Paying Ourselves Before Year-end: S-Corps and LLCs

Foreign. Welcome, everybody, to this week's episode of the Main street business podcast. I am here with you, Mark Kohler, and my amazing co host, Matt Sorenson.

Yes. I'm delighted to be with you today. Of course. Now, Mark, this might seem like, you know, foreign territory behind him. That's the office.

That's.

That's the office backdrop for Mark Kor. You know, when you. When you got a video studio, you know, you don't need to come to the office. Yeah.

This is not a video wall of what an office looks like. It's actually the office.

It's actually. It's not a pretend office. Yeah. I actually went to the office.

Yeah. Thank you. Boy.

Wow.

A little passive aggressive there, are we.

Just a little humor while I was trying to.

A little fun, you know, Matt's mocking me. This last week was my tour through the offices per se Christmas parties was in Utah office. Phoenix office.

Yeah.

Here in the Idaho office.

Got to count. Shake the hands, kiss the babies, you know, get those votes, get that support.

Yeah. Just everybody feels loved. And I felt love, too, from the teams, so. So we wouldn't be here today without all the team, you know, all those Christmas parties. Got to hit the gym. Okay, today's topic is a good one. There's a lot of myths, I think, of people that I need to pay myself or I don't. If I don't, I don't. I save tags. Do I have to?

Yeah.

Good.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll break it down. What you need to be doing and how to do it right. There's some technical things you got to make sure you get done. For those of you that are new to this, maybe you knew with an S corporation or it's your first year with an LLC or even a sole proprietorship, like, what do I need to be doing on, like, payroll? What's going to go on my tax return? You know, you be thinking about this right now. There's some mechanics to it. There's also a lot of misunderstandings. Like Mark said. I think there's some myths out there, but I think there's also just like some classic misunderstandings of this. A lot of people fall into and make a couple mistakes and we'll hit those so people know what to be planning for and how to kind of also dial this in because there's some strategies here. You want to dial in right now on paying yourself. That helps you save taxes. You want to. But the best you can dial it in, the better you're going to be on taxes. Yeah.

This is Good stuff. We will do our normal banter. Maybe a few movie tips here as you go into the. You know, it's that time of season where, you know, in the evenings, you might have a little extra time to just sit by the fire, look at the Christmas tree, watch a good movie. And 1883 is out. Some of you may not know this. There's a prequel to Yellowstone now. And if Kevin Costner wasn't freaking bad a enough, we got Sam Elliott in the prequel to Yellowstone. Oh, it's like the best.

So, yeah, I'll get. I'm sure I'll get addicted to that too. Great.

But they're, you know, they've got it down. They're just like. They're like, just releasing an episode a week like the good old days.

That's how they get you. You know why they've started doing that? I've heard one of the reasons is a lot of people will sign up for a specific, specific streaming service that only has that show, and then they'll cancel it next month. So if they drip it out longer, it makes you stay in it for a few months at least, you know, to get the whole season. I don't know.

I like it. It helps. It's. It helps with my addiction of binging.

That's true. On it. Yeah.

Yeah. If it were good, a good movie show comes out, I just binge it. Not. Yeah. Okay.

All right.

What do you want to start with?

Let's. Let's hit a couple basic things that are. And dispel some of the myths.

Okay.

I think so.

Sole props.

Yeah. Let's talk about sole prop, which if you have an LLC and you didn't make an S election on it, and it's just you and you set up your own llc, your sole prop. If you started doing business and started collecting payment for goods or services and you didn't set up an entity at all or do anything, or maybe you did. You got a DBA or something, which is not an entity, but you got a name. You're a sole prop, too.

Maybe you're driving Uber, maybe started delivering some doordash or you sold some stuff on ebay.

Got an Etsy shop. You got a real estate commission, a sales commission for something you got 1099 for. You're a sole proprietor.

And we need to start. We're trying to not go down any major rabbit holes, but if you're crypto mining, staking things like that, and you're making money, that is a sole proprietor, you're not investing in Stocks or tokens or coins or currency. And so it's not a long term holding. That's an operational business. So that's a schedule C sole prop. So the golden question is, does it, do you need to pay yourself? Does it behoove you to pay yourself or not pay yourself? Easy.

Yeah. And I think on. Well, let me hit a myth that I get. A lot of times people will misunderstand this and this is particularly with llc. Well, I'm just going to leave all the money in the company bank account. I made a bunch of money. I'm just going to leave it in the bank account. Not going to pay myself because I don't want to pay taxes. But if I, but if I pay myself, Matt, and I transfer it out to my personal account, I'm going to have to pay taxes on that. You're paying taxes either way.

This is. We got to break you the bad news. So I hate to tell you. Yeah. Now, for those of you that were driving Uber or buying equipment and doing some things or selling on ebay and all that, whether you get a 1099 or not is irrelevant. You chose to live in America. Maybe not. You've decided to stay.

Yeah, the two. Yeah, the IRS just go with, you're here. Yeah, you're here, so knows it kind of tax you.

You may think you're off the grid, but you're not. So if you made money, you have to claim it, and if you don't and the IRS catches you, that's when bad things happen. So don't think, well, if I leave it in the bank account, I won't get taxed or, oh, I made money doing this and no one's going to 1099 me, so I don't have to claim it. Wrong. Well, I, we won't even go down the I just take cash only live under the table crap. I just, I'll lose it.

I think they know that's not okay.

Yeah, they know. They've chosen to live that life. But. But the point is. That's a great point, Matt. It's a myth, everybody. You're going to get taxed on that income whether you take it out of the business account or not. Whether you get a 1099 or not, you have to claim it. Now, how many podcasts do we have on all the write offs you're going to get to take? Oh, we want to. We're going to pack that tax return with all sorts of awesome write offs. But you still have that first line. I had income. And whether you took the money out of the account or not? Yeah.

So let's talk about the sole prop though, because in the sole prop, really what you're doing is, I mean, you may be taking money from the business account and you always want to have a separate business account. It's so much easier to track your income expense where this is an LLC or just your separate sole proprietorship, but your taxes are sole prop. When you take money from the business account to the personal account, that's not really what you're being taxed on. What you're being taxed on. And when you think of paying yourself, you're just taking money out as you want. What you're taxed on is the income. After all your expenses, that's what's going to show up on your taxes. Now, you don't do a W2 for yourself. If you have employees, you will. But just for you, if you're the owner of this, this is all flowing on your schedule C, you're not doing a double W2, which we're going to talk about for S Corps here in a minute. So your planning is really not that much. And I think in terms of what you need to do by year end, don't fall into the myth of, well, I just will leave it in the business bank account. I'm not taxed on it. I ain't working. Of course you want to have your books in order so you can determine what's the net income that you're going to end up paying into self employment tax and income tax on.

Yeah, and I'll say I want to throw you a lifeline here, everyone, and that is you have a lot of opportunity in January, February, March and into next year to dig up expenses that you may have incurred during the year. We want to book mileage, we want to book things that maybe you paid cash for or buried in a credit card somewhere. Last week we recorded our year end tax tips and one of them was go out and spend some money on some things you might be buying in January. Maybe you're going to buy a new computer, a new phone, a new iPad, a new webcam, a new this or that. So if there's anything you're going to be buying in the next couple of weeks, taking money out to buy those things before December 31st, that's a good idea. But if you're just going to put it in your personal account or not put it in your personal account, that's irrelevant. So that's the myth. Myth dispelled, myth busted. Boom. Is Jake. What were their names? Jamie and.

Oh, I don't know who really did. I don't remember.

It was Jamie and I can't remember the brother, but they were okay. Good guys. Good guys. They did us. They did a lot of good in America. Busting. Yeah.

Okay. Okay.

Now, S Corporations. Okay. Different animals. Yeah.

This is where there's a lot of meat on the bone, so to speak.

Okay.

Okay. Now talking about like ribs, you know when you're eating a good set of a good rack of ribs, all right, you don't, you don't want that rib. There's no meat on the bone. You want the one with the meat on the bone. This is, I'm, I'm pushing over to you now. The rib with a lot of meat on the bone.

Yeah. This is exciting one. So this one is. It's okay. Here's the myth again. Whether you take the money out of the S Corp or not, same story. It's irrelevant. It's a flow through entity. You're going to get taxed on whatever the S Corporation made in net income after all your write offs. So whether you leave it in the corporate account or you take it out for yourself, if we're going to pay kids or we're going to pay a spouse or buy some equipment, that's a different story. Listen to last week's podcast on some year end strategies. But when it comes to paying yourself from an S Corp perspective, taking the money out of the account or leaving it in, I would say again, irrelevant. It's payroll allocation.

Yeah.

What's your advice for the average S Corp owner, Matt? Where do you start here?

Well, you have to start with you really need your books put together. You need to know what your income and expense has been through the year. Now you don't have to have it. Exactly right. Like Mark said, if you're digging out a credit card statement with something you may have expense or some mileage here and there you weren't tracking so hot. But you need to be pretty close on what your income and expenses because we need to know what you're going to be taxed on. If you had 150 grand of income and you had $30,000 in expenses, great, you got 120,000 of income that you're only going to be taxed on, but you're going to have to book those expenses. But we need to know what your income and expenses is because we want to know your net profit first.

Yeah. Now we have a lot of accountants and tax professionals that follow our Podcast. And so I'm going to do basic, and then we'll do a little more advanced. And many of our listeners, whether they're accounts or not, they can handle the advanced. But, yeah, let's do basic. Yeah, BASIC is just ballpark. Just freaking go. All right. How much money did I take home this year? Approximately what's my net income? I think, oh, it's very similar to last year. Just come up with a number. And this is where the payroll matrix comes into play that Matt and I have disseminated all over the country for so many years there. And I'm going to get to the advanced level here for just a moment. But the payroll matrix is just a rule of thumb. We've put that disclaimer all over the matrix to just say this is a safe harbor where you're generally going to be okay, and you want to find an allocation for payroll. And you say, well, Mark, does that mean I need to take the money out and do a paycheck? No. So you get. Taking money out is irrelevant. You're going to do a payroll report, an allocation of how much money you feel you need to claim for the F word, fica. And so taking money out of the account can impact your equation, but it's really about how much do you need to claim to be a fair American citizen and pay your fair share of fica. And so it's not really a bank account thing. That's the way I explain it, Matt. How would you do it? Sometimes you and I say it differently and it clicks for, you know, the way I say it clicks for 90% of the people. And then you say it another way for about 10% of the people. So for those few folks out there that,

well, I want. I think.

No, no little giggle at all. I mean, you didn't appreciate that at all. I thought that was.

No, I mean, that was, you know, that hurt. I just don't even want to. I don't even want to argue. I mean, it's. It's the holidays. I don't want to get in a fight. You know,

enough drama at home.

I'm a peacemaker. Okay, well, I was good. What I was going to add in here, and maybe this is a little premature, but I was going to add in. We do we want some more numbers here. I want to know your net income and I want to know what's going to go on your W2 is wages. We also need to know retirement plan contributions that have already been made or that you're going to make here. By, you know, and I also want to know your health insurance payments. Did you pay for health insurance? They're both going on your W2 on your retirement plan. This is like you have to check the box in box 13. And if it was traditional, it's going to lower the wage amount, you know, on the W2. If it's Roth, it doesn't. So there's, you know, there's some stuff that's going to come in here that you need to go back and be, you know, thinking of.

Here's the play on words. Let me throw out this play on words. When we're talking sole proprietorship in LLCs, we think of paying ourselves as doing an online transfer or writing a check. If anybody still writes checks. I mean, you're really just doing an online transfer. When it comes to the S Corp. And we say pay yourself. We're really talking about how much you're going to allocate to paying yourself. On the W2. It's more of a kind of a paper product and I don't know, just kind of a.

Well, I think here's a, here's a number of ways. Think of like, what did you take from the bank account? Because I've seen this with clients. I had a client while back was like they just ran all their personal expenses out of the S Corp bank account, you know, and it's like that's effectively paying yourself. Okay.

Yeah.

All those, those, those like payments and credit card. That's a mix of business and personal from that. Like, I mean, that's all that. Anything that was paying for your personal stuff, that's paying you. So you got to Abby adding. I mean that you, you. That's important to know. But again, we're going to look at what's the net income. We're going to allocate amount to payroll. That's going to go on the W2. Because what the IRS wants to know is you took a reasonable compensation, you took a reasonable salary on this W2. And to know what the heck's reasonable, the amount you're going to claim, we need to know what you had expenses on through the year.

Yeah. Now let's get on the table. The advanced perspective. Here's the advanced perspective. Well, how much should that allocation be? And this is where some accountants go ballistic. They think we're a little too aggressive. Although I want to say right here on public radio on our podcast here, that we have never had a client audited for taking too little of payroll. We've talked to. I had a Client get audited on payroll rules this last year. Client and the pain. The kids flew right through with flying colors. We've. We have ex IRS agents or former IRS agents working in our firm. Feel very comfortable with our payroll allocation. So I would encourage many of you accounts that have kind of been afraid of being a little more aggressive there. Look at the matrix and some of our prior articles on this. I think you can get Payroll certainly below 50%, if not in the 40, 30, or 25% payroll range, depending on the amount of income and what's going on in the business. And that's where you're going to see that matrix come up. Point number two is, and here's the technical point, it's really not your net income that you look at when you allocate payroll. It's your draws now. And I know some of you are like, hold up, Mark, you made it sound so simple. Now you're killing it. But let's think of it this way. Let's say you brought in $100,000 in your business and you had 25,000 in expenses. So you netted 75. Well, did you take home all 75? I'd say most people do. They use their business to live on. So it's easy to say, look at your net income. Allocate your payroll. That's probably definitely the general rule. But there are those people that go, I got another job. I left the entire 75 grand in my S corp. I didn't take any draws at all. I just pumped it right back into the business. Technically, under IRS rules, you don't have to take a payroll because you never paid yourself. Now that's deep. So this is for some of you that have an S corporation where you may fall into that category where you're like, I didn't take out all the profit. I'd left a good chunk of it in. In the next four to five weeks, you want to be meeting with your accountant and talking about, okay, just like Matt said, what are all these boxes? What's my insurance, my 401k? Oh, and I didn't. My net income is different from my draws. And you want to focus on draws when you're allocating payroll. So that's the technical point. A lot of you accountants appreciate that, I hope.

Yeah. Okay, so. Okay, so give me the. Let's run an example. Run an example, if you would. On. I calculated my draws. Okay, I know what that was. Just give me an example of something.

An easy one. And I think this is common of a. I would say the average small business owner makes between 80 and 120,000. That's kind of your middle income America. So you're making between 80 and 120 net. That's what you're taking home. So we're looking at kind of that $7,000 a month to maybe $10,000 a month take home. So if that's what your net income and draws are generally close, then you're okay. Again, you don't have to be super, super accurate on this. The IRS isn't going to chase down pennies. They're looking for the abusers that are like, they made 150 grand and they took a $10,000 salary. Those are the people getting audited for sure. But let's say you've netted $100,000. On our matrix, we're going to be at about 40% probably, maybe even a little less, maybe 36. So we take a salary of 3,000amonth times 12. That's 36 looks clean. You allocate that to yourself on payroll. The remaining 64 is draw. So we're good. And so that is typical before 401 allocation.

Yeah. And remember, in case anyone's confused, why the heck are you doing this in the first place, taking a W2 and then taking some net income? Because that 60,000 plus that you paid as, there's just net income essentially. Or draw, this is profit coming through the business. It wasn't wages. You're not paying into Medicare and Social Security on that. There's no self employment tax. That's 15% tax savings on 60 grand. That is $9,000 in tax savings by doing that. That's the whole point of the S Corp and why people do it. But that example is the mechanics of it. I just want to highlight the outcome in case anybody didn't know that little move right there saved small business owner 9,000 bucks in taxes.

Yeah. Yep, yep. And we've got podcasts dedicated to the S Corp strategy.

Now let me say this. What's going to go on when you're doing this? Payroll. Just because, you know, with many of our S Corp clients have solo 401ks and they've got to include your 401k contributions. And this is actually box 12. I was just looking this up because the W2 boxes change every year. I'm just looking at the current W2. This is box 12. And you need to put these on there. Even if they're Roth and they're not reducing your taxable amount on the W2, they still go on there. So just remember when you're talking to your payroll provider, your payroll company or your accountant, whoever you use for it, make sure they know what you put in or are going to put in, you know, for the retirement plan contribution on the 401k.

And they need to know that.

They need to know it's a 401k. They code it special. They know if it's traditional or Roth, they code that special. Now if you're doing employer contributions, let's say it's a solo kick. Don't worry about that. That's not going on the W2. If you're doing like the matching or the company side, that's going on the W2. And it's an expense on the company return for an S corp. But just remember those S corp owners, when you're doing payroll Here, remember this W2 also needs to include retirement plan contributions. It's box 12. Yeah.

And a nice little side note here is you don't have to write a check to your 401k plan before December 31st, whether it's your contribution or the match, but you still get the write off this year. So again, another myth is they're like, oh, I've got a 401k, I better run down and make my contribution if I want the write off. Nope, that's easy, schmeasy. As long as you indicate it on the W2, you're golden. The other thing I would say too is this is very, very, very important. If this is your first year as an S corporation, or let's say you made a retroactive L.L.C. s election scenario, you had your L.L.C. all year long. And I'm working on one here this afternoon. They're doing their S election. They're going to claim payroll. You can get away with doing that year end payroll allocation on one big fat 941. That's the form number for essentially payroll reporting 941. That's going to be due by January 15th. Because your deposit is going to be pretty substantive or substantial or substantive. So if you don't make that deposit by January 15th, there's going to be some penalties. You don't want that. So you got one. In your first year as an S corp, you can kind of get away with that one time allocation in the fourth quarter. But now turning the corner, you got to do it every quarter from now on. And the IRS wants their deposit every quarter, which is good for you too. You don't want to wait till the end of the year. And all That I wish I've always been Matt. I seriously, for 10 years, I've been trying to figure out a good analogy or metaphor of, like, once you start this, you got to maintain it. You got to keep doing it. I thought of it kind of like the once I had it is like, for us guys, if you help your wife out in the kitchen and you're. And some of you grew up in these very. I don't know, what do they call them? Old time, old school homes where maybe the. The husband and wife have very clear duties and this.

Traditional.

Traditional, yeah. And so some of you break that mold and say, hey, I'm cool. I'd love to help in the kitchen and I'd like to do this. Or I might help with laundry, which may be in a traditional household back in the 50s. That would be the wife trying to make sure I don't dig myself in a hole here.

Yeah. Mark's going, I know, I know. Correct here with this example.

But once you start doing that, you're like, I'm on board. You know, you ain't going back. And. And I think that could be stay at home mom, stay at home dads, same story. But. And I think my metaphor is that once you start doing something and maybe your relationship, your partnership, your marriage can kind of be like, well, that was nice. Are you going to keep doing that? So it's kind of like that with payroll and S Corps. Once you start payroll, the IRS is like, you're on board now, right? You got to do that every quarter. So, yeah, if you have a.

Think of a better analogy for you. I'm going to think of a better analogy for you.

Okay.

I don't have one yet, but it's going to. I'm going to let it percolate. Something's going to come.

All right.

It's going to be better.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. I don't know. Last week's podcast we did paying your kids, paying your spouse, hide your kids, hide your wife. You know, all this. You know, remember that YouTube, That was like 50 million views. YouTuber. That was a funny, funny one.

Okay.

But otherwise paying yourself, that's it.

Yeah, yeah. And I think one other thing I would say, and this is somewhat related, is some small businesses, you didn't make money yet. You know, you've just started this first year, you haven't made any money, you haven't had a sale. Maybe if you incurred some expenses, you're still in startup mode. That's okay. Track those expenses, you're going to use them in the future, grab a sale if you can here by year end. We talked about that last week. But if you're like, guys, I kind of dropped 10 grand in this business bank account to kind of go. And I've, I've spent five of it on it, but I haven't really made any money. But then I took 2000 back from that business account because I needed to live on. That's okay. You didn't make any money. The money you put in to start this thing, you pull money out, that's not taxable. You're not going to need to do payroll or anything like that. Don't worry. So just for those newbies or those starting this year, don't get too overwhelmed if you don't have any sales or income yet.

Yeah. And I guess we're trying to give you a, you know, a little silver lining, a little glass half full is that if, you know, this year you're in, you know, startup, just go. Well, there's one good thing I don't have to payroll yet, you know.

Yeah, those suckers that had sales and income, they got to be doing their W2s.

Well, I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up C corporations at every one of my workshops. There's one Yahoo in the class that has a C corp and they always feel bad and I'd like I beat the heck out of them by the end of the workshop. But they are an isolated strategy for the small business owner. But if you have a C as in Charlie Corporation, leaving the money in is a very precarious strategy because you leave it in and you don't take a dividend or payroll. The only way to get it out of a C corp is dividend or payroll. Yeah, but I got all sorts of write offs. Okay, after all your write offs, you, you still got profit.

Yeah.

Well, how are you going to get it out? Well, payroll. Well, now you're paying fica. Well, if I take a dividend now. Okay, but I got to pay corporate tax first. I mean, it's just a mess. So anyway, some people will loan themselves money out of the C corp that you're in and actually go through that step. They're going to pay corporate tax 21% flat rate. And people think, oh, that's lower than my personal rate. That's a good thing. No, because you have to pay that loan back and then take the money out and pay personal tax. So you're never really ahead of the curve when you start that. It's a scary, scary process that's hard to unwind. But anyway, some people will do that with their C corp. They'll take out a loan. They're expecting big losses next year to chew up the profit next year so they can pay the loan back and not pay tax. And it's just tricky. We're not a big fan.

Yeah. Yeah. And last comment I just have is I think payroll, particularly for you S Corp owners, this is where it's a little more arduous. You know, the sole props and stuff, it's a little easier. You're not needing to do the W2.

Arduous.

Arduous, yes. Wow.

Taking this to the next level, Matt. Yeah,

so. But for those S Corp owners, most of them kind of get in a rhythm. You know the income you're going to make, you get in a better rhythm. You, you know what type of salary you're taking, you got your quarterly's down of how much you're reporting as you know, wage income and you're paying in your self employment tax on. And then at the end of the year you're just kind of tidying it up. You're looking back and being like, even if your books are a mess, you're looking back and like I made a little more this money, I made a little less than I thought. And you kind of dial down fourth quarter up and down based on that. For those that having, you know, New Orleans that are having significant growth, you know, you've got to, you got to kind of find your rhythm. It takes a minute. You got to find your rhythm, get, get in the groove of what's the right amount. And then hopefully you'll, I mean, maybe you keep growing forever. I don't want to hope for that, but just, I just won't want to feel overwhelmed for any of you new people being like, oh, I got to do this every year and it's going to be chaos. And it's like, no, you'll, you'll get to your baseline rhythm and kind of know how to increase or decrease it based on the year.

And I will. My last admonition is that okay?

Yeah.

Rather than tip, I wanted that sounds

like I'm being scolded, like I'm at the principal's office. You need to be admonished, son.

Okay, there's your admonishing. This is encouragement.

Yeah.

Encouragement is that first and foremost, people, let's go out and make money, let's have a great year end, see if there you can drum up any final sales before year End, do some pre sales, give some discounts, try to get some, some revenue in before year end and go spend some money on some things you're going to buy in January anyway. Some clients are pushing income to January. They're like, I don't want to receive money from anyone. I'm already in a bracket. I don't like. I'm going to let all my customers pay me in January. Be careful. Make sure you've got proper documentation to collect if someone stiffs you. But let's keep our eye on the ball. The eye on the ball is we're running a business. We want to make it easy for people to pay us. Oh, and I've got a good story to finish on. I got it. This is a good story.

Okay.

And it's on this note. So I was out jogging over the weekend and I was staying in Phoenix because we did the, our Phoenix. I talked about my tour. I hit Utah, went to Phoenix office, and then back here in Idaho. So I was out jogging right now. That's not something you do at Idaho. It's snow and, you know, ice and you end up good.

Good jogging time in Phoenix.

Yeah, good job. Beautiful weather. So I was cruising along and on this corner, lemonade stand, three kids. And these kids are about, I'd say 10 years old, three little boys. And I always stop. I want to encourage all of you, if you're a business owner, these are little budding entrepreneurs. Make their day, pull off, pay them double, pay them triple. Have a good time with them. Ask them how they're doing. Well, I was pretty impressed. I'd pull over, I'm like, what do you got? Well, they were doing orange juice. Fresh squeezed orange juice.

Ooh, nice.

Yeah, I like that. So I was like, I'm all in. You know, a little more healthier than this sugared up lemonade. And they got their little, you know, right there. They're cotton milk oranges. They're all into it. I'm like, these guys, I'm liking them. And they start chatting me up. I'm like, I love this. This guy's like, how's your job going? How are you doing today? I'm like, who are you? You know, I'm kid. You know, it's like, yeah, you know, they're like chatting me up and they're just all friendly and. Yeah, beautiful day, isn't it? And you know, it's just. I'm like, okay, how old are they? Like 10, max. They were 10, not 8. You know, you can tell the 8 year old, little. They're a little, you know, wide eyed. But no, these are 10 year olds. And they go. And then here's, here's the big. This is the big problem. I go, I don't have any cash. I'm jogging. But I got my phone with me. I go, you guys take Apple pay Venmo? And they're like, no. And I go, all right, well, we gotta get, we gotta solve that right now. And they're like, I go, dude, you guys can be taking money. You gotta make it easy for your customers to pay you. You gotta. And they're like, yeah, it's a good point. And I go, all right, now I'm gonna make you a deal. If it's cool, I will send you money here on Apple Pay if you give me your cell phone number. And then I want you to delete it. I'll delete your number here too. I don't want it. You know, I just. But I can't pay unless I have some way to do it. You have Venmo. Okay, I can pay you on Apple Pay. Just your phone number. And the one kid's like, I'll do it. I'm like, all right. So he gave me his phone number and they were selling it for a buck a cup. And I said, here's 10 bucks. You know I love you guys. And they're like, oh, you know, they're freaking out. So paid him $10 on Apple Pay. And I run off, I do my loop and I come back and I'm coming by and I'm like, how sales going, guys? And they're like, dude, I just sold this lady on Apple Pay. She was like. And it's like, she's like, oh, I don't have any cash. That's okay. We take Apple Pay. And she was like. I was like, see what I'm saying? And I was like, ah, but you know what? There's a huge moral to this story. I don't know how many landscapers, contractors, just people you meet that are doing sales where they're like, they don't have a simple way to get paid. And I think we're talking about paying yourselves and all that, but keeping our eye on the ball is make your business easy to work with. Think of. And you think of your 2022 plans. Think of, how can I make it easier for my customers to pay me and get more sales just through ease of systems. Anyway, I don't matt any thoughts on that. I mean, you're a big.

Oh, I love that. I love that. And you know, we are accepting crypto now at KQS lawyers. If you want to pay us in crypto, that's another way of thinking, make it easier for people to pay you. And that's one of many topics we'll actually be talking about at the crypto tax summit is some strategies on if people are paying you in crypto, how you want to handle that. There's some tax ramifications to that. And so that's the crypto tax summit on January 29th. That's Saturday. Going to be in Phoenix, virtual and live. Go to cryptotaxsummit.com I think it's redirecting to Mark's page right now. But there's cryptotaxsummit.com easy. You are all to get to the right spot. And I just want to wish everyone a merry Christmas, happy holidays. I'm really looking forward to the time with family. Hope you are too. And my last thing I would just say is, because I've been, I've been doing this myself, is start doing your inventory of the year. Start thinking about what you want to do as a strategic plan for next year, which is basically your goals and how you're going to accomplish them. And start letting that percolate, simmer, marinate, whatever it does in your brain. Let that happen because we're gonna be talking about it early at the beginning of the year.

Yeah. Well, great, great tips. Thanks, everyone. You have a wonderful, safe holiday and keep living the dream. Don't give up, Sam.