Top Tips from Matthew Fornaro
1. Importance of Written Business Plan:
“First, businesses don’t have, like, a written business plan, which is a necessity. I mean, you have to have a written business plan because it tells you what your goals are, what you’re trying to accomplish, who you’re trying to interact with, what your market is, what your budget, you know, it’s got. It literally has everything in there. It’s a roadmap on how you’re going to hopefully run your business.”
2. Review Contracts Regularly:
“You should review them on a regular basis. You know, I mean, you don’t have to have the contract sitting out there, looking at it every day, but, you know, quarterly, semi-annually, annually, at least on a regular basis to make sure that it still complies with what you want, because you always have the ability to renegotiate the contract and enter it into an amended contract.”
3. Understand Your Legal Documents:
“Make sure you comply with them regularly, like if you’re supposed to, you know, no matter how small your company is, if you’re supposed to have an annual meeting, make sure you have an annual meeting. Or if you’re going to have a shareholder meeting, if they have a shareholder just, you know, just the most basic compliance stuff is one of the things you have to always follow up on that a lot of people don’t do.”
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, work, contract, clients, documents, terms, people, lease, attorney, accountant, plan, landlord, beginning, focus, debra, run, businesses, family, week, corporation
Matthew Fornaro 00:00
You should always have a written contract in place, because you want documents that explain what your relationship is with your customer or your vendor or your landlord or whatever. There’s a big difference working for the big company versus working for yourself, where you’re not going to get paid. So obviously that whole mindset. It’s something that you have to put in place and get over very quickly.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:32
Good morning and welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry Taylor, and I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs lead their ideal lives.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:49
I am a certified EOS implementer, an FBA accredited family business advisor and a business owner myself with several business interests, I tend to work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help them create a better business they can actually get what they want out of their business and their life on the show, I invite guests who can share their experiences in terms of running a business, but also specialists who can stretch specialist expertise and knowledge that will really help you with growing your business. Today’s guest has spent 21 years as an attorney or lawyer. He has shared with me that he loves Lifetime movies, which is a channel in the US, which most of you all know, is an all around corny kind of Roman, manned mystery, murder type movies.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:29
He is related to the US president, Andrew Jackson, who is featured on the US $20 bill. But a controversy going on with that at the moment, with all the whitewashing going on. And he also attends at least 10 concerts a year, saying that he loves, particularly 90s alternative music. So today, my guest is gonna us the things you need to think about in terms of legal for your business, not only when you start out, but also as your business grows, my guest today is Matthew fornaro, and he is the owner of Fornaro Legal, Matthew, welcome to the show. Lovely to have you here.
Matthew Fornaro 02:11
Thank you, Debra, Thank you for having me.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:14
Absolute pleasure. So I always ask my guests when they come on to give us a little bit of history about their life to date. Now we’ve had a bit of a bit of a chat before we came on board. So I know that you’re 46 years old. I know you’ve been an attorney for 21 years, and you’ve got a great family, but just tell us a little about you know, why did you how did you get to where you are?
Matthew Fornaro 02:31
Now, sure, so growing up here in the States, I used to watch, you know, the People’s Court and other great American television like that. I always knew I wanted to be an attorney, so I went to college and went to law school.
Matthew Fornaro 02:49
I got out, and I kind of worked my way through two pretty large law firms and represented like big companies and corporations and banks and insurance companies and stuff like that. And I had the opportunity to work at even bigger law firm, or I could go out and do my own thing. So I decided I wanted to go out on my own for my own business, in my own law firm, and focus on serving small and medium sized businesses, because I felt that it was a underserved area, particularly where I am in South Florida. And also growing up, my dad had a small business, and I saw the kind of things that he went through, and I thought that his like his area, was underrepresented for professional representation, whether it’s from an attorney, accountant, banker, whatever.
Matthew Fornaro 03:38
So I decided that would be my focus. I did about nine years ago, and now I’m talking to you excellent. And so you were brought up in a family business of sorts. Then were you?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 03:48
So your dad had his own business. Did you get involved in that business at all?
Matthew Fornaro 03:55
Yeah, I used to help him out when I was, when I was, as you would say, a lad, you know, I used to help him do things as a medical supply business. I used to help him do, like, inventory and other non-cool stuff like that. And then, you know, I did that from he started, and I started, I was doing that, like in high school and college and law school. I would help him during the summers, when I be home. So yeah, I helped out. I didn’t do anything really cool, but that’s what I did.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:27
Fantastic. I still think it helps you to expose you, though, to some of the business principles, right? Because I think what happens a lot of business owners is they’ve worked in corporate, they go out on their own, and they might be very, very good at their technical expertise for your in your case, obviously, an attorney, but they don’t know how to run a business, and there’s a lot involved in actually running a business, right?
Matthew Fornaro 04:45
Yes, that’s one of the main things that was a problem when I left big law was that I knew law stuff fine, like I knew how to, you know, compliance and regulatory stuff and how.
Matthew Fornaro 05:00
Respond to lawsuits, all stuff like that, but I didn’t know how to, particularly from the small and medium size, how to run a business, and that’s something that I had to educate myself on over the last nine years, which I’ve done by attending a few different programs that we have available to us here in Florida, in addition to, you know, actually like finding out and learning more about like clients and their businesses and their business practices, so I’m better able to help them, not just from an attorney standpoint, but from, like, a business counselor standpoint.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 05:34
Okay, and so interested to hear a little bit more about that. What sort of things do you get taught? Because I think this is, I’ve seen this happen a lot, right, where you’ve got attorneys or accountants or any kind of profession where, especially in the services profession, where you go through all your training, you become an expert in whatever it is that you do, but they don’t teach you the basics. Do they in terms of what is required to run a business, or what is required to manage your team, or what is required to how you should actually make sure your business is being successful. So what are the things that you picked up for your own business by doing some additional study, if you like.
Matthew Fornaro 06:09
Sure so I had when I left my big law firm, I literally had no formal business training or education whatsoever. I never took business in college or law school or even high school for that matter. So trying to get in, I mean, I understand from watching my dad, what he did and whatever, but that only goes so far. So some of the things I had to do was there’s a lot of programs that we have that I got affiliated with, and I’m actually now an instructor for in addition to a graduate of that focus solely on helping small businesses, like the small business entrepreneur, be successful, and I got involved in like two of those programs.
One is the Kauffman Foundation, and the other one is the Jim Moran Institute, which is affiliated with water State University. So both of those are two programs that help average people, or whatever that want to start businesses or get into business or make their business better, that actually teach them about the mechanics and all the things that go into actually running a business, from the ground up, from everything from having a written business plan to what business organization that you decide to form, how you do taxes, payroll, all that thing, all that stuff, where you decide if you want to run a space, how to deal with commercial leasing and all things like that.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 07:34
Yes, those things we don’t really think about is, and often what I find is, you know, the business that I work with are generally more established, but they all started somewhere, and when they start, you know, it’s usually just yourself, then you bring on board somebody to help you, and it may be a friend or a family member, or sometimes just anybody who’s available can actually help you out in the beginning, and then it grows organically, and then suddenly you realize you’re missing some of the absolute fundamentals, including things like, one of the things I kind of often see Is that, including things like having good shareholder agreements, understanding the Constitution for the directorships, even with family businesses making sure that they’ve actually put provisions in for how the family works together, and what that looks like as the families kind of go through the different generations. What’s the biggest kind of mistakes that you see people making or things they perhaps haven’t thought of as they start to grow their business.
Matthew Fornaro 08:23
Sure, you kind of just pointed out one of the main issues is that, first, businesses don’t have, like, a written business plan, which is a necessity. I mean, you have to have a written business plan because it tells you what your goals are, what you’re trying to accomplish, who you’re trying to interact with, what your market is, what your budget, you know, it’s got. It literally has everything in there. It’s a roadmap on how you’re going to hopefully run your business. A lot of businesses don’t do that, and that’s a major problem, because then you kind of just float by trying to get from day to day, week to week, without having, like, an overall strategy or goal.
The other thing is, like you just pointed out, is that regardless of where you are in the world, a lot of people don’t have the initial startup documents or the governing documents that are required for their business, like versus here in Florida, where I am in the States, you know you can Go online onto our state’s Secretary of State website and form a business within 10 minutes online, and all she could do is pay $75 and that’s it.
Matthew Fornaro 09:31
You have a real business, but you didn’t do any of the due diligence that goes with it. You didn’t do you know, the corporate bylaws, if it’s a corporation, or the operating agreement, if it’s an LLC, you literally just did the bare minimum. So a lot of people just do the bare minimum and think that that’s fine, the suffice. And then they go down the road, and maybe they’re successful, maybe they’re unsuccessful, maybe something happens, or they have to do something, and then they find out that they don’t have those governing documents that.
Matthew Fornaro 10:00
Tell them what to do and how to do things, and then they run into trouble. So that’s probably the main thing, is that businesses are missing those documents. And that’s something that I’ve seen that’s not just statewide, not just the United States. Issue that’s a like worldwide issue is that people don’t have to cover any documents.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 10:18
I completely agree. It’s very similar over here, both in Australia and New Zealand, to set up a business do sell my business, I think it’s about $120 but our money is different to yours and it really is. It’s cheap, it’s easy, but it and you can download generic kind of documents that will potentially get you started, but nobody actually reads them. Nobody understands what they’re about. So they really get shoved in a modern drawer somewhere, if they’re done at all, and it’s only really when the shit hits the fan that they suddenly kind of go, oh gosh, we haven’t got something that actually will help us with this. But I just want to go back a sec, because I think that the business plans are really interesting. Well, I love the Alice in Wonderland story, and I love it when Alice comes up to the fork in the road and there’s a grinning Cheshire Cat there. And she asked the Cheshire Cat, we know, which road Should she take? And he basically says, Well, where are you going? And she’s like, I don’t know. He said, Well, in that case, any, any of them, will get you there. And that’s kind of what happens in business is like, if you don’t actually know where you’re going, you can get very lost, very easily. Who knows where you should go? So that’s one of the things I’m very passionate about, is, you know, it doesn’t have to be a massively complex business plan, but it should be.
You know, where are we headed in the long term. Who? Why do we exist? Who do we exist for? How do we operate around here? And needs to have some really clear goals for the short term, the medium term, the long term as well. So that’s definitely the first step. But in terms of the legal side of things, yeah, so you can go, I can get a business. I can go online right now if I wanted to pay my $120 for my new business. And people do that without thinking about the legal implications, like when you open up a business, you’re suddenly bound by all of the legislation that comes with running a business. And I think often people don’t really appreciate what that means. So I know that the laws can be different between countries, but still, the overarching stuff is the same. You’ve got a business, you’re legally required to make sure that business is running solvently, that you have certain rules and regulations in place and know how things operate. What, what are the the main things that you need to think about?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:11
Well, as far as putting the documents together, I mean, it’s, you know, you got to make sure you have everything in those documents, depending on what kind of business organization you have, you have to have your you know, if, for instance, in the states, if it’s a corporation, it needs to have corporate bylaws. If it’s a limited liability company, it has, has have an operating agreement. And one of the things you have to think about is, like, the structure.
First of all, what kind of business do you want to be here in the States, we don’t have like national corporations. We have each core each state run is what you register your corporation, and you don’t like register with the United States. You pay taxes to the United States, but you register with the state. So it depends. Like, for instance, what state do you want to incorporate in? Because you can operate in one state and reside in another for tax purposes. So one of the things is, what do you want? Where do you want to be? First of all, and then what do you what do you want to be? Do you want to be a corporation? Do you want to be an LLC? Do you want to be a sole proprietorship? And that’s why one of the things that I always do with my clients is I always work with an accountant to find out monetarily, what makes the most sense for them, because from a legal standpoint, you can operate a business like five or six different ways, but from an accounting standpoint, if you don’t do it correctly, you’re going to get taxed to death, and you’re going to pay way too much money than you should.
Matthew Fornaro 13:35
So that’s why I like working with the accountant, and then it’s implementing the documents and then going from there, but that would be the initial things, figuring out what where you want to be and what structure you want to have, and then putting the documents in place.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 13:49
And I think it’s a little bit like a business plan too, right? You see, you may have all your legal documents in the beginning, but you should actually review those regularly to make sure they’re still serving you in the best possible way. Would that be fair?
Matthew Fornaro 14:00
Yeah, you should review them regularly and make sure you comply with them regularly, like if you’re supposed to, you know, no matter how small your company is, if you’re supposed to have an annual meeting, make sure you have an annual meeting. Or if you’re going to have a shareholder meeting, if they have a shareholder just, you know, just the most basic compliance stuff is one of the things you have to always follow up on that a lot of people don’t do.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 14:20
I’ve seen that a lot, even as well larger companies. If I’m being really honest, one of the things I’ve kind of found with some of the businesses that I work with is the whole terms of trade thing for their clients. Again, once you when you start a business, initially, you may not actually have any of those terms of trade. You just have a an agreement. And I go, Matthew, we’re going to work together. This is my fee. That’s what I’m going to charge you. And off you go, which, you know can work for many, many years. It can even work as you grow until it doesn’t so. Terms of trade, tell me a little bit about what we would recommend in terms of thinking about those things when you’re dealing with customers, particularly when it’s B to B. Services type provision.
Matthew Fornaro 14:59
Sure you should, you know. You’re selling goods or services or buying goods or services or whatever it is, you should always have a written contract in place, because just like you have governing documents for your business, you want documents that explain what your relationship is with your customer or your vendor or your landlord or whatever. So having written contracts in place, it tells who does what, when, where, why, how? It tells what. You know, if there’s a dispute, how you’re going to resolve the dispute. And it has all the information you need in the contract so that it’s not up to chance. So then, that way, if you’re not performing under our contract, I can point to you in the contract and say, you know definitely you’re not following. You know, clause one, clause two, clause three. Please fix it. Otherwise, I’m going to have to go with clause, you know, 10. Lawsuit.
Matthew Fornaro 15:57
So the main thing when you’re involved in trade with someone, she always got to be sure, no matter how friendly you are with someone, if it’s your mom, if it’s your dad, and it doesn’t matter, have a written contract in place, because you’re going to avoid a lot of problems that way.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 16:03
I like to consider it’s like people always sort of say, Oh, well, it becomes very litigious, but it’s like, actually they’re children’s and I think all human beings actually work better when they know what those boundaries are. So we actually go, Hey, these are the boundaries that we work within. And this is what happens if we have a dispute. It’s just about giving some some security around what should, what can happen, and what we’ll do with it if it does happen, right?
Matthew Fornaro 16:25
Yeah. I mean, it gives you as much as there’s still some wiggle room, it gives you certainty as to if you don’t do something, here’s what’s going to happen, versus if you don’t do something, I don’t know what’s going to happen, that kind of thing. So, yes, it’s kind of gives a feeling of, at least not a certainty, but foreseeability of what’s going to happen or not happen.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 16:45
Perfect. Hey, I know that in one of my very, very early businesses, which unfortunately did go under, but we had a contract with we were based in New Zealand, and we had a contract with an American company, and we thought we had a supply contract that gave us, you know, surety for a certain period of time. But the the client started pull the pin, and they came and they gave us two weeks notice, and we had about 14 staff that were servicing the account, so it was a little bit of a shock. And it was like, actually, when we went back to the contract, the contract had been signed years ago, and yes, the actual agreement said it was two weeks notice.
Now, I think that when that was signed, we’d only had a small number of people actually working on the contract, but over time, they’d grown and grown and grown and grown and become quite a large part of our business. So we effectively lost a huge part of our business in a heartbeat because that contract said there was a two week notice period. It kind of highlighted to me that just just set a contract, you shouldn’t just set and forget. You do need to review it regularly to make sure it fits in with whatever has changed in your business, in their business, in the environment, how often do you reckon you should review those type of contracts?
Matthew Fornaro 17:50
Should review them on a regular basis. You know, I mean, you don’t have to have the contract sitting out there, looking at it every day, but, you know, quarterly, semi annually, annually, at least on a regular basis to make sure that it’s still complies with what you want, because you always have the ability to renegotiate the contract and enter it into an amended contract. So you want to make sure that it still fits your needs, and if it doesn’t, then maybe you want to pursue change, you know, amending the contract or coming up with a replacement contract, but you should always regularly review it to make sure that it’s still required, still meets your needs as far as what you’re doing.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 18:29
And I think one of the other things I’ve seen happen a lot is that people will be given legal contracts like a lease. For example, most of us have an office we have an office lease. We get given a lease by our landlord to renew our lease at a certain period of time. And I know that some people think, oh, but you know, to pay a lawyer to go through it all again is gonna be costly, and what’s the point of it. But there can often be things that we who are non legal experts can completely miss, because especially being entrepreneur, I skimmery things. So for me, it’s like, oh, yeah, high level, yeah, that’s fine.
But I remember when I actually signed the lease on this current building, which I’ve now been in for a couple of years, I was pretty much ready to go. I saw the lease look pretty standard, but yeah, that’s fine. And then just I better run it past my lawyer, and he actually said to me, Debra, you do realize that in this lease, it says there are no animals allowed in this but in the building, and I actually have two dogs that come to work with me every day. And so I’d completely not, not even thought about it. And fortunately, we went back to the landlord and they changed it in a heartbeat. It wasn’t. A heartbeat. It wasn’t a problem, but it’s it’s interesting that we think we can do it ourselves. But I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a legal expert. What is the benefit of getting somebody like yourself involved to look at those things? I suppose my question.
Matthew Fornaro 19:37
Well, it’s a proactive approach, that you’re going to avoid problems down the road. So for instance, in the example you just gave, if you were to just sign that contract without having your attorney review it, and you brought the dogs to work, you’re in violation of your lease. So that’s why, in your example, your attorney wrote the contract. You spotted the clause that you didn’t like, you got rid of it.
Matthew Fornaro 20:00
You still have your space and you can bring your dogs in. It’s the same thing with anything. The reason why you left the attorney to review the contract is proactively, you want to avoid problems down the road. And in contracts, you can negotiate terms and negotiate out terms that you don’t want, particularly like in a commercial lease setting, at least here in where I am in the United States, that’s probably, you know, one of the main contracts that people have is commercial real estate lease, or commercial real estate sale, and those are ones where they are skewed in favor of the landlord. Hands it to you. It’s usually favoring the landlord’s favor on every possibility, and that’s something that you can always negotiate and try to get a better foothold or a better terms for the tenant.
Matthew Fornaro 20:54
And that’s one of the reasons why you want an attorney in there, is because an attorney will let you know that, like, yeah, here, particularly in Florida, landlord commercial landlords want personal guarantees for all leases. You can’t just sign a lease, as you know, Acme Company or whatever, you have to sign it, and then Debra has to personally guarantee it in case the business fails. Well, that’s a term that you can negotiate out where you don’t necessarily have to have a personal guarantee, and that, you know, greatly affects how you’re going to do things. So the reason why the attorney comes on board is because they’re able to help you negotiate out those terms and help you avoid situations down the road.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 21:37
Yeah, and I think you’re right. It’s often one of our biggest, biggest contracts as well. I mean, when I had my event Centeno we’re looking at, the lease was almost half a million dollars a year. And so, you know, that’s a that’s you. We obviously broke it down to monthly costs. It didn’t feel like it was a lot when you actually looked at it. It’s half a million dollars a year that you’re basically signing on the dotted line to all of those terms and conditions that are on there. So it’s really important you actually check to make sure they’re going to suit you both now, but also in the longer term as well.
Matthew Fornaro 22:03
Yeah, no, that’s true. I mean, you know, you got to review the contracts ahead of time, otherwise you’re going to get stuck with something that either you don’t know about or that you’re going to wish you knew about later on down the road.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:14
Okay, so I’m going to talk a little bit about your practice. I saw that you’ve won a lot of awards in your business, and, you know, top rated lawyer and various different awards in your business. Why? What do you think has led to that? What do you think about your practice has led you to actually better win those top awards.
Matthew Fornaro 22:36
You know, I think my first of all, the fact that I keep it real and I stay within my lanes, to use an American expression, I don’t go outside my wheelhouse, so I don’t try to do things that I know I can’t do, and I focus on what it is I do, and if I need help, I will request help from other attorneys who specialize or focus in other areas, so that way I can help make my clients more successful, because I know that we can put a team together to make you more successful than if I were just trying to do it myself, or whatever. So, for instance, you know, you may have, you know, speaking of here, I’m speaking about American issues. You know, New Zealand needs to be done. It can be things that you think about.
Matthew Fornaro 23:33
But you know, for instance, in America, we have a lot of labor speed issues, okay, regarding like, workers rights, you know, minimum pay, things like that. So that’s something I know about, but that’s not something I focus on or specialize in. So if my client brings to me one of those issues, I’ll reach out to someone who’s like, board certified in employment law, and we’ll bring that person in and make sure that they work, you know, as part of a team and help out the client. The same thing for like intellectual property. You may have a patent or a trademark or something else that you know, I know about, but I’m not focused on whatever. I’ll bring in an intellectual property attorney to help do that.
So I think that that’s kind of led me to be successful as being kind of the leader of the team that we work on, on behalf of the client. And I think that’s led to some of my success is that I’m able to work as part of a team, and I just don’t do it all myself.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 24:38
Yeah, we talk about this, and we help clients with the EOS process. We talk about delegating and elevating and being really clear about where you should focus your time and your energy and when you should bring other people in to actually help. And I think it’s something that Australians and Americans do a whole lot better than kiwis. The idea is that we recognize what our specialty is and what we do really well, and if we need anything else, we should be really happy to look outside for somebody else to do it. But it must have met New Zealanders.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:00
To have this whole, oh, we can do it ourselves. And they dabble in lots of things that really aren’t their real specialty, which I think isn’t a disservice, because if you stick to what you’re really, really good at and do it really, really well, you add a huge amount more value than if you don’t. And if you try to do everything for everybody, you end up being nothing for nobody. It’s one of my favorite sayings. People think sometimes it’s going to be cheaper if I do it myself, when, in actual fact, it could have massive consequences, and you better to get the expert in to actually do that right.
Matthew Fornaro 25:28
Yes, that’s correct. I mean, it’s all proactive and reactive. Yeah, it is interesting. I would say. I would say Americans are like New Zealanders or Kiwis, and they try to do too much themselves, particularly small business owners, try to do too much themselves.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 25:46
Yeah, I think that definitely happens. And when we all do it in the beginning, and that’s pretty fair and pretty standard, because in the beginning, you do have to do everything right. You’re the chiefs, the bottle washer everything, because there’s only one of you in the business. But as you grow, I really believe the more you can learn to let go and let people do things, the better. I personally hate accounting. I can do it, but it’s not a strength of mine in any way, shape or form. In the beginning, I had to do it, and as soon as I could get rid of it, it did two things for me.
First of all, the accountant is always going to do a way better job than I will ever do in accounting. But secondly, I wasn’t sitting there whining complaining about stuff that I hated to do. I was back doing the stuff that I love, which is the coaching, the leadership training, all that sort of stuff. And so it has a financial impact too, because they can do it in a much quicker way than I and it frees me up to do stuff that I do really, really well, and that adds huge value to the business that I’m in. So therefore I’m generating more income for the business. And it means there’s a real opportunity cost of trying to do everything yourself, in my opinion.
Matthew Fornaro 26:42
No, I agree. And it’s one of the things you know, I say is that as part of, you know, a cadre or a group of people who try to help a business, along with an accountant, bank, or whatever, my goal is to try to take as many non business decisions off your plate as possible. So then that way all you have to do is the business owners make business decisions and all administrative stuff, you know, compliance stuff, regulatory stuff, that’s what you have the professionals to do, and you can just focus on making business decisions and making your business successful.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 27:16
So tell me, in terms of working with an attorney or a lawyer, I think a lot of people tend to use them very much ad hoc, right? I need something done. I’ll just go get my lord have a look at it. Is there a better way to work with them? Because I feel like it should be more of a partnership where you’re meeting regularly, like an accountant, you’re meeting regularly and really understanding what’s going on in the business so you can get more for the business owner. What’s your view on that?
Matthew Fornaro 27:38
Yeah, I mean, I like to be as proactive and as possible, slash as much as my client allows me to be. Some clients I’m much more hands on and proactive, and some clients are much more guarded and only come in when they need something. So I try to, you know, stay on top of mine with all my clients, you know, and stay in touch with them to make sure that if something happens in their business, not necessarily like a legal issue or whatever, that they kind of stay in touch and tell me about things, so that when in legal issue happens, we can head it off very early and take care of it, versus having to react and play catch up to try to fix it on down the road.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 28:22
Yeah, I agree. I think the more you can work proactively, the better it is in the long term. Certainly it may have an impact on cost in the beginning, but I think from a long term perspective, you’re actually getting better value by having somebody who’s really, truly on your side, a partnership in terms of helping you to run that business. Makes a lot of sense to me.
Matthew Fornaro 28:37
No, I agree totally. I mean, you know, it’s not necessarily. I mean, if you don’t want to call it a partnership, you can call it a symbiotic relationship.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 28:45
Yeah, yeah. Partnership has legal implications, right? Yeah. Okay, so in your business, I’m going to find out what have been the biggest challenges for you in terms of moving from the corporate world into your own business. What do you think have been the biggest challenges as a business owner?
Matthew Fornaro 29:00
Well, you know, there’s a big difference working for the big company, and every two weeks, you get money in your bank account for, you know, doing work, versus working for yourself, where you know, unless you’re out on the tightrope doing it yourself, you’re not going to get paid. So obviously, that whole mindset is something that you have to put in place and get over very quickly. Otherwise, you’re not going to do too much at the same time. You know, you know, I can go on my couch back here and take a nap and not work for a week at a time. No one’s going to tell me what to do or whatever, but if I do that, I’m not going to make any money. So one of the main things is you have to put that mindset of, you know, you have to be proactive. You have to go out and do stuff. Otherwise, nothing you know, nothing’s going to be handed to you, nothing’s going to happen. You have to go put systems in place, do things you know, have your documents in place, work with professionals, build relationships, build business and do things.
Matthew Fornaro 30:00
To make your business happen. It’s not just going to be like working at a job where I do my job and then every two weeks I get paid. It’s a totally different mindset. So that’s the main thing that you have to get over. And then once you do that, it’s all trying to trying to plan out as best you can, to do things trial and error, you know, going over things and just trying to make the best business possible.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:24
And how do you make sure? Because you’ve obviously got a family who said your son was currently off doing his overseas trip in Greece. So how do you make sure you have time for your family as well as your work?
Matthew Fornaro 30:33
Yeah, you know the technically, like I said, I can not do work for as much as I want, or I can work 24 hours a day. So I have to be able to balance work life. So, you know, I’m able to have the ability where, since I don’t have a boss telling me what to do or whatever, I can plan my day out, where I can work from whatever you want to say, nine to five, eight to four, whenever work from eight to 12, not work from 12 to five and work from five to nine or whatever.
So it’s just planning my day and then planning my week, planning my month later, my year, where it’s just time management and, you know, allocation of resources, allocation of work, and then I’m able to, you know, enjoy time with my family, versus burning the midnight oil every night.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 31:25
You can’t see behind me, and neither can the listeners, but I’ve got a calendar on my wall where I actually spend time before the year begins, and I plan out all of the time off that I want to take. So we always make sure we have a good four week holiday overseas. We make sure we have at least five long weekends away that we spend together and that we have time for birthdays and things that are really important, I actually put them all into my calendar first, and then that means when a client comes to me, I can say, hey, look, I’m available. I’m not available based on what’s on that calendar. Do you do something similar for your year ahead? Because you talked about planning your week, your month, your year?
Matthew Fornaro 31:56
Yeah, I kind of do something similar where I kind of not as specific as you are down to, like, birthdays and stuff like that. But I do figure out that, you know, at the beginning of the year that sometime in June, July, August, I’m going to take time off and do stuff, or for American holidays, like Thanksgiving, I’m going to try to make that an entire week off. Or for Christmas, I’m going to try to make that an entire two weeks off for that kind of thing. So yeah, I put in that kind of planning ahead of time, and I make sure that things aren’t scheduled and I don’t have to go to court or anything like that, or have client meetings during that time. But yeah, I’m not as super specific as you are, but I do have things set aside.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:39
Yeah, I didn’t used to be that specific, but I have a colleague over in the states who talks about planning your life before somebody else does. And I think one of the things we’ve talked about is you can have a lot of freedom by running your own business. You can actually choose when you want to work. There’s also a danger, because most of us who start our own businesses are really passionate about what we do, and so therefore we can get a little bit too passionate and perhaps spend too much time at work. And so he said, if you don’t plan your year out before anyone else and you will be consumed by your work. So plan your year out before anybody else does otherwise, your clients are running your life for you, because you’re probably not going to say no, because you’re good at what you do, you love it, and you want to help.
So he encourages everybody to go right if you just think about your year before you even start, mark out what is important, like having rocks in your business and make sure those important things are in there first, and then you can actually fit everything else around it. I have to say that I did it, or started doing it three years ago, and it’s just made such a huge difference in terms of being able to manage that work life balance in some respects.
Matthew Fornaro 33:34
Yeah, I agree. I mean, just like how I give the example of not working them out. I mean, you can work too much and focus on business where you kind of lose yourself as a person, when you kind of come, come synonymous with your business, and your business takes over your personal identity. So, yeah, you gotta, you know, you have to separate the two worlds and make sure they don’t cross.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 33:57
Yeah, that’s beautiful. Okay, so make sure you’ve got your business plan in place. Completely agree. I could say, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there have people around you. I mean, don’t be afraid to ask for help. I think having people who are professional and know their area of expertise, it will just make you go faster. It’ll make the business grow faster, make everything in your life a little bit better, and yet believe in yourself. I think it’s important that it can be a hard it can be a really hard road, right?
Matthew Fornaro 34:19
Well, one, you gotta make sure you have your written business plan and governing documents in place. No matter if you’re starting the business or if you’ve been successful for 10 years and you don’t have it, you need to implement it at some point in time. So do that very important, no matter where you are, how you know you’re going to need it at some point. So make sure you have your written documents in place. Two, I would say, make sure that you have, as a business owner, you have a team of professionals that you work with. Don’t try to do everything yourself. So as much as I’m the business attorney, you want to make sure you also have the accountant, the banker, the IT person, if you have, like, a web presence or an internet type thing, and make sure that they all know who each other is on your team, so that they can interact with each other and help you, you know, do whatever it is to do to make your business successful.
Matthew Fornaro 35:14
So that’s why, like, I know who my business you know my clients are. I know who their accountants are. I know where they bank at so I can interact with them when necessary in order to better advise my clients. And then I would say the third thing is just old fashioned, believing yourself and you know, no matter what you do, no matter where you are, no matter where you go, you’re always there. You know, other people may not be there. Bosses may come and go, employees may come and go. Businesses may change, but you’re always the constant. So you always gotta believe in yourself and what you’re doing and make sure you give yourself the best opportunity to succeed.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 35:53
I think it’s important that it can be a hard road, right? Sometimes running a business, we have our knockbacks and things. So if you really understand why you’re doing it, and know and believe that you can do it. I think anything is possible. That’s always been my belief anyway. Well, Matthew, look, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. We’re going to put the details in the podcast of where you can get hold of Matthew, I think some real gold in here, just in terms of making sure you’re looking at the right things and getting the right help. I was trying to convince Matthew before the podcast, he should come visit our beautiful car. Visit our beautiful country here in New Zealand, hopefully you’ll come visit us soon.
Matthew Fornaro 36:26
That’s correct. Debra, thanks for having me. Man, I enjoyed it all the way around the other side of the Earth, from Florida to New Zealand.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 36:35
Hey, thank you for your time, Matthew.
Matthew Fornaro 36:36
Thank you.
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Debra Chantry-Taylor
Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Certified EOS Implementer New Zealand
Certified EOS Implementer Australia
Certified EOS Implementer UK
Certified EOS Implementer NZ
