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Taxes are fun with Branden Drake
118 Plays3 years ago
Happy Woo Wednesdays! Today me and Braden chat about finances: business entities, tax, or cash flow. He puts things in lamen terms and makes knowing your numbers fun!
We deep dive into
-why people are afraid of numbers and taxes -the types of insurance you need and -how you should protect yourself if all your sd cards get wiped-What type of LLC you should get
Braden is a California licensed attorney and tax professional. His tagline is your gay best friend here to help you get your legal, tax, and financial shit legit. Braden works primarily with service based, creative small business owners through his signature program, the Profit Rx.
Connect with Braden
https://www.instagram.com/bradenadamdrake/
https://www.bradendrake.com/profitrx2
Connect with Carissa
Join my facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/957498271691816/
Learn about my coaching program
https://www.instagram.com/carissawoo/
DM me the work lead for all the free goodies
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Transcript
Introduction to Taxes and Accounting with Brayden Drake
00:00:00
Speaker
Happy Woo Wednesdays and welcome back to Get a Heck Yes with me, Carissa Woo. Make sure to join my private Facebook group. I give a ton of free resources for you to thrive. So the theme of the week is taxes and accounting. Fun, right? Today's episode is with Brayden Drake, your gay best friend here to help you with legal and tax shit. He truly makes taxes fun and easy to learn because they are not going away.
00:00:26
Speaker
Check out his Instagram. He is very active on it and gives the best advice on his stories and feed. Enjoy this episode.
Carissa Woo's Photography Background and Mission
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome to Get a Heck Yes with Carissa Wu. I'm your host, Carissa, and I've been a Los Angeles wedding photographer for over a decade. I've traveled the world, built my team, and seen it all. I now coach wedding photographers hit 10K a month and build a thriving business. In this podcast, we are going to deep dive into how top wedding creatives get that heck yes from their dream clients. We are not holding back on the struggles of the business and how to push through the noise. Some healthy hustle, mindset shifts, up-leveling your money story,
00:01:06
Speaker
time hacks because I'm a mom of two, a little bit of woo woo, and most importantly, self love and confidence are just a few of the many things we will talk about. I want to give you a genuine thank you for following along my journey. I hope to inspire you every Woo Wednesday so that you say heck yes to listening to this podcast. See you guys soon.
Brayden's Podcast and Book on Business Clarity
00:01:29
Speaker
Today I have a very special guest, Braden Drake, from my favorite business and money podcast called Unfuck Your Business. What a great name. He's your gay best friend and makes taxes and legal stuff and money in layman terms, which is very hard to do. And he changed my thinking to strive to hit 30K a month and it's looking very possible with his help. And also be sure to check out his book, Unfuck Your Business, where you could truly step into the role of CEO. So welcome, Braden. Hi, thanks for having me.
00:01:58
Speaker
Oh, you're so welcome. Yeah, my friend Lisa Marie photography and like podcast episode three. She told me about you. I just had friends with her and she's like, Oh, do you do not unfuck your business podcast? You have to listen to it. Oh, good, good, good. That's always good to hear people share or sharing it.
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm not like a numbers person or a money person. I'm like more of a creative. I'm a hustler, but I'm definitely those type of people that don't know about like money and like I don't know where it's going. But yeah, tell me a little bit about how you got that got started and how you are so good with your numbers.
Brayden's Journey to Becoming a Tax Law Specialist
00:02:35
Speaker
Sure. Well, first I'll tell everyone if they want to go listen to the podcast, it's Unfuck Your Biz. So B-I-Z. And you got to put an asterisk for the U or it won't pop up, which is probably a mistake on my part. So a little bit about my background. I grew up in Indiana. I went to Indiana University for undergrad. I moved to Southern California, San Diego.
00:03:01
Speaker
for law school, and then just kind of meandered my way through and ended up specializing in tax law. So after the bar exam, I went and got my master's degree in tax, and from there I started my own business. So I always kind of joke, I've never really been excellent at math, but I've always liked numbers, like if we can riddle how that works.
00:03:26
Speaker
But you know, like addition, subtraction, percentages, those are fine. And that's really all we need to know anyway, to be like financial savvy business owners. So that's what I like to educate on. So do you live in San Diego now? Yes. Okay, cool. And then you were becoming a lawyer, you said? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm an attorney.
00:03:49
Speaker
Oh, okay. Okay, awesome. And do you work with a lot of wedding professionals? How did you, my friend, all my friends, like seem to know about you, my wedding professional friends. So how did you get in like the niche of wedding professionals? Yeah, so it was, um, I actually worked when I was waiting for my raw results. I worked part time at West Elm.
00:04:08
Speaker
And yeah, we had a lot of like pop up shops in there, a lot of creatives, mostly like painters and artists and floral people. So some of the floral people worked in the wedding industry, but really, it was a few of them introduced me to Rising Tide Society. Oh, yeah, totally.
00:04:28
Speaker
Yeah, I started attending local events, and then I started speaking at a lot of the Southern California events. And although Rising Tide is not a wedding-specific group, it was founded by Natalie, who's a wedding photographer. A lot of wedding professionals. And now I'm the co-leader of the San Diego chapter of Tuesdays Together. So that's kind of how I got introduced to the wedding industry. But now I'm friends with a lot of fellow educators in the industry and go on a lot of
00:04:56
Speaker
a lot of podcasts and a lot of events and those kind of things. Wow. Yeah. I'm in Rising Tide Tuesday together and Gabby, I think episode five, she's like the Pinterest queen. She was the president for Torrance. So I'm all about Tuesday together and it's a great community.
00:05:12
Speaker
Yeah, we did. Um, I think two years ago, it was two or three years ago. It was a September. The topic was illegally protecting your business. So I reached out to every, pretty much every leader in Southern California, and I asked each of them if I could come speak to their group.
00:05:28
Speaker
Keep in mind, I said I live in San Diego, which is about as far south as you can go in California, for those of you not familiar. And I spoke to Palm Springs virtually, but I drove to Orange County, Thousand Oaks, Inland Empire, Temecula, both San Diego chapters. And I think I spoke to seven Tuesdays Together groups that month. Wow.
00:05:51
Speaker
And it was a lot, you know, I think for one of the events, I think I drove like four hours both ways to speak to five people. But when you're getting started in your business and you're trying to make a name for yourself, like those are the kinds of things that you have to do. And I'm happy to report that it was well worth it, I think. Oh, I mean, that's such like, I love that hustler side in you. Like, what is the structure of your business? Is it more like courses?
From Legal Services to Education: ProfitRX
00:06:14
Speaker
Or do you actually like have tax accountants? Or are you just more of like a coach and a mentor?
00:06:19
Speaker
I'm primarily an educator now. I am working on rolling out a one-on-one service. So I started out with a law firm, right? So I was doing legal work, mostly drafting contracts, forming LLCs, S-corps, that type of thing. And then I got primarily into courses because educating is what I'm really passionate about. Now I have one signature program called ProfitRX. It's a monthly group coaching program. Your prescription to help you build a healthy and wealthy business. That's the tagline.
00:06:47
Speaker
And it's really great, so I work with people in there. I'm working currently on Potentially, so don't hold me to this, but Potentially rolling out that offer has like a higher ticket VIP one-on-one offer for really those people who are at higher levels of revenue in their business and just want quick results. So those will be kind of the two ways to work with me in the group program and then with the one-on-one service. But yeah, mostly coaching and education.
00:07:16
Speaker
Okay. Okay. I'm going to ask you this question. It might be like kind of a dumb question, but it's going to like open up to the whole conversation. But why are like numbers so important knowing your number is so important in your business?
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, we have to know our numbers in order to know if our business is actually making money. At the end of the day, we're all here to make money. I think we oftentimes forget that. A lot of us are in business because we're passionate about what it is that we do, but if we weren't trying to make money, we wouldn't take on clients. Photographers would just go to the park and they take photos and they call it a day.
00:07:56
Speaker
I'm in order to stay away from having a full time job elsewhere and not being self employed our business has to make a certain amount of money to sustain our lifestyle in order to make that money we need to know our numbers we need to know which avenues of our business and most.
00:08:12
Speaker
profitable. We certainly have to know our numbers in order to pay our taxes. So all of these things are really crucial in order to build the business that we want to build. Most of us also aren't at our dream profit goals right now either. So there's some numbers that we have to know in order to get there. And apologies if you can hear my dogs barking. They're very excited about them. It's okay. I have a big dog too, so he's going to bark too. Once Amazon rings a doorbell.
00:08:38
Speaker
It's all good. I was going to ask you, because this is the title of my podcast, but how do you get that heck yes from your dream client?
Addressing Client Problems for Business Success
00:08:48
Speaker
What's your biggest sales technique? I know you've been doing this for a while.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, to be honest, that's still like a constant work in progress, right? So I actually just last month worked, I went through a group coaching program with a messaging coach. And this is what we were working on is how I could better message my programs to get those
00:09:10
Speaker
Heck yeses. But for me, it's really, you know, you have to figure out like, what's the problem that people have? What do they need help with? And then how can we speak to that problem and deliver them like the actual solution? So that's obviously the key, but then we all kind of have our own unique way to do that. And for me, it's taking these really scary topics and trying to make them like as fun and digestible as possible.
00:09:36
Speaker
And I think if people realize, oh, he teaches the things that I need help with, and it's not going to be terrible, that's kind of like the one-two punch that I need to get a heck yes, I think.
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, I honestly got to say like you're really good because I hate like numbers. I'm allergic to analytics. Like my parents never talked about money. I have a bad money story, but I actually could, I really enjoy listening to your podcast about numbers. And I just listened to the episode about making like $200,000 a month and breaking it down to like the T and I was very intrigued. $200, $200,000 a year. A year? Yeah. I don't know.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to don't want to terrify your audience. Yeah, so that podcast topic, I highly encourage everyone to go check it out. That podcast was really about how a lot of people talk about wanting to get to six figures $100,000. But really, when we break down our business expenses on our taxes, for most of us, that's not enough money.
00:10:36
Speaker
in order to pay off our student loans and our debts and also save for retirement. But most of us really need this $200,000 in revenue because after figuring 30% for expenses and 25% for taxes, that then leaves us with $100,000 for all those other things.
Setting Realistic Financial Targets
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like I'm like balling and I'm like, where's my money?
00:10:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's good, like, that's good. It's a good threshold, right? So I mean, a lot of people, so a lot of people who talk about numbers talk about building a seven figure business, they talk about these really, like, high numbers. And for a lot of newer business owners, even 200,000 might seem astronomical. But I believe that that's a figure that's doable for everyone. If they want to do that.
00:11:21
Speaker
And it should be a good goal. Now, if you are in a dual income household, you might not need your business to get to that point. That's totally fine. If you have a full-time job and you love your full-time job and you don't ever need to take your business full-time, that's an interesting consideration as well. But for those of us who need our business to be like a real breadwinner, a $200,000 in revenue is a good target to have.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yes. And just hearing you say it, it just makes it feel achievable to me. So when you break it all down and feel like I could strive for more and then have money for retirement. Okay. So I'm writing a book. It comes out in May. You already have a published book and it's amazing. So can you just tell me a little bit about the process of writing it and publishing it and where it is now and how you're kind of marketing it?
00:12:13
Speaker
Yes, so I have a self-published book. I always like to clarify because really to self-publish a book, all you have to do is decide that you want to write one. A long-term goal of mine is to get a published book through one of the big publishing companies.
00:12:33
Speaker
I'll be the first person to let you know that that's not like that's really just it's like an egocentric goal. It's more an achievement to have not necessarily something that's important to move my business forward. But yeah, so I have in I joined a business mastermind a couple years ago. And there was a group of like six of us. And one of my peers and my mastermind is a book coach.
00:12:57
Speaker
Her name is Jodi Brandon. She also has a podcast called Write Publish Market. So I highly recommend her podcast. It's fantastic. And she specializes in working with entrepreneurs to write nonfiction books that they want to leverage in their business to grow their business.
00:13:16
Speaker
Since joining the mastermind, it was always kind of in the back of my mind. I always kind of wanted to write a book. It just seemed like it would be a fun challenge. It's kind of just my personality. Yeah. I started working with Jodi. And I actually already had my course textbook for my old signature program. I was already probably like 40 or 50,000 words. So a lot of that became the basis for what became my book, which is also titled Unfuck Your Biz.
00:13:45
Speaker
Available on my website and then you could actually that's your freebie today It's a free chapter of the book if you go to his website and I'll link it up Yeah, I listen to it. So good. Okay, one last question before we get into the hot topic
00:14:02
Speaker
Let's see, what is your biggest accomplishment? Well, the book was a pretty big accomplishment. That was really, really awesome. And then also, I mean, it sounds kind of cheesy to say, but like anytime we have really great student success stories in the programs, that always feels like a big accomplishment, right? Because it's one thing to talk about like making money. It's another thing to like make an impact. I'm a big believer that if we strive for both, we'll be doing pretty good.
00:14:32
Speaker
So I can't really boil that down to one. Can you tell us a client win, a student win, this one? I had two different students that joined around the same time. One of them was a wedding planner, one had an event rental company, but they both had some back tax issues with the IRS.
Overcoming Financial Challenges with Systems
00:14:50
Speaker
They were both at a pretty decent level of revenue though. So the program
00:14:55
Speaker
when they joined. First, we like got bookkeeping up to date, so made sure the books were all good. And then we dialed in how much they needed to be saving for quarterly taxes because I teach this concept called the oh shit cycle of back taxes. Your old back taxes, you got to make sure you're paying quarter like current taxes so that you don't keep on that cycle.
00:15:17
Speaker
And then after that, we formed LLCs, S-Orbs got on payroll, really dialed in the cashflow. And then once all of that was running, dialed in a plan to pay down the back tax. So again, one of my philosophies is that you need to dial in your systems first so that everything's smooth running forward. And then once you get the systems rolled out, then you can kind of look back and take care of the issues.
00:15:39
Speaker
that you've created in the past. And working with those types of clients is what kind of created the Unfuck Your Biz brand. I've pivoted a little bit now with my new ProfitRX program because it's less on fixing business mistakes and more just about, you know, how we can build profitable businesses. But it's nice. We still have the book there for people who have made some of those mistakes, which is great.
00:16:06
Speaker
I love it. Just talking about your client win just makes me like my shoulder is just like, like melt. Like I feel like more relaxed. Like, oh, like they could like relax in their business and just everything's like based on systems and they could just focus on growing and making profits. So that's amazing. Yeah, that's, that's always the goal. Yes. Okay. So we're going to get into our hot topic, which I'm super, super excited about, but you could tell, tell the listeners about the hot topic and why you chose it.
00:16:36
Speaker
I got in the last like two or three days, 18 inquiries. What the heck? Hey guys, you all know me. I'm Carissa Wu and I'm a coach for wedding photographers. I've also been a wedding photographer for over a decade, so I've been through it all. I was a shy, awkward girl and I've come so far. I'm now beyond passionate about helping wedding photographers not struggle how I did for so many years.
00:17:03
Speaker
It was six years into my business and I was so tired of being ghosted, nickel undimed, and hearing the dreaded words, we went a different direction. I also knew I needed to find a way to not rely on referrals or paying $350 a month for the knot to get my leads. I didn't want to have anxiety about when my next payday was going to come and I wanted to scale my business.
00:17:25
Speaker
Fast forward to now, I created my very own stack system to help wedding photographers get constant leads and master the dreaded sales call and get a heck yes in 24 hours or less. And charge more than 4, 5, 6K. No more waiting around guys, this is our livelihood, our artistry and our passion and we deserve to be respected, valued and paid for what we are worth. I've helped so many wedding photographers.
00:17:51
Speaker
Watch my 20 minute masterclass all about lead generation and closing the sale. The link is in the bio. You don't want to miss out on the wedding boom and you don't want to miss out on booking your calendar for 2022. It's engagement season, guys, so you don't want to miss this. See you guys soon. So we're going to talk a little bit about common legal and tax mistakes and how to fix them.
Common Business Mistakes and Legal Protections
00:18:13
Speaker
So this is kind of in keeping with our unfuck your biz.
00:18:16
Speaker
broader topic here. Now, like I mentioned, now I run a program called ProfitRx. Most of what I taught in Unfuck Your Biz is still in ProfitRx. I've actually expanded on it and built upon it. But before ProfitRx was in existence, I ran four rounds of Unfuck Your Biz. It was a $2,000 course. I've had about 70 students go through that. And of course, by teaching them, I've seen a lot, a lot, a lot of common legal and tax mistakes. So that's what we're going to talk about.
00:18:45
Speaker
Okay. Take it away with tip number one, or mistake number one, I mean. Yes. So mistake number one is not using contracts and not having insurance. So both of those things. We need to have contracts. That's pretty obvious. I think everyone at this point knows that we have to have contracts, especially after the year of COVID 2020. We all saw how much of a disaster it was with cancellations and postponements, even if you did have a contract.
00:19:12
Speaker
Now we need to make sure that the contract is very thorough. So I could actually now add the mistake like not properly considering cancellations, refunds, postponements in your contract. And then insurance is another big one as well. I call contracts and insurance two of the legal layers of protection that you need in your business. The other layer is an LLC. And I actually consider contracts and insurance to be the essential layers. They're kind of like the non-negotiables. Everyone needs to have those.
00:19:39
Speaker
Okay, so say like you are a wedding photographer and maybe you're like in your third year making like less than a hundred thousand, maybe like 70K. Do you think they still should get a LLC? Yes. Okay. Yeah, LLCs. So we can talk all about LLCs. Actually, those are, I have on the list of other mistakes as well. So we can discuss it for sure. But the main thing with an LLC is an LLC helps
00:20:08
Speaker
protect your personal assets, right? So if you're ever sued, I also teach this concept I call the magic bubble of protection. So I always tell people to picture their business in a magic bubble. Specifically, if you're a photographer, this is really easy. Like you can picture all of your photography equipment in this magic bubble.
00:20:27
Speaker
And if you were to be sued you know there's a various different reasons you could be sued but if your business is sued imagine all of that equipment like kind of exploding inside of the bubble but the bubble protects everything on the outside from the explosion so all of your personal assets are shielded.
00:20:45
Speaker
by the LLC so the LLC is the bubble so that's how that works now the LLC can't protect you from like any and every kind of liability specifically if you've made like a personal mistake because they could still sue you personally an LLC isn't like the end all be all of legal protection but in many states they're quite easy to form and they're pretty inexpensive to have so
00:21:08
Speaker
Really, the only reason not to form an LLC is if you simply cannot afford it. And most of the time, you know, once we get our first few clients, that's not going to be the case. So you just go ahead and do it. Okay, cool. So how did they get the LLC? You form an LLC by filing with your state. Okay. That's actually the easy part. The more difficult part with an LLC is then knowing or people not knowing that you then need to update your business license to be in your LLC name. You need to update your EIN.
00:21:37
Speaker
You need to update your business bank account or open a new one. You need to have an operating agreement meeting minutes. These are all part of what I not what I call but what legally are called corporate formalities. They're the formalities you must have to maintain proper separation between you and your business.
00:21:52
Speaker
So these are some of the things that I teach inside of my programs. I have something, it's the small business blueprint, and it's all the steps that you need to take when you go to form your LLC. So where people really mess up is like missing some of these steps. And then their LLC is essentially worthless if you don't implement them all. Okay, got it. And then just one last question till we move to mistake number two. But for insurance, is it just liability insurance?
00:22:21
Speaker
Yeah, so liability insurance and then also it's always good to look into errors and admissions insurance or professional liability insurance. Those two things are the two things that you really need to look for. Liability insurance is typically going to protect you against like if you physically harm someone, but errors and admissions insurance is what you want to look into for
00:22:46
Speaker
other kinds of liability, which could stem from you making professional mistakes. Everyone's terrified that all of their SD cards are going to totally be wiped or something. That's something that would be protected ideally by an errors and admissions insurance policy. But these are the kinds of questions that we for sure want to ask our insurance brokers as well. Oh, I never heard of that. That's so crazy.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, I did a podcast a month or two ago with a friend of mine who's an insurance broker. And we talked about that for like 45 minutes. So it's a great episode. Yeah, I'm going to check it out. I love listening to all these nerdy tax and money lingo. You're opening my world, whole new world for me. I got you. Thank you. Okay. Mistake number two.
Tax Obligations and Bookkeeping Essentials
00:23:39
Speaker
So mistake number two is not paying quarterly taxes and also not filing taxes on time. So this is a big one. Okay. So quarterly taxes, you recommend quarterly taxes because you don't want to get hit hard at the end of the year, right?
00:23:58
Speaker
Right. So you don't want to have to pay a big lump sum at the end of the year. Also, for most of us, if we owe taxes and we're not paying quarterly, we're actually going to end up paying penalties and interest as well. So we don't want to do that. Okay. Penalties are no good, but the bigger issue is not saving taxes, right? So a lot of people don't pay quarterly taxes, but they do save.
00:24:22
Speaker
That's okay. You'll pay a little bit of a penalty, not a huge deal. But if you don't save for the taxes and then you get on that oh shit cycle I mentioned earlier, that's a big problem because it's a really hard hole to dig yourself out of.
00:24:37
Speaker
Okay, cool. So for quarterly taxes, do you recommend hiring accountant or using QuickBooks or hiring you for your worksheets or your mentorship? How should you start? Yes. Well, everyone should go to theprofitrx.com. Okay.
00:24:55
Speaker
and join my program. I'll teach you all about it. Like specifically in our first module, I have everyone go through an exercise that I call the quarterly tax calculator. It's actually a Google sheet, so a spreadsheet where it estimates how much you should be saving. So you start there, you have to figure out how much you should be saving. And then you need to have some kind of cash flow management system. So determining once a client pays you
00:25:23
Speaker
What are you doing with the money? How are you saving it? When do you pay yourself? All of these essential steps. And then the bookkeeping is kind of the next step after that. Obviously very important for tax time. But when it comes to just paying quarterly taxes, that's easy. It's the knowing how to save it is the trickier part. Do you recommend QuickBooks or like HoneyBook or to see like your cash flow?
00:25:50
Speaker
Yeah, so HoneyBook, so HoneyBook's a CRM, right? HoneyBook's a client relationship management program along with Absado. There are many others. Those are great. I highly recommend having a CRM to manage client contracts and invoices. And those will also show you income coming into the business. But to do your actual bookkeeping, you're going to need a bookkeeping tool like a QuickBooks. Okay. I currently am actually getting zero certified. To be honest, like
00:26:20
Speaker
Right now recording this, I don't have a strong preference between zero and QuickBooks, kind of learning them both, although I'm leaning towards zero. If you ask me again in one month, I might give you a much stronger opinion.
00:26:31
Speaker
But for newer business owners, I actually am just a big fan of using a spreadsheet. I have a template in my program. And the reason for this is spreadsheets pretty quick. It's pretty easy. If you don't have a lot of income and you don't have a ton of expenses, it only takes you about 10 minutes a month to do your bookkeeping. And you don't have to take like the hours of time it takes to learn the software. So I recommend starting there and progressing the software as you grow.
00:26:57
Speaker
Cool. And it's good to like look at the worksheet, just actually see like where your numbers are going. Right, exactly. And if like, because a lot of newer business owners, like if you're a newer photographer, you know, like book one wedding in a month, you're very excited. Like for portrait sessions, that's only five transactions you need to put on your spreadsheet. And then you have maybe you're paying for HoneyBook, you're paying for like my program, you're paying for
00:27:23
Speaker
calendly and like four other things and then you have lunch with the business friend like twice a month. That's only like 10 to 15 expense transactions. You can manually enter those in about five minutes. Oh, you make it so easy. Okay, take us away Braden with mistake number three.
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah, so now we talked about our two primary ones. The rest of these are all kind of less common, less people are making these mistakes, but still important to talk about. So one of them is forming an LLC in the wrong state. It's a very bizarre issue if you read, and if you get enough of those marketing bro, like form a cryptocurrency business, like Facebook ad or YouTube ad, I think you probably know what I'm talking about. Yeah.
00:28:14
Speaker
There's a lot of hype around forming LLCs in states like Delaware and Wyoming. Those are like the big two. Generally, that's terrible advice. You want to form an LLC in the state where you work and live. Otherwise, you would need to then register your LLC as a foreign corporation in your home state, which is a pain in the ass. Then you have filing obligations in both states. So that's a smaller issue. I've seen several people do that though. Okay.
00:28:42
Speaker
Because they wanted to save on taxes.
00:28:45
Speaker
Yeah, because they think they're gonna save on taxes, right? But so California is a very expensive, California is a very expensive state, right? So ideally I would love to not have to pay income taxes here. I would also love to not have to pay my LLC annual fee here as well. But if I form my LLC in Delaware, I'm still gonna have to file income taxes in California because this is where I live, right? And I'm still gonna have to register my LLC here because again, this is where I live and where I work.
00:29:15
Speaker
So now I'm doing filings in California and Delaware when I could just be doing them in California. It doesn't make any sense. Okay, cool. Don't do that, guys. And I see a lot of these issues too, when people like form their LLCs places like Legal Zoom.
00:29:34
Speaker
they don't know what they're doing. Um, not necessarily legal, legal zoom. It's just that like legal zoom doesn't really give you any good advice. So it's a dumb service. I could, I could go on and on about that. Okay. So the next mistake would be forming a single member LLC rather than a multi-member LLC.
When to Form an S-Corp
00:29:51
Speaker
And again, this might sound pretty obvious, but, um, I've had several students in the past who had business partners. They were in partnerships
00:29:59
Speaker
But then they accidentally formed a single member LLC, which meant their business partner was not on any of the legal paperwork. And you can imagine what kind of problems that would create. So that's another one. Okay.
00:30:11
Speaker
Another issue would be forming an escort too early. This is probably a more common mistake. Just a common months ago, I had a new student join my program who formed her business. She hired an accountant. The accountant formed an escort for her like day one of her business, but did not put her on payroll.
00:30:34
Speaker
And one of the requirements when you have an S-corp is that you're on payroll. So I frankly don't know what that accountant was doing because that was incorrect. So S-corps are great. S-corps help us save taxes. But S-corps have certain requirements and they require us to have a certain level of profit. So typically we're not looking into forming S-corps until we're making 50, 60, $70,000 in profit.
00:31:00
Speaker
don't do the single-member LLC, do the team member? Multi-member, if you have a business partner. If you're a solo business owner, you need a single-member LLC. If you have a business partner, you need a multi-member LLC. Got it. Then five, don't file for the S Corp too early. Yes. S Corp is different from LLC.
00:31:26
Speaker
Yeah, so an S corp is actually a tax status. It's not a type of entity. You form an LLC and then you elect for your LLC to be taxed as an S corp. So you get different tax status. But when you do this, you have to put yourself on payroll, which means you actually take a salary just like you would through any other company.
00:31:45
Speaker
And if you can't, if you're not making enough money in your business to pay yourself what's called a reasonable minimum salary under the law, then you have no business being an S corp just yet. Okay. I have a lot to think about today. Okay. Yeah. I have a lot to think about, but we're going to go into rapper fire questions. So I get to know you a little bit more. Okay.
00:32:10
Speaker
So, I know these numbers light you up a lot, but what else lights you up? What are your hobbies? What do you like to do for fun? Well, I'm currently training for my fourth Iron Man Triathlon, if anyone is familiar with what that is. I actually, at the time of recording this, I was supposed to do an Iron Man Triathlon last weekend in Sacramento.
00:32:35
Speaker
But the day we were there, they had a single day record for rain. So I was standing, it was about 5 30 a.m. 40 degrees, pouring rain, heavy winds, standing outside in my wetsuit about to start this like 12 to 15 hour race. And they canceled it.
00:32:55
Speaker
That was a bummer, but it was unsafe conditions to be doing that kind of thing in any way. So we've now had to defer our race to Iron Man Tulsa in May. So now I'll tell people this is my fifth time training for an Iron Man, but it will be Iron Man, fingers crossed. Wow. Yeah. Just from looking at you, you look pretty in shape and you look like you have like a West Elm vibe in your office because you worked there.
00:33:20
Speaker
Yeah, so I would say I actually work with a fair amount of interior designers. That's fun. I have a lot of many varied interests and hobbies. Ironman, I do CrossFit. When I'm not training, I like to play tennis and volleyball and basketball. I was a very hyperactive child, as you can imagine, so I moved to get my energy out.
00:33:42
Speaker
But other than that, I love shopping. I love interior design. My husband and I have three little tiny doggies, but at the gym, you'll usually just find us on the couch watching Netflix. Oh yeah, me and my husband too. Why do you think entrepreneurs are so allergic to numbers?
00:34:10
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not really sure. I mean, I wouldn't say that it's all entrepreneurs, but definitely a lot of creative entrepreneurs, right? Of course, like I have friends who were accounting and finance majors who went into like the wedding industries, very different for them. But honestly, I think it's less of a problem with business owners and more of a problem with
00:34:35
Speaker
the industry as a whole, like there aren't very many people who teach these topics in an approachable manner, so. Yeah, and you do that, so you feel the gap. Yeah, I also, I have, if anyone goes to my website, I have a photo, I had my brand photographer take a photo of me with her extra camera, like looking at it very confused, and basically I have some web copy on there that's like, I have no idea how to work all the buttons on this camera, like you shouldn't expect to immediately know how to do your own taxes.
00:35:02
Speaker
Oh, I love that. That's so true. It gives me chills. They're all learn skills. Let's see. Since I have a podcast, do you have any advice for me to get the name out? Any tips for you to get the name out on your own podcast? Yep.
00:35:20
Speaker
My biggest tip would be to go interview on other podcasts. I don't even remember. Did we pitch your podcast or did you ask me to come on your podcast? I just DM'd you and you DM'd me so fast. I love that about you.
00:35:37
Speaker
Yeah, so I love it. Anytime someone asks me to come on their podcast, that's amazing because we actually, my virtual assistant sends out three podcast pitches per week. We have a certain goal of interviews that we like to do each quarter. And so anytime someone approaches me, it's less work on our end.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yeah. Because the thing is, is like, if I go do a speaking engagement, or I do a Facebook Live, or I do an Instagram Live, and I pitch my podcast, hopefully some people will go check it out. But some of those people may not be podcast listeners. I know if I'm on your podcast, people clearly already have the podcast app, they're listening, it's much easier to get them to jump over. So I think the best way, or one of the best ways to market your podcast is to go promote it to other podcast audiences.
00:36:23
Speaker
Thank you for that advice. I'm going to tell my VA to do that right after we got the call. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, what is your woo factor? What is your unfuck, your biz factor, Braden factor? What makes you stand up?
00:36:39
Speaker
Well, my tagline, you're a gay best friend here to help you get your legal intent. Yeah, love that. That probably makes me a lot different. I also have, and this is like actually a good and a bad thing, but I have quite aggressive branding for the industry that we're in. I actually talked to, I have a friend who does Facebook ad consulting.
00:37:01
Speaker
And I said most of the people that I work with, you know, they all have like the pink branding they have, it's like a lot of brushes and golds, you know, all the wedding industry kind of stuff. And then my ads are like, unfuck your biz. And it's all like black and navy. And they probably just immediately think I'm like a bro marketer. So definitely stand out. But then also it can be a little bit of a challenge as well. And that's why I really have to work on getting like making sure I have a strong brand voice to go along with the imagery.
00:37:30
Speaker
Well, I'm very feminine and I'm very attracted to your brand. I even showed some of my friends and I was like, oh, I love your brand. And you show up on IG, IG live and IG stories all the time. So you're on it. I think it works really well with people who are introduced to me like through someone else. I just think it's different when you're just like visually looking at it and you know who I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I got it. Okay. Can you ask me a question?
00:37:58
Speaker
Um, what made you what made you want to start your podcast? I wanted to start my podcast because I became a coach during pandemic. I've been doing the wedding photography thing for 12 years. So I thought this was a good platform to learn grow and grow my audience and just to
00:38:19
Speaker
kind of, it's a very intimate way of networking, which is what I found out in the past couple months.
Impact of the Pandemic on Photography Business
00:38:26
Speaker
Like I get to know. So I have a really good question for you. So doing coaching, like doing coaching through the pandemic, what do you think was the biggest mistake you saw other wedding professionals making with regard to cancellations, refunds and postponements?
00:38:41
Speaker
It's hard to say mistakes because it's the pandemic, like no one knew it was going to happen. But I think I kind of screwed myself because I let everyone reschedule. And then I normally don't do back-to-back weddings. That's why I've been in business for 12 years, because I still love love. But if you keep doing it back-to-back, you literally hate love.
00:39:01
Speaker
Because you just burnt out so everyone was rescheduling and I was letting everyone do it So then I'm doing back to back to back weddings with two kids and a baby and it's just miserable So I don't know if maybe I could have just gave some of the weddings to associates I think that would have been
00:39:22
Speaker
better on my end just to see myself. Yeah, because I really, this year was just so crazy, like, you know, wedding, wedding season on steroids. And it was, it was hard for me because I was maybe like not working for a year. And then it really hit me hard. And I wasn't used to it. And I like literally had a panic attack, like an engagement session.
00:39:44
Speaker
I was just so overworked, like I was literally like freaking out for no reason. And then I was working every day and now I'm kind of like used to the grind, but you know, it was just such a shock to the system.
00:40:01
Speaker
I mean, it's been just basically kind of like a shitty situation that most of us can't really help, right? But it's going to be, I mean, I think it's for a lot of people, it's going to be like that through next year, honestly. I don't think it's going to get back to the quote unquote normal until 2023 because
00:40:19
Speaker
You know, a lot of people who are supposed to get married last year, postponed to this year, and then a lot of those people also postponed next year. It's kind of this two-week or two-year cycle. What I've seen, though, is it's really changed the way people look at their contracts, specifically all those provisions that I mentioned. And, you know, I'm an eternal optimist, so sometimes it's annoying to talk about, like, the positives that's going to come out of this
00:40:47
Speaker
situation because no, if we're going to be honest, it's like mostly negatives. But I will say like one positive is it is really going to shore up the way people think about their contracts. And certainly with the way they think about their refunds. That's something I talk about all the time, is it's not enough just to be focusing about make like focusing on making money all the time. We got to focus on all right, well, how are we going to keep that money that we're making? Well, it's sure that you're not doling out refunds left, right and center.
00:41:13
Speaker
That was the big difference I saw last year. A lot of my friends who were really seasoned in the industry that had solid contracts, they had a lot of respect from their clients and really great communication. They seem to get postponed, like they seem to handle their postponements pretty well. And a lot of the newer business owners were giving out refunds all the time. And then before they knew it, they were, you know, they were out of money and really struggling. Yeah, that's so sad.
00:41:40
Speaker
Wow. Okay. That's, yeah, that's something to think about.
Planning for Success in the Wedding Industry
00:41:44
Speaker
Let's just give us like the last advice from you for like wedding professionals and where to find you and then tell us more about how to work with you again.
00:41:56
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, my last piece of advice is to take your business seriously, right? I mean, if you're listening to this podcast, like you probably don't really need that advice, but a lot of people tend to put off like the things that it is that I talk about and we don't want to do that. I also don't
00:42:17
Speaker
Sometimes it's hard for me to talk about all these mistakes too because people get overwhelmed. They think they need to do everything all at once. That's not the case. This is where I will transition into my program pitch. That's why I like to teach things in a very step-by-step manner. So we're going to think about covering one thing at a time, which is what we do in the ProfitRx. So again, if people want all the information on that, they can go to the ProfitRx.com.
00:42:42
Speaker
to join. Also subscribe to the Unfuck Your Biz with Braden podcast. And then I am very active on Instagram. So people want to follow me. They can follow me. It's at Braden, B-R-A-D-E-N, Adam, like the biblical character, Drake, like the rapper. That's my full name, Braden. Follow me. That's a cool rapper name too.
00:43:05
Speaker
Yeah, shoot me a message if you have any questions about the programs or you just want to say hi. I love to send voice memos in my DM. So if you message me, I'll send you back. Yeah, and you truly are like the bestie on Instagram because you're always on stories giving like really cool advice and you're just like talking when you're running or at the grocery market. It's so cool. It's so cool.
00:43:29
Speaker
I get I'm actually now I'm starting marathon training. So after you're running like 10 miles every day, you start to get bored. So I just do the time. Oh, that's so funny. I do a lot of my social on the treadmill.
00:43:42
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, it's a good way to multitask while being productive. Yes, I'm definitely going to recommend you to all my students because I teach more about the sales call and the leads. And then you talk more about the money side and all the legal stuff and the taxes. So I definitely don't teach that. So I'll hand them over to you.
00:44:03
Speaker
Good, good. Yeah, that's one of the things I talk about a lot. Like you I mean, you have to have good marketing, right? You got to learn from people who are going to teach you how to convert people on your sales calls, how to make the revenue. But also, like if your revenue seems to be disappearing all the time, then clearly revenue generation is not the only thing that we need to talk about what you're doing with that money once you actually get it. So you and I can be like the one to punch to cover both of those things.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yes, yes. Yeah, the one two five. Boom, boom. Yes. Knock you out. Cool. Well, I love this conversation, Braden. And thank you. I know you're a busy guy. So good luck on your Iron Man. And I wish you the best of luck. Thank you. You're welcome.
00:44:50
Speaker
Thanks for joining me this week on Get a Heck Yes with Carissa Wu. Make sure to follow, subscribe, leave a review, or tell a friend about the show. Take a screenshot and post to IG. Tag me. Also, don't forget to download my free guide on how to become a lead generating machine. See you next time, wedding pros.