Balancing Acts (Aired 06-10-25) Master Cashflow, Taxes and Avoid Costly Bookkeeping Mistakes

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam hello and welcome to Balancing Acts, your guide to grow profit and scale, where we explore the tightrope of building a successful life and business without losing your self along the way. The numbers do matter a lot. And today we are going to have a guest, Joseph Reyes with us. He spent his entire career helping entrepreneurs find peace of mind through financial clarity. And he's a financial strategist and host of the upcoming show Business Forward. And he knows the struggles business owners face when the numbers don't make sense. And he's breaking it all down for us today. Welcome Joe. It's so great to have you with us today. [00:01:13] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. [00:01:16] Speaker A: So this first segment together, let's talk about balancing the books. You know something, we've spent our careers helping business owners do, but often they find it very difficult. They can feel like they're losing their mind. So how do you start helping business owners who feel overwhelmed about understanding their books and getting them balanced? [00:01:43] Speaker B: So a person who, whose car breaks down and they're not a mechanic, they should not be trying to fix their cars. Right? Because they're not a mechanic. Somebody who's running a business. And it's not an accountant who doesn't understand accounting rules and regulations, of which there are many who doesn't understand bookkeeping. And there's a difference between bookkeeping and accounting. What I would say is for, you know, the overwhelming part is they don't know what they're doing. So business owners should, unless they have accounting back backgrounds, they should not be doing the books. They should not have be anywhere near doing data entry of all the transactions. They should not be anywhere near creating a chart of accounts and setting up QuickBooks. So many of them want to do it on their own. DIY may work for some things, but in the accounting world, DIY does not work. So I would just tell somebody who's trying to be a, to get their accounting in order when they start the business. I would recommend hire somebody who's a professional, who has some knowledge. It doesn't have to be a high level professional, but get somebody who has a clue about how accounting works and how to set up the books and set up the accounting infrastructure so that it does what you want it to do instead of you going in there and just messing it up. And I strongly, strongly recommend just getting an accountant to help you out. It is the one of the biggest mistakes I see business owners make. They're trying to save a few dollars. They think it's going to Be expensive. But if you think doing the books in the beginning is expensive, try cleaning up the books. [00:03:25] Speaker A: Way more expensive, you know, and you said a couple things that made me think, because I know I've told business owners throughout my career that they really shouldn't do their books. And I understand that a lot of the times they do, it's because they feel they can't afford it. Right. They can't bring it in. Also, they often think, I really know how to do this. It's not so hard. And QuickBooks kind of helps with that, you know, the DIY coming out of there. But as the topic we're talking about balancing your books, the numbers aren't always right. Right. How many times do you see a client bring their books to you that they're, like, completely wrong, the profit's not right. No wonder they're losing their mind, because they're shock. So what would you say are the first steps for somebody who's doing their books right now themselves, or, you know, just getting started? What is the first step they should do and trying starting to get their books in order? [00:04:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So again, the first step is take the advice of an accountant who can help you set up the infrastructure. At a minimum, the infrastructure. The second thing is just to come to an honest moment in your life, look in the mirror and tell yourself, you are not an accountant. Don't do it. Right. It's accounting. And bookkeeping is not mathematics. Right? Mathematics. Once you know the rules, right, it's logic. You know, it's an exercise in logic. Accounting and bookkeeping and tax preparation, it has nothing to do with logic. It's rules and regulations that you have to adhere to. You have to know where to put stuff. You have to know how to consider the transaction itself. And we have. I have seen. I see. I have seen it so many times where we get a set of books and we're like, it's tax season, everybody's coming in the door, and now we have to clean up a whole year's worth of books that somebody decided they want to do it themselves. And all that does is throw a monkey wrench into the process. So the first thing is hire a bookkeeper. At a minimum, a good bookkeeper. Get referrals or hire an accountant. Doesn't have to be a cpa. It could be just a general accountant who understands how the book should look. And then from there, make sure you get, like a program like QuickBooks or something like that, or FreshBooks or Xero. There are many products out there. Some are Less expensive, obviously than QuickBooks and don't do it on Excel. Everybody thinks they can do it on Excel. Excel is good for listing things. Or we just tell people you have to use the software. Get a cheap software or free software. You won't regret it because it's going to be more expensive in the long run. You know, a CPA can charge 200, 300, 400 bucks an hour. Right. And you try to save $1,000, you know, in software fees, but then you wind up paying it and more to an accounting for his fees, you know, and so my recommendation is spend a few bucks. It's worth it. [00:06:22] Speaker A: So besides the, you know, yes, hire a bookkeeper or an accountant. But what I've seen over the years is they hire an administrative assistant, an office manager, and they say, oh, it's nothing to it, they can do the books. So whether the owner does it or whether someone who has no bookkeeping skills really has no training at all, your books are often wrong, right? That what you were talking about, putting things in categories is really about like, what are you spending your money on? And if your books are wrong, how do you even know what's left over? So how can they find, you know, someone that has at least some bookkeeping skills? You know, they might not, depending on the complexity of the business, need somebody with years and years and years of experience, but they should have someone who, who understands what a chart of accounts is and how to track things. Right. So how do you advise your clients to, to find that help if they can't afford maybe off the bat to hire a cpa? [00:07:22] Speaker B: Well, I, I've very often referred a client to a bookkeeping service. You know, and one of the things that we have today, you know, is an influx of foreign based bookkeeping firms. You know, they're in the Philippines, they're in India, you know, they're in South America. South America is hot now. It's up and coming as an administrative and bookkeeping accounting hub. And so you can find, well price, well educated bookkeepers and accountants outside of the United States. You know, I know that sounds like a trader, but the fact is that we, it's a global economy. So if money is a big issue, and I understand that if you're starting a business, you got to watch every dollar, then yeah, you know what, you can hire an inexpensive bookkeeper, somebody in even the United States. There are people who they, they contract out their work and they'll charge a whole lot less than, you know, a CPA firm would. And for bookkeeping we don't Recommend using a CPA firm because you're going to be paying 120 bucks, 150 bucks an hour where you can get a bookkeeper in the US for 25 bucks an hour, you know, and they're happy to do it. So I would say, you know, just check around, go to your chamber of commerce, ask around. You know, I'm a nice guy, so if you call me, I don't know you and you're asking me those types of questions, I will give you this advice that I'm giving out here, right? This is what I recommend you do. You know, don't waste your money until you have to spend the money on a CPA or high price accountant. So the, you know, Fiverr is a website that's a gig economy website. I think it's F I F I V E R R I think it is. You can just Google it nowadays and you can find all sorts of people, you know, put up their services for relatively inexpensively at a good price. You just got to watch them, you know, and just have an accountant every now and then take a look at what they're doing. And, you know, it does take a couple hours to double check what somebody's doing. And what we also recommend is never let the person reconciling your bank account be the same person who pays your bills. [00:09:31] Speaker A: Good advice, very good advice. Because that's how you can keep control over your money. And that leads me to, you know, as we close out this segment on them not feeling overwhelmed, sometimes I find the books are wrong. Right. They made a lot of mistakes with money. How do you help people not feel embarrassed or ashamed if things have to get fixed? And that will be a good way to talk to help them understand how to maybe not ignore it and get help. [00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a saying that I like. It goes like this. Sooner or later, everybody has a bad day, everybody makes mistakes. It's not the end of the world. You know, you deserve what you get. When you ignore the fact that you're messing things up and you just continue doing it, then I don't feel sorry for you. But if you are making a mistake, so what, you made a mistake. You know, let's get it cleaned up. There's no, there's no, you know, it's not a sin to make a mistake, right? So own up to it. Try to learn from it. Hopefully you learn that, hey, leave this to somebody who knows what they're doing, right? But you made a mistake, let's clean it up. Let's get past it and move along. You know, you don't have to. I don't beat people up for making mistakes. Right. So I know accountants, we tend to be a little harsh sometimes, you know, but I think as an accountant, if you develop people skills and you learn to be gentle and kind to people and empathetic, that goes a long way. People appreciate that. They feel it. And you just got to get rid of that embarrassment on their side, always keeping in mind that sooner or later it's going to be your turn, you. [00:11:05] Speaker A: Know, so, you know, so I think that's really helpful. And I, and I mean, that's my takeaway from today is one to get help, you know, hire a bookkeeper or at least get somebody with enough training so that your books are what you called clean. And you know, that you have clarity into your money and to not be embarrassed if some mistakes are there and they need to be fixed. How can people find you online or your website? [00:11:34] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm just outside of Philadelphia. My website is reyesaccounting.com that's R E Y E S as in san accounting.com so rayusaccounting.com my phone number is 215-525-2976 and all my contact information is on my website. Easy to get to us. And we have clients around the country, so. And I'm bilingual, so I, I can double the exposure that I have. [00:12:01] Speaker A: Thank you so much for sharing your insights with our audience today. Stay with us. We'll be right back. And we're going to talk more to Joe in our next segment about cash flow and understanding how important it is compared to profit. And when you're comparing it to profitability. Stay with. We're back on Balancing acts, and we're talking with Joseph Reyes of Joseph Reyes Accounting Firm. In our last segment, we talked about how business owners often feel overwhelmed by getting their books right, by having clean financials and understanding how they make money, and even trying to correct mistakes when their books are not accurate. So now we want to talk about cash flow and why cash flow can kill more dreams than your hard work ever could. Now, that's an interesting statement to stay. But cash flow is so critical to the life and health of a business. Joseph, why is it the cash flow is more important than profit? Or how do you see that comparison? I find that a lot of times people don't actually understand the difference. [00:13:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So profits, you know, profits are of course, essential, but profits are what create cash flow. Right. So unless you're infusing the business with outside money like a loan or a capital contribution. But cash flow is the lifeblood of a business. You know, yeah, on paper you could be making a great profit. But you know, if the, if you make a sale today and you're not going to get paid on that sale for 60 days, but you got a payroll to meet tomorrow or next week and the money's going to have to come from somewhere. So if your clients and customers are not paying quickly, then you could be out of business. Right? Because if you think about the human body, if the blood stops flowing, the body dies. Right? Same thing with, with cash. The business needs cash to pay payroll vendors, you know, any number of expenses come up that are critical to the business. So especially payroll being the biggest one. Right. Never miss a payroll. So if you're not, if you don't have a way of having cash flowing to the business to sustain it, you may be out of business before you ever get paid by a client that you know you sold something to and you're waiting for the payment to come in in 30 to 60 days. So profits are usually important, but the cash flow is equally important. Hopefully the profits of the business are going to want to feed the cash flow and make the cash flow through the business. But when you're just first starting out, it could be more expensive than sales. You could be running at a loss initially, which is very common in new businesses. So the question becomes, do you have the cash flow to pay, make the payroll? If you're just starting out, you're losing money initially because you have to put a lot of money up front, right. It takes money to make money. So you need cash from somewhere. It could be from a credit card, it could be from a line of credit, it could be from a sale you made two months ago, the money just came in and whatnot. So you have to find a way to make sure that that cash is flowing, otherwise you're dead in the water. So you can be profitable on the books, by the way, and you can be out of business because you don't have any cash. And that's absolutely plan for is so critical and that causes so much stress if you don't, if you're not ready. [00:16:06] Speaker A: For it and that, you know, it is more critical, isn't it, in a lot of ways than profit. And they often are losing money in the beginning. But when you're losing money somehow you were covering that money with your own cash, your personal cash, your credit cards and building debt. The only thing is to keep in mind with profit, I think is if they're really losing money year after year after year, profit eventually eats your cash and it will catch up to you. So you do have to stay on top of both, right on the cash flow as well as profit. But if you're waiting to get paid, you've loaned somebody out, you're loaning your customers your money and you need it, right to make your payroll. So what are some of the signs that their cash flow might be in trouble? And maybe they don't realize that they're warning signs, but they're either not paying attention to them or they don't see them. [00:17:03] Speaker B: Well, the biggest one, of course, is not having the money to make payroll, right? If you're scrambling every day and you're worried every single day about the next dollar that comes in, or you're watching the mailbox or your QuickBooks payments account looking for money to come in, you know, you already got stress, shall we say, you know, because this is typical. Even larger companies get into cash crunches. It happens all the time. You know, the only question becomes, can you handle that stress? And do you have a plan B in the event that you don't have the cash to make the payments that you have to make? I mean, we have a client that, you know, that they've had trucks turned around because the client didn't pay, you know, a bill and the vendor shipping something and the money's not in, they just turn the truck around and then the client is scrambling to get money to pay. So the quite, you know, one of the telltale signs is are you struggling every single day for cash? That's a telltale sign that you've got cash flow problems. And what I recommend is, you know, that you have a line of credit from the bank, you set up a cushion when you start the business, not after you start the business. Like before you start the business, you've gone to the bank, you've asked for a line of credit, a bank account, etc, or a credit card account so that you can maybe make some payments with a credit card and get the float of 30 days in order to make the payment on that and hopefully that you can make it work, you know, and that develop, you develop that skill set, but just be ready for the stress and that two o' clock in the morning, waking up in sweats, you know, terrified about what the next day is going to look like, how. [00:18:38] Speaker A: Am I going to make payroll tomorrow? Right? [00:18:40] Speaker B: That's the big one. [00:18:41] Speaker A: Cash flow is very stressful. So they could use credit cards or credit lines. Unless maybe they might be struggling with some personal credit, you know, or ability, or maybe the line's not big enough. Are there any ways that they can start to look at fixing their cash flow without taking on debt if necessary? [00:19:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So one way you could do that is by tightening up your terms with your customers. So instead of saying, hey, pay me in 30 days, just say, hey, our terms are 15 days, you know, paying your vendors, you know, stretch out the payments, you know, like just working out with your vendors. Hey, I want 30 day terms. You know, if you can get 50 day turns on the money coming in and have 30 day terms on the money going out, that should get you some kind of relief, you know, but you, at the end of the day, you should have personal money on the side or personal loans or something like that. But that, that's how, that's basically, you know, the two big ways that you should be able to make the money work better for yourself, you know, so those are the two big ones. And then always have money set aside for payroll. So it's better to pay a vendor late than to pay an employee late. [00:19:55] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:19:57] Speaker B: So vendors will wait, you know, they will, they'll wait to get paid, you know, so that's because you'll wait. You're waiting to get paid from your customers. So, yes, the other side knows that. So the trick is, you know, your people skills, the negotiation skills. I would recommend strongly taking negotiation classes and learning what the triggers are in dealing with, you know, people like vendors and customers. And there's an ex FBI agent, his name is Chris Voss, and he's a massive negotiator. I've taken a couple of his classes. You'd be surprised what you can pull off, you know, by negotiating with vendors and customers. [00:20:37] Speaker A: And he has a great book, Right. Never Split the Difference, which is a wonderful book. Another place that you should never pay late would be those payroll taxes you withheld from your employees. Payroll taxes, sales taxes. Because those can come back to bite you personally. So those. Right. Are things that they have to make sure they have enough cash for. Do you ever see that? One of the problems might be that maybe they're not charging enough and that's also hurting their cash flow, that their costs are much larger. In the first segment, we talked about making sure your books made sense, your bookkeeping is right. So is that a place they should check? And how can you maybe raise prices, especially now? We know times are tough, but if you're not charging enough, that's impacting your cash flow too. What would you recommend if that's the person's situation? [00:21:34] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, that's an excellent point. You know, by the way, on the payroll tax issue is actually illegal to utilize somebody else's taxes. [00:21:43] Speaker A: Right. [00:21:43] Speaker B: To run your business, you got to submit that to government immediately. But you bring up an excellent point. Yeah. So if you're selling a product or service, you got to do your due diligence. You know, what is this service worth? What is this product worth? You know, because if you have it incorrectly priced, then every time you sell a cup of coffee and you lose a penny on a, and a cup of coffee, then at the end of the day you're going to be out of business. Right. That's a good way to go bankrupt, you know, so you, you have to price out your goods and services accurately. So you have to do your due diligence. How do you know, how do you know you're not properly pricing your goods and services? That's your monthly bookkeeping, you know, what is the, if it's done properly, what is the bottom line for that month? If it's red, then something's wrong. And if you, the sooner you find out that something's wrong, the better. Hopefully though, you've already done some due diligence as to what goods and services are worth in your area before you open your doors and go and start selling. Because if you don't have any idea and you're just using, you know, your just numbers out of the air, that's not a scientific way of doing it. So you have to have a sense of what you know, what, what is the market paying, you know, and whatever, the range is low to high, whatever. But that's actually very critical. And if you're going into business, if you've never had a business before, then maybe it's a good time to get some coaching and take a class or two. And now there's YouTube and the Internet and whatnot. There's really no reason why you can't have a clue when you're going to start a business. There's so much information out there that's very helpful. But yes, properly pricing the goods that you're buying and I might add, knowing what something should cost so that you know you're not getting hosed by somebody who might be on the higher range of pricing to their clients. And maybe you could find a less expensive alternative. [00:23:33] Speaker A: Thank you, that was great advice. And how can people find you online? [00:23:38] Speaker B: Yeah, my website is reyesaccounting.com that's R E Y E S as in SAM accounting.com so reyesaccounting.com my phone number is 215-525-2976 and we have clients around the country. We're just outside of Philadelphia, but we have a national presence at this point. [00:23:57] Speaker A: Thank you. Love what you're watching. Catch this episode of Balancing act and every Now Media TV show, live and on demand anytime 24 7. You can download the free Now Media app on Roku and you can listen to it on your favorite podcast. You can get instant access to all all our bilingual content in English and Spanish. And from business to news to lifestyle to culture, it's all streaming 24. 7. So search Now Media TV on your Roku device and never miss a moment. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Welcome back to BALANCING acts. I'm here with financial expert Joseph Reyes, and we're dealing it with all the parts of a business that don't always get a lot of attention but cause a tremendous amount of stress. We've talked about balancing your books and getting financial clarity from those books and fixing mistakes. We talked about how important cash flow is to being the lifeblood of your business. Now I want to talk about turning tax season from being panicked into feeling empowered by it. So. So, Joseph, let's dive into that. Why do you think people fear tax season so much? [00:25:42] Speaker B: I think because one mistake can cost you dearly and it can get super expensive super quickly. So people fear tax season because they don't know the tax laws. There's a lot that they don't know. If you're running a business, you're busy, you know, and there's some things just take the back burner sort of get put on the back burner. So I think taxes is one of those. So what we see is people just get all freaked out over taxes when some people are good at it. I've been amazed at some clients that we've had that are really on top of it. But I would say that the vast majority of people wing it. They don't prepare for it. They don't plan it and they don't know it. They make assumptions, unfortunately, you know, it's not, it's not like a budget that you could walk around adding numbers in your head and thinking, okay, my sales are going to be this. My expense is going to be this or this, how much I have in the bank. This is much on spending. No, taxes are based upon calculations. And these are calculations that have many different parts. You can't do this stuff in your head, Right. So people would just put it off and put it off and put it off. It's complicated. And next, you know, they're freaking out when tax time comes. [00:27:00] Speaker A: So true. So true. And part of that, I guess, is, you know, that fear of irs, right. You know, they get a notice, just the word IRS upsets them the stress probably of owing money. And they're not sure how much they're going to owe. Right. Maybe they didn't come in until, you know, a month before the tax return is due. So how can they feel prepared throughout the year? How can they manage that stress? So it's not so bad when they come in to see their accountant to get their return prepared. [00:27:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So just a side point, like, you know, when, when you get home and you have a stack of mail and there's a letter from the irs, most people, that's the first thing that they open up. Now, I know people, it's the last thing they open up, and they open up a month later. But it's like, right? It's the first thing you open up. It's like, is there damage to me financially? Because taxes are expensive, you know, so what we recommend for staying on top of your taxes. It's really as easy as keep your bookkeeping going monthly. Don't try to do it all at the end of the year, and then start scrambling for receipts and figuring out what I did here, what I did there, whatever. If you're feeding your your stuff electronically nowadays, you can get a relatively inexpensive online bookkeeping system. QuickBooks has something called a start, a starter package for a few bucks a month. There's some relatively cheap or inexpensive bookkeeping systems that are online that you can get. There's no reason why you can't get a clue as to what your business is doing on a monthly basis if you just pay attention to it or have somebody else preferably pay attention for you and keep the books going so that you have a sense of what your income or losses is going to be for the month. Right. So if you're just doing that one thing, you're now starting to plan for tax season, number one. Number two is if you're making a profit, sock away 20, 30% of that monthly profit into a bank account. And by doing that, you're not paying it to the government, but you're acting like you're paying it to somebody by taking it taking out of your business checking account or taking it out of your personal checking account. And Putting it into an account that you don't want to touch. That's a really good way. So that. Preparing for tax season. So when tax season comes, your books are generally up to date. You just need to clean up maybe some stuff. And if you made a profit, guess what? You're not. You're not sweating how I'm going to make this payment, because a lot of people don't make the payments and they have an installment agreement, which is not the end of the world. It's a. It's. It's actually a. It's a relief for somebody who's having some financial stress or tax stress, you know, so. And not. And just making sure that you keep your records in decent shape, you know, and not be sloppy about them. That's really critical. Those little tips right there make all the difference in the world, especially if you're looking at a $30,000 tax bill. Right. You don't want to find that out. That, you know, April, that, oh, I owe 30,000. I don't have 30,000. Well, and then you've got all these financial considerations that your business is requiring of you or even your personal. You may have a tuition payment coming up, or you may need a roof put on the house. You know, the stress just piles on. And I've seen it. I see it all the time. Those are my recommendations. [00:30:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really important. And I love what you said about putting aside 20 or 30%. You don't have to write it to them, and if you don't know that much, you have some savings there. So it's really a great idea to set that aside. What about, you know, you talked about keeping your books clean and being prepared month to month. What about people who maybe get a little sloppy and kind of mix business and personal in the book, so, you know, it takes even more time to clean up at the end of the year, or what would you advise? Sometimes they do it just because they only have the one bank account and they're not, you know, they're not. They just can't cope with more than one. But what should they do if that's their situation? They're mixing business and personal in the same QuickBooks file or the same 0 file. [00:31:14] Speaker B: Well, what I would say is, you better hope and pray you never get audited. The IRS disdains. They have contempt for people who mix their business and personal expenses in the same bank account and on the book. In the same books. They want to see a separation of books. If they were to review you and they saw that you have personal expenses running through your business checking account or running through your bank, you know, through your P and L or your balance sheet, your financial statements. That's a red flag for them. And a good way for them to start digging deeper is to do stuff like that, you know, so you have to consider that the business is, if it's a, if it's an LLC or corporation, is a separate legal entity from you, you're a legal entity and the business is a legal entity and they have to be treated as such. It is really poor, poor business practice to combine the two. Number one and number two on top of that is how do we know what's personal, what's business? You know, you could be charged with tax evasion because you're running personal expenses through the business. It happens all the time, you know, and people go to jail for that, you know, so if the numbers are large enough, you can get charged with a crime. So it has to be taken a lot more serious. And for somebody who starts a business and they're doing stuff like that, they clearly have not been taken advantage of, of Google, YouTube, AI that you can ask simple questions about what do I do to start a business? And you question whether or not they're going to survive as a business person. So, yeah, keep them separate, stay safe, keep the IRS off your back. And if they ever come looking, you know, just show them what you've got. You've done it right. You can sleep at night, you know, and if you're using a tax professional to do, you know, to do your tax return, you have more assurance that you're in a good place. [00:33:11] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. Right. And I would say for, you know, some of our audience listening, maybe they're not running it through their P. L. They might have had some personal expenses in there. Keep it clean. And at least set up an account that says personal expenses so that they're totally segregated, that your bookkeeper knows how to pull them out. And you know you're not going to get in trouble for that. It might be messy and you want to make sure there's no expenses, but you really want to make sure you totally separate those. And you probably see that more for Sole proprietors llc. So let's talk about what's one thing you think you see business owners forget that ends up costing them really big. [00:33:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So that the one, the biggest thing I would say is if they're running a profit, not setting aside money for tax time, that is, I, I have found that to be the biggest culprit because people will make a profit and they're spending it on all kinds of things. And they think, well, when tax time comes, you know, I'll pay the bill. Like, not if it's 30 or $50,000, you're not. You know, unless you have that kind of money sitting around, you're gonna have to borrow it from someplace or get into an installment agreement. So the one thing that people seem to forget is that the IRS system is a, is called the pay as you go system. And that means that if you're a W2 employee, you get a paycheck. There's always a withholding being done because it's pay as you go. For the business owner, pay as you go means estimated tax payments every quarter. April 15, June 15, I know that's not a quarter, but that's the reality. September 15th and then January 15th of the next year, that kind of can be rolled back to the current year. So on. For every quarter, you put money aside or you send a check into the IRS and the state or whoever and, and stay current with that. And it may not be pleasant, but it keeps you out of trouble. That one thing I think helps a lot of people stay from, stay out of having large surprise at the end of the year. And then of course, like you said, you know, your personal stuff just don't have to mind your business, you know, and, and you know, monthly bookkeeping or quarterly, when the end of the year comes, you're pretty much set to go. And, and it's going to be easier. And then of course, your tax accountant is stressed out having, you know, hundreds of people coming in wanting the taxes done. The last thing they want to do is start cleaning up your books, right? You're going to, you're going to go on extension and, you know, then we get to it and you know, or you're going to find somebody who, another accountant who's not busy. You wonder about that. But maybe they're starting up, you know, but somebody who can take it on, who's not so busy. But, you know, there's so much business for accountants nowadays that we're all like, putting people on extension and whatnot. [00:36:09] Speaker A: So, yes, the problem of having so many tax filing dates all at the same time. Thank you for sharing that. I think you're right. And my takeaway is that they want to keep their books up to date throughout the year, and that's how they don't feel panicked by setting aside money, keeping their books up to date, and maybe putting in a call right to their accountant earlier in the year if they. If they need a little estimate, if they're making a whole lot of profit. Thank you. And how can people find you on your website? [00:36:40] Speaker B: My website is reyesaccounting.com that's R E Y E S as in SAM accounting.com to raise accounting.com and my phone number is 215-525-2976. Stay with us has all my contact information. [00:36:56] Speaker A: And we're gonna. We'll be right back. And we're going to close it out. Talking with Joseph about his new show. I'm really excited about Balance Forward. Stay with us. You're watching Balancing Acts. And we've had a very pretty practical, empowering conversation with Joseph Reyes. To wrap up, we want to give you a sneak peek into his new show Business Forward. It's about grit, growth, and getting ahead. And it's coming soon to now Media tv. Joseph, what inspired you to create Business Forward? What can viewers expect from the show? [00:38:00] Speaker B: Yeah, so as a small business owner myself, and I've done a few businesses, I know how really difficult it can be. And I know the toll it takes on a person's family life, the toll it takes on their minds and their bodies. The stress level can be astronomical. And what I've discovered is that what a lot of small business owners are looking for is somebody that they feel comfortable with that can come alongside of them and give them ideas and strategies, advice on how to move their business forward, how to get past the hump, how maybe today's challenges may not be made to. May be gone tomorrow, and you've conquered that and you're moving on to a new challenge. So we want to see business owners start businesses and scale those businesses and have the grit to keep at it if it makes sense to keep at it. And if it doesn't keep, if it doesn't make sense to keep the business going, to hear from somebody that gives them basically an idea like, you know, you might want to reconsider your ways, you know, so my goal is to help business owners start and grow their businesses and help them find a place to get technical information about what it takes to run a business, you know, and then I leave the emotional stuff to somebody better suited than myself. But on the technical side, I can show them how to save money on taxes, how to get the books done, you know, how to solve technical problems. I have a master's degree in finance on top of an accounting degree and a CPA license. So I think I bring a lot to the table. That can help people grow their businesses and become successful. And you can also become successful by getting rid of a business that is not doing you well, if you will. [00:39:49] Speaker A: Exactly right. And so who's the show really for and what do you hope they walk away with from such all these great topics that you just talked about? [00:39:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it's primarily for small business owners and entrepreneurs, you know, getting started or if you have an existing business that you're struggling with and you just can't find answers to and you don't know where to turn. And again, I'm bilingual, so I can cater to you, you know, to English and Spanish speaking business world and help those people find strategies and technical details. Sometimes the technical details are. Could be a lifesaver. You know, if you can show somebody how to save $30,000 in taxes through smart tax planning, then guess what, you know, maybe at the end of the year they might have $30,000 more in their pocket that they wouldn't have had otherwise because they did it all wrong and didn't know where to turn. A lot of CPAs don't do the planning side. They do the compliance and technical stuff. But we want to come alongside and do the planning side and the advisory side. So I'm well trained in those areas, by the way, so I can do a lot of good consulting. So that's why we're going to be talking about stuff like that. [00:41:04] Speaker A: That's fantastic. I'm actually excited to listen to some of these episodes because I think planning is the one thing that helps businesses grow, right? Yeah. Businesses that plan grow 30% faster than those who don't. So whether it's tax planning or growth planning or scaling, it's really important to do that. And your show is going to give them ideas for how they can make a difference and move the business forward. As you said, move the needle. What's one powerful message from the first episode that sets the tone for what's coming? [00:41:46] Speaker B: Yeah, we're going to address, you know, the, the technical part of tracking a business, starting a business. We're going to be talking about creating a trust, you know, for yourself and making sure you have a will. Make sure and making sure that you are placing your business in the right bucket compared to your trust and how to have asset protection. So we're going to teach, we're going to be driving home the idea that it's not just making the money, but it's also keeping the money. And keeping the money is keeping the money from lawsuits and mishaps and also keeping the money from taxes. Right. So we want to do a 360 review of our clientele and our listeners and talk about you are missing out on your estate planning and your lifelong planning. If you're not creating a trust and a will and where do you put and how do you structure your business? There are all so many ideas and I have some experts that we hope to bring on and hopefully you will be on also that we can bring to the table and show them that there's data that we can put all in one place in one show that you can use to be technically better at running your business and becoming more wealthier, basically. [00:42:58] Speaker A: So let me ask you, you know, the trust, the will, things like that, are businesses ever too small to start thinking about those things? Is it something you think about from the beginning or do you wait till after you're in business for a few years? [00:43:13] Speaker B: Well, in my opinion you should have a trust and a will even if you don't have a business. Right. And if you have, if you have married and you have a family and you have dependence and whatnot, you got to have a trust and a will and they're not that hard or that expensive to create. And you know, should you die unexpectedly who your people being left behind are create inheriting a mess whereas it doesn't have to be that way. And so it should be done before just regular day to day life and then of course having life insurance of course so that your children, let's say maybe can go to college because you know, the family left behind, you know, doesn't have the money saved up for it but life insurance will take care of that. So we are looking for the 360 view of our clients and our listeners. [00:44:04] Speaker A: Joseph, thank you so much for sharing your insights and your heart today and your care for our audience. I really appreciate it. So many business owners are, you know, they're going to listen. I think they're going to feel seen and supported. After the conversations we've had today through all the segments, if you've been struggling and you're listening with the financial side of your dream, I hope today you're reminded that you're not alone. It's never too late to take back control. There's lots of advice you can get on all the shows at NOW Media and with all of the hosts and the experts we bring to share both practical and strategic insights with you. If you love what you're watching, please look at look for you can catch balancing acts and all the Now Media shows on Roku it's streaming 24 7. You can download the Now Media app. It's bilingual English and Spanish anytime, whenever you are ready and so you can search NOW Media TV on your Roku device and never miss a moment. And we hope you'll do that because we really like if you're too busy during the day, great time to listen. Catch it in the afternoon or while you're in in your car on on your favorite podcast. I'm Linda Hamilton and this is Balancing Acts. And thank you for spending time with us today. Take care of yourself and all your dreams for your business and come back next week for another episode. Bye.