Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 233 with Adam Ginns of Layers Accountancy & Adrian Jenkinson of YouPay

This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk where each week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry and we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we’ll be speaking with Adam Ginns of Layers Accountancy and Adrian Jenkinson of YouPay. We’ve added an event section on our website. There you can find out about all the B2B events in our industry and there are discounts on selected shows. Go to adultsitebroker.com to find out more. Speaking of events, I’ll be at the X-Biz LA show January 13th through the 16th and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone there and talking some business. Contact me on our website to book a meeting at adultsidebroker.com. To register for the show, go to xbizla.com and I’m proud to announce I’ve been nominated for Community Figure of the Year at the X-Biz Executive Awards as part of X-Biz Honors January 15th. It should be an exciting night and I hope to see you there. 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My guests today, that’s plural, on adultsidebroker.com are Adrian Jinkensen of YouPay and Adam Gins of Layers Accountancy. Gentlemen, thanks for being with us on Adult Site Broker Talk. Thanks Bruce, great to be here. Thanks Bruce, thanks for having us. It’s a pleasure. YoYouPay is a professional gifting platform for creators. YouPay was created in 2020 in Brisbane, Australia by former EA Sports Producer and Digital Entrepreneur Matt Holm to bring privacy and security to online wish lists. Today YouPay operates globally and has over 150,000 users. Their mission is to change the future of gifting to make it safe and secure by combining an interactive approach to e-commerce with a powerful focus on connecting people, communities and customers digitally. Adrian Jinkensen is the chief revenue officer and co-founder of YouPay. Adrian has a chartered accountant and expert in financial services and payments with over 20 years of experience, including 10 years with American Express. Adrian is leaving his corporate career, Adrian is dedicated his time to early-stage startups and innovative payment companies. Layers Accountancy was formed to create an accounting firm to support businesses rather than traditional compliance-based model. With a combined 20-plus years of accounting experience and a top 10 global firm and more recently in smaller UK boutique firms, Adam and Joshua decided to venture out and create a simple mission to provide high-quality service to clients and be an employer helping future ways of work. Adam Gens is the co-founder of Layers Accountancy, a forward-thinking accounting startup, a qualified chartered accountant. Adam helps businesses and individuals move beyond statutory requirements using financial insights to drive informed decision-making. Now with experience in both boutique and top 10 firms, he has shaped Layers Accountancy into a practice that goes beyond traditional accounting. By combining the rules of accountant, tax advisor, and business consultant, Adam offers clients a well-rounded strategic approach to business growth. Oh, I’m out of breath. Okay. I don’t blame you. So let’s start with Adrian. How did YouPay get into working with adult content creators? Yeah, thanks, Bruce. Yeah, congratulations on actually bringing a couple of accountants onto a conversation for the adult industry. I think it could be a first. YouPay’s been around for a number of years, but it was really about two and a half years ago when we started working with a brand called Honey Bird Debt, which is owned by Playboy, as you may know. And we really, Matt and I really saw the opportunity where a lot of exchange of gifts was happening for Honey Bird Debt products in particular and realized that gifting between creators and their fans was an activity that was something that fans really wanted to participate in and also represented a significant opportunity for creators to engage with their fans in a mechanism outside of some of the traditional platforms. So over the last couple of years, what we’ve been highly focused on is really continuing to build the functionality and solutions within the YouPay platform, but specifically focused on the adult content creator as a key audience and making sure that everything we’re doing is designed to support their business, their brand and help them monetize the content that they’re producing today. With the growth of the creator economy, you guys must be soaring. Absolutely. And I think the creator economy for me is really just starting. I think that for a number of years now, the creator economy was thought of being just a COVID consequence, but I think we’re clearly seeing that the economy is going far beyond that. And I think what’s really exciting for us is that we’re also seeing that the adult content creation side is really starting to, we’re not quite there yet, but it’s starting to mainstream. So we’re seeing that more and more providers like ourselves that come from professional backgrounds are looking at how we can best support creators to achieve their potential and also make sure that they’re fully supported across the platforms that they engage with. So why don’t creators just use Amazon wish lists instead of something like YouPay? Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s something we see a lot of from questions from all over the place. I think the key thing around gifting in particular is a platform like Amazon has served a purpose for creators over time, but it carries with it a number of risks, including potential risks of access to more private information than what creators may want to give away. And there have been instances in the market where creators have accidentally had their address details or country location disclosed. Key thing around YouPay is really privacy and protection of the creators anonymity as a first principle or a first value for us. So building that storytelling layer that exists between the creator and the fan where a creator can with confidence share the gifts that they would like a creator would like a fan to buy for them and have that transaction exchange happen, but securely, privately and protecting their anonymity is one of the key things. So that’s why using a gifting platform versus some form of direct interchange means that their privacy is protected. But also the risks associated with those types of transactions are mitigated as well. Again, we’ve heard of instances where a fan has promised a creator a gift. They’ve shown them the transaction through Amazon and then at a later date, they’ve actually rescinded that gift and had it canceled. So the creators never been paid for that gift, whereas we prevent those types of activities from happening by providing instant payouts on our gifts. Very good. I see there’s been lots of recent issues with wishlist platforms being shut down. Now what’s the story with that? There’s a number of reasons for that. And I think this is an example of the evolution of platforms meeting demand and also the evolution of what’s happening with payments and gifting with the creator economy. So yeah, a lot of it has been relatively easy to date to build some form of gifting platform and have a payment process in place. There’s a few different payment providers that won’t name them that make that relatively easy, but over time, what happens is that they start to hit potential issues either around having a high level of charge backs happening, so fraudulent transactions, which actually causes the platform to go. There could be a problem here and then suspend payments to the creators or through due diligence that happens with a lot of the payment platforms. The platforms realize over time that there are transactions that are happening between parties that don’t fit the terms and conditions of that platform. So they end up being either suspended or shut down. And I think it’s a crossover. We’ve seen it across every industry where there’s opportunity. People will try and grab the fast gain financial returns and all fails in too bad. Whereas we have really built YouPay right from the start to be a professional and ongoing platform that both creators and their fans can rely on for the longer term because we want creators to be successful using us and we want them to have the confidence that we’re here for the long term. So we’ve taken a probably a slightly more cautious approach to getting to market, so to speak. But at the same time, what we’ve done is make sure that we’re building the right systems and processes to prevent risk of any particular payment providers stopping us from transacting. And we’re also building a partnership ecosystem around that today, which I know we’ve got Adam on the call today as one of the people we’re working with. But we want to extend the value of what we do as a platform beyond just the gifting side of things and leverage our skills and capabilities to add other solutions that will help creators thrive in their business no matter what their business looks like. Where are you getting most of your business from geographically? The US and I’ll just call it Europe are really the two key areas for us. And then it’s into the UK. So it’s really, I’d say, given that I’m based here in Australia, it’s the northern hemisphere that really has the larger component of the creator economy. And again, quite spread across that. But definitely, it’s in countries where people are choosing to be able to work from their own country. But I think the flip side of that Bruce is that we are seeing those creators in different countries engaging with fans from not just their own country, but globally. So one of the key things that the UK is providing is the ability for those creators to receive a gift in their own country, in their own currency, but that could be bought from someone in a completely different part of the world. Right. How did you and the guys that layer accountancy first get together? Yeah, great story. We’ve been on a path for global expansion for some time. And I think as as UK continues to grow, Matt and I some time ago, recognize that one of the core problems to solve for creators fundamentally is to help them run their business properly. So not just be a creator that’s getting, earning a good income, but how do we start to provide solutions and support to help them build a both a sustainable business and capitalize on the revenue they’re generating for the period of time that they’re operating their business? And it was through that endeavor of starting to look at who are some of the people that we could talk with. We were introduced to Adam and Josh through a creator that uses YouPay and it suggested that it’d be worth while having that conversation. And you know, accountant to accountant, so to speak, we started having a chat about the things that Adam and Josh had been doing specifically around supporting creators because it’s sometimes one of the biggest challenges for all of us is actually finding creator friendly enterprises that recognize and acknowledge that creators are, you know, super human business people and you need the right level of support to guide them through the journey of being a creator and having a successful business. So it was refreshing to actually find an accounting firm because you always think of them being highly conservative and, you know, a little bit weird sometimes to actually go, yeah, we’re all about creators. We work with creators and we love where the creator economy is going and want to be there for the long term. Yeah, I mean, it only makes sense because there’s so much business there, but I think most accountants just don’t understand the business. Look, from my perspective, I think that’s a hundred percent correct. But you know, what do you think, Adam? Yeah, I mean, it’s full on, I think, and kind of for us, one of the things that happened was we, you know, spent a lot of our time before as an accountable full coming across creators and not really knowing or hearing from them. But when you meet and speak to them about the business side of it, I mean, one straight away, you kind of see that the biggest opportunity for help, you know, what I think we kind of can get into it a bit later. But, you know, specifically in the UK, there’s this this threshold where you go between sole trader and limited company. And there’s kind of like a bit of an overnight success story you can find with the creators and you really need to be on top of that. But from my outside, it was, it’s no different. It’s a, you know, it’s a skill set, it’s a business. And you know, we’ve got to offer our clients advice and do the best job possible for them. So it’s no different. And if anything, it’s a nice, exciting area to work in. It’s different. Each, you know, each creates an experience is different. So you can really make a difference as an accountant, which we always joke and say this, but I didn’t get into accounting to balance spreadsheets and books despite what the kind of the outlook on the profession is. So yeah, that’s kind of how I feel on it. Yeah, I’m sure it makes life a hell of a lot more interesting guys, doesn’t it? A hundred percent. Yeah. And it goes along with the overall discrimination against sex work. And this is something that’s universal, unfortunately. It’s worse in some countries than others in places like the US and the UK. It’s financial discrimination in Arab countries. People get their heads chopped off. But overall, if you look at the entire world, there’s discrimination against sex workers. Yeah, look, a hundred percent. And it’s an ongoing problem that it’s something that, you know, from a U-Pay perspective, in particular, we have conversations with creators and, you know, other advisors in other countries all the time around this. I do think that, you know, we’re not quite there yet, Bruce, but we’re certainly making inroads collectively, you know, as well as as a platform. But even when you hear some of the commentary that’s coming out of only fans, for example, is a there’s a high level of acknowledgement for people in the industry that this is a problem to be solved. And I do think that, you know, where we play a part is actually helping to try and mainstream a lot of what’s happening in the adult industry fundamentally. But also being smart about it, right? So there are platform rules that you have to abide by. There are payment rules that you have to abide by. Part of our role right now is to educate creators on how they can be successful within the rule set that unfortunately exists. But I think as as we progress down that path, working with people such as Layers Accounting, for example, and helping creators actually have a proper set of financials and a proper company structure. The mechanisms that go towards helping mainstream financial services actually recognize that creators are a small business like any other business, highly lucrative small business for many creators. And you know, if they’re following good advice from a from a good accountant and they’re getting the right level of structures in place, then they’re actually putting themselves in a position to have a greater level of consideration from a financial services provider in the future. So I do think that personally coming from the financial services arena, so to speak, at the end of the day, if there’s money to be made, someone will wake up at a point in time and realize that, you know, there’s a path to actually create proper financial services for creators. And I don’t think we’re too far away from that. Maybe a couple of years at max. No, I talked to a young lady by the name of Catherine Studley of the only consultant and she does accounting and you guys might have heard that episode. She does accounting for creators for sex workers in the US exclusively. Okay. But you talk about financial discrimination and you mentioned only fans. The CEO of only fans had her bank account closed because of her connection with sex work. Yeah, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Like it’s a legitimate business that is run professionally. Yep. It’s illegal. It’s completely illegal. Completely illegal. And that’s that, you know, and this is, you know, the unfortunate thing is that we have a financial hierarchy, I suppose, in terms of how institutions operate that hasn’t quite caught up to where the new world, if I can use that term, economy exists. But at the same time, you know, this is like the creator of economies is growing and growing and growing. And I mean, even the statistics today show that the next generation of adults coming through see that being a creator at some point in their time is one of the things that they’ll be doing, whether it’s a side business or whether it’s something that they’re doing full time. So, so this push is going to continue. They are sort of the next, the next wave of, for one of a better term, trades people, but it’s the creator economy, right? And they, they need to buy a house. They need to buy a car. They need to have the ability to have a credit card and travel overseas and have all of those benefits that they’re associated with any other person who’s a business owner. So, you know, I strongly believe that this is, you know, there are a lot of people working on solutions to this problem. And it’s only a matter of time before we start to see people coming out with solutions to that. And once that wave starts, then FOMO will kick in and we’ll actually see a change. Yeah. The Free Speech Coalition, I’ll put in a plug for them as I often do. They’re working on putting together a credit union in the US. I love that. You know, that’s the community driven solutions, particularly given such a strongly knit community that exists in particularly amongst the adult content creators is a real opportunity as a solution to solve some of these challenges. They’ll get it done. They’ll get it done. Yeah, I love it. I believe in those people. So Adam, how did you end up working with creators? It’s, again, stumbled upon it really in a previous role. And through that, I say, the big thing for us is that relationship with the client. So kind of through that, it just got, we got more and more exposed to it through more referrals and things like that. And as you say, even in the UK, you can Google it and you’ll see people who say they are, you know, only fans friendly and that specific accounts for that. But the reality is, it’s, you know, when you go on their websites and things like that, they’re just putting that in the shop window when it comes down to it and the actual advice and even, I guess, the, you know, the sitting up of companies we spoke about, you know, this kind of, it’s not always getting done to the highest standard and, you know, not understood to the greatest extent. So yeah, just by chance and almost, you know, you spoke of the financial institutes, I always find it a challenge. I like to go the other way when the majority are going one way. And one of the things was our clients keep strong with bank accounts in the UK, which to no wind frustrates me. Like you say, you know, if our clients is a limited company making over 90 grand a year, well, they have to be that registered. They have to pay the government money, but there is no opportunity for them to get a bank account from any of the mainstream banks. So you know, how does that work? How is that fair? So kind of, I see it as like a sort of sort of certainly and still see it because we’re not fully there yet. But it’s always like a personal challenge. So I quite like to deal with the early the tech side of accounting and speak to a few people in the industry to try and achieve this. And it’s amazing how the lack of support for, like you say, creators, you know, with one again, bang slash the money platform that won’t be mentioned, you know, we’re having a discussion around offering crypto currency services for businesses that want to trade in that area. And we had a 15 minute conversation about, you know, how banks are being unceremonious with cutting off ties with companies just merely associated with the name. So I went and asked them, well, what about banks for content creators and adult and only fans? And then I know it’s too risky. I said, well, what do you mean by you know, you challenge that you know, what do you mean by risk? You know, you’re an individual, a limited company receiving income from one platform, international global platform. What’s risky about that? You know, say, stay what’s on your mind, say the elephant in the room. But I think as of kind of come to try and fight that fight, you know, there are compliance stuff in the background that needs to change to help banks also be able to do that. But you know, we I think as Adrian said about the trends, I think there are good things coming in the next few years. I think banks are going to be more receptive to it. And I’ve heard rumors that one or two banks, you know, I say traditional banks, they’re not traditional, but one of the one or two of the main banks in the UK might be looking to offer this as offering bank accounts out to creators. So I mean, that’s great news from our perspective. That would be fantastic. Yeah. And I guess the kind of how it’s evolved is without that yin win or yang win everyone yins. We set up our own firm. It’s hugely about those relationships. And we want to Josh, Josh and I have both built up stronger relationships with people that we know in the industry and want to help them continue to see do well. So kind of through that, it’s just expanded. And I would say it’s probably quite a large niche of our of our firm now is, you know, helping people in this industry, which is great because you say as we probably get onto a bit later when it comes to the actual taxes and the nuts and bolts of it, they actually are there are a lot of work we can do to help them. And there’s a lot of kind of tax savings. I know it’s not it’s when did we see that would get mentioned. But there’s this huge opportunity to just set people up the right way where, you know, accountants tend to see them once a year. But the thing is within a year, their turnover could have grown from, you know, 20 grand to 300 grand. And by then it’s too late. Exactly. Save your receipt. Always. That makes creators different as a client of an accounting firm. Well, the truth is, they don’t in a sense, but they also do in that. It’s no difference to any kind of, I guess, call it a YouTuber platform where that there’s that exponential growth. So you’ve got to be really careful of, you know, when they make it, they can become an overnight success. The uniqueness comes from as they grow the revenue, how do they build the team around it? You know, the transferable skills, you know, those marketing skills that they’ve learned and applied. The uniqueness is around that and the earnings. So what, you know, traditionally, let’s say, you know, there’s one person, you know, they can to some degree, there’s an unlimited earnings potential, which means kind of there’s no fixed costs. There’s no value. There’s no variable costs associated with being a creator once you process it and revenue threshold. And so in that sense, like you said, about the business of the future is going more and more that way. So those are the kind of the unique challenges we find. The transition from sole trader to limited company here in the UK, in the UK, from a VAT perspective, we have to do things slightly different for a VAT return to kind of only fans to release that VAT money when you’re a VAT, a registered company. So it requires being a lot more on top of the client’s work because you have to submit things before you actually release the money. So there are little nuances here and there that are definitely specific to the industry. But as a whole, you know, it’s that high growth, high turnover, low costs that then leads to high tax bills. And of course, obviously, shorter career spans for some of them, you know, and different goals and mindsets to set themselves up for the future in different ways. Sure. Because if you make a lot of money in a short period of time, you need to be thinking about putting a lot of it away so you can invest and take care of yourself, right? Yeah. I heard someone, Bruce, say that can equate the career of a creator like the career of a sports person. So you know, you’ve got and that’s not always the case, of course, a lot of people self-select to maximize their earning potential for a short period of time and then do something else. But you’re right, you know, you can be making significant amount of money for a period of time and then, you know, circumstances can change. So I think one of the key things that we’re passionate about is a platform that’s helping creators monetize their brand is to make sure that they’re maximizing their potential out of that earning and not just blowing it all. And then, you know, basically having had a good ride and then not have anything at the end, we’d rather see people, you know, do it properly and also, you know, not get caught in a sudden instance of where the tax department comes to you and says, by the way, you haven’t paid taxes for the last five years and here’s a bill and a fine, right? You’d rather see people, you know, play nice with the regulatory authorities and in turn, that just means that they’re left alone. And again, it’s part of that whole process of how do you legitimize your business and your operations. I think that’s a great analogy. That’s it. And that’s where what I like what we try and do is, you know, I said that the traditional accountant, here’s your tax return, see you next year. Well, working with their creator, okay, well, what are your actual goals? I want to be out of this in five years. Okay, well, let’s let’s use your earnings and a way to, you know, buy you investment property, you know, put a load of money into your pension. That’s the real stuff that, you know, we’ve just recently hired a kind of relationship manager and he says, this is the full stuff that get my sinasses fired. He uses it like that. Because it is, it’s, you know, like you said, you see all these instances of sports people or you go and kind of come back into the real world after those sports in career, because, you know, they, they just enjoyed that time. And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that per se. But some people’s goals are to get out, you know, have a sustainable lifestyle for the rest of their life. And that’s where we really like helping those people and individuals get there. Because ultimately they do need financial help to do that. So that’s the area we love. That’s great. What are the big risks the creators should be wary of in managing their finances beyond what we just talked about? Again, bank accounts, I think the being at the moment being shut down by a bank account, making sure that, you know, they have their funds split across a number of banks if they can possibly, but specifically the UK, I think the real risks are, you know, I’ll talk accounting and tax side or all business financial risk rather than, you know, I know because one of our clients has a whole course, you know, where they, they talk about this sort of stuff. But I think it’s, it’s being caught off guard with tax planning, all that sort of stuff of not having enough money in the bank, you know, setting up a lifestyle that they can then no longer sustain or something drops off. I think those are the real risks for what we see. Yeah. And I think from our side, one of the greatest risks we’re aiming to prevent for creators by having a global platform and a number of different options in terms of how gifts can be given is to prevent people from going to direct peer to peer type transactions because that just presents significant risk in having to disclose other personal information that, you know, may put the creator at risk either for, you know, fraud risk or personal risk in terms of disclosing their whereabouts or, or giving someone access to other personal information. So, you know, using platforms that, you know, like cash app, which has just been, been shut down in the UK, but, you know, any of those type of transactions that mean that you have to disclose any personal information to be paid for us actually is a, is a significant risk for a creator. And that, that goes not just in terms of gifting, but also, you know, if they are selling other content through their own website or using other platforms to exchange content, then, you know, we always say, make sure that whatever you’re doing, you’re just not sharing information that could give someone the ability to either get access to your bank accounts or get access to your personal information. Yeah. So, cash app got shut down in the UK. So first I’ve heard of that. Why do I think that has something to do with sex work? It may, it may not. We’re not fully sure. So, I think the line that came out from a media perspective was around Square bringing all of their focus back to the US as their main market. But I do, and this is, you know, publicly available information from what I read. I think there was also some potential issues around them completing the appropriate levels of know your customer or KYC side of things, which is, is often prevalent in peer to peer and transacting platforms because it’s effectively exchange of a small amount of value. So, it’s deemed that, you know, the money laundering risk is relatively low. So platforms don’t undertake KYC because it’s an expensive process. So, therefore, I think, I think it was part regulatory and part strategic just to pull out of the market and not be available. And I would probably say part penetration of that. They didn’t really have the takeoff that they probably expected in the UK. Yeah. How can creators be better prepared to maximize their earnings? I’ll chime in a little bit and I think Adam can give some really good insights as well. But, but I think it’s, Adam nailed it. It’s all about planning, right? So, so I think you know, having a plan for the future and making sure that you’re really focused on, you will have peaks and troughs in terms of your, your revenue generation as any business does, but also have a business plan. I think one of the things that I’m seeing, you know, like I said, I think creators are huge super human people, right? So they spend all of their day preparing all the content, you know, building their brand is some of the most incredible individual brand marketers I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been in, in the marketing and finance game for a long time. And you know, I think one of the things that comes with that is over time, the ability to really understand where they should focus and potentially even, you know, bringing in help as well. So I know that Adam’s got some creators that he works with that effectively, you know, have support, you know, either outsource providers that can do some of the, the back office type administration type things or looking at, you know, other ways that they can have paid services to support the day to day administrative side of their business while they’re really focused on the things that are going to generate and improve their brand and improve their revenue generating opportunities. So I think the more that creators can think of their business as a business and then, you know, again, you know, look to other creators, but also look to people, you know, around like ourselves and, and that have, you know, supporting creators for ideas on how they can actually free up their time so they can spend more time generating revenue and less time doing all the admin stuff that goes with running a business. Mm hmm. Some of the things that they’re paying people to do is the subject of lawsuits right now as you probably know. Yeah. Well, some of it you just got to be a little bit careful, right? Exactly. Adam, did you have anything to add on that? Yeah. And this spot on why is it any different than me having an EA to plan and organize my life whilst I focus on what I’m good at, you know, the accounting side of things. I mean, it’s exactly that what Adrian said from my side too. It’s all about planning and, you know, trying to not to fit any more puns or unintentional faux pas in here. But it’s like, you know, talk of the unsexy things that you can do in terms of planning. You know, I always talk, you want to be very, very boring, you know, pensions is a great way to save tax and plan for the future. Investment property, all these different things changing from a sole trader to a limited company here in the UK. So all these different things you can do to maximize kind of your income and minimize your tax liability. Planning planning planning, very unsexy, very boring, but effective nonetheless. Indeed. What makes you pay experts in gifting as opposed to say Amazon or other wishlist platforms? Yeah, that’s a great question. I know I asked it. Yeah, this is why you’re the expert, Bruce. It’s interesting, right? Because I think we, I don’t think we’re a complete expert in gifting yet, but we, you know, will continue to become the best platform for gifting over time. And part of the reason for that is that we actively engage with the community that works and uses our platform to get ideas from them on how we can best improve, how we can minimize risks for them and to make sure that it’s a relatively frictionless process, at least in the gifting side of things. And that’s key for us. So it’s not about us sitting here going, hey, we’re the best people at gifting. We wouldn’t be where we are now without a significant amount of engagement with the creator community and a significant amount of feedback. And I think also just, we’re only a small team, but we listen deeply to what creators are looking for. And, you know, quite often we’re super responsive in terms of being able to deliver pieces of functionality or ideas that creators have that will support them in their business and also at the same time help us to continue to grow as well. Okay. Should creators be setting up their own company? And if so, why? Well, I guess this again is my moment. Certainly in the UK, there is this threshold point where they should potentially. So, you know, and it’s not one size fits all because again, what tends to happen with creators, they might have a part-time job or a job that they keep doing whilst they are starting up and doing this on the side. So for instance, for a creator in that mold, they might set up a limited company sooner rather than later from a tax point of view. If it was their sole job, generally speaking, and without getting into the politics of our tax regime at the moment, that number varies really. You know, you know, there is I’m sure there isn’t there’s an exact optimal point in which the admin of doing a company outweighs the tax saving. But generally speaking, as they get into the higher rate tax bracket, that’s when they should start to look to set up a company. But those aren’t the only reasons when you know, you might still be in that 50 50,000 period where you’re 50,000 earning window where you’re just below the higher rate. But you might want to set up a limited company because you want that safety, you want that peace of mind, you’re looking to invest in property, you know, there are a multitude of times you should set up your own limited company. But yeah, like I say, get in touch with an accountant because every scenario is specific. And like I say, it’s not as much as we might like to think it, it’s not one one size fits all in accounting. Can you think of any account and so fan? Just kidding. Okay, so what should a creator or adult performer be doing to ensure they can get financing for say a house or a car? So, so again, UK is great just carry on doing what you’re doing. So all self employed people, it is, I wouldn’t say it’s more difficult, but it there is more nuance to getting say a mortgage or a car in the UK. So traditionally, you need to have two years worth of tax returns. Basically you need to be able to show your income. If you’re doing self, if you’re self employed, that will be all, you know, it’s called an essay 302. Basically the summary of your tax return, you need to provide two to three years of that depending on the mortgage you’re going for the car payments you’re going for. If you’re through a limited company, you know, you would need to show earnings again on your personal tax return. But potentially, if you weren’t taking significant funds out your company, you could look at they could use your reserves in your company to look at it. So basically just run the business as if they would. It should be no different to any other person who is self employed or an owner of a limited company. One would hope so. But Adam, so from your perspective, obviously as an accountant working with creators, I’m sure you’ve identified some key providers that are more suitable for you to be able to take credit creators to to help them through that process as well. Yes. So we’ve done and like I say, for the most part, the mortgage advisors don’t care for lack of a bit of word. But because we have an open dialogue with one or two mortgage advisors, they understand there’s no shocks or surprises when they get any information over. But yeah, it shouldn’t make a difference. But we like to say have someone we would refer to. Because again, as a specialist in kind of sole traders, sole company and directors, that understands kind of working for yourself. Great. What types of adult entertainment are you using YouPay? Yeah, it’s a real mix. And I think, you know, we talked at the start about the fact that the creator economy is growing. And I think what we’re already starting to see is that the categories of creators that we’re seeing on YouPay is going broader as well. But you know, look, it’s the majority of creators using YouPay for gifting will have some form of streaming profile, whether it’s only fans, loyal fans or one of the others. You know, and we typically see that they’ll have an X profile. What’s really interesting is a lot of creators are using TikTok now as well within the guidelines of TikTok, building their profile, guiding people to view their content on a streaming platform and then, you know, through their link tree or equivalent type of link in bio solution will make their wish list available. But you know, there’s a lot of activity in terms of categories, Bruce. We’re very big in the DOM space specifically. Feet are always going to be there. You know, it always amazes me how strong the feet fan community is if I can call it that. And then you sort of get into just like the more mainstream adult content creators, but everything from fitness models to performers to, you know, we’ve got on YouPay, we’ve got people that have X Playboy bunnies, we’ve got mainstream porn stars, you know, all the way through to gamers and a lot of cosplay type categories as well. So it’s quite broad and we’re seeing, you know, engagement with fans across traditional social media, but also, you know, more and more in platforms like Discord. And definitely, if you’re a creator today, the two main platforms that everyone’s really driving engagement with their fans outside of the side of their streaming is X and TikTok. So what are the challenges for creators right now that you guys are finding? On our side, I think, you know, I break it into two categories, which is the traditional challenges and the emerging challenges if I could go down that path. But I think the traditional challenges for a creator always going to be there, which is obviously day to day production of content and making sure that it’s relevant and engaging with your audience and keeping that audience engaged with you. You know, I think, you know, a significant proportion of the successful creators on YouPay have an engaged audience that they’ve engaged with for a period of time. You know, the flip side and the negative side of being a creator is combating, you know, the trolls, the negative feedback. And, you know, often it’s creators sort of trolling other creators too, unfortunately. So there is a bit of a negative personal side of things. And, you know, there’s mental health challenges that come with that, which is one of the reasons why we’ve partnered with Pineapple Support to raise funds this year for creator mental health is because we saw that firsthand through some of the creators that we knew that we’re having challenges. So it’s been given us a good opportunity to really give back through our community. And then the last area that I think I’d call ongoing and a stronger emerging threat is really around the hacks, the profile hijacking and, you know, people cloning creators account to try and really steal someone’s brand and then benefit off it. But the emerging threat now, as we all know, is really AI and where that fits in people starting to either replicate creator profiles or create, you know, fully fake accounts that look like creator profiles. So the challenge for all platforms is going to be having very strong verification processes for creators. So when a fan engages with a creator on the platform, they can have confidence that it’s the real creator and not, you know, some piece of artificially intelligently created, unless that’s what you want, of course, or, you know, someone who’s stolen a profile. Absolutely. So what should creators be watching out for besides what you just mentioned? I have one actually on that side is I think it’s they’re making lots of money or some some people are making money quickly. You know, I think it’s the I’ll call it, say, management companies in the space. You know, obviously they were good management companies, but they’re obviously bad actors and, you know, being mindful of those people that go, Oh, we’ll manage your profile and take 50% of your revenue, things, things of that nature. That’s not just randomly plot situation there. But yeah, that’s, that’s a big thing. I think it’s, you know, people taking advantage of your success really to your math side. Well, I mean, some are worth it. Yeah, that’s kind of the point that’s this bad actors and very good management companies that, like we said, you can outsource your. And for my side, the biggest threats are the threats are thinking you’re making all this money, but because you’re not paying any tax on it at the time you were in it, you could end up 18 months down the line with a very big tax bill. It can catch up with you. Yeah. And look, I think the last thing for me is, you know, the as a creator economy grows as more and more people become attuned to the opportunities that that presents the watch out is for creators is to, I think, listen deeply to the community that they’re already plugged into because, you know, we’ve learned ourselves that the greatest validation that can exist is is social proof through through the creator community. And that’s quite broad and includes people like yourself, Bruce. So, you know, I think it’s, it’s important that, you know, what always looks good on the outside may not past as we would say in Australia, the pub test, which means that basically, you know, if you’re having a beer and you said, what do you think about this? You would go, no, that just sounds a little bit weird. Yeah. Creators need to sometimes take the pessimistic view. And I know many of them are good at it anyway and do their due diligence because what we don’t want to see is creators put all of their eggs in a single basket, whether it’s a gifting platform, whether it’s a streaming platform or any other monetization opportunity and then have their brand or their earning capability disrupted because that platform hasn’t either operated properly or isn’t everything that it’s purported to say that it is. So I think, you know, an element of cautiousness is always important. And you know, don’t be afraid to do your due diligence and listen to the community about what’s good and what maybe isn’t as good. Yeah. I mean, if something doesn’t seem right, make a post on xbiz.net and ask the creator community or probably even better yet, Twitter or some of the creator forums and say, hey, xyz, what do you think? Yeah, 100%. And we’ve seen it time and time again. It’s again, it’s something that, you know, we’ve been really focused on in engaging with the community, particularly on x. That seems to be where most of the conversation is. But if you can’t pass the test of a community poll on x or something along those lines and you don’t see the sort of results that you would expect when you’re personally interviewing a platform, no matter what it is, and there’ll be more things that will come out over time than I think that’s a really good starting point because the community is very smart group of people. I wouldn’t believe everything I read on x either. Come on. We won’t have a conversation about that. That’s another time. Indeed, Adam, did you have something you wanted to say about that? No, like I said, I think you’re a nailed at spot on. Okay. Last question, Adam, when should a creator be talking to an accountant? The question should probably be when shouldn’t. But yeah, it’s, it’s one of those. I was most accountants. Well, and again, we, let’s talk we, let’s not generalize. Yeah. If you want to have a chat, cause what I would say is as soon as possible. So life cycle of it, you know, you decide to do this, you’ll start to make some money, you know, you’ve made over the course of 2000 pounds an hour, give us a call. There’s no fee. There’s no, you know, nothing to be charged at that initial stage. Just have an understanding of what you need to do, you know, insert, register, stuff, so all that sort of stuff. Understand what you want to do. If you think you can do that, then you know what you’re on the right path and you can do that. Or if it’s all overwhelming at that stage, get an accountant to help you kind of the next stage really is. I think it’s when there’s a significant change to your circumstances. I think significance may be a bit of a strong word there, but you know, when there are things that are revenue has doubled or jumped a bit, or you have a different life circumstance that you need to deal with from this, I think that’s kind of how I describe it to not just creators, I think to all kind of self-assessment, self-employed people when the business is growing, if we don’t speak to them regularly, get in touch the moment something changes all happens and things like that. And then generally just reach out and have a call if you want to have your mind cleared. So that’s kind of my thing is, you know, you can’t, you’re right. You can’t speak to somebody, an accountant soon enough, but it doesn’t mean you need to be paying for an accountant from day one. At least explore and understand when you might need to start paying for one. Absolutely. Adam, Adrian, I’d like to thank you guys for being our guests on Adult Site Broker Talk and I hope we’ll get a chance to do this again soon. Thanks Bruce, really appreciate it. Thanks Dominic. Thanks guys. My broker tip today is part seven of how to buy a site. Last week we talked about the agreement and escrow. So now you own the website. What do you do now? The first thing you should do is make sure you understand everything about the operation of the site. The previous owner will hopefully be available for a period of time to help you with this. As I mentioned last week, you should establish what the former owner’s participation will be after the sale. You’ll need to deal with production of new content, processing, paying affiliates and many other things. If you don’t have experience in these areas, you may want to consider using our general consulting firm, Adult Business Consulting. You can get more information on what this company does at adultbusinessconsulting.com. We help website owners project manage and guide them to the right vendors. Maybe the previous owner had all the right elements, processing, hosting, payments, production, scripts, etc. Or maybe they didn’t. We can help evaluate that for you. Let us know if we can help. Anyway, you’ll now be operating the website. If you don’t have someone like our general consulting firm to help, evaluate all of those items and everything the site is spending money on and using to operate the site. Make sure you’re getting a good deal and that these companies are providing the right service and check to see if you can do better. Hosting is a great example on something where people are often both overpaying and not getting the right service. Many times the server is just too slow. If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to reach out to us on our site. Next week we’ll talk about how to sell a website. And next week we’ll be speaking with Alex Luchinsky of Develit. And that’s it for this week’s Adult Site Broker Talk. I’d once again like to thank my guests Adam Gins and Adrian Jenkinson. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I’m Bruce Friedman. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]