How to Build a Side Hustle and ACTUALLY Make Money

The opportunity to talk about the way to build your side hustle. The basics. I want to try to break this down into some simple steps for you to make more money with this idea. Project some, you may not see it as a great opportunity. I want you to. We're going to talk about the side hustle and I'm going to give you five basic steps to get it started. Rolling and making more money. Now, my name is Mark Kohler. I'm a CPA attorney, best selling authority, a serial entrepreneur. I love small business, I love Main Street America. And I've been helping thousands and thousands of clients for the last 25 years build businesses. And I've been doing the same thing myself since age, I think nine. That's when I had my first lemonade stand. So I'm with you. I get you, I love you and I love the American dream and I love the side hustle concept. This year it is estimated over half of working Americans have a side hustle. That's a 1099. That's a little business on the side where someone's paying you to do something out of your regular 9 to 5 job or day job or night job, if you will. You're out there earning money in some other way. Now, by the way, this is the gateway drug to the American dream. The side hustle. A small business. It is. And I want you to embrace it. The side hustle is such a wonderful way to break out of the insanity of just trading time for money and working for someone else. Not that that's bad. I have many, many clients that keep their technical training from a great college experience or vocational training or a career path where they're getting paid great money or reasonable money for, for their day job, career, that's fine. You got benefits. Maybe you and or your spouse love it. I know, I'm okay with that. But if on the side we can build that side hustle and make more money, we're going to pay off debt, we're going to start saving more money, we're going to invest in assets that start making passive income people. The side hustle is the method to save more in taxes and build more wealth. Tax free cash flow. We want to build cash flow so that we're not working our butts off every day. So my friends, that's the beauty of the side hustle. I want you to embrace it, understand it, have passion for it and go for it. So the five basic steps to begin with, and these are categories more than, I mean There might be 20 or 30 things to do here, but I put them in five steps. Number one, launch the right side hustle. That's number one. Now there's really kind of level one side hustles and level two side hustles. Level one is Uber DoorDash. Maybe you're doing some consulting on upwork. You might be making 100 to $200 an hour on upwork as a side hustle. It's a great website for you to kind of sell your services if you have some technical training. Uber doordash, we get it. And I've got college students that are Local Area Level 2 DoorDash. They're making 30 to $35 an hour in the evenings and weekends doing doordash. That's great. It's wonderful. And I'm hoping any of you that are on a level one side hustle, you're taking that money and you're getting ready to go to level two. You're getting out of debt. You're using that money not to just live week to week, month to month. And I know, I know it is tough out there. The cost of living has gone up dramatically. Wages are stagnant and people are struggling. My son here in the studio has been talking to me about just this ongoing suffocating feeling of our economy. And so many middle to lower income, which you don't feel low income, but if you're making less than 100 grand, you're like, I'm broke. You're living week to week, month to month, and it is brutal. So you're doing this side hustle to make ends meet. That's level one. It's okay and I get it. And I can save a lot in taxes on that because that little uber side hustle doordash, selling consulting services on upwork, that's a small business. So I want to write off cell phone, home, office, auto dining, travel, all sorts of goodies. And we're going to pay less tax on that money. That's good. That's good. But that's level one. Level two, and this is how you get wealthy, is that side hustle has to allow you to duplicate yourself or sell a product or service in the middle of the night while you're sleeping. That's when you start to build real wealth. Because now you're not trading time for, for money. You're taking your time and building something that you can sell when you're not there. Now, let's do a couple of quick examples. Let's say it's janitorial or landscaping. I've got a client that does landscaping, and he's got two crews. They do sprinkler systems and new builds, and they do lawn maintenance. And then he's also got two crews that do cleaning for. For Airbnbs. One guy, he and his wife, wonderful couple. I love him. And they've got two crews out there every day cleaning Airbnbs and two crews working on homes. Now, he could do it all himself, the landscaping and charge X, and his wife could go do all the cleaning and charge Y. But now if they have got two crews cleaning homes at $300 a house, and they're doing two houses a day with two crews at four different homes at 300 a home, whoa. Now I'm bringing in $1,200, but I'm only paying my crew $600. So if I can get a hundred percent markup on services I'm providing, I'm making money when I'm not there. Now, is that a challenge? Sure. You got to hire, you got to fire, you got to make sure your crew's where they're supposed to be. There's going to be administrative costs. But now you cleaning homes, you're managing cleaners, and you're making money even when you might be at the soccer practice of your kids. Now, you could. And it's the same with the landscaping. Number two example. This is a dog. My daughter Alison. I want to give her a shout out. She sells product online. She's been doing it since she was 14 years old. She would go buy used clothing, put it in the driveway, drive over it a couple times with my car, and then sell it online and call it the urban outfitter version. I'm more of a rural outfitter, Walmart. But anyway, she would take clothes, drive over it and sell it, and she'd go into my closet and look for any old ACDC rock band shirts from the 80s and resell them. I'd be like, where the hell did my shirt go? Well, I didn't know you wanted it. Yeah, I wanted it. And she'd sell it. But she's been selling clothes online for years now she's selling patterns online so she'll find. And she went on to school and learned how to be a designer and sew clothing. And so she can take patterns, show how to do them on YouTube, and sell the patterns with her YouTube videos online in the middle of the night. She is making money online in the middle of the night. That's how we start to build wealth. The next video I'll shoot is on Scaling. But the first one is let's just choose the right side hustle and level one's okay, but let's be thinking while you're driving Uber or you're out there doing that consulting or driving doordash, you, you're thinking, I can do this better. What's my next side hustle where I can duplicate myself or a product or service and sell it online. Now it's going to take some time, it's going to take some development. You should be watching Shark Tank every freaking night thinking of ideas and. But don't be beating yourself up. Take time to develop this idea and something that you're passionate about, something that you can make money at, that you love. All right, now I'm going to be filling questions here. In a moment I'll give you some additional resources. I'm not going anywhere here. I'm Every week we're helping small business owners around the country get straigh structured. But it's not setting up an LLC first, it's not opening a bank account first. It's deciding your plan. What does that side hustle going to be now? Number two, Number two, Strategy or step? The basic steps. Okay, you want to go just do level one and take write offs. Great, I'll help you all day long. You want to go drive Uber, take write offs and put that money in the bank and pay off debt, that's great. You want to make money. I think that's why you're watching. Now we got to do step two. You're going to develop side hustle level two and you're going to write a business plan, a one page business plan. And you can get online and look over and over at all sorts of business plans and watch videos and do it. But don't pay anybody to do a freaking business plan for you. And don't think it has to be 30 freaking pages long. Just write up a page. What am I going to sell for? How much? Who's my competition? How am I going to produce it? How much is it going to cost me to produce it? How am I going to sell it? And a timeline here. What's it going to take? One page. That's all I'm asking for. Bring me one page. Don't try to do it online or don't let AI do it for you. Don't pay someone else to do it for you. Take a real pen to real paper and pencil it out. Did I say pen? Take a real pencil and put it into paper and pencil it out. What are you Going to sell for how much? How much is it going to cost to produce? How are you going to produce it? And what's your marketing plan? That's it. Well, I talked to so many people that have a small business idea. I'm like, show me a one page. What do you got on it? Well, I got this great. No, no, no, don't tell me. Show me the one page because we got to see it on paper. Who's your competition? What are they doing? Secret shop someone. And it doesn't have to be super unique. You can be something doing something just a little different than your competition and blow it up by. Did you hear of Lowe's and Home Depot? It's okay. You don't have to be unique. There could be two of something. Number three, you're going to determine my capital needs. Am I going to have to borrow money from someone or partner with someone? You could be borrowing from a bank, an angel investor, someone that wants to get you. An angel investor means they don't want their money back, they just want to help you. It could be grandma, but you're going to borrow money from someone or institution or you're going to look for a partner. Stay away from the I word. Investor is a dirty word. Investor means give me money and I'll give you something. If I make anything, invest in my business, you lose their money, you're going to jail. That's an SEC problem. You don't want to look for investors and make promises you can't keep because you get in trouble. You want to say, hey, do you want to loan me money and I will pay you back X in interest? That's a lender. It's a note. You borrow money, you pay them back. Or hey, do you want to partner with me? Don't call him an investor. Say, do you want to partner with me? You want to give me 10 grand and you can be a 20% partner, 30% partner. That's what they're doing when they go to Shark Tank. They're saying, give me money to help me launch this business and level up now if you need it. So I'm saying third step in this process is decide if you need money. You may not. A lot of service businesses, you don't need extra money. I started a janitorial business back in 1992 when I was started to go to college and I ran it for six years and sold it for a profit. I had 25 employees at one point I was working in the middle of the night as a janitor. It took me $500 to start the business. I went and bought a vacuum, a wet dry vac, and a mop and a broom, literally. And I started knocking on commercial doors saying, I'll clean your building at night, and I build a business that way. Sold it for $50,000, to be honest, is what I sold it for at the end of the day and went off to law school. That was a janitorial business. I didn't need investors, I didn't need partners. I didn't need to go borrow Money. Your Level 1 side hustle is you're saving money to be the capital you need to launch your level two side hustle where you can duplicate yourself a product or service. Now step four, step four is you're going, okay, Mark, I got my ideas, I've got my business plan. I decided I don't need money or whatever. I've got the capital to do this. I'm going to go sell that piece of crap boat in my backyard or that RV I never drive, or I'm going to go sell this in my garage or I'm going to sell something to get this launched. Step four, structure. Now I'm going to go to the whiteboard. You really have two options on this. And it's okay, don't think again. You have to run out and go set up an llc. You might. We're going to talk about that. So get structured because you have to. You can't build wealth if you don't build a structure to build upon. So option A and B. Option A is ghetto. We're just going to do a sole prop. We're not going to go worry about an llc. We're going to use your Social Security number. We're going to just start marketing it. We're going to. We're going to test the product. We're going to make a little money. We're going to just make a little and we're going to see how it goes some. We don't need to rush out and get a formal thing going. If it's just, you know, we're just going to test out the idea. And I kind of like this idea because I don't want to spend a bunch of money getting organized. If we're just in kind of that product development focus group level, you know, I'm going to just try this out and see how it goes. If you get any traction at all, we immediately go to option B. Option B is where you're going to set up an LLC in the state where you operate and live. Now, I'm not going to. I'm going to maybe launch that into an S corp down the road, but that's later. I just want a basic LLC in the state where I live. Now. Be careful going online and click, click, click, click. And I'm just going to go set it up and watch Google and La la. I'll tell you, my little law firm is very affordable and helps clients around the country do it right and ask a bunch of questions of a real tax lawyer on Zoom for a Main street business owner for around 1200 bucks. But if you want to go knock it out for 4 or 500 on some online site, go for it. Be careful. Make sure you check all the right boxes. You and it's not just one sheet of paper. Well, Mark, I can do it at the state for $50. Yeah, that's about a tenth of an LLC. There's a lot of pieces. You got the new BOI report to FinCEN has to be done in 90 days. You need an EIN, you need a corporate book, you need a bank packet. You gotta go to the bank and open up an account, get it done right. All right, so you've got this llc, you're gonna get an ein, like I said, and you're gonna go get a bank account and you're gonna start getting the platforms in for payment. You want to set up your stripe, your square, your whatever Zelle. You're going to do all the things you need to. And by the way, as a person, you can get money on Zelle, but you don't tell them it's your business. But anyway, you start getting all these payment plan forms in place, your bank account, your ein, your bank, your llc, and you're going to look at your URL. What is your website name? I want your website to coincide with the name maybe of your llc. We always want to be looking for our URL on Go Godaddy. At the same time we're deciding on our business because we're ready to launch. We got to have all this structure in place. Now is there going to be more than that down the road? Sure, maybe we build some corporate credit and we start getting our logo down and we start designing our website and all this. But to me, this piece brings us to step five. Step five is the marketing plan. And in the marketing plan you're going to decide on the logo, the website, your colors, Are you going to do paid ads or not? What are you going to do with social media posting and social media platforms? And you're Also going to talk about your local market. Is there networking involved locally? How are you going to sell, how are you going to onboard, how are you going to bring in your clients and make your sales? So you've got this whole marketing plan that you can evolves. It grows, it evolves, it changes. It's okay that it has change. It's okay. So I carry my marketing plan around with me everywhere. So this step of getting structured could be super simple or at least enough to open the doors. Like I want to open the door and start making money. So if, if I can get these five steps down, let's repeat these. I've got my level one side hustle. Level two is where I'm going to make the real money. Number two, I'm going to do a business plan for that Level two idea. Number three, I'm going to determine what the capital is going to be necessary to launch this and if I even need partners or where I'm going to get the money. Level four, I'm going to get structured. Now I may do some market testing. Staying as a sole proprietorship. I don't need to go out and spend for any legal or any banking or any major structuring. I'm just going to kind of test out my idea. Secret shop it, if you will, amongst your competition. And then the real structuring before I go to level five, basic step five is I'm going to get my structure done. An llc, a bank account, an ein, the payment platforms, La la la la la. And then boom, go to the marketing plan. And in the marketing plan, we're going to start checking off all these boxes. The last thing I want to say is, do not feel like you have to do this in the next three weeks. Don't compare yourself to anyone else. Compare yourself to you. There's no rush. It is not a race. I want you to love this idea. I want you to be passionate about the process. I want you to be excited about this. If you're having anxiety, waking every day up every day about this, you got the wrong approach. You know, I've got to do this. I don't want to do this. This is terrible. This is miserable. I hate this. Then don't do it. Let's find the thoughts that give us the right feeling. Like, oh my gosh, this idea is great. I have unlimited potential. I could make more money doing this than working for someone else. I could supplement my day job and in a powerful way, I could build wealth, I could build a future retirement. This could be really Exciting. Think of all the new people I'm going to meet. Oh, do I have to be perfect at it? No. Do I have to be super successful at it? No. Do I have to do it right away? No. No. Is there any pressure? No. You're the only one creating pressure for yourself. Think about the mindset you want to go into this with. That's half the battle. Setting up an LLC and tax write offs. Follow me. I gotcha. I gotcha. I'm doing this constantly. I got books, I got podcasts, I got videos. I got a tax pro network of accounts that'll help you. It's this stuff that matters. On what you're going to do and believing in yourself, taking your time and going at it in pieces and parts. Now I'm going to do another broad. This is step one, this is part one, part two, which may be next week. It might take a couple of weeks. Let it percolate for some of you is I want to do scaling your side hustle. See, once you get this launched, that's one thing, but how do I hire employees? How do I expand, how do I grow? How do I scale this? That's a whole other set of tools. But let's just get the damn thing up and going. Let's make some sales, let's figure out our product or service, our pricing model and work out the system a little bit. It's okay. It could take you several months to do that. Could take longer, could take less. That, my friends, are the five basic steps to get your side hustle launched and cranking. All right, well, I want to be here for you with any questions you might have on the process. You may want to challenge me on some of these or ask me or tell me that something should be different. I'm all ears. Let's do it. Dylan, who do we got?

First question comes from Amit on Instagram and he asks any recommendations on how to manage people for these small businesses? Books on managing people. Anyone have any tips?

Oh, my gosh, I love it. Anybody in chat want to help them out with some good books? I love the book Traction. Now, Traction has been a life changer for me in the last two years. There's a book on scaling, but it's meant to really go next level, so it might be a little over your head, but I'd like Traction. The other one that I love is Trust and Inspire. It's by Covey and it's a great book on how to inspire others to believe in the passion of what you and your idea and your vision and it's very, very powerful. So look at Covey's Inspire book. The next thing I would say is if you're going to hire employees, everybody, this is super powerful. I love your question. If you're going to hire an employee, you should if. Let's just do a basic billing model. You're going to hire an employee to go clean something. You're going to hire an employee to do consulting. So you want to be charging for their services 3x what you're paying them, at least. So let's say I'm paying someone $20 an hour. Your FICA cost of payroll withholdings and workers comp And Suda Fuda Fica is going to be around 15%. So a $20 employee is really going to cost you about $25. So you have to keep that in mind. So that employee cost me $25. Well, I want you charging 3x at least of what that employee is costing you. So if you're going to say, go out to a building and say, let's do an airbnb example. You're going to have an employee go clean an Airbnb. So you're going to walk in and go, okay, I could clean this airbnb in four hours. All right? And so you go, okay, my employee is going to cost me $25 an hour for four hours. That's 100 bucks. Now, you may put in there some money for equipment, supplies, cleaning material, la la la la la. But let's say that cleaning job is a four hour deal. Your employees 25. You should be billing at least 75 per hour for that cleaning. So if it's a per hour, so if it's a four hour cleaning job, you're going to be at around $300, around $300 for that cleaning job. And a lot of Airbnb are paying about three to $400 to have a typical three, two Airbnb cleaned. Now you're bringing in three to $400. You're paying out $100 in labor, and then you're going to have some overhead. The goal would be everybody for every gross dollar you bring in. Let's do whiteboard, Dylan. You're going to bring in gross revenue of, let's say $100. You want a third of that to go to labor in a typical labor intensive business, a third of that to go to overhead and a third of that to go to profit. You want to be shooting for a 30%, 33% profit margin on the prices you're charging. So as you scale now, this is going to be more of a scaling conversation is if I can operate on a 30% profit margin, I'm killing. Most restaurants are a 5 to 10% profit margin. A realtor might be on a 80% profit margin because they have lower overhead. A Realtor doesn't have an employees or a big restaurant and food costs. So depending on your type of business, you're going to figure out what how much am I going to charge and how much is my labor allocation. But this would just be kind of a typical like that, that cleaning idea. So as you now with that said, you're going to make sure you have an employment agreement you're going to have and by the way, when I say employment agreement, I go with at will agreements. It's really a letter of. Letter of understanding Loi. A letter of understanding for the employee because you want to be able to fire them at any time. You don't want to sign employment contracts. And then you're going to have an employee handbook. You're going to set up a payroll procedure and I love ADP for this. I may even want to put that down in the description. Our link to Brandon over at adp. So you can go to ADP and line up your payroll, which can be extremely affordable. So you've got your employment agreement and I'm going to put letter of understanding Loi. You're going to have an employee handbook and an ADP for payroll, let's say. And then the big one is you're going to have a training program and you're going to also give the duties and responsibilities to the employee. And you're going to regularly train, build, mentor and follow up with them so they can understand their duties and get them feeling excited and grateful for what they have. So you want to really be managing employees is an art. Absolutely. It's a lot of work, but there's also some basic things to do and so I would go that route on that. Next question.

Dylan, next question comes From Patrick on YouTube and he has a few crypto questions. So the first one is why an S Corp instead of an LLC for crypto miners and staking? And then he asks if I start an NFT project and sell NFTs for ADA, do I pay sales tax? And if I convert that ADA to usdc, is that a taxable event?

And all the acronyms out there, can you have them put in chat? Ada, Is that a token? I apologize. I believe it is a token of some sort. Help me out in chat on that one. Okay, everybody, the first question was why would I need an S corporation for crypto mining or staking? Now everybody, this is why a realtor needs an S corp. This is why a restaurant owner needs an S corp. This is important, Patrick. Why does a lawyer need to be an S corp? An accountant need to be an S corp. A landscaper need to be an S corp. Here's why. If you're out there, people as an LLC and doing landscaping or you're doing crypto mining, because crypto mining is a service that's not investing. Crypto mining is a service. And you're like, well, my CPU is doing the service. Doesn't matter. An employee is out cleaning for me. A computer is mining for me. Same thing. It's generating income. It's a service, it's not an investment. You want to go buy Bitcoin and sit on it, that's capital gain. You want to go mine, that's a business staking. Now there's delegating node operator and then there's custodial. Custodial staking is passive. I'm going to let Gemini stake my coins while they're with them in their at the exchange. That's fine. But if you're going to do any node operating or even delegating, the IRS is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Your staking is an active business. It's not just investing. So it's very clear in regs and rules and our position at our tax law firm. Custodial staking, passive node operator, delegating operational. So you guys see this? So if I'm a landscaper or crypto miner, so landscaping or crypto mining, and I bring in 100 grand and I spend 25 grand on expenses, that could be for the crypto mine, it could be for my landscaping truck, whatever. Just hang with me. And you net 75 grand. You're going to pay self employment tax at 15%. That's 10 grand. That's self employment tax in any state. I don't care if you're in a basement or doing this in Yugoslavia. In the United States, you're going to pay self employment tax of 15% on that mining revenue. On your landscaping revenue net, you're going to pay 15%. Then you're going to pay state and fed. You're getting hit three times. Boom, boom, boom. This could be 5% state, it could be 20% fed. Look at this. You're out 40% in taxes. Holy crap. Right? So Patrick, not good. So why we convert to an S corp. And all I have to do is convert this to an S corp. By the way, it's super expensive. Call my office. It's 200 bucks. Yeah, it's 200 bucks, so chill. But you got to do it right, you got to date it properly. It's a two page form that clients screw up all the time. So anyway, so now that I'm an S corp, I make the same hundred grand. I spend 25. I net 75. Now. No self employment tax, no Obamacare, no corporate tax. What? Awesome. Now the only catch is I have to take a little bit of salary here and that is called reasonable comp. I'm going to take the 75 grand and cut it into two pieces. Probably 25 grand salary, 50 grand net. I just saved 15% on 50 grand. That's $7,500. So Patrick, if you're in the crypto business of mining, you, you want to run that mining through an S corp. So you save on self employment tax and it adds up. Quick, talk to one of my attorneys at my office and they will help hook you up and get you into the right structure for your crypto projects.

Next question comes From Monica on YouTube and she asks. I work with the Department of Mental Health county as a full time job and I just started doing a part time private practice therapy in California.

Love it.

Do I need an S corp if I'm making around 20k on my part time?

No, you don't, because you're going to graduate to the S corp when the savings makes sense. I probably wouldn't even do an LLC at this point because there's an $800 minimum tax in California and you don't need it for asset protection. Now if you were starting a bungee jumping school and you were throwing people off a crane at county fairs this summer, I'd get an LLC. Even if you were only going to make 20 grand because the LLC is an asset protection issue. But for you doing counseling on the side, it's a little sole prop. Now it's a level one strategy. It's a level one strategy. You're trading time for money. Okay, you want to go next level? Here's what you do. What's her name? Monica. Okay, Monica, hear me out. Set up a website where you give it a cool name and say here's the coaching. Because if you're going therapy and you're not licensed and all that, you got to be careful with the words you use. But if you're going to be doing some coaching, which is an Unregulated service. And you're going to be helping people through trauma or whatever you're going to do. Set up a business where you have other coaches and therapists or whatever you call it, that are on your team that you bill out. So now you're bringing in clients and passing them off to the other specialists, and you're getting paid a piece of the revenue that's getting paid to these people. Now, that would. There's a lot of wellness centers that do that approach. It's a big deal. I get it. And that may not be a good fit for you. I know, but I'm just giving you the point that you want to be starting to think about how can I duplicate myself and pay someone to do what I'm doing? And I'm the coordinator, not the executor. You want to be the coordinator and making money that way. But level one strategy, don't do an S corp. You're fine. Dylan.

Next question comes from Christian. I think this is a fantastic question. He asks, can you think of any creative way to legitimately write off the purchase of a nice watch?

Wow, that's a great question. I don't know two words. Apple Watch. A smartwatch is not a watch. It's a Bluetooth device to help you succeed as a business owner. So with a smartwatch, you're using it for calendaring messages. Efficiency. It's a business tool much like a phone. So a smartwatch can be up to 100% deductible if it's used in your business legitimately to help you be more successful and succeed. And it's a tool. A regular analog watch ain't nothing. I am sorry. I wish, I wish. I love a good watch, but you ain't writing off an analog watch. It's got to be a smart watch. There you go.

Next question comes From Charlie on YouTube. And she asks. I get paid from my husband's single member llc, coaching business for admin, website design and marketing. Can I just be paid as a contractor or do I need to be an employee? As a contractor, what is best?

Neither. Neither, Neither. Nothing. No, don't do it. All right. I've got videos on YouTube. Should I pay my spouse in my business? The answer is no. There's two reasons only where I would pay you out of this business. Now you're like, well, hold it. My husband needs to pay me. He can pay you out of the profit. I don't want you if he pays you out of the business with the payroll. He's got to withhold fica and then you turn around and claim it. We're back where we started. You just incurred more taxes for him to pay you and then he's going to 1099 you. Now you got to pay self employment tax. Stop the insanity. In a marital relationship, I want the couple to own the business together. Now that may be a single member llc. It could be a schedule C as in Charlie. It could be an S corporation. It depends on your, I don't know, the revenue. I don't know why your husband husband's paying you. It's his business, your business. The point is, when he pays you as a subcontractor and employee, it's going to cost you more in taxes for no good reason. The only times I want him to pay you is if you guys funded a 401k. So if your business set up a solo 401k and I want you to put in money and I want him to put in money now you're on payroll for the sole purpose of pumping money into that 401k. It could be a Roth 401k, people. You can put up to 60 grand in a Roth this year by coupling it with the super k solo 401k on top of your small business. That's great. That's the only time I put you on payroll. And I said there was two. The second one health care. We might want to implement a health reimbursement arrangement. Not health insurance. I can write that off anyway. Not a health savings account. I can do that anyway. I'm talking about the HRA. Now if you get over to my book the Tax and legal playbook on Amazon, there's a whole chapter on medical. That would be where you'd go to understand why I would pay a spouse for medical. But just go watch my video on when should I pay a spouse. You and your husband own this business together. It's a marital asset anyway. Holy crap. He doesn't need to pay you. Just take the profit out and allocate it between the two of you. Let's be efficient. Talk to one of my tax advisors in my network. If any of you need a better accountant, please go to markjkohler.com and go to the TaxPro network. You can find an accountant around the country that trains with me weekly. Dylan.

Next question comes From Sam on YouTube and he asks. I'm looking at doing a print on demand business starting as a sole prop DBA so I can test and make money to set up a business more properly.

Okay.

What is your starting price for the trifecta?

Oh, well, thank you. First name again? Sam. Love it. So what Sam's asking everybody is you're willing to pay to meet with your dentist every year. You might go meet with your doctor once a year. You might even go meet with your insurance agent once a year. You might even meet with your accountant once a year when you drop off your crap and pick up your tax return as fast as you can and have no conversation at all. But do you meet with your lawyer on a regular basis? How many of you even have a business lawyer or tax lawyer? It's pretty rare, right? Because most lawyers are too damn expensive. You can't understand them. They're a pain in their butt with a stick up their butt. And they're tough. They're difficult to work with. I admit it, I'm one. Do you know how much therapy I went to to be a cool tax lawyer? Did I just say I was cool? I guess I can't be cool if I call myself cool. Anyway, here's the deal. In my little tax law firm, little boutique, we want our clients to meet with us at least once a year and make a plan. A plan that if we don't save you 10 times what you pay us, we screwed up. And so we'd like to build a trifecta. It's a little structure, Dylan, whiteboard that helps a client understand that their life is broken into operations and assets and wealth. This is your legacy. And down Here is your 1040 tax return. In your trust, you might have an entity for business. You might have a W2. You might have an LLC over here for rental property. Boy, that's an ugly LLC. You might have an LLC here for your S corp, for your ops. And so this trifecta in your homes over here, this is just a beginning. And this trifecta is what you use to build a vision for the future and mapping out the moving forward. And so if a client wants to meet with us, it's going to be around 1500 bucks. And it could include a new entity. It could include us going through tax returns. It could include a new trust. We want to bundle something into that trifecta. We want to build a trifecta for you and look at your tax returns. A new entity or a trust. We want you to walk away with a tangible action plan. And then you're going to go from there and build wealth. So that's a trifecta plan on about 1500 bucks. And then once a year, you can do a Tune up, don't pay lawyers. Big, big tens of thousands of dollars. You don't need to. It can be actually very, very affordable.

Dylan, I think two more questions. Probably. Good. Excellent. Okay, let's start with angel on YouTube. He asks, Is there a revenue threshold that helps you determine when you should convert LLC to S Corp?

If you don't have any other income with a W2 or anything, it's just you and a small business. The net income trigger for when you should seriously consider an s Corporation is 40 grand. If you're taking home at least 3,000amonth after expenses, we're talking auto, home, office, dining, all the goodies. You're taking home around 3k a month in your side hustle. You need to start thinking about an S corporation now. If you have a day job, if you're married, if you have other income, it's going to change the equation. And the very nature of a side hustle means you have a W2 somewhere else. So if you have a W2 somewhere else is going to change the math a little bit because it's going to depend on the level of your W2. But again, when you're netting around 40 grand a year in your small business or you think you're going to net 40 grand this year, you want to be thinking S corporation, get a consult with one of my tax lawyers. We'll rock your world. We'll save you. We want to save you. So you come back. We just don't want this like one off relationship. Next question.

Hey, last question comes from Amit on Instagram. And we're going to jump back to the tax tips you started out or the business tips you started out with the very beginning. And he asks what specifically is on a one page business plan sheet that you talked about?

Okay, okay, I'll go there. Oh, here's what I would say. Okay. The basic business plan. Now you're going to see all sorts of outlines out there, everybody. And it is really an art. Some people overdo it and have a 50 page business plan, in my opinion. Some people have no plan at all. So here, here's what I would say. Basically I want you to have on a one sheet. In fact, some people might summarize a big business plan on one sheet, but to me it's kind of the same. What I want, number one, is a paragraph with a. That looks ugly. Let's clean that up. I want to know kind of the executive summary like, and that's what it's normally called, but it's an executive Summary. Like, what is your business? Like, what is the idea? What is your differentiation, if any? The why. What makes it so cool? Kind of the what and the why and maybe a little bit of how. You know, just kind of like, this is a paragraph. This is what my. This is your. This is your pitch. This is your elevator summary. I want it in one paragraph, super easy. Okay. Number two, what is the product or service? And you might just have a list of the top five products or services. Products or services, and description and price. What are you going to sell? You may say, oh, I'm going to open a spa. We're going to do massages, we're going to do facials, we're going to do mani pedis. Here's our general price range. Okay, cool. Now, there's a lot of spas out there and they. And you can be just like every other spa. It'll come down to your marketing plan and the experience people are having. But the more differentiated you can be, the better. But anyway, you're going to put down your two. Number two, your product services, description and price. Number three, I want to go with competition and it could be lower on the list, and I'm okay with that. But I want to know who are you up against and how much do they charge? And you're gonna secret shop them a little bit. You know, this is what they're doing. I can do it better. So you can say, here's my competition, but here's how I'm different. That's almost. That's always a nice little benefit. Number four. And again, these could be in different orders. You want to talk about your cost to launch? Like, what is this business going to cost me to get off the ground? I would call this a startup cost. Like, this is how much I need to get it going. And number five, then you're going to talk about your operational or variable costs. Like, what is my costs to produce? And you might do what's called a very short, a little P and L profit and loss. The product or service. Like, how much is it going to cost to do this? And what is my profit margin? How much am I going to make? And you're going to do some projections. Now, I know I'm dumbing this down and I'm keeping it super simple. Some of you are cringing going, mark, that should be three pages long. I get it. I do. I've written those. But I'm saying at least the basics start with one freaking page. Just tell me, here's what my idea is. Here's the product or service, how much I'm going to charge. Here's my competition, here's how I'm a little different. Here's how much I need to start this up. I'm going to need five grand to launch it. Then once I do launch it, here's my cost of goods sold, or here's my operational costs, and here's my profit margin and some projections. Okay, last thing, Dylan. Now, this might be size 10 or 12 font. You're right. It's one page. You're going to talk about your marketing plan, how you're going to get the word out, and you're going to summarize that with maybe some bullet points or a paragraph. And then number seven, your leadership. Who's my team? Leadership team or partners? Or a little bit about you, like, what makes you special? Like, how can you do this? So the structure, again, the legal structure and the tax strategy, that doesn't need to be in a business plan. I want to know how you're going to freaking make money and how it's going to work. And so those seven, I think, are a good start. And then as you get out on the web and look at other business plans out there, just here's the problem. I get so many people in analysis. Paralysis. They just stayed stuck in the business plan for months. You know, I've met clients that have been stuck in it for years. Like, well, I don't know. I just. I don't have anything. And you know why? Because they're scared, they're nervous, they don't know how to launch it. And so they stay in this analysis mode. And. And they never take action because it's scary to take action because we might fail. And I want you to feel like it's okay to fail. It's okay to get out and try. It's okay. I mean, there's story after story, Colonel Sanders, to whatever you know of, just people that are. They're just tried, tried, tried, and then it finally hit. It's okay. Don't compare yourself to others. Don't put yourself on an arbitrary timeline. Don't measure your success by dollars in the bank. Measure your success with maybe the people you impact, the relationships you make, the experience you're having. Now, I want you to make some freaking money, but let's not kill ourselves emotionally or physically or spiritually. Let's just be very, very kind to ourselves. Let's give ourselves a little grace. You went to college for five effing years, but you expect to know how to Run a business in five months. Really?

Really?

That's your judgment? That's your scale? You're going to judge yourself after five months of training on Google compared to four years of college and then going to beat the crap out of yourself when you don't succeed? People, you're better than that. You can do this. Now I'm not going anywhere. I've got a great website, marcjcohler.com, a tax pro network. I've got a Tax Pro certification program for anybody that wants to build an advisory practice. Get over there, do a demo for free. Check it out. I've got a great boutique tax law firm where lawyers can meet with you that are affordable. And when I say affordable, you're like, Mark, 1500 isn't affordable. Really? When I can save you 10 grand and structure it properly, you can't afford not to do it. So save your money. Get out of debt, build that side. Hustle, people. The American dream is real. You can do this. And it's just as important to know how to save money than it is to make money. This structure, this organization is so important. And I want to be that guy for you. We've got the team, we've got the support to create that structure, to create that receptacle for the wealth you want to build. And I know it's fun. We can walk on fire and high five and have all this exciting talk about making money. I get it. But at the end of the day, you got to wake up and do QuickBooks. You got to have an LLC. You got to have a bank account. You got to know what a P and L is. You got to know what's a write off. We got to do those things and it's okay. It's okay. That's how the rich get richer. They embrace it. They love that structure. They love that organization. So I'm giving you, in summary, I am giving you authority to be a geek. I want you to be a nerd. I want you to be a nerd about money. I want you to be anal about it, excited about it. You can do this. Well, everybody, thank you for being here today. Check out all that information down below and I'll see you next week for another live on the American dream.