September 2023 Income Report: EOFire turns 11, Baby Dumas is on his way, and more!

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Success Story. Today is the income report for September of 2023. We have a great conversation for you. We're bringing in our lawyer for a legal tip, our accountant for a tax tip. We're talking about turning 11 years old. Talking about something else that's pretty darn cool if you stick around for it, and so much more as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. The Hustle Daily Show, hosted by Juliet Bennett-Ryla, Rob Litters, Ben Berkeley, and Mark Dent, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

0:49The Hustle Daily Show brings you a healthy dose of irreverent, offbeat, informative takes on business and tech news, like a recent episode on Hackers vs. Casinos, where the hosts talk about MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment and the devastating potential of cyber attacks. Listen to The Hustle Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Don't be the bottleneck to your organization's growth. Accomplish more with Belay. To get started, schedule a free delegation consultation with Belay in just 30 minutes. See how their flexible staffing solutions can grow your business and free you up to lead. Text FIRE to 55123 to schedule your delegation consultation today.

1:27All right, Fire Nation, we are back and we are ready to dive in. And as always, we want to start with Ron, Mr. CPA on fire himself with his September tax tip, sales tax for digital products, something you definitely want to know. Before we dive into that though, I want to share that for the month of September, our gross income was$160 ,879. Our total expenses were$11 ,896 for a total net profit of$148 ,983, up$38 ,000 from last month, with a percentage of net profit to overall gross revenue of 93%. Killing it, Fire Nation. All right, Ron, take it away. Hello, John, and hello, Fire Nation. This is Ron Parisi with CPA on Fire for your September November 2023, tax and accounting tip.

2:25Hey, Fire Nation. Hey, John. Hopefully, everybody's well out there. I recognize a lot of you, Fire Nation, sell product and services online. And this month, we're going to be diving into the topic of sales tax for digital products. I know a lot of you online sellers out there are challenged by this topic, And I thought I'd give our perspective on it and maybe help you guys navigate this moving target. First of all, you know, sales tax in the United States is primarily governed by state law, right? So whether your digital product will be taxed can vary from one jurisdiction to another, right? How I want to frame this is sort of it's a two-part process.

3:16process and one is whether you know you and your product have nexus i.e connection with that state and then you you know once you establish that you do have nexus then you kind of have to move into whether your digital product or you have to go through your series of digital products are taxed in that state so let's start from the top right nexus so how is nexus established How is connection established for various states? First, you look at physical presence, right? So where is your office? Where are your employees? If you have inventory, where is that stored? Manufacturing processes that you own can cause or can link you through physical nexus.

4:04And then if you remember a few years back, the Wayfair case, right, that created this concept of economic nexus. And that means that by the number of volume of sales that you have in that state, by the dollar number of sales that you have in that state, can also cause nexus. So when you look at your sales state by state, you have to look for economic nexus and then obviously physical nexus as far as where you're located. So then you make a short list of the states where you have this connection. And then there's a second piece of this analysis, and that's whether your product or service will be taxable in that particular state.

4:48Just to give you sort of an example, a lot of our clients have online courses. right so an online course depending whether it's a pre-recorded course which more likely or not is going to be taxed compared to a live instruction course where most likely that's not going to be taxed so you really have to go through once you you know understand your nexus you have to go by you know state by state to determine whether your digital product is taxable so what do we counsel our clients. Obviously, that's a tall order. There's definitely software companies out there, I'm sure a lot of you guys are familiar, that can tie your API to their programs and can evaluate, one, for that economic nexus, and then two is once you kind of describe your products can determine whether they're taxable.

5:52Okay. So if you, you know, select a sales tax program, software company that can help you and guide you, but the problem is these, these can be expensive, right? Depending obviously on your size and your revenue. So the concept here is, you know, I think one, to do your own evaluation of where you have Nexus and, you know, with the taxability of your digital products. And then two is what's the solution for being able to collect that sales tax and remit it. And again, we sort of steer people towards the, you know, software programs and companies that can help you do that. And I think, you know, a word of caution before we end this is it's extremely important to understand your product, understand all the expenses that go into, you know, your product.

6:49And this is an area where I see people getting caught off guard, right? Where you have certain regulatory requirements that can be very expensive to implement. So again, when you go and, you know, you have a business, it's very important to put together a budget to understand your expenses and making sure that you have a healthy profit at the end of the day. So of course, that's the CPA in me. But just wanted to, you know, Fire Nation just wanted to allow us to be able to understand that this digital product sales tax is here. As states look for more and more revenue, I can see them expanding their definitions of products that need to be taxed.

7:42So it's something that needs to be on your radar. And it's also something that needs to be included in your budget as you go forth and operate your businesses. So as always, Fire Nation, always a pleasure to be with you. Wish you another tremendous month. And you guys go out there and crush it. So thanks a lot. Always appreciate being with you. All right, Fire Nation, please check out cpaonfire.com for any of your accounting needs. Ron at cpaonfire.com is always on standby to answer your emails, Fire Nation. Now we're talking to David Lizabram. His legal tip is all about concerns about AI and non-disclosure agreements.

8:27David, what do you have to share about this? Take it away, brother. What's up, Fire Nation? David Lizabram here, and I'm excited to be back with another legal tip for you. I've been practicing law for 21 years, and I have loads of free content over at my website, LizabramLaw.com. This month's legal tip is all about AI and nondisclosure agreements. That may seem like kind of a strange topic, but it's something that I've kind of recently come across and discovered, and I haven't seen a lot of people talking about it. It's a potential kind of vulnerability for really any kind of business, large or small.

9:00So I wanted to make sure that we let you know about it. So the bottom line is that your business's existing non-disclosure agreements, as well as any other contracts that you may have that include confidentiality provisions, may need to be revised to account for new developments in technology. So let me give you an example. Imagine you own a marketing company, small, large, whatever. You provide advertising solutions for clients. So you sign an NDA, non-disclosure agreement, with a big client to work on a campaign for a product launch. The NDA is standard. It hasn't been updated to account for new technology.

9:35Let's say you use a cloud storage service like Dropbox, something like that, to share files and information. Lots of us do that. Maybe you're not even aware that this cloud storage service, Dropbox or whatever in this example, also offers text and data mining features like AI capabilities to help businesses extract information from their stored files. Companies are adding these features all the time. While you didn't actively opt for the text and data mining service in this example, the cloud provider's terms of service do mention they reserve the right to scan files for offering custom features, including advertising options to the user.

10:13Now, are you really reading all those, you know, kind of updates that you get from all the different services? I mean, I write these things. I'm a lawyer. I don't even read all these things. So nobody really keeps up with all of it. It's nearly impossible. But the situation I'm describing puts you at risk of violating the nondisclosure agreement because your client's confidential information that you're storing with, let's say Dropbox, Dropbox reserves the right to scan and analyze those files. You're exposing that confidential information to a third party, thereby breaching your NDA obligations unknowingly could expose you to a lawsuit or other types of claims and could be a bad time.

10:50So let me just kind of run through some of these issues. just to remind everybody a non-disclosure agreement an NDA people call them you know these type of things confidentiality agreement it's just a legally binding contract that prevents one party from sharing another's confidential information they can protect a wide range of information from your client list to your business plan to all kinds of private information you don't want shared with the world they can be mutual meaning both parties agree not to share each other as information, or they can be one way, which is primarily aimed at safeguarding only one-party secrets.

11:25Now, when I talk about AI, we're talking about language models, chatbots, data analytics tools. They're becoming indispensable in business. I'm sure you hear about them all the time. An example is ChatGPT. It can simulate human conversations. It can draft emails. It can write code. But there's a lot of AI tools out there, so don't just focus on one, for example, chat GPT. All right. So, you know, so why do you care about how NDAs intersect with AI? The issue is that most AI platforms are operated by third-party vendors. They often claim they're going to anonymize data sent for trading their models, meaning like if they take data, they're not going to expose whose data it is or specific details that could lead people to understand the source of the data.

12:13But really, it's like you're sharing this data with a complete stranger you met on an airplane, right? I mean, you don't know what this company is, who's running it, et cetera. You're potentially breaching the NDA by exposing confidential information to a third party. And if you're sharing confidential information with any other person or business, you should make sure that your NDA explicitly states that none of that confidential information can be input into an AI program without your consent. Let me say that again. If you're going to share information with somebody, for a potential client, a potential business, an investor, whoever it may be, that you're going to share your private information.

12:52You say, oh, well, let me just have you sign an NDA. You have to make sure that that document makes it very clear that that information can't be input into any kind of AI program, even something like a Dropbox or something in this example that may use AI without your consent. So there's a few things you've got to do or I'm recommending that you do. You want to check your existing agreements to make sure that they are updated. always consult legal counsel. I mean, I'm not providing legal advice here. This is just general information. You want to make sure you're speaking to your lawyer to understand the risks involved in using AI in your business.

13:27If you have employees or contractors, other people working with you, you need to educate them. Make sure they know the implications of using AI platforms. They might say like, oh, you know, I'm working for Joe. I'm just going to put this info into ChatGPT, and that's going to help me put the, you know, presentation together. that he's hired me to do. Well, you know, they may be, again, they may be sharing information that could lead to you breaching an NDA even though you didn't know about it. You want to check the usage of AI tools in your organization. Make sure you have these conversations.

13:59You know exactly what they're being used for. If you're going to use AI tools like ChatGPT or something like that or work with any kind of service that may use AI scraping your data, make sure that the other party you're working with has approved that. But that's just a couple things. There's other information on the blog post and in the income report. So this is a really complex issue. I appreciate you hanging with me through this because it's just an evolving new thing that's just kind of popped up. And a lot of people are just not aware of it. And I just foresee a lot of lawsuits happening in the future.

14:34And people may not be intending to share other people's data. They may be intending to comply with an NDA and doing the best they can. But if you're not aware of how these things interact in an evolving manner, you can really find yourself in trouble. You know, AI can offer exceptional benefits for business efficiency, but it's crucial to navigate its use carefully to avoid breaching NDAs and putting your company at risk or exposing your own information that you want to keep private. NDAs are not just pieces of paper. Just because you've signed an NDA and the other parts have signed an NDA, it's not like you're covered.

15:05That's it. You're done. No, they're legally binding contracts. They can lead to penalties if they're breached, whether you mean to breach it or not. And ignoring those risks is really not an option unless you're prepared to face the consequences. So anyway, I hope you found this interesting. If you have legal questions about your business, you can get in touch with me. It's David Lizardbram. It's Lizardbramlaw.com. You don't have to spell it perfectly. Type it into Google. You'll find me. And I'm always happy to talk with members of Fire Nation. I look forward to talking with you next time. Thanks.

15:33Fire Nation, please do check out Lizardbramlaw.com. He's got a lot of great stuff on that website. Not to mention, anytime you need some legal advice, if David can help you, he would love to do just that. So what went down in September? Well, what about our interview of the month? We talked about how to triple the size of your business without tripling the amount of work required. Clay Clark and attorney James J. DeChristofaro just dropped some serious value bombs. We talked about taking action, being diligent, and consistently putting in the effort to optimize your website. We talked about how it's crucial to measure what matters instead of just throwing things out there without tracking results.

16:14Focus on delivering excellent service, Fire Nation. Get your reviews and consistently improve. Then also you need to ensure the quality of your product or service, which means having systems for quality control. I mean, how many of us actually have that? It is crucial for business growth and success. So as always, Fire Nation, check out Thrive Time Show and ThriveTimeShow.com slash EO Fire is where you can go to set up a free call with Clay, get an amazing assessment and see if you need your business to be taken to the next level by him and his amazing team. in Fire Nation. We're going to talk all about EO Fire turning 11 years old, as well as a final trip that we took as a twosome.

17:01That's me and Kate. We'll also be going through the incredible income report numbers themselves, as well as final thoughts by Kate. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, the fourth quarter is here. It's time to hit your revenue targets, finish strong and win the quarter. But before you can win Q4, you have to close deals. And before you can close deals, you have to fill your pipeline and nurture prospects, which is oftentimes the hardest part. So how can you get a jumpstart on your Q4 sales goals? What you really need is an easy to use all-in-one sales software like HubSpot Sales Hub. It's where sales teams can prospect smarter, grow revenue faster, and mine deeper customer insights.

17:43Sales Hub's all new prospecting workspace gives reps a single cohesive view of their work so they can focus on building relationships with customers. And with a new deal management tool, reps can easily categorize and prioritize deals so they can identify ways to accelerate revenue growth. It's smart software for smart sales teams who want to close the year strong. Win the fourth quarter with Sales Hub. Learn more at hubspot.com slash sales. Are you still in the idea stage of starting your business? Maybe you're still feeling things out and you're not sure what step to take next. The beauty of the world that we live in today, you don't have to spend years and go into debt to find your path to success.

18:23Instead, start listening to the Millionaire University podcast. The Millionaire University podcast will teach you how to run a successful business and graduate rich, not broke. The Millionaire University is hosted by Justin and Tara Williams, and they started their business from square one. Fun fact, Justin was one of the founding members and the very first mastermind I launched for EO Fire. We've known each other since 2013. Justin and Tara have hit lows and dug themselves out of debt, and they've reached incredible levels of success, all while raising a family. And now they want to share the lessons they've learned with aspiring entrepreneurs like you.

18:57So don't wait. It's time to turn your business idea into a reality by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. Find the Millionaire University on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the trickiest challenges you'll face in your business especially as you begin to scale and grow, is how to make time to focus on the future and grow your operation while still delivering quality results to your existing clients and customers. That's because in order to accomplish this, you need support. The good news is for over a decade, Belay has been helping entrepreneurs scale themselves and create the time and focus they need to scale their businesses.

19:34Belay's flexible staffing solutions can match you with the help you need now and scale with you as you grow. Their virtual assistants, accounting professionals, and social media managers can free you up to focus on what matters most. Don't be the bottleneck to your organization's growth. Accomplish more with Belay. To get started, schedule a free delegation consultation with Belay in just 30 minutes. See how their flexible staffing solutions can grow your business and free you up to lead. Text FIRE to 55123. That's F-I-R-E to 55123 to schedule your delegation consultation today. All right, Fire Nation, we are back.

20:13And as I mentioned before the break, yes, we have turned 11 years old. It is really hard to believe because time does actually fly, not just figuratively, but literally. So happy birthday, Fire Nation. We are very excited about this 11-year mark, and we would love to think that there are 11 years or more ahead of us. So Kate, why don't you jump in here, say hello and take it away? Wouldn't that be cool? 11 more years. Man, I really had to actually bust out a calendar and triple check myself because I remember our 10 years so vividly. I did a huge blog post about like what had happened over the past 10 years.

20:58And I feel like I just wrote that last month. So I really was like checking myself over and over again when I was writing this part. But wow, yeah, happy birthday, Fire Nation. So excited to be celebrating 11 years. That's a long time and a lot has happened in those 11 years. So we thought it would be kind of fun to run through some of our big milestones. And we do have a full timeline of the business from the very start all the way up until today. You can find that on our about page. So eofire.com forward slash about. but on this income report I kind of grabbed a few major highlights from each of the years and 2013 was a really big year for us.

21:43I actually cut a couple things out of there that I had put on there but I'll run through a few of these quickly here. So September 2012 is when Entrepreneurs on Fire launched. April of 2013 we locked in our first sponsor. July of 2013 we launched our first mastermind, Fire Nation Elite. And in October of 2013, so we're coming up on our 10-year anniversary of this, we launched our first online course, Podcasters Paradise. So that's kind of like the first year of Entrepreneurs on Fire. And those are some huge milestones. I mean, we really got off to the races. We did a lot of things wrong, and we also did a lot of things right.

22:26So really cool timeline. So true. January 2014, we were awarded best of iTunes for the year 2013. January 2015, we had our first 1 million downloads in a single month. And then we went on a little bit of a physical product spray, specifically in the journal space. January 2016, we launched a Freedom Journal on Kickstarter. January 2017, we launched the Mastery Journal on Kickstarter. and then July of 2018, we launched the podcast journal. So that was kind of like our era of journals. And then May 2019, we finished sixth place in the Tony Robbins KBB affiliate launch. That was a monster travel year for us, not just going to Fiji for the Tony Robbins mastermind that we were a part of because of finishing sixth place, but that was our 90 day European adventure.

23:24and man, I still look back at that trip and think of us packing one backpack each for 90 days and I feel like we kind of crushed that trip. We crushed that trip. I have so many good memories from that. The pictures are fantastic. Man, that was a goodie. That was a goodie. December of 2020 is when the pre-order became available for your first traditionally published book with HarperCollins, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. Hard to believe that that's coming up on its three-year anniversary as well. Wow. May 2021, we joined the HubSpot Podcast Network. March of 2022, we hit our first 3 million downloads in a single month.

24:06And again, these are just a few highlights from our calendar or our timeline, rather, of milestones here at EO Fire. So if you want to check out the full timeline, I have it linked up in this post. Again, it's on our About page. But if you head over to eofire.com forward slash income 121, I have it linked up there. Thank you so much, Fire Nation, for being a part of this journey with us. It's been so much fun thus far. And John, like you said, hopefully we have many, many more years ahead. We've only just begun. Maybe. All right. That was just a glance at the timeline. And again, like Kate said, we have the whole timeline linked up, eofire.com slash income.

24:52one-to-one. Let's talk about our final trip as a twosome. Take it away. So technically, I guess we weren't a twosome because baby's on board, but it was our final trip, just me and you without a baby outside of the womb. So in September, we took our final pre-baby trip and we had such a blast. We kicked things off over Labor Day weekend at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington State right on the Columbia River. And oh my goodness, if you have not been to this venue, it is spectacular. We camped out for four days. We saw three straight nights of Dave Matthews Band with my sister and her family. This was actually their fifth year attending.

25:38They bring the kids every year. They have such a blast and they've got it down to a tea. Like they just know exactly what's going on. So it was really awesome that they invited us to go with them. This was actually our wedding gift from them. We weren't able to go last year because we were both in a friend's very good friend's wedding. And so we made it this year and wow, it was so fantastic. We had incredible weather. Our campsite was great. The show was amazing. Dave Matthews Band rocked it out three nights in a row. What were some of your favorite highlights from that weekend, John? There were so many highlights.

26:19I mean, we just really packed it in. We went and visited some of the natural splendors of the surrounding area of the Columbia River. The natural beauty was amazing. So we just really maxed it out. And I'd never really listened to a lot of Dave in such a short time frame. So that was cool to get exposure to him and his music and to meet his fans who are just really cool people in general. And just the whole experience was great. So if you are a Dave Matthews band fan in any way, shape, or form, this needs to be on your calendar at some point. Totally agreed. And there are other great shows that they do at the Gorge Amphitheater.

26:58Some of them are like these overnight experiences where you can camp out right there and you just walk over to the venue. So to me, like driving in there, pitching our tent and then getting to hang out and not have to leave for four days. That was pretty amazing. Like everything was right there. We got to walk around this beautiful like campground. We got to walk right to the Dave Matthews Band show. We actually did drive just a little ways down the road. John, like you said, to see all these beautiful landmarks and to go to a little beach and that kind of stuff. But man, if you are a music person and like outdoor theaters, check out the Gorge for sure.

27:41From Washington, we made our way to Boston for HubSpot's annual inbound conference at the convention center in the Seaport district. And again, we enjoyed incredible weather. I feel like I'm more obsessed with the weather now than ever because it was so nice to get a break from the Puerto Rico heat of summer and feeling a breeze off the harbor in Boston was like the best thing ever. I loved it. We had a ton of delicious meals. I got to shop at Trader Joe's, which I miss very much. Great mixing and mingling with our HubSpot podcast network crew. John, you got to rock this stage twice. First with Jay Klaus, host of Creator Science, and second on the main stage, which was very impressive stage with Stephen Bartlett, who's the host of Diary of a CEO.