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.
Ep 371: 5 Things You Need to Know to Hit A Bestseller List | Esther Fedorkevich Episode Recap
AJV (00:02):
Have you ever wondered what makes a New York Times bestselling book? A bestselling book,
AJV (00:58):
And so I thought I would share some of those tidbits with you because they were really important to me with the disclaimer. At the end of the day for anyone who is a writer, an author, a content creator, a thought leader, it’s like, I just think this should go without saying that. I do believe solely wholehearted wholeheartedly that knowing the amount of work that it takes to write a book and then edit it, and then rewrite it and then edit again, and then rewrite it again, like that’s no small feat. So I know that at the heart, most authors, most people who have a message on their hearts are not doing this just to hit the list, right? Because the real benefit is a life changed, a life transformed, sometimes a life saved because books have the power to do that. Words have the power to do that.
AJV (01:45):
And at the same time, we know that when you do hit a list, it creates a credibility factor, a shareability factor, a just a, a component to it that helps you share it more, get it into the hands of more people, thus impact change, transform save more lives. So I don’t want this to just be about, oh, like the only reason you write a book is if it’s only good if it hits the list. That’s clearly not the case, cuz lots of not so good books hit the list.
AJV (02:59):
AJV (03:44):
Number two is you gotta have a platform. You’ve got to have people that are already coming alongside with you on this journey. And that’s a really important part of this because although not every author is in the business of hitting the bestseller book or selling millions of books, publishers are
AJV (04:37):
If you don’t want to hit a list and make this some sort of big part of your business, then self-publishing is an amazing route. And self-publishing today is extraordinarily amazing. Like, truly like it’s not the self-publishing that it was 12 years ago. Like you can’t even tell some of these self-publishing houses. You couldn’t even tell that this was done self-published. They’re really great. And so you’ve gotta think about the intent of that, of knowing that if you’re going after a traditional publisher, the intent is that you’re gonna hit the list and you’re gonna sell lots of copies. And in order to do that, you need a platform, right? You, you gotta have a platform of, of fans, followers customers that already know who you are and subscribe to the content that you’re teaching. Then I love this and I loved what Esther said, and she was like, you actually have to have a unique idea, right?
AJV (05:27):
Having great content is one thing, but it needs to be unique. It needs to be a creative idea or concept. What we would say is it’s got to forward thought leadership. It doesn’t have to be a brand new idea, but it’s got to be presented in a brand new way. So those are the three things fundamentally that are kind of like at the base, the foundation of if you’re going after a bestseller list to get this in the hands of lots of, or get this book in the hands of lots of people, those are like the prerequisites. Then there was a few other things that I thought was really important, and she was like, you just, the bestseller list, just hitting the bestseller list on Amazon alone is its own algorithm and its own beast of just knowing what category listings, not listing listings to be in.
AJV (06:15):
And I’m gonna tell you, go listen to my podcast interview with Esther. This is just like one of the most insightful interviews. So just go listen to it in terms of if you’re in that world of writing and publishing a book right now and your launch season or pre-launch season go listen to the interview with Esther. But this whole concept of Amazon listings, it’s like, think about it like this way, when you go look for a book in a retail bookstore yes, there are a few of those left
AJV (07:07):
And I think it’s like, it’s like that but different when it comes to Amazon because you’re just typing in book names or categories. You’re not saying, Hey, I want to research kids books about turtles. Most likely you’re saying, Hey, I want to go kids books for five to seven year olds, boys, right? And it’s like, the thing is though, the category listings are really important and Esther told us awesome story about one of her clients who is a 17 year old who wrote a kid’s book about turtles and it hit number one on the Amazon bestseller list under the category of turtles. Turtles, right? It’s a kiss moment, it hit it under turtles. So it’s like being strategic with the marketing intent is a really important part of, you can’t just have a great book and assume you can just throw it on Amazon or anywhere.
AJV (07:55):
It’s like no, that there needs to be some strategy and marketing intent in order to get it to some of those credibility components like a bestseller’s list that’s then going to help it spread and help the message populate throughout, you know, your intended audience. So category listings actually do make a difference. I think that was really unique and very insightful. The other thing that I thought was really interesting is she shared with me that audiobooks audio sales are up 347%. Now, book sales are also up, but audiobook sales are up 347%. And what she said is that most people even though they listen to it on audio, they will also buy a physical copy because after they listen to it, they wanna go back and have something to underline or highlight or go back over. And so many people are doing both.
AJV (08:49):
But audio that’s huge. And then she goes, I make my author. So Esther is an agent, right? She is the owner and founder of the Fed Agency, but she goes, I say, if you’re gonna write a book, you must do an audio book. It’s a prerequisite, right? You’re doing it. And I would say I would throw that in there as the unsolicited feedback from a consumer books. If you’re gonna do an audio book, make sure you read it. You need to read your own book. Don’t hire someone else to read your book. You read your book. It makes it so much better for the consumer to listen to if you’re listening to the actual author. So just a couple of quick things about audio and the importance of not just having your book and words on pages, but having the audio version will actually help your book sales, audio sales help book sales.
AJV (09:35):
So make sure you have it on audio. Then we talked about a couple of other things that I thought were just really important. And some of them are just high level and, but worthwhile, worthwhile is that if you’re gonna launch a book you need to treat it like you’re launching a business because that’s what it is. And you need to be prepared to put in the time, resources, money as if you were launching a business. And because that’s what it takes. It’s gonna take a lot of sweat equity, a lot of actual equity, bro, dollars and cents like things cost money to prize. But a lot of time, and I thought this was really again, an important thing to remember. It’s like people talk about launch season. If you’re an author or an aspiring author, you know what I’m talking about.
AJV (10:20):
There’s a launch season. But nobody really explains like how long is a launch season. And what Esther said is she was like, A launch season is about a year, a year, not six weeks not three months, not six months, 12 months, let’s say year. And she goes, most of my authors begin their pre-sales and their kind of pre-launch season, six months before the pub date of their book, six months. And now that’s after they already have a plan in place. So think about how much
AJV (11:53):
Organically, or at least 10 years. Now that doesn’t mean you won’t write other books and talk about other things, but you gotta love it so much that for the next 10 years I would dedicate every conversation to this or for my life. Like, I could be talking about this until the day that, you know, I go to heaven, I God brings me home. It’s like I could talk about it forever. That is what needs to be in your book, is the things that people are like, man, like you always talk about that. You should write a book about that. And so just think about that. It’s like, this is not, I’m gonna write it and then for a couple of weeks we’re gonna market it and then it’s gonna spread. And no, it’s the, it’s not build it and they will come. It is you build it and then you go talk about it and talk about it some more and talk about some more and then some more and then a little bit more.
AJV (12:37):
And so it’s just treating it like a business that it’s like, it’s not something you write and it just sits on a shelf. It’s just like a business. It takes a continual process over the course of time before, during, and after to really make it successful. And then the last thing that I would just say I would just share is there is not one sales aha. In order to sell a lot of books, there’s a lot of sales aha movements and a lot of sales strategies. And there’s not one thing that’s a lot of things happening simultaneously that work today and that’s new and that’s different and that can’t feel overwhelming, which is why you need a good strategy and you need a plan that you can do over six months. So some of those things are making sure you’ve got a good social media plan.
AJV (13:22):
And some of the things that Esther and I talked about on our conversation I thought was so good is do fun things that create engagement. Like do a do a book cover reveal with your social media followings. Do a challenge from content in the book. Do different fun things like do a book launch party do giveaways, but create engagement with your social media months and months before it releases. You know, give tiny little sample excerpts outs, share stories, but create engagement all around the content that’s happening in the book. Other things were make sure you do a podcast tour, right? Make sure that it’s like you’re hitting every single media outlet in media venue. You can speaking, right? Speak for free, speak for money, go on podcasts. If you can get big media outlets to interview you, that’s great too.
AJV (14:12):
But it’s making sure that you’re just exhausting all of your resources. It’s not just sending an email to your list or just focusing on your followers. It’s how do I access anyone who I think could benefit from the message that are on the pages of this book? And that takes time and it takes a plan. And it’s not one thing. It’s lots of things happening simultaneously, which means you gotta have a sales and marketing plan. And I think that’s like the big overarching takeaway is that launching a book is like launching a business. And as the author, a huge part of your role is the salesperson. You, like, you are the sales team of the book. And if you are not a great salesperson, then you’ve got got to surround yourself with great salespeople who can go out and market and sell the book on your behalf.
AJV (14:57):
But again, like this is a really important thing just to walk away with, is we say this all the time that Brand Builders Group is, there is no such thing as a New York Times best writing author. There’s only New York Times best selling author. Highlight, bold, underline, whatever you need to do, which means that’s who is selling it, right? That’s who is selling the most. That’s who’s buying the most of that book. There’s not a lot of the best writing. That’s the, you know, that’s just what’s required. That’s the prerequisite, is it’s great writing, it’s great content that should be right. But then there’s gotta be the sales and marketing plan to get it in the hands of the people that you can help. So I hope this helps. You’re so insightful for me. Great reminders, new stuff. So hope this was helpful. Go check out the full conversation on our podcast, the influential Personal brand. I’ll catch you later.
Ep 370: What Makes A New York Times Bestselling Book with Esther Fedorkevich
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody and welcome to another episode on the influential Personal Brands. AJ Vaden here, one of your co-hosts. And I’m very, very excited to have a special guest and a new friend on the show today. But she’s new to me. She’s not new to Brain Builders Group or to my husband Roy Vaden, because Esther works with tons of our clients, lots of our friends, and also some of our team members. And I was just sharing this with her before, if we didn’t already have such a tight relationship with our literary agent, Nina, like there is no one else on the planet that we would even consider to desire to work with other than Esther. So before I give her a formal introduction, I just wanna tell you guys why you need to stick around for this show because as you saw the title of the show, it’s How to Write a New York Times bestselling book.
AJV (00:48):
And here are the reasons that you wanna stick around to the end. Number one, you can’t write a New York Times bestselling book surprise. So you probably need to stick on, figure out then, well, how on God’s green Earth do you get one if it’s not writing one? So that’s the first thing. Second thing is that this is an episode for you who are in the author space. It doesn’t not matter if you dream of being one, you’re an aspiring one, you’re a first time one, or you’re an established author. This is an episode of if you have a book that you want to get into the hands of other humans you need to listen to, because that’s what we’re gonna talk about. And then the third are just what are some of the ins and outs of actually making it work in the publishing industry today?
AJV (01:32):
Because it’s changing. It’s been changing, it will continue to change. So as someone who’s in that creative space and you wanna get your thoughts on paper and that paper into the hands of many, what do you need to know of how to get a book published and out into the world today? So that’s why you wanna listen and lemme tell you mainly why you want to listen. So I’m gonna tell you a little bit about Esther formally. So Esther is the owner of the Fed Agency. Esther oh my gosh, see better Kevin? Yep. I’ve been saying for Dork for Forever Better Kevi, I’m gonna like say this in my sleep now, but she’s the owner of the Fed Agency. She started her career in a lot of different ways, but some very I think important things to know is like you were part of the Dave Ramsey organization and really helped grow that to what it is. I think that, I think I read somewhere that you have helped more than 80 books become on the New York Times bestseller list a hundred.
EF (02:28):
We’re over a hundred now. We just hit 102.
AJV (02:31):
Woo. I mean, if that doesn’t inspire you to listen to the rest of this episode, then you can just go ahead and like hop off right now. But it’s like if you’ve helped more than a hundred people hit the New York Times list, this is just extraordinary. But one of the things that I loved most about your bio that you sent over is that you’re not just in the business of helping people get their books published. This is about changing lives helping dreams come true and really being a conduit of really good messages for people all around the world. And I love that you’re also a mom. You’ve got two kids. You live in Austin, Texas, and I could go on and on and on, but Esther, welcome to the
EF (03:07):
Show. Thanks AJ for having me.
AJV (03:10):
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I have like, genuinely been looking forward to this conversation. Four weeks ever since we got this scheduled because I, I wanna just be I wanna be like one of your customers today because I think there’s so much changing in this space and in the industry of what I’m gonna call thought leadership or the knowledge economy. That’s, I just, I think that we’re, if you’re not constantly having these conversations, you’re already behind. And so as we kinda like step into this and what does it look like today, I wanna know two things to help our audience get to know you is one, you could have done so many different things. Like you have sold millions and millions and millions of dollars through book publishing. You have worked with some of the largest names, household names out there. You could be doing anything you want. Why did you pick this space? So that’s my first question.
EF (04:04):
Okay. So I didn’t pick it, it kind of fell in my lap when I started working for Dave Ramsey. We were self-publishing and then publishing with publishers about 50 different products a year. And they were all financial products. So I was trying to think of like a new way to say the same thing with a new marketing. It’s all marketing guys, right? So new marketing idea, new way. And it was get, I’m like, I wanna do more than just finance books. And so I worked for Dave till the day I gave birth to my first daughter. I was 25 years old and I said, I’m gonna start my own literary agency and I think I could do this. I was good at sales. And I’m like, I love story. So what, it really fell in my lap. Cause I love story. I’m really a branding and marketing person.
EF (04:43):
A lot of literary agents come in this space because they’re literary, they’re writers. I came in this space as an entrepreneur and businesswoman, but coming in from the say I love story and I love helping people know how to market that story. Cuz there’s one thing about writing a great book and then there’s the other thing about getting it out there and selling it. So both things matter, but it kind of fell in my lap. And then I’m really good with people. I was a big Zig Zeigler fan growing up. I mean, I think I’ve listened to every Zig zeigler, you know, audio cassette back in the day. And like, I also just love people. So Dave Ramsey had us read a book. He made all of his employees read a book, how To Win Friends and Influence People. And then I did this Dale Carnegie course and I’m like, I’m really good with people. I love story and I can sell. So I kind of said, wow, that makes a good literary agent, someone who can sell Ari. Because most writers aren’t salespeople naturally. Yeah. Most writers are, you know, they have the ideas, they’re right, they’re, they don’t like bragging about themselves. So it’s perfect for someone like me coming in and helping get their message out.
AJV (05:42):
Matt, I love that. And you put in your bio statement that that’s your also your favorite book. Why is that your favorite book?
EF (05:48):
I think because it’s still relevant today. When he wrote that, think about it, it was no social media. There was no, I mean, I told my employees all the time, did you talk to them? Did you actually actually pick up the phone and talk to them? Right? Did you, so I love relationships, I love building relationships. And my whole business has been built on relationships, real genuine relationships. And I think a lot of times this younger generation comes in and they have, you know, a hundred thousand friends on Instagram or Facebook, but they couldn’t, they have never picked up the phone and talked to them. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (06:26):
Oh, it’s one of my favorite books too. It was mandatory reading early in my sales career. And you said something that I think is gonna set the precedent for the rest of our conversation, which is, you’re, you’re in the literary field, but at the end of the day, you’re branding and marketing aka sales. And I think one of the things that we run into all the time with our podcast listeners to, with, with our Brain Builders Group community and just with everyday conversations is people somehow have forgotten that relationships are still the fundamental way that we do business today. And they think that you get enough followers, you get enough this and this is gonna figure itself out. And, you know, we are lucky to be behind the scenes of a lot of launches. And I’ll tell you what, lots of emails do not convert into lots of books all the time. And lots of followers do not convert into lots of sales most of the time. And so hence why I think this conversation, I’m
EF (07:23):
Glad you figured that out. Cause if there, if that was true, right? We’d all have the magic formula and no, just to sign someone if they had 10 million followers that they were gonna sell 10 million books. But that’s not the case.
AJV (07:34):
That is not the case. And so here is why we’re here today. Like what is it? Like, what do we need to be doing? So here’s my first here’s my first question which is kind of like, you know, part two of a little bit about your backstory is what, what do you think makes someone not a great writer, but a great candidate to hit a list? Because I think that’s like ultimately what so many people want is like, how do I hit that Personally, I don’t really care, but I know that it’s a big goal of most. And so I’m curious, what do you think it is not about the writing, but what makes someone a good candidate to have the list eligibility?
EF (08:16):
Well, I say like, as an agent, I look for three things, right? And you have to have two of these three things to be successful. And I think to have a chance to be a New York Times bestseller, and this is for me acquiring an author to go sell, right? But then I still think it’s relevant as when they go to brand builders and you’re helping ’em, or they’re doing it on their own. It, you have to have a great book. It still has to be a good book guys to sell. Like you can’t just write crap, right? And then think it’s gonna sell because you have 50 million followers, right? That’s, I mean, I can prove you over and over again people that have 50 million plus followers that haven’t sold a hundred thousand books.
AJV (08:53):
I, I agree.
EF (08:54):
So step one, have good content. Step one, the content’s gotta be good. And if you have the ideas and thoughts, work with a great writer or, or collaborator that can help you put those, read them in a way that you’re making the reader, you’re empowering ’em to change, you’re encouraging, you’re inspiring, you’re, you know, making ’em cry. You’re making ’em laugh, whatever the goal is of that book. But they really wanna, at the end, when they close it, they wanna get up and go their, their life has changed somehow. Mm-Hmm.
EF (09:39):
When I started, I started in 2003, the only social media around was MySpace. So there was no Facebook, there was no Instagram, there was, there was no TikTok there. So think like I like started as a young agent, right? When social media was coming out and how the older authors were thinking that we’re selling, you’d actually go into retail and find their book. So I, a quote of mine is, with the death of retail is the death of discoverability. So there’s no retail anymore. So gotta get that outta your mind. And everything is our phone. I don’t have mine here or like the computer. It’s how people are getting to you to buy that book. So platform is huge. And when I can find, even if someone doesn’t have the biggest platforms, but they have a cultish engaged platform mm-hmm.
EF (10:27):
If you, and you can look at that by like, what’s their engagement level, what’s their likes? How many people are actually commenting? That’s super important. That means they have a tribe that’s pretty, you know, dialed into them. And then the third thing, so you got, it has to be a good book, right? A good content. It’s gotta be platform. And the third one is gotta be a creative idea. It’s gotta be a good idea. That’s why when you see some of these books that they have a saying on it, like, make Your Bed Right? Or the four Hour We Work Week, I put them the four hour work week just cause I’m like, Ooh, that sounds amazing. Four hours a week, that’s all I would have to work. Right? And it’s not even about that. So it’s like having a really cool concept where idea or thought process that like actually makes your book different is really big.
EF (11:10):
The har like when someone has a great story, so many people have great stories. It’s finding that secret thing in your story and expanding off of that. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (11:59):
No, I love that. It’s not that you should write a book, it’s you should write that book that you need to write a book about that. So like, for any of you listening, it’s just, I would just sit there and ask yourself like, what do people actually come to you for? Right? And it’s like, that’s something we talk about all a lot, a lot even in like our own like family and our own personal brands at Brand Builders Group is like, what do people come to you for? Like, what’s that superpower thing? It’s not that you have a great story, it’s the stories, the launching pad. It’s what is something that you do so well, so uniquely different that you could write a whole book about it. Yeah.
EF (12:31):
And so like a lot of times like for a pastor by, like, I work with a lot of pastors of huge megachurches, right? And let’s say they wanna write on something and that’s the sermon that got the worst downloads, right? But that’s what they really care about. And I’ll look at them and say, what’s the message that everyone comes back? They remember 10 years? Like, what’s your core message? And guess what that core message is? Their biggest selling book. Like if you look at Warren with the Purpose Driven Life or Joel o with Your Best Life Now, or like, I could go on and on. All of those were those pastor’s core message that people remembered and kept coming back to them. So it’s not the other, the new message because why haven’t any of their other books sold with that book is sold. So it’s, it’s, I think it’s really kind of identifying what that secret thing is, why people love you and are coming to you, what content is that that they’re going
AJV (13:21):
For? Yeah, I love that. Cuz so many people do. It’s like, and there’s this, I’m not saying this is right and or wrong, you can say that, but I won’t. But it’s like so many people want to tell their story, right? And it’s like, that’s for a keynote, that’s for a blog, that’s for social media and that’s a piece of the book, but it’s not the book.
EF (13:36):
Yep. You got it. You’re exactly. So a lot of times people are like, oh, I wanna tell my story. Well, memoirs don’t sell that well, right? You have to have the secret in the memoir, right? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (14:31):
Yeah. I love that so much. And I love this whole thing. It’s, you know, it’s one, one, I kind of wrote this down, it’s like whenever you’re saying it’s like clearly you have to have good content, but it’s like, make it sticky, make it memorable. Make it shareable, right? It’s like, it’s not like, oh, that was a good book and then you forget that you ever read it. Which I’ve done lots of those two platform, it matters. And I love what you said, it’s like death of retail is death of discoverability. So you’ve got to have a platform and what is it, right? And how many people are you reaching? I love that. Number three this is just what I wrote down is it’s about the creative idea, but it’s, it’s about developing true thought leadership. Right? You know, people always say there’s, you can’t say anything that hasn’t been said that may be true, but you can say it in a new way.
AJV (15:14):
You can say it in new context. And with that slight twist, so what is your version of forwarding this thought, this idea this thing. And I, I love that so much because I feel like people really struggle with how do I take these ideas from my head, get ’em on paper, but then translate them in a way where it’s not about me, it’s about the reader, it’s about the end audience, but then getting it from there to actually having someone buy it, right? Yes. So let’s assume we have great content. It’s sticky, it’s memorable, shareable. We have a good platform, we got a great idea, a unique, awesome idea. Where do we go from there?
EF (15:58):
Okay, so let me first say, if there was a magic formula, we would all be worth a billion dollars. Okay.
EF (16:43):
But I’ve had the perfect lineup of all the major shows and it wasn’t a bestseller, which it’s just like, oh, you get so upset, you’re like, what? That’s, and then that book you see 12 months later hit the New York Times. So sometimes you don’t know. It’s not like you, you, you have to do all the right things, right? And one of the things is what worked, and you, I know h i u would agree with this and Rory would agree with this. What worked two years ago doesn’t work today. It keeps changing because people are buying differently. Yeah. And they’re using different, like it was the day of the email blast was everything, right? And then it was the day of Facebook like it all, I believe you have to, you have to do all of the things and consistently. So I kind of think it, it’s like marketing you.
EF (17:28):
You can’t just talk about your book on book launch week and then not talk about it anymore. It’s, you can’t just be onto the next thing. You really gotta give a book time and make that your core message for the whole year and let people hear it, let people talk about it. That’s why if it’s a good book and it’s changing people’s lives, guess who what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna tell your friend when someone gives you a book and it’s not that great of a book. You’re not talking about it it to others. Yeah. So it’s about, I think, I think authors give up too quick. And I see this all the time. It’s like the ones that are persistent, that keep going, that keep working it, that keep investing because you have to look at an author. It’s like when you write a book, it’s a business.
EF (18:04):
Let’s get real. It’s not a hobby. If you wanna be successful, you’re starting a new business and that book is your new business. And a book can turn into more speaking dates. A book can turn into, you know, like you are opening into new audiences that you never were before. It could get you on podcasts, it could get you on media. I mean, a book, a book opens lots of doors. But, and it also makes you that expert in that topic. When you put a book out, what does everyone think? Oh my gosh, that you’re an expert. You, you must be, cuz you have a whole book, a book’s a lot of work. It’s not like, oh, you say I wanna write a book, and then you think it’s gonna be a couple hours a week of your time. Yeah. But I think authors spends so much time writing the book and then it comes to marketing and they don’t put the same amount of time into the marketing.
EF (18:45):
And they think an agent, I always say an agent is not a magician. I I’m not this, I can’t wave my magic wand and make all my books that I do hit the New York Times bestseller list. Right? It’s hard work. And so when you go in, if you can go into with that like, perspective of publishing and your book is, this is a business, I’m gonna grow my business. If you had any other business, you’re not gonna sit open up a retail store and never go work it and never go check, check out your competition and ev I mean, you’re consistently working it. And so I think authors gotta be looking at, you know, when they write a book, it’s part of their bus, it’s a business and it, or it’s part of their business and they’re gonna spend some time growing it.
AJV (19:23):
Yeah. I love that. I think that’s such a great reminder of if you, if you just wanna talk about your book, just so it hits the list, don’t even bother writing it. But it’s like, you gotta be able to willing to talk about this book all day long, every single day for years and years and years. And if you don’t wanna talk about it for a lifetime, don’t write it.
EF (19:41):
And AJ that’s why when it’s your life message, you’re always talking about it. So though, that’s why the, there’s always a book for every author that’s the one that sells the most. It’s because they’re, they love talking about it. So I, identifying that makes it big.
AJV (19:56):
Yeah. I think for, again, for everyone listening, it’s just, if you don’t want to talk about whatever is going on the pages of your book for a lifetime, then start over. Like start over. Because if you want people to buy it, you’re gonna have to talk about it incessantly to the point where you’re sick and tired of hearing your own voice and then you do it some more. Right? And I think that is a thing for all of us, is we move on too quickly.
EF (20:19):
What drives me crazy is when an author is on a, like they have a big break, they’re on a big show, right? Let’s say they’re on Joe Rogan and they never talk about their book. And I’m like, you’re on the big, like one of the biggest podcasts and you know, you’re talking about your book, but you never mentioned that you have a book. So like really working with authors too, and I know you guys do this like on a regular basis, but in my book, you know, here’s the title. This is what I talk about in my book. Like it’s really also training the authors. You want people, people to buy your book, right? So you’ve gotta talk about your book.
AJV (20:50):
Yeah. So that kinda leads me to the second thing that I wanna talk about, which is this concept of, to be a great author, in my opinion, to be a bestselling author anyways, you have to be a great salesperson. And we, we have this saying that brain builders group that, you know, editors edit, publishers publish, but Hoover, him sells, right? And it’s like the author does, the author needs to sell. So I’d love to hear your take on how do you get people to buy your book, right? Because at some point you get big advances for authors all the time, but that big advances don’t mean anyone’s buying it. It’s like at some point you gotta, you gotta put some hustle and grind into this and say, what am I gonna do to move some books? So what moves books? Like what do you see as actually moving books today?
EF (21:40):
A bunch of things, right? All together at the same time because people look and once you see things, you know, like on your, on your feed, when you get the same thing coming up then what do you do? Oh, I gotta buy that. Right? You can’t just do it one time. You gotta keep talking. Like, if I keep seeing something over and over on Instagram, guess what? I’m gonna finally click it and buy it. So it’s consistently talking. Get on line up your podcast, do 50 podcasts, right? Do like, make sure you’re always talking about it. But okay, so when you were, when you were talking about authors have to sell their book, if you’re an author, I’m just, that is not a good salesperson that can’t sell. You better have a freaking amazing team around you that can sell for you. So if your natural skill, like I’m probably, I would say the best salesperson probably I’ve ever met.
EF (22:24):
Like honestly that’s my one gift. I didn’t think that sales actually mattered. Like, but I’m like, oh, I’m really good at selling, so let me, but I can’t sell all my authors books for them. They have to. So if I can train them a little bit how to be at least a little better than what they are at sales. And if they, if they lack that, like the truly like the writers, the introverts that can’t sell, get people around you that can help you sell mm-hmm.
EF (23:06):
Right? So I think, and I mean you guys do this right? I think it’s putting enough time in your presales up. You have to, you can’t just start promoting your book a week before your book releases. The, it’s getting longer and longer. Six months before start talking, do a cover reveal, have your audience like build up this anticipation that your book’s coming out and why they need your book. So I think it’s the building up. You can’t just start a it, I mean you can’t just start week of release. You got, I mean the best selling books, I mean we’ve have planned six months, nine months ahead of time that we’re building towards that release. Hmm. Creating multiple products. Like I love it when we have a trade book and a devotional or e-course or a bible study or a gift book like, or a children’s book like actually building where there’s other products feeding into people wanting to buy the trade book.
EF (23:58):
So everything test leads back to the trade book. So if you have a children’s book that has a some little message that kind of gears you to the trade book, it makes you wanna read the trade book. So a trade book is your, your your main book. You know, it’s, it’s the, it’s the non-fiction self-help book. And then you can have all these little products that kind of leads you or are magnets to lead you to the trade book. So offering free content, doing some kind of challenge before getting people for free to get invested in something that they’re like, wow, this is so great that they have to buy the trade book speaking, setting up a speaking tour around your book. That’s huge. Cuz speaking, you’re, you’re getting a hundred people or a thousand or 10,000 people at one time, all motivated talking, putting it on social media, buying it on Amazon. So that’s why I say like, it’s multiple things going at the same time. Is all of our bestsellers have had that.
AJV (24:51):
Yeah, I think that’s
EF (24:52):
Had a plan. You can’t just go into publishing your book without a marketing plan. And so many authors go into books without a marketing plan. And the biggest, biggest mistake authors make is they think the publisher’s gonna do it for them Guys, I’m telling you, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. The publisher is not gonna do it for you. It’s all on. You have to go in, even if you’re with the biggest publisher in the world and you ha and you got a 5 million advance and every, yeah, they’re gonna put some more money into you. That’s really what they’re gonna do. But you still have to be involved and you have to work your butt off. Like it’s just how it is. You’re never gonna get a best seller if you’re sitting back and just thinking the publisher’s gonna do it for you.
AJV (25:34):
No, I, I think this is really, really important. Going back to what you said earlier about launching a book, writing a book is like starting a business. So it needs to be treated like one or at least a part of the business because like to that it’s like how many of us would’ve actually lodged a business without some sort of plan or some sort of budget with the money and the funds that we had? And it’s like, most would not do that most, right? It’s no different with your book. It’s no different. And
EF (26:02):
If you go,
AJV (26:03):
You gotta have a plan.
EF (26:04):
If you go the business mentality into it, you’re thinking, okay, like if I was gonna start a business and I’m like, okay, it’s gonna cost me $80,000 to invest and start this business and I’m gonna be working 80 hours a week, and I that’s your book. You should be thinking with that mentality going into your book, that is a business and you’re investing in something, however it’s gonna return. You know what your revenue returns gonna be on it, great. But it’s how much work you put into it. You cannot go into a book think you don’t have to invest any money, you don’t have to invest any time. You know, it’s not gonna be a bestseller then you’re just writing a legacy book. Like a lot of, like my rich billionaire clients do they just write a book so that their family can have it. They don’t care about sales, they don’t care about, they don’t wanna talk about it. It’s just for their, their kids, grandkids, great grandkids to know about how they started their business.
AJV (26:47):
All right. So that leads me to a question that I have for you. Something you said made me think about this. So what about for the authors who want an agent wanna go the traditionally published route and they don’t really care if they ever hit a list, they want a big advance and then they just want sales to happen organically.
EF (27:04):
That’s tricky cuz most, most big one, big celebrity clients, they wanna hit a bestseller list, right? The issue I see a lot AJ, is when an author comes in, they don’t have a platform, they have a really good idea, they’re a good writer, they don’t have a big platform. And I don’t work with the smaller publishers really because the smaller publishers don’t pay advances. You’re giving up too much, you’re not controlling your rights. So we have a program here at the Fed Agency where we, we pick a select few, right? But that we publish it for them where we’re helping them grow their platform so that when they’re at the point that they’re ready for a big New York publisher, we’re able to go sell ’em and they’re of value to them. But the days of the big advances, you have to have a big platform if you’re thinking you’re good or it’s gotta be a national media story where then everybody knows the story, everybody wants to do the book and there’s a bidding war on it. And I think, I think the mistake authors make is they don’t treat a book like a business. And that’s really comes down to, so an author comes in here and they don’t care about the bestseller list, but they want a big advance, then we’ll probably get them a big advance if we can. And then the publisher’s disappointed, everyone’s disappointed, and then they’re not really doing another book anymore.
AJV (28:16):
Hmm. So that’s around
EF (28:18):
Building a publishing enterprise. Like we want authors coming in and we do have the books that the authors that they’re only gonna do one book in their career and that’s it. But most of our authors are looking at building a publishing enterprise. They’re saying, I want publishing to be part of my business, part of my brand, part of everything I do. And then we’re mapping out what that could look like.
AJV (28:36):
And if you don’t want that, then probably don’t need an agent, don’t need a publishing house. That’s really the, this is the self-published route, right? If you’re not trying to do this to grow a and treat it like a business, because at the end of the day, publishers are in business to sell books. Right. And they’re depending on you to do that.
EF (28:56):
Yeah. So like, like I’ll take 2022, we did 200 million in sales in book sales. And when you think about that, like wow, that’s $20 a book that’s 10 millions books sold last year from the Fed agency of all of our authors. Right? And that seems like a lot, but at the majority of, if you look at how many of those books actually sold over 500,000 copies, I mean you, you it’s maybe six.
AJV (29:22):
Yeah.
EF (29:24):
Lot of ’em sold a hundred thousand. And so you’re trying to get that author that sold 50,000 in the first year to the next year, saw a hundred thousand of their next book. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (29:55):
And you know, it’s so funny, it’s like when you’re thinking of selling a half a million or a million books, in theory that feels like a lot. But then if you think about it in context of even just the population of the United States is like roughly 365 million and we’re talking about people are trying to figure out how to sell 100,000. That’s such a teeny tiny, I know minuscule portion of the actual just population in the US forget North America or you know, the remain the remainder of the world. But it’s like, it’s really small. So what makes it so hard to reach even such a small percentage of the population?
EF (30:30):
I think a lot of authors give away their content for free. So people don’t think they need to buy the book cuz they’ve heard it. And that’s a big mistake. I mean, you have to give bits mm-hmm. And pieces, but you have to make the book unique that it’s a, you need to read this, right? Don’t, like PE pastors do a sermon series. You walk in, you’ve heard it, you’ve seen you get everything for free, right? So why would you spend $25 for a hardback book? You already got it for free. So it’s making that urgency, right? That need that you need to buy it. And we try to help our authors build transactional audiences, audiences that will pay money, not audiences that just get everything from you for free. And that’s where I think if you’re in business, you’re gonna be thinking, I wanna give some things for free, but I’m not gonna give the magic away for free. Right. I’m gonna make them know that there’s value and that they’re gonna pay for that.
AJV (31:18):
Mm-Hmm.
EF (31:28):
Good
AJV (31:29):
You can give away the what charge for the how.
EF (31:32):
I agree with that like that. And that’s why e-courses are doing so well, right? Because people want, but listen, it’s like if someone gives you a free ticket to a concert right? You’re chances are you probably won’t go right? But when you pay $200 for a ticket, you’re gonna
AJV (31:46):
Show up. It’s an investment. Yeah.
EF (31:47):
It’s an investment. And so I think like, I think the same thing when you, when it an e-course someone says, oh, here’s my e-course for 20 bucks join. I show up like it’s a $20 e-course. Right? But if I’m paying $3,000 for e-course, I’m gonna show up like it’s a $3,000 e-course, I’m gonna look nice. I’m gonna do my makeup, I’m gonna like, but if it’s 20 bucks, I’m like in my workout clothes with wall cap on saying, okay, let me see what the heck this is. You know?
AJV (32:10):
Yeah. Well, and like I’ll, I I tell you like last year I made this commitment that I was gonna read a book every month, right. And I did. I was like, so I, I read 15 books last year. I was so proud of myself. And so, let tell you what happened though is I was reminded of the power of a book and I had forgotten that because I had gotten away and just listening to podcasts and listening to short form contents. And I got reminded in the biggest, most profound way last year from reading 15 books that I even think about myself. Like the amount of time, like, you know, don’t take offense to this, but the amount of time that I took to prepare for this interview, right? That it’s, it’s minutes, right? It’s like 30 minutes versus the amount of time that you prepare, write, edit, rewrite, reedit.
AJV (33:02):
A book is months if not years. Versus I will throw out a podcast with 30 minutes of preparation. I’ll whip together a blog post in 30 minutes and I’ll do a short form video content with five minute prep time. And that is nothing compared to the amount of time, sweat efforts, just incredible resource to put together a book that we then only charge $25 for. Yep. And just a major shout out to when you think you listen to a podcast and you got it, you don’t, you don’t, like there is just, I’m so positively reminded of that last year.
EF (33:44):
Yeah. And there aj there’s something about highlighting in a book, right? It’s thinking about it like if you’re reading it that like I read it a lot for living. So I’m always reading but highlighting and saying, oh, this is really good. This is a sticky state statement of magic. Right? This could change someone’s life. It’s, you get to spend time and sit with it. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (34:20):
I’m so on the same page with that because I just, I’m still reveling in the fact that some of these books, I’m like, this will change my life forever. And it was a $25 investment. I’ve spent 8,000, $10,000 on events that I’m like, I’m taking long lunch breaks and checking emails. And it’s like,
EF (34:42):
Yeah. So I represent this, this really famous therapist, right? And like, she doesn’t even do sessions anymore, but if you did a session, it’ll be like a thousand dollars an hour, right? This is here, you can get her book for $25 Right. And she can, you’ll read it and it could actually save your marriage, right? Or yes. You know, help you like deal with depression or whatever it is. Any mental health issue. And I’m like, it’s $25, right? Like that is like, that’s so amazing, right? That you could get that. You just have to read it and do the work, right? Yeah. It’s the same, like, same thing with any diet book, right? Or health book. It really can change your life, right? If you read it and apply it and it’s only 25 bucks cuz you get a personal trainer, it’s gonna cost you a hundred bucks an hour at least. Right?
AJV (35:23):
Or a coach or a consultant or counseling, all these things. Yeah. So there’s, there’s
EF (35:29):
A way, there’s a way a book, like if you actually use it, do it. You can save a lot of money and get the best value, you know? Heck
AJV (35:39):
Yeah. Cause I just, that’s part of why I wanted to have this call with you cuz I have had such a, I I’ve, I’ve re fallen in love with books and the written words because of my commitment to do this, you know, for a little personal challenge last year. And now I’m just like, I’m blown away that it’s like the amount of money I’ve spent on other things compared to the amount of money I spent on books is not even in comparison. But what I learned from the books versus what I’ve learned from all the other things I did is insurmountably bigger.
EF (36:06):
What was, okay, out of the 15 books you read last year, what was your favorite book?
AJV (36:10):
I have, well, I have to have two because one is the one that will forever change my life and my Eternity, which is the book Heaven by Randy Alcorn. And I read every single word and it’s long and it’s heavy
EF (36:46):
Head. Did you read that one?
AJV (36:48):
I did. That was, that’s how I finished the year was with that. But the one that was my favorite book of the entire year is Nothing to Prove.
EF (36:55):
Good
AJV (36:56):
Book. Nothing to prove. Get out of your head, find your People. We’re all Jenny Allen books that were at the top of my list. But nothing to prove would’ve been my favorites last year. And I just like, I think that’s just a great reminder for anyone who’s listening who is an author. It’s like, don’t forget that in addition to hitting the list, you’re actually changing people’s lives. That’s ultimately, yeah, ultimately that’s really
EF (37:19):
Good. But you got one Jenny Allen booking, guess what you did? You wrote, you read three more after that. So
AJV (37:24):
I have her avatar. Like she, she writes for me
EF (37:27):
AJV (37:37):
You gotta have great content, right? Have great content.
EF (37:41):
Yep. We get thousands of letters in of suicides, not committed of people coming to Christ of marriages saying family’s reunited. And we, like, I tell my staff all the time, this is why we do what we do, right? Like we’re, we’re a part of this because we help get the book out. And I like, that’s really rewarding and I mean humbling and rewarding, but that’s, that’s why you write a book is you’re, the last part is what we were talking about is that these lives are changed, right? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (38:31):
But you’ll never sell a million copies if you don’t have incredibly great content and you’re not willing to market and sell the pants off of it. And I think that is like two really big takeaways for everybody. All right. I know we’re almost outta time, but I have two more really important questions for you. Okay. When it comes to category listings, how important is that?
EF (38:51):
When you mean like on the what it’s the one category or are you talking about Amazon?
AJV (38:58):
I would say both, but we’ll start with Amazon, right? Because I know so many people who are obsessive of has to be in this very specific category because in this category I know that on this week that I can hit X, y, Z.
EF (39:12):
So I, we do a much categories as you can, right? Like on Amazon, because you can, we have a book that hit the okay, so our youngest author, she’s 17, she did a, a c book, a children’s book on like aquarium type of thing, right? And one of the categories we picked that we put her on at Amazon was Turtles. And she hit number one bestseller in Turtles Never. But now that helps the algorithm, right? So yes, I think authors the mistake they make is like, I wanna be in self-help. Great. Let’s be a little more specific because we want you, the algorithms start kicking in and it working and I could do a whole talk with you on Amazon how it works. Cuz doing this for years and years and actually working with people on Amazon are very high level trying to figure this stuff out. You wanna, you want the algorithm working in your favor. So you, you don’t wanna be so broad, you actually wanna try to nail down be pretty specific and that’s what helps you hit bestsellers in different categories. Yeah. And nobody looks back in the day for categorizing, like for Barnes Noble people cared if it was like religious religion, right? Or sell cookbooks or nobody looks at that anymore. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (40:26):
Totally. No one even pays attention.
EF (40:29):
No one pays attention. Just like no one pays attention to what’s on a spine of a book. Like who the publisher is really only people in the business like me and you and but like the general person doesn’t know the difference between what publishers, what publisher, they couldn’t tell you Penguin Random House was the largest publisher in the world. They have no clue. Right? So Yeah,
AJV (40:46):
That’s so true. It’s so true about nobody
EF (40:50):
Else cares about
AJV (40:51):
EF (41:19):
And you, you wanted to say number one bestseller, right? It doesn’t, they’re not looking number one best seller in turtles, right? But our marketing director did a really good job of really narrowing it down to that niche of turtles, right? Cause there’s a turtle on the cover. I’m not laughing cause I’m like, that was kind of genius, right? Because this girl doesn’t have any platform. She’s like a high school student, but here you go. She just hit number one Amazon bestseller interns.
AJV (41:41):
You know, I’m telling you like that is just so important. Back to marketing, branding, selling, writing the book is just a piece of this puzzle. But it’s like you’ve gotta have a good team who knows what they’re doing to figure out these little nuances. And a part of that is like, and I, Rory always corrects me and he goes, it’s not that hitting the list doesn’t matter, it’s just, it’s a piece of the puzzle. But the more times that you can hit the list and the more you sell, the more other people will hear about it and then it spreads. So I have to remind myself of that. Cuz I’m one of those like, it doesn’t matter, but it kinda does. Cause when you do
EF (42:19):
Exactly rose’s, right, you’re both are right. But the other side is the best part is when you see it on the list over and over and mm-hmm.
AJV (42:40):
Yeah. Not looking for the one hit wonder. Okay, last set of questions and then I have a personal question for you. What, no, you told me earlier like kinda like three things, like make it sticky, have good content, have a good platform, it needs to be unique. That’s like generally speaking, but for you personally, like working with a 17 year old girl who has no platform, right? And I just also happen to know some of your authors who don’t have big platforms and all of that. So I know that’s not the only thing you look for and I just think it’s really unique to find an agent who is willing to invest in people who you’re like, no, I see something in you. I see something in this message and I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do it regardless. It may not get me the biggest advance and you may not this, this and this, but so I’m curious for you personally, what, what makes an author someone that you’re like, you, I wanna work with you.
EF (43:29):
Oh, okay. So I’m a sucker. Okay. Like, listen, like for story, right? So someone comes in and they have a crazy story. I’m like, oh my gosh. And I cry all the time. Like, I don’t know what happened in my forties. I just like
EF (44:09):
If I’m touched by the story, I’m like, I wanna do it. I wanna help you get this message out. But that author has to wanna work. I usually, yeah. Like if an author is like, eh, I don’t need it. I really, I, I, I don’t have that much time in the day. Like, I like to help start businesses and empower people to keep going. I think the biggest mistake people make is they quit before their miracle. Like they’re right there and they just give up. So the best are the authors that are really in it. And so if I have someone that’s super passionate and really in it and know that this is a core message, it’s really hard for me to say no to that.
AJV (44:42):
Mm. I love that. So for you, it really does come down to two.
EF (44:46):
Oh yeah. I’m, I said, I was like, my whole team’s like Esther say no. I’m like, yeah, but this story’s so good and I think it’s got some legs and maybe this could be a movie or maybe we could do this. And so it’s fun like thinking through it. But yeah, like sometimes I have to bring my team in the, for them to be like, no, this isn’t,
AJV (45:04):
We all have to have people who are willing to say no in our lives. But I love that it’s like it’s, this is story, but also are you willing to work? Are you willing to work? Are you willing to work as hard as I’m gonna have to to make this come to life? I love that. I think that’s so cool. All right. Here’s a personal question for you in the group. So you kinda told us earlier what your favorite book was. Well I dunno if it’s your favorite book of all time, but How to Win Friends and Influence People. I would say, what has been the book that you would say, like, for me, heaven will be like forever change the direction of my life. But I would also say like nothing to prove and discovering Jenny Allen has been a life-changing event for me in the last 12 months of going, I’ve never read a book where I’m like, oh, I’m your avatar. It’s so clear who you’re writing to. It’s me. Hi My name’s aj. So I would say to you like, do you have a, an author or a book that you’re like, I don’t care who you are or anything, but if you read this work or read, read this book, or from this author, like, it’s gonna change your life?
EF (46:02):
I do. So everybody that knows me knows my book. Like it’s changed my life. It changed the way I thought about business. It’s changed everything. It’s actually Buck there. It’s by Mark Patterson, who’s one of my favorite authors that I have the privilege of working with. It’s called the Circle Maker. And I, I read the Circle Maker. I was agenting for seven years of my own company and I was pretty successful. And I read this book and it like, it, it just wrecked me. And you know how people are like, oh, I pray, or I, I do this right? And, and remember I get to read it before all of you guys read it. So I’m like, way ahead of thinking, you know? And I’m like, this is gonna be a bestseller. It was a New York Times bestseller. It’s sold over 5 million copies. It’s been unbelievable.
EF (46:44):
But what’s so cool about this book is this guy, it’s, we, we sold it as Hony the circle draw what’s called the Circle Maker. And it’s about praying circles, right? So I started believing God. I prayed circles around every office. I prayed circles around an office building I wanted to buy. I prayed circles like, God, if this is for me, prayed for every employee on every desk. And guess what? I started getting better employees. I started getting like more champions. I started getting bigger authors. And there was this guy, he talks about the end of the book, right? So it doesn’t ruin the book for you guys, but there was this guy named Gypsy Smith, right? And he was this evangelist that traveled all over the world. I think he did 45 trips around the world. And he was this amazing preacher speaker. And somebody asked him like, what was, was the secret?
EF (47:29):
And he’s like, was his prayer life? And he goes right away, he goes, these revival secrets were asking what was God like, what’s, how can God use me? And so when I was reading this book, I’m like, God, how can you use me in a bigger way? And he goes, go home, lock your door, kneel in the middle of the floor. Draw, take a piece of chalk, draw a circle around yourself and pray fervently and brokenly for God to do a revival inside that chalk circle. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (48:29):
Why? I just wrote it down. I wrote it down. Part of me is
EF (48:33):
I’m gonna send you a copy. So I’ll send you one today.
AJV (48:36):
EF (48:42):
Both. Right. So I’m a speed reader so I can read pretty fast obviously cuz I, I read like 300 books a year. But I listened to, so a lot of times I’m, I’m a big believer every book you have to do an audiobook. I don’t let my authors not do an audiobook. It really, yeah. Makes me mad if they don’t wanna do an audiobook. Audio is up to 347% in the last two years. Wow. So more people are listening than reading right now. Huge authors, and I can give you the stats. They’re selling more in audio than actual print. Print cells are still up by the way. So it’s, it’s like, it’s both, they’re buying both versions. Like I do that all the time. I buy the print version and I buy, I listen to audio and sometimes I read a little bit of books. Sometimes I listen to it. I think listening, like when I’m walking or working out or like in the car, it’s so much easier to listen. But I still love to read. So I read every one of the books I represent I or listen to it, one or the other. So I think it’s whatever, whatever your preference is.
AJV (49:41):
Yeah, I love that. I
EF (49:42):
Remember it better AJ if I’m reading it than if I’m listening to it cuz like, you can tune out or get too strong. But when I’m reading it, I feel like I really take it in more.
AJV (49:50):
Yeah, I’m with you on that. I always I always tease my husband. I’m like, you did not read that. You listened to that. That’s not, you can’t say I’ve read that. You can only say I listen to it.
EF (50:00):
I have to tell her when reading or listening. It’s the same thing, right? Because
AJV (50:03):
No, it’s not, it’s not the same thing. I’m so too, I’m so biased, but I’m, I’m very much like, I’m a speed reader. So it’s like I can, I can crush books. I crush books. But I love but I love to hold it. I love to like feel the pages fold ’em, doggier, highlight, underline. But there’s power in everything. Think
EF (50:21):
All women. I think all women like that, right? Like we like take those.
AJV (50:24):
I like to hold it. But I would also say as unbiased feedback for anyone who is listening, when you do your audiobook, at least from this one consumer’s piece of feedback, read your own book. Please do not hire someone else to read your book. I want to hear the author’s voice and connotations and I want to hear it from you. So piece of unbiased feedback. And Esther, I would just say, man, not only are you like repre representing authors that are truly changing the trajectory of this world, like the work you’re doing is changing the world. You are helping get things out there that are saving lives transforming lives. And man, it’s such an honor to get to meet you and have you on the show. Thank you so much. I’m so excited to release this episode and get it out into the world. So thanks for giving us your time today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right, everybody, stay tuned and listen to the recap conversation that I’m gonna do on my conversation with Esther. And we’ll see you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. See you later.