How to not Over Pay the IRS to scale your business and SEE MORE PROFIT!!

Summary

In this conversation, Arthur Willis, an accountant and financial advisor, discusses his journey to becoming an accountant and the importance of accounting in business. He emphasizes the value of experience and recommends starting in the job market before venturing into entrepreneurship. Arthur explains the role of different accounting positions, such as CPAs, bookkeepers, and tax accountants. He highlights the importance of understanding taxes and the need for an accountant to manage finances and ensure compliance. Arthur also addresses the lack of financial education in the black and brown community and the importance of educating and inspiring others about accounting and financial management. The conversation focuses on the importance of financial education and accountability, particularly in the context of accounting and business management. The guest, Arthur Willis, emphasizes the need for individuals and entrepreneurs to take control of their finances and understand the basics of accounting. He highlights the risks of relying solely on accountants and financial advisors without actively participating in financial decision-making. Willis also discusses the significance of building a solid foundation in business and the value of paying oneself as a business owner. He encourages individuals to establish good financial habits and organization, and emphasizes the potential for growth and success through proper financial management.

Takeaways

Experience in the job market is valuable before starting a business as an accountant.
Different accounting positions have specific roles and responsibilities.
Understanding taxes and compliance is crucial for business success.
Financial education is lacking in the black and brown community and needs to be addressed.
Accountants play a vital role in managing finances and helping individuals and businesses make informed financial decisions. Financial education and accountability are crucial for individuals and entrepreneurs to take control of their finances.
Relying solely on accountants and financial advisors without actively participating in financial decision-making can be risky.
Building a solid foundation in business, including paying oneself, is essential for long-term success.
Establishing good financial habits and organization is key to effective financial management.
Proper financial management can lead to growth and success in business.

Chapters

00:00 The Journey to Becoming an Accountant and Financial Advisor
01:26 The Importance of Experience and Starting in the Job Market
03:04 Understanding Different Accounting Positions
04:23 The Significance of Taxes and Compliance
09:16 Addressing the Lack of Financial Education in the Black and Brown Community
14:59 The Role of Accountants in Managing Finances and Making Informed Decisions
24:35 The Importance of Financial Education and Accountability
26:04 The Risks of Relying Solely on Accountants
28:56 Taking Your Finances Seriously
30:25 Establishing Good Financial Habits and Organization
32:22 The Consequences of Poor Financial Management
41:40 Building a Solid Foundation in Business

Keywords

accounting, accountant, financial advisor, entrepreneurship, experience, CPA, bookkeeper, tax accountant, taxes, financial education, black and brown community, financial education, accounting, finances, accountability, business management, financial decision-making, foundation, paying oneself, financial habits, organization, growth, success

Chapters

• 0:00 The Journey to Becoming an Accountant and Financial Advisor
• 1:26 The Importance of Experience and Starting in the Job Market
• 3:04 Understanding Different Accounting Positions
• 4:23 The Significance of Taxes and Compliance
• 9:16 Addressing the Lack of Financial Education in the Black and Brown Community
• 14:59 The Role of Accountants in Managing Finances and Making Informed Decisions
• 24:35 The Importance of Financial Education and Accountability
• 26:04 The Risks of Relying Solely on Accountants
• 28:56 Taking Your Finances Seriously
• 30:25 Establishing Good Financial Habits and Organization
• 32:22 The Consequences of Poor Financial Management
• 41:40 Building a Solid Foundation in Business

Transcript

 (00:00.238)
Welcome back, OPA to OPM. We got another great episode for you. I got my brother Arthur Wills here, accountant, financial advisor. What's going on, Brody? I'm good, man. How you doing? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I'm your boy, Kel. I'm here with my two co -hosts. Yes, sir. Let's get it. Alex, another great one. What's going on? Stay male. Yes, yes, sir. So, brother, what made you want to become an accountant and financial advisor?

I was, well maybe one of the accountants, I think I kind of like fell in love with numbers as a kid, you know, like law and division, you know, staying after class with my teacher to always, you know, figure out math problems and stuff like that. And then once I got to college, I kind of like started taking accounting classes. And then from there it was like, wow, like I didn't even know this was a thing. I didn't know anybody even had an accountant. I didn't know accountant was a job for one. So.

I started getting into it and I understand that accountants are like the backbones of every business. So when I understood that, I'm like, wow, this can be kind of profitable. Like if I could be the accountant for any business in the country, like, and that also gives me more like variety of different types of places to work, like as far as like areas and, you know, any job market, because every industry need an accountant. So once I had that realization, I thought that was like, I thought that was the path to go, honestly.

So why start a business as an accountant and not why not go work for another company?

Well, I say that you need to first learn. So you should start off working on a CPA firm or you should work under as maybe an accountant assistant or maybe a clerk. You need to get your foot kind of wet type of thing. So I would say it's always good to start in the job market, the nine to five jobs and stuff like that, because you got to get the experience.

 (02:06.733)
You need to learn how to talk to people. You need to learn how to deal with different situations that you can't get from a book. Like I'm talking about real life situations. So that's why I say you should start off in the workforce and then kind of like venture off. Because again, being an accountant ain't easy. Like you need to have the time to work on people projects as well as your personal life. So I say that you need to do both. It's not rather do one or the other. You need to first start off.

in the regular job market and then try to do your own thing because starting off doing your own thing first, for one, it's not that profitable because no one's going to trust you. No one's going to trust you to handle their finances. No one's going to trust you to do their bookkeeping if you've never done it for anyone else. So I think the experience is like the biggest thing. And once you have the experience, then you can move on and start your own practice. So real quick, just for context, because when most people hear accountant, bookkeeper,

CPA, CFP, any of these things, they either get nervous, timid, or bored. Why should someone care about an accountant or why should someone care about these things? Because it's like, all right, I make X amount of dollars. As long as I don't overspend that, I should be good. It's called the Letterman. What's that? The letter guys, they know they got three letters.

the alphabet boys. Yeah, the alphabet boys. I call the letter guys to just kind of like, you know, for people to understand. But yeah, the alphabet boys, that's why. Once you understand what those alphabet boys do, you'll start realizing how much, how important accountant is. When you say alphabet boys, you mean the IRS? absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Once you - The three letter agency. Yeah, once you learn about those guys, you'll start understanding the value in your accountant.

And I say that you understand the value of your account because of taxes. Once you understand that you have to pay taxes on your income, then you understand that you can't just be making all this money and you're just making all this money. You gotta understand that you have to pay your tax to the land. You know what I'm saying? We don't own anything here, so if you wanna make money here, you gotta pay tax here. So if you wanna understand your taxes, you probably wanna hire an accountant. And that's basically just, you know.

 (04:23.917)
managing your books, managing how much money you're making so you know you've taken out enough for taxes. And also if you have employees, you know, because then you have your payroll taxes and your FICA taxes, which is your Medicare and Social Security, those type of things. And I bring that up because everyone wants to have employees. Everyone wants to have this big, giant business. But understand that if you ain't just working with contractors and you want to actually have employees and have certain type of benefits for your employees,

like unemployment, people want to just have contractors. Understand, once you fired that guy, that guy has to go out here and figure out on his own. You hired someone as a W -2, now they have unemployment insurance. Stuff like that is actually looking out for your employees. So that's dividing your accountant, because I look out for your people. Well, my fault to cut you off, but accounting's expensive. Why not just go to HR Block? You go to HR Block.

But then you're not getting that one -on -one. You're not getting that personal relationship. H &R Block, you can go there and get one service. You kind of meet. We're together for a lifetime. You know what I'm saying? So you really got to see the value in the person that doing your books. Because H &R Block has 300 ,000 people that's probably going to them on a daily basis. Kudos to them. But me, I'm local. I don't have 3 ,000 people. I can manage you.

I can manage the people that's coming to me. H &L Block may not make you a priority. You'll be a priority to me. And you'll be a priority to anyone that's an accountant. So don't ever shy away from going to the local smaller guys, because they probably have more time to put into your business. I got a quick question because Alex asked a quick question about people who are nervous about accountants. But he said they're for things like CPAs, bookkeepers, tax accountants, CFPs, and things like that.

A lot of people who are new to entrepreneurship don't know the difference between any of these things. I'll be honest with you, I'll be full -fledged. I struggle with what's the difference between these positions. yeah, absolutely. For one, a CPA is licensed. A bookkeeper is probably someone who's freelancing. And what do each thing, each role does? What are they responsible for? So most times, your CPA is responsible for your taxes. CPA is probably mostly responsible for

 (06:49.869)
everything under the accountant's scope. So for most businesses, you have an accountant department. At the top of your accountant department is probably your CPA. And then under your CPA, you probably have junior accountants. And those junior accountants are probably dealing with your accounts receivable. Those junior accountants are probably dealing with accounts payable. Accounts receivable is money that you're going to receive later. So say if you pay me for a service, but you say, hey man, I got to pay you next month, but I'm going to write on this statement.

saying I'm gonna sign it, saying I'm gonna pay you next month. Now my books, I have accounts receivable for this payment. So you have junior accounts working on stuff like that. So Klarna. So Klarna's like, all right, I'm gonna get the money to you a little bit later. Pay now, pay later kind of thing. Yeah, so that would fall under accounts receivable. Okay. So there's actually the - Net 30s and net 60s. Net 30 and net 60s, net 90s. Exactly, so those all follow under accounts receivable. And then on the back end of that, for the person that's paying,

which is you that's paying me, that's be accounts payable. So there's an apartment called accounts payable that's gonna pretty much make sure that everything that you're saying that you're supposed to pay, all the contracts that's supposed to be paid, all the servicemen that's supposed to be paid, they're making sure that those payments are being paid. They don't go over 30 days, they don't go over 60 days. There's a department for that. So when you say what are the differences between the roles, those are different roles. You have accounts receivable roles, you have accounts payable roles, you have people that...

only work on taxes. So then when you talk about bookkeeping, bookkeeping's a little separate. Bookkeeping's something that you deal with on a month -to -month basis. And this month -to -month basis is consistent of your profit and losses. And your profit and losses can be a statement. So this is essentially your revenue from all your services and all your income minus your expenses and you have your net income. And that's mainly what bookkeepers work on.

So as well as like, you know, record selling, your bank statements, things like that. So there actually is plenty of roles under the accounting field, whether it's payroll, you know, it can get pretty vast. And it's actually dealing with everything you have to do. Even on the marketing team, you might need an accountant just for the marketing team. You might need an accountant just for like the brand ambassadors. Like there should be accountant involved in every process of your business.

 (09:16.366)
Let's say somebody's getting into business tomorrow and they get QuickBooks set up because that's just what they see. They're just like, QuickBooks, all right, cool. And they don't have the most amount of money coming in. Is it necessary for that person to have to worry about a thing like an accountant and a bookkeeper? Or is it something where it's like, I get to it when I start making money? It's definitely important to think about it when you first start your business, absolutely. Like, because again,

taxes. If you plan on making money, you plan on paying taxes. So you need to talk to an accountant regarding that. Now hiring an accountant when you first start your business, now that may be something that you want to like, you know, reconsider or possibly not do because it is expensive and you haven't made no money yet. But what I do advise you to do is talk to a financial advisor and get like a financial plan. Because maybe in your financial plan, three months from now, I want to hire an accountant or a year from now, you want to hire an accountant.

Just make sure that accountant is in your plan. Don't just eliminate him from the plan. It's something that you can work around and do your own, but make sure you have an accountant in your plan. Because he actually knows things that can help you. That's dope. When we got started in the interview, we really just jumped into it, but I really want to know who are you and where did you grow up and why did you want to be an accountant? Shoot, man.

I'm Arthur, you know, I'm from Maryland. Look man, like I see the value in like the lack of knowledge out here. So like there's a lot of people that don't understand like accounting, it's like a foreign language to them. You can show someone a tax form, a 1040, 1040 is individual tax form. You can put that tax form right here in front of somebody and they gonna think it's like, what am I looking at? But it's in English.

It's telling you line by line what each line is, adding up a total at the bottom. I think there's no urgency to learn about this type of stuff. And that kind of like, it puts me in a space where like, wow man, I want to put the message out there. I want to make it cool to be an accountant. I want to make it like a thing to seek this information. Because how many people want to wait till the end of the year to get a refund check?

 (11:41.774)
And my thing is like, why are you planning for one time to get this lump sum of money? You could have an accountant that can actually manage your money so you can get those lump sum money throughout the year. You can actually plan to go on vacation when you want. You only plan to go on vacation because you're getting this money at a certain amount of time. That's not okay. I'm trying to teach people to just plan your life out so you can do it when you want to. Okay, you said something about like,

my phone to keep asking questions. But you said something about, like you said a sheet of paper, a lot of people wouldn't know how to read this. The 1040. Yeah, like a 1040, but even just any accounting sheet, like a lot of people don't know how to read it. And that's got something to me that I've been thinking about, like people don't know like math and accounting. It's a language. Like a lot of people want to learn like French or ...

Mandarin, all these different languages around the world, like literature languages, but math is a language in itself. It's a universal language. It's a universal language as well. And so a lot of us, especially black, brown kids, we don't grow up learning how to read and talk in math. Can you speak on that? Absolutely, man. It's not a necessity. What a necessity is, is to listen and follow directions.

And those type of teachings can hinder you. Because if you only know about, listen and do as you're told, that means no one's telling you that you're actually supposed to pursue different ideas as well. So it does create a box when you're a child, when you only learn about five things. And you learn about these five things all the way up until the end of high school. What are those five things?

reading, math, social study, science, and health. You understand? So you learn math, but it's not the math that you're going to use as an adult. I'm talking about accounting and math. Those are two different things. Math isn't involved in accounting, but when I talk about accounting, I'm talking about financial statements. I'm talking about profit and loss. I'm talking about accounts received, but I'm talking about accounts paid. I'm talking about payroll. That's what I, when I say accounting, math, algebra.

 (14:02.062)
Trigonometry. I find value in the life skills. These are life skills, the accounting thing. The math is going to help you pass the test. I'm trying to help you save money on your mortgage or something. Because I'm going to put you in a position to know what your value is. If you think that you're just supposed to go out here and buy a $500 ,000 house and pay whatever they tell you to pay, that's on you. But if you know something about interest rates, you know something about ...

how much money you bring in compared to how much money you're spending. You're like, it's a mindset. You're never gonna wanna spend more than what you're gonna make. So creating that type of mindset is where I'm trying to influence. I'm not trying to influence people to do anything besides that. People need to be aware of their spending. People need to be aware of planning out the year instead of planning out the day. I'm putting that into the air.

So, yeah.

If someone was looking to, you know, become an accountant, what...

 (15:17.39)
Step one is to first get familiar with the Circuit 230. Just get familiar with that. Get familiar with the IRS publications. Obviously, first just get familiar with that. And once you get familiar with that, then I would definitely recommend looking up the requirements for a CPA exam and then start studying. And then from there, once you start studying, I advise you to probably try to find some type of internship.

you know, get some experience and then through that experience, you know, leverage your time so you can actually take the test for the CPA. And then I think that you're good from there. Being an accountant is hard. Being consistent is hard. I'm sorry, being an accountant is not hard. Being consistent is hard. Not my bad. Like being consistent is very hard. You know why? Because who wants to do the same thing every day? I do. And that's why I separate myself from everyone else. That's why I wanted to.

create more avenues and more lanes so people can find me. I truly think that the message I'm trying to put out here can help my community. It's just like people gotta see it. What is something that you would say, because we're talking about the education piece, right? Your main thing is to educate and inspire. When it comes to someone who's like, all right, cool, maybe I need an account. Maybe I need a bookkeeper.

But there's a ton out there. How do they separate and figure out what's a good one and what's not a good one? Because I've had a CPA myself. Right? Smart guy. I try to be. But even still, my CPA ended up messing me over. And now I'm having to go back and backtrack and a lot of stuff like that. And a lot of people have a lot of sour taste put in their mouth because they're like, my such and such, I had to pay hundreds of dollars for this service and it didn't work out that well.

and he ended up having to owe a lot of money in taxes and stuff like that. So how do you kind of figure out who's good and who's not so good? I'd definitely say referrals. I think referrals is like the number one thing, like referrals. Like someone either recommends you to this accountant, just looking up an accountant online, you know, make it seem like, I don't know what he can do, but at the same time, I think referral is my answer to that.

 (17:41.902)
you know, someone that you know that had worked with them and, all right, they did good work with you, so they should do good work with me. So that's what I think, that's my answer. Okay, now I have a question for that. You say referrals, but what if you're a brand new accountant and you don't have anyone to refer you? So how do you get that work to begin with, to get those, to build those referrals? See, and now that's where the experience comes in. If I don't have any referrals, I'll tell you where I've been working.

and the type of people I've been working for and then that I build off of their background. So the CPA firm I work for, I will recommend that you visit that CPA firm and look at their work and then come back and say, okay Arthur, you know what? I just read all their past financial statements. I just looked at all the clients that they've been working with. I definitely want to work with you now. So in other words, you leveraged their credibility. Absolutely.

I'm getting other people's audience. Absolutely. Interesting. How you guys feel about that? Leveraging your audience. no, we love it. That's why it's called OP8, OPM, other people's audience to other people's money. It's all about leverage, baby. Understand, understand. I'm going to start writing my closing statement down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, it's a good thing that you mentioned that because at the end of the day, it's like you're able to leverage the company who's built their reputation for 15, 20, 30, 40 years and say, look,

they obviously wouldn't hire me if they didn't deem me as credible. And now that they hired me, I have to abide by their rules, I have to abide by their policies, procedures, how they go about things, their SOPs, and the way that they go about their thought process. And I get to extend that to you as a CPA or an accountant or anything like that. So you're really able to...

magnify what it is that you're doing to then get that initial client base, but then once you get that, it's more about nurturing. So how, as an accountant, because again, most people are just like, I pay this accountant two, three, $400 one time, and that's it. I don't think I should need to see them again. Is that true or is that something that's an ongoing relationship? I do want to touch on one thing, like with the last point.

 (19:59.31)
You know, it's just like getting a new job. This new job is essentially like a new client. You know what I'm saying? So you have to have a resume. So I'm using my resume from my past job experiences to get me a new job. Same thing with new client. I'm going to show you my resume of who I work with to bring you on. And now to answer your question. So I start with just a plan. We do the plan and that's the first thing. If you want to follow that plan, let's follow the plan. The next step in the plan is maybe, okay,

Let's reconcile for the month. All right, let's do that. All right, so in three months from now, let's make sure that we did the same thing you want to do three months from now. And now guess what? Three months has came. It's been a quarter. Now we need to look at the quarter statements for the year. Most people don't understand that corporate businesses break down their businesses by four quarters a year. So once we get to that three months, then I know, all right, man, you know we got quarter one down, so let's go to quarter two. Let's go to quarter three.

quarter four. Well now we have quarter four, let's get prepared for taxes. Now we did taxes. Guess what? Now let's do our annual compliances, which is annual reports. Most states you have to file an annual report of your income for the year. Now you have your annual reports. Now guess what? We have employees. Now we got to send out 1099s. Now we got, or send out W2s. Now we also have to make sure that we actually document the proper

payroll taxes for employees and then submitting 940s. So just a little nugget, if you're a corporate business out here, you're supposed to be submitting 940s every quarter. It's just so like, it's a lot to do. So it's not just a one -time service. It's all about how invested you are to your business. Cause I can scale out your business to run efficient, to have a full scale account department in your business. It's up to you if you want that much. If you just want a bookkeeper, I'll just be a bookkeeper. If you just want me to

help you out with a financial plan, let's do that. If you want me to just go over your bank statements to make sure that you're not overly spending, I could do that too. But if you need someone to be your accountant hired on a yearly basis, we can also do that. So how I explain it to my services, break it down by daily, break it down by weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. And then you tell me which of these services you want and it'll be create packages for you.

 (22:27.406)
Just to get, so just kind of like diving in on my own personal.

there's more to this than just numbers or math, because I know that's what inspired you to want to become an accountant. And then also, what made you want to start educating the black and brown community? Shoot, man. The first part of your question, I got screwed over with my own finances from someone that I trusted. Well, I ain't trust, from someone that I thought knew what they were doing.

And honestly, man, for me, it's not that that person didn't know what they was doing. It's that that person didn't educate me on what was going on. Like oftentimes you pay someone for a service, whether it be like, you know, bookkeeping, taxes, payroll, whatever it is, but you don't know what they did. So my thing was like, why didn't he explain to me what was going on? Because if I go get a burger, they're going to tell me everything on that burger.

You know, if I get my car cleaned, they're gonna tell me everything they used to clean my car. If I go anywhere, they're gonna break it down. But for some reason, for some reason, when it comes to like accounting and finances, people don't ever explain it. They don't ever break it down. They'll never tell you how it works. So I just found like that was just amazing to me. That like no one ever talks about it. Then I realized that it wasn't that no one talked about it because no one knew. No one knew what it was. No one even...

even thought about it because there was nothing to think about. And when I say no one, I'm talking about people in my community. Of course, there are people that do know, I'm just not part of that community. So I realized that my community doesn't know. So I wasn't going to be selfish and move over to a community that does know, which would benefit me because why would I not want to be around people that know what I know? No, I want to help. I want to be the solve to the problem.

 (24:35.886)
I'm not trying to create these generational curses that we've had over these years. Once I realized that it was a lack of education in accounting and finances, then I kind of took it personal. Because I was like, man, I don't know what anyone else's purpose out here is, but my purpose out here is to help. My purpose out here is to educate. Yeah, I want to make money, but man.

We gotta get somewhere as a race, excuse me, as a community. As a race too. As a race too. I was gonna say that's a good point because we've seen stories like Steve Harvey and Mary J. Blige where their personal financial person or their accountant or whoever. Fat Joe. Fat Joe, right? They didn't know what was going on. And because of that, they were just like, am I good? Yeah, all right, cool, we good then. But then that person was going behind their back.

and doing things and now this person is on the hook for the actions of their accountant or whoever their financial person is. For more clarification on what Alex is talking about, so if that Joe, Steve Harvey, they had an accountant, right? And so they thought that those accountants were paying off their tax bills at the end of the year. Okay. But they weren't. So those accountants were actually stealing money from them. And so just because...

you're ignorant of what's going on, the IRS doesn't care about your ignorance. They absolutely don't. They want to know, okay, they were still on okay, but where's our money? And so if you don't have a good answer for them, they're going to lock your ass up. And that's what happened to Fat Joe. Steve Harvey, I think Steve Harvey was able, because he talked about it in Vest Fest. Shameless plug on that one, but it is what it is. Shout out to EYL. And so he was able to negotiate...

or something with the IRS. And so he was able to avoid jail. But yeah, so just because you think your accountant is doing something, you always got to double check, and especially with your freedom and your money isn't involved. And if your accountant steals from you, I mean, there's no way to get that money back. Yeah. Almost, I wouldn't say it was happening to me, but I had last year, I had an accountant.

 (27:01.966)
And had I not known, like you said, could have got screwed over very easily. And because I caught it early -ish, it was like, no, we're going to cut this off, right? Cut this relationship because it's not going where I needed to go. And the reason I say that is because my taxes weren't filed. I gave them all the documentation in September. And then when I got everything else in January, February, gave it to them already there electronically.

And when my taxes weren't done in May, I'm like, yo, we got an issue. Why my taxes not done by now? And he's like, we got to do this and we got to do that. And he just kept spinning me week after week after week after week and month after month. And it got to the point where I'm like, yo, what's the holdup? And he's like, well, you want a depreciation. So let's throw on this stuff off because I had a house or I have a house.

Now he's like, now we got to rearrange all this other extra stuff. And it's like, again, it's when you don't have somebody on your side to show you what a good job is, to walk you through the process, to say, this is why we're taking these actions. You need to know this because if you don't take your finances serious, nobody else will. So I'm here to educate you. And it's very rare to come across somebody who's in the financial space, who's willing to take those extra steps. Because to talk to somebody who's...

like ignorant and not to me in like the meaning way, but lack of knowledge definition. Right. It's 2024. Somebody who doesn't know and you're trying to educate them. They're just like, you're throwing a lot of words, a lot of numbers and a lot of things and a lot of forms at me. Can't you just do it? And it's like, no, you need to know this. This is your finest. This is your livelihood. This is your estate, basically.

I completely agree with you and thank you. Thank you. Because it's not often that people show appreciation for what I do. Because again, man, people just want the job done. Like you said, they just want to pay you and get it done. It's a joyment I get when people ask questions. Because that means you're trying. You're trying to learn. How often do people just do? But when you ask questions,

 (29:26.062)
That's reinsurance for me that you want to actually do this. When you want to like, when I explain something to you and you say, okay, and then next week I got explained again, I love it. You know why? Because we're building a relationship. That means you're going to help the next person. I see the value in that. So yeah, man, like I just want to like really bring more people to my platform and help people like, like create the smalls...

Small routines. You gotta have the small routines done early. You gotta already be pulling your bank statements every month. You gotta already be knowing what expenses you're supposed to be spending this month. And if you got those things under wraps, that's kinda half the battle. For me at least, for someone who just getting to their finances, if you're actually going back to checking on, excuse me, you're going back and checking on what you've done just in the past month, you're doing good already.

people go the whole year and then ask someone about their finances. And like that can hinder you. It hinders people. It hinders people so much, especially when they have loans, especially when they wanna actually get like, get a loan. Like come on now. People don't even understand that if you want a loan, you gotta show some type of history of paying something back. If you haven't even noticed that you've been paying maybe your credit card bill late every month because...

you ain't know that your post date ain't posted on a certain date, you would never know. And guess what? Until someone tell you, your credit score gonna keep dropping and you're not gonna be approved for the money that you want because you're not on top of your finances. So no, I'm not a credit guy, I'm just a accountability type of guy. It's in the word, accountant. It all flows into the same thing. So the small routines that you do on a month to month basis, on a day to day even,

Excuse me, on a day -to -day basis, on a day -to -day basis, you should be aware of what you're spending. It should never be no frivolous spending. Like, we're all grown here. Even if you're under 18, you should always understand the value of your money, because you shouldn't go out here and go get some blissiagas when you're only making $1 ,000 a month. Where is the business sense in that? Are you being profitable?

 (31:53.006)
You want to be profitable in your own life. Who wants to just come out even every month? yeah, I came out zero this month, but I ain't got paid nobody, but I ain't got nothing coming in. You don't want to be like at the end of the year. You don't want to have to pay all this money in taxes just to get a refund back for the same amount of money you paid in taxes. You know what I'm saying? It's ridiculous because it's been going on for years and people ain't catch on to it yet. And when I say what's been going on, people have been struggling.

with debt and finances because they're choosing not to properly manage their money. They're choosing to. There's people out here that know how they got in their situations and just cool with it. They just cool with it. I'm just gonna go get another job and just, you know, don't worry about the debt. I'm making a certain amount of money and it's hard for me to save money, but you know, I got a kid, so I'm worried about my kid. Well, guess what, buddy? Your kid is gonna have the same problems you have because you don't want to teach them.

So that's where I stand on that. You kind of touched on it. So for someone who doesn't know how to manage their, especially for new entrepreneurs who don't know how to manage their money, who doesn't know how to record a profit and loss statement, so what should they be saving to give to you for tax time or ...

for bookkeeping and things like that. What should they be doing? What are they responsible for and what are you responsible for?

So for me, I base things off of how much work you want me to do. So however much work you want me to do, that's what I'm going to charge you on. If you want me, like I was explaining earlier, if you want me to just look over your bank statement, I'll charge you to look over your bank statement. If you want me to run your payroll, then I'm going to charge you to run your payroll every two weeks. You know what I'm saying? And I'm going to explain to you what comes with running payroll.

 (33:58.062)
But yeah, nah, because I was going more so I guess I don't want to say necessarily play devil's advocate because I feel like it's a really good question, but What? I'm pretty sure you have class that come to you say you're doing it based off of like what they want but How do you start to implement what they actually need because I'm pretty sure clients come to you Saying yeah, well

I was told maybe I need to do this or maybe I want this, but after you find out what their goals are or what their financial plan or necessities might be, how do you then tell them what they need? Every business is unique. Every business is unique. Let me start there. But the IRS publications and the accounting standards are the same.

Now there are new rules that what you can and can't do. And I just go about those rules. I don't have a certain standard for your industry. I don't have a certain standard for your industry. Each industry has to follow the same rules. So it's not like I'm customizing my services or not like I'm only doing a certain thing for one business, I'm not known for another. I'm coming at every business with the same knowledge and it's your choice to work with me.

So that's when I say I'm not giving minimum anything. I'm giving you everything I got and it's up to you to take on what you want. Because I got a lot to give and I get and I lay it all out. So you tell me how much you want and we gonna go from there. So that's how that works. So what's the sauce? So when someone's trying to get right, before they get to the point where they can come to you, it's like, yo, I ain't making that much money. I'm just getting started. I'm just trying to maintain the little bit I got.

They might have a clothing business. They might got a plumbing business. They might got some where it's like, yo, I'm just getting started. I ain't got, you know, thousand dollars a month to be paying you to do these services. I ain't got thousand dollars to pay for my taxes. I just need to get by. What services or platforms or, or softwares would you suggest or recommend somebody to just get their feet wet before they go big leagues and come to you and anywhere else?

 (36:22.766)
You can, of course you can say like QuickBooks. You can start off there, but like. Is that for business or personal? well, for business. On the personal side, the first step you need to do if you trying to, if you, okay, so now that's two different avenues, business and personal. With business, I'm going to say you need to pay yourself. You can start there. Because most people, they just make money and you just forget to pay yourself.

Like you think all the money is the profit. No, sir. The money is your wage, whatever your wage is, which is probably 15 to $20 an hour, pay yourself that wage and pay yourself every week or every other week. And that way, that's a good start. Start paying yourself. So that's why I would tell any business out here, if you're trying to like, like kind of get involved in accounting thing, like start paying yourself. And then that will start scaling you to understand like, dang, I got to pay myself this much.

Well, I can't spend this much on supplies because I still got to pay myself. And then you go and have that mindset of like, all right, no matter what, if I have to pay someone, that means I got to see how profitable that person is. Since you work for your business, you know how profitable you are. So you're going to pay yourself what you're worth. Now, if you bring someone on your team, you got to understand what profit do they bring onto the team? How much can you actually spend on them? How much does it cost to spend on that? What's the cost efficiency to have an employee?

or a contractor. So my advice, another advice is whenever you think about bringing someone onto your team, think about how much it would cost you to have them on your team. Don't just look at them like, okay, they can help me with this. No, people want to get paid. I don't ever want to get away from reality. Everyone want to get money. So don't have no one on your team that you can't take care of. So you understand the value in people. You got to have people skills. You got to have customer service skills.

These are the things that like, you know, keep that foundation. I think that's like a big thing for me. Like, make sure you got a solid foundation. Cause I think once you learn enough from me, you can go off and do your own. And that's what I want. I'm not, I'm not trying to spit no game to anyone. I want people to learn. I want you to be a better business and you know, what they say, spread your wings. You know what I'm saying? Like I just view things differently from most entrepreneurs like.

 (38:44.91)
It's not about a dollar, like I really want to help the community.

It's dope, it's dope. Is there anything else? No, I think that kind of satisfies a lot where it's just, at the end of the day, people know everything it is to be successful. We all know, the information's all out there of what it is to be successful. It's up to that person or you who is watching to then take this information, like you said, start paying yourself, start documenting what you have going on, start keeping receipts, start.

electronically filing things so that way you're not scrambling around trying to... And then trying to, okay, all right, let me get this receipt. Right? So you can start sending PDFs off to your account and stuff. Yeah, organization is big. Organization is big, making sure that you have everything in order. And when I say everything in order, having those receipts in order, having your... Say if you have 10 contractors.

You want to know everything about those contractors. You want to know their first and last name, their address, their cell phone number, emails, everything like that. You know why? Because you got to send them a 1099 in the year. You don't want to just have people on your team and you don't know nothing about them. There's a reason to everything. So when you speak on being able to send documents by PDF, that too, man. Having on your computer, having certain files for each client.

or having certain files for each services. You used to get well versed in documenting things on Excel. You get well versed in learning how to manage your file explorer, things like that. These are the small things. I get it. It's very small. It's foundation. A lot of people don't even have a foundation. A lot of people out here just working. You need to establish foundation.

 (40:43.822)
You can make a hundred thousand dollars a year, but guess what, bro? You don't know how to structure your business to move forward from there because you don't have no foundation. You've just been working. You got to have something that's going to be solid. So then guess what? We can build some equity. Cause that's the next step after this. I can't even go beyond like the routine and the finances and the taxes because people got to get that first. Once we understand that, then we can get into equity. Then we can understand how we can sell our business.

Like that's the next step, but we gotta keep it here. We gotta keep it here, because the masses need to understand the basics first. But that is a dope subject to touch on, how to scale and then sell your business, for sure. Yeah, you should do a course on that. Man, you know how many successful businessmen out here have sold their successful business to have another successful business? That's literally, that's the game. That's the real game.

But like, I don't try to get lost in that too much because again, I want you to actually build that Fortune 500 company. I want you to build it up to that. Like, you got to get there first and then we can sell and you know, and the sky's the limit from there, man. Like, the sky's really the limit, man. You look at a lot of these companies, they change ownership every year. You know why? Because people want more money. Like, I want to do this now. now I want to do this. Like, or you become partnership, partnerships end like.

That level is where you want to be, but you can't get there unless you don't have that foundation. You can't get there unless you ain't build that business up to something that's worthy enough for someone to buy or purchase from you. Like, people want to sell their business for what? You don't even have consistent clients. You still out here calling people on a daily basis. You know what I'm saying? You don't even have reliable employees. Why would I want your business? First of all, you can't sell your business if you don't have your bookkeeping in order.

Because you can't even tell what's the value of your business. Exactly. I don't even know how profitable you are. You just say you made this amount of money, but you can't tell me how much money you spent. That's crazy. People are making all this money, but you can't tell me how much money you spent. You probably spent more or close to the amount of money that you made, but you don't know that because you don't have an accountant. Or you not even know your accountant because you're not paying attention to your finances on a month to month basis. It's keys to all this stuff, man.

 (43:09.55)
and you got to unlock the door to your business so you can grow and go to the next one and buy another business. Your specialty could just be buy businesses, but you can't buy a business if you don't know if this is a good business to buy. Exactly. Come on, I'm here to give game and I'm here to teach, but at the same time, bruh, I don't want nobody to be naive to anything out here. I'm not naive to nothing. I just want people to understand how to...

how to read the business and understand your value and the steps to create value. So, yeah, man. That's dope, that's dope, that's dope. If somebody's interested in understanding more, getting questions and stuff like that, how can they reach out to you? Yeah, because you have a lot of gems, bro. So, you reach me on Instagram, WGGTAX. So, WGGTAX.

on Instagram and then you can also reach me on YouTube, WGGTax on YouTube and then my email WGGTax at G -Band .com. Yeah, you know, reach out to me, man. Two things to close out. Real quick, just touch on your show. yes. All right. And also, please tune in to TAC Talk Tuesday. We drop videos every Tuesday. We're here to...

to influence our community and also bridge the gap between different industries to the accounting world to make you understand the relation between both. We tackle a lot of different industries from automotive to hair to manufacturing clothes to nails, you know, so we get pretty vast and we got more guests coming on. So tune in to Talk Talk Tuesday YouTube. And then final question to close this out. I've been starting to access to a lot of people. Got them that.

Starting a business, what would you say was the number one thing you wished you would have known when you first started?

 (45:13.678)
No one thing I wish I would have known when I first started my business.

 (45:20.718)
Well, I wish I would have known I ain't had to use my own money. I wish I would have done that. And there you go. Go into that just a little bit. my baby. Go ahead. Go ahead. Man, it's truly something you should look into. Business credit, loans. And I'm not saying this just to go and get it.

If you really have a real business, a real business plan, it's something that you know is going to work, then take that risk. That risk is what's going to separate you from anybody else because you did it.

Close it out brother. Yeah, I mean that's great. It's like the risk of scaling and because everybody's so used to trying to take money from their job and then put into the business and then they realize wait I still got my life expenses that I got to deal with. I still got to pay for this, got to pay for that, childcare, this, that and it's tough right. A lot of people are struggling and as we go deeper and deeper into this recession a lot of people are struggling to figure out how do they

branch out and grow their business in a way that it's not gonna break the bank. And it's something that they can still pay back. Cause those loans that you take out, you do have to pay those back. And I think that it would be remiss that people don't listen to this, like don't take the advice from this episode and really realize like, yo, you need to have the bookkeeper and the accountant and the financial planner and all these people, because we take our health series, we take our life series.

You got to take your finances serious. And if you don't, what will end up happening is that you start taking all this money in and you got all the money coming in from all these different areas and you're not managing it and it can get out of pocket real quick. So when you get to that point where you have your books in order, you have your accountant happy, you know, you're able to dish out things. You're able to get to that point where

 (47:28.942)
If you're starting, like you said, your accounting business, you can really grow this because now you're nurturing relationships. People trust you and understand like, wait a minute, there's more value to this than just make sure my numbers are in order. Absolutely. Absolutely. So when you get to that point where you can start expanding and bringing in money to these people and allowing them to see the bigger picture, they're not just fighting the survival guide anymore. Now they're really understanding that that is how you

turn other people's money into other people's... shit. Other people's audience to other people's money. It was so, so good. It was so good. I was ready. I was looking. It was all good. It was all good. All right. That was another great episode. Very dope episode. Very good jam. Very, very, lot of good jams. Make sure y 'all go follow Roadie too, man. Make sure. Make sure. And make sure you go follow our Instagram and make sure you hit the like button, the subscribe button, and the notification bell.

to the video as well. All right, please peace.