#73 - Joshua Martin (Cine Dailies) - Staying Authentic While Building on YouTube

28:55But I say yes to a lot of lenses, even, well, not to a lot, but right now my, my pool of lenses I say yes to are DZO. I've been in a long time partnership with them. Nisi, um, seven artisans has some unique things. I got this fun little lens with me. Um, and then I'm trying to hit the big, big, uh, big wigs. Like, so cook, they've hit me up. They've been slow to answer cook, hit me up. um and some of the things like that yeah so like i i do that because i think that's a very viable piece of gear that all filmmakers want to see the characteristics of and how's it looking different scenarios so i i would say that's something i say yes too often and sometimes it's not even for compensation sometimes it is for exchange a lens exchange for um a video because i can i can actually use that for what i'm doing right and um and so then the next phase I haven't gotten there yet is the lifestyle phase.

29:50What is something, what is a sponsor that I can say that can, that can break out of the circle of filmmakers that can reach more people? Um, and so, you know, finance is very dear to me because my wife and I've been on our debt recovery journey. So that's something I've been thinking about, excuse me, a lot is, you know, is there a financial thing to kind of promote, but that hasn't come yet, but that's kind of like how I think about sponsorships, what's going to best serve the viewer. And sometimes, and people don't notice, I take less money sometimes just because I want to be able to say that it's true to what I believe is best to share with you.

30:33And it's not always chasing the dollar. Sometimes I have to rack up a few things in terms of like using my Instagram as leverage to promote stuff. Instagram is a whole other thing I'm trying to figure out, but YouTube is where I want to be able to say, this is me and And this is where I think will best serve you as the viewer. As you've developed on YouTube from when you started to now, how has your approach changed? Like how have you developed as a person on YouTube and sort of like, where do you, where do you see yourself right now in terms of the space? Dude, I have to say you are a very good listener and the way you approach your questions, it's just, I'm always impressed when I listen to you talk.

31:13Thanks man, I appreciate it. My favorite thing about YouTube right now is writing. Like I spend so much time writing scripts and I've never was a, I hated language in high school. I hated writing papers in college, but this is the most enjoyable thing that I've grown into ever since starting YouTube is the writing process. and um and on top of that analytics um understanding i very much enjoy just everything about youtube because it's such a i'm my own boss in a way right i'm controlling my own narrative in the space but i'm also learning how this can be a powerful tool in so many different ways outside of just making revenue it teaches you so many different facets of the job and And it also bleeds into my work as a commercial director because the boards that we tend to see are social focused boards at times.

32:12And so a director that cares about the process of social media is something that agencies love. And this is why we get work. because since I do this from day to day, I'm in the trenches, I'm looking at the data, I'm watching content that helps me rethink how I'm serving content to my viewers and the viewers beyond that. And so being a student of this space has been really fun and grow into. Before, I thought it was just a simple formula where it's like, yeah, talk about this gear, show some pretty B-roll and then the views will come. And it was like that early in YouTube. Today, it is extremely hard to get any attention because everything's changing almost from month to month on this platform.

32:58And it can be stressful, but I see myself as trying to be an expert in this space with the nods I have outside of YouTube that I can bring into the YouTube space, but also being a student of how I can learn this platform and the tools that's available to me to put out the best content. Sometimes the views don't always show. And I have, and when I'm in conversations of sponsorships and stuff like that, which I actually need to start sending emails out, but I need to, I use that data to tell them like, yeah, I'm not the type of channel that's going to try to hit, I'll never say this right, but being viral.

33:39Like I can, my channel isn't about being viral is about talking to my core audience and getting, and if for you, it's about clicks. And so the core people that trust my word and my decision are the people that are going to actually click. And I know that what matters to the sponsor that I'm talking to, the brand I'm talking to, that's what matters to them. Some want views, some have standard for views and I'm telling them, and I sometimes say, this is not what I am. I can't guarantee if this video is going to get 10 ,000 plus views. I will, well, I can guarantee you might get that in a month or two, but it's not going to get 50, 60 ,000 views.

34:15Um, because I'm, that's not the way my channel is built. Um, and I'm building my channel off of, um, sort of evergreen content. There might be some things that pop up, but I want to make content that people will tend to look up, you know, over time. And that's, you know, dealing with SEO that's dealing with certain things. Um, but also it's like sometimes you need just emotional videos, like videos, like how you put out like all what I'm doing right now. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes you need the emotional. Yeah. To be honest, they don't really, it's weird because they don't hit, like they're not there.

34:48I don't make them necessarily for them to hit in terms of the algorithm. Yeah. Yeah. I know that from a sponsorship perspective, when you look at my channel, some of the videos are like, Oh, you know, like some of these do well. And then some of these not do well at all, but I'm trying to figure out where I fit in still on YouTube. And I think I've said this since I started, I don't even know where I fit in. Cause. And I don't think, I don't think you need to fit in. That's the thing. You've kind of, you've paved your way of content and I respect that. And I think that's, unfortunately, YouTube doesn't always reward that.

35:22And we see that. And that's the thing we're always fighting is that we have to fit into a niche. We don't have to fit into a niche. You don't have to fit into a niche. You are doing your thing. And I listened to that content. And there's a lot of people. What's been valuable to me and what I've sort of realized is that the less that I worry about if YouTube sort of makes my video hit per se, that is less important to me than looking at the comments and seeing 30, 40, 50 people being like, wow, this made a difference. And that to me is more important than seeing that video hit 10, 20, 30 ,000, if it only hit 3000, but 45 people commented saying that it impacted them.

36:01That to me is way more important because like you said, I'm, I'm trying to build a community of people that actually find what I'm doing to be valuable to them. And I'm not trying to hit a mass audience in, you know, I don't know. I just, I'm on the same page with you and trying to, trying to build that really strong foundation of a community. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, of course, more views will be nice. But if you if you you know, I always look at the back end of my channel, what videos are still getting hits and reviews. My channel is very healthy. And I think that's because I decided to hunker down on the core audience, the core foundation of why my channel is actually successful.

36:43And so I do my best to understand the metrics on that end and see, and I make, I do make small tweaks. Like I'm the type of nerd that goes in and makes small tweaks to titles and thumbnails to see if it does reach the next phase and stuff like that. So like that stuff doesn't matter to me. And that's helped my channel to be continually growing. I'm, I'm approaching, I think 50 K subs. Awesome. Dude, that's all like, thank you. And it's just like, wow, that's taken, it's taken three years, but it's like, I did it the way that best served me. And also I think that best served the viewers. And so, um, I'm very proud of it.

37:19And so I, I can tell that there is, there's no, there's, there's this momentum that's building and I want to make sure I stay true to that. Of course, there's going to be some one-offs that might do really very well. And that's might important to me to be just to just have fun still have fun with the platform and the process and i still have fun i know there's some uh youtubers that i know that it's like i'm tyler at race and this and the other luckily it's like it is my nine to five but it's not everything that i do i try to do i try to have multiple baskets of revenue and just multiple baskets of this outlets for me to just stay sane so i can walk away for a little bit and then come back and still enjoy the process I love that.

38:02You know, I, I, one of the reasons why I hit you up initially was because I saw your sort of transparency and honesty when it came to finances in particular. And to me, that's been very important for me as just a freelancer, as a DP, as just a person in the space is to be able to understand financial finances and have a basic understanding of financial literacy. And when I, when I first started seeing some of your, you know, you made a couple of videos, you posted on threads about it. I was really, it, it opened my mind a lot. And I really did appreciate your sort of transparency towards that, because I think there's a lot of people in our industry that struggle that don't really feel that they have a voice to even maybe talk about it or just express, or maybe they feel alone in it, that they're the only one that's going through it.

38:54So, you know, before we dive into it a little bit deeper, I'm just, I'm curious as to like, what made you sort of spark talking about this publicly? Yeah. Um, what did, so I know it's not easy. It's not easy. It's not, it's not, it's not. And it was a lot of conversations with my wife and I, cause it stems from our own realization of where we want to be financially in a few years. And we think about our kids. My son just turned four. My daughter will be six next weekend. And so we're just thinking about just the future of things and how we view money and our relationship with money. And this all stems from our studying of the scripture and how the Bible talks about finances and how to be good stewards and really understanding where our good gifts come from.

39:43So all of that kind of start to bubble up. And I did realize like, man, there's nothing in this space for me to turn to. Like I was watching a lot of financial videos, Dave Ramsey and some other people out there. And it helped build that courage. It's like, I do need to just talk about this, rip this Band-Aid off because there's this taboo to act like, I don't say taboo. It's common to act like you have all of these toys and then you're making all this money. But in reality, I know for sure people like me who do spend these monies frivolously are in debt or dealing with debt or think debt's okay or all these things.

40:25And so I just got tired. We just got tired of being in debt. It was just like, I'm sick of it. Yeah, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of living paycheck to paycheck. I'm sick of just thinking that we might not have money if we need an emergency. I saw a stat was like, you know, I might butcher this, but like 60 or 70 % of Americans don't even have$500 set aside for emergency. I don't know what the exact stat is, but it's like. I read something similar as well. Something similar is around that percentage. Yeah. I was like, holy smokes, that's me. Right. And so it's like. I mean, reading that and thinking to yourself, that's me, it has to be a huge wake up call.

41:04Oh, massive. It was like a punch in the face. And I think about all of the jobs I had, all of the things that I was making money all my life, but I didn't have the evidence of that money. As in I had no savings, I had no investments, I had nothing to say, yeah, this is all the money I worked for. Where is it in gear? Where is it in depreciating assets? It's like, what am I actually doing? And I'm 34 and I don't want to be able to say that, you know, we have a repo come and all that stuff. Granted, we're not perfect where we are right now, but we definitely got our heads wrapped around what we need to do and the plan that we had.

41:39So we sat down, created a budget. Every single dollar that was going out of my account was accounted for. And we said, we don't need this subscription. We don't need this. We don't need that. We wanted to try to find the margin and get it down to the bare necessities first. What can we actually live off of? I was making, you know, a first year at 716, we were all making like roughly$115 ,000 a year.

42:10And I was still living paycheck to paycheck. It doesn't make sense to me living in Indiana with such low prices of where we are with food and everything. So that just lit a fire under our butt. And we were just like, well, let's just live within our means, below our means in a lot of ways. and address this behavior with money. And that changed a lot of stuff this year. This was the first year where we didn't, the first few months was hard because we had to figure out, you know, our rhythm of things. How often do we look at the budget? I was gonna ask if you can dive into a little bit of that sort of transition.

42:50Cause you know, you go from not thinking about this in terms of the benefit of having a budget and maybe not caring as much about money to being very specific on your budget and now being very conscious of where your money goes. So that switch can't happen immediately. So what is that sort of transition like? Yeah, to be really nitty gritty, it's like understanding what are your triggers to spend. That was the first thing we had to tackle because that's part of the behavior. And really understanding when to set aside money and don't touch it. And when you have that urge to touch it, that's what you had to address.

43:29And so that's what it started out the first few months. Granted, I praise the Lord for this because our first few months, we had some backlog money that was needed to be paid for us from jobs that we didn't do the previous year. And that was a nice, large chunk. So that definitely got us to start. And for me to kind of manipulate and move money around where I needed to and start pushing money a little further ahead. So we started to build our emergency fund. We started to build our three-month expenses as well. And that forced me. Also, another thing that forced me was tithe and offering. So in the church, we, you know, believe that the Lord wants us to give 10%.

44:06And that's not so much to say that we do this and we get a reward. It's more of changing, again, changing the behavior of your finances. And it creates and fosters this willingness to give. And so we were practicing that. And so once all of that came out, taxes, tithes, and then savings, we were forced to deal with what we had and be stewards of what we had. And so once—and you had to tell yourself, this is all we have. So once those bad habits creeped and you dipped into those funds, you're taking away food. You're taking away medical. You're taking away—you're forcing yourself that—you're—what's the word I'm looking for?

44:46You are, um, you're kind of, um, deterring that behavior because you're forced to live within that, that budget. And so that practice for the first three months was hard and it wasn't perfect. And building new habits at all is really hard. And so, um, one of my bad habits is I spend a lot of money on apps. Like I like games and so in-purchase apps, rackups, as soon enough, you have a hundred dollars. I was assuming if you had$200, I played, you know, I played a lot of Xbox. So I have like subscriptions that are just, you know, I can use my time more wisely doing other things. I used to say that's my outlet, but now I have a son who wants to play football with me, who wants to play cards with me.

45:31So it's like I had to reallocate my time. And so all of that kind of, all of that forced us to make that habit and to get into rhythm. And eventually, again, when I got you, and also this was a scary time for us because this was the first year that we didn't know where our finances would come from. This is the first year I'm fully freelance. Still attached to 2016, but we decided to, how 2016 worked was we would split a pot basically. Once a job hit, we would split it amongst ourselves to pay everybody's salaries. This is the first year we decided not to do that. Everybody kind of fend for themselves.

46:14When there is a big job, we will split the big job, but everything else in between is on our own. So this was the first year where I went back to being a freelancer, using YouTube as a means of finances. So getting those deals are really important for me to kind of sustain the family. And so that was a scary thing to try to be on a strict budget because you had to at this point of any funds coming in. So, once we got into the rhythm, it did get easier. And it's a lot of conversations with my wife and I. Now, she was never the one to look at a budget. Now she looks at it actively. We talk, how much do we spend?

46:53I almost became obsessed with it, not in the sense of like, I'm fearful of it, but it's like, let me create this new habit where I need to look at this budget more than once throughout the month, not just the end of the month. And I have all my tabs and my little spreadsheet, everything listed out. And plus, we had to tackle debt. We had to figure out how we're going to reallocate funds to pay down our debts. A lot of our debts are in collection now. We paid off at least$20 ,000 worth of debt already, which is also we have no - Thank you. Thank you. We have no active credit card. We don't use credit cards anymore.

47:30Everything's cash flow, cash flow in terms of debit. and so um yeah it's not you know there's so many different voices of like debt's good or debt can be working for you i for me personally debt is this evil it's always been evil to me it's always been a shackling i've been slave i've been a slave to to the to the money and i want to get out of that so right now we're working towards that and uh yeah how do you how do you think that this sort of transition between, you know, your previous versions of yourself and the financial aspect to now has sort of helped you and your wife and your relationship?

48:06Oh, yeah. Yeah. We previously, we were scraping. We were just like, where did all of our money go? And that definitely put a strain on our marriage. And I, you know, earlier on, you would, people would tell you too, like the reason for one One of the percentages for divorce is because of financial lack of finance for most cases. And that can cause divorce. And so I don't want to be, I don't like being statistics. And my wife and I, it's like, we had that. It's like, are we going to let finances pull us apart? Are we going to figure it out together? And it was that constant. And we didn't really have that turning point until this year.

48:46And we've been married for, it'll be seven years in October. October. And so, um, yeah, just to, to not let, um, lifestyle creep come about. Have you heard of that term? Lifestyle creep? I feel like I can kind of get the grasp of it, but if you don't mind defining that. Yeah. Yeah. It's essentially just you're living outside of your means. It's like I'm making$5 ,000 a month. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I make 5 ,000 a month, but I'm spending 7 ,000 out of nowhere for no, for no reason. So like living, so, so, so lifestyle creep was big for us. Um, we love to eat out. Food is always going to be a big thing.

49:23And we just had to just hunker down. Let's, I love cooking, but I, if I'm tired of editing all day or I've been causing all day, I don't want to cook. So I'm going to go buy something. Right. So it's like changing those habits. Um, and we're, we're not perfect at it. It's still up and down, but then what we do is, well, if we go out to eat, it's just going directly to our food budget. And if we don't have any more food budget and that's it. We had to say, that's it. So, um, so yeah, very much, uh, it's improved our communication. It's improved our trust because she's a big spender. She spent money when she didn't have money and that, that stressed me out.

50:00And I used to think too, like in our marriage, even though I was the, uh, even though in a marriage, you know, we share everything, everything's one-to-one I deep down felt the money that I was making is mine and so when she would go out and spend the money I would get upset because it's like you spent the money that I had saved for this that yet for our livelihood and it had to I had to come to a turning point to realize that it's our money and she has to also feel the effects of spending the money irresponsibly and it's not just me so it so it goes both ways and understanding that anything that we make comes to us together and we had to deliberate it together.

50:40It's not just on one side anymore. And so that's, that's another thing we definitely practice before. If we didn't, if we haven't done that, I think we would have definitely been in a very string, strenuous relationship, but, um, having that awareness and understand that we want to keep our, we want to, we love each other. We want to work. So let's figure out to make this work. Let's pull eagles aside. I'm not going to sit here and act like I have everything figured out. You're my partner. You're the person that's going to, I need to go to first and foremost, and let's figure out this together.

51:09So, and we're doing that. That's amazing, dude. I'd love to hear that. Yeah. I know that you, I know you have two kids and I'm curious from a parent's perspective, how do you approach sort of teaching your kids about finances? Have you guys talked about sort of the importance of educating your kids eventually on sort of your guys' struggle versus, you know, how you overcame it? Yeah. One of my current bad habit still is I I'm a collector I collect Hot Wheels and um brother brother hobbies dude I got some hobbies they're really nerdy hobbies too and my son loves it and so sometimes I and I noticed I created created this both of my kids where we'll go to like Walmart and something and their initial thought is oh we're gonna go get a Hot Wheels toy and that's the thing I unintentionally created now because they see daddy go buy a hot wheel and say, no, this is not for you.

52:04This is for daddy. And that's the, that's the, that's the thing now I'm currently trying to break right now. So in terms of learning, we're, we're figuring that out. And it's more of this conversation, making it really, really simple for them is that, you know, do you have money? Do you, can you work for this? Like having those simple conversations with them. And then now the conversation is funny is when we go to walmart it's like we're only going to go look not buy that's what they say to me unintentionally like unprompted so it's kind of funny when that happens and um or they'll see a toy it's like i need to work for this it's like there you go but it's still the idea it's like they want to buy a toy versus like let's talk about how to put this money aside they have a little piggy bank like all the money that aunts and uncles and stuff like that send, we tell them this money is to be put away.

52:53It doesn't get touched. And so, um, and I remember my dad tried to do that to me young. My dad's actually an accountant and which blows my mind that I'm so bad with money and I had an accountant in the house. And so, uh, I just laugh at all the things that I remember he taught me to do. Were you taught about finances growing up? Yeah, I was taught about finances. I just didn't, I just didn't care. I just like, well, this is my money now. You can't tell me to do with my money. I'm my own person. And then next, you know, Hey dad, can you bail me out? Hey dad, can you, Hey dad, I need you to pay for it.

53:22Like, so I, I had to mature from that too. And, um, I, I've always, I've just apologized. I was like, dad, I'm sorry, man. You tried to tell me and I didn't listen. So, um, but Hey, a love of a parent, a love of a parent is, is powerful. A true love of a parent is powerful. He'll, he'll still guide me and stuff like that. So, yeah. Yeah. I think the, one of the biggest things that I see, you know, people struggle with in the freelance space. And I think I did. And sometimes too, as well still is trying to create a budget within a career that isn't necessarily super consistent. And it's harder to do that because one month you might make 5 ,000.

54:00Next month you might make zero. The next month you might make 20. Instead of, you know, your every two week paycheck that you would get from a standard nine to five, you have to kind of create a budget based on your perceived income. yes and especially if you're fairly new in the freelance world and you don't necessarily have one two three years of sort of backlogged you know income that you could look back okay november i made five thousand this year i made four thousand the year before and you can kind of create a sort of rough estimate yeah in your experience with your wife and kind of you know in this career how have you sort of created that budget within an inconsistent sort of career yeah so yeah great question.

54:41So right now, like I said, YouTube is my nine to five. So coming into this year, it was a top priority to figure out some sort of steady income that I can account for each month, even if it's$2 ,000, even if it's anything that I can know that's going to come about monthly. I try to lock that in as quickly as possible. Granted, not everybody has an opportunity to say that with a YouTube channel. And I get that. But what I'm trying to say is if there is any sort of funds that you can try to account for on a monthly reoccurring basis, use that as a foundation and build from that. For us, it was definitely, um, oh, I just lost my train of thought.

55:24Sorry. Repeat that question again. Is this just creating a budget within like an consistent career? Yeah. Um, my, I had several goals early on to really work for was to at least have one to have money saved for at least a month ahead. And that means I had to make a lot of money that month to actually do that. So for us, for instance,$5 ,000 a month is our baseline that covers every single bit of necessity that we need, covers bills, food, rent, everything, $5 ,000 a month. That's our baseline that we need to cover. So I had to do every little odd job. granted like I said earlier we had some backlog money come in but I kept the mindset that I still needed to make at least ten thousand dollars that month so I can have one month ahead and there's no direct answer to figure out how do you make that money it depends on the market that you're in depends what you can do it might actually just you know you might have to take a nine-to-five job just to do that and then you know eventually get out of it but for me it was very much like I needed a baseline.

56:32I needed to know what number we needed to hit in order for us to start moving forward. And then eventually that budget would dwindle down a bit because we needed some things we didn't need to spend money on anymore. Like I had this one big thing that I felt was spending frivolously is our phones. So my phone bill, I have Verizon. Verizon I have a love hate relationship with them because they always incrementally add a surcharge here or there but I was spending at least$360 on our phones we have two phones and one iPad and I'm like why is that so high and I looked at it it was I was still paying the phone like you know when you do the upgrade thing they spread out the payments over two-year contract whatever that is and every time I paid$350 to or$60 to it it wasn't even moving the phone price.

57:33It was like$38 a month and they would split it up across and it was like$14. It wasn't even moving it. So I'm like, what the heck? And so I made sure I went into every single account, phone, whatever it is, to see where I can get that price down. If I'm a longtime customer, I'll negotiate, say, hey, I've been with you guys for four or five years. I don't like, is there any deals, special deals? I just straight up called them and said, is there anything to lower this bill? Because I don't know why is it so high. The phone bill, I needed to pay off the device completely. So if I had like$900 left on this device, figure out how to pay it off as fast as I can.

58:07And I did that. So none of our devices have a device fee. It's just a line now. So that helped lower the bill. So like through that time of having a baseline of a budget, still try to work at the budget to get it lower even more to get a true baseline. and that's going to help figure out your income on a flip and how much you need to make. If your goal is to just get that month done, you'll have a number now to hit to at least. Now, I'll try to overshoot that number again because I want to try to be a month ahead or at least have some money for$500 for emergency. And then eventually when I made that kind of snowball effect of getting$10 ,000 to$12 ,000 a month, I tried to build our three month savings account in case there was a down month and there was two months where I made no money but I was able to rely on that three month reserve because I just I just knew it's like I had to plan I had to plan ahead I can't sit here to think that this month is all I have I had to if I have things going on and it's a lot it's a lot for one person to do that.

59:19I do all of that. My wife doesn't do that. She takes care of the home and that's her job, her responsibility. She does it absolutely well. She takes care of the kids. And so my job is to figure out and project where income is going to come in the next one to two to three months. And it's not easy, but I'm with you. Yeah. Yeah. It's not easy. And especially if you're only trying to do, um, is, is, is cinematography your only, um, income stream? No. So I have, being a DP is my main income stream. That's where my predominant amount of income comes from. I also co-own a half ton, I co-own like a small genie company as well with someone in Philly.

59:59That to me, that is all, that's technically passive income for me. It was active income for a while. But everything, everything, the van itself paid off. I don't owe anything on the vehicle all the equipment inside the van lighting everything paid off there's not a single dollar that's owed on that business except for expenses like gas and tolls and maintenance what a great feeling that is isn't it yes big time um so that that's another stream of income uh youtube is another stream of income um what else what else what else uh sometimes the podcast is if i'm lucky every once in a while yeah yeah or something like that yeah yeah and And I am currently building another business right now that will hopefully be another sort of stream.

1:00:45And I love to hear that. Cause like, it's funny how the evolution of filmmakers is, it's not even filmmaking anymore is we're, we're entrepreneurs, right? We have this, we have our trade, but then we're, we're utilizing that trade to figure out other revenues to sustain us. I just started a rental company here in Indiana this year, just locally. And everything that I have is already paid off, paid off. So I'm, I'm making everything's profit now, right? I don't have no margins to try to hit or anything like that. And so I'm trying to utilize that. So it's like, okay, do I need to put that into our personal finances?

1:01:19Do I need to set money aside? Right now, this is the funny thing too. It's like, for me, I have an LLC and I know some people might roll their eyes. And like, at the beginning of the year, I had no idea I was going to make right now. We're sitting at$186 ,000 in a year. I had no idea I was going to make that money. So, um, so now I got to think about, okay, I need to have an S-corp because taxes are going to kick me in the butt next year. And I know that. I'm probably going to pay over probably$25 ,000 of taxes probably next year if, if I'm still on this trajectory. And so, um, so there's that to take account in an account.

1:01:50Do you do your own taxes? Do you have an accountant? I hire a CPA. My dad, my dad, I don't want to bother him too much. He's a little older. No offense, dad. Um, but, um, I'm going to hire another CPA. I did a CPA last year. I'm gonna do it again this year. And I've been, you know, I've been bookkeeping and everything like that. I took a risk on myself. I only been paying half of what I need to put aside for taxes, just because I want to be more aggressive on the debt. For me, it's hard to have savings and do this than the other. When you have the debt. Yeah. And I need to move. Yeah. I need to move a lot of that out of the way as quickly as possible.

1:02:29So I took a risk of not putting aside as much as I should for taxes. So I'm going to take that hit on the back end. And I'm going to talk to my CPA and figure out, you know, what to do with that. Um, I think having a relationship with the CPA has been one of the biggest benefits that I, I started probably four years ago or so. Nice. Prior to that, I had an accountant that, uh, I didn't really know too well. I didn't really necessarily trust. It was from a family friend. And I remember one year for tax. Well, first off, backstory, the first year, this is, I mean, some people have heard this, but I think it's, it's eyeopening a little bit.

1:03:02The first year I was ever in LLC, the first year I was ever freelance. I didn't know anything about taxes. Um, I had no idea how to save for him. And when I got my tax bill at the end of the year, I had to empty my bank account. Yeah. Completely gone. Completely gone. And from there I, you know, worked with an accountant to be able to figure that out and not realizing that that accountant wasn't actually doing his job. And I got a bill for 38,$40 ,000 I had to pay in taxes. Oh, wow. Uh, luckily, um, I ended up finding a new accountant that same year who told me that I didn't have to owe anything because that accountant had no idea what he was doing.

1:03:39Oh, wow. Okay. So my, my, the, the point of this story is, if you're going to find an accountant, I highly recommend it, but don't just live with the one that you have. If you have a great relationship with one and you find that they're actually, they care about you, they care about your business. They care about actually seeing you succeed. Fantastic. But if you feel like you're not getting attention, you feel like they're not, you know, treating you like, like they should, then that doesn't mean you have to stay with them. Find somebody that truly does. And the accountant that I currently have now has helped me tremendously.

1:04:12And over the past three years, he's helped me get my books to the point where I was able to buy a house with my wife this year. Congratulations, man. Thank you. And all of that is just because of the relationship I have and, you know, explaining my goals with them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And yeah, an accountant is definitely next to my list. Um, I use the platform called found it's sort of like your digital accountant, which has been very helpful because I just read all the articles that they have on what to look for, how to manage certain things. So I've taught myself how to do that, but now I want somebody else as a third, uh, second opinion for sure to, to be like, Hey, look out for this or look out for that.

1:04:52Um, cause I definitely want to, I need to start thinking about an S corp. Um, not to say next year is going to say, be the same trajectory, but at the same time for tax purposes and everything, are you S corp now or no? So I still do something with my account where I try to write, I usually expense a certain amount. I put a lot into my retirement account and I usually have enough to kind of cancel out to be able to owe a certain level of taxes that keep my income at a certain point where I'm not, I'm not crossing that threshold to S-Corp yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So yeah, like learning all of this, it's just, that's the next level, just kind of really wrapping your head around it and understanding that.

1:05:34But that's awesome to hear, dude. It's like, yeah, that's a whole other backstory too. It's like being freelancers, understanding how to really manage your money in all phases. I'm transitioning into a whole different mindset right now. Like, you know, I bought the Venice and I bought the, you know, my cinema lenses that I have. And to be honest, I'm looking to get rid of them. Not the Venice, but I'm looking to get rid of the lenses and some other things just because I want to reduce the overhead that I have. I just want to simplify my life a little bit. What does that look like? Like simplifying?

1:06:07Simplifying means just reducing the amount of stuff that I have. Also, some of the stuff that I have to pay for that I haven't paid off yet. And trying to reduce sort of my general expenses. I don't have that much debt at all besides my camera, my lenses, and a couple other really small things that I usually pay off every single month in terms of credit card. But it is important for me to try to minimize all of those things to reduce that overhead and just sort of live a little bit more in peace. I think that's really what I'm searching for when it comes to finances is just where can I start to find more peace?

1:06:45Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, finance is, especially in today's climate, our industry is all over the place. People are just losing jobs here and there or just not sustaining jobs. So I know it can be very daunting for a lot of people. It's daunting for me just figuring out what to do with this year. So I'm hoping from what we're talking about, people will hear this and kind of just figure out things. That's the real reason why, too, I'm so open about it. to getting back to your question you had like 40 minutes ago. It's just, it's somebody, somebody needs to, somebody needs to say it. And it's just, you know, I, one of the, one of the principles and, and Proverbs is, you know, not even Proverbs, but it's like the, the, the parable of the talents when, when the rich, when a master goes out and gives a talent to each one of their, his workers and each one does something slightly different with it.

1:07:45one hides it and doesn't even touch it the other one goes out and invests it and doubles it the other one saves it and still does it still and i don't want to be that third one who's just who goes and hides it or just wastes the time and needs to be active and needs to do something but i do need to clear off of debt i don't want to owe anything and so in that mindset and working towards my goal because i want to be able to give i want to be able to give freely without any hesitation um and and uh be a blessing to someone else and we've done that this year which has been amazing to say is like, how does it, how's it that we still owe a hundred and right now we owe $150 ,000 of debt.

1:08:21Um, and we're able to pay for my, my mother-in-law's, um, uh, medical, uh, bills and be okay still. It's like, that's a blessing in itself. So there's, so there's, there's something there where giving freely does change your perspective, change your habits. and so um of course think about your family first think about your own livelihood first but then be able to help somebody else if you can and that's where that's my goal that's that's where i will find peace i guess you will say um with my finances because uh it's yeah that's what we're called to do i believe amazing my kids my kids are outside my door i got one last question for you that's cool oh you're good you're good you're good yeah um how is your evolution of what you determined success to be?

1:09:08Like as, as you came up, what was your definition of success and how has that changed? Um, I guess before my younger self, it was to be recognized. YouTube is a little narcissistic anyway in that vein, because we, you know, we were in front of the camera. Hey, listen to me. I kind of grew up as a middle child anyway. So I had that complex anyways. Like I don't, my voice isn't heard. And so success for me in the beginning was like, oh, I can have a voice and people can actually hear me without interruption. I mean, no matter what they're doing, how they're watching it, they have that one-to-one opportunity to hear me talk and share my ideas.

1:09:45Very narcissistic of us. But for me now, I'm still freaking out loud, to be honest. Success comes in many ways. I guess right now, I guess the most immediate need, success, is my family okay? I love my wife. I love my kids as much as I work and take long nights. And sometimes I sacrifice my time with them to make sure that they're okay and they're safe. That is where I'm putting my everything into is making sure that they're okay, if anything does come up. And so with that goal in mind, like I've been saying, it does change the habits. I had to really look at myself and see how am I spending my time.

1:10:31man I have that urge to sit down play xbox for two hours right or or do what I need to do for xyz but I have to be weary of my time spend the time um with the lord spend the time with my wife and then the kids and everything will follow after that that's how I measure success if they can be free and run around in the grass barefoot like that that that's that's awesome to see they have no worry they have no care they're not seeing us stress and so right now that's success for me career wise um just continue to make good work um continue to i'm still striving to make that piece of work that really has my voice and my fingerprint on it still not there yet um because where i am right now is very much a team effort and um voice of the collective of sunny 16 is what's what's dominating the work that i do um but the opportunity will come where i'll get to put my stamp on something and say that I did it to my best of my abilities.

1:11:31And I'm very confident I could do it. I'm just waiting for the opportunity. Sometimes I might even need to make that opportunity, but right now it's not the time. So yeah, I don't have a definite answer, but other than my family and the health of my family and the safety of them is really what success is, the success I hinge on right now. Amazing. I'd love to hear it too. Thank you so much for being here. Oh, thank you for having me, man. It was a pleasure. Absolutely. Where can people find you? Where can people watch you? Please share whatever you got. Uh, yes. Cine dailies is my YouTube channel.

1:12:02Currently, uh, is C I N E D A I L I E S. And, uh, it should be like that across all platforms. Exactly that way. Um, and eventually I will be starting speaking of other YouTube channels adventures. I'm starting two more channels. If you weren't busy enough. Yeah, I know. Right. But one with my wife and I, we're going to start podcast and then um um a financial personal finance channel that's what i'm working on yeah so that's that's exciting dude i'm really excited to see that for you no appreciate it man again thank you so much this was an honor and thank you yeah i got all my nerves out so hopefully we're not you're good um but thanks man really appreciate being here yeah Thanks for having me.

1:12:46All right, everyone. Hopefully you enjoyed today's episode. Peace out.