How Was I Supposed To Know That?

Most business owners put their real estate tax bill on autopay and never look at it again. Carlo Betts, founder of Rittenhouse Appraisals and Reduxx Group, says that habit is costing companies real money, and it is about to get worse.

On this episode of How Was I Supposed To Know That?, small business attorney Bernard A. Williams, Esq. welcomes Carlo Betts back to the show to talk about real estate taxes and real estate as a growth strategy. Carlo explains what an overassessment is, how a property tax appeal actually works (and what happens when a municipality refuses to budge), and why cuts in government funding are pushing more businesses into overassessed territory.

The conversation then turns to strategy: how owners use mixed-use buildings and small strip centers to grow from one location to many, why doctors are often risky real estate investors, the one lease clause every small business tenant should ask for, and where the Philadelphia real estate market is headed.

If you own or lease the property your business runs out of, this episode is a reason to pull out your last assessment and take a closer look.

Chapters:
0:00 Welcome Back, Carlo Betts
1:18 What Reduxx Group Does
3:16 Launching a Second Company While Running the First
5:12 What Is a Property Tax Overassessment?
6:45 How the Real Estate Tax Appeal Process Works
7:18 When a Tax Appeal Goes to Litigation
9:06 Why More Businesses Are Being Overassessed
11:43 Should Every Property Owner Review Their Assessment?
12:18 When You Are Underassessed: Stay Quiet
14:34 Real Estate Tax Mistakes Business Owners Make
15:46 Using Real Estate as a Business Growth Strategy
18:20 First Steps: Define Your Target Market
21:12 When the Real Estate Strategy Goes Wrong
22:52 Why Doctors Make Risky Real Estate Investors
23:49 The Philadelphia Real Estate Market Outlook
26:19 Should Philadelphia Host the Olympics?
29:19 The Future of Homeownership
32:40 Advice for Tenants: Ask for a Right of First Refusal
33:56 What's Next for Reduxx Group

Talk to Company Counsel: https://www.companycounsel.law/contact-us

How Was I Supposed To Know That? is hosted by Bernard A. Williams, Esq. of Company Counsel, fractional general counsel for small businesses in growth mode. Have a legal question you wish someone had warned you about? Send it our way.

#RealEstateTaxes #PropertyTaxAppeal #SmallBusinessLaw #CommercialRealEstate #FractionalGeneralCounsel

We break down why “operational friction” quietly drains time, money, and leadership focus, even in companies that look successful on paper. We also lay out how clean processes, clear decision rights, and trustworthy data can raise business value and reduce risk before and after an M&A deal.

• Operational friction defined as anything that makes execution harder 
• Owner dependency as a growth killer and a valuation risk 
• Undocumented processes and inconsistent handoffs as hidden costs 
• Single points of failure in small teams and big organizations 
• Running the business like it must operate without the owner 
• Core workflows, accountability, and decision rights that buyers expect 
• Meaningful KPIs and reliable systems and data for due diligence 
• Post-close integration ownership, culture, and operating rhythm 
• Merger versus acquisition differences in roles, tech, and culture 
• A practical AI approach: fix one painful process first 
• The “hidden friction tax” exercise to find time and revenue leaks 
• Intake as a universal process worth improving

They can reach me either by my website, which is thefrictionfixer.com. My email address is [email protected]. You can also find me on LinkedIn as Trisha Warren, MBA.

We sit down with technology transactions attorney Pooja Teckchandani to get practical about AI risk for entrepreneurs who are moving fast and shipping products. We break down what “AI” actually means, where liability can hide in vendor terms, and how to ask better questions before a launch turns into a fire drill.
• What a technology transactions lawyer does day to day inside a large company
• Career lessons from being the first and only in house lawyer at a fast growing brand
• The difference between automation, generative AI, and agentic AI
• Where AI shows up in real products and back office operations
• Why LLM providers can function like subcontractors and what that changes
• Data retention, deletion, and security posture questions to ask vendors
• How “improvement” language can become a training loophole
• Why AI compliance is often state by state and how to track legal updates
• Risk decisions when building agents and who owns output responsibility
You can go on to my website, which is tech-law.com, T E C K L A W.com or you can find me on LinkedIn.

Your company shouldn’t depend on a single human being to survive a surprise. I sit down with Ivy Slater, CEO of SlaterSuccess.com and author of Best of the Best, to talk about what happens when business gets messy fast: rejected sales calls, thin margins, partnership betrayal, and the moment you realize you need real infrastructure, not just hustle.

Ivy shares how she broke into New York City’s printing industry when it was openly a boys’ club, then learned profitability the hard way by digging into overhead and asking “show me the numbers.” We also walk through the day she opened the office door and found half the place emptied out, and why her first moves were practical: protect the checkbooks, call the attorney, call the accountant, call the bank. That experience shapes how she now coaches leaders through partnerships, mergers, separations, and the communication breakdowns that signal trouble.

Then we get into the core idea: succession planning is really legacy planning. Ivy explains the “life happens” moments that can hit any founder, why a strong growth strategy doubles as business continuity planning, and how her 365-day vacation thought experiment exposes whether you’re delegating, training your team, and spreading key knowledge across the organization. You’ll leave with a simple planning method that starts with a five-year vision and turns it into 90-day goals, weekly steps, and consistent progress.

If you care about small business growth strategy, leadership development, and building a sustainable company, subscribe, share this with a founder friend, and leave a review so more owners can find it.

Tina Hamilton, CEO and founder of myHR Partner, joins Bernard Williams to unpack HR outsourcing, the new hiring risks created by AI (including an all-AI reference-check scam), why employment disputes tend to be the most expensive litigation a company faces, and when a workplace issue needs an attorney. Plus Tina's 24-year founder journey: her first staffing franchise, surviving the 2007 crash by pivoting to HR, and why she runs the company debt-free.

Learn more about Tina and myHR Partner at myhrpartner.com.

How Was I Supposed To Know That? is a podcast for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs — hosted by Bernard Williams of Company Counsel.

On this episode of How Was I Supposed To Know That?, host Bernard A. Williams talks with Cass Bailey, CEO and founder of Slice Communications, a Philadelphia communications agency that helps high-risk and complex organizations communicate through change, crisis, and opportunity.

Cass Bailey shares her accidental path into PR and crisis communications, why she founded Slice in 2008 to bring social media and PR together, and how relentless networking carried the company through the recession. She and Bernard get real about selling the business in 2012, the acquisition that fell apart, and buying her own company back in just 23 days.

From there the conversation turns to Slice's growth-by-acquisition strategy: the red-flag/green-flag playbook, why buyer due diligence matters as much as seller due diligence, and why 70-80% of M&A communications should be aimed at internal audiences. If you are thinking about buying, selling, or scaling a company, this one is full of hard-won lessons.

In this episode:

• What Slice Communications does and the crisis calls that come in at 2 a.m.
• Founding a PR + social media agency in 2008
• The three reasons M&A deals fall apart
• Why internal communications drive M&A success
• Buyer due diligence: the questions sellers forget to ask
• Buying the company back in 23 days
• Cass Bailey's acquisition and integration playbook
• What is next for Slice, including AI and executive communications

Connect with Cass Bailey on LinkedIn (Cass Bailey, Slice Communications).

Presented by Company Counsel — fractional general counsel and business law for growing companies.

Small business owners obsess over revenue — but Alex Hayes, President of Boost Pricing, says that's exactly the trap. In this episode, Alex joins Bernard A. Williams, Esq of Company Counsel LLC to explain why "revenue is a vanity metric," and why profit margin is the number that actually keeps a business alive.

Drawing on 15+ years in sales leadership, Alex unpacks the difference between skill and confidence, why so many owners discount when they don't have to, and how to think about price increases without the fear of losing clients. She shares Boost Pricing's profitability calculator, the "$300-to-$200" discount problem, and why giving work away for free is often better than cutting your rate.

For any professional-services owner — law, marketing, consulting — this is a practical, mindset-shifting conversation about charging what you're worth.

Guest: Alex Hayes, President, Boost Pricing — [email protected]. Ask about the book Fearless Pricing.

Most founders think selling a company is about agreeing on a price. Then the documents show up, and suddenly the deal feels like a maze of acronyms, redlines, and “standard” clauses that don’t feel standard at all. We sit down with attorney Jon Thielen, partner at Company Council, to translate the legal side of mergers and acquisitions into clear, practical steps you can actually use as a buyer or seller.

We walk through the M&A process from the first real document, the letter of intent (LOI), through due diligence and into the purchase agreement that ultimately governs the transaction. You’ll hear what typically belongs in an LOI, how exclusivity periods and confidentiality can become binding early, and what “redlining” really means when lawyers start negotiating language. We also talk about how to protect sensitive financial data during a small business sale, including limiting access and using secure document portals.

Then we get specific about the contracts that decide who owns what and who pays when something goes wrong: asset purchase agreement versus stock purchase agreement, representations and warranties, disclosure schedules, assignment and assumption agreements for key contracts and leases, purchase price allocation for tax purposes, and indemnification provisions that allocate post-closing risk. We also cover common add-on documents like promissory notes for seller financing and employment agreements when the seller stays on during a transition period.

If you’re preparing for a business acquisition, planning an exit, or just trying to understand M&A contracts without the legal fog, this conversation will save you time and stress. Subscribe, share this with a founder who’s heading toward a deal, and leave a review with the one contract question you want us to tackle next.

A business can look wildly successful on the outside and still be “not ready” the moment you try to sell. We sit down to unpack the uncomfortable gap between what owners think buyers will pay for and what the market actually rewards, especially when risk shows up during due diligence. If you care about getting the best outcome for your money, your people, and your legacy, this conversation is for you.

We get specific about deal structure in mergers and acquisitions, including why earnouts are so common, how buyers use them to protect against uncertainty, and why they can become a mess once the seller gives up control. We also talk through a popular private equity approach, the equity rollover, and how staying invested can create alignment and a real “second bite at the apple” when the next exit happens. Along the way, we zoom out from pure valuation and focus on the total package that determines what you actually take home.

Then we go to the root issue that quietly drives price cuts and tougher terms: owner dependency. If your top customers only trust you, or your team can’t operate without you, buyers see risk and will structure the deal accordingly. We share practical ways to reduce that risk by building leadership depth, documenting processes, cleaning up financial reporting, addressing customer concentration, and thinking like a buyer who asks, “How do you double this business in three years?” We also tackle the emotional side, including fear near closing and how a founder’s identity can derail a great deal at the last minute.

If you’re thinking about selling a company or planning an exit strategy, subscribe for more conversations on M&A readiness, deal terms, and building a business that can thrive without you. If this helps, share it with a founder friend and leave a review. What part of selling a business feels most intimidating right now?