Unf*ck Your Biz With Braden

On today's episode of the podcast, we're talking about big business changes that are coming based on what has and has not worked for us this year. One question I ask myself and continue to ask yourself is, "What can I do less of next year in order to spend more of time on what's working best? What's making the most impact and how can we do more of that?" Between multiple memberships, courses, social media channels, blog posts, podcasts, guest speaking, summits, bundles, stage speaking, I've been pulled in a lot of directions, especially as our business keeps growing which is fantastic, but comes with push pull. When you say yes to one thing, you say no to something else. I've seen areas of growth, I've seen areas of decline, and I'm sharing today how that's impacting what we're doing in 2025. What's working for us: 1. The Contract Club 2. Speaking 3. Affiliates What's Kind of Working1. Threads (Great for business connections, not as much for sales)2. Our quiz funnel (People are going through it, need to look more into conversion data)3. Our blogs (They're a resource, the SEO could be better, I'm not putting more resources into this) What's not working1. Instagram, especially stories 2. Facebook group, engagement is down3.Too many offers, too much we're trying to do What I'm not sure about1. This podcast Our 2025 Core Offer Suite1. Contract Club2. Compliance Club3. Unf*ck Your Biz4.Alumni offers for Unf*ck Your Biz students What we're doubling down on in 20251. Affiliates (if you aren't already an affiliate, you can become one at notavglaw.com/affiliate)2. Strategic partnerships/guest speaking in programs3.Core offer suite4 Stage speaking/podcast guesting 5. Threads and Instagram6. Quiz funnelWhat's getting the cut1. New offers, instead focusing on different launch strategies2. Growing my business TikTok audience3. Reddit4. Our Facebook group - I started this in 2018/2019. I started it as a list builder and as a way to cross promote my offers in the group. The group is now mainly people who are/have been students or bought a program and has mainly turned to a place where they are getting support for the programs they've purchased. Providing this community can be done within our offers in Kajabi. And most of the questions I get on Facebook already are not community-answer questions, they're questions for me and my team. 5. This podcast - I feel uncomfortable talking about this because I really don't know if it's doing much for us from a business perspective in relation to the effort and with the time saved not planning and recording podcasts, I can nurture other areas of our business, like our offers, so that people naturally want to share them and affiliate market. I've found that the podcast is very cyclical, people come for what they need to get answers for where they are in business. Do I talk about the same topics year after year so do I re-record that same episode about LLCs or direct you to a pre-recorded one? I'm not ready to make a decision on the podcast right now and have decided the best thing to do is to take a 3-ish week hiatus to spend time with family for the holidays and think about the future of the podcast. I'll be back in January with an announcement of what will be coming next. Thank you so much for tuning in! I appreciate you all more than you know. I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a DM on Instagram @notavglaw

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing Are you ready to unf*ck your biz? The doors are now open to our signature program, Unf*ck Your Biz, where we go through our six-part framework to get your legal and tax shit legit through our video course with group coaching support through weekly calls and a group Slack channel. You get access to our bookkeeping spreadsheet, quarterly tax estimator, contractor classification guides by state, our state-by-state business blueprints and so much more. The doors close on Monday, December 16th. Learn more at unfuckyourbiz.com November was an exciting month, we experimented with new strategies to lead up to the launch so we'll dive into the report but before we do, you can grab your free copy of How to Conduct a Profit Report for Your Business at www.notavglaw.com/355 to follow along with my step-by-step process and run your own profit report. November Projections vs. Actual • Monthly Clients: $8,500 → $8,900• UYB: $0 → $0 (Doors were not open in November)• Compliance Club: $13,000 → $21,000 • Contract Club: $7,500 → $13,850 (We did a promotion before we increased the price and it closed December 2nd and we had over $15k those last two days so more will be reflected in our December report)• Trademarks: $2,500 → $6,750• Other: $2.500 → $1,500 Total revenue: $33,500 → $52,000 (A record revenue month for me) Profit Total revenue: $52,000Cost of Goods: $227 (printing my books)Expenses: $22,678Profit: $29,000Owner's salary: $5,300 Total business profit: $23,708 Notable Expenses • Employee wages: $8,500 (Pretty high, but I had two team members with me at Wedding MBA clocking extra hours at our booth)• Contractors: $4,000 This brings my team expenses to $12,500 • Monthly tools: $1,900 (Higher than usual, but I have an annual payment of $1,500 for Kajabi)• Affiliate payments: $380 • Marketing: $800• Hotels: $1,600• Trademark client fees: $1,900 How am I feeling about the numbers? Prior to November I was not feeling great, we had a pretty bad spring and summer. But November slingshot us over our adjusted goal of $270,000 good goal. We got to $280,000 and with our UYB launch in December, I know we'll be able to hit my adjusted best goal of $300,000 for 2024. This was a big profit month, but we know I love transparency, so a lot of this is actually going to loan repayments. In October I took out a $15,000 Stripe loan to help get out of the hole of the summer and run payroll and make investments into our November launch. We went from our Compliance Club launch to Contract Club launch to Unf*ck Your Biz launch. We did our workshops to launch UYB as a paid workshop because there was more content in it than past years but anyone who had the Compliance Club, Contract Club or came by my booth at Wedding MBA had the opportunity to register for free so we had about 700 registrants between our two workshops. Compliance Club Debrief We offered a few price points - $10/month or $180 for lifetime membership to this monthly compliance newsletter, private podcast and additional compliance resources. I started the lifetime membership at $250 and offered it first to the 19 people on our Compliance Club waitlist but even as warm, interested leads, 8 people opted into monthly instead of the lifetime deal. I lowered the price to $180 as I found that interest in a lifetime deals is best when the price of lifetime is just under the cost of 2 years so people would price anchor that at $240 and psychologically under $200 is more attractive. Once I lowered the price, 70 of the next 92 people who joined were lifetime. I capped lifetime at 100 members and we had 101, one person snuck in as I was toggling it off. I then changed lifetime to annual and made it $90. The Compliance Club is not currently open, but you can get on the waitlist at notavglaw.com/compliance. The Compliance Club is also a temporary upsell on paid offers like the Contract Club. Total revenue: $20,800• Lifetime: 101 sales• Annual: 22 sales• Monthly: ~80 sales Our launch goal was 50 monthly sales and 50 lifetime with a stretch goal of 100 lifetime sales. We surpassed those goals. Wedding MBA Debrief • 40 book sales• 35 Compliance Club lifetime memberships• ~40 Contract Club sales Current Project Plans • Wrap up Unf*ck Your Biz launch• Move into our Quiet Weeks • Run our clubs and programs to a higher level in 2025 • Doing less to do more in our business in 2025 (I'll dive into this on next week's episode) Key Performance Indicators • Bumps across the board on everything as a result of promotions• Instagram: +80 new followers• Facebook group: +50 new members • TikTok: -4 followers • Website: 40,000 unique visitors (about quadruple what we see in a normal month)• Quiz starts: 107 starts, 68 finishes • Email subscribers: Went up a bit despite higher unsubscribes due to promotion• Podcast downloads : down December Projections • Monthly Clients: $8,500• Contract Club: $22,200 (we did $18k in sales at the end of our Contract Club promo that fell on December 1st and 2nd) • UYB: $35,625 (15 full pay, 25 on monthly payments) I think we'll be a bit below this goal of 40 students based on current data, but we will see) • Trademarks: $5,000• Other: $2,000 Total: $70,875YTD Revenue • On track to finish around $330k which would be very exciting considering, especially how the first half of the year went after my mom was put on hospice and passed away. If you're dealing with anything in your personal life that's going to make this holiday season or next year rough, remember that you can always circle back to your business goals and take a break for your mental health or to spend time with family. I've been there and many of us have all been there. Keep that in mind as you do your own goal planning and figure out how you're going to make it through. Business is a roller coaster and we can do our best to make it look like a kiddie roller coaster, but there are always hills and valleys and we are here to support your legal and tax goals. If you enjoyed today's episode, share it with your biz besties and tag us on Instagram and Threads @notAVGlaw

On this bonus episode of the podcast, I'm inviting you to my open house on December 12th and sharing all the details about how to join Unf*ck Your Biz before the doors close. If you've been wanting to get your legal and tax shit legit to start 2025 off feeling secure in your business protection, now's the time to join! The doors are now open for our signature program, Unf*ck Your Biz. Learn more at notavglaw.com/uyb Doors close on Monday, December 16th. Have legal and tax questions? Considering joining Unf*ck Your Biz but aren't sure if it's a good fit? Stop by our open house on Thursday, December 12th at 10:00am PST/1:00pm EST and we can chat, get your questions answered, and go through a run-through of the program. Sign up at notavglaw.com/openhouse To learn more about the Unf*ck Your Biz program, check out today's episode or visit the website where we cover what's included and the framework of our 10-week, high-touch group program. Get all the details at notavglaw.com/uyb The Unf*ck Your Biz Framework 1. Account - Update your books, learn how to create and analyze a profit and loss statement. 2. Tax -Learn how taxes work, what you need to pay, how to calculate your quarterly tax percentage and how to save. 3. Unf*ck - Complete any back tax strategy, fix any business entity errors, and determine worker classifications.4. Layer - Update contracts and business insurance and obtain trademark searches. 5. Form - Learn how business entities work and form or update your LLC, S Corp or Corp. 6. Flow - Learn how to pay yourself and complete your cash flow policy. We'll go through the framework, with implementation weeks built in so you can get the unf*ckening done with the help of the course, weekly group coaching calls and a group Slack channel.

On today's episode of the podcast we're talking about the importance of leaning into the CEO role of your business. The doors are officially open to Unf*ck Your Biz: Your step-by-step framework to get your legal and tax shit legit. The program will help you get your 2024 taxes and bookkeeping wrapped up, make sure your business entity is properly formed going into 2025, getting your legal protections in order including contracts and trademarks and more. It's our signature program that's only available a few times a year and you can join now until December 16th at notavglaw.com/uyb. To announce the launch of Unf*ck Your Biz, I hosted two workshops today to help you at your stage of business. If you missed our workshops, check them out at notavglaw.com/masterclass Legally Launched: The Absolute Legal and Tax Essentials for New Business Owners The 6 Figure Tax Blueprint: The Roadmap to Money in Your Pocket At and Beyond Six Figures When you run a business, it's important to have an understanding of everything that goes on in your business. CEO may stand for Chief Executive Officer, but I often say it also stands for Chief Everything Officer, which is very accurate as a small business owner, especially before we hire anyone. As CEO, we need to know all the core aspects of business. Would a CEO ever get handed a P&L statement from the accounting team and not know how to read it? They have to have basic knowledge because they can't make business decisions if they don't know the numbers. As CEO, it's important to consider that you're building a business as an asset that's ideally going to provide you, family members, team members, etc. a livable income. You may also decide you want to sell your business one day, even if that doesn't seem possible or of interest right now. What legal structures do you need in order for this to happen? You need layers of legal protection to protect your business. These are the foundations we grow our business on. Even if you hire other professionals to manage things bookkeeping or tax strategy, you need to know enough to have savvy conversations with them. When do you go to your lawyer and ask for a new trademark? When do you need to tell your accountant about changes to your business or your personal life that may impact your taxes? No one is keeping track of your business 24/7, you need to proactively be talking to your professionals in order for them to be able to help you. If you want to put on your CEO hat, check out Unf*ck Your Biz at notavglaw.com/uyb

On today's episode of the podcast I'm talking about terrible advice I see on the internet and how to avoid it. Next Thursday, December 5th, I'm hosting two workshops - "Legally Launched" and "6-Figure Tax Blueprint," tailored to your needs as a business owner. You'll leave with the core takeaways you need to take action after the workshop. Learn more about which one is right for you and register for the workshop(s) at notavglaw.com/masterclassI'm only sharing 10 of the terrible pieces of advice I often see on the Internet, but I could have made this a multi-part episode. 1. Don't form an LLC until you hit $30,000 in revenue. - I hear lots of mythical revenue markers but there's no magic number because LLCs provide liability protection at any revenue. The more money you make, the more liability you're likely open to because you're more working with more clients which can lead to more problems. The longer you wait the more hassle it is to form an LLC. 2. Form an S Corp right away. - When you form an S Corp you are legally required to put yourself on payroll, pay yourself a reasonable recurring salary, and have profit leftover in your business which you can't do if you aren't making money when you start right away. We'll dive into this deeper on the 6-Figure Tax Blueprint workshop. 3. Just use LegalZoom. - I'm not a huge fan for many reasons including lack of added benefits. They ask you questions to fill out a form you can fill out for free yourself online. They charge you to get an EIN when you get your EIN for free on the IRS website. 4. Just do it yourself. - If you scroll through social media I frequently see people say "use LegalZoom" or "do it yourself" or "go work with a lawyer." I suggest somewhere in-between. The problem with doing it yourself is we've seen clients who did it incorrectly. Once you file, you need to maintain your LLC compliance requirements including back franchise taxes. I believe in a well-rounded approach of doing it yourself, with guidance which is why I started creating courses. 5. You don't need trademarks. - This is kind of like telling someone you don't need health insurance. You hope you'll never need to enforce it, but if you need to use it and don't have it, it's a problem. 6. Trademark everything. - It depends on who you are as a business owner and what you're launching. 7. Don't trust templates. - The person who writes the contract template understands your industry, your business, and these templates are typically based on contracts they've custom written for clients. 8. You don't need to do that. - This can refer to a lot of things, but I see it often with things like BOI (Beneficial Information Ownership reports), testimonial requirements, website compliance, etc. Too often people think these laws are for big corporations like Amazon or Target and not small businesses like us, but we see it happen to small businesses all the time. 9. Just write it off. - Not everything is a tax deduction! You need to be using it for business. And writing it off doesn't make it free. Focus on buying things that have a high ROI. 10. You can pay $0 in taxes. - Not every strategy is helpful, even if it's not fraudulent. You may end up owing more in the long run and all tips don't apply to all businesses. Register for our December 5th workshop(s) at notavglaw.com/masterclass

On today's bonus episode I'm sharing the why behind our decision to raise the price of the Contract Club, how you can get it before the price goes up, and, of course, I tell you all the revenue and profit numbers that went into this decision. Join the Club: www.notavglaw.com/club (Price goes up Tuesday, December 3rd) History of the Club - Launched January 2022, originally called the Contract Vault. Prior to this I had a Contract Template Shop that wasn't very profitable and frankly, a pain in the ass. - Did almost 1,000 sales in the first year- 2023: Started our affiliate program- 2023: Sold more passively and did about half as many sales as we did in 2022. $17,280 in revenue, averaging 48 sales/month (Compared to 80/month average for 2022)- End of 2023: Released our Contract Bot, a $70 upsell to the Contract Club that generates your contract for you from our templates - May 2024: Offered 100% affiliate commissions on Contract Club sales (meant we were losing money on processing fees). We had 248 sales and 30 Contract Bot sales. - June: Contract Club price went up to $50, Contract Bot price went down to $50. - June - early November 2024: Contract Club brought in $10,300, averaging 37 sales/month. Bot conversions went up from 10% to nearly 30% Our 2024 projected Contract Club revenue (assuming we have ~200 Contract Club sales this month as part of our pre-price increase promotion plus 60 bot sales): $41,520 Year-to-Year Sales Breakdown: 2022: 964 sales, $28,940 revenue2023: 576 sales, $17,2802024: 741 sales, $41,520 Why Increase the Price? I'm frequently asked why the price is so low (a flat $50 for all the contract templates you need) and the answer is because up until now we've been treating the Contract Club primarily as a lead generator. It brings us in the majority of our leads who bring us in additional revenue from higher ticket offers. I didn't get a lot of drop-off from the $30 to $50 so I figured we could up it some more since sometimes people tell us they didn't buy it because it was so low and it seemed too good to be true. I got this idea from the Kajabi conference this year and the message hit me at the right time. The message I took away this year was "make the main thing the main thing and do less in business." It really resonated and to me, "less" means just really focusing on the things that are already working. The price is going to become $200. I can justify a higher level of service to the Contract Club members, running more ads, divide our attention across less projects, and elsewhere, many people sell one singular contract template for $200 or more and you can get all your templates from us for $200 ($50 through December 3rd). Love the Contract Club? Become an affiliate and get paid to refer the club at www.notavglaw.com/affiliate

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing my finance formula and how to make it work for your personal financial plans. The Finance Formula is a bonus resource included in our Unf*ck Your Biz alumni membership. I am a very big advocate of people fixing their business before they dive too deep into personal finances so even if you're not a Finance Formula member, you can still learn a lot from this episode on how to implement this to improve your personal finances. It's hard to strategize how much money to put away for emergency savings or retirement if you don't know how much you're actually making. We need to know our income, revenue, business expenses, profit, tax rate and how much we should be putting away to pay the IRS quarterly. If your business is not really fucked up and you don't think you need this, I would challenge you on that because there probably are some things we need to fix. To get the most out of the Finance Formula, we need to start with our money mindset- Ask yourself questions like "What are some of your beliefs about money?"- Read a money mindset book or two (I recommend Denise Duffield Thomas)- Get as little or as much woo-woo as you want with itLearn the bare bones basics about retirement and get up-to-date on retirement plans. 1. Take advantage of 401k match if it is available to you or your spouse through an employment role2. Max out a Roth IRA3. Max out 401k if you have one4. Look into self-employed retirement options Tackle debt- I have a lot of feelings on Dave Ramsey, but his most popular teaching is his debt snowball method to help you pay off your debts from smallest to largest by making minimum payments on all your accounts. - What Dave Ramsey is missing is nuance, customization to our own individual needs, and that's where the Finance Formula comes in. The best way to look at this is with a hypothetical. Let's say you have four goals: - Build an emergency fund of $3,000- Pay your quarterly business taxes- Start a retirement account- Pay down, let's say, $3,000 in consumer debt What order do you prioritize them? How would this change if your consumer debt was a lot higher, like $50,000? There's not really a right and a wrong answer, it's personal for everyone based on so many factors like how old you are, how long you have until you want to retire, what your income looks like, etc. It's important to get the wheels turning so we can focus on our own individual goals. For more personalized examples of what your Finance Formula might look like, check out today's episode.

On today's episode of the podcast I talk with Stevie Dee about the AB5 law, its impact on her business, and how it effects all of us. Get in Touch with Our Guest Stevie Dee Photography Check out their website www.steviedeephotography.com

On today's episode of the podcast I'm taking you through my October revenue, expenses, profit and goals. I'm using my downloadable guide, How To Conduct a Profit Report for Your Business, to record this episode. Get your free copy of How to Conduct a Profit Report for Your Business at www.notavglaw.com/355 and listen to episode 355 to hear me break down step-by-step how I structure my own profit reports. September Projections vs. Actual • Monthly Clients: $9,250 → $10,220• UYB: $750 → $1,625 • Contract Club: $1,200 → $3,300• 1:1 Services: $2,500 → $5,050• Other: $4,000 → $2,100 Total revenue: $17,500 → $23,735 Profit Total revenue: $23,735Cost of Goods: $65 (printing my books)Expenses: $25,245Profit: - $1,500Owner's salary: $5,300 Total profit: -$6,800 While this is not great, I was prepared for the expenses to be high. I went to the Kajabi conference in Los Angeles and the hotel alone was $1,600. I booked hotel rooms for Wedding MBA and I had a team member forget to clock out so I paid them double as much (not a big deal, that will get remedied next pay period). Notable Expenses • Employee wages: ~$9,000• Contractors: $4,500 This brings my team expenses to $13,000 • Affiliate payments: $4,000 (This was high because we paid out some lagging affiliate payments)• Marketing: Higher than average due to conference planning Annual Goal Review • Annual revenue: $300k. We're roughly on target but need to have a pretty big November and December• Profit: 20% margins. I used to have a goal of 50% but I'm spending a lot more now on team expenses. Current Project Plans • Alumni membership launch for Unf*ck Your Biz students • Wedding MBA• Contract Club price increase promotion• Contract Club affiliate promotion - Become an affiliate at notavglaw.com/affiliate• Big December Unf*ck Your Biz launch• Launch the Compliance Club (aka the Not AVG Newsletter) - Learn more at notavglaw.com/compliance Key Performance Indicators • On our social platforms we had about double the amount of followers we normally get due to meeting people at events. • Higher completion conversion of our quiz November Projections • Monthly Clients: $8,500• Compliance Club: $13,000 (100 members between monthly and life time) • UYB: $0 (payment plans will be wrapped up) • Contract Club: $7,500 (150 joining before the price increase) - This should shift to December because if Black Friday is the 29th, this won't hit our bank account until December. • 1:1 Services: $2,500• Other: $2,500 Total revenue: $33,500YTD Revenue • Exceeded October revenue goal by almost $7,000• Exceeded October 2023 revenue by almost $4,000• Annual goal of $300k revenue looks possible if we have a strong promo for the Compliance Club, but that we could at least pass last year's revenue of $270k Get your free copy of How to Conduct a Profit Report for Your Business at www.notavglaw.com/355 and listen to episode 355 to hear me break down step-by-step how I structure my own profit reports. If you If you enjoyed today's episode, share it with your biz besties and tag us on Instagram and Threads @notAVGlaw

On today's episode of the podcast we're giving you an update on what compliance tasks are new in 2024 that you are required to complete as a business owner. Get your website compliance resources when you join the Compliance Club at notavglaw.com/compliance As a small business owner, we have lots and lots of obligations that we have to meet in order to stay compliant in our business. We call this our foundational layer of protection to keep our businesses legally legit and out of trouble. It's the most important thing and compliance basically just means complying with laws and obligations that we have. Keeping up with everything can seem like an impossible tasks as a small business owner, especially if you're a solopreneur. That's really why we're rolling out the newsletter so that we can set up alerts on all of the legal platforms that we're involved with. In this episode, we're going to do a little bit of a recap on some of the things that have updated this year and some of the things that you could expect that we would talk about in the newsletter once you become a member. 2024 compliance examples that we break down on today's podcast episode include: 1. Beneficial Ownership Information Report, or BOI 2. Unrealistic promises about AI powered services 3. Fake and unrealistic testimonials 4. Digital accessibility Check out today's episode and stay up-to-date on your legal compliance tasks by joining the Compliance Club at notavglaw.com/compliance

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing what you need to know when it comes to hiring contractors. Get on the waitlist for our newsletter and contractor compliance resources at notavglaw.com/newsletter 1. Contractor vs. Employee You've heard me talk about legal layers of protection, and the base level is compliance aka not breaking the law like paying your taxes and not misclassifying your workers. The state cares about worker classification because they get payroll taxes. The state is also responsible for enforcing minimum wage requirements, worker's compensation, overtime, etc. The state is invested in protecting the people that work in the state. The IRS cares because you should be paying payroll taxes for employees. If you're misclassifying, they aren't getting their taxes and it's easier for them to get taxes from employees than tracking down contractors. The worker cares because if you're a contractor, your place of work and time/ hours of work can't be dictated if it's not within reason. This is also a problem when workers who don't have businesses and don't want to have businesses don't know about quarterly tax withholding and get stuck with tax penalties at the end of the year. 2. Determining employee vs. contractor All states use different tests, but generally the tests fall into one of two categories: the totality of the circumstances test and the ABC test. With the totality test the burden of proof is usually on the worker, and with the ABC test it's on the business to prove the worker could have been a contractor. If you feel like you are in a more relaxed state when it comes to this, know that there are also federal laws around employees vs. contractors to look into. Inside the newsletter you'll find our Contractor On-boarding Toolkit that includes our State-by-State Classification Guide and our California Contractor Compliance Framework Guide. Sign up for the newsletter at notavglaw.com/newsletter 3. What type of contractor are they? If they can be a contractor, before we onboard we need to know what kind of contractor they can be. Generally speaking, we can divide contractors into two main buckets: people who are working in our business (this is not typically common as they would often be employees but there are state-by-state exceptions) and people who are project-based contractors. It can come down to who is leading the conversation. For example, if I'm onboarding a contractor and they don't have a business or a contract, I'm sending the contract and leading the conversation. If they have a business, for example a brand photographer, they have their own contract and invoice process. If you're onboarding, you'll need a process (again, be very careful about those classification tests and how control and direction plays a part in that). You should always have a contract (we've got them in the Contract Club notavglaw.com/club) and there should be a contract per worker per event/project. For example, if they're a second shooter you'd need a contract per event with them. You'll also want a copy of their business license because some states have business to business carve outs and this will help prove if they're a business. We also recommend getting a W-9 before you ever pay them. 4. What goes into the contract? There are some basics, like a work made for hire agreement which ensures that you get copyright ownership for your business. There's also a provision that the worker understands they're not an employee, though this doesn't absolve you from any audit liability. Outline payment terms. 5. Training This is difficult to talk about in regards to contractors because one of the factors is we are not training people or dictating what they do because they should be equipped with the skills to do what you're hiring them to do, otherwise they should be an employee. I would consider this more of an orientation to a training so you're orienting them to your business and language. You're not training them how to do their job.

On today's episode of the podcast I'm explaining the Chaos Carousel, why you don't want to ride it, and how you can get yourself off of it. It's no secret I love branding and cute names. You're all my business besties, my team is Team Besties, I teach about the "WTF happened to my money hamster wheel?" and identifying where our money is going when we make more revenue, the "oh shit cycle" of back taxes which is what happens when we don't keep up with our quarterly taxes and now we are introducing what I call the "chaos carousel of contradictory advice." The Chaos Carousel happens in all avenues to all of us. Stage 1: Not knowing what we don't know. Stage 2: Knowing what we don't know. Stage 3: Basic understanding. Stage 4: You're fully competent and can do it An example of this is BOI reports (check out episode 337 for all the details). This year, business owners when from not knowing what it is to knowing it exists and not quite understanding it to then getting a basic understanding. Getting to Step 3 can be a mixed bag because it starts with Googling and Googling has all kinds of results and how do you know who to trust? So then you think you might hire someone to help and people give you different answers and you're spinning round and around trying to find a clear answer. Getting contradictory advice from professionals happens for two main reasons: 1. They only see one side of your business 2. They only know what their main niche expertise is. They aren't viewing it from all angles. Sometimes, for example, what's good from a legal perspective isn't good from a tax perspective. Contradictory advice doesn't always mean one person is wrong. It's up to you to reconcile this and determine what is most correct for you. And what is most correct for you now may not be most correct for you later. A big example is forming an LLC. Even lawyers will vary on the answer. Some will tell you don't start a business until you form an LLC because it's your biggest barrier of protection. Some tax pros will tell you not to form an LLC until you make $30,000 or another arbitrary amount. They say this because LLCs don't have tax benefits so you might as well wait until you can become an S Corp, which makes sense from a tax perspective, but not a legal perspective because your business isn't protected. Same with bookkeeping and the conversation around QuickBooks or spreadsheet trackers and when it's the right time to move to a software. Same with contract templates. The reality of those is that ant lawyer you hire that's been in business for awhile is going to have all their client contract templates. They may not sell templates, but if you hire them to write a contract for you, the first thing they're going to do is duplicate and edit a contract from a similar contract scenario. And then some lawyers will take these and templatize them. Templates can also be extremely helpful to new businesses. For example, if you're a new wedding venue and you hire someone to draft you a custom contract but they haven't worked with a wedding venue before, you'll both be trying to predict potential issues that might happen to cover in the contract meanwhile a template has already addressed all the concerns from multiple wedding venues and worked with that lawyer. (You can get all our contract templates in the Contract Club for just $50 at notavglaw.com/club) I also see contradictory information about trademarks which drives me bananas. Why are business coaches giving trademark advice? That's something you want from a lawyer. The key takeaway is you want to know the legal and tax basics. My goal is for everyone to get to Step 3 so they have an understanding and know, when you go to hire someone you have the power of knowing if they're the right person to hire who understand what you're looking for. The chaos carousel is something that is going to exist in all aspects of life, but we, within our control, can hop off of it and stop the spinning by taking the time to educate ourselves and having the knowledge we need to have. If you want to get a baseline of knowledge, check out our book at unfuckyourbizbook.com and if you missed last week's episode, we offered a free chapter of the book which you can grab at notavglaw.com/358

On today's episode of the podcast I'm talking about how running a business is a lot like putting on our grown-up pants. It's a difficult, but necessary topic to address. If we're going to reach our goals, both business and personal, that require us to do things we don't want to do. Grab the Quarterly Tax chapter for free from my book, Unf*ck Your Biz at bradendrake.com/chapter5 Quarterly taxes are a prime example of things we need to learn and have to pay, even if we don't want to. We find in working with clients that even if you are hiring us to unf*ck your biz, there are parts of your business you still need to be doing and keeping track of, whether or not you hire someone to help. While there's no rules out there on how to be a grown up, there are rules on how to run a business. Businesses require paperwork. No matter how many people you hire, most of the mail is still going to be ending up in your inbox, meaning you need to know how to handle it - what is your responsibility and what needs to get passed on to the professionals you're hiring? If you can't afford to hire professionals yet, you need to know how to handle it. You also need to know what professionals are going to be able to handle for you and what they aren't. For example, we had a student come to us who owed four years of back franchise taxes. They had filed on LegalZoom who isn't the best about keeping people up to date on compliance requirements. Same with filing LLCs in different states if you moved. Even if you hire someone to do this for you, no one will know you've moved unless you've proactively told them. No one is going to care more about your business than you do. How can taking ownership over the thing you don't want to do positively impact your business and mindset? If you take ownership over your business from a legal perspective, it's going to help you know when to file the forms related to your LLC and avoid potential legal pitfalls. If you ever have legal issues, you or your business are going to be the ones to get sued. It sounds like a harsh statement but if you or someone who works for you makes a mistake, you'll be the one to get sued, not your lawyer or whoever you relied on to file for you. Same if you have intellectual property issues. Ignorance of someone's business name or ignorance about a law is never a defense so you need to be proactive. From a financial perspective, similar to the whole if you get sued thing, when it comes to your tax return, the ONLY person for your tax return, tax bill, penalties, fees, etc. is you. You're the only one because you signed the tax return. At a minimum, you need to know what your tax obligations are, how you owe tax, how their business income is calculated and how to read a basic tax return. You need to at least be able to skim it and know if it makes sense or not. When it comes to hiring someone, you're the person responsible for handing over all the financial documents. We have this issues over and over again. We can't do your bookkeeping if you don't give us your bank statements. We can't read your statements if they're co-mingled between personal and business expenses. We also need to put our grown-up pants on when it comes to knowing your numbers. You're the one who is making key decisions, like when to invest, when to save, when to do a new launch, when to hire, get a business loan, etc. These are all numbers-driven decisions. You should be able to look at your financial statements, know how much cash you have in the bank, how much revenue you have coming in, when your next big expenses are, etc. to decipher what you need to be doing in your business. Even if you have someone crunching the numbers for you, it's your responsibility to review those numbers. If you haven't launched your business yet, ask yourself if you want to do these things or if a hobby would be a better alternative. I know these sounds scary, but I would not trade the freedom by business provides me for not having to do these things any day. Put on your grown-up pants and download the Quarterly Tax chapter from my book, Unf*ck Your Biz at bradendrake.com/chapter5

On today's episode of the podcast I'm taking you through my September revenue, expenses, profit and goals. I'm using my downloadable guide, How To Conduct a Profit Report for Your Business, to record this episode. Get your free copy of How to Conduct a Profit Report for Your Business at www.notavglaw.com/355 and listen to episode 355 to hear me break down step-by-step how I structure my own profit reports. September Projections vs. Actual • Monthly Clients: $7,000 → $8,050• UYB: $20,000 → $4,375 (I pivoted our post-summit launch from a signature service to group coaching based on the attendees of the summit) • Contract Club: $1,500 → $1,660• 1:1 Services: $1,250 → $2,250• Other: $1,250 → $4,900 Total revenue: $31,000 → $24,000 Profit Total revenue: $24,000Expenses: $13,500Profit: $10,200Owner's salary: $1,000 (I only paid myself $1,000 last month, $800 of that goes to taxes but the reason for this was because we were quite in the hole from previous summer months) Total profit: $9,000 Annual Goal Review • Annual revenue: $300k. This might be a stretch, because we'd need to exceed October, November and December's projections - Profit: 20% margins. I used to have a goal of 50% but I'm spending a lot more now on team expenses. Expenses • Employee wages: $7,500• Contractors: $4,000 This brings my team expenses to $11,500 (I expect this to be much lower in October)• Monthly tools: $335• Marketing: $781 (I lowered my Facebook ad spend from $20/day to $5/day because they were not converting how I wanted. • Client fees: $500 (a variable expense for trademark clients. We include the filing fee in the price we charge the client)• Other: $290 Total: ~$13,000 Current Project Plans • Deliver Unf*ck Your Biz group coaching • Wedding MBA Prep• Launch of low-ticket offer• Big launch in December for Unf*ck Your Biz Key Performance Indicators Instagram: 30 new followersFacebook group: 70 new membersTikTok: 9 new followersThreads 70 new followersWebsite traffic: 30,000 (a huge spike) October Projections • Monthly Clients: $9,000• UYB: $750 (no new students as doors are closed, but we do have some students on payment plans) • Contract Club: $1,250• 1:1 Services: $2,500• Other: $4,000 Total revenue: $17,500 (need to do closer to $20,000 to match last year's October but ideally we want to do $25,000 as our best goal) If you liked today's episode, be sure to tag us on Instagram and Threads @notAVGlaw

On this episode, I chat with Keila Hill-Trawick, owner of Little Fish Accounting, about Listen to episodes 125, 129, 131 and 132 of the Unf*ck Your Biz with Braden podcast to learn even more from Keila Hill-Trawick. Keila believes that cash flow gets buried behind financial statements. Everyone wants to talk about their P&L and top line revenue, but that doesn't matter if you don't have any money. If the whole point is to earn revenue and keep expenses at a certain point so you have money in the bank account, but you don't, we need to talk about that. Why does it look like you should have profit, and you have it on the P&L, but you don't have it? For example, I met with a client recently operating at a $9k YTD loss, but they were still running payroll and running distributions every month so the question was, how are you paying yourself more than your business is profiting? For them, they had a built-up savings from the past few years of business, but that isn't evident on the P&L. People get caught up on payroll. You don't need to run payroll every week if cash flow is low. But payroll taxes aren't what's going to make or break you. And sometimes you have to take a lower pay if cash flow is low and your team needs to get paid. This leads us into a conversation about Profit First. Keila doesn't think it's a bad method, but she's found that people are often not making enough money in the beginning to meet the percentages you set up and you're robbing Peter to pay Paul. She recommends that when you start you should at least have two - an operating checking account and a tax savings account so you can visually see that money doesn't belong to you, it belongs to the IRS. Once it's in there, it's no longer available to you. I suggest adding a sales tax account as well if you collect that. When it comes to saving for quarterly taxes, these estimated payments are just you paying in advance what you think you're going to owe next year. Every time you get paid from a paycheck, only taxes for that paycheck are taken out, not the taxes for your other business. And if you rely on the voucher system, that's based on you making the same amount in your business that you made last year. If you made more, then you weren't paying enough by just paying the amount on your voucher, you're only paying the minimum. On the flip side, you could make way less than you made last year and not owe all of what's on these vouchers. Going back to talking about understanding how cash moves through your business, if you aren't sure where it's going Keila recommends starting with the basics of accruel vs. cash. Accruel means you are recognizing income when earned, so when you send the invoice you recognize you've done that amount in revenue even though it hasn't been paid yet. Cash method only counts when the money is received. Your baseline revenue needs to cover your fixed expenses, any expense you know you're going to have. You need a sense of what you need to always have in your account to cover your payments. Any time you have a fixed cost expense, it's easier to plan versus when you pay something, like a team member, who works hourly that can change month to month. Sometimes your answers are not in your financial reports. Sometimes they're in a spreadsheet that has a breakdown of how much you're paying each team member to work on each client project or how much you profited on each project. Your numbers are more than what you need to file taxes which is why there's no one correct way to do these things, it's about what systems are best for you. Don't stress about everything being perfect, instead ask yourself what you need to make better financial systems for your business. The whole point is you want to put money in your pocket so you want to be informed enough to know when cash needs to stay in the bank for things like payroll and when you can safely take an owner's draw to support the life you want to live. Keila reminds everyone that when you get debt to pay debt, you still need to pay it off. We see people get loans to pay credit cards, but when you use the cash to pay it off, that cash won't be there for you as the business moves forward. Get in touch with our guest Keila Hill-Trawick, founder of Little Fish Accounting Follow Keila on Threads @littlefishaccounting Follow Little Fish Accounting on Instagram @littlefishaccounting Check out Little Fish Accounting's website Listen to the Fish Food podcast Follow Little Fish Accounting on Instagram Join the Braden's Bestie's Facebook group for answers to your legal and tax questions.

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing the process for how I create my monthly profit reports and giving you a checklist so you can create your own. It's launch week here at Not AVG Law! The doors are wide open for us to take on new one-on-one clients in our Unf*ck Your Biz signature service and new students in your Unf*ck Your Biz Group-Study program. We haven't launched the Group Study program in over a year so now is the time to get in on it. The doors close on September 24th so be sure to join now at unfuckyourbiz.com I've been sharing my profit reports on the podcast each month for the last couple years and wanted to formalize the process in a free downloadable workbook so you can follow along. To get a copy of step-by-step process along in an editable guide you can use to create your monthly report at notavglaw.com/355 Conducting a profit report is important for understanding your numbers to make informed, important decision. This may look like getting insight into whether or not you can afford to take on new team members? Can you afford to hire a new contractor? Do you need to let go of a team member or decrease their hours? Do you need to increase your prices or focus more attention on a more profitable offer? When should you take vacations? Monthly profit reports can really show when you have lighter client work months, especially if you are someone who keeps themselves busy all the time, even when you don't have that much client work. If we shift those projects to other months, you may find out you have an entire months to take an extended vacation. A monthly profit report will also show you which offers you should push more or push less and it's also going to help you decide when you can make big investments, how much money to save, how much money to save for taxes. A profit report is not just for tracking numbers, but also for analyzing them and using them to help you make key decisions. Follow along with the steps in the podcast and create your own profit report at notavglaw.com/355

On today's episode of the podcast I'm talking about the very demure, very cutesy trend from a trademark perspective with attorney Caroline Fox, owner of CJFox Law and Engaged Legal. The "very demure, very mindful" trend was started by creator Jules on TikTok and then corporate brands started hopping on it left and right. A couple weeks later a random man named Jefferson Bates filed an intent-to-use trademark application for it. An intent-to-use application, also called a 1B, essentially says I'm not using this commercially yet but I will swear under oath that I have good faith intention to use this trademark in relation to whatever services are being claimed in the application. When you file an intent-to-use, you should have in mind what it will be used for, like if you're planning a rebrand to launch in a few months you already know how it will be used. Sometimes people file and don't have an intention and their fall back becomes putting it on some kind of merch, but that would make it ornamental use and that's not even a trademark use. Unless you're operating the retail store, you'll probably get a purely ornamental refusal if you're just putting a slogan on your shirts. It's easy for this to be confusing because we see slogans or logos like Nike on shirts, but it actually has to be a source indicator. It has to either be related to the brand name or it has to be identifiable to your brand. Bates filed the trademark in Class 35 under advertising services, and we're not sure what the thought process was there. Jules could file a letter of protest, but you can't argue with a letter of opposition before the trademark opposition proceeding happens. Jules can file her own application, but even if she pays to expedite it she has to wait for Bates' to be reviewed first. Get in touch with our guest Caroline Fox, owner of CJFox Law and Engaged Legal Follow Caroline on TikTok @a.lawyer.and.her.dog

On today's episode of the podcast I'm reviewing my August profit report and September projections. Not Your Average Summit kicks off on Tuesday, September 10, a free online summit focused on the legal and tax side of your business. Sign up for the summit at NotAVGSummit.com. 2024 Adjusted Goals Recap - Annual revenue: $300kis now a reasonable but ambitious marker to hit - Profit: I started the year with a goal of 50% but then I unintentionally built an agency model and now if I can get to 10% for the year, that would be fabulous because YTD this year's profit is barely even positive. We'll head into 2025 with the information we need to set more realistic expectations. Trademark Shout Outs While client shout outs can be tricky due to proprietary information, trademarks are publicly published so I want to share any new trademarks that we've gotten for our clients. Sandra - Dom Sub LivingAnna - Eyes RockCindy - CM PromotionsMichelle - Walk the Path Within Want a trademark for your business? Start with our trademark quickie search and leave the research to us. This $100 search allows us to determine the trademark-ability of your business so you aren't wasting all your money on a trademark attorney only to determine you won't be able to get a trademark. After we determine if there's any glaring issues, if you wish to move forward we can book the next step to strategize, file and prepare your trademark application. https://notavglaw.com/trademarks Projections vs. Actual • UYB - $4,000 → 5,250• Contract Club - $2,000 → $1,350• Legally Launched - $250 → 0• Profit Rx - $500 → 0• Monthly Clients - $9,000 → $6,910 (a little lower than expected due to a cancellation, a delayed payment going through and I'm looking into the rest of the discrepancy)• 1:1 Services/trademarks - $1,250 → $4,250• Other: $2,000 → $350 Total revenue: $19,000 → $18,500 Expenses • Employee wages: $6,000 (does not include my own salary)• Contractors: $6,500 (a combined $12,500 makes this a high percentage when we didn't hit $19,000 in revenue. Ideally I'd like this to be 25% or less)• Monthly tools: $450• Affiliate payout: $200• Marketing: $1,000 (I lowered my Facebook ad spend from $20/day to $5/day because they were not converting how I wanted. • Client fees: $1,750 (a variable expense for trademark clients. We include the filing fee in the price we charge the client)• Other: $1,000 Total: ~$16,500 Profit Profit: $1,900 (before my salary) Owner salary: $4,500 Business profit: -$2,700 Year to Date This is where we look at our annual goal of $300,000. Q4 is always our biggest quarter and we have one month left in Q3 so year-to-date we have $183,000. We need to average about $29,300 in revenue for each month of the rest of the year to hit our $300k mark. That's pretty ambitious but I think it could be possible. I'm not going to do anything outrageous to hit it, I'd rather focus on setting us up for success in 2025 instead of burn us out this year to hit this. Key Performance Indicators Our social metrics were up a noticeable amount in August on Instagram and Threads. For our intake quiz we had a dip in July and then a bit of a bump back in August and this is verified by our website traffic numbers. What's Coming Up in September 1. Opening up Unf*ck Your Biz. Now is the time to get rolling if you really want things tidy for tax season. 2. Working on determining profit margins by client/offer with the goal of doing more dynamic pricing September Projections • UYB - $20,000 (goal - 7 new clients)• Contract Club - $1,500• Courses - $750• Monthly Clients - $7,000• 1:1 Services/trademarks - $1,250• Other: $500 Total revenue: $31,000

On today's episode of the podcast, HR specialist Kira La Forgia and I continue our conversation about what small businesses can take away from the WNBA/Hamby lawsuit. To get the run-down on the Hamby suit and what we covered in Part 1, check out Episode 351. Not Your Average Law Firm is hosting a summit! Not Your Average Summit: Foundations for a Multi-Six Figure Business. Taking place online September 10 - 12 the summit has 9 amazing speakers who will be covering the topics you need to scale your business to the next level including insurance, bookkeeping, retirement contributions and the legal and tax sides of owning a business. Get your free ticket at NotAVGSummit.com Get in Touch with Our Guest Kira La Forgia, Founder of Paradigm Follow Kira on Instagram @theparadigmm Take Paradigm's People Leader Archetype Quiz at the-paradigm.com/quiz PS: We can't let you go without introducing you to their new resource, 5 Day Plan To Go From Manager to Trusted Leader from our friends at Paradigm. Kira and the team at Paradigm have been an incredible resource for so many of our clients and friends, as THE go-to HR and Team Leadership resource for online businesses. Need more hands-on HR support for your team? Book a free call at the-paradigm.com/contact and make sure you tell Kira I sent you.

On today's episode of the podcast I chat with HR professional Kira La Forgia about the WNBA Hamby suit and what it means for small businesses. HR is something that's relevant to all small businesses. Whether you have employees or contractors, you have to understand what the qualifications are for those to make sure you're legally compliant. Compliance has the biggest risk and is the baseline for not breaking laws in your legal layers of protection. I'm excited today to bridge the gap between my love of women's basketball and a legal scenario that makes it relevant to small business owners. There is a lawsuit currently happening where a player is currently suing the WNBA and her former team for pregnancy-related discrimination. She filed a complaint, which is the actual term for the legal document you file with the court when you're suing someone. It outlines the facts of the case and what they're suing for. The other party responds to the complaint. This complaint is from the plaintiff's perspective, we don't have any legal documentation from the defendants, so everything in this complaint is alleged, which is important to know Get in Touch with Our GuestKira La Forgia, Founder of ParadigmFollow Kira on Instagram @theparadigmmListen to Kira's podcast, On the Up and Up

On today's episode of the podcast I'm reviewing my July profit report and sharing my August projections. To kick this recap off, I've been out of the office for a few weeks spending time with my husband's family on vacation in Florida and then to Indiana with my sisters to see my grandma and clean out my mom's house to get ready to sell. I'm back home just in time as August tends to be when things pick up and get busier so we're using this month to ramp up for that. I also want to share a mistake I discovered in my bookkeeping. Where I found the formula issue was on my summary page which won't effect my taxes because I use my 1099 from Stripe and my expenses log that I keep for my tax return. Basically I have one tab in my spreadsheet for misc. other income that includes old offers in evergreen, one-on-one offers we offer occasionally, etc. and I forgot to add these in which means I was underestimating my income about $1,000/month. I also had an issue where I was overstayting my expenses, my salary was double counting, and what that amounted to was that instead of operating at about a thousand dollars profit for the year like I thought, it's closer to $40,000. The good news is the business is more profitable than I thought. The bad news is that means I owe about another $5-10,000 in quarterly taxes I haven't paid. I share all this to stress the importance of looking at your numbers every week because sometimes it's going to take you awhile to catch mistakes and make sure you're on the right path. 2024 Adjusted Goals Recap - Annual revenue: $300k is now our main goal as opposed to it originally being my low-end goal and I hope this will set us up for a big jump in 2025 because this year has been a lot more about refining systems than I thought it would be. - Profit: I started the year with a goal of 50% but now that I've found this bookkeeping issue I need to revisit this one and will circle back on it next month. July Projections vs. Actuals • UYB - $6,000 → $4,000 (I had a couple of folks on payment plans that finished in June) • Contract Club - $2,000 → $ 1,100• Legally Launched - $250 → $250• Profit Rx - $500 → $0• Monthly Clients - $8,000 → $9,500• Tax Services - $3,750 → $1,250 (I anticipated three trademark clients and we only ended up with one).• Other - $2,000→ $4,300 Total: $22,500 → $21,000 (I'm not too bothered by this because this is what happens when I'm on vacation/in maintenance mood). Expenses Total team expenses: $7,000 (a little high but fine)Monthly tools: $360 (I'm trying to get rid of a couple before next month)Affiliate payouts: $76Marketing: $1,100 (about 50% Meta ads, 50% web domains)Other: $2,000Total: ~$11,000 Profit Revenue: $21,000Expenses: $11,000Owner profit: $10,000 (profit before my personal salary)Business profit: $4,500 Year-to-Date (YTD) This is something I recommend you all do even if you use Quickbooks. You always want to compare your revenue to that same time last year. It's not fair to compare your July revenue to February, it makes sense to compare it to last year's July and see what's changed. This year we did $21k in July, last year it was $17k, the year before that it was $12k. YTD we are $11,800 ahead of where we were at this time last year which of pretty good. We need to finish the year $25k year ahead to hit our $300k goal for the year. With five months left to the year, we want to hit $5,000 more a month each month compared to last year. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) • Audience growth: 10 new followers on Instagram, 12 new Facebook group members, 6 new TikTok followers, 70 new Threads followers (this is where I've been most active)• Web traffic: 6,600 (lowest since March. I expect to go up in August)• Podcast downloads: back to tracking this metric, had a small increase this month• Email list subscribers: Slow growth What's Coming Up in August • Summit coming soon!• Working on determining profit margins by client/offer with the goal of doing more dynamic pricing• Continuing to work on streamlining offers August Projections • UYB - $4,000• Contract Club - $2,000• Legally Launched - $250• Profit Rx - $500• Monthly Clients - $9,000• 1:1 Services/trademarks - $1,250• Other: $2,000 Total revenue: $19,000 Normally August would have higher projections, but we're starting and closing a launch/promotion in early September this year instead. If you're looking for help with the legal and tax side of your business, head to notavglaw.com/quiz to learn more about the ways we can help you.

On today's episode of the podcast, I'm breaking down informational asymmetry and what you need to know before you make claims about income or other results your clients can expect.

On today's episode of the podcast I'm joined by guest Danielle Ryan, a content creator and YouTuber, to discuss what MRR is (and no, we're not talking about monthly recurring revenue this time). MRR stands for Master Resale Rights and refers to a product, typically a digital download or a course, that someone creates and assigns MRR to do that anyone who buys it has the right to resell it to their own audience. One of the original MRR courses was "The Digital Roadmap," a lengthy course priced at $497 USD and the premise was to teach you how to leverage digital marketing to sell digital products in your business. When talking about MRR we should also talk about PLR, Private Label Rights, which is essentially white labeling. With MRR you don't have to change or rebrand anything, you can just resell it. When reselling an MRR product, the original creator does not receive commission, so they really need to capitalize on being first to market in order to maximize their profit on the MRR products. What ended up happening with this digital marketing course is that instead of people learning from the content, often people buy it, position themselves as the expert and then resell it without learning the skills to back up their claims. How can you coach someone on something you've never done yourself or previously helped someone achieve? Eventually, the reselling of an MRR product will come to an end with someone not making their investment back. This begs the question from people, Is MRR a pyramid scheme? From the traditional definition of participating in sales, MRR is not a pyramid scheme because the people at the top are not benefiting from the people at the bottom, but Danielle would argue it's very pyramid shaped because it gets saturated and harder for the people on the bottom to sell it. This has begun to pose a problem for some course creators, where people are buying their course and reselling it because they think it has MRR when it doesn't. To protect yourself and your digital products from resale, you'll want to add a paragraph to your contract and terms of agreement when buying your course that it does not grant them Master Resale Rights. This contract clause is available inside our Contract Club and it provides extra protection since they can't sell your product anyway since you didn't grant them copyright. Get in Touch with Our Guest Danielle Ryan Follow Danielle on Instagram @itsdanielleryan Join Danielle on YouTube @itsdanielleryan

On today's episode of the podcast I'm joined by brand photographer, videographer and educator Emily Kim to discuss business best practices, process, contracts and communication we can learn from the sepia bride. I took an informal poll online and the general consensus is that people are pretty over this topic, but we're using it as a brief example to discuss some overall lessons learned so if you're over the sepia bride, stay with us for a moment. If you aren't familiar with the sepia bride conversation, a bride hired a photographer, got the photos back and wasn't too happy with them when she noticed the editing didn't reflect the style she'd seen in the photographer's portfolio. She asked for the raw photos from the photographer, who made a good faith effort to re-edit the photos for her and it didn't end up working out. The bride posted a series of videos on social media about the situation that divided people between Team Bride and Team Photographer. To start, Emily and I discuss photo editing. She gives a hot take that she disagrees with the majority of photographers when it comes to editing vs. the client experience. Emily says there's merit and validity to saying you hire a photographer whose editing and style you like but that the issue arises when photographers value their artwork more than the client experience. If your client isn't happy, did you really do a good job? When Emily was new into photography and hadn't honed her editing skills, she used a preset for a long time with no issues until a client asked her to reedit the photos to be true to color but Emily recognized at the end of the day she was wrong because the client was selling clothes, not Emily's artwork, so the client's preference is what matters. Emily thinks it is part of the photographer's responsibility to talk with the potential client to see what style of photography they're looking for and if you're a fit or should refer them out. To help with this, Emily asks clients to create a mood board. Emily says she thinks she is in the minority when it comes to considering herself a business person first and a photographer second. She wants to be the kind of photographer who can match what people bring her, so she's worked over the years on understanding different editing and lighting styles to better serve an array of clients. Emily asks if you are forfeiting your copyright and no longer have the rights to these photos as the photographer if you give the client the raw files. My general legal instinct is that you own the copyright and everything you produce. In the contract you always want to specify what kind of license you want to give people. Within copyright, there are six different sub-rights, like the right to make a derivative work, and when you address copyright in your contract you want to address which copyrights you are licensing or assigning to the person. If you send over raw files to your client, you can send them an additional contract to go with them saying that this does not transfer any additional copyrights to the client. Emily and I chat about our hot takes and feelings on clients adding filters to your photos when they post them online (it's okay if they do, we can see that your work doesn't look like that if we click over to your profile and maybe the client just likes their Instagram aesthetic a certain way). When it comes to best practices in contracts in regards to the sepia bride situation, there was some beef online about how long the photo gallery was available. Emily would recommend putting in your contract how long they will have access to the gallery online and that if they would like to purchase cloud storage from you, you can keep it up longer for them. If they come back looking for them later, you can be generous with a bit of an extension and then charge them an unarchival fee to bring them back beyond that. Also in your contract, you'll want to include an artistic style release which is a simple paragraph that states that the client has looked at a representative sample of the photographer's work and understands that the photos will be shot and edited in a similar style. Emily tells her clients before they book is that she includes five advanced edits (using Photoshop to extend background, smooth skin, etc.). Some people use all, some use none. If they have additional requests, Emily charges per image. Anything you would charge additional money for should be addressed in your contract. The easiest to say is if you have any additional requests that have not been considered under this agreement, you can email and ask for a quote for that. This will give you freedom and flexibility on things like additional edits or selling your raw images if you choose to. This language is included in our Contract Club, which you can get at notavglaw.com/club Follow me on Threads @notavglaw Become a Bestie on Facebook in the Braden's Besties Facebook group Get in Touch with Our Guest Emily Kim - Photographer and EducatorFollow Emily on Instagram @emilykim.coJoin Emily's Facebook Group, Profitable Creatives

On today's episode of the podcast I'm answering the legal and tax questions I get inside my Facebook group. When you join my free Facebook group, Braden's Besties, we ask if you have any legal or tax questions and today I'll be diving into some of those. 1. How much money do you need to make before you file taxes? Learn more about taxes, the process of saving for them and paying them by grabbing a copy of my book, Unf*ck Your Biz, at unfuckyourbizbook.com 2. What can/ can't I deduct on my taxes? For an in-depth guide to business tax deductions, get your copy of the Small Business Tax Deduction Guide at notavglaw.com 3. Should I be an LLC or a sole proprietor? Learn if you should be a sole prop, LLC, or S Corp with this blog post. 4. How do I do taxes as a freelancer? Learn more with our blog post The Ultimate Tax Guide for Small Business Owners. 5. Can you have multiple streams of income under one LLC? 6. What's the best way to track miles for music gigs? 7. How can I file my taxes effectively? 8. What kind of prices to charge? 9. How are education credits taken into account within taxes for a small business? 10. How do I submit sales tax? 11. How do I form an LLC? Our Small Business Blueprint to file your LLC is available in our blog post Should You Be a Sole Prop, LLC or S Corp? 12. What tax structure makes sense for my small business?

On today's episode of the podcast I'm chatting with Misa Bacon of Perfectly Kept Books about how to care for your business and yourself through bookkeeping. Misa is a bookkeeper that takes an easy, fun and accessible approach so business owners enjoy getting to know their numbers. Misa typically works with women creatives. It's easy to stay in the dark about your numbers, but if you don't know how much you make and how much you're spending, it's hard to grow your business. Bookkeeping is about more than just knowing your numbers for taxes. Society always talks about self-care, but we don't talk enough about financial self-care. But how you feel about money is going to effect everything you do, especially in your business. And knowing your numbers helps you get a better understanding and the information you need to make a better decision for tomorrow. It's okay if things aren't good today, things can get better, but they can't if you don't know what's happening with your business. If you have bank account anxiety or are avoiding your numbers, it starts with logging into your bank account and just look at what's there. See what's happening - were you charged for something you shouldn't have been? Did you get paid by a client? As time goes on, work towards checking your bank balance daily. For more on money mindset blocks, check out Episode 65 - Money Blocks with Denise Duffield-Thomas When it comes to financial self-care, a lot of avoiding money is tied to negative money beliefs. One of the big ones Misa often hears is the belief that I'm not good with money, which means different things to different people. But being good with money is a skill, and skills are learned. You will learn the terms and get a better understanding with time if you get out there and learn it. Start with the basics in your business. Do your bookkeeping at a minimum, know what you're making and what you're spending, and determine what's bringing in an ROI and what is unnecessary spending. After you've done that, then you can start to learn about APRs and investing and savvier business investments. It's all building blocks and it's important to start with the basics of bookkeeping and not try to skip steps. For more on financial mindset, check out Episode 327 of the podcast -- Healing Your Money Mindset with Financial Therapist Rachel Duncan Not having a business bank account is another building block that is often overlooked but ultimately makes more work for the business owner. When all of your business transactions are not separated out, you'll need to comb through all of your personal statements to highlight business expenses which is very time-consuming. Choosing to skip the work of going back and finding these expenses can cost you more in taxes, even if your business isn't making any money, because you won't have as many deductions. When all of your business expenses are deducted from a business account, it makes bookkeeping significantly easier and more time efficient. You don't need an LLC to open a business bank account, as a sole prop you can open a separate personal bank account for your business. If you're just starting to get a hold of your finances, Misa recommends setting up a system and sticking with it. It's one thing to say you have a bookkeeping software or spreadsheet, but it's another thing to actually use it and making sure you set aside time to do it. If you choose to use a spreadsheet, Misa advises to get one that is already set up instead of trying to build one from scratch. It's important to understand what's going into your bookkeeping, even if you hire someone to do it for you. Learn what to look for, what reports to look at, and how to read your books. If you're going to set up Quickbooks, ask someone for help. A bookkeeper can show you what to click and how to set it up appropriately from the get-go so you aren't having to go back and re-do things. If you're in a place where you need help with your bookkeeping but can't yet afford a monthly bookkeeper, Misa created a membership to give you access to ask a bookkeeper questions because having someone you can go to can help make you more confident to do it on your own. Get in Touch with Our Guest - Misa Bacon Join the membership to get answers to your bookkeeping questions at club.perfectlykeptbooks.com (30 Day Free Trial available) Follow Misa on Instagram @perfectlykeptbooks Check out Misa's website perfectlykeptbooks.con

On today's episode of the podcast I'm reviewing my June profit report and sharing my July projections. Looking back at the year, it's hard to believe we're already in Q3. As I've talked about on previous episodes, the end of Q1/Q2 was a struggle which also means I haven't hit the goals that I set out for this year but it is what it is and we're just going to keep the ball rolling on this year and focus on what we can control in the business. 2024 Adjusted Goals Recap - Annual revenue: $300kis now a reasonable but ambitious marker to hit - Profit: I started the year with a goal of 50% but then I unintentionally built an agency model and now if I can get to 10% for the year, that would be fabulous because YTD this year's profit is barely even positive June Projections vs. Actuals • UYB - $8,000 → $4,250 (not sure what the disconnect was on my projection. What I really need to do is log what month all our clients start their payment plans and then what month they're projected to finish so I can do this projection more accurately. Payment plans are not MRR and should ) • Contract Club - $1,750 → $ 1,350 (We did raise the price to $50 this month but we lowered the price of the Contract Bot upsell and we sold to 14 people this month which is a much higher conversion on the upsell).• Legally Launched - $250 → $250• Profit Rx - $500 → $500• Monthly Clients - $7,500 → $7,500• Tax Services - $0 → $0• Trademarks/VIP Days - $15,000 → $4,500• Other - $2,000→ $1,250 Total: $30,000 → $20,000 Expenses Employee wages: $3.500Team contractors: $4,700Owner wages: $5,000Owner taxes: $2,200Monthly tools: $500Marketing expenses: $860 (I started running Facebook ads which has been working really well)Client fees: $1,800Other: $350 Profit While it was a fairly profitable month on paper, I talked last month about how our credit cards were pretty maxed so we used a lot of that profit to pay off debt. We're still playing catchup and still behind on some expenses from our negative profit in March, which means less profit in future months when we have the money to pay those. Revenue: $20,000Expenses: $17,000Owner profit: $2,500Business profit: -$2,500 Key Performance Indicators • Audience growth: 15 new followers on Instagram, 80 new Facebook group members, 4 new TikTok followers, 56 new Threads followers (this is where I've been most active) • Web traffic: 31,000 (This is a big, unexplainable jump) • Quiz data: 49 starts, 33 completions • Email list subscribers: steady increase What's Coming Up in July • I'm going to scrap promotions. We may do a couple things in emails we send but other than our routine stuff we don't be doing anything super special, we'll just be hitting our baseline revenue • Our focus is on planning our summit coming up likely in the end of August and working on backend systems to streamline processes for our clients and revamping our email templates July Projections • UYB - $6,000• Contract Club - $2,000• Legally Launched - $250• Profit Rx - $500• Monthly Clients - $8,000• 1:1 Services/trademarks - $3,750• Other: $2,000Total revenue: $22,500 Over/Under To more accurately measure growth, I like to look back at my numbers for the same month in years prior to see if we are over or under that month in the previous year. In June 2023 we did $21,500 in revenue and $20,000 in revenue this year for June. YTD we are $650 ahead of where we were last year which isn't terrible, but based on January and February I anticipated being about $20,000 higher year-to-date which means we are trending downward but I am confident we will turn this around by the end of the year. Our focus for the rest of this year is to really dial in our offer structure.

On today's episode I talk with Destini Copp about her three trademarks across multiple businesses. We filed 3 trademarks for Destini across her multiple businesses. Destini started her first business, DestiniCopp.com in 2018 teaching marketing through courses. The first trademark we filed for Destini was for this personal brand. We filed a second trademark for Helping Content, her Shopify store selling over 200 courses. Her third trademark we filed was for Hobby Scool, a separate business. While they are all under the same LLC, Destini will need to separate out Hobby Scool when she plans to sell just that company which she'd like to do within the next two years. Destini had already built and established the marketing and customer journeys for Destini Copp and Hello Content when she started Hobby Scool from scratch. Hobby Scool was grown using virtual summits around different hobbies like gardening and art. By getting in front of the speakers' audiences, Destini was able to grow the Hobby Scool email list. This then ties into Destini's other businesses as people begin to want to monetize their hobby. Get in Touch with Our Guest Destini Copp Check out her website and get free resources at DestiniCopp.com Listen to Destini's podcast, Creator's MBA wherever you listen to podcasts

On today's episode of the podcast I'm answering even more of your questions from inside my Facebook group, Braden's Besties. If you missed last week's episode, head back to episode 341 for the answers to even more legal and tax questions. When you join my free Facebook group, Braden's Besties, we ask if you have any legal or tax questions and today I'll be diving into some of those. If you like this Q&A episode format, send us a DM @notavglaw and we may just make this a monthly thing. Questions answered during this episode include: 1. What's the best way for legal and tax purposes to set up as a sole prop that runs multiple businesses, one of which could be an LLC, others are just misc. smaller income streams i.e. if I sell online, have a subscription service, etc.? 2. To cancel a contract, such as the one I made using the Contact Club videos, do I need to provide a valid reason? 3. I'm moving to a project-based model rather than an hourly model, how do I deal with refunds or postponement? 4. What is the best payroll app for small business? 5. How do I not pay taxes? 6. I did spend a lot of money this year on a business but haven't yet filed the LLC, how much time do I have in 2024 to file an LLC in order to claim these expenses? 7. If I don't make a ton of money in my business just yet, do I still need to pay quarterly taxes? Check out our blog post "The Ultimate Tax Guide for Creative Small Business Owners" 8. What website and email contracts do I need? 9. Does your information generally work for Canadians? 10. How can I open an LLC as a non-US resident? Form your LLC using our course, Legally Launched available at notavglaw.com 11. What is the best thing you can do to get the most out of tax time as a small business owner? If you like this episode (or don't) slide into our DMs @notavglaw on Instagram and let us know so we can give you more of the episodes you enjoy.

On today's episode of the podcast I'm answering your questions from inside my Facebook group, Braden's Besties. When you join my free Facebook group, Braden's Besties, we ask if you have any legal or tax questions and today I'll be diving into some of those. When I first started the podcast in 2019 I used to do two episodes a week with one dedicated solely to the questions from my Facebook group so today we're throwing it back to those original episodes and answering some of my most recent questions. Questions answered during this episode include: 1. What are the pros/cons of having a longtime business partner as a contractor/consultant versus moving into a dual partnership LLC structure? 2. What are the differences between hiring a contractor and a part-time employee? 3. What should I prioritize to have a business that is legally set up and clauses that need to be in place? 4. I bought a legal contract in 2021, it's specifically for wedding planners and I haven't updated it since. Is this something I should be updating frequently or if I should be buying new material? 5. What can I deduct on my taxes? 6. How do I figure out my target for deductions? 7. What are the contract I need to stay legal? 8. Where do you start to unf*ck 50+ years of bad business practices? 9. When does it make sense to choose an S Corp over an LLC and why does the IRS still consider it an LLC after you have an S Corp? 10. What are all the write-offs I can take? You can check out our Small Biz Tax Deduction Guide and read our blog post "The Ultimate Tax Guide for Creative Small Business Owners" If you like this episode (or don't) slide into our DMs @notavglaw on Instagram and let us know so we can give you more of the episodes you enjoy.

On today's episode of the podcast I'm recapping my May profit report. I'm bringing back VIP days. The point of a VIP Day is to take super quick action to knock out a big task on your to-do list without all the email back-and-forth. I'm booking 5 slots a week in June and you can get an LLC-in-a-Day, S-Corp-in-a-Day, Bookkeeping-in-a-Day, or Trademark-in-a-Day. Interested? Send us an email at bad@notavglaw.com or DM us at @notavglaw Profit reports allow me to assess my goals and revisit projections. I find that nothing ever goes fully according to plan based on the goals I set in the beginning of the year. Usually Q2 is where things start to change. I made a plan this hear that we've mostly stuck to but I think a lot of the time while we may not be hitting our goals in relation to a plan we set in months past, pivoting may actually be detrimental to the longterm success of the business even if it's beneficial to bring in revenue in the short term. For example, if we're not making a lot of money now, that's still okay if we're warming up our audience to buy for a launch in August. Instead, if we do a promo now, it may bring in some clients now, but to the detriment of our launch down the line. But sometimes you need money now. Adjusted 2024 Goals • Good, Better, Best Revenue: $300k, $350k, $400k• Ideally 40% profit but that's looking dicey• Over/under - I encourage you to look at your monthly numbers year-over-year to compare. Are you doing over or under for year-to-date and also month to month May Projections vs. Actuals • UYB - $6,000 → $8,500• Contract Club - $5,000 → $8,750• Legally Launched - $250 → $0• Profit Rx - $0 → $500• Monthly Clients - $7,500 → $8,000• Tax - 0 → 0• Trademark - 1,250 → 1,250• Other - $9,000 → $2,250 We planned to promote a retreat and this number was going to account for ticket sales but the interest didn't work for the date available so since no one was ready to sign up after one email I was going to scrap it for another time. Total: $29,000 → $27,500 Key Performance Indicators • We have an email funnel set up that you enter in when you buy a low ticket offer to lead you to our quiz that determines your next best business step. The funnel is working because we saw an increase in people taking the quiz in correlation to our huge spike in Contract Club sales• List growth: 300 subscribers added• Web traffic: 22,000, a huge spike from the already high 9k the month before• Social media: Slow and steady, but Threads got the most new followers (60) because I'm putting in the most effort there Profit While it was a fairly profitable month on paper, I talked last month about how our credit cards were pretty maxed so we used a lot of that profit to pay off debt. We're still playing catchup and still behind on some expenses from our negative profit in March, which means less profit in future months when we have the money to pay those. Revenue: $27,500Expenses: ~$17,000Owner profit: $10,162Salary: $1500Business profit: $8500 Expenses Employee wages: $7,000Team contractors: $4500Other contractors: $1000Monthly tools: This is a lot higher than I'd like due to some software we've been using that's been more expensive than I anticipated so we will need to cut some monthly expenses next month. June Projections • UYB - $8,000• Club - $1,750 (35 sales since we increased the price to $50 this year)• LL - $250• PRx - $500• Monthly - $7,500• Tax - 0• TM - 0• VIP Days - $15,000 (this is a big question mark. I think we can definitely get to at least half of this with a few email promotions, I already have had two sign ups this month) • Other - $2,000 Total: $35,000 (a big, big goal). I'd be pretty happy with $27,500 Back to the over/under: Last year, we did $21,500 in June. To hit the $300k goal, we need to average about $4,300 over prior year revenues in that month. So this month, we need about $25,000 to be on track. If we consistently did $10k over like I'm projecting this month, then we could be on track for the $350k. I think it might make sense for me to start talking about monthly projections as good/ better/ best because to me a projection is what we can hit with little to no effort, it's kind of our baseline vs a goal is a projection with additional marketing and promotion behind it. Sometimes we need to accelerate our revenue and that's what we're doing with VIP days and then in July we'll be back to our slow and steady revenue goals.

On today's episode of the podcast we're talking about things that should, and shouldn't, go in your contract. Starting June 1st, for the first time since launch two years ago, the price of the Contract Club is increasing, from $30 to $50. If you want to save $20, join the club now to get access to all the contracts you need at notavglaw.com/club Looking at contract provisions and terms, I believe they fall into one of two categories: 1. I agree - For example, I agree to provide these services, client agrees to pay this amount of money, client agrees to provide this to company, etc. These are the typical things that are in our contract. 2. I understand - These are more acknowledgements of factors of circumstance. They can be in the form of I agree statements, but sometimes it can be as simple as "Client understands that generally our communication hours are between X and Y." This is the delineation of what goes in the contract. "I agree" statements always go in the contract, "I understand" statements sometimes go in the contract. What goes in the contract: 1. Key terms to the agreement - services being provided, how much you're paying, anything that might cause beef/upset your client like a late payment penalty or limit on number of revisions. 2. Legalese - Choice of law provision, choice of venue, all the boring stuff at the end of the document that the lawyers right that you may not typically think of needs to go in the contract. What should go in onboarding documents that doesn't need to be in the contract 1. Anything that's nice to know - General business hours, best ways to book, how to upload client files, etc. 2. Core values statements - Include this in your marketing so people know who will be a good fit. Looking back at an example from 2020, there was a photographer and their couple wanted to cancel the contract because the photographer posted something about Black Lives Matter and the couple didn't agree and didn't want them to do their wedding anymore. Core values aren't really a contract term because even if someone agrees to be inclusive what exactly does that mean? I recommend putting your core values on your website above your intake form so they read and self-filter and can include in the email with the contract to confirm you're aligned. 3. Nitty gritty details about the project Provisions you can add to your contract (all available in the Contract Club) • No Master Resale Rights • No firearms (at events) - Clauses like this can get tricky since you aren't having every single guest sign a contract that attends an events. The only thing you really can do is have a client inform their guests • DJ approval for wedding planners • No harassment - What do you do if you are made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe • Newborn photo clause • Drone usage • Parking reimbursement - Client agrees to provide parking. This was created after a band had to pay parking tickets after an event. • No pets • Ad material • Spelling mistakes - Client understands that spelling and punctuation is the sole responsibility of the client. • No print files The main thing to think about is "is this something I need to address in my contract?" Keep in mind the contract is part of the client experience. You don't want to look like one of those Airbnb hosts who gives you a massive cleaning to-do list before you check out and still charges a cleaning fee on top of that. If your contract is like 30 pages and you look petty to a client they may not want that but at the same time, you need to have a happy medium. You don't want a two page contract because you want them to like you. Every clause in your contract has a purpose. You should be able to walk your client through it, and sometimes a preface is good something in the contract email like "Our contract is a bit long, but it serves to protect us both and outline our working process and expectations. Every provision serves a purpose and many stem from personal experience. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to let us know." Have a provision and you aren't sure if you should add it to your contract? Ask us inside our free Braden's Besties Facebook group bradensbesties.com Get access to provisions and contract templates inside the Contract Club at notavglaw.com/club

On today's episode of the podcast we're talking about the most common bookkeeping mistakes we see and how to avoid them. 1. Going to Quickbooks too early Unless your hiring a bookkeeper who knows what they're doing, this is not recommended and the reason why is because we see a lot of error. From the outside the bookkeeping looks good, but when we get in there we find that it can be a bit of a mess. A big one we see is accounts never getting reconciled and then we have to go back to the beginning of their Quickbooks to start reconciling. We spend so much time having to reconcile clients' Quickbooks that a lot of time it doesn't end up being worthwhile because that can cost you a few thousand dollars. In the beginning it can sound like DIYing your Quickbooks can save you money, but it can catch up to you in the long run so you should hire a professional from the beginning. What I recommend people do is just use a spreadsheet. Log your income, log your expenses. If you need help with this, you can have us set it up for you through our Unf*ck Your Biz service or you can get all our bookkeeping, tax and cash flow systems inside the Profit Rx course https://notavglaw.com/profit-rx 2. Not having separate bank accounts When you start your business, open a separate bank account. Bring all business income and expenses through this bank account and it will make bookkeeping exponentially easier, especially if you hire someone to do your bookkeeping. If you comingle your expenses, we have no way of knowing what's business and what's personal. The same goes for credit cards, PayPal accounts, etc. If you spend something from personal, note it right away so you don't have to comb through your personal statements. Technically you should run a reimbursement through your business account and go through a more formal process if you have an S Corp. 3. Waiting too long to do your bookkeeping Half the benefit of doing your books is to gain financial insights for your business. We do it because we have to for our taxes, but looking at our bookkeeping helps us better understand our numbers. For example, to can learn if you're charging enough for your services or products. By looking at the numbers in my business, I learned that I wasn't even really breaking even on some Unf*ck Your Biz clients because I was paying our bookkeepers so much to reconcile years' worth of Quickbook accounts for clients. This helped me know I needed to raise the price, create custom pricing to add on extra services based on what a client needs, and create podcast episodes like this to help prevent these issues for you in the first place. Bookkeeping also allows you to search by client and offer to see what is most profitable for you and when it might be time to raise your pricing. This also helps you determine what offers and programs do best during what time of year so you can better promote. If you aren't keeping your books regularly, you won't be able to make tweaks and changes as needed throughout the year. 4. Overcomplicating things One of my mottos is: complicated systems are only as good as our ability to manage those systems. So before you setup some complicated fancy system, ask if you'll take the time to maintain it (speaking from person experience). The same applies to our bookkeeping. Start simple with a spreadsheet, divide your income and expenses into a few broad categories and once you start tracking it you can make it a little bit more complicated after you've proven you can stick with it. 5. Not using an actual bookkeeping system A bookkeeping system is going to track everything you need to track. For example, CRMs (Honeybook, Dubsado, etc) are not bookkeeping systems, they have bookkeeping elements to them. I haven't looked at them in a while, but to my knowledge, they only really track your income. 6. Not knowing what you can actually deduct We've been seeing this a lot recently with clients spending money from their business bank accounts to pay for personal expenses. Inside Profit Rx we give a Small Business Tax Deduction Guide (you can also get it for $10 on our website or inside my book, Unf*ck Your Biz). Want to know the best next step for you? Take our quiz at notavglaw.com/quiz

On today's episode of the podcast we're taking about the Corporate Transparency Act and why it comes with a Beneficial Ownership Information report. Spoiler alert: you'll need to fill out the BOI form this year if you haven't already. When Congress makes new laws, they set a day when the law becomes effective. It's a heads up that they're changing the rules and that starting on that day-you'll be expected to obey. That delay gives everyone time to • read the new law, • ask questions about what the new law means, and • organize resources in preparation for the new law. In 2021 Congress passed a bundle of laws as part of the annual defense budget which came into effect on January 1st of this year called the Corporate Transparency Act. The Corporate Transparency Act requires most businesses to disclose certain information to the federal government. We'll cover: • whether or not your business is exempt from reporting,• whose information gets reported, and • how to report that information if you're required to do so. The Corporate Transparency Act is for helping law enforcement agencies find, prevent, and prosecute financial crimes. Financial crimes can look like a lot of different things. A popular example you see in movies is money laundering, when people get money from illegitimate sources but can't just go deposit it in a bank or use it to buy a car or a new house with it so they disguise it as other assets and run it through their business. People have been doing this for a very long time and proving it can be difficult. Back in 1970 Congress gave us the Bank Secrecy Act, which said banks have to actually help law enforcement identify and prosecute financial crimes. The reason was because banks didn't care where the money was coming from, they were getting paid and it wasn't their job to ask whether money was coming from a legitimate or criminal enterprise. Congress said banks don't get to turn a blind eye and have to report suspicious activity or really huge transfers. While this helped a lot, there was still plenty they couldn't catch. In 1990, Congress gave us a sub-department of the United States Treasury called the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. FinCEN lets law enforcement agencies talk to each other about that information that banks have to report, like suspicious activity or huge transactions. They compare notes, so even if a single blip on the radar didn't raise any alarms at the FBI, they might talk to state law enforcement and compare notes and find out about criminal activity they couldn't see before. FinCEN even gives awards every year to different agencies that successfully use FinCEN's data to prevent or prosecute crimes. For example, in 2023- • The Drug Enforcement Administration used FinCEN data to find and seize 4.5 metric tons of cocaine• The Secret Service and U.S. Postal Inspections Service used FinCEN data to shut down a scheme to compromise emails• And the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division used FinCEN data to protect hundreds of victims of a human trafficking ring. But there was a huge absence of information for FinCEN that still made it really hard to crack down on financial crimes. FinCEN knew what the banks were telling them about suspicious activity and big transactions and what other agencies noticed about that information but they didn't know who was behind these semi-legitimate businesses. That's what this new law, the Corporate Transparency Act is for. Businesses affected by the law will have to complete a Beneficial Ownership Information report to FinCEN. While it's not a ton of information they require from you, it's information from a ton of people, and that tells them more than you might think and helps them discover a lot more criminal activity that they couldn't know about just from the banks or by talking to each other. By collecting a small amount of information about a lot of people, you can make connections in their interests, and gain insight into their activities. Congress says we're now going to use that method of data interpretation to catch financial crimes and the people who benefit from them. To comply with the law and tell them you aren't commiting financial crimes, you need to file a Beneficial Ownership Information report on FinCEN's website. I really doubt you fall under an exception, because basically the only companies that don't have to file are businesses that already have to give FinCEN a bunch of information, like banks. If your business was formed by filing with a secretary of state, you've got to dish your deets. LLC's, Corporations, whatever. If you created it by sending a piece of paper to your Secretary of State, you gotta tell FinCEN who you are. If you have an ownership interest in a business, same deal, dish the deets. Important note here: It doesn't matter to them if you have a controlling interest in a business, like the majority of shares or whatever. You are a quote “Beneficial Owner” as long as you have an ownership interest that you benefit from. If your name is going to be on a form to create a business like an LLC or corporation either this year or in the future, then you're what they're calling a Company Applicant, and you need to fill out a report. Whatever reason you have for filing a report, whether you formed a business or you're a beneficial owner, or your name is going on the paperwork for a new business-we're all going to the same place for this report. You go to FinCEN's website and they have a big ol' button on the front page that'll take you to file at https://www.fincen.gov/boi I recommend taking a minute to gather your info before you start, like, the same papers you would if you were jumping on a tax strategy or business entity formation call with me. We need stuff both for your business and for you personally, since you're a beneficial owner. For your business, you'll need to report: • Your full legal name• Any Doing Business As (DBA) or trade names• Your complete current U.S. address The State, tribal, or foreign jurisdiction of formation (wherever you sent the papers to create your company)• If it was formed abroad: the State or Tribal jurisdiction of first registration• And your IRS Taxpayer Identification Number (including Employer Identification Number) For each beneficial owner or company applicant, you'll report: • Full legal name• Date of Birth• Complete current residential address (except if you filed on behalf of a business, like if you're a paralegal)• Unique identifying number, issuing jurisdiction AND image of one of the following documents:• U.S. Passport• State driver's license• Identification document issued by a state, local government, or tribe. Great. Love it. Let's talk due dates. If your business creation documents were filed prior to January 1, 2024 then you have until January 1, 2025. Amazing. That date feels pretty far off, but we want to treat it like a tax deadline and make sure we have all our information in so we can file ahead of schedule and spend Deadline Day relaxing at the pool. For new businesses being formed this year, you've got less time. If your business creation documents were filed/will be filed after January 1, 2024 then you have 90 days from the date of notice that the filing is effective. So you get an email from the secretary of state saying yes you can be a company, and you'll have 90 days to tell FinCEN that it's official. Starting January 1, 2025, they really pick up the pace. If your business creation documents are filed after January 1, 2025 then you will have 30 days from the date of notice that the filing is effective. I know this might sound scary but don't panic. Just follow rules and file your report. When they passed this law, Congress kind of interrogated FinCEN about how harsh they were going to be about the reports. FinCEN isn't looking for gotcha moments. They only want to prosecute willful violations. You are a pinpoint of data on a map of every business in America. They're looking to trace the path of money from point to point and see when it cycles back or if it's headed to something bad.

On today's episode of the podcast I'm giving you some must-know legal updates about non-compete agreements. Just a reminder, the Contract Club price is going up beginning June 1st (only to $50) but if you want to save $20, get access now for just $30 at notavglaw.com/club. And, if you want to get paid for sharing the Contract Club with your friends, we're paying out 100% affiliate commissions (regularly 50%) through the end of May. You can become an affiliate at notavglaw.com/affiliate A couple weeks ago, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took a vote on Non-Compete Agreements and made a 570 page publication and we're going to take an aerial view on those key takeaways. The FTC's job is to protect the public from deceptive or unfair business practices and from unfair methods of competition. It's a federal agency that's been around since Woodrow Wilson's presidency. The FTC is put together by Congress, consider Congress the parent and the FTC the babysitter that enforces the rules. The FTC was asked "can businesses limit a worker's employment option after they leave the company?" 570 pages later, the answer is no, that's unfair competition. Let's dive into why this is unfair and totally bullshit there are three broad reasons we'll touch on with examples. The FTC says this is why non-competes restrict the freedoms of American workers and suppress wages. Example: Elle is an attorney for Louis Vuitton. LV has her sign a non-compete agreement saying she won't work for another luxury handbag company for two years after her employment with LV ends. She's not sure where to go from there when she's ready to leave because she can't go work for another luxury handbag company and she can't apply and use that offer to leverage benefits to stay at LV. Non-competes stifle new businesses and new ideas. Example: Elle can't start her own fashion handbag company or team up with her friend to consult on her luxury handbag company. They impact too many people. Example: Elle decides to focus on her philanthropy until her non-compete expires. Looking at jobs with other luxury handbag companies, she sees that they all have non-competes as well. They're widespread in the US economy and one in five workers is subject to a non-compete (~30 million people). It's also wild how many people don't even know they've signed a non-compete until they get sued later on because a lot of times a non-compete can be a single term deep within a contract. It's often overlooked and commonly lumped together with a non-disclosure agreement. On the flip side, if you are the issuer of a non-compete, you're going to need to take it out now and check any contract templates you use or previously drafted attorney contracts to make sure it is removed. A large portion of effected non-compete workers are in healthcare, not great for public health when we had a global pandemic and they were prevented from working where the need was greatest. Any time a federal agency has an idea for a new rule, they have to open it up to the public for comment and then they have to respond to those comments otherwise a court will smack down the rule for not being well thought out. This rule had 26,000 comments, of which 25,000 supported a total ban on non-competes. There are some exceptions for senior executives, mainly that if you're a senior executive under a non-compete you still have to follow it, but there can't be any new non-competes. To draw some attention to the legalese, it says "worker." It goes on to say "worker, including but not limited to an employee, independent contractor, extern, intern, volunteer, apprentice or sole proprietor who provides a service to a person." The only exception is the senior executive. They include a part in this rule that allows it to stack with state laws so if your state has a rule against non-competes, you're in trouble with both the FTC and the state. Are you fucked if you've had people sign non-competes for your business? No. If you as a business had any worker sign a non-compete, you can get unf*cked you just have to send a notice to them saying you can't and won't enforce it. You have a little bit of time, this rule is not in effect until 120 days after it gets published in the national register. During that time, go to the FTC's website and find their model notices. There you'll find the language to use to inform people about not enforcing your non-competes. Using this exact language will protect you under the safe harbor provision. You can access that at https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/images/new-rule-image-noncompete-rulev3.png The rule is going to face some challenges. The US Chamber of Commerce has called this rule a blatant power grab and is going to sue the FTC and say that Congress never intended to grant the FTC the power to do this. The FTC's document addresses these concerns and there are already states that have their own non-compete bans already in place. Did you enjoy today's episode? Send us a DM on Instagram @notavglaw

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing my April profit report. If you enjoy the profit report episodes, send us a DM @notavglaw and let us know what you think! As we kick off every episode, let's recap my 2024 goals. • I set good, better, best goals of $300k, $400k and $500k in revenue. I was shooting for $400k, I think the $300k is still doable now despite the setbacks in the first quarter that I've talked about on previous episodes. I've now shifted them to $300k, $350k and $400k. What I'm not doing is any rushed promotions to try to hit these, I'm focusing on slow, steady growth to end the year strong. • Hit 60% in profit • Book 4 stage speaking gigs for next year • Consistently hit $25k months. Did this in January and February, not in March, probably not in April • Hit $15k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by the end of the year. This was the big goal to help us get to our revenue goals at the end of the year. We're a little bit less than halfway to this so far. My original goal was to get to 10k by the end of March but that hasn't happened yet. Projections vs. Actual: 1. Unf*ck Your Biz- $4,000 → $2,500 (A caveat to this is we had two more $1,000 payments that went through on the 30th but won't hit my account until May meaning we didn't hit the goal). 2. Contract Club - $1,000 → $1,1403. Legally Launched - $500 → 04. Monthly Recurring Revenue - $7,000 → $7,5005. Tax - $4,000 → $2,2506. Trademark clients- $1,250 → $07. Other - $1,000 → $3,200Total revenue: $17,000 → $15,000 Expenses Employee wages (this does not include myself): $4,000 Contractor expenses: $3,000 Owner wages (after my taxes): Monthly tools: $400 Affiliate payouts: $370 Marketing: $400 Client fees: $500 Other: $1800 Total expenses: $16,000 (we were in the negative by $1,000) A lot of this stems still from Unf*ck Your Biz clients because we are going back and doing several years of reconciliation for some clients. Profit (- $1,000) If you're wondering how I'm doing this the answer is I don't have great business savings which we wiped in the month of March (yikes) and the business credit card is maxed. I'm not too stressed about it, I'm expecting expenses to go down and revenue to go up in May and it should start to even out. KPIs I want to start talking more about the KPI we track each month in Enji. We track: Sales (revenue): Tracked in our profit report Audience growth (Facebook group members and Instagram, TikTok and Threads followers): A lot of people call these vanity metrics and I don't get too into these numbers, it's just helpful to see trends in respect to how active and engaging we're being. Are we continuing to see growth even if it's steady. PR touchpoints: We track the number of podcast guest spots, summits, in-person speaking, bundles, etc. we do each month. This impacts our follower count and number of email subscribers and shows how our KPIs are all connected. Contract Club and Contract Bot Sales: I track this separately in Enji so I can have a line graph to see growth. December through April each month we had: 37, 38, 36, 32, 38 and it's interesting to watch it stay so consistent without promotion. For the Bot upsell we had 4 sales in February, 1 in March, and 7 in April (an 18% conversion rate is pretty good for a $70 upsell). May Projections 1. Unf*ck Your Biz- $6,000 We had 5 new clients sign up in April who are all on payment plans. Our goal is to bring in 4 new UYB clients every month to guarantee that revenue and then if half those clients continue to sign up for our monthly services we'll continue to increase our baseline revenue. 2. Contract Club - $5,000 I'm expecting a big increase because of our current affiliate promotion. May is the last chance to get the Contract Club at $30 before it increases to $50. If you aren't already an affiliate, you can sign up here to become one. We are paying out 100% affiliate commissions on Contract Club sales in May. 3. Legally Launched - $2504. Monthly Recurring Revenue - $7,5005. Tax - $06. Trademark clients- $1,250 7. Other - $9,000 (I've been hinting on social media that we might be doing a mastermind retreat in August). Total: $29,000, $20,000 if we don't launch the retreat sign-up this month. What's Coming Up in May No big promotions coming up so I may need to adjust our revenue goals for the summer months. Right now the goal is to get people into the Contract Club and get people into our quiz funnel (notavglaw.com/quiz) to determine how we can best help you and your business.

On today's episode of the podcast we're chatting trademarks and what we've learned about the trademark filing process over the last year. In the past year we've filled 22 trademark registration applications and we've gotten back eight of those thus far. The way we kick off our trademark application process is through what we call Trademark Quickie Searches (notavglaw.com/tmquickie). A traditional law firm would charge you their trademark fee up front (typically $1k - $3k for smaller business, up to like $10k for big businesses like Procter&Gamble because there's a lot more that goes into it). Once you retain them they'll do a trademark search and chat with you about the likelihood of approval of your application and if you have over like 50% odds they'll file the application. Sometimes they'll also look into alternative trademarks for you. We do Trademark Quickie Searches first (these started at $10, then became $25, $50 and are now $100).We raised our price point to help with conversions because at $10 we were getting more people who were just curious about trademarks, not because they were interested in getting one. These searches are time intensive for us, it's not something you can just click a button to search. We are currently accepting five new TM Quickies. You can get started at notavglaw.com/tmquickie Registering a trademark at the federal level has several benefits including: • The right to exclusive nationwide ownership of the mark (except where it's being used by prior users). • The right to put the ® symbol after the mark. This puts others on notice that you own the registered mark. • A legal presumption that the registrant owns the mark. Trademark rights are given to the person who first uses the mark in commerce, not the first person to file, although filing is still a great idea rather than relying on being first inuse. “Use in commerce” means you're actually using the mark to sell a thing. If you rebrand, your new mark isn't being used in commerce until you release it to the world. What we've learned from filing trademarks: 1. Likelihood of confusion is maybe not as big of a deal as we thought it would be, at least it hasn't come up in the eight marks we've had processed by the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). Likelihood of confusion means they can get approved of they're likely not to be confused with someone else's mark. This tells me we can be a little bit more aggressive with the terms we file. 2. People really need to stop filing their own trademark applications. This is because trademarks are more of an art and a science and the way you craft your application impacts approval odds and your ability to enforce the application. Even if it gets approved, you may find your application doesn't have many teeth to it when you try to enforce it. And if it's not approved and you get something back from the PTO asking you to fix it, hiring a law firm to fix it is going to cost a lot more than just hiring them from the get-go. 3. Nearly descriptive marks are a big deal and something most folks wouldn't inherently think about. Some marks actually are much easier to protect than others. Some can't even be registered. Trademark law has invented a system based on the “strength” of a mark. Astrong mark is easy to protect, while a weak mark may be difficult or impossible to protect. There are five levels of strength with varying rules: Generic: No protection (ex: coffee) Descriptive: No protection unless you can prove secondary meaning. (ex: Coldstone Creamery) Suggestive: Protection (ex: Netflix) Arbitrary: High protection (ex: Apple) Fanciful: Highest protection (ex: Xerox) At a minimum we want it to be suggestive. I experienced this personally when I went to file a TM for the Contract Club. It was at first denied because it was merely descriptive of a club that you can join that provides contract templates. I worked with another attorney on this and we submitted a brief to argue against the refusal saying it's not really a club because it's a one-time payment, there's no dues and no membership screening, etc. My attorney estimated 50/50 odds of it getting approved. It did not. 4. You have to own your mark. Apply now so you don't have to change it later. This is something I already knew and want to make sure others do too. You don't want to need to change your business or product name down the line. 5. Working with the examiners isn't so bad. They want to move your application off their desk so they don't want to make the process difficult. When you file with the PTO it goes to an examiner who is an attorney. If they determine any issues they issue an office action. Sometimes it's simple like didclaiming a word, sometimes it's more complex. I found them easy to work with. 6. Getting a trademark application approved can taking even longer than I thought. I thought most applications would get approved within a year but around when we started filing trademark applications, the processing time to even get the application looked at was about eight months in the shortest end, 10 months on the longer end, and then from there you're often going to have that back-and-forth office action. Once they approve the application and it gets published, anyone who wants to oppose your trademark has up to three months to oppose the men. 7. There are a lot of great names out there to be trademarked, especially online business folks, when it comes to names for courses, memberships and online programs. I've done searched for at least 75 trademarks (and filed 22 of them). Sometimes I really surprised at some some really great names our clients have that a search showd are really free and clear. I think this will change over the next several years. The market is getting really saturated and there are some that have really obvious buzz words like "academy" but I'm still surprised about how many are available. If you've landed on a program you really like, you should get a TM application. 8. Trademark applications can be a very easy process, or a very lengthy one. We've done some minor ammendments on disclaimers, but other than that, our client TM applications have gone though pretty well. If our clients are responsive and communicative I usually get the application in within a week and then it's a waiting game from there. If you're interested in getting the process started, we are currently accepting five new TM Quickies. You can get started at notavglaw.com/tmquickie

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing my March profit report If you listened to last month's profit report you may have heard me sounding a little bit defeated with my numbers due to some personal stuff going on. If you missed it, go back and listen to episode 330. Diving into the March profit report, let's revisit the 2024 goals I share at the top of every episode. • I set good, better, best goals of $300k, $400k and $500k in revenue. I was shooting for $400k, I think the $300k is still doable now. Last year we hit $270k so I'd really like to get that to $300k this year. • Hit 60% in profit. Probably going to be changing • Book 4 state speaking gigs for next year • Consistently hit $25k months. Did this in January and February, not in March, probably not in April • Hit $15k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by the end of the year. This was the big goal to help us get to our revenue goals at the end of the year. We're a little bit less than halfway to this so far. My original goal was to get to 10k by the end of March but that hasn't happened yet. Let's recap what happened in March: • I've previously shared that if all things went to plan, March was going to be a $40k month. That's what I was hoping for because of launches we had planned. Those didn't end up happening, • We had planned a couple of launches and they didn't really end up happening • We promoted our tax challenge and at the end of that I was planning to promote our services but I ended up doing the challenge while I was out of town, we didn't have many people sign up and I didn't get around to doing too much in terms of promotional emails. Projections vs. Actual 1. Unf*ck Your Biz - $4,000 → $1,000 2. Contract Club - $1,000 → $1,100 3. Legally Launched - $500 → $250 4. Monthly services - $5,00 → $7,145 5. Tax - $4,000 → $3,000 6. Trademarks - $1,250 → $1,250 7. Other - $1,000 → $1,010 Total revenue - $17,750 → $15,265 Expenses Employee wages: $5,200 (this does not include myself) Contractor expenses: $4,700 Owner wages: $2,900 (after my taxes. I paid $2,500 into taxes) Monthly tools: $500 Affiliate payouts: $650 Total expenses: $17,600 Profit (- $2,400) While I know a revenue of $15,265 sounds great, when expenses are $17,600, it makes it a lot less exciting. I then paid myself my salary of $5,300 so the total business profit was about (-$8,000). This is why it's good to have a little bit of cushion in our bank accounts. In April, I'm hoping to make a little bit more money. We're not really doing any promotions this month to make a lot more, but a lot of the team expenses were for Unf*ck Your Biz clients we were wrapping up and our bookkeepers were working on some clients' books that were several years behind and it's a project to really get them caught up. I'm probably going to need to readjust my profit goals because it's dawned on me that I've essentially built an agency. It's a law firm, but it's an agency and I may need to hire more bookkeepers to keep up with demand. Higher profit means more money in my pocket as the business owner, but I also am not looking to work 40-60 hours a week, for me ~30 is the sweet spot so if I can make less profit in order to bring on more people to do more of the client work, then that's okay with me. Because we weren't able to do our launches in March, my biggest issue right now is MRR (monthly recurring revenue). This is not recurring payments for courses, MRR is something you pay every month for until you cancel, think things like Netflix. My big goal is to hit $15,000 in MRR by the end of the year. If our goal was to get five people at $500/month that's $2,500/month times nine months would be close to $25,000 in revenue that we're now missing out on. If we can bring these clients on in May during our launch, that's two less months compared to if we had gotten in during a March launch. I thought about doing an impromptu emergency launch but I don't want to rush anything. We did do an Open House this week and we have a couple fun things up our sleeve next month, but I'm really thinking about shifting the next couple months to focus on audience growth and continue giving out excellent free resources like we always do. April Projections Unf*ck Your Biz- $4,000 Contract Club - $1,000 Legally Launched - $250 Monthly Recurring Revenue - $7,000 Tax - $4,000 TM clients- $2,500 Other - $1,000 Total: $19,750, would really like to hit $20k What's Coming Up in May No big promotions in April but we are focusing on more people signing up for our referral program. If you have the Contract Club and you like it and want to share it with friends, if you become an affiliate you can earn money from every sale you refer (and the same goes for most of our products and services, not just the Club). Sign up at notavglaw.com/affiliate

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing our commonly spotted contract red flags. I messaged MJ, our team attorney, to put together some of the red flags they've been spotting in contracts because they are the primary person responsible for updating our Contract Club templates and working one-on-one with our Unf*ck Your Biz clients to give them their full suite of contracts that can typically range from seven to 15 contracts to each client. If you're not familiar with the Contract Club, it's all the contracts you need, all in one place, all for one price, just pay the cover and you're in for life. You can pay your $30 cover and join the club at notavglaw.com/contract We have dozens and dozens of templates already in the club and we're adding more all of the time. We're always putting out new ones in response to contract requests in our Facebook group, Braden's Besties. 1. Repetitive, contradictory terms Repeating yourself in the contract might feel like emphasizing a term's importance, but it can hurt you. When a judge or mediator reads a contract, if you have two different versions of the same term, if there's contradiction in any way between the two, the judge has to decide which controls if they don't just toss them out altogether. If you do need to repeat in the contract, just say "refer to paragraph five for the cancelation provision). I the terms are repetitive but not contradictory, your duplicative terms just made it longer which is unnecessary for you and your client. 2. Inconsistent style of writing We love a patchwork - for quilts only. It does not belong in a contract, and when you're copying and pasting parts of your contract from multiples templates you've found here or there online, lawyers can always tell. What ends up happening, for example, is different contracts from different attorneys will use different terms to refer to the same person, such as "photographer" or "company" and it's confusing to the client. It's a bad look and tells a judge you weren't being very serious about your legal needs and that you might not know the legal footing in your case. 3. Unfair or unenforceable provisions If you put unreasonable shit in your contract, a judge or fact-finder is going to be very suspicious of the other stuff in your contract. There are certain things you cannot put in your contract which is pretty standard and varies a little by state. The way we typically draft our templates is if it's a red flag in some states we just don't include it. For example, non-disparagement clauses. You typically can't have these in client contracts i.e. in California you can't say a client can't write a bad review about your business. There are policy reasons why this is prohibited and suing people for being open and honest is not very good for the general public. 4. Language you don't understand If you can't explain what the contract says to your client, it shouldn't be in the contract. This is not only why it's important to get a professional contract, but that you take the time to read it and understand what's in your contract. Just because you don't understand it at first, doesn't mean that you should immediately cut it out, it just means you should take the time to understand it. It's okay if you don't understand it at first. We do videos with most along with most of our contracts inside the Contract Club to explain what each and every paragraph means. We don't want you to just buy a template and not know how to answer your client's questions, and they will have questions. 5. Formatting issues Like an inconsistent writing style, having an inconsistent format is a bad look. I don't think most people will have a problem with this because, working mainly with creatives, aesthetic is typically on your mind but if you aren't being careful, it shows that you're okay with shotty legal work. Make sure you use consistent spacing and standard fonts. It's not worth the time and energy to make a contract "fun." Don't give a contract that's fun colors or fonts unless you want the title in your brand font or color. If you want to make sure you're avoiding all of these and don't want to break the bank, join the Contract Club (https://notavglaw.com/club). It's only $30 and you get access to all the videos to really learn what's going into your contract templates. And, once you understand what's going into your contracts, if you want to short-cut the process, then what you need is the Contract Bot. It's our not-quite AI tool that developers helped us create that asks about 10 questions in a form and it will give you a generated contract. This is separate from the Contract Club, you can add access to the Contract Bot on to the Club when purchasing it at notavglaw.com/club and you can use the bot whenever you want.

On today's episode of the podcast, I chat with Jodi Brandon about preparing for unexpected time off in your business. I'm hosting an open house! If you've considered working with me or aren't sure which service is best suited for you, register for the Open House on Tuesday, April 16th at 9am PST. I'd love to answer your questions and share more about the resources I have available to help get your legal and tax shit legit. Register at notavglaw.com/open-house Jodi and I go way back to a mastermind event in 2019 and have been in a mastermind group together ever since brainstorming ideas and solutions in our business alongside for other business owners. She is also my book coach for Unf*ck Your Biz. Jodi has one of the most streamlined businesses I've ever seen which lends well to taking unexpected time off, something Jodi has had to do. The streamlined organization is the product of the time off Jodi had to take when he husband had to have a valve replaced in his heart and what was supposed to be an easy procedure became unplanned open heart surgery that was much more complicated and required time off. At this time, Jodi was doing all one-on-one copy editing work with no subcontractors or SOPs in place. This wasn't something scalable and Jodi was out of work. This time off is what led her to diversify her offerings, including the book coaching she now offers. Subcontractors now on her team work on the copy editing. After her husband's surgery, they knew that in the future he would need to have this same valve replacement again. Jodi wanted to be prepared for the next time she would need to care for her husband so she got to work learning about systems and preparing for what happens if you can't run your business. She has a network of colleagues that she wanted do be able to line up work with in the event of an emergency so her clients wouldn't be out of luck. During this time Jodi had some clients who were okay with being moved off her plate to someone else she lined up, some who were good to paise the project until Jodi could work on it again, and some who were unhappy and wanted to stay on schedule because they'd had a contract. Jodi still discloses to all her clients that she is not always the main one to be doing the work because sharing your book can be a vulnerable project. Their contract is with Jodi Brandon Editorial, not just Jodi Brandon. If you aren't in a place to financially hire someone just yet, that doesn't mean you can't plan for the unexpected. You don't necessarily need to have someone on stand by or do doomsday preparation, but you would be surprised how often these conversations are happening to prepare for all sorts of scenarios like maternity leave or chronic illness or caring for a relative. To prep for this, you can charge the client more than you need to pay who you'll contract to. You may be making low overhead to keep your business afloat, but if you have long-term goals for your business, this is better than referring everything out and losing out on weeks or even months of client testimonials. Systems are also an incredibly important part of preparing your business. The clearer your standard operating procedures are and the systems you have in place, the less someone will need to ping you to constantly be asking for info they can't find. These are all things we should have in place anyway, especially if you have team members who take time off, planned or unplanned. Loom videos can be incredibly helpful to create your SOPs. If you need to give yourself unexpected time off, give yourself grace. Even when the business is still operating, it's easy to get caught up in negativity and frustration. It won't be forever, even if it feels like it when your life is in disarray. It's important to give yourself the mental space you need to not go down the negative rabbit hole. You likely won't look back and regret that time you spent during that unexpected time. Going back to preparing your audience, like in the case of Jodi preparing her clients that it's not just her working on their projects, it's important that clients know that I own the business but that I'm not the only one at Not Your Average Law Firm. Get in Touch with Our Guest Jodi Brandon, owner of Jodi Brandon EditorialConnect with Jodi on Instagram @jodibrandoneditorial

On today's episode of the podcast I'm breaking down my February profit report and what's been going on behind the scenes of my business and personal life. I'm hosting an open house! If you've considered working with me or aren't sure which service is best suited for you, register for the Open House on Tuesday, April 16th at 9am PST. I'd love to answer your questions and share more about the resources I have available to help get your legal and tax shit legit. Register at notavglaw.com/open-house If you've listened to the podcast, you know I'm all about transparency and while I don't share every detail about my personal life, it felt like I should share what's been going on the last couples months because you'll also see my numbers are down this month and this will inform a lot of that. I took a few weeks out of office when my mom's health began to decline due to the cancer she was diagnosed with in 2020 and it was clear we did not have much time left with her and then a full week completely off from everything including email when she passed. I'm back home and back to work but it's still hard some days knowing I won't have my mom around for more than half my life. During my time away I've also had a minor business crisis because we had to skip two full launches and I had been planning for March to be our busiest month of the year with people wanting to come and work with us around tax season and everything that comes with that. Diving into the profit report, let's revisit the 2024 goals I share at the top of every episode. I set good, better, best goals of $300k, $400k and $500k in revenue. I think the $300k is still doable, the $400k that I really wanted to hit, I think might be a stretch. Hit 60% in profit Book 4 state speaking gigs for next year Consistently hit $25k months. This is going to be a struggle in March when I do my projections Hit $15k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by the end of the year Let's recap what happened in February: Not a whole lot We had planned a couple of launches and they didn't really end up happening We promoted our tax challenge and at the end of that I was planning to promote our services but I ended up doing the challenge while I was out of town, we didn't have many people sign up and I didn't get around to doing too much in terms of promotional emails. Projections vs. Actual: 1. Unf*ck Your Biz - $14,000 → $15,000 2. Contract Club - $1,000 → $1,080 (I continue to be surprised how predictably this falls between $900 and $1200 without promotion) 3. Legally Launched - $1,000 → $500 4. Monthly services - $8,700 → ~$4,000 5. Tax - $15,000 → $7,000 This and monthly services are the two biggest places where we missed the mark due to missed launches 6. Trademarks - $2,500 → $2,500 7. Other - $1,000 → $1,850 Total revenue - 4$7,700 (Projected to be our highest revenue month ever but I expected us to at least hit $30,000) → $32,000 I'm pretty happy with this, all things considered. Profit Cost of Goods: $48 (Our only COGs are the physical copies of my book) Expenses: $22,600 (very high for me) Owner profit: $9,300 My salary: $5,500 Profit: $3,900 Expenses Employee wages + team contractors (contractors I work with on a regular basis that don't need to legally be employees): ~$13,000 This is double our average. This is because I'm paying our tax preparer for a lot of tax returns and our bookkeeping team put in a lot of hours in February into March because we have a lot of clients who need 2-3 years of bookkeeping backlog Owner wages/owner tax (what I pay myself, technically expenses for the S Corp): $5,000 Monthly tools: $400 Affiliate payout: $650 Marketing: $300 Travel: $150 Other: $2,600 (included one large refund, a large office expense, a couple Ubers, couple online filing fees and a few meals). This came to 70% Expenses (need to work on these numbers) Profit margin: 30% These expenses are the main reason we're going to be increasing the cost of Unf*ck Your Biz, our signature service, to $5,000 moving forward because after the first time running it I'm realizing the amount of hours my team is putting in for every client is a lot higher than anticipated. I don't think that's a bad thing for our clients, it means they're getting really high value services, I just need to budget for that accordingly. I'm also going to be adding in some more of our higher margin services, for example instead of a trademark filing being a la carte, it'll be included in the services (a $1,250 value). I do the trademarks, not a team member, so this will be a profitable thing for us to do. Adding something with a high margin to a something with a low margin so that it shakes out is something for anyone with packages to consider (and you'll only know this if you're tracking your numbers on a monthly basis). Since I recorded this on March 26th, I have a good idea of what my March profit report is going to look like so you're not getting the real story with my March projections because now the projections are filtered through the lens of having gone through the month and looking at the numbers as I can see our monthly revenue is down when I log in. March Projections: 1. Unf*ck Your Biz - $4,000 (lower than February because our December monthly payment plan clients are done with payment) 2. Contract Club - $1,000 3. Legally Launched - $500 4. Monthly services - $5,000 5. Tax - $4,000 6. Trademarks - $1,250 7. Other - $1,000 Total revenue - $17,750 I stretched some of these beyond where they might be to push myself this last week of the month and now really I should do my income bookkeeping now to see where we're at so I know what to adjust this last week. Hopefully I won't need to do this as I've done four client intake calls so far this week and three seem pretty promising so that would go a long way. Will I get to the $25k goal of monthly revenue? Doubtful but I'm going to give myself grace on this one For context, if we'd done all our promotions this month I'd been anticipating March to be around a $40,000 month so we definitely won't be close to that. To end the episode, I want to share a bit of a mindset shift we're having over here at Not Your Average Law Firm. For context, I've always been very envious of people who have super streamlined business models and clear messaging of the one thing they sell, take it or leave it. I have a hard time with it because I do feel it's my responsibility to meet people where they're at with their needs because I don't want to turn people away or not help them. But as a business owner sometimes we need to say we're not the best fit so I'm going to start leaning more into that, specifically, encouraging people to more to sign up for Unf*ck Your Biz, our signature service and turning away most other one-on-one service requests because we have trouble providing services in a vacuum. A lot of times people come to us for one-on-one help with contracts, but their business is fucked in many other ways that need help in addition to the contracts. More specifically what we'll be able to do is put all of our effort and energy into helping a new signature client starting every week on a rolling basis. My dream for this is to be booking out eight weeks in advance and then at the end of the service folks join our monthly on-going services because we're already well-equipped to handle their business. If this isn't a good fit, we have our three do-it-yourself online programs on our website for people who are just starting out or don't need the full investment. If you've been curious about working with us, take our quiz at notavglaw.com/quiz and sign up for our open house at notavglaw.com/open-house to get a deeper look at our services.

On today's episode I chat with Amber Anderson, Owner of Refine for Wedding Planners, about business acquisition and trademarks. We should all run our business with a long-term perspective of "do I want to run this thing until I'm ready to retire?" or "do I potentially want to sell my business one day?" Even if you think you don't want to sell, it's good for business to run it in a systemized way that it could one day be sold. Amber Anderson sold her wedding planning company, Heavenly Day, in January of 2020. She said it was easier to sell the company since it was not tied to her name directly, though the name was not trademarked. When she was ready to sell, it all came down to timing and who was ready to buy at the same time Amber was ready to sell. As for pricing, Amber calculated based on 3-4x annual revenue. Depending on your timing and if you had a broker and how much time you have will also play a factor in the money you will get and if you can get more. If you don't have solid bookkeeping, you won't be able to calculate this. Amber sold in a self-financed deal. Amber now owns Refine, an online community for new, aspiring and struggling wedding planners with coaching, retreats, and templates. When buying the business she received a flat offer and put in a bid above that offer since there were others interested. When evaluating a business, it's important to take a look at what the business owns, including intellectual property, courses that have been created, assets, and goodwill which is how well you are thought of by your community. In buying the company, Amber recreated the courses and assets to be her own. Upon buying Refine, trademarking the name was on Amber's radar immediately because of the numbers and trajectory of the business. Amber also saw other educators using Refine's first in use terms and was advised by her lawyer that she needed to protect her business each time because if she didn't protect it with the first person, it would be harder with the next. The USPTO is backed up and the first step of trademark applications can take up to a year, or longer if you mess up the application and have to start all over, a common occurrence if you try to do it on your own without the help of an attorney. It also depends on how layered and complex your name is, as was the case with a more commonly used term like "refine." Get in Touch with Our Guest Amber Anderson, Owner of Refine for Wedding Planners Check out the Refine for Wedding Planner's websiteJoin the Refine Facebook CommunityFollow Refine with Amber on Instagram

On this episode of the podcast I share why going out and hiring a tax pro and a lawyer is not your best first step, and what to look for if you do hire someone. Which Biz Bestie are you? We work with so many fabulous types of business owners. Everyone is unique, but we can typically put each person on one of three paths when working with us to get their legal and tax shit together. Take the quiz at notavglaw.com/quiz We get different answers from different people because everyone looks at something from a different lens - an accountant and a lawyer will give you two different answers to the same question, even though tax and law are so related. It's like asking a contractor and an interior designer what you should do with your house. It's similar but very different. I often see bad advice from accountants and attorneys (more on that in my podcast episode "Three of the Worst Pieces of Legal Advice I Have Seen in Facebook Groups"). For example, accountants love to throw out arbitrary numbers for how much income you should have before filing for an LLC, because they're looking at it from a numerical lens versus how a lawyer looks at it with a protective lens. Between accountants, bookkeepers, and lawyers, each does not usually have a full comprehensive understanding of all business entities. This is why ideally you want to work with a lawyer and an accountant when you start your business, but that's out of budget for a lot of people when just starting out. My other beef is that tax pros and lawyers do not educate nearly enough. Lawyers charge hourly meaning you often want to avoid sitting down for a leisurely educational lesson. Accountants make more money the quicker they can move you in, out and on to the next customer meaning they lack incentive to spend time educating you. You want to find accountants that specialize in your specific field. Think of your family member that doesn't totally understand what it is you do. Imagine you ask them to create a list of all your business expenses. They couldn't. An accountant will have a general idea, but they may not have any idea about industry-specific expenses unless they are an industry-specific bookkeeper. You need to understand your compliance costs, how much to save for taxes and what will effect your savings rate. If you have someone who files your taxes ideally they should tell you how much to pay in quarterly taxes, but that can change based on how your business performs that month or if you file jointly with your partner and their job changes. You can't rely on your tax professional to check in on your specific circumstances regularly.

On today's episode of the podcast I'm joined by financial therapist Rachel Duncan who Rachel is a financial and art therapist who has combined her background in mental health with her background in personal finance to help impulse spenders learn to trust themselves. Her clients typically have a lot of emotions around money or have trouble sticking to a budget. Rachel is not a financial advisor, but says that after working with her, you could go to one and not cry. As a special treat for my Besties, Rachel is offering 10% off her signature program, The Healing Circle: An intimate 12-week therapist-led group container for those ready to kick impulse spending for good and learn to trust themselves with money. This program takes you through the nuts & bolts of money and the deeper emotional blocks that are holding you back from facing your money. Learn more at www.moneyhealingclub.com/healing-circle Use coupon code: NOTAVGLAW at checkout for 10% off I discovered Rachel when she became a prospective content who inquired about trademark services. Looking through her website I knew she'd be a great fit for the podcast. While I give people the technical skills to get their business finances together, if they are looking for help with the money mindset around that I want to point them in the direction of specific resources. I know that people need this because it would be hard for me to tally up how many people have cried on meetings with me, money is an emotional topic. Rachel and I work through an exercise that she does with her students to identify our, what Rachel calls "money scripts" which are things that we've learned about money that are intense either general senses about money or things that were taught to us by specific people. Make a quadrant on a piece of paper with each one labeled "Income," "Expenses," "Debt" and "Savings." Write down a phrase that immediately comes to mind for each of these words. What are your beliefs or what are the quiet voices saying in your head about each one? For me, my income quadrant was around hearing about our money tree as a kid. Needs were met and I recognized as a kid we were what I call "country middle class" because we could afford to go visit family in Florida every summer, but if I asked for certain wants like a trampoline I'd be told to "go pick the money off the money tree in the backyard." For expenses, I wrote "do you actually need that?" and also wrote, "treat yo'self" from Parks and Rec. I'm a big treat yourself person, I'm a spender. And I saw some of that growing up, so it's not coming from a place of rebellion because spending wasn't allowed. I feel like my parents preached the importance of savings, but I wasn't necessarily witnessing it. No one seemed particularly frugal, other than my grandpa who was also preachy about it. For debt, I wrote "cash only." This comes more from my dad who was the son of a farmer, and the only one of the nine children who didn't go into farming. A lot of the farming was crops that were paid for in a lump sum and they could turn around and buy something with that and then save the rest. My dad's not a farmer, but to this day he doesn't have a credit card. For savings, I wrote "save 10%" and I don't know why my mind went to church tithing. We were always told to save a little bit of the money we got like at Christmas time. From reading books over time I've learned that the reason I've never really been able to save is because it comes from a scarcity mentality. Like when you see money in your bank account and you want to spend it before it's gone. I have trouble letting money accumulate in a certain area. As you do these exercises, identify where these phrases came from in your life and how the people in your life came to believe that, was it war, the Great Depression, etc. Take a few of these, especially if one goes against what you'd like to be doing, and really break them down. For me, I've rephrased my money mantra and I say my business is my money tree and it will be fruitful when I develop it. It brings more abundance but also makes me think I'll just save later because I'll just keep making money. All these quadrants reflect on one another. And savings is quiet, it's not something we see people do so it can feel mysterious whereas spending money is the most visual and tangible. Same with debt, it's less sexy and therefore not talked about the same way. If you could rewrite some of these phrases, what would you say that feels good for you? Rachel suggests ending this exercise by making a new grid, not only with the new phrases, using different words to reframe our mindset as well. Instead of debt, which is a scary word for many people, maybe call it "borrowing money." Debt can be neutral if you borrow money (use a credit card) and then pay it back. Instead of income, look at it as "making money." Savings, look at it as "keeping money" or "future spending." What other words can you use? Get in Touch with Our Guest Rachel Duncan, owner of Money Healing Club LLC Get on her email list for money love notes and check out her website: moneyhealingclub.comFollow Rachel on Instagram: @moneyhealingclub

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing how to build a profit plan designed for your business. If you haven't already, take our quiz to help determine your best starting point on your legal and tax journey. Head to notavglaw.com/quiz to get your results. When I started my business I was operating with a sub-500 credit score and I didn't have the greatest habits with money (still don't always, but I have the knowledge and know-how).I was in a cycle of churn and burn that was further exacerbated when I started making more money in the business. I'm not going to tell you that making more money doesn't help, but if you're not managing it well, what happens is you start spending more money on more expenses. That's why it's really important to stay off the "WTF happened to my money?" hamster wheel and get your profit sorted out sooner rather than later. When I was going through this journey I read Profit First and lots of other finance books to piece everything together. During this process I created my Unf*ck Your Biz course and wrote the first edition of my Unf*ck Your Biz book. Fast forward a few years and now we're running Unf*ck Your Biz as a signature 1-on-1 service and I'm seeing more than ever how much of a sticky issue cash flow is for people because no one teaches us these things. How do you pay yourself? Do I need a business bank account? Can I pay a business expense from my personal bank account? What if I'm an LLC instead of a sole proprietor? The list of questions goes on and on. I get asked a lot about Profit First and while I may be jealous of the brand recognition, I can't hate on the book too much because it has done a fabulous job of getting people to understand the importance of profit and to pay themselves first. It also gives a simple to follow system. The big thing Profit First has you do is open five bank accounts. I did this at one point in time and despite setting it up properly, it wasn't set up right with the bank on the back end and I was getting fined zero balance fees for zero-ing out the accounts as you're supposed to do with the Profit First method. I also found many people going through Profit First only end up implementing about half the system anyway. My biggest issue with Profit First is that while it helps with cash flow issues, it doesn't teach what you're required to do in terms of paying yourself or tax nuances based on tax and business structure. I understand why it doesn't from a legal perspective. As a tax attorney, I'm able to dive into cash flow in my book, which is a big piece of unf*cking your biz, but also dig into the nitty gritty that comes with it. If you're curious about how you should be doing all this, that's what I dive into in Profit Rx. The Profit Rx course dives into parts one, two and six of our Unf*ck Your Biz framework which is covered in the book. You can also work with us to implement the full framework 1-on-1, you can DIY it and use the book, if you just want the legal bits of the framework you can buy our Legally Launched course and if you want the tax, bookkeeping and money aspects you can buy our Profit Rx course. To give you a highlight of what's included in the book and what you can get in Profit Rx, let's look at an excerpt from the book in Chapter 18. I hate the word "budget." Ick. But creating a bucket system is like budgeting for non-budgeters. By separating your money into different buckets, you're creating a budget for each category without sitting down and saying, “I'll spend X on groceries this month, Y on eating out, etc.” Instead, your balance in any given account is your cap for spending on that category to make it easy. The basic system looks like: 1. Set up a business bank account - If you have a sole proprietorship, you're not legally required to have a separate bank account. If you have an LLC, or any other formal legal entity, maintaining a separate bank account is one of your corporate formalities and is required. 2. Dial in the profit 3. Automate your taxes - Inside Profit Rx I teach you how to calculate your quarterly tax percentage and therefore how much you should save for taxes. 4. Pay yourself - Once your tax savings are automatically taken out. I recommend that twice per month you transfer a set amount of funds from your business account to your personal account. This prioritizes your profit. After you transfer your profit, the balance remaining in your account is your allotment for expenses. If you want to take on a new business expense, you must have the funds in the biz account. In the book I dive more into detail like how to add in sales tax savings, how to adjust cash flow in a partnership, how to adjust cash flow with an S Corp, and more. To learn more about this whole process you can: Buy the Unf*ck Your Biz Book: notavglaw.com/book Join Profit Rx: Get all the lesson videos, guides and templates: notavglaw.com/profit-rx Take the quiz if you're curious where to start: notavglaw.com/quiz The main takeaways I want you to have from today's podcast is to separate your business and personal finances, start saving for taxes and start focusing on profitability and start paying yourself.

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing the lessons I've learned since re-opening my law firm last year. Head to notavglaw.com/quiz to find out which business bestie you are. The quiz will tell you what direction you need to go and what you need to be doing in your business when it comes to the tax and legal stuff. Last year I relaunched my law firm and rebranded it "Not Your Average Law Firm" in February 2023. After I did some soul searching and decided what direction I wanted to take the business, we launched the firm with an open house and kicked off the firm with our monthly legal subscription and had about 10 clients join in our first couple months. We then started doing tax return services and trademarks. In just the last year with our legal members, we had one client who we helped navigate the $50,000 copyright lawsuit they were served. We had a client who purchased a business ten years ago and they got hit with a copyright claim for a photo on the website from before they bought the company, we've also filed about a dozen trademarks for our clients and the first are on their way to being officially approved soon after going through the process. We've drafted dozens and dozens of contracts and terms of services for clients and sent emails on their behalf to their own clients who weren't paying on time. In December, we launched Unf*ck Your Biz as a done-for-you service and onboarded 19 clients. One big thing we learned from the legal subscription is a lot of folks get themselves into trouble because they don't take time to set themselves up properly. For example, I spoke with someone getting refund requests from two multi-thousand dollar projects but we had a hard time helping them because they had weak contracts. Same with the clients that come to us looking to file a trademark before they have an LLC. There's an order that things need to be done in order to avoid patchworking things in an unideal order that isn't systematic.. From our perspective, there is a step by step process we recommend going through to avoid these scenarios. Here's what I've learned: 1. It's hard to launch an offer without great systems, but it's really hard to invent great systems before you launch an offer. We've set up work flows and within a week of launching we're changing them because now we're getting a better understanding of what our client needs and what works better. For this launch we did 1-on-1 calls with each Unf*ck Your Biz client to see what they needed and then we took them through a custom roadmap. My lesson was that beta programs are great, but you need to do them with fewer people depending on the capacity of your business. 2. I decided we are going to raise the price after our first beta launch so a) I want to get more people and b) I wanted to give people an opportunity to join the cohort at that initial price point. This is where I learn a lot of my business decisions are clouded by the conversations in the online course space about beta programs, founding members and scarcity. But, when you have to deliver on a service, maybe not the best option. If I could do this over again I would do a quiet launch for about five clients as an initial beta to develop systems and then I would do a big beta launch. Clients have found it to be valuable, but we want a more organized system in place that's clearer to those in the cohort. Next time, we'll do it the opposite and do a five client beta program in March to test out our 58 step system to really test the process we've created. We still have three spots left for the March cohort. One of them can be yours. Send me a DM on Instagram @notavglaw and we can chat about if it's a good fit for you. This round will still be at the $4,000 price point from last year, and this will be the last time it is offered at this rate. For everyone who signs up for Unf*ck Your Biz, we: - Set up your bookkeeping and complete up to one-year of bookkeeping catch-up. - Provide tax strategy plans - Do ne past tax return if you're behind on your taxes- A full suite of contracts (at least seven to eight covering your routine business stuff)- File one trademark for you- Do a legal compliance audit- Set up a business formation (LLC, S Corp, etc.) - Create a custom cash flow strategy After we go through Unf*ck Your Biz (UYB), we help everyone maintain their systems for those who choose to continue working with us through one of our monthly services. For 2024 this looks like a two tier system. In our first tier, we track all your income and expenses for $150/month and do monthly Q&As where you can bring your tax and legal questions. In our higher tier, the Monthly Everything tier, we offer full bookkeeping in Quickbooks, we do the reconciliation, and this also prepays for your tax return next year. We also include tax strategy, twice annual tax consultations, all of the monthly legal services mentioned earlier in the episode AND up to one trademark a year for just $500/month. If this sounds interesting to you or are curious if this is best place for you to get started, be sure to take our quiz notavglaw.com/quiz

On today's episode of the podcast I'm re-airing a popular episode highlighting some of the most overlooked tax deductions that entrepreneurs are missing. Don't forget, our Tax Season Workshop is back and it kicks off Tuesday, February 20th. During the workshop we will get you ready to file your taxes by wrapping up your 2023 bookkeeping, making sure the proper documents are collected and organized and getting prepped with video lessons from me and live Q&A sessions. At the end of the workshop you're ready to file on your own, hand your neatly buttoned-up package off to your tax preparer, or have us file. If you are looking for us to file, we are only filing this year for our students, members or anyone who goes through the workshop. Sign up at www.notavglaw.com/taxworkshop! Most overlooked tax deductions: Commissions and fees - This is the title of a category on a Schedule C. When I mentioned commissions and fees I want to talk primarily about processing fees. Let's say I charge you $1,000. There is then, let's say, a 3% processing fee that comes off the top from your payment processor. $970 enters your bank account. What a lot of people will do is report $970 in income but that is not correct, we got $1,000 in income. You want to make sure you're taking your processing fees as a deduction, and they should be detailed in your bookkeeping. Education - Deductible if you can show the education maintains or improves skills required for your existing business or are required for you to maintain your current status. Graduate level courses are typically not deductible, this is more for things like required continuing education. For example, I have to do 25 hours of continuing education for my law license every three years. If I buy a busines-related book I include that as well. Same for in-person conferences you're travelling to. Car and truck expenses - You may take a deduction for business uses of your vehicle. You have a choice of taking actual expenses or the standard mileage rate. You multiple business miles driven by the applicable rate. One requirement is you use the standard rate if you used it the first year you had the vehicle in business. You may take parking and toll fees in addition to the standard rate. Commuting miles are not tax deductible. Home office - The rules are strict. You may only deduct if you are in business, you use the home office exclusively for business unless you store inventory or run a daycare, and you use your home office for business on a regular basis (so no home office that doubles as a gym) plus one of the following additional requirements: your office is a principle place of business, you regularly use the office for work activities and have no other fixed location where you perform administrative activities, unique clients and customers, a separate structure on your property you use as an office, you store inventory/products in the space, or you run a daycare center. If you meet the criteria you can deduct direct and indirect expenses. A direct expense would be something like a desk chair. An indirect expense would be something like rent, utilities, HOA fees, even a portion of your house cleaning. You cannot deduct mortgage but can take a depreciation deduction. Much like the car/truck expenses, there are specific rates you can take that I highlight in the podcast episode. Travel - Deductible business travel is overnight travel away from your tax home. You can deduct travel, expenses incurred while there, internet fees, 50% of meals and 100% of lodging incurred while travelling. If you're travelling within the US you can deduct 100% of travel costs if 50% or more of the travel is for business.

On today's episode of the podcast I'm diving into my January 2024 profit report. If you're new to the podcast, I do these profit reports for a few reasons. 1) It's good accountability for me to keep up with my bookkeeping every month. 2) It helps me do my projections for the next month. 3) It provides a good example of what is possible when you regularly do your bookkeeping, do projections and really look at the numbers. 4) It's one of my core beliefs that money is more taboo of a topic than it should be and if we talked about it more we'd have more realistic expectations of what it costs to run a business. Our Tax Season Workshop is back. During the workshop we will get you ready to file your taxes by wrapping up your 2023 bookkeeping, making sure the proper documents are collected and organized and getting prepped with video lessons from me and live Q&A sessions. At the end of the workshop you're ready to file on your own, hand your neatly buttoned-up package off to your tax preparer, or have us file. If you are looking for us to file, we are only filing this year for our students, members or anyone who goes through the workshop. Sign up at www.notavglaw.com/taxworkshop Diving into 2024, let's take a look at the goals we have for the year. We set good, better, best goals of $300k, $400k and $500k for the year. It's a big range but we've seen big jumps in the past. We're aiming for 60% profit margin not including my owner salary. Other goals are to book four stage speaking gigs in 2025, have consistent $25,000 revenue months, and end the year with monthly recurring revenue at at least $15,000. There wasn't a lot happening in January as we were heads down working with the 19 Unf*ck Your Biz clients we signed in December. We also resurrected Legally Launched from what it was a few years ago and brought it back as a $200 program that launched in January. If you purchased the $10 offer, this is different that that, we just really liked the name stole the name to use for this new offer. We didn't promote the launch much due to some family health issues and time I'll be taking off so I'll be doing 1:1 calls with the two people who joined instead of a group cohort as planned. That program is now evergreen that you buy at any time. We also launched our Contract Bot which will auto-generate your contracts and is an upsell to the Contract Club which you can get at notavglaw.com/club. Let's review our projected vs. actual revenue amounts. Projections vs Actuals 1. UYB - 14,000 → $14,4002. Club - 1,000 → $1,1403. Legally Launched - 3,000 → $500 (off-the mark but that's okay because didn't promote it as planned)4. Monthly - 5,700 → $8,500 (includes monthly legal clients, monthly bookkeeping clients and monthly membership clients because we're restructuring our monthly offers for a clearer marketing message)5. Tax - 5,000 → 0 (mostly because the clients we signed for this will role into February when I sent contracts and they're ready)6. TM - 1,250 → 0 (Had someone sign up but that revenue won't hit the bank until February) 7. Other - 1,000 → $1,1788. Low Ticket - 0 → $190 ($10 offers and my book, I projected $0 because honestly I forgot to make a projection)Total - 31,000 - $26,000 Expenses Team: $5,200 (about $1,500 more than I typically average which is because we're working with all our Unf*ck Your Biz Clients. This will be about double in February because our bookkeeping team is logging like 5x as many hours because we are doing full 2023 bookkeeping clean-ups for all our UYB clients and our attorney is logging a lot more hours working on contracts for clients). Non-team contractors: $1,200 (folks I hire for one-off projects)My wages: $5,600Affiliates: $500Worker's Comp Insurance: $45Marketing: $905 (more than normal, included annual Squarespace renewal)Client fees: $250 (the fee way pay to file a trademark on behalf of the client)Other: $1,500 (I bought a new rug for my office and a few other things) Definitely did not hit 60% profit this month because our expenses were more than 50% Profit Revenue: $26,000Expenses: ~$16,000 (pretty high, will be higher next month)Owner Profit (profit before Braden's salary): ~$10,000Braden's Salary: $5,600 (about half goes to taxes)Total business profit: ~$4,000 February Projections1. Unf*ck Your Biz - 14,0002. Club - 1,0003. Legally Launched - 1,0004. Monthly services - 8,7005. Tax - 15,000 (this number will make or break the revenue for the month)6. TM - 2,5007. Other - 1,000Total - 47,700 (That's wild to type and say. It'd be a record month for sure. Even if we only hit $35,000.) What's coming up in February: - The Tax Challenge- Profit Rx onboarding- Wrapping up UYB client work and rolling these students into Profit Rx- Starting new UYB cohort in March (I won't be promoting this, we'll hopefully be filling all our spots from the waitlist so if you're interested, head to notavglaw.com/uyb to get on the list. The price will be increasing and we will be taking a smaller cohort.) Enjoy the episode? Give us a review on your podcast platform and tag us on Instagram @notavglaw

On today's episode of the podcast I am going through the roadmap you need to get through tax season. This is the perfect episode for you if you're worried you're missing something when tax time comes around or if taxes don't come second nature to you at this stage of business. The Tax Season Workshop is back. During the workshop we will get you ready to file your taxes by wrapping up your 2023 bookkeeping, making sure the proper documents are collected and organized and getting prepped with video lessons from me and live Q&A sessions. At the end of the workshop you're ready to file on your own or hand your neatly buttoned-up package off to your tax preparer. Sign up at www.notavglaw.com/taxworkshop Taking a look at the Tax Season Roadmap, there are six steps to getting ready to file and implement systems after filing. 1. Wrap up your 2023 bookkeeping - The IRS wants to know how much money you made and you need to know how much money you spent because these deductions are how you save money. We need these deductions summed up by category for when you file. For tax time, you need an annual total, but ideally you're keeping up with these monthly to understand where our money's going and where we may need to cut expenses. Separate your income and expenses by category. 2. Send out 1099s - These were due January 31st. If you haven't already sent them, there is a penalty of $50 per late 1099 if it's less than 30 days late, after which it does go up. Better late than not at all. If you paid folks by credit card you don't usually need to send a 1099. Get answers to your 1099 questions at notavglaw.com/1099s 3. Collect all your documents - As documents come in the mail, collect them in an envelope or drawer to prep for tax time. Be sure to keep them for 10+ years after filing in the event you are audited. Also be sure to keep receipts and any other physical documents that go along with your bookkeeping. For your records, you'll also need a digital folder of email receipts/documents to go with bookkeeping and information on your home office space - the square footage of your home office, your home square footage to calculate your deduction, and any household expenses such as rent, utilities, and general upkeep like housekeeping or gardening. This is because if you rented an office space your rent for the space would go to this upkeep so the same goes for these services for your home office since they're like 10% business expense, 90% personal expense. You also want a note of business miles driven. Ideally you'll make a note of your odometer every January 1st for what you start and end the year with and then a record of how many of those are miles driven for business purposes. 4. File your tax return - This can be done on your own or you can hire us to help (we'll be offering tax filing services you can join after the tax season workshop). 5. Review your return and create a tax strategy - Specifically you want to look at the percentage of tax paid compared to the money your household brought in. We use this number in order to tell people how much we should be saving for quarterly taxes. You can also use this to determine areas of opportunity such as things you missed out on and things you can take advantage of this year and next year. We also want to do an S Corp analysis to see if you should file for a late election this year (ideally you want to file in January) or would 2025 be the year for you. This is a little hard to do on your own if you're not super savvy with reading your tax documents. We do this 1:1 for our clients and if you're in our membership we'll do a group call to help our members with this part. 6. Implement strategy and continue bookkeeping - Now that everything is set up you will ideally be keeping up with this on a monthly basis. To get into a good spot for tax season this year and moving forward, join the Tax Season Workshop at www.notavglaw.com/taxworkshop

On today's episode of the podcast, I'm sharing my Small Business Blueprint. I share this topic annually as a reminder for those of you who are new to the podcast or who need a reminder of the steps that still need to be completed. These are the steps you'll need to take if and when you plan to legally solidify your sole proprietorship, form an LLC and/or form an S corporation. You can get help with all of this inside our program Legally Launched. The doors are officially open and if you join by end of day Friday, January 26th, then you can get access to a live cohort of the program where we'll be doing three group Q&As on Tuesdays at 9am PST/12pm EST. Each one will be structured with the course, which is only about 20 minutes of videos each week. The biggest benefit to Legally Launched is you're going to learn what actually needs to happen with your LLC and S corp and how to maintain them moving forward so they don't dissolve. Join at notavglaw.com/legallylaunched While we use my home state of California as an example, these blueprint applies to all states. 1. Get registered agent 2. Choose biz name and check availability 3. Determine entity and file articles 4. Obtain employee identification number (EIN) 5. File for seller's permit 6. Get fictitious business name license 7. Obtain business license or business tax certificate 8. Draft operating agreement 9. Draft meeting minutes 10. File S corp election 11. File statement of information 12. Pay annual franchise tax 13. Open back accounts 14. Set up payroll Steps 1 - 10 are what cover your entity, 11-14 are post-formation requirements. Before we dive deeper into the steps, I need to remind you to stop paying for bull shit. Online filing systems are like car mechanics, if you don't know what you need, how do you know if you really need everything they say you do? The blueprint is going to tell you everything you need, and will vary based on your business entity choice. If you plan to stay a sole prop I recommend looking at steps 4 - 7 and 13. Do the same if you have a general partnership, but add a partnership agreement. LLC formation, go through the full blueprint but only include steps 10 and 14 if you plan to elect S corp status on your LLC. You can always form an LLC and elect S corp status on a future year. Even as a sole prop it's good to get your EIN and other business licenses now. If you do an LLC later you can update that then. Let's review the steps in detail. 1. Get a registered agent - This is the person who will receive service of process if you are ever sued. Every LLC and Corporation must have one located in the state where the LLC is formed. You can be your own registered agent with your home or office address or you can hire a corporate registered agent which usually happens under two circumstances - they don't feel comfortable receiving service of process because your home address or office address is publicized or your office is outside the state where you formed. 2. Choose biz name and check availability - LLC filings are rarely denied but one common reason for denial is using an already taken name. Google "(your state) LLC search" to avoid this before filing. The rules that constitute a similar name vary by state. Almost every state allows online LLC filing through a .gov address. Don't fall for the trap of filing through a third party and paying additional fees. 3. Determine entity and file articles - Entity means the legal ways to form your business. The options are sole proprietorships, general partnerships, limited liability companies, S corporations, and C corporations. The default entities are a sole proprietorship and general partnership. The most common options for small businesses are LLCs and S corps. Remember that an S corp is not a type of entity, it's a tax status therefore for most soloprenuers an LLC would be the best starting point. If you plan to make more than $60k-ish a year, check out the S corp Savings Calculator to determine if you should file an S corp . If you want S corp status within the first year, you must file for S status within two months and 15 days from the date of forming your business. For existing entities, you can change your status by filing before March 15th of the year you want S status to become. 4. Obtain employee identification number (EIN) - Essentially this is a social security number for your business. You are required to have one if you have employees or if your business is a partnership or a corporation. Most banks require an EIN to open a business bank account. You want the EIN in the LLC's name so you want to file the LLC first. You can get your EIN totally free through the IRS website during IRS business hours, do not file through any third parties. If you already have an EIN, it's okay to file for a new EIN when moving from a sole prop to an LLC but the IRS would prefer you to update your existing EIN instead which is cleaner and helps maintain your tax history under one account, it just takes longer. The most common mistake is things getting wonky if you have multiple EINs and mistakenly use the wrong one. 5. File for seller's permit - Sellers permits are required when you have sales subject to sales tax. Some states have different names for sellers permits. If you don't need this, don't get it because once you have one, the state will be looking for sales tax returns from you, therefore hold off on getting one until you start collecting sales tax. 6. Get fictitious business name license - After you get your EIN it's time to file your FBL. This is to establish your DBA (doing business as) and this is typically filed through your county. If you need multiple DBAs, many counties allow you to file several on one form and pay for each, add any and all you want and make sure to put them all on your business license. You only get one FBL per business. FBLs also have renewal requirements and may renew at a different timeline than your LLC. 7. Obtain business license or business tax certificate - Business licenses are sometimes called tax certificates. These are required by most cities, check your city requirement. These are typically required anytime you operate a business in that city and the definition of operate may vary city to city and is generally based on physical location which would be where your office or storefront is. Some cities have requirements for businesses that operate out of their home. Many business to business exceptions for hiring require businesses to have a business license, you should always ask for a copy when hiring someone using one of the exceptions (more on this in episode 278). 8. Draft operating agreement - If you have two or more individuals coming together to form a partnership you need a partnership agreement. A general partnership doesn't have a separate existence in the eyes of the law so the partners will be held jointly and severally liable for any debts or liabilities of the business. State default rules apply in absence of a partnership agreement. If you don't have an agreement a court can make and infer particular rules. The main reason to form an LLC is for liability protection. To maintain your liability protection, you must meet particular requirements that prove you're keeping yourself separate from your business. One way to do that is through an operating agreement. You can get operating agreements in the Contract Club (notavglaw.com/club). 9. Draft meeting minutes - The operating agreement and meeting minutes are internal documents, meaning they don't get filed with the city, county, state, or IRS.Recording meeting minutes is one of those formalities to maintain your magical liability bubble. They don't have to be complicated; you don't need to record minutes for every minor decision, like offering a promotion, for example. Instead, record major business changes in meeting minutes like salary raises, opening and closing bank accounts, buying physical property, etc. 10. File S corp election - If you're filing your LLC later in the year, note that you're only getting the tax benefits for those months. If your S election is not effective on the 1st of the year, you file what's called a part-year tax return. For the one part of the year you don't have S corp status you file taxes as a pass-through. For the other part, you file as an S corp. Because this makes things more complicated, you may want to file for S Corp status at the beginning of the following year. 11. File statement of information12. Pay annual franchise tax13. Open back accounts 14. Set up payroll

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing what's considered a "reasonable salary" when filing for a S Corp. If you missed last week's episode, go back and listen to part one of this two-part S Corp series. In episode 319 we talked about how S Corps save you money, and the trick is you have to pay yourself a salary. The lower the salary is that you pay yourself, the more you save in taxes, but that salary has to be reasonable. So what is considered "reasonable" for tax purposes? Coming soon we're launching a small cohort of my program Legally Launched to help you form an LLC or an S Corp or even if you want to make sure your sole proprietorship is legally legit, this program is for you. You'll keep your access to the program, so it can grow with your business and you can revisit it when you're ready to become an LLC or an S Corp. We also have a S Corp Savings Calculator, available at notavglaw.com/scorpcalculator for $10. This will help you determine how much an S Corp can save you in taxes. The calculator is included in Legally Launched so if you know you're going to join the program you don't need to get it but if you're not sure if the program is for you yet, the calculator is a great stepping stone. In my book, Unf*ck Your Biz, I have a chapter on S Corps, including a section on determining reasonable salary. To do so, you can look at the market rate of pay for someone offering your services in your geographic area with your level of expertise. Alternatively, consider how much you would pay someone to do what you do. What would be a reasonable amount of pay to find someone qualified to fill your role? The importance of this is that S Corps are subject to fraud abuse so the IRS may look at this through a critical lens. The way we can start to determine this is with a simple Google search to give us a good ballpark. This is where it can get tricky. Often this can skew to the high side, and that's because we don't spend all our time necessarily doing that one thing. That's where the alternative Many Hats approach, a more popular salary calculation method for entrepreneurs. As a solopreneur you wear all the hats. You may start the day in your administrative work hat, then you put on your social media manager hat before another hat change into your core role. Consider the Many Hats approach a pie chart where each slice is sized by the time spent wearing each hat. This approach allows us to consider time spent on these tasks. We then calculate our salary by taking that percentage of the reasonable salary for reach job, for example 10% of your time on social media is 10% of the social media manager reasonable salary, etc. I learned this the hard way. I looked up the (high) salary of a San Diego tax attorney. But only about 5% of my time is spent doing tax attorney work. The rest of my time is spent podcasting, speaking, doing social media, etc. When you do the Many Hats approach it can help pull your salary down which will help save you taxes. It just needs to be reasonable. For example, if you have $100,000 in revenue and $50,000 in expenses you'll have $50k in profit. Let's say you wear four hats - web design (their primary), admin, social media and managing their team. If they spend 40% of their time doing web design with a reasonable salary of $70k, their percentage is $28k, social media, we'll say 20% of $50,000 for $10,000, for admin work we've got 20% of $60k at $12k, and management at 20% of $70k is $14k for a total salary of $64,000 which is $6k less than the $70k reasonable salary. This would save $918 in taxes. This is not fool-proof, the IRS will be doing the same types of calculations on their end if you were to get audited. The most important thing to do is document everything when you calculate. Hyperlink screenshots of the reasonable salary numbers you find, don't just include the source link as average salaries change and if you get audited in a few years it may be higher than it was when you calculated so be sure to screenshot and date those. Note the tasks you do under each hat. Worst case scenario if you miscalculate your reasonable salary, your penalty is going to be owing the difference in taxes on that salary difference plus some interest and penalties they decide to charge those to you. Not the end of the world unless you drastically underpay your salary. If you're not about doing this math, you can use RCReports. You pay them a few hundred dollars and they ask you some questions about what you do in your business that they run through their algorithm to tell you what your reasonable salary would be and they give you a report you can give to the IRS if you're audited. I don't think this is necessary for everyone, I think it's more for businesses making six or seven figures in profit and wanting to pay themselves like $100k.