Choosing The Right Bank For Your Business (And Why Your Bank Probably Sucks) | Back To Basics

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, Episode 252

Welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income.

If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place.

Hello, and welcome to the 6 Figure Creative Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Hood. If this is your first time joining me today, first of all, welcome. Thank you so much for giving this podcast a chance. There are like 3 million other podcasts in the world. I looked it up just before this episode that you could be listening to.

So thank you for giving this one a chance. This podcast is for freelancers who are trying to earn more from their creative skills and preferably doing it without selling their souls. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. And for my returning listeners, you are smack dab in the middle, or actually probably more the beginning of the new series called Back to Basics, where I'm uncovering all the basics of things that most freelancers either breeze past without thinking about it or just completely skip over. Things that I personally might have skipped over myself, things that I got wrong myself, and today's episode is no exception. We're talking about business banking.

Very dry subject, very boring stuff. When I told my wife what I'm recording today, she goes, yawn, boring.

I'm just like, I don't know how to make this interesting. I will say this, I have personally used over 10 different banks in my life through the 13, 14 years that I've been doing this, because I have been unhappy and I've always found something that is a deal breaker for me in a bank.

So this is something that's been a lifelong obsession for me, is finding the right bank for my business. I think I've finally done that. But I wanna make sure that anyone who is either unhappy with their bank that they're using right now as a freelancer, and we've probably got plenty of reasons to be unhappy because most banks suck, and your bank probably sucks. And two, if you're on the precipice of launching your freelance business and you're trying to decide how do I choose the right bank for my freelance business so I don't have to be like dumb Brian and go through 10 plus different banks over my lifetime, then also this episode's gonna be awesome for you. If you're just like, I don't really care about banking, I'll listen, Brian, great. I'll try to make this episode short and sweet, get to the point, and let's start with the first thing. Most freelancers do this. When they are trying to choose a bank for their businesses, they do one of two things. They either one, go to just one of the big banks because that's where they've seen the commercials, that's what they've seen the stadium names of, that's where they've seen other people using the Banks of America, the Chase, et cetera. Those are garbage banks.

Do not use those banks. If you're using one of those banks, please, God, finish this episode, and then go to the resource I'm gonna send you into this episode where you can just sign up for the bank that I use myself that I've been entirely happy with, and then I'll show you all of the back behind the scenes of. And by the way, if you just wanna skip this entire episode and use what I use, just go to 6figurecreative.com/bank, B-A-N-K, number six, figurecreative.com/bank. I will just show you the bank I'm using, why I love it, why I chose it, et cetera.

So that's the first thing. People just run to those banks, and the reason they suck is they tend to nickel and dime you. They do not care about you in any way, shape, or form, and they even limit you in some really weird ways, like just sending money to people. They'll charge you for that. They'll limit how many transactions you can have in your account each month. Like, for example, Chase bank account, you can only have up to 20 free transactions in your account. So if you buy more than 20 things or have more than 20 transactions that happen in your checking account as a business, they will charge you for that. It blows my mind that that's a thing that they can get away with and that people sign up for without even realizing it. And when I say nickel and dime you, that's one of the things, but they also will charge you monthly fees on your account just for existing. This is what pisses me off even more, especially if you're below a certain balance. For example, I think it's Chase, it's $2,000. If you're below $2,000 in your account, they charge you some monthly fee, which again is so stupid. If you're below $2,000, you're the last person that can afford to pay monthly for a bank account. So let's just throw those away. If you have one of those accounts, I've closed a Bank of America account in my life, it's a pain in the ass. I'm so sorry, but just do yourself a favor and go do it. Get it out of your life. The second thing that freelancers do when they're going to choose a bank is they try to be a little smarter. They've probably heard me on the podcast in past episodes say, oh, just use your local credit union. They're almost always nicer. They're better experienced, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. While that is true, it is definitely better than the big banks. This isn't always the case, but they are typically way behind on technology.