0 (2s):
Boom shake the room Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals with great shows like My First Million. Today is the Income Report for December of 2023, and we're gonna be talking about some really cool things Fire Nation. Ron, Mr. CPA ON FIRE himself has a great monthly tax tip. We're gonna be talking about 48 days to the work you love settling in as a family of four and so much more. We'll be diving into that and more as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors.

The Sales Evangelist (40s):
Sales Evangelist Hosted by my friend Donald Kelly is Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales Right. Now a recent episode you should definitely check out is The Five Ways to Do Daily Outbound with LinkedIn, Listen to Sales evangelist. wherever you get your podcasts,

Hostinger (1m 6s):
Hostinger is among the top web hosting and website creation brands in the world. See for yourself. Head to Hostinger.com/ONFIRE and use code ONFIRE for an exclusive 10% discount. That's Hostinger.com/ONFIRE and the code ONFIRE

0 (1m 24s):
RA fire Nation. Let kick it off with our December, 2023 Income At A Glance. Our gross income for December was $146,758. Our total Expenses were 17,182 for a Net Profit of 1 29 5 7 6. That's a $29,958 decrease from November. And our net profit to overall gross revenue Percentage was 88. 88%. Absolutely love that. Now fire Nation, we are gonna dive into 48 days to the work you love. We're gonna talk about settling in as a family of four, but first, Ron has a great monthly tax hit for you.

0 (2m 5s):
So Ron, take it away.

1 (2m 7s):
Hello John and hello fire Nation. This is Ron Parisi with CPA ONFIRE for your December, 2023 tax and accounting tip. Hey, fire Nation, we're gonna, this month we're gonna be covering a topic hot off the press. Probably something you've come across you've read and maybe you haven't quite grasped exactly what that is. And this is the Corporate Transparency Act in a nutshell. This is where you have any entity that you've created with the Secret Secretary of State may need to be registered at the Financial Crime Enforcement Network.

1 (2m 51s):
Vincent, this is the same folks that are part of the Department of Treasury. Same folks. If you have money offshore and you need to file an F bar, these are the same folks that kind of are, are the ones that you need to report that as well. So what essentially is the Corporate Transparency Act is requiring everybody to register a beneficial owner information report, A BOI report with their agency. And what that means is if you have an entity you've created with the Secretary of State, you're gonna need to go on the website. You're gonna need to create an account and you're gonna need to register that entity and not only register the entity, but you're also gonna have to report any beneficial Owners of that company.

1 (3m 41s):
And I'll just tell you Right now, so let's, the beneficial owner is anybody who owns over 25% of the company, but also who exercises substantial control within the company. And that would be your senior officers, maybe board directors, anybody who's got a substantial control over the business or within the business. Let me, let's just talk a little dates Right now, right? So we've been getting a lot of inquiries at CPA ONFIRE, right? This is kind of really came on us very quickly. It's a huge, I have no idea how many entities are registered out there.

1 (4m 22s):
I heard a number of 35 million. I got a feeling that's a little light. But essentially let's take, let's just talk about deadlines and what you as the owner of an entity need to do. So if you have an existing entity coming into 2024, you have 365 days, you have all year to register that. And this is just only a one time registration. So if you have an existing entity coming to 2024, you have between now and January 1st, 2025 to register that entity. However, if you create a new entity, you have 90 days from the creation of that entity in 2024 to report it to sen and then the last date is 30 days.

1 (5m 7s):
You have 30 days to report any changes or maybe any corrections to your original filing. So just one year, 90 days, 30 days just to remember this, I'm gonna take you, I'm gonna give you my take, right? Is that, yes, this is a big undertaking. The first thing I would think you guys want to do, I mean I had to do, is really think back about all the entities you've created in the past and maybe didn't work out. Did you, you know, fully dis you know, dissolve those entities is probably a good dime Right now to figure that out. But really think about how many entities that you own. You know, we have clients that, you know, every real estate project is in a separate LLC, so every l, you know, every separate LLC, they're gonna have to register with FinCEN.

1 (5m 57s):
So it could quite become quite taxing. But you know, this has been my advice to my clients is kind of let's just wait, wait to that a little we have all year, right? Let's let some of the big technology software companies maybe help us along the way. I know some of the corporate registrants have products out there, but I think that, you know, before you go out and hire an attorney or seek advice from another service provider, I think hopefully over time, you know, there's gonna be different service providers that are gonna be able to do this relatively without a lot of friction.

1 (6m 45s):
But it does encumber us as Owners business Owners to really think through, you know, how many, how many entities need to be registered and exactly who needs to be listed as a beneficial owner. And I really think that, you know, I would wait personally until the spring and summer to really start investigating and look for potential third parties. There's some, some, you know, issues about maybe this is the unauthorized practice of law. I don't know exactly that's a state by state issue, but this is something I just wanted to raise with you. fire Nation, just to be aware of. This is not something that you guys need to totally rush into unless you do start creating new entities in 2024.

1 (7m 31s):
But I think it's really smart to be one aware of the reporting requirement. Two, kind of wait this out. And then the third piece I wanna talk a little about, and that's a cent identifier. So if you are a real estate professional, or for my instance, right, I own like three different businesses, it's probably a good idea to get an identifier first and then use that identifier to help you quickly report your beneficial Owners over multiple entities. So definitely look at this unique identifier and obtaining a UCA unique identifier first and before you go and register the entities on sen.

1 (8m 14s):
So take a step back, right? Corporate Transparency Act. You gotta register all of your created entities with the Department of Treasury, the SEN you have all year if there's, if there's an existing entity and then you, like I said, we have 90 days if you create a new entity, 30 days if you make any changes. So hopefully I wanted to kind of make everybody aware, I wanted everybody to kind of have a pretty, you know, general understanding of what the reporting requirements are. My advice, kind of wait this out, let's see where we are come spring and summer and how if it's any easier to, to do these filings maybe with some third party reporting operations.

1 (8m 59s):
So that's my, that's my accounting and tax tip for December. The one thing I wanted to mention before I go off is that, hey, I wrote a new book. It's called Financial Superpowers. Take Your Business and Personal Wealth Next Level. And for those who don't know me, right, I'm, I'm the managing member of CPA ONFIRE. The book is really written as a guidebook for financial operations. You know, how important financial operations to you entrepreneurs to the business Owners are to really be a guidebook for entrepreneurs to understand how, you know, growing entrepreneurs should view their financial operations, should manage their operations, should optimize their financial operations.

1 (9m 47s):
So you can look at it on Amazon, you can get a digital down Cop Download copy from our website, cpa ONFIRE dot com. Once again, it's called Financial Superpowers, how to Take Your Business and Personal Wealth. Next Level, Ron Parisi. Hey, always a pleasure being with you. fire Nation. Until next month, we you the best and happy New Year. Take care now.

0 (10m 10s):
Ron, thank you as always for dropping Value Bombs for fire Nation and fire Nation. Please for help with your taxes. Any questions, Ron at cpa ONFIRE dot com is always waiting for your email. CPA ONFIRE dot com is a website where you can learn more about them and their great business. They're a great company, check them out. Now I wanna talk about the interview of the month. It's with one of my dearest friends. I go way back with this individual, Dan Miller. He is famous for his work all around 48 days to the work you love. And this episode was so good. We talked about building on where you are in life.

0 (10m 50s):
It's never too late to have a new beginning about sometimes we hang on to things really tightly, but just being generous may open the door to some riches you didn't expect. We talk about how being wise can be more than just having a degree lean into things that increase your ability to have an understanding heart, not necessarily just another piece of paper to hang on a wall. And speaking of an Understanding Heart checkout this culmination of weekly inspiration shared with Dan Miller's Inner Circle over the years. The link to an Understanding Heart is on our website, EOFire dot com slash income 1 2 4 or just go anywhere and Google an Understanding Heart.

0 (11m 30s):
Dan Miller and you will find it Now we're gonna bring Kate in as we talk about settling in as a family of four.

2 (11m 39s):
What's up? fire Nation Happy 2024. I know that this is our December Income Report, but of course going live in January and whoa, talk about a year flying by, which in the moment for me being pregnant, it felt kind of long day to day. But looking back and thinking at the beginning of the year we didn't have a baby. And at the end of the year we had a baby. That was pretty wild. But needless to say, December was a very busy month here at EOFire Studios, but not in the typical sense. It was busy in the sense that we've just welcomed our first son, Bo Arthur Dumas into the world and he is definitely keeping us on our toes.

2 (12m 25s):
Wow. So he was born November 14th, so December we were just a couple weeks into it. And this being our first child, we weren't really sure what to expect when it came to our new day-to-Day routines and such. And for two people who thrive on schedules and planning, we've definitely had our fair share of adjustments to make. But we are loving every minute of it. And Gus is also adjusting to the idea of having a baby brother along around. He's not really too sure what to think of all of this yet. Although I will say over the past couple of weeks, I feel like Gus is definitely paying more attention to Beau and very interested in what he has going on.

2 (13m 7s):
But all things considered getting into the flow of parenthood has been very smooth, wouldn't you say? So John?

0 (13m 13s):
I'd say it's been quite smooth and that's a little hat tip to your sister and your mother and father being here for a big part of this and being a lot more helpful than I expected, to be honest.

2 (13m 26s):
Oh my gosh. We have had such a huge luxury of having a family flowing in and out since his birth. Really. I mean, your parents were here when he was born, then your sister and her family came into town. And then what did we have one or two days in between your family leaving and my parents arriving and then my sister came in the middle of that. My parents are still here for a couple more weeks and I totally agree with you. I was thinking like, oh, it's gonna be really nice to have people around. The emotional support has been awesome, but it really, like having an extra set of hands makes such a huge difference

0 (14m 6s):
Big time. I mean, just the fact that your mother is willing to just sit there and hold bow for really a just open-ended period of time is huge hours.

2 (14m 19s):
Yeah, that has been such a treat. And I think it's awesome that he's just been around so many people. He's actually, I don't know if this is credit to us just being very active when I was pregnant and out at get togethers and gatherings and parties a lot. We traveled a ton when I was pregnant, but Bo is such a champ. I mean, he went with us to multiple Christmas parties. He went to the golf cart parade here in Palmas. We did a New Year's Eve party where he hung until I, I think I left at like 10 30, 10 45. And he was just rocking out in the carrier all these times that we were out with him.

0 (14m 60s):
He's been a good little buddy to have around and I'm glad that we're exposing him to noise and to people. And he's a trooper.

2 (15m 8s):
He is definitely a trooper. So be has definitely consumed a huge part of our December, pretty much all of mine in the best way possible. And yeah, we hope that you had an amazing time celebrating the holidays with your family and loved ones as we did. And again, a huge happy 2024 to everyone out there tuning in and fire Nation.

0 (15m 30s):
Fire Nation. You need to check these photos out that Kate posted of Bo and us. Even Gus makes an appearance. EOFire dot com slash income 1 24. These are the creme de la creme of the photos. And I gotta be honest, they're pretty awesome. Bo's yawning in one, he's smiling in another, he's sleeping in another, he's laughing in another. He's very stoic in another. I mean, really the whole range of emotions. And man, some good photos, definitely check it out. EOFire dot com slash income 1, 2, 4.

2 (16m 9s):
And just to round that out, I will say that becoming a mother has been such an incredible treat. So many people try to describe to you what becoming a parent is like, and there's just no way to ever experience like that feeling until you're in it. And I'm just so grateful that we've had the opportunity to experience this together. John, I feel like having Bo has been such a beautiful chapter in our journey together. Aw, Okay. Email Opt in Testing, left hand turn sharp left in November actually, we were approached by a longtime friend and fellow Entrepreneurs ex Winehart and he has done a lot of website work for us in the past.

2 (16m 55s):
He's built landing pages for us. He has also done some email testing for us in the past, but this time he asked if he could help us improve our homepage newsletter, opt-in our email conversions there. And we are big fans of email and we believe that your email list is incredibly valuable despite over the past five-ish plus years, people saying that email is dead and yada yada yada. I don't believe that. I think email is very much alive and that it's a very important part of your marketing and communication strategy. So we took Zach up on his offer and testing is still in progress, but we are seeing some pretty incredible results so far. Zach is totally rocking it out for us.

2 (17m 38s):
Just a little sneak peek into some of the stats. The total percent of all website traffic opting in and confirming their email from a recent test that Zach ran is 2.27%. Our baseline was 1.79%, so that's a 26% improvement. Not bad at all. We'll definitely keep you posted as Zach continues his AB testing. But I'm very happy with the initial results and I'm excited to see what happens in the coming months.

0 (18m 8s):
Absolutely. And fire Nation, listen, numbers do not lie. We've been tracking this stuff for a long time. So we are seeing these real numbers increase in a incredibly meaningful way. I mean 26% improvement and we're looking to build off of that. I, I mean, the amounts of leads that's going to generate over time is incredibly significant. So I'm really glad that Zach's doing this for us. He's great and I know he's always open and willing to work with fire Nation. So we have a link to Zach's website in the Income Report, and of course you can just directly visit zach swinehart.com. That's ZACK Zach swinehart.com.

0 (18m 49s):
Check it out, check him out. He's always very excited to help people that are in his wheelhouse and really, really nice guy, really great guy. We really appreciate what he's done for us. Anything, Kate, before we move on to the next step?

2 (19m 5s):
Nada.

0 (19m 5s):
Fire Nation. Next step coming. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, the new year is upon us and that means new goals, more growth, and upgrading your day-to-day workflow. While most sales folk are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling, digging into data and tracking down leads, let me share with you a better way to win so you can crush your Q one. The new HubSpot Sales Hub is smart sales software for today's multitasking reps. It's built to help you manage every stage of your sales pipeline with ease. It's filled with easy to use and powerful tools that make closing deals and collaborating across departments A breeze Sales Hub is an all-in-one platform for things like converting contacts into customers and accelerating sales with smarter sequences. Plus, you can supercharge your work with AI powered apps like ChatSpot.

0 (19m 47s):
ChatSpot combines the power of chat GPT in your HubSpot smart CRM to give you a gen AI powered personal assistance. How's that for upgrading your workflow? Bottom line Sales Hub is focused on helping you work smarter, not harder, so you can get after all those other New Year's goals, close more deals and get on track for your best Q one yet. Explore the new HubSpot, Sales, Hub and AI tools like ChatSpot at HubSpot dot com slash sales. When you're running a business with multiple team members in multiple locations, staying on the same page can be tough. Document updates, spreadsheet calculations, and knowing whether you're working on the most up-to-date version of a project can result in wasted time and frustration. But with Coda, you and your team will always be on the same page, literally by bringing together the best of documents, spreadsheets, and apps into one platform.

0 (20m 36s):
Coda stops you pinging ponging between different tabs and tools. I checked out Coda's team Hub tutorial and I love how you can bring all the important docs for your team together in one place and customize the entire experience. Now's the perfect time to get started with Coda, especially its extensive planning capabilities. Manage your planning cycles, set and measure OKRs, communicate and collaborate on documents and roadmaps and access hundreds of templates in Coda's Gallery. If you want a platform that empowers your team to collaborate effectively and focus on shared goals, you can get started with Coda today for free. Head over to Coda dot io slash fire. That's Coda dot io slash fire to get started for free.

0 (21m 19s):
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0 (22m 2s):
I tried out Hostinger myself and their AI tools made building a website such a breeze. It took me just a few minutes to personalize and set everything up, all without breaking a sweat. See for yourself. Head to Hostinger.com/ONFIRE and use code ONFIRE for an exclusive 10% discount. That's Hostinger, H-O-S-T-I-N-G-E r.com/ONFIRE and the code ONFIRE. Alright, fire Nation, we are back to talk. December, 2020 three's income breakdown. Our product service income was $138,593. We sold 83 journals and that was 43 freedoms, 31 mastery, and four digital packs for the podcast Journal.

0 (22m 45s):
We did over $6,000 for Podcasters Paradise Podcast sponsorships were over $129,000. And then affiliate income was a little over $8,000, most of that coming from ClickFunnels. And that brings our gross income to $146,758 with our total Expenses of 17,000 1 8 2 for a net profits of 1 29 5 76. And as I mentioned in the intro, that is an 88% NET Profit to gross margin revenue. So very happy with that number. Definitely looking forward to future numbers in that arena.

0 (23m 28s):
And Kate, you're gonna take us home with the biggest lesson learned starting the year off strong.

2 (23m 34s):
Yes. Yes. Well, as we wrap up 2023 here and look into 2024, I know this isn't the first time you've heard me talk about this if you've been following us for a while now, and that is reflecting back on the previous year in order to help start your new year off strong and honestly, it doesn't have to be at the new year that you do this. You could really do this any time of year. You could even do it more often than one time a year. You could do a quarterly every month. In some ways. We do it every month with our income reports. And that is reflecting back and seeing what went well, what didn't go well, and what you can double down on.

2 (24m 16s):
'cause oftentimes as business Owners, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, side hustlers, whatever you refer to yourself as, we can really get caught up in the doing of things. And with such a long to-do list and huge aspirations and goals for our business and in our personal life, sometimes we can forget to take that time out to just reflect on where we're at. And also more importantly, where we've been because what so many of us do not realize is how much we can learn from our past experiences. So I get the question a lot like, how do I know what goals to set or well, how do I know if I should focus on this or focus on that? And the answer to all of these questions is looking at your past experiences and seeing how they can help you shape the next three months, six months, or one year in your business.

2 (25m 4s):
So here's how we do this. It's a very simple set of questions that you can sit down and ask yourself. The key is you have to actually set aside time to sit down and answer these questions. It's not a two minute exercise that you can just jot down real fast, although it doesn't have to take days or weeks either. So I would recommend even just blocking off one hour on your calendar sometime in the coming week. Schedule this time to sit down and really think about these questions. There's only four questions. We've got 'em over on the Income Report, so you can always refer back to that. As John said, the Income Report this month is EOFire dot com slash income 1, 2 4.

2 (25m 44s):
Those four questions are what were our biggest ones last year? What were some of our toughest struggles or missteps? What do we want to eliminate or do differently this year? And what do we wanna double down on? So you can see that answering some very simple questions about where you're at Right now and where you've been over the past year can really help inform your goals and what your focus should be moving forward. 'cause by identifying your biggest wins, you know exactly what's working well. So these are the things that you should strongly consider doubling down on. And by calling out your toughest struggles or your missteps, you can start to eliminate or even decide to do differently the things that are not serving you or your business.

2 (26m 28s):
'cause when you know what you wanna double down on and what you wanna eliminate, you can start to craft your goals and the focus you wanna have for 2024. I'm very excited to be starting this year off strong and I hope you are as well. Now,

0 (26m 41s):
Did Bo really not make a peep this entire time?

2 (26m 45s):
He is just sleeping like a little angel next to me. Right now.

0 (26m 50s):
Wow. fire Nation. Before we went live, we said, you know what, if Bo starts being a little cranky pants or starts whining, we're just gonna go with it. He's gonna be part of the episode. I fully expect it to happen. You know what? He didn't. But expect a future Income Report to include Bo going a little whiny town on us at some point. 'cause hey, that's what babies do, but I guess it won't be this episode. And until next month, fire Nation, keep your fire burning sales Evangelist Hosted by my friend Donald Kelly is Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales Right.

0 (27m 35s):
now, a recent episode you should definitely check out is The Five Ways to Do Daily Outbound with LinkedIn Listen to Sales evangelist, wherever you get your podcasts. Hostinger is among the top web hosting and website creation brands in the world. See for yourself. Head to Hostinger.com/ONFIRE and use code ONFIRE for an exclusive 10% discount. That's Hostinger.com/ONFIRE in the code ONFIRE.