Legal Protection Strategies for Growing Home Service Businesses with Mitch Beinhaker

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're going to be discussing legal protection strategies for growing home service businesses with Mitch Beinhocker. Thanks so much for joining us today, Mitch.

Thanks, Phil. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, absolutely. So Mitch is the owner of Beinhocker Law, a seasoned attorney with over 32 years of experience specializing in business law, real estate transactions, risk analysis, and estate planning for entrepreneurs and small businesses. He's also the author of 10 Ways to Get Sued by Anyone and Everyone, which is a practical guy for business owners. And he's the host of the Accidental Entrepreneur podcast since 2019. And with a background that blends legal expertise and entrepreneurial insight, Mitch provides practical legal guidance that helps business owners avoid common pitfalls while focusing on sustainable growth. All those things, everyone listening is like, I love it. Because this is. They're accidental entrepreneurs. They were in the trade, they were technicians, you know, started a home service business. So it's going to be a great conversation. Can you tell us a little bit how you got into law, some of your background? What does that look like?

Sure. I mean, you're going back 40 years, right? So I guess when I was in college, I was majoring in, you know, business and economics and finance, stuff like that.

Okay.

And I didn't want to really go the MBA route or anything like that, so I, you know, I was always attracted to small businesses and planning and things like that. My dad was in the life insurance business most of his career, so I just decided to go to law school. I was sitting around with a buddy of mine, and he was like, I'm going to law school. And I was like, all right, I'll go to law school, too. And then two days later, he said, I decided I don't want to go to law school. And then, then I said, well, do I really want to go to law school? I was just drunk with him one night and I was like, I don't know. I think it's. I think knowing the law is a good background for, you know, whatever you're going to do if you're going to be in business or, or whatever. In some cases, it makes you dangerous. But I ended up going to law school and I got very interested in tax and finance and business planning, all the legal stuff. And when I got out, started working for insurance companies and financial companies. That was really my, you know, my dad's market and my connections there.

Yeah.

And over the years, I've learned all the, you know, ins and outs of the legal side of doing, planning and work for small business owners. And that's my whole practice. It's all transactional work. You know, document drafting, forming companies, helping small business owners acquire companies. You know, we do have some home improvement contractors and retailers and things like that that buy other small businesses. That's kind of their strategy to. To expand. And then I help them with their commercial leasing, and I help them with their wills and trusts in the states, and it's just kind of developed like that. I try to stay out of court when I can. I don't. I don't litigate. I maybe deals with some, you know, the probate court sometimes, or a tenant eviction. If you're a business owner and you own some properties, you're like, mitch, I don't know what to do. This guy's not paying me. So, all right, so we'll file an eviction. But I'm not going to. I'm not your PI lawyer, you know, gonna sue for stuff like that or even commercially.

Yeah, you're gonna try to keep things clean, protect you from attacks, legal perspective. Hopefully, nothing happens.

Exactly. And then about 2001, I think I kind of migrated out of working, you know, in house for financial companies because I had, like, a small legal practice on the side, and I had a lot of contacts in the financial world and, you know, the insurance guys and the wirehouse guys and all that kind of stuff. And I, you know, went out on my own, and I. Because I was just getting a lot of legal referrals, and I, you know, left that world, started my practice and, you know, continued to. To, you know, grow the practice that I had. Now I had partners over the years and worked for other people. And just before the pandemic, I just went back solo, and I've been mostly virtual at this point. I do most of my stuff, you know, virtually.

Yeah, that's awesome. And the podcast, how did that come about?

Well, the podcast came about because, I guess in 2019, I was thinking that I listened to a lot of podcasts, a lot of business podcasts. Right. I think there's a lot of good knowledge to be gained. And, you know, I read a lot of contracts. I'm not always reading, like, pleasure. I do some of that. I have a book on my desk, but. Yeah, but so I, you know, I think I heard a video once or another podcast that said, hey, you can start a podcast for 75 bucks. And I'm like, well, don't you need, like, you know, know, like a studio you know, sound manager or whatever. So we bought some. I had partners then we bought some cheap equipment. In those days, if you listen to the early episodes, they don't sound very good. And I started learning about how to do all this editing. And it was all audio at the time.

Yeah.

Right. But it was. It was the. It was the decision to say, all right, what kind of content do I want to produce? Yeah, drive my brand, to drive the firm and things like that. So it's really, you know, I don't anticipate signing any deals with Spotify in the near future. Right. So it's more of content, a content marketing strategy for me. And I. And I enjoy it. People come to me all the time. Should I start a podcast? I was like, well, don't do it because everyone else is doing it. Do it because you have something to share and you like to be on the mic and you like to talk and you like to interview people or however you're going to do it. And, yeah, that's kind of why. Why I started. And it's kind of taken on a life its own. We're still six years in 400 episodes. You've been on the show. Yeah. And the episode's not out yet, I don't think. But. Yeah. And I don't even look. Somebody asked me, like, how do I find guests? I don't know about you, but I get recommended two, three guests a day now.

Yep.

I don't even look for them.

Just natural.

Yeah.

Organic.

Just because once you have enough episodes, the bookers find you and the matching websites find you. So that's been. Yeah. And then I do blogging and stuff as other marketing strategies now that I have somebody doing the editing and things like that. But that's kind of how it came about, to tell people story, you know, to tell stories of success and failure and what they learned and how. You know, because a lot of people come to me who are clients, you know, you'll come to me and say, mitch, it's Phil. Listen, I need help. I got to shut my business down. And I'll be like, phil, didn't you start your business, like, four months ago? Like, what happened? You know, what is your business plan? Say, I don't have a business plan. You know, and. And there's a lot of that missing. And I. That's. That's kind of where the. The whole kind of accidental concept came from. Yeah.

Yeah. Makes complete sense in your book, the 10 Ways to Get Sued by Anyone and Everyone.

Yeah.

Love the title. I think it's awesome. Kept very attention grabbing.

Yeah.

What are, what are like a couple of those.

Yeah. So. And by the way, I give some credit to my co author, Barry Cohen, who he's got like a Ten Ways series. That's where the Ten Ways came from. I like it came up with the title and without him I would never get. I, you know, I can't. It took me three and a half years to write this book, so. And it's, it's a, it's a resource guide more than it's a story. Right. If you've looked at it. So I've interviewed other attorneys that work in other areas and we looked at, you know, what if, you know, your partner's getting divorced and what's that going to do your business? You know, what about risk management? And we talked to some insurance people that know the business. Employment law matters, collection issues, doctor, collections attorney, and, you know, how do you stay ahead of that game? But the main theme in the book is, you know, putting things in writing, you know, making sure that you do business on paper. And it's very applicable when we're talking about home improvement contractors because a lot of the consumer fraud statutes in different states, especially New Jersey, New York, where I practice, require that you do business in writing. And there's statutory requirements that say, hey, you know, you have to. And everybody should check the state in which they're in and see what the laws are. But you know, some of the states require you register, get an home improvement license contractor number with the Division of Consumer affairs or maybe some other government entity. And there's requirements of the law as to often what the contract should say. And they have sample language that you got to include. You got to give them a certain time to review the contract. It's got to say a start date and an end date and the price and everything's changes have to be in writing and so forth. And if you don't follow those rules, in New Jersey, for example, you can be liable for treble damages. So even if you cause damage by accident and they sue you and you don't help them or they're not willing to work with you, you might be paying three times what the damage was, plus their attorney's fees, plus their court costs.

Wow.

And yeah, New York's pretty similar, so. And I'm sure there's a lot of states that are similar to that too. So you need to know your state laws and you know, like real estate and some other businesses, you're required to do business in writing. And you know what, between you and me, like, professionals use contracts, right? So you give them an estimate, you make sure you have a contract, they sign it. You make sure that any changes you make, even if they're, you know, on the job and they're like, hey, you know, can you do this? That you follow it up with an email and say, hey, listen, we talked about this this morning. We're going to do this. This is the additional cost. Please at least respond back. You're confirming that that's right. So you have a, you know, you have a record of what was discussed. Right. And in court that would be admissible. And you'd say, listen, this is our course of doing business. And, you know, they wouldn't sign the amendment the next time I went there, but I have an email that says what we did. So. Yeah, and, and you got to make it a habit. And I know that if you, if you start out doing small contractor work, you know, in home, home improvements, things like that, you're doing a little loosey goosey at the beginning, but you got to build the habit of doing it, writing and all these things, because that's what happens. These projects get out of hand. And I consult with homeowners too, you know, and when I have them doing projects, I say, listen, you got to start a binder, you got to get your contract, let me review it. And every time you do something followed up with an email, print the email out, put it in the book. And when the contractor, who's very busy, right, he's got a lot of jobs going on, he says, honestly, Phil, I don't remember us talking about that, that I was going to run Cat 5 for you because, you know, I had extra in my truck. And you go, well, if you look at the email from May 15, we talked about it, I followed it up, I sent you an email. And, you know, there's not a lot to argue about, so. Because those things, they just get out of control. All kind of he said, she said, and you told me this and then you didn't. So, yeah, that's, that gets to be difficult. So that's, that's the main theme of the book. Like, you know, have a written business plan, have contracts with your customers, because you kind of have to in that. In the home improvement business, if you have a partner, make sure you have agreements with your partners. Don't wait until you're arguing over the trucks and the tools and, you know, pencils and paper. It just gets nuts.

Yeah.

You know, and cost you a lot of money in legal fees.

Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of people usually, so our audience, like 1 to 10 million in revenue. So you see a million dollars, you have some type of a contract, but things change throughout the contract.

Yeah.

Things are said. Technicians are out on the job, and things don't happen. And so to your point, got to try to get it in writing as best you can via email or some type of communication that's documenting.

You know, have your tell your technicians that if, you know, I don't know how automated businesses are these days. I'm the bigger you are, the probably more automated you are. But if you're not working on an iPad or whatever, have the technician send a text back to the office and say, listen, I just talked to the homeowner. This is what we agreed to. Please send them an addendum.

There you go.

Right. And make it a habit to do that. And your guys have to learn the sum of the business responsibilities they have when they're out in the field.

Exactly.

You know, it's not just like, okay, and they go ahead. Because I've had situations with homeowners where the, you know, you know, the guy's on site, not the owner, raised one of the workers, and he says to the guy, you know, listen, I got some extra. It was. This was literally like, I think, Cat 5 or something to do with wiring. Right. They were running stuff up to a third floor or something, and they're like, listen, while I'm pulling all this stuff up, I can pull up some extra, you know, cat five. Don't worry about. It's in the truck. We have it. And then next thing you know, they're getting a bill for it, and they're like, well, I told the guy. I literally told the guy, as long as it's not costing me any money, that's fine.

Wow.

And then you're an art. That's not what he said. I talked to the guy. He didn't say that.

Yep.

Yeah. Things get a little out of control.

Yeah.

And that's already done. Like, the stuff was in the wall already.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah. So now you're arguing about. Yeah, exactly. So.

So as companies are scaling like that 1 to 10 million mark, are there things legally that, okay, you need to get this in place. You need to get this thing. What does that look like? Because your exposure becomes more and your processes change. Like, are there things specifically that you would pinpoint, like, hey, you got to do this?

Yeah, well, there's a couple of things. First, from. Let's move over to the risk side, risk management side, right? You make sure this happens a lot, that you communicate with your insurance company as your volume grows up, grows, and your business grows. So from a liability standpoint and things like that, the insurance companies want to know, are you doing 500,000 or you're not doing 5 million?

Yeah.

And you do 5 million. And they may want to raise your premium. So they don't want to pay on a $2 million claim when you, they thought you were doing $500,000. A business, right? So that's, that's the one thing on that side, on the, on the documenting side, if you don't already have it and you're doing a couple million dollars in sales, you need an operating agreement that talks about what. What are the rules and responsibilities of everybody in the business. I even recommend, if you're the only owner, you still should have an operating agreement, because if you end up in a lawsuit and they're requesting documents and you don't have one, they're going to try and argue that the business is really just you and you should be personally liable. And then in order to have an operating agreement, either you got to commit fraud and make your own agreement, which is probably going to suck anyway, or you go to an attorney. And no attorney's going to want to backdate an agreement. It creates something that didn't exist. So I recommend even to the, you know, to the solo owners that have been operating, get an operating agreement. The second thing is, is that there's something called a buy sell agreement, which is common in the financial planning world when it comes to business planning that addresses, it addresses a number of things, but four major issues, right? And this is more. This is common when you have partners, but we'll talk about if you don't have partners in a minute. So it would address four basic things, right? One is if you want to retire, walk away from. Away from the business. Two is that you're. You're being in, what I call involuntarily terminated. Somebody's trying to sue you, you're getting divorced, and your spouse is trying to take half your business, whatever. Third one would be death, premature death. And the fourth one would be becoming disabled. Especially if you're, you know, out doing jobs and up on roofs and ladders and stuff. So if you, first of all, if you have a partner in the business, right, you want something in writing that says, hey, if you want to walk away, if you're getting sued, if you die, I got to deal with your family. If you become disabled and you can no longer work, what happens with the business? Do I buy you out? Do I continue to pay you? Because you may have to hire somebody to replace that person. Right. And what's the value of the business and how do we keep that up? What's the formula? And because that really avoids a lot of issues, especially with sudden deaths. And then you deal with family, and the family thinks it's worth $10 million, and you're like, no, it's not. It's worth $2 million. You know, whatever.

Yeah.

And you get an argument. So those are buy sell agreements. I have a lot of clients who are solopreneurs. They may have employees, but they're. They're the only owners. And their question is always, okay, well, how do I do that? For me, how do I give my family some peace of mind? So a couple of ways to do that. One is you could do it with a key employee, right? You could say to them, listen, if I die or I can't work anymore, I want to retire. Do you want to take over the business? And you can do some sort of a deal. Maybe you give them some benefit for doing that, like a discount to buy the business. And you promise them, listen, if we sell the company in the future, I'll give you a piece. There's all kinds of ways to do that. Or maybe you funded the agreement with life insurance and you let the company pay for the life insurance. So they're not really paying for it, but it gives your spouse peace of mind on the transition to deal with all this stuff. Or if you don't have that, maybe you have a colleague in the industry. You know, you're both home improvement contractors. You see each other a lot. Sometimes you can't handle the job, you send it to him, or vice versa. You work together. You can do a cross per. A cross agreement where you agree for each other to be the backup program. And we do a lot of that stuff, too. So that's. That's probably as you're growing. I'm not saying that's the thing you do from the get go, but if you're doing a million dollars or more in revenue, 5 million, 10 million in revenue, definitely something that's a little overdue at that point that you should be addressing.

Yeah, I think the buy sell agreement is. That happens so much divorce, yeah, I'm out of here. Death. Those are the big ones. And then, and then it leaves everyone floundering, and it kind of goes back. You got to have it down. On paper, everyone knows what's happening, or.

They'Re all arguing about it. Right. Then you forget it. When the lawyers get involved, they want to make money, and they're, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

Screaming at each other about what it's worth and what it's not worth, and you don't even know. And this guy put so much in, and he don't. Just gets crazy.

Yeah. So. So a lot of people, you know, they get to 4 or 5 million. I've gone through several transactions with our clients as well, but I want to talk a little bit about if someone's considering selling or transferring ownership. What should business owners do way in advance to make sure their company is more valuable? Transferable?

Yeah.

How can they set themselves up to get the most money for it, but then also protect themselves, like, from an asset perspective.

Yeah. So. And this is always the problem with business owners. Right. Sometimes you operate your business really from a cash flow standpoint, a lifestyle standard. Like, it supports your lifestyle, but on paper, it doesn't look too good. So you have to balance what your books look like from a gross rev. From a net revenue standpoint. Because I do a lot of business transaction work. Right.

Okay.

And often I'm coming into a situation where we're going through due diligence. And I'm not a. I'm not an accountant in any stretch of the imagination, but I go through a lot of this stuff with clients where you're looking at a business to buy the business. Let's say we're on the purchaser side. Right. And you have a broker and the owner that's trying to convince you why there's really profit in this business. Because they've always add backs. Right. You know, payments. Right. The whole family and that. That maybe that's true, but it's a hard pill to swallow. Of course, when it. Right. It also becomes a problem for the buyer if he wants to finance this thing, because no lender ever, SBA or otherwise, is gonna go from anything except what's on paper. They're not gonna go with the cash that you're pulling out of the washing machines every, you know, every month or the. The cash that you collect from jobs that you do that you don't report because that. You can't. You can't count that stuff. You know, maybe the guy buying it understands that side of the business and he says, listen, you know, it's a cash business. I don't. You know, it's a good way to manage my Cash, I don't have to. I know I don't pay tax on everything and because, you know, as long as I'm reporting whatever. And that's his choice. But in terms of buying the business on paper, you can't, you know, finance things that don't show up. So. And that does not happen in six months before you sell the business. That's got to be something you've been doing for five to ten years.

That's right.

Tax because of it.

But yeah, but you have clean books and.

Clean books. Right?

Yeah. Then when you go to sell it, you have the. The EBITDA is easy to calculate the profits. They're easy, everyone. It's easy to look at your stuff and make it sense.

Right. So now from the legal side, more. Right. You want to make sure that your, what I call your corporate governance is in line. Right. Big term, applying to large corporations, public companies, whatever. But when you're a small business owner, you want to make sure you do have like an operating agreement or articles of incorporation by bylaws that are up to date, that you've kept minutes and resolutions of changes you've made with the business along the way, that all of your state and in some cases federal filings are up to date and on target, depending on the kind of purchase that's being made. Because they may be buying the assets, they may be buying the stock. It just, it varies. Buy more assets more often than stock. Right. But every state has filing requirements for LLCs and corporations and things like that. Now, we are very fortunate to have an additional filing requirement that the Financial Crimes division now requires that people file a beneficial ownership information report. If people search BO ir, they will find a lot of sites. Make sure you get to the actual government site, not these marketing bullshit sites that are trying to charge you money that's free. There's no filing fee for this, but you're required to do it now within 30 days of setting up the business. And for older businesses, you had all of 2024 and the last two months, diversity months, 2025 to file this thing. It's like $500 a day penalty if you don't do it. So if anybody's out there listening and they haven't filed their ownership information report, they should do it immediately because I don't know what kind of enforcement they're going to do with regard to people who have no idea what these things are. Applies to corporations and llc. It's not partnerships or sole proprietors.

You said corporations and llc. So like an S Corp. S Corp. Llc.

Yeah, llc. You got to file these things. They're just. You basically provide information like copy your driver's license, who you are, some information about the business, and then you're done.

Yeah.

One time filing, unless you move or you change ownership or something. But that's another thing. So if you're buying the business and they've never filed the report, you might be like, you know, and then make sure you do the, you know, filing immediately, but you want an indemnification. If later on, six months from now you're buying the business, it comes back, you get a fine that this guy never filed. Even though you did, he's got to pay it. So. Yeah, so that's, you want to make sure those are all kind of up to date and that, that's some of the due diligence that as a buyer you would do, but some of it you can't correct.

Yeah, you know, makes sense. Of course you can't correct.

Yeah.

All right, so for correcting, there's penalties. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's say someone has one location and they're like, hey, I want to go to a second location.

Yeah.

What are the legal considerations for something like that? Do they need, what, what's the best way to structure one location to two locations? Starting expanding.

Yeah. So let's assume right now it's within this one state. Yeah, it's one state. And keep it easy. I would, I would encourage them to if they could do business at each location in a separate entity.

Okay.

Okay. Now there are entities out there. Delaware is one of them. I think Alaska has this, maybe Oklahoma, there's something called a Delaware series llc. Not Delaware, there's something called the series llc. Delaware in specific. I use it for like real estate owners and stuff. It allows you to set up one master LLC and then have, have little sub series for each business. As long as you keep separate books and records for the business. You don't have to have separate tax ID numbers. So. Right. And, and you don't have to file for each entity that you open. So I have guys that have franchise locations. They're opening a franchise. So we do, you know, restaurant 001, restaurant 02, and the masters called whatever holdings.

Okay.

Yeah. And then they don't have to file every time. So if we sign a new lease, it's not like I got to run to set this thing up. It's already set up. I just have a three page agreement we signed for the, for our internal records.

Okay.

So that's a Good way to do it. If you're already got four or five locations and you don't have this Delaware thing set up and it's too difficult to transfer everything, then, yeah, I would. I would set up separate LLCs for each, you know, location. But you want to make sure that you don't commingle assets. Like you have one LLC paying for other things, because then they can just argue that they're all on the table if there's a lawsuit involved. Yeah, but you want to notify your insurance carrier too, when you're doing that, too. Make sure you're covering the multiple entities and stuff. But that's. That's how I would do that sort of expansion.

Yeah, yeah, it's really hard because, like, one location is their main location and they're going to be taking money and team members, you know, and paying for the second location to get to get up and running. And then how do you blend that?

So some of that may involve discussion with payroll companies.

Exactly.

I will tell you this. If you're offering benefits to your employees, you have to pull them anyway. You can't put you and me in that one LLC is the owners and we get all the benefits and then exclude. They got rid of those rules. They're called Affiliated Service rules and service Group rules that came about years ago and said, you can't do this anymore. You gotta treat everybody the same. So you don't get around that stuff. But yeah, some of it's bookkeeping stuff, some of it's payroll stuff, some of it's accounting. You talk to your accountant. You know, people ask me, should I be a C corp and S Corp? Definitely an accounting question.

Yeah.

An LLC can become a C corp. It doesn't really convert, but you make an S election to be treated like an S corp. You can do that nowadays. And, you know, the states are catching up with that, with those elections as well. So, you know, there's opportunity. Not in a bad way. I mean, now they're asking the question. Never used to ask the question. Yeah, yeah, that used to be IRS thing. So. Yeah, so that's some of this stuff. You know, that's why it comes down to building a good team. You know, I'm the lawyer and I'm part of the team, but you don't call me every month. You may be talking to your CPA and your bookkeeper every month, but, you know, quarterly. You want to definitely talk to your insurance people and, you know, your payroll people and stay on top of that kind of stuff and say, hey, listen, we're looking to buy three locations. What does the payroll look like? If we got people in different LLCs and then they might say not a problem, we can, you know, some of them can handle that.

Right, right.

So you want to figure that stuff out. But yeah, part of that's business management. You just got to do it then me, I don't know, you talk to me once a year. Unless you got problems.

Yeah. So you're, you only work in for people that are located in New York and New Jersey type businesses or can you help anyone?

So I do, I do work with companies outside of New York, New Jersey more as a, as a business advisor.

Okay.

With one exception. I do some of the tax planning. I do. People want to put more money away or whatever. I'll do those federally as long as they have local counsel if it's necessary. So I'm an attorney for a non qualified type of program that people want to put more money away.

Makes sense.

And we have clients in Alabama and South Carolina and Texas and Illinois and California. And as long as they have local council, I'll do the federal stuff. In terms of planning these things, I do all the documentation for these. There's some financial companies that I do work for, their clients they bring in. So. But usually those programs they're looking to put away, you know, $250,000 or more a year collectively doesn't work if you're putting away 10. Just do a 401k. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Okay, that makes sense. Another question I have for growth and scaling challenges that a lot of people face is the employment challenges and how can people protect themselves or structure. Structure like legal protections when you're getting a bunch of people that are coming on board.

Yeah.

Anything. Any thoughts on that or protection or.

We're talking about from an employment law standpoint. Yes, yes. So if you are. First of all, you want to basically start clean, right. With the new employees. So you wouldn't be obligated to hire them. If you're going to hire them, you hire them yourself. But in the purchase agreement, you want to make sure that, you know, that all PTO has been paid, you know, paid time off and any of the requirements under law under the old company are up to date and that there's. And then you have representation from the company and maybe even the employees, depending how big it is, that they're all square and owed and paid, that they don't come back to you and say, hey, they owe me six months of pay. Whatever. That's why Usually an asset purchase is a safer way to go. That's right. Than a stock purchase, a business purchase. Sometimes you can't because, I don't know, maybe the business has contracts that it's too hard to transfer them all over or whatever. But you may be inheriting problems with the past employees, so you want indemnifications and representations from the owners. Things are up to date. So if you do run into, like, Department of Labor issues, you get a Department of labor audit a month after I had somebody had this happen to. I did. It was involved in the transaction, they bought the business for whatever reason, there were contracts or whatever. Two months later, they get an audit based on something happened six, eight months ago. And now they're dealing with the other people, and they didn't have the proper indemnifications. And it was. It was messy. And, you know, a lot of people, like, ran for the hills, so to speak. So.

Yeah. So do people, like, call you up, set up meetings with you and just, like, give you all their problems and you have to try to figure it all out? Or is it hopefully more proactive or how do you. How does it usually engagement look?

Okay, so. So I would say. And that's why I have a monthly retainer program, right? So somebody comes on a monthly retainer, I get to know their business. There you go. So then when they call me, I'm familiar, Phil, with your company, and I know what's going on. So let's assume that's not the case where we just met, you call me because you have some issue, right? So usually that's the hottest call in the fire, right? So we got to deal with that issue. But as I'm going through it, I start discovering the things that are missing, like documentation and filings. And then if you bring me on board, even if it's just per project, not on a monthly retainer, I'm going to want to take a look at your state filings, make sure those are up to date, your. Your agreements, make sure you've done all your kind of resolutions and minutes, and you've kept those in a good, you know, readable form. I might talk to your CPA about what your books look like and things like that, and then we can strategize going forward about what, you know, what makes sense to position you to, like you said, succeed. Transmission the business. You got two kids in the business. How do they take it over? I do that for a lot of families. You know, how do we. How do we make sure the parents still get income and the kids start taking over the business and not keep it in the parents name and, you know, what does that look like? And yeah, so. So it's, it, it does take a while. I mean, it's 15, 20 hours of work, but of course you should have been doing it from the beginning, so.

That's right. I think people probably reach out to you because they have a bunch of problems and then they realize, man, I need to just like work with this guy so that I can call him and he knows my stuff. So it's not just trying to unravel a bunch of things for 20 hours every single time.

Yeah, because that, that's how I started all the estate planning. Right. Because then you talk to the guy, I mean, do an operating agreement, you're talking to the partners, and he go, well, what does your will say happen to you? Like what supersedes this? And they go, we don't have any wills. So then you got to do that part because it's all interrelated. That's one of their biggest assets is the business. That's right. And if you died and you had probate issues and all kinds of stuff, so you gotta kind of figure that part of it out too.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it makes total sense, you know? So, Mitch, thank you so much. You've given like, I love, I love when people come on and they give real examples of real situations, not just fluff things, especially if they've written a book and it's just fluff. So you gave a lot of good stuff, real examples, and I appreciate that. Where should people go to get in contact with you or learn more about you and the business?

Yeah, well, binhackerlaw.com is the website. I also have a personal mitchbinehacker.com where you can find the book. There's some ebooks on there. I got an ebook. If I have parents that panic when their kids go to college and they realize that they can't talk on their behalf because they're 18. Okay. I wrote a book on that, like a survival guide. I think there's a lemon log guide. There's a bunch of stuff in there. Some health, some brochures. And you can also see like, like when, when we get this up, I'll put a link to it and there'll be on that website Also, I'm on LinkedIn and my VA puts us on the show. She edits the podcast, so she puts that stuff on reels. And YouTube, we have a YouTube channel, LinkedIn I guess I'm on Facebook too. I don't look at Facebook too often, but yeah, so probably. And if you want to connect with me, LinkedIn's a good place to do it as well.

Yeah. Awesome. All right, well, it's been great, man. Look forward to continue the conversation and. Yeah, maybe we'll have you on again. It's good combo.

Always available.

All right, thanks, man.

Thanks.