Join my co-host Todd Wattley and me, Ian Weiner, as we unravel the financial intricacies often mishandled in the legal profession. If you've ever found yourself scrambling at tax time or wondering if your wealth management strategy is actually working, this episode of the Lawyer's Money Show is your lifeline. Together, we dissect the crucial steps for building sustainable firm finances and personal wealth, all while sharing stories that bring home the reality of what happens when these aspects are neglected. Experience the clarity that comes from our conversation on the importance of process, and let us guide you towards making informed decisions that resonate with your life goals.
In a world where law and finance intersect, knowing how to effectively manage both is key to professional and personal success. We take you behind the scenes of the financial planning process, discussing the magic of outsourcing and the strategic importance of team building, which can enhance creativity and operational efficiency. From cash flow management to retirement planning, Todd and I stress the significance of understanding the 'why' behind your financial choices. With a wealth of anecdotes and insights, you'll come away equipped to tackle the financial side of your law practice with confidence, ensuring your focus remains on what you do best – practicing law.
Join my co-host Todd Wattley and me, Ian Weiner, as we unravel the financial intricacies often mishandled in the legal profession. If you've ever found yourself scrambling at tax time or wondering if your wealth management strategy is actually working, this episode of the Lawyer's Money Show is your lifeline. Together, we dissect the crucial steps for building sustainable firm finances and personal wealth, all while sharing stories that bring home the reality of what happens when these aspects are neglected. Experience the clarity that comes from our conversation on the importance of process, and let us guide you towards making informed decisions that resonate with your life goals.
In a world where law and finance intersect, knowing how to effectively manage both is key to professional and personal success. We take you behind the scenes of the financial planning process, discussing the magic of outsourcing and the strategic importance of team building, which can enhance creativity and operational efficiency. From cash flow management to retirement planning, Todd and I stress the significance of understanding the 'why' behind your financial choices. With a wealth of anecdotes and insights, you'll come away equipped to tackle the financial side of your law practice with confidence, ensuring your focus remains on what you do best – practicing law.
Welcome to the Lawyer's Money Show with your hosts, todd Wattley and Ian Weiner, where finance meets the legal profession. Here we dive deep into the economics of law practice, from managing your firm's finances to optimizing personal wealth strategies for legal professionals. Every episode we bring you insights, strategies and stories from leading experts to help you navigate the financial landscape of the legal world. Stay tuned as we uncover the tools and tactics needed to help lawyers make the right money moves so they can grow their career, manage their practice and optimize their wealth so they can focus on enjoying the life they've worked so hard to build. For more resources, visit us at wwwlawyerstotalplancom.
Speaker 2:That's right, this is the Lawyer's Total Plan podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. We are always happy to have everyone listening, everyone subscribing and downloading and telling other folks about us. We always appreciate that. I am here. My name is Todd Wattley and I am here with my co-host, ian Weiner.
Speaker 3:Todd, always good to be here.
Speaker 2:We're progressing down this road of what we do, how we do it, and I think today is going to be important because I personally have gone through this process as an attorney in my office. I have gone through this process and what you find out, what today's podcast is going to be about is figuring out what's going on, how to fix it, and it is a very eye-opening experience. Today we're calling this processes and pitfalls. What are some of the pitfalls and what are the processes to fix it and how do we do that? And we're going to try to do that in about 30 minutes.
Speaker 3:This will be fun, as always. These are going to be expounded on at a later time because there's so much to talk about here. I think that is an important word that we begin to use. We're going to use this word all the time, but process is key. I appreciate, as always, the candor, because these are not easy things to talk about.
Speaker 2:It's pride damaging yeah.
Speaker 3:I think I do have it all together.
Speaker 2:I should have it all together. People think I have it all together, but I really don't.
Speaker 3:That's okay. I think that's a huge thing that we have to talk about. Every good attorney should have an attorney you don't want to represent yourself. Typically is what I understand as a non-attorney.
Speaker 2:Sure, you need a second set of eyes to come in and look at this, and particularly someone who has the experience and the training. They don't teach us business stuff in law school. We learn it through the school of hard knocks, and sometimes that's not a real good school.
Speaker 3:It can be expensive. It can be really expensive. We'll talk about process and why we want to have process and then just some of the pitfalls to not having a process and not doing planning. I want to bring this up you mentioned a case that you're working on and something that an attorney said on a previous case. This is the direct quote. Tell me if I'm wrong Quote. I don't have a closing argument.
Speaker 2:I had kicked their tail so bad there was nothing for them to say, and this was with Medicaid and a fair hearing. I had proven my point so bad that the case worker agreed with me, and so the attorney for the state was like I don't have a closing argument, that's good.
Speaker 3:Todd was telling me this story before we came on today and I said I want to use that as a clip on our show. You can have a lot of the other pieces together. You can have all of the facts, you can have all the paperwork. You might have had a great opening, but when it comes to career and building the life that you want and building whether you want to call it retirement or financial independence selling your practice, making that transition, not having a closing argument, it's bad and it's akin to not having a plan for that. There's not a good reason to not do it. I can't think of a good reason to not have a closing argument if you're a competent attorney.
Speaker 2:We're filming this and I'm sure this term you hate with a passion, but we're recording this during quote tax season. For you, I'm sure there is no season for taxes. It's a January 1st to December 31st process and I'm sitting here today, having just gone through this process, wishing I had focused on taxes at the beginning of the year, but I was. Some things were brought to my attention in November and December of oh shoot, there's some problems here and we're scrambling to fix them. Had I done this back in January, february, march would have been a much more easier and given us time to do stuff. So expand on that.
Speaker 3:Well, this is a huge piece and I could put this under pitfalls and process. You know, one of the pitfalls of not having a process is certain things get put on the back burner, and this is natural. You know you're running a practice. There's other things that have to be done, but areas that can save you money and cost you money, like taxes and tax planning, tend to get put off. And then there's like the year end scramble. You know, okay, what can we do? How do we? You know, what I'm gonna suggest to you is that good decisions don't get made in the scramble most of the time, absolutely, you know. And so, as part of a process, we wanna be evaluating things. When there's no pressure to make decisions, we're ahead, we wanna be ahead on these things, and so that's one of the opportunities and that's one of the things that having a process helps you with is that feeling of not having something lingering that it's just easy to put off. You know, feeling like you're ahead, feeling like you're on track, and that helps you in so many other areas of your practice.
Speaker 3:You know, well, I have a practice. I'm not an attorney, but it functions in a similar way to some law practices that we see. You know I mean I have a professional services firm, and the more proactive I am about taking care of stuff that I know I need to do at some point, the more creative I become. It's really interesting. You know when your mind is not bogged down with all the stuff that you gotta get done, or it has a place, that it exists and you know when you're gonna get to it. There's a process for it. It's amazing how much more creative and how much better I do in a lot of areas of life, and so this is just one area where we wanna have a process so that it can free up other things.
Speaker 2:So I'm sure the attorney's sitting there listening to this saying, okay, great, so I've got to plan a week of not seeing clients so I can sit down and go through this.
Speaker 2:It's not gonna take that much time, you know, but Well, my point is one of the things we're offering is throw that stuff to us. You keep on practicing law. Give us that. Let us go through and be creative and figure this out and see what's wrong and see the opportunities so that you keep practicing law. You don't have to mark off time. Just pitch this over the fence to us and we'll take care of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's the big part about building a team. You know we talked about that a lot last time. You need to have a team that is covering these areas for you. And so when we talk about process and the process, let me lay it out generally for what this is like. So when someone comes in and says, okay, I'm ready to get started, what happens? That's the question we want to answer. So the first thing that we want to do is we're gonna put together a report that outlines opportunities and observations. Okay, think of it as kind of initial findings. Right, we want to get all of the data we need the quantitative, the numbers information, as well as the qualitative information.
Speaker 2:So quantitative profit and loss statement.
Speaker 3:Profit and loss taxes. If you have investment accounts, you know we want to see the numbers. Okay, that's an important piece of this. It's not the most important piece, though. An equally important piece is the qualitative stuff, because every single person, their practice and their goals are different. You could have the exact same revenue as someone down the road I mean to the dollar but your goals, what's important to you, where you want to go are likely going to be different, and so the plan is going to be different.
Speaker 2:Well, prime example, I've sat down with a cousin of mine who's wanting to sell his service business and he told me one of the things that's most important to him is during this time of you know, during November, december. He said I have always donated $15,000 to buy toys for kids. He said that's incredibly important to me. I want that to be in my plan, in in everything I do. I want $15,000 to go to buy kids. That's a qualitative Request that is important to people and you should be able to do that.
Speaker 3:And if we know that information, we can build it into the plan in a thoughtful way and have an impact not only on you know, the, the kids and their lives and the meaning that he gets from that, but also on taxes, and we don't want to do things just for tax reasons, but if you're gonna do it anyway, we let's take advantage of the rules. You know that are there. So we're gonna create a report and the report is gonna go through areas like cash management. Okay, how much cash, you know, should you have on hand, how much expense and what should you do with excess cash. Okay, we need a process for cash management. It's gonna look at debt. Do you have debt personally? Do you have debt in the practice and how are you utilizing that? That is not necessarily a bad thing. We just want to use it wisely. It's a tool, you know.
Speaker 3:Leverage would be the other way to Say that. We're gonna look at insurance, whether that is Insurance in your personal world. Okay, we need to look at life insurance, disability, you know we need to look at all of these things and make sure that what you think you have is what you have and it works the right way. You be. I mean, you'd be shocked at what you know. Folks think they have one thing, but they actually have another thing and it's not there's. There's gaps in there in their coverage.
Speaker 2:And, like we talked about on the radio show this morning, was why do you have that? You know stocks, bonds, annuities, whatever. Why do you have that? Why does this fit within your plan? And I think most people don't understand why.
Speaker 3:Why is because that's what the guy showed you yeah, and that's not a great reason necessarily To own something right and so, but that also goes to, you know, building out the right team. If you have the right team, we address that issue of why, before it gets to you, really you know, and so we've done that that vetting process, investments, turning some investments, whether that's you know, in in the practice and new hires, in scaling the firm or Private, and your personal investments, private investments, real estate we want to look at Retirement plans and retirement planning. Okay, and when I say that, I'm thinking of Of qualified plans right tax qualified plans. We want to be thoughtful about Creating as much Opportunity for financial independence as possible. I'm trying to get the word retirement out of my vocabulary Because there's so much data that suggests that that word causes so many different thoughts in people's heads that we want to, we want to Create financial independence.
Speaker 2:I think most attorneys never quit working someday, but a lot of them it's. It's not a physically demanding job, it's our brain, and so you know we can come. You know, I know of some really old guys who come into the office once or twice a week and do a few things and they never quote retire. But they kind of you know you can't do that unless you're financially independent, and that's the goal work Optionals.
Speaker 3:Another way to say that you know, so you want to do things on on your terms, for just for the reason Right there, just because you can't, that's what we want to get to. And then you know a state planning is gonna be another piece, right. So you know, I mean, the plumber has a leaky faucet in a lot of cases, you know. And so it's like, yeah, the estate plan that you've put in place, is that gonna work the way that you think it's gonna work?
Speaker 2:if you did it yourself, you probably should get a second of peace have it, have it reviewed, you know, just to make sure, right?
Speaker 3:I mean, that's the, that's the point. And so what we do is we, we go through all this analysis. This doesn't happen overnight, you know. I mean this is a this is a couple week process for us. You and we come back with a report that goes through some of the key areas, the key findings from these areas, and what we want to try to look at is, you know, if we're going to do a 90-day sprint, which is the next part of the process, what are going to be the highest leverage opportunities? You know, where can we save the most in taxes? Where can we get the biggest bang for your buck and have the most impact right away? That's the key. And so we'll go, we'll create the report, we'll come back, we'll sit down and talk with you. This is about an hour, an hour and a half process where we're going to have a conversation, because we're going to go in depth in this stuff and it's very likely going to be the most in-depth you've ever looked at a lot of these areas, you know. I mean most financial advisors. They're going to put up some graphs and some charts and you know some ratios and by the end of it, you know, normal people are like okay, what just happened? I don't know, it doesn't. This is totally different. This is looking at all of your stuff organized, lined up in a way that makes it clear, that makes it easy to understand and that's actionable. And so at the end of that conversation, what we'll have is we'll have a couple options. Okay, this is where we decide. You know what working together looks like, moving forward, okay. So what I like to break it down is do it yourself, because in the report I'm going to tell you, if you want to do it yourself, here's what it looks like. Okay, maybe there's some pieces there and there's some expense for that. Or if you want our help with it, you know, do you want some support or do you want it done for you? Okay, so we'll walk through the options and what that looks like.
Speaker 3:But in that next phase is the 90-day sprint. Okay, and we break it up into 90 days because you have a practice to run. Life is still going on for you, you know, and so this is not something that needs to consume all of your time, but we need to have a couple meetings during that period. Maybe it's meeting with the CPA or the tax preparer, maybe it's, you know, with the company that's helping to put together a non-qualified deferred comp plan, or you know some of those pieces and we're going to focus during that time on taking care of the big stuff.
Speaker 3:Now, while that's happening, we're saving money, you're getting stuff checked off the list, you're starting to understand, you know our process and what we're actually doing behind the scenes and how we work together and we're getting to know each other a little bit.
Speaker 3:You know, I mean, there's a little bit of that beforehand, but really we're digging in and you're getting to see the kind of service that we provide, the way we think about things, the way that we handle things. And so at the end of that 90-day period, we're going to look back and we're going to say, okay, you know we want to do accomplish X, y and Z, and we did this, this and this, and here were the results. Now, almost invariably, every single time during that 90-day period, there's other stuff that we're going to find that's going to come up, there's going to be other opportunities, okay, and so maybe some of those have had taken priority over that period, and so we're going to review what we did and we're going to look forward. Okay, are there other things that we need to address? Maybe, maybe not, and what does that look like? Or are we ready to move on to the ongoing planning phase?
Speaker 3:The second tier of important things, the second tier of important things, you know, and so this is an iterative process. So it's. It may not ever be quote-unquote done.
Speaker 2:Sure, there's always.
Speaker 3:And that's a scary thing to say in that way. Now, our goal by the end of that first 90-day period is that you've decided look, you know, we've done such a good job for you that you don't want to try to do this stuff on your own anymore. You know, and you want our help, to be your partners alongside. I mean, that's our goal, obviously, right, and we make money doing that. Okay, let's be aggressively transparent. Sure, but what we also might find is that you've taken care of a lot of those things and maybe we don't need to get back together for another six or eight months. Or, you know, you start to put your team in place, and great, that's okay. That's okay too.
Speaker 3:But the next phase is ongoing planning, and this is something where some folks will find this valuable and some folks won't, and so that's okay. But let's talk about what that looks like. So we get through some of the big sprints. We take care of the triage issues, right, okay, oh, you had a $100,000 tax bill you didn't know about. How can we make sure that doesn't happen again? You know, now let's start to, let's start to work through a process where we're ahead of these issues before they come. Okay, so we're doing things like we're meeting with your tax preparer before the tax deadline, like what I?
Speaker 3:know it's crazy or making sure that we're you know and there's going to be.
Speaker 3:In the tax world, there's always things that come up and change, you know, and you might have a better year than you thought. Okay, and we're being thoughtful, but, boy, I would love to be able to address that as the only thing we need to address, rather than, oh, should we have a retirement plan for this year? Should we do bonuses? Should we do? You know? And so the ongoing process is we're available, we're able to communicate with you, we're gonna, we're gonna meet with you on a preset schedule based on what's important to you and we're gonna help you walk through whatever issue it is that we need to deal with at the time.
Speaker 3:Whether there's a cash flow challenge, whether there's an investment challenge, you know we want to look at your investment portfolio a couple times a year and make sure that you know you're comfortable with that and if that's important to you, that you're contributing to that, and so that's where, kind of the maintenance phase, you've got your team, we're working behind the scenes, but we're also getting together with you a couple times to make sure that you're comfortable and you know that you're on track. And so, in the in the ongoing process, from your side of the table. What's happening is, when you get a pitch, when you get a product or a professional that comes to you and offers you something, you say, okay, ian, todd, I'm gonna forward that to you, you guys evaluate it and, if it, if it's worth me looking at again, bring it back.
Speaker 2:You just spent 30 seconds on it.
Speaker 3:Yep, instead of maybe a couple hours. You know, and it's so nice in the age that we're in, I mean, I don't know a lot of people that answer their phone anymore because of all the all the spam all the time. If you're a business owner, how much worse is that you?
Speaker 2:know, during this podcast I've gotten through the phone calls.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's amazing and so you know. But at the same time there maybe are some good opportunities out there, but it's such a nice feeling to be able to go hey, I've got a team that takes care of that, so I'm going to forge your, your you know your email onto them. They'll evaluate it. If they need anything from you, they'll let you know. And you know like that is. You know that is. That is top executive level kind of reflects.
Speaker 2:You know values your time in your thought processes rather than stopping what you're doing and taking time a few hours to look into it. Just don't just be done with it and know that someone else is taking care of it.
Speaker 3:And know that if it's a good opportunity, you're missing out on it, right? I think that's a that's a key piece, right? Because I mean it's easy to delete the email, you know, but it could, there's a possibility. That's a good thing.
Speaker 2:I've got a very exact story on that. I got an email from this company that says hey, we do a free magazine for you. I was like, oh, this is scam. You know, it's sure you do. And for some reason I thought about doing it. I looked into it and it's been one of the biggest benefits to my practice. They were legit yeah, come to find out later. I was their first client, but I took a chance on them and they produced this very high quality magazine that they sell ads to other people and they pay for it and I get 2,000 copies of it to hand out. It's got my picture, my ad. You know I write articles for it and it's very well made.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's like a Southern living magazine like a Ford, you know it is very high quality and I almost missed out on that because I thought that's a scam, but I took a chance on it and that's exactly one of those things I could have missed out on a really big thing just because I was too busy and didn't want to spend time on it, and that's what we do. We've probably seen it before.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we'll help to make sure that you don't miss those good things or that you don't over commit to something that's not a good thing, you know. I heard about there was a physician that was getting pitched this investment opportunity in a small private deal, right, I mean this happens to everybody, though. I mean it was like a 10-year lock up on this thing. I mean it was like no liquidity. I mean we see this on real estate deals all the time. I mean real estate is the big one.
Speaker 3:Real estate, for some reason, is just sexy to everybody, and there's some good opportunities in real estate.
Speaker 3:There's some great tax advantages We'll have a whole episode on that and how to utilize that in your world but there's also some gotchas there that if you don't have the time to dig into it, you don't understand how these things work can be very costly. So we want to not miss out on opportunities, but we also want to miss out on getting taken advantage of, and so that's the concept is building a team so that you can focus on what you're best at really, and this is what I think is so fun about working with attorneys. In a lot of cases, they have a really good sense of their hourly value. I mean, I think they probably do that better than just about any other field and anything that does not meet that hourly value should be delegated. And that's really what we're talking about. It's really all it is. So we want to have a process so that we can avoid missing out on opportunities and avoid making mistakes really and be proactive and ahead of things, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So that's why we created this business. I mean, Ian and I met and he had known about this concept and was not sure how to implement it. And he implemented it with me and it's like, hey, this work, let's, let's make this a let's bring it to others. Yeah, let's bring it to others and it's been truly amazing and absolutely something, obviously, I would recommend. But, yeah, let's, let's talk, ian, if if people have questions or concerns, how can they get in touch with?
Speaker 3:us. So Ian at lawyers, total plancom and Todd at lawyers.
Speaker 2:Total plancom. Just email us and that's the best way. Like I said, we don't answer phones anymore. Just email us and we will get back to you and we'll set up a phone call and kind of get some information from you see what's going on, and then we'll talk about going forward with the plan.
Speaker 3:Talk about the process. You know we want to be free.
Speaker 2:Okay, Because it's a lot of work. I mean, there's a ton of work and if it's free you should honestly question what you're getting.
Speaker 3:What's it worth, you know, and so, depending on when you're you're listening to this, I mean we kind of have demand pricing, you know, in a sense, and so you know it's going to be what we can, what we can take at that time. We can't take everybody. You know we have other, we have other businesses that we that we run, you know, and so you know we will talk through that and it will be abundantly clear how the process is going to work, what to expect. You know we are in the eyes wide open business. You know we want to pull back the curtain of how your world works, what's what's important to you, the stuff you have, what it costs you to own it, all those things, transparency and clarity, that is that is huge with us. So you're not, you're not. You know we're not going to start doing the work and we'll tell you how much it costs later. That's not how it works, okay.
Speaker 2:It's all up front and you know you talked about ongoing work with these people. We don't make you sign a contract. It's month by month and if you don't think you're getting your money's worth, tell us and we'll quit. Okay, we don't want to force you to stay with us when you're not happy.
Speaker 3:We want to work with people that that value the work that we do and want us on their team. You know, and and the reason we've designed the process this way is it takes a little bit to get to that point, but once you do, you're not going to want to leave, and you know we don't work with jerks. That's another thing we should say. You know, I have a personal policy. I don't work with jerks, yep. So you know we we do this because we care, but we also want to work with people who are doing cool things that we like working with. You know that's how we're we're designing this. So reach out, we'll have a conversation, get your strategy report done and you'll be amazed what we'll find.
Speaker 2:Absolutely All right. Thank you all, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on the Lawyer's Money Show. We hope today's episode has provided you with valuable insights and actionable advice to enhance your financial well-being. For more information, to access show notes or to explore further, please visit our website at wwwlawyerstotalplancom. We look forward to guiding you through your financial journey. You can give us a call at 479-485-1911. Until next time, keep striving for excellence in both law and finance.