Adam Torres and Chris Papin discuss business planning.
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Show Notes:
Business planning is at the heart of maintaining and growing a successful business. In this episode, Adam Torres and Chris Papin, Founder of Papin CPA & Papin Law, explore Chris’ journey as and entrepreprenuer and Papin CPA & Papin Law.
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About Chris Papin
Chris Papin is a licensed Attorney and Certified Public Accountant in the State of Oklahoma focusing his practice on the representation of closely held businesses and its owners. he represents businesses in many capacities including start up/formation activities, business planning and development, and financial/tax planning. He represent individuals and business owners by assisting with estate and tax planning. Potential new clients are welcome to contact me.
He enjoy involvement with volunteer, civic and professional organizations serving in various capacities with numerous organizations including serving as a Member of the Board of Directors for Epworth Villa, Director of the Deer Creek Middle School Soccer program (a non-school funded soccer program), a member of the Board of Directors for the Pi Kappa Phi Alpha Gamma Chapter Housing Corporation, as a member of the OCU LAW A Night for the Innocent, Inaugural Gala committee, as well as other various opportunities that come my way. He also serve in a volunteer capacity for the Oklahoma Bar Association Young Lawyers Division as a CLE presenter and served on the Oklahoma Society of CPA’s technology committee.
About Papin Law PLLC
Papin Law, PLLC is a boutique law firm specializing in representing small businesses and small business owners. Focusing on the practice areas most important to a business allows for a growing business to have centralized resources one step away. Partnering with Papin CPA, PLLC also allows the clients of Papin Law, PLLC to have accounting, payroll, and tax services all under the same roof.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Chris Pappin and he’s founder of Pappin Law. Chris, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to a fun conversation today. Oh, as am I. And for everybody that’s watching this live, obviously it’s a, the day after Christmas, I’m feeling good feeling like we’re, we’re ready to get this started and and really end the new year with a bang it’s going to be, it’s been a great year for us at mission matters and for our guests as well, many of our guests as well.
So Chris, just to get us kicked off, we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute. So Chris, at Mission Matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Chris, what mission matters to you?
So for us, we’re focused on kind of a value statement of respect, integrity, and accountability. And this is in representing our clients. This is for my team. This is for the firm as a whole. But I found over the years that if we will align ourselves with others to achieve their goals, it puts us in a place to be successful as well.
So we do that. You know, everybody has to have respect. Everybody has to be accountable to the different tasks, but everybody’s going to have some integrity. If you can’t tell the truth to your professional advisors, who are you going to tell it to? It’s great, Chris. Well, great having you on the show.
Love bringing mission based individuals on to share, you know, why they do So we can all learn and grow together. So again, great having Jan and I got to start with this title. Like not all rainbows and unicorns. Like when you propose this title, I’m like, come on, man. Really? What, what’s the inspiration?
Tell me why this is part of you. So the piece of it is, is it kind of feels a little click baity, right? You know, in business rainbows and unicorns are not a thing, but I think the reality for a lot of folks is. Especially with social media, we tend to focus on successes, but success is the result of being knocked in the dirt and getting back up and getting knocked in the dirt and getting back up.
And if you think all of those different sports analogies and, you know, pick whoever your favorite is, but I like to run with the, with the Tom Brady Superbowl when they’re down to the Falcons. He didn’t change who he was, he didn’t change what he did. And we’re not going to do that as business owners and business advisors.
And sometimes it gets mucked up and messy. And that’s where the, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns comes from, you’ve got to be willing to put in that hard, difficult, nasty stuff to overcome obstacles, to achieve real successes in life. When did you get into business? Like, how did all that start for you?
So for me, I grew up in it. Mom and dad are both entrepreneurs. They happen to teach in their different professions at the local university. But I really don’t know any other way. So having two small business owners, mom’s kind of in, in mental health, education and counseling, dad was in automotive repair and fast forward, I go to business school, I’m working through my accounting education and there’s kind of this distinct moment where I go to the professor and I keep asking, Why do we skip these pieces of the chapters?
And he’s like, Oh, that’s legal work. That’s what the attorneys are going to do. So I’m like, this is dumb. Why are we going to two different places to do this? So kind of took those values that mom and dad instilled about taking care of other folks, wove them into kind of my business elements. Got to give my brother some credit in here too.
He was a finance and accounting guy. So kind of influenced that value proposition for me. But at the end of the day. We solve problems for small businesses and small business owners. We have lived the transition. My father passed when we were young. We had to implement estate planning tools. We’ve had to live through that succession plan that is forced upon you when someone passes.
When my brother stepped in and took Took over the family business. So in a lot of instances, a lot of the things that I preach, I’ve lived in a, you know, you, you’ve heard the different businesses. I’ve got a law firm. I’ve got a CPA firm. There’s some other things that we do along the way, but kind of that serial entrepreneur has some truth to it.
I am a small business owner. I operate in this world all the time, but I also represent folks that do it. So we pull on the experiences. I may do something a hundred times whereas a client may only do it one or two during their lifetime So why not partner together and kind of relate together because we’re all living the same journey What was one of your first businesses you remember like going back before what you’re currently doing?
Like what was the first one could be when you’re younger or whenever when was one of the first ones you remember? So one of the first business experiences ever I am In the building I’m in now, my brother and my dad are kind of going through the process of building the building. Yeah. And I think I’m on my way to like a preseason training.
One of my coaches was coming by and I remember looking around kind of going, man, I, like, I don’t see all of the vision here. I’m like, why are we jumping through all these hoops? This seems like a lot of work, you know, one of those kinds of things. Well, fast forward 20, 25 years. And here I am officing in the same location where I’m going, man, it’s early in the morning and I got to go to weight training and all that stuff was off the table.
But when you look back, I lived it. I was part of it. That’s part of that hard work you’ve got to do. You got to get up early and put in the work. Yeah, I just wanted to go to now you’re sitting in the building and now you’re sitting in the building. They built. Am I hearing that right? You are hearing that right?
And we’ve got another 1 going up, you know, inspections any day now. So we’re super excited for chapter 2 of that journey. What was it like growing up in an entrepreneur family during like, the holidays was a lot of business being talked about, like, about around the dinner table or like, what was that?
Like, I’m always interested. So Here’s a fun story for, for one of the Christmas breaks, dad had just given a final exam and this was kind of like intro to automotive think back. This is very mechanical based and he hands across like this test that he gave to his students. And, you know, this is just stuff all day, every day.
He had to grade a whole bunch of final exams. Of course, I’m like, what are you doing? So he hands me the test. So I take it real quick. I scored the highest of the whole class. Of course I won because I grew up with it. Right. But it’s moments like those where you realize. If you live for what you do, it’s different than doing what you do to live.
And people have heard versions of that, but my dad truly enjoyed this stuff. Mom in her counseling businesses, she loves people. She wants to give back to her community. So yes, holidays were always interwoven with this stuff, but it’s a lifestyle choice for us. We enjoy it. Yeah, that’s interesting. It must be, it must be interesting now, kind of looking back and reminiscing about like those early conversations during the holidays or otherwise.
And and just seeing, cause it’s not common. So whenever I hear, especially when there’s both mom and dad that are both entrepreneurs, that’s when it always, I’m like, Oh, what was it like sitting around that table? Did you, did you pick up like a lot of maybe the knowledge and things and like, was, was that kind of like an informal or even formal mentorship?
I don’t know. Like working with your parents and otherwise. It was both. Since mom’s in mental health and counseling, she was into emojis before they were titled emojis. She had like happy face charts and, you know, people have done maybe Myers Briggs or desk profiles and different things like that over the years, but she had so many of those.
And of course, I hated it as a kid, never wanted to do it, but looking forward, seeing how different folks work together, seeing strengths and weaknesses, having understandings about just emotion. The how the limbic system functions, you know. Fight or flight always triggers before logic. So when, when, especially in the world, we’re in money triggers emotion.
So having some of those disciplines now I would kill for, and I’m so grateful that I have, but at the time, you know, grabbed me as like a 15 year old kid and I couldn’t run away from it fast enough. Like emojis. What is this? I got to take another test. Come on. I don’t even know what this, let me go play ball.
Right? I like teasing about the emojis. Everybody has seen kind of those emotional charts. You know, I call it the happy face chart, but somewhere in there all of those subtle nonverbal things, watching dad, you know, interact with different folks in, in some instances, maybe some not so good scenarios where somebody is frustrated learning some of those customer service elements.
Coming together with people. A lot of our family friends were also customers, you know Everybody says you’ve got to keep business and and personal separate and you kind of do you’ve got to have a healthy respect for both But sometimes when you do a lot of stuff with people, they become part of your extended family and yeah Those friends are also interwoven.
So I got a lot of The cliff notes of how to cheat and make that go forward. You know, I, I talk with my hands. I don’t know where that came from. We’re not Italian or anything like that is to chase those stereotypes around. Somewhere in there, we learned that there’s different ways to communicate.
There’s different ways to illustrate what’s going on. My dad and my brother both like to show people what’s physically wrong in a vehicle. Because the phone call just doesn’t do sometimes, but when people can see it and understand that it’s a safety hazard, they behave differently. They make decisions differently.
And that’s where we really want to partner with our customers. You know, I, I learned it all from them. But when you partner with your people and do what’s right for them, everything else takes care of itself. Right? So speaking of business and just compliance versus planning. What does that mean to you?
Compliance versus planning? So. Because we’re at year end, the analogy that’s going to come up is we will probably get in the first week of January, somewhere between 50 and 75 cold calls where people are going to call and say something like, I’m ready to do my planning for 2024 or too late. If we are in 2025, we are too late.
You have taken so many tools out of the toolbox. I have a Phillips head and a flat head and that’s it. I don’t have a hammer. I don’t have a nail. I don’t have power tools. So that’s the illustration of compliance or the maintenance things reporting what you already did. Yeah, it’s kind of the monday morning quarterback type stuff Planning is that forward looking And in being adaptive and this is really where the not all rainbows and unicorns comes from Sometimes as a business owner you make a bad decision.
That’s okay. You’re allowed to You just got to be nimble enough or have metrics to help measure that soon so you can pivot and change and adjust And I think that’s the space that is the most valuable to people right now, is sitting down with people and helping them brainstorm. Where should I be going?
My experience is that business owners are very, very talented in their craft. But when it comes to the legal ease or the tax or the application of the details, all of those things matter, they are not going to be the person that bangs out the purchase agreement and protects them from all the hidden liabilities in that purchase agreement.
And with AI, we’ve got to be super careful. Cause people are going to go to chat, GPT and co pilots and similar tools and say, Hey, send me a purchase agreement that, but did it protect you? Does it have your interests in mind? Did we align the mission of the document with the mission of the person? And that’s where I think this stuff’s really starts to overlap.
I’ve watched a lot of DIY deals blow up. And again, nobody talks about being at the courthouse or going through remediation or spending 400, 000 that they shouldn’t have spent settling in a state that a mistake was made. That’s not fun stuff to talk about. So that’s the space where I think we really need to spend time and focus in because man, compliance can be tedious.
key. Talk to those 50 75 people that are gonna, that are gonna call the office randomly. Like we’re heading into year end. I always like to provide some type of tips or like some type of thought processes or, you know, tools, right? To our audience. So let’s have you talk specifically. Specifically to those 50 to 75 people that are going to call in.
Like what, what kind of things should they be looking into as they go into 2025 so that they don’t make the same mistake and, and hopefully they’re not doing another cold call right. At the end of the year. So I’m going to give three two are going to seem dumb and rudimentary, but they’re by far the most, the most popular conversations is the way I’m going to say it, the most voluminous conversation, but the first is did you pay your estimated taxes?
Everybody I talked to wants to minimize tax and probably about half do not make estimated tax payments as they go. So they subject themselves to unnecessary penalty and interest. I can make it cheaper, just pay it sooner. The second one is oftentimes we don’t, don’t do the little thing. Like putting all of our business expenses inside of our business account.
We’ll use, Oh, let’s use this credit card over here for points or, Oh, I forgot to get those receipts over and make my books audit proof. Again, simple stuff, but it’s neglected because it’s Saturday and I got to go to soccer practice. And then, Oh my gosh, it rained. And now we’re pushed back and practice ran into the game and I didn’t get home till nine o’clock.
So I can’t get to the business things. I get it. I live it too, but you’ve got to do those small. So those are the two easy ones. The third that I’m going to give people is you need to change your mindset. The phone call you should be making is, Hey, I have 24 in front of me. If there’s anything I can do for 24, I’m game, but I’m invested from this point forward for a proactive plan for 25.
Because I have all of the tools at my disposal to help you for 2025 rather than the wrench or what do we go with the flathead and the Phillips head screwdriver. That’s what we went with. Yeah. So if I have all the tools, imagine the impact that we can make. Imagine if we have a set of financial information that can give us some sort of future looking guess and maybe free chip number four estimates are exactly that there’s, they’re designed to be estimates.
But if you don’t have that expectation in mind, how are you supposed to plan? You know, it’s like getting into the car, driving to a state. You’ve never been to, you would always use a map or maybe some form of phone maps, you know, get, get Google maps out, follow the directions. Right. But business owners don’t do that with their finance.
They just react and say, okay, do it all at your end and let me know how it played out. How do you know? So be proactive rather than be reactive. Do you specialize in any any type of specific industries like service based manufacturing or, or otherwise? Generally, I align with service based industries first.
It’s kind of who I am. It’s what I know. It’s, it’s the core of probably 85 percent of our, our client base. Yeah. But naturally when we work with good people you know, my running joke is I don’t represent restaurants except for the six restaurants that we have on our client list. So it’s stuff like that where when we align with folks, we’ll grow with them, but we do have a core competency inside of those service based individuals because that’s kind of the world me and my team live in.
So it comes natural to us. Amazing. Well, Chris, man, this has been a lot of fun finally getting you on the show. I’ve been trying to do this for a long time and I’m glad that I got all these tips out of you for as we go into year end and hopefully for those of us that need it have that shift in mindset.
I think that was a great tool and a great tip having a shift in mindset of just doing what you can do for now. Like what, what can you do in 2024? Great. But 2025, make it the best year. Like, how do you have that shift in mindset? That’s a great, great. That being said what’s next? I mean, what’s next for you?
What’s next for the business? What’s next? So one of the things that is upcoming, we are working on a book for small business owners designed around the platform of entrepreneurship. Where do I start? What do I do? Pieces of it are going to overwhelm folks. Pieces of it are not going to be deep enough for folks, but we got to start somewhere.
I would also tell people, you know, pay attention to my LinkedIn because what’s next? Well, we have an election year, so there’s a lot of what’s next and I have no idea what they are, but we will post them to the LinkedIn site and we will keep people up to date because I imagine we’ve got a lot in store and I’m really excited at the different opportunities that come with law changes.
Amazing. And how can people connect, learn more about the company and follow up? Yeah. LinkedIn, find my name, Chris Pappin on LinkedIn. You can certainly go to firm websites. PappinCPA. com is probably the easiest to navigate. Certainly PappinLaw. com as well. I’m always looking to reach out to similarly minded folks.
I attend different Events. Sometimes I’m a speaker. Sometimes I’m a participant. So if you ever see me or want to say hi, come over. I love meeting new people that are doing similar things to what we’re doing today. Amazing. And for everybody watching this, just to let you know, we’ll put the links in the show notes so you can just click on the links and head right on over and check out Chris’s firm and speaking to the audience.
If this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t done it yet, Hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re putting out a new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Chris man, wishing you a great end of the year and on into 2025, man.
Appreciate you coming on. Happy 2025. Appreciate you.