In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Scott Reib to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover the way to shatter proof you business.
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Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Scott Reib to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover the way to shatter proof you business.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
- Instagram: @Thomas.mbennett
-YouTube:@SmallBusinessMoneyConnector
- LinkedIn: Thomas Bennett
Subscribe to "Small Business, Big Moves" on Your Favorite Podcast Platform for more inspiring episodes on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
Welcome to Small Business Big Moves, the podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Tom Bennett, and we'll explore all things business growth from business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses. Welcome to the show. My guest today is a man known as America's legal coach and the official Zig Ziglar small business lawyer, Scott Reeb. Scott, I'm excited to have you on the show and I'll let you introduce yourself. Hey Thomas, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here with you and talk about some big moves. The yeah, for the last 10 years I've been going around the country on stages talking about shatterproofing businesses. I have a law firm called Reblaw out of Denton, Texas, which is just north of Dallas. I have a consulting company called Shatterproof Solutions, and my mission is to help business owners grow, scale, and protect their businesses, because I believe that the business is the best vehicle to achieve their life goals and dreams. Absolutely. I'm glad you mentioned that. It's a great area to cover. I know a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs may not be protecting themselves and the business the way they should be. So, I definitely Like to jump a little more into that and I know we're gonna throw a lot at them today, right? I know you mentioned kind of shatterproof in your business. Obviously protecting your business And then another area that we touched on was having a recurring revenue model, right? So just a Just a preview, right? We're gonna throw a lot at them today but before we jump into that I know you mentioned you spent about 10 years doing that if you could really kind of take it all the way back to 2020 To where you started and kind of how you got into where you are today. Yeah, I've been, I mean, I've been practicing law for 27 years. I graduated from college in 1991 with a business administration degree with marketing concentration and really wanted to be an ad exec. That's really what I wanted to do. And in 91, the economy was bad. There really weren't very many jobs period. And there really were no marketing slash advertising jobs, everything was sales. So I tried to sell insurance. That wasn't me. Ended up, I tried to sell some financial like loans and things that really didn't work so great. I ended up selling telephones. With a major telecom carrier, AT& T, and ended up having my own agency where I was the aftermarket rep for anyone that had a AT& T phone system in their business in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area and was doing fairly well, had found some systems for turning some things into mailbox money printing, printing contracts off of my dot matrix printer on my dining room table. If you're If you're young, you probably have no idea what a dot matrix printer is. What we said is printers that printed these sheets of paper, they're all connected together, and then they had these little holes on the sides. You had to pull off. It was a real pain, but we print those contracts out, send them out to, to the, to the actual clients, they'd sign them, come back and I'd, make money. I was 23 years old. Everything was working great, and the man, a new manager came in who was very nice loved, was very complimentary of what I was doing, loves my system, and took it and gave it to a hourly, hourly employee that came in on wage, and sent me to the Sticks in Oklahoma, which the Sticks, if you ever get sent to the Sticks, that's code for they have no technology, and they send you there to die, so they sent me to this place where they didn't need phones to sell phones. And so I got the clue real pretty quick and decided to retool. So it was either you get a master's degree, I get an MBA. And that wasn't real interesting to me. And I had always kind of thought that being an attorney might be fun. So I took the LSAT, did all right. Got admitted to a couple of law schools and chose to go to the university of Oklahoma and spent three years there, got out in 96 and took the bar in Texas and I've been a lawyer ever since. good stuff. And then I wanted to also cover that as well, right, obviously the official Zig Ziglar small business lawyer, I know that's pretty exciting to me, like I mentioned, I know when I first got into sales and business, I was always looking up to Ziglar and watching the trainings, listening to the books and everything what got you into that or how did you end up with that opportunity? Yeah. So in 2012, I had a vision for creating an on demand legal subscription for small business owners and hired my first coach and we started creating that. And I knew I was just smart enough to know that I needed a niche and that just saying I was a small business lawyer wasn't great. I needed to have some focus that I spent my marketing dollars on. I could take other things, but I needed to have a focus. And so I, I really wanted to help speakers, trainers, and coaches. Because I felt like, you know, their, their mission in life was to help other people. If I'm helping them help other people, my influence would be exponential. So I set out on that path to get certified, to do that. And my homework was to come back to Dallas, go to a live event, take notes, come back to this group of us that are in a cohort that we're getting trained together and then talk about it. And so the only name I knew in the Texas area was Ziegler. So I Googled it, found a Ziegler event. I did not, I did not realize that Zig had already passed away. I'd missed him by about two years and ran, walked into a room where Tom Ziegler and his his partner, Howard Partridge were putting on a born to win event. And it was amazing. I mean, you know, you've heard Ziegler content was coming from those guys. So it sounded a little different, but it was the same stuff. And at lunchtime we're out in the middle, outside of Houston and out in nowhere and there weren't any restaurants. So I'm asking the hotel clerk, where do I go eat? I didn't have a car. And they're like, well, we have a vending machine. And Howard Partridge heard me and said, hey, do you need a ride to lunch? I said, that'd be great. On the way back, he's like, how are you getting to the airport tonight? And I said, well, I've got the business card from the cab driver that brought me here last night. This was kind of before Uber stuff was real popular. And he's like, nah, Tom will take you. And I'm like, Tom who? He's like Tom Ziegler. So we walked back to him and he says, Hey, Tom, you're taking Scott to the airport. And Tom's like, okay, well, I'm leaving at 4 45 sharp. So I got my suitcase put next to his. And after I signed up for their coaching package, which then put me in three coaching coaching packages, I walked to the car with him and we were in Houston traffic for about two hours. Anyone who's ever been in Houston traffic or other big cities, it's usually not fun. But I'm riding around with a son of Zig Ziglar. And so I'm hearing all the Zig's wisdom coming out of Tom and we really got to know each other. And about a month later, I had a, another appointment with him at lunch in Louisville, Texas. We had some Mexican restaurant, Mexican food, and he looked at my sales presentation. And at the end, I just asked him if there was, if there's any reason that you wouldn't do business with me today, Mr. Ziglar, and then I shut up. And a few, a few minutes later, it seemed like 10, right? But he said, yeah, let's do it. and signed a contract. And so they became early adopters of my access membership plan. And from there, I've become very close with the family went through ZLC training. So I'm now a legacy certified trainer. So I can teach six courses. And then I get to do all, I get to look at all the programs that are coming out as they create new things, I get to help them design programs, and it's, it's just a blast to be their official lawyer. Absolutely. That's exciting. I'm glad you shared that too. I know a lot of a lot of listeners are obviously familiar with the Zegler name, so that's exciting The other thing I wanted to really jump in on, right, is I know obviously we've talked about it a few times on here, but shatterproof in your business, right, I know you mentioned six phases there that you focus in on, so I wanted you to kind of highlight that or talk about how businesses might be able to shatterproof themselves. Yeah, you bet. And that's the, I've, I've got a new book out called the shatterproof entrepreneur. That's a live on Amazon and it goes through the six phases in detail. I also talk about it on my podcast by the same name, but basically the idea is let's build businesses in a way that they'll bend and not break. Right. Cause it's like, there's, there's, there's, it's not, if something bad is going to happen in your business, it's when. You know, you're either going to get sued, you're going to have something go wrong that could be catastrophic if you don't have the right systems and structures in place, and so we teach our clients how to do that. The, you know, the first part of any building anything is you've got to get the foundation right. And so the foundation of a business is, to me, the combination of things. It's, it's, you've got to have the right leadership in place. And so you have to have a vision, mission, core values, and you have to be able to communicate those clearly. If it's just you, you need to be able to really understand them to your core. And then as you add team members, you've got to communicate those in a way that they That it resonates with them and they can buy in. And I've, I've, I've done that poorly in the past. And you can, that can cause trouble. The next part of that phase is that you've got to start building the legal structure of your business. Too many people are still running around as sole proprietors. So a sole proprietor is someone that does not have a corporation or LLC. They are just, they just hung out their sign and said, I'm in business. Right. It's happening every day, every minute. Someone's becoming an affiliate marketer and they're a sole proprietor. And that means any liability they create is theirs. It's their personal liability. And so if they were to make profit and buy personal assets, it's all at risk. Your spouse's assets could be at risk. Right. Everything you've got. So get the right legal structure. Sometimes that's a corporation. Sometimes it's an LLC, sometimes it's a combination of those, and, you know, most people don't have the, the sophistication to figure that out, so you need to also have a team of key advisors and part of that foundation. One of those advisors needs to be a CPA. The way that we keep score in business is money. It may be unfortunate, but that's how we do it, and they're the experts at it. They help you track it and keep it and make sure you pay enough to the government. So get, get a good one that you like hanging around with and spend time with them. Build a relationship. And then another one is you need to have a good, strong entrepreneurial business lawyer that can help you figure out those structures in conjunction with that CPA to make sure that they're tax efficient, but that you've got that protection at the first foundational phase. Because that's, that's everything rests on that. And so if you don't do that correctly, it can all crumble when those lawsuits happen. And so the shatterproof idea is that I believe that your small business is the best vehicle to achieve your goals and dreams. And those vehicles, everyone I've ever been in has a windshield. And those windshields are made of glass. And that glass is shatterproof. And it serves two purposes. One is vision and the other is protection. And you need both of those if you want to survive in business. And if you've driven down the highways, like I have in Texas, the rocks fly off these trucks and hit you in the windshield. I've never once in, but 35 years of driving longer had one come through my windshield and hit me in the face. They mark it. Sometimes it cracks the windshield. I can go onto my destination and then fix it later when it's convenient. Right. And so we want our businesses to be the same way, shatterproof. So we don't get knocked off the road. We can deal with the problem when it's convenient. It's not an emergency because we have these shatterproof strategies in place. It's so true. And I love the I love the analogy with the part in the windshield, right? Because I think you nailed it best. A lot of people have that That vision, but they probably don't have the full protection for the business I mean, like you said it goes a little further than just having the llc or having the right structure, right if you have If you have that all set up, great. You're going in the right direction, but obviously, like you mentioned, there's still a little more on top of that to make sure you're fully protected. And anything else that you wanted, wanted to cover on, on that area, as far as the shatterproof part. Yeah, I mean, it goes through, you know, it goes through all six phases. And the next one that you want to do is you want to have a consistent, ownable brand, something you can dominate. I mean, you've got a good, strong brand with your podcast that no one else owns. You got a trademark so that they can't take it from you. And they can't call you an infringer. If someone else is using something similar, you got to go through the, it's a, it's not easy. And you need someone with some skill to help you own it. Because. The biggest problem you could have is to get to the end of the road, have climbed this ladder of success and figure out you're leaning against someone else's building and they knock you off of it. Right. So this legal, this legal stuff, it's no fun. It's just not, it's not what you want to do. You want to be building stuff and you want to be making money, but if you invest in, in the right legal structure, systems and information, it can really set you up to scale in a big way. That's spot on for sure. And then the other area I wanted to to jump in on as well was the the recurring revenue aspect. Right. I know. A lot of people then I see, at least it seems like they're in business. They focus on getting the next client or getting the next sale service some, and then move on. Unfortunately, that's what I've seen throughout a lot of my career. I try to take the approach of obviously continuing to go back to clients and help them or. Be more of a consultant to them, but I know a lot of people may not think about the recurring revenue model. They may not realize that's a area that they can have in their business. So I wanted you to touch on that a little bit and help you all might be able to benefit from that. Yeah, there's two concepts there that you kind of just touched on. One is a lifetime value of your customer. And so even if they're not a recurring revenue customer, it's what can they spend with you over the, over their lifetime with you. And you need to have, know what that's worth and know what that customer's worth. And, and one way of extracting that value is by having some sort of subscription model, recurring revenue. In your business, take what you're doing and bolt it on to your business so that you have something on the first of the month that you know is coming in. That was the biggest difference for me. You know, I got about a year into my, to my recurring revenue subscription program and had a, had a problem here, lost all of my employees ended up with just me and 2, 500 square feet of my business. One plus when that happens is that you have no payroll, your payroll goes to zero. And so if you have no payroll and you have recurring revenue. You're in a pretty good spot. I also very quickly raised my prices so that I would have more revenue. But I had that recurring revenue and, but until then and that was about year seven of my firm. And so I had every, every first of the month I'd walk in and just wonder, am I going to be able to pay all the bills this month? Because you really never knew, even if I already had some clients, I would have to do work because I, you know, back then everyone billed by the hour and they'd have to pay me if they didn't pay me, I'd have an account receivable to have to chase and do more work without getting paid. And so it was kind of a mess. And so when I figured out that that was not only making my life stressful, it was also making the client's life stressful because they didn't think they had access to, you know, The information they needed because they, every time they'd call me, they would envision money flying out of their pocket. So they just keep making mistakes over and over. And so I could solve that problem by eliminating the hourly rate. They have unlimited access to me with stupid questions so that they don't have to worry about it. They can just ask me anything and everything and they don't get. You know, money flying out of their pocket. And so by doing that, we may have, we've been able to create a seven figure law firm that is 90 percent recurring revenue. That's fantastic. Good for you. Yeah. And then we do other things, you know, so that you've got these customers that like, love you, like you are raving fans, and then you can find other things that they need, other problems they have. That we can solve. So we solve the general counsel problem, letting them be proactive with their business, but we also can help them do estate planning, we can help them with transitions like doing buy sell agreements, we can help them buy new businesses and those are all flat fee packages, but they add on to that revenue and lifetime value the client, because once you become their trusted advisor they keep coming back to you to solve other, you know, related or adjacent problems. And so I talked to my business owner clients all the time about find something you can do that is recurring revenue. And you might find multiple things you can do, but find it there. I mean, there is an adjustment. It's a different kind of a business. The financial statements will look different especially for a while. Because your revenue may have, you may have had big chunks of revenue coming in from your, from invoicing. And now you're doing the smaller monthly subscription payments. But over time. But you got to let that time run for a little while before you get there. Absolutely. No, that's great. Another, another great point. And I know, like I said, I know we were going to throw a lot at him and give him a lot of value, but anything else that we might've left out or that you wanted to leave the listeners with today? Well, I want, yeah. I mean, make sure that, that you've got those trusted advisors, that you're making sure you're protecting your intellectual property. And seriously, find a recurring revenue model that you can implement in your business. If you can't find one in your business, then find another side business that you can build with recurring revenue. And if you can, and if it can be built on someone else's labor and not yours even better. But try to figure out that recurring revenue, because it's a real game changer. And all of this takes what it called, takes something called proactivity. Right. You can't just sit back and let it happen. Life and business don't work out well that way. You've got to have a plan and you've got to be proactive and going after it, which requires you to, you know, set goals, figure out the obstacles. Figure out the action steps to get there and then then go get it make big moves. Absolutely. I appreciate that Yeah, and then that's that's going to be a wrap for this episode of small business big moves If you enjoyed the episode What would really help us is if you shared this podcast with someone you think could get value out of it And like and review the podcast you can also hit me up on all social media at thomas bennett And I look forward to seeing you all on the next episode