From Corporate to Consulting | Cameron Williams

I think they think once you give it to us and everything's perfect, like, no, we still have to have conversations and I have to know what you're attempting to do or what's coming up. Because you guys have to remember, most marketing agency people move at light speed. It's not like real estate where it's a super slow— marketing people move fast, right? Creatives in general, you're going to have new ideas all the time. So you still have to communicate things. Think about if you're Coca-Cola or any regular-sized company, hey, the finance team has to know what the marketing team is doing, or the finance team has to know what the sales goals are so that we can be prepared. It's not just here's everything, bye, and you handle it. No, we have to be in lockstep with each other. And I think they forget that you still have to tell me like, hey, we just signed this new client, but the deal is structured this way, which is different from the norm.

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Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I'm your host, Christian Brim. With me today is Cameron Williams of Kenley Consulting. Welcome, Cameron.

What's up? Thank you so much for having me.

I am fascinated to have you on here. I told my marketing director that we were going to have two accountants on a podcast And what could be more exciting than that?

A lot. Not that much. We, we got a lot to say.

That— well, I'm hoping that we prove the naysayers wrong. So tell us, you know, briefly what you do and, and how you got here with Kinley Consulting.

Cool. Um, again, thank you for having me. Um, so what we do— so we are Kinley Consulting. We are an accounting and fractional CFO consulting firm in Atlanta, Georgia. We've been doing it for— this is now year 6. A little bit before that, we were in corporate. So I've been in public accounting, which for those of you who don't know, public is like your CPA firm, audits, taxes, bookkeeping. Then went into private, so worked for like the number 1 card processor in the world, worked for an energy company, worked for a tech company, worked for I think that was under 3 before I ended up going into my own thing. So like I said, we've been doing it for about 6 years now. I mean, it's been a fun journey. Of course, a lot of ups and downs because, you know, this is the stuff they don't teach you in school. You know, why would they do that? But definitely learned a lot. We just pretty much went all in. We had to. And it's been a great ride.

So how old were you when you started Kinly?

Uh, let's see, 2018. So I would have been 28. Nice.

I started my company when I was 27.

So that's— Oh, look at that. See, it must be something about that 27, 28 range that, you know, life gets really real.

So did you always work with creatives and marketing agencies, or is that something you were drawn to after?

No. So funny story. So of course, I think pretty much everybody starts with like, I just want to start making some money ASAP. Right. That's part of my story was in that working for that big company, what it was, they relocated from, I think, Maryland to here. So of course, only like 2 people came. So they had to hire a brand new accounting department. 10 months in, they decided, I guess we have too many people. So everybody that was an accounting supervisor, they laid us all off on the same day for the same reason. And I found out the day after or 2 days after. So it was everybody on the supervisor level. Um, so after that, we basically had our second kid, which is about to turn 7 in like 2 weeks. Um, but back then, brand new baby, and I didn't have a job. And of course, I think y'all can see the pictures behind me, clearly I have degrees. I was like, oh, it's no problem, you know, just get another job. Yep, that never happened. So, um, just prayed about it a ton. And then started the business. So at first we were generalists, right? You help any and everybody because we're trying to pay bills. Then of course you start hearing about niche down, niche down. And so we have one client that was a recruiter and they made a ton of money. And if you don't know how recruiter pay structures work, it's essentially whatever your yearly salary is, they get like 15 to 20% of that upfront. So if they're going to make you, for example, your salary is $100 grand, they're going to get $20 grand upfront. So I was like, oh, that would be great. Because most people don't know what to do with $20 grand all at once. That's a lot of different opportunities. Well, that didn't work out. Like, we tried to market to them and post content and all these things, and I literally had a marketing guy try to help me, and he was like, for whatever reason, your stuff is the only one of my people's that's not working. So I had the conversation with my mentor, and I'm like, yeah, I think we need to switch niches. So I'm like, who— what would you suggest? And so I forgot the first one she threw out, but the second was One was marketing agencies. And I was like, why would you suggest that? And she was like, well, Cam, from an age perspective, y'all are kind of right there. You know, you're talking like 24, 25 to like mid-40s. Typically they're family-oriented, typically really easygoing people. You'll learn a lot. Typically they're not very combative. They love to learn. And typically numbers aren't quite their strong point. She said, versus you pick recruiters, they're kind of opposite of your temperament, like you're more low-key. They're very, you know, aggressive. They want to try to negotiate everything, right? Because their job to do. She was like, and you don't really want to deal with that, as you saw with the guy you had. So she was like, worst come to worst, you know, you try it out, and if it's 6 months in, you're not seeing any traction, then you know you ain't married to it. Pick a different thing. So, um, I picked it and literally, uh, took a marketing course at the same time, took off. And ever since, that was about 3-ish years ago, I think. And we just decided to just be fully immersed in it. So we try to go to the same conferences as they do, be in the same masterminds and groups, have them on our podcast just to kind of go through their story and their journey, just to encourage other agencies. And it's been a blast, in all honesty. And our company's definitely grown probably like 3, 4x since then. So it was definitely a good choice.

I like what you said about them, them being nice people. When, when we— now you figured that out, like, I, if I do the math right, uh, which I'm not really good at, but it sounded like 6 months in. It took me more than 20 years to figure that out. So you, you figured out the niching thing a lot, a lot quicker than I did. But we just went through our client list. I said, everybody go through your list, give me the top 5 who you like to work with and who values what we do. And over half of them were industries that were what I would call creative, you know, videography, marketing agencies, etc., but that enjoyed working with, right? You're right. They generally have a good disposition and they are fun to work with because, you know, I think by their nature they just kind of view the world differently, more optimistically, kind of like what's possible. So, okay, now let's, let's get down to the dirt, to the down and dirty. We're going to swap stories. I'm going to tell you my worst— not going to name any names, but I'm going to tell you the worst in memory story of how bad creatives are with numbers. Okay, so I have a client and they had this brilliant idea that if people would pay them up front, uh, like a 6-month project, pay them up front, they'd give them a 50% discount. And the, the accountant that was working with him is, uh, hold on a second, you know what your margin is, right? And he goes, well, yeah, it's like, uh, 70%. And he's like, oh no, 50%. And he's like, you realize that you've just given away all your profit. Well, no, no, no, no, that 50%, that still leaves me with another 50%. And he's like, no, no, no, that's not— but you know, it's, it's like that, that part of the brain just doesn't connect sometimes. And I think that's why it's important to have people like you and me that can help bridge that gap. Uh, so what, what's, what's your worst horror story?

Worst?

Yeah, like what did you see? Like, oh man, I can't believe they did that.

Uh, there's one that comes to mind. So there's this guy, he's actually a real estate agent. And so he, one of our, he may be our longest, he's either our longest client or our second longest client. Guy used to go to the gym with and do CrossFit with., he was like, hey, I told this guy about you. And so the guy comes in and again, real estate agent. So start there. And so, you know, I said, hey, you want all this stuff? We can do all this. And I think I quoted him like maybe $5,000, $5,500, something like that. And so we start doing the work because basically, long story short, he was working with an older accountant. The guy's like in his 70s, kind of phasing out. He's like, I want somebody new, young, cutting-edge, innovative, more attentive. Cool. So then he comes to us in like March, we file the extension, of course. And so we start working on it. First off, this guy has no financials, right? No big deal, normal to us. So we create those forms. So we get to the tax return and I think he ends up owing like $70 grand, right? Which I was pretty happy about because I think originally he was starting at like $100 So I was like, hey man, you know, super excited. You got— you owe $70 grand. Well, he's like, absolutely not. I'm like, why not? And so he got upset and he's like, well, you know, I don't think I should owe that much, which that's always such a fun conversation. But long story short, he's like, well, hey, because mind you, he had so many cards and we're trying to clean them up. But what we do, or one of the processes is we'll say like, hey, tell us which ones are personal versus which ones are business, if they're personal or if that's a distribution. So he's like, well, can I see what you put as personal? I'm like, sure, you know, here's the list. So he starts going through and tries to pick apart the Excel sheet that we give him, and he's basically like, these are all business, man. I'm glad I asked because all of these you would have said were, were personal and that would have cost me And so I'm like, well, first off, correction, you've already told me that these were personal, right? I'm like, literally, because one of the things we do, we'll send those questions, let the client mark them and say personal or business, and we save that in the file. I literally start go cross-referencing. I'm like, no, you said all these were personal. Now that you know you owe money, all of a sudden they're business related, right? And then he's like, well, and I got two other cards. I'm like, well, I asked you, did you give us all the cards? Well, no, no, no. On second thought, I do have these other two cards. I'm like, well, what do you want to do? Because the deadline is like 3 days away for the extension. The guy is like, well, just go ahead and file it. And then, you know, we'll make the changes. I'm like, that's not how it works. That's filing a fraudulent— you're filing a return knowing that it's incorrect. You can't do that. You can't just make a note on it and be like, hey, we're—

this is our best guess. No, I'm like, you can't.

Mind you, then he had a whole other partnership that he didn't tell me about till right then. And I'm like, well, let us do the claim, the same process. Let us do the claim, I get the numbers. Well, no, I don't want you to do that. But the deadline's coming. Well, I'll see if I can get somebody else to do that part. Just file the taxes. I can't file it because I don't have numbers. So what I ended up having to do, long story short, was basically disengage with the client. So which, of course, he tried to threaten to sue us. And I'm like, how are you going to sue me? You're going to sue and you don't really— come on now, you already charged me and you're not even filing a tax return. So really, you should be giving me my money back. Like, incorrect. You paid us to do the cleanup and to prepare the tax return. It's— you can't ask me— literally, that's going— so for those of you who don't know, we as accountants, CPAs, tax preparers, EAs, We're not allowed to file a return knowing that it's wrong. It's one thing if the client doesn't tell you something and then you come back later and file an amended. That's one thing. We already know this is wrong. You're asking me to file it because you're trying to get the best result and then you're trying to say, tell them we're going to come back and amend it. That would mean you already know it's wrong. So literally in all of our books, I think I even got one. You know that big old tax journal book? They'll literally tell you what you're supposed to do. You know, these big old things like this. They'll literally tell you, hey, when you're supposed to tell the client, and then if they don't agree, you disengage because they could come and take our licenses. And so I'm like, literally, I can lose my license and ability to do this. I can't do it. He gets upset and he's like, well, that's fine. I'll just see you in court, which of course never happened. Well, I just thought it was hilarious. Like, you're mad because you didn't do what we said. You fought us. You tried to nickel and dime me. You didn't sign up for monthly retainer so I could take over everything. And you're only now trying to go back and redo things because you know that you owe. So you're really trying to do it just— which, by the way, us as the accountant, we can't tell you if you're lying or not, by the way. Right. But the fact that you've already told me they were personal and you're now trying to go back, now we're on the verge of committing fraud. And I just wasn't willing to do that. So that's probably the worst story we've had, just because, like, he didn't want to let us do the additional work. He was trying to argue with us on why we should file it, even though he and I knew it was wrong and he wanted to. So that was probably my craziest story. Other than that, the only other one I can think of is, which is why we don't offer bill pay anymore. Yes. Long story short, client on the south side of Atlanta. We go in, she was super excited. We start working and she wanted us to do bill pay. I'm like, all right, cool. Here's an Excel sheet. Tell me all the bills and what's the dates and give me login so that I can log in and be able to do that at a certain time frame. Well, she never does it. And mind you, every week I'm like, hey, don't forget, send me them passwords. So then she sends me, hey, you didn't pay my rent. And I'm like, you never gave me a login. And she's like, but you should have known I was going to have to pay it. I said, you never told me the day. I said, okay, well, what day do you pay it? Well, the day changes every month, but they usually send it to me like 10 days out from when they want it. You never told me. You never gave me access to it. I only have the login to your bank. I don't know when you're supposed to pay it. And the number changes and the date changes. Come on, Cameron, if I have to keep reminding you of things like this, then we may have to take this to court because I'm not going to be paying you all this money and you're going to make me late on my stuff. I said, you know what, don't even worry about it, disengage. Then she got mad because she's like, well, what do you mean disengage? It's not even worth all that. Here's your money back for the last month and we're no longer going to work with you. We're terminating. Contract. That was it. That's why we don't offer bill pay, because I saw right then that a client will try to make it as if it's our fault when they literally didn't provide us the things to do our job. Like, we have— we maybe had 5 emails where we said, here's the template, fill it out. I even went back and said, rent, phone, and tried to do— all you need to do is put in logins and the date and the amount. She wouldn't do it, but all of a sudden it was our fault. That your rent didn't get paid even though you didn't know when it was supposed to get paid or the amount. So that's when I made that decision. I think that was like 3 years ago. We're not going to offer bill pay because if it's going to lead to that, not worth it.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. You know, I, I, I take two things away from that, uh, advice for our listeners is one, full disclosure to your client. Tell them, tell them what's going on. Think of them as a priest. I don't offer absolution, but I, I can't, I can't work with what I don't have, right? And two, you have to still do something, right? It may not be much, but you still got to do something. And so You know, a lot of people come to an accountant and they feel like, you know, well, my, my finances are a mess, uh, and they just want to dump the mess in your lap, right?

And it doesn't work that way. Well, it does with a caveat, right? Exactly. It's a lot of stuff, but like, okay, I can build your accounting from scratch, but I need login so I can get— exactly, so I can tie it out. Or like, we just had to tell the client this, I think last week. They're like I don't understand why the stuff is not matching with our internal report. I don't know either. All I know is it matches the bank. Like, unless you— I think they think once you give it to us and everything's perfect, like, no, we still have to have conversations and I have to know what you're attempting to do or what's coming up. Because you guys have to remember, most marketing agency people move at light speed. It's not like real estate where it's a super slow Marketing people move fast, right? Creatives in general, you're going to have new ideas all the time. So you still have to communicate things. Think about if you're Coca-Cola or any regular-sized company. Hey, the finance team has to know what the marketing team is doing, or the finance team has to know what the sales goals are so that we can be prepared. It's not just here's everything, bye, and you handle it. No, we have to be in lockstep with each other. And I think they forget that you still have to tell me like, hey, we just signed this new client, but the deal is structured this way, which is different from the norm. You got to tell us that. Otherwise we will put it in just like we would everybody else. So I just think that that communication piece still has to be there. Yeah, we can still handle— once you tell me, I got it. But you can't not tell me and expect it to be this perfect alignment when we're not you. We're not making those judgment calls. We're preparing data for you to be able to speak to your goals, to hiring people or scaling or paying people. We have the data available. I still got to know what the goal or the objective is so that I can best help.

Yes, I think communication, you nailed it. I think when I said they just want to dump the problem in your lap and walk away, it's that walk away problem, right? Like, this is an ongoing conversation. You have to— You got to work with us here because if there isn't any communication, then there's going to be problems. So what is the most common problem from a financial standpoint that you see with agency owners?

Uh, kind of a mix of things, but if I had to probably pick the biggest one, it's typically centered around cash flow. Like, Cameron, I'm making $50,000 a month, but why is majority of it not in my bank account? And you and I both know that that's a very multilayered question. But some of the top reasons I would say are, A, you're probably paying yourself too much in distributions. B, you probably have some type of loan or credit card payment or my least favorite merchant loans that's just destroying your cash flow. C, you've overhired, you know, because you listen to your buddy and they got you know, 12 contractors and you think you should have 12 when in reality you may only need 5. That's one. And your tech stack is out of control. You signed up for some things that, you know, may have been good at one point, but either they're outdated or you thought you canceled them. So those are kind of the top 4 things that we see that kind of mess up and disturb that. And it's the hardest one to fix is the loan. Right? Because you got a loan because of something, but those terms are typically not good. They're pretty bad. So to try to help them get out of that is probably the biggest and hardest challenge for us. Or when they like owe money for their taxes and they didn't know, like that's the season we're in right now with it being extension season. And we just finished an S corp return for a guy. He's going to owe about $24,000, $25,000. And he's like, What? I didn't know. Why is it so much? Just like, man, if I only had him last year, I know for a fact I could have probably slashed that bill in half. He probably would have only owed maybe, maybe $10,000. But it's like, I didn't have you. There's— I can only tell you so much after he came to us, I think in March. I can only tell you so much. The year's already over, you know. So it's very hard for us as accountants and CFOs and all of that to to see it because to us we know how to fix it. But typically you got to kind of let that first year or 6 months kind of run its course of whatever the past person did for it to kind of be a clean slate. So like in that tax example, like 2024, I'm like, you're not going to have none of these problems, but you still got to pay 2023.

Yeah. And I think that's a good— you said first year. I think if you make a change with an accountant plan on being with them for a year because you're, you're not going to see the full benefit most likely, uh, until that second time around, right?

Yeah, their stuff takes until—

exactly.

And that's the crazy part about tax season, right? And I think you'd attest to this. Tax season is every accountant's most profitable time, January through April. But it's also the— if your accountant has a heart, it's the hardest time because If I didn't have you on monthly retainer prior to January 1st, whatever your last person told you, or in my case, a lot of times didn't tell you, there's not that much we can do to fix it for 2023 stuff. But now 2024, all of this is going to be changed. It's going to be a lot different, way better. But like in that guy's case, the only reason that his taxes got destroyed like that was because he was an S corp and the last accountant didn't tell him he had to be on payroll. So he took out all these distributions. And you know how that goes. You take out all the distributions, no salary, but they're going to hit you with capital gains tax. And basically, to put it in English, since this is for the creatives, basically the IRS says, hey, you thought you were slick by not being on payroll and trying to just hit that transfer button. Nope, we're still going to get our money. So we're going to tax you and you don't get to control by how much. If we say we're going to tax— I think his was like $150,000 was his total distribution. We're going to tax $89,000 of it. And this is the number. Like, there's nothing you can do about that. And I feel so bad because he's a good dude. He works hard, family man, involved in his community, right? All of those things. But that was only because they didn't tell him that as an S corp, you need to be be on payroll and that's what destroyed them. So of course it's like you hurt as the guy trying to come in because it's like kind of got to bite the bullet for '23, but now '24 going forward, you're going to be crystal clear, right? But that's always the hardest thing for us and just trying to communicate like, hey, I can't fix that because that year's done over with, but I can fix everything going forward.

Yeah, I think a lot of business owners I think that taxes is, you know, your H&R Block where you, you know, bring all your forms and they put it in the computer and it spits out. And, you know, they don't see a lot of value in it, but it's kind of like— I would equate it to not going to the dentist, right? And then, you know, your mouth starts hurting and you go to the dentist and, oh, we got to extract these teeth and do surgery and all this, and it would have been a lot better if you had been coming to us for the last 5 years, right? And, and I, I think it's, you know, once they have that toothache, they don't want a toothache again. And, and that— but a lot of them, uh, it takes a while before they realize, hey, I really do need an accountant. It's not just a, you know, something I have to do. It's, it's something that brings value to what you do.

And, and Yeah, and I think to your point, like, what we tell people is you got to remember, you've never made $30,000 per month. I'm not talking about the year, per month before in your life, right? Most— the average American, which shout out to you guys, we love you, but the average American, right, you're talking they're bringing in $4,000 to $6,000, maybe $7,000 per month, and that's before you take out tax. Versus on the agency side, it's very common for us to see $30K to $100K months, not year, but months. So if you've never made— let's just do easy math. 3 times 12 is 36. Add your zero. You've never made $300,000 in one year before. You have no idea about my taxes. What? I got to owe him how much? And I got to pay the feds and the state. What I got to do? They've never experienced that. So that's again going back to the heart of an accountant. Like, that's what kind of breaks our heart as people because it's like, and you know, my mentor is completely opposite from me. She'll be like, Cameron, you don't need to be so whatever with them because think of you made $300 grand and you know you didn't pay no taxes the whole year. I don't want to hear that crap, even though she used different language. Me, I'm just like, yeah, but coming from— remember, I got let go, so I know what it's like to be on the food stamps and to barely make money, right? Now you're making 20, 30, 40, 50 grand in a month. You happy. You're not thinking about saving for taxes and building up your rainy day fund and building up a savings fund and building cushion. Babe, you want to go to the best restaurant? Let's go travel. Like, that's what they're thinking about. So to have to kind of bring them into reality and say, hey, I'm so happy you made $500 grand this year, but taxes on that at the least and being super conservative. Yep. $500 grand, probably, you know, about $60, $70 grand. But then you got to lead them through that. But hey, you know, you went to that conference, Funnel Hacking Live and Bid Summit and, you know, GoHighLevel and all these different things. If we can use those, that $500 now becomes $250. Taxable on $250 is $45 grand. And then if we do this special tax strategy, maybe we can turn into an S corp. What is that? Why ain't that— well, hey, now we got it down to $35,000. So like, you got to walk people through that because in their mind, it's make as much money as I can, right? And then Hey, let's just either spend it on scaling or let me just save it all. That's cool. But you need to know if you're going to scale, which— and we tell people you fall into two categories. Either you're the conservative person. We had a guy that used to be like, Cameron, I don't know what it is. It's not like we grew up broke or nothing, but it just does something to me when I can log into my bank account and see $100,000 in the bank. Okay, I'm not mad at that. You just need to be aware that you being more conservative, a.k.a. not spending, means you're going to pay higher taxes. So we need to accommodate that. Then I got some of my other people, I call them aggressive. Can we try to get to 7 figures? We're going to spend it unless you tell me stop. I'm trying to get people in. I'm trying to spend it. We're trying to blow money on ads. Okay, cool. Less cash because you're spending it all. But that also means less in taxes. We just got to play that line of Keeping some cushion in there in case something happens, in case you lose some clients, and still scaling. So typically people fall into two sides, but it's our job as the accountant to try to get you in the right profile so that we can best support you. But again, going back to your earlier comment, you got to communicate these things to us too. We, we need to know, are you trying to get to 7 figures? Are you just trying to pay bills? Are you just wanting to save? What, what are those goals so that we can best help?

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Yeah, and I think to summarize it, you know, let's say you started the bank account was zero and you ended the year and you didn't pay yourself, right? Okay, we're just going to say it's all in the bank, everything stayed in the company, and, and you, you end the year with $100,000 but you haven't paid any taxes. You know, that $100,000 isn't all yours. It, you know, it could be $15,000, it could be $30,000 depending upon your situation, you know, outside of the business and what else, what state, you know, blah blah blah. But it's not, uh, you're not done until you've paid taxes on it. Another thing that I see a lot of business owners getting hung up on are loan payments. You know, they think those are deductible, right? And it's like, because the cash went out the door, right? And I'm like, well, did you pay tax on it when you got the money? Uh, no. Okay, well, you then you don't get it when you pay it back. So I'm a little older than you. I want a tax tip, tax strategy for marketers Give me your most obscure one and see if I haven't heard it. Because I— yeah, so like, yeah, I love, I love tax. While you're thinking, I had, I had a client once and he came to me. He was in the real estate business partly, and he said, well, I'm going to do this and do this and this is going to allow me to do this for taxes. And I sat there and I went, huh, that's actually brilliant. And my client taught me a tax strategy. So I'm always looking to learn for new ideas. So here's your shot, Cam.

I don't know if I have a new idea. The most practical, I would probably say, that is often overlooked. Everybody, "Oh, I want, gimme them strategies Trump has," or, "I know if Trump's not paying taxes on all of that money, I need the same thing." And I hate to say it, but the best, most practical tip is you got to have clean financials. Like, I hate to simplify it, but we've seen such a difference in people who just kind of come in and wing it. Like, yeah, I think I made about $500 grand and I probably spent about, you know, $200 grand. I'm like, do we want to think or we want to know? That's a big difference. And then you start doing all the numbers and all the math. Come to find out they made $625,000, but they spent $450,000. Well, that's still a lot better than just winging it. So that would be one.

I would agree. I would agree with that.

I would agree. S corps, it's not the best move for everybody because the goal is never really, if we're being honest, to pay the least amount of taxes. The goal is to have the least amount of cash come out of your pocket, because what a lot of people don't realize with S corps is, yeah, I'm not paying self-employment tax. Yeah, but that just turned into payroll tax too. And if it turned into payroll tax, then you got to have a different level of compliance, right? You're— you have to have financials now. There's a bigger and a completely separate tax return. So now your compliance costs have gone up. There are so many other things to it. Sometimes you will save more cash going out of your pocket by simply staying an LLC, but that's something that your accountant needs to walk you through with some type of presentation or entity analysis. So beware of the accountant that just says, yeah, be an S corp, you should be one, it'll save you on taxes. Like, It can, but see, what if your wife is married and, and work— or wife is married— what if your wife is working and has 3 W-2s or 2? That can throw that off. You may not need it. You— so there's so many different aspects to that. So I mean, we post a lot of content on social, but let your accountant— bring the concept to them and let them put that in a presentation or an analysis for you. So that you can see what's best for you. Because just because it works for your buddy doesn't mean it's going to work for you. Your buddy could be the stay-at-home— you know, his wife's a stay-at-home mom. He's the only one working. Perfect for you. If your wife has a high-income job, it may not be the best thing for you. Once you draw out the fact that you got 3 kids, she works a high-income job, she withholds a ton, and you're in a state that has high state taxes. Well, we don't know that. So I would just encourage to run the numbers, okay? Have those financials in place before you start trying to do all these fancy holding companies and all these other fancy things.

Yeah, you're 100% right. As you were saying that, the analogy would be, I'm going to go take whatever medicines you're taking because that's going to make me feel better, right? Like, it doesn't work that way. There is a company out there, and I wouldn't share the name if I remembered it, but I'll send you the link to it because it just blew my mind around what they were selling as far as tax advice and tax strategies. And I think Cam's right on the head with you need to not listen to other business owners. You need to talk to the professional. About your situation. But the reality is, if you want to screw your taxes up, there are plenty of people out there that will take your money and screw them up. And, you know, I don't want to say commit fraud, but in some of these cases, I mean, they're flat out fraudulent.

Wait, okay, we got to go here. So you asked for a story. All right. This happened earlier this week. So I get a guy, he, you know how they do on Facebook. Hey, I need an accountant that can help me do blah, blah, blah. He wants us to do a tax projection. Get him on a call. All right, talk me through it. So he starts talking, hey, I make about $70 grand. So I'm like, that's not going to be a monthly retainer person, but okay, keep going. So I want to project my taxes for the rest of the year. All right. Do you got your income? You got what you project to hit at the end of the year for income and expenses. He then says, well, I've already talked to another accountant. Okay, this guy says he can save me $25,000 on taxes. So now my first thought is like, wait, you make $70,000 and he gonna save you $25,000? I'm like, well, let me look at your tax return. He's like, yeah, it should be just like last year. We started looking. He's— I see the business and it was around $70,000-ish last year, but then there's this huge like -$72,000 loss on some weird name. So I'm like, what is this? Oh yeah, the guy who did it, he asked me, did I have any property? And I kept telling him no. And he was like, well, do you have some? And he put me some property in India and marks it as a $72,000 loss. So I'm looking like, well, let's ask the basic question. Do you have a property? He's like, no. And I kept telling him that. I'm like, well, it's definitely on your tax return. So I'm like, well, let me look for the Schedule E to see, like, how did you do it? There was no schedule. It was just the fallout piece on there. Nothing with the what happened, the entry, or the expenses or income or anything. And so he was like, well, you know, now that you kind of brought it up and talk me through it, I did think that was kind of suspect. And I'm like, well, it's on your tax return.

And you signed it.

So you signed it and you got like a $3,000 refund. Right. To be clear, you— I said this is your choice to make, not mine. But you either need to be okay with this and roll the dice and hope that you don't ever get audited, or you need to file an amended return, which would be my suggestion. Because if they were to ever ask, hey, what is this property on this Schedule E that's negative $72,000? You literally just told me you don't know, you don't have an idea, and there's no documentation to back you. So to your point, people— he then he says, I forgot this part. Well, Cameron, this new guy I'm talking to says that he's gonna charge me $1,500 for a consultation, $3K to see if he can save me money, and then another $3K to do a plan. And he swears he can save me $25 grand. And I was like, no offense, I said, because I haven't taken a dime from you, you know, this is just diagnostic call. I said, if you make $70K, how is he going to save you $2,500? That makes no sense because you and I know this just for a super generalized thing, just for the non-numbers people. At best, right, you're going to pay at least 15%. So super easy way to do it, what's 10%? And then add a little bit more to it. So if you make $70 grand, 10% is $7 grand. Round up, let's be nice. At most, you gonna pay $10,000. He gonna save you $25,000. Well, he was saying that he's gonna link the amount of savings that he can get for me and gonna tie that to his fee. I was like, yeah, that's a fact.

Because now— absolutely, that's a flag.

You know, we're— now he's not incentivized to be correct. He's incentivized to make whatever the result is to get you a refund. Therefore, you will justify his fee. And we've never done that. And all the good ones, let me just say it on record, all the good accountants, tax preparers, CPAs, EAs, they're never going to promise you a percentage. Why?

Because it's unethical.

Accuracy, right? No, we can save you money if we do it correctly. But I mean, for me, we may just charge you, like, for example, to do a tax projection and an entity announcement and all this stuff. Let's just be nice to say, hey, it'll be $5,000. We'll do the accounting from January '23 to— what are we in— September '24. We'll do the S-corp return for you. We'll do the analysis and get you on payroll all for $6,000. If I'm telling you $6,000, that's because I've already calculated the numbers to know I'm saving you $35,000. But I would never frame it as this is a— we're going to charge you a percentage of savings because you do the return. You technically don't know because the client's gonna forget something. Oh, I forgot to add this. Yeah, throw this in there too. So you just got, if it sounds too, too good to be true, it may be a good chance that it is.

You, you're, and, and like I said, they're out there and people are throwing money at them because they tell them what they want to hear. And, uh, that's not a recipe for success. I, I, I'll close with one, uh, uh, more story. When I was very new, probably second or third year in business, I, I had this guy and he had a business and we did his return. And that was back when you had to come in and physically sign them. And, uh, then he looks at me and he pulls out this, uh, driver's license. He goes, are you ready to do the next one? And I looked at it and it was his picture, but it wasn't his name. And I'm like, What are you talking about? And this is right after the, um, Earned Income Credit had come, come into play. And so he's like, well, I need you to file another return. And I said, absolutely not, get out of here. I'm like, I don't want to see you again. Like, but it, you know, people, people think about taxpayers committing fraud. Yeah, but there are also tax preparers that commit fraud. And, you know, I it's, it's not, it's not a good situation. Cam, how do people find you to learn more about Kinley Consulting?

Um, so you can always connect with us on Facebook. I'm pretty active on there when I'm not in stuff like this or in client meetings. Um, so you can just find me Cameron Williams. You can go to our website, which is kinleyconsulting.com. Um, but for the most part, I tell people Facebook, for us, you get a lot of free value, a lot of tips, a lot of things to watch out for. Hey, is this you? You probably should check this. Just kind of the same conversations we're having here. You need to go and just follow us for that in and of itself. If you were to follow us, you'd get so much value in regards to what should my salary be looking like? Am I paying myself too much, too little, etc.? So we just tell people reach out to us on Facebook. Again, that's just Cameron Williams, my first and last name, or you can just go to the website. We have some, you know, information about us and what we do. But yeah, we just try to serve first. That's kind of our motto for this year. So any way we can help you that, of course, Christian and his team cannot, then just reach out to us and let us know.

Cameron, thank you very much for joining me today. For our listeners, if you like what you've heard, follow the podcast or subscribe, uh, depending upon your platform. If you don't like it, uh, hit the link and send us a message and tell us what you'd like to hear next. Until next time, ta-ta for now.

And that's a wrap for today's episode of The Profitable Creative. Until next time, you money lovers. And don't forget, Profit First for Creatives is live via Amazon. Link below.