent her a, a balloon of this giant, a giant balloon that was like a Congratulations, New York Times bestselling author. And then she posted that we’re not trying to get her to post on social, we’re not trying to get more money out of her. She was the past client at that point, right? Like, we already had her money.
RV (08:52):
Like it, it was, it, it’s about caring for people and, and caring for them in a hyper-specific way, in a tailored way, in a unique way. Not that you shouldn’t do good things. Not that you shouldn’t be responsive and you shouldn’t be positive and you shouldn’t smile like you shouldn do all those things. Those are good customer service, but good customer service is markedly different from good Secret service or what John de Julius calls secret service. This secret service is this idea of going be listening. First of all, it’s listening, it’s caring, it’s watching, it’s paying attention. And then just looking for these natural moments where you can intersect into people’s lives and go, man, it sure feels like something big just happened for this person. And, you know, everyone gets birthday pre, everyone gets presents on their birthday, right? Everyone gets phone calls on their birthday, everyone gets presents at Christmas time.
RV (09:48):
It’s not that you shouldn’t send gifts to someone at Christmas or at their birthday. You, you know, you should, if you can, you should. But the part that is really special is, is when you’re, when you do something, when no one else does, when it shows that you’re watching when maybe no one else is, when, when you’re going, man, I see you going through a tough time, or I see you having a huge win that, that you wanna celebrate. And, and maybe honestly, you don’t wanna celebrate it on social media because you don’t wanna look like you’re bragging or whatever, and going, but we see this, we wanna celebrate with you. It’s caring about people, right? The the best form of marketing, the best marketing strategy in the world is to care about the success of the people in your company and the success of your clients and the success of your prospects.
RV (10:36):
We’ve done things when we, we happen to be talking to a prospect who’s not even a customer, and we hear that their house gets hit by a tornado, or they lose a loved one or something. And you go, what can we do to just show them a little love? And I don’t know what the ROI is on it financially. We don’t measure that. We don’t track it, but we don’t have to because the, there’s, there’s, there’s always an r o i on service. There’s always an r o i on making, making people feel special. There’s always an ROI on making people feel seen and, and, and helping people feel heard and helping people feel important. There’s always an ROI on that. And it doesn’t have to be financial. It’s even if it’s the, the satisfaction and the meaning and the purpose that you get from your business and what you do and the way that you’re using your money.
RV (11:26):
Like, that’s really special. And, and do we do it a hundred percent of the time? No, we don’t. Like, we miss a lot of ’em. And sometimes we’re going too fast to pay attention, and, and sometimes we maybe just, maybe money is really tight and we can’t do it, or we can’t do it for everybody, right? But you, you try to choose the moments for the people that you go, man, this is someone who’s important to me, or I I want to be important to them, or I want them to be important to us. And I wanna build a relationship to go, this is beyond money, this is beyond transactions. It’s about, it’s about caring, and it’s about service. And, and the, the only part that’s secret of it is that you’re secretly watching, you’re secretly paying attention. You’re secretly going out of your way, pausing our own natural self-centeredness, just for a moment to open our eyes and be alert and awake to what are the big things going on in other people’s lives, and how can we mourn with them?
RV (12:21):
How can we celebrate with them? How can we cheer them on? How can we encourage them? How can we recognize them and just make them feel special and important? So it’s, it’s this hyper-specific response, this hyper tailored experience, and that has been life-changing for me. The, the relationships that we have furthered and developed and deepened from that, and just the meaning and the significance and the joy that the genuine authentic joy that you get from being able to do something for somebody. And this all could, could, you know, from a tactical standpoint, this all could be summarized from a line from Sean Connery and the movie Finding Forrester and Finding Forrester was not necessarily a great movie, but this is a great line. So even if it wasn’t a great movie, this is a great line. And Sean Connery is this older writer and he’s mentoring this young writer and he starts mentoring, kind of like in more than just writing.
RV (13:24):
And, and this guy’s like trying to catch the attention of a girl or, you know, to make her like him or whatever. He’s trying to like, you know, get her to like him or show, show her that she’s important to him. And Sean Connery says, the secret to a woman’s heart is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time. An unexpected gift at an unexpected time. That is what secret Service is all about. Not just to a woman’s heart, not just for earning romantic love, but for earning and developing and building all types of love, love with your employees, with your customers, with your spouse, with your kids. Unexpected gift at an unexpected time tailored to them, right? And the, the key is tailored to them, right? We have these wonderful, beautiful brand builders, group pens, these brand builders, group pens. They have our logo on ’em, sending these out or giving these to everyone who comes.
RV (14:17):
That’s good customer service. Like, okay, hey, thanks for the pen, man. It’s a cool pen, but it’s, it’s marketing, right? If it has my logo on it or our logo on it, if it has our company logo, it is, it’s marketing. That’s not service, that’s marketing. But if I send them something with their logo on it, or a picture of their family, or celebrating their win, or memorializing their achievement or something like that, that that’s not marketing. That’s, that’s friendship. That’s relationship. And so it’s, it’s simple, but it’s so powerful and profound, and most people don’t do it because we’re too busy and we feel like we don’t have the money or we can’t justify the roi. And I’m telling you, just do it. Just, just do it. And also, it doesn’t have to be big, right? You don’t have to send them to Disneyland, right?
RV (15:05):
That’s not even secret service. Like, it, it’s, it’s just doing something that’s really relevant to them is going, oh, you know what? They really love yoga. I’m gonna send them some yoga socks, right? And, and it’s like, they get it and they go, this is so different than what it’s, it’s like you’re listening. It’s like you’re paying attention because you are, it means that you care. So show that you, you care and, and pay attention. That secret service the, my second customer service secret, that will grow your sales. And again, you know, I don’t mean to hype hyperbolize too much, the revenue part of this but it does, it does grow your revenue because it grows your reputation and reputation always pre precedes revenue. So how do we track this exactly? We don’t, nor do we want to, nor do we care about this, you know, tracking these things.
RV (15:51):
But if unexpected gift at unexpected time in a tailored way would be the first lesson. The second lesson is to anticipate the need you wanna provide, great customer service, anticipate the need. That is what great customer service is all about. Right? Good customer service is meeting the need, meeting the expectations, right? I check into the hotel and I expect to have a clean room. I expect it to be ready. I I expect it, you know, to have, you know, cool air and, you know, some, some number of amenities based on the price that I’m paying and the brand of the hotel chain, right? Those are expectations. Anticipating the need. Anticipating the need is somebody arrives late and you know that they’re, they probably missed their flight. And so maybe they don’t have their luggage, or they tell you, it’s been a rough day, I lost my luggage.
RV (16:42):
And you go, oh, you know what? Let me send you up some, let me send you up a toothbrush and some shaving cream and, and whatever. And you know, that’s anticipating the need. What you wanna learn to do with your prospects, with your customers, with your employees, your team members, with your spouse, with your kids, with anyone you’re trying to build a relationship with, is anticipate their need. By the way, this is everything we do at Brand Builders Group. Everything we do is about trying to anticipate the needs of our clients. So we’re going, okay, what do they need first? First of all, they, they need, they need education. They need to understand that, you know, there’s a, there is a framework and a structure for how to, how to build a sales page that converts the 15 piece of copywriting, right? So we gotta teach ’em that, but then we go, well, now what are they gonna need?
RV (17:29):
They’re gonna need help doing it. So we either need to introduce them to a vendor who can help get it done, or we gotta create a template for ’em. And so we go, let’s create templates that people can use, right? And then, and it’s like, okay, well now they have a template. Now what? Now they’re gonna need help building it into a page. So how, how do we, how do we create a template to actually convert the copy into, into an actual landing page? Boom, right? And so our whole company is in a constant evolution of going, anticipate the need, anticipate the need. What do they need next? How can we help our clients succeed faster? How can we help ’em succeed for less money? How, how can we help ’em create more impact? Like, what would shorten the learning curve? What would shorten the implementation cycle?
RV (18:09):
Anticipate the need. If you wanna earn the respect, the admiration of your boss, you wanna raise, anticipate the need, right? Look on their calendar, look on their cal. This is the easiest thing to do. If you have access to someone’s calendar, you go, what do they have coming up next week? And they’re not even thinking about it, right? Cuz their, their, their hair’s on fire, they’re thinking about today. And Oh my gosh, what am I doing right now? So you look at what do they have on their calendar next week? And then you go, what are all the things I could do for them to help set them up for success? Wh how much of the work could I do for them so that when they get there in an, and they find out in an unexpected fashion that so much of this is already done, anticipate.
RV (18:52):
That’s how you get promoted. I mean, straight up, that’s how you get promoted. That’s how you get raises. That’s how you become more valuable, right? You help other people succeed. That’s what value is. Value is derived from helping others succeed. So one of the easiest ways is to go, you know, you might not even have to learn anything. You might not even have to do anything different. You might just have to do it sooner. And in a more app, appropriate timing, right? A lot of this is about timing. And you go, okay, what do they have coming up? And how can I help them succeed even before they get there? Or so that when they get there, I’m delivering this information, this tool, this training, this knowledge, this resource, this, this relationship. So that it’s like, oh my gosh, you’ve already thought of this. You’ve already taken care of this.
RV (19:39):
I mean, hallelujah, thank you. Anticipate their needs. So you gotta be asking that of yourself, of all of your employees, right? And your team members and, and, and your customers and your prospects. Like what do they need next? What, what is the thing that they most need in order to take the next step? And like one of the things that we’re rolling out, if you’re a member, you know this or you’re gonna know this, we have spent the last few years building something called Instant Automation Toolkit. And Instant Automation Toolkit was about taking all of the strategy, right? We have 14 different two-day courses that make up the curriculum of Brand Builders Group, right? Like when someone, someone joins up for our entry level monthly membership, it’s like a couple hundred bucks a month. Like they get access to all 14 courses right away.
RV (20:27):
I mean, we give away the farm for like very little money. So they get access to all the courses. But then we go, okay, well now how are they gonna implement? So we’ve been building these templates for years and years because we’re going, ah, what do they need next? They need help taking this strategy and applying it, and, and we can build tools. So the, the whole mantra is how much of the work can we do for them, right? That’s what we’re trying to do. How much of the work can we do for them? Now, ultimately, we’re a strategy firm and they, people gotta do their own work. And at some point, you know, you lead the horse to water, they gotta drink, they gotta do the behaviors. There’s certain things they have to do that we can’t do, but we’re going, how much of it can we do for them?
RV (21:08):
How far down the field can we advance the ball? How can we solve a bunch of the problems in advance for them that they don’t even know they’re gonna have yet? You know, for example, once they get clear on their uniqueness, then we help ’em create their content. And then they’re gonna go, oh, shoot, how do I get trademarks and how do I get copyrights? And we go, you know what? Let us introduce you to the legal firm that we use, that built templates so that you could get all of your copywriting, all of your templates, all of your contracts done for like a very low fee because we’ve already cur curated this relationship and we’ve created all these tools. And then they go work on their keynote and we go, Hey, now that you got your keynote, there’s a good chance you’re gonna need a slide deck for that.
RV (21:47):
Right? Here’s the template that we have that we put together based on what we use and your speaker kit, and we create all these tools and assets that they don’t even know they need yet until they get there. And by the time they get there, they go, oh my gosh, I, there’s so much I need and we wanna show up and go, here it is, boom, right here for you. Anticipate the need. It’s so simple, but it’s so profound. And if you do those two things right, unexpected gift, and well put that qualify in there, unexpected, customized gift at an unexpected time, unexpected gift at an unexpected time, and you anticipate the need, if you do those two things, you will be prov and you do it consistently. And especially if you can operationalize it through your organization and your practice, and your firm and your company and your life and your personal life, if you can find a way to operationalize those things, you will be delivering world-class service, world-class experience, you will be excelling, accelerating your reputation.
RV (22:51):
And you know, there’s, there’s, there’s there interviews at least three that come to the top of my mind that you should go back and listen to if you want more on this. So one is obviously the interview that I just did with Brittany Hodak creating super fans. The other is John de Julius. We’ve had him on the show and we’ve talked about this concept. The other, the other person who I would be remiss to not mention in this, in this conversation is John Ruland. He’s the author of a book called Giftology, another close friend, also a client of ours, somebody else that we’ve learned a lot from in this area. All three of those are podcasts that are available here. So share this episode with someone you know that wants to increase the customer, improve the customer experience inside of their company and then share, go, go back and listen to those other three and share those as well and keep coming back and let us know how we can make it better, right? Sometimes we can’t always anticipate the needs we’re trying to, but if you have ideas for how we can do that, please let us know always. And I hope we get a chance to talk to [email protected] slash podcast if you’re ready to get serious about implementing and operationalizing these principles along with all the other ones that we teach here on this show. So thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time. Bye-Bye.
Ep 396: Creating Superfans with Brittany Hodak
RV (00:02):
Well friend, you are in for a treat. I’m gonna introduce you to one of our best friends in real life. This is Brittany Hodak. Our kids go to school together and we actually hang out with them and we love them. She’s also a client of ours and I am now a super fan of hers. And she has written a book called Creating Superfans, which I’m gonna go ahead on record and say this is one of my all-time favorite books, period in business. And specifically in the area of customer experience. And you could call it customer service or marketing just in general, but I would say customer experience, which is really what her expertise is. In fact, she’s the former Chief Experience officer for experience.com. She was the c e o of a company and the co-founder of a company called the Super Fan Company. She’s worked with some of the biggest brands in the world. Walmart, Disney, Katie Perry, Dolly Parton. The other night I was flipping through tv. I was on watching like mainstream national television, and there’s some show about Britney Spears. And all of a sudden Britney Hodak pops on the screen and I’m like, wait, what though? What the, wait, that’s Brittany, what are you doing? Like, why is Britney in my tv? So buddy, it’s so great to have you. I cannot wait for you to share your expertise with our audience. Welcome.
BH (01:21):
Thank you so much my friend. It is always great to be here with you, and thank you for the very kind words about the book. It means a lot, and I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again and again. I could not have written this book without the support of you and AJ and the entire team at Brand Builders Group, so I’m glad I did. You proud.
RV (01:37):
Yeah, you, you totally, you, you you did me proud. And then like, one level above, you know, I endorsed the book without reading the whole thing. And then after it came out, I, I, I have read this book cover to cover, which, you know, I cannot say that about every single guest. You know, I try to like, be familiar, but like I have read it cover to cover. I absolutely love this so much that I, you know, I’m recommending you to our clients and like our keynote clients. So let’s talk about super fans. As personal brands, obviously we understand we gotta have super fans. We gotta have people loving us, sharing our content, buying our books, telling their friends. So I guess gimme the, gimme the definition of a super fan in your, in your world, and then we’ll talk about how to create ’em.
BH (02:24):
Yeah. So I define a super fan as either a customer or stakeholder who has such a great experience with you that they become an enthusiastic advocate. Mm-Hmm. So they not only wanna work with you again, but they tell their friends about you. Exactly like you just said. They make those introductions and those referrals. Essentially, a super fan is a customer who creates even more customers.
RV (02:46):
Yeah. I mean that, and that is the, you know, one of our BG mantras is the, the most powerful form of marketing in the world is a changed life. And it’s like no ad, no, no webpage, no copy. Like nothing does the job that like a customer going, you freaking rock. And all of my friends, you know, tell, they tell other friends, enthusiastic advocate is super duper clear. So let’s just jump into the super fan. I know you have the, you have a, you have a great methodology, you have a great framework. I think it’s totally applicable to what we do. Well actually, so before we do that talk, talk about the, the, the, the layer. Talk about the levels. Ta talk about the layers of I forget what you call them, but like the, the spectrum sort of, of like where customers are at.
BH (03:42):
Yeah, absolutely. So in the book, I talk about this idea of the ladder to super fandom. And you know, the more advocates you have, the fewer ads you have to buy, the easier everything gets mm-hmm.
BH (04:17):
Like, not enough people care that I exist. But in reality, and especially with personal brands, it is so prevalent. So in the book I talk about this idea of the ladder to super fandom, and the very first rung of that ladder is apathy. But people try to skip over that. They try to start with awareness of like, I want somebody to know who I am and that I exist. But the problem is, if you don’t have a compelling enough story, if you’re not able to connect what you do, what your purpose is with the need that they have, then they’re never gonna care. It’s gonna be like the, you know, the analogy I use in the book is that carnival ladder where it’s easy to get somebody on the first step and maybe even the second step, but then they just fall over because apathy is everywhere all around you.
BH (05:01):
There’s never been more competition for our attention. There’s never been more competition for somebody to care about the thing that you do. So throughout the book, I talk about this idea of transforming from a commodity provider to a category of one, going from a transactional relationship and mindset to an experiential one where it’s about more than just your products or your services and even more than your relationships. It’s all about that experience. So the idea of the laddered super fandom, and you know, we don’t have to go through all the rungs, is, is how you take someone through each level of, okay, I know how I’m gonna overpower that apathy. Now somebody is aware of my brand. How do I get them to take an action? Now I’ve gotten them to take an action. How do I get them to adopt this? How do I make it part of their, their plan their life, once I’ve got them to adopt it?
BH (05:52):
What do I do to create affinity? And, you know, most people stop at Affinity. I talk in my book about the idea of the difference between fans and followers, or the difference between fans and super fans. And most people are like, oh, I’m in someone’s consideration set now. They’ve tried me a few times, now they like me. They’re coming back. And that’s where they stop. But if you can create someone, if you can take someone from that like, you know, affinity level of, oh, I like you, to that advocacy level of I like you and I can’t wait to tell other people about you, that amplification is what really makes things exciting, both on the personal brand side and on any business side. Because once you have those customers creating more customers for you, once your followers are telling their friends and growing your audience, it becomes really viral and, and really effective.
RV (06:43):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (07:17):
And I completely overlook as a first opportunity to go, what if instead of trying to make more people aware of me, I took the people who already know of me who have apathy and go, what if I just took the people who know of me already and made them fall in love so much that they became advocates? And I, and I just go, no one in the world is ha no one in the personal brand world is thinking about this. Everyone is going more followers, more reach. I need more people to be aware of me versus going, what if the, the few people you had freaking loved you, they would do that work for you is basically what you’re saying.
BH (08:07):
That’s basically what I’m saying. And I think that you know, there’s a quote that I love. Albert Einstein said, not everything that could be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. And I think he was probably talking about Instagram and TikTok when he said that
RV (09:22):
Yeah. And, and I think, you know, I if you just have ask yourself the sobering question, do I spend more of my time thinking about wishing for praying for more people to find me? Or do I spend more of my time thinking about wishing about praying about how do I serve the people who are already in front of me? I have to go embarrassingly. I go, oh my gosh, I am, I am missing the mark badly. In Adley. And I think your your, your book highlighted that in a way. So you, you, you just touched on kind of the premise of the book. The way that you become a super, you make someone a super fan is to connect your story to their story. And this is another part that hit me hard actually, because so super is an acronym and we walk through the, we walk through the steps and the s is story, right?
RV (10:16):
So we start, we start with our story. And I struggle with this because I go, why does my story matter? It feels like starting with my story feels vain, it feels arrogant, it feels self-centered. And I’m going, why don’t I just start with like, what’s in it for them? And you know, what, what do I provide? And I think your book really hit me hard in this area. So can you talk about what it means to create to, to, to, to share, start with your story, and specifically why starting there is not vain and arrogant and, you know, self-centered?
BH (10:59):
Absolutely. Well, when I say start with your story, I don’t mean lead with your story. I mean, everything has to originate from you because we are living in an experienced economy. It has never been easier for any competitor to come in and usurp anyone in any category, right? So if you are competing on commodity things, I’m the cheapest. I’m the fastest, I’m the closest to your home. I’ve been around the longest. It is very easy for someone to displace you. So when I say start with your story, what I mean is what is your superpower? What’s your origin story? What makes you better than everyone else? And you know, I’m always, I’m, I, I’m always shocked when I talk to people and I say, why are you the absolute best choice to serve your prospects and customers? And they stare at me blankly or they say something that every single one of their competitors would also say, Uhhuh, that there is absolutely no proof behind.
BH (11:53):
And what I always say back to them, because this is sort of the idea of apathy and action is, well, if you can’t tell me why you’re the best, how in the world is a prospect ever gonna be able to figure it out? If you can’t even articulate to me clearly why I should care, then how am I ever going to care? So that is what I mean when I say start with your story, not making it about you. Throughout the book, I, I try to say again and again, this is all about customer centricity. This is all about showing up to serve people, but it’s kind of like, you know, we’re recording this. I’m at the airport for anybody who is watching it, this beautiful background behind me is a B n A conference room. Like when you’re on the airplane and they say you’ve gotta put your mask on first before you assist the people with you, because you’ve gotta, like, you’ve gotta do you, you’ve gotta make sure you’re taking care of you. And it’s kind of the same thing when I say start with your story, is you can’t expect people to sign up to say, I am a super fan of this person, or I am a super fan of this offering. If you yourself haven’t done the work to say, why do I deserve a super fan? What am I doing that is better than what my competitors are doing so that I can help serve these customers and make their life better in some way?
RV (13:02):
Ah-Huh
RV (14:03):
I want a New York Times bestselling logo on my book. And it’s like, what actually gives me the credibility is not just that we’ve done that, that we’ve helped other people do it. It’s that I wanted it so badly and I felt so far away and I felt like it was impossible. And it, it’s like, it’s the story and I never tell that story. I talk about, oh, my credentials and our exper you know, like the, the pe the clients we’ve worked with, which I don’t think is bad, but I go, I think I’m underutilizing the human part of my story a bit to go, that’s what really care they care about. Cuz other people would say that too. Well, I’ve got, I’ve got a hundred clients and I’ve helped clients do this and that and, and blah blah blah, blah blah. But there’s this emotional human bond that happens from the origin story. And I’m going, I don’t even have the origin story on my website. We don’t even have the origin story on brand builders group. And I would never even think to put it there, cuz I would think of that as like not useful to the customer un until you told me it was
BH (15:15):
Well. And it, and it is so useful. And that’s, you know, we were connected through a mutual friend John Roland. Yeah. And John Roland didn’t say to me, oh, meet this friend of mine who was like, helped a bunch of other people like you. He said, you’ve gotta meet my friends, Rory and aj. And he told me about who you are as people and, and what your origin story is and why he thinks you’re the best in the world. And I know this is something that a lot of business owners struggle with as they’re scaling because they think, well, if I tell my story then clients are only gonna wanna work with me. They’re not gonna wanna work with anybody else. Sure. But, you know, and, and there there is like a murky middle where sometimes that is true. Everybody feels those growing pains of, you know, I had the people who are used to me and now I’ve gotta tell them that they’re, they’re not gonna get as much as my time cuz the business is growing and changing.
BH (16:04):
And that’s something that I think every entrepreneur has been through. However, I would argue that telling your origin story makes it that much more important because now people are going to understand, okay, this is the person helming this company. This is the person who is not just making the decision of everyone they hire, but training them, making sure there’s an alignment, and then they’re gonna be curious about every single employee’s origin story and what attracted them to come work for you, who you are as a leader, how that plays out into everything that you’re doing. So I think that most people mis or, or underutilized misuse or under util underused their own personal origin stories because of everything you said a few minutes ago. It can feel arrogant, it can feel self-serving, it can feel very, you know, youth centric. But in reality, we learn best when we hear stories.
BH (16:56):
Our brains are hardwired to react to stories much more so than facts. I mean, there’s every single research study that’s ever looked at it has said yes, people believe stories more than facts and figures. And we trust them more, we remember them better, and that’s why they’re so effective. And when we show up and we talk about the results, or we talk about, you know, the past work or the past clients, people don’t feel that emotionally. Like very few people ever like got teary eyed or thought me too, over a spreadsheet or like a list of stats and figures. But when you can tell a story, people are like, I felt that, I felt that in my gut when I was walking through the airport and wanted that, or I felt that in my gut when I was a kid. And I said, wow, this is my calling.
BH (17:39):
So it’s so important. And in my book I talk about some of the tools that people can use, some of the exercises to really step outside of yourself and look at your story through the eyes of your customer to say, what should I be talking about? How am I able to craft this narrative of who I am and where I’ve been in a way that makes it very clear to my target customers that I can help them because I used to be right where they are now. I used to be sitting right where they were sitting
RV (18:06):
And yeah. And that, and that’s the thing, it’s not, it’s not just telling your story, it’s telling your story in a way that it, it is useful for the customer because they put themselves in the story and they go, oh my gosh, you’ve been through what I’m going through. And and I, you know, and I, and I think that’s the game changer because it’s relatability and it’s credibility and it’s all about that. Which kind of leads to the u I guess in, in the, in the super framework. So to walk us through what u’s all about.
BH (18:37):
Yeah. So in the book I say that each of these are kind of like nesting dolls, all five letters of the super framework build on the one before. And the u is understand your customer story. So I said before, super fans are created where those two worlds collide your story and theirs. And another reason that it’s helpful to start with your own story is because when you do that, you can better understand your customer story. Because when you think about who you are, what your origin story is, it helps you better understand what that customer or prospect is struggling with, what transformation that they’re looking to undergo that maybe you’ve already gone through, what reservations they might have, what they might be even unaware that they’re feeling, because it’s so deep down. So really getting clarity on your story positions you in a way to understand your customer story in a way that’s much deeper than a lot of people wanna go. And, you know, in the book, I tell the story and I’m curious, Rory, do you remember the first time you saw a teacher outside of school?
RV (19:35):
Oh yeah. I mean I, yes I do. I vividly remember that.
BH (19:38):
Yeah. It, and it did it just freak you out? Like what was your experience?
RV (19:43):
Well for this particular was one of, one of my favorite teachers. And I, I saw her at Buka Depo, like downtown, like, like 40 minutes away from where I went to high school. And it, it was, it just freaked me out. Like it just, it was like, oh, this is a completely different person. And never had dawned on me that like, this person had a completely separate life with like, friends and out out anything outside of like, the classroom.
BH (20:08):
Yeah. Well, and it’s, it’s so funny. I remember I was in first grade, the first time I saw a teacher, Ms. Beatie at the grocery store, and I was like, oh my gosh. Like, they let her leave school. And it was that same thing, that realization of like, oh, this is an actual person that has all of those things. And when I talk about understanding your customer story, one of the sort of jokes I tell in the book is a lot of people never go deeper than we all went when we were kids. You looked at a teacher and saw someone who was there to like, you know, teach you math or science for, you know, a couple hours a day or whatever it is. But if you look at your customers and say, this is a fully developed person with like a very full life who has goals, who has dreams, who has a history, who has people who people who love them, not only does that give you more empathy in the way that you think about and get to know your customer, but it also gives you more understanding about how your authority can, can matter to them, can help them.
BH (21:02):
So what I, the reason that I, I make the second step in this framework, getting to really, truly understand your customer is because a lot of people don’t ever do that work or they do it like, just on the surface. So in the book I talk about, you know, really getting, getting clear on the types of questions that matter, the types of information that are gonna help you think more critically and teach your team to serve even deeper when it comes to showing up for your customers and your future customers, or your followers and your future followers.
RV (21:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I think you know, another great marketing strategy, you know, I, I said that before about it’s a transform life. The other, another great marketing strategy is to care, is to like care about your customers and the more you like, spend time thinking about them and, and acknowledging I think who they are in real life and understanding it. And, and yeah, you’re, it’s, it’s, it’s ironic that when you start with your story, it forces you to kind of ask that question because you go, how does this story apply to them? And then it puts you in the place of thinking about where are they now? Like where, where are they now? And how can I share how I have been there and, and, and create that connection. And so you really develop a lot of passion and love and affinity and, and appreciation just for who your prospect is.
RV (22:24):
And just like, there’s such an authentic connection that I feel like suddenly it shows up in your marketing, whether, whether it’s a podcast episode or whether it’s a video or it’s, it’s even an advertisement or a website as they go, they feel that, they feel that, like, you actually give a crap about me. You actually know something about what it’s like to be me. And I think, I think that’s super powerful. So what about the p Okay, so s so start with your story. Understand the customer story. The p this is, this is, this one’s clutch
BH (22:58):
Personalized. Mm. So p is personalized and you know, again, there’s all kinds of stats and, and, and figures. And McKenzie study just came out a, a couple weeks ago that said 71% of customers now expect personalization from everyone they give money to. So they don’t wanna be treated like just another customer, just another number, just another order. So in the book I talk about the need to balance the high tech with the high touch. Hmm. So what can you automate? What can you systematize, what can you get set up to help drive personal interactions at scale? While also, and this is the key part, freeing up more of your team’s time or your own time to find opportunities to do those high-touch things that can’t be automated. Because it’s all about the human attention, the human interaction being in tune to someone’s need to show up for them in a way that’s going to exceed their expectations.
RV (23:56):
Mm-Hmm.
BH (24:14):
People who like, are ready to fight me over that. Yes, that is a very polarizing opinion, but I’m like, you would never like Rory, we’re friends. I would never buy you a gift and write my name on the bottom of it to be like, just wanna make sure when you’re using this cooler out by your pool, you don’t forget it’s from me. Like, we would never do that in real life. And yet in business people are like, how many logos can I slap on this? What can I do? Which is fine. Like, I’m not anti swag. I just believe that it has a place and that place is, has an ad, not a gift.
RV (24:44):
Right? And it’s not, it doesn’t make anyone feel special when, I mean, the, the, the way, the another extreme example of it, I was like, imagine if I sent you a picture of me
BH (26:14):
Yeah. That’s, I a hundred percent agree with that. And it’s looking for ways, like, as you said, let’s see somebody who’s listening to this and you are you work in real estate a way to make a decision once and scale. It might be every time I sell someone a new home, I’m going to get them a welcome mat with a picture of their family, or I’m going to get them a garden flag with a picture of their family, or I’m going to take their listing photo and turn it into a puzzle for them. And knowing that you have a vendor who can do those things very easily and have someone on your team who knows, like, okay, before closing day, I’ve gotta go on every family’s Facebook page and like, pull a picture that I really love and get that made into a like, welcome to your new home at a b c Apple Street or, you know, 1 23 Apple Street, whatever to create that for them. So there still oftentimes is, is a human element involved, but you’re, what you’re doing is you are eliminating that process of, ugh, let me think about exactly what to do for this person and how I’m gonna make it. Because you already made the decision, you made one decision that you can repeat a thousand times instead of making a thousand individual decisions.
RV (27:23):
Yeah, yeah. Another thing is, I mean, anything with their family seems like low-hanging fruit there mm-hmm.
BH (28:30):
Absolutely. It’s the fact that they took the time to do it. And you know, we both know like when you get something that Jasper or Leah made for you, it’s not about, you know, how expensive that thing is. It’s, wow, I’m going to love this and keep it forever because my kids made it for me and they put love into it. So it’s that idea of showing someone that you spent time thinking about them, you spent time, you gave them the gift of your attention and your care and whatever it is that, that, that materialized into in the form of a gift.
RV (28:59):
Totally. Totally. So I know that, I know you’ve got multiple mini phases in this, and again, y’all, the, so the book’s called Creating Super Fans Brittany Hodak, of course is who we’re talking to here. The the e is another one that is simple, not easy but another like game changing thing that you go, man, if you adopt this into your culture, it works. Like this actually works. So what’s, walk us through the e
BH (29:28):
Yeah, all of these are simple, not easy. And that’s, and that’s why I wanted to put them in a framework that would be easy to remember. You know, the idea of, oh, being super, you know, it sounds like something you could almost easily dismiss, but if you do these things consistently, they absolutely will lead to huge growth. You will have more earned revenue, you will have more earned customers, you’ll have people who are coming back more quickly and spending more money with you. The e stands for exceed expectations. And this is probably my favorite pillar in the book just because I’m so passionate about something that I call intentional experience design, which is really looking at every single touchpoint through the eyes of your customers and saying, is this making their experience better, worse, or not having an impact on it? And many of our experiences as customers are what I call net neutrals.
BH (30:16):
They’re like, nothing burgers, we forget about them as soon as we encounter them. And then occasionally there are those net negatives that are annoying or, you know, cause us to, you know, grumble a little bit. And then very, very rarely there are those positive things. What I encourage people to do is to, you know, using the, the system that I lay on in the book to look at every interaction and teach everyone on your team that they are the chief experience officer. They are the ones who can turn those neutral interactions into positive ones by using intentionality, by using that customer centricity to say, how can I elevate this otherwise like, forgettable moment into something that’s going to be meaningful? How can I show someone that we care more by going a little bit above and beyond? And if you can do that, not only are you like quite literally making the world a better place because you’re improving people’s days, their, you know, their minutes, their, their interactions, but you’re also giving people those things that are friend j bear calls talk triggers.
BH (31:18):
You’re giving somebody something that they want to tell somebody about, whether that’s online or inline at the grocery store. You’re not gonna believe what this person on the phone just did, or you’re not gonna believe how, you know, this person did this thing that just helped me. And it’s, and it can be, it’s almost always the little things like, this doesn’t have to be big grand gestures. It’s, you know, a week ago I had a bunch of balloons at Publix, so it was my husband’s birthday party and the, the person who was working the door said, here, let me help you out to your car with those. And I said, no, no, no, it’s okay. And he said, no, I, I know a trick. I’ve loaded balloons a lot, I’m gonna, I’m gonna help you make sure that you, that you get these in. And the trick, by the way was to put a piece of paper on top of the balloon and then that they, like, there’s like less static and they go in. But so those interesting little things that you can do to exceed someone’s expectation in the moment and training everyone on your team to look for those opportunities to exceed their expectations.
RV (32:13):
Mm-Hmm.
BH (33:18):
Yeah, so that’s a great question. A lot of it is planning ahead so that you can be more present in the moment to look for those little things. Hmm. Of, you know, oh, they’ve got a kid with them, I’m gonna offer them a sticker. Or they’ve got, they’ve got a lot of bags, I’m gonna make sure somebody’s helping them carry them like the, the, the human things. In the book I talk about this idea of intentional experience design, which is how do I bring more intentionality to every part of the experience? Because one of the, one of the things that I talk about again and again in this book is your customers are going to have expectations that constantly rise because they’re not just comparing their experience working with you to the best experience they’ve had with your competitors. They’re comparing it to the best experiences you’ve had anywhere.
BH (34:07):
So you need to constantly be looking at even your experiences that you have as a customer with, with other parties around you to say, how can I make this better? And this is not in the book cuz it just happened a few weeks ago, but we were out at a Mexican restaurant after a baseball game one day and the kids were hungry because it was a little bit late. And I was like, oh, we’ll just go to a Mexican restaurant so we can like, feed them fast. They’ll at least be chip and salsa. And the waitress came to take our order and Cato, my five and a half year old said, excuse me, did you know a lot of restaurants have apps and if you had an app, we could have ordered our tacos on the way here and you could bring me tacos right now
BH (34:43):
And like, he wasn’t even trying to be a jerk, he was just like, it was in his mind it was like so inefficient that he’s like, why do you have to have a person come ask me what I want to eat? Like someone has already solved this problem. So knowing that your customer expect your customer’s expectations are always going to be getting higher. So looking in that moment, it’s, it’s about how can I serve them quicker? How can I serve them in a way that goes above and beyond their expectations? Like I know I always when I check into a hotel, I notice when somebody goes above and beyond, obviously there’s a couple brands who give you cookies, but if you go to a Margaritaville resort, they offer you a rum punch. A lot of times when you check into a Marriott resort, they have like a wheel that you can spin if you’re a part of the Bonvoy club to like earn bonus points. So just those little touchpoints a above and beyond of am I offering someone a water? Am I offering someone a piece of candy? Am I showing them that I’m happy to have them here? And I don’t think of them as just another customer. I think of them as a person whose life I can improve because we’re, you know, connected in this moment.
RV (35:45):
Yeah. And, and you know, I think you nailed it with it’s going, how do I stay? You have to be, the real magic is being present in the moment to be going, what can I do to make this moment better? Like, magical for them versus scrambling to just meet their expectations or because your brain is off somewhere else, cuz something else fell apart. So like a lot of it is is caught up in, in, in the, the planning. So Brittany, I know we, I know we have the r which, you know, we can wrap up quickly, but before we do that, where do you want people to go if they want to connect with you and learn more what you’re about and you know, get the book, et cetera?
BH (36:27):
Well, my website is britney hodak.com and I hope everyone checks out the book. It’s available everywhere books are sold, including on Amazon as a hard cover and an audiobook and an ebook. But if you go to Britney hodak.song, excuse me, my ho my own name is hard for me to say, apparently if you go to britney hodak.com/gift, you can download the first four chapters of the book totally free because I want everyone to get the framework that they can use to start creating super fans in their own personal brand and business right now. So britney hodak.com/gift.
RV (37:03):
Cool. Very, very cool. Well send us out here. What about the r Yeah, yeah, tell us about the r We don’t, we, we don’t wanna leave everybody hanging too much, but you know, so you got start with so, so super, the acronym, start with your story, understand your customer story, personalize, exceed expectations, and
BH (37:25):
Repeat,
RV (37:26):
Repeat,
BH (37:27):
Repeat. That’s it. I wish customer actually, I I don’t wish customer experience will set it and forget it. I know a lot of people do. I actually love the idea of constantly looking for ways to exceed expectations. But in the fifth pillar, I talk all about the systems and processes that you can use. Another great, great quote, this one’s from Elizabeth Arden. You know, sorry, I know you’re, you’re very Mary Kay loyal, but this is a good quote. Regardless of your preference for, for makeup brands, Elizabeth Arden said, repetition makes reputation and reputation makes customers. So it’s about showing up and doing this again and again, transaction after transaction, interaction after interaction because you become what you do.
RV (38:09):
Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, the other surprising bonus of this is you go, oh, it’s not even five steps, it’s four steps, and then I just do ’em over and over again.
BH (38:19):
It is, it’s 20% easier than I promise. So hopefully I exceed your expectations with four things to remember instead of five. Yeah.
RV (38:26):
Well, and frankly, like, if you get the story part right and you really understand who your customer is, and then you repeat a lot of this is about personalizing and exceeding expectations, and you go, all right, those are like two things that I gotta do is, is like, just go, how do I set everything up to be in this moment serving on people, loving on them at a level that’s higher than what they’re used to seeing? And what a great way to be an awesome person and you know, create superfans and drive and make more income in the process. So Brittany, you’re the best. Thank you so much for this friend. Everybody go get the book Creating Superfans. I’m a, I’m a huge believer. I’m a huge fan. We make our whole company read it, adopting it as part of our culture. It’s a big part of, of what we see as the next level for us at, at Brand Milds Group. And anyways, friend, keep kicking butt out there. We’re cheering for you.
BH (39:17):
Thanks buddy. I appreciate it. I’ll talk to you soon.
Ep 395: Simple Steps to Grow and Scale | Andy Bailey Episode Recap
AJV (00:00):
So you want to scale your coaching practice. This is a conversation that I have with so many individuals who are beginning on their coaching journey or who’ve been on it for a while, and they go, I’m ready to take it to the next level. So figured why not have this conversation in a recorded sense so that we can share it with the masses. So a couple of things that I think are really important to have this conversation. The first thing is asking yourself, why do you want to scale? Because you don’t have to. And I think the important thing to realize is that scaling takes a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of resources, and it takes people, right? And I think what people also don’t realize is that often in order to scale, you will lose money before you make money.
AJV (00:58):
Not always, but often. And the truth is, is that our reasons for scaling are often out of line, are out of alignment, meant with what we really want, and we think, well, I need to scale because that’s what you do in business. And it’s like, not really. It’s your business. You get to decide what you do. And there is nothing wrong with just going deeper with the clients that you have and making purpose your bottom line, versus trying to scale revenues and actually lose on profit. And I think there’s just sometimes too, too often we focus too much on the money. Now, clearly we need to make money in business to pay our bills. Clearly we’re in business to make some sort of profit to like enjoy the fruits of our labor, but not at the cost of our happiness, our peace, our joy, our our time with our family.
AJV (01:58):
In other words, why are you doing it? And so I just would encourage that before you go, yeah, I’m ready to grow and ready to scale that you really actually answer the question, why? Why do you want to scale? Because you don’t have to. Now, if you choose to then let’s talk about that
AJV (02:49):
That’s what I’m talking about, right? And it’s like, okay, now I’ve got to duplicate processes, duplicate systems, duplicate myself with more human capital, and that, that will require your time and your money and your resources. So one, be prepared for work. Number two don’t expect it to happen overnight. Let this grow over time. Let it grow organically and let it grow by demand. That’s important. You do not have to bring on three people. It’s like you bring on one and then you bring on another, and then eventually you bring on another. It’s like let this happen by demand and let it happen organically so that you don’t find yourself upside down going backwards instead of actually growing forward, which is what you wanted in the first place, right? Number three, get super clear on your culture and your people acquisition process before you can start growing in terms of the people component.
AJV (03:43):
You’ve gotta be really clear about who you are, who your clients are, how you do what you do, why you do what you do, and what makes you unique in all of that. And you’ve got to align yourself with people who line up with that culturally and beliefs and values. Like that’s important before you start expanding your company, which is also your reputation. This is a reflection of your personal brand. You’ve gotta make sure that you have all of this work dialed in so that you can be a magnet to people who are like that. Or you can be the opposite, right? You can be repulsive, polarizing to the people who aren’t. And you wanna be a little bit polarizing in the fact that I would love your culture or not for me, you need to make it that clear so people can make an a easy yes or an easy no.
AJV (04:39):
And so that you can make an easy yes or an easy no. So get clear on your culture and your people acquisition process. So what do I mean with our people acquisition process? Where do we find people? How do we interview ’em? How do we make the offer and how do we onboard ’em? Right? So a couple of things here I think that are really important is one, where do people come from? In my personal opinion we’re kind of at a place in our life where you’re gonna need to come from someone I know, right? There are very few resumes that I put online when, and, and I’m talking specifically about a coaching business, right? But it’s like, I know you or I have a client who knows you or a friend who knows you, or another business owner who knows you.
AJV (05:23):
So network, why? Because this is going to be such a key part of the reflection of your reputation, but also it’s because if I’m going to entrust my clients to you, which is a really big important part of the relationship I have with my clients, then I need someone else who can vouch for you. And I don’t, I’m not talking about stranger references, like, I want to know you. So where do you find people? It’s like you network, right? You network through your friends and business acquaintances. That is what we do, right? Through our own employee base, our client base friends. I don’t put job ads up anymore because it’s a very lengthy process to filter through the masses to find a mi maybe might be one or two potentials, right? And so that’s not the answer for everyone. I’m not talking about scaling with dozens of people.
AJV (06:09):
I’m talking about the ones and the twos, and it’s like, I’m gonna network myself to finding that right person. That’s where we do slow down the interview process. You don’t have to make a decision in 24 hours or one week. It’s like meet the person in person. Even if that requires travel time to get together, it’s like you must meet in person. They need to do a shadow day, they need to get to know you, you need to get to know them. We always do the spouse test, which is are they married to crazy? Right? At the, one of the great lessons we learned from entree leadership at the Dave Ramsey organization, it’s like, man, you’re not just, it’s very much like a marriage. It’s like you’re not just hiring a person, you’re, you’re hiring who they’re attached to. So are they single?
AJV (06:53):
Are they married? Do they have kids? It’s like those aren’t deciding factors and whether or not you hire someone, but man, you do need to know those things about the people that you’re going to spend 60% of your time with every week. It’s like, I need to know where you’re coming from. So I know that if we’re how and if we’re aligned and then shadow days, right? It’s like they gotta see the job, not read it on a piece of paper. They gotta experience the job and you need to experience them experiencing the job. Those would be all things hire for experience. These are a couple of tips. Hire for attributes, not skills, hire for their values and their character traits, not just skills. Now with that, it’s like, yeah, you need to hire for experience. You need to hire someone who can do the job, but you also need to hire someone who shares the same cultural values and beliefs that are in alignment with you and your client base, especially if you have an existing client base.
AJV (07:49):
All right, next thing set pricing based on your people talent, right? So as you start scaling in people, this allows you to have different pricing tiers. It’s likely going to cost a different amount to coach or work with you than it does the people that you’re now bringing on. So that allows you to have new tiers, new levels of service. And I think this is really important for two different reasons. One, most of you are underpriced and you need to increase your prices. And most of you need to increase your prices for you. So this is a great opportunity for you now to have a tiered pricing schedule where the current pricing you have is now the pricing to work with my coaches that I’m bringing on board to help but to coach with me, and now I’m increasing that, right?
AJV (08:32):
It’s a simple supply and demand. You increase prices when there is more demand than supply. When you have more supply, i e a new person, then you can keep prices the same, right? And then over the course of time you have to hire another person. It just allows this opportunity for you to set pricing the way it should be, which is a little bit based on supply and demand of your time and availability, but as you bring on more people you don’t have to outprice yourself out of the market that you serve or love unless you want to. And that’s up to you. And then the last little quick tip, because I’m trying to keep these short is create recurring revenue lines, right? When you set your coaching pricing model, when you’re thinking about scaling, now this is specific to scale.
AJV (09:17):
It’s a, you have to have products that allow you to have some recurring revenue. If it is always, I’m gonna sell a, you know, three month, three month contract and I’m constantly trying to renew this quarterly thing, you’re gonna be in sales mode all the time, right? So what can you do to create some monthly recurring revenue models or annual recurring revenue models that make it a no-brainer for people to sign up for those? Now they may buy additional services that aren’t that project-based services, but this is a membership model, is what I’m talking about. This is it could be an annual mastermind model that renews and recurs over time, not a one and done. But this is a month to month or a monthly with a six month, 12 month whatever contract model. These could be online education platforms, memberships, the list goes on and on.
AJV (10:10):
But make sure that as you are selling, you don’t sell calls one at a time or you don’t sell just a quarterly contract where you’re always in renewal season, but find ways to create recurring pricing models that allow you to create a base foundation to give you some breaks to do the work. Because if you’re a solopreneur, a coach that is looking to scale, even if you have a couple of other coaches and you’re going, what’s that next tier? That next level the biggest thing, it’s like, it’s really hard to create both lots of new revenue and nurture and care for the existing client base that you have, right? And so some of the very first physicians that you may need before too long as a salesperson. So you’ve always got someone focused on bringing new business in while you or your coaches focus on keeping the business that you have.
AJV (10:58):
So first questions first. Why do you want to scale? And if you go through that process and still determine, yeah, I do, then you’ve got a quick checklist of things to go through. But just remember purpose comes before profit. Now that isn’t, I didn’t say revenue, right, that it’s like, make sure you’re doing what you’re doing and you’re going deep and wide and making an impact and loving what you do, and weigh all the pros and cons of how much of that will will temporarily go away in the scaling mode. Now I’m all about scale. I’ve scaled businesses. We are scaling our current business. I am not antis scaling. I am anti undoing it because somebody else is doing it. I am anti doing it for the wrong reasons. I am anti doing it because of our ego and our pride. I am pro doing it because there is demand that is requiring you to expand your reach and
AJV (11:52):
Impact, and you can do it right. And it’s like you have the desire to do it, is what I mean by can you have the desire and the ability to do it. And you don’t always have to. There are gonna be seasons where you’re like, I’m good. And maybe that’s just for a season. So just give yourself the permission to be happy where you are and love the work that you’re doing and the impact that you’re having, knowing that there’s always a season to grow and to scale. And sometimes there’s a, there’s a season to just go deep with what you’re doing and define that deep work and passion can easily be the thing that you look for versus the very next, you know, business move. So with all of that said there are reasons to scale. There are reasons to not, and I hope this quick conversation helps you vett those for yourself. We’ll see you next time.
Ep 394: Scaling Your Coaching Practice with Andy Bailey
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand. I’m so, so excited to get to introduce you guys. To my friends a Andy Bailey today. Before I give you a formal introduction to Andy there are two things that I think is really important for everyone to know. Who’s tuning in is one, as you guys know, since you listened to this podcast, you know, we serve the expert, community coaches, consultants, trainers, speakers, authors, or any of you who want to be one of those things. And a huge part of what we’re gonna talk about today is how does scale your coaching practice, right? But we’re gonna talk about the business components, the personal components the leadership parts, the sales parts. And so if that is you and that sounds appealing, then this is probably an episode you wanna stick around and listen to. The second thing that you need to know is how I met Andy Bailey, which now would be, I don’t know, 14, 15 years ago.
AB (01:03):
Hey, right after you moved to
AJV (01:04):
Nashville. I mean, it was like within months, and we got connected through a mutual acquaintance. But I remember coming to your office and I was working at our former company, and I met you there, and I still have it, and it’s sitting on my son’s shelf. And you gave out this little Yoda, these little bobblehead Yoda. Do you know what I’m talking about?
AB (01:24):
Hundreds and hundreds of those things we given out. But yeah,
AJV (01:28):
I still have it. Do you really? I should have brought it up here as proof that I still have it. But it’s
AB (01:35):
My
AJV (01:37):
And I carried around. I still, I had carried around that to two companies, several offices, a new house, and it has made its way onto the shelf of my son’s, both of my son’s study room. And, you know, for years, people would come into my office and they would say, are you into Star Wars? And I’d be like, no, I’ve never seen it. And they’re like, why do you have a Yoda? And I’m like, oh, well, I’m gonna tell tell you this great story about this person I met named Andy Bailey, who did not give me something with his logo on it, but gave me something that now makes me tell his story everywhere I go. So I have used that on stages on podcast interviews. And you may not know it, but I talk about that little Yoda and meeting you all the time.
AB (02:22):
Well, I need to get a bigger stash of Yodas to start. That’s gonna be the the outcome
AJV (02:27):
Yeah. And, and I still have that little sucker. So I just think that’s really important because so many of us are trying to figure out in a world that’s really noisy, how do you stand out and how do you be memorable? And sometimes it’s the personal things about yourself that stick with people the most. And I don’t get to see Andy a whole bunch. She’s now lives in Colorado, but I still have your Yoda on my shelf. And so I don’t see you all the time, but I think about you every single time I walk by that little Yoda. So, again, for those of you who are tuning in I’ll give a quick formal intro of Andy. But this is, that’s one of those things that’s like, we’re all trying to figure out how do we grow in business? How do we scale?
AJV (03:09):
How do we get people to know about what we do so they can buy your products and services? And often we skip past the simplest of things, which is just help people get to know you. Be memorable by just being you, which is exactly what Andy did for me 15 years ago. And now you’re on this show set. Now let me formally introduce you and we’ll get down to business. But Andy Bailey is the founder of two awesome companies Petra coach, which we’ll talk about, and his newest company that will also talk about called Boundless. But he helps businesses scale to the point of selling or scale to just the point of healthy profitability. He helps so many people that I personally know with their leadership teams, their sales teams, their executive team. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He and I are part of the same EO group here in Nashville, the Entrepreneurs organization. He is a, a speaker and a constant adventurer. So without further ado, Andy, welcome to the show.
AB (04:10):
Oh, aj, thanks for thanks for the introduction. There’s a lot in there for sure. We’ve been an EO member for since 1997. When I speak to those groups, I always kind of weave that in. And I’ll say, is anybody older than me in the, or? Like nobody in the world has been a member longer than 97. I’m sure there’s a few, but if there are few and far between,
AJV (04:27):
Oh, that’s so funny. You know, things, I, I just hired two new people and on both of their you know, I’m like filling out payroll yesterday and both of them were like, born in 2000. And it was like, how old am I? What do you mean? We’re born in 2000? So when you said 1997, it’s like, I’m like, I was just filling these out yesterday going 2000. How old are you? I’m like, doing the math and it’s like, oh my gosh, you’re babies. You’re babies. Well, I, I’m I’m so excited to have you on the show, one, because I just, I know you personally, I know that you’ve got such a breadth of wisdom of not just in business, but in this really awesome niche business that we happen to be in, which is in the coaching world, right? It’s like you have built an enormously successful coaching business that helps other people build their businesses. So there’s so much dual benefit of the conversation that we’re gonna have today. And so I’m gonna start super broad and I’m just like, whatever wisdom you have to get, I’m gonna take this personally as like my free coaching hour with Andy, cuz you’re real expensive. But for everybody else’s gonna get some benefit too. So here’s my first question. If you had to nail it down to like the top one to three things that you think business owners need to do today to grow and scale, what would they be?
AB (05:49):
That’s pretty easy. So I, I think in this order of importance, and this is never a popular answer cause I’ve, I’ve, I’ve given this answer at colleges and at talks before and everybody wants me to say stuff like, you know, find something you’re passionate about or define your purpose and put a big, like, you know, all that stuff is great, but first and foremost, it has to be profitable. Hmm. If a business doesn’t generate a level of profitability, it can’t fulfill purpose, it can’t take care of others, it can’t fulfill a mission, none of that stuff. Mm-Hmm.
AB (06:39):
We were talking about people earlier. You, you have to, and we see this in EO quite a bit now. I have the fortunate I get to go talk to a lot of EO and business people and big groups and big crowds and usually leadership or the leader themselves, they invest in their own personal growth. Hmm. But they don’t do the same for their team members. Hmm. If you take a, a general business that’s about five or 10 million in revenue, and if you took their p and l and just looked at what is the education line or the learning line the majority of that’s gonna be tilted towards the owner of the business, the entrepreneur themselves, and then it just goes right down the scale all the way to the frontline. So we’ve got to make sure that we’re investing to grow our people.
AB (07:24):
Sometimes I’ll, I’ll speak to it as, you know, if a business is growing at 20% a year, everybody in the business has to grow at 20% a year. They have to build additional capacity. Capacity can be knowledge or skills or, you know, feeling better, whatever it might look like. But we have to make sure that we’re investing in the people. So, so profitability, focusing on
AJV (08:23):
Mm-Hmm. Those are good. And I have a question for each one of these cuz I think these are one just sound business
AB (09:13):
Be the, be the, be be good. That’s the answer to your
AJV (09:16):
Question,
AB (09:17):
Yeah. That
AJV (09:19):
AB (09:23):
Yeah. well we have some rules in business. One of ’em is do we say you’re gonna do be, you know, be on time every time, finish what you start and say please and thank you. Like that’s four rules in business that everybody should be following. Your competition doesn’t do that. It’s easy to outpace your competition if you do those four things. But what I’m saying about being good is if I stack up everybody else that does what I do and you know, people are gonna pick me, I, this sounds like an arrogant statement, but people are gonna pick me outta that lineup nine out of 10 times. I’ve, I’ve literally had spent a thousand days in rooms with teams like let that seek in for a second, 1,008 to 10 hour days working with teams of people over the last decade plus all the prep work, plus all the reading, you know, the 300 books that went into it.
AB (10:09):
I’m good at what I do. I’m really good at what I do. That means I don’t have to go market myself all that much or go sell myself all that much. It means I can be more profitable. It, it means I can do all the things in business that I want to go do. Now my job now, because of the scale of Petra, is to get other people to be good, which is a whole nother challenge. And that’s what I’m working on. But the answer to the question is, if I can give you one piece of advice, go be good at what you do. Yeah. Really, really good.
AJV (10:41):
I love that. What I wrote down for myself is be so good at what you do that you’re the only option, right? It’s like you so outpace everyone around you that you are the only option because you’re so good at it.
AB (10:52):
That’s right. That’s right. Whatever is your chosen field. If it’s writing or speaking or coaching, especially your audience, you know, probably a lot of solo entrepreneurs or solopreneurs, you know, they’re, they have to, they, they probably spend a lot of their time in as my website, right? As my business card ride. Do I have my, my thing put together is the cover of all that stuff is good and you gotta do that. But if, if you’re not delivering at the point of delivery to a level better than everybody else, it’s not gonna matter that much.
AJV (11:22):
Mm-Hmm.
AB (12:33):
The time piece is probably the one that’s most difficult, especially in our time now. Cause everything is instant and you have an entire generation that grew up on everything is at my fingertips. If I want something, I just push a button in the car comes, picks me up, takes me. Like all that stuff is instant. There’s no real concept of time. And you’ve heard the statement and everybody probably has heard the, you know, every success overnight success is a 25 year journey always,
AJV (13:00):
Right?
AB (13:00):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (13:29):
Yeah. And that kind of leads into the second thing that you said, which is be growing as yourself, the leader, right? The entrepreneur, the business owner, but also have your team grow. And so I’d love, do you have any just kind of like tips or, you know, best practices, rules of thumb, whatever we wanna call it, of how much do you invest in your team, right? Like what, what’s a good budget policy? Do you let them pick? Do you pick like what’s a good practice?
AB (13:57):
I don’t think there’s an answer to what not, not a universal answer. You know, if you’re, you know, 10% of gross margins should get, like, that stuff probably doesn’t exist cuz everybody needs something in a little different degree. But certainly if you’re running an organization that has people in it, other than you, you should be working with the individuals to figure out where are their gaps. You know, what is the place, not weaknesses, but gaps. Mm-Hmm.
AB (14:42):
Or you’re gonna Yeah. Experience a lot of chaos and pain. Right? So what do you have to do? And sometimes that’s people skills. Like, Jimmy, I need to teach you how to actually deal with people
AJV (15:37):
Good.
AB (15:38):
The company just don’t focus on that.
AJV (15:40):
That’s good. But that, I mean, that’s the whole, that’s the whole concept. I remember hearing this years ago, it’s like, if you grow, the business will grow, right? So it’s like, you know, it’s like we’re all, businesses are just a collection of the people, right? And their experience skills, knowledge, right? It’s like, businesses don’t exist without humans. Some human has to be there. So it’s like, where are you growing? And as long as you’re growing the business will likely follow you in some capacity. All right. And then the third thing, sales and marketing, which you kind of referenced this a little bit. It’s like, man, if you’re so good that you’re the only option, kind of sell yourself. But in a world where it’s easy to compare your step one to someone else’s step 1000, or you’re year one to someone else’s year 12. And when you get in a world that’s so noisy with distraction of, oh, we’ve gotta, you know, we’ve got this growth funnel and we’ve got this email thing and we’ve got this new website thing and you’ve got all things digital that are real distracting and surprise, they actually cost a lot of money and also take a lot of time, what would you say are the one to two things? It’s like, just pause for a minute. If you really wanna grow sales, this is what you need to do. What would you say?
AB (16:58):
Ask
AJV (16:59):
AB (17:02):
Ask, ask for the sale. I mean, most people are, you, you, we don’t get what we, I mean nobody, you don’t get a date unless you ask for a date. Like they don’t just show up. I mean, maybe they do these days, but they typically, you have to ask in some form or fashion. We hide behind a bunch of that doesn’t put us face to face with people. Mm-Hmm.
AB (17:19):
AJV (18:06):
Way undercharging. Let me make sure you heard that way. Undercharging. Most of you.
AB (18:12):
Yeah. Yeah. And I find that even in business, especially in small business, and it’s one of the hardest things we do. Like we, we coach it’s 10 million to a billion dollar companies now. But anytime that we go into an organization and we do a financial review and, and we have like le we call ’em levers, we can pull these levers. One of the levers is increase in price. Hmm. And you would’ve thought I just shot somebody’s dog in the room and made ’em watch. When we started talking about we’re gonna have to do a 3% increase in price, well shut the market and paper costs 17% more gas is 40% increased freight to bring the stuff to the warehouse went up by 70% last quarter. What do you mean you’re freaked out about passing along this percentage increase to the customer? Well, I’m gonna go tell ’em.
AB (18:54):
It’s a price increase. Everybody’s got a price increase. Mm-Hmm.
AB (19:37):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (20:21):
Yeah. That’s so good. You know, it’s so funny cuz I know exactly who you’re talking about. And, and not only did she double her business, she had a wait list. She had a wait list of people who wanted her services to do their, you know, very at that point, high-end weddings. And it did double her business and then had a wait list. Because I think a part of that is, you know, I think what I have found anyways in a lot of programs out there is if you, if you don’t have confidence in your own pricing, the consumer base has just a lack of confidence in what it is. And it’s like, that’s only this amount of money. It can’t be that good. It’s like we even associate pricing with quality, which is often not true. Right. And I think the great analogy to that is a book, right? It’s like, I think books are one of the most undervalued and most important things in the whole world because it’s like, you think about how much I prepared Noah offense and for this podcast and it was like 10 minutes. But you think about how much I would prepare for a blog, I don’t know, maybe it’s 20 minutes, but how much time I take to prepare for a book is years. Yeah. Right? The amount of editing and distilling and back and forth and it’s what, $24 and 99 cents to buy a book?
AB (21:41):
Yeah. You make books. I got a couple of ’em myself,
AJV (21:44):
You know, and it’s like, but it’s like I think we, we go, oh well, you know, but Right. Somehow it’s like, if I wanna coach with Andy, it’s gonna cost me $20,000. Right. It’s like, or I could read a freaking book. Right. And it’s not that it’s, they’re clearly different, but a lot of times we just undervalue things because they are underpriced and it’s like when you get it priced right, people actually, you attract the right audience. And I just, I see that happen with our clients all the time. It’s, they’re not attracting their right audience because they’re not priced right. They’re attracting an audience that actually is the opposite of what they’re looking for based on pricing.
AB (22:20):
Well, they, and they won’t volume too. They, they’re, you know, well I can get, they won’t buy it at that. Everybody else is charging $99 and if I charge more than $99, they won’t buy it. Well, everybody’s buying the other person’s now. It’s like, you know, do you want all of those because you gotta go do the work that represents all of those. If you triple the price and you got one third, the amount, you’re actually better because you’re working one third is often or the same money. Like Correct. It, it, it, it doesn’t make any sense. I mean we, we’ve got, we in our organization, Petra today, we’ve gone from, I remember the day that we went to $2,500 a month was our standard fee for coaching. We have companies today that are 25,000 a month. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (23:35):
Yeah. It’s kind of back to, it’s like people don’t pay for time, they pay for experience. That’s right. And your ability to consolidate that and to super easy to, you know, like to comprehend strategies and principles that my team can then go and deploy. Right. That’s what we’re paying for. So, kinda on that note, you mentioned Petra, which you have scaled to a very healthy eight figure coaching business over the last decade. So if we were to just take a moment and narrow in a little bit of, not general practice, but like scaling a coaching business, like what does it take, what do you need to know and how do you do it? What do you got for us?
AB (24:15):
Well that’s, that’s a, I should probably write that book cause a lot of people wanna know that. What I did in the very beginning when it was just me, was a, I went to some kind of thought leader gurus that are around the coaching world. And I started asking the question, cuz this is what I do and I teach other people to do the same thing. If I wanna achieve something, go find somebody who’s already done it and just ask ’em how they did it. You’re asking me now. So I went to two or three people who are kind of kings of the methodology and just said who, you know, I, I would like to, I’m my history comes from recurring revenue. So I learned the reoccurring revenue thing back in when I, in my twenties. So I did not want to just trade my time for money for the rest of my life.
AB (24:58):
I wanted to make sure I built something that returned return revenue without me doing it back in the story. So I asked a few people and they said, you know, I don’t really know of anybody that that took, you know, a methodology turned and that they would deliver to a group of people and turned it into a practice with. So I had to figure that piece out on my own. Extremely difficult, more difficult. And I, and I started a software company aligned, as you’re familiar with it’s in New Orleans has 25 or 30 employees, does great down there. We’ve got a marketing company as well you know, in, in the Petra imbalance. So I, I started these kind of traditional businesses alongside this coaching practice after having a traditional business for 18 years prior to that and exiting it, coaching practice factor 10 more difficult to scale factor a 10
AB (25:52):
Like, it, it’s an incredibly difficult thing. So how did I do it a little bit at a time? So we’ve made some mistakes early, we got some wrong people in the seats outta necessity. I learned that lesson really quick, meaning there was so much business coming in the door that I just really needed the relief. Mm-Hmm.
AB (27:01):
AB (28:20):
We can do all the online training, all the shadowing, all the books, everything, everything. But as your speakers on this absolutely understand you’re not as good. I don’t care what, you know, from stage, the 50th time as you are gonna be the 500th time experience is the best teacher.
AJV (28:43):
Yeah. So funny. One of our early mentors, when my husband Rory was competing for the world championship of public speakers, I, we remember this so clearly, and Eric Chester is the one who told us this. He said, the only difference between a good speaker and a great speaker is a thousand speeches. I said, go give this presentation a thousand times and a promise to you, it’ll be great. Yep. And that’s what he did. That is literally what my crazy husband did. In the back of a Denny’s with two, two people to any school or free club that would have him. And, and that first 12 months when he was competing, he did that speech probably 340 times. And that’s once a day. Y’all like, there’s only 365 days in a year. And out of 25,000 contestants, he came in second. Right. What he says he is the number one loser
AB (29:52):
There’s, you have no choice. But most people, most people will not go do that. And we talked a little bit prior about, you know, just the societal viewpoint today is, I won’t give me that now. I deserve it. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (30:37):
Yeah. I think that’s a good reminder to all of us. And even like starting Brain Builders Group, like we turn five years old in just a couple of weeks. Right. And it feels, it feels like yesterday, right? But we were build building our first coaching company for 12 years. And you know, the thing that I’ve learned is like, the more that you do something, the quicker you can redo it and make it better. But, you know, it’s like we stepped into building brand builders groups constantly frustrated of like, why isn’t this working fast enough? Right? And it’s like, but you look up one day and you’re like, oh, that’s because it’s like, again, I just, I have, I have so much to learn in the patience category, but it’s like, and it takes time to build anything good takes time. And if you rush it, you’re gonna cut corners and you’re gonna skip things that are crucial to the foundation. And I know from our community and from people listening, it’s like, man, you wanted to work so bad and you wanted to work so fast that you’re often tempted to just skip steps. But it’s like you’re always gonna have to repeat those steps at some point.
AB (31:39):
And everybody’s looking for a like a silver bullet. Like a, can I use a piece of technology? Can I use a, you know, like no
AJV (31:52):
Yeah. That’s good. So I, I think one of the things too, because you have done this, how many, how many coaches do you have at Petra?
AB (32:01):
There’s about 20, 25, 26, something like that.
AJV (32:03):
That’s a lot. That’s a ton. So if you were to give any tips, and I know we only have a couple of minutes left here, but if you were to give any tips for people going, wait Andy, I have to go hire people. Like where do I find good talent? Like how do I find, attract, train, and keep good talent? What are your tips?
AB (32:27):
First of all, it’s a decision process. And I, I’ve had this conversation, especially when somebody, I, I, I’ll use an example. Been working with the company now for a while, like a decade, a while. And when they first approached me, highly successful, highly profitable, just a few people kind of run like a fraternity house. And they were in the sales business and they all made great money, I’m think, I mean like millions a year, right? So, and they want, but he wanted a business. He’s like, you know, I feel like, I feel like I need a business. I’d like to, I wanna scale this thing. I wanna turn it into an actual business. I know it’s just a job right now and it’s a good job, but an actual business. I’m like, are you sure dude? Like, you need to be sure.
AB (33:12):
And there’s nothing wrong with solopreneur lifestyle business, you know, staying small, staying small and being great. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Cause it takes an enormous amount of energy to scale something beyond yourself. Mm-Hmm.
AB (34:07):
The second piece is you’re going to lose money before you make money. Mm-Hmm. So if you make 2 million a year doing what you’re doing today as a solopreneur, you probably are gonna get to a place where you make it half million dollars in the first three years of your little venture off into being a business. Cause now you’re paying other people to do this stuff 30% as well as you were doing it until they can get it up to the a hundred percent where you want them to be. And you gotta be willing to suck that up for a period of time in order to get scale on the other side. Right. So you’re gonna, it’s gonna cost you not just effort and energy and time, but a lot of money to go build something like that as well. So at the end of the day, just be cautious with the decision itself.
AJV (34:48):
Yeah. I think that’s actually really wise. And sage advice because I think we often get so tempted where we think we have to scale. We think we have to grow. And the truth is, you
AB (35:00):
Know, you don’t have,
AJV (35:01):
You don’t,
AB (35:02):
I’m at a place right now with Petra where we, we, you know, we had meeting, we had a meet half a half a day meeting today. I mean, our business does really well. It makes, it makes really good money. I’m not that involved in it anymore. You know, I’ve built it so it could run on its own. That’s what we do with other companies, might as well do it my own. So all of my businesses operate pretty much without me. But in order to go from where we are to the next level, you know, the 25 it’s gonna take a lot of my time and attention and I’m weighing in my mind like, am I actually willing to go do that
AJV (35:55):
AB (35:56):
What are you looking for from an attribute standpoint before you look at the skillset? Skillsets can be taught, attributes are innate and they’re just part of the being.
AJV (36:06):
Mm-Hmm.
AB (36:06):
AJV (36:21):
Old office. Yeah.
AB (36:22):
AJV (36:43):
Yeah. I actually, I love that it’s, you know, and actually I really love that it’s what can you do to slow the process down versus, you know, how do I speed it up? And I think so often it’s like, how do we make faster recruiting decisions and how do we expedite the onboarding? And it’s actually, I really love the advice of like, no, slow it down. Right? It’s like, don’t make these hasty decision decisions. Know exactly who they are. Make sure they know who you are. And that, again, takes time. So slow it down.
AB (37:15):
Well, you, you’ve had the experience. I’m making an, again, another assumption and I talk to a lot of business people. You know how difficult it is to get somebody out of your business once they’ve been there.
AJV (37:25):
Oh yeah. It’s, it’s annoyingly difficult and to do it, there’s not gonna create any sort of legal ramifications or everyone leaves on good terms and everyone’s happy. It’s like, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s a little bit like getting married. And you know, for those who’ve been through this getting divorced, it’s often a lot easier to get married than it is divorced.
AB (37:49):
Super easy to get married, super easy, really difficult to break that thing up. Yeah. Same thing is true and
AJV (37:55):
Painful for all the parties involved. So slow it down. I love that advice.
AB (38:01):
You wouldn’t rush into a marriage you would date for a while. You’d pick different people, you’d sit with ’em, you’d talk like, you learn about somebody before you make the commitment. Same thing is true here.
AJV (38:09):
Yeah. I think that’s so good. Andy, if people wanna learn about Petra and what you do for businesses, and if somebody’s in a state of like, I am scaling and I do need this kind of advice, where should they go to learn about Petra?
AB (38:22):
Just go to petra coach.com. We have some online tools and some downloads there. We also do some live events virtual live events. May the 18th, I don’t know if this comes out prior to May the 18th, but we, we do have a live event in Nashville that people are welcome to sign up. Most of this stuff is free as well.
AJV (38:39):
Ah, that’s awesome. And I’ll put all that in the show notes. But then also you’ve got this awesome new company boundless, stop me. And that’s really more about the personal development side. And so can you give us your 32nd? Tell us about Boundless and where people go to find out about it.
AB (38:54):
Yeah, so as we were talking about earlier, like growing the individual inside of the business, that was a missing component inside of Petra wasn’t something that we could spend a lot of time with. So we started the business a couple of years ago that St took the tools for growing an organization, a company. And we just turned those tools into tools for the individual. We call it high performance for high performing humans. So it’s literally, think of it as life planning. Where you, where you gonna be in your life? What do you want in 10 years? What do you want in a year? Very, very detailed. We created a journal system that goes along with it so you can write every day. And it’s a process I’ve been following personally for 12 years and I just turned it into this stuff. It’s been, this has been a fun journey creating this.
AJV (39:35):
And people can go to boundless.me to check out the more personal development side. And then also in the show notes Andy’s been so gracious, we’re gonna include an awesome QR code where you can just sign up for quick, easy little, you know, snippets of information that’ll come to you every day. And so that’ll all be in the show notes and I’ll put all of the other links in there so that you guys can learn, stay in touch and continue to get these awesome pieces of wisdom from my good friend Andy Bailey. Andy, thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate you. And for everyone listening, make sure you stay tuned for the Cliff Notes version of this episode, which we’ll release shortly after this. We’ll see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 391: How To Get Your Brand Protected | Heather Pearce Campbell Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
All right,
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.
HPC (05:24):
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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):
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,
AJV (31:20):
Well, and not to mention on that note of borrowing with the bunny
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.
HPC (35:44):
I have read and agree to the terms of purchase whatever, which I have never done ever, but okay, right.
HPC (36:43):
Mm-Hmm.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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
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,
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.
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.
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.
VF (06:42):
It’s true
AJV (06:42):
Typically, right?
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
VF (21:54):
It doesn’t sound fun
AJV (21:56):
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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,
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,
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.
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
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
SW (17:45):
You feel like you’re a scooch McDuck in the vault, swimming in the dollars
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.
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?
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):
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):
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
SW (37:07):
I love it.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.