# 620 5 LLC Mistakes

Owls really do not deliver messages. No. Dang it. All right.

I'm bringing us in. Yeah. All right. Welcome everyone to the Main Street Business Podcast.

This is Matt Sornson joined by the great and powerful Mark J. Kohler. Well, they say that after he just had to lower his chair because I had the lower chair. So I was looking, I was like the kid at the Thanksgiving dinner.

I I didn't want you to feel, you know. I need you to feel big. Yeah. I need you to come in with a ton of confidence today.

So you'd come out with the great and powerful. Yeah. The little kid's chair. Yeah.

It's trying to pump you up. Yeah. Well, I'm excited for today because this LLC mistakes are so rampant. This is Yeah, and I think the LLC is the most common business entity out there.

You're going into business, main hustle, side hustle, investing in real estate. You've probably heard about the LLC and you're listening to this. I'll bet you have one. But did you do it right?

Because we do thousands of them every year setting up for clients who are actually real lawyers. Instead of this chat GPT lawyer you're talking to that doesn't know what the hell they're doing, or this online site, or these people you talk to that aren't real lawyers, we're real lawyers. We've been in the trenches. We want to make sure you know what to clean up, probably.

Yeah, and I'm just gonna say out of the five, only the two are did you do it right? The other three are once your LLC is up and going mistakes. So you may say, Oh yeah, I set it up right. I'm gonna go to a different podcast.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. We've got a little bit more to know here. We're trying to help you out. And it's not just an infomercial sales pitch.

These are easy things. You don't have to spend more money. Just do it freaking right. So, all right, let's get into it.

Matt, I will let you go first here, because I'm I'm a giver. Thank you. You're welcome. Um, what is your number one mistake?

Well, the number one mistake is you've got this one piece of paper from the state that you did online in 15 minutes and you paid 50 bucks to file, and you're like, I'm business, baby. I've got an LLC. And you know what? I'll bet you set up that LLC.

One of the reasons you set it up was you wanted asset protection. You wanted to make sure that whatever's happening in that business, something goes wrong in it. You get a lawsuit with a customer, someone you're working with, an employee, whatever. You don't want them to sue you, all of your personal assets.

You want to force them to have to sue the LLC and they can only get to that LLC. That's one of the main reasons you set up an LLC. But does that one piece of paper get me there? Okay, so what are all the parts I need?

All right, you're gonna need an operating agreement for your LLC. Okay. Operating, I'm writing these down because I mean this is operating agreement. This is a revelation.

Operating agreement is critical. And by the way, when you go to set up a bank account, I just set up a bank account for one of my new LLCs for a real estate deal. And what do they ask for? Operating agreement.

Like, they won't even set up the bank account. They're like, We know you got this piece of paper from the state that says that LLC XYZ holdings LLC is approved, but we're not gonna even let bank you unless you have an operating agreement. Okay, so and you alluded to the first one, articles. Okay, that's because you filed your articles, so you have to operate.

Sometimes it's called certificate of organization. There's 50 states and 50 different names for that. Operating agreement. Okay.

And then you want to have minutes. These can be organizational minutes typically. That say who your key people are. Yeah, key key things in there.

Tax selections people need to be in there, accountable plan provisions. Oh, you wanted to take some extra expenses for home office auto, maybe some healthcare strategies. Those better be in your minutes. Well, my accountant will just do it later.

They got to be in your minutes. Under audit, you will fail. Okay, so minutes. Sorry, that was the accountant and me getting a little i.

Okay. Next thing you brought up the IRS, you want to get an EIN for the business. Even if this is just a sole proprietorship or there's no Selection or partnership separate tax return, you still want to get an EIN for the LLC that's separate from your social. Yeah.

And you're gonna go, oh well, Mark, hold it under the S instructions for the SS4. If it's a sole proprietorship, I don't need an EIN. You you might get it because I just had to go get a sales tax exemption number for one of my LLCs this last week. It was one of the ranch entities because I wanted to go into tractor supply, not pay sales and tax.

Of course you did. You probably already have your tractor supply. Yeah, I've already got that sort of thing. All right.

Uh they're like, what's your EIN? Now I could have said, Well, I'm a sole prop. I don't need an EIN, but to go to the state and get a sales tax exemption number, you have to have an EIN even with a single member LLC. You could have payroll things, you could have sales tax issues, you could have a property tax issue.

Get a freaking EIN. You know, I hate it when people say, Well, I don't have to floss. Yeah. Well, 405 dentists recommend you floss.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, that EIN, by the way, you want to start building, establishing some business credit. You want to get a line of credit in the business. It needs to start getting separation from you personally.

Um, you're gonna grow and add employees, you're gonna need it. There's not a cost to it. All right. It's like, oh, why are you skipping it?

It's not requiring more tax filings than you'd otherwise be doing. So the bank will love it too. Sometimes called a tax ID, by the way. We're talking about the same thing.

There's more. What else do you want in your little beautiful package? Well, I'd like a corporate book, you know, to have it all organized. We actually do a corporate book.

And you can have a membership certificates with it. You could doesn't have to be certificated for an LLC. Corporations need to be certificated, but your your LLC does not. So you could, you know, there's different ways to go on that, but we want a corporate book with all these documents organized.

Now, this could be electronically kept too. You know, when we're setting up entities for clients, we have an electronic corporate book on our end that we're maintaining for you as well, at least in terms of like what was set up. Once you you get the thing, you got to figure out what to do. We'll talk about next.

And folks, if you did not do it right, we are not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We're going to let the bathwater go down the drain, save the baby, bring it with us. That's an important paranormal precaution. I wouldn't like to make if you some of you weren't thinking about that.

We want to keep your LLC. We don't want to throw it away if you didn't do it right. We can clean it up. Let's get all the pieces and parts done.

So at our law firm, we've been doing that for years. We have a cleanup special on a regular basis. I think maybe we go now, we'll talk about it later. But we want to clean up the entity, keep the AIN, keep the company name.

It's all good. Just get it done right. That's number one. Yeah.

And I'll just say a couple of things. And this is something you, you know, if you haven't been operating that LLC much, or maybe you're new, you might have had not been asked for these documents yet. But if you're for real, when you start having real customers, real vendors, real property managers, companies, a real audit. Yeah.

A real deed that you're going to title into that LLC for the rental property, someone's going to ask you for this stuff. The title company, the vendor you're trying to onboard, the line of credit you're trying to get, the employee you're trying to hire. Somebody, your lawyer, when you get sued, is going to be hoping when that LLC gets sued for something that you have this stuff. All right.

Now, some of you are like, hurry and get to number two because I've got things to do. I paid this company to take care of my LLC. In fact, the influencer I follow charged me quite a bit for a really cool LLC. I did all this stuff, guys.

So obviously I did not make mistake number one, because this influencer was amazing. I've got this special crypto LLC. I've got this special LLC for the type of real estate deals I do because this influencer knows what they're doing. And I paid a grand or a couple grand for this LLC.

So pray tell what I could have done wrong. Well, mistake number two is it wasn't structured properly. Because maybe the influencer that told you to do this, or the cubicle in Nevada that was doing these high-speed LLCs for you, did not take the time to understand your situation or what some of your priorities were or some of the structural issues. For example, did you place yourself as registered agent and your home address?

Maybe you don't want that on a public record. Who is your registered agent? And by the way, are you paying out the butt for so that? Is it too expensive?

Maybe you could do it more affordably. So registered agent is a common mistake we see clients make with the wrong entity, person, or address. Number two, did you make the right tax election? Is this supposed to be an S-corp?

Should have been an S-corp? Did you make an S-corp and it shouldn't be? Oh, heaven forbid you're doing a C corporation. Are you the member?

Who's the member? Is your trust the member? Are you the member? Oh, you did member managed?

Oh my gosh, now the whole world knows who owns this. Don't want that. Did you wow? So we've got address issues, privacy issues, manager, members.

Is your structure proper in the big scheme of things? Do you have a trifecta? Do you even understand why you did this LLC? Or do you just do it because the influencers said to do it?

So, and I'm not trying to be demeaning here. We're all trying to build wealth and grow and all that. But there's some things that could be structured. Yeah.

Do you understand the difference between an operational LLC and an asset holding LLC? Those are different. How are they structured? What's the ownership of them?

How is the tax? How are they taxed? Okay. And so, and and also, if you just have one entity, what we know with entrepreneurs is over time, you're gonna end up doing more things.

You're gonna start acquiring assets, you're gonna do other businesses, you might have a partnership. And making sure all those entities are coordinated properly is about the structure. So, um, and then here's what here's why this matters. The structure that you have is the way that you maximize the asset protection you're hoping you have from an LLC.

Okay, you you have to have it structured properly. You also want to minimize the taxes you have to pay. Those are the whole structuring points here. Setting up an LLC is not gonna necessarily get you that.

You have to have the structure of the LLC properly to get that. I love it. Okay. Number three.

What do you got? What's your favorite number three? Number three is you got the right thing, but you got it in the wrong place. Okay.

You needed an LLC for what you're doing. You might have even gotten the right documents, and maybe even you structured it properly for specifically your situation. I love it. So you're saying I probably should have set it up in Wyoming.

I I screwed up. I didn't set it up in Wyoming. Yes. So Wyoming is the state we put every LLC for all of our clients, no matter what state you're in or what type of business you are.

I wonder if they can can they feel the sarcasm here? Yes. I hope so. Please don't we're wrong.

We're joking. Yeah no, yeah, not every LLC should be set up in Wyoming. Where should I set up my LLCs? Well, this is the this is the piece that an influencer can't tell you because they don't freaking know, because the answer is actually a little nuanced.

It depends. Here's the basics though. We are gonna set up the LLC in the state where the LLC is doing business. If you I live in Arizona and I got a rental property in Indiana, I'm gonna have an Indiana LLC because I'm doing business there.

I need the LLC in that state. Could I go to Wyoming? Sure. But if I want to then have that property deeded into the an LLC in Indiana, I've got to register that Wyoming LLC for an indie, Indiana now.

Oh Mark, I mean, Matt, you're so you really don't know what you're talking about because Wyoming is so good. You want to pay for it in Wyoming, then register in Indiana. Haven't you read up on this? I mean, this these influencers, they know so much more than you.

How could you be a lawyer and not know that you should do it in Wyoming first, then in Indiana? I know. Don't why don't you sell me on that? Are you are you you're incompetent, aren't you?

Yeah, I just I just, you know, I gotta be on TikTok more to learn how to be a lawyer, I guess. So um here's the this is the thing with a lot of legal strategy. Um, is it works for some people in some instances, but it doesn't work for everyone in all instances. And the Wyoming LLC has been sold to everyone for everything.

Oh, because people make money doing it. Exactly. And they'll tell you, well, this is what the wealthy do. Not really.

This is what some of them do in certain situations, and and it's it's very nuanced. So the Wyoming LLC, we set them up. We like that strategy for one out of ten clients. You know, I'm gonna do a big reveal here.

I haven't I haven't said this on the podcast before. This is gonna be good. So I'm gonna look you in the eye when I say this. This is Mark Kohler with gosh, I probably have over 20 or 30 entities, multiple states, multiple real estate holdings, multiple companies, great law partner sitting right here next to me on our podcast.

I have I can't even count how many different employees and different organizations and paralegals and attorneys working for me. I Mark Kohler, do not have a Wyoming LLC anywhere in my structure. And I can make a call right now and get one for free, done for me in my law firm, done correctly. I don't even have a Wyoming LLC.

Because, people, I don't need one right now. I don't need to have it. It's the juice is not worth the squeeze of that easy. That's how we say it, yeah.

Yeah, so um, if you've got a Wyoming LLC, is it providing benefit to you? Probably not. Can it be helpful? Maybe.

Uh, do we need to kill it? No. Can we live with the structure? Yes.

But would I have set one up for you from the get-go? Likely not. So again, most of our clients, even Mark J. Kohler, do not even have a Wyoming LC.

I do not have a Wyoming LLC. I didn't know. I was waiting to see if you're gonna do it. I probably got 20 or 12.

And I don't have a Wyoming LLC. I know what they are, I know the benefit of them. There are some privacy benefits, there's some outside liability protection benefits to it. But in my own structure and everything, with all the LLCs and businesses, assets and things I've got going on, I'm not even utilizing that strategy.

That's interesting. Well, we had to come on the podcast to have a little confession session. Yeah, there you go. So, do you need one?

Probably not. But maybe, yeah, I'm just saying it's so I'm gonna throw this out. If some of you are a little frustrated hearing that, going, well, what the hell? If Mark and Matt is, I would hope you would feel, major tax and legal influencers in America with all the resources to do it right and study this every day, if we're not doing it, oh no, maybe I should get an evaluation, a second opinion.

Please, I beg of you. Down in the description below, there's a link to KKOS lawyers. You can have a phone call for free with one of our new client advisors, they're gonna offer different options for you to get what I would recommend a comprehensive trifecta consultation. We will for under two grand, you're gonna be able to meet with a real lawyer on a call, looking at your structure, all your entities, your tax returns, your structure, and we will give you our opinion as to how it could be most efficient for you, and we'll be there for you moving forward with attorney client representation affordably to do it right.

Please do it. We want to save you taxes, we want to make your life easier, we want to give you better asset protection. Please get that call done, scheduled at least once a year to have an evaluation. Yeah, there we go.

Our work is done. Oh, we have four and five. Yeah, we still got to get to four and five. All right.

Do you want me to hit four? Yeah, I kind of I was talking a lot there. I'm sorry. Yeah, you tell you.

You gave me three, and then you know, you kind of comment on the case. Wrong case. I kind of piggybacked it. I know.

I know you had a lot on your mind. Yeah, you know, you had to have some things to say. I had to say, Yeah, you had a confession to make and um you know. All right.

Uh number four. Number four, you need to be operating this LLC properly. Let me go over some common things. I can't just I set it up right in the right place with all the re pieces and parts.

I'm done. You actually need to use it. Okay, examples. Okay.

First thing, everyone will need this: a bank account, not your personal bank account. A bank account in the name of the LLC. This is an LLC business checking account. You're gonna receive your income in that business from it.

You're gonna pay your expenses from it. There's two reasons why you need to do that. They're critical. First, if you get in a lawsuit and you don't have a business bank account, it's gonna be very easy for the plaintiff suing your LLC to go right through it and after you personally by saying, the alter ego of this LLC is you personally.

This LLC, you didn't respect it as an LLC. You treated it like your personal bank account. If you ran all the income and expense out of a personally owned business bank account, sorry, out of a personal bank account, a court is not gonna treat you personally as separate from the LLC because you didn't. Yep.

And so they're gonna blow right through it, and you're the whole asset protection benefits of the LLC are out. You know, Matt, again, you're showing your incompetence because didn't you know you can set up a management LLC to run all of my other LLCs? Didn't you know that? Didn't you know I can set up all these LLCs to hold the property, but actually use one LLC to manage all of them?

Boy, Matt, you need to go back to school or something because wrong. You cannot have one LLC run the affairs of all the other LLCs. That's the same thing as the alter ego of the one LLC. You have all these pieces of paper, it's smoke and mirrors.

You don't think a judge can see through that? You don't think a plaintiff can see through that? Let's say you're suing someone that's playing this game and they ran over one of your kids, or they had a crappy slum lord uh rental property that your kid went to college in and your child got hurt, or someone got hurt, and you're pissed, and you're gonna go after them, and come to find out they have all these smoke and mirror LLCs, but one LLC runs them all. What it's all gonna end up back in the same bucket, and all these LLCs you paid for to set up are worthless.

You have to respect all of them. With and I'm just on the banking issue. Yeah. Yeah, if you want separate liability treatment, you need to treat the entities as separate, and that starts with the bank account, money coming in, money coming out.

The second thing in terms of operating is you need to be conducting business in the name of the LLC. If this is a rental property LLC, the deed to the property better be in the LLC's name, not in yours. And if that's fine, you bought the property in your name, you can deed it over to the LLC. There's no due on sale clause.

Don't worry about the do-on-sell clause. The banks don't care about that as long as you're still paying the mortgage. But also, what about the lease? Is that in the name of the LLC?

Is that in your name? If you're a business selling goods or services, are you invoicing clients in the name of the LLC? Do you have a service agreement in the name of the LLC? Are you are you emailing them in your capacity as an owner of an LLC or is the LLC in business rather than just your personal email and blurring the lines?

Are they dealing with you personally or are they dealing with the LLC? So you gotta operate in the name of the LLC. Yeah, and then and and I'm gonna, that was a great rental property example. I'll just say a couple things about an operating LLC that you might be making an Selection on someday.

Is the merchant account in the name of the LLC? Do you have employees and vendors that are paid out of the LLC? Do you have uh copy machine agreements, or do you are, you know, like all the lease agreements, the equipment, um, your marketing, or does your website reflect the proper name of the LLC? Do you have all the disclaimers and contracts?

And I mean, I just the list goes on and on. I'm sorry, but that's how you make money. You set up a structure and respect it and build upon it. And guys, let's let's let's talk about a good thing here.

You're gonna want to exit at some point, you're gonna want to sell this business, you want to create a stream of income. You want to have a an operational unit that's got value in and of itself. If you're blending all these lines during your scaling, you're you're you're not creating a value of something that someone's gonna want to buy. Make it easy for them.

Make help let me help you. Help me help you. One might have Jerry. All right.

There we go. All right, number five. Number five. I can say number five.

Yes, yeah. You gotta do that. This is one of my favorites, too. Number five is maintaining the LLC.

We just talked about operating the LLC. Now we gotta back go back to maintaining the entity itself. Are you paying the annual fee to the state? Is there an annual fee?

Is there an annual filing? Have you checked on it recently? Is your LLC in good standing or has it been uh administratively dissolved by the state because I haven't heard from you? You ghosted up after setting up your LLC.

Have you held your annual minutes? Well, Mark, I don't have to do that. It's an LLC. Gosh, you guys are stupid.

Didn't you know that? LLCs don't have to do minutes. Yeah, you don't have to floss either. See you next year when you're getting that root canal.

People, you want to maintain the LLC by having your annual meeting minutes. And it's a great tax write-off opportunity. You want to make special tax selections in those minutes. You want to have a board meeting with your family when you're having Thanksgiving dinner.

I want to write that trip off. I want to go on an annual trip with my family and talk about business, leaving a legacy, talking about business. The board meeting should be one of your most special times. Literally.

Patty and I, my wife and I, we love to have our board meeting with our kids. And we have a company for this, Main Street Business Services. We have a portal where you could actually do your meeting minutes online on your laptop or on your iPad at your board meeting in the mountains, looking out the window. And oh, how did the business do?

Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, go. And then your minutes are printed for you. They're organized. It's super expensive, though.

I'm sorry. Buckle up, it's 200 bucks a year. I know highway robbery, but Anyway, yeah, I'd say the other big thing about it is we get a lot of clients that they're like, man, I just got to focus on my business every day, handling my customers, getting new sales, growing that business, doing the marketing, the ops, all the things that you're good at. The thing you got to get stuff off your list.

You don't want to be like, like remembering, did I renew this year with the state? Did I file that renewal to keep it active? Is my entity in good standing? Is it administratively dissolved because I didn't pay the annual fee to the state to keep it going?

I didn't fill out the one piece of paper I got to do to keep it active. Do you really need that on your to-do list? Get it off your to-do list. Okay.

That's part of that whole service that we're talking about here. And this is the maintenance. So whatever the process is, you got someone on your team, you're dedicating the time for it. I just say outsource it.

It's what Mark and I do with our own entities too, to Main Street business, is get someone that can handle that for you. Make sure you're doing it. But we got to make sure that entity stays active so that we have the uh so that and I've had clients call me up and being like, my entity's got dissolved with the state. What do I do?

And and it was a customer of theirs. And it was a very embarrassing moment for them to be like, uh, I looked you up, bro. Your entity's dissolved. And they had no idea because they weren't paying attention to it.

They get business busy with everything else. So we get that taken care of, get the minutes done, making sure you're ensuring asset protection. So we want to make sure it's maintained and we've got that corporate bell 100% intact. Did you go to the dentist, by the way, recently?

Well, it's all these dental examples. You know, it is kind of funny. I maybe, isn't it subliminal? I guess I did cancel my dentist appointment last week.

I'm sorry, I'm gonna take a shot at dentists. I'm gonna one more. I was saying, I was telling dentists all the good things of flossing. You were kind of I was on their bandwagon a moment ago, but I will say this.

The dentist, I like I cannot come in Thursday at two o'clock. I've got a life. Sorry, can't go to the dentist at Thursday at two. I can come in Friday afternoon.

Oh, I I'm sorry. The dentist doesn't work on Fridays. Do you know a dentist that works on Fridays? Yeah, I think um Is that a class in dental school?

There, you know, I think that's just like the thing of being a dentist. There, that's just like that's like they get to get away with that. I guess I said, I'll come in when he's open on Friday. I literally said that.

Patty was kind of mad at me. She's like, You don't say that. I'm like, why? I work on Fridays.

How do dentists get away with that? I mean, you have the right to go somewhere else. Yeah, I do. So anyway.

Um boy, you brought up something. No, I teeth are great. I've never had a cavity my whole life. I'm super lucky, but I do need to go in and just you know, get good teeth cleaning.

You never have a cavity your whole life? Wow. Yeah, I've gotten blessed. Good teeth, I guess.

Good for you. Anyway, okay, so what's our five? Set it up with all the right documents. Number two, make sure the structure is correct.

Number three, did I set it up in the right place? Number four, am I operating the LLC properly? Number five, am I doing the correct maintenance so that my LLC gives me the tax and legal benefits I dreamed of? Those are the five.

They're not that hard, they're not that expensive. It's just following the procedures. Asset protection is actually very easy and affordable. We get sold.

This concept has to be this big deal. Right. And a bunch of BS you don't need. So if you've got your entity and you've got your LLC, you've done those five things.

Let's turn this around. I'll bet your entity's doing great. I'll bet you've got everything dialed in and you're setting yourself up for success. So um think of those five things.

Hopefully, some of them were helpful to you. We're here if you need us to be a resource to help you. Reach out at KQS Lawyer, links KQS Lawyers. That's our law firm helping clients across the country for 20 plus years, a team of 60 plus amazing people you get to work with.

We'd love to help you. And uh thank you for tuning into the Mainstream Business Podcast. Please share this with your friends and family. Give it a thumbs up, five stars.

I I don't know the other ways you can send, you know, send up a smoke signal, put it on a balloon, send it. Send send send vibes, send it, whatever. That's kind of young people say that. Send it.

Send it. Okay. All right. Yeah.

All right. Thanks everyone. We'll see you next time. See you next week.