TOP 5 THINGS every new entrepreneur MUST KNOW to make money

What's up guys, it's Prince Donnell, founder of Jumping Jack Tax. Welcome to my YouTube page. Thank you so much to all of our newest subscribers. I believe we're at about 27,000 subscribers right now. It's been really crazy, the level of support that we've been receiving. So if you're new to my page and my channel, thank you so much. I'm still new to YouTube space, so please like, comment, and subscribe if you like all of my information and my content. The goal of my content is to create business finance information that's going to help you thrive, businesses thrive, and also help the everyday person to do more than survive. And we're back at it again with another video. I've received a ton of messages from a lot of subscribers and supporters saying, Don, what is some advice for new entrepreneurs and investors? What's some financial advice that you can give us? I think entrepreneurship has been really big lately from 2020 to 21, specifically because of the pandemic. And you need to make money right now. I think that everybody should have a side hustle, every single person. Have your job, have your side hustle, because you just never know when things get real like we've seen with the pandemic. So with that said, now understanding your finances when you have a business or a side hustle, understanding taxes, right? And the profitability and how to scale this thing, this is not easy for everybody, rightfully so. I started out in entrepreneurship about, I'm gonna say five, six years ago, and I'm still getting into the swing of things. I think a lot of people say that they got rich overnight and everybody's driving around in a Lamborghini, but let's get real. I like to speak on real topics. I like to show you guys what entrepreneurship really is and the things that you have to do in order to reach a level of success. And I preach long-term investing, right? The long-term skill sets. And I'm gonna go over five things that every new entrepreneur and investor should know when going ahead and start a business. And I got my list here. And we're gonna go ahead and get right into it. I wanna go right in. First things first, if you are a new entrepreneur or an investor, number one, an LLC does not mean a damn thing. An LLC don't mean a damn thing, okay? Before y'all comment and say, Don, what do you mean an LLC doesn't mean a damn thing? Well, I think that there's a lot of people on the internet right now like, get an LLC, get an LLC, get an LLC, get an LLC. But there's a lot of people out here who are new entrepreneurs and like, hey, I got an LLC, but what do I do now? Right, like literally, let me first and foremost break down what an LLC is. For those who don't know, an LLC is a limited liability company. When we talk about taxes in the IRS, the IRS doesn't even identify an LLC, right? The IRS only identifies one being a sole proprietor, a partnership, a C-corp, S-corp, okay? Anything else beyond that point, they don't identify. So if you have an LLC, it's literally just for legal purposes. That's why it's called a limited liability company. Basically what that means is that it prevents you and your personal assets, for the most part, from being sued. So for example, if you have a food truck and you're selling food, it's probably in your best interest to get an LLC. Just in case you give somebody food, they have an allergic reaction and they wanna sue you, now they sue the LLC and they don't sue your personal assets. So all an LLC is, is a form of legal protection from your personal assets. But from a tax standpoint, an LLC, a single-member LLC, doesn't give you any type of tax benefit, right? Because you're still considered a sole proprietor, a sole proprietorship in the IRS's eyes unless you have a multi-member LLC where now y'all are preparing taxes as a partnership, which is a tad bit different. So there's no real actual benefit to the LLC other than a legal protection. But the reason why I say an LLC doesn't mean anything, back to the point, is really because the LLC doesn't work unless you work. Like, okay, you got your LLC, okay, you spent the money, you have it, but at the end of the day, the LLC is not gonna work in your favor unless you start adopting the skills of an entrepreneur, until you start hustling like an entrepreneur, until you start waking up like an entrepreneur, until you start investing like an entrepreneur, until you start having the drive and the skill and the knowledge of an entrepreneur, until you're willing to put everything on the line like an entrepreneur, the LLC's not gonna mean anything for you. An LLC is gonna be very valuable to somebody who is adopting all the things that I just said. So first things first, if you're watching this, you're a new entrepreneur and investor, an LLC doesn't mean anything until you start putting in the work that's necessary and required to be a real successful entrepreneur. And unfortunately, that takes a long time to do, and I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you right now and say that you're gonna get there overnight. You're not. It takes time to get there. You could get lucky a few times along the way, but with the right skillset, it takes time to get to that place where your LLC then becomes a valuable thing. So don't think that you're gonna wake up tomorrow, get an LLC, and then the next day, you're finally gonna become successful. I'm here to tell you the truth. Unlike other entrepreneurs and people out there that are selling you the courses and the dream, I'm here to tell you the truth. That is not the case, but with the right amount of work ethic, then an LLC will mean something to you in the future. So that's number one. An LLC doesn't mean anything until you actually put in the work. And to recap, I broke down the LLC, Limited Liability Company, and even if you're a single-member LLC, you're still considered a sole proprietor in the IRS's eyes and it's only a form of legal protection. And number two, be a master at knowing your numbers and calculating your profits. This is something that I had to learn when I first went into the entrepreneur field is that nobody's gonna know your numbers better than you. And although you can hire somebody that's gonna handle the numbers as the founder, as the CEO, as the person who is, at most times when you're an entrepreneur, you're a one-man show. Not only are you a one-man show, but also you may not have the finances to pay somebody else to do these things. You may be strapped for cash, especially if you are really an African-American-owned business. A lot of our businesses are underfunded. So when we think about that for a sec, you're strapped for cash now. And with you being strapped, you have to keep all of your money, which means that you're gonna be wearing a ton of hats. And with that said, you're gonna have to learn your numbers. Your numbers is the heartbeat of your business. What I mean by that is that money is basically the blood when it comes to your body. Without the blood, without the oxygen, nothing works. And you have to understand the money. You have to understand your cash flows. Before you make any investment, you should know what the profitability is going to be on the opposite side. And you should also know how much you're willing to lose before it's time for you to get out. If you don't understand that part, then don't start the business, don't start that investment. For example, if you have a product-based business, and let's just say I have a tissue company, I need to know how much this tissue is gonna cost me every time that I buy it. And then after understanding how much the tissue is gonna cost me from there, I need to know how much the markup is going to be. And then I need to know what my profit margin is gonna be in between. And from that point, then how much do I have to sell in order for me to make a living? Because if I didn't do any of that, I could end up selling the product and I'm happy about it, but it may not be the product that is even enough profitability to be able to scale it, to get to the place to where I wanna be, where I can maintain a lifestyle. Same thing with investing, right? Don't just invest and go into the stock market and say I'm just buying this stock because my friend told me that it was a cool stock to invest in. Well, no, you should have a plan, right? You should have detail, you should have indicators that tell you when is the right time to buy a stock? Why am I buying this? Okay, how much am I gonna lose before I get out of this stock? How much do I intend to profit on before it's time for me to sell, right? You need to be disciplined. You need to know your numbers and you need to know your profitability. So then from there, you have the ability to scale at that point. And in another video, I'll go over how to calculate how much money that you need in order to pretty much transition into full-time entrepreneurship. Like if you have a salary right now, how much do I gotta make from a salary standpoint to transition into full-time entrepreneurship and giving myself a plan, right? I'm all about plans and when it comes to your finances, your numbers, when it comes to your profit, you need to know that, right? And it's gonna tell you what are the things you need to do in order to make more. So don't just push that off to somebody else in the beginning because that's gonna tell you a lot about your business, okay? Next thing is, hold on guys, I'm pulling up number three. Next thing is hire yourself a bookkeeper or use some type of bookkeeping software, learn it. I'm gonna tell you this from a tax standpoint because with me running a tax business, I've had clients who have, business clients who have come to me on many occasions with a ton of receipts inside of a trash bag and they're like, hey, can you do my taxes? But their receipts are all over the place. I'm gonna tell you transparently if you're a new entrepreneur here, that is a means for audit. And if you don't know what an audit is, you're going to learn when the IRS goes ahead and audits you and they audit certain transactions and certain tax deductions that you took and then you can't verify them because your receipts are all over the place, your transactions are all over the place, you don't have the appropriate bookkeeping set up. So the best amount of money that you could possibly spend as a new entrepreneur or investor is hiring yourself a bookkeeper. And again, if you're strapped for cash and you don't have the money to do so, I would suggest learning a bookkeeping system. Personally, me, I learned a bookkeeping system. There are a ton of videos on YouTube. I call this YouTube University. There are a ton of videos out there that you can watch that are gonna teach you how to use a bookkeeping system so you can make sure you're calculating all of your transactions. And please, please, please, always make sure that you have a separate account established for your business income and not mix that with your personal because that's another means for disaster and you're just asking for the IRS to audit you. And I'll tell you this, by not learning bookkeeping or by not hiring a bookkeeper, it's gonna cost you more in the future when you're audited by the IRS and you end up having to pay way more out of pocket when it comes to penalties and interest as opposed to how much you would have paid a bookkeeper or to learn a system. So learn from me. Don't be the person where your books are messed up and now you're like, okay, now I gotta figure this all out. If you do it right from the beginning, it's gonna save you so much time. Just to tell you guys a little bit about what I do from a strategy perspective is I normally, at the end of each week, go ahead and log into my bookkeeping system and I go ahead and clean everything up at the end of each week, make sure I'm assigning all of my transactions, giving them names and putting them in a certain categories where they need to go, whether it be for advertising, software, office supplies, and I'm already putting those in a certain sections at the end of each week. So then by the time the end of the year comes, the ultimate goal is for you to be able to pretty much give your bookkeeping information, your system, give your accountant or your tax professional access to it and they can go ahead and see your balance sheet, see how much you spent on everything and the process becomes so much easier for you to be able to get your taxes done. You don't want it to be a nightmare in April and you're like searching for receipts and now you're screwed. I don't want that for you. I've seen it happen to many entrepreneurs. I've even seen it happen to myself in the beginning years. I just didn't know enough. And I'm just telling you from the very beginning, please invest in that. It's gonna save you a ton of time and a ton of headache because you don't want issues with the IRS, right? Here's the next thing, number four. I thought this was very important to put on my list is that business credit won't save an unskilled entrepreneur or investor. And I'll say that again. Business credit will not save an unskilled entrepreneur or investor. Now I know there's a lot of content out there on hey, get business credit. Get your business credit. Use it to fund your business. Get business credit. Well here's the thing. Just like I talked about in number one how an LLC doesn't mean anything unless you actually make it mean something, same thing with number four. Business credit means nothing to an unskilled entrepreneur or an investor. What sense does it make in you using business credit when you don't even know how to make money as of yet? Imagine, and the issue is that a lot of people are getting funding to start their business and you get all of this funding, which is probably more money than you've ever had access to before in your life, but if you don't have the knowledge and the skillset to know what to do with the money to be able to make a return on your investment, all you're gonna do is end up putting yourself in debt and not know how to get yourself out. Or if you've already had bad habits around credit and debt, you're gonna put yourself even more in debt. Now don't get me wrong here. I think business credit is an awesome tool, right? I mean, imagine me getting a $10,000 business credit card with a zero percent rate and I'm able to use that money to flip it and turn it into profitability without paying any interest. I mean, yeah, credit is amazing, but it's only amazing to the responsible person who knows what to do with it. And let me tell you, when I first got started in business, there was absolutely no debt because I did not know what I was doing as of yet and I didn't wanna take on a lot of debt. Grabbing credit sounds great, but again, the goal is, if you're watching this video and you're gonna learn this from following and subscribing to my channel, is I really believe in building long-term. I really believe in learning a skill. I really believe in building organically. I really believe in you learning how to sell your product hand-to-hand first. And what I mean by hand-to-hand, actually like organically, reaching out to people through direct messages, making videos like these, like commenting on people's pages and promoting yourself and getting out there to networking events. Well, it's COVID now, but getting out there to networking events and calling people, learning the skill and the foundations of making money first. And once you understand that, then you can take on some business credit to help you expand on the skills that you already have and the business that you have. Because again, maybe you have a business that just literally is not good. There are a lot of people who have businesses where your product actually sucks and it just doesn't fit 2021's market. So you go ahead and get business credit. Now you're stuck with the product that's not gonna sell and you don't know how to sell it and you don't know how to market. So again, my best suggestion would be to start small, learn the skillset first, learn what you're doing and then take the business credit to expand if you need the funding to do so, okay? So I'm not saying business credit is a bad thing. I'm saying it could be bad for somebody who does not know what they're doing and you could end up worse than when you started, okay? So that's number four, business credit. Business credit won't save an unskilled entrepreneur or an investor. And then number five. Number five is probably my favorite one. Reinvesting in your business is like paying yourself in the future. I'll say it one more time. Reinvesting in your business is like paying yourself in the future. What does that actually mean? I actually dropped a video. A lot of y'all who are new subscribers, probably you guys found me through the video that I posted about how to pay yourself as a single member LLC. And there were a lot of comments like, hey, do you believe, Don, do you believe in the pay yourself first method? Well, it's hard for me to answer that question because there are different ways that you can pay yourself, okay? The first way to pay yourself is to literally, if you have a single member LLC, that's what I'm talking about, the first way that you can pay yourself is to literally write yourself a check or put yourself on a salary, right? And the money goes into your personal pocket and you do whatever you please with that money. That's the first way to pay yourself. And I think that that's the way that most entrepreneurs look at it is I want to take my profits out immediately and run with it. But the other way to pay yourself, which a lot of smart entrepreneurs do, and this is something that big companies like Apple do, and Apple is sitting on billions of dollars in cash right now, and this is why they can acquire so many companies like that. The reason, what I mean by paying yourself by reinvesting in your business, which pays you in the future, is because, think of this for a second, instead of actually taking the profits from the business and putting it in your pockets, imagine if every time you got a dollar, you said, you know what, instead of me using it for my own personal gain, why don't I use it to reinvest in buying myself a new camera that I can use to be able to make better content in 2021 because I know content is king. Why don't I use that money to reinvest in being able to bring somebody else on board that's going to help us to expand and build the team and the company? Why don't I reinvest in buying myself a new laptop because my other one is super old and it runs too slow and I need a better laptop in order to be more effective? What I mean is that that in itself is a form of paying yourself in the future because although you're not taking the profit and putting it in your actual pocket, you're actually putting it back into the business and putting it into things that are going to generate more revenue for the future. So then in the future, now when more revenue is coming in, you have the ability of being able to pay yourself more. But when you're in the beginning first, like I would even say three to five years of the business, I don't even want you to be thinking about pulling profitability from your company. I mean, of course, you need money to pay yourself if you're full time in this thing and you need money to be able to suffice for your bills. I totally understand that part. But anything outside of your lifestyle being taken care of, you should not just be pulling profit beyond that point just because you want to do so. All of the rest of your dollars should be reinvesting. And for those who understand compound interest, then you know what I mean by actually having money inside of the stock market, having money inside of your 401k. And every time that you pull money from that, you're ruining the compounding interest that builds up a bigger snowball so that it can gain more money. That's why I said with money, you can make more money because of compounding. Same thing with running your business as an entrepreneur or an investor. The more money you have available, it compounds because you can keep reinvesting in more things that are gonna help to expand a lot faster. So just remember, reinvesting in a business is a form of paying yourself in the future because it will pay off. Every time that you keep grabbing profits, you're slowing down the growth of that business to be able to satisfy your own needs. And it depends upon your goal. Me, I care about really building the business. Others just care about the profitability and that can end up being a very short-term thinking. And if you're listening to this and you're subscribed to my channel, you're gonna hear me talk about long-term all the time. Building skills for long-term, reinvesting for long-term, and that's the goal. So just to go over these five things again and then we're outta here is, number one, an LLC doesn't mean anything unless you make it mean something and you're not saving yourself any money on taxes with a single-member LLC because you're still considered a sole proprietor. It's only for legal protection purposes for the most part. Number two, be a master at knowing your numbers and calculating your profits. You should know your numbers in and out. It is the lifeblood of your business. Number three, hire a bookkeeper or learn some type of bookkeeping software because you don't wanna end up getting audited or having receipts that you can't find and you're just completely discombobulated. You wanna spend more time focusing on generating revenue for the business and acquiring customers, not on trying to find receipts in March. Number four, business credit won't save an unskilled entrepreneur or an investor. I don't care how much business credit that you have access to. I don't care if somebody gave you 50, $75,000. At the end of the day, even if you had that money, you still won't be able to make more money than a skilled entrepreneur who came from nothing. So learn the skills. That's the only thing that's gonna truly help you to grow and grow the business. And number five, reinvesting in the business is like paying yourself in the future. Instead of always taking profitability from the business to pay yourself and to satisfy your own personal needs, reinvest that back into helping the business grow, giving it the food it needs in order for it to grow for the future. You follow those five things, then I can tell you this. You have a really bright future ahead of you, and you're gonna be way ahead of a lot of entrepreneurs today who only care about profitability and trying to move really fast, but yet in the next three to five years, they're not gonna be able to show anything of it. You, if you make smart, sound decisions and you focus on the skillset like I explained, you're gonna have a very, very long career, a long future. You're gonna have a business and a brand that's going to last for generations because we're doing this to create generational wealth. Anyway, with that being said, I'm outta here. It's your boy, Prince Donnell. Make sure that you download the Jumping Jack Tax app. If you need your taxes done, you can download our app. We are a virtual tax preparation franchise, so you can either call 267-792-0186, and you can ask, that's our flagship office. We take virtual appointments across all 50 states to prepare your taxes, or you can download the Jumping Jack Tax app to find a virtual tax pro, right? And more importantly, please like, comment, and subscribe. With this being a new YouTube channel, all the support is definitely necessary. I appreciate it thus far, but let's keep expanding this message out, and I appreciate y'all for being a part of the community. If you have any other questions or any topics that you want me to touch on, please put them below in the comments here. I would love to be able to read them and be able to put out the right type of information that can help you succeed in entrepreneurship, in the business finance world, or in marketing, or whatever you need help with, just put it right there in the comments. The team will read them, and we'll be able to put something together. Again, with that said, I'm Prince Donnell, founder of Jumping Jack Tax, and we're out, peace. ♪ Got my taxes jumping, now my bag coming ♪ ♪ With that major money, tripping blessings ♪ ♪ Check my, buy a house for my money, don't even sweat it ♪ ♪ Cause they'll repair it, ain't no question, they can do it ♪ ♪ It's a major movement, yeah, we can do it, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪