479. The Biggest Money Mistake Podcasters Make

0:05 Good morning podcasting, Morning Chat. Today is Monday, March 23rd, 2026, and today it's our first Money Mondays with Ralph Estep, and we're taking a closer look at a money issue many creators overlook until it starts creating bigger problems over time. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, etcetera, please share this with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

0:52 Podcasting Morning Chat is powered by Ironic Media, helping podcasters launch, Polish and grow great shows and by content creators Accountant, helping creators build real business behind their content. Good morning again Podcasting Morning Chat. Thank you so much for being here. I am your host Mark Ronick and currently on stage with me. We have a full house. We have Dr. Faye, Jonathan Howard, Alex Baelish, Ralphie Steps, Sid Meadows and also oh, Nick Naulback and also BC Babbles and then Tim and Tide has joined us from the audience today. I was just putting in the chat.

1:44 I was a little moderator button heavy this morning. I just started making everyone moderators of the clubhouse room. So enjoy that green bean and you know what that means if you are on Clubhouse and welcome to our live video streaming audience as well. Today we are getting into a new series and it does not mean that obsession Worthy podcast is going away. It just means we're trying some new things out with the podcasting morning chat and Ralph is going to every so often take the lead on Money Mondays appropriately. So 1st, a couple of quick housekeeping items for you that I think as a podcaster content creator, this is all stuff that is important to you first if you are in the DC area.

2:33 Thursday March 26th, I'm hosting a meet up at Pinstripes in North Bethesda. I'm doing this with my friend Christina Vitovic. She is from Women Getting Visible. This is a free event to attend. It starts at 5:30 PM Eastern. It's a happy hour networking type event. Will meet a lot of cool content creators there. Come join us and you will find a link in the show notes. And just a quick reminder again, Obsession Worthy podcast does return March 30th, that's next Monday. Jonathan Howard will be breaking down an episode of the podcast 20,000 Hertz and their episode Hamilton. It's episode 36 to be specific.

3:20 And again, that will be in the show notes as well. But you can also go to podcastingmorningchat.com/OWP to get that information and listen to other episodes we've done with Jonathan. And finally, I will say this, evaluation episodes are coming back a week from this Thursday. And if you want to apply to have an episode of your podcast evaluated by this friendly team, I say that because I don't want anyone being scared to do this. I have come across some podcasters that say they want to do it, but they're hesitating because they're very fearful of putting themselves out there. But I promise you we are gentle. We are honest, but we are gentle at the same time. So check the show notes for that link or go to podcastingmorningchat.com/eval EVAL. All right, so today we are going to be talking with Ralph Estep, A licensed accountant, a content creator and as many of you know, he runs Content creatorsaccountant.com. And I know that we are going to discuss these money mistakes and probably your biggest one that you see Ralph working with lots of content creators.

4:35 So with that, I will hand the baton to you. Go for it. Good morning, Mark, and thank you so much for having me here today on this beautiful Monday morning. So we're going to start with a simple question for the room. And this is what I do for a living. So I want to get the feel from everybody else, and how many of you currently have your creator income landing in the same account that you use for groceries and everyday spending? This is in a judgement zone. I'm telling you right now. This is extremely common, but I just wanted to hear from everybody. Where are you currently doing this? I'll start, but I do want everybody to chime in here. And I guess what you're talking about here, Ralph, is like, for example, if we have a credit card, are we using that credit card for both groceries and buying the new sure microphone?

5:22 Absolutely. That's exactly what I'm talking about. It's a fancy word in accounting lingo called commingling. But basically what that means in accounting lingo is that everything is in the same bucket. But that's what I'm questioning right now. How many people are doing that? Raise your hands and come up on stage and let's hear from you. So for me, I will say that the vast majority of my expenses and I'm hesitating because Ralph is my accountant. So I'm ready for him to at least behind the scenes to me, like Mark, what are you doing? But I think the vast majority of my charges are separate. I do have a dedicated card that I use for my business expenses. Now where why I'm hesitating is because I fully admit there are times that I'll go to that business card for a personal expense and vice versa.

6:09 So I don't, I can't say I'm perfectly 100% clean separation of those two cards. But yeah, I'd say for the most part that's me. Now, Sid, I saw you with the thumbs down and that surprises me. Is that true? And again, like Ralph said, no, not, no judgement here 'cause I do that all the time, right? But I'm curious about you, Sid 'cause you gave us the thumbs down. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. So my thumbs down was, I think the question was how many of you have everything commingled? And my thumbs down was, no, I don't have them. Like, Nah, that's bad. OK, that's. OK. Yeah, no mine, yeah, no, mine are all separate. All all of my businesses versus my personal account are all separate. Gotcha. OK, cool.

6:50 Yeah, that's what I just kind of assumed with you. Sid DRI saw you wanted to chime in. Go for it. Good morning. Good morning. So yeah, true confession time. I was commingling pretty heavily up until January 1st, when, you know, this is Ralph's influence on me being on this show and hearing Ralph speak. I made a promise to myself that I would stop the commingling and so far, so far so good. Nice. OK, so you have now 2 separate cards, one for personal, one for business. Cool. Anybody else want to chime in? OK, Ralph. Now I want to talk about why this is so important because, you know, it's one thing to say, hey, you should do this, but I want to get into a little bit of why this is so important. I want to talk today about when you should start separating because I think maybe, Mark, we go there first. Actually, a lot of people say to me, Ralph, because I work with a lot of content creators and they'll say Ralh, yeah, once I get that brand deal or once I start monetizing, once I start doing this, once I start doing that, and my position is once you start is too late.

7:54 And I understand that there is a difference between those of us who are business podcasts and I mean business from the standpoint of operating it as a business and others who are operating it as a hobby. But even if you're going to operate it as a hobby, I was asked on the show a couple weeks ago, they said, when should you start doing this? I said before you start your podcast. And they said, wait a second, we don't even know what we're going to do. I think you start before that point. And the reason you start before that point is because you never know when something's going to happen. You don't know when you're going to get that brand deal, when you're going to get that sponsorship, when all of a sudden you have the ability to monetize. And then what happens, Mark, for all the time, somebody will get that dreaded 1099.

8:35 Now, I'm a jargon here a little bit. A 1099 is a form that someone sends you when they pay you money. Sorry, I had to do it. Didn't mean to interrupt your flow there, but I had to do it. But it's a valid point because I'll and I call me out today if I use any jargon terms. I try not to, but a 1099 is basically someone way of saying I paid you during the prior year. So they have to report that to the state. They report that to the IRS. And what absolutely happens all the time with creators is they get this 1099 in January or February. With some of my other clients, they don't quite send them out on time, but that's OK. They send them out and then all of a sudden the person starts to panic and they say, Ralph, what do I do with this? I wasn't expecting this guy and I, we were just friends and I did some work for him.

9:20 He did some work for me. The problem is now you've got a situation because now the IRS is looking for, and I'm going to throw Mark under the bus here. If Mark got one of these 1090 nines, the IRS is looking OK. Mark, are you going to put this on your tax return? Well, if you wait until March or April to go back and say what happened last year, you're going to struggle. And I see that. That's why I think you need to start separating these things out at the front end basically as you're starting. And the problem is so many people learn this the hard way. They learn it the hard way because somebody like me says to them, hey, guess what, Mark, you owe $10,000 in tax this year and you go Ralph that, wait a second, I don't even have $10,000 in the business anymore. It was spent here, was spent there. I was like, OK, that's fine, but where was it spent? And that's why it's so important to start that out at the beginning.

10:06 The other side of this, and I'll get into this a little bit deeper later, the IRS loves commingling. The reason they love commingling is that is their biggest audit. They, when they see that, they go after you because here's the problem. If they see it one time, they just assume it's pervasive. So I'm going to ask the room a question now. Did anyone today say, well, I've never heard of this, I don't have even thought about separating it. Does anybody want to talk about, hey, this is news to me Or has this already sort of been out there? Everybody kind of knew what was going. Well, I know for me, I've always attempted it that way. But yeah, Dr. go ahead. I knew what was going on. It's just hard. Once you start commingling, it's hard to break that habit. And yeah, I knew that it was wrong or that I should not have done it, but things came up and, you know, I've hopefully, hopefully I've corrected it as of January 1st.

10:56 I know that sometimes some people just, they don't think, oh, well, maybe I wouldn't qualify to get a business card, right? Like I need an actual corporate card. But I think that's just not the case, right, Ralph? No, absolutely. And that's what I want to answer Nikki's question in the chat also, because I think those two things go hand in hand. I am. I'm not saying that you need to go get a business card or a business checking account. If you can. I think that's a great thing to do. I think it sets you up for success. But if you don't have those things, you can go get one of your credit cards out of your wallet and say this is the credit card I'm going to use for business. This is the credit card I'm going to use for personal. I'll tell you a funny story.

11:38 I had a client a few years back and I may have shared this on the show. He was a plumber and every year he would come in and I might say, dude, look, we need to separate your finance. He goes, oh, but Ralph, I'm out shopping or out doing this and I just grab whatever card I can grab. Mark, I said hand me your cards and I took 2 little sticky notes and I wrote AB for business and AP for personal. And I've I've stuck them to his cards. And to this day when he comes in and sees me, he's got him, he's got him cellophane taped on the front cellophane, but that's an old term I haven't used forever. But it's got he's got it taped to his car because he doesn't want to mix that up. So Nikki, what you were talking about Mark, first of all, to answer your question, no, it doesn't have to be a quote corporate account. It doesn't have to be a Co corporate checking account. That's great if you can do that. I think that's a good thing to do. But Nikki, the issue is this.

12:22 The IRS comes in and they want to make sure there's separation. Give you a great example, Let's say that you go to Best Buy and you want to buy a new microphone for your recording. That's fantastic. That's clearly a business purchased, but at the same time, you go to Best Buy and maybe you buy a game console or you buy something like that. Then all of a sudden the IRS says, well, I see you've got all these Best Buy charges coded as business expenses, but how do we really know that they are business expenses? And it's kind of like one of those things. Once they sense blood in the water, I know it's a horrible analogy, but they go after it. I have had so many clients that made one mistake or just didn't do a good job of separating things. And once they did that, the IRS said, so as an accountant, as I've been doing this for 30 years, professionally licensed and all those sort of things, that is like the biggest thing when I was teasing today's show, the biggest money mistake that I see content creators doing and small business people creating is this not keeping tough separate. Now, the other reason it's important to keep it separate is you want to know how you're doing. One of the things that I hear content creators all the time, I'll say to them, how are you doing with your business side of content creation?

13:29 Rafael, I'm not really sure. If you don't know, how do you measure success? You know, we talk on the show all the time about your why for podcasting, how you're going to measure success. Well, if you're doing it for a business purpose, if your goal is, I want to be a good side hustle, I want to be this a replacement for my income. If you're not measuring that, you're never going to know how well you're actually doing because a lot of people get stuck on, well, there's money in the bank. I have revenue dollars coming in, but I ask people all the time, OK, what was your take home? What was your net profit last month? And I hear crickets. So I, I don't want to talk the whole time. I want to open this up to other people's questions and ideas. But you know, I this is, I see this all the time and so many content creators behind the scenes, it's a tornado and tornadoes just lead to destruction. Yeah.

14:13 So I don't know if you have a question or not, Ralph, but I'll ask you. I mean, you've been, I know you work with a lot of content creators. So what have you actually seen? I know you probably have dealt with audits as well, right? So what have you actually seen in audits when people don't keep their business and their personal finances separate? I'll give you an example of that. I was, I'll give you a quick story. I was working with a content creator, had a successful podcast, and he had sponsors coming in. He was actually selling merchandise. He had a Patreon site and everything looked great. But like I said, behind the scenes, his money was a tornado. And I say it was a tornado because everything was mixed together. His personal, his business, his mortgage came out, his groceries. Amazon.

14:55 Don't let me get started on Amazon. Amazon is a brutal one because so many people buy so much stuff on Amazon. But yeah. And I'm going to stop you right there too, Ralph, with the with the Amazon thing that drives me crazy is that they don't provide really any reporting. You have to actually just go into your order history and go through each and every day that you've made a purchase and then on your own, decipher whether that was for your business or personal. And it gets really tedious really quickly, especially if you're waiting until tax season to do that and. That's one of the reasons I don't know if you know this or not, Mark. You can actually set up a separate Amazon business account. And that's one of the things I recommend people to do.

15:36 If you buy a lot of stuff on Amazon. Look, Amazon stops at my house three times a day. Like the guy goes in the withdrawal if there's not, if he's not stopping here on the farm. But you can actually set up a separate login. And I really recommend that. Set up a separate login and track all of those business expenses through that so that you could say with certainty, yeah, if I spent money on Amazon for the business, it went through this account. You can tie a separate credit card to all that. But that's a brilliant observation, Mark. And it's it's one of the ones I see auditors are having a field day because they know all, everybody's buying stuff through Amazon and Target and walmart.com. And I'm, I'm not trying to throw Amazon or the bus, but it happens everyday, Mark. So, so yeah, that's interesting. So is there any other advantage besides keeping the two accounts separately? What are there any advantages for creators to open up a separate Amazon business account other than keeping things separate?

16:27 Yeah, there's reward programs too there and I get pushed these all the time. They're spending rewards is how much you spend rewards, all those type of things. There's definitely a lot of things and that's where, and I know Jonathan Howard put in the chat, he says love my rewards on that thing. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the other benefit to having a separate credit card is you can use that for rewards. If you're doing travel, if you're going to go to Empower podcasting #3 hey, charge that on your credit card. Put your hotel on there, put all your reservations and all your meals and all that stuff on there. But that's the problem, Mark, is that people don't do that from the front end. Then when you go to put it together, Mark, you nailed it. What did I buy on Amazon? Oh, these kids expenses, the groceries and the problem is they all get buried in the same account. And then you have to ask yourself, OK, what was this for? What was this for?

17:11 And the the problem is then you get audited. OK, and then you think, and, and here's another sidetrack. A lot of people think, well, if I've got the credit card receipt or credit card statement, that's enough. Well, guess what? Spoiler alert, that's not enough. The IRS wants receipts. They want the receipts. They want to see a receipt for what you bought. They want to see the time, they want to see what it was for. So here's a little key take away. Here's something you can take to the bank today. When you spend money for your show, you take your phone. Everybody carries phones now. Take a picture of that receipt and then put some notes on there. This was Mark and I had lunch, talking about the podcasting, morning chat, something like that. That way, a year from now when somebody like me says, hey, Mark, last March I saw you went to such and such restaurant. What was that for?

17:53 You can say, oh, I got that. I've got a folder over here by year and by month and I can go, Oh yeah, that was lunch with Ralph. We talked about such and such because here's the problem, like this creator was talking about, everything was mixed together. So this particular audit, she said, Ralph, I'm just going to disallow everything. She goes because I don't believe any of this. Now, the truth is by the end of the audit, he had lost $8000 in deductions. Now, it wasn't because he cheated on anything. He didn't lie about anything. It was just that everything was mixed together in this big old salad bowl. And the IRS says, look, I don't see any records here. I don't see any cohesiveness to your records. And so it costs that particular creator $8000 in deductions. Do some quick math.

18:33 Let's just assume they're in the 30% tax bracket. That's $2500 out of your pocket in real dollars. Wow. Yeah. And I'm looking here in the chat, by the way, Tim, right on. I love that you say I'm using my business checking account to travel to Empowered Podcasting 3 and pay for the hotel. So that's right. Exactly what Ralph was just referring to. And also I think Tide has something as well. Go ahead, Tide. Had a question. I knew someone who got audited a few years ago and they didn't, the IRS didn't just check their bank accounts and all of that. They actually actually wanted to see the person's agenda, their calendar. So if anybody keeps like a notebook where they're writing down dates of important events and appointments and things like that, they wanted to see that. And I was like, really?

19:19 They didn't just want to see the receipts. They wanted to see like your Google Calendar. And they were like, yeah, they did. So I don't know, Ralph, if you had any experience with that or heard of that happening? I do and I'm going to add two things to that, Nikki. Number one is they will always ask for business and personal records. They're going to ask you for your business account, they're going to ask you for your personal account because they want to see is it working in both directions. Because sometimes a creator will say, you know what, I have this separate account set U, but I don't really want to report this income. So I'm going to deposit this check over to my personal account. So the IRS looks at that. But what Nikki is really getting at is a different question. It's the same thing, but it's a different question. And that is, is there a for profit motive for this business, Nikki?

20:00 That's why they're asking you for that. They want to see how much time and effort you're putting into this because a lot of content creators, and I'm sure it's nobody here, do this so they can write off a bunch of expenses. But there is absolutely 0 intention of this ever being a profitable venture. So the IRS calls that a hobby and hobbies are great, but you can't take a hobby as a loss on your tax return. So Nikki, the reason they're asking that is they want to know how much skin you have in the game. They want to know, are you, are you out there doing this? How much time are you spending doing this? So Nikki, great point because that is something I think all of us should keep. I do this every day in my own life for two reasons. Number one reason is for audit. Second reason, so I can build clients, but I keep track of every 15 minute interval of my day. And of course I'm anal retentive. I get it.

20:47 But if the IRS said to me on Tuesday, March the 28th of 2025, who did you meet? Mith, what did you talk about? What was it? How was that business related? I can go back to my calendar just like Nikki said and say, yes, I met with this person. I met with this person, I traveled here, I traveled there again. Here's what I like to do when I work with an auditor. I want to overwhelm them with information because the truth is, look, and I'm not throwing auditors under the bus. They have a job to do. And if you can help them do their job easier and audit goes great. I've had this happen so many times. Or in order to come in to me and I'll say Ralph, I am so happy to be working with you because you have all your IS dotted, your T's crossed, you got everything ready for me.

21:27 I'm ready to go. I never want to be in that situation where an auditor says to me, Ralph, I don't see anything here. I don't see any records because I guarantee that auditor is going to go find something and what they're going to find is going to hurt you. So if you have more information than you need, that's better than having less information than you need. So Nikki, I hope that answers your question. But that's the reason they're asking that question is they want to see, is there a profit motive for this? Now, profit motive is in the eye of the beholder. How much time are you putting into it? Are you advertising? Are you promoting your business? Are you on LinkedIn? All those type of things. Keep track of all that stuff. It's what we kind of call, you know, in podcasting, we talk about telling a story. Well, your accounting records should be a narrative.

22:08 They should tell a story of where you were, what you did, what you did it for. And when you do that, you're dealing with a person just like you with the IRS. These are not bad people. They're just trying to do a job. They've got a job to go out there and and the big word says a fair administration of tax law. Now we could argue fair administration, but that's their goal. And if you're doing the right things, if you're not being ridiculous, then you're not going to have a problem about. People get so scared of audits, but there's really nothing to be scared of. If you have an intention from the front end to keep your books in order. That's the key. And start it before you start your podcast. And like Mark said, you can set up a separate account. You can use a credit card that you already have, but just keep it separate and be regimen into doing that.

22:50 Hey, I wanted to go to Jonathan real quick. Jonathan is sharing a little bit in the chat and responding, I think, to some of the things you're talking about. And Jonathan, I just, I'd like to hear, I'd like the rest of the audience to hear what you're saying. So would you chime in please? I was just saying I hope to the IRS does not need to see my personal calendar because that's mostly. Post it notes on my desk or sometimes my mom calling me and saying hey, don't forget to go to your cardiologist appointment, you know, tomorrow. And yes, I know I'm 45 and I should know these things. But. You know. Hey, that's OK. Accountability can come in at all ages. Having an accountability partner can be very helpful. So that's the way I'll choose to look at that for you, Jonathan. But yeah, Ralph, any thoughts?

23:32 Any response? No, I agree. And unless you ask a bigger question, unless you ask the room, this one, why do creators mix their money? Let's go there. Let's talk about those folks who have struggled with this. Why are you mixing your money? And, and again, this is not judgement. I I have a heart to help people. My goal here is to help you. So let's talk for a few minutes about why you're mixing your money. Is it convenience? What is it lack of knowledge? Let's hear from the room and see whatever the people are doing, why they would mix their money in the first place. I mean, for me, I think it would be more about convenience. I think that, yeah, just like I was saying earlier, you know, not even maybe it's also not being educated, right? Not realizing that, yeah, I can take out a personal card, but I can dedicate that just to my business expenses, right? So I think it could be a combination of both. I also, look, I think that maybe sometimes people are mixing it because they're kind of hoping they can get away with something, right?

24:26 Like, you know, maybe the this personal thing, maybe I can write it off, you know, and just kind of slide it in there. But that obviously can be very dangerous. Nikki wanted to chime in on this one as well. Go ahead, Nikki. For me, I think those are all really great points too, Mark. And I was just going to say that for me, when I first started my different businesses, I didn't have any money. I was just a teacher, you know, I was spending money from my personal account to start my business because I didn't have any business funds. So a lot of the expenses got put into the personal account because I didn't have any business money to to utilize to buy the things that I needed. Yeah, fair enough. Go ahead, Ralph, And then let's hand it off to BC. Who wants to chime in. Ralph, did you want?

25:07 You're muted. I'm sorry, Nikki, I was going to say you do like everybody else does, absolutely accurate. So the how you solve that, no Nikki is now what you do is you go create that business setup and you reimburse yourself for all those personal monies that you put into the business. But you're absolutely right, Nikki, and I think that's one of the big things that operates this is that people don't see this as a real business yet. They don't have any money in the account. And it's a little bit of, you know, gymnastics with money when you first start out, Nikki. But I think you've nailed, I think that's a really good reason for why you feel that way. But go ahead BC I know you want to make a comment. Yeah. And I wonder this, this might be a combination of just not being educated, but I think there's also for people who've had a long term desire to see their content show potential to be something that can allow them to maneuver themselves or, or depart from maybe a typical function that they've wanted to depart from for a long time.

26:06 And then to see, wow, this is actually beginning to work. Let me not lose as much of this as I can. Let me try to keep as much of this as that as as possible and then hopefully reinvest it and make this bigger so I can finally depart from this 9 to 5 whatever function I've wanted to leave for years and finally live this kind of dream career. But again, also being a mix of lack of education, this is not how it's supposed to work. But they don't know that there's a, there's a level of, of, of desperateness and trying to really hope this thing works. And that kind of prompts this not best decision making when it comes to their money. Yeah. And I want to go to Nick and Tim and made some comments in the chat, Mark, but I want to go to one more place and then we'll go right to that question because it's I'm going to nail it. So we've talked a little bit about not mixing your money. I want to really lay down, there's really 3 problems that this causes.

26:59 Number one thing, we've kind of beat this to death. Deductions get challenged. The second thing, and I want to spend a minute here, is you lose financial clarity. And I think we don't want to just overthink this because you really need to understand. I'll give you an example. I had a person in last week, this was not a content creator. This was somebody in a regular business. I say regular business that sounded harsh, but a different business in content creating. And I was looking at their tax return. And they said to me, Ralph, how am I really doing with my business? And I had to have one of those difficult discussions. And I said to this person, I said, what's let me ask you this question. How many hours a week do you spend in your business? And she says, Ralph, she says, I'm really working hard at this thing. I really want this to grow. She says, honestly, I'm spending about 60 hours a week in my business.

27:41 I said, I commend you. That's great. You're, you know, you're doing the hard work. I said, but when I look at your numbers, you made a $20,000 profit last year. And I'm not going to do math for here on the show, but it worked out to be about $4.00 an hour. And I had to have a difficult conversation with her. I had to say to her, is your hour worth more than $4.00? And that was hard because, you know, I felt so bad at the time. I was like, but you know what, It's interesting. Her response to me was I never thought about it that way. I said, well, see, that's the thing. If you don't have that financial separation, if you don't have that clarity, you don't know what your profit is. You don't know what your expenses are, you don't know what your taxes are. That could be coming because we could have had a completely different discussion. We could have been at the end of the year and made $100,000 profit. And I say, Chris, yeah, great, fantastic. But now you owe a ton of money.

28:25 Here's the third thing. And this is what leads into what Nick was talking about. A lot of people say to me, Ralph, well, I set U an LLC, I'm good to go. I I saw the gurus online and Reddit told me go set U an LLC. That's great. But an LLC is not an accounting or tax strategy. An LLC and I'm not an attorney, it's a legal strategy. But here's the problem. A lawyers will tell you this. If a lawyer can prove, if the IRS can prove that you mixed your finances, they will argue that LLC is nothing more than a shell. And if it's just a shell, they're going to do what's called Pierce the corporate veil. Once they Pierce the corporate veil, it's like you didn't have your LLC at all, which means that your personal expenses are exposed. And what Nick put in the in the chat is I think sole proprietor or single member makes it easy to blend business and personal. He's absolutely right because there is no distinct separation, which leads me to Tim's question and Tim said, let me find it here.

29:17 Tim says what's a good way to pay yourself from your business account? Brilliant observation, Tim. This is one of the things when I work with content creators, you need to set up a routine for yourself. A lot of us get regular W2 jobs. We get a pace, we get a paycheck. You're used to that. You get it weekly, you get it biweekly, you get it monthly. If you're operating a content creation business, you need to start thinking about the same thing. What is the interval that you pay yourself? One of the things that I recommend people to do is have a money meeting every week to talk about your finances. You can then look at, OK, how much came in, how much went out, how much should I put aside for taxes?

29:58 And yeah, how much should I put aside so I can pay my bills because I got to pay rent, I got to pay mortgage. The car payment would sure be nice. And my wife would really like it if I helped her out with some of the household bills, paid some grocery bills. O Tim, one of the things I think you're saying there, and I love it, is you're saying, how can I be intentional in this? And what I suggest you do is go to multiple accounts. Now we're taking it a whole other step. And that is we have a tax account. It's what I call a tax vault. And every week, whatever came in that gross number, you put X percentage in the tax vault. You do the same thing for your own spending money, because then you start to pay yourself. You nobody told you when you got into content creation that you were going to be a marketing whiz, a technical engineer, an accountant, and a payroll clerk.

30:42 But guess what? You are, and I can help you with things like that. There's a lot of people that can help you with things like that. But Tim, you just absolutely nailed it. And that is to start thinking intentionally about paying yourself. Now, I want to open up the questions because I've done a lot of talking there. But you know, let's talk about this. For those of you who do run it like a business, what systems are you using and what's working for you? Before we get to that, Ralph, do you want to answer Tide AKA Nikki? She in the chat asked about quarterly taxes and where do we go to pay those. That is a complicated question because it depends on your situation. And Nikki, if you're asking me, if you're just a regular federal tax filer, then you would go to irs.gov and you can actually make payments there. But don't lose sight of the fact that all of us live in states as well, and some states have taxes as well. So you may need to pay state taxes. Some of us live in places where there's city taxes. Nashville's a great example of that, where Dr. is Nashville has city taxes.

31:44 O this is the time to invest. Go meet with an accountant. Go meet with somebody who understands the industry and find out the things that you don't know. But that is a very good point, Nikki, because here's what happened. A lot of people don't know this. The IRS wants to get paid as you go, just like the state wants to get paid as you go. When you work for somebody else, your employer, every time you get paid, send some of that money to the taxing authorities. Well, the IRS wants it the same way. They don't want you to pay at the end of the year. A lot of people think you can. Here's what happens if you don't. They will, they will send you a penalty and those things are ugly. They will penalize you from what you should have paid throughout the year. But to Nikki, to really answer your question, you need to start at a very minimum. Like I said, I believe in a tax vault approach, which is this simple.

32:26 Once a week, what came in the door after expenses, take that and multiply by whatever your tax percentage is and put that money aside. Once you do that, then you need to think about, OK, do I need to make quarterly payments? Yes, the IRS wants you to pay quarterly, but if you don't have a big profit, if you're not going to have a big tax bill, you're not going to get a penalty at the end. Now I'm going to say this, it depends on your situation. I cannot give you personalized advice without knowing your particular situation, Nikki. I probably should have said that at the beginning so I don't get myself in trouble with the people that I have to deal with compliance wise. But if you at least set it aside, then you don't have that surprise moment. So I love the fact that you asked that question, Nikki, because it tells me that you're already thinking through this and that there's another step to this. And yes, there is another step to this, but you don't want to just go out there and try to do this on your own because there you can get yourself all kinds of tied up backwards. Because here's the other side of that, Nikki. Let's say that things are going really well now. You just landed a big content deal. You've got a brand deal.

33:19 Everything is going great. And you say, well, you know what, I better set aside some money, let me send it to the IRS. What happens at the end of the year when things aren't going as great and now you've got a editor to pay or you've got some things you need to do? Well, now that money's sitting at the IRS and you can't get that back until you file your tax return in the next tax season. So I'm one of these guys. I'm sort of a rebel in my field. I'm not a huge fan of quarterly estimates. Unless you really know what your income is year after year, I would much rather you park the money over in the tax vault and just be ready for that. That way if something happens, you, and because I've had it happen so many times where an opportunity came up or there was a downturn in the economy and people had to live off their tax vault. Listen, if it comes down to survival, you can use that money, but if you've already sent it to the IRS, you're going to be wondering, hey, how's these are the people that are in to see me, Mark on the 15th of January saying I need to file, I need to file, I need to file me.

34:15 I can't even do it yet because the software is not available. So Nikki, there's a blend here of hope. I've addressed your question, but there's a nuance to this. Thank you, Ralph, and thanks for the question, Nikki. I think Dr. has something. And then after that we'll answer Ralph's question around what systems that we're using to keep all of this together. Go ahead, Dr. Well, I kind of feel vindicated now, validated. The bank that I'm using for my business is Sofi and they have it set up to where you have these bolts and you could call them anything, tax, new car, mortgage, you know, you can call them anything. So I have one that is set up for tax and every month I have like $250 taken out and put into the vault and it's strictly just for taxes at the end of the year. Now my husband and I, we, I don't even know how to say this. We do our taxes, you know, for the household and my business like all in one.

35:14 I have a feeling I'm going to get reamed for that. Now, Dr. Let me jump in there. So you're OK. What you're really saying is you don't have a separate legal entity for your content business, and that's OK. What you're talking about is I'm getting a jargon wheel again, Mark, if you want to hit it. So what Dr. is talking about is she's reporting this on a Schedule C on her personal tax return. And that's fine, Dr. I'm not a big fan of that long term because it's not the best tax structure. We can get into that discussion robably at another time because that would be an hour discussion about self-employment tax. But no, you're not wrong, Dr.

35:55 It's not the best strategy, But Dr. is absolutely right in that it's all kind of going on the same place. It's all kind of feeding each other together. Sid, you've got something. Go ahead. Oh, Sid. Oh, sorry, good morning. Sorry, I have an Internet outage issue or an Internet issues. I'm not always hearing everything. OK, so I didn't hear you call. No problem, sorry. So I have two comments. So for Dr. Ralph chime in. OK, setting up an entity for your business is not that hard. You can do it at LegalZoom and other places. You can hire an accountant or an attorney to help you do it and pay a little bit more. But it does certainly just give you this like Peace of Mind. I mean, I have 4 different LLCS because I have 4 different businesses.

36:36 Each one of them has their own bank account, Each one of them has their own QuickBooks account. Each one of them has their own credit card. And it can get confusing at times because I bank at the same bank. So everybody's, I mean each business's bank account is at the same bank. It's just easier for me. But it does get confusing at times. But it's really not that hard to set up an entity for your business, is it? And then I have a follow up question comment. All right, Sid, I love you brother, but I'm going to tell you that it may seem like it's not that hard, but if you don't do it right, it doesn't really help you. And that's where I was going down the road. Sid, if you've just setting up a single member LLCS, then that doesn't really give you the legal protection and the tax benefit that you could get by setting up something different that comes off of your personal tax return and is really treated separately. I agree with what you're saying said there are places online where you can go and do it for $199. But I say this to clients all the time. You get what you pay for and you want to make sure you set this up correctly.

37:34 It's kind of like when you build a house, you don't want to scrimp and save on the foundation of your house because if you don't put a good foundation, your house is going to fall over. So Sid, I commend what you're saying, but I don't want to just, I don't want to leave the impression that it's this simple thing to go set up this LLC because I see those all the time and I fix those all the time. But you had a follow up question too. Sid and also I just want to chime in, you know, somebody like Sid who's been an entrepreneur, a business person for many years now, he might be somebody that's educated enough in knowing the insurance and outs of filing, right. But for a lot of content creators, yours truly included, I hate doing it myself. I don't trust myself one bit.

38:14 And that was one, that was the first thing that I ended up doing with Ralph as far as working together was I asked him to do that for Empowered Podcasting because for the longest time, well, for the 1st 2 plus years, it was under my business's umbrella. And for now, what we've decided is to separate it and make it its own LLC. And I did not trust myself whatsoever to do that. So yeah, I think it also depends on your expertise, your knowledge and your confidence doing it yourself. I think it's still probably important to have somebody look it over, even if you are doing it yourself. Yeah, and don't be afraid to spend a little money to protect yourself. It's not an exorbitant amount of money that you have to spend to at least have a consultation with somebody and say, hey, Ralph, here's what I'm thinking about doing. What do you think I might say to somebody like Sid? Sid, man, you got it all figured out. You're an excellent businessman.

39:07 I wouldn't change a thing. But if you don't know what you don't know, that's what gets people in trouble. And that's when we have an issue later on. But I think Sid had a follow up too. Yeah. And then Dr. So go ahead. Sid Yeah. Well, so for clarity, I don't do crap when it comes to this. I have an accountant and I've had the same one for 15 years. He files everything and he's a pain in my butt. Ralph, you guys all are in that category, right? And but he does everything and I just follow the rules is what I do, right? But I, the young lady that's been working for me for marketing, when she started work for me, I was paying her personally and I'm like, why don't you have a business? You need a business. And so I told her to find an attorney and find an accountant. And Ralph actually sent her to your YouTube channel to consume some of your content.

39:51 And she texted me on Saturday and said I thanks for kicking me in the butt. And I talked to an accountant and an attorney and I now have a business. So I sat down in front of TurboTax the other day to help my son file his taxes because his summer job, he got a 1099 that showed up and she was paid cash during a summer job. So who knew that the guy was going to file a 1099 on him? So it's the most frustrating thing I've ever done because. He got a penalty. He's only $99.00 for not paying taxes. He did make a decent amount of money for a young man working three months in the summertime laying sod. And he is being hit with to what you said, self-employment tax. And because he doesn't have a business, but he's being forced to pay self-employment tax.

40:39 So it was so frustrating and I felt bad for him because he's got a decent tax bill he's going to have to pay because he doesn't have any deductions to go along with it or at least any that he tracked because he didn't know he was going to get this 1099. But if you, they're going to hit you. I think we lost the last part of what you said there, Sid. They're going to hit you anywhere they can. And the self-employment tax was a surprise. I wasn't prepared for him to have to pay self-employment tax. He's going to have to pay, but he's got self-employment tax, penalty tax and then whatever percentage they want to take of what money he made this summer. And Sid, the problem that you and I don't know if you want to go here or not, the problem is his employer didn't do it correctly. I have no doubt that your son was not an independent contractor.

41:22 And that's the thing. See, a lot of business people want to skate the system and they say, well, I'll just send you a 1099 because I want to pay you cash. That's not fair because the IRS is very clear of who is an independent contractor. I want to go here for just a second, Mark, because it's important. An independent contractor is somebody who has their own tools and equipment. Sid, I don't think your son was using his own truck, his own sod laying stuff and all that sort of thing. They also have their own license and insurance and they don't get directed on on when they're going to work start time and end time. And see the problem is a lot of quote employers say, well, I'll just send you a 10990 the end of the year. So they don't have to pay the they don't have to pay the self-employment tax portion. They're supposed to pay Sid and they don't have to pay workers comp.

42:03 They don't have to have insurance and all those sort of things. I get where your son's at because your son's like, but I had a good job, I made good money, but they're kind of sticking it to him on the on the tax side because it's not your son's fault, it's the employer's fault. Because I suspect your son probably figured he was getting paid under the table. And when the 1099 came, I was like, I wasn't expecting this. Now here's what you could do, Sid, since you asked, since your son was treated as an independent contractor, he could go back and take a deduction for any mileage to and from any of the jobs, any of the tools or equipment, clothing that was used just for business. If he's doing sod, he probably buys gloves. He probably buys work boots.

42:44 All those things would reduce some of that tax, would reduce some of that income, which would therefore reduce that sub emloyment tax. Let's talk about sub emloyment tax for just a minute. It's 15.2%. We're not talking about a small amount here. So if you're making $100,000, that's $15,000 in extra tax. So Sid, I hope that address your question. But because I get so frustrated when clients come in and say well, you know, I had an employee, but I didn't pay employee wages. I'm like, well then you didn't have an employee or you didn't and it's a whole discussion. But here's the content creators take away. If you are paying someone to work with you in your content creation, if you pay them more than $600 a year, you as the content creator have an obligation to collect their information. It's a form called a W 9 form.

43:30 So before you pay anybody anything I say he didn't have the gold makes the rules. As you're giving them their money, say ha, I'm going to give you your money, but you're going to fill out this form for me. Because that W9 form is going to capture their name, their Social Security number or their EIN number, business ID number, and their address. So that somebody like me or Sid's pain in the neck accountant is going to say I need W9 forms from you so I can keep you out of trouble with the IRS and send these to you. So long answer, but it's very important that you do that. Thank you. Ralph OK, I know Dr. had a question and I think BCI saw something he had put in the chat that I want to hear out loud, so go for it Dr. OK.

44:10 So I had two questions. The first question is about the LLC. I know the pros of having an LLC is that they can't go after your business, they can only go after you personally, right? But I don't what are the cons of having an LLC. So, and I'm going to answer Tide's question at the same time it answers yours VR. So the cons to it is you definitely need to keep things separate. The other side of this is going to cost you a little bit of money upfront if you're going to do it correctly because you're going to have to file and create this LLC. Most states charge what's called a franchise tax for the sake of having a separate. So when you set up an LLC, you're actually creating a separate legal entity. That legal entity has to have a governance underneath of it. It has what's called an operating agreement. So it's going to cost you a little bit of money. For example, and I'm going to put it right out there for setting up LLCS, my firm charges $1000. And the reason we do that because there's a lot of things that go into this.

45:05 We have to get your EIN number with the IRS. That's a number like a Social Security number for the business. We have to file your certificate with the state. We have to write operating agreement. It's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into a making it done right now. Nikki also asked. The question is how much do I charge for consulting services? Nikki Ioffer a free 15 minute discovery call if you go to contentcreatorsaccountant.com/help me. I would rather start there. Let's understand what you've got going on That is absolutely free. Don't charge a dime for that and then we can talk about what works best for you. Getting back to DRS question the cons, really Dr. is keeping things separate. If you do it the right way, it's actually going to be put on a separate tax return, either on a partnership return or I love subchapter S corporations with an LLC to save on that self-employment tax.

45:52 So Dr. those are the big two things. It's going to cost you money upfront and it's going to cost you money annually if you do it. But here's the deal. Well, we just talked about that self-employment tax. Once you have net income in your content of about $8000, it pays for itself in the tax savings you're going to have on the self-employment tax. I'm not even talking about the liability protection, I'm just talking about the real tax numbers. I hope that answers your question to you. It does. The second question I have is regarding so I have a team I have and it's offshore. I've talked to you about this before, separate on on, you know, through Adm. Now, I know you told me that we don't have to worry about claiming them, but is this something that I can write off?

46:40 Do you know what I mean? Like as a deduction. Yeah, if they present you with an invoice and you pay them from an invoice, then that's like you're buying from anyone else. Now, I will take back a little bit of that doctor. It depends on where their home base is. the US government has tax treaties with the multiple countries where that's on them. They have to worry about reporting the income. They have to worry about it. But in general terms, if you're getting an invoice from them, it's just like you're going to the store and buying something and just like you're subscribing to Captivate or you're subscribing to one of the platforms. As long as you've got an invoice, yes, you can take a deduction for that. OK. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, DRI Know there are more questions and I just want to throw this out because I want to make sure we get it in time. As far as systems that we use, I use QuickBooks for ironic Media and we're going to be using it for empowered podcasting as well.

47:30 QuickBooks, it can be a little pricey for some people and it's always made my life a ton easier. I can. It really just helps keep things very organized. And of course, when I'm working with Ralph and his team, he has a bookkeeper that's also helping me each month go through my books and make sure that everything is lined up properly, right. But QuickBooks for me has been wonderful. And I've been an entrepreneur most of my adult life, so, and I've always used QuickBooks for at least when it came time that I really recognized I would need a system, I always would go to QuickBooks. I think there are times where I would start business just working with spreadsheets, for example. OK, let's go to Sid.

48:16 I know Sid had a question and then I want to go to BC maybe for the final question of the morning. We shall see. Go ahead, Sid. Well, I don't actually have a question. I had to follow up to doctor to Ralph's question, which was something about, I forget now, but my response? Is. The reason that I think that people don't set up LLCS and they don't set up their business the right way is they perceive that it's complicated. And it may be complicated to start in the beginning to get it all set up. And at the end of the day, it's really just, you're just running a system the way you run your personal life with bank accounts and credit cards and things of that nature. But I think getting it set up is what scares people because it's easier to say, I'm just going to put it into this account and I'll just use it and then I'll worry about it at the end of the year.

49:00 That's the easy path. But in business, especially for people like Dr. where her services are her primary core of income, then you should set up the appropriate systems in order to run your business at the end of the year. That you don't hate people like Ralph and free people like Ralph don't hate you for not having all your stuff together. Thank you, Sid. All right, let's go to BCBC. You had a question. Yes. So how can content creators go about preparing for taxes when they don't typically start off with any kind of reliable, consistent income and assuming that they see a growth over time and potentially crossing different tax brackets?

49:44 What is your best suggestion on what to, you know, how to how much to decide to put aside for tax season? And and you know, yeah, what, what, what is your best suggestion for that? Great question BC it's a question to get all the time through the content creators account and website. What you're really talking about is inconsistent income. This month I have income next month is crickets, the next month I have. It's very hard, I'm not going to lie to anybody. There's really two components to that. Number one is look at your tax return from last year and look at your effective tax rate. At a very minimum, I would tax vault whatever your effective tax rate is. So if you're filing a tax rate in the United States and let's just say you're in the in the middle to lower tiers, you're at the 22% tax bracket at the very minimum, I put 22%.

50:30 Now, if you're starting to see things increasing, maybe you you cheat that up to 25 or even 30%. The other side of this, and you didn't ask, it's not a tax related question, but so many country creators get themselves in trouble because they have a good month and they go and spend and spend and spend and then all of a sudden crickets the next month. So one of the things that I say is don't spend money until you see consistency. You know, what are your bare minimum business bills? Don't spend more than that. It's what Dr. and I love what Dr. said she goes, I have this fund and that fund I work with a company called relay bank. One of the reasons I like relay Bank is that we're able to set up pay yourself first scenarios. We're able to set up separate accounts. One of the things I like to do with the content creators said, oh, you really want to get some new gear, don't you? Great, here's what we're going to do. We're going to set up a new gear fund and every we're going to put X number of dollars in that fund. We're going to put so much in the tax vault. So BCI hope that answers your question. But at a very bare minimum, look at your effective tax rate from last year.

51:27 Understand whether you're going to pay self-employment tax. Like Sid and I have beat that horse to death, I think today. So at least have an understanding. You may a good news is like as much as Sid wants to throw accountants under the bus and I'm just being funny, Sid, if a client comes to me and they're prepared, hey, I get a hug at the end of the meeting. Oh, Ralph, I am so excited. You told me to put that money in a tax log and now I can go on a vacation because I didn't even need to spend that much because you set me up for success. And that's really the key take away for today. The key take away for today is the biggest money mistake that content creators do is they don't set themselves up for success from the beginning. So if you've not heard anything else I've said today, set yourself up for success from the beginning and then you will you will get the benefits from that for years and months and going on by setting it up with intentionality at the front end and. I do have one tiny follow up if we got a minute for it, Mark. Now if we do see the growth like you mentioned, Ralph, and we do decide, oh, maybe I should move up to this tax bracket for this month, do we then need to retroactively look at previous months and take a little bit out for those months, assuming at the end of the year for next tax season, The entire year is treated as one tax bracket.

52:41 So if we end up upping how much we put away further into the year, do we have to retroactively take care of that from previous months? Yes, the answer. Quick question, quick answer, yes. And the way I think about it as a cumulative thing, so as you're accumulating that profit, if you were let's say the beginning of the year, setting aside 10% first three months and then March, April, then all of a sudden May comes and man, you landed amazing brand deal. Now you may have to go look and say, OK, well year to date now that 10% isn't going to work so I've got to go retro. But honestly, if you think about it in terms of doing it weekly, biweekly, monthly, I think you're going to be OK as long as you're graduating that up. But always, yeah, that's, I mean, when I work with clients, when we get closer to the end of the year, we're looking at a bigger picture. When we're first starting off in the first quarter, we're looking at, OK, what happened the first quarter, OK, is this really going to happen all year?

53:30 Is it not? But no, to answer your question, yeah, I mean, it's going to be cumulative BC so at the end of the year, whatever that is, that's what you're going to pay. So yes, you may have to, but if you have a fantastic, you know, mid year and end of year, yeah, you're going to have to retro and go back and say, oh, you know what? The other thing here's a little sneaky teeth take away too. That's when you want to talk to somebody like me and says, hey, it's really hitting now, Ralph, can we go back and fix this for the current year? And the answer is yes, there's some things we can do to fix it for the current year and potentially cut down on that self-employment tax. You just got to reach out to somebody that knows what they're talking about. Gotcha. Cool. Thank you Ralph. Awesome and I think we are really close to time here.

54:11 I know that Dr. chimed in the chat said she uses Wave where I use QuickBooks. There are lots of different ones. I think Honey Book is another one that a lot of content. Yeah, BC is giving the thumbs up. A lot of content creators use Honey Book as well. There are lots of different tools, but where do you want to land this plane, Ralph? So here's the thing. Like I said, be intentional and use what works for you. If you love spreadsheets, use spreadsheets. If you love QuickBooks, use QuickBooks. If you love honey, if you love Wave, whatever you're going to use, I don't really care. Use something. But like I said, my I want to land this plain on this intentionality.

54:51 Be intentional in your setup, be intentional in the use of it. And like I said, like we said today, you don't have to set up something elaborate. You can use a separate card. That's quote not business. I think as you grow, you're going to grow into those things. But it's really simple of trying to intentionally keep things separate so that by the time you get to the end of the year, you know, OK, here's what I can expect. Here's how much I've got set aside for taxes and you don't have that scary feeling like Oh my God, April 15th again. I hate this time of year. If I can make you feel better about tax time, then I've done my job well. And then people like Said won't hate the accountants anymore. Yes. And I'm glad we have a content creators accountant here on the podcasting morning chat, somebody who I think does make it much more digestible. I'll say that it's never fun having to deal with your taxes and your money.

55:44 And that's, well, it can be fun, I guess. But as far as keeping it all organized and doing all the things that we've shared today, it can be challenging. And Ralph certainly does make it easier. And remember to go to that URL. If you want some more customized advice from Ralph, go to contentcreatorsaccountant.com/help me. Is that right? You got it. Just content creatorsaccountant.com/help me. I'll be happy to jump on a call with you. I got to be honest with you, right now my schedule is super busy, but as soon as we get past April 15th, I love content creators. I'm happy to sit down with you, do a Zoom call, 15 minutes, and we'll talk about what's going on. And then as Nikki said, we can talk about what that looks like in the future. I just want to throw one more thing out there. Dave mentioned about Canadian taxes. I don't do Canadian taxes, but I do consult with people in Canada to help them with that scenario.

56:32 I just don't prepare Canadian taxes. But honestly, Dave, most of the time money is money and there are some nuances to it. But I can work with people all. I have clients all over the world that I work with in this regard. So I am the person to go to if you find like, it's a good fit, if you feel like there's a good relationship here. Awesome. Thank you, Ralph, and thank you all for this great conversation. Sometimes when you know it comes to taxes and organizing your money may not be the most engaging topic on a lot of shows, but I think this today was a very engaging discussion. So thank you for bringing this today, Ralph. Looking forward to the next one I want at some point, maybe it's the next one, maybe it's one upcoming, but I'd love to talk more monetization secrets strategies as a content creator.

57:16 So maybe we can talk a little bit about that and see what we can put together for the next one. We are back tomorrow at 7:00 AM Eastern. We are opening the mailbag I will be hosting live from my parents home tomorrow. I'm going to visit my folks and friends and family in Maryland. So we'll see how all of that works out. I'm I've got a little anxiety about putting it all together. But remember, you can find out all the ways to connect with us at podcasting morning chat.com/join us. And I want to say this, please come tomorrow if you are, if you consider yourself a member of this community, come tomorrow because I have a what could be considered a relatively big question to ask you about this.

58:00 Show some thoughts I have about possible changes possible. But I don't like to make changes without working with you, the community first to get a good understanding of how you feel about any changes. So don't be scared, but I want you to come tomorrow so that you can give your input. Ralph, did you have something else you wanted to? Say before, I just want to say one more thing. If you're getting value from the show, we'd love for you to support the show. You can go to podcastingmorningchat.com/support. Again, that's podcasting morning chat.com/support and show us a little love that you're appreciating the show and where we're going with the show. So thank you, Mark. And remember, all links that we share with you during the show, we will put those in the show notes. I know we've thrown out a lot of them today. So just go check the show notes and you'll have your directory of links to go check out.

58:47 So thank you all for a great conversation. We'll be back tomorrow. And until then, make it a great day. Everybody, take care.