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The Good Question Podcast
Law Firm Profitability Simplified Ben Hockema On Profit First & Financial Clarity
00:30:35
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- [00:01]
A
You're listening to the Good Question podcast with Richard Jacobs. Our goal is to make each of our guests exclaim, hmm, that's a good question. I don't know the answer. Because when that happens, it means you, the listener, may be inspired to learn more beyond the interview and to ask great questions yourself that lead to new insights. In this podcast, we cover historical and current anthropology, comparative religion and history. Welcome. And let's get started.
- [00:36]
B
Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Good Question podcast. My guest today is Ben Hakima. He's a certified financial planner. He's a founder and lead financial advisor at Illuminate Wealth Management. And we're going to talk about law firms. Profit first for law firms, a simple system that brings immediate clarity. So I think this would be great for the law firms listening. So welcome. Ben, thanks for coming.
- [00:55]
C
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [00:56]
B
And tell me a bit about your, your background first. You know, how did you get into working with law firms?
- [01:02]
C
Yeah, so I, right out of college, I, I started with a traditional wealth management firm, that's what I would call it, and worked there for about 15 years. What became a minority partner and, and that gave me a little bit of insight into being a business owner, but not really a lot because I was third generation and kind of been over my skis and a little worried about, you know, fitting in and making a good impression. So. But after being there a couple years as a, my, as a partner, I actually left and started my own firm, Illuminate Wealth Management. And that's the first time that, you know, I really had to be entrepreneurial and, and build something from scratch and all that. So, you know, all my background was in helping individuals on planning for retirement and things like that, investing and saving and cash flow and all of the traditional stuff. But wasn't really trained. Even with my certified financial planning studies, I wasn't really trained in business tax, business cash flow, the way to think about running a business. And so that's what really led me down the path of the profit first is experience experiencing it myself. And then from there, just the people that I like to work with, the people that I start, started to get clients from as we did the virtual CFO service for a lot of business owners tended to be lawyers, whether it's a traditional law firm or, you know, even some consultants that were attorneys and, you know, just really a group of people that value advice and understand, okay, there's some expertise and we're all typically highly educated and like to have these conversations, but also know the lane that you're in. And so that's what has led to working with a lot of business owners. But, but about half of our businesses we work with all are smaller law firms as we employ the profit first and everything from the business finances all the way to the personal side.
- [02:42]
B
So when you say small law firms, is that solos up to a certain number or how big?
- [02:48]
C
So typically the total firm, including, you know, any support staff, is going to be under 25 people total. And so it could be as small as a solo. I've got several solos that are know whether they're family law or estate planning, and then again some with, you know, multiple lawyers and have some support staff as well. But we aren't dealing with any really, really big. I say big firms, the ones that are qualified. There's a big difference Once you go 25, 26 employees in terms of the benefits and things. And candidly, that's not the area that we live in most of the time.
- [03:22]
B
That's okay. You know, the phrase the cobbler son has no shoes came to mind. I wonder if, like, even for financial individuals, you know, CPAs, CFPs, et cetera, is it hard to run your firm itself and other law fir but your firm with good books and with good financial practices? Like, do you see, I don't know if you deal with other CPAs or CFPs, but how hard is it to run a firm according to the principles that you espouse? You know, the profit first.
- [03:48]
C
It's a great question. And you know, we did not talk about that question before we started, but it's, I think it's some, some great insight here and I have to be a little vulnerable when I started and I didn't come up with a profit first system. There are several books out there and, and it's a general concept and everyone applies it their own way. When I first heard about it, I said, oh, that's too simple. That will never work. I know more than the people this is written for. And honestly, I was a little bit arrogant about it. And then a couple years later, after running the business, not using the system and seeing the problems that we had in our books, I said, okay, maybe I need to pull this book back out and let me think about the concept and how do I apply this to clients now maybe I should apply it to myself. And we've seen a huge change in just the clarity around making decisions as you run your business, just like we try to do for the clients. And I wasn't doing it myself. And so I think most Certified financial planners have any training or experience in running a business. They just, they're good at the personal side and getting money out, but they're not great at understanding the levers to pull and how to think about running their business. They're, you know, they're great in the spreadsheets and the numbers, but not great at putting it all together.
- [04:59]
B
What about attorneys? You know, they have to have a trust account. They only call it Iolta account. Is their accounting and bookkeeping and firm management particularly difficult or is it just specialized?
- [05:11]
C
So it's not so in my mind it's not difficult, but that's because we've got experience in it at this point. I have never seen a law firm that's started working with us that's had clean books ever. In all the, all the clients that we worked with, the worst books typically are the lawyers. And, you know, almost every one of the attorneys I work with says things like, I hate numbers. I don't want to do anything with numbers. You know, I pay a bookkeeper, but I don't know what this means. And that's pretty consistent. And then the IOLTA account is just. It is something that is hard for bookkeepers who don't know what that means and the nuances around it to then give you accurate books. So it's, again, it's not hard from a bookkeeping, put it in, you know, QuickBooks perspective. Where it gets difficult is in separating it out as you're making the decisions. So a lot of the firms, I'll give you one example that we're onboarding right now. There's three attorneys in this firm, it's an immigration firm, and they, they obviously have this account. But when they talking about how much revenue they have and what their balance sheet looks like and all the levers to pull, all the main questions, they kept including this account in there. When you know, all, all the lawyers who are listening know that's not your money and that is not something that's an asset that should be considered at all as you're thinking about the way to make decisions on your business. And so we've had to separate that in the books. And again, it's easy in QuickBooks to do it, but it's all about being intentional about how you set up the rest and how you make those decisions, which obviously we prefer the profit first model, but there's a lot of different ways you can handle it.
- [06:42]
B
So what's the closest analog to the IOTA money? Like receivables?
- [06:46]
C
It's receivables that's, it's future receivables. So it is, it is money that will eventually come to you, but it's not yours now and you can't earn any interest on it or anything like that. And it is future contingencies is kind of a way to think about it for some, it is not something to be included today when you're thinking, how profitable is my business now?
- [07:09]
B
Okay, so what happens? Is it just laziness? I don't want to, you know, every time I have to draft the accounts, I don't want to have to document it. Is that what stops people from, you know, having good books? Or what do you think it is that's, that's causing. Most firms, they're just, they're busy running the firm. They're like, I don't want to deal with this. Yeah, I just write this down or I'll do it later type thing.
- [07:29]
C
It could be a couple, a couple of different things. One is just trying to most have a bookkeeper, whether it's an office manager internally or a third party that's doing the books. And typically I found that those are inexperienced in law firms specifically, or if it's an office manager, maybe they just don't know what they don't know. It's an ignorance, no fault of their own, just not experienced, and they're doing a bunch of other things. And this is one other piece on a checklist. But ultimately I think it goes back to the beginning, which is if the owner doesn't like numbers, doesn't want to be in the numbers, wants to serve their, their clients, but they don't want to. They don't. Maybe they don't love what they're doing on the business management side. They're never going to look at it. It's not a priority. And if it's not set up intentionally a certain way to begin with, it seems irrelevant. And so you look at the books, you look at the P and L, or you look at the balance sheet, you say, okay, great, I see my number. It doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't tell me what. It doesn't help me make decisions. And that's how not just law firms. Almost every business that we work with, the books are set up to be easy for tax filing purposes, but nothing else. And so there's no strategic decisions that are able to be made around it. So if I talk about profit first, I guess I'll give you a quick overview of what that is and how I think that Shifts the mindset a little bit and leads to then having books that work for you to help you make decisions, rather than just, you know, a tax reporting.
- [08:55]
B
Before we get into that, I want to ask you one more question. How do you reconcile the attorney client privilege nature of the information? So, like, if I'm the attorney, of course I know how to withdraw from the IOLTA account. But if you're the bookkeeper, or if you're the cfp, how do I tell you why I drew out of the account for X, Y or Z without compromising the attorney client privilege?
- [09:16]
C
So that's a good question. We haven't had, we haven't had that issue partly because of the same disclosures that we have. We're registered with the sec and also we don't have the same attorney client privilege, but we have all the same structures. I guess I would say from protections, we just can be subpoenaed and you can't would be the difference. And so part of that is we are putting in some, some separation between what we have access to and what we don't. So I don't actually have the names of the specific clients, but I am able to talk. Okay. This is generally where we are. This is the fees that would be associated with it. And then here's how we pull that money out and so it doesn't change. The IOLTA specifically is not, in my opinion, that difficult. Once you have a system in place where I tell that office manager, the business owner, here's how you're going to move the money around, just, just give me this information so I can record it correctly in the books. But as we're talking about strategy, it's more on, we're doing projections. Here's how much you've taken out each quarter, here's what it looks like moving forward, and here's how we can make decisions around it.
- [10:18]
B
Okay, but there's no problem legally for you working with attorneys and you know the specifics of, of how the money moves in and out of the account then?
- [10:26]
C
No, no, we've, we have not run into that at all.
- [10:28]
B
That's great. That's fantastic. Okay, makes sense. So, yeah, let's get into the profit first system. So what, how does it work? What's it about?
- [10:34]
C
Yeah, so profit first basically is up your business the way that we're all told to run your personal finances as well, which is pay yourself first. And you know, I remember growing up, I was taught that as well, which is, you know, when you get paid in a paycheck you should put money to a 401k or put money in a savings account emergency fund before you go and spend it. And so we're basically taking that same concept and applying it to a business. Everyone's taught, if you go to business school, you're taught the way that you look at a profit and loss statement is you start with income or revenue at the top, you subtract expenses and what's left over is your profit. That's what at the very bottom. And that's the way they're all set up. The problem is then most owners spend money and with no idea of profit in mind, and they get to the end of the year and they look at the bottom line and it's not nearly as big as it needs to be and as big as you intended it to be. And part of that is because of human nature where we fill in and adapt to our situation on what it is. And so if you log into your bank account, because most attorneys aren't looking at their QuickBooks, they're looking at their bank account. They look at it on their phone and say, okay, how much money do I have in this account? You look at the account, you say, oh, I've got a new expense that I to spend on this. I want to hire somebody, I have the money, it's sitting in the account, let's spend it. And you get to the end of the year and you have very little left. And so profit first flips that on its head and says, we're going to intentionally put percentages around every dollar that comes into your account. So every time you get paid, you move the money from the IELTS account, whatever that is. Every time revenue comes in, we immediately allocate it intentionally the way that you want to run your business. And so the first place we put the money is profit. We set it aside, we don't distribute it to the owner. We it in a separate account. And we say, this money is here. In an emergency you can tap into it. But our goal is at the end of this quarter, we're going to distribute that to you as an owner for having profit. The second account that we set up is an owner's compensation account. And so a lot of people may be hearing this and saying, well, I'm, I'm the sole owner. So how's that different than the profit account? The profit account is specifically tied to the risk you are taking as being your own boss, being the business owner, and you deserve to get paid for that. The owner's comp Is if you had to hire somebody to do your job, job of the day to day, you know, meet with your clients, things like that, be the attorney. That's what the owner's comp is. And so you should get paid in two ways. And so your regular salary should be owner's comp profits, what's left over because you ran the business really well. And those are two different roles. Then we have a few other categories. We have taxes. And so we want the business to be paying the owner's taxes so that you don't have to come to you personally. And then figuring out how I'm going to pay for this, it's paid out of your business account. The more profit you have, the more revenue that you have, the more in taxes you should be paid. And then we have the last things, which are really operating expenses and payroll and those are the last categories that we have. So we start with setting up those different accounts. And a lot of this has to be done intentionally upfront to set percentages and things like that. But once that's set up and I can talk, you know, I'm sure you've got questions, but once that's set up, you can manage day to day by having these different accounts.
- [13:39]
B
It's great. I have a little bit of knowledge about this. I know when selling a business or buying buying it, they'll have like owner's discretionary earnings. Meaning, you know, when you review like the P Ls and the balance sheets. What is this for? Oh, the business pays for something it's not supposed to. Was this for. Oh, the business paint? You know, so you have to impute. Okay, what would a normal owner of a business make? And then how much did that business owner actually take out? So you guys segmenting it is nice. We think it makes the business a lot more saleable and clear. And then also holding back for taxes. That would be a big relief too because I would think a lot of business owners just take it all out and they'll be like, like, I don't know, I'll put aside this percent or I just won't put aside anything. I'll just figure out what to do later with taxes. I don't know.
- [14:23]
C
Yeah, for sure. It's, it's. You never want to get that big tax bill when you file in April or if you extend it all the way to October. And now you owe interest and penalties and things like that. Setting that aside, maybe aiming a little bit high, knowing it's there. And then when you meet with your cpa. When you calculate the taxes, if you've got some money left over from what you put in the tax side side, great, now you have more. That basically becomes profit that's distributed to you.
- [14:45]
B
Okay, how do you allocate for, I guess a little bit of a complicated equation. But each dollar you take out, only a percentage of that you'll keep and then the rest will go to taxes. So I guess for each dollar you take out, depending on your brackets and what you make, you're keeping, I don't know, $0.40, $0.50, $0.60, whatever it may be.
- [15:03]
C
Yeah. So we like to set up the tax account, we aim a little high the first year just to, to, to make sure that we've got enough set aside. Again, don't want to have that surprise when you file. But as you work on an ongoing basis, you hone in on what that number is. But just to be clear, we are basing the percentages on the total revenue. So every dollar coming in before you've allocated it, and so we don't have to hold back 40% of revenue for taxes. It can be something closer to 15% because you've got other expenses, you've got other things that the money's going to go to that then you get down to the bottom up a profit and owner's comp. That's where, you know, maybe 15, 20% is really the number worth holding with taxes, as opposed to 40. It's the same dollar amount. It's just a different way to look at it is every time you get paid. So whether you're paid in consistency with, you've got, I don't know, a lot of estate plans that you do or you're paid these big contingency fees at different periods of time. And it's really lumpy on when you have money coming in. Regardless if you apply the percentages, you know, you, you, you don't have to make those decisions. You just apply it whenever the money actually comes into the account and then you can live within your means. And so that's, that's ultimately where the power comes in is if you've already allocated for profit for owner's cop for taxes, then you're running the business on a smaller pie. But all that money you can spend and you can make better decisions on living within your means of, of using scarcity to your advantage and saying, okay, I only have, I don't know, 40% of revenue available to me to spend. So I, I'm not looking at my bank account, I'm looking at I. 40% of this, this is this number. And it just so happens to be an actual bank account that you set up is what I think is best. And then you make better decisions because you don't feel flush with money, even though that's. It's more of a mirage anyway.
- [16:46]
B
No, I understand what it's like. Sometimes if. A lot of times, if you have money in the account, you feel like, oh, yeah, I can spend it. It's good. I don't have to worry. And then some. You're quite often you don't account for something and you're like, oh, no, now it's negative. Then maybe you go into a savings mode. You know, I can't spend on anything. And then when there's money again, you're like, all right, I'm blowing it. And go back into. It's like daily boom, bust. I think I've definitely experienced that a lot. And I wonder how common that is. I.
- [17:11]
C
In my experience, it's very common. And it's. It's all different business owners. And I've done it myself before. We use profit first. I did it that way and had that same experience. The way we build is mostly quarterly, and so we'd have a lot of money the first month of the quarter and not a lot at the end of the month or end of the quarter. And the decisions we were making, we spent a whole lot more money that first, first month of every quarter instead of the last month, just because it felt different. So now we use the profit first model. And what I like about it is it we've already, again, been very intentional that I know I could spend all. All the money that's in this one account because this is the operating account. And so if I want to spend some money on marketing, that's fine. I know I have a limit on how much I could spend. I know what I can afford. And I also know if I spend this, here are the things that I have to give up as opposed to if I spend this. This. What I don't realize is happening is I'm reducing how much comes to me as the owner of the business. You intuitively know that, but you don't feel it in the moment.
- [18:04]
B
Yeah. I guess. In summary, it's very, very hard to not spend money that's there. And then it's very hard not to feel bad about yourself and beat yourself up when you spent money. And now you're in the negative or now you're in trouble, you know?
- [18:16]
C
Right. Yeah, for sure. And you May have personal goals that, you know, you care about for your family and. But if it's. If you don't see that for six months, months. That you're not on track for it, it can be difficult then to connect those. And you feel shame or, or whatever that other feeling would be.
- [18:31]
B
Do you guys have to deal with that? Does it impede your ability to work with people if they feel guilt or shame? Do they. Do they get you stuff late or not get it to you or. I don't know, do they even give you the wrong numbers if they feel enough guilt or shame? Like what. When you see it happen, what does it look like with a client?
- [18:47]
C
Yeah. So I. And we like to work with clients all the way from the books and doing the bookkeeping on the business all the way to the personal finance side and everything in between. So we file the taxes for both the business and the individual and then we get the money out. And we want to work with you on the individual side. And I find that most business owners are more comfortable sharing their business finances with me than their personal finances. And part of that is because they can kind of, they can talk about their plan or their strategy or how I'm like, how am I going to make the business work better? But it's really hard to hide from the personal side. And there is a lot of shame there. And so what I do with a lot of people is we start with the business, get comfortable, build that trust, work together on it. You can't really hide that from me anyway because if I'm doing your taxes, I'm going to see every dollar anyway. And so you have to be transparent with somebody on it. And so we get in there. But then we also do this owner's audit where we talk about, okay, great, your business has X number of dollars that you can pull out. Let's talk about where that's going. And I do adapted over time. I do make all my clients get give when they start with me, I want a credit report. I don't want you to hide what you have because I can't make. I can't advise you well if you're hiding from it. And so we, we talk a lot about it. We talked. I've had several clients talk about how we're kind of like their therapist. And I take a lot of pride in that because I think we do a good job of helping through that. But everyone's got a little bit of shame, whether it's money you should have saved or money you shouldn't have spent or, or whatever, whatever that shame is. I think we all have a little bit of that. And we try to start with the business though, because that does seem more transparent for most people.
- [20:21]
B
Even when they're disciplined through your systems for business, are they relaxed in their personal life or with your health? Does it, does it slowly get better in their personal side? Like what have you, what have you noticed?
- [20:31]
C
What works best, honestly, in my experience, is to treat your personal life like a business too. And it works for business owners when their mind's already there. And so we actually set up for a lot of the, A lot of the business owners we work with that we're doing both the business and personal is. We have a separate quickbook books file, balance sheet, P and L for their personal life. And we're pulling in transactions. We know what you're spending. We have a lot of rules. So I'm not judging on how much you spent at, you know, Chipotle or something. That's not a conversation that we're having. What we're doing though is, is having general buckets and we're saying, okay, this is about where we are. And, and what you told me is the most important thing for you is you want to save for your kids college, great. You're spending in this area. You're making a conscious or unconscious decision to spend on this instead of saying for the college. So let's just set up some systems, priorities, some accountability so I can keep you on that just like I'm helping you on the personal, on, sorry, the business side. And so we really treat the personal like a business too. And that's freeing for a lot of our clients because they're used to thinking that way on the business. And then it's just one other thing. And again, they're kind of delegating the concern to us. And we are there meeting at least once a month on both the business and personal to talk about what's happened, what's good, what's bad, how do we course Correct.
- [21:45]
B
Correct.
- [21:45]
C
Just so we have information is the most important. A lot of business owners, they think about their business all the time and they neglect their personal finances. And so if we can pull that conversation into one, I think is super valuable.
- [21:56]
B
Do you notice it changes the family dynamic, you know, as immersion as a person gets into this. Like, what do you see?
- [22:02]
C
Oh, absolutely. Especially if, if the spouse is not working in the business, if you're married and the spouse is not in the business. Because we actually start with the end goal in mind when we're meeting if you're willing to, to if you're willing to talk about everything. We bring in the spouse. We talk about the end goals, the what we call the billion dollar question. If you had a billion dollars, how would your life be different? What would you do? What would you not do? And then it helps guide those initial discussions. Here's what life looks like. If we had everything set up the right way and so then we can reverse engineer what the business has to spit off when a lot of times the spouse that's not working the business is just completely blind to what's happening in the business. And they don't, they don't have, they don't have buy in. They're not a part of the decisions. They' maybe some shame with the business owner because they're not sharing with their spouse, whatever that is. So if we, if we do the whole thing and we start with the end in mind, it brings, brings the couple closer together and it aligns with what they said they cared about. So the business is now working for you and for your life instead of just a drag away from your failure.
- [23:01]
B
What about, so multiple partners? What's the dynamic there versus a solo? Is it, you know, because of different personality differences and partners harder to set this up? Like, what do you notice?
- [23:13]
C
So it does take longer to set up, but once it's set up, it tends to work and actually provides a lot of clarity. So we obviously have, you know, you have different partners, different owners, they're making different decisions, they have different priorities most of the time, you know, maybe work with, let's say there's, I'm thinking of one in particular. There's three lawyers. We work with two of them on the personal side. The other one, we only have the business relationship and that's fine. I don't need to do it. It does at times cause some conflict because I will recommend that we set up a cash balance plan for the business because I know what it means to the other to. But the one that we're not working with personally, their personal advisor either doesn't agree or isn't familiar with it or something like that. So there's some conflict that we have to work through that and my job is to give advice and ultimately, you know, they have to make the decision if they're going to follow it or not. But if I wasn't there, they'd have the same conflicts. They just wouldn't have a third party that they could blame and, and, and have me be a part of it. And so we found it's. It is helpful for the business, too, even if not working with the personal side, because I'll also talk to each of them individually, even though when we're not doing the personal, I'll say, okay, here's, here's our goals. Here's what we're trying to accomplish. We want to reduce the overall taxes that you owe, and we want to make sure that you can save for retirement. So that's the plan. Here's where this is coming from. Work with your advisor to see if that fits into your plan, and then we'll talk about it together. And so we work with. I have a few clients that have their own financial planner that we communicate with on a regular basis. I'll do a tax projection on the business, communicate with the personal financial planner as well. I'm a. Trying to take their business. And it's a nice collaboration, even if it's only the business side.
- [24:49]
B
Yeah, it seems like most, you know, bookkeepers and CPAs there, they don't say anything to you, and they'll say, you know, get me everything at year's end. And then they'll just present you with, you know, surprise, like, all right, here's what you owe. Maybe they'll warn you once during the year, I don't know. But really, it's, it's mostly reactionary. And it sounds like what you're doing is looking forward. So, like, how often are you meeting with, with, you know, the attorneys and the firms and, and how far forward do you look?
- [25:12]
C
At a minimum, it's going to be quarterly. Sometimes it's, it's monthly or, or even more especially year, we'll meet more often and we run the tax projections. And then I want to facilitate, I actually want to facilitate the payment. So if we have to make a tax payment from the business or the personal side, we have the powers of attorney in place, but we'll make that payment so that the owner doesn't have to do it. And then I also know that it's happened, so that, that makes it easier on, on tax filing as well, because I have all the documentation. So we really want to get in there and talk at a minimum, on a quarterly basis. What I like to do is help people have a strategic plan, have KPIs that they're tracking, and then we are able to run the reports and actually lead those strategic meetings. It's not just the finance, it's the overall business and make sure that we're that accountability partner and everyone wins. If you are executing on your plan and you're looking at it regularly and you know, the taxes are, are doing well and we could head off any problems that would be out there. We know cash flow is not a problem. Everyone can sleep better at night and run their business better. And we all win in that scenario.
- [26:12]
B
Is it when businesses come to you, do they come to you only when they're in trouble? Or what's a common story when you know when someone's going to sign up with you, what are they telling you is bugging them?
- [26:22]
C
Almost every time it is. I'm working really hard. My business feels successful, whether it's a revenue number or compared to peers or growth. And I don't feel it personal. That is almost always the problem. And that is very common in all, in every industry, every type of business owner. And most of the people we work with are or what we call reluctant entrepreneurs. They love their craft, they love what they do. They love serving their client. They love the area law that they're in. They're not business owners. First, they started a business because that was the best way to serve their clients. But they don't know how to serve themselves. And so it leads to this problem of I just keep taking and taking from my personal life, time, energy, money, and I don't see the fruits happening over here. I'm getting great feedback from my clients, but my wife is telling me I work too much and we don't have enough money. So that's the over overall kind of problem almost almost every time. And, and so they don't know what the problem is. That's part of our job. First is diagnose. Is it a spending problem? Is it a tax problem? Is it a, you know, the corporate setup? Or is it just you're not disciplined in the way you're thinking about money and the profit first will really work.
- [27:29]
B
You're fighting human nature. You're. You have to steer it. It sounds like all these things are just being uncommon to us all. And they lead us to make these decisions that it end us, end us feeling like again, we've. We worked so hard and we have nothing to show for it. It seems like.
- [27:42]
C
Right. I mean, there's a reason I have my own. Not because I don't know what I'm doing. It's because having a third party who's not living your life, who can be on the outside and say, have you thought about this? I'm going to hold you accountable. You told me this was important, you know, help connect so that my Wife feels heard on what she wants and not just the way that I want it. All of those pieces are human nature and are helpful to have a third party. It's not just about what you know. It's about helping you execute it.
- [28:09]
B
Very good, Ben. How do people find you? Can you service people in all 50 states or what's your limit?
- [28:14]
C
Yep. So it's. It's us is my only limit. It has to be United States. We have a virtual firm, so I have five employees and. And no one is in the same state as anyone else. We've got clients in, I think, 18 states. We can serve individuals and business owners. We can do just the business, just the personal. The best way to find out about us is go to our website, illuminate wm.com and there's a lot on there about all the different ways we can help people.
- [28:38]
B
Okay, very good. And again, attorney firms, up to about 25 attorneys. There's your specialty.
- [28:43]
C
Yes, exactly.
- [28:44]
B
All right, excellent. Well, Ben, thanks so much coming on. And you know, I love what you're doing.
- [28:48]
C
I think it's great.
- [28:49]
B
Last question. How rare are you, you think in the CFP or CPA or, you know, bookkeeps their world?
- [28:55]
C
So that's a fair question. I will say, I don't know anyone else that does it the way that we do it. And what I mean by that is we are trying to fill three roles. We're trying to be the bookkeeper, trying to be the CPA and being the personal financial planner and connecting all those dots so that you have all of that. There are CPA firms that have some financial plan planning, they do some bookkeeping, but they're really a CPA firm. They do the tax. We have financial planners, as I said, I think as a general rule, they don't know business that well, and they definitely don't know business tax that well. And so. And then bookkeepers typically are. Are just doing the books. And so I will say I don't know anyone else out there that does all of that. And sounds a little arrogant to say that, but I haven't found them.
- [29:34]
B
Okay. Yeah, well, I just wondered. So thanks. I encourage everyone listening to check out your services. I mean, we all need it desperately. I don't care anyone says I live this beyond what it.
- [29:44]
C
It's not fun.
- [29:44]
B
So you spend so much time, energy, work in your business, and if your numbers aren't right, I mean, what's the point?
- [29:50]
C
You're.
- [29:51]
B
You're essentially become a slave to your business, and no one wants that so again, Ben, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. It's been great.
- [29:56]
C
Yeah, thank you very much. If you like this podcast, please click the link in the description to subscribe and review us on itunes.
- [30:05]
A
Thank you for listening to the Good Question podcast. Please email supporthegoodquestionpodcast.com if you have any referrals to great guests for us to interview. Visit thegoodquestionpodcast.com to hear more interviews. And please help us spread the word by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to this podcast.