[00:00:00] Juli Baranik: Welcome to the seven figure builder show.

[00:00:01] Juli Baranik: My name is Julie Baranik, founder of seven figure builder, where we help high achieving CEOs connect the dots in their business to scale to seven figures and beyond. And I’m here today with my friend, Maya Weinreb. Hey, Maya. 

[00:00:12] Maya Weinreb: Hi, good to see you.

[00:00:13] Juli Baranik: Good to see you too. I’m thrilled to have you

[00:00:15] Maya Weinreb: on today. Yeah.

[00:00:16] Maya Weinreb: Thank you so much for having me. This is exciting.

[00:00:18] Juli Baranik: Yeah, totally. I know. We’ve been trying to connect for a little bit. So

[00:00:21] Maya Weinreb: I’m thrilled. We were. Yeah.

[00:00:23] Juli Baranik: Yeah. So first and foremost, where in the world are you?

[00:00:27] Maya Weinreb: I am in Florida near Tampa in a, in a little town called Clearwater. That’s my favorite part of Florida.

[00:00:36] Maya Weinreb: I have to say. It’s got a great beach. Oh my God. 

[00:00:39] Juli Baranik: I love that area. Yes. It’s beautiful.

[00:00:41] Maya Weinreb: Yeah, yeah, I moved here in 2020 from LA, I started in LA and then here, and I just like the weather here better, and it’s just kind of chill, it’s got, now that I’m just working all the time, I don’t really need the, the busy LA nightlife, so this works, it’s like nice, chill, I’m just working all the time.

[00:01:01] Juli Baranik: I love it. Yeah, I absolutely love that area. So I’ll have to stop by and visit you sometime. Yes. So for people that haven’t had the pleasure to meet you yet, can you tell us just a little bit about what you do with your business?

[00:01:13] Maya Weinreb: Yeah, I own a bookkeeping firm. We help, business owners, service based industries.

[00:01:21] Maya Weinreb: With full service bookkeeping. So we like to say it’s a boutique bookkeeping firm with concierge level service. I love it. Yeah, there’s a lot of accounting and bookkeeping firms out there that are very, dry and, they only do what they do. And of course we can only Do what we do, but we try to be really full service and willing to, you know, handhold when needed.

[00:01:48] Maya Weinreb: We know that bookkeeping and IRS and taxes is all very confusing and stressful for people. So we just want to be able to be there for them. I think that’s how I’ve built the company is that we’ve done it really on just being service oriented and we’re here to help.

[00:02:03] Juli Baranik: I love that. Bookkeeping tends, at least in my mind, tends to be something people pull in. Part way down their journey, right? Like typically it’s not up front in their business, but where do you find that you help people the most in their journey? Who should be running to you for their help with bookkeeping?

[00:02:20] Maya Weinreb: Yeah, I mean, we help people in A lot of different times I have people who have come to me who are already making 700, 000 revenue and don’t have any bookkeeping and they kind of don’t know if they can afford to hire that new employee or not. And, you know, of course, they have some things going and they have numbers they give their CPA, but they don’t really know what they’re doing.

[00:02:39] Maya Weinreb: And I’ve had some people who are like, listen, I just started my company. I expect to make revenue. I need help getting organized now or, you know, what’s the 1st steps and depending on where they’re at, I will do a consultation. I’ll be like, okay, good. Here’s your homework.

[00:02:54] Maya Weinreb: Here’s the 1st few things to do with the bank accounts. And we also set up entities for people actually was, doing a webinar yesterday with the CEO of corp net. And we use corp net to help set up entities. So we’re doing LLCs and, S corp elections and all that. So we can help people anywhere from the beginning, all the way up to, like, 15 million revenue, depending on their industry type, when you can afford us, but no matter what, we can always help, you know, if you just started your company, and you’ve only made a few thousand dollars, okay.

[00:03:28] Maya Weinreb: It’s probably not the right time to hire a bookkeeping firm, but if you just started your company, you only made a few thousand dollars and you have no idea what you’re supposed to be doing for tracking things for taxes. Book a consultation, you know, you get an hour and I will give you a rundown of exactly like, here’s what you need to know.

[00:03:48] Maya Weinreb: Here’s what you need to do. And then, , if you ever need any help in the future, we can just do another consultation. So we can do anywhere from that. To the bigger companies that we have that are in the 10, 15 million revenue range that we’re doing 25 hours of bookkeeping every week where we’re doing all of the books.

[00:04:07] Maya Weinreb: We’re doing all of the payroll, paying the bills, doing the 1099s, all the reports and sales tax, everything, everything. So we have all different sizes.

[00:04:18] Juli Baranik: And I think that one of the critical things I heard is you need a relationship with a bookkeeper, no matter

[00:04:24] Maya Weinreb: what level you’re at. Yes, exactly. That’s critical.

[00:04:28] Juli Baranik: And I love that, that, you know, even at the beginning, like it’s, you save yourself time, money and energy when you connect with people that that’s their expertise and that’s where they shine. So they can give you the shortcuts. And then. As you’re growing, right? Your, your needs will change and they’ll get more complex.

[00:04:44] Juli Baranik: And that’s where you really need them on a more, consistent basis. It sounds like.

[00:04:48] Maya Weinreb: Exactly, yeah. I just know, even for me, when I started my business, and I already knew bookkeeping, but I didn’t know how to do all, you know, register for payroll in different states and all that, all those letters, like, when you, especially, I have a remote firm, so I have bookkeepers and employees

[00:05:05] Maya Weinreb: all over the U. S. And each state has its own laws and rules, and it gets complicated, and I get all these letters, and it’s like, okay, what do I need to do on this one? And I have a pretty good understanding of all of that, so I can just imagine, and I know because they tell me how business owners who, that’s not their area of expertise, you know, whether they’re a dentist or a marketing professional, like, their area of expertise is not bookkeeping, documents, IRS, payroll.

[00:05:32] Maya Weinreb: So these letters that come in just feel overwhelming and for us, it’s like, okay, yeah, that’s a two hour call with, Washington state and we’ll get that sorted out for you. Yeah,

[00:05:44] Juli Baranik: no, and I, I believe wholeheartedly and surrounding myself with people that are smarter than I am. Compliment my weaknesses and I think that’s really important that then you can focus on your area of expertise and really shine where you need to be in your business, but bring people in that, that’s their area of expertise and they can really help you shine there.

[00:06:03] Maya Weinreb: Exactly. That’s why I hire marketing people. Cause that is not my area of expertise. Someone says, Oh, we need a, a blah, blah, blah on a different format. And I’m like, what now? Or send me your pitch deck. And I’m like, Oh yeah, someone made me one of those ones, you know, that’s not my area.

[00:06:20] Juli Baranik: Yeah, no, it’s the truth.

[00:06:22] Juli Baranik: The absolute truth. So what are some things like when people are at that six, seven figure mark that what are some things they need to keep in mind, or they might not be thinking of that’s critical for the success of their business?

[00:06:32] Maya Weinreb: Yeah, so one of the things is that not all CPAs do tax planning. So even if you have a C P A that you work with, you want to make sure that they do tax planning for you.

[00:06:46] Maya Weinreb: If they say they don’t do it, then find someone who does. If you love your C P A, keep your C P a, but find just a tax planner. , but you have to, and you’re in the six seven figure mark. If you don’t have tax planning, you’re wasting money. You’re throwing money away on taxes.

[00:07:02] Maya Weinreb: There’s a lot of things that a tax planner will tell you to do in order to get organized to not waste money, not spend money you don’t need to spend. But most CPAs, even if they offer that as a service, they’re not going to offer it unless you ask them. I have a CPA who’s great and he’ll tell me, Oh, if you do this, you’ll save money, you know, and we even do tax planning meetings throughout the year, but he’ll just come out and tell me, Oh, you did it like this.

[00:07:29] Maya Weinreb: If you do it like this, you’ll save money. And I’m like, great, but most CPAs don’t do that. And I have the best CPA and he won’t take any more clients. So my clients are like, Well, who’s your CPA? And I’m like, yeah, he’s, uh, he’s, he’s booked. He doesn’t want anymore. I ask him every year and he says, no. So you really have to ask your CPA like, Hey, do you do tax planning?

[00:07:51] Maya Weinreb: Can we do a tax planning meeting? It’s very important. And one of the first things for tax planning that you’re going to want to look at is if you are in the six, seven figure market, if you’re making over 100, 000 in your business, you’re making over 50, 000 profit, you should most likely be electing to be taxed as an S corporation.

[00:08:11] Maya Weinreb: Your CPA may not have told you that. It’s very important because if you’re still, self employed or you’re an LLC, a single member LLC, which is taxed the same as self employed, you are spending too much money on taxes, because You’re paying the self employment taxes. Whereas when you elect to be taxed as an S corporation, you actually don’t have to pay the self employment taxes.

[00:08:38] Maya Weinreb: You have to pay, income tax on all of your profit. And one of the rules is you have to have a payroll. The business owner has to be on salary or on payroll. They have to pay payroll taxes and they have to be compensating themselves a reasonable salary, which could change depending on your state and your industry.

[00:08:57] Maya Weinreb: But once that’s paid, then all the money that you pay yourself as a draw or, an owner’s distribution or shareholder distribution is only tax and income tax. And that’s a big tax loophole that is. Important to be aware of because that is where most business owners will save the most amount of money on taxes.

[00:09:19] Maya Weinreb: It is a pain in the ass. You do have to now set up payroll and payroll taxes. And, there’s certain rules that apply to S corporations. For instance, if you have employees, if you’re paying your own medical expenses out of your company, you’d have to make a policy that all employees get that, you know, Things like that, because now you’re an employee.

[00:09:39] Maya Weinreb: If you have employees, if you don’t have employees, then you just have to be the employee yourself. There’s different things like that, but that’s one of the main things that I would say. A lot of people come to me and they don’t know about, and they say, how come my CPA never told me this? And again, that comes back to you didn’t ask for tax planning.

[00:09:56] Maya Weinreb: And while it would be nice if all the CPAs were very proactive and thought about all that. They’re probably going through a thousand different people’s taxes and they’re just filing, filing, filing. So you have to ask for that. You have to ask how could I save money on taxes? And also you could research, if it’s a really like confusing, stressful area for you, then hire someone, get a bookkeeper, reach out to us.

[00:10:18] Maya Weinreb: But we will always recommend that if I see that in someone’s revenue level that. That they should do that. 

[00:10:25] Juli Baranik: And how do like, consultants and contractors factor into that?

[00:10:27] Maya Weinreb:  Consultants and contractors wouldn’t be employees unless, I mean, you have to look at what the definition of employee is compared to contractors.

[00:10:36] Maya Weinreb: So there’s certain people who maybe should be employees and aren’t. And I would recommend that you make them employees if you’re working for you, 40 hours a week, if you’re directing their schedule, you’re directing their work, and if they’re doing the same thing you’re doing, like, if you’re a marketing company and you hire people to do marketing, they full time for you, they probably should be employees if you are

[00:10:58] Maya Weinreb: a contracting company like let’s say you’re a painting company and you hire a marketing person to come in five hours a week or something, then that would qualify most likely as a contractor. The IRS has, certain rules and definitions as any business owner would need to make sure that you file 1099s on all of those at the end of the year.

[00:11:18] Maya Weinreb: And the best rule of thumb is to collect a W 9 from the contractor. Before you pay them, because sometimes at the end of the year, you might not have correct contact information. They might think you’re paying them under the table. But if you don’t file a 1099 on every contractor that you pay, you could be liable for all of their self employment taxes.

[00:11:43] Maya Weinreb: So you definitely want to make sure you file those 1099s. In order to do that, you have to get them to fill out a W 9, and a W 9 is really simple. It’s literally their name, address, you know, business structure and tax ID. I don’t know if that totally answers your question, but that would be that. And also on that, there’s a lot of people or companies that get hired that business owners don’t consider are contractors, but they are.

[00:12:11] Maya Weinreb: Thank you. You know, if anything that you’re saying is a business expense, that is a service that you purchased, is a contractor. So if you hired a marketing company, it’s a contractor. If you hired a company to wash your windows for your company, for your building, it’s a contractor. So you have to think with any service that you pay for, that’s not an employee.

[00:12:35] Maya Weinreb: Is a contractor and would need a 1099. There are more rules. If they’re a corporation, they don’t need a 1099. If you paid them a credit card, there’s more rules. But in general, you should get a W9 from all of them. So, you know, whether they qualify to receive a 1099 or not, because again, if you don’t do that 1099, you could be liable for the self employment taxes and you don’t want that.

[00:12:56] Juli Baranik: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s the critical part of planning ahead and getting ahead of this rather than having it hit you from behind. But what are, any tax deductions that people don’t normally think about, like section 179 or, you know, things like that, that they could be missing out on.

[00:13:13] Maya Weinreb: Yeah, I mean, it’s so funny because there’s so many, like, tax deductions that are talked about, like, when you get TikTok tax advice, and it often applies, but it doesn’t always apply, so you have to really make sure you get the data from your CPA, because if you come into your CPA and go, I heard that I could so Then, you know, tick tock said, like, it may or may not apply to your tax situation and your CPA is going to have all the information.

[00:13:42] Maya Weinreb: But yeah, I believe you’re talking about the vehicle one, right? Yeah, so if you own a company, and you. I don’t remember the exact weight. I think it’s 6, 000. Yeah.

[00:13:53] Juli Baranik: I asked because I’m sorry, I don’t mean to cut you off. We found that because we were digging in from our personal side. Like, you know, what are we missing out on?

[00:14:02] Juli Baranik: And that was something, but yes, yeah. 6, 000 pound vehicle gross

[00:14:05] Maya Weinreb: weight. Exactly. Then that can be written off or a large portion of it can be written off in that tax year. Those types of things are if you have extra money that you don’t know what to do with and instead of paying it to the IRS, you can, purchase a vehicle.

[00:14:22] Maya Weinreb: Some people are not in that situation and they’re just like, well, I don’t have, you know, you tell them at the end of the year, oh, you owe 100, 000 to the IRS. Like, I don’t have 100, 000. Well, of course you don’t because you probably spent it. So that’s when you do the tax planning. And do the things that will make more of what you’re already spending money on deductible.

[00:14:40] Maya Weinreb: Exactly. So, things, yeah. So, there’s that one, that’s a good one. There’s another one, which I believe it’s called the Augusta Rule, where you can rent out your property to your business for 14 days out of the year to get, , a tax write off or a fair market value. So, there’s that. And that’s something where you’re already paying rent, so you don’t have to go out and purchase anything.

[00:15:01] Maya Weinreb: You do have to have paperwork. So you’d have to, create a rental agreement or, you know, whatever, so that there’s documentation because the IRS, if they ever audit, you is going to want documentation. And speaking of auditing you, there was last year or some months ago, the IRS hired new employees.

[00:15:21] Maya Weinreb: And I’m sure a lot of them are going to be auditors. So things that they’ve probably been lax on could potentially not be lax anymore. So we have to make sure we cross our T’s and dot our I’s at this point on documentation.

[00:15:35] Juli Baranik: A hundred percent. Yeah, no, that’s critical. 

[00:15:37] Maya Weinreb: Yeah. Yeah. There’s that one and then retirement planning, there’s a qualified retirement planning is all tax deductible, lots of different things like that.

[00:15:47] Maya Weinreb: Certain things not tax deductible for your business, but. The interest is, and it’s like sort of a way you can save your money on retirement planning is also getting a life insurance policy. Again, it’s not tax deductible for your business, your, life insurance policy, but you can use that for saving money and, retirement planning and all that.

[00:16:10] Maya Weinreb: I unfortunately don’t know all of what is. , the tax, what’s pre tax, post tax, but there’s all of it, your CPA, all of your retirement planning, most of it is tax deductible and helpful, for your taxes. So I would go look into that. I don’t do, investment things. So I stay away from that.

[00:16:28] Maya Weinreb: I’m not licensed, but I know that you should do retirement planning and I’m working on mine. And then deductions that people miss, the main places that people miss deductions is in not having bookkeeping when your books are messy and you are paying for things out of a personal account and sometimes out of a business account or you don’t have a business account and you’re mixing it.

[00:16:48] Maya Weinreb: You’re going to be missing deductions and you’re going to end up paying more for the IRS because anything that’s a regular and ordinary business expense should be paid out of your business account and then you can track it as a business deduction. If you’re traveling for business purposes, not if you’re going to Disneyland and you’re also going to talk about business, but if you’re going to a business conference, if you’re going for an educational trip, if you’re going to meet a client.

[00:17:12] Maya Weinreb: Or, even, a networking meeting, any of those, all of those travel expenses are tax deductible. Your office, your home office expense, if you work from your own apartment or your own house, the square footage. That, is dedicated to work would be tax deductible. So that would include that square footage percentage of the mortgage or rent, security, utilities, maintenance, all of that would have a home office.

[00:17:40] Maya Weinreb: deductions. So those are things people miss. It’s funny. There’s some things people kind of take deductions on that I kind of go, uh, okay. And then some things that people miss, like some people, every time they go out to eat, they say it’s a business meal because they talk about their business.

[00:17:56] Maya Weinreb: And I mean, I understand, but I think that the IRS would not agree with you because you have to eat anyways. Right. A lot of influencers and actors will say that all of their clothes are deductions and the IRS would not agree with you because you have to wear clothes anyways. And even though you bought that dress for a red carpet event or for something, if you can also wear it to anything else.

[00:18:24] Maya Weinreb: It’s not a business deduction. So, you know, there’s things like that. You have to look at each thing and be like, what was the purpose of this? Was it, was its original purpose business? And am I going to use it only for business? Like, the same way that the office space has to be a dedicated space for your office, it wouldn’t really work if you just used your living room, you know?

[00:18:46] Maya Weinreb: Because you also sit there and watch Netflix. Of course. Yeah. So things like that. Awesome.

[00:18:54] Juli Baranik: And as we’re working with a bookkeeper, what does that look like as far as those check ins, just to make the business owners, you know, life working smarter, not harder.

[00:19:03] Maya Weinreb: Yes. I’m all about working smarter, not harder and keeping it simple.

[00:19:08] Maya Weinreb: Yes. Yeah. I love that. I, cause I agree, you know, as a business owner, you started your business because you wanted to do XYZ. You wanted to do marketing. You wanted to be a dentist. You wanted to be an actor. An influence or whatever you wanted to do and then all of a sudden now you’re also the bookkeeper And now you’re also the this also the that and those are not all tasks that you you know Signed up for and they’re going to take you a long time.

[00:19:32] Maya Weinreb: They’re going to be stressful. So it’s In the spirit of work, smarter, not harder, higher professionals have people around you that are smarter than you on those things. It’s why you hire a lawyer. It’s why you hire a CPA. You don’t know all of that. those people spent years and years studying it.

[00:19:49] Maya Weinreb: For us, what we do is, depending on the frequency, some people we do weekly bookkeeping for, some people we do monthly, and some quarterly. So depending on the frequency is when you would expect to hear from us, a lot of clients, we just do monthly bookkeeping. We send them their books.

[00:20:07] Maya Weinreb: We will send a P& L and a balance sheet and any other reports that, they’ve asked for. We send it once a month. We’ll send a preliminary one with questions. We have an app that we use, which is amazing. It’s called UnCAT, which stands for Uncategorized. And they have the app has like pictures of cats all over it.

[00:20:25] Maya Weinreb: It’s super cute. So we use the app. If there’s any transactions that we don’t know what they are, we’re going to send you a link to that. Plus, your report. So we’ll say here’s your preliminary. Here’s questions we have. You can just go in the app. It’s got a little magic code. You just type in the answers.

[00:20:40] Maya Weinreb: Then we update it and send you final reports. So then you know that we’re working on it every month. If you need your PNL, it’s right there. I hate when I hear clients say, I asked my bookkeeper for a P& L and it took them three months to get it to me. Because to me, that means your bookkeeper wasn’t working on it every month, that they had to now fit in catching it up.

[00:21:00] Maya Weinreb: And I just hate that because as much as I’m a people person, I’m very organized and, I have lists and I’m a perfectionist and things need to be a certain way. So every client’s books get done every month that’s signed up for monthly, right? If they signed up for quarterly, then they get quarterly plus.

[00:21:16] Maya Weinreb: , any payroll stuff, so any payroll notices you get registrations when you hire someone, all you have to do is tell us, hey, I hired someone new. And give us the email address and we’ll send them the documents for them to fill out and on board them for you as far as the payroll side and we send out the 1099 for you.

[00:21:36] Maya Weinreb: , we’re going to ask, do you want us to collect W9s or are you collecting them? So we’re like pretty full service, depending on, you know, what your budget is, what we can do.

[00:21:47] Juli Baranik: I love it. That’s awesome. Yeah. It’s so easy to get bogged down in those details and get overwhelmed. Cause like you said, you don’t have to do everything.

[00:21:56] Juli Baranik: You don’t have to know everything, like focus on, your zone of genius, but how would you encourage business owners to have fun in their business again? Like it’s so easy for us to get burned out. What have you found?

[00:22:08] Maya Weinreb: Yeah. Wow. That is such a good question. No one’s asked me that. How do you encourage business owners to have a crazy thought?

[00:22:17] Maya Weinreb: I guess for me, as a business owner myself, I would say what’s fun for me is. When I make goals, I’m like, you know, I set goals and then I work towards achieving them. And it’s funny because it’s not the actual achieving of them because whenever I actually achieve a goal, now I’ve like won and I’m bored again.

[00:22:42] Maya Weinreb: So I have to make new goals, bigger goals before I hit my goals. So I’m always making, seriously, I’ve gone into this, like when I started my business, I went into entrepreneur depression because, and I’ve heard of a lot of people go through it. Cause I like made a big revenue month and then I was like, now what, and I didn’t want to get out of bed for a few months.

[00:23:03] Maya Weinreb: And I was telling my friends, I think I’m depressed. And they were like, what are you talking about? Like, cause I’m always laughing and stuff. And I was like, yeah. They’re like, no depression is like when you don’t want to get out of bed and you don’t want to do anything. And I’m like, yeah, yeah.

[00:23:16] Maya Weinreb: And I had to really get inspired again, but as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, there’s not really anyone else that can inspire you except yourself. So you have to really take that, , you have to get rid of the self doubt and the, voices telling you, you can’t do it or whatever, and just make new goals and start working towards them.

[00:23:38] Maya Weinreb: And that’s what’s fun for me. It’s like in achieving those goals and all of the different things that you have to do in order to achieve them. There was recently in my company, we have a slack channel and some of my employees were like, started complaining about clients.

[00:23:54] Maya Weinreb: And I was like, no, that is not the culture that we want to have. And I was like, it’s probably my fault because I probably was like, Oh, that client’s annoying or something. Right. And I was like, so as the leader of this, girl power group, because they’re all women, I have to change the culture. And so I said, guys, I’m sorry if I have made you think that it’s okay, but all our clients are amazing people and I know that because when they’re not, I fire them. If they’re giving my bookkeepers too hard of a time or whatever, I get really mama bear and I’m like, no, the bookkeeper is more important. Thank you.

[00:24:29] Maya Weinreb: You know, my team is more important to me. I only want nice clients and so all of them are So if the client is, sending an email or they’re upset I know it’s just because they’re confused finances is confusing why it took us three hours with Tennessee On the phone is confusing to them.

[00:24:48] Maya Weinreb: They haven’t done it themselves. We’re the experts, so we just have to be willing to meet with them and explain it to them and be able to look at it from their point of view. And so even that, while it’s not like a fun conversation, and it’s not an easy thing. sometimes having the hard conversations gets you closer towards achieving your goals.

[00:25:12] Maya Weinreb: My mission statement for my company is complete and perfect financial records for the business owner’s peace of mind. So one of my goals is for all of my clients to have peace of mind. So if I’m having clients that are like, I don’t understand this. And you know, why is this, this, that means they’re not having peace of mind.

[00:25:31] Maya Weinreb: So how can I help, my employees help my clients achieve peace of mind. So obviously that’s like a never ending goal. And I can’t make a bigger goal than that one. But as far as like, but other goals, like revenue targets, you know, sales targets. Completion targets on tasks, open tickets, I have KPIs on everything and I work on, achieving the next goal, the next goal, and that’s what makes me happy.

[00:25:56] Maya Weinreb: And that’s what makes it fun for me. So if, I don’t know if everybody’s like me, but I would say that creating those goals, working towards them and then never, never settling on like sitting on your laurels when you achieve it, because I don’t know about. Everyone else, but I get bored and I have to make a new goal in order to keep it fun and entertaining.

[00:26:20] Maya Weinreb: And people ask me what I do for fun and I’m like, what do you mean? I build a business. It’s so much fun. Like I built an empire.

[00:26:26] Maya Weinreb: What else could be more fun? I have another business. I started, I’m doing podcasts. I’m doing networking events. Like this is fun. This is the funnest. This is the best time I’ve ever had in my life.

[00:26:39] Maya Weinreb: And I know entrepreneurs understand, but there’s also some of the lowest lows, you know, like you get a client really upset or , couldn’t achieve something that you wanted to do and you failed at it and you have to like, be able to build yourself up. So I also do like, motivational stuff, like.

[00:26:56] Maya Weinreb: I listen to a lot of Grant Cardone 10x. I don’t know. Have you heard of him? Yeah. So he likes, I have a 10x button on my desk when he was selling those, like gimmicks. And I love it because every once in a while I just hit it and I start laughing because he’s like, you know how he talks. He’s like, come on, get going.

[00:27:14] Maya Weinreb: Don’t sit like that. Okay. That’s awesome. Some people hate him and, you know, I think he’s too aggressive and I get that too. But I’m Israeli. I was born in Israel. So I feel like it like kind of has a similar energy, even though I’m a little, nicer in my, you know, energy, but yeah, that was a very good question.

[00:27:34] Maya Weinreb: I’ve never had anyone asked me that before. Thank you.

[00:27:37] Juli Baranik: I have a couple more of those. Yeah. I love it that your results. oriented, service driven, like satisfaction of your clients. And that’s what’s made you incredibly successful, right?

[00:27:48] Maya Weinreb:  And yeah, that’s what I strive for. I mean, I don’t know if I, you know, incredibly successful as the people making, you know, millions, and I’m not there yet, but I’m working on it.

[00:28:01] Juli Baranik: Right. So that point, you’ve accomplished a ton in your business. You have extremely satisfied clients, but what do you see as success? How do you define that? What does that look like for you?

[00:28:10] Maya Weinreb:  Yeah. So, I mean, that’s also a really good question because I think that’s a personal thing that’s different for everyone.

[00:28:18] Maya Weinreb: I don’t have kids and so I pour pretty much, I have a dog and he’s super cute. You know, but he doesn’t take that. I mean, I take him on walks and stuff and we cuddle, but he doesn’t take that much work. There’s a lot of, especially in my industry, there’s a lot of moms. And I think, how they define success is going to be different than how I define success.

[00:28:39] Maya Weinreb: For them, like when they have work life balance, when their family has everything they need, and they have the time to spend with their family and they’re not working all the time. And I think that’s beautiful. But for me that’s not it because I don’t have other things that I want to spend my time on.

[00:28:55] Maya Weinreb: For me, success is, I think, always around the corner. Like, yes, I have achieved success, but I don’t ever want to, stop. I don’t ever want to feel like, okay, I’ve achieved it because I want to always compare myself against myself and do better than I was doing before. But there’s certain things , like maybe when I can justify buying that Chanel purse that I want and not feel like I should be investing that into my business, but again, like I could buy the Chanel purse.

[00:29:31] Maya Weinreb: But I’d rather buy a first class ticket to somewhere I want to go. So, it’s like when buying a Chanel purse is the same as, you know, buying a Target purse. Because… It’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t have to think about it. I know that I have enough money that I’m investing into my business. You know, that’s like one level of success, but then that can’t be the only level of success because someday I’ll achieve that or someone will buy me one and I’ll be like, Oh, well now, now what?

[00:30:03] Maya Weinreb: So that’s why I feel like success, how I define it is like always that next goal, Maybe the next goal is the 10 million revenue. Maybe it’s a 10 million net worth, you know, whatever it is. It’s like, always have the next goal and obviously you have to have gratitude like it’s not that I’m like whatever.

[00:30:23] Maya Weinreb: I’m not successful Like I’m successful. I worked hard to get here. My team is amazing. Every single one of them is amazing I think them I try to remember to tell them as much as I possibly can that they’re rock stars My clients are amazing that you know, they’re loyal. They’re there.

[00:30:40] Maya Weinreb: They pay me money, and everybody that’s ever helped me Even just recently, I walked into a room and I was, waiting for something, he was at a doctor’s office and there was a guy there who owned like a, I don’t know, a billions dollar company, public company. And he was just sitting there and I was like, oh my gosh, can I pick your brain?

[00:31:01] Maya Weinreb: And he was like, absolutely. And he gave me a reading list of books I should read. He gave me his email address and was like, if you ever have any questions, send me an email, like once a month, you can send me an email that’s willing to mentor me. And that is like, how can I not have gratitude? And, I feel blessed to be able to have networks like that of people where, for instance, where I know, like, I want to buy more bookkeeping firms, to put, into my company, and I couldn’t buy one by myself, but I know that in my network, I have 5 or 10 people who, if I said, hey, there’s this bookkeeping firm.

[00:31:43] Maya Weinreb: I vetted it. It’s a really good deal, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just need an investor. I would get one because that’s my network. And I love that. And I feel like having that amazing network is also a sign of success. Like, you know, you have to be in the room. You can’t be the most successful person in the room or else you have to get into a different room.

[00:32:03] Maya Weinreb: So I’ve got some friends and clients and people in my network that are way more successful than me. But in certain areas, and everybody has things, right? Maybe they’re unhappy in their marriage or, they have held things or whatever. You never really know everything. So how people define success is very, very personal.

[00:32:24] Maya Weinreb: But for me, I think it goes along with what I’ve been saying, always like achieving that next thing. Because if I stagnate, I feel like then I’m not successful, even though I’ve achieved success. And then hopefully have it like moved backwards into less success. I can’t be stagnant. I have to always be moving forward.

[00:32:43] Maya Weinreb: Next, next, next.

[00:32:44] Juli Baranik: Yeah. No. And I think it comes down to personal and professional growth. Like when you, and I’m very similar where I’m a lifetime learner. I’m always, always learning things. And when you are constantly comparing yourself to yourself. Nobody can push you more than that and that’s how you blow away your competition and that’s a non issue.

[00:33:02] Juli Baranik: So I love that. That’s how I function too.

[00:33:04] Maya Weinreb:  I can see, over 150 different companies books. I know what their revenues are. I know what they’re doing and it’s really easy for me to go, wow, they’re already making 10 million. They just started their company two years ago. I’ve been doing this for five years and I’m only making, you know, and.

[00:33:23] Maya Weinreb: I try really hard not to do that because maybe it’s their fifth company and their experience and their network, you know, where this was the first company I started and I started as a bookkeeper, deciding to have my own clients, not knowing anything about business other than the bookkeeping side of it.

[00:33:39] Maya Weinreb: So, just, , compare yourself to yourself. And it’s like, when people tell me, oh, don’t you want to have more time so you can have time off? I’m like, no. More time so I can do more things. So I can start another company so I can figure out a new, strategic plan so I can travel around the country and do networking meetings because I want to have more success, but that’s what’s fun for me.

[00:34:04] Maya Weinreb: Other people want to have more time so they can spend more time with their family so they can, chill more at the beach. I love going to the beach. I just went to Cancun for my birthday for a whole three day weekend and I was rejuvenated and refreshed and I was excited to be back at work.

[00:34:20] Maya Weinreb: That’s awesome.

[00:34:21] Juli Baranik: So you’ve got amazing things going on in your business, but what can people expect from you next?

[00:34:27] Maya Weinreb: I think I’m going to stay in, , my lane, as far as in the finance and bookkeeping. Industry and I want to make a bookkeeping class for business owners. So I have that on the horizon.

[00:34:39] Maya Weinreb: It’s there’s a lot of bookkeeping schools and classes for bookkeepers but I feel like business owners need a different level of like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah I don’t need to know all this like what do I need to know to you know, move forward? They don’t need to be experts. So when they’re not ready yet to hire a bookkeeper or even if You know, they’re a bigger company and they have in house bookkeepers, but those bookkeepers need help and they don’t need to know how to do bookkeeping for every scenario.

[00:35:06] Maya Weinreb: They just need to know how to do that. So that’s kind of the next thing I want to do. I also have. Some partnerships I’m looking at for specific industries, but keeping for those industries, because we specialize in service based industries. I didn’t really niche all the marketing.

[00:35:25] Maya Weinreb: You are like, you should niche. And I’m like, I mitched in service based industries. I have some partnerships I’m doing with that. And then just. I have, a webinar podcast that I have been kind of slacking on that I’m trying to get back going and a lot of networking. So I guess people should just expect to see a lot more of me, like my face planted everywhere.

[00:35:47] Maya Weinreb: Um, that’s kind of my plan, and just really building my business. And in the spirit of how can we help, whenever I’ve gotten into situations where I feel like, why is sales so hard this week? I realize I have my focus on the wrong thing. The focus isn’t on, or shouldn’t be on, I need money or I need sales because I need my numbers, but I need to help people.

[00:36:10] Maya Weinreb: This is such an area that people need help and they want help. So how can I help more people? And whenever the focus shifts to that, that’s when I get more sales and that’s when my company grows. People should expect to see me helping more people because I want to help as many people as I can.

[00:36:27] Maya Weinreb: I love helping business owners. It’s a personal purpose of mine to help business owners succeed. I think it helps everyone. Um, when you’ve got, you know, successful business owners, it’s good for the economy, it’s good for the world, it’s good for their families, it’s good for their communities. So, I think that would be the best answer.

[00:36:45] Maya Weinreb: People should expect to see me helping more and more people. I love

[00:36:49] Juli Baranik: it. I love it. Love it. So if you had the attention of the whole world for five minutes, what would you tell them?

[00:36:54] Maya Weinreb: Oh my gosh, that’s, you’re asking me hard questions, man. You should have sent me a prompt sheet for this. If I had the attention of the whole world for five minutes. Gosh, I think, I don’t think I would even talk about bookkeeping. I think I would just probably do some kind of an inspirational like, because I think. Not, I mean, bookkeeping is super important, but it’s such a small part of life and happiness. It’s a big part of business, but I think I would talk about, do big dream, big.

[00:37:27] Maya Weinreb: Achieve your goals, make goals. Some people don’t even, write down their goals or don’t have goals. I talk to people cause I’m like dating too. And I’m like, Oh, what do you do? Like, Oh, I work, you know, at a grocery store. Well, cool. What are your goals? And they’re like, Oh, no one’s asked me that before.

[00:37:43] Maya Weinreb: Like, oh, well, is that a thing to have? Yeah. Like, is that what you want to do? Do you want to work at a grocery store? Like, do you want to be the manager at the grocery store? Is that like your life goals? And I’m like, oh, like I have to think about it. So I think it’s just so important to have goals. When I was a teenager, I thought that I had to find a purpose and I thought that I would have a divine sign of what my purpose was in life because I was very much like floating around like a leaf in the wind.

[00:38:15] Maya Weinreb: And then I finally realized that it’s not that way. I mean, maybe for some people, I definitely have friends, you know, they’re actors or they’re, doctors. And they’re like, yeah, I just knew from a young age that that’s what I want to do. And I’m like, that’s incredible. And I’m so happy for you. But for a lot of people, it’s not that way.

[00:38:32] Maya Weinreb: And you can’t just look for a purpose. You have to go make yourself a purpose. So you have to go get goals. Like go through, what do I want to achieve in my life? Or, you know, find things that you like, find things that you’re passionate about. People ask me. If I’m passionate about bookkeeping and I don’t think I’m passionate about bookkeeping, but I’m passionate about helping people and I’m passionate about being an entrepreneur and I found a vehicle that would help me achieve that.

[00:39:00] Maya Weinreb: And so that’s sometimes how you have to look at like maybe you’re not passionate about. I don’t know being a grocery store clerk and that is understandable, but maybe you are and maybe you’re passionate about helping people. Maybe you’re passionate about health and you want people to get the right products, you know, so like find the things that you are passionate about and then get.

[00:39:21] Maya Weinreb: The correct vehicle that helps you achieve those goals at one point. I said, okay, well, I want to help people. I want to be an accountant. I’m going to go to school. So I was working full time and I started going to school for accounting and I realized. I didn’t have any time to help people because I was working full time and then I was in school full time and I wasn’t in school, I was doing homework and I was like, okay, well, that plan does not achieve.

[00:39:47] Maya Weinreb: It’s going to take me 8 to 9 years on a part time basis to get this. And that does not achieve my goals anytime soon. I can’t work on what I want to do now. So I said, F it. I’m going to hire accountants. And so that’s what I do now. And I’m, you know, I’m happy. I made that decision. I don’t have a degree and I’m okay with that because I love what I’m doing.

[00:40:09] Maya Weinreb: I’m helping a lot of people. I think if I had everybody’s attention for 5 minutes, that’s what I would harp on. I would just be like, what? Find something like what makes you happy and then how can you achieve that? And obviously it’s not that every single thing that I do in my business makes me happy.

[00:40:25] Maya Weinreb: There’s hard conversations, there’s bad days, but I love being able to help people. And I love the journey.

[00:40:34] Juli Baranik: I love that. No, I couldn’t agree more. So how can listeners support you in your work? Where can they find you online?

[00:40:41] Maya Weinreb: Yeah, they can go to my website, SolvencyNow. com. Um, if they need any help, they can send me an email at Maya, M A Y A, at SolvencyNow.

[00:40:51] Maya Weinreb: com. We also have a Facebook page, SolvencyNow Bookkeeping, an Instagram page, SolvencyNow Bookkeeping. Um, LinkedIn, SolvencyNow Bookkeeping. Also, I’m, I have public profiles personally under all of those. You know, it’s good. Look at all of the, the funny things that I post, um, as a lot of them are about bookkeeping and we actually started a tick tock page, but it’s kind of on pause because I need to make it better.

[00:41:20] Maya Weinreb: I need a better marketing editor person, social media person, but we even have a tick tock page. Um, which is again, Solvency Now Bookkeeping, and you can message me on any of the social medias too, and I’ll get the message, or my team will get the message, um, an email, and you can, we have contact us boxes on our website, you could probably send a smoke signal, and say, Maya, help, and yeah, I’ll be there, exactly, so, but SolvencyNow.com,

[00:41:48] Maya Weinreb: is our website, and it’s a cool website, it’s SolvencyNow. com. We just got it made the new website a few months ago. So it’s all purdy and modern looking, and it’s got most of my team’s pictures on it. , and pretty much any business owner. I can help them if I can’t help them directly.

[00:42:06] Maya Weinreb: I could refer them to someone. And if they’re just starting out, I can do a consultation and help them figure out the next few steps. If they have been doing this for a while, and they are trying to do it on their own, I can help them. If they’ve been doing it for a while, and their bookkeeper never sends them reports, or they can’t get a hold of them, I can help them.

[00:42:26] Maya Weinreb: So I’m here to help.

[00:42:27] Juli Baranik:  I love it. And we’ll have all the links below for people to come check out your website and come see all the amazing stuff you’re doing and get your help with their

[00:42:34] Maya Weinreb: business. Thank you, Maya, for being on today. Yeah. Thank you so much for listening to me. You got me all inspired. I’m like, Oh, I can read my, I’m going to go on a stage and go do an inspirational talk now.

[00:42:49] Maya Weinreb: Awesome.

[00:42:49] Juli Baranik: Awesome. I love it. If you found it inspiring, please do share it. That’s how people find us and you can find me at sevenfigurebuilder. com and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.