Don't Make These 5 Expensive Money Mistakes as a Creative

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Have you ever wanted to go back in time and fix some mistakes that you know would have saved you tons of money, time and heartache? I know you could fill in that blank with a bunch of things that you wish you could change. But if you hear from someone that's made the mistakes and it's going to help you avoid them, well, that's better than a time machine that's going to improve your future. And that's what I want to do today by sharing my five most costly mistakes I made as a musician and an entrepreneur who was just starting out of business and didn't realize the power of making certain smart, wise, financial and money making strategies which would have made a big difference in my business. And I'm going to help you avoid those problems and start off on the right foot.        

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Or if you've already been doing the same thing like I've been doing and trying to make things work and finding yourself in the same struggles, fixing these problems now is going to benefit you a huge amount of in the long term. So give me just a moment to welcome those of you who are new to God and gigs, and then we'll get right into this powerful and important conversation.        

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Artists, musicians and creatives of all kinds looking for help? Balancing your passion to create with your everyday life? Not sure if your faith can coexist with your profession? Welcome to a place where real artists discuss real life. You're listening to the God and gig show.        

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Visit godandgigs.com for show notes, links and more information.        

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Hello and welcome to our show. Thank you so much for making this podcast a part of your creative day. And if you are new to our show, thank you so much for giving me and us a chance. When I say us, I mean our God and gigs community. And let me tell you who you're joining with right now.        

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You are joining with other creatives who want to connect the dots and between their spiritual life and their creative life by solving their temporary creative problems with timeless spiritual principles. We've been doing this through our podcast since around 2017. Our book God and gig succeed as a musician without sacrificing your faith came out in 2016. So we are in this for the long haul. And you found your tribe as a musician, entrepreneur, creative artist, anyone inside the content creation space or the artist space.        

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But you also have a christian or faith focused background. This is what we do. This is who we're here for. And you are in the right place. And one way that I know you're in the right place is because you like me most likely struggle with this issue of managing your money.        

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And I don't mean to say that in a mean or derogatory way. I just mean as a group, creatives have not always been the smartest, the best, and we have a bad track record, in some cases of using our money wisely. And we usually use this excuse that, well, I'm a creative. I don't think like a business person. I don't think linearly or I don't think with math.        

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And I like to be more creative. And in my, my left brain and my right brain, which is more organized and math centered and money centered, that doesn't really focus the same way or work the same way with me. So money's just going to be one of those things that I'm just going to have to struggle with. Well, I want to let you know that's a myth. But it is rooted in some struggles and some mistakes that I fell prey to at the beginning of my creative career.        

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And I did a creative checkup video where I shared these five costly mistakes that I wish I had avoided. And I share how I'm now fixing those mistakes and how you can avoid them altogether. Now, this video was a great talk. I wanted to make sure I shared it here in audio form. You can find a link in the show notes to the whole video.        

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But this will give you the nuts and bolts of those five costly mistakes that I am so glad I've learned my lesson from, but that I want you to avoid so that you never fall into the same traps that I did when it comes to money management strategies, income, and taking care of my business so that I could bless people and that God could bless me with better income and bigger impact.        

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All right, well, hello there, my friends got and gigs community. If you're watching right now, watching live, we are about to talk about making money as a creative. If you're watching on replay, we're also about to talk about making money as a creative. What I wish I had known before starting this creative career. So I was looking at my bank statements.        

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I know it's a weird way to start any conversation. I was looking at my bank statements. I was looking at, actually, I take it back. I was looking at my invoices. That's gonna give you a cue right now.        

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I was looking at my invoices, and I was looking at how much I was owed for this month. I have a set of invoices that are due. You know, some are past dues, some are due in 30 days. Some are due in two days or whatever. And I was looking at that and I said to myself, this is now.        

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Tell me if you've ever felt this way. If you've ever heard this, I want you to put a yes in the comments. If you've ever said this to yourself, give me a me. Give me a hand. Like, yep, that's me.        

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If this has ever been you, you looked at something like this and you said, why did it take me so long to figure this out? If that's ever been you, let me know. Have you ever been looking at something that you're doing now as a creative, you're a professional, you're a hobbyist, you've kind of done this for a while, and you look at something and you're like, it is an instant of not regret, but perspective. Okay? So give me a comment.        

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Give me a wave. If that's you. We got some live viewers right here on Instagram. So if you guys know what I'm talking about. Let me see a hand.        

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Yep, that's me. I have been that person that has looked at my own work, looked at something I'm doing now. I'm doing now, and said, man, why did it take me so long to figure this out? Well, that was the experience I had. The experience I had is realizing that I should have been doing some money things with my creative career, some things that would have been so much more beneficial for my creative career if I had started earlier, if I reminded, not reminded, if I had known, you know, and then actually taking some advice that I had been given, if I had done that earlier, it would have been so much better for my creative career.        

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I was looking at these invoices, and what I realized was, this is some processes that I've developed that, again, some of this only in the last few days or weeks or months. So I'm not going to act like I've been doing this for a while. But what I realized is if I struggled with something that I wish I had known back when I started creating, and again, we're talking from the context of a creative who loves God. This is not about making a million dollars. This is not about trying to get rich quick immediately.        

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A lot of people, as soon as you saw money, I saw some people even unsubscribed when I sent this message about making money as a creative. And I think I can guess what they were thinking. They were like, oh, my gosh, this guy's only about money. This is supposed to be a christian oriented theme in terms of this God and gigs thing. I don't want to be in anything that's like, oh, it's all about money, and money is the root of all evil and all these things that they people come up with.        

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Okay? So I knew as soon as I put this topic that some people were going to either unsubscribe or think that this is all worldly. It's not for musicians or creatives that love God. This is just, you know, a bunch of scam stuff that he's starting to talk about. This is not for you.        

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You can go ahead and scroll past, this is not for you. God bless you. Pray for you. This is for the people that understand. Also, there's a verse where the Bible says that he gives us power to gain wealth and that the wealth of the wicked is laid up for the righteous.        

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So if you want to go Bible, I'll go Bible on you in terms of what money means, okay. And money is just a means to an end to promoting the kingdom. So if we are kingdom creators, if you love God, if you're in this God and gig community and you want to help people, James says it like this. What good is it is if you pray for a certain person and you don't actually help them? If you don't actually put clothes on their back?        

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Don't actually help them. Well, guess what? You know how you put clothes on people's back? You have money to pay for it. You know how you feed your family?        

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You have money to pay for it. You know how you keep your kingdom creative career advancing. You bring an income, invest in yourself, build a business that creates a legacy for you. So that's for all of those people. Send this to them.        

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If they are the people who keep saying that. It's not about money. No, it's not about money, which is why I need to make money. Did you follow me? It's not about money, which is why I need to make money.        

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Because it's not about money. This is about impact and things I should have done with my creative career. And again, share this. Send this to somebody who's either struggled with money as a creative has felt like they don't know how to make an income, who has felt like God has, like, kind of cursed them or that their enemy has cursed them, they don't know how to, like, make this work. And I want to tell you the things I wish I had done 20 years ago, the things I wish I had paid attention to 20 years ago when I first started performing, creating, making this a full time income, whether it was in ministry or outside of ministry.        

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It was all still the building blocks of a career in creative life. So send this to them. So I want to start with what seems like the basics. But the basics are not the basics. Oftentimes, the basics, we skip the basics.        

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So the first thing I wish I had done back in the old, and when I first started, and yes, I am, I consider myself old. First thing I wish I had done, I wish I had kept my business and my personal finances separate. I wish I had kept my business and my personal finances separate. My creative business, music gigs, my income from everything, all my side hustles. I wish I had not mixed it in with my personal accounts, because that's what I did back when I first started creating, when I was first doing gigs, even when I was first, you know, I'll be careful about the church.        

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I'll never refer to the church as a gig, but it was an income. It was a side income. So even that, I wish I had made very clear that this was a separate business entity and that it has its own accounts and that it has its own place and that it has its own way of running. And then I pay myself, as a company into my personal accounts. Now.        

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That's what I do now. I wish I had done that back then. If this is you, if you ever felt like that and you've ever said, man, I wish I had done something like that, then put a yes in the comments. Okay. And what I mean by that is that when I first started, as soon as I got a check from any gig, I threw it right into my personal account.        

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It was, oh, my gosh, I can pay this bill. Oh, yes, thank goodness. I got this dollar 200, and it was, like, immediately gone. Like, no tax, no paying attention to paying the taxes, no attention to how much am I really making? No record keeping, none of that.        

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And so two things happened, of course. One is I had no idea how much I was actually making from my gigs and my creative life and my creative income. So I really had no clue. I wasn't treating it like a business. And the second thing that might have been even more devastating was that I didn't see the value of this as a business in terms of my own mentality.        

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I didn't. I was saying things like this. Tell me if you've ever said this, if you've ever said something like this. I'm not good with business. I'm not.        

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I'm not. I'm a creative, so I can't handle contracts and finances and things like that, and I absolutely struggled with that. I struggle with this idea that I'm not supposed to be good with money. So my only goal is to try to grab as many checks as I can, throw them into the personal account, and hope for the best. That was my mentality.        

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What I wish I had done, all right, seventies with me, right? What I wish I had done is I wish I kept them separate. I wish, even if the business was not making a lot of money. And here's one of the things I think we all struggle with. We think that you can't really make a separate account for the business or it's not worth it until you're making like some kind of big income.        

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No, if it's just $50 and that $50 sits in a separate account outside of your business, outside of your personal account, it's still worth it. There are plenty of free accounts. I'm going to talk about some things that I've used that are, again, I'm not a financial advisor, I'm not a tax professional. None of these things. I'm somebody who's used these things.        

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And so I'm going to invite you to check out some of these people that are in our established creative experts universe, in Godgate universe, check with them. I'm going to allude to them as financial experts because they do have credentials. So first thing I wish I had done, kept business and personal separate. Okay? The second thing I wish I had done different.        

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I'm going to go right through these as fast as I can. It kind of goes along with what I just said. I wish I had taken record keeping and taxes seriously. I wish I had taken record keeping and taxes seriously, y'all. I won't be honest, I am still living down the mistakes I made in my record keeping and taxes when it comes to the business.        

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The reason why I followed that up with keep your business and your personal separate in terms of being a creative and not just grabbing checks and throwing them into your personal account is because of all the benefits you lose and all the personal. The possible penalties you will fight, you will face if you don't take your record keeping of your business seriously. Here's the scary part. The IR's is real, y'all. It's routine.        

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We got about 40, no less than 45. Like 25 days, 30 days or so, or 25 days until tax day. Creatives, how many horror stories have you heard? I want you to go. Actually, I can't do it on my phone.        

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I want to see if I can do it on my computer. Go look up our interview guide and gigs 360 members. You have access to this already, but we have a webinar and our interview with Sam Maybry, Samantha Maybry, who is a tax strategist and our podcast with her, she did a great interview with us on taxes and why creatives. We struggle with this. And then number two, the problem is, as I just mentioned, is that what happens is you miss out on all the benefits, on all the tax deductions.        

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How much money would I have saved on taxes, on my personal taxes, if I had done deductions back then, on everything I buy, on the lights I'm using right now, on the mic, on the keyboards, if I had had saved that money by putting the deductions and not doing the taxes myself. Paul Creative Services is not our friend. I'm just going to say it out loud. I'm not a tax professional, but I'll say it like this. Turbotax was not my friend.        

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How's that? Okay. If anybody is struggling with taxes right now, I highly recommend you grab a professional. If Sam Mabry's taking clients, there's other people that we'd recommend inside our guiding gigs community. But please do not try to do your own taxes when it comes to your creative career.        

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Let somebody and take records of everything. I use a program called Hurdle that keeps up with all of my drives. And then now, as I mentioned, my tax, my tax, I guess my software is, well, hurdle pretty much does everything. It keeps everything together. So I don't have to do like, separate things for like, quickbooks and stuff like that.        

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So you have to keep track of that, and keeping track of that will have huge benefits. And again, I'm raising my hand. If this is you, if you've been lax on the tax thing, if you've been lax on keeping track of what you spend for your trumpet manual, for your pieces. Brent, good to see you, brother. You know this.        

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Chime in if you agree with me, okay, your things that you buy for your gas, for, just the travel, the gigs that you travel to, the clothes you wear, all of that is deductible. And I'm not a tax professional. I'm just telling you what happened to me is I missed out on a lot of deductions because I never took the time to make sure that that was taken care of. You've got to make sure you itemize and take, pay attention to. And this, again, we're creators.        

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We get stuck like, oh, my God, I don't want to do all this stuff. I don't want to do all this stuff. It's true. But I wish I had done more of it sooner. I would be saving myself a ton of money on taxes.        

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I would be in a better position. Financial position. And God calls us. Look, even Jesus paid taxes, y'all. Jesus paid taxes.        

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He made sure that he was covered. He now he was able to do a miracle. Get a fish and get something else. Paul says he just got a new mouthpiece. Tax deductible.        

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I am not a tax professional, but if it's for business, and you can show it's for business, then by all means. So, this is something I'm taking my own advice with. Guys. I gotta go get my. We are behind.        

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I should have done this long time ago. I'll probably do it tonight or tomorrow. I'll probably get my hurdle app. I'm not. I'm not a much call.        

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I'm not an affiliate hurdle, but hurdle is spelled h u r d l r. Okay. No e in there. So if you want to check out hurdle, I use hurdle. I used to use a couple of other ones, but those are.        

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Those are defunct now. So now hurdle is the one that I use, and it's been tracking me for. Tracking me, has been tracking all of my drives, and I just hit a button, and it collects all of my information, and I just send that to my tax professional and done. A lot of these banks now actually have software kind of built in where they also track your stuff for you in terms of a. This is all from the restaurants.        

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This was all from gas, this was all from this particular store. You can track all that and then just send that amount, and you can do your tracking again. Hire a tax professional. It's my highest, highest, highest recommendation. We saved a ton of money, and we were in a boatload of tax problems before we took care of that.        

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All right, this is a really. I got this next point. There's those Instagram who are not watching from a book called real Artists don't starve by Jeff Goins. I still recommend real artists don't starve, which is amazing book. And what Jeff Goins talked about was something that I really have realized I should have leaned into more when I was working full time in ministry.        

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And that is your job, is your creative patron. Back in the day, when there was Bach and all the classical and even, you know, artists, it still happens. Now people have patrons. That's why that patron is now like an app, right? So patrons are the people who paid for and self support the artist.        

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But some of you are working part time or working full time, and then your part time is your creative career. And you might think, well, my job is my job, and I just need to focus on that. And the money goes there, and I don't really pay attention to, like, they don't really mix. Like we said, don't mix them. But what you can do is you can see your job as your creative patron.        

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So, in other words, you start investing into your business slowly, piece by piece, small parts by small part, from your full time job, and your job is actually making it possible one day for you to switch and eventually become a full time creative. Let me explain. I am not saying to just start funneling all your money from your bills, that you need to pay your bills and then funnel it into the business. What I am saying is that if you are working a full time position and you can start making some of your targeted investment things back into your business, those funds, as we just mentioned, now become business funds. You loan it basically to yourself so you can look, talk to an accountant, make sure this is above board so that you're not mixing personal, but you're also looking at, how can you start investing yourself, your own proceeds from your personal, and actually use your job as a creative patron.        

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So let's. You know, lashonda, you're the bootstrap queen. You know what we're talking about? We're talking about bootstrapping from the first couple of purchases you make. And usually you haven't made a lot of money.        

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So you're not trying to, like, go into debt to start your creative business. You're starting from, hey, I made a bonus here. I'm setting this bonus aside. This bonus will go toward this particular thing I need for my creative business. That will become my first asset in the creative business.        

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Then that asset starts to pay for itself to the next job I do, the next creative thing I do, the next gig I do. And now that becomes a income producing asset in my business, which my job paid for. Is this making sense? I wish I had done this more. Why do I wish I had done this more?        

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If you are starting out and you are trying to get your business, creative business, off the ground and you see your full time job as a detriment, I wish I had more time, but I've got this full time job. I wish I could sing more, I wish I could play more, but I got this. I got me paid bills. That mentality is what I wish I had erased from my mentality. I wish I had not thought that way why?        

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Because I stopped seeing my job as being a benefit to my creative career, and I saw it as a detriment to my creative career, and it made me less ready to see the benefits of having both going on. Is this making sense? You need to keep both these things separate, but you also need to see how they can help each other. A very perfect example of this is the fact that the only reason I have a full time job at my church as a podcast producer is because I started a podcast for God and gigs. It is not a one to one thing where it's like, oh, well, if I'm making money off my business, then I need to.        

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I, you know, then it's just the business and the, the full time job is just a full time job, and they're separate. No, my side hustle is what made my full time job possible. So had I not invested into the side hustle, my full time job never would have become a full time job. So what I'm saying is, change your mindset from I can't do one or the other. It's got to be either or to my job makes my creative business possible, and my creative business could then benefit my job, and your job is actually going to benefit your overall side hustle.        

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Create a career. I wish I had changed that mentality back when I was working full time in ministry. This is what's going to make your creative life better, because when you're not thinking about these things, you're going to get more creative. When you're not stressing about bills, you're going to get more creative when you're not like, oh, God, who paid me? When did they pay me?        

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I don't remember. They paid me. When do I get this check? Do I get this check? Do I have any money?        

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Is anybody giving me any money? I can't do this. When your mind is stressed about money, your creative abilities are crushed, okay? You're just, you're too stressed. You can't think clearly to create like that when you're so stressed about bills.        

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So let's get the money thing figured out. Okay? All right. Ptol. I made this up, but this is something I wish I had known back when I started.        

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I wish I had known the profit first model. So profit first is a book and a process and a method about how to manage your business finances. The reason I wish I had done this way back when, I wish I'd read this book earlier, is because this PTO, oh, which is basically profit taxes, owners pay operating expenses. That's not in the book, I made that up. It helps me remember.        

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Ptoo, okay, so think PTO, but double o. So PtO O is really just my way of reminding myself that I need to give myself first, pay myself profit. It's called a profit first model for a reason. Profit first literally means where most companies say, oh, profit is what I have after my expenses and my income. Income minus expenses equals profit.        

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The way that the profit first model takes it is profit minus expenses equals income. So, in other words, they start with profit. I'm going to pay myself the profit off the top so that there's always a profitable company, and then I will organize everything underneath it to make sure there's always a 2%, 3% margin at the beginning of it. I wish I had known this, y'all. If I had been thinking like this when I first started being a creative.        

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If I said, the first thing I'm going to do is not just pay myself. Notice this is not paying yourself first. This is profit first. I am going to make sure there is a nest egg, a profit, before I even start talking about the rest of it. If I had a mentality that I need to profit from my create a business that God gave me from the get go, I would have been so much better off.        

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If you currently, right now, have never thought of this, be honest. Say I, you know, be honest. If you never thought about I should be profitable, then you're not alone, because I used to be that way, too. Okay, next is taxes. All right?        

00:26:46
            

Yes. Lashonda, I should have known you were lover. Your lover proper is my sister. We on the same page. We still on the same page.        

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Okay, calm down, calm down. Get excited. Okay, taxes is next. I love this stuff. And then I gotta go in a second.        

00:26:59
            

I always get rolled, and then I gotta stop. Taxes is after that in the profit first model. So profit and taxes. And by the way, this is all percentages. This is something else that I wish I had done.        

00:27:09
            

Profit first breaks things down to percentage. Go get the book. You can go to gotta geeks.com books. I think profit first is on our recommended list. If not, I will add it guidedgigs.com books.        

00:27:23
            

Okay. You'll see all of the books we recommend. I also think I created a library on my Amazon storefront. Lashonda, I'm so proud. I got an Amazon storefront.        

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Now, I don't even know where my link is, but actually, I'll get it and I'll find it. But anyway, I want to make sure that everybody understands these percentages is what blew my mind. I was like, oh, I don't have to think about this anymore. This much goes to profit. This much goes to taxes.        

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Every paycheck I get from my clients automatically, boom. I know how much I'm sending. No more guessing. Oh, what bill do I have to pay? Oh, I need this much.        

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Oh, let's stuff like this. Oh, shoot, I got this. I need to make more. It took all of the pressure off of my money management and my business. Oh, the first o is owners pay.        

00:28:06
            

So then there's the part that actually goes pays me, and the last one is operating expenses. So here's the cool thing about the last one being operating expenses. It forces everything else to fit before I worry about how much my business is going to take from me. I make sure I get my profit, I make sure I get my taxes, and I make sure that I pay myself. I had none of this when I first started.        

00:28:29
            

When I first started, I had no clue about profit. I was not taking out taxes, and I was not taking out a dedicated percentage to pay myself as a salary. And my income and my life was drastically worse financially. I am not making any kind of big bucks here. I am not one of those people who are like, oh, follow me.        

00:28:54
            

You'll make seven figures. That's not me. Go somewhere else. Go find Gary v. He'll tell you how to do that.        

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Not going to find it here. What you will find is someone that has a strong foundation now of how to build a creative business and has done it while keeping my family intact and been able to build a business that I care about and that I love and that other people are blessed by. If that's what you want and you want to follow these models, then this is what you want to do. Follow these types of models that give you a percentage and give you something that you can stick with. It changed so much.        

00:29:27
            

It changed so much of my perspective. All right, finally, let's get to the last of these things that I wish I had done back when I was first starting 20 years ago. Okay. By the way, thank you guys so much for joining in and being a part of this. If you did like this, please share it.        

00:29:44
            

If you're on Instagram or Facebook, any of these other things, please go ahead and like those posts like this. Let me share this with other people. As you can see, I get animated. I did not realize how much I love teaching. I mean, I'm always gonna be a teacher, but this format really, like, just leads to what I know.        

00:30:00
            

I'm gifted and blessed to do. And so I can become the creator that I'm created to be, thanks to you. So please share this. We are a value for value program. I'll explain about value for value.        

00:30:11
            

You can go back to our last, our last live, where I talk about value for value in depth. And value for value is a huge new thing that's happening. Both technology, but then it's a timeless tradition of talent, time, talent and treasure, where if you give time, you're giving time right now. Talent. You can send us stuff where you can have a jingle or maybe you're a graphic designer and you can help us with logos or whatever, and then treasure if you hit the super thanks on the.        

00:30:38
            

I think we do have super thanks. No, we're not super thanks yet. Not on this channel. But you can use PayPal or on our podcast. We also have a thing where you can use a very cool form of bitcoin to support us.        

00:30:49
            

Yes, we're going there, guys. We're going ahead. All right, let me finish this up. Using invoices for everything, y'all, this is a recent development that I am finally, my wife is like, why did he take so long? I'm finally, as of, like, last month, invoicing everyone and everybody that I do business with.        

00:31:13
            

And I know musicians, especially. Those are musicians. You're going to be like, wait, you invoice, like, the people that are doing, like, the little hundred dollar gigs on the side, and you just, yes, I am learning to invoice every single bill that I'm due. I create an invoice even if I don't send it to them. This is the key.        

00:31:37
            

This is what life blessed me. I'll tell you right now what helped me. I'm now doing a business. I'm playing professor. I'm playing keys for a company that's hiring me to go to hotels and resorts.        

00:31:50
            

They send me a thing to fill out the invoices. And I saw this come out every time, and I was like, well, they're sending me. I'm sending them invoices through this software company. Why don't I just use that same software company and send my bills to everyone else? And, y'all, when I started just seeing paid invoice, the change it does in my brain to just waiting to be paid to paid invoice, paid in full part paid.        

00:32:19
            

When you start tracking that stuff, y'all, your brain will change. Your mindset about business will change. Your creative energy will change. It will be like, wait a minute. I worked, and I deserve what I need, and I deserve to get it at this time.        

00:32:34
            

And I'm going to put it in writing. Kind of goes along with contracts. We have a podcast on that. But I am now invoicing everyone. I wish I had done this back when I had started.        

00:32:44
            

I wish. And now the place I'm using is bill.com. Just like that, bil l.com. Okay. I'm not an affiliate.        

00:32:52
            

Not making any money off of that. Go to bill.com. That's where I'm starting to do my invoices. Some people do it through Google. They do Google spreadsheets.        

00:32:59
            

I used to do Google spreadsheets as well, or Google then create an invoice. It didn't really track anything. PayPal does invoices. If you don't get paid through PayPal, you can always do PayPal for PayPal invoices. I used to do that a lot, but bill.com is the one that's, like, really freed me up because it's like everything's in the same place and I can create them easily.        

00:33:18
            

Some people use quickbooks. Again, the method is not important. What's important is that you actually follow through with these. So those are the five things that I wish I had done. Want to go them quickly again?        

00:33:29
            

Hopefully. If you're on Instagram, if you need these, please join us@gottingigs.com. Info I can send this to you through a newsletter. Okay. I can send these to you, and you can join our newsletter, and you'll get all five of these so that you'll be able to keep up, keep biz and personal separate.        

00:33:46
            

I wish I had done that. I wish I had taken my record, take record keeping and my taxes seriously. When I first started, I wish I had known that my job is my creative patron. They're not battling each other, they're actually helping each other. I wish I had known the profit first model, the PTOL profit, taxes, owners pay and operating expenses.        

00:34:10
            

I wish I had paid attention to that. Go check out profit first. Finally. I wish I had used invoices for every single time I'm owed money. I send them an invoice, even if I don't necessarily, like, you know, get handed to them, because it's like a one time thing.        

00:34:26
            

I still create an invoice. It helps me with the tracking. It reminds me of what I'm worth. It reminds me how much money I'm owed. I don't lose track.        

00:34:34
            

I don't forget who pays me, what, why I didn't pay me, so on. And I can send them the invoice. And that reminds me to keep my businesses correct. Now, if that has blessed you and I'm right on time, I believe I got three minutes. And you want to get more resources like this consistently, I suggest you join the guiding gigs.com inspired, which is the inspired creators corner.        

00:34:59
            

The inspired creators corner is part of our Goddard gigs 360 membership, but it's our low cost version where there's not a lot of live coaching or any live coaching. All it is is you get these resources, things like, which I'll go right now and I'll tell you, we have that seminar that was with Sam mayberry on how to organize your taxes and how to get the tax benefits. That's inside the creator's corner. Okay. You don't have to go re register or anything just for $10 a month.        

00:35:27
            

Okay, let me put this in. Gotta gigs.com inspired. Inspired. Okay. With a D.        

00:35:34
            

Gotandgeeks.com inspired. It's just $10 a month and that will get you all of the resources plus a new resource every month. We're going to work on the month of April. So if you need a template on how to grade your invoices, we make it. If you need an employee, a template on how to build up your record keeping, we'll make it.        

00:35:59
            

If you need a template on how to organize your marketing, we can make it. If you need the best emails, which I've gotten 50% to 60% open rate on my emails for the last year and you want to know how we've done it and what subject lines we've used with my creative business so that I can get people to my shows that every time I send out I think to my shows, I get 60% to 70% people opening that email to see where my shows are and I get about 510 percent clicks. Okay, if you want that, I can create the template, show you how we did it. No live coaching for that. You don't have to worry about the live coaching.        

00:36:35
            

That's for the mastermind. Level 70 is in the mastermind. She knows about that. That's gotta dig 360 gold. Okay, you want to go to the mastermind, guidedgeeks.com gold.        

00:36:43
            

But just to get into the part where you get the templates and the webinars and everything. Guidedgeeks.com inspired, my friend. Now that you heard the things that you shouldn't do and hopefully you can learn from my mistakes now I'm hoping you'll take action and make sure that you apply the right strategies with your money so that you can expand your creative business and make the impact that God wants you to make in your career. And you know, one way to do that right away is by getting the resources that I have learned over these past 20 years and that I've learned from hundreds of interviews with some of the best creatives in the world. And all of that is stored in our inspired creators collection.        

00:37:33
            

We also called it the inspired creators Corner in the video, but I thought collection was a better term to describe all of the resources that we are collecting just for you inside of guiding Gigs 360. And as I mentioned, this resource is only $10 a month. It's basically your easy way into guiding Gigs 360, which is our membership for all of our thriving creatives. And it lets you get all of the resources, whether it's a webinar, a training on anything. When it comes to faith, creative life, money, strategies, anything that will help you become a totally confident, well rounded creative who can excel any place in the marketplace, well, that's where you're going to find all of these resources.        

00:38:20
            

So go to godandgigs.com inspired jump in today, because this is the kind of thing that will help you avoid all those issues that I wish I had known back when I started this creative journey so long ago. Well, I feel it was so long ago, and I really pray that you'll keep connecting with this podcast with our community through guiding Gigs 360, the inspired creative collective. And also check out God and gigs gold because that's where you get the live coaching. But I just wanted to make sure that you had an open invitation and an easy route to get the resources that you need. So go to guiding Gigs.com inspired, or just check the link in the show notes.        

00:39:04
            

Also, remember, we are a value for value podcast. Now what does that mean? It means we build our community with you based on when you share your time, talent and treasure. I just mentioned the way that you can share your treasure in a value for value type thing, because you can purchase something like the inspired creators collection for your own benefit and your resources, which also benefits our community. But you can also join us by sharing your time, just by sharing this episode.        

00:39:36
            

Take a few minutes, comment, share, and that builds our community so that we can help more creatives become confident in everything that God is blessing them to do. Or you can share talent. Maybe you're good at graphic design. Maybe you have a jingle idea. Whatever you want to do to supply something that's talent to our community, let us know in our Facebook group, email me, or simply comment via social and share a talent with us.        

00:40:04
            

And once again, you can share treasure by either purchasing products or by even using a modern podcast app, which you can find a link to in the show notes. And it's a really cool way to even share directly with us through bitcoin and other digital currencies that are going to revolutionize the creative space. Trust me on this one. I'm talking to some very smart people who are going to do some amazing things with this technology, and we want you to be at the forefront, which means you got to jump in and learn how to do it with a podcast like this. Well, my friend, that's our show for today.        

00:40:39
            

Thank you so much for listening and learning with us. And until next time, continue to become the creative that you were created to be. God bless, and I'll see you next episode.