Okay. Hey everybody. Welcome to the video. I think you guys will really enjoy this video today. I'm talking with Alan He runs free cash flow.io as an agency helping online entrepreneurs basically do text and accounting Because this feels very niche, right? So if you're an online entrepreneur doing e-commerce SaaS you sell courses content creator, whatever it is online, right? He helps these types of clients So today he's just I think this video will be very of much value to you guys Probably he's gonna break down the top 10 tips. Am I right? Alan that e-commerce owner usually face with the text and accounting, right? So he's gonna go through it and I think especially applicable especially because He's in the US. So US get a lot of applies and stuff. So Yeah, okay, so I'll just let Alan take over from here. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead Yeah, hey guys and hey, Jonathan. Thanks for having me on your channel. So my name is Alan Chan I'm a CPA who stands for certified public accountant and basically I run an agency that focus mainly on online business owners e-commerce You know SaaS or you know, YouTube streamers those kind of clients and we're very focused on basically helping them maximize their tax deduction helping them Have their books being ordered and you know, provide all kind of consultation for them So Jonathan invited me on his channel to basically provide you guys with some some tips And I thought it'd be a good idea to gather, you know, the top 10 most frequently asked questions that e-commerce owners come and ask our agency So, yeah, just want to give you guys some value back just before our tax season started Yep. Okay, so I mean Alan, I think I give you a screen share so you can okay. That's good Let me let me share my screen with you guys Cool. Can you guys see this? Yeah, I can see. Yep. Okay. Cool. So, yeah Just just again our agency's name is free cash flow It's a little modest tax savings you can feel because we really want to emphasize on, you know Maximizing your app the tax profit for you all of you guys out there. So yeah, we get started with you guys Yep, so our topic today is gonna be the top 10 most frequently asked e-commerce owners questions and we're gonna answer them all for you Right here on this channel So before we get really started on everything we just want to give a little disclaimer here obviously Everyone's situation out there is different. This is just a you know, a YouTube channel video on on internet So we don't want to guarantee that everything we say is gonna apply directly to your situation But you know, if you guys are interested or have a business that needs accounting or tax help We will love to set up a consulting call with you so we can get really personalized and you know Really gets understand your situation your tax situation. But yeah, cool Okay, and just a little bit about our mission So a whole reason we started this business is to really help forward-thinking online business owner scale to business while ever worrying about accounting and tax issue up again, so This is a little known fact, but I actually was an e-com owner myself this past year I really got to understand a lot of things about, you know, how to run an online business all about Facebook ads how not to get banned on Facebook Google SEO, you know like designs a site page optimization, so I got to understand how much time each things take and how you should you should be worried about scaling your business and not really Worry about tax and you know accounting issues. So hopefully With with someone like me, you don't have to go and go in and do something like that anymore And then yeah I so I want to just go over a little bit about like what we see as a typical e-commerce income statement So what you have is maybe like what you have see as a top line revenue So, you know if a business shop of five Amazon, you can be making 1.5 million or more a year. So that'd be a top line. Your cause would cause good soul is basically your inventory cost So that's like say it's 400,000 operating expense. It's basically everything else.   Hey, hey, dude, this is what you're gonna be paying But we want to show you what will happen if you go and hire someone that really understands your business and really cares about You know trying to find and maximize your tax deduction So this is this is what we see when we take on a client, right? So not only do we just take the face value of what you give us as your Financial statements and your and your revenue we go and try to find, you know Miss deductions things that you may have missed because your accountant asked you to write questions about things that you're doing this year And then we also find ways to help you accelerate expenses So for this particular clients, we saw that there was an opportunity for them to actually buy your inventory in advance, right? So instead of buying it say in 2022 they decided hey I can actually take on that in between now and take take that tax saving now and then I can have greater cash flow So I can reinvest in other parts of my business. So you can see the really big effect here because they they they do all this They only only getting a tax to about 199 thousand and we saw that there was a tax credit They they can apply for and tax credit is our amazing So tax credits if you guys don't know is a dollar for a dollar return on your taxes Which means if you take a $10,000 tax credit you get all $10,000 back as a almost like a refund for you So when they take the $10,000 tax credit actual tax liability was only 189,000 So a and b this is this is the same client This is basically before they came to us and after they came to us and you can see the effect here So that's $40,000 in savings that they realized because you know They go and hire someone I really really want want them to see and do well and not just you know filed the taxes for them Okay, so question. Yeah, of course.  Like I'm sure different states have different taxes tax brackets, right? 37 is the oh, yeah, so this is this is federal tax, Jonathan. So yeah, so it applies to everyone in the United States Okay. Yeah. Yeah, state tax is different. You're absolutely right. Okay Yeah, so if we want to talk about that there is definitely advantages of living in certain states say like Texas Which doesn't have a state income tax So if you can actually be flexible So that's a great tip if you can actually move your operations around and say move everything to Texas only sub your taxes there Hey, I'm in California and we have very high state income tax here So if you can move out of state and just do do it in a no income state tax That's more power to you. Okay. Yep Cool, any other questions? No for move on. Okay. Cool. So we're gonna jump right in So we're just gonna go do the top 10 most asked questions of our agency from from our different clients that we have So number one, of course, we always get is is my ads been tax deductible So that can include, you know, Facebook Google or Snapchat really anywhere that you go and you know, you go do and pay ads, right? So just good news is, you know, all advertising expense are deductible. So you don't have to worry about that So one really important tip for you guys is of course always gather up all your reports through the you know, the Facebook admin portal Do Google to make sure you are maximizing it and you're not losing out any deductions And it includes a lot of categories. So you don't you're not just restricted to online advertising, right? That you can do TV ads. I know it's like a performance TV is a big thing right now on streaming magazines even promotions on business cards, but yours Promotional stuff like if you guys are eight eight nine figure guys and promoting a sports team point anything, right? That's tax deductible. So don't worry about it If you want to go go and sponsor the Golden State Warriors or something like that And then another pro tip is this is fine. Not something as pie post-covid But say you're hosting a promotional event at a event show, right? And you want to offer them food That's also deductible. So if you want to go offer some lobster bites to your to your customers. Yeah, totally totally fine Cool, so that's the question number one Do you have any questions, Jonathan? Can I move on? No, I think quite straightforward this yeah, okay? Awesome. So question number two is how about my inventory? What if and what if I am drop shipping, right? So that's something that we always get as the next most frequently asked question So inventory is actually an interesting topic and a little bit complex. So inventory is actually one of more complex Topics in accounting because there's a lot of different ways of valuing it and a lot of different ways of looking at it But we try to keep as simplified as possible, right? So So before we answer that we want to make the custom kind of client aware that this difference between Inventory you purchase versus inventory you consume with soul, right? So inventory that you sold This is of course for those established e-commerce out there that holds inventory in like warehouse of fulfillment centers That's called cause good soul and it's considered direct costs And it's subtracted from sales to get your gross profit and you'll actually allow to take any and all cause good soul during the year So any time you sell inventory, that's a deduction to your taxable income One key to consider is of course there are different methods to value inventory. So there's this cost is lower of cost of market and this retail So I will go into deep into it to to board you guys. This will actually control the amount of cost of good goals So you guys can take because the different ways you value that inventory means the amount different amount of The actual amount of cost that you can deduct that year So for example, if your inventory all value very high right at the beginning then you can take more at the beginning But but then that means later years might only go to take less. So there's a lot of planning involved there And then for those of you drop shipping out there, you don't have to worry as much Obviously when you when your drop shipping your cost of good soul is what you pay for your supplier, right? So you're overseas say you're trying to supplier. That's kind of like your middleman So it still makes it very important to keep good records, right? Because I know from my experience Working with someone from from China overseas. They don't they don't really supply you with much record So you if you're if you someone who has made it to six seven figures or beyond This is up most important to request some kind of Purchase order or some kind of proof because a lot of people payment providers and especially the IRS They don't want to see that that you actually you actually have a way of Verifying and validating that this is the cost of the inventory that you purchase. So that's something to really keep in mind also another value add is don't be afraid of Having like obsolete into it Obviously inventory is very inventory. That's dead, right? That's that you don't feel like has any value anymore to you Obviously, you don't want that but that is actually something that's also deductible on your taxes If you get to a point where you can make a hundred percent determination that that inventory is no longer worth any value Okay, so that's inventory I'm guessing this is just sorry just to interrupt. Yeah, this is this related to the accelerated deduction in the past slight. Yeah, really good question, Jonathan So so for someone that is looking to try to get back a little bit more after after tax money this year Yeah, buying inventory in advance is a Amazing way of doing that, especially if your cash basis taxpayer, which I'm guessing most of your e-commerce out there You I would say the only case there was there was not be used if you're over 25 million in revenue this year Then you're forced to be in a crew method So we will have there'll be a whole different case in that in that in that realm But if your cash basis, there's a lot of ways where you can move things around Especially at your end where it's all about cash, right cash goes out. It's an expense cash comes into revenue So as long as your cash goes out in the right tax year, you can sell it at expense again I get more back possibly on your tax this year. Okay, so I mean, why will people not use accelerate it? Like won't they always use it since it's more advantageous to them tax wise Yeah, yeah, so that's a really good question to Jonathan. So there's two reasons, right? When you accelerate your expenses, it's basically a planning move So you're planning to gain that benefit now, but think about it next year during your taxes You may not be able to make the same move if you don't have a similar inventory about you, right? Because you already did that in a year prior. So it's really about how you want your cash flow to go If you need that cash flow now first, you can need it needed for next year, right? So you're planning a big move right now where you need another $40,000 in cash to do other things, right? So you really want that tax refund to come back to you Then that's something that you can talk to your accountant to do for now for the current year Okay, and then the second reason is of course, just just a matter of cash flow, right? Do you have $40,000 in your bank account for that inventory if you do that? You're in a really good situation and that's something we got we want to plan for it for you, right? If we see that you have that excess cash and just sitting there You're not putting it into other investments. For example, then you're like, okay Let's do this. Let's see how much tax saving this verse a hey say you invest that money Okay, I understand. Yeah, cool. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, if you've been interrupt me any time You've got more questions. So we keep going keep going for now. Yeah question number three So I this is this I get a lot. I get texts about this. I heard about business owner gets a travel for free But how? I'm sure John from be interested Yeah, yeah, so yeah, this is also a course business credit card hacks that you can take But there's actually also very legit ways of doing it as a business travel So first of all, we want to establish that you know, everything we do FCF agency We try to stay very I would say green, right? Well, we do we try to stay away from anything that will get you in trouble So we want to emphasize effort for first of all So first of all business owners you do get to travel for free, but not exactly how you think about it Okay, so let me explain So there are no free lunch in the world first of all, right? So the way that you can travel free is this first of all you had established The first requirement which is having a business purpose, right?  It needs to be there be a potential generate revenue So I'm kind of pretend to generate revenue the second requirement It's it's that it's ordinary necessary, which means like so in as part of your industry, right? Ecom You know is that people do just kind of traveling It's not out ordinary, right that you guys go to this country Like if you right now go travel Antarctica people are like what kind of what's an Antarctica for you for your business You know, yeah, so yeah ordinary and another another another pro tip to mention I don't think this is something that a lot of people know about is Domestic international travel is different. So domestic is kind of a all-in-nothing rule So domestic if you go and travel less than 50% You don't I'm sorry if you if you're your travels left less than 50% business related None of it is deductible Okay, but if your business if your travels 50% or more then you can deduct all of it Well, international doesn't work that way international is proportionate So if international if you're 60% of your travels business related then you get 60% 20% of this business related you get 20% So you we really got to make that differentiation if we're traveling like domestically in the United States internationally There's a lot of planning involved there and the third thing is of course detailed record keeping You know, you don't want to get in trouble where you know, you're doing this all this business traveling But you know, of course sneaking in some fun, but then IRS like hey, I don't I don't you think this is a real business trip I think you're just going to Cabo or Miami for fun You know, you know, you know, everyone gets that that point and you can't prove it that so you want to gather all that Vendor and client data right like hey, I actually talked to this person He's a he's a representative that works for this company and this is the time we met You know this location here's my receipt, you know You want you want to have that kind of backup to make it so that you you can sleep better at night. I would say Yeah, yeah, just to justify that just to justify that. Hey, I was at this business meeting You just got to keep records and a timeline and then put in a file somewhere. Okay, it's exactly right Jonathan You you want to you want to make sure that you kind of jogged that you actually didn't meet with that person Right, whoever client it was you if you're you went to an event show, right? You have a brochure that says hey, I benched this I benched the meeting This is the speaker that was I was listening to you know at this meeting Yeah, what you do maybe after the speaker. Maybe you go to K barbecue. That's on your time Right, but hey, you got you got a free travel out of it because that's part of business travel But I'm gonna do a little bit example actually next look how you can really a plan for this. Okay, okay So Adam a client is a seven-figure nutritional brand owner, right? So he comes to us and say hey, man I got this big trip that I always plan every year. He goes to us a it basically a Nutritional brand trade show and he always goes Miami every year, but he says oh damn. I'm so busy You know, I never have time for vacation. That was like hey You know, you can probably work work that through the business trip that you're taking that's all we tell him Right, so we're like hey, maybe you can spend the beginning and end of the days Doing your doing you need for the trade show but in the middle you can kind of actually choose what you want to do So but basically because he does that kind of planning where the beginning and the end of his trip is business related the flight It's cover because that's all they that's all they're going to see did you and and tend to go to go to that place for business reason Yes, did you at the end of the day? Did you finish your business and go back home because the business reason ended? Yes now what you fit in between Day three and five that's up to you, you know So as long as I like what we talk about you keep all email confirmation Tratio schedule named a speaker who you talk to then you're gonna be pretty covered You know, you can be sitting on this little little infinity pool on the right And then really enjoying your time day to be in five and you know that this there you go That's the free traveling and you know a little bit more a little bit more tip here when you do business traveling There's a lot more than just travel and meals. That's cover. I think that's what most people know about you can actually If you pay any gratuity like tips to people your laundry baggage fees rental car Dry cleaning those are deductible as long as you do them during the business part of your trip So get them done day one and day two and a second day seven basically in this example So yeah, John, if you're planning a long trip like to you know to some country Yeah, the Thailand or something ten day trip, right as long your day one day ten You're out there, you know teaching people how to do Facebook ads. Hey day two and day nine is up to you, bro Okay, whatever you like. Okay Yeah, so you should plan a seminar around that, you know, okay Cool, so move on from here. So we're gonna go to question number four So next question we always get is how about driving right mileage business purpose. So like so say they go and Drive for the purpose of going to post office or a workplace warehouse a business meeting and yeah, that's totally deductible Like so there's actually two ways of figuring this out There's the what they call the standard method and the actual method So standard method is very simple and actually recommend that for all of you are starting out there to do your taxes to follow standard method And standard method is basically a rate irs gives you it changes every year for 2021. I just looked this up It's 56 cents a mile. It actually went down 1.5 cents of 2020 And basically all you do is you take the mile the miles that you travel to and from the place of business, right? Record it and multiply it by that by that The better rate and that's the amount of tax deduction you can take. So that's great And all and but then there's actually the more complex way, which is called the actual method So the actual method is a little bit more complicated But it actually could give you back more savings possibly at the end of the day because the actual method basically lets you Do a lot more. So I'll show you the next slide. So the actual method let you take all these things, right? So you can take gas oil maintenance repair registration fees and taxes license insurance vehicle loan interest rental release payment depreciation garage rent tolls and parking fees. So Obviously when you when you're doing all this, it's a lot more involved But it's a great amount of categories you can take but don't think that this is always gonna be the best better method So I'm gonna show you two examples of what why we say this, okay? so first example is so So you have a vehicle that you're using about 18,000 miles a year, right? A business vehicle and use it for 90% of the time for your business. Okay, so what you mean is about 16,200 miles each year So use the actual expense method you you basically go and log, you know, how much gas oil you take registration fee insurance loan insurance interest, excuse me, lease payment and toll expense So with that said your total deduction is about eight down six hundred forty, right? But then the standard mile method was just a lot simpler You're literally just taking the actual business mile you have which is sixteen thousand two hundred your timing by the mileage rate Oh, this is this is my apologies. I should update with two thousand twenty one But you know for two thousand twenty is fifty seven point five so a little bit higher So then your total deduction is you get to take is nine thousand three hundred fifteen So you can see actually you doing all this work But actually the standard mile wins in this case, right? But let's let's switch it up Let's say you are a person who are actually driving a more of a luxury vehicle, right? Or just a bigger van or something that you need to store all your inventory for stuff, for example, right? So no luxury vehicle example all your all your things are more expensive, you know Your gas more expensive your engineering fees more expensive insurance your lease is twelve hundred a month could say you your big baller And you have a Mercedes Benz, right? So your lease payment is a lot higher. Well, look at that Your total expense is twenty four thousand So if you take that expense and multiply by business use which is ninety percent you get twenty two thousand of possible expensive here But then if you only did the actual business miles method that's only gets you about nine thousand three hundred fifteen So you can see there's a big difference here by not chain And if the actual expense method is the right one for you And I feel like a lot of times when you go to An accountant that you know that doesn't really you know how busy who doesn't really like look out for your business They'll just do the standard miles method no matter what right because easy You don't even need to pay someone do this honestly that you can you can calculate this yourself, right? You just have to keep good mileage records and multiply by rate and there you go, right? And that's sometimes okay, but sometimes you can be missing out almost ten thousand dollars in tax deductions You can see a big difference there, right, Jonathan? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so Okay, you have any questions there, Jonathan. No move on. Okay. Okay, so So next we have my business is growing question number five. Can I hire family members to help? So we get this a question a lot about you know I want to hire my my nephew son or you know, their cousin tries to move is that okay for my business? And that's actually a legitimate legal tax deduction you guys can look into especially running a family business So it's it's a concept called family income splitting right and basically allow you to split your income So doesn't all get tax at the higher bracket So it actually allows you to basically keep more of your after-tax profit But it's one thing you got to watch out for is that was what they call the kitty tax So he's taxes basically in the 1980s people start abusing this They started saying hey, I have a kid who's like five year old Let me make make make him a employee of my company and pay him a hundred thousand dollars for you know Opening mail or some some some dumb things like that right and IRS and Congress basically caught on say hey You can't do that that five-year-old should not be first or a child labor loss Not be working for your company 80 hours a week so you cannot pay a hundred thousand dollars due to simple things Right. Yeah, so the kiddies tax basically saying that whoever's working for your company They need to be legitimately doing something for your business, right? They need to be running logistics money marketing and they need paid a market rate for it So basically they're saying no one's gonna pay a five-year-old a hundred thousand dollars what they're saying therefore If you try to get around this and pay a five-year-old dad They're gonna catch you and call it a kiddie tax and you get a tax at your rate anyway So it's not worth it doing it that way. So if you're gonna hire someone basically you need to hire someone that it's actually doing work for your business So just want to give you examples So we have Steve who's a e-commerce owner making 300k a year and this is a tax bracket that we have here and basically He decided that hey, I'm gonna be hiring my daughter and then my nephew Greg to do two legitimate things for my business, right? My Sarah's gonna run social media for me and Greg's and Greg's gonna do fulfillment and we're gonna pay I'm gonna pay the fifty thousand each But but you can see by doing this The hundred K now is allocated to the twenty two percent tile and not to the thirty five percent Which is what he would have got taxes for all three hundred thousand dollar business profit But by splitting it some of it's only gonna be taxed at twenty two percent So he realized the thirteen percent difference in between those two brackets Which is awesome and just something that you can definitely do if you have a lot of people working in your company So don't be afraid to hire your family members to get them help out Okay The next session we have this one's really popular now that went in the COVID environment is you know I'm working from home. Well, what kind of deductions can I take and There's a very very in-demand question our agency lately and we've done a lot of research on this actually and the good news You want to tell you is there is a home Offer deduction that you can definitely take if you're an online business owner and to qualify this basically You just got to meet two conditions. One is you need to have regular and executive use for your business Which means that the space has to be for business use only so basically it has been office space dedicated to your business It can't be a nursery, you know, it can't be anything else, right? It can't be at your dining room also It might be a space that's just for that and the second requirement is it has become now your principal place of business So basically you can't have a home office and also have an office outside of this office also So that's something you just got to keep in mind when you're running a home You want to take this deduction and just like when my wish is actually two ways of taking this There's there's the easy way of doing it Which is just taking actually you get $5 per square footage and then you just and you get up to 300 square foot of your house Right, so you just five times 300. That's the maximum deduction and take but then there's also the more complicated method Which is also called the actual expense deduction Which you can deduct the actual percentage of business use that your business take up in your home So you can take up a well haven't much your business take on your home You can take a portion of your mortgage interest any kind of taxes like property tax that you paid Maintenance to repair that you get that you guys do insurance utilities that you do So that's actually I could add up to a lot of deduction that you possibly take So that's something that you want to really watch out for especially if you have you are you know You are using more than 300 square foot of your home for your business Yeah, you want to see if you can talk to an accountant that can help you take some of these other Things for your business and that can add up to a lot more than the just a simple method of taking this deduction Okay Okay Next we have question number seven why seven LLC water benefits So no welcome too much into it You know some some of the some of the benefits that you guys might know about of course the limited person Limited personal liability that you get that you get so basically I see a lot of people that starts out as entrepreneurs, right? That that keeps everything in one their personal account and that's very dangerous actually basically if they say you run a toy company Right and you get sue right because when your toys is toxic it's from China and a kid gets sick because of it What the parents can do is basically sue you and sue sue your entire person Which means you know, they win the lawsuit they can go after your house your mortgage your car your boat Everything that you own basically and you don't want that what that's why people set up LLCs LLC basically provides that that shield against that kind of thing when you have an LLC The parent whoever whoever is it's an example can only sue your LLC, which means that They can only take up as much as business asset that's in your business and they can never touch your personal stuff So you want to make sure that there's that really good distinction between business and personal Because if the court finds that you guys are mixing the two that's really bad Then it's a concept called piercing the corporate veil and they can come to come after you too So just a pro tip that we always recommend clients is please But I love it God separate your your expenses out make sure you have a business account and a personal account Don't mix the bull don't commingle. Don't hey. Hey, I want some points Let me put on my business account. Don't don't do that because they'll just get you in trouble Okay, and other things goes no double taxation, you know, LLC is a lot easier as far as paperwork If you if you go and sell but what they like what and you really incorporate become a C Corp, right a corporation You get taxed to levels at the shareholder level and also the personal level, but I'll see that's not that There's no and the third thing is no restriction a number of type of owners So you can actually take in owners out the entities you can take an international owners, too It just you got to do a little more paperwork and distribution types than doing that But you can and of course flexible profit distribution is the last benefit of LLC So what that means is say you both go you and your partner both going to business But that guy only one only has enough to put in $2,000, right? And you can put in $10,000 Well, that still means that you guys can do a fifty-fifty split the business And that doesn't mean that how much you put in is how much you need to split a profit It's totally up to you how you how you want to distribute that so a lot of flexibility there And it doesn't have any proportion amount of contribution Cool and then yep, we're gonna go to question number eight Oh man question one of my favorite questions. So I'm making money now man I'm rolling in this dough like how do I stretch this dollar to make it last longer? So that's something that's one of my favorite topics actually of Helping clients realize that, you know, they're doing great in the business and that's awesome But I'm sure a lot of them are hoping for the day where they can't just sit back and really enjoy the fruit of their labor You know really gets enjoyed themselves So something that we always go on get on a call with them is talk about like a retirement options They have and there's a lot that they can do a lot of different plans that they can do even as a small business That they can look into like 401k Sep IRA Roth IRA that they can really set up for themselves to not only possibly reduce their tax situation now But they can also invest that money let it grow tax-free and really set themselves out when they want to retire one day And another thing that hopefully someone talked to you guys about it just what we call HSA It's a health savings account It's basically another investment vehicle that the government allow you to do that lets you not only put in your money Tax-free let it grow tax-free and at the end of the day you can take it out tax-free for any kind of medical health related reasons So that's that's powerful. Yeah, you guys even you nice that you know how You know not that great the medical system is in the US right in some other countries you get free medical care That but in the US you really got a prep for that So health saving account lets you basically not have to worry about that piece like when you get older and you actually need the medical Expenses you can draw from this count at that point and hopefully at that point your account has grown to a good amount Where you can afford all that well any problem Another thing we always talk to our client about is asset diversification, right? So don't just focus on one stream of income Yes, we know your brand is doing great, but now that you have this extra cash flow You should think about putting it in real estate should think about putting it in stocks bonds ETFs Make sure that you have a diversified stream. So then you're well taken care of no matter what happens to your business Most real streams of income we always try to explore different ways that they can look at into affiliate marketing merch Anything that's you know, not their primary business, you know, maybe they can go do as an event speaker I know that's a very popular popular role right now And then at the end day, we just want to help you find passive income Right things you can do on your on your boat on a beach somewhere and just earning money for you Well, you do anything, you know, and that's what we want to do And the last thing is, you know, if you still think your business is very viable You want to just hire an amazingly talented team to take over for you, you know So and there you just have to look at your financial report, you know that your accountant gives you and say Hey, this is how much your business is making a day your tax situation is taking care of you're good to go You can keep going on your vacation because you have a great team That you're taking care of all that for you and that's very comforting as a business owner who has done this for a while And I can ask right, um, yeah, your hsa So in Singapore, I think it's called cpf. I think it's the same thing, but basically you put in Money and then you invest the tax rate Right, so but is there a cap to how much you actually can contribute to this account? Yeah, there is actually so there's an individual cap that it's about things around 7100 And then if you're married it doubles that to about 14 14200 Is something around there? It's it changes. Yes per year Okay, it's it's it's good at this little inflation that congress of congress changed that every year But basically you can you can you can if you have the cash flow to cap out on it Because it basically helps you lower your taxable income that you have this year by that amount, right? So say 7100 and then not only that is you can put that money in It'll grow tax-free and then in there you can take it out all of it tax-free for any kind of medical issues you have So it's really amazing and also only for medical only for hospital stuff bills Yes, only for any kind of medical things it's tax-free But uh, if you don't I think it's like a 10 percent penalty Which is which is not a bigger deal as you think once you let it grow over 10 20 years Okay, just last question. Sorry the asset diversification, right? Would you recommend? Buying like bond stocks within your company or do you take it out of the tax profit? Then you go in this Like can you actually invest? company money and then let it sit in within the LLC So, um, you can uh, you can't invest on behalf of your LLC Uh, it just depends on how you set up your LLC, right? Because you I think of LLC is not just your own, especially if you're not a single member LLC If you have multiple members in your LLC, you have a lot of partners Uh, all those decisions you can make as long as you can make as a group, right? So What I'm saying is uh, you you can do that It just as long as you get along really well with your partners and your members And you guys can always come to the right the kind of investment decision you want to make together I would recommend this path, but And I hardly see businesses in that setting, right? Where everything's just harmonious Where everyone just want to invest in the same thing, right? So say I want to invest in tesla But you want to invest in uh, you know, some other company, right? We might might disagree and because using company money might might actually create more, uh I would say uh controversy and argument, but you can it's it's totally fine But I actually would recommend that you take the uh after tax profit of your own and invest because you have more control over it You can you can do more what you want with the money. That's my recommendation Even if uh, for example, like you are uh, like soul entrepreneur, right? He's doing lc. You're making like four million dollars On Shopify per year. Is that does that still make sense or you still should probably take it after tax profit and invest that Yeah, so that's uh, that's a that's a that's a concept that uh, a lot of people don't Don't know about is if you're a sober prior ship, even if you have an Not so pro but more like, uh, you're one-man LLC Like you're so exactly. Yes.  They're basically saying because you're only one person the LLC really doesn't Uh, take as much effect if that makes sense. It's like they see you as just an individual person Uh, basically disguising as an LLC Okay, if that makes sense Yeah, you actually you actually most of the time don't want to form the single member lcs You want to form a partnership you want for multiple member lcs? So uh, they uh in a court of law, they see you more as a legitimate business Rather it's someone who's just looking for uh, you know, personal liability protection and forming an LLC So what i'm saying is if you're just a single member lc, uh, it They will they wouldn't treat it the same way Okay, later you invest in the company or yourself. Yeah, you should just take it out because they're gonna make you take it out Yeah, okay. Yeah, so it's you can't you can't hide that way. Unfortunately Any other questions jonathan? No, no, i'm okay. Cool. I'll move on to last two questions. We have now um, number nine Yeah, something that a lot of people don't worry about is of course about sales tax, right? It says should I be worried and when should you be worried about sales tax, right? So, um, one thing was what we want to make sure that econ owners are always scaled to a certain point They start thinking about this and it looks really troublesome at the beginning, right? So and it creates a lot of compliance issues for companies that don't get a jump start on it But there's good news Most states have certain sales thresholds you need to meet before they even go after you So I would say that unless you're at I would say like three to 500k mark You really don't have to think about this Really like the only state that you kind of have to think about is just your own state That you have this kind of issue with so say i'm in california, right? I would need just need to make sure I collect sales tax for california customers And then I would I need to file sales tax with california But for any other state, I don't think you need to worry about my until you get to a really high revenue point And then uh, yeah, then you probably need to look into it But just just don't worry about like one of the things that I want to mention is our agency We provide a an annual state. I say sales tax impact report for you guys So what we do is we basically analyze your entire customer list Break it down into states and how much impact you have per that state and when you actually need to be alerted to file for that state so With that, you know, you kind of know What one point you need to worry about it And then if you don't actually meet that certain sales volume per state, you can just kind of forget about it So Yeah, not not too much to worry about anyone that's making I would say less than three to 500k This per year right 500k per year per year. Yeah Okay Yeah, yeah, if you're making three to 500k per month, uh, you really just start worrying about this now Yeah, give give account a call like today You don't hesitate to be making that much. Yeah, because that's over a six million a year, you know Yeah Okay, great. Now last but not least, uh, this is just a little plug that we have for ourselves You know, why should I hire you right? Why shouldn't I go and just Hire someone that just a you know family friend or someone that's recommended me who I someone I google I hope from all these questions that you've seen before that you kind of get understanding that Uh, it's not it's not so simple to just hire someone who's just a tax preparer, right? Someone who's just a tax preparer Most of the time is just going to take the number you give them Put it on some sheet and say bam. This is how much you got to pay Like there it is pay that amount, you know, and that's that's fine But you can see that you're actually missing out on a lot of possible deductions this way You know just with that income statement example at the beginning just with the the actual the mileage you saw just with the Home deduction There there's always different methods of calculating those things. So if you don't do things like proactive tax planning You're very likely to miss miss out on those things and you also want someone that's really Laser focused on your niche, right? So a lot of accounts. I see a generalist They'll take on any kind of clients, right retail brick and mortar real estate Just some some fruit stand in the streets. You don't want that because they they're just going to apply really general Tax knowledge to your business. You want someone that's laser focused online business Why? Because the IRS tax code is It's it's not that complicated. It's just that it's just thousands of pages. That's all You want someone that's like only reading the part that's related to you, you know If they're if they're at over there like talking about mumbling about things that's not related to your niche For your your brand that doesn't help you, you know So you really want someone that's really like like here's your maximize your tax deduction like When we went out company in our company setup tax preparation is actually the last step Like what we do before that is we know we prepare you all your bookkeeping. We make it clean We go into tax planning Then we talk to you about what your goals are for the future You know what you want to do and we really plan that out for three to five to ten years And really see hey does that make sense in a in a in a legacy setting, right? And then doesn't make sense of what you how you want to retire and how you want to leave behind money for your dependence and your beneficiaries, so we really want to focus on that so With that said, this is kind of like all the things that we prepared We also want to want to want you guys to know that you kind of want someone that has that synergy, right? That does your bookkeeping through the tax plan your financial reporting and don't need to go to different sources for different things You want someone that can do it all and you can just become a one-stop shop So you don't have to talk to no one wants to talk to three to five accounts, right Jonathan If I only want to talk to one accountant that's just like hey Let me just do one call and I get the second care of and I could go go on do my business and go back on my boat You know So you don't want to go and have like three to five conference call them I was like, hey, I need to talk to my bookkeeper here and talk to this guy doing my sales tax I need to go talk to this guy doing my tax preparation. No, that's that's that's a lot of headache And you're trying to get rid of headaches, you know, so that's kind of why a little plug here Just want to mention that, you know, we're just we're not we're not we're not really just here to do your taxes That's like the last thing we think about we we feel like if we had done everything else that was supposed to have a deep understanding of your business This would take care of itself as far as filing your taxes for you Um, yeah, so, uh, yeah, we're really pretty much done. We we actually have a lot other questions that I got Yeah, we have questions on the chat. Uh, we just want to mention things that our agency have seen Uh, but you know, if we if we just interest we can of course Answer some of these other questions and maybe in another interview some other time But yeah, just wanted to let you know some of the other questions that we may have gotten out from I think and then Jonathan Yeah, your audience may have some questions too, right? Uh, yeah, give me open up the chat. Wait, um Okay, so first question Comes from Aaron. Can I man? I won't say the name uh for an average e-com. Yeah, sorry from an average e-com owner What are the easiest uh, low hanging fruit adjustments that you can do to save taxes and how much can you expect to save? Yeah Yeah, yeah, that's a great question So like two of the things that we always mentioned you just want to kind of like low hanging fruits is uh your merchant processing fee So a lot of people don't consider this when they're filing their taxes, right?  And they charge you three to four percent of that That's 30 to 40 thousand dollar of extra tax deduction that you should be taking for your business So don't forget about that. Make sure you keep all that uh reporting Organized you don't know how you feel food dm us will show you how to you know find those reports Um, but make sure you gather all that up and then really yeah, go take that tax deduction It's all tax deductible as online online business Another thing is something we mentioned one other slide is mileage, right? So if you don't have time to if you don't have a having a chance hire someone who An accountant you can just do the the simple method, right? Which is taking 56 cents six cents per mile and just just multiplying by the number of miles that you're traveling Bam, and that's another great easy tax deduction right there Okay, uh, next question. Is there any way to invest? Uh, the cash back into investments example stocks. Yeah, so I mean you think you mentioned it by thing I guess this guy wants yeah, yeah for sure for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's actually really highly recommended to diversify your Your cash flow, right? So currently in the united states, uh, the capital gain rate is a lot lower than your ordinary income, right? Ordinary companies are your business income But capital rate is basically Uh capital gain rate is basically the the amount you realize from investing in like stocks on cts mutual funds So you actually really want to take advantage of that by putting money into those kind of investment vehicles So then later on when you take it out you actually have to tax at a lower rate at the end of the day Right, so I think right now if you have you're taking out 80,000 or less in in your investment gains It's actually only gets taxed at uh, if you're marifado joint zero percent So it's 40,000 for single 80,000 for marifado and jolly But then between eight I say 80,000 215, but 200 5215 thousand dollars around there. Don't quote me on that It's around, uh, just 15 percent. That's the tax rate So you saw the the tax bracket put up it could go up as much as 37 percent, right? Ordinary business income so that's a huge difference right there right there Okay, uh next question Could you explain more about the 401k in the previous slide? Oh 401k. Yeah. Yeah, so 401k and you know SEP IRA, you know simple ira I just there's a lot of different ones that Depending on your business could could work the best for you and your employee actually you can set up a plan for your employee and basically Depending on what plan you choose you need to put in pre-tax or post-tax dollars Enter these investment vehicles. So for example, if you're just doing a 401k, you can take your pre-tax money So for example, if your business is making a top line of million dollars, right? And uh, you can put in I would say like 18 to 20 thousand into a 401k Um, that means that 18 20 thousand dollars is not getting tax Instead you can put it to this full pay plan and it basically gets to grow tax-free But then at then over 20 30 years you'll grow to certain amount because you know the stock market usually return about 7 8% Over over like like about 20 30 years and then at and then you have a pretty nice Retirement fund there that you can take out and use Um, I think there are ways to take it out early But the normal retirement age that you can take it out is 65 But there are other um, I would say retirement strategies can allegedly take that out a little bit earlier than that Okay Patrick asked when do you recommend getting an accountant? Is there a specific dollar amount you should Uh, then look to get to higher one. How should I go about looking for one? Yeah, that's great question Patrick. Um, so it's actually recommended and I kind of mentioned that a little bit ready You know once you get past I would say the 300 to 500k mark an annual revenue You probably want to look for an accountant at that point And maybe you don't need someone that does your taxes exactly Maybe you just need someone that does your bookkeeping because at that point you probably have a pretty high volume of transactions In your business So you want to have someone that can really, you know, make sure your books are organized, right? Because one of the things we always see from client is, you know, why why is my why why do I not get all my deductions? Well, it's one reason it's probably because you have very messy bookkeeping And what messy bookkeeping does is you don't know Uh, like a certain transaction if it's tax deductible or if it's only 50% or if it's 0% you have no idea So you just you just you just go and you put it down in a bucket and it that's not that's not the greatest plan I'll say once you saw making real money Because you really gotta think about your tax planning as just another stream of revenue for you You you saw in our previous example, right jonathan and on income statements slide Like by doing great and advanced tax planning. That's that's 40k, I mean you would love to have 30 40k back in your pocket, right? Well not doing much work And that's basically what happens if you hire someone that really understands your business You can just get that back and you're not doing that much more Then you just you just hire the right person to really understand your business. So I would say yeah Um, if you're if you're around 305 and k mark definitely saw looking into an accountant But obviously if you're in the high six figure seven figure, you really should look for someone that seriously understand your business Really want to help you with tax saving really want to help you with what you want to do in the future As far as your financial plan and uh, they help you scale really Okay Lucy asked even I have this question What software systems do you recommend personally? What are our source documents? Do you need to keep up with and how should I go about setting this up? Yeah Okay, uh software meaning like counting system, right? Yes. I think so. Yeah, okay. Yeah So, uh, I think for most of you guys out there and even even our agency uses to is a quick book online Is really good It's one one while I want industry standards as far as accounting software out there Uh, they're of course more sophisticated software out there once you're you know company grows to a certain amount in a certain size Especially if you start doing more like payroll and more complicated issues like issuing debt uh stock options employed benefit plans But uh, I'm thinking for most of your account owners out there. You guys probably not to that stage yet But you are no talk to us. Well, we'll say you're a better accounting software But mostly out there I think quick book online is a great thing to get started and I would highly recommend that over just Keeping that in excel, right manually because you guys gonna really start tripping up and it's gonna be really hard To pass that on to account if you only keep your records in excel Um, so as far as payment processes go, you uh, basically just want to go and download all the monthly statements That's generated from their websites and just keep it keep people your records keep it in a some kind of secure data hub, right? So at our agency, we we basically we take The company that we we take their The clients data and we really keep it secure and we really keep it ready so that if anything happens, you know If irs come back to us we're always already, right? So if you get forever get flagged and you might if you start making seven figures Don't worry about it, right? If you if you have if you have a right person to watch out for your finances Your all your documents all your backups ready. It's ready to go So you don't have to worry about it So you have a panic when something like happens and you're gonna fly you're gonna pass the flying colors Okay, that's uh, does cookbooks have p-roll at this point? Yeah, it does It's add-on it's add-on. Um, it's probably not the best solution But I think if you're only hiring around one to 10 employees, that's it works perfectly fine. Okay. I'm said Okay, then you'll ask if we are hiring vas and such. How do we expense this? How do you go about structuring deductions for hiring vas? Uh, and any special scenarios? Uh, yeah Yeah, yeah, that's just a great question. Daniel. Um, so hiring the vas is interesting in the world of uh, online e-commerce, right? Because uh, as John from find knows a lot of people just hire is a lot of people from overseas right international vas from different countries and Honestly, there's not a lot of guidance around this. The reason is okay. When you hire a v a in the u.s Is they're what they call an independent contractor So what that means is, you know, they work for themselves and you hire them on and what will happen usually is you have to issue Them what they call a 1099, right? So 1099 basically we I report saying telling the IRS. Hey, I hired this person But I did not Would draw any taxes for them, right? So because when you hire an employee, that's what you have to do for them You have to take payroll tax. You have to take Medicare Social security, you have to take that on the behalf and take a portion of it, right? You would we held it and then you you submit it to the government But we're independent contractor as long as they make more than 600 more a month from you You have to issue them what they call 10 9 but That's only for us Contractors why because on the nine form they asked for a social security number If you go hire v a from, you know, Philippines or I don't know India They don't have a social security number. So there's no way for them to fill that kind of form So really in that way, um, you really can't recognize them as independent contractors so there's a specific line on the schedule C where you can put them on as a Basically a contract work as someone who's not you're not going to be issuing a 10 99 to and you basically just lump them to a category and say Well, this isn't still an expense. I did hire someone but Uh, it's not someone in the u.s. So there's no need to withhold taxes for them And basically that's what you would do and it's actually works out better Honestly, and I can see why more and more people are hiring international, right? It's by one is cheaper wages and two you can kind of Escape this tax situation until irs issue some kind of more Definite guides on it. I I would say you should definitely take advantage of that. Okay. So actually if you have like a hundred vas, it's fine That's no issue. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, it's it's crazy I know and I'm sure one day the cons is going to be like, hey, this is unfair This company can hire a hundred vas. But for now, yeah, this is the way to do it. Okay Uh, okay trend us, uh, you mentioned bookkeeper And the content is different. How is uh, what's the difference? Okay. Yeah, trend. Yeah, I'd love to answer that for you. So I mean, it's in a way It's almost like just just terms, right? But if you really want to find it A bookkeeper is just someone that's you know, who's solely responsible for making sure you have good records Make make sure your transactions are in order So, uh, you know, you'll supply that person with your bank statements your credit card Shopify report your merchant fee report and all kind of things like that all your expenses that you got on daily basis And she is basically responsible for making sure that It's it's put in a coherent matter While tax account is job is to take what the bookkeeper has done and prepare tax findings for you So in this way, if you hire a back bookkeeper, you know messy books It can affect how the tax accountant does his job, right? Because tax all tax how I can do is Take what you give him as far as a monthly report of your your books and just take that and say, okay I think you should you're able to take these deductions So if the bookkeeper doesn't do a good job of categorizing a setting of your charter accounts, you can actually miss out on deductions that way On the other side, of course is you have amazing bookkeeping But you have a tax accountant who's not very knowledgeable about what's going on. What's what's the current tax laws? What's what's what the changes are then they can just be like, okay? I'll just fill out what I know And then put it on a sheet of paper, right? So you you can actually mess up both sides and that's why we really recommend you hire just one Fern or one agency that can take care of both sides for you You know that this it could just create some more synergy and you it kind of ensure that you won't miss out on all the tax deductions that you really deserve Okay, uh, okay. Last three questions. Okay. Okay, so Yeah, Amanda. Amanda asks what types of services do you offer? How can you help? Uh us basically, yeah Yeah, yeah, so, um, I mean that's something that we really emphasize here at fcf agency is that What kind of not your typical tax preparer firm that you know that you can google or you can just I don't know even worse I I heard one of our clients found someone on fiver But paid him like very little money and then it was it was a disaster Okay, I tell you that story sometime Jonathan But uh, so we like to think of sell it's kind of like your outsource cfo right kind of an extension of your brand That's not just going to help you during tax season time But really going to help you all year round You know, like we want to be you're kind of your reliable trusted advisor That's going to be anytime you need to text us or chat to us about hey, I have something going on with my company I'm not sure if I can do this. Can I set up my company in a different way? Uh, you know, can I can I invest in these things? What do you recommend? Uh, should I buy inventory now versus later? Uh, you know, hey, I'm working from home now Okay, these are all audit deductions like, you know what we want help you any kind of questions you may have And not just tax related. It can be bookkeeping related. It can be your financial forecast It could be valuation. It could be when you want to sell your company, you know That's kind of like, uh, the background that I have is that we kind of Want to help you in all aspects of the business and we hope that that's something that you You guys are out there looking for someone that's there's not there just helping with taxes You can come and you know, uh, come talk to us and we would love to see if we can help you out Uh, yeah, you mentioned before the call. Uh, your partner has uh experienced an MNA as well, right? Is it so? Yeah, yeah, my my partner stanford. Uh, he's he's more on the valuation side So he has done uh more on the uh financial forecast Uh side of things so he's very good at knowing about like valuation and how much your company's worth in your brand Okay. Yeah, so guys, uh, if you need help with that MNA Can go to them Uh, okay, uh second last question I'll manage it, uh as well biggest mistakes your client has experienced Because most common Yeah, the most common mistake is basically like googling and hiring the cheapest person Like I know a lot of people don't think this is a big deal, right? They're like, hey, I oh my god It's it's uh, February. I time found my taxes. So let me just go higher two first Let me just you know use turbo tax or something, right? So the problem with that is Doing yourself works when it's just your personal tax, right? Personal tax there is just not as much deduction and credit you think about there's still some There's still some you can take for sure, you know, you can still itemize or taking a standard deduction things like that but on the business side With the volume you're doing with the sales with the amount of sales that you possibly are doing there's just a lot more things you can miss and Missing it is it hurts, you know, it hurts We have clients come to us to have missed, you know, tens of thousands of deductions in prior years And they're like, I can't believe this, you know Like they didn't check this.    You know, I can teach you right now to fill out some forms, right? Like I can teach you how to fill out this form. You can watch on youtube Yeah, you can youtube it like you seriously like you can go right now and search on youtube with someone that's like Hey, how do I fill out my tax form and you do tell you do it, but The problem is, you know, if you don't understand your your financial records If you don't understand your bookkeeping, it doesn't help you You you could be putting down numbers that are not verifiable, meaning you don't have good backups for it So you're just putting down a number now that just put you at risk first of all Yeah, that just sets you up for, you know, for you to have sleep this night thinking about oh shoot Did I put this number down right? What I just I just put this number down. I hope I hope I hope they don't come after me And I you don't want you don't want that like why was someone who's earning seven figures more Wanted to not sleep well at night. No, you want to be dreaming me about You want to dream about like what boat I can buy with tesla? I can be driving right now Not oh shoot and rs gonna come after me.  I think this is a good question. It's two parts by the way So the first part is so daniel has not charged sales tax in the past So do does he owe the irs now then part two is so In the coming future, he's going to charge sales sales tax, right? So how does he Pay that? Yeah, does that make sense? Yeah, that's a great question. So daniel like first of all I want to need to first understand of course your situation, right? I'm like how much revenue you're bringing in this year Versed all of your other expenses. Um, but then one thing I would just say is You know for whatever state you're in I would uh, if you're if you're doing certain volume I'm not sure but let's say you're doing three to five jk annual revenue I would start seeing what your what how what your concentration of customer is in that state, right? So I would say if I'm in california and I have 30 percent of my customers that's in california, right? Then you probably can do some uh, rough estimate something I'll from what help you with obviously But if you want to do it yourself a rough estimate of you know, you take the state's sales tax I think it's like 9.5 and then you multiply it by the amount of revenue you have taken for those customers And you kind of get a rough estimate of how much you buy old The state so if you want to state you want to be in compliant if you know your business is growing And you're not you know scaling down on anything You probably want to set aside that amount of money In account somewhere so then if you do Get in trouble or anything like that you do know that this is the amount you need to set aside reserve for it So you can pay for that taxes and as far as your second part question is okay now you want to be Compliant, which is great. You know the government love people who uh self report, you know They love people who just like shows like hey, I volunteer to pay my taxes Don't don't don't please don't don't come after me. They love that They're they're very forgiving for people like that. So if you go and now say hey, California, I want to Um, you know start fine my taxes. That's that's fine. Just you know, just sites and forms You just got to fill out and just become compliant get a gotta get basically a permit to sell Is what I call it and the state you're in and then yeah, you'll be set up and on your way And that knows all things agents can help you with we can also help you turn turn on those features and Shopify We don't know how but basically you just want to be uh, let Shopify I think has a good feature I think other Ecommerce sites have this too where you can just set up state by state of which sell which state you want to start collecting Based on what state you're buying it from right? So we recognize that that person's buying it from a California shipping address So you need to start starting to tell tax for him But if he's buying from a Texas shipping address then you wouldn't collect sales chats for him until you get So certain threshold of customers in that state. Hope that'll answer your question Okay, then I hope it's okay. Yeah, uh, okay. Let me know if it doesn't you can always contact me later Okay, Ken, uh, and I think really thank you for your time Giving the audience um like tons of value and stuff. Okay now Feel free to plug your stuff. How how do people find you? Um, How do they engage through the services like there's so many things to think about so yeah, yeah appreciate it so I mean, I just want to mention like We love helping online ecommerce owners, you know, like that's kind of like a passion and kind of like what I got myself into Especially when I you know was doing e-commerce last year and I saw all the headaches that Tax and accounting and compliance that was was having a toll on these six seven e-commerce owners That should be enjoying the success that they have from figuring the stuff out themselves, right? You guys do sales as well right like software companies Yeah, yeah, we also do that and basically any any online business that you collect money over the internet We help you with because that's that's our main focus So, um, you know, if you are one of those companies out there that haven't really have a good grasp on your Tax and accounting and bookkeeping. I highly recommend you guys just set up a free consultation call with us I'm not sure if it's still on the screen Jonathan, but basically I have my contact information on there It's um, Alan at free casual down You want to just email me and then I also have a facebook page and instagram You know feel free to use any channel you guys want Where do we find you? Where's the number one? Yeah, yeah, you can just you can just email me I think that'll be probably the easiest and I mean get you guys feel more ready to set up a call We also have our site where you can just click on it and set up an appointment with us directly And then we will just jump on a free consultation call with you We'll understand your situation and we'll see if we're a good fit together and we'll go from there Easy as that Okay, can thank you so much Alan for your time. Uh, yeah guys we've come to the Okay, so you can stop sharing the screen again. Yeah, we come to the end Thank you guys for watching to the end if you're still here Uh, yep, and thanks Alan. You guys can find them at free cashflow.io slash opt-in Yeah, so I'll put the links and stuff in the description as well and I'll put This video is really long. So I'm gonna put the time frames so you guys can press the questions by questions as well Yep, okay, so that's pretty much it. Okay. Thanks Alan for your time and uh, I'll stop the recording now Okay, thank you so much, Jonathan. Yep. See you guys. Have a good day everyone. Bye


Hi and welcome to my new mixed media Tuesday series. Every Tuesday I will be creating art journals, canvases, shadow boxes and other projects always using different mixed media techniques. For today I was planning to make a video using my molds and different ways that you can use them, however I am still expecting products through the mail which is super slow these days. So instead today I am going to make a really fun project using things that I had already in my stash, super old papers, stamps etc. and I am sure you will be able to recreate something similar with what you have already. So first of all for what I have in my mind I need to create a few envelopes.  If you don't have such a die I am sure you can easily create your own envelopes or maybe you already have some smaller ones that you can use for the project. So as I am assembling the envelopes I am going to talk a little bit about what I hide in my mind. Now I have moved houses and I am in my new craft room for less than a year now and I am still trying to organize things and decorate everything and I wanted to create something for my world that has to do with card making. Card making was the first step when I started sharing my projects on my youtube channel and it has completely changed my life and my first ever art general project that I shared on my youtube channel was about card making and I wanted to somehow combine those two in one project for my wall. All the projects that I make really tell a story about me and this is one about being brave and following your dreams and doing exactly what I love. So anyway I am putting together the little envelopes, I even created more than the four ones that you see here, I am going to put them aside and I will use them later on. I am going for a square 8x8 project, there is something about square projects that I absolutely love so this is a mixed media paper that takes sprays, water and other mediums really nicely and I am going to start with a coffee archival ink and an all time favorite stamp that I have been using for ages, I think this is one by Penny Black, pretty sure it is discontinued but you probably all have a tech stamp somewhere in your stash. I am working with archival ink just because I am going to use sprays later on and I don't want the stamping to bleed, also I don't want to have the perfect impression of the stamp, this is why I am not using a stamping block but rather stamp everything with my hands without pressing all over the stamp, I just want to have an impression, imperfect impression of the text here and there. I am planning to have a lot of things going on in the foreground, that's why I don't care about adding too many things and too many elements on my background, I am going to keep that quite subtle, that's why I first spray it with water and then I am going to apply some pale blue in different areas, not covering up the whole thing. The spray that I am using happens to be speckled egg distressed spray but you can achieve similar look with just using your watercolors. I like to spray my paper first with water to make it nice and wet because when I go then with the spray paint it doesn't absorb instantly into the paper and I am able to move it somehow, you can see I can get some drippage if I like to and I can even move the colors, especially if you are using more than one color for your background, it's always nice to have a little bit of water before. Now I am going back to this stamp that I had for ages, probably more than 6 or 7 years ago, I got this one, I am pretty sure this is also discontinued, it's a stamp with 6 coffee stains that I absolutely love and I am going to stamp with my coffee archival ink all around, mainly staying at the edges. Then I looked through my stash and since I am going for a letter-themed look I found this by Darkroom Door and it has tons and tons of stamps that are perfect for letters and I am going to use some of them around to create a border, the idea is to have a darker border all around, which is something that I always like to do, I am stamping everything with black archival ink this time and I am not going to pay any attention on the stamps that I am using, I just want to have a stamped black border all around using all the stamps that I have here, now whatever I use I am going to try and find if they are still available and I am going to link them down below but I don't promise because today I just shopped my stash and I tried to find products that I had for years and I haven't used them. Once finished with the stamping I went with my blending tool all around and I created a vintage photo inked border, one of my favorite inks of all times and then I am going to ink up the edges with black archival ink and I am going to surprise you with my project today, I am not going to do any splashes at all or stenciling, I am just happy with how the background looks at the moment, nice and subtle, now I am going to bring in a super old paper pad, probably you have it in your stash already, it is I don't know, more than six years ago that I got this one and I am going to use this paper that has those blue and red lines all around to stick on top of my background and this way I created a lovely frame, of course if you don't have this pattern paper you can always do that or create something similar with your markers, now I'm going to bring in the envelopes that I prepared as the first step and I'm going to ink them up so that I can help them stand out a little bit against each other, I am planning to layer them one on top of the other so a little bit of inking and shading is a must here, again for that I did use my vintage photo Distress Ink and I like to add the same touch of color in pretty much all the elements on a project because this way you bring everything together now in my stash I also had this ephemera and I'm probably sure you have them too if you are a team holds fan for years I was able to pick up from those bugs a few stumps but of course you can make your own stumps just cut out little images from different pattern papers and you are good to go, again I ink those up as well, I am trying to find bits and pieces to make some of the envelopes stand out a little bit more to have some detail on them so that they are not just plain envelopes at the background and this is where I remember that I had this wax set so that I can make waxes, yes these are a really great touch especially on an Arginal project or a Mixmedia project where you want to have different textures so if you want to recreate something similar but you don't have this set you can always use your heat gun and with silicone you can create kind of a seal that you can then color it with your acrylic paints and you are good to go, however this set is lots of fun and I just used three of the little wax pieces in the spoon I am waiting for them to melt and then I'm going to pick one of the stumps for them that it is quite generic I don't want to have anything really showing there and I found this one that has a large flower so I'm thinking it is good to go and while I'm waiting for my wax to melt I'm going to wrap one of the other envelopes with some string for some of the envelopes you will be able to see the front for others the back and I don't want them to be similar I want to have different bits and pieces on them so that they look more interesting and this is where I'm getting ready to pour the wax but of course my camera was controlling so the most satisfying part of the video is lost but anyway I'm absolutely in love with it I love the texture and that vibe the old vintage vibe that it gives on the project I also like that it is imperfect and I was actually going for that I didn't place the stamp exactly at the center I think it looks better this way anyway I have all the envelopes pretty much ready to go and I'm ready to start assembling my project and just like always I am auditioning I'm trying to find how I'm going to place all these things together trying to find something that it is pleasing to the eye decide how I like things and then I'm going to commit and glue them down for that I'm using my nouveau deluxe glue but then a glue would work for this project just because I am planning to frame this project I don't mind about the dimension if you are trying to recreate something similar inside the pages of an art journal then you can stick the envelopes one on top of the other completely flat and a little bit of dimension could go inside an art journal like the wax stamp for example and definitely use a string that it isn't as bulky as the one that I used here for one of the letters one of the envelopes is open this is where I'm going to add inside flowers but you can add inside the envelope whatever you feel like it can have butterflies coming out of it it can have a letter coming out with your note on top or your thoughts just go for it and be creative I am going to add a few more ephemera that I found in that ephemera pack just to help them separate a little bit from each other because they are a tone on tone same color on top of another same color and they don't stand as much I went through my stash to find out dyes that cut out leaves and I used a bunch of them here I used different shades of green cardstock to cut them out and I also did ink them up a little bit with the vintage photo like I always do I am going to stick them coming out from the envelope and I'm always making sure that I have enough dimension after all this is going inside the shadow box I'm also going to use some dimensional paper flowers that I had for ages I got these in three different sizes I think from when from eBay ages ago and I have them in a drawer so I thought it would be the perfect project to use some of them today but of course you can die cut flowers and stick them there and especially if you are trying to recreate something similar inside a book in an art journal then you have to go completely flat so it would be better to just stamp flowers and cut them out or die cut them and finally to have a touch of cuteness on my project I decided to add some tiny little hearts that I cut I used a dark cardstock red cardstock that matches the color of the wax seal as well as the other red elements around the project I'm going to spread them out as if they are coming out of the envelope no splashes no highlighting with my white gel pen for today I just fell in love with the project just the way it is and I didn't want to touch it anymore of course I want to add the quote I always like to add quotes on my mixed media and art journal projects and for that I decided to go with be brave and trust your heart this is exactly what I did when I decided to change careers and follow this creative journey and I never looked back I think it's a perfect project for my craft room I am framing it now as you can see I'm not going to have a glass at the front because I don't like the glare although it does help with the dust I absolutely love the vintage vibe I love the border with the red and blue lines the wax seal which is such a fun element I love the dimension I think it is the perfect project with a meaning for my craft room here are some close-up photos where you can see more details of my project I hope that you had fun today that you got inspired don't forget to leave me a comment down below it really helps as well as like this video and share it with others if you had fun watching thank you all so much for joining me today and I'll see you all next time