Unf*ck Your Biz With Braden

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: $24,000
Expenses: $13,500
Profit: $10,200
Owner'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 followers
Facebook group: 70 new members
TikTok: 9 new followers
Threads 70 new followers
Website 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 Living
Anna - Eyes Rock
Cindy - CM Promotions
Michelle - 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. This complaint is from the plaintiff's perspective, we don't have any legal documentation from the defendant. 

Kira and I go through the complaint and discuss the hypotheticals of if this happened to small business owners, how to prevent them, and how to handle the situation. 

Plaintiff Dearica Hamby, WNBA player and Olmpyian, is suing the Las Vegas Aces, WNBA champions for the last two years, as well as the WNBA itself.

In paragraphs 25 -28 the legal document highlights that the WNBA season runs from May through August, post season begins in August. On or about June 28, 2022 in the midst of the season the plaintiff signed a two-year contract to continue playing basketball with defendant, the Las Vegas Aces for the 2023 and 2024 playing seasons. 

Allegedly, in an effort to deter Hamby from entering the free agent market, the Las Vegas Aces offered, in connection with the contract extension, certain benefits and inducements outside of the contract including a donation to her daughter's school, essentially paying her daughter's tuition. 

Kira shares that the reason they would do this is not just the tax benefit to the company, but because sports teams are held to a salary cap of how much you can pay players and for the whole team so they were making every effort to keep Hamby.  They do this to avoid all the best players going to one team that can pay more than other teams. 

On or about July 18, 2022 the plaintiff discovered that she was pregnant with her second child and she informed the head coach on or about August 6, 2022. Two days later her pregnancy was confirmed by a doctor and she notified the team's general manager. September 18, the team wins their first WNBA championship in franchise history. Hamby was a starter during this game and 32 of 34 games during the season. 

Different companies require different pregnancy notification times depending on the risk you can be liable for putting people's bodies in danger. As a general rule, an HR department would need to know if anyone was divulging information that put them in what's called a protective class so they can be more cognizant that things are being done and documented correctly to not only protect the company, but also the person who needs protection. Pregnancy does fall under this. It is the worker's responsibility to have the information from their doctor based on their own circumstance, but this isn't just for pregnancy, and then the company should meet them half way to provide accommodations that are being requested based on what is needed per doctor's orders. 

In September, during the team's victory parade, Hamby announced publicly that she was pregnant. She alleges that after the announcement there were noticeable changes in the way she was treated by Las Vegas Aces staff. For example when the school tuition was due she inquired with the team and they said they were working on it. The manager told Hamby that she must vacate team-provided housing, no reason was given. In November 2022 she followed up on the tuition and it was still being figured out. In January 2023 during a call with the head coach, Hamby was asked if she has planned her pregnancy. When Hamby responded that she had not, the coach said that she was not taking proper precautions not to get pregnant. If this allegation is true, Kira shares that this is problematic because it is implying that being pregnant is a negative trait which lays the groundwork for discrimination. During this call, the coach allegedly also questioned Hamby's dedication to the team. Hamby assured her commitment to the team and said she would be ready to play for April 2023 pre-season. 

Hamby is an example of contract employment, something Kira says most small business owners are steered away from doing (at-at will employment is typically recommended)

Get in Touch with Our Guest
Kira La Forgia, Founder of Paradigm
Follow Kira on Instagram @theparadigmm
Listen 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: $76
Marketing: $1,100 (about 50% Meta ads, 50% web domains)
Other: $2,000
Total: ~$11,000

Profit

Revenue: $21,000
Expenses: $11,000
Owner 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