3 TAX HACKS to CRUSH Your Money Goals in the NEW YEAR

0:00Your savings are not there to make you wealthy, they're there to protect you against an emergency. You take your income, you subtract your expenses, and that equals your investments plus your savings. So if you want to become wealthy, it ultimately comes down to... Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

0:37Welcome to this special masterclass. We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's gonna be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

0:54We talked about how to save your money. We talked about how to invest your money. We talked about how to manage your expenses. But now let's talk about the income. because if now you understand how to live below your means, you understand how to put your money to work, if you want to put fuel on the fire, you just got to earn more money. Now, if you earn$100 ,000, you earn a million dollars, you earn whatever, you earn more money. Now, you know how to put this money through your system, through your funnel, whether 75, 15, 10, or whatever else. You know how to take this extra money, put it to work, that way you have more money to invest, more money to save, more money to live your life.

1:32but the key is you don't want to 100 % increase your lifestyle to match your income. You want to increase your income with your investments. And keep expenses the same. Keep it ideally. Now you can marginally increase your expenses, but the key is you want to be increasing your income and your investments way more. So the question is, how do you do that? Well, this is where, again, understand you. If you are an employee, you don't want to start a business. You don't want to start a side hustle. Fine. Nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with being an employee. You just have to understand you.

2:03But that means now, how can you earn more money? If you like your job, look for ways to get a raise, to get a promotion. See how you can get a bonus. Just be open with your boss. Say, hey, look, I want to be able to contribute more. I want to earn more money. What can I do? Most people are going to be very open and honest. Say, hey, I would like you to tack on this, this, and this. Do this, and then we will help raise your salary. Maybe if you don't like your job, you're going to get a certificate. You're going to do something else. you need to figure out now how you can earn your increase your income maybe what value can you bring to the business to bring in more money for the business or save more time or create some system exactly so that the business can say okay cool let's give you more opportunities for growth exactly i mean if you can bring in an extra ten thousand dollars a year to the business of profit they're not going to have a problem paying you five thousand dollars or whatever it might be right and this is where you just want to be open because every business is different maybe take on a second job and you know it's just figuring out how can you earn more money there now if you say well i want to do something outside of my job fine well the first thing you can do is start a side hustle so much more accessible now than ever before i mean you can go on to the internet become a virtual assistant you can become a copywriter you can become a designer you can become a video editor i have paid so upwork they're not paying me upwork is a platform that I use to hire freelancers.

3:25And I did a video on this, so I looked this up. In the last two years or three years, I have spent more than a quarter million dollars on Upwork alone. Wow. On different individuals. Different individuals, just hiring people in different areas who don't work for me. They work on their own schedule because now this freelancing business has grown so much. And so there's a lot of opportunity there where now you can, if you can present a service, you can make money doing that yeah they might be working an extra 5 10 20 hours a week on the side or they might just be full-time freelancers yeah yeah and you get to set your hours for the most part uh you can really do something that you like that you enjoy that you're good at so there's a lot of opportunity there where now you can be a freelancer or start your own side hustle if you have a idea you want to one of my buddies his mom is really good at making cakes and she started this what is it called?

4:16Carrot cake business. They're making a good, I don't know how much, maybe I think it's like$700 or$1 ,000 a month selling carrot cakes from Instagram. He markets on Instagram, people say, hey, can you make me a cake? His mom makes the cake and he delivers it. Sure, sure. It's just the number of opportunities. Now, of course, as an attorney, I should say there are liabilities to selling food, get insurance and all that. But this is where there are so many opportunities, right? Just being a hustler, just getting yourself out there, figuring it out. and there's an unlimited amount of possibilities and opportunities out there.

4:47Now, if you want to take it one step further, you could try to build your own business. Your side hustle can turn into your own business. If you have a business idea, invest in it. First, invest in your mind, invest in your education and then try to do it. You want to invest as little money as possible until you start generating revenue. Like again, mindset versus tool set. We assume that we need all these tools to start doing it. But the reality is the first thing you need is your mind because there's a lot of alternatives on how you can do it. Like when I started, I started a sock company a number of years ago when I was trying to figure things out.

5:19And it was a water-resistant sock. Yeah, yeah. And the interesting thing was I knew nothing about socks. How do you manufacture socks? How do you make them waterproof? And so I was working with textile engineers. I was working with manufacturing companies. I was working with a lot of different people. I didn't have a lot of money. And they wanted, and now we're talking about a real product. so I learned to talk and essentially I did not I think my total cost to build my first round of socks was$3 ,500 it's not a lot of money but relative to what if you want to manufacture products and create a product to go through the prototype after prototype to prototype it costs typically $100 ,000 plus I did it for under$4 ,000 because I was able to talk to them I used to talk about the potential and I worked with them to build out these special deals where hey work with me here and you know i'll do more business in the future exactly and we were able to get it going so it's the ability to hustle be willing to find a way and that's that mindset that sometimes too much money can be a disease especially if you want to be a side hustler or a business because now you just start spending money and i've been a victim of that too i i'll just give examples like the minority mindset blog i didn't know how to build a blog And my time was so eaten up with things like market briefs, talking about building this tax business, although that's much newer.

6:46But building my companies, building my YouTube channel, doing all these other things, investing in real estate that I didn't really care about building a blog. Like I cared about it, but I didn't have the brain capacity and the time to sit here and come up with a strategy to do it. So I outsourced it. I hired some of literally the top blog managers in the world. and they charged me a lot of money, like as in six figures plus. Right. $100 ,000 plus to manage the blog and they promised all this stuff. I was like, fine, do it. So$100 ,000 for the blog manager, at least another$100 ,000 on blog content over the course of 12 months.

7:24And guess what? No results. Zero. Nothing. The worst. What did I do? Too much money problem. I just, I said, I don't got the time. Just going to throw money at it. Hopefully that will fix the problem because if you can get the top blog manager, you can hire people to write. It's easy, right? Well, after those 12 months, the contract was over, fired them. And this is where I was like, all right, you know what? Let me figure this out because I do want to build a blog. And so we built a brand new strategy. It costs us a fraction, like a teeny tiny fraction of what we were paying before. Let's get bigger results.

7:57And our blog is growing. We're generating revenue now. I mean, it's a complete turnaround, but it's that mindset versus tool set. Yes. And these are real stories, real things that I have gone through. So you need to know now how do you multiply your income and understand that you don't need thousands of dollars. My first business, I started with nothing, essentially, when I started my bed planning company. I started Minority Mindset with under a few hundred dollars. I was making videos off of my cell phone. You just need some hustle, some creativity, some action, some consistency, some relationships, some communication, and just making stuff happen.

8:33The hustle, man. And that's why I always say keep hustling at the end of my videos because the hustle mentality is so crucial. And you can't teach that. You can't read that in books. You have to actually live it. And so this is where now if you want to really do that, you have to understand the hustle mentality. And this brings me now to the be great aspect. The last part now. I like it. Speaking my language. Exactly, right? Exactly. Greatness. So you've built the base. You're putting some money to work. you're leading your money, you are either paying off your home or you're understanding how to use your extra cash the right way, you're increasing income that way you can build your wealth even faster.

9:12Now it's all about being great. And there's two aspects to this. The first aspect that I want to talk about is protecting yourself because the reality is when people realize that you have money, they're going to try to take their hand, put it in your pocket and keep some for themselves. You know, to pause on you there, I remember hearing Oprah talk about this one time. Years ago, I heard her on some podcast or somewhere. She said something like, as she started to rise to fame with her talk show and started to make a lot more money, what do you think happened? Everyone's reaching out with a handout, right?

9:45Oh, you got money now. Can you help me with$1 ,000 here? Can you help me with this? Well, you've made the money. Can you help me? Yeah. She said, I'm paraphrasing this, but after like, I don't know, a decade of this or something, It just felt like everyone was using her as opposed to just being in a relationship with her and having an actual friendship or relationship. And she said that she decided after a period of time she was tired of just giving, giving, giving, giving to people who had a handout. And so she said, I'm going to do a big dinner and I'm going to invite everyone, friends, family, everyone, you know, third cousins, you know, twice removed.

10:21Everyone who's been asked for a handout, I'm going to invite them all. and she said like she gave out, she had this massive dinner for everyone, like everything you could eat and she started giving out envelopes and gifts and cars and cash and just like she gave out gifts based on what she wanted to give to each person. Everyone got something. And she said, she gave a speech at the end and said, this is all I'm gonna give you, don't ask for anything else after this. And she said, still, people were complaining, oh, you gave this person 10 grand, I only got 5 ,000. It's like, you got to learn to protect yourself mentally, psychologically, financially, because you could just be giving and giving and giving and it can never end.

11:07Right. Right? A hundred percent. So how do you do this? That's a huge relationship aspect. I'm going to take it one step a little bit deeper on the legal side because you're absolutely right. And, you know, I struggle with that relationship side as well because... I'm not saying don't be generous, but also it's like when you feel like you're being taken advantage of, then it becomes challenging. So my family is from a state in India called Punjab. And what happens, a lot of people, is you come here to America or to, you know, somewhere like Canada. My family came to America and your family is in India.

11:41And they think, oh, my God, you're wealthy in America. So you're working your butt off here while sending money back to India. So, you know, my parents did this, my dad did this a lot where, especially when we were young, he wasn't making a lot of money, but he was always sending money back to siblings or people just to help take care of them because that's our culture, to help take care of people. And it becomes difficult because, you know, it's that, at least for me, that cultural aspect of giving, which I like, taking care of family, but then also not making them reliant on you because now once you start giving, then they're saying, well, I don't need to step up.

12:14Yeah. Yeah. And so it's a very tough balance. And I don't have a good answer for you here because, you know, I do like taking care of people. I like helping people, especially, you know, within my family. You know, I want to make sure I can take care of everyone. That's why I work hard because I want to make sure that I can give you. And so when I because I have given money to people around me, my family and my friends, the way that I look at it is I don't want that money back. I know when I give you money, I'm never going to ask for it back. And I don't want it back if you give it back to me maybe i'll take it but i'm never going to ask her back and i will give based off of what i can but i know that's money in my mind i'm never getting back and i have to be okay with that for myself and if i'm okay with that that's fine and i think that's one of those things where i don't because i don't want to mess up the relationship right with my family that's more important to me and so look if i'm okay giving you a thousand dollars here's a thousand never talk to me about it again right and really that's it and if i see you blow the money in dumb ways, guess what?

13:12When you ask me for another grand, you're not getting it. It's as simple as that. I'm going to forget about it. I don't like arguing over money. I think that's very dirty and evil. So I am generous in that sense, but I'm also very straightforward where if I feel like, hey, I'm not going to give it to you, I'm not going to do it. But I also don't sit here and ask for it back. But you're talking about protecting yourself legally. Legally, which means now having the right advisors, accountants, and insurers to protect you. And so when you start earning money, people are going to try to reach into your pockets and get it.

13:45Also, legally. I had a tenant in one of my properties, Sumer Realistic Company, because they said that the bathtub got too slippery when the water was on. Jeez. And because it was so slippery when the water was on, it caused them to slip and fall, which then - It's a bathtub. It's a bathtub with water. And because of that, they wanted damages for injuries. But you just have to defend yourself even if it's not your problem. And so this is where how do you protect yourself? So I had a couple things. One, I had an LLC. Second, I had insurance. And third, I had a property manager company, property management company.

14:22And so I'll go through the different layers. You can see all the different levels of insurance and how they worked. Because now the first thing that happens is my property management company documented everything. because prior to them slipping, they made a complaint that there was about a quarter inch by quarter inch chip in the bathtub. And they said, oh, there's a little paint chip. We want to get this fixed. So my contractor goes out there. He says, okay, yeah, we can fix this. And my contractor said, you know, the tenants here are kind of old. Let's install them a handicap pool just to be nice.

14:49We weren't required to do this. We were fully licensed by the city, but my contractor offered to do this. So now they go back to do the work. The tenants say, we don't want you to do it. We're tired. He goes back to do it again. They said, we don't want you to do it. the tenant slipped and fell at a barbecue they go back he said no he's still injured from the barbecue so we have notes of all this sure and then they go and say that they slipped and fell in the bathtub we have records of all this where they said they slipped and fell at a barbecue and now they're saying they slipped and fell at a bathtub why are they doing that well maybe they can try to get some money out of the quote-unquote rich landlord i was a very young kid at this time i was still in college um trying to dig into those pockets thinking that oh if he's a real estate investor must have a lot of money.

15:32And so they use one of those free attorneys to go after my insurance. So now I have insurance. So now my insurance company gives me an attorney to protect me through this process. And the judge laughed at the case. Even the attorney laughed at the case. He was like, look, man, they're just trying to grab money. There's nothing here. It's a frivolous lawsuit. So we just have to do it. And the insurance company wants to settle because it's cheaper to settle than to pay$350 to$400 an hour to the attorney to fight it and actually win the case. And so that's where the insurance came in and protected me.

16:07They fought me for me and defended me and then paid out the settlement. Now, if it had escalated further, that's where the LLC protects me, which is where you want to have a good attorney there to recommend what's best for you because that LLC then kind of creates a shield where you can only take what the LLC owns, then you can't go after my personal assets. So if the LLC only owns that property, you can't go after anything that I own because the LLC is what owns the real estate. So you want to make sure you protect yourself there. So this is where having those right shields to protect you are so important because especially in America, we are the most litigious country in the world.

16:49And you want to make sure you protect yourself against that. And there's a funny saying in real estate that if you haven't been sued as a real estate investor, you haven't been in business long enough. So it's just one of those things where you want to protect yourself. I think people also got to also understand this is a full contact sport. You know, learning how to follow these six steps that you've laid out, which I think are great, but learning how to be, you know, an investor, it doesn't come easy for everyone right away. You're going to make some mistakes there's going to be some challenges to face and the longer you're in it you just have to deal with stuff that's not fun right this is something you have to deal with there's probably months of a back and forth thing and you're there's some stress there's some worry there's conversation it's time it's energy with insurance with lawyers just to deal with something that even isn't your fault 100 and you know this is just one of the realities of being an investor an entrepreneur where, you know, understanding the aspects and there are going to be some things that are not fun.

17:53Like I talked about in our previous podcast, the tax issue. It was where my accountant calls me up saying that, hey, Jaspreet, this is nine in the morning. You owe$100 ,000 by the end of the day. Send it into the IRS. And now I have to go figure out how to do this, send it in. And then he tells me that I also have to pay a penalty on this because he did something wrong. So it's one of those things that's not fun. It's a problem. But then as an entrepreneur, how do you find the opportunity? Well, first I fired the accountant. I go on the hunt for a new accountant, a new tax advisor. I start working with this new tax advisor and I see the difference between a bad accountant and a good accountant.

18:33I start learning, wow, you're telling me that every month we can meet and you can advise me on what I can do with my money. That way I can legally limit my tax liability and you're going to do all this work in advance and I don't have to worry about this ever. I love that. Now, with my entrepreneurial brain, I'm like, let's start working together because there's so many small businesses that need this. It is a real problem because there's a lot of bad accountants out there and we need more good accountants. We need more good tax advisors who's going to help people, especially in this new age where we have more IRS agents joining the workforce.

19:03We have a lot of things changing. We're probably going to see a change in tax laws. So you want to make sure that you're taking care of yourself. So this is one of the things that I'm working on with him is to fix that. We don't have a website or anything. So if you want to learn more, shoot me a DM on Instagram at Minority Mindset or email me at team at theminoritymindset.com. But this is just one of those things where you want to make sure you have the right resources there to first be great to protect yourself for your family. And I'm going to take that one step further because as an attorney, you also want to make sure you have the right estate planning in place because this is one of those things that is really not fun, but so crucial.

19:40If you build any sort of wealth, you want to tell the world. And when I die, where is it going to go? Because if you don't, your family is going to fight over it. Oh, man. And it's not fun because no one wants to think about what happens after I die. But it is so, so, so important because when you die, you don't want your family fighting at your funeral. And so create a will, create a trust, have an estate planning attorney that can help guide you there. Because you never want to have to worry about that. And the second aspect of being great is being great for the world, where the more you have, the more you can do.

20:15You can give back now. You can do more things, whether it's your money, whether it's your time, whether it's your education. Because when you can light a candle, well, you can light one candle, but that one candle can also light a million other candles. And this is where now, as you're on this journey to build wealth, you have lit your own candle. Now, you can help light someone else. You can help give someone a helping hand, whether you help someone financially. whether you help them with your time, whether you help them through your expertise because now you've learned the process because information is meant to be shared.

20:48I talk about this stuff on YouTube not because I wanted to get rich, but because I was so frustrated by the system, right? I never knew that I could even make money on YouTube. I started making videos without even turning advertisements on. I didn't know that you could do that until someone showed me, hey, you can make money from these videos. And so it's the whole idea of helping to spread because like we've talked about in this video this podcast there's so much misinformation out there there's so much lack of information out there and financially like if you don't understand money if you don't have money it can ruin so many other aspects of your life because if you don't have money, if you're stressing about money now you can't take your spouse on the vacation that they want You can't pay for your kids education You can't fund your retirement You can't buy that gift that you want You can't do anything and now you're stressing It makes your mental health worse It can put you into depression It can make you start eating bad It can make your physical health worse It can make you feel so unfulfilled It can make you feel so spiritually beat So this is where understanding Hey, more money isn't going to fix every aspect of your life But if you don't have money It can impact every aspect of your life what do you think are the key things that abundant mindset people around money do differently than scarcity mindset people around money if you had to say three or five kind of key things they appreciate it as you said that that is a biggie they appreciate it and they speak about it as they love it.

22:31They're not weird about it. They're also generous with it because when you pinch yourself off from giving you, that is sort of a subconscious way of saying there's not enough to go around and it's not going to come, I'm not in the flow. So when you don't give generously, it's because you're scared that it's not going to come in anymore. Um, they take risks, you know, you got to take risks. You are where you are because you've been doing what you've been doing. So if you want to change your life, you've got to do stuff you've never done. Um, what else? Wealthy people. They learn about money. You focus on money.

23:04That was such a big thing for me too. When I was broke, I never wanted to think about money. I was all about writing songs and doing much more noble things. Sure, sure. But when you're broke, all you think about is money. I don't really think about money that much now that I have it, but every single decision you make when you're broke is about - Well, I have enough to pay for this. Can I afford it? What happens if I don't have you? Right. You wake up first thing in the morning in a panic because you got to pay your bills. So you're always thinking about money. So it is really just sort of getting in the flow with that and just, you know, being on good terms with it and focusing on it.

23:38And, you know, how are you going to make it? Like being realistic about your income streams and, you know, and if you want to make it, you've got to coax it in, you know? I'm curious about this. Okay. You, you're a starving artist. You wanted to do noble things, which about art and making art and all these different things. What would have happened if someone would have said, Jen, you know what? I love that you're an artist. I love that you have this, you know, passion for art and you want to keep doing this. And this is the way you've been for 40 years and we don't want you to change. Here's a hundred grand a year for the rest of your life.

24:17Don't worry about money up to a hundred grand. What would that have done to you if someone would have given you a hundred grand a year and you would have just been like, okay, I'm going to write and do whatever I want. And how do you think it would have been mentally, emotionally, spiritually versus you having to risk emotionally and mentally, you getting to heal, let go, overcome, challenge yourself into asking for money and to becoming something greater than that limiting belief, what do you think, what do you think it'd be now? Probably would have spent it on beer, honestly, back in those days.

24:50Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't, you, you're absolutely right. It's an, it's an, it's a frequency, you know, it's like, it's like, uh, I don't know. I mean, I always, I always had, I guess I'm going to say gall. That's not the right word, but I did, I didn't do a lot of stuff that was pretty edgy and I pushed the envelope a lot. So I may have gotten there, but I don't think it would have been as exciting as it was to do it myself. You know, there really is. You do grow. And they say, you know, starting your own business is the best personal development course you can probably do because all your stuff comes up, right?

25:30All of it. Relationship training, it's leadership training, it's inner child training, everything. everything totally totally so so it wouldn't have been as satisfying i don't think i think i still would have done it though because that is kind of my personality when i'm ready to change i'm ready to change and i do it yeah so but i think it wouldn't have been as glorious and i'm definitely i probably wouldn't have written you are at that which totally changed my entire life so it changed yours but also changed other people's lives yes so it's who you become the lessons you learn the wisdom you have yes to then be able to be of service and teach yeah from your own experience Exactly.

26:04Yeah. The book about me getting a hundred grand a year just for being would not be that interesting to people. Right. Right. That's interesting. Yeah. What has been the biggest lesson in the last 10 years? Because that was 10 years ago when you wrote You Are a Badass, right? And you've written two or three books since then, I believe. What has been the biggest lesson, three books since then? Yeah. What has been the biggest lesson in 10 years since you were a bad to now? Personally, physically, and financially. Oh, man. Let me think. Okay. The biggest lessons since I wrote you are a bad. Because when you get more money, more impact, more celebrity, fame in an industry, people change around you.

26:51Some people don't. Some people do. Right. you get to make different choices with your health. Right. In positive or negative. Right. You have more abundance to do bad things or good things. Yeah. And you get to see how you show up emotionally, spiritually as well. Yeah, that's such an interesting question. You know, I definitely feel like since it came out and has had the success, you know, that I've gotten better and better. It really, this sounds cold, but like not caring what other people think about me. Like that is something that I'm really dedicated to right now where it's like the one star reviews and the five star reviews.