Mike Minutes Mastermind 09/21/2023

Final destination. Hope you're doing well. I'm at the airport.

Let's go get started though.

Sorry, I'm chomping on my gum. There's not a single trash can in sight and my flight should be here any second and we're late so let's go ahead and jump in. Oh, I need this on YouTube. Sorry, give me one second. Copy that Facebook.

All right, boom. Let's jump in.

Present Share Screen.

All Nero Uno first of five questions of the day Max Harvard from Burnaby. I currently have four work vans. Originally I purchased this many because I was predicting a high rate.

Of growth and I wanted to ensure employees made more money by working solo.

In reality, we have not grown as quickly as anticipated and employees are generally less money motivated money motivated than me. Plus they prefer working in pairs. Would it be wise to sell one van to make more cash in the bank and switch to two man cruise next year? I could use one van to help as needed and complete complete estimates. The other two vans would be useful for full time work with two employees in each. Please let me know if you need more information. The only other other information would really be like are you going to make money on the deal? Like if you have if you had one of these vans for a couple years and now you're selling it for five grand more after using it for a couple years, that makes pretty good sense. Also, what's it going to cost you to get another one? Because it's very likely over in a year. You'll be wanting to get another one and you'll be now in the position of having to go find another one, paint it. Etc. It's like what's the delta between what you're going to sell it for and then what it would cost for you to buy another one? If it's like 10 grand, I wouldn't do it.

I would rather in that case you take it off of your insurance and let it sit in the garage or sit at your house in that case because it'd be cheaper than losing 10 grand in a year to just save the, you know, 150, $200, whatever you're paying per month on insurance.

So I just be careful too because sometimes it's easier than them to sell a yellow van, for example. Like a van kind of pigeonholes yourself a little bit. It's like a work truck. It's a little more versatile in terms of selling it. So I think it just for me it would come down to what I can sell it for and what it would cost Me to buy and paint a new one in a year, year and a half, whatever. And is that loss worth it? Would be the question. If you were lucky, you'd sell it right now, like top dollar and then a year cost of trucks and vans and everything has gone down. And then you time it perfectly. But that's never promised, so that's not like typically how economics works.

Max.

What advice do you have for monetizing a podcast? I have a master's in theology and would like to slowly grow a podcast or something similar to the point where it can be monetized. I want to do this because I would like to spend my working life focusing on tasks that are close to the church as possible. I would like to start the podcast sooner rather than later because it takes time to grow an audience. For context, I don't see working directly to the church as a viable option because the salaries are generally low. And when you have a family to support, you need a certain level of income. In the short term, I recognize that I need to spend the bulk of my time focusing on a long term business because that will generate cash at a much faster rate, at least initially. What are your thoughts on this idea and what recommendations you have for monetizing a podcast? Podcasts are really, really tough because there's no, there's no mechanism for. There's not like an algorithm that feeds you podcasts very well. Typically you hear about someone on YouTube, you read their book, you watch them do a keynote, and then you go find their podcast.

So like, even when I do my book next year, I will put the majority, if not all of it on my podcast for that reason.

In terms of monetizing it really, it comes down to you gotta have an audience. And before you even think about monetization, I just like, there's 101 ways to monetize attention. The hard part is not monetization, it is getting the attention. That's the bottom line. So any sort of content, someone trying to make money, ET.

You don't need to worry about monetization. Monetization will come to you and you'll. If you do a really good job of getting attention, you'll have a lot of options. You can use sponsors, you can create your own product, you can sell consulting. The easiest way to do this is sell your time, right? So if you do a mat, if your master's, get a master's in theology, the fastest way to getting revenue, making that profitable is selling your time. And you'd be selling your time at like a couple hundred dollars an hour. Right. At least. Right. So for a 30 minute session, 150 bucks. Very reasonable. If you create enough attention to where you have an audience. Are you gonna get that from day one? No, no. You'll have to get a lot of people listening. So I would, I would simply focus on creating the best content possible. I would. To get attention, you're gonna have to do talk on the fringes of things that get, garner attention because you don't have the, the native audience. You're going to have to do things like talk about the theology theological backing of like relevant things to date. That's what I would do in this case. So anyone can talk about theology, but can you talk about what happened last week in the news? And you, you have your perspective because of your unique background, which is you have a master's in theology. So I would do something like a segment on like the theological viewpoint of an insert headline. What's happening recently in the news. I'm so bad at this.

The theological.

Point of view.

Of the debt ceiling, for example, elections, right? And you know, talking about your, your calling an election, being sure, if you wanted to talk about, you know, what's going with the election, like you can just tie all of these aspects and then give a theological point of view. That's how you're going to get an audience, attract them. And then what you're going to keep them with and really create value with them is the more in depth content. So.

And you will grow into that over time because you'll hear from your audience what they like. But to garner an audience, you're typically going to want to like. If I was to redo everything that I did in the past, I would, I would have started being a little more controversial on the fringes earlier on because it took me like four or five years to figure out the fact that like you will have to say your opinions because your opinions are what make you different. If you just say what everyone else is saying, why should they listen to you? So be okay with like saying exactly what you think? And even if those thought, those thoughts aren't well thought out. He's like, if it hits you in a certain way, you say it. It's your, your opinion and your thoughts are what make you different. So just saying what everyone else is thinking and every other theological master's degree holder has is not going to get you an audience. That would be my 2 cents. Ken from Fenton, Michigan. I had asked a question about solar growth model a few months ago. I would like to review it. Is it possible to get a link to that mastermind?

I have no idea which one it was. You would have to go back and find it. Sorry, I don't tabulate them. You could do if you go into the Facebook group. Thanks to Connor Hutchinson. He did his notes for all of us, every single mastermind, bless his heart. You could search it in there. That'd be probably your best bet. But I do not keep track of who asks questions on each mastermind. Sorry. How much money is too much money in the business bank account? Well, I will never say no to having more money. There's never too much money. Well, I would say what you're probably getting at is like where, where's the line of cash in the, in the bank versus like from a tax perspective? Because ultimately for all of us, whether you're an S Corp or an llc.

Whether the money is in your bank account or the business's bank account, you're going to get taxed on it the same way from a tax perspective. Not a huge difference, honestly, in terms of where the money is at now, whether the money is in a checking account right now garnering 0.05% interest when it could be in a high yield savings account or a money market account and making 4 or 5% interest right now. That might be something you want to consider if you have a whole bunch of cash just sitting in the bank account. First off, just address the fact that this is a good problem to have. Okay. But then secondly, like, yeah, if you're just sitting at checking account garnering 0.05%, it's stupid, especially if you don't need the money. It's more of a savings account and you're just stacking cash, which is fantastic.

I would just put that in a potentially high yield interest rate saving count. If you want to be super conservative but have more growth behind it, probably putting like the S&P 500 or even into a, into stocks that have.

A high amount of dividends. So basically kind of like interest. So. But then you potentially have more growth on that side. Right? So do you want growth though? Because whether you get interest or you get, you have to get dividends that you cash out, you have to pay taxes on those. Right? So interest is taxable. Same thing with, if a dividend stock goes up and you sell it for a gain, you have to pay taxes on that. If you get the dividends and you cash them out, you also have to pay taxes on those. So it's not really about how much Is too much. It's really a matter of like, what do you need in the business? Banking. And then outside of that, where do you put the money?

Illinois. Wait, did I skip a thing? I feel like I skipped one.

I think I skipped it.

Sorry. I felt like I skipped a.

Question. Sorry. Let me just make sure I did.

Not do that one. Okay, we're good. All right. Didn't miss anything. Cool. Kyle, Freeze. Moving to Illinois. Have you guys found that door hanger? Success is as weather dependent on every door. Direct mail or do you still just play the numbered game with them even on crappy days?

Based on my experience in North Carolina, when I did a whole bunch of them, I would put them out every day. And then when it was a nice day, it seemed like that was when I got all my calls. Have I done it long enough to say there's a direct correlation? No. Would I not put the door hangers out on bad days? No. It's better than nothing. No action. Some action is better than no action. And I think sometimes on days when they like ring me or bad weather and you don't have other work you could be doing, not a bad idea to go put little door hangers out.

All right, let's see what we got here.

You got a question? What is the best gift you could have been given?

Oh, man. First thing that comes to my mind is when I was a woman.

When I was 11 or 12, my parents gave me an ipod touch. I never. I didn't have a phone. I never had anything that could listen to my own audio. And so we started Andy's long hair and I would be able to listen to stuff throughout the day. Very cool.

That's like the one like to me in part because I knew it was a big sacrifice for my family at the time. You know, ipod touch back then was like 250, $300. It was a cheap one, but I knew that was a big sacrifice for my family and they got it for me. That one sticks out to me. In terms of a gift.

It'S usually not been like the thing. It's been like who's giving it. And if they've sacrificed a lot, I usually value it significantly more. Honestly.

My previous account accountant, I'm guessing said we need an escort. We have since let her go as she was all over the place. New accountant doesn't see a need for it and is a lot of extra paperwork. You just spam the S corp. And just using the 1120s election on an LLC, what would that cost? A lot of money and be worth it.

If you're making more than like $40,000 in profit, your taxable income from your business, you should be asked for. Now. If you just do an 1120s, you do not need to go file a separate corporation and do articles of incorporation and do all the extra paperwork. The 1120s.

To the 1120 election, like the 1120s is based upon a form which is called. I think it's the 1053. One second, let me check.

No, it's not 1053.

It's a form 2553. I knew there was fives and threes in there. Form 2553, election by a small business corporation is all it needs to be signed.

You can now go to the dashboard, go to forms and you can fill out the form for Brad to do your taxes. I highly recommend it. He has it at cost for everyone. The franchise doesn't make a penny off of it. I take that. We charge a couple dollars for processing fees. Outside of that, he gets the money and he's giving it significantly less. I think it's like 300 less than what he gives the public.

He will be able to file this for you. It is not a big deal. It will cost you about an extra eight to nine hundred dollars per year in your tax return to do it. To have AN S Corp versus A LLC, however, that 8 $900 starts to make a lot of sense when you don't have to pay 15% extra self employment tax on everything that you're making in the business. So typically you're making 40 plus thousand ish in taxable profits from your business. You probably want to DO A Form 1120s and File File that way. So obviously talk to an accountant. But if your accountant is telling you that you shouldn't file because a whole bunch of tax or a bunch of paperwork.

Maybe they're just busy, I don't know. But the only reason I would say to not is if you were literally, you're growing your first couple years, all the money was going back in and there wasn't any profits and 15% wasn't, was negligible. In that case, maybe I would just stick with an LLC just for the sake of not having change. But it's not a lot of paperwork. One form, form 2553. All right everyone have a fantastic rest of your day. Tomorrow's Friday. I am flying from. Where am I at Boston to Louisiana today. It's gonna be a long day and a long day tomorrow and then I'll be back home. All right? Guys have a great day. Keep bringing your questions. See you tomorrow. Take care.