From the archive: This episode was originally recorded and published in 2019. Our interviews on Entrepreneurs On Fire are meant to be evergreen, and we do our best to confirm that all offers and URL’s in these archive episodes are still relevant.
Scott Royal Smith is a real estate investor and asset protection attorney in Austin, TX. He became an entrepreneur while still in law school, purchasing and running an auto mechanic shop to pay his way through school. After graduating, he begin his law career as a high-stakes corporate litigator.
He has spent the last 8 years of his career analyzing real estate investment and asset protection. Today, he is the Founder and CEO of Royal Legal Solutions, a firm he built to offer tax, business and legal strategies to clients all over the U.S and Canada. He continues to educate the public on asset protecting strategies to help circumvent debilitating lawsuits for his clients.
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Royal Legal Solutions – Sign up for your $149 Roadmap Consultation with Scott and after the consultation you’ll receive an Anonymous LLC for free!
3 Value Bombs
1) An LLC creates a barrier between you and your money, and anybody who tries to come after you.
2) Before you start the day, write down the one thing that you have to do today – that if you only do that one thing, you can say that the day was a success.
3) As an entrepreneur, you can’t allow cash to stand in the way of you being able to create value for your customers.
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HubSpot: Customer expectations are at an all-time high, and making things easy is how you’ll win. Learn more about how HubSpot can help your business grow better at HubSpot.com.
Show Notes
**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.
Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS: Top 10 ‘Must Do’ List for a Startup with Scott Royal Smith
[01:36] – Scott shares something interesting about himself that most people don’t know.
- He is still active in kickboxing and Jiu Jitsu.
[02:54] – Scott’s professional advice for setting up a business – from an attorney’s perspective.
- Know the right lever to pull at the right time as an entrepreneur.
- You have to know what the minimum thing is that you need to do to get to your goal.
- Focus on that one thing that makes you powerful and drives you where you need to.
- Before you start the day, write down the one thing that you have to do today – that if you only do that one thing, you can say that the day was a success.
[04:39] – What are the things that you need to focus on as an entrepreneur from a legal perspective?
- First, start with having an LLC. This is so important that Scott is giving it away to you, Fire Nation! He is on a mission to get everybody in the United States protected.
- Royal Legal Solutions – Sign up for your $149 Roadmap Consultation with Scott and after the consultation you’ll receive an Anonymous LLC for free!
[06:49] – How does an LLC protect you?
- It creates a barrier between you and your money, and anybody who tries to come after you.
- Maximize your tax write-offs by using your free LLC to run your business through.
- As an entrepreneur, establish your own 401K. It allows you to shelter $55,000 every year from the government.
- An LLC can give you an extra sense of insurance – it gives you the ability to know that even if the worst-case scenario happens, you’re totally covered.
[12:29] – Scott shares a story that will wake you up if you’re not prepared…
- He had a client without an estate plan, which means that all of the assets go through the court system.
- They had to go through a process called probate, where the whole world gets to see everything about your finances. Because of that, people started filing cases against his client’s estate.
[16:26] – Scott shares some tax break secrets.
- Write off your vacation – you can do it by sandwiching your vacation between two meetings.
[17:56] – What should entrepreneurs be thinking about when it comes to estate planning.
- Have something like a Living Will in place.
- What you need for estate planning is a Living Trust, which will own your LLC, which in turn, will own your assets.
- Without the Estate Plan in place, the government decides what happens with your money and who gets to take care of your kids.
[20:16] – A timeout to thank our sponsor!
- HubSpot: Customer expectations are at an all-time high, and making things easy is how you’ll win. Learn more about how HubSpot can help your business grow better at HubSpot.com.
[20:18] – Scott talks about solid banking and bookkeeping essentials.
- Keep it simple and up to date.
- Go through things at the same time every single month.
- It can be pretty difficult to figure out what your banking relationships need to look like… tune in to hear Scott talk more about this topic
- As an entrepreneur, you can’t allow cash to stand in the way of you being able to create value for your customers.
[26:15] – Scott’s parting piece of guidance
- Royal Legal Solutions – Sign up for your $149 Roadmap Consultation with Scott and after the consultation you’ll receive an Anonymous LLC for free!
- Being an entrepreneur is hard enough – let alone the legal aspects. Scott’s team can handle that for you so you can focus on the making money part!
[29:29] – Thank you to our sponsor!
- HubSpot: Customer expectations are at an all-time high, and making things easy is how you’ll win. Learn more about how HubSpot can help your business grow better at HubSpot.com.
Transcript
0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Being Boss. Today, we're pulling a timeless EOFire classic episode from the archives, and we'll be talking about the top 10 must do list for a startup to drop these value bombs. I brought Scott Royal Smith in the EOFire studios. Scott is a real estate investor and asset protection attorney in Austin, Texas. He became an entrepreneur while still in law school, purchasing and running an auto mechanic shop to pay his way through school. After graduating, he began his law career as a high stakes corporate litigator. And today Fire Nation, we will be talking about how an LLC creates a barrier between you and your money and anybody who tries to come after you.
0 (48s):
We'll also talk about how you can't allow cash to stand in the way of you being able to create value for your customers and how to make sure that doesn't happen. And so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors business made simple, hosted by Donald Miller, takes the mystery out of growing your business. Recent episodes, like how to attract and retain top talent and how to make more money with your current products are straight fire. Listen to business made simple wherever you get your podcasts. Scott say what's up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know,
1 (1m 24s):
Yo Fire Nation. My name is Scott Royal Smith. I'm an attorney in asset protection and as well as in real estate. And when people, a lot of people don't know about me is that I'm still active after all these years with kickboxing and jujitsu, which is what actually what I did after I graduated at undergrad and I couldn't get a job. I started tutoring and just training martial arts full time. And so my plan is to lose 60 pounds and the next 90 days getting back into my martial arts.
0 (1m 50s):
Wow, that is quite the goal actually down in the community that I live in, in Puerto Rico, Palmas Del Mar the guys are all getting into jujitsu because we actually have a former MMA fighter down here. Who's training people. They keep being like John, like, what are you going to come down and train with us? I'm like, Nope, not my thing is just not my thing. No big deal. I'll stick to the microphone. But Fire Nation, as I mentioned in the intro, we're going to be talking about incredibly important and valuable topics today. The top 10 must do list for a startup from a serial entrepreneur. So Scott Royal Smith is going to be rocking the mic. He is incredibly excited to drop some value bombs.
0 (2m 32s):
So let's just start off Scott with you sharing some professional advice for setting up a business from an attorney's perspective.
1 (2m 40s):
Yeah. So I'm an attorney, a real estate investor, but also an entrepreneur. So when, when it really comes down into is that there's, you have to know what is the right lever to pull and at the right time as an entrepreneur, right? So what this really comes down to is really thinking about thinking deeply about where am I at right now? Where am I growing in the next year? And what is minimum things that I need to do to be able to get me to my goal? And cause that's what I believe is what makes us powerful as entrepreneurs is being able to just focus on that one thing that makes us really powerful and that drives us to where we need to. And that usually comes with simplicity and being able to offload a lot of the work on other people. So for the biggest value bomb that I would say that I have for everybody is just to embody that inside of your daily practice of when you get up in the morning and before you start their day, just write down.
1 (3m 29s):
Here's the one thing that I have to do today that I only did that one thing I would say today was a success
0 (3m 35s):
Fire Nation. Always be cognizant about where you're going, have your finger on your own pulse. I mean, that sounds pretty obvious, but guess what? So few people do that. That's why I'm personally so obsessed with journaling because for me journaling centers, me, it brings me back every morning. Okay. What have I done recently? This worked, what am I doing currently? That's working or not working. What am I doing in the future? What are my goals? My dreams, my aspirations moving forward. Am I on the right path for those? And I love how you put that, Scott, what are the minimum things I need to do to get me to my goal? Because it's all about simplicity, Fire Nation. It's all about focus, follow one course until success.
0 (4m 15s):
So let's maybe expand upon that just a little more before we move on Scott, talk about some things that we really need to be focused on. And this is more from an attorney's perspective. Now as a business, as an entrepreneur, as we go through our day to day is we're making sure that we're doing what we need to do as entrepreneurs to protect ourselves, to make sure that we're doing everything as far as Donnie, the I's crossing the T's from that legal perspective.
1 (4m 40s):
Yeah. So there's really only three things you gotta do. First thing you gotta do is make sure that you're protected and by that's, by having proper protection in place is a really, if you're just starting out or either, if you're pretty far down the road, that's just as simple as having an LLC at the very beginning, you can just start there, right? I mean, these are so important that I give them away for free. I even pay the filing fees for people because I'm on a mission to get everybody in the United States protected. And I'm serious about it. I'm saying like, we're even going to pay for your LLC for you because we know that by getting you and working with us, that we're going to find all kinds of other ways that we're also going to be able to help you. There's no obligation for doing any of that, but you got to have an LLC to be protected. Okay.
0 (5m 18s):
Okay. So stop you real quick because this is so key Fire Nation. You need to have an LLC to be protected. First question Scott is because you're offering this free LOC, which again, we'll circle back at the end as well, but where would Fire Nation go to start this process to get an LLC for themselves for free from you? If they're interested,
1 (5m 37s):
Just RoyalLegalSolutions.com/fire, we're doing a special promotion for all you guys for these, for these free LLCs. So that's a RoyalLegalSolutions.com/fire. And that's how you get your free LLC truly free, seriously free. You're talking about we're even paying the filing fees for everybody that comes.
0 (5m 56s):
I mean these filing fees, aren't cheap. Either Fire Nation. Believe me. I have a hundred numbers. Yeah. I have a number of LLCs and I grew up, I kind of grind my teeth every time I get to do one, because I'm like, oh, I know the filing fees are coming. So Fire Nation, if you are listening right now and you don't have an LLC, you need to pause. You need to write down RoyalLegalSolutions.com/fire in, go get the process started because this is a free, free gift from Scott. That's one of the most valuable I can picture because it could save you so much. And before we move into the next step, Scott, I just want Fire Nation to know why, why does an LLC protect you? How does it protect you?
1 (6m 33s):
Yeah. So what an LLC does is, is treated for legal purposes as if it's a different person, right? So what it does is creates a barrier between you and your money. And if anybody ever tries to come after you. So let's say you're running your business and somebody tries to Sue you and you have an LLC in place for it. They can't Sue you personally. They can't take the money that's in your personal bank account. All they can do is come after your business. So if you structure things correctly, you have an LLC. That is who everybody is doing business with. That doesn't own anything, right? All of the assets are held in a different LLC or they're held by you, right? So that gives you that barrier protection of knowing that you can't have a lawsuit blow up your life. What you want is the type of protection just by using these free LLCs that people can Sue you and you don't have to care.
1 (7m 18s):
And that's what we do for the people at Royal Legal Solutions that gave them that kind of peace of mind, along with the business and tax strategies that has all of the work that we're doing for people paying themselves back. Because now they're operating more efficiently and more leveraged and side of the information that that really saves them money
0 (7m 35s):
And Fire Nation. This is the situation where people haven't spent a few hundred bucks for an LLC or in this case, you're talking to us. They haven't spent just time because it's free for you. You know, if you go through RoyalLegalSolutions.com/fire to get an LLC, and as a result, they've lost their house. They've lost her life savings. They've lost X and Y and Z. And it was all completely avoidable by taking the right steps. So Scott was set number two.
1 (7m 59s):
Yeah. And step number two, as we're going to be talking about taxes and taxes are the way that you're able to maximize your tax write-offs is using your free LLC to run your business through. And what that's going to allow you to do. Number one is really maximize all of the expenses of write-offs that your business could be taking. A lot of people don't do everything they can on that route, right? That's one of the things that we're going to teach you, how to do at Royal Legal Solutions is how to use your LLC to be able to maximize your tax. Write-offs. The second thing that you're able to do with that is to be able to establish a solo 401k as an entrepreneur, underneath the rules, you can establish your own 401k. It's super simple. It's easy. There's not a whole lot of maintenance that goes into it.
1 (8m 40s):
It's not very expensive. What it does is allow you to shelter up to $55,000 every year from the government. And with that $55,000, you don't pay taxes on it. And guess what? You can loan up to half of it, to yourself to run your business or to invest whatever. So you get all of this tax free money that you can then use for whatever entrepreneurial ventures that you're wanting to go into. And then over the course of five years, guess what? You're paying back to your own retirement. So you're building your retirement while you're stable to use tax free dollars to help build your business. And that's all possible through the use of the free LLC that we're offering
0 (9m 17s):
Fire Nation maximize tax write-offs. And that solo 401k is critical. That allows you to shelter $55,000 from the government that's tax free. You can loan half of it back to yourself to keep running your business. I did this for four years while I was in San Diego. And it was absolutely critical to help maximize the tax write-offs, you know, since I moved to Puerto Rico and we have all the awesome things over here with act 20 act 22, with 0% capital gains and 4% corporate tax and all these awesome things down here, but not everybody can or wants to move to Porto Rico. And so when you're not, and you're living in the states, these are things you have to absolutely do. So we talked about that about how are you protected, number one, having an LLC maximizing your tax write-offs solo 401k.
0 (10m 5s):
Was that all three Scott? Or was there a third point?
1 (10m 7s):
Yeah, we got one more point in here and it has to do with the estate planning, but just to underscore what we have here with the free LLC, and it's like combines with the tax savings as that, this is really the leverage guys that takes you to the next level of how people are operating businesses. Because I had a friend of mine who thought he was well insured and he lost over $3 million from a single lawsuit has come to find out that insurance companies, when they're major problems that happen, what they do is deny coverage. And I just had, you know, grant Cardone was on my show, real estate nerds. And we were just talking about the same thing. It's like insurance companies are great, but you can't trust them with your wealth. And that's what these LLCs do. They give you that extra sense of insurance that gives you the ability to know that even if the worst case scenario happens, you're totally covered.
1 (10m 49s):
Then you lever that end to say, you're also going to be able to get these additional tax write-offs. You're also going to be able to use the, a 401k. And once you start to see relatively quickly, is that your growth over time as a business owner now levels out because you don't have whip saws that can happen to your life up and down because of legal issues that could happen or a tax issue that can happen. All you have is growth. That's more consistent and it's faster growth when you start to employ these measures. And that's what we're helping people do is realize here's the simple tools that you could be doing. That when combined together, they synergistically make your life more powerful of getting to it, whatever the goals are, you're trying to reach financially or with your business. And that also parlays perfectly into our third topic here, which is the importance of estate planning to help take care of your children because we're building all this wealth, what's it for?
1 (11m 36s):
It's gotta be for our kids and for our legacy, right?
0 (11m 39s):
So powerful. So meaningful estate planning is something that a lot of people don't even think of Scott, which I think is a huge mistake because, you know, sometimes we just don't know we're going to step off a curve. Boom, it's over. We're going to have a hardest ag. Boom is over. And then what happens? We don't know, hopefully we're all gonna live long, healthy lives, but we know that's not going to happen for every single person. Give us a story. I kind of want to hear a story. You don't have to share names. Obviously it doesn't even have to be a hundred percent like an actual story. Just something that you've seen happen over and over again, that can really kind of wake Fire Nation up and to say, man, I'm not prepared for something sun had happening. I'm not prepared, you know, for my potential passing.
0 (12m 19s):
What would that look like? Tell us that story.
1 (12m 21s):
Yeah. So the first thing that keeps people from doing, you know, say planning is obviously it's scary. It's not fun to think about dying, right? And it's also one of those things that's like final. How do I know that I'm making the exact right decisions right now? You know? And then we alleviate a lot of those concerns with how we work with, with estate planning inside of Royal Legal Solutions. And that can touch on more of that in a moment, but a story for you. This is a, it's a true story from my experience, being an attorney, as well as an entrepreneur and real estate investor, that I was that we had a client of mine who didn't have an estate plan and without an estate plan in place, what that means is all of your assets, all go through the court system and you have to go through this process called probate. And in probate, the whole world gets to see everything about your finances and where all of your money's going to.
1 (13m 6s):
So if you have any appreciable amount of wealth, guess what? Now, everybody in the world knows who to target to go after that. Well, what's even worse is because it's public. Now, you got people coming out of the woodwork saying, oh, John owed me all this money and guess what? They start filing those claims against your estate, John. And that means that money's coming out of the pockets of your kids, because guess what? Your kids aren't in a frame of mind to get into a complex legal battle because you know, you know, you just died, right? So now that some of your state's getting robbed by other people now for investors or people have businesses, this is even worse. Getting caught up in probate because inside a probate, it's now a court proceeding where somebody has to get charged by the court to be able to control those assets that can take time, right?
1 (13m 51s):
To be able to be able to appoint that person, especially without a will or living trust. And this is bad because without somebody being appointed, that means for real estate investors, that means that mortgages aren't getting paid insurance, isn't getting paid rents, aren't getting collected as a business owner, nobody has power to control your businesses. Orders. Aren't getting fulfilled your, your vendors, aren't getting paid. Your business can go under. And for a lot of us that are entrepreneurs, that's our major source of our income, of what we think we're passing on to be able to help take care of our kids and our loved ones, right? With an estate plan in place, you get to avoid all of that. You get all the anonymity, you get to completely avoid probate.
1 (14m 31s):
Nobody can find out what you own. Somebody immediately gets to take control of all of your bank accounts, your property, your businesses, et cetera, to be able to make sure those things run smoothly. And then your family is protected from anybody from the outside, looking to attack on what their state is and Rob them of their inheritance. And it's so easy to do. And the modern well to do it. If you have under $11 million in assets, it's easy, guys, I'm talking within a couple of days. You can have this state plan set up. It's done once. The way we structure it with the free LLC you get to do at once. You'd never have to touch it again. And if you ever need to alter it, Royal Legal Solutions will modify your estate plan for you. Absolutely for free. So you don't even have to get it perfect. The first time you just got to get it done once, and then you're going to know that you haven't done for forever.
1 (15m 15s):
And if you ever need to change your mind on anything, it doesn't cost you anything to do it. Wow.
0 (15m 19s):
Fire Nation. Let's kind of go over a few things here. Number one, are you protected? Get that LLC. Number two, are you maximizing your tax? Write-offs you have a solo 401k. You can shelter $55,000 a year tax-free and then loan half of the back to yourself and then build your actual retirement account up over time in a meaningful way. And then number three, estate planning. Are you going to let the vultures pick away and Rob your wealth after you die? I mean, may I talk about rolling over in your grave? You're going to be doing spins and flips down there when you're seeing what's going on. Just because you didn't take a day or two and just take the proper action to protect yourself in your estate. So we all love tax breaks.
0 (16m 0s):
We all love tax breaks. Scott, why do you think I moved down to Puerto Rico? I love myself some tax breaks, but share some of your favorite tax breaks seekers for entrepreneurs. I mean, you know, we talked about some things already, but what are some other things that are maybe some lower hanging fruit that we can just start taking action towards or, or change our mindset around
1 (16m 18s):
The number one thing to look at too, when you're looking at any professionals that you're looking to bring onto your team as what are the people that are in similar kinds of business that you're in, that are Mac using the same tools for themselves, but they're also recommending for you to use, right? And so all of these tools that I'm recommending for everybody are ones that I use personally. And for my over 3000 clients for all over the country, we help people in all 50 states for that. And the number one thing that I see that I love to use and that I have a lot of my clients using right now is the ability to write off all of their vacations. All you have to do to be able to write off a vacation is sandwich your vacation among two meetings and whatever, wherever spot you want to go to, you want to go to Barbados, cool, find a good CPA, or find somebody else that you want to connect with down in Barbados, have a meeting with them on Friday.
1 (17m 4s):
Also have a meeting with them on Monday, enjoy the weekend to yourself. Now you get to write off the entire vacation as a business trip, and you got to spend two days on the beach. That's a beautiful thing.
0 (17m 14s):
Fire Nation. These are just things that you can do to maximize the money you're keeping in your pocket. Enjoy your vacations, a little more knowing there's going to be business write-offs I think so. Absolutely to the end of time. Now, before we take a break, Scott, is there anything else you kind of want to talk about estate planning wise? Like we, we went through a lot of different things, a lot of different options and opportunities. Anything else you think that entrepreneurs just Fire Nation in general really should be thinking about when it comes to that?
1 (17m 41s):
Yeah, absolutely. So with the state planning, what a lot of people have done before is that they have things that they think they've done estate planning, but they haven't really they'll have something in place called like a living will or some of the other terms that you'll get kicked around and there. But all of those have to typically do with what happens if you're injured and you need somebody else to take control of your assets, like a power of attorney. What you really need for estate planning is you need a living trust, which will own your LLC. Your LLC will in turn, you know, own your assets. So that way your assets are protected. They're all part of the estate. That way you can set it up once. And it's one and done forever. A lot of people are doing that's wrong is that they'll have a living trust put in place. And they'll spend, you know, $5,000 with an attorney by the local attorney to put together a simple living trust form.
1 (18m 25s):
Cause they don't know any better that you know, these, that they don't need to spend that much money to do that. And only to come to find out that they're holding all of their assets directly inside the living trust, which means that they're totally not protected. So they accomplished the probate protections by making sure that all of the assets avoided probate court and protected pass directly to their heirs. But what they missed was the asset protection piece. So what I want to just emphasize in here is that all of these things have to work together correctly to get the synergistic benefits. So just working with somebody that only works in one field, they're going to miss the forest for the trees. So that's why you have to look at someplace. That's a professionals that really understand who you are, everything that's going on in your life.
1 (19m 8s):
And then you get a game plan that takes you from start to finish, not just for now, but over the next 15 years of all the things you're going to be able to put in place, guys. And it all ends with how good the estate planning structures with everything else. Because at the end of the day, it's about making sure that our kids are provided for that. The right people are taking care of the kids. And without that estate plan in place, the government decides what happens with your money and who gets to take care of your kids. And for me, that's a non-starter
0 (19m 35s):
Value bombs are being dropped, Fire Nation, and Scott is just getting warmed up. So we got some more things to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsor customer expectations are at an all-time high and making things easy is how you'll win. If you can accomplish easy, you'll turn one-time customers into lifetime customers. So how can you make things easy for your customers? It starts with knowledge like having a 360 degree view of how your customers have interacted with your business in the past, what their buying preferences are and how likely they are to become a repeat customer. But how do you gain these insights with a HubSpot CRM platform? That's exactly what you'll get easy to use tools that give you and your teams, the full picture of your customers.
0 (20m 19s):
Just one example of how powerful having that full picture can be. Well, HubSpot, intuitive payment tools allow you to help your customers have a seamless purchase experience with full access to payment data, your teams get the full customer story, meaning they can provide the best possible service. And with directly embedded payment links, your customers can quickly and easily purchase and pay from emails, live chats, and more, learn more about how HubSpot can help your business grow better at hubspot.com. So Scott we're back and solid banking and bookkeeping, it's part of being a successful entrepreneur. So break it down for us. What are the baking of bookkeeping essentials for Fire Nation?
1 (20m 59s):
Yeah, the number one thing that you want to do with your banking and bookkeeping is just trying to keep it simple, but keep it up-to-date right. So that's usually just as simple as using QuickBooks or another piece of software and just go through it, you know, at a scheduled time each month, right. Especially if you're just starting out and you're doing all of your own bookkeeping to just say, I'm going to be disciplined enough to go through this either at least once a month, but probably every couple of weeks. And the reason this becomes really important is that you need to start having a discipline around your finances and a discipline around all of the numbers. It's, it's the most unfun thing you can do and tell, you can start to see how the numbers on the page will tell you what you need to be doing in your business, right?
1 (21m 40s):
So it's, it's amazing how the numbers, once they're properly input into your QuickBooks, into your accounting software can tell you like, oh, this is the knob. I need to turn on my business. I need to be thinking about how can I generate more $10,000 products or I need to have more subscriptions to be able to, to level out what's going on with, with the finances of my company. So, but all of that comes down to your bookkeeping guys. And we have a ton of free courses that we offer on the bookkeeping side of how do we use that as entrepreneurs? How do we actually use it as one of the fastest growing law firms in the country to say, this is what informs us of the types of decisions that we need to be making. But the number one thing to do is if you're just getting into it, do it as simple as possible.
1 (22m 23s):
Otherwise your head's going to explode with all the new information and trying to put it all together,
0 (22m 28s):
Fire Nation, keep it simple, keep it, up-to-date go through it at the same time every single month, if you're not building discipline around your numbers, what are you doing? And I love how Scott said, it's the most unfun thing to do, but guess what's more un-fun being broke. And unfortunately that's what a lot of entrepreneurs find at the end of the month. The quarter of the year is wow. I had no fiscal responsibility around what I was doing. My profit margins are nothing. I'm actually losing money. You know, there's, there's people that make millions of dollars a year. That's why I'm so such, such a stickler about, I don't care that you made $7 million last year.
0 (23m 8s):
What's what is your net profit from that? Because you can make 7 million and spend $9 million. That's why people are there on the Inc 500 list. I see them all the time. There's like they generated $3.4 million and I see they have 112 employees. I'm like those numbers don't add up the profit margin on those companies are raised within if anything, I mean, Fire Nation, you have to have discipline around your numbers because nobody's going to care if you're making a net profit, except you, you need to care, you're running it. So what else do you want to chat about when it comes to banking and bookkeeping for entrepreneurs, Scott?
1 (23m 42s):
Yeah. The other thing that happens with banking is that it can be pretty sometimes to figure out what are your banking relationships need to look like? So what we have is we have a lot of banks that are national and online where people can set up bank accounts completely virtually without ever stepping foot in a branch. Because when people get these with a, get the free LLCs, we come in, we also help them through that process of here's how you actually set up the bank accounts for it, where you have all these online platforms that make it really easy for, for that banking process to take place. Now, the relationship with your bankers as an entrepreneur becomes exceptionally important because as you grow with the one things that you're kind of find is, is you're, you're stuck in a quagmire of sorts, right?
1 (24m 22s):
Where do I have to get people equity? So that way I can get more cash to grow to the next level, or do I take on debt in some form of fashion with an outside person, which can be really difficult to do? Or my favorite option to do is actually just take the accounting records. Remember, cause I'm keeping up-to-date accurate accounting records with a bank now with maybe Solera bank or one of the other banks that we have a relationship with. And now what you can do is you can apply for those business lines of credit directly from the banks and the interest rates on them are phenomenal. You're able to just pull on them whenever you need to, to be able to take whatever cash you need to at whatever time you need to. So if you're scaling up an ad campaign or something like that, you're able to easily pull on those.
1 (25m 5s):
And they're usually able to give you somewhere between 25 and 30% of your prior year's revenue directly from the banks, with the relationships that we have. So now you have these much larger pools of access to capital. That's not on credit cards, it's just tied to your business. That way it can affect your personal credit, if anything goes wrong, which is also super important. And what you're able to do with that, as you flatten out your cashflow, you don't end up with these cash crunches that that keep you from being able to do the next thing that you need to go do. As an entrepreneur, you can't allow cash to stand in the way of you being able to create the value for your customers. And so you need to think strategically about I'm going to get my bookkeeping. I'm going to get my banking.
1 (25m 45s):
I'm going to let them see that I'm operating correctly for a period of time. And then they're going to give me the keys to the kingdom. They're going to give me that easy cash to go to. And I don't have to go seek it out from outside parties that may want to try to steal part of my business by taking part of my equity or give me some really harsh loan terms that has interest rates kicking in from day one. I'm into it. These banking relationships are absolutely essential
0 (26m 7s):
Fire Nation. When's the worst time to try and get alone when you absolutely need it. You need to have lines of credit in reserve on the ready. You need to have relationships in place with banks so that you can tap into those when you need it. Not being like, oh my God. If we don't make, if we don't get this amount of money in the next two weeks, we aren't going to make payroll and then going on scrambling and not actually continuing to run your business. These need to be in place Fire Nation, focus on this stuff now. And it all comes and starts with the relationships you have with your bank and making that happen. So Scott, as we wrap up here, bring this home for us. What message do you want to convey to Fire Nation, to all of our entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, wantrepreneurs side, hustlers, small business owners.
0 (26m 53s):
What do you want to say to them?
1 (26m 55s):
The number one of the things I want to say to them is that is to go onto RoyalLegalSolutions.com/fire and get your free LLC and get your foot in the door with Royal Legal Solutions. The reason that we're giving away these free LLCs to everybody, there's no secret hint to it, right? Is that what we know is what you've just heard here in this podcast, that once you start working with us, you're going to see all of the different values that we can bring to the table. And that's where we make money. We able to present those opportunities to show you how these things make sense, and there's no obligation to act on it. Otherwise guys, why this is so important is because being an entrepreneur, to be able to create the products, find the customers, be able to launch your ad campaigns.
1 (27m 35s):
Doing all of that is hard enough, right? We are one-stop shop that handles everything else in your life for you, if you want us to. So that way you can just focus on the things of the making money part. That's the part we can't do for you just about everything else we can take for you. We can show you how to do it. I've built multiple million dollar companies up from the ground up. What I've developed here is where law tax estate planning, all of the functions come together. So that way you don't have to figure them out. We've already figured them out and we're happy to show them to you for no cost. And if you want us to do it, then we're happy to do that for you.
0 (28m 10s):
Fire Nation, royallegalsolutions.com/eof-free-llc, take action, get your free LLC. And then if the time is ever right to pursue further things with Scott's team, then of course you're going to do that because they're awesome. And if not, you just have a free LLC. It's an absolute, win-win no risk situation. So I just want to say Fire Nation, that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with SRS and JLD today. So keep up the heat and of course, head over to EOFire.com. And if you type Scott in the search bar, the show's page will pop up with everything we've been talking about. Best show notes in the biz, links to everything we mentioned. And Scott, thank you for sharing your truth, your value bombs with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side.
0 (28m 60s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by Scott. Fire Nation are ready to rock your very own podcasts? Well, I have a free podcasting course where I teach you how to create and launch your very own podcast in you guessed it. It's for free at freepodcastcourse.com. freepodcastcourse.com. I'll catch you there Fire Nation, or I will catch you on the flip side. Business made simple hosted by Donald Miller, takes the mystery out of growing your business. Recent episodes, like how to attract and retain top talent and how to make more money with your current products are straight fire.
0 (29m 41s):
Listen to business made simple wherever you get your podcasts.
Killer Resources!
1) The Common Path to Uncommon Success: JLD’s 1st traditionally published book! Over 3000 interviews with the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs compiled into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!
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3) Podcasters’ Paradise: The #1 podcasting community in the world!