Bryan Franklin

Replicating and Protecting Your Great Work in Order to Scale Your Business

11 years ago

Truth-telling lawyer Alexis Neely has made every entrepreneurial mistake in the book, costing her hundreds of thousands of dollars and derailing the growth of her business by years. Instead of allowing these obstacles tear her down, Alexis has made it her mission to teach other entrepreneurs how to secure and protect their business by building solid legal and financial systems.

And she does it in the most transparent and authentic way as she shares with her followers and fans her journey down the path of self-discovery, awareness and reinvention. This is what allows her to bring a tremendous amount of heart and understand, along with raw truth and tough love, to all aspects of her businesses.

On this exclusive call with Alexis, we focus on setting up a business to scale by having the infrastructure and legal groundwork, and why now is the best time to take control of our financial systems and especially your taxes.

Click here to listen to the recording with Alexis Neely or you can ready a summary of the 53-minute interview below.

LIFT + Replicator + Support = Rapid Growth

Setting up your business to scale means building solid systems and having an infrastructure in place that allows you to be “required” less as the business grows. There are three components you need to have in place to scale your business.

1) A LIFT Foundation. Most entrepreneurs avoid the “business” side of their business, burying their head in the sand when it comes to anything dealing with legal, insurance, financials and/or taxes. It’s like having a boat and only taking care of the cabin or only worrying about what you are going to serve out of the kitchen. But without taking a hard look at the hull, identifying leaks and sealing the cracks, your boat (your business) will sink the second it is lowered into the water.

2). Identifying Your Replicator. Recognizing the thing in your business that you need to be able to replicate in order to scale.

3). The Right Support. Putting the right support in place through coaching and/or mastermind (preferably both).

Even as a lawyer, Alexis didn’t see the need or importance to have agreements or protection for her creative property. She operated her business on trust with no financial systems in place. She was so focused on sales and marketing, that it took an outside force (that would be me) to show her the blind spot that was keeping her from having the right replications on her business.

Having the Right Replicators

The right replicator really depends on which level you are on as an entrepreneur. These three levels are:

1) Solopreneur – Doing it all alone, usually one-to-one services, no legal business identity established

2) Enterprising Entrepreneur – Have some of the replica table systems in place, and beginning to leverage products and packaging them into programs, may have support staff

3) Empire Builder – Have a completely replicable system, the hull of your boat is not cracked but gleaming and strong, you are building a legacy business that can serve unlimited people, whether you are a part of the business or not

Growing Pains and Protecting Your Property

Every time your business grows is a chance for people to go after you and your work. The act of understanding what you can protect under Copyright Laws can help you distill the unique value you have to offer and clarify your own thinking about what you provide others. It also shows you where to invest your time and money; you don’t want to invest in something that you don’t own .

Getting in Agreement with Agreements

You must have in place the right agreements and the right understanding of intellectual property.

Any time you are building something creative and replicable, then you must have a Work-for-Hire agreement to ensure you own the work outright at the end of the project. Make sure you own the system that makes it replicable.

GPS For Your Business: Setting up Systems for Tracking

You can only fix what you know if broken, which is why it is vital to establish financial systems that track the right metrics. But you have to know what you need to know, and that isn’t always as easy as asking your accountant. Don’t just focus on sales. You need to be able to read and understand financial statements and budgets if you want to make sure you are getting all the information you need to track your current and projected situation.

LIFT Your Business

If you create a replicable business, but don’t have the right management in place and the appropriate LIFT foundation, then you could be building your house on a deck of cards. LIFT (legal, insurance, financial, taxes) is the one thing that is standing between you and the business you want. Once you begin putting those systems in place, all the other areas of your business just align themselves. It is like having an accelerator for your business growth.

Don’t try to do this step on your own. You may be tempered to go it alone, making up agreements that sound legalese, but not knowing what to do yourself is a recipe for disaster. Bring in the right person that understands what you need.

Talking Taxes and Planning Your Strategy

When should an entrepreneur be thinking about taxes when they are first becoming profitable?

It’s sooner than you think.

First, a couple of years before you are profitable, you want to have the government subsidizing your business. Too many entrepreneurs avoid paying taxes all together because they just don’t know what to do. This isn’t anything to be ashamed of, but you do need to take care of past taxes as soon as possible. Get help and clean it up.

In her first year of hitting the million dollar mark in her business, Alexis had no tax plan and ended up with a $116,000 tax bill. She was completely unprepared for it and had to take out a loan. Worst of all, if she had taken a few strategic steps that year, she could have saved $60k off that bill – that’s money she could have had in her bank account for her family.

The best time to talk to you accountant is in the summer (after the big April tax deadline) and then again in September or October. There are actually specific things that you can do in November and December to drastically reduce you tax bill, and maybe even get a refund (if you have the right business identity).

This isn’t about you trying to game the system or use loopholes to cheat the government. It is a way to use the incentives that have been set up for small business owners to stimulate the economy.

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Register now to join Alexis for a free call on the 3 Action Steps You Must Take This Year to Save $1000s on Your Taxes and Keep More of the Money You Make.

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Final Words on Scaling Your Business

If you want to double your business, make sure it relies on half as much of you.

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About Alexis Neely

(@AlexisNeely)

Alexis Neely has built two million-dollar businesses, published a bestselling book and appeared on many of the top television shows as a legal expert, all while raising two kids and discovering her Truth. Today, she trains, coaches and strategizes with business owners on how to put in place the business and life foundations needed to truly think and play big through her ground-breaking Money Map technology and her LIFT Foundation System.

Register for a free call with Alexis on Thursday, November 1st, for the 3 Action Steps You Must Take This Year to Save $1000s on Your Taxes: https://fwpi.infusionsoft.com/go/liftmega/a1357

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