Tips for New Business Owners for 2026

Today we'll be discussing tips for new business owners for 2026. Hello and welcome to Money Talks. My name is Ken Wink from Summit Financial Consulting. If you'd like more info about what you hear during our show today, please give us a call 586-226-2100 or you can visit us online at summitfc.net. While you're at the website, be sure to check out the podcast page. You can check out our past shows. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Amazon Music. So if you're starting a business from scratch or maybe just within the last year you opened a business, it can feel really overwhelming. In most cases, you're in charge of marketing, sales, distribution, bookkeeping, all the banking, you know, the list goes on. So today we're just trying to give you sort of a cheat sheet to possibly make your life a bit easier when it comes to business planning and some tax tips. But before we jump into this topic, let me introduce my co-host, Tony Shore. Tony, I feel like we have so much to talk about here. I got new headphones, which in the podcasting world is a big deal. I also got to see you in real life in Arizona at the greeting event, which was great to see you in person and celebrate all of our great podcasts we've done almost. We're creeping up on a year here, Tony. We're at 11 months, so... Lots to celebrate.

There is. There is. And it was good to see you in person, Ken. You and your wife. It is amazing. Every year they have the Gradient Summit, which is a huge financial conference. There were over 500 people at the conference this year. I think that's maybe a record number. This year, tied for the biggest year ever. And really it's hundreds of the top advisors from all over the country, great financial minds, advisors, Wall Street folks. And it's really great that they can get together, brainstorm, talk about changes. And of course you were there. And I think that's great. I was there checking it out. They had me doing some announcements between events. So That was fun. My voice is still recovering, but they had a lot of great speakers. One of my favorites was John Taffer, the guy who hosts Bar Rescue, that TV show. And he's a consultant for a lot of different companies, and he's turned so many businesses around. I think his track record for failing businesses is... he will go into a business that's failing, not just for the TV show, but people hire him to do this. If your business is failing, he can come in and turn it around in his record. 78% of all failing businesses he's ever worked with have ended up being extremely successful after after he gets done with them. And I love it. He, you can, we learned a lot from it. I love how he said the, uh, he goes, there's just one thing I do to turn them around and that's, uh, get them to stop wasting time and spinning their wheels and to be proactive. And he talked about meetings, uh, having meetings about meetings and not ever coming to a conclusion. Uh, and he used some colorful language. He's very intense, uh, And he has that New Jersey accent. I'm like, I leaned over to the advisor next to me. I go, I think this guy might be connected, mobbed up. I don't know. But he has that Jersey or Brooklyn kind of accent and a tough guy, you know, and he's funny. What do you think?

Yeah. My biggest takeaway from him was just taking responsibility. So yes, no excuses. Yeah. He actually referenced a bar rescue that he did in Detroit. And he asked the lady why her restaurant was failing. And she said, it's all because they moved to the Euro in Greece and, And he was like, what does the Euro in Greece have to do with your mission? So, you know, he just said people do not want to take responsibility for their own actions, you know, whether your business is failing or your health isn't good. You know, people blame it on this, this and this. And he said, you got to just take responsibility for your actions and say, you know what? That happened because I didn't make exercising or eating healthy a priority or I didn't work enough or I scrolled on my phone too much or whatever. You know, just take responsibility for your actions. You know, and I think that's a great tip for any business owner is look in the mirror and take responsibility and whenever possible, just work your way through it or connect with people that can help give you some tips. You know, I, my thing, when I go to these things, I, you know, I've been in the business now for almost 25 years. But people sometimes say that I look young. And when I go to, I normally go to like the top, the top businesses, the top salespeople, the top financial advisors in the country. And I just ask them for tips and And they normally especially I'll wait till cocktail hours been going for an hour or two and then I'll go ask. But I just get as many tips as I can. And when I approach those successful people humble and then, you know, try and emulate them. It's been a recipe for success throughout my career. You know, picked up a lot of momentum earlier on in my first 10 years, but have continued to do that. And it's been a recipe for success for us.

Yeah, which is why you go to these events and sit at a roundtable with other financial advisors who've had success in different areas. They pick your brain on what you're doing for your clients and you've helped so many people in the area here. And then they take that away and you help them improve their business and vice versa. So I like the way that works. So yeah, it has been a wild ride. It's always fun to see you in person, Ken. That was great. And I was announcing you even jumped up and yelled, I'm here. That was a funny moment at the event. That was good. You and Summit won a few awards, and that's always nice. You'll have some awards to financial awards and achievements to put on your shelf there. Yeah. That'll be nice. Well, what are we talking about today? You said you wanted to discuss tips for new business owners, right? for 2026. And maybe you're going to steal some of John Taffer's advice here for this topic. Sounds like something he would talk about.

Yeah. Well, we covered it pretty good. I guess I'll open with you want to make sure that you're always looking professional. So just one last 30 second sidebar. So my wife finally confessed to me and my daughter, Charlotte, that when I was doing the podcast, It looked like I was a chipmunk with his cheeks full of nuts that he was storing up. So I've been doing the podcast for 11 months, Tony, and my family finally confronted me and said, I look like, you know, I've got a big fat face when I wear those old headphones. So I've got these new in-ear headphones. They're like something that drummers wear. I'm feeling pretty cool wearing them. That's for sure. That's That's awesome.

Now, they now, you know, it's I see a little bit of irony and maybe hypocrisy here, Ken, because you talked about not making excuses. So we're going to blame the headphones for your appearance on previous shows. Your face looks a certain way, but it was the headphones.

Yeah, definitely the headphones, not the actual face. My head is going to do with it now.

Oh, Ken.

Oh, Ken.

All right. We started off on the wrong foot. Yeah, no, I do. You can't even tell you're wearing headphones. That's what's great about these new headphones. I know you're excited about them. You're proud. I had to give you a hard time, though.

Yeah, well said, well said. No, we'll jump in. So one tip that I want to pass along to all business owners is you've got to make sure that you've got the right type of business structure. So for more advanced businesses, just give me 10 seconds here. If you're a brand new business, we highly recommend that you open up an LLC. Make sure that you're an LLC. because that can cover a lot of very important basis. So, number one, it can protect your personal assets from lawsuits so that if something goes wrong at your business, it's a very litigious society. Attorneys are always trying to make money any way that they can. You know, having an LLC will help protect your personal assets. You don't lose your your personal stuff if something bad happens to the business. Maybe more importantly, though, once you have that LLC, then you can get what's called an employee identification number. It's basically a social security number, but for a business. So you want to get that, then walk into your local bank and open a bank account in the name of your business.

Yeah.

So that's, that's really important. Building upon that, depending upon your ownership structure, whether you have partners, whether you have employees or not, I highly recommend meeting with an accountant or a CPA and asking them, should I be taxed as an S corporation or should I just continue to be taxed as an LLC? If you're in this sweet spot where it makes sense to ask the IRS to tax you as an S corporation, you get this luxury of taking both wages and profit distributions, and it can potentially save you 15% on your taxes by eliminating self-employment taxes, FICA taxes. So I don't want to go into that level of detail on the podcast here, but If anyone is in that situation where they're a sole proprietorship, they're an LLC, and they have no idea what I'm talking about right now, give us a call at 586-226-2100. I'd be happy to meet you up with my tax manager, and we can talk it over and try and save you some money on taxes. So that's sort of an advanced topic, but for the beginners out there, just make sure that once you've created this business bank account, you pay... almost everything business related directly from the business bank account. So I see a lot of business owners that are not paying for their health insurance through their business bank account. Again, talk to your tax advisor to make sure everything checks out here for your particular situation, but health insurance, cell phones, possibly your vehicle. And then if you're going to write off your vehicle, you have to decide, am I going to take the mileage approach, which is you get $72,000. 0.5 cents for every mile driven that's business related? Or do you want to use the actual costs, which could be your lease payment or your monthly payment if you haven't paid it off, oil changes, repairs? So there's a lot of accounting that needs to be done to determine how are we going to save you the most money on your taxes? And we love to help people do that.

Well, and I think the point there that you're making, too, is pay all business related expenses and even some that you might not realize are through the business account. But keep the business and personal separate. Yes, absolutely. That's why it's important to get that LLC set up, get an EIN number and have a bank account that's just for the business. If you mix the two, that's bad. The government doesn't like it. The IRS won't like it. Your tax situation will be worse because of it. And you'll be in legal jeopardy.

Yeah. Agree a hundred percent. Yeah. It's gotta, gotta be a separation there. Just keep everything nice and clean. And then when you go to do your accounting, you know, you can just bring all your business bank accounts and maybe a business credit card to your tax repair and they can prepare your, your books and records.

Perfect. Yeah. That's great advice. Yeah. I like that Ken. So what else do we need to know for new business owners out there?

So you want to make sure that you know your numbers and keep tabs on them. Sometimes when you're working and in some cases, tons and tons of hours, right? You don't have time to necessarily look at everything, but I highly recommend that people do know their numbers. So you got to track your cash flows and not just your profits. You know, you might be performing a service or selling something and you're like, okay, I'm making money on every single item, but you got to make sure you've got some breathing room there. You don't want to be bouncing checks, um, Once you do proactive planning to say, OK, this is what my profit is most likely going to be for the year. Maybe I have to purchase a piece of equipment. Again, we want to make sure that there's proper cash flow. Maybe you need to get a loan to purchase a piece of equipment or maybe you're buying a new delivery van. You know, every business is different, but you got to track your cash flows, meaning making sure there's always enough money in the bank account and also your profits. And again, if your profits are Generally speaking, if your profits are over $30,000, in a lot of cases, it does make sense to ask the IRS to tax you as an S corporation. So we got to keep an eye on all this stuff, do proactive planning, work with a professional to figure out what makes the most sense for you. Again, to pay, it's always, I shouldn't say it's always, but most of the time it's hard when you're starting a business from scratch or when you're in the first few years of operating a business. you don't want to give extra money to Don Colesan that you don't have to. Right.

Yeah. And if you have to invest in new equipment, can you write off the interest to those loan payments? Can you, are there tax benefits? That's really important to figure out and work with professionals that can help you with that.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And I know Summit Financial Consulting, you work with a lot of small businesses, so.

We do. Yeah. It seems like almost every day we're meeting with small business owners and talking about ways that they can optimize things. We also have Summit Tax Services, which is the underlying company is a CPA firm, Heemer Klein and Company. They've been in business for over 50 years. So we all work hand in hand to strategize and come up with the best game plan possible for each and every client and especially our business owner clients.

That's good. That's good. OK, so know your numbers and figure out the tax situation.

And are you should you be set up as an S-corp? So there you go. So next thing is just clearly define your value. So figure out who you serve. You know, what what is your what we would call the target demographic? Who are the people that? are really going to want to work with your business? What is the problem that you solve? And then why are you different? And lean into that. Find out what your competitive advantages are. Obviously, you want to try to create as many competitive advantages as possible, but you want to make sure that you know internally what your value is, what's your mission statement, and then share that with your customers because they're I feel like everything about business is about relationships, um, in, in most businesses anyway. Uh, it's easy in an online world to just sort of get wrapped up in, um, you know, the transaction itself and maybe the costs, but, um, If you have a good relationship and you're defining your values and you're sharing your mission statement and you have pride in what you do and you have enthusiasm about what you're doing, it's most likely, you know, the customer is going to feel that, Tony.

Yeah, well, for sure. And I like that. You know, who do you serve? Are you solving a problem? Typically, if you've started a business, hopefully you've done this due diligence and that's why you're starting it. You see a problem. And your your business is solving that problem. One, my personal takeaway, though, is you said, you know, why are you different? Lean into that. Well, I am different and I've really leaned into keep up the good work. On that aspect, I think I've done that. Be different and lean into it. Yeah, I think I've accomplished that.

What's next? So just sort of leaning into that building relationships thing. There's a show that I recently watched on streaming called The Bear. Oh, man, that restaurant show. Yeah, yeah. So I look at The Bear, even though that's like a fictional TV show, but also like Bar Rescue, going back to John or even Chick-fil-A. A lot of these really successful businesses, they want to create an exceptional experience or they want to create a reaction each time. Like Disney World.

Yes.

Disney does at Disney World. Yes, they create reactions and experiences. Yeah, yes. And and especially in a digital world, where what you do, what what you can post, what you can share, what video you can film and share, you know, the more exciting that, you know, something that you do or the better the experiences, the more likely that will raise awareness and get shared and liked and commented on. So, um, You're trying to create reactions. You're trying to really create a marketing plan from day one. You know, you don't want to. Sometimes I see businesses where they open up and in a lot of cases it is new restaurants and they put a sign out front and then they just exist and they're not advertising. They're not marketing. They're not.

They're like that tree that falls in the woods. If nobody's there to hear it, does it make a sound, right? Yeah.

Yeah. You don't want to just exist and wait to die. You have to have a marketing plan, start marketing from day one, figure out how you're going to get people in, how you're going to get a positive reaction, how you're going to get good reviews, you know, contact local newspapers and TV stations.

Just build, build relationships, build those relationships is what you're saying.

Yeah, build relationships, create experiences, get reactions. All of that is going to help contribute to your success early on and throughout the life of your business. You're never done marketing in business, that's for sure. Well, no. Yeah, you can't be. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise you're just waiting to die, right? As a business or you're waiting for your business to die. If you're not, if you're not moving forward, you're not going to, you're not going to last long.

No, eventually something will change. A new challenge will arise and maybe you'll adapt to it, but you know, the more customers, the more revenue, the more cushion always, always be marketing.

Right. And I think the success stories usually come after failures or mistakes. You said, yeah, mistakes will happen, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Every business faces its challenges. You're going to do something wrong. There's only so many hours in the day. Just don't give up. You know, be persistent. Keep fighting the good fight. I always say if you want to be average. then do what everybody else does. But if you want to be better than average, you have to do above average things. You normally have to work harder. You have to strategize better. Maybe you have to spend more on marketing. You got to have a better product or a better price, better relationships, better reactions. You got to do something that's better if you want to be above average. Oh, for sure.

Yeah, I would agree. And I think you've laid out some great points and some great talking points and really thinking points for new business owners or people who are thinking about starting a new business or have a relatively small business. These are all things you need to be thinking about. And I know you're more than happy to consult with them and talk to them. And you offer a no charge, no obligation consultation, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's actually my last point is don't try to do everything. There's only so many hours in the day, depending upon how much staff you can afford, you know, get help, whether it's free help from professionals that have experience with marketing. Google search engine optimization is one of the most important things when it comes to businesses. Oh yeah. It is oftentimes one of the most overlooked things. So yeah, As soon as you have some money, you want to try to buy back your time as soon as you can afford it and hire professionals. But even if you can't do everything that you can to get free advice, coaching from successful people. Um, so as a business, we're happy to sit down with you and give us our two cents. Uh, you know, like I said, I've been in business now almost 25 years since I got my first license in this industry and we have helped, uh, over 100 of our clients that are small business owners just get from point A to point B. So we'd love to help. Our phone number is 586-226-2100. Our website is summitfc.net. Wherever you're located, we'll meet you where you are. Whatever your goals are, we'll give you our two cents and help you get the ball rolling in the right direction.

Well, that sounds great, Ken. And again, a great show. Listeners, thanks for tuning in. Viewers, that does it for today's episode of Money Talks with our host, Ken Wink. Thank you for joining us for Money Talks. Don't head into retirement without a strategy that addresses both income and taxes. For more information, please contact Ken Wink at Summit Financial, working with people you trust. Call 586-226-2100 or visit summitfc.net. Join us again soon for another episode of Money Talks.