John Scott & Kip Bilderback

John Scott (00:00)
if I can take my time on a process and drive it down from an hour to six minutes, then I’m still creating the same value for the client. I should be able to capture those efficiencies which will allow me to do more.

Kevin Daisey (00:14)
Hey there everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Managed Partners podcast. I am Kevin Daisy and I’m your host. And today I got two guests joining me. So I got Kip and John joining me and we’re going to be talking about some really cool stuff about, you know, growing a law firm, but the financial side of it and cashflow and cool things like that. So we got a lot to talk about and we’re going to have fun with it.

And I’m happy to have these guys on the show today. tune in, take notes and let’s get started off. So first gentlemen, I’ll have you introduce yourselves real quick to the audience. Kip, if you want to go and then we’ll go over to John.

Kip J. Bilderback (00:56)
Sounds good. Thank you, Kevin. Appreciate being here. My name is Kip Bilderback. I am an attorney and business owner. Having practiced for 30 plus years as one of the managing partners in a regional law firm based out of Missouri, I was able to exit the law firm a couple of years ago and start Builderback Business Advisors where I assist

attorneys, other businesses and entrepreneurs in all phases of their business processes and help them to grow. And looking forward to chatting with you a little bit today. Thank you.

Kevin Daisey (01:38)
Yeah, I love that. You got the background, right? You exited, you’re giving advice, but you can give advice because you’ve been there, done that. So you can appreciate that for sure. John, tell us your story.

John Scott (01:54)
Well, before I introduce myself, KIPP is great at drilling down on processes that are repeatable and are really not part of the artistic portion of law and creating efficiencies to create capacity so you can do more. I have worked since 1992 with a regional law firm, Anders in St. Louis, we’ve got about 450 people. And from a very early age in my career, I worked with a number of attorneys. Most of our referrals came from attorneys.

And I met a very entrepreneurial attorney who worked on his business and not in it. And watching him for 17 years really got the equivalent of a PhD in law firm management. And so now that’s what I do on the virtual CFO side, work with law firms to help them grow in scale and manage their business.

Kevin Daisey (02:41)
Really cool. So yeah, as you can hear everyone, they have some backgrounds, some good skills and can share a lot today. So we’re going to try packing as much as we can for the short time that we have here. And where are you gentlemen coming from? Kip, you’re in Florida.

Kip J. Bilderback (02:56)
Yeah, I’m based in Placida, Florida right now, digging out a little bit from the hurricane, but we’re good and it’s beautiful weather down here right now.

Kevin Daisey (03:05)
Yeah, I hope it’s good.

John Scott (03:05)
And I’m in St. Louis, which Kip was not originally from, but lived here for a while and then he moved back to Florida.

Kevin Daisey (03:13)
Actually, I always like to guess to know where everybody’s at and I’m in Virginia Beach, Virginia. So we’re covering a good part of this, the U S here. So, so gentlemen, let’s kind of jump into, you know, what do you want to cover today? And I’m just here to facilitate, maybe ask some questions and maybe throw in my own insights. So, where would you like to start off that?

John Scott (03:35)
Well, you know, from my perspective, we like to help law firms run their business as a business and focus on profit focused accounting. And we think there’s four pillars to that. One is cash. The next is financials, then production and pipeline. And so the first one being cash, we helped them set targets as to how much cash they need to effectively run their business. know, many lawyers, they get a big payday, they get a big check in, they want to take it out.

It’s just like every other business owner, but there’s a certain amount of working capital, especially as you’re growing, that you need to hold onto so that you can make the next couple of months a payroll and pay all the other bills. And then an extra financials. And many times we have people that are long time employees in the office running the financials. They’re not really trained in that area and certain most attorneys are not trained to run accounting financials or interpret them. And so.

We come in to oversee and help them maybe suggest some best practices, some change in processes to how they’re doing things, to automate things, less manual. Manual leads to fat fingers and making errors, and create some efficiencies on there to get better, more accurate financial information. Then we can focus on KPIs, production, and defining their capacity and seeing how we fill that capacity.

Kevin Daisey (04:58)
Yeah, just to add to that real quick, you know, I run a marketing agency and we have contracts with a certain amount of money per month per client. So it’s very predictable. And I could imagine if you just got chunks of money here and there, you know, and how do you manage that? Especially if it’s something you’re not used to and you’re new at it and you have money just coming in. You know, how do you handle that? Right. And I can see it getting out of hand pretty easily.

John Scott (05:25)
Right, in your world you have these contracts, it’s really kind of subscription based. You know there’s a set amount of money coming in. If you pick up a new contract or one drops off, there’s some churn, you can adjust that pretty quickly and know what the next three months looks like. In an hourly billing firm, they can do the same thing based on charge hour expectations, but in a contingent firm it gets more difficult because they really have to dial in in their contract management system or their case management system.

the inventory of cases, where they are in the milestones of those lifespans, and when that case is going to settle so they can predict those cash flows.

Kevin Daisey (05:56)
Mm-hmm.

Kip J. Bilderback (06:03)
I think the other thing that we should note in the contingency arena, a lot of times there are case expenses as well that you’re fronting. So you’ve got to maintain adequate reserves, not only for your operational expenses, hopefully for anticipated growth. So if you have the kind of information that John can provide, you may be able to track and predict your growth, give yourself capacity or excess capacity. But then on top of that, you’re financing the cases themselves.

which may or may not come to fruition in a payoff.

John Scott (06:34)
Exactly.

Kevin Daisey (06:35)
Yeah. Yeah, true. Yeah. So, the four, you know, the four pillars that we, we got through, you know, you’re talking about, you know, cash. So let’s, let’s keep it rolling. What we got.

John Scott (06:47)
Well, know, the financials, financials that are three months historical don’t give me anything to plan around. I need financials that, you know, by the fifth or the 10th of the month, tell me what happens so that I can make decisions on the future. And then once I get those dialed in, I can create that dynamic forecast, which is different from a budget. A budget is, okay, here’s the roadmap, but the dynamic forecast is adjusted

every time I look at it to say, okay, we planned on growing X percent, but we’re deviating from that. What do we need? What levers do we need to pull to get back on path to achieve our destination? And so the dynamic forecast different from budgeting is key to telling us where we’re going to go and how to get there.

Kip J. Bilderback (07:37)
I’ve got some experience, real world experience from my practice area, which was mortgage law. With the kind of tools that John is discussing where you have dynamic forecasting, you understand very up to date how to react to more immediate circumstances. You can deal with dramatic changes. For example, in the mortgage realm, if we have a disaster, a natural disaster, pandemic or something, the entities that are working with defaulted mortgagers

may put a moratorium on their processes for a period of months or longer. And by having that up to the minute data, by understanding what your spend is, what your burn rate is, for example, you can more adequately respond and respond more quickly to preserve your resources, to leverage your assets, maybe to go into another area. So that kind of data is incredibly important to…

run a law firm or any other business.

Kevin Daisey (08:37)
Yeah. Well, you know, you said to John, they’re like, you should have these financials in front of you. You said it like five days or 10 day, day 10, something like that. What is your recommendation on that? Because I know that’s something we’ve worked on here to, to get closer and closer. I think we’re about the fifth day of the month where we have, you know, everything in front of us. But what would you recommend? What would you recommend for lawyers listening? what kind of financials they should have? How, how fast should they have them?

John Scott (08:52)
Mm-hmm.

That’s awesome.

Kevin Daisey (09:06)
in the month.

John Scott (09:07)
Well, I really would like to see firms reconcile cash on a daily or weekly basis. You should always know how much, what your cash position is and where you are with respect to that target that you set. And let me talk about targets. If you are a low risk firm, let’s say you’re hourly billing with great clients, pay their bills by return bill and your billing hygiene is good, you can probably get away with about 10 % of your expected annual revenues as a cash balance. If you’re on the higher risk side,

contingent fee firm, fewer but bigger paydays, you don’t necessarily know when that money’s coming in, you probably need 30 % of your expected annual revenues as cash. Now, if you are recording transactions on a regular basis and you try and automate things like go to abill.com to get your payables paid, make your payroll bridge right into your GL, that can help these folks that are doing your

internal books become more efficient and less prone to error so that it is achievable to close by the fifth day or the tenth day of the month. And then with that good information that you know is always up to date, you can make those decisions and build those dynamic forecasts.

Kevin Daisey (10:23)
Interesting, Yeah, I for me it’s a little different because we do ACH. It’s instantaneous for the most part. I think our AR is like a day and a half or something like that. But to law firms that we’re talking to, it’s different, depending on what kind of firm you are and how you’re set up for your piece.

John Scott (10:33)
That’s phenomenal.

But you know, there are firms that work off of Evergreen retainers and the retainers pay by credit card. Their process would be draft a bill for the whip that occurred in the previous month, send it out to the client for review, and then once it’s approved, you can hit the credit card again and be refilled. So they can keep their AR really low in that respect.

Kevin Daisey (11:04)
So question like on cash on hand, just, we do it a different way. just, do it like two and a half times. So it’s basically two and a half times, I guess expenses or, you know, our revenue that we’re bringing in on a monthly basis at that time that we have two and a half times that. So I guess you’d do that as a percentage of the year, which is kind of what you were.

John Scott (11:27)
Well, it’s interesting you say that because that’s exactly what the 10 % to 30 % does is it looks at a couple months versus six months of your bills. And really, let’s say you’re a 30 % firm, we don’t expect you to keep all that in the operating account, not earning any interest, but maybe keep two payrolls there and then put the rest in a money market account to earn some interest on.

Kevin Daisey (11:45)
Sure

That’s what we do. We have a bunch in different money markets or high interest accounts or we’ll kind of try to get with our financial planners and say, Hey, what’s, you we can take this over here. doesn’t have to be as liquid, you know? So where can we put that? And then here’s kind of where we want to be liquidity wise and you know, money we want to get to. So we’re always kind of looking at that to see like what we can do. so.

John Scott (12:15)
A few years ago that didn’t matter so much because interest rates were so low, but today there’s real interest there.

Kevin Daisey (12:19)
you

It really is, actually have, even personally, I have a 5.37 % savings account and it’s extra money. You know, it’s just kind of sitting over there that I want to be able to grab when I want to. it’s within three days, I can have it back in my main account and it’s, you know, working all right.

John Scott (12:39)
You know who suffered when the Fed had interest rates so low for what, 40 years? It was really the older generation that suffered because they looked at their risk profile and said, need to be more liquid, more in cash. And they were earning 1 % on their money. When inflation was two, they were still losing ground.

Kevin Daisey (13:03)
Yeah. A good point. But so yeah, I, you know, this is a personal tip, but it was, you know, it’s again, there’s some stuff out there and I just tested it with like 10 grand. Just to make sure my money doesn’t disappear. But other than that, it’s a FDIC and all that good stuff and, just put more in there and it’s, you know, makes a couple hundred bucks a month. And, you know, it’s just kind of set aside cash. So yeah. Awesome. All right. Well,

Kip J. Bilderback (13:30)
The other thing I like about that approach from a personal standpoint is the fact that because you have it in that separate account, I kind of blind that for myself. So I look at my operating account as my cash on hand. I know up here that I have something back, but I don’t see it every day and you don’t go, that money looks good. I’d like to use it for whatever sounds good today. It allows you to have a little more long-term thinking.

Kevin Daisey (13:54)
Yeah. So yeah, good point. And I, so one of the books that we prescribed to you early on was a profit first by Mike McCallowitz. And it was, I guess the best way, I’ve mentioned that on the show a few times, but it’s, like your grandma’s envelope system, right? You know, yeah. A little money. You have to take a hundred bucks and you put 20 for dinner and meals and you put 20 over here. We did that with our bank accounts. And so, and we, had a vault account, which was in a different bank.

John Scott (14:03)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Daisey (14:24)
with no ATM cards. And it was just like, money just flows over there that we just kind of like at a percentage rate to where it’s like our vault, like backup, you don’t even know it’s there that we check on every once in a while, but you have to physically go to the bank to get it out because we have no access to it otherwise. And that’s designed that way, but it’s just one of those fail saves as backups. And so yeah, you’re not seeing that, you know,

every day going, there’s some money. Let’s go. Let’s go buy something. So.

John Scott (14:58)
You know, we like to do that with partners tax distributions. Set that aside, look at every month, 40 % of the income, put that in an account that we can’t really see or touch, and then distribute it to the partners to pay their taxes. That way, you know, they get their K-1, they’ve got the estimate voucher due or the balance due on the return in a growing year, then the money has been set aside to pay those taxes. There’s never any consternation about how am I going to pay this.

Kevin Daisey (15:29)
That is awesome. So we do that. And that’s been like the best thing. My wife freaks out every time too. Cause most of like, what are we going to owe? I’m like, we got money set aside for it. So, me and my partner do that. And, and you know, sometimes it’s, know, you got to adjust it or sometimes we like had a big year and we didn’t really set enough aside or, estimated taxes weren’t, where they should have been the previous year.

Other than that, we’re pretty much in line with that. So that’s a great tip right there for everybody. If you’re not doing that, you’re trying to pay less taxes, save taxes, but when the bill comes, the tip that they’re mentioning right there, you have it. And it’s so easy as a startup business. And I remember making some money and being like, wait, I got to pay taxes. then you might not have that money sitting around because you had to spend it. Things are tight.

John Scott (16:04)
You have it.

Kevin Daisey (16:19)
So if you’re a new firm out there.

Kip J. Bilderback (16:20)
And I think as you grow, as you grow and consider bringing in more partners, more stakeholders, if you have that as a habit, they understand coming in. So they understand they’re getting some kind of draw. They’re hopefully limiting their personal expenditures to fit that understanding that there is a backup of the tax income. What that allows folks to do is not make foolish decisions.

quarterly or at tax time that affect how much they try to force you, hey, we need to take money out of the firm. They know that that’s not a possibility, which allows you down the road to have better strategic choices on growth. So it’s really key. It’s a good way to proceed.

Kevin Daisey (17:07)
Yeah, I think, you know, feel like, go ahead, John. You can jump in there.

John Scott (17:07)
If you

Well, I was just going to say if you are disciplined enough to set this money aside, then you’re always going to be in sync with the cash flow curve. Where firms get into trouble is where they over-distribute either in draws or at year end, not comprehending the taxes. Then the balance due comes plus the first quarter estimate and the money’s already gone. I already gave it to them. They spent it on other things and we’re constantly chasing this. Now, the last part of cash is

have a great line of credit that probably equates to your cash target and don’t use it to support partner lifestyle. Use it for dips in cash to make a quick investment in some new technology or an office build out. But then get that paid off. Don’t live on the line of credit.

Kevin Daisey (17:56)
Awesome tip. We were told that a while back and we started doing that.

Kip J. Bilderback (17:57)
And ideally, one of the things that…

Kevin Daisey (18:01)
We just got their Kip. Sorry.

Kip J. Bilderback (18:03)
Yeah, I was saying ideally, if you can get to a point, and I’m very conservative financially, if you can get to a point where that line of credit is truly for emergencies, but you are keeping your regular operational cash and then able to project your capital expenditures, your new systems, new infrastructure, that thing that hits immediately where you need to upgrade software. If you have the cash on hand to do that,

you’re never going into debt. And that is for a developing and growing law firm business is a great place to be. It may cause you to slow growth sometimes, but that’s okay because ultimately you’ll stand the test of time.

Kevin Daisey (18:47)
Yeah. Yeah. You want smart growth. You don’t want to grow too fast or break things. yeah, that’s two good points there. I want to kind of back up too is one. Yeah. Sometimes I’ve seen firms going to me and be like, Hey, that new website we’re going to build, let’s, can we do that? Like right now in December and pay for it, but we’ll start it next year. They’re trying to, you know, spend some cash, right? so I definitely see that a lot. it gives me a little idea, not that I get into their finances, but.

John Scott (19:04)
you

Kevin Daisey (19:14)
run a business I know. And then the other thing about the line of credit, I used to never have any debt, no lines of credit, no nothing. And was like so proud about it. And I had some business owners going, Hey, well, you don’t have a lot of credit or a relationship with the bank. Like, no, like we, know, we don’t have any debt, no credit cards, nothing. And they were like, that’s not necessarily a good thing. Like you need to build a relationship with your bank because they’re not going to give you a lot of money right now.

The goal is that you build that up and build trust and lines of credit. So if you do need it, or if you need it to grow, scale, higher, whatever, that you’re building that up and you have that. So yeah, we started to get a line of credit and this increased a lot. We don’t need it. We use it here and there because if you don’t use it at all, then they’re not going to, yeah, they’ll say, hey, we’re going to close this out. So yeah, go get a good relationship with a good local or regional bank.

John Scott (20:00)
I’ll take it, yeah.

Kevin Daisey (20:09)
That’s my, my take. I had a lawyer asking this the other day, like, should I bank with? And everyone’s like local, regional, you know, build a good relationship. and then use the line of the credit and then pay it off just like you would an Amex card. Yeah. So we have, we had Amex like you have to pay that thing off. Like if you go a day late, like you’re screwed. The interest rate will go through the roof. but Amex is a good, a good card to have if you can do that. So.

John Scott (20:24)
Right.

Kevin Daisey (20:37)
Great, great tips.

John Scott (20:37)
Hey, I do want to talk about like term debt and there are places where debt for a law firm or any business is appropriate because if you think about it, if we’re netting 25 or 30 % profit and the term debt to expand our footprint or buy some new computers is seven or 8%, it’s still good to leverage that acquisition because

Kevin Daisey (20:50)
Mm-hmm.

John Scott (21:03)
My other cash can be earning and growing my business and I’m going to earn 25 to 30 % on that and I’m paying 7 or 8 % on the term debt. What I’m cautioning against is living off the line of credit, use that for emergencies. But if you have a strategic acquisition or a big purchase, go ahead and turn that out. Plus, if you have a firm with multiple partners, some are older, some are younger, those improvements, the acquisition is going to affect everyone.

So I want to match the cash flows going out to pay the term debt off with the benefit of what I’m acquiring.

Kevin Daisey (21:40)
Now, I love that. you guys, what do you got to add to that?

Kip J. Bilderback (21:42)
I kind of agree with John. You have to look at the cost of money. I think if you have the right data, you are going to align these types of purchases, expenditures with your strategic plan and make intelligent decisions that you can then spread out. does look good. I’ll leave to John to talk about the accounting.

but sometimes it’s nice to spread something very big out over a number of years. And there are several investments. And what I see is in footprint growth, maybe, in dramatic increases in infrastructure. A lot of times that’s information systems or other things to help you better serve your clients. I do believe that that can be used strategically to fuel the growth that you are planning on in the long-term.

John Scott (22:17)
Kevin you just talked about websites a new website. What’s that cost 100 grand? They’re not cheap. So so if I did.

Kevin Daisey (22:37)
it can. yeah, 20,000, 20,000 on the low end from us and then, yeah, it could be a lot more. So.

John Scott (22:48)
But if I was going to spend a hundred grand on a new website, it’s going to benefit me for a number of years rather than take a hundred thousand dollars out of current cash. Maybe I take some of my own cash and then term out the rest over three to five years. That seems reasonable to me.

Kevin Daisey (23:05)
Sure. Or we’ll put you on a payment plan and we’ll finance it for you. So yeah, we’ll be the bank. We do that all the time because it makes sense versus someone writing a big check. So we try to make options like that. So we have cashflow and sometimes I’d rather have the cashflow than a hundred grand today. So that’s kind how we do things here and to be in that position where years back we were a project company.

John Scott (23:10)
You’ll be the bank.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Daisey (23:30)
And we had to have those big checks and I hated that. So we slowly said, all right, let’s start taking the next guy, next firm and say, instead of a project, like let’s do, you know, 2,500 in a month or whatever for 18 months, whatever it ends up being. And that started to build our cashflow and we started shifting to where we’re like a hundred percent recurring revenue. So what we do, we do a lot of other.

John Scott (23:55)
Right. And that’s great for knowing where your cash position is going to be.

Kevin Daisey (24:01)
Exactly.

Kip J. Bilderback (24:01)
And it’s something I’m seeing attorneys do more frequently in those hourly billing situations where you have a corporate client or a regular client who has a certain amount of work to be able to give them a deal where you are in some way having them on a contract on a monthly basis. It allows them to better budget their legal expenses. It allows you to guarantee or to understand your cash flow.

And I do see many more colleagues finding that who have the types of clients who fit that profile.

John Scott (24:39)
Hey, let’s talk about AI for a second, because Kip, you mentioned hourly billing. AI, think, is going to change all our worlds in a good way. I’m not one that thinks AI is the devil. But in an hourly billing firm, I need to change my engagement letters to comprehend that I’m going to capture those efficiencies. And I’m not gouging the client, I’m still creating value.

Kevin Daisey (25:01)
Mm-hmm.

John Scott (25:04)
and providing value to the client and I’m charging for that. But if I can take my time on a process and drive it down from an hour to six minutes, then I’m still creating the same value for the client. I should be able to capture those efficiencies which will allow me to do more. And if we look at the accounting world, we used to do spreadsheets by hand on green bar paper and then VisiCalc and Lotus 123 came along and now it’s Excel and Power BI.

I mean, we can do so much more with our time and then it’s just gonna ramp up like a hockey stick.

Kevin Daisey (25:40)
Yeah, that’s a really good point. And I was at a conference recently in Phoenix and a good friend of mine, Kellum Parks, who’s been on the show here, a law firm here in Virginia, a very smart guy. He’s big into AI and cybersecurity and stuff like that. Yeah. One of the talks that I heard was, yeah, if you’re hourly, like you need to start figuring out how you’re going to be charging for value because the hours won’t be there. So at some point, right.

You know, so these law firms have to start figuring that out. Like how are they going to switch over to charging for value and what’s that price and what fits? What are the clients comfortable with? How do you figure that out? But yeah, I’ve heard a lot of things like, it took an associate 12 hours. Now it’s one hour. Right. For some of these case files and stuff like that. So it’s definitely already in use.

Kip J. Bilderback (26:25)
Good.

And that kind of falls into the process stuff that I’ve been talking about or that I like to deal with in that by having robust processes around all of your legal activities, you’re able to save incremental amounts of time on those processes, whether it’s by repeatability, whether it’s by incorporating AI or whatnot. And I believe there’s a couple of ways that you can…

recapture that. John’s always big on looking at what you charge hourly to make sure that you’re capturing the clients you’re able to afford it, the right kind of client. And I think your hourly can increase based on that efficiency. Alternatively, to be able to price your services adequately and accurately in a flat fee for value. if you have, let’s say you are taking a

a simplistic estate plan, for example, instead of saying, hey, we’re going to charge you hourly, you know you’re going to charge four or $5,000 for that basic estate plan. If you can save time through AI, through your processes, and decrease the amount of input you have to do while you’re still billing that $5,000 value to the client, that’s where there’s some amazing profitability that can come in.

Kevin Daisey (27:54)
That’s awesome. Yeah. If you have your, if you’re heavy processes down, you just, you know, the processes might change with some AI inputs and things like that, but it’s still, can say, all right, here’s how much time it took us before. Here’s the old process. Here’s the efficiencies. How much time has that taken us? But yeah. So if you don’t have any processes in place, then, you know, it’s going to be difficult to track the value, right. And the time. So yeah, interesting.

Yeah, good stuff. AI is coming. I was, when I was again at this conference, were showing all the software for lawyers, you know, it’s built, built for, you know, it doesn’t hallucinate. doesn’t create. You know, it doesn’t create stuff. It’s, it’s built for, you know, for lawyers to use. And it’s really cutting down the time for all this stuff. And so you still need lawyers to review things and to go through it and.

and everything like that, so it’s not replacing lures, but definitely speeding things up.

Kip J. Bilderback (28:55)
The other thing I think these things do is it increases the client satisfaction and the quality of your work. A lot of what we talk about when we’re talking with John is that base financial value. But the thing we don’t often talk about is the fact that having those processes, having the ability to understand your financial world to grow leads to the ability to better serve your client, to take the

unique challenges and address them sufficiently to have the better contact points with your client. A client who’s getting a regular bill on a timely fashion that’s expected is a lot more satisfied than someone who gets invoiced irregularly or has a surprise come out of the woods. And the type of work that John’s company does allows their clients to better serve their client overall.

John Scott (29:50)
Well, the other thing I would add in AI is for those firms that embrace it and use it in the right way, create best practices, it’s going to allow small and mid-sized firms to compete with much bigger firms.

Kevin Daisey (29:51)
that yeah

No doubt. And the big firms that don’t want to change or they’re comfortable, they’re going to have an awakening for sure. Cause I know a lot of young virtual, they started, you know, young firms that started virtually, they’re virtual. they’re, you know, working with clients all over the country and, and practice areas that you would never think that could do that. And, they’re being efficient and they’re, they’re, doing well. So, know, the bigger firms need to definitely adopt this and figure it out as soon as they can.

one, one point I just, one thing I was thinking about as a Arjun Robbins, he, he runs a group called how to manage a small law firm. They have about almost a thousand smaller firms that they consult, if you will, they coaching, CEO’s CFO’s, you know, they kind of have like a consultancy program. And one of the things that he preaches all the time is that if you’re running a law firm and

You don’t know what your finances are. It’s shaky. you’re running around like crazy. You don’t have processes in place. You know, some of things you were just mentioning where the bills are coming out here and there or irregularly. you’re not financially stable and running a good business, then you’re every time you sign up a client, you’re, you’re basically lying to them that you’re able to take care of their situation. Cause you might not be in business by the time.

It comes time to help them out. So, you know, he’s he was just saying if if you were a law firm and you told them all those things that the problems you have They wouldn’t hire you, right? So I forgot what he said, but it’s like not malpractice, but he knew something like that. He’s just like and there’s so many law firms out there like that that

John Scott (31:50)
I’ve read his stuff and I agree with about 99 % of what he says. The 1 % that I disagree is he hammers CPAs on GAAP financial statements. I do agree with that, but what he’s painting is all CPAs that are historical in nature and GAAP statements. I don’t prescribe that you need GAAP statements unless the bank is requiring it. What you need is current accurate financial statements, which he would agree with.

He just tries to paint all CPAs as, they’re going to push gap statements and you don’t need that. I agree. You don’t need it, but we’re not all historical in nature. Some of us are advisory and looking forward.

Kevin Daisey (32:30)
No, yeah, that’s a good point.

Kip J. Bilderback (32:30)
Of the lawyer always has to look for someone to make fun of. And if we can go to the accountants, we’re going to do it because we’re usually the one with the jokes.

John Scott (32:39)
We’re easy target. We are an easy target.

Kevin Daisey (32:42)
And no one likes marketers either though. So there’s a lot of bad ones out there.

Kip J. Bilderback (32:46)
It’s true.

Kevin Daisey (32:47)
Fog it. We’ll deal with that. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I was actually a legal conference in Chicago. Louise Scott’s, eight figure firm and a friend of mine now. Yeah. A friend of mine, Adam Williams, he’s got a firm called Pennywise and they’re tax strategist. And that was a new kind of terminology for me. And yeah, I’ve had your traditional CPAs that just you meet with them and they’re like, all right, taxes are due today. Let’s meet real quick. And you’re done. You’re like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa.

John Scott (32:55)
yeah, I like that guy, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Daisey (33:17)
so, you know, if your CPA does that, you need someone to plan with, you know, way ahead.

John Scott (33:24)
Yeah, they’re great at telling you what happened, but not what’s going to happen.

Kevin Daisey (33:27)
And I think that’s the hard part.

Kip J. Bilderback (33:28)
And I think I can give a brief testimonial to John because not only do we like to work together, John is our accountant and John is so dedicated to looking forward that we have had meetings where he says, hey, I just need to spend 25 minutes with you and look forward because I see this stuff on the horizon. I want to make sure you’re dealing with it adequately.

And that is like nothing I’ve seen in other CPAs and other business advisors. It’s really phenomenal.

Kevin Daisey (34:01)
No, huge. I would say anyone listening, you know, if you don’t have someone like that, you know, reach out to these gentlemen, reach out to John, but find someone like that, that you can sit down with. know, we just switched to a new firm because we were not happy and we were not being proactive and they were not helping us, even though they were expensive. We switched to a new firm early this year. We had to file late, of course. And then the 15th just hit, right? So,

They already emailed me today. We’re like, all right, it’s time to meet again and start planning, and figuring out what we’re, what we’re doing, because we have a lot of things to clean up. and so yeah, if you’re not planning, you’re not having active conversations and you’re not getting financials on your desk, within the first week or so of the month. And there’s some things you got to work on for sure.

John Scott (34:48)
Exactly. Hey, I want to put a shameless plug in for a book I wrote called Judicial Dollars and Cents. And if we could put this in the show notes, I’d be happy to send anyone a free copy of it.

Kevin Daisey (34:55)
Awesome.

that’s awesome. appreciate that. was going to say, well, yeah, I’m happy to put that, in our newsletter as well. and for anyone listening, for a little while, I did a, like a book club. so when I had guests that come on and have a book, we would feature different books, like in our newsletter. And I really want to bring that back. So I’ll, I’ll have to put that in there. So I appreciate it. what was the name of the book again?

John Scott (35:23)
to additional dollars and cents.

Kevin Daisey (35:25)
traditional dollars and cents. Okay. Everyone check that out. Reach out to John and what’s the best way I want to get everyone the best way they can connect with you all. obviously you can reach out to me, LinkedIn or wherever, and I will connect you if you email me. but Kip and John, what’s the best way for folks to, to find you and connect with you.

Kip J. Bilderback (35:42)
I’ll start if you can find me at my website builderbackadvisors.com. You can go on LinkedIn or you can call me and the number is 314-277-9599. A lot of people don’t give their phone numbers out, but I’m kind of old school. That phone’s open 24 seven. Feel free to call. Happy to chat with you.

Kevin Daisey (35:58)
I like it.

Awesome.

John Scott (36:05)
And for me, it’s on the Anders website, anderscpa.com or on LinkedIn, John Scott CPA, and my phone number, 314-229-2173. And like Kip, I always have my phone with me.

Kevin Daisey (36:20)
that same here, I give out my number. My employees are always like, you’re phone number. Okay. On this, like, yeah, it’s my cell and my business and my life pretty much. So just doesn’t matter to me. Seven by seven, six, seven, nine, six, two, seven, four. Let’s go. So, Hey, gentlemen, I appreciate you coming on to share a great conversation. you know, anyone listening, if this is foreign to you or some of the things that we talked about.

you can definitely have an episode about almost every little thing that we talked about, leveraging debt for growth. mean, there’s just so many good things there. so if you want to hear maybe more about one of those topics, have these done on back on, let me know. and if not, we’ll see you on the next episode, John Kip, anything else you want to share before we go.

Kip J. Bilderback (37:06)
I appreciate your time today, Kevin.

John Scott (37:09)
Yeah, Kevin, thank you for having us.

Kevin Daisey (37:11)
Absolutely. Well, you all stay on with me for just a sec. We’ll talk backstage. Everyone tuning in. Thank you so much again for tuning into the episode. Any feedback, topics, things you want to hear, let me know because I’ll find the best people to talk about it. So we’ll see you soon on the next episode.