E154: The One Habit You Need to Develop as an Entrepreneur with Mitchell Beinhaker

Mitchell Beinhaker is a lawyer, entrepreneur, and advisor. He loves helping companies translate their

business goals into reality. He's also the host of The Accidental Entrepreneur. Mitchell started businesses

in middle school and high school where he had a car detailing company and practically had been in

multiple businesses since then. Mitchell has also been practicing law for the better part of 30 years. He

works with a lot of business owner startups and family-owned, multi-generational businesses, helping

them out in areas related to governance, structure, and estate planning.

Here are some power takeaways from today’s conversation:

● Mitchell’s entrepreneurial journey

● Habits you need to develop to increase your chances of success as an entrepreneur

● Operating agreement vs. buy-sell agreement

● Why getting divorced is one of the worst things you can ever do for your business

● What you need to get life insurance for your business

● How to keep a healthy, positive mindset

Episode Highlights:

The One Habit You Need to Develop as an Entrepreneur

You can increase your chances of success if you just made it part of your practice to put things in writing.

Whether that’s an agreement between your partner, customer agreements, with vendors, and your

lease. Where people also get in trouble most of the time is not having any business plan. And that as

soon as they shift to another business, they fail. They're not really entrepreneurs because they didn't

have business skills, to begin with. They don't have anything planned in terms of capital, financial

forecasts, marketing, and all that stuff. So these people will do it by accident. There are also a few

reasons entrepreneurs develop these bad habits over time – either they're lazy or they're scared of

dealing with these things.

Operating Agreement vs. Buy-sell Agreement

An operating agreement is a document used to run the day-to-day operations of your business. A

buy-sell agreement addresses things like death, disability, retirement, and involuntary termination like

when someone is suing you, or you're getting divorced.

In most states, if you get divorced, your spouse is entitled to a percentage in the business. So you want

to make sure your spouse signs a waiver where they’re not allowed to have shared, but you might have

to pay the value. And this is why getting divorced is one of the worst things you can ever do for your

business. Another common mistake people make is when they fail to fund the agreement. Therefore,

getting life insurance for your business is important.

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