Bank Accounts for Content Creators: The Setup That Stops Money Leaks

Hey, have you ever had a payout hit and you felt rich? Well, for about 12 minutes.You know when Stripe pays you and PayPal pays you, that AdSense drips in and that brand deal lands, and for a second you're thinking, okay, we're good. But then life happens. That Adobe account renews, the editor sends you that invoice you've been dreading.You buy a lens off for the channel, a chargeback hits, a refund hits, and suddenly you're looking at your account like, where did all the money go? Friend, let me tell you right now, your money isn't disappearing. It's just living in a setup that was never built for creator income.So today, I'm going to show you a simple creator bank setup that makes payouts clear, taxes automatic, and spending decisions common. Hey, we can all use some comm.But before we go any further, if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, ralph, I. I need this fixed, like, right now. I don't want to guess anymore. I've got you covered. Go to content creators, accountant.com help me. It's really that simple.Content creators, accountant.com help Me. That's the fastest way to get personal help from me based on your exact setup.We'll talk about your payouts, we'll talk about your platforms, even your state and your tax situation. It's not about shame, it's not about judgments. It's just about clarity. All right, well, now let's build your system.

Every knowing the reasons why I got a vision and a voice they can't ignore Every beat I drive just opens the door yeah I'm rising, climbing flipping the seed break the chain, shite the dream I'm a creator a creator on fire.

Hey, I'm Ralph Estep Jr. I'm a licensed accountant with 30 years of experience. And I'm a working creator as well. So I don't just teach a finance class.I translate this kind of stuff into creator language. So you can build a creator business that actually lasts for the long term.And if you want a business that feels steady even when income is not, let's be honest, Creator income is not always steady. You're in the right place today. Let me tell you what's really going on here. Creators don't have one paycheck.They've got money coming from everywhere. The stripe looks one way. PayPal looks and feels completely different.AdSense is always late, but it's confident when you get it that affiliate income has returns, brand deals have deposits, some payouts put on holds, and you got fees you didn't even think or forgot about so you could be making money and still feel broke. Because the problem isn't the income. The problem is the containers. The problem is the flow of that income.And when your money has no structure, your brain has to be the structure. And your brain is already doing a million things a day.It's posting content, it's doing editing, it's talking to those clients, it's coming up with creative ideas, and it's building those thumbnails. It can't also be your banking system. Let me give you a real clear moment. Crater told me not too long ago, ralph, I made eight grand last month.But guess what? I still feel stressed. And it wasn't because they were reckless and they certainly weren't lazy. And these were busting their butts to get somewhere.But the problem was the money was everywhere. It was coming from all directions. Like I said, some was in PayPal, some was in Stripe, some was hitting their personal account.We've talked about that a lot. And some was still sitting in a platform balance that was just out there. They haven't grabbed it yet.And every time they spent, they were spending money. They weren't sure what they were doing about it, and they weren't spending with confidence. See, that's the part nobody talks about.A messy setup turns every purchase into these kind of questions. If you don't have a clean setup, you start to think, can I really afford this? Can I buy this microphone? Can I buy this camera?You start to think, should I buy this? If you're really thinking about it, you start wondering, am I spending my tax money? Am I spending my rent money? Is this even business money at all?And you could think, well, you know, I just gotta hustle more. But the fix isn't in the hustle. The fix is a system that actually tells you the truth. So let's start with a quick test today.Just the answer, yes or no to these questions. If you're listening to this on audio, you should know we release these on video on YouTube as well.So if you'd like to play along with this, feel free to leave your answers right in the comments of the video. Here's the first question. Do you have a business bank account that is not connected to your personal life? See, we got to start there.I've talked about this in the last few shows. This is one of the big places where the system breaks from the beginning. So answer yes or no. Like I said, post it right in the Comments?Do you have a business bank account that is not connected to your personal life? That's question number one. Here's question number two. Do your payouts go straight to your bank instead of sitting inside PayPal or Stripe?Now, what I'm talking about there is when PayPal or Stripe pays you, do you have it sitting on that platform? Just answer yes or no. Here's the next question. Do you move tax money the same day a payout hits? See, that one's going to.We're going to talk about that a little bit later. But that one is so critical. And here's another question. Can you tell me in 10 seconds what is safe to spend in your account?I want to open your eyes a little bit, won't it? And the final question. Are your business subscriptions paid from business or are they mixed in with your personal?See, we want to have them clean and consistent. Now, listen to me. If you said no to two or more of those, I want to tell you right now, I want to reassure you, you're not bad with money.You're in creator chaos. A lot of us live there. And the fix is not to try harder. The fix is to have a better setup from the beginning.So let me say something that may save you this year. Your bank balance is not a permission slip. It's not some green light.A lot of people think, well, if I've got money in a bank, listen, I deal with business clients every day. They'll say to me, ralph, I got money in the bank. I must be doing well.They think it's a green light, but it's not a green light, especially for content creators. It's a dashboard because the balance includes money you don't get to keep. It includes money for taxes, money for subscriptions.That editor invoice, we talked about those software renewals. And hey, if you're really paying attention, maybe quarterly tax payments, maybe you talk about that on another show.So when a creator says, I had money, then it vanished. And I hear that all the time, most of the time it didn't vanish. It was never available at the front end because the system was broken.See, your goal is to know what is safe to spend without living in regret. And a bank setup is the first step to think here. Here's the one thing you need to understand.And I want to say this, I want to shout this from the mountaintops. PayPal and Stripe are not your bank. See, a lot of people say to me, ralph, I don't need a separate bank account because I got a PayPal account.I've got a Stripe account. They're not, they're not banks, they're payment processors. They're not designed to hold your money long term.Although a lot of content creators leave their money there. They're not designed to make taxes EAs. They're not designed to give you with your finances. That's where your bank account becomes your home base.And when you use it right, everything flows through that home base, through that bank account for the business. Everything gets categorized from it and everything becomes trackable from it. See, that's the goal.The goal, big picture, 30,000 foot view, is clarity. So here's the simple creator setup that I recommend to every person I work with. I'm going to give it to you right now.You don't need 10 accounts, you don't need something complicated. Listen, you just need two accounts. I believe that's the minimum that changes everything. Let's start with the first one.Your first account is your business checking account. This is what I'll call your landing pad. All your income needs to land here and all your business expenses need to get paid here. That's the first one.The second one is going to keep you out of trouble with the IRS later. And that's your tax savings account. I call this your IRS seat belt. You lock it in. See, this is where you move your tax money every time you get paid.Yes, you heard me right. Every time you get paid, you move that money from your operating checking account to your tax account.And listen, if you want to level it up even later, we can add more. But don't start fancy, start functional. So let's move on to three levels of creator bank setups so you can stop guessing and listen.Feel free to tell me what level you're writing right in the comments as you're listening to this. Here's my first level. This is what I call the starter creator. This is a person that's building. The income is uneven.Listen, I know people that are well into this content creator and their income is still uneven. But this is the starter creator you're building. Your income is uneven and you're proving the model.So I think for you, you got to start with two accounts. A business checking account and a tax savings account. But you're saying, ralph, wait a minute, I'm just getting started.I'm not really making any money. That's okay. Set up those two accounts. That's it. Let's move on to level two.What I call the growing creator money is starting to be consistent now you've got PayPal every month, you've got Stripe, maybe you've got some AdSense, you've got some affiliate income, maybe you've got some brand deals. But here's the other side of that. Your subscriptions are stacking up. You've got gear upgrades that are happening and you're traveling sometimes.Here's where you need to add a third bucket or what I'll call your third account. We'll call that the third bucket. So we already said business, checking account, tax account, but here I'm going to add a third bucket.I'm going to call this your gear and annual bills bucket. This is where you put your future expenses so we can put them aside for later.Because this way, so many content creators say to me, ralph, I wasn't planning for this. This is where you can plan for that. You know what these big expenses are going to be? Maybe you've got software that renews once a year.These are not just monthly expenses. These are those big expenses. So they aren't surprises anymore. So that's level two. Here's level three.And this is what everybody in the content creator field is aspiring to. They want to be that full time creator. This is where it's a real business now. Now that contradicts what I've said in other shows, right?This is what but I'm talking about, this is your main source of income. You don't have another nine to five. This is it. You've got multiple revenue streams. Maybe you've got contractors, you're spending money on ads.And hey, maybe you've, you've taken that s election and you're doing payroll. Here's where you need to add one more layer, what I call the buffer. Because the biggest threat at this level is the great month broke month cycle.We talked about that a little bit in last week's show. It's the buffer that breaks that pattern of that feast or famine, that great month versus broke month.So if you're just listening to me right now and you're just getting started, start at level one. You don't need to jump in to one of these other levels, but you earn your way to level two and then you build to level three.But now I want to share with you my 48 hour creator money rule. Because we talked about the banking system, but this is what makes it actionable. I call this the 48 hour rule.So if you're taking notes, get ready to write this down. Every time you get paid, you handle that payout within 48 hours. Not someday, not when I catch up within 48 hours. Kind of like that show the first 48.This is what you're going to do with your money. Here's the flow. Step one, your payout hits your business checking account.So when you see something post to stripe, you got 48 hours to move it from there to your business bank account. Same thing with PayPal, same thing with those brand deals with AdSense and any affiliate income. Don't leave it on the platform.In 48 hours, move it to your business checking account. That's when you're going to start to realize it. So that's step one. Step two is this. Move the taxes immediately. I even say same day, if possible.Maybe in the same transaction, you move the money from the platform to your business checking account. And then you say, okay, here's how much I just moved, here's how much I need to put in the tax account.Maybe it's 15%, maybe it's 20%, maybe it's 25%. It depends on your income level. But that's step two. Move those taxes immediately because that's not money you can spend.Step three is then decide what's safe to spend after taxes.Here's what I can spend, here's what's left in the account that I could spend for subscriptions, or I can spend for travel, or I can spend for some advertisement or some gear. And then step four, and this is the part a lot of content creators miss, pay yourself intentionally.Pay yourself first, even not randomly, not whenever the personal account gets low, because a lot of content creators don't think about it this way.When that money hits your business bank account, you've got to carve out the percentage of it that is yours to take away because why are you doing this? You're doing this to pay your bills. Listen, you don't want to miss that rent payment. You don't want to miss that mortgage payment or that car note.So whenever that money gets in your business account, take the taxes out, take the buffer money out, and then move it to yourself and pay yourself intentionally, because it turns that payout into a habit and it reduces that creator money stress that so many of us live in. Well, now let's move on to my 5 minute payout day ritual so you can see exactly how we do this. We talked about 48 hours.It's not going to take you 48 hours to do this. It's just five minutes. I want to make this easy for you.Every payout day, you do this five minute ritual, as I said before, number one, transfer that tax money, then look at what bills are coming this week. Take a look and say, okay, here's what's coming this week. On Monday, I've got this. On Wednesday, I've got this. My order.My editor wants to get paid on Friday. You need to make sure you've got those things set up.And then once you figure that out, once you've moved the tax money, you know what bills are coming, then you decide that safe spend number, and then you decide how much to pay yourself and leave a little buffer in there. You don't want to take all the money out of the business account because things happen sometimes you weren't expecting.Maybe you've got that subscription you thought about.But if you do that every single time you get paid, like I said, it takes five minutes, your money stops feeling like drama because now your money has a plan. And see, that's the thing. So let's make this real. I'm going to talk about some real life scenarios of people that I work with. Here's the first one.Stripe payout. You see a payout hit your stripe account for $2,000. Hey, this is great. I'm feeling good making money with this.But what's hit your bank account is not $2,000, as we kind of talked about this last week, because they take their fees. So let's say Your deposit is $1,940. That's what actually got moved from stripe to your business bank account, 1940.Well, now we're going to apply that tax rule. So let's say for our example, easy math. They say don't ever do math on a podcast, but we're going to do it anyway.We're going to take 20% of that $1940. So we're going to take three. I did the math. So I did the calculation for you.We're going to take $388 and we're going to take it out of that business checking account and we're moving it directly over to that tax savings account. So now all of a sudden your business money is that 1940. That's what came down from stripe, minus the 388. Again, I'm doing the math for you.It equals 1552 dollars. So now you've got two accounts. You've got 388 dollars in the tax account, and you got 150052 dollars in your checking account. Well, guess what?That's what you can safely spend. And now you're not going to have tax trauma at April 15th. But see, here's the problem.Most creators spend like they just made two grand because they don't think about the fees. They don't think about the taxes.And that's why April feels like you're getting hit in the head with a rubber mallet, because you haven't planned for that. Let's talk about another one. This is what I call the PayPal payout with chaos. Let's talk about shift a little bit. PayPal pays you $850.But then you got to realize something. PayPal's going to take a fee. PayPal is going to hold some of your money and, and they mix the transfers. It is a mess.It looks like spaghetti on steroids. But here's the move. Stop leaving the money in PayPal. Here's one of the things you can do with PayPal.You can set up what's called a sweep to your business bank account on a schedule. You can say daily, weekly, whatever that looks like for you. I think at least doing it weekly is the way to go.Because if PayPal's holding your money, your numbers are never going to match when you try to figure this out. And when your numbers don't match, you stop trusting your own business. That's not a good thing.So set up those automatic sweeps, whether it be daily or weekly. And then live from your business checking account. Not what PayPal's telling you. Let's talk about brand deal month.Let's say you're doing really good and you've got a brand deal that hits for five grand. You think, hey, this is great. It's gear upgrade time. Hold on. This is what I want you to hear right now. That $5,000 is not all yours.Well, at least not all of it. Because if you're self employed, or maybe you're not self employed, but you still got to pay taxes on this.And if you're doing well, guess what, we talked about this earlier. You may have to make those quarterly IRS payments. Hey, your account is going to be on you about this.So use that same 48 hour rule and that five minute payout. The payout hits your checking account, then taxes move immediately, let's say 25% for a big month. So we got that $5,000. We multiply that by 25%.Again, I'm doing the math for you. That's $1,250. So the safe money is not five grand. Now it's 3,007 50 because you already put 1250 over into the tax account.But now you start thinking, wait a minute. But Ralph said something else. He said, what are my expenses for this week? And you start to think, I've already got some expenses coming out.My editor's got to get paid. I've got some software renewals. Hey, I'm going to PodFest. I need to make sure I've set some money aside for that.And I'm thinking about doing some ads. See, that's why putting up these separate accounts changes your life.Because now that taxes isn't an issue, it removes the fantasy of it and replace it with calm.So if any of these examples hit close to home, I wanted to ask you to do me a favor, share your experience in the comments, because let's talk about what you're doing and what's working for you. It's great for me to tell you what to do, but I would love to hear from fellow content creators who are out there in the trenches doing it.Now, you're probably thinking, where am I coming up with these tax percentages? Probably thinking, ralph, you are all over the place. You said 15%. Then you said 25%. Well, I want to give you some quick guidance.And let me start by saying I am not giving you tax advice. If you want to set up a call with me, I talked about that earlier. Content creators, accountant, slash, help me.Content creators, accountant, slash, help me. Then I can help you on your specific situation. But let's talk general things. We're not about perfection. We're talking about a starting point.If you're just starting and your profit is small, that's where you can probably use 15% for that tax percentage. Again, that's at the low end. That's when I feel safe.If you're just getting started, if you're in that level two that we talked about and you're consistently profitable. Now, when I say profitable, I'm not talking about what's coming into the top. I'm not talking about what came in.I'm talking about what's left over after your expenses. That's what we call real income, or accounting jargon. That is your net income.If it's consistent and you're profitable, maybe you need to push that up to 20%. Again, we started at 15. Now we went to 20.Now, if you're having big months, you got brand deals, and, you know, you can just picture somebody like me when you get to April and they say, hey, guess what, Joe, you owe 30% of what you made. You're like, ouch. That hurts. Well, that's when you might want to start looking at 25 or 30% again. We went from 15 now to 30.Like, wait a minute, Ralph, you just doubled it. Yes, because your income is growing. But listen, pick a number you can live with.The goal is to be consistent, and you're never going to be perfect at this. Now, while we're talking about managing your money, let's talk about a trap that I see so many creators fall into.And this one is going to sting a little bit because I actually think this is a big one for me, too. Subscriptions. So many of us have these subscriptions that quietly eat at our profit. I'm just going to list a couple.We got Adobe, we've got Canva, we've got Descript, we've got Epidemic Sound. Maybe you got Tubebuddy. Kajabi Notion. I could start rattling this off real quick. Cap cut and then Google Drive.And it'll feel like they're a big deal because it's only $5 here, $15 there, $30 there. But guess what? When we stack those together, that can be hundreds of dollars a month. You heard me right. Hundreds of dollars a month.So here's a quick win for you today. Here's what I want you to do. Open your bank account. Now, I'm assuming you've taken my advice and you set up that separate.Separate business account or using a separate credit card. I haven't talked about that a lot, but you could do this on a separate credit card as well.And I want you to just search for those things we talked about. Search for Adobe, search for Canva. And here you want to make yourself cry a little bit.Count how many tools that you're paying for and list those all out. And then once you do that, ask yourself, how many of these am I actually using? I've worked with creators at 14, 20, 20.I had one lady, I think I talked about this a couple weeks ago, had 24 subscriptions when we got her. The hood looked at it. Most of those, she wasn't used anymore.She saved hundreds of dollars a month just by doing what we would call fancy accounting term. She audited her subscriptions. That one move can create an instant raise in your life. Now, I know you might be thinking about something else.Somebody sent me a quick message. They said, ralph, you're talking about bank accounts. What about debit cards versus credit cards? So let's go there right now.Here's a quick note about this. If you're a creator, I know you buy gear And I know you return stuff. And guess what?If you've been doing this for a while, people are going to do chargebacks on you. Here's the problem with using a debit card. I don't personally love debit cards. I do another show where I talk about daily financial things.I don't think debit cards are the right for people. Now, that said, if you're not good with a credit card, maybe a debit card is better for you. But here's what I recommend.A dedicated business credit card, because it helps you keep tracking going and it keeps things separate. Now, listen, only do that if you've got some regimen and you pay it off monthly. Because what I don't want to do is put you into a debt cycle.The goal is not to create debt. The goal is to have clean records and clean categories.Now, the reason I really like credit cards is because the money doesn't come out of your account right away.If somebody pulls some kind of scam on you or if your car gets compromised, it doesn't impact your ability to pay your rent, pay your mortgage, feed your family. It allows you to do a chargeback. And you can, you can dispute those charges. But here's the thing I love about a business credit card.You notice I said business credit card. Now you might say, ralph, I'm just getting started. I can't even qualify for a business credit card. That's okay. You can use a personal credit card.But here's my caveat to that. Make sure that that credit card, even if it's a personal credit card, I only use this for business. I've got many clients that have two credit cards.One is for business, one is for personal. I'm cool with that. Because it is hard sometimes, as you're first getting started, to set up that business credit card relationship.So I'm cool with you using a personal one, as long as you say to yourself, this is my personal credit card. This is my business credit card. But the reason I really love those is they're great for tracking. It's so easy.And listen, a lot of credit card companies will actually send you an itemized receipt or an itemized monthly statement that breaks it all down by category, which I love that. So it's great for tracking and it's great for safety. Now, let's talk about the elephant in the room.A lot of content creators are online folks, right? So you're asking me, Ralph, wait a minute. Should I be of an online bank or a local bank? I've got the creator answer. Online banks are great.If you're doing most things digital and most of us are like we talked about, we don't have a lot of people sending us cash. Now, who sends cash in the mail anyway? But if you don't have cash deposits, you want to be able to transfer money fast and you want some clean apps.That's where online banks are great. Do your due diligence, make sure if in the US make sure they have FDIC insurance or if it's a credit union, make sure they have NCUA regulations.Those online banks are great. There are some great options out there. To be honest with you, in my accounting practice, I haven't stepped foot.Now I actually use a credit union, but I haven't stepped foot in my credit union for years because everything is done electronically. Even when people write me a check and yes, there are people out there still writing checks, I take a picture of that or I key that information in.So that's great for online. Now if you handle a lot of cash, let's say that you're a creator that does stuff where you're getting paid cash.Maybe you're selling swag, you're selling merchandise and people are paying for that with cash. That's where you might want a local bank relationship that might be a good fit for you.Or let's say you want to build a relationship for lending later. Maybe you're looking at an option to build something bigger. That's when you might want to have that local relationship.Now I'm going to tell you what I have noticed. Online banks are doing lending as well. So I don't want you to think it's an all or nothing game.Either one of these can work, but pick the one that matches how you operate. Now let's talk about how to pick a bank. You know, we're getting pretty deep today, but I thought this was such an important thing to talk about.Don't pick the bank based on the logo.A lot of people say, oh, I picked this bank because man, they got a fancy logo, they got a cool flashy website and not based on what someone else flex. Don't just say, well, all the content creators use this bank. Pick it based on the reality of what it is on the ground.Here's the questions I would be asking. Do they offer fast transfers? Can you easily transfer money between checking and tax savings?Believe it or not, there are some online banks out there that make it really hard. But there are others, man, you can have multiple accounts. It's super simple.So if that's important to you, and you heard me say today, I want you to have those two accounts at a minimum. So as you're looking for a bank, make sure it's easy to set up a checking account and a tax savings account.And listen, you want to make sure you can go onto their app and transfer money really easily. So that's first thing. Second thing, low fees.If you're dealing with a bank that charges fees, make sure that either you can have a minimum balance or make sure they're easy to wait. But understand the fees because yes, you can eat yourself up in banking fees. Here's the third thing I'd look at.Are there clean ways to export your information? Because if you have a messy export, you're going to have messy books. What am I really talking about here?If you use QuickBooks online, if you use Wave, and we're going to be talking about some of those products here in the next couple of weeks. Some great apps out there, but you need to make sure that they can connect to your bank account.Some of the online banks, some of the older local banks still don't have great connections with your online apps. And if we're trying to make sure that we have clean books, we got to make sure those connections work. Here's another one.Check to see if they've got an excellent mobile app because the truth is if you're not going into the bank, you're going to live on that mobile app. So make sure you can run your business from your phone. And last but not least, make sure they support the answer your questions.You can't have a bank that you got to go out there and wait two weeks for a reply. Here's what I recommend you do when you're shopping for a bank. Go to their website.Click on that little chat now and see how long it takes for somebody to get back to you. Ask them questions pry, ask them how their, how their bank works, what are their services, all those things.It's okay to kick the tires a little bit and make sure you do the right thing. With all this said, let's move into some rapid fire creator frequently asked questions. These are going to be quick answers and quick answers.Here's the first one. Do I need an LLC first? We're talking about banking today, but somebody reached out to me and said, ralph, wait a minute.Before I set up a bank account, don't I need an LLC first? No, what you need is a separate business account. It may very well be a personal account.But you put your business name on that, or you just know, listen, this is my business account. This is my personal account. It can live in the same place, but make sure you're putting that and delineating that separately.Here's another question I got. Do I need a business account if I'm small? Yes. Because you want to be able to segregate that stuff.You want to be able to measure that stuff, and you want to be able to keep it separately. You don't want messiness. Here's when I got. Somebody said this to me on LinkedIn. They said, Can PayPal be my bank? No, PayPal is not a bank.PayPal is a payment processing platform. They're not intended to be your bank. Now, I will say this. I noticed this the other day as we were preparing for this.PayPal does have a bank that you can subscribe to. I don't have all the specifics on it, but PayPal by its general nature is not a bank. Here's another question. What if I only get paid once a month?Fantastic. You got 48 hours once a month to do the ritual. Then five minutes, 48 hours after your money hits.And if you only get paid once a month, hey, that's bonus for you. It's not that complicated to do it. Here's another question I got. What if my spouse helps me with money? Spouses help with money. Great.You still got to keep your business and personal separate because that clarity is going to protect those relationships. And here's where I would love you to comment. I would love to hear what you've experienced in these areas as well.So share your ideas right in the comments. I respond and review every single comment. Don't be surprised.It might be two o' clock in the morning when you get a response from me, but we look at the comments and I respond to every single one of those personally. Well, now let's talk about the biggest mistake creators make with banking, because we talked about what we should do with banking.But let's talk about some real mistakes, because I'm not saying these because I read them in a book. I'm saying these because I've cleaned them up for real creators. Here's mistake number one again, using personal checking for now.I hear this all the time. I work with a creator who ran everything through one account. You're probably thinking I'm a broken record every week. Ralph, you talk about this.That's because it's so important and the IRS is looking at this. But this creator ran everything through one account. Their personal Bills, their business tools, their Amazon orders, gas for their car and gear.And when we went to do their books, when we went to do the tax return at the end of the year, every transaction became a question. And I remember sitting across the desk from this person, was this for content? Well, I don't know, Ralph. That was last February. That's a problem.Or was this groceries? Was this a business expense? Was this a personal thing? And these folks weren't bad with money. They were just tired of trying to guess.It was kind of like they were blindfolded. They're pointing, which one is business, one is personal. So that very day, I helped them.We went right onto my computer and we opened up a separate business checking account. And as soon as we did that, the stress dropped because the business finally had that home base of its own.Here's mistake number two, and I've talked about this one a couple of times. You're starting to say, ralph, I get it. Leaving money in PayPal and Stripe.I had a creator tell me this, Ralph, my bank says I got 1200 bucks, but PayPal shows 900 and Stripe shows 1100. And they were asking the real question, which one of these is real? Ralph, they didn't know because they got too many platforms. Here's what happened.Money was sitting in the platforms. Some payouts were pending, some were held, some already had fees taken out. So none of the numbers matched. They had no clue what they actually had.So what do we do? We set payouts to sweep automatically to the business account. That's what we did.We set it up so that when they looked at the business account, their books matched, the brain calmed down and they stopped checking five different apps like it was a part time job. Because you can make a part time job out of this. Those dashboards are cool and fancy, but it doesn't need to be a second job for you.Here's another mistake. No tax account. And this one is the most common mistake I see creators doing. I work with a creator who had the best year ever.I'm talking about they were making money like it was going out of style. Great brand deals, steady affiliate income. They were building affiliate. Listen, I'm being a little bit honest with you.I thought their affiliate income was awesome. They had adsense growing. And they said to me, ralph, I feel like we finally made it, but getting it. What?They reached out to me because they said, tax time hit. And they said, I thought I was doing well. Why did this feel like I was getting punished? And here's the reason.And this is why I stress this so much today. Because taxes weren't set aside, they were being spent.So all year long as they were having that great year, they were buying gear, they were traveling, they were doing this, they were doing that, but they hadn't set any money aside for taxes. So what do we do for them? We opened up a tax savings account and we picked a simple percentage.We looked at their tax return, we said, this is the percentage you need to take. And we said that. We took the 48 hour rule and we took that five minute rule and we said, we're going to take an automatic transfer every time.And the next time the taxes came around, they didn't panic. Guess what? They had actually put too much in it. It was like bonus day. But the money was already there waiting for them.Here's mistake number four, paying personal life from business. And this one is sneaky. I work with a creator who would, we'll call this word, borrow from the business.When life got tight, when they needed the mortgage or the groceries or the kids needed stuff, or I'm just debt scrolling, I decided to buy something on Amazon.They would hit the business bank account and they would always say to themselves, you know, I'll pay it back when the next payout hits, but let's be honest with ourselves, we're not really going to do that, are we? And then every payout becomes a rescue mission to solve another problem.And that the problem with that is the business never feels stable because it's constantly being drained by a hundred little cuts. So we did something simple. And I talked about this earlier, we set a pay yourself day. Same rhythm, same routine.Just like everybody else in the world, they set themselves up as a payroll. We separated the money on purpose.And that one move, let me tell you right now, it changed their whole dynamic of their business and it stopped the financial whiplash. Here's mistake number five. No routine, no rule, just vibes. Content creators, we feel the vibe, don't we? This is, I'm busy all the time, Ralph.I don't have time for this. I remember I had a creator with good income, but this creator had no monthly rhythm. They checked the money when they felt anxious.And see, when you check your money, when you feel anxious, always reacting. If you're always anxious when you're checking your money, you're not leading your business. I gave them that one rule, the 48 hour payout rule.Every payout gets processed, the taxes get moved, the bills check. We're looking at what we can do. This week and then we build that safe spend decision. And after a few weeks, that's what they told me.They said, ralph, for the first time, I feel like I'm running my business instead of my business running me. All that we talked about today, that's the difference. See, a creator with a system can grow. A creator with vibes is like pod fade.You're going to burn out. And if you don't have those systems, they don't scale. So here's your plan for today. I'm going to give you something really simple today.This is what I want you to do. It'll take you 10 to 15 minutes. If you don't already have a separate business checking account, do that.Second step, open that tax savings and internal and automatic payouts from Stripe and PayPal so that money goes out of those platforms and right to your bank. It's going to take you 10 minutes. Then I want you to do this this week. Start looking at that tax percentage.Pull out your tax return, look at what your tax percentage is.Like I said, you can reach out to me, talk to your tax accountant and set up that automatic transfer rule based on that percentage that you come up with.And then move those business descriptions to the business account because a lot of people are still paying for stuff on the personal card, on the personal credit card. This is a great time to find those things and put those on the business account.Like I said, if you want to set up a separate credit card or use a separate credit card and just call that business and start that payout day ritual. Because creator money gets easier when the system is boring, when it just set and kind of do it itself.That's when it becomes a really viable solution for you. Because, friend, this isn't about banks. You probably said, why. I tuned into this day because I wanted to hear about banks.But what do we really get into? We talked about building a business that doesn't feel like chaos.I was interviewed on a show the other day and they said, what's the biggest problem that you see? Content creators. I said, they live in chaos because they don't have any structure.So if I can help them do this and if I can help you do this, when your money has structure, your content creates easier to create because you're not stressed about that all the time. You can be creative. You're not worrying about that tax fear.April 15 and I said earlier, if you want personal help from me based on your exact situation for your business, go to content creatorsaccountant.com helpme again. That's content creators accountant.com helpme.And if this episode hits you, I want you to subscribe because we're trying to build a creator business that lasts and help you get ahead in this thing. All right? Go get your money out of chaos and get it into a system again.I'm Ralph Estep Jr. And I am the Content Creators Accountant, and I'll see you next time.