Episode Notes

The end of the year is upon us and whether we like it or not, it’s time to think about wrapping up our finances. Do you have a plan in place for your financial strategy? Do you know why it matters? 

Join Stephanie as she talks with Lawyerist Lab financial coach Bernadette Harris about finding the levers to systemize your firm finances and get ready for tax season. Plus, she shares some tips on how to increase your income but NOT your tax liability!

If today's podcast resonates with you and you haven't read The Small Firm Roadmap Revisited yet, get the first chapter right now for free! Looking for help beyond the book? Check out our coaching community to see if it's right for you.

  • 6:32. Important terminology.
  • 8:25. Create a plan for your financial strategy.
  • 16:32. Advice on how to get there.

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to The Lawyerist Podcast, a series of discussions with entrepreneurs and innovators about building a successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. Lawyerist supports attorneys, building client-centered, and future-oriented small law firms through community, content, and coaching both online and through the Lawyerist Lab. And now from the team that brought you The Small Firm Roadmap and your podcast hosts

 

Stephanie Everett (00:35):

Hi, I’m Stephanie Everett.

 

Ashley Steckler (00:36):

And I’m Ashley Steckler. And this is episode 418 of the Lawyerist podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today Stephanie talks with our lab coach Bernadette, about year-end finances.

 

Stephanie Everett (00:48):

Today’s podcast is brought to you by Posh Virtual Receptionists, Berkshire Receptionists, and Lawyerist Lab.

 We wouldn’t be able to do this show without their support, so stay tuned cause we’re gonna tell you more about them later on. It’s Thanksgiving holiday here in the US. This show is actually airing on Thanksgiving, which means we are feeling very grateful for all the things in our life.

 

Ashley Steckler (01:11):

End of years coming, holidays are coming, family time planning what the next year looks like. I mean, there’s lots of things going on at this time of the year for sure.

 

Stephanie Everett (01:23):

And I think one of the things, it’s easy to get in holiday in festivity mode, but as business owners we have to stop and also start getting into planning mode. I mean, I always love the first of the year because it does feel like a reset for the business. New budgets, new goals, new everything. It’s like first day of school with a brand new notebook, but it’s for your business. And so now is a great time to really be intentional and set some time aside to do that work.

 

Ashley Steckler (01:51):

So we’ve been talking a lot lately on our team about making sure that we’re wrapping up the year talking about what next year looks like with the realization that there’s vacation time, extra holiday built-in time, and so we actually have less time than a full calendar month. So what can we do about that?

 

Stephanie Everett (02:13):

Yeah, I mean I think it’s a good time to do a check in on whatever your end of the year goals are for 22 and be realistic knowing that you just said all those things. Maybe you had five more things you wanted to get done and two feels a little bit easier than just reset and make sure you get the two done. What we don’t want you to do is say, I have five, I’ll never get to five. So I do zero.

 

Ashley Steckler (02:35):

Yeah, absolutely.

 

Stephanie Everett (02:37):

And then I think in terms of planning for next year, again, it’s about setting side some time and making it a priority. I think it’s really easy to sort of push that off. It just feels like not as important with all the other things we’re trying to do to wrap up the year. But it’s really a great way to make sure we’re ready for the new year and getting started. And in lab, we are actually setting aside, we’re doing a study group. So we’re doing three weeks, one hour each week in December of planning. Like I’m going to walk everyone as a group through and we’re gonna create our 2023 business goals.

 

Ashley Steckler (03:14):

And so that starts December 7th

 

Stephanie Everett (03:18):

And it’s something that everyone in our lab community is invited to join, obviously as part of the program. But we decided to open it up to special guests because maybe there’s listeners out there, people in our larger community who are feeling a little lost or stuck or intimidated about how to get started or they just would like that extra accountability of knowing they’re gonna have homework each week and show up and have to present their homework and show me that they’re doing their things.

 

(03:42):

So if that’s something someone’s interested in, let us know. We will put the link in the show notes. You can also email Jennifer jennifer@lawyerist.com for the details and we’d love to have you join us for that. Yeah, that’s great. And now here’s Stephanie’s conversation with Bernadette.

 

Bernadette Harris (04:03):

Hi, welcome back. I’m Bernadette o Harris, the finance coach here at Lawyers. Excited to be back on the podcast again. I’m talking about some fun stuff.

 

Stephanie Everett (04:14):

You always talk about fun stuff, you make numbers fun. That’s the whole point, right?

 

Bernadette Harris (04:18):

Yes. That’s one of the things that I really do love about what I do, is just the ability to do that. Cause so many people are afraid of numbers. So many people don’t wanna have the conversation about numbers. And so I like to be able to take that anxiety away and let’s just talk about it, right?

 

Stephanie Everett (04:35):

Yeah. I mean, I was actually on a coaching call this morning with someone who just joined lab and she was like, yeah, I’m scared to look at my numbers. So I kind of look at my bank account, make sure I’m not overdrawn <laugh> about it,

 

Bernadette Harris (04:47):

<laugh>.

 

Stephanie Everett (04:48):

And it’s something we see. So first let’s just acknowledge it that fear is and anxiety is out there. It’s

 

Bernadette Harris (04:55):

Very real. Yeah, it is very real. And you are not alone. I know a lot of times when people have certain fears, you think, am I the only one who thinks like this? And oh gosh, no, you’re not. Right? So if you do have that fear and if you’re in lab, so I know you told her to book a call with me so we can kinda go through this <laugh>. Yeah,

 

Stephanie Everett (05:15):

For sure.

 

Bernadette Harris (05:16):

Yeah, definitely work through those anxieties. Because one of the things that I know that a lot of labsters that I work with is being able to help them get excited about their numbers and actually looking forward to looking at their QuickBook files or looking at their PNLs when they get it from their bookkeeper, their accountant. So that’s the goal of business because whether you’re a numbers person or not, if you are running a business, you have to know your numbers, you have to pay attention to your numbers there. There’s just only so much you can outsource on that. But that’s not why we’re here.

 

Stephanie Everett (05:53):

No, no. But it’s a good reminder. We’ll make it fun and it’s okay to be scared, but it’s not okay to not look. So we we’re here to help you. We can. And that’s what I did today. I was like, well, let’s just get started and take a look and see where we are so that way we know where we need to go next.

 

Bernadette Harris (06:08):

Absolutely, absolutely.

 

Stephanie Everett (06:10):

So today we’re gonna talk about some end of the year planning because we’re recording this. It’s the beginning of November. It’s gonna air and it’s gonna be that time of year where we’re looking, we’re thinking about the end of the year, we’re getting ready for next year. And so it’s a great time to really think about your numbers and maybe some things you can do now that can make a difference.

 

Bernadette Harris (06:32):

And it is really important. And as we get started, we like to do a lot of educating on this podcast. And so I like to throw out some terminology then let’s define them. So the first terminology is tax avoidance. You’ve probably heard this term before. Tax avoidance is first of all, it is legal. So tax avoidance is legal. It is when you put a plan in place ahead of time to lower your tax liability. So tax avoidance is something that goes hand in hand with tax planning and we’ll talk about that in a second. The converse to that is tax evasion, which is illegal. And tax evasion is when you put a plan in place after the fact to avoid taxes or to lower your tax liability. And the reason that we’re having this conversation now is so that you can be on the legal side and you can be on the tax avoidance side to put a plan into place.

 

(07:40):

Now when the year is still in, we’re still in the current tax year, something that you can do now to avoid your taxes. Cause inevitably when we prepare a tax return in April, somebody says, well, what can I do to lower my tax liability? And it’s like, this is a conversation that we should have had last year is not a conversation for April. And so we’re gonna have this conversation today. So we know that we are on the tax avoidance track and we understand that tax avoidance is a part of the whole tax plan process.

 

Stephanie Everett (08:16):

And so what are some things that we should be thinking about when it comes to tax avoidance or is it fair to just call that tax planning? Is that the same?

 

Bernadette Harris (08:25):

It really is. It really is tax planning because tax planning means you are proactively putting things in place to lower your tax liability or you are proactively putting things in place to match your financial strategy. What do I mean by financial strategy? Sometimes lowering your tax liability is not the priority for your business. I was speaking to a group that I was coaching, coaching and we’re talking about where you are personally in your life may dictate what you need your tax return to look like. If you are getting ready to purchase a house, your tax return probably needs to show that you’ve made enough money to be able to repay that mortgage or you’re trying to get a business loan. So tax planning is one of those things where it is not always about deducting everything that you can and paying the lowest possible taxes, but it is about being proactive and creating a plan that is in alignment with whatever your financial strategy is for that year or what you have coming up. Does that make sense?

 

Stephanie Everett (09:35):

It does. I mean, it sounds like you’re telling a story. What do you want your tax returns? Which story do you want them to tell? So if you’re Exactly, if you’re trying to get a loan, if you need it to be a good story of, yeah, I make some money. Sometimes I joke with my husband, maybe if this is okay, he runs a business with inventory and so often at the end of the year they’re writing off the bad inventory that has spoiled. And we can’t sell cuz he sells beer. And so if it goes bad, believe it or not, you have to get rid of it. And I’m always like, yeah, go ahead. Show a loss. It’s okay cause that might help us. And so I mean they’re looking at their inventory and seeing can we make any adjustments before the end of the year because maybe that then lowers the income for the business. So that would tell a different story. But if we were trying to tell a story of getting a loan then that we might not wanna do that. Is that, do I have it kind of right?

 

Bernadette Harris (10:31):

Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it. And so in that same scenario, like you said, that’s what the tax planning comes in and you say, Hey, we’re actually trying to tell a different story. We want our tax return to say something different. So instead of writing off this bad beer in January, I mean in December, let’s do it in January so it hits the next and not, and that’s what tax planning is. And so when you are paying attention to your numbers and not really running from ’em, actually dealing with them, you are in a position to be able to make decisions to make sure that what the story that you tell. I love that the story that you’re telling is in alignment with the strategy that you put in place for that tax sheet.

 

Stephanie Everett (11:16):

And so what are some of the first steps someone takes? I mean it sounds like, first of all, you need to know your numbers. I mean, I feel like we’re a broken record, but it’s probably worth saying that if you don’t know your numbers, you don’t even know what levers you might wanna pull of how that could impact one way or another.

 

Bernadette Harris (11:33):

Exactly. You definitely have to know your numbers and we’re going to say this on every single podcast cause it’s so important to make sure that you have a record keeping system in place. You have some way of knowing what your numbers are. Are you making a profit? Are you losing money? If you are, why? You know, all of those kinds of things. And so the tip that the number one tip, anytime I teach a tax planning workshop, if I have a tax planning conversation with a client, the first thing we’re talking about is record keeping. What is your record keeping looking like? And so if you have QuickBooks, is it up to date, is it accurate? All of those kinds of things.

 

(12:16):

So you wanna make sure that you have your records in place. That’s the first thing. We’re gonna beat that horse to death. We’re talking about it every single time because that is the most important piece. We cannot even continue the conversation if you don’t have that. It’s almost like when you go to a store and they say, no shirt, no shoes, no service, you can’t even come past, there’s no, there’s nothing else I can do for you until you get a shirt and some shoes. So until you have a record keeping system in place, we can’t have the tax planning conversation. This forces you to, one, have a system in place and also it needs to be up to date and accurate.

 

Stephanie Everett (12:58):

And I think we’ve said this before, but we’ll beat it again. If you’re outsourcing your bookkeeping to someone like you’re the client and it is perfectly reasonable for you to ask that bookkeeper to give you your monthly reports by, I think we say the 10th of the month for ours, or we had done the 15th, but we realized we needed it a little bit sooner for some of the stuff we were doing. I hear so many lawyers say, well I’ve outsourced it but my bookkeeper just doesn’t get it to me or I don’t have it and I don’t even understand that excuse. I’m like, you’re the client, I want to empower you right now. Ask for it. And they should get it to you each and every month by an agreed upon date. And if they don’t, it might be time to change services.

 

Bernadette Harris (13:41):

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We have that same policy in our firm. We’re between the 10th and the 15th, just depending, there are factors that change that date and make that data a little bit flexible. It depends on the bank and when they actually make the statements available and things like that. But that is not an unreasonable request to have your financials definitely by the 15th. The 15th is our drop dead date. We are really striving for the 10th, but the 15th is a drop dead date. So that is not unreasonable for you to ask for your financials and for them to be up to date. Now I will add this in here because I’m an accountant and we deal with this, right? Business owners also have to take responsibility for their role in making sure that the financials are on time. So that could be the accountant or bookkeeper is waiting on the client to get back to them about transactions or they don’t have the right statement so they don’t have all the statements. And so there’s some onus on the business owner as well. But if you’ve done your part, it is very, very reasonable for you to expect the person that you or the company that you’ve outsourced it to do their

 

Stephanie Everett (15:02):

Part. Yeah, no, that’s all fair. And I feel like we have a good working relationship with ours and so they’re asking us questions, we’re getting them responses and you know, just stay on if you stay on top of it too. It doesn’t become this big thing. Cuz that’s the other thing that I think happens is people put their head in the sand and wait and then it becomes a day’s project. Whereas now I spend a few minutes every couple of weeks answering a question and then maybe an hour or two a month reviewing things and it’s easy. So that’s the good news. That’s what everybody should be striving for. When you do it and you keep it up to date, it really, it just becomes a natural part of your workflow. It does not take up hardly any time at all.

 

Bernadette Harris (15:43):

Yeah, it’s like me with washing dishes. So confession, I hate washing dishes. I absolutely hate washing dishes, <laugh>. So I have to tell myself, Bernadette, if you just wash the bowl after you eat salad, then you won’t have dishes piling up if you just, and so it’s the same, it’s essentially the same concept. It’s something that you don’t particularly care to do, but if you just do it in the little small increments, like washing a bowl in the plate after I have a salad is so easy as opposed to the salad and then the chicken and then I cook and then it’s like now it’s like, oh gosh, I have a whole sink full of dishes. So same concept. Same concept with your numbers. So we beat that horse today.

 

Stephanie Everett (16:29):

Yes. So we know our numbers.

 

Bernadette Harris (16:32):

We’ll probably do it again in the next episode, but really, really important. That’s the really, really important tip. And so next I wanna to talk about a tip that a lot of times I think is missed by small business owners. And I go into a lot of detail. I know we did it in a session with the labsters. I teach a workshop about this where we really, really get into it. But there are what I call tax free extractions that you can have in your business. So what does that mean a tax free extraction? It is, I don’t know, let’s say this is a Bernadette term. I may have made this up, I don’t know, but I don’t wanna take credit for it if it’s somebody else’s stuff, but I feel like I made it up. But anyway, so tax free extraction is a way that you can deduct something on your business side, put income in your pocket.

 

(17:25):

On the personal side, it’s an expense on the business side, but it’s not income on the personal side, it’s an exchange. So that is a way that you can lower your tax liability on the business side because now you have this deduction, you’ve increased your income. So now this is money that you can use to pay a bill or buy a pair of shoes or whatever you chosen to do with it, but you don’t have to claim it on your tax return. So my favorite tax free extraction is mileage. And this is missed so much by business owners because a lot of business owners wanna do things like, oh I’m gonna buy the vehicle in business name and that’s a whole conversation, let’s put a pin in that maybe we can come back to and do a show about that. But the mileage deduction is a huge deduction that you can get as a business owner.

 

(18:19):

And if you have a personal vehicle that you occasionally use for business as well as personal, it is in your very best interest to keep track of your knowledge because keeping track of your knowledge is a way that your business can reimburse you for driving for the business. So you’re paying your own car payment, you’re paying your own car insurance and repairs and buying gas and all of that on your personal account. But occasionally you have to drive to go teach a workshop or you have to drive to go to court or do a de or whatever the case may be. In those instances, it’s a great idea to keep track of your mileage. Cause now the business can be firm, can reimburse you for those miles and deduct that as a travel expense on the business side and you get money in your pocket on the personal side.

 

Stephanie Everett (19:13):

Yeah, makes sense. And there’s apps now that will help you do it for you. I know we used to keep a notebook and pin in our car and you’d have to remember to check your mileage at the beginning of a trip. But now these apps with gps, they just do all that for you. Just click a button.

 

Bernadette Harris (19:29):

Oh yeah. The apps are so, they’re so easy. So there’s, they’re apps and I won’t call any names, but you could download a mileage app and it’s on your phone. Nobody is leaving home without their phones. Not anymore. We’re turning around. If I leave my phone, I am going back, I will be late for wherever I’m going. I’m not going anywhere without my phone. And we’re all like that. It’s not just me. So because you’re always gonna have your phone with you and you have this app on your phone, it is just paying attention. So it’s like, hey, you’re in the car and you’re moving, let’s start tracking your mileage. And that’s exactly what it does. And when you stop, it pops up on your phone and it says Hey, was this a business trip or personal trip? You swipe one way for business, one way for personal and voila you have a know log and it’s a know log that you can use if you were ever questioned or audited by the IRS, it be approved log because essentially it’s probably better than that little notebook that we had in the car because it literally tracks every single thing.

 

(20:37):

So it’s a very, very easy way to keep track of your knowledge and it’s a lot of money that you can rack up on knowledge depending on the city that you live in. I know there in Atlanta you can drive a hundred miles a day and that’s nothing.

 

Stephanie Everett (20:55):

Yeah, for sure

 

Bernadette Harris (20:56):

And that’s a nice mileage reimbursement. So okay, that’s my tax-free extraction.

 

Stephanie Everett (21:01):

I love it. So let’s take a quick break and hear from our sponsors. We’ll when we come back we’re gonna hear Bernadette’s next tip for us on how we can do some tax planning or end of the year planning with our finances

 

Zack Glaser:

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Stephanie Everett (23:14):

I’m back with our financial coach, Bernadette, and we’re talking about end of the year planning. So what are some other things we should be doing this time of year?

 

Bernadette Harris (23:22):

The other tip that I wanna share on today’s podcast is retirement plans. A lot of small business owners kinda sleep on this. You don’t think about it, you know, started your firm, you’re trying to build your firm, you’re getting your clients, you’re getting your staff and you’re not really thinking about later. But a retirement plan is a great way to do two things, lower your tax liability and also save for the future. Not to mention having a retirement plan is also a great way to attract good people to your firm. So looking at retirement plans is a way to lower your tax liability. So I’ll throw in the disclaimer, I am not a financial planner. Please speak to your financial advisor about your particular tax situation and we’re just gonna give some general, general advice as it relates to retirement plans. And so generally speaking, when you’re thinking about retirement plans, some of the things that you wanna think about is who is going to be covered by the plan.

 

(24:30):

So we have some solo practitioners who are solo and they really are fine with being solo. They’re not looking to grow their firms, they’re comfortable with being solo. And in a scenario where you are solo, then doing something like a SEP, SEP is a great option because with a SEP all the money is contributed by the business and because you’re solo, you don’t have any other employees, you don’t have to worry about contributing for your employees. So that is an attractive way to save for retirement. With a SEP plan, the beauty of the step is unlike just like a traditional IRA or Roth IRA, you can contribute more to yourself. And so this is great for people who may have gotten a late start on contributing to or setting up a retirement plan. It’s also great for people who are over a certain age like me because there’s like the provision that allows you to add a little bit more and it adjusts for I. So we won’t even use numbers cause it just changes every year. But just understanding that that is one of the options that you have as a solo practitioner in your firm.

 

Stephanie Everett (25:51):

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and I know mean, again, not to get into too many of the details, but even if that option isn’t available to you, there are so many plans out there now. I think in my mind, when I was a firm owner, I always thought that this would be really expensive and the administrative cost of setting one up and maintaining it is really low. There’s a lot of easy plans out there. I mean the little bit of the cost comes, we did a safe harbor plan so we had to contribute to our employees funds, but then it allowed us as owners to also participate. Cuz I used to do really boring things like deliver people’s discrimination testing on their 401K plans in a former life. So not to get too technical, so there could be some cost if you do a match with it, but the actual setting up of the plans is really a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

 

Bernadette Harris (26:43):

Same here. Yeah, same here. I was honestly one of those late people to start. I started my firm 20 years ago and 21 years ago I was not thinking about retirement, I was thinking about survival. So now having a plan and knowing that man, I could have done this so much sooner and this I could have just been in a different place had I done it. So retirement plans is a great way to be able to lower your tax liability, to save for retirement, attract good people to your firm. And there are other plans, like you said, you can do a safe harbor plan, you can do it for, there are solo 401ks that allow you to contribute a little more than the step. They’re regular 401ks if you have employees. And so it’s a conversation worth having to decide which of these plans actually makes sense for me.

 

Stephanie Everett (27:40):

Absolutely. Yeah. So once we’ve done that, do you have another tip for us today?

 

Bernadette Harris (27:47):

So another tax planning tip that you can look at at the end of the year is an entity check. And what I mean by entity check is making sure that you are in the right entity for where you are income-wise in your firm. So a lot of times when you start your firm, maybe you started in, you’re really uncertain, you’re not really sure what the profitability of the firm would be. So you may have started out as a sole proprietor and looking at your tax numbers, you are probably gonna get slammed with the self-employment taxes and things like that. And so that now it may be a time to have a conversation about is it appropriate for me to switch to an S corporation or if we became a partnership, what does that look like? Or if we became a C corporation, what does it look like?

 

(28:38):

And so this is a great time a year to look at it to see if, of course we can’t do a lot retroactively, but in planning you may wanna look to see if there’s something that you wanna change for next year. And so it could be something, think about a lawyer who has a contingency practice and maybe you have some cases in the pipeline that you know are gonna probably settle in January and when those cases settle it’s gonna put you in a whole new tax bracket and that’s something that you wanna have a conversation with your accountant about to see if you need to be making some switches or some changes to your entity type.

 

Stephanie Everett (29:20):

That makes a ton of sense. And I guess the other sort of obvious thing that jumps out to me that I always think about is now is a great time if you were looking to switch your accounting software or maybe start it if you haven’t heard that message from us yet, or pay payroll companies now is just a good time as January 1st comes to just do that switch so you have a clean switch and you can have all your information in the same place for the same year.

 

Bernadette Harris (29:51):

Yeah, that’s a great one. That’s a great idea because a lot of times you don’t really have a payroll system in place or something like this, so maybe a good time to implement it or you’re not happy with the payroll company that you’re using. So this may be a good time to start working on switching because the other part of it is payroll companies are slammed in January and so looking at payroll companies or accountants looking for accountants, it’s like buying a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. It’s just not a good time to do that. But if you do it, you may find a Christmas tree, but what is it gonna look like? So same. This is a good time to start shopping those things if you’re looking to change, if your relationship with your account and your bookkeeper is not good, this is also a good time to start shopping at Yeah, kinda stuff. So that’s a great point.

 

Stephanie Everett (30:46):

And a lot of the payroll companies know that this is a good time for you to switch. So they have a ton of incentives and gift cards and

 

Bernadette Harris (30:53):

Promotions,

 

Stephanie Everett (30:55):

Referral links. I’ll give you a referral link, you reach out to me, I’ll tell you, I’ve helped a bunch of people switch and they’re like, here’s your Amazon gift card and here’s your Amazon gift card. Exactly. Same here, same here. My husband’s business, I was like, oh let me set you up on a new payroll system and we get both Amazon gift cards so I mean we’re being silly, but it is a good time to just think about this is the good time of year to be thinking about all that and putting your financial strategy in place for next year. So it’s a good reminder to carve out some time to work on your business in December cuz now’s when everything’s happening and January too. Some of this work might bleed into January, but the tax,

 

Bernadette Harris (31:38):

But at least you’re having a, you’re starting to think about it and it’s a part of the conversation, it’s a part of your strategy and all of that. So we at least want to put the bug in your ear so that you can’t say you didn’t know

 

Stephanie Everett (31:51):

And let’s just make a little plug here. We don’t do it very often, but if you’re listening today and thinking this stuff just intimidates me, maybe it’s time that I finally get a business coach cuz I know I wanna make more next year. I know my year didn’t end the way I thought it was going to. This is what we love doing. I tell everyone we hit the professional lottery cuz our job is to help you run your business better. And I know you do such awesome work as our financial coach, get in. So if you join Lab, you get to work with Bernadette and people like me and we help you figure out what that financial strategy looks like, what levers you need to pull so that you can be profitable and let’s just be honest, be happy. Create the firm that’s gonna give you the life that you wanna live.

 

Bernadette Harris (32:36):

And happy isn’t always a whole lot of money. Sometimes it is about figuring out what does the balance look like? How much time do you wanna work, how much time do you not wanna work? That’s all a part of the financial strategy and it, it’s just like, I love being a part of the Lawyerist community because we really did, we hit the lottery. We really do get to do some awesome work. I’ve had some really emotional days where I’ve had a day of working with clients and just like, wow, I really get to help people to see blind spots and just be able to, like you said, pull the right lever, just tweak this one thing and now your business is doing what you wanted to do.

 

Stephanie Everett (33:19):

Absolutely. Well, great talking with you today, Bernadette. As always, we’ll have you back on the show and happy tax planning everybody.

 

Bernadette Harris (33:27):

Yes.

 

Announcer:

The Lawyerist Podcast is edited by Britany Felix. Are you ready to implement the ideas we discuss here into your practice? Wondering what to do next? Here are your first two steps. First. If you haven’t read The Small Firm Roadmap yet, grab the first chapter for free at Lawyerist.com/book. Looking for help beyond the book? Let’s chat about whether our coaching communities, are right for you. Head to Lawyerist.com/community/lab to schedule a 10-minute call with our team to learn more. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not endorsed by Legal Talk Network. Nothing said in this podcast is legal advice for you.

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Stephanie Everett

Stephanie Everett is the President of Lawyerist, where she leads the Lawyerist Lab program. She is the co-author of the bestselling book The Small Firm Roadmap and is a regular guest and co-host of the weekly Lawyerist Podcast.

Featured Guests

Bernadette Harris Headshot

Bernadette Harris

Bernadette Harris started her first business in 1998 and never looked back. With a background in accounting, business strategy, speaking and fraud forensics, Bernadette has helped countless businesses grow and become even more successful. Her ultimate goal is to see fewer businesses fail. She has written three bestselling books where she focuses on business strategy, preventing fraud, employees/vendors, and more. Her specialties include tax and forensic accounting, entrepreneurship, speaking, and fraud prevention.

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Last updated November 22nd, 2022