Income Report for April 2023: Preparing for Travel, Closing a Facebook Group, and more!

0:00Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by the HubSpot. Spot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Content is Profit. Today, we are dropping our income report for April 2023. And guess what? You might hear a little bit different audio quality, maybe a lot, but Kate and I are currently on a 23-day river cruise in Europe. So I'm using a shoddy microphone as I float up the Danube River somewhere in Germany. So please forgive us. Please bear with us. We have a great income report coming your way as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors.

0:55Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business with episodes like how to get out of your day-to-day operations without crashing your business. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched franchises in a variety of industries outside of food and Fran Bridge Consulting has guided them to these premier opportunities. The founder, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country.

1:27Sign up for a free consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising at FranBridgeConsulting.com. All right, Fire Nation, we are back, and our April 2023 income at a glance is as follows. Our gross income for April was$181 ,607. Our expenses were just under$16 ,000 for a net profit of$165 ,693, up$26 ,000 from last month, with a net profit of 91%. when you take our percentage of net profit to overall gross revenue. So hit that magical 90 or above percent number again, which we are stoked about. And we have some great content to share with you today. But we're going to start with Mr.

2:18CPA on fire himself, Ron, as he shares his monthly tax tip. Ron, take it away. Hello, John, and hello, Fire Nation. This is your April 2023 tax and accounting tip brought to you by CPA on Fire. Hello, Fire Nation. This is Ron Parisi, a managing member of CPA on Fire. Today, I want to talk about venture capital and venture capital deals and kind of share with you guys, you know, CPA on fire's experience both in 2023 and 2022, some of the deals that our clients were involved in from a venture capital perspective. Basically, I'm going to cover just two quick topics. One, you know, why you should be familiar with VC.

3:15Why would they be interested in your company? and then two, just sort of the process that we experienced and how to prepare yourself for an exit or a possible exit somewhere down the road with you guys. Okay, so the first thing is why should you be aware of VC and why would they be interested in your company? Most of the deals that I've seen are on a consolidation basis or an aggregator, meaning that they're looking for, you know, three, five, up to 10 businesses in sort of the same lane, same type of business, whether that's SaaS business, some type of coaching business, digital marketing, where they can consolidate one for scale, right?

4:15So the larger company, a lot of maybe the expenses that can be reduced and redundancies can be eliminated. So they can scale if they have five businesses as opposed to your one. But two is VCs know how to run businesses. And I feel that being around them for as long as I have been, one of the main reasons is they know their numbers better than you. And obviously that's coming from a CPA here. But, you know, the folks that run these VC firms are very financially astute, always looking at the numbers, always digging in, always aware, always current, always having accurate financials. And, you know, they're very good at making money and very good at bringing profit margins up and creating cash flow.

5:15So, I mean, this is something, you know, that we all should be aware of, you know, as we, you know, potentially are not do not have lifelong businesses and want to exit at some point. You know, venture capital could be a way for you to sell your business and get out and maximize your value. Let me talk about the second piece, right? And that's sort of the process. And let me talk a little about the process and maybe what the biggest surprise of mine. But the process, the due diligence, right? Before the transaction, there's a due diligence stage. And that's really where the VCs ask a lot of questions.

6:02They dig really deep, not just into your financials, but also your clients, employees. You really need to be on top of any type of variations, you know, past three, five years. You know, why did certain things go up? Why did certain things go down? why did we have a certain degree of client turnover during this period I mean really they roll their sleeves up they get involved in the business pretty in depth and particularly on the financial side they do a pretty extensive audit of the books making sure all the numbers are correct and really looking like I said for any inconsistencies with the numbers but I just want to share with you Fire Nation One of the biggest surprises was their emphasis on sort of forecasts and budgets.

6:58And if you know me, I'm big on forecasting and budgets. And I was very surprised by a lot of questioning about my clients' past forecasts, past budgets, and how close they were able to forecast, particularly revenue, but also expenses. and so they kind of wanted to see the last three years budget to actual, so where my clients would actually forecast where the revenue would be for the year and how close they were able to predict that revenue. And that kind of surprised me because I hadn't seen that too much before and I think it's an important thing for you, Fire Nation, the business owners out there.

7:47I think it's a really important process to go through. And now on the backside, it's interesting to see how important it is, you know, for these venture capital, for these, you know, acquirers to really see, you know, how well, you know, you were able to predict the business and sort of the ebbs and flows of your own business. So I just thought I wanted to share, you know, I think that we hear the term VC, but I wanted to share kind of our experiences on a very high level. You know, why you should be interested in the VC market. You know, why, you know, why would they be interested in your business?

8:30and then two, just being aware of the due diligence process, what they're looking for, and sort of the extensive dig that they're going into your business and being prepared for that, coming in with a prepared mind, with a prepared process for you guys. So anyway, this is Ron Parisi with CPA on Fire. Always wonderful to be with you, Fire Nation. until next month. Go out there, crush it, enjoy yourselves, and we'll catch up with you next month. Thanks now. Ron, thank you so much for dropping those value bombs, brother. And make sure, Fire Nation, you check out cpaonfire.com for any questions you have when it comes to entrepreneurial tax questions or needs.

9:20Now we're going to talk about what went down in the month of April. And I'm going to start that off with the interview of the month. I interviewed a gentleman by the name of Taylor Conroy, and we talked about how to do a TEDx talk in the next 90 days. And this is even if you aren't a speaker currently. It's still possible. And we got a lot of cool messages about this episode, so I wanted to highlight it on the income report. There were three major value bonds, Fire Nation, that we want to talk about today. Number one, you do have a message inside of you. Don't let it just stay inside until the day that you die.

9:57It is meant to come out to the world and impact the people that it is meant to reach. As I like to say, you have an obligation to share your knowledge, your passion, your area, your niche of expertise with the world. So do it. And number two, your higher perceived value correlates to how much you get paid to speak. So if you want to do free gigs, don't do a TEDx talk. If you want to get paid gigs, do a TEDx talk if you want to elevate your paid status. And then the last thing is, in reality, the one thing that matters and the one thing that will contribute more to a paid speaking career than anything else is having one single authority building, credibility building talk that you can send to the right people who have a budget to pay you to speak.

10:44And of course, within this episode, Fire Nation, we talk in detail about this entire process, about all these value bombs, about what next steps you can take. There is an amazing webinar that we did. You can get the replay of with even more details. A lot of great, exciting things for you in this area. Thought-leader.com. Why? Because you're one step away from becoming a speaker on the world's biggest stage. and thanks to Taylor, you Fire Nation can actually book a completely free call today. So we still have some awesome things coming up. We're going to be talking about preparing for a month away from our home, our headquarters, our studios of Puerto Rico.

11:33As I mentioned in the intro, I am at this moment floating up the Danube River in Germany in the middle of a 23-day river cruise. We'll be talking about what we did, myself and Kate, to prepare for this departure. We're also going to be talking about kind of a sad thing. We're saying goodbye to our Freedom, Mastery, and Podcast Journal Facebook group and why we did that and how we did that. Something really interesting there you don't want to miss. Of course, we're going to be breaking down the income in detail, and Kate's going to have an amazing final takeaway as always. And Kate's going to actually handle the remainder of this episode as I pass off the one single headset that we have to her.

12:23So this is a adios from myself, Fire Nation. Enjoy the sponsors. Enjoy the next part of the episode. And I will catch you on the flip side. Hey, what's up, Fire Nation? Kate here, excited to be hopping on the mic to break down what went down in the EO Fire studios during the month of April. You can check out everything that we are breaking down today over at EOFire.com forward slash income 116. And let's kick off the updates with what John mentioned, preparing for our month away. So on May 1st, we left Puerto Rico, headed towards Bucharest, Romania, for the start of our next epic adventure, a 23-day river cruise across Europe.

13:14We started in Bucharest. We're making our way all the way to Amsterdam. Today is day 16 of 23, and holy wow, are we ever having an amazing time. time but a huge part of that is because of all the preparation that we did leading up to this trip the only thing we planned to record was a specific income report which I was supposed to bring the ATR 2100 for and I did not but while we are on the boat we really wanted to make sure we had as much free time as possible to enjoy the tours the views from our balcony and the top deck of our Viking cruise boat. So we batched a lot of our work ahead of time.

13:57Now we always intended to check in each day while we're on these travels. Typically speaking, we probably log about 30 minutes to an hour of work each day while we're on the road. And that time is spent just doing kind of maintenance mode stuff, checking emails, doing any related tasks from those emails, doing our social media sweeps, checking in with our team, that sort of thing. But as you well know, this is not our first rodeo. This is not the first time we've taken off and been on the road for long extended periods of time. You might remember us talking about preparing for our 90-day European adventure.

14:38That was back in 2018. And during that time, as we were prepping for that trip, we actually created a four-part series on how to prepare for your next trip. So whether you have a weekend away coming up, you plan on attending a conference or an event, or maybe you have an epic adventure of 30, 60, or 90 days coming up, I linked up that four-part series in the income report so you can check that out, how to prepare for your next trip. Again, all of this is over at eofire.com forward slash income 116. So that's pretty much what our April looked like. We did a lot of preparing for our time away. And I thought it'd be helpful to just share a list of the things that we wanted to check off before our departure.

15:24So you kind of get a feel for what we were focused on. So for John, that was largely the podcast itself, EO Fire. He had to record and edit EO Fire episodes, record the sponsor reads and insert those into each of the episodes, upload all the EO Fire episodes and all of this was through June 15th. So we're talking back in April all of May and half of June that's 45 episodes that's a lot of content that's a lot of interviews that's a lot of recording and editing and that takes a lot of time and effort and energy as you all know. So that was really John's focus leading up to the trip. My focus was making sure that those sponsor reads were complete for John to record.

16:12And sometimes that does take a little bit of extra back and forth, especially when we're requesting reads so far in advance from sponsors. We typically always do request those reads a month in advance. So typically speaking, in April, I would be asking for all of May. The difference this time is that I was also asking for half of June. So it's a little bit of added back and forth there. I also wanted to make sure our weekly emails that we send out each week were scheduled out through June 15th. I recorded, edited, and uploaded podcast episodes for both Kate's Take, which I'm in season nine right now on podcasting.

16:49If you're interested in creating, growing, or monetizing a podcast, then definitely check out season nine on Kate's Take live right now, wherever you're listening to EO Fire. and also my episodes for the podcast that I co-host with my girlfriend Nicole called Nicole and Kate Can Relate. So we batch recorded, edited, and uploaded a bunch of those episodes. I also started the draft for this income report. I reviewed all the show notes through May 30th, which one of our VA's, JM, does an excellent job with our show notes, but I do always give all of them a once-over before they go live. And then of course, because we all know the lovely time of year that April is, tax time, I wanted to make sure that all of our pending tax items were wrapped up before we took off for this trip.

17:40Now I wanted to talk about specific dates on these items just to show that we don't just give ourselves space for actual trip time. We also carve out a good amount of breathing room for after our trip. We know that traveling, even when it's meant to be a relaxing vacation, doesn't always provide a smooth transaction back into your daily life and work routines. As I'm sure you know, you've experienced before as well. You take off for a few days, you have a great time, you come back, and you feel like you are flooded with all the things. So whenever we travel, we're not only batching for our time away, but we're also making sure that we block off time after so that when we return from our trip, we're not just inundated with so many things.

18:26So good tip if you are looking at traveling. Don't just prepare for your time away. Also give yourself a block of time for after you get back. So in this specific case, we return from our trip on May 26, but we've batched several of our bigger tasks through June 15 to ensure that our transition back home is a smooth one. All right, what else went down in the month of April? Well, as John mentioned, we did say goodbye to our Freedom, Mastery, and Podcast Journal Facebook group. Wow. If you've ever run a Facebook group, you know that running an engaged Facebook group, running a Facebook group period is not easy.

19:05Running an engaged Facebook group is definitely not easy. This requires a lot of time and effort and energy and since we launched the Freedom Journal back in 2016, we have been very dedicated to running a Facebook group. That's why we launched the Facebook group is for the launch of the Freedom Journal and over the last seven years, we've grown that group to over 10 ,000 members. Again, it started with the Freedom Journal in 2016 and over the past seven years we've expanded that group to all of our journal members. So anyone who has invested in the Freedom Journal, the Mastery Journal, the Podcast Journal, or the Common Path to Uncommon Success has been invited to join this group.

19:49But over the past year or so I've noticed a pretty big drop in engagement. This is a group that John and I are visiting every single day, answering questions, asking questions, posting interests, well what we consider interesting things. And a lot of people request to join. And when they answer the group questions that we ask of anyone who is requesting to join the group, a lot of people, a majority of people say that they want to join for accountability and to connect with others using the journal. That's one of the questions that we ask is why do you want to join this group or what do you hope to get out of this group?

20:24But the thing is accountability and connection require work. And I get it. Most people are very busy and they don't make the time to jump into the group and engage. And that's not helping anyone. So over the past year, I've pulled out all the stops. I've followed every piece of guidance and advice and taken my personal experience and creating and running engaged Facebook groups and nothing has really worked that well. So last month I had a bit of an aha moment about the group. I realized that despite my 100 day goal challenge where I published an episode on Kate's take and I posted in this Facebook group every single day for 100 days plus my consistent twice per week and sometimes more posts that I would put into the Facebook group to try and get the community to engage, 99.5 % of the group members still were not active.

21:25So John and I had a quick chat and honestly the decision was pretty easy to sunset the group. Now on a day-to-day basis sure maybe the group wasn't a ton of work but I think that we tend to ignore or maybe subconsciously ignore. We just don't always realize that even the smallest tasks can add up. Every single day John and I were going into that group we were either accepting new requests to join, we were posting in the group, we were commenting on others' posts. So, I mean, it might not have taken more than a couple of minutes each day, but the group would pop into my mind several times throughout the week as well.

22:05I would wonder, why aren't people engaged? And is it something that I'm doing wrong? And I try to brainstorm ways to get the group to be more active. And that time was definitely adding up. So at the end of the day I had to ask myself, what's the point of any of this if the group isn't making an impact for or being leveraged by the members who are a part of it? I certainly wasn't running the group just for me and so considering what other people were getting out of it, we knew the best thing was to be transparent and let the group know about our decision. I went ahead and took a screenshot of the post that we put into the Facebook group to let people know that we would be closing the group.

22:46So if you want to check that out, eofire.com forward slash income 116. All right, Fire Nation, make sure you stick around. We still have our April 2023 income breakdown coming up, plus my biggest lesson learned for the month of April 2023. We're going to dive into all of this when we get back from thanking our sponsors. We all want the same things for our business, more leads, faster sales, and better insights so we can serve our customers at the highest level. One thing we all don't want to waste time and money trying to figure these things out. So what's the solution? A CRM that's easy to set up and customize.

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23:56HubSpot CRM's powerful tools will help marketers wow prospects. Sales teams lock in deals and service teams improve response times and overall service. Get started for free at HubSpot.com. That's HubSpot.com. More and more entrepreneurs and investors are discovering the awesome franchise opportunities that exist outside of food. Franchising can simply be the better path. An interest in franchising is at an all-time high. Lucky for you, John Ostinson, founder of Frambridge Consulting and a frequent EO Fire guest, is here to help you explore the premier franchise opportunities today. John and his Frambridge Consulting team are part of the largest brokerage in the U.S.

24:34and have vetted the market thoroughly. Frambridge is hands down the premier source for the best opportunities in the non-food franchise world. They represent every type of non-food franchise, from healthcare to dumpsters, youth soccer to oil changes, specialized senior care to dog training, to insulation and floor coatings. John has served as an Inc. 500 franchisor and a multi-brand franchisee, and he does more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today, or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. That's FranBridgeConsulting.com.

25:11All right. We are back with April 2013's income breakdown. Our product and service income was$175 ,864. We had some journal sales in there. We have our Podcasters Paradise recurring revenue. We also had another big podcast sponsorship month with$166 ,000. Our affiliate income came in just under$6 ,000 and our biggie as usual was ClickFunnels with$4 ,418 for a total gross income in April of$181 ,607. Business expenses,$12 ,000. Our recurring and subscription-based expenses, just under$4 ,000 for a total expense bill in April of$15 ,914, which brought our total net profit to$165 ,693. Another incredible month here at EO Fire Studios.

26:17All right, bringing us home with our biggest lesson learned, and that is preparation makes all the difference. As you know by now from this income report, we are currently on our 23-day European River cruise. And throughout this income report, we've talked a lot about our preparation from a work standpoint to be on this trip and to be enjoying going into the cities and the different towns that we're in and not be stressing about work. and I'm very happy to report our preparation has been a huge success. We've been having such an incredible time on this trip and we're going to be sharing so much more about our trip, pictures, updates, all that good stuff in next month's income report.

27:00But I can say we have been working less than an hour each day doing our check-ins and there have been zero fires to put out. So our preparation has really served us well And the best part is preparation is not that hard. You just need a plan to follow and the focus and discipline to execute that plan. So whether you have a big project coming up, a launch that you want to go really well, maybe you're planning an event, maybe you have a new opening for a team member that you are trying to fill. No matter what you're preparing for, it doesn't have to be a trip. It can be any work-related thing or life-related thing.

27:46And no matter what it is, just give this a try. Put in the work to set up a step-by-step plan that you can follow. And then ask a friend, a colleague, a mentor, an accountability partner to check in on you. Practice, focus, and discipline in order to follow through and execute your plan. If you need a little helping hand, I know that the Mastery Journal is an awesome companion for helping you prepare for any project or life event. I use it every single day to help keep me on track when I'm at home and in my work mode. And it has been such a game changer for me. I know it can be for you as well.

28:27TheMasteryJournal.com Alright Fire Nation, we hope you enjoyed this month's income report for April 2023. Again, everything we talked about is over at eofire.com forward slash income 116. And until next month, keep your fire burning. Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business with episodes like how to get out of your day-to-day operations without crashing your business. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts.

29:02Many EO Fire listeners have launched franchises in a variety of industries outside of food, and Fran Bridge Consulting has guided them to these premier opportunities. The founder, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country.