[00:00:00.570] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Taxes are a necessary part of business. So why does it feel so hard every year to file your taxes if taxes make you want to vomit, if you filed an extension on your taxes, again, you're going to really enjoy this episode. I'm welcoming special guest Braden Drake who wants you to unfuck your taxes. You're here to grow a business, but not just any kind of business. You want to grow a profitable business with purpose. A business where you wake up every single day driven to serve your customers and make a difference in your own life. I'm Candice Coppola, published author, business coach, and your guide to building a profitable business with purpose. Join me here every single week as we explore how to build and grow your business with purpose. Get ready to dig in and have meaningful conversations about the strategies and techniques that will help you build your dream business. This is the power in purpose.

[00:01:13.510] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Hey there, friend. Welcome back to the Power in Purpose podcast. It's me, your host, Candice, and as I mentioned, we have a very special episode today. I'm joined by attorney and licensed accountant, Braden Drake to help you figure out all the scary things around paying your taxes. When I was speaking to Braden about this episode and just what I hope we could talk about, I mentioned how it's so common in the wedding industry for business owners to not file their taxes on time and on time being in April when they're supposedly due filing extensions and then also having several years of back taxes. And he shared with me a statistic that 30% of business owners have back taxes. So if you're one of that 30%, I want you to know you're in good company. I personally had back taxes for a number of years. I know what it's like to hate paying your taxes, to be scared of numbers, to be scared of taxes, to not file them and not file them again and get yourself into a little pickle. I also know that you can get yourself out and that you can learn how to be a better business owner and to handle your taxes.

[00:02:27.620] - Candice Coppola (Host)

So I thought, you know what, this is a topic that's pervasive in the industry. Let me bring on Braden, the expert, who by the way, has a ton of programs that can help you to get your business together. We talk about them inside this episode. Absolutely shameless promotion for him because he's got some really great programs that are very affordable that will help you to grow some of the more logistical sides of your business, the foundations of your business. But anyway, I said let's bring him on and let's have this uncomfortable conversation and have him help us to unfuck our taxes. So, just a little caveat. We say the f word a lot in this episode because the f word is really part of Braden's vernacular because it's part of his business. He has a book called Unfuck Your Biz. And a lot of this vernacular makes its way into his coaching style and programs. So here's the deal. If we have little ones around and you don't want them to hear Auntie Candice and Uncle Braden talking in this way, my advice would be to put on your AirPods, or better yet, send our little friends with their AirPods into another room so that you can fully enjoy this episode.

[00:03:44.000] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Now, Braden is a California licensed attorney and tax professional and his tagline is your gay best friend here to help you get your legal, tax and financial shit legit. So fun. I love it. He works primarily with service based creative small business owners. The wedding industry is definitely an industry he serves. I would be surprised if you haven't heard of Braden. He has a podcast. It's called unfuck your biz. He has a book. It's called Unfuck Your Biz. And he has a lot of amazing programs like Bookkeeping Blueprint, the Contract Club, legally Launched, and Tax Toolkit. Don't worry, I will have all of this in the show notes so you don't miss a beat. So Braden is more than qualified to answer this question for us of how we can get our taxes in order and become a better business owner and pay our taxes on time. Wouldn't that be nice? Okay, let's get into my interview with Braden Drake. Hey Braden, welcome to the show.

[00:04:48.220] - Braden Drake (Host)

Hi, thanks for having me. How are you doing?

[00:04:50.170] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I'm doing good. I'm excited to talk to you today because taxes and tax season are one of the biggest stressors for any small business. But I feel like wedding industry pros really hate fucking taxes, myself included. Honestly, I just paid my quarterly taxes yesterday and I literally said to my husband, I was like, guess what I'm doing? And he said what? I said, It's the thing every adult hates doing. He said, oh, you're paying your taxes? I said yeah.

[00:05:16.930] - Braden Drake (Host)

I don't think anyone is super passionate about it, myself included, to be honest. But here we are. We got to do it. We got to make it happen.

[00:05:24.650] - Candice Coppola (Host)

We got to do it. It's important. Well, I'm excited for you to help us unfuck our taxes and unfuck our business today. Giving us some practical advice and just helping us work through some, I think the roadblocks that get in our way of creating a sustainable business that pays its taxes on time. And we don't have this stress point because wedding pros have enough to stress about in their business. There's so much that we're responsible for and there's so many other stressful things that I think we can both agree that we don't want taxes to be the thing that tips us over the edge.

[00:05:55.230] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, leave your stress barometer open for your clients. For sure.

[00:06:01.410] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Okay, so my first question is about stress. Taxes, stress wedding pros out. And I think at times when we get stressed by something, we just choose to ignore it. So what would you say to the person listening who ignores their taxes until the very last minute, who files extensions? And then here comes October and it's like, hi, you need to pay us. We're the IRS, we're the government. You need to file your taxes. You need to pay us. And it's so stressful to file late and to extend all the time. What would you say to that person who has that situation in their business? How can they change their mindset to view taxes as part of maybe their business growth and not necessarily a burden?

[00:06:43.320] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, well, I would say just don't. Right? Easier said than done. But this is a lecture we get on procrastination from our parents, from our teachers growing up, from everyone, right. If we do things sooner rather than later, it's always going to be less stressful. But I think a lot of the time what I've noticed with myself in adulthood is the things that I tend to put off the most are the things that I'm not good at or I'm not knowledgeable about, because it's almost like that lack of knowledge is what makes it more scary and more stressful. And you're not going to get more knowledgeable about it until you really take charge of it. So this is more than just paying your quarterly taxes. It's like doing your bookkeeping, managing your numbers, getting your documents to your accountant if you have an accountant, if not getting them to yourself, like taking all of this stuff seriously. And when you just stay on top of it on a regular basis, like, I do my bookkeeping every single week, then you're not going to get too behind and it's not going to get too unwieldy, so to speak.

[00:07:43.490] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Totally agree. I've gotten into this space. I feel this scenario because I've been there before where there were a few years went by that I didn't file my taxes, and I was so stressed out Braden I thought they were going to come for me like Teresa Judice and throw my ass in prison. I thought they were going to come and take me and throw me in prison. And I was terrified. And I had made so many poor financial decisions that snowballed into not filing my taxes or not doing things properly. And it was such stress. And this was earlier in my career, it was so much stress. And if I had just acknowledged that I didn't know what I was doing and sought out someone like you to teach me what I don't know, I probably wouldn't have been in that situation.

[00:08:26.390] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah. This was actually our first year doing tax return services as part of our business and our company. I hired a tax repairer on as an employee, and we did about 20 returns. And I would say at least half of our clients were more than a year behind on taxes. I think that's more than the average. It's probably because it's not technically my brand name, but people really know me as Unfuck Your Biz. That's my podcast name. It's my book name. It's my program name. So I think it just makes people with back tax issues more comfortable to come and talk to us. We see it every day. People get a little bit behind, then they get more behind, but you got to rip the Band Aid book a call with us. We'll be happy to help you people. But get started. We got to get started.

[00:09:13.440] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, we got to pay taxes. Unfortunately, or fortunately, if we look at it as your business is generating income for yourself, that's a blessing, not a burden. And I think you're going to walk us through some steps to make this better in our business. But since we're talking about money, I hope that maybe you could just lend a little insight into what are some habits or practices that can help someone to improve their money mindset when it comes to paying taxes or numbers, finances, bookkeeping? What would you say?

[00:09:44.400] - Braden Drake (Host)

Sure. So you want to get, like, a little bit woo woo with it?

[00:09:47.420] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, let's go.

[00:09:48.730] - Braden Drake (Host)

Okay. All right. Well, I'm not like a super woo person, but I read all the books. Right. So one of my favorites is like, get rich, lucky bitch. Denise Duffield Thomas. I've interviewed her on my show. She's fantastic. You're a badass at making money. I feel like that was do you remember that? That was like the thing, like, four years ago, so good. Yeah, I don't I don't know if people are still all about that, but all those books are great. I think it's really important to get into the money mindset to figure out, like, Denise calls them money. Right. So where are your money blocks stemming from? I think that we all have that figure out if this is something that you need to go to therapy for or maybe just do some journaling. I'm not going to tell you one way or the other, but we have to do some self exploration. But I have a few mantras and journaling exercises I like to do. First of all, I'm really big on goal setting, so I have financial goals every year in my business, and I look at those pretty much every week when I map out my project plan for the week to see, okay, well, what's my target revenue goal?

[00:10:47.380] - Braden Drake (Host)

So that's a good one when it comes. Have you heard that term money blocks before? I don't know if that's like, just a Denise thing or like a more widely popular I have.

[00:10:55.480] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah.

[00:10:56.120] - Braden Drake (Host)

So she talks about that and how we all take away these things that our parents tell us. So my mom's favorite go to was like, Go pick it up. She'd say, Go pick it off the money tree. Anytime we ask, like, I wanted to go to camp or I needed new basketball shoes or just wanted a PlayStation. Did you get that one from your parents?

[00:11:14.940] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I did, yeah. Money doesn't grow on trees. I had a single mother who was a waitress, so literally we didn't have very much. And what we did have, she had to use it for a lot of other things.

[00:11:29.790] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah. So I got that one. So I actually named in business banking, you can often name your bank accounts. I named my business bank account my money Tree. And my mantra that I tell myself all the time is, my business is my money tree and it will grow and be fruitful when I nurture it and care for it, which is very woo for me especially, but it makes a lot of sense for me. Right. It's like taking ownership of the fact that, well, money kind of is imaginary and we get to create it and we're self employed. A lot of that is within our control. So those are some of the money mindset things that I try to implement in my business on a daily basis. And I think if that resonates with people, you can borrow it, but if not, go learn from some of the money mindset gurus out there and then you can come back and talk to me when you're ready for the like, do I form an S Corp? And how do I do my bookkeeping? Like nuts and bolts, tangible kind of things.

[00:12:21.170] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I love that. Yeah. One of my best friends, Beth Chapman, has this mantra that she says to herself, maybe not every morning that's exaggeration, but it is. Money comes to me frequently and often and I've heard her repeat this to herself under her breath. And I love it because I think sometimes we need mantras just to get our mindset right or just to believe in the abundance, that there's enough money out there for us or whatever.

[00:12:45.240] - Braden Drake (Host)

The mantra. Yeah. When it comes to all the universe stuff, I've heard people say that basically the universe can see your mindset and will pass money to you accordingly. I like to get really tangible and practical about it. The way that I view it is when you have an abundance mindset, as they say, really what it is, is I think you're opening your own subconscious into seeing opportunities. So then when an opportunity to make money comes across your path, it's not just going to go by you, you're going to recognize it and you're going to pounce on it more because it's more top of mind. So that's why I really like those kind of mantras and how I like to think about it, if that makes sense.

[00:13:28.210] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, that's such a great explanation, actually a perfect explanation of how mantras can work. So you have this four step process that you take your students through in your program, unfuck your biz, and I'm hoping that we can spend some time walking through this formula which relates back to getting your taxes in order, whether you're filing them late and hopefully getting you to file them more on time.

[00:13:54.520] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, let's hit it. Should I just start with step one?

[00:13:57.840] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, let's do it.

[00:13:59.020] - Braden Drake (Host)

Okay, so step one is learn, because the first thing we got to do is we got to learn what we're doing. Right. So the basics of do I understand the difference between income tax and sales tax? Because I find a lot of people will ask questions, and they're actually asking a sales tax question when they think that they're asking an income tax question. So those kind of things, like understanding what quarterly taxes are, how they work, and what states do we owe taxes, you have to understand these general basics before we can even really move forward with what your process should be.

[00:14:33.960] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, I agree. And I think once you start to dig in and learn, it becomes a lot less scary. Like, it doesn't feel so hard to understand or to even do.

[00:14:44.400] - Braden Drake (Host)

Right? Yeah, exactly. It's like the knowledge is power. So once you know the basics, you'll be a little less intimidated. And also, I think this is super important because here's the thing. All right, here's the thing. You got to know enough to at least know that the people that you're hiring, if you are hiring people, are doing their job right. Does that make sense? Because then it's like, well, you have to at least know when your filing deadlines are to know if your tax repair is filing your taxes on time. And then if they're not, then you can fire them and hire someone else.

[00:15:15.730] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Agreed. So what's our next step after we dig into the learn portion of unfucking our biz and getting our taxes together? What's the next step?

[00:15:22.660] - Braden Drake (Host)

So the next step is just called unfuck. So that's kind of like the namesake of the program and the framework, but this is handling any back tax issues. So oftentimes people, you will usually come to us in one of well, I would say one of three situations. So situation one is they're completely new business owner, and they're setting everything up from scratch. Great. Easy. That's like the easiest kind of client to work with. The other kind of client will come to us, and they have messed up their business. They owe back taxes, and that's who we're really talking about here. The third kind of client is they come to us and they've been in business, but things are pretty well squared away, in which case they just go to step three and four to improve things. But if you have back taxes, well, the first thing that you will need to do is get caught up on your tax returns because you can't pay the IRS until you know how much you owe the IRS, and you don't know how much you owe until you do all your tax returns. So doing your tax returns, getting on an installment agreement, paying off the back tax, doing all those kind of things.

[00:16:22.110] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Step number two, do you have any suggestions for somebody who might owe more than one year of back taxes? Which year should they start? And if they have maybe not all of the money to pay, how should they approach this? Should they pay one year over another? Should they go into a payment plan for both? What would you suggest?

[00:16:42.330] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, so you guys are great question, because it has to be very holistic. You can't really do years separately. Really? So what you have to do is right now we're recording this in 2023. So let's say you still have to file 2021 and 2022 taxes. Okay? So you file 2021, and let's say you owe $5,000 for that year, and then you file 2022. That was way too many 20s. But you file that year and you owe $10,000. So now you have a $15,000 tax balance. So the IRS doesn't really care about 21 22. They just care about you owe us 15 grand. And how are you going to pay us? You either can pay it off in a lump sum, or you set up an installment agreement and pay monthly. Or sometimes there's other ways where you can settle for less than you owe if you're low income, but that's more the way that we do it. They don't really split it up as much per year. And we can talk more about installment agreement options as well, but that's kind of the general process.

[00:17:42.160] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, thank you for explaining that. I imagine that the installment agreement options would really depend on your individual circumstances right. And how much money is owed and what you can do. Could you point out that delaying paying your taxes is costing you even more money? Because I don't think people really realize how penalties add up.

[00:18:01.480] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yes. First of all, we're supposed to be paying quarterly taxes. If your business is making a profit, you really should be prepaying your taxes. And if you're not, then you're going to end up owing interest and penalties. Now, the penalty is pretty low. It's way less than credit card interest. So I always tell people, don't go into credit card debt to pay your taxes on time, but at the same time, don't avoid paying your taxes and letting it add up. We call that the ocean cycle of back tax. That can be pretty dicey. Failing to file your tax return on time actually has a much higher penalty. So the main thing we always tell people is, even if you don't have the money in the bank, make sure you file your taxes on time, because the IRS is more forgiving once you've filed penalty wise. So we have to keep that in mind. And then the penalties technically accrue per day. So the sooner you get things taken care of, the better. This is why we never want to have our head in the sand, so to speak. It's always better to get your return filed and then even if you can't afford an installment agreement now, you can contact the IRS to say, hey, can you put me on hardship?

[00:19:12.250] - Braden Drake (Host)

Meaning like, pause the penalties for a year or whatever? And this is the nice thing about the one nice thing about it being the government sounds a lot scarier, but they have a general interest to serve taxpayers and to serve those of us who pay into the system. And so they tend to have a lot of options for us when we are having difficulties.

[00:19:34.220] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, I find that they're actually pretty well, at least the people I've interacted with at the IRS are really nice.

[00:19:40.330] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah.

[00:19:41.180] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Usually an agent on a bad day. Yeah, but agent 1952. Mrs. Jones is very pleasant on the phone trying to help you figure out your next step if you owe back taxes or if you're calling to see like, hey, I made a payment. What's my balance? They tend to be actually quite nice. And to your point, they have a vested interest in retaining their money, so they are going to be nice to you.

[00:20:04.450] - Braden Drake (Host)

Right. And of course they want to collect tax dollars. That's their job. But they are empowered to be a little bit more forgiving than more traditional debt collectors, let's put it that way.

[00:20:16.550] - Candice Coppola (Host)

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[00:21:33.450] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, I mean, it depends how much they owe and it depends how much work they have to do. So step number one is, is going to be your bookkeeping, right? Because we always work backwards. In order to pay your tax balance, you have to have a tax balance. File the tax return. In order to file your tax return, you have to know how much money you made and how much money you spent. So you got to do your bookkeeping, right? So a lot of folks can do that. Like, you can do your own bookkeeping on a spreadsheet, and then you can file your taxes on TurboTax if they allow you to go back. And then once you get your tax balance from TurboTax, you could set up your installment agreement. If you owe a lot of tax, I would say don't do that because we can probably save you more money than you're going to pay us. If you don't owe a lot of tax, then I would say, ask yourself, be very honest with yourself and say, I can do this. Am I going to do this? I actually had to pull that out of my pocket on a sales call a few months ago because the client said, Well, I can do the bookkeeping.

[00:22:30.840] - Braden Drake (Host)

And I said, well, you can do it. But you came to us six months ago and said you could do the bookkeeping. So are you going to do the bookkeeping? Or is it time that you just pay us $2,000 so that we can get this fucking taken care of for you and you can stop stressing?

[00:22:44.450] - Candice Coppola (Host)

And she goes, So we could stop having this conversation, right?

[00:22:47.570] - Braden Drake (Host)

She goes, no. She's like, no, you're right. Send me the invoice. And we got it all done. We got it all done in, like, three weeks. And she's on our payment plan with the IRS now.

[00:22:55.240] - Candice Coppola (Host)

God bless you. Sometimes we need somebody to say that to us. We need somebody to look us in the face and be like, you can, but will you? There's a difference.

[00:23:03.050] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, exactly.

[00:23:04.600] - Candice Coppola (Host)

For sure. All right, so after we have handled our back taxes, what's the next step in your process?

[00:23:10.960] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, so now we set up a system, right? So the next steps are flow and track. So flow is cash flow. Track is just tracking our bookkeeping. We've actually reordered these things in the latest iteration of our program, but it doesn't really matter. You can do one before the other. Let's talk about cash flow first. Have you read the book Profit First, or are you familiar with it?

[00:23:36.440] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Are you kidding? I send it to every single person I mentor as mandatory reading.

[00:23:41.260] - Braden Drake (Host)

Okay, great. So this basically step four is essentially like Profit First. So we teach our own cash flow system inside of my program. I'll just be very honest with you. I'm very jealous of profit first. So a lot of my animosity just stems from jealousy. But I often tell people, Mike Mccallowitz, who's fantastic, he has a lot of great books, he did not invent the concept of cash flow management. He just wrote a very wildly popular book about it that people want their own. Yeah, if people want to DIY it, they can just buy that book and go that way. We kind of teach our own version of cash flow inside of my book. But the most important thing from my perspective is automating your tax savings and paying yourself. So that's where the title profit first comes from. It's prioritizing paying yourself first and then the money that's left over in the business, you can spend on expenses rather than thinking about expenses and then paying.

[00:24:39.680] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yourself, the leftovers paying yourself is one of those questions that people ask me, like, Candice, how do I pay? Like that's. Like, I don't know where to begin with that question because there's so much that goes into it, and it's not just something that you can follow a one, two, three step, and then suddenly now you're cutting yourself checks consistently. I don't want to throw this question on you, but I'm sure you get this question asked of you all the time.

[00:25:05.270] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, how to pay yourself.

[00:25:06.740] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah.

[00:25:09.810] - Braden Drake (Host)

Well, here's the thing. This is the way I always feel like we have to break it down. Okay? Are we talking about literal how do I do the bank transfer kind of question?

[00:25:19.980] - Candice Coppola (Host)

No, we're talking about how do I literally pay myself out of my account rather than going into my account and spending my money at Target and thinking that's like paying myself, writing myself a check. How do I even wrap my brain around that? I think people have so they just don't know where to start or how to initiate that in their business.

[00:25:39.340] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, so when you're starting out, it's actually very simple. So there's, like, the technical. This is how you legally do it, and then we have the optimized way to do it, if that makes sense. That's where the cash flow comes in. But when you're starting out, you want to have a business bank account. That's step number one. So put all of your business income in your business bank account, pay all of your expenses from the account. And then whenever you need money, whenever you want to pay yourself, you do a bank transfer from your business account to your personal account. Right. Link your banks, do a transfer. Easy peasy. Now, that's the legal way to do it. It's like, technically correct. There's no problem with that. What I see people happen, Candice, is they go to Target and they're like, oh, Joanna has really got all this nice home goods bullshit that I want to buy. But I check my bank account and I only got $100, and I also have to get groceries. So I'm going to open my phone banking app and I'm going to transfer myself money. We don't really want to do that.

[00:26:34.990] - Braden Drake (Host)

We want to have a system where we pay ourselves biweekly on a monthly basis, whatever. And that's where we really look into, all right, well, how much do I pay myself and how frequently do I pay myself? Because that's similar to budgeting in our personal finance realm. It just. Helps us. God, that could be a whole nother podcast on all the pros of like.

[00:26:57.080] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I feel like it is. But I know you must teach this, though, inside your program and give people the tools to kind of figure out what they can afford to pay themselves and then how to initiate that and get into a good habit of doing that rather than going to home goods and fucking blowing $1,000 on bullshit and then using that as their salary.

[00:27:18.490] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, that's what we do. So that profit first philosophy of figuring out how much you need and how much you should pay yourself and then setting that up on a system. I recommend that people pay themselves every other week or we do twice a month. So on the first and 15th of each month and then you automate your tax savings. That makes things really nice. And specifically the way we set our structure up is to essentially it's like a training wheel system for your eventual scorp. So I would say where we differ a little bit is because I'm a tax attorney, our cash flow system speaks much more specifically to the tax side of the business.

[00:27:59.080] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So we have flow and track. We've talked about flow. Can you share a little bit more about the track portion of this formula of just kind of, I guess keeping track of things and maybe having a better system to do that?

[00:28:12.500] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, so track just essentially means bookkeeping. I used to think that when I threw out the term bookkeeping, people just automatically knew what I was talking about. I've learned that's not the case. So I'm not talking about like, you don't need to go create yourself a balance sheet. That's not what we're talking about. It's just tracking your income and expenses. So again, if you have a business bank account, this is going to be so easy because all you need to do at whatever frequency you want to do it, again, I recommend every week, but most people are not going to do that. In which case knock yourself out and do once a month. You're going to open up your bank statements and you're going to track all your income. Are most of your people wedding planners specifically or just wedding industry mix?

[00:28:52.110] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, a mix of photographers, planners, invitation designers. We have a large group.

[00:28:56.520] - Braden Drake (Host)

Okay, let's use planners as an example. So let's say they just only really have two income categories. I would call them income categories. So they have full service planning, and then they have wedding management or day of coordination, whatever you want to call it. So I would set up two income columns in my spreadsheet for those two things. And then your expense categories would be marketing, online software, independent contractors, employees, and then you're just going to track everything in your spreadsheet. And then at the end of the year, you're going to know how much you spent on each of those things, but you're also going to see it on a monthly basis so it can help you with your business budgeting forecasting. All those kind of things are extremely important.

[00:29:38.280] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, I wish that wedding pros and small business owners spent more time digging into their numbers and really paying attention to their different revenue streams, how much money they're spending, because as you know, in profit first Michael talks about this cash eating machine that your business know it's just paying everyone else except you.

[00:30:00.160] - Braden Drake (Host)

Right?

[00:30:00.960] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I wish that wedding pro spent more time digging into the numbers because if they did, they'd have so much more information to help them make better decisions.

[00:30:09.550] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, I always like to ask wedding professionals which of their services are most profitable and they just kind of stare at me like a deer in headlights. But some of my favorite clients and students actually do very diligent time tracking in their business. So then we can look at, okay, well, you charge $3,000 for wedding management and you charge $10,000 for full service planning, but you're actually spending like 20 times the amount of time on the full service planning. So actually that lower ticket thing is more profitable per hour, which is always fascinating for people to find out. That's just an example. It could be totally the opposite in your business depending on how your systems and workflows are. But having that information is super powerful because you might think, well, I'm going to sell more of the $10,000 thing because 10,000 is more than 3000. But if you can do four $3,000 clients in less time than 110 thousand dollars client, well, you're making more money and you're working less. And let's also take into consideration that some people really love working on long term client projects and some people don't like that they would rather bring in a client, work with them for three months and then go work with someone new.

[00:31:24.890] - Braden Drake (Host)

So we have to take into consideration what we want to do in addition to our profitability as well.

[00:31:29.390] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yes, numbers help to paint that picture for you and give you options and allow you to make decisions in your business that are related to facts instead of how you feel. I just know how difficult it is for people to get started with everything that we talked about today. Let me just recap though, your four step process here. Learn unfuck or fix flow and track and flow and track are sort of interchangeable. I just love that you decided to name all your shit like unfuck, unfuck your business, unfuck your life, unfuck your taxes, unfuck everything. I just love that you had the guts to just go all in on the word fuck.

[00:32:09.730] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, I actually came to that during a business mastermind pretty early in my business. And someone asked me, they were like, well, who are most of your clients? When are they coming to you. And I said, Well, I really thought that all my clients would be brand new business owners, right? Because that's when you should be setting all this up, right? Before you get a client, you need to set up your bookkeeping and figure out no, people are not thinking about that, right? They're thinking about, oh, I have a logo idea, I need to hire a designer. Right? Like, that's what people are excited about. So I said, most of my clients come to me when they've already been in business for two to four years, and now they realize all of this is important. They weren't problem aware of these services before, and now they need to unfuck their business. So that's kind of how we came up with the brand, because that's just the way it works.

[00:32:55.430] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I love it. Well, it's definitely memorable.

[00:32:59.610] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, definitely. It's not for everyone, but attract and repel marketing, I'm a big fan of it.

[00:33:05.530] - Candice Coppola (Host)

100% is really important, actually, especially in this day and age, it's really important. So we have learn unfuck flow and track. What would you say to the person who's like, okay, I get that I need to just rip off the Band Aid. I need to learn. I can figure this out. I need to know numbers, I'm ready. What would be like their first step so they don't feel overwhelmed?

[00:33:26.460] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, well, first step would be to start the bookkeeping. I was going to say, is it too cheesy if I say the first step is to just go to our website and hire us, fill out our contact form, get started.

[00:33:40.790] - Candice Coppola (Host)

But if not, not at all.

[00:33:44.390] - Braden Drake (Host)

If not us, go find someone else. We have a lot of low ticket offers to help people get started. So particularly if you're a newer business owner, highly recommend that you grab a copy of my book, because I go through this full framework in my book. We also have a $30 programmed on getting started with taxes. So just the basics. And then we have a bigger program. Unfuck your biz when you're really ready to dive in and do all the things.

[00:34:11.680] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Fantastic. I love it. I love that you have all these resources at different stages for people where they can dive into whatever makes sense for them now. So we have the book, which I'll link all of this in our show notes so you guys can go and sign up for all the things which I recommend. I think sometimes you just need to acknowledge that maybe this isn't where you excel. Because if you did excel at it, you wouldn't be in this situation. And just to hire somebody to teach you, to train you, and even just.

[00:34:37.210] - Braden Drake (Host)

Do it for ditto ditto. So we have all that. We do one on one services as well. If you're like. Braden I don't have time to dick around with a course or I don't want to. No, problem. You can just pay us to do that. And then before we go, I feel like we have to plug the Contract Club because it's like the one thing that everyone needs to know about.

[00:34:55.780] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, yeah. 100%.

[00:34:57.680] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah. So if you all haven't checked it out already, you may have heard about it, but we have an offer called the Contract Club. Our tagline is all the contracts you need, all in one place. Offer one price, just pay the COVID and you're in for life. It's not a membership. One time charge of $30. And we have wedding planning contracts, photography, DJs, efficiency. We have web terms, privacy policies, cancellation agreements. Basically every contract template you need is in there for one fee of $30, which is pretty bananas.

[00:35:32.510] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, my God. Yeah, that's too good to be true, but great. Fantastic. I love it. And I love that those resources are there and it's affordable because I think that's really part of what maybe people don't seek out the legal agreements they need to protect themselves until it's too late. I love that this is affordable and accessible.

[00:35:50.490] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah. I got really tired of reading terrible contracts on a daily basis that people had Frankenstein together from 80 different resources. So we just decided to not really give them away, but almost give them away. And then it's a great entry point for people to find us as well. So everyone wins.

[00:36:07.840] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, my gosh. I feel like we need to have an episode on why Frankensteining your contract is a bad idea. Why asking people in Facebook groups, what's your clause for this scenario? And then taking whatever they post and putting it into your contract is just really probably not the smartest thing you've done today.

[00:36:24.490] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yeah, you can't do that. And I'll give you so we'll record another episode on this, maybe sometime in the future. But to give everyone a real quick example of why you can't do that, if someone says, oh, your penalty for canceling the agreement is 50% of your booking fee with a capital B and capital F, but your contract refers to it as a deposit or a retainer, well, now what happens? You have different clauses in your contract that contradict each other, and it's essentially ruled ineffective. And if you ever go to court, the judge is just going to toss those paragraphs out. And now you're sol, so we don't want to do that. Stop copying and pasting.

[00:37:01.920] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, stop copying and pasting. Just join the Contract Club and you'll have everything you could possibly need for one fee and then any additions you also get. So, I mean, it's like a no brainer just to have as a resource in your back pocket. Even if you feel like your contract is good, it's always nice to see another version. Maybe you'll see something better inside the Contract Club, but it's also good to just have this at your disposal for anything you might need in the future.

[00:37:26.000] - Braden Drake (Host)

Yes. Love that great sales pitch.

[00:37:28.100] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Love that for us before Braden changes the price because I can't imagine it's going to stay $30 forever. Coaches like this is a great idea, but I think we need to up.

[00:37:38.290] - Braden Drake (Host)

We could be. Yeah, we'll see. This is always a fun conversation to have. It's like, at what point does it no longer become a no brainer? Tricky thing to see without testing, but we're going to keep it there for a little while.

[00:37:51.910] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, that's so true. Yeah, so very true. Well, Braden, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today and to teach us how we can get started on our taxes, how to take the stress out of learning about all of this and giving us resources that you have to unfuck our biz. So I appreciate you so much.

[00:38:08.780] - Braden Drake (Host)

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[00:38:10.650] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I want to thank Braden for being such a great guest on today's episode of the podcast. I've decided that I want to give away one of his books, Unfuck Your Biz. So here's what I'm going to ask you to do. I'm going to ask you to head over to my social media and go to the latest post with Braden in it. And I want you to answer the question of the episode over on my Instagram post in the caption. I will choose one lucky listener to win a copy of his book and I can't wait to send it out to you. So make sure you go over to my Instagram at Candice Coppola and enter to win a copy of Unfuckyourbiz. Friend, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I've linked all of the things Braden offers, his podcast, his book, his website, all of his amazing programs. I've linked those in the show notes, so head over there if you need some. You know, I really appreciated what he said when he said that sometimes you have to ask yourself like, sure, I can do this, but am I going to do it?

[00:39:10.110] - Candice Coppola (Host)

And if you're finding yourself in a little bit of a financial pickle right now where you wish that you had more control over your taxes and your finances and making sense of all of this, you wish you had learned some of this in school. You didn't, but you can learn it now. I want to encourage you to seek out resources, mentors people who can teach you the things you don't know so that you can feel better about your business. Okay, friend, I'm here to remind you, as always, there's so much power in your purpose. I'll see you next time.

[00:39:43.050] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the the the Power in Purpose podcast.

[00:39:48.590] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Enjoyed the show.

[00:39:49.420] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and consider leaving a review. Head over to Powerinpurposepodcast.com to access all of the resources and links mentioned in today's episode. That's powerandpurposepodcast.com. I'll see you next time.