Stephanie Novak

I've worked with over 30 personal brands. Professional athletes, business owners, c-suite execs. Buckle up and bookmark this - I'm sharing everything I've learned (including proven methods to gain followers)....

@homeservicebase Really cool seeing all of these Ohio people in your comments. Welcome!

In two months, we’re moving to Columbus, Ohio. We just bought our first house there. Texas heat and year-round allergies pushed us to move north. After a long process of filtering options and traveling across different states, we decided to choose Ohio. I see a lot of business opportunities there in general, and strong potential to expand my appliance repair business specifically. We plan to launch appliance repair services in 3 metro areas this year. As a bonus, it’s new construction, so I’ll get exposure to many different home service industries from the customer side, and I’m excited about that. It’s my 4th year in the U.S., and my 3rd year running a business that made this possible. A country of opportunities, for sure.

@MikeCalcara White

White or green?

@ryan_doser13 100%. People forget they do still have some control over what they see. But some people just love the rage bait 😄 they won't admit that though.

The best productivity hack is to mute/block ALL rage bait accounts. News media, politicians, hype grifters, etc. You will thank me later

@heathcummingssr I went to Bdubs and they had all of the games on BUT they had no specials, their soda machine wasn't working, and they had 1 waitress. There were maybe 7 tables, but that place used to be packed for the tournament. Bdubs used to be THE place to watch games. Sad times.

Went to a sports bar today to watch the tournament. We'd been there before, good food, good beer. Walked in and they had zero tournament games on. "Working on it." After one beer they still had zero games on. Mostly baseball and football re-runs on the TVs...a few TVs with a tournament app on, but "free trial expired.". Obviously, we left. I still don't actually understand any of it. How do you own a "sports bar" and not plan on having all the games on all day on one of the most important sports days of the year?

The downfall of Buffalo Wild Wings needs to be studied.

Some of the most profitable businesses can still overpay 6-figures in tax every year because nobody ran the W-2 math before December. Once a business crosses $200,000 in profit, the tax playbook changes and you need to have a different conversation. If your adjusted gross income (AGI) is below certain levels, you can get the qualified business income deduction even if you did not pay any W-2 wages. Above those thresholds, the deduction gets capped by W-2 wages actually on payroll. For single filers, that cutoff lands around $197,000 in AGI. For married filing jointly, it sits around $400,000. A company running entirely on 1099 contractors at that income level needs to see this coming before year-end. No W-2 wages above the threshold means no deduction. That gap can be tens of thousands of dollars every single year. One route you can take is transitioning some of the workforce to W-2 before December 31st. Another is finding ways to bring AGI below the limitation while there is still time. Both work when the conversation starts in October. One call in Q4 can change the outcome more than anything done after January 1st. If you found this helpful, follow @bradncpa for more breakdowns like this.

@_dobylanete Audit

Most agency owners know they're wasting time. They just don't know exactly WHERE, how much, or what to do about it. I've run 25+ automation audits for agencies over the last year. The same patterns show up every single time: - Triggers nobody knew were broken. - Manual tasks that take 10 minutes each but happen 40 times a month. - Handoff work that nobody counts as "real work" but eats hours every week. - Data scattered across six different tools that should be talking to each other. So I put together a free resource to send you that walks through exactly HOW to find this in your own business. The 10-Point Automation Audit. (See images below)

Last year, a client came to me with $1.2M in revenue but couldn't tell me their profit margin. Their books were six months behind. Bank accounts weren't reconciled. When we cleaned everything up using a specific 30-day process, we found $18K in duplicate transactions and missed deductions, resulting in another $25K in tax savings. It completely transformed how they saw their finances. I documented that exact process so other business owners can do the same. Like and Comment "SYSTEM" and I'll send you the guide for FREE. (Have to follow to receive)

A client came to me last month dead set on a Tesla Model Y. Before we pulled the trigger, I asked him a few questions. Where do you live? An apartment downtown. No dedicated charging spot. A couple of shared chargers in the garage that are almost always taken by the time he gets home at night. How long is your commute? About 180 miles round trip, 3 days a week. Do you take road trips? Every few months. About 400 miles each way to see family. Think about what that actually looks like day to day. He gets home after a long day, pulls into the garage, and the two shared chargers are taken. Again. So he goes to bed with whatever charge he has left. He wakes up, checks his range, and hopes it's enough for the day. No charging at work either. An EV works best when you're able to charge consistently. For him, it would've been a daily inconvenience at best and a stranded car at worst. He actually needed a plug-in hybrid. Electric for the short days, gas for the road trips. He ended up in a Toyota RAV4 Prime. Loves it. This happens a lot simply because people don't have the time to research different types of vehicles. So I put together a full breakdown that takes less than 5 minutes to read. Gas vs. Hybrid vs. Electric. With real numbers on fuel costs, maintenance, depreciation, and total cost of ownership across all three. Comment COMPARE below and I'll send it to you. Make sure you're following me so the DM goes through.

@MikeCalcara Compare

@JonathanShoff System

@SahilBloom @davidnimaesq They make natural light ones my dude. This engagement bait stuff is getting too funny. A ring light made me lol 😆

@davidnimaesq Ok, so please suggest how I get natural light at 430am in Boston at any time of year, then.

Right idea, but bad methodology. Yes your body wants light in the morning. But that desire is for natural sunlight. Not some artificial fluorescent light purchased from Amazon. This is not a long time sustainable solution that you can do for 50 years. Is the equivalent of eating creatine powder versus natural proteins from eggs. Right idea wrong methodology.

Cockroaches crawling on the floor. Mold in the soap dishes. Broken dryers. That's what motivated @TylerPurcell24 to start his own laundromat franchise. He wanted to be better than what he was seeing in other laundromats. So he started posting online. And he posted EVERYTHING. From the deals that fell through to the times he didn't know what he was doing. Sounds crazy, right? But there's a valuable lesson here. Don't just post your success. The mistakes are what make people follow you. "People hate course creators because all they show are wins. It feels fake because business is a roller coaster. Show the downs with the ups." When you post the real stuff, people know you're trustworthy. Your struggles are more relatable than your successes. That's what turns strangers into customers.

@JonathanShoff This!! I will never understand people who would rather wait in a line than order ahead. How do they have so much time to kill?

I'll bet the same concept goes for the Chick-fil-a customer base. I can get carryout there in 3 minutes flat with the app but I see tons of people waiting in the drive-thru then I go inside to get my food and the line at the register has 25 people in it waiting to place their order.

@ianncushing Exterior

We do so well for pressure washing / gutter cleaning (via cold email) that I might just start and scale one to $50k/mo this year just to prove a point.. If you want my business plan, comment "Exterior" below and I will DM it to you.

People say Ohio is boring 🤷‍♀️

@donisflying Audit

Your website could be invisible in 6 months. Google traffic is down 34.5% since AI results launched. Someone asks ChatGPT "best HVAC companies near me" Your competitor shows up. You don't. The difference? Their website is AI-ready. Yours isn't. We audit 36 technical points that AI bots look for. Things like schema markup, LLM.txt files, and semantic structure. Check yours for free! (make sure you're following me so I can dm the link)

If you want AI slop content, follow this method.

Wait until X finds out what a Florida man said about a dolphin.

You walk onto the lot. Find the car you want. Check the window sticker. $42,500. Then you notice a second sticker next to it. An addendum label. It lists: Paint protection sealant: $800 Vin etching: $400 All-weather floor mats: $400 Wheel locks: $150 Door edge guards: $95 Nitrogen tire fill: $200 "Market adjustment fee": $1,500 Total: $3,545 Your $42,500 car just became $46,045. And most buyers don't realize those addendum items are negotiable. Dealers call them "dealer-installed options" or "addendum packages." The more honest term is profit-padding add-ons. This is my honest breakdown: Dealer add-ons are almost entirely profit. Vin etching costs a dealer maybe $15-20 to do in-house. They charge $200-400. Paint protection sealant gets sprayed on during the detail and gets billed at $300-800. There's almost no hard cost to defend, which means there's almost no floor on what they'll actually accept. Before you even get to the finance office, the right move is to address these at the sales desk during price negotiation. If a dealer has $1,200 in add-ons on a car, you can ask them to remove the items entirely (some will, some won't depending on whether they're already physically installed), discount them out of the out-the-door price, or swap in items that actually have value to you. The ones that are hardest to remove are things already physically on the car: door edge guards, wheel locks, mud flaps. Dealers argue those can't be "uninstalled." That's sometimes true, but the cost to them was $40 in parts, so there's still room to discount. You're not trying to get them to rip parts off the car, you're trying to get them to not charge you full retail for something you didn't ask for. When you're negotiating at the sales desk, here's what to say: "I see the addendum items. I'm not paying for those. Either remove them from the price, or I'm walking." If they push back, ask: "What's your cost on the vin etching? $20? So why am I paying $400?" Most dealers will fold. Some won't. If they won't budge, leave. There's another dealership 15 minutes away with the same car and no addendum sticker. The earlier in the process you address it, the more leverage you have. Now, the finance office is a different dynamic. By the time you're in that room, the sales price feels settled and people are tired. Dealers count on that. The same add-ons often resurface there as "protection packages:" GAP insurance, extended warranties, prepaid maintenance. Those are negotiable too, but that's a separate conversation from the addendum items. Factory-installed options ordered with the car? Those might make sense. They're often integrated better and can affect resale value. But the add-ons they slap on in the back lot the day before you pick it up? Those are dealer markup items, and you shouldn't be paying full retail for something you didn't ask for. The short version: Everything on that addendum sticker is negotiable, and the earlier in the process you address it, the more leverage you have. If you made it this far and like this kind of breakdown, give me @MikeCalcara a follow.