Welcome to Episode 20 of the Bandhive Podcast.

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I'm here with my co host, Matt Hois of Alive in Barcelona. How are you doing today, man? I am doing stellar. James, How are you doing today?

I'm doing fine. I'm glad to hear you're having a stellar day. And it seems like February mid February. Well, the weather is nice here. I hope it's the same for you. You know, I we actually just got dumped on for the last two days. Here Way had 70 degree weather on Sunday. And then Monday it was 15 and snowing. So that's just a little taste of Denver weather for you. For all the listeners who have never been here before. When you hear people talk about the weather being bipolar, they absolutely mean it.

Well, that is pretty crazy. And Today we have a special guest and a third weather report from Josh Nachbar, who is in Boston, Massachusetts. He's our guest today on the podcast. How are you, Josh? Thank you, James. I'm doing well and it is surprisingly nice for the middle of February, but we'll take it. Well, that is wonderful. I'm glad to hear that. And I would say the weather here is pretty similar since we're only about three hours apart. It's not to drastically different. Thanks for taking the time to be on the show. Absolutely.

We asked you to be on the show because a few weeks ago you made a comment in the Facebook group, which really struck me. And I was like, Man, we got to talk to Josh on DSO for people who don't know Josh personally, which is probably most of the listeners Josh and I. Yeah, Josh and I met years ago when we were in college, at different colleges, but we were both involved with kissy pig studios in Boston, Massachusetts. Technically, Austin and Josh was always the dude who was just doing everything.

So, like I remember, it was like your second day working there and you had taken the board apart and you were soldering pins on the, uh, was a DB 25 connections Way needed. One of them was a little scratchy. Yeah, and that was the second day you were working there. So, yeah, that was just my first impression of Josh. And that's basically what Josh has continued to dio now to the point that you can work a minimal amount every week and spend the rest of your time playing music and engineering and doing what you love.

So I thought that having you talk about how you achieve this would be a great way to help other artists figure out ways that they can, you know, become self sufficient and have an income that lets them go on tour or lets them play all the shows they want or lets them go in the studio for a month and still make sure that they have their expenses covered so that they can live the quality of life that they're accustomed to before we get into all that detail.

Josh, do you wanna just give us a little background about yourself? And what inspired you to pursue music? Absolutely. So I I kind of see myself as, um somebody who kind of really comes into their own at the intersection of creativity through sort of a technical medium and music production was kind of a perfect candidate, and since very young, I was always very excited about those kinds of projects. Um, that's sort of evolved, since I'm pretty heavily involved with computer security at this point as well as, um, sort of computer infrastructure projects, I guess, is probably the right way to describe that.

I look at it as it's more instruments, toe, learn and play and be excited about. And it checks a lot of the same boxes for me personally lately. Yeah, it's trying toe. In the effort to try to make life easier, I ended up formally incorporating I take a salary. I'm on my own payroll. I am a W two of my organization. That's kind of a nice way I found to hey, make taxes easier and thank goodness for QuickBooks online and auto automation, tagging everything. Otherwise, this would just be such a tremendous amount of work.

I don't know if I could handle it, but, um, thank goodness for automatic payroll and people in the background, filing stuff with the state, important things you have to think about as an individual and organization. That's sort of a loud kind of a buffer. So when times are good and there's a lot of work, I just can focus on that. And when there's times where there's a couple weeks off, or I wanna go on a vacation or going to the studio and make a record, um, and still on that salary, and as long as they don't completely run that into the ground, you know we're all good.

I think it's It's kind of a nice way to go. So basically, you're using the salary to make sure that you don't get a huge influx of cash one month and then the next month. If you're not working, you're still getting that paycheck just to kind of keep you in check. That's my allowance to myself, for sure. Yep, nice. That's awesome. That's a really smart way to look at it. And obviously, to, you know, you mentioned the taxes air easier. Yeah, you don't have self employment tax, but the corporation is paying that.

But I also assume that if there's money left in the corporation that you're not paying to yourself, then that's tax at the corporate rate, rather than on your personal tax is correct. 5% instead of 15. And now that's an asset and you still own it so you can pull that out at any point. That is a really smart way to do it. And for anyone who might not know what self employment tax is, Oh, my goodness, it's like 40%. Oh, my. The first year you have to deal with that is like, I don't even want to think about how surprised and caught off guard I was like just a couple years ago, you know, finally hitting substantial 10 99 income and then being like, Oh my goodness, I owe how much we have to solve this.

And that was that was really kind of the driver toe to kind of settle this up. Yeah, so for people who are listening and haven't been self employed, your Medicare and Social Security taxes, your employer actually pays half of that. But if you are self employed, you have to pay the full amount of your Medicare and Social Security tax which Social Security caps at 112,000 or so of income. Something like that. But Medicare is on all your income forever. Basically. Yep. And if you do have a day job, you might not realize it.

But your employer is actually paying half of your taxes for you, which is nice. Yeah, it's a very nice to not have that burden, but it also means that they pay quarterly taxes and you don't. But as you in your up and coming band, as things start toe scale, yeah, you'll have toe figure out how toe to set this up, right? That applies for everybody. Yeah, and so that's the kind of thing where doing what Josh did and incorporating or creating an LLC might be beneficial. I would definitely recommend if your band is getting to that point.

Talk Teoh a. C p. A. About your next move for the band just to make that kind of stuff easier now, Obviously, Josh, you did it for a technology business rather than for your musical pursuits. But it's still applies, and that's one of the things that you were saying you wanted to talk about is how basic business principles do apply to music. And that's also one of like the tenets of Bandhive educating musicians on how important business is. Two musicians, really? So there's this idea that I've kind of coined as the business back end, and that is in a nutshell, the way you present yourself to the I. R s in one sentence and you know you can do the LLC thing.

That's pretty well known. Uh, LLC is a pass through entity. What that means is it's owned by individuals. Your earnings against the LLC as a legal endpoint. It's like a legal proxy, really is what it is. Pass through to your tax return. So you report the gains and losses effectively yourself on the scale of completely individual, up to full on C Corporation. There's kind of four levels. There's 10 99 sole proprietor, which is there is no distinction between you and your business. It's just you. Legally, that means, if heaven forbid you end up in in legal hot water, you're not protected at all unless you have insurance.

But there's no liability advantage, and you pay a lot of taxes. Uh, within LLC. You still pay pretty much self employment tax at that rate. But the nice thing is, if you execute contracts between the LLC and somebody else if things don't go so well, you have no personal risk. You can Onley lose what you put in, which means if you have a house or a car or a bunch of guitars and you know someone's coming after you, they're going after the LLC. That could go bankrupt.

And, yeah, it won't be great for your credit for two years, and I think you can't, like, get a business loan for X number of It's not that bad. It's It's a couple of years, but, you know, nothing bad happens to you personally. The third level is what's called An S Corp. That's what I dio where you know, on the state level, your formal corporate entity. What that means is you are owned by shareholders, not individuals. So, yes, I have 5000 shares of stock that I priced at 10 cents each, and I own them all, and I have thio.

The other big difference with the escort versus an LLC is you're actually bound by all the corporate formalities, So yes, I have a board of directors. It is a president of vice president, a secretary and a treasurer. And, yes, I voted myself into all four positions. And yes, I have to have a meeting once a year with me, myself and I going around the room doing an annual report, saying, Here's how much money we made, Um, you know, talking about the strategy for next year. And I have to submit that to the state, and they take it very seriously.

And then there's the full on C Corp. Which is like the whole corporate citizenship hilarious nous where you know the corporation itself is taxed, and then you as an individual are taxed as well. Um S Corp. You don't run into that. You are taxed at the federal rate for, um I forget exactly which piece it is. But basically you get the advantages of the flow through thing without the double taxation, and you still get the limited liability at the expense of a little bit more formality. So it's kind of your meeting it in a position of the best of both worlds.

That's kind of I did a huge amount of research at one point trying to figure out how how to do this. And and that was My conclusion was, this is kind of the best of all. Um, I don't mind a little more structure, uh, part of the rules with an S Corp. Or like you can't have more than 100 employees, and you can't make more than, like, $6 million a year. And I was like, Okay, I'm not worried about that level of problems, so this should be just fine.

Those would be a good level of problems. Toe have. Yeah, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Out of pure curiosity. Is thesixties million income limit? Is that your revenue or your net income? That's gross, I think. Okay, so that's, uh, potentially. That's actually much, much lower. If you're paying 100 employees that's gonna eat into that Quite a chunk. Yeah, It sounds like more than it probably is if you multiplied income by ah 100. Yeah, I agree with that. Okay. And so just to give us an idea of how much effort this took and continues to take, how long did it take to set all of this up as your business.

You know, obviously the corporation stuff, too, but just building your business and building your connections. And if you had to give an average amount, how many hours would you say you are currently working per week over the last year or so? So Part A is the culmination of building this up, and that's probably a combination of skills, people, community and probably like I said five years ago. Ish was kind of when I decided I wanted to crack this American dream lifestyle of kind of getting to do whatever about five years soup to nuts and to end specifically setting up just the business stuff, probably a couple months toe iron everything out at the most.

It's really not that bad to the point earlier there there's a business back in. There's also a business front end on That's a brand, and that's, you know, my reputation as a as a technical guy in some communities. But what's interesting is there's nothing really stopping me from doing multiple brands and one business back in. You can absolutely do that. The advantages. I can have this also be my publishing company, or I can rebrand this to be a band name and just say, Make checks payable to, you know, my company name, and that's all fine.

The disadvantage to that is if one gets sued, it all comes out of the same pot, but it's still not personal to me. So that's calculated risk for me and something I'm willing to dio. But basically what that means is disguised the limit on what you want to do on the front end. How you wanna market and grow really brand. And that's what you're doing is a band. Whether you realize it or not, is growing this thing and trying to figure out how to have people have a positive emotional reaction to this.

This idea right? And that's true of Coke and Pepsi as well as you know, your garage band down the street. It's all levels of solving that problem, sometimes called different things, sometimes with teams of people who went to school for it or whatever. But, you know, it's all it's all to the same goal. Yeah, and on that note, I don't believe you went to school for software or anything like that, right, because you went Thio Berkeley for a while corrected, You switch over and go to get any formal education for what you're doing now.

Uh, nope. Okay. Completely self taught. Hacking it, I'm That's probably a good time to mention, you know, I am not a CPA or a lawyer or, you know, ah, business manager. Well, technically in the business manner. But, you know, I'm just a guy who's had to figure out how to do this and has done this. So opinions on my own. Don't take this as is legal advice or anything, but definitely consult the c p. A and a lawyer before trying this at home. But, um, you know, it's it's definitely possible for entertainment purposes only.

Yeah, I think that's something that, ah, lot of artists, really, if they had the opportunity to sit down and figure out some way to make enough money that they can then just focus on music as much as they want Thio. That would be the dream for many people. And that's basically what it sounds like you're able to do now. And so can you just maybe run us through what a typical week would look like for you, you know, feel free to go into as little or as much detail as you feel comfortable with, since you have some clients that you can't really talk about.

But just to give people an idea of how much time your spending on your software business and how much time your spending on your music so it varies is the truth. It varies week to week. There's no week that's identical to the last one, and that's a really positive thing for me. Um, I'll just pick this week and then we'll zoom out. So I'm working with the customer now. I think we're in have been involved for about probably four or five months now, and things were going well on.

They do product development for a like a cloud based cybersecurity solution, and I am not contractually required to go into the office. I enjoy it more often than not. So usually no less than two days a week. I'll jump in the train and be able to like, peek over a desk and be like, Hey, you know, versus being online and and typing back and forth ferociously sometimes. Also today, later, I'm gonna be doing vocal tuning for the afternoon After that, I'm probably going toe jump on a mountain bike and taken our and go rip around in the woods and then come back and think about, you know, the potential of Of what next?

Once this projects over which may be the case in a month or maybe the case in six months, they're kind of smaller. So there, they're, like, two months at a time. And we're now on extension three, which is nice, um, nice to be wanted and doing something useful. And it's a little more stable to since you don't have to find another client and get into their ecosystem. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This this industry, if you can kind of tap into it, is the kind of industry where, like, once you get some steam going, you could wait around for that five months at a time of work.

If you really want Thio, that sounds really like you have it set up in a way that you are comfortable with what you're doing and comfortable enough that if you don't find work for a while, you're okay with it. That's what that salary pads all about. Yep, my weekly allowance just get usedto, get used to the smaller paycheck and then just direct deposit and not think about it. One of the really awesome things, too, about being an L, L C R C Corp or An S Corp.

Is that you actually have the freedom. Thio put a lot of your bills underneath that business, which is a really awesome business tactics. So I don't know if you have your set up this way, but I know you know a couple of my friends, they have their phone bills set up underneath their business. They have some of them even have their car payments set up underneath that. So not only is this, you know, these air considered company assets, but it's also money that the company no longer has to pay taxes on.

But then it's also money that's not coming out of your personal paycheck, which is really nice. So your salary is your money, which is incredible. Ah, 100% correct. Yep. I have a company sponsored phone plan, uh, company sponsored health care. The I. R. S is pretty generous with operational expenses for corporations on being just part of the deal and not not a tax liability that includes Employeessalaries. It really is a new, entirely different legal entity 100% with its own financial, its own bank account, its own set of actions and and rules.

And then there's me, the individual who's just an employee working there. You're essentially a an employee, and since you're working as all of your board of directors, you're also a liaison for yourself on behalf of your business to the government, which is which is beautiful. Um, for all of our listeners, you it's I really wanna just emphasize how important this is. Um, you know, things like health care are very expensive for an individual and, ah, lot of businesses what you know, if you go and you work for McDonald's and you get health care through McDonald's, McDonald's is footing a lot of that bill.

And so, you know, the government has set up certain tax benefits for you as a small business owner to allow you to continue tohave, you know, to afford health care by yourself and not paying a premium that's through the roof. That's a super super awesome and very, very important. I really love what you're saying about you know and kind of telling people the you know, the different steps of business you know, with as a sole proprietor your tax i d number. It's your Social Security number that is, You know, you're paying taxes under you hold all of the liability.

You know, with your next step. The limited Liability LLC stands for a limited liability corporation on dso. You know, that takes a lot of the you know if, like, you were saying, if you end up with a bad situation where you know you can, you know, basically liquidate your business, uh, it hurts your business credit, but you as an individual, your fun? Yeah, exactly. They don't. You know, the government's not somebody's not coming in and taking your home, which, you know, if, for any reason you are making good money as an artist and you are not a registered LLC or an S Corp or A C Corp, then you need to stop what you're doing immediately, and you need to file that with the state, because should something go wrong and you get sued by somebody, let's say there's a he said.

She said, type of situation that happens with a venue. They're saying you destroy their P A system or something. They try to sue you. They have the money to facilitate suing you. And then your business is now liable for, you know, let's say hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. If you don't have an LLC, then you as an individual are responsible for that. And so I really like how you've kind of outlined each and every level of the corporate world and, uh, really emphasized what the important parts are.

So I I really like how that you have your your current situation set up. I think that's really valuable information to our listeners. Thank you on kind of that. The other scenario that would happen with a band that would creep up on you if you're not ready for it is you know, let's say you're on the road and you start making good money. It's like when that one person who's more organized than everybody else says, Oh, no, you just write the check to me and I'll distribute it and it's fine And you know that person might not realize that if that crosses a certain dollar threshold, Ah, year later, Uh, I R s might have questions and yeah, you have to report that, and it's you.

It's your name on it, which basically means it's tied to your Social Security number. It doesn't have to be all all this stuff. I took on a lot of it by myself, but you don't have to do all of it, right? Getting an LLC for your band and making an operating agreement like it doesn't need to be heavy at all. But should things start to be fairly serious, it would be nice to have a bank account and be just a light operating agreement. And you can you can do whatever you want.

Um, that's kind of the beauty, and in all of this, as we're fortunate enough to live in a country where you know don't break laws and pay your taxes. But past that, knock yourself out, do whatever you want, father rules, be a good citizen and just go do it. These guys, you know, world's your oyster. But yeah, the bank account super important. You're operating agreement, just something that if it were me and I was in a situation with multiple people, depending on each other. Um, let's say on the road for six months straight, making good money.

It's not fun, but somebody at some point might have to think about, well, what happens if so and so leaves or how are we going to treat somebody coming on? Do we wanna have? You know you need to be in the band for six months and then we'll back pay you will give you a stipend and then you'll full share will come in. Or do we want to just say equal in all day? One who's ever part of it and there's no wrong answer, but it's very possible that on the road of things, working out in a creative position with multiple people, um, that and history is riddled with these kinds of stories.

If you If you look in tow music business law, where you and the other writer co write something and you're both technically owners on that intellectual property, and five years later one of you wants to go do something else, it's like then what happens? You don't have to solve this yourself, but you just you do have to realize that somebody probably does. You can outsource that to legal if you can afford it. And this is when things air, you know, starting starting to roll in their services on the Internet.

You can go on to just be like, let me give you a chunk of money and as a service go file. All these things for me that exists makes it pretty easy to dio for people who have a C p A. Which I mean, I definitely recommend using a C p A. Even for your personal taxes. If you're self employed like that's what I do. I'm fully self employed and I have a great C p a. And he teams up with providers like what you're talking about, Josh.

So if you have a C p A. By all means, ask them, they might have somebody that they recommend to help doing all of those paperwork. And one of those companies or service providers highly recommended. A lot of them will do consultation for either very minimal amount of dollars or free on understanding what it is you want to dio not unlike a studio owner might talk to an artist whose a prospective customer for a coffee or whatever Yeah, exactly. And it's like for me in my situation, I pay my c p a to do my taxes.

It's a little over $200 a year, but he advised me on just how much I can write off as a sole proprietorship, not LLC or anything like that on just how much I am able to write off from my expenses. Like I bought a new iMac primarily for work, but partially for personal. He's like, Okay, well, this is what you do, and, you know, you can write off this percentage of it based on your usage and stuff like that. So it's the kind of thing where if you have a good C P A. Even if you aren't in LLC or incorporated, they can still advise you on what the best move is.

And they can also advise you like, hey, maybe it's time to become an LLC or an S Corp One thing I kind of want of outline. Since we're here in the middle of the episode and we've done a lot off talking about taxes in general, I just wanna let everybody know that the reason that this type of stuff is so important is because if you ever have ah, hope of being in the music industry for your entire life, you need to have provable income and provable income.

There's two ways you can do it. You can either show somebody your bank account statement and show somebody how much money you have in there. Or you could give them last year's tax documents. Which shows, you know, this is a government mandated document that says this person, I certify they made that much money this year. This is what allows you to get home loans, business loans via, you know, like any type of loan that you could ever want in order for actually advancing in your life. These types of things come from taxable income, and so the reason we keep harping on taxes and how the different you know, what different scenarios look like for a sole proprietor versus a corporation is because if you have a hope of doing this for a long time and you ever wanna buy a house, then you need to do taxes every year, even if it seems like a small, tedious thing that you don't see the benefit in yet Stop what you're doing.

Record those numbers and do a little bit of research because this is all very, very, very crucial to having a successful business. Absolutely so nice segue into this studio room Here is part of the house that I just recently purchased, which things that they should teach you and they don't. For whatever reason, in every school institution I've ever been to, uh, eyes that, yes, mortgage companies, they're going to look at at minimum, uh, they define it as stable income. But what that means is the last two years, um, averaged of yeah, taxable income, provable assets.

And I had I had a heck of a time trying to explain to somebody how I went from a W 22 to 10 99 back to a K one corporation form and a W two to try to explain to them that this is all technically self employment on it worked. It sounds like a nightmare. It was a little painful. Um, you know, I was talking toe probably administrative assistants who are trying to check these boxes, and I'm just, like, so not, you know, it's nice square box for them you know, And it it was It worked out.

But what an adventure. Taxes, air, Very confusing people. I mean, it's and and the further you get into business, like the worst it gets. That's why quickbooks is a wonderful thing. You know, the last thing you want ever to have happened is to claim you made a certain amount of money and then get audited and to not have neat books. This is, you know, that's just gonna be a ah lot worse than a headache for Yeah, Yes, definitely. And if you have a C p A, they will be happy to talk to those folks for you.

Or that's all you. Amen. Yeah, another very good reason of a c p. A. And also going back to what you're saying, Josh, about having a separate bank account. Because if you have a separate bank account, QuickBooks is so much easier to sync up with that. If it's all in the same bank account, then you have to go through QuickBooks and figure out what's a personal transaction. What's a business transaction? It's more than anyone. Mortal could possibly dio themselves without a huge amount of these tools. and you know, we're again.

We're so fortunate now to be in a time where, through the miracle that is technology and all this cool stuff QuickBooks online automation in general, Um, that you could do the work of 10 people almost automatically if you're smart about it. And that kind of frees you up to do what you want to be doing as an individual, which for me might be the poll guitar off the wall at 2 p.m. On a Tuesday and come up with something. If I don't know anybody, anything at the time, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Or recorded a podcast episode at 10 AM on Wednesday. Exactly. So many people right now would be working. But here the three of us are all able to have a sustainable lifestyle. And then go do music when we want Thio because we've leveraged different things in our lives to be able to survive without working a traditional 9 to 5 job feels good. Yeah, it does. It's a really important thing. Thio, sit down and really, uh, identify what's important to you as an individual. Because, you know, like for me, I'm a very freedom based person I love to have.

You know, I have Ah, two year old son. I'm married. Um, I like to travel my my in laws around the East Coast. I'm in Denver, you know, we tour way there's There's a lot of working parts inside of my my personal beast That is my life. And so for me, it's very important. I have freedom. And so, like, I love hearing that you kind of followed the same path where you found a skill set. You worked really, really hard. Thio cultivate. You found the demand and you figured out the way to deliver the supply.

And that, in essence, has not on Lee, given you the security that you need financially, but it's also giving you the freedom to pursue what you love emotionally and so, like it's this wonderful, you know, yin and yang type of balance. You know, if you if you end up swaying too strong, toe one side between freedom and between safety, you know that it's a very, very, very hot, you know, as with anything being too waited on one side, it's it's almost impossible to balance. And so I love hearing you say things like, Oh, I you know, I go into the office two days a week, but then if I decide that I wanna go out mountain biking, then I could do that.

And, you know, I live the same way. I do handyman work while I'm at home, which allows me to leave for tour, come back and basically still have the freedom that I need to pursue music and still actually pursue a music career is well and, uh, and maintain my financial security. So the other thing, too, for listeners who don't realize the legal distinction between an employee and a contractor boils down to, um, being in control of the way the work is delivered. And that's time. That's what you wear.

That's when you wanna work where you wanna work. All that really matters is that the outcome that you're contractually obligated to works out versus an employee in which the employer is in charge of the way the work is delivered is kind of the fundamental difference. And I'm not saying everybody should just go be contractors right now because it's it's not always easy. Um, socially, it's a It's a lot different um, if you're somebody who kind of needs people, it might not be the most appealing option for you out of the gate.

Hence, me going to the office a few days a week. I don't need Thio, but I like it. Yeah, a little bit of social interaction. Yeah. So if there was one piece of advice that you could pass on to listeners in the music industry, what would that be? Pretend it's not a thing you care about when you're dispassionately trying to set it up for success so that when you switch your passionate brain back on, hopefully you've taken care of all this other stuff in a way that you don't have to Then worry about it later is probably a big one.

And I suppose the other is, ah, hallmark of sort of. Coming into your own is having a tax strategy, which is my analogy for being an adult. That's how you know that's when you know, is when you use the words tax strategy, not sarcastically, is your there. This is how it's gonna be now. And the third thing is, if you don't have, if this all sounds terrifying and it kind of is, um, you don't have to do all this yourself, Um, but you do have to at a minimum, make sure that these areas air are taken care of adequately, and that's legal, like financial.

A lot of companies use PR firms. You don't have to, but somebody has to go get this from this thing you're doing into the consciousness of people. You are hoping Thio reach or in a business sense, I say collect from I don't mean that sarcastically. But you know, currency, I think, is an interesting word as not a synonym, but it only has value when it's moving. If everybody just stop spending money at all, it would all fall apart. It's like electricity. It's current. As an individual, it's easy to think about trying to save as much as you can be comfortable.

And it's tough being young, sort of today in the ecosystem, especially music. Hate to say it. It's very tough to not think about that sort of thing as like pure survival, and it's kind of stressful as a business. Part of why I structured the way I structured was to keep Mawr things flowing into the local community on the state level because that's more relevant to me and who I interact with in the community. I don't look at money the same anymore. Now that it's like learning how to manage where it flows and you get to decide where it flows, you really do vote with your dollar, right?

I say that on Lee to say, you know, don't think of people Aziz, your audience or fans as people you're just trying to take money from. But if they're going to go spend dollars on mental health and they want to do it through music and you want to figure out how to be the entity that they want to go do and in exchange they'll pay your mortgage or, you know, fund your tour or pay your C P. A. It's all in ecosystem. It all flows. It's not hostile to set up a way to, you know, earn money for what you dio creatively is.

My advice is, um, that's kind of how I felt really in the young days, it felt weird, but now I think that's my advice is understand that it is an ecosystem. Money is flowing everywhere. It's not wrong for it to flow to you, to do something you work really hard at. But you do need to figure out how to become a known be in that niche and see, uh, structured in a way that it works, right? And that's the business back in the bank account, the taxes, all that you got.

You got to figure that out. At some point. It sounds like essentially, you're saying, have the business structure in place and then add value. Yeah, 100%. Yep. Figure out. Figure out how Thio set everything up right in that sense. And then exactly as a self employed individual creative professional, you're really in the business of adding value. That's all I do with my computer thing. On the side, too. Is I just add value to situations where that really it's really crucial that it works out correctly. Yeah, the difference being that you add value to Fortune 500 companies instead of individuals who have a hole in their heart and need that music.

Yes, different value proposition, but kind of the same. Ultimate thing is somebody believes this thing is valuable enough to pull the trigger and pay for it. All right, Josh, That is awesome. Thank you so much for taking an hour out of your day. You know, instead of doing mountain biking or something else that you probably would have had much more fun doing. Now that we really appreciate it, I I enjoy this. Well, thank you, man. Now, we really, really appreciate you sharing your wisdom. You've had a lot of really awesome things to say outlining tax strategy.

And I you know, I think it's a lot of things that people that creatives in general don't really think about. And so I really appreciate all of your insight and wisdom and a very hairy field. Next man. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you have a c p a. You want to shout out? If not, that's fine. But if you dio go for it, now is the time. Yeah, well, I use a Massachusetts specific guy named Nick DiDonato. He's been great. My mom. Full disclosure is also a c p.

A. So she has been very helpful over the years, partly in shielding how much actually goes into it, which I've kind of taken on myself a little bit The last two years. So and that's kind of giving me a more of an appreciation for just just how kind of much there is back here. And if people want to find out more about what you're doing, what is the best way for them to find your website or get in touch with you? Let's chat on the band page.

Yeah, that's the Bandhive Facebook group. You can find it by going to Bandhive dot rocks slash group will redirect you right to that group. And, uh, yeah, this is Josh. Knock bar. He spent the last 45 minutes to an hour with us. And thanks so much for talking us again. Josh. Matt, thank you for being here as well. All right, that's it for this episode of the podcast. I just wanted to say thank you again to Josh for coming on the show and talking about how he built his business.

Thio help make music. Essentially, he's able to set his own schedule and work when he wants or go into the office or not go into the office now. This was recorded long before the cove in 19 outbreak hit the U. S. But I would think that something like this would be even more applicable now, with lots of more traditional jobs, having people work from home or even furloughing people. If you can run your own company and do well with it, that's awesome. And I know a lot of artists are hit hard to.

So if you're able to provide a service or skill to people, that is still in demand, even with the economy not being as good as it was and most likely being on the brink of recession, that's awesome. And I do want to say even now I'm recording this outro ah, couple of weeks before the episode comes out. So if something changes drastically, I will definitely record a new outro. But if there isn't a major change, if it's just something minor, I probably will just, uh, thank you would understand that this outro is a bit out of date.

But thank you again for listening. Next week we'll have an episode about merch and, as always, keep looking out for those bonus episodes that we are dropping in between our standard episodes for coverage of the Cove in 19 crisis and how it's affecting the music business and what you can do to not be affected by it quite so much. Thank you again. I hope you have an awesome week. Stay healthy and, of course, keep rocking.