325 - Lessons learned 1 year in

On today's episode of the podcast I'm sharing the lessons I've learned since re-opening my law firm last year.

Head to notavglaw.com/quiz to find out which business bestie you are. The quiz will tell you what direction you need to go and what you need to be doing in your business when it comes to the tax and legal stuff. 

Last year I relaunched my law firm and rebranded it "Not Your Average Law Firm" in February 2023. After I did some soul searching and decided what direction I wanted to take the business, we launched the firm with an open house and kicked off the firm with our monthly legal subscription and had about 10 clients join in our first couple months. We then started doing tax return services and trademarks. 

In just the last year with our legal members, we had one client who we helped navigate the $50,000 copyright lawsuit they were served. We had a client who purchased a business ten years ago and they got hit with a copyright claim for a photo on the website from before they bought the company, we've also filed about a dozen trademarks for our clients and the first are on their way to being officially approved soon after going through the process. We've drafted dozens and dozens of contracts and terms of services for clients and sent emails on their behalf to their own clients who weren't paying on time.  

In December, we launched Unf*ck Your Biz as a done-for-you service and onboarded 19 clients. One big thing we learned from the legal subscription is a lot of folks get themselves into trouble because they don't take time to set themselves up properly. For example, I spoke with someone getting refund requests from two multi-thousand dollar projects but we had a hard time helping them because they had weak contracts. Same with the clients that come to us looking to file a trademark before they have an LLC. There's an order that things need to be done in order to avoid patchworking things in an unideal order that isn't systematic.. From our perspective, there is a step by step process we recommend going through to avoid these scenarios. 

Here's what I've learned: 

1. It's hard to launch an offer without great systems, but it's really hard to invent great systems before you launch an offer. We've set up work flows and within a week of launching we're changing them because now we're getting a better understanding of what our client needs and what works better. For this launch we did 1-on-1 calls with each Unf*ck Your Biz client to see what they needed and then we took them through a custom roadmap. My lesson was that beta programs are great, but you need to do them with fewer people depending on the capacity of your business. 

2. I decided we are going to raise the price after our first beta launch so a) I want to get more people and b) I wanted to give people an opportunity to join the cohort at that initial price point. This is where I learn a lot of my business decisions are clouded by the conversations in the online course space about beta programs, founding members and scarcity. But, when you have to deliver on a service, maybe not the best option. If I could do this over again I would do a quiet launch for about five clients as an initial beta to develop systems and then I would do a big beta launch. Clients have found it to be valuable, but we want a  more organized system in place that's clearer to those in the cohort. Next time, we'll do it the opposite and do a five client beta program in March to test out our 58 step system to really test the process we've created. 

We still have three spots left for the March cohort. One of them can be yours. Send me a DM on Instagram @notavglaw and we can chat about if it's a good fit for you. This round will still be at the $4,000 price point from last year, and this will be the last time it is offered at this rate.

For everyone who signs up for Unf*ck Your Biz, we:

- Set up your bookkeeping and complete up to one-year of bookkeeping catch-up. 
- Provide tax strategy plans 
- Do ne past tax return if you're behind on your taxes
- A full suite of contracts (at least seven to eight covering your routine business stuff)
- File one trademark for you
- Do a legal compliance audit
- Set up a business formation (LLC, S Corp, etc.) 
- Create a custom cash flow strategy

After we go through Unf*ck Your Biz (UYB), we help everyone maintain their systems for those who choose to continue working with us through one of our monthly services. For 2024 this looks like a two tier system. In our first tier, we track all your income and expenses for $150/month and do monthly Q&As where you can bring your tax and legal questions.

In our higher tier, the Monthly Everything tier, we offer full bookkeeping in Quickbooks, we do the reconciliation, and this also prepays for your tax return next year. We also include tax strategy, twice annual tax consultations, all of the monthly legal services mentioned earlier in the episode AND up to one trademark a year for just $500/month. If this sounds interesting to you or are curious if this is best place for you to get started, be sure to take our quiz notavglaw.com/quiz