And the thing that took me a while to learn is that if I hire people initially on an hourly basis, I'm only going to be paying them if I have client work that needs to be done, and if I have client work that needs to be done, I have client revenue coming in to pay the person. So you likely can hire sooner than you think, which can free up your time to do the things that you need to do in your business to really push it forward.
I'm Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger, and you're listening to the wedding pros who are ready to grow podcast. I'm here to share with you actionable tips, strategies, and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level. If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business, doing what you love, then you're in the right place.
Let's get going with today's episode. Today, I'm chatting with Braden Drake, founder of Not Your Average Law Firm. His goal is to help business owners get their legal and finances sorted and stop being afraid of them. With a master's degree in tax law and a whole bundle of personality, Braden takes you through particularly really boring subjects, accounting and law, and brings them to life.
Of course, we first met out in Las Vegas over some drinks and we even shared a bath together at the Museum of Selfies, which was a lot more PG than it sounds. And I knew right then that I had to get him on the podcast. So here he is today. Braden, welcome to the podcast.
Hi, how are you? I'm super excited to be here.
I'm so glad you're here. It's been a long time coming since we arranged this in that bathtub in Vegas. But I'm excited to dive into this conversation because we had a whole lot of fun. But what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?
Yes, indeed. Indeed, what happens in the bathtub stays in the bathtub, my friends.
Exactly. But saying that, I still need to get you on the podcast to talk to you about all of these things. Because what I found really interesting when I met you out in Vegas was how much you buck the trend. Because you are not your typical lawyer. You're not your typical accountant. And you do kind of talk about some of the most boring subjects at the conference. Yet you made it really fun. I like, how do you do that?
Well, I mean, I think, okay, so first of all, anything can be exciting to anyone, right? So I would say the like planning and logistics, not that exciting, but like a lot of wedding planners, they're going to like, love that stuff. Right. Talk to me about how camera works. I'm going to fall asleep. We all have our own niche, right? So how can we radiate that enthusiasm? A. But B. A lot of the time stuff is just boring because we don't understand it.
So if we can break it down into simpler terms, not so boring anymore. That's my goal anyway.
It's so true. And also the way that you deliver it can be so much more fun. When you bring that energy to the stage and you bring, people with you, then you can make any subject sound more interesting. So take me back, take me back to the start of your journey. How did you end up working in law, working with numbers in the first place?
So a little bit roundabout, I always knew that I wanted to have kind of an office job because I grew up, my dad is a general contractor. He does like roofing all summer. And I grew up being forced to work with him and I knew that manual labor was not maybe my calling, right? So in high school, I did all the subjects and I thought maybe like law would be fun. And I dabbled through a few different things in undergrad, but to cut out all the long story, ended up in law school.
And I decided pretty early on in that process that I also wanted to have my own business.
Amazing. Now, please tell me, is law school in America exactly like it is on Legally Blonde? Because that is one of my favorite movies in the world.
I would say it's like 80 to 90 percent accurate. So I never got kicked out of class for not knowing what subject matter jurisdiction was. But the professors would call on you, and we had one professor who would make you, he'd say, rise to the call of greatness. And then they would just pepper you with questions, which actually trains you for a future when you're going to be like in court in front of a judge.
And if you don't know the answers to the questions, you might get scolded for being unprepared if they're kind of a mean professor, but usually you just be embarrassed and they tell you to sit down and then you would get like a negative mark on your participation for not being prepared for class.
And no one just broke into song like they do in the musical.
No, well, sometimes like outside of class because we all were pretty hyped up on like various types of caffeine trying to study for finals. So you never know, but not to the same degree. No, unfortunately.
Yeah, definitely. When I was growing up, I went through a phase of, I need to be a lawyer because I want to be like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde. So when you graduated, you finished college, you decided you wanted to go out on your own. Like, that's a big step. Did you just do that straight away as soon as you graduated?
I did. Yes. But I always like to give the caveat because, you know, transparency is one of our company core values. I think it's very important. Otherwise, I think if we're not transparent, we say we set unreasonable expectations for other people. So it's important that we address our privileges and all of those things. So at the time I moved in with my now husband, like my second week of law school. And he had already been a practicing attorney for eight years.
So I kind of had that financial fallback once I graduated because I'm like, worse comes to worse. I don't have to worry about like losing my apartment or having the electricity shut off kind of a thing, but it gave me the freedom to really grow my business for two to three years and laid a foundation. Yeah.
Well, an incredible. opportunity for you to be able to do that. I think it's really important that we talk about that actually, because we do all have different privileges. When I grew my business, people often say to me, how did you grow your business around your children? How did you bring in the finances? And I was lucky enough that my husband bought in money. And so that to start with, I could earn less money and look after the children and then grow the business to where it is today.
So yeah, you're absolutely right. It's important. We're transparent about this stuff. So, what you do now is, well, where I met you is part of the wedding industry. You seem to have quite a lot of wedding industry kind of clients, you're in that arena. How did you end up going from, I want to do law, have my own business, to suddenly working in this wonderful world of weddings?
So I used to work at this retail store called West Elm. Do you have West Elm over in the UK?
We don't, but I know what it is.
Okay, so it's like modern, like mid century modern, like pretty hip, pretty trendy, kind of expensive. But I connected with a lot of interior designers there, and then they also do pop up shops every weekend. So creatives, artists, makers, crafters would come in and sell their stuff inside the store, which is pretty cool. And I would always talk to the people. I was trying to start my business and I ended up niching and working with creatives.
But then some of the folks there told me about this group called rising tide society. Are you familiar with rising tide? No. Okay. So rising tide is now a global organization for creatives and they do monthly meetups called Tuesdays together. It was founded by Natalie Frank. A lot of people know her honey book ended up buying that several years ago. Honey book no longer owns it. We've like spin off into a nonprofit, but I started going to their meetings.
And I started speaking at the meetings and it's just it's very predominantly like a wedding industry first organization because that's what it started. And so that's just kind of how I organically grew my following in the wedding space. And now I speak at Wedding MBA and have a lot of affiliates and referral partners and friends like yourself in the industry. So yeah, it's probably about 50 percent of our audience.
And I think typically, from my experience, from the clients I work with, we find that a lot of them are really good at what they do, right? They're amazing at being florists. They're amazing at making cakes. I'm there helping them with their marketing. But then it comes to the parts of the things that you help them with, and they just freeze. They don't want to talk about it. They don't understand it. They just don't. Panic. Is that your experience when you first come across people?
With a lot of them, obviously it varies based on personality type and whether you have like an avoidant personality where you like to avoid your taxes or whether you meet it head on. I find a lot of the wedding planners we work with, they're kind of like, we all have those friends who are like, Oh my God, don't judge me. My house is such a mess. And then you walk in and like, it's pristinely perfect.
That's how a lot of planners are because they're very, very detailed and organized, not all of them, but most of them. And then a lot of the other creatives, like we have some photographers, DJs. Some of them are a little less buttoned up when it comes to the backside of the business. So it's always, it's always a mystery what we're going to get when we start digging into people's taxes and bookkeeping and things.
And so one of your main goals in your business is to help people undo the pickles that they get themselves into to try and get their business sorted. What is kind of the heart behind that mission?
Well, it's really just, What's been necessitated like since we started the business. So a swear warning for everyone, but my podcast and signal or her signature offer and my book are all titled unfuck your biz, a step by step process to get your legal and tax shit legit. And that kind of came from a business mastermind that I did where they were asking me these people who were trying to learn about my business. They were asking me who I help and who I work with.
And they all assumed it would be brand new business owners. And as you know, as a marketer, I use the term, I said, well, no, a lot of new business owners aren't problem aware that they need our services. They're a lot more excited to like do their branding and build their websites. And then they come to us after about three years and they say, Oh no, Brayden, I didn't settle this legal and tax foundations up from the start. Can you help me unfuck my business?
I kind of said that as I was just rambling and then they said, they all said, Oh, I like that as like web copy. And it kind of expanded from there. And now that's really part of our mission because I don't think you can grow like a really solid, successful business. if you're constantly like scrambling on the back end.
Yeah, absolutely. I see it all of the time. So there's two main parts that you try and help people with. As I mentioned at the beginning, there's the finance side and there's the legal side. Now a bit of a disclaimer, because obviously a lot of my audience at UK based a lot of what you do is based out in the US. So we're not going to get into the nitty gritty details, because obviously your tax deadlines, everything like that is different.
different, but I do think some of the principles and some of the commonalities are definitely the same, which is why I want to have this conversation. So let's take the law side of things first, the contracts. I know you have your amazing contract club. You're big on contracts. What are some of the common mistakes you find that wedding business owners are making when it comes to contracts or maybe not even having a contract?
Well, not having a contract is mistake number one, right? Mistake number two would be having contracts that don't cover everything you need them to cover. Like, if your contract's only one page, that's really just probably a proposal. It's not even really a contract. And then the third big thing we see is contracts that are contradictory or just confusing.
Because what happens is if you buy a template here, and then you get some provisions from your best friend's contract, and then another friend gives you some of their provisions, We call them Franken contracts, fairly self explanatory, they're hodgepodge. And none of the definitions line up. Yeah. And it just is a mess. It's a mess.
So typically then for your general wedding supplier, what kind of contracts should they have in place or what should they have hovered in those contracts?
Well, the main thing is going to be your client contract. So the whatever contract you're going to have your client sign. And then that needs to outline obviously the payment terms, the scope of services, any kind of cancellation. So we all learned a lot of life lessons in 2020 when it came to event postponements and cancellations.
And we have something called the force majeure clauses here, all of that's super important, basically covering the what ifs of every scenario, if anyone's been in business long enough, a lot of those what ifs have become realities for either of them or friends, so we can address those in the contract. And then we have other contracts that are important as well.
You need to have website agreements, privacy policies, even here in the U. S. We recommend that the people meet GDPR standards if their websites are accessible in Europe. And why wouldn't they be? And then you want to have independent contractor agreements. We even have a podcast release agreement. I don't really use it, but some, some people really like to use that. And there's a bunch, bunch more.
Okay. So there might already be people panicking, thinking, Oh my goodness, I don't have any of this stuff. I don't even know where to start. Like give them some guidance, make them feel less scared.
Yeah. So find some solid templates. If you are U S based, you can definitely grab our contract club. If you're not U S You still might find it helpful, but I can't really make any guarantees. So I just usually don't sell it to people outside the U S. But I know that there are fabulous attorneys in the UK and all over the world that have their own versions of templates. So you really just need, like, one solid contract for your clients and your services.
You need your privacy policy, your web terms, and then everything else is, like, on an as needed basis. So if you hire a virtual assistant, they might have a contract for you to sign. If not, you can get one for them to sign at that point. point in time.
Yeah. And absolutely. We definitely need something like the contract club here in the UK. We were having this discussion just the other day because I just think it's amazing what you do. You keep it low cost. You have all the contracts people need and then they can go on and build on them. So maybe what we need to do, Brayden is get a UK lawyer to look over the contract club so that we can decide once and for all whether or not we can use it here or not.
So maybe I'm going to put that on my to do list.
Yeah. I mean, I would love to do that, but then I'm like, I've, I've been, my wheels have been spinning, right? As a business owner, I'm like, but why would a UK attorney like then want to put a rubber stamp on like my program? Cause then like, they're my competitor, but then they're sending me business. I'm sure there's a collaborative way to do this. We'll have to find one. Or they just create their own.
I'm all about community over competition. So I'm all for finding someone who's up for collaborating. So if anyone's got any recommendations, who's listening to this podcast, let me know, because I would love to put a UK stamp on the contract club so that we can so I can promote it here in the UK as well.
One day I might just hire a UK licensed attorney to join our law firm, but then I have to figure out like all the licensing logistics of how that works, you know,
definitely one to watch for the future. I'm going to be keeping my eyes and ears out for that because I do think it's worthwhile. But if you're in the U S a hundred percent, check out the contract club because it's a great place to start. Okay. We talked about law then let's move on to finances. So when it comes to the accountancy side of businesses, where are the common mistakes? you see people making?
The biggest one, I would say that the biggest and the easiest to solve is just not having separately maintained finances. So again, I'm not going to speak to how bookkeeping is supposed to work all around the world or how the tax returns are filed. But in order to know how much money your business made and how much money your business spent, you have to be able to track that in some manner. And it's a lot easier to track if you're paying for everything out of separate bank accounts.
So open a business bank account. The sounds self explanatory or obvious to some people, but we have new clients and unpack your biz all the time that don't do this. And then what we have to do is they have to send us their personal bank statements and spend, you know, hours highlighting the things that were business related versus not business related.
What's really fun is we also work with a lot of drag queens, and then we have to comb through their Amazon statements to figure out like what's drag hair and makeup and costuming versus like personal expenses. So if you separate it becomes a lot easier.
Yeah. And that's not that hard to do. I mean, even here in the UK, we have these online banks, Starling Monzo, things like that, where we can just open an account. We can open a business account. There's no charges on it. So if you're listening to this and you haven't separated your accounts, there is no reason not to go on right now and go and open another account and start separating it out. What about keeping money back?
for taxes and or profits because I sometimes see people just seeing money in their account and then spending that money right away.
Yeah. So if anyone, I mean profit first is, I know it's really popular here. Is it popular in the UK?
Yeah, it is.
Yeah. I would think that the concepts are pretty applicable and he doesn't really give tax percentages. So then it's going to be even more applicable. Yeah. I write about all of this in my book as well, but I, mine's very much geared towards how much you should be saving in the U S as well, but everyone can figure that out and then what I recommend is if some of those online banks you recommended do auto savings, like some of ours do, that's fantastic.
Because you can figure out the percentage you need to save and then you can have that amount auto saved every time you have money deposited and you can do the same for some profits set aside as well because what a lot of people end up finding is that if they don't really focus on saving taxes first they get on what I call the oh shit cycle of back taxes and then if they don't think about saving profit or paying themselves they go to file their tax return at whatever
point in time and then they're like oh Shit, I made like 80 grand, right? But why don't I have any money? Why don't I have any money left? And why am I in business if I don't have any money to, you know, save for whatever my big personal goals are at the end of the day. So you have to kind of force yourself to do that as you go along.
And it's amazing how quickly you can shift youpaying themselves they go to file for that profit first model and you start moving money across. I like to coin my own version of this, which I like to call Disney first. So in my business, the money comes out and goes into my Disney fund before anything else comes out. And that grows really fast. My Disney fund is growing fast.
But if I didn't do that, if I didn't go Disney first, I guarantee it would all be gone by the end of the month on something that I didn't really need.
And is that, is that for like Disney world in Florida or like, okay, nice, nice.
Yeah. I'm, I'm saving Disney first. All my profit is going to Disney world Florida next Easter, which I'm very excited about. But yeah, it really does make a difference to put some of that money aside right at the start of the month. The other thing that I find people are scared of is the thaw about the fact that they have to pay their tax so far in advance.
Now, again, I know it's going to be different between the UK and the US, but I'm trying to normalize getting more excited about the tax return because we can pay off our taxes early. Like, we can save money and then if there's extra money left, spend it. Like, how are you making tax more exciting for people?
Well, first of all, it's like, This isn't really exciting, but no one wants to get stuck with a big bill like down the road. So like, let's pay in chunks so that we can prevent that. And then if you automate it, like again, doesn't really make it exciting, but if you automate the savings, then it makes it less painful to go pay it. Because a lot of people when they automate it, they don't even really notice it's gone.
And then when they go to pay the tax, you're like, Oh, holy shit, there's 5, 000, like 5, 000 in here. I always say 5, 000 when I talk about international currency, because then it's universally, universally applicable as opposed to saying dollar or pound. But everyone gets the picture. So that's really, that's really just the best way to do it. It's kind of the out of sight, out of mind approach, in my opinion.
Yeah, absolutely. Now, one of the other things I thought was really interesting when I came to your stage talk in Vegas was when you were talking about some of the myths around spending before your tax break. year is up. And so you were talking about the fact that people are like, Oh, let's just spend loads of money because the tax is up and it will come against my tax bill. But actually that's kind of not quite what we should be doing.
Yeah, because we have a lot of people, they don't, they, they misunderstand the difference between tax deductions and tax credits. Do you have deductions and credits in your tax system?
Well, we have, we have deductions, but I think sometimes we forget that a deduction doesn't mean that we're getting the money back.
Yeah. So a deduction, like if you make a hundred thousand, let's like, so let's say you make a hundred thousand in revenue and then you spend 20, 000. Those are your deductions. So now your profit is 80, 000, right? So if you're on a 10 percent tax bracket, 10 percent of a hundred is 10 K. 10 percent of 80 is eight K. So you spent 20, 000 and you saved 2, 000, right? 2, 000 whatever.
So you're not saving that full 20, 000 that you spent and that's how a lot of people think that it works and it, it doesn't. So I always ask people, usually from stage, I say, if you go into the store tomorrow and they have MacBooks on sale for 20 percent off, like, would you buy one? Would you buy one?
No. Not unless I needed one.
Yeah, so that's that like actual correct answer because if you already need one, if it's on your shopping list, then you're like, Oh, well, I was not going to buy it till like two weeks from now, but it's on sale now. So I'll buy it now. Great. If you're not going to need one for two years, then you probably don't need to buy it. Tax deductions work the same way. Buy what you need for your business, buy what's going to make you an ROI.
And then you just take the benefit then after the fact on your taxes.
Yes, that makes perfect sense to me. Great, great analogy. I understand it now. Okay, one of the other things I think we need to do in the wedding industry is normalize talking about this stuff, talking about money, because especially here in England, as soon as someone talks about money, we all go very polite and we don't like to talk about it. But one of the things I absolutely love about what you do is your podcast, where you talk about your own family. finances.
So I like to have a little cheeky listen to that. I like to listen to what Braden's up to and you talk very candidly, very openly about your profit for the month, your losses, if there are losses, your expenses, and I love that because I think it's so transparent and so helpful. So, obviously, we're not expecting everyone to do the same, but what was it that brought you to the place where you decided to do that, and why do you do it?
Well, A, it's just, I like, can't help myself from oversharing to begin with. It's just who I am as a person. Do you have the phrase, do you have the phrase over there, like, never talk about politics, money, or religion? That's something that, like, parents and grandparents like to say all the time. Yeah, so I think that's how a lot of us are raised. They're all considered like kind of taboo topics, at least to talk about with people you aren't super close with.
But from my perspective, it's like we all enter our business really having no idea what the norm is with regard to how much we're gonna pay in taxes, what our expenses are, how long it takes to be profitable, when can we get expect to make money? How much do we actually need to gross in a revenue in order to be able to like pay all of our bills?
So I try to normalize that A and B just to be frank, like talking about the numbers highlights the importance of knowing your numbers, which also promotes my business. So it's kind of a win, win, win. I asked guests to come on my podcast and share all their numbers. So I also have to put my money where my mouth is and do the same and hope that it helps people in the process. That's the goal.
Yeah, I think it's really interesting. And I think it normalizes things like the fact that some months are better than other months, that that's totally normal in business, that sometimes we have unexpected expenses or unexpected drop offs. And I think everyone in their own wedding businesses thinks these things are only happening to them. So actually it's really refreshing to hear from someone else.
I know it's not the same kind of business, but actually to just hear the ups and downs of business and what's going on out there.
Yeah, we talk, we talk a lot about like the importance of tracking your time and knowing your numbers and knowing your margins, you know, how much to charge for things. I just, when we launched to unfuck your business, the signature service, we priced it at 3, 000. And then I, we were doing the time tracking and I paid my team for some clients. I paid my team members almost 4, and hourly fees for a single client. So if I had this data beforehand, I would have priced it differently.
Now we've priced the service at 5, 000. It's like, if you don't know all those numbers, you can't price it. But also I share the story on my podcast so that people know like, You're not the only one probably making pricing mistakes in your business. Like we're all doing it and we, we live in and we learn.
Well, one of the things I've alluded to all the way through this conversation is how you're bucking the trend to pretty much everyone else. And I love that you lean into that. I love that you're completely unapologetically yourself. It's the way that I teach my wedding business owners to be, I'm like, be yourself, don't try and be someone else, but I'm sure in the world that you're in, in law and finance, that's kind of. unexpected.
So how do you find the confidence to just be yourself and what benefits do you think that brings to your business?
How do I find the confidence? That one I don't really know. I think my, my best friend one time told me that I just like walk through life within, with like a, with a confidence that is really, what's the word I'm looking for here? Unwarranted, I think was probably what she's, what she said, which was, you know, a nice, like, playful way to phrase it.
But I decided I actually when I first graduated from law school, I did like dress up every day when I went to my like office at the WeWork and by dress up I mean I would wear like nice jeans and like dress shoes and like a cardigan or a sweater and it just really didn't feel like me. And then I was like, my clients don't want to be dressed up every day, even if we have in person meetings, they don't want to come to zoom calls and like, feel like that.
They need to, you know, get all ready and everything. So I took it to quite an extreme and just started showing up in my pajamas. I probably need to find like a happy medium. But ultimately, like what our clients often share is that they come to us because they don't want to feel judged. or intimidated or like looked down upon and we cultivate a safe space for that. Like they don't want to be judged with regard to what they're wearing or what their business is like on the backside. Right.
So we try to keep it chill and fun and judgment free over here.
I love that. And I love everything that you do. So keep on being you keep on being yourself. And if you're listening to this, and you've enjoyed this conversation with Brayden, go find him right now. online, go listen to his podcast, go listen to his revenue reports, because although it's not always 100 percent relevant to hit us here in the UK, you absolutely will get some stuff from it. And it's just refreshing.
And it's everything that I teach you guys at home to be, which is just go be yourself. Don't try and feel like you have to fit in the mold of every single other wedding planner or dress like every single other cake maker. Be yourself, bring your personality to the forefront because you will find the people, you will attract the people that want to work with you. Brayden, before I let you go, I always end the podcast with the same question.
And it's this, what's one thing you personally wish you'd known sooner in your own business?
Well, you really end it there on a real tough question. The first thing that comes to my mind is that hiring isn't all that difficult. So I really wish I would have done it sooner. I drug my feet for a really long time because I thought I had to be like at a certain revenue marker.
And the thing that took me a while to learn is that if I hire people initially on an hourly basis, I'm only going to be paying them if I have client work that needs to be done, and if I have client work that needs to be done, I have client revenue coming in to pay the person. So you likely can hire sooner than you think, which can free up your time to do the things that you need to do in your business to really push it forward.
Awesome. Yeah. And I think, again, I think most people hire too late because they think that they have to be a certain level or be a certain kind of business before you can bring people on to help you. But ultimately in any business, you get to a point where if you want to grow, you've got to grow the team because we are just one person. We can't do it all. Brayden, it's been so fun. I'm glad to find you. finally have you on the podcast.
I cannot wait to spend some more time with you out in Vegas. Emily promised that this year we're going to ride the roller coaster together and I am not going to ride it on my own. So I'm looking forward to that. Some of my UK friends are also joining us in Vegas this year, which is going to be a whole lot of fun.
So if you're listening to this and you still want to come along and be with us in Vegas, there's still tickets to Wedding MBA available, drop me a message and I can send you more details. Brayden, if people want to find out more about what you do, where's the best place for you? For them to find you spending your time.
Follow on Instagram, not AVG law. So that's a short for not average law, not AVG law. You can join the Braden's Besties Facebook group and then of course subscribe to the podcast and fuck your biz asterisk for the U and you should find it just fine.
Amazing. I will make sure I put all of those links in the show notes and I'll see you very soon. I love that conversation with Brayden. So much fun. I told you that he had bundles of personality, and I love that he walks into a room with such confidence. In a space, which is typically really boring, he makes it a whole lot more fun and a lot more interesting. I hope you found that helpful. If you've got more questions, reach out to myself or Brayden, and I'll see you next time.