Wendy Valentine: Welcome to the Midlife Makeover Show. Today I’m thrilled to introduce you to Tanisha Souza. Tanisha is not only an author and a patent holder, but also a former attorney who turned her expertise into a thriving career as a wealth and passive income coach. Her after. Excuse me. After successfully replacing her law practice income with passive income from real estate, she founded TARDIS Wealth Strategies where she empowers others to achieve their financial dreams through innovative and risk free passive income strategies. Tanisha holds degrees from UC Berkeley and USC Law school, bringing a deep well of knowledge and experience to her coaching and speaking engagements. In this episode, we’re diving into the concept of the income snowball, the only patented wealth building system of its kind. You go, girl. We. Whether you’re already a TARDIS client or just starting to explore how to build your passive income, Tanisha’s insights are invaluable. Get ready to learn how you can start living your dreams by building wealth in ways that are not only effective, but also secure.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about money on this show

Please welcome Tanisha to the show.

Tanisha Souza: Wow. That. I love that intro.

Wendy Valentine: Isn’t that nice? Isn’t that nice? I know. I think it’s like my new business. I want to start recording intros for people that’ll be like their alarm clock. They’ll be like, like dance, ready to start the day. It’s actually been a while since I’ve had anyone on here to talk about money, money, money, money, money. Show Me the Money. That’s like one of my favorite movies by the way. Show Me the Money.

Tanisha Souza: Oh my gosh, that’s so. It’s a hilarious movie.

Wendy Valentine: Love that one. but it is so important, right? Like, it’s like one of the most important things we should be talking about that we’re not. I was thinking back in the last few decades of my life. Okay. My whole life, I haven’t really. No one really taught me about all of that. And then I think, here I am, I’m 52 and I’m. I mean, I’m. I could ask you the question, is it ever too late to learn and to invest? You’re. I know you’re going to say no, but yeah, yeah. Because like, if anything, this is the time we really need to be doing this so that we can prepare for retirement and we can live in cool places and do amazing things and enjoy our retirement and all of that. So, yeah, it’s a very, very important topic. We’re going to dive into it.

How did you go from being an attorney to becoming a wealth coach

But my first question for you is how in the world did you go from being an attorney to becoming a wealth coach. What inspired you to make that big shift?

Tanisha Souza: Don’t you know how much I loved the practice A lot. No, I’m just kidding. I know. Actually the opposite. But yeah, so it was kind of, it’s kind of an interesting story. So, I had a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt, you know, after graduating Berkeley and usc. And I was super stressed out. I was working at a law firm. A law, a large firm in la. And that was stressful enough and I was working crazy hours and people would sleep at the office. I mean it was one of those kinds of things. and it was highly stress, highly stressful environment. I think what I don’t like about the practice of law and you know, some people love it, but you know, I didn’t like it is that it’s a very, you know, cover your b*** type of you know, business. So it’s kind of negative. Like everything is, it seems pretty negative. I’m a very positive person. So it just didn’t fit my personality. But we were. I basically had a lot of debt and, and then I moved to before I moved to, back to Hawaii, I actually was, I was practicing making about $100,000 a year fresh out of law school. And that sounds like a lot of money, but when you have $100,000 student loan debt, it’s not. So I literally did all the things they tell you to do which is, you know, cut back, you know, don’t, don’t eat out. I had a little envelope that I carried with me to the office that I had I think $200 in. And that was going to last me for the entire month. That was my lunch money for the entire month. And when I ran out, I wasn’t allowed to eat out anymore. So I had to bring my lunch to, to work. I had a, I drove a 1989 Volkswagen Fox and yeah, yeah.

Wendy Valentine: I had the veto Jetta. Yes.

Tanisha Souza: And it had no working gas gauge and no. And the air conditioning broke. So I was literally driving around in 100 degree heat in the summertime in LA with roasting like to death. And I ran out of gas on the freeway twice. Had to get my best friend’s dad to come pick me up because I couldn’t afford to fix those things. I was like, you know, I’m trying to cut back. I need to save, need to pay off this debt. Bought all my furniture from garage sales. I opted out of parking in my apartment complex so that I didn’t have to pay extra for that. Parked on the street, you know, had to walk blocks to get home in the rain sometimes. but I really did everything I possibly could. followed everything in the book. And by the end of a year, I had only reduced the principal balance of my $100,000 debt by an additional. I think it was 7,000, 7 or 8,000 on top of my normal, you know, monthly payment. And then.

Wendy Valentine: And then, of course, in all the stress of just trying to cut back and not living right, you’re not. That can’t be.

Tanisha Souza: It was, it was awful. It was. I would not recommend this. I know there’s gurus out there that tell people to do that.

Wendy Valentine: But, I tried that once. It only lasted like two weeks for me. I was like, I’m not carrying an envelope.

Tanisha Souza: I did it for a year. I did it for a year. And, and. And I really. My thing was the reason, the whole reason why I moved back to la. So I. I actually had a clerkship, a judicial clerkship in Hawaii for a year. I met my husband, but I said, hey, Chris, I have to move to la. I’m going to make more money there. I’ve got to pay off my student loans. So we were long distance for a year and a half. And yeah, I mean, I was, I was trying everything I possibly could to pay this debt off because I didn’t want to go into the marriage with a bunch of Deb. And, I was miserable. We, you know, were long distance. And so after all of that, I realized if I only paid this down by an extra $7,000 in a little over a year. Right. I think maybe it was like almost 8,000.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah.

Tanisha Souza: And I said, then I. I can’t do this. Like, I can’t. First of all, maybe we need to try to do this together. Like, I’m trying to do this by myself and it’s not working out. So he proposed to me and I moved back to Hawaii. And, we, you know, I basically had to take a 40% pay cut. So I was making $100,000 in LA, had. Making 60 grand. So now I’m making 40% less than what I was making before, trying to pay this debt down. And the work got even more stressful. So I was telling him every day, I was, like, stressed out, I couldn’t eat, I was losing weight. I had all these, you know, just. I was really stressed out at work. So he. I said, you know, I have to quit. I’ve got to quit my job. You know, we’re married now. He’s like, you can’t quit. You got a hundred thousand student loans. Like, we’ve got to figure this out. So, this is kind of a chance thing, but there was someone in our family whose house was going into foreclosure over, maintenance fees. So it was, the house was paid for, but, the association dues were not paid for months. So it was maybe $5,000 or $250,000 house. So my father in law saved the house.

Chris and I bought a house on foreclosure for $5,000

Right. He paid the association fees. And I thought, wow, like I, you know, I could buy a house on foreclosure for $5,000 and resell it for 200,000. I could probably pay off my student loans. So that was the thought process. Now I would never recommend anyone do this, by the way. I mean, we did it and it was highly, highly risky. It took every weekend. It took everything.

Wendy Valentine: But you were at that point where, like, I’m taking this risk. Like you could. Yeah.

Tanisha Souza: I was like, if this doesn’t work out, he’s going to divorce me because we’re using. I had to use his life savings. Like, I had no savings. I had no money. I had, I had a hundred thousand in debt and no savings. He had 30,000 in savings and no debt. So I was like, you know, I definitely married up on this, you know, like, whoa. So, so we, we, we basically did that. We worked an entire year and we bought a house on foreclosure. not for $5,000, like 140,000. We flipped it and we paid off all my student loans. I think we sold it for $275,000.

Wendy Valentine: Oh, that is so I’ve got, I bet that. Do you still remember that day when you got to like send the, the check or the electronic transfer to them?

Tanisha Souza: Like, it was insane. It was unreal. It was absolutely bumps.

Wendy Valentine: Like I’ve had that feeling even just like this. Isn’t that funny though. Like, even the smallest of debt, like I finally, it’s a long story, but finally paid off my car that I have not even had for three years. and it’s just like, oh God, feels so good just to not. You just feel like you’re like, here you go, let me toss out some more money. You know, it’s such a good feeling though.

Tanisha Souza: Okay.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah.

Tanisha Souza: We, I mean, I, I guess our big thing or our big challenge was not only working, you know, every single week and no days off. I mean, it was. And, and so on top of my law practice, right? So I was working at the Biggest law firm in l. In Hawaii. And then on top of that, every evening, we’d go to this house, we’re digging up, you know, put planting plants and painting, doing all this stuff. And, you know, I could tell you some crazy horror stories, but, we ended up. We ended up paying off the debt. Here’s the thing that I didn’t realize. I didn’t realize that even paying off the debt didn’t completely solve my problem because I didn’t want to work there. I didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore. And although I paid off my debt, we still had bills. I mean, we had to pay the rent. We had to pay. You know, we had. We had bills, other expenses, not anything. We had no other debt, no credit card debt or anything. But, you know, it would have been tight if I had quit. And then Chris worked. He was only one working. So we read the book. Rich dad poured out. My best friend gave me the book.

Wendy Valentine: Yes, I know.

Tanisha Souza: you know, that’s like. I love.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, that was a good one. Yep.

Tanisha Souza: And I read the book, and I thought. And I told Chris and I told other people. I was like, I’m never doing this again. We’re never going to do this. This is horrible. Like, you know, and it was. It was an awful experience, flipping that house. The result turned out well, but, But it was an awful experience. Let me tell you this one part. Just nuts. At the end of all this, we. We. We bought the house. We fixed it up. We worked every weekend, and then when we went to sell it, right, we fixed it up, and we’re ready to sell it. We found out that the title was not in our name, so we didn’t actually own the house. And the reason why we. And, we made every single possible mistake you can make. We did not get title. We did not buy title insurance. Because I didn’t. I was like, oh, we can’t afford it. We’re scraping by. I had to use every single penny of his savings, credit cards, everything, to do this. And so we didn’t buy it. So then I’m thinking to myself, they’re like, oh, sorry, you don’t own the house. I’m like, we’ve been paying a mortgage on this house for an entire year. We’ve put $30,000 into it, another $20,000, and fix up costs through credit cards. And you’re telling me we can’t even sell it because we don’t own it? And they said there was a problem in the foreclosure.

What we really need is passive income to cover our expenses, not debt

Process. So fortunately, we went to the bank. I knew the bank had title insurance, and they would be very upset to find out that the people, the people that they were trying to charge didn’t really own the home. So they got their lawyers on it and fixed the whole thing, and they were able to sell it.

Wendy Valentine: But that’s where law. That’s where law school really came into play for, you know?

Tanisha Souza: It helped, right?

Wendy Valentine: I don’t like my job, but yeah, it helped.

Tanisha Souza: It did help. But, so, so we. When I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I thought, okay, we’re doing this. We’re doing this wrong. I mean, it’s good that we paid off the debt, but what we really need is passive income. We need passive income from investments to cover our expenses so we don’t have to work. That’s what’s going to. That’s what’s going to eliminate my job is passive income, not paying off debt. Like, think about it. You pay off your mortgage, your cars, everything. You pay off every debt you have. You still have expenses. You’re still going to. On your house, you’re still going to have property taxes, you’re still going to have insurance, still going to have maintenance, still going to have, you know, have to pay for your car, you know, repairs, everything is. There’s a cost. Food, you know, lights, your electricity. So you have to, if you want to be free. That’s the key, right? I still do things, but I just didn’t want to have to work, especially in that job. So when I got that, I said, you know what, Chris? Okay, all right, so our next thing has got to be. We’ve got to create enough passive income so that we don’t have to work. And that’s when we went to work. We actually flipped another house and put that, the proceeds of that into a strip mall. And the strip mall was what, made us financially freed. Wow. The income on that, I mean, it’s just insane. I mean, and we were just kids. Like, we had no idea what we were doing. And so that was our. Was that our first. That was our first rental property was a strip mall.

Wendy Valentine: Oh, my God.

Tanisha Souza: $1.125 million strip mall. And we used, we used, you know, a line of credit for down payment. We used, we used all these different resources. And, and, and, and of course, the 10:31 exchange from that rental property, we have not rental the, the house. We flipped the second one into that, so we were able to do that, but it was $30,000 a month. We had this. These huge expenses. Like, I think it was $5,000 a month. Ground, lease, rent. The mortgage was 12 grand a month. So all said and done, we end up with $8,000 a month in extra cash flow from that strip mall, which was more than I was making at the firm. Yeah, that was more than crazy, you know, and all we need to do is cover our bills. We didn’t have to, like, you know, exceed my income, but we did. Now, again, I don’t recommend people that have never, like, invested before to, like, buy strip Mom. That’s like, yeah, crazy. There’s easier ways to do this. Trust me. And I. And this is what I’ve been teaching. Much easier ways to do than what? Than all the stuff that we did. But, it’s. It’s. It’s exciting because the possibilities are really endless when. When you don’t have to work. I became a better employee. I didn’t have to work. I knew I could quit. I was like, hey, you know, just.

Wendy Valentine: You know, you’re, like, so chill about. They’re like, wow, Tanisha is so chill now. Why. She said, why she being so nice in court?

Tanisha Souza: Yeah, it was. It was so. It was so different. And, And so to me, when people say. When they talk about retirement, it’s. I think of it differently. I think of it as the opportunity to not have to work. To work because you want to, not because you have to. And that’s, You know, people want to follow their passion, and there’s people that want to, you know, I want to paint. I want to be an artist. I want to do this and that. They know there’s no money in it. Well, you know, the fact that we are financially free actually enabled us to start our business like it was. There was no risk to me to starting this company. Even though I’d never started a business before. I’d never run a business. I. You know, we started with a couple of partners, and I told them, I said, hey, you know, I’ll quit my job and do this. and I’ll.

You worked for free until your company became profitable, then you quit

And I’ll work for free until we become profitable, because I didn’t need the money. And so I worked for about eight months, and we became profitable. And then I got a. You know, got. Gave myself a small paycheck, and, you know, the rest is history. But it. It was, It was a very rough, rough time to get to, you know, where we ended up.

Wendy Valentine: So is it interesting to, like, even when you’re telling that story, to look back at that, like, all of the, there’s that, there’s the quote from Steve Jobs where he says, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect the dots looking backwards. And it’s like, as you connect those dots, it’s like, ah, like this dot led to the next one and to the next one and the next one. And I mean that’ like, even for my life, I look back, I’m like, oh, my gosh. You know, but it makes you, like, kind of relax a little bit more knowing that what, whatever dot you’re standing on right now in your life, you’re going to be led to the next correct dot. like it’s, it all works out, right? But then also learning. I mean, when you tell that story, you’re basically. You were learning from every single thing, whether good or bad. Happy, sad, like, and even just knowing the fact that, like, okay, I don’t like my job. I went out of this and, and just pushing through because how many attorneys especially will literally stay in their job because, well, well, I went through to school. I have to do this. I, I paid all this money to go to college. I must stay in this job that I hate, you know, and it’s awful. So good for you for pushing through that.

Tanisha Souza: Yeah, I think, you know, it’s interesting. When I left, I, I told, you know, everybody, hey, you know, I’ I’m starting a business. And people were like, oh, you’re so lucky. Oh, my goodness, blah, blah, blah. And I thought to myself, you know, I mean, they could do it too. Yeah, they wouldn’t want to put as much like work, hard work and effort. I mean, they didn’t have a strong enough why that I did. Right. I had a very strong why. I thought, I’m, I’m. This is stressful. Plus, I wanted to have a family. I was in my 20s at the time, and I was like, there’s just no way. If I don’t have time to spend with him, there’s no way we’re going to have kids. I’m not going to have time to have a family. So I need to do something else. This is, way too much, too much work. And like I said, stressful, negative. So. But, but it was one of those things that I did. I learned from every single mistake. And I teach my clients, I tell them, I say, hey, learn from my mistakes. You don’t have to make the mistakes I did. There’s much easier ways to do these things than, than the way that I did it initially.

Wendy Valentine: So I’ve always said there’s one common thing that every single one of my guests have had on the show is that they’re all, they’re guinea pigs. They’re guinea pigs for all of us. So you guys did all the hard work. So you’re like, okay, cool, she already went through all that, so now you just teach us the good stuff, right?

Tanisha Souza: Exactly, exactly.

The moment your passive income exceeds your living expenses, you’re officially retired

Wendy Valentine: So passive income, I mean, silly question, but what is passive income and what are different types of passive income?

Tanisha Souza: Yeah, so passive income is essentially, usually alternative investments. They don’t have to be in alternatives or anything outside of stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Although there are some of those types of investments that can pay you. So investments that actually pay you money on a regular basis. And I like to have monthly income, I would assume because, and most people do because they work and they have bills that they have to pay monthly. So the thing that people need to realize, if you haven’t read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I mean it’s a classic, so you definitely need to. But one thing that Robert Kiyosaki says in that, and I thought it was just mind blowing, is the moment your passive income exceeds your living expenses, you no longer have to work. That’s when you’re officially retired. And so if your expenses are say $5,000 a month, that’s all you have to do is create enough passive income to cover five grand a month. if you, and if your expenses are lower than that, there’s less that you have to do. But most people are really putting all their eggs in the regular, you know, basket of the 401k or the mutual funds in the stock market, which you really don’t have any control over. And you’re going to have to amass literally millions of dollars to be able to live on the interest of that, of that money. So that’s where your passive income will eventually come in. At least that’s what they say. But the problem is you’ve got all these taxes, you’ve got a lot of things that are going to come out of that. So even if you do build up like say 2, 3, 4 million dollars maybe you have this really huge high paying job and you, you can do that over the course of 30 or 40 years. There’s no guarantee that when you need to take that money out, it’s going to be there. I mean, who knows, what’s going to happen in the political landscape that changes the, you know, the, the stuff. Oh gosh, anything happens, I mean, there’s a war. You Know, it’s like, so you know, it, you just, you want to be able to have some control. And when you have passive income, you have more control over the income you have plus, you know, how much you need. So it makes it a lot easier to, to get to that goal. So you know, you said in the beginning, you asked the question of, you know, is it ever too late?

Tanisha Souza: Actually, if you’re relying, I think on the traditional system of let me amass money in the 401k and you’re starting when you’re 70, that’s.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, that’s going to be too late.

Tanisha Souza: It’s too late. I have, I mean I have clients. I have one in particular. Her name is Kathy, Kathy Cargillon. She doesn’t mind me saying her name because she’s, she’s on our, on our, testimonials on our website. But she, she actually started this when she was 70. She is the craziest story. She’s crazy story. She was in her 30s, so I think she was maybe 35 or something. And she started investing in an IRA and, and they said, you know what, just put X amount of dollars a month, whatever the maximum was, might have been, you know, three to 500amonth for the, for like as long as you can. And by the time you’re 60, 65, you will have, you know, millions of dollars, whatever. Fast forward 65, I think maybe even 68, something like that. She had like, it was like less than $300,000. Ah, okay, thank you. Imagine being almost 70 and you want. And you’re going to try to live on $300,000 for the rest of your life.

Wendy Valentine: And I think it probably happens to. I’d be curious like what the stats are. There’s probably a lot of them that are like that and then are just having to live off of hopefully Social Security, right?

Tanisha Souza: Yeah, hopefully. but it’s. Yeah, so, so she was, she was in a situation. She was a medical transcriptionist and she didn’t like what she was doing. and she had built her dream house and she thought, I’m not going to be able to keep this house. Fast forward, I think it was two and a half, three years with us and she was debt free, so mortgage free. she was financially free, had enough passive income to cover all her bills, didn’t have to work anymore. And she’s just, she just, you know, she bought her new, you know, I mean it’s not new anymore, but she bought like a candy apple red Tesla a while ago. She’s taking all these pictures, going on, going all these cruises and doing all this stuff and she has her home and she’s just doing great. You can accelerate it the, the goals if you have a better system. But I think the traditional system is very slow and so if you are starting late, I wouldn’t recommend the traditional system because it will take you a long time and you just don’t know if you’re going to have the money when you need it.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the income snowball. Yeah, I like how it sounds.

Business that taught people how to pay off mortgages quicker with a sweep account

Tell us about that.

Tanisha Souza: So, okay, so this is kind of interesting. So when we, when we started the business, it was a, like, it was, it was different. It wasn’t a, it wasn’t a wealth coaching business. It was a business that taught people how to pay off mortgages quicker with a system we call a sweep account. And so it’s pretty cool because a lot of people wanted to pay off mortgages. We didn’t even have a mortgage, so Chris and I didn’t have a mortgage. But we were teaching people how to do that. And in the meantime we’re on the side investing, doing all this other like investing stuff and I thought, wow, you know, it’d be really cool if we could teach people how to do what we’re doing because we know like from experience that just paying off your debt is not going to make you free. Like you’re still gonna have to work and if you don’t like your job, you’re going to stay in that job or find another job hopefully that you like better, but you’re still going to have to work. So you know, I, so when the opportunity came to, to start, start the business, I took it and we were running this. It was basically a franchise. It was a, it was an arm of a larger company and we wanted to teach these investment strategies and they were like, no, you can’t do that. You know, this is our system. So we’re like, all right. So we ended up buying the company out. So we bought them out and turned it into a full scale wealth coaching company. In the meantime, the, I was experimenting with different investments. I was running it through these different calculations and I thought, wow, this is interesting. If I bought three of these exact same properties or four of them, I wouldn’t. And I, and I use the income to pay it off. Kind of like traditional debt payoff strategies. You know, it would take, it would be a little bit different if I, if I added, even though the debt is more I actually pay off in the same amount of time, no matter how many rentals I get. So it was, it was kind of interesting. I was running these different calculations. I had a client who had a advanced math degree from Harvard and her dad was a professor. And so, and they’re both math wizards. And I thought, you know what, I have this idea, I wonder if this will work. So I ran it past them, and they said, I think it will. So I said, here are my initial calculations. They went ahead and started running, running others on it. And I talked to some people in the financial industry. They told me it couldn’t be done. And I was like, no, I think it can be done, right? I’m not, I’m not in that industry. So I’m thinking a little out of the box. So I found these investments that I call, I call short term amortized income investments. At tardis, we call them fast burning fuel. And basically what they are, alternative investments. They don’t require a large outlay of cash. You can invest like $500 or a thousand, something small and. But it produces monthly income for you for a certain period of time. So for 18 months or two years or three years or five years. And so I found these investments and I thought, let me try to see if I can, if I can use a little bit of leverage, a little bit of these investments, a little bit cash flow. Let me see if I can combine all these into a, system that can accelerate creating enough passive income so that you don’t have to work. And when I did it, it enabled the average person to be able to stop working in five to seven years. So that was kind of like the boom. you know, one of those moments where I was like, wait a minute, this is crazy. So I confirmed with them, they helped me refine it, and then I went for the patent. So filed with the patent office. Initially they were like, well, you know, you know, ask me all these questions, like, are, you sure? Blah, blah, what about this? What about that? Tested it all. And they’re like, yeah, it looks like it works, it makes sense, it’s unique. There’s nothing else like it out there. Therefore, patent approved. So, yeah, you know, and it’s hard, I’m telling you. Like, you know, when I looked up all the other patents, because you have to make sure there isn’t anything already out there, like what you invent. And when I was looking at everything out there, they were all like, made by these huge financial corporations like American Express and like, you know, Chase bank and all this. And I’m just this like, little lady in Honolulu who’s like, you know, coming up with this thing. And I’m like, but it, but, but it, it came from me working in that mortgage acceleration thing because I was able to kind of see things a little bit differently. And I was thinking, you know, most people aren’t like us. me and my husband were, you know, I married somebody with 30 grand in the bank and they’re going to flip a house. I mean, you know, you watch these shows on TV and, you know, these people spend all this money to try to flip a house to make 20 grand. Like, you’re not gonna make a hundred thousand dollars or 150,000 flipping a. I mean, it’s just, especially nowadays. So, you know, the likelihood of that happening is very, very slim. And so I was looking for a way for the average person to be able to get ahead and to achieve similar results with less risk, less work, you know, less headache. And, with a little bit of outlay of money, and if they don’t have any savings, they could still do this system. So that’s what I like about it. The other thing that’s kind of cool is that when you, when you’re looking at paying off debt, because I do believe in that. Right. Like, we, you know, we, we don’t have any debt. we know we paid off our mortgage, our cars, we pay cash for. We, we don’t, we don’t like that. So, I mean, I’ll do it for like a rental property, but for our primary residence, I’m not really interested in that. And people do it for the tax, the tax deduction. But there’s so many other ways you can get tax deductions, and that’s really not the only way. But for the average person, I could see why they would want to do that. But what, what I think is pretty unique is. And I’m not aware of any other system out there, and I’ve looked through the patents, I’ve looked through everything online. I haven’t found another system that allows you to pay off debt and build passive income simultaneously. Because most gurus will tell you pay off your debt first. Right, yeah.

Wendy Valentine: if you carry that envelope around and.

Tanisha Souza: Right, right, right.

Wendy Valentine: I need a bigger envelope.

Tanisha Souza: Right. And, and some will say, don’t pay off the debt. Like if it’s like a car loan at like, or something else. So don’t pay that off. Just invest. You’ll earn more. So you, you get two schools of thought and they’re just like, you have to choose.

I created the income snowball calculator to help you reach financial freedom faster

Well, with my system, you don’t have to choose. You can actually do both at the same time. And what’s great about it is you’re, you’re getting out of debt. As your debt goes down, your, your passive income is going up at the same time. It’s like this. It’s crazy. And so that was kind of a really cool thing. But again, I utilized some of the strategies I learned from that mortgage acceleration company. I incorporated the fast burning fuel type of investments. I incorporated, like, just a lot of things that I learned over, our time investing and incorporated it. And it just worked beautifully. So that’s the income snowball. It really just accelerates the ability to reach that goal of, of financial freedom faster.

Wendy Valentine: you know, does someone need to be a math wizard to do this? Although I think I am, but I was good at math. But I think some people would be intimidated, right, like to do this because they’re like, oh my God, I don’t know about all of this stuff and how do I do it? You know? Yeah, yeah.

Tanisha Souza: you know, I, I think, I think there’s two things to think about, right? The whole idea. So I created the income snowball calculator. That’s what I have the patent on, is the calculator. And the calculator will give you a date by which you will achieve your goal. So if your goal is to quit working, it will tell you when you’re going to do that. If you’re like, I, want to have enough passive income to cover the mortgage on my dream home, it will tell you when you can do that. So whatever it is that you’re trying to do, you can plug it in and, and it will tell you the date that you can do that just by following like a specific. It’ll give you step by step what to do now. you know, the, the idea though, that you need to be like a serious mathematician or anything like that, that’s the whole reason I created this calculator in the first place, is that, I wanted to make it so that it was basically done for you. You don’t have to do the trial and error. You don’t have to try to figure it out. It’s actually created for you. And it, and it shows you, like the graphs and the chart shows you everything that’s happening so you can see what’s going on at any given time. You can actually fast forward into the future and say, what does my life look like a year and a half from now, you know, December of, you know, 2027 or whatever. And it will tell you this is how much passive income you’ll have assuming you do these things. And so, you know, obviously with every investment there’s always risk. With every investment there’s no investment that’s without risk. But you can lower your risk dramatically just by using a better system. And so the system just uses a stacking method. I call it momentum income stacking, but it’s a stacking method, of using this short term income. And you’re getting so much money from these investments. So like when you choose, if you buy like a rental for example, you might have to put 30,000, $50,000 down and you might be getting 200amonth cash flow. Okay, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of a lot of money for that little return. But what we’re talking about are investments where you can put in say 5,000 or 10,000 and get 300 or 400amonth or 500amonth from a tiny investment. You know, comparatively. And the reason is because they, they last for a shorter period of time, right? They’re amortized. I mean think about this, right? If anybody that’s listening, if they have a mortgage or even a car loan, the shorter the term of the mortgage, the bigger the payments. That’s the reason why Nobody wants a 15 year mortgage on their house, right. They don’t want these. So the, but on the investor side, if what you’re doing is you’re getting amortized investment income, you want shorter when you’re using my system. And the reason is because the payments are so much bigger, you can utilize the income from that, stack it and then you can start using it to buy more. It’s a really it’s a really interesting system and you start with a little bit of leverage. And, and I’m not talking about 30 or mortgages and stuff like you would for for a rental. Those are great. But, and you always, here’s the thing about leverage. You have to be very careful. You have to know exactly what you’re doing. You got to know what you’re investing in. Leverage is a great tool. It can be great tool, right? But you only want to use leverage to buy assets, never liabilities. Right. People will borrow money to buy a bigger car or to put rims on their car or big sound system or you know, a, ah, big flat screen TV or they’ll borrow money to even buy a big house. Those things are great. And we need those things. But what I learned is that it’s better to have your passive income pay for all that. Like, right. I would rather, instead of me working to pay for my flat screen TV and my car and my house and all that stuff, I’d rather have my assets do that. My assets that produce passive monthly income. You know, we were renting. My husband, I were renting our entire, you know, all the way up until we. When did we, when did we buy M. So when I had m. My first daughter, right. When we had our first child, my mom was like, you need to buy a house. I was like, why? We’re renting. It’s great. You know, I was like, I don’t understand. I understand. We had, we owned buildings and we didn’t own a home. And she was like, well, you know, you know, you have a baby now, you should get a house. So we’re like, okay, so we bought our dream house and we still live in it. And we, I think we got it for one and a half million. It’s probably worth about 3, 3.5 or, you know, million now. But we, we, the. Our, passive income from our investments covered the mortgage and all of our other expenses, so we didn’t have to worry about, oh, what happens if business is slow or what happens if my, you know, if you’re working. What happens if I get laid off? You’re never going to have to worry about that if you have that passive income to cover those things. And so that’s really the key.

In my view, the safest thing to do is to create enough passive income

Wendy Valentine: You had, you had a big snowball.

Tanisha Souza: Yes, yes, we did. So, yeah, I mean, but, but you don’t have to have a big one. You know, I mean, if you live in Hawaii and the home, the average home is $700,000, I think.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Tanisha Souza: So, you know, it’s not like that big of a deal. But, but if you, if you live in a place where your average, you know, home value is 300,000 or 500,000 or something like that, you’re still, you still want to. In my view, the safest thing to do is to create enough passive income so you don’t have to worry. Right. You don’t want to have to be worried about things like that. And that’s, that’s what I love. It’s, it’s make. Giving people peace of mind.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, exactly. So they can live and enjoy their life.

Tanisha Souza: Yeah.

TARDIS helps clients figure out what they want out of life

Wendy Valentine: So what’s involved in becoming a client of tardis?

Tanisha Souza: Well, you know, the, the first thing we do is we do an assessment. Right. So we will do, like an initial strategy call just to kind of see what are your goals, what are you trying to do, and, and then we’ll. We’ll map out a plan, right? So we’ll say, okay, so this is what your goal is. This is your timeline, this is your age. This is all of that. And then we’ll put, we’ll plug everything in your cash flow, all of your, you know, kind of regular information. If you try to pay off debt, we need to know that as well. Plug that in. And then we come up with a plan, and then we present that. And then the, you know, you as the client or potential client, whatever, takes a look at that and says, hey, this looks great. I think I want to pursue this. Or no, it doesn’t. It’s not what I’m looking for. So we always want to make sure it’s a good fit for both people, our company as well as for our clients. But pretty much anybody that, that is looking to improve their lifestyle, right? Not have to live using an envelope with $200. They have to have the entire month driving without a working gas gauge or air conditioning. If you don’t want to live like that and you just want to improve your situation, even if, even if you’re young. Like, for me, we, were young. And it wasn’t like I was going to stop working, right? I mean, I just didn’t like my job. I couldn’t just sit at home and, like, twiddle my thumbs and like, not do anything. That’s just not me. And, you know, we didn’t have any kids yet or anything, so it wasn’t like there was anything for me to stay home and do. So I was planning to work anyway. I just didn’t want that job. So it’s a matter of getting into, digging into your. Why. What is it that you want out of life, right? You have to. You have to ask yourself that question, kind of figure out what you want, because you need to have that answer before, you know, before we can help you, because we want to see how we can get you to that goal. But if you don’t have a goal, we can’t. We can’t really help you with that. So. But it’s, it’s very simple. So that, that’s. That’s really the first start. And I do also, like I said, I. I wrote a book that goes into the things you should do, the things that you shouldn’t do. And so I highly recommend, like, all of our clients, you know, they all read the Book, they all get the book. And and so I, I definitely recommend that as well. And, and I do offer the book for free for people who do just get a strategy session. There’s no obligation. Yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s, yeah. When you become a client Amazon globally. Yeah.

Wendy Valentine: Oh, nice. Okay, good. I’ll have to put that in the show notes too.

You need to have specific criteria for the investments you make

do you, do you also help with what to invest in?

Tanisha Souza: Yes, yes.

Wendy Valentine: Okay.

Tanisha Souza: So I mean we’re a full scale, you know, wealth coaching financial education firm. So we go into the different types of investments, right? We have, we call them fast burning and slow burning fuel. So slow burning would be say like rentals, real estate, M, mortgage notes, those kinds of things. And then you have fast burning, which are the short term, like I mentioned. And we’ll give them all kinds of examples. We’ll show them. And then here’s, here’s a really big key that I think a lot of investors and we see people that own like six or seven rentals and they don’t do this. And I find this just shocking. But nobody teaches you this stuff, right? So you need to have criteria, right? You need to have specific criteria for the investments you make. You have different risk tolerance in your next door neighbor, your mom than your dad. So you do like a risk assessment then you do, we, we help you develop criteria from that. It makes it so easy to invest. Like, you don’t have to like rack your brain. You’ll know exactly whether or not this investment fits your criteria or not. You just go down the list, doesn’t fit, move on. You know, it’s, it’s here, it’s so easy, so quick. It doesn’t matter what type of investment, whether it’s fast burning fuel or slow burning fuel, you’ve got to have that. Then there’s the due diligence piece, right? I’ve got a due diligence checklist that, that our clients use and they go through to evaluate an investment to see, you know, does it fit my risk tolerance in the first place? You know, is this something that, am I comfortable with the underlying aspect asset, you know, it do I understand it? Like you shouldn’t invest in anything you don’t understand. So we teach you not only those things, but then you learn about the investments too. And it doesn’t take a, you know, it doesn’t take a lot of time. If you have a system and we have all these systems in place that we’ve been using for over 20 years and it really helps people hone down really quickly. This is what this investment is about. This is how I evaluate it. These are the risks, these are the rewards. This is one I’m looking for. This is one I don’t want. It’s, it’s super easy when you have a system like that. Yeah.

Wendy Valentine: And then do you provide the coaching throughout the whole process?

Tanisha Souza: Yes. what, you know, it’s basically very hand holding. So what we do is we make sure that every single month you meet with your coach. We look at the calculator, we look at where you’re at, we see, oh, something big came up this month. Oh, yeah, I had this major expense. There was a car accident. My car got totaled. I had to put a $6,000 deductible that changed my cash flow. No big deal. We can go in and we can, we can plug all that in and see what that does. If you have, oh, my daughter got into this great school, but it’s going to cost me this. We’ll readjust everything to figure out. Okay, this is how you’re going to pay for it. And actually, don’t even worry about it. You don’t dip into your savings. You don’t have to do any of that. The income stonewall is going to pay for your daughter’s college. It’s fantastic stuff. I mean, it’s. It’s great to have a coach because we know what you know, we know what’s. What could go wrong. What you know, what to do. That’s right. What not to do. And sometimes learning what not to do is even more important than learning what.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah. Story of my life. what if I could. Do you. Do you work with clients outside of.

Tanisha Souza: The U.S. we do, we do have a few. So we have some in Canada. We have some. Yeah. We have some in other. In some other places. Country as well.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, I know. I have listeners in the uk, Germany, even here in Portugal. So that’s good to know. Yeah. Because there’s sometimes like, I’ll have guests on, but it’s only for the U.S. so it’s always, always try to remember to ask that question for everyone in the world. So that’s very cool. Wow.

Tanisha Souza: Yeah. I want to do it. Yeah.

Wendy Valentine: That is so cool. Well, thank you, Tanisha. And then how can we find you? And then. And the, the free. Free strategy call.

Tanisha Souza: Or we have a free strategy call. and when you do that call, you’re gonna get, you’re gonna get a book. You’re gonna get one of my books. Hard Copy. Right.

Tanisha says reaching financial freedom takes about 10 years

Not the Amazon. You Know, online version. And it’s better to get the hard copy too because I’ve got.

Wendy Valentine: You can, you can mark it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tanisha Souza: So, so that, that too. And I also recommend, there’s a wealth assessment on our website and I’ll give you the link for that too for guests to do. It’s free, so they can actually go in and try to see where they’re at before they even reach out. I mean it’s, it’s, it’s fantastic. People, people get in there and they go, oh, wow, okay, this is interesting. Now I see where I’m at and where I need to go. And that will also help them with their. Why when they discover what it is they’re trying to do. I think that’s really important.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, I think when I first went to your website, there’s something on there and it said something like, reaching financial freedom and like something like 10 years, I think, or something like that. And it seems like a long time, but it’s really not. And it’s better to go for it rather than not at all. And then 10 years from now you’re like, d***, I should have done that. You know, like I’d be sitting on the beach right now if I had done that, you know, and not having to continue to work.

Tanisha Souza: We had a guy who he heard about us 15 years ago. 15 years ago. And he you know, kind of looked at it, talked to a couple people, not sure, blah, blah. Fifteen years later he reads my book, he, he schedules a strategy call and signs up. He is now 75. Now it’s not too late, of course. Yeah, because, I mean there, there are people that, like I said, Kathy did it. And I think it was three years, two or three. She became 35 years with her IRA, 35. And then in, in less than three years, I believe she was able to retire, be debt free, everything. I mean that’s. So this is accelerated. We try to be conservative by saying 5 to 10. There’s people that do it much shorter to some people takes longer, some people takes about 12 or 15. But again, if you’re 25, you’re 30, 40 years old. You know, that’s easy. But Even if you’re 45, 50 years old, I mean I would want to be totally financially free in five to 10 years. Yeah, I wouldn’t want to try to rely on the traditional. That takes 30 to 40, 40 years and cross your fingers that that money’s there.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah.

Tanisha Souza: God forbid we have another 2008. Right. And you’re. You’re 401K. No. You know what I mean.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly.

Tanisha Souza: Turns into a 101k, you know, I.

Wendy Valentine: Mean, just like you said, you can’t put, like, all your eggs into one basket because what if that. One basket.

Tanisha Souza: Exactly. Exactly.

Wendy Valentine: M. Thank you, Tanisha.

Tanisha Souza: Yeah. Yeah. No, this is fun.

Wendy Valentine: I’m so glad you were a good little guinea pig. You went through all of it.

Tanisha Souza: Yeah. Yeah.

Wendy Valentine: Good for you, though. Yeah. And you’re making such a difference in the world.

Tanisha Souza: Think about, like,

Wendy Valentine: Think about that. That is so cool. Think about how many people, like, are actually. Even if they decide they’re. They just don’t want to work at all, or they don’t. They don’t have to work the job that they had, and they can whatever, take up art classes or whatever. I mean, anything. Start their business. There’s so many different things that they can do.

Tanisha Souza: Right. Like we did, you know, there was no risk starting the business. We already had enough passive income. That’s. That’s what we want to do.

Tanisha says getting testimonials from clients makes her day

And I hear from clients, not all the time. I’m not. I’m not. You know, I actually don’t know probably the vast majority of our clients, but, But I hear from our coaches, and they tell me, you know, they send me the. The testimonial or, you know, people say, I want to do. I want to do video, or they put. You know, it’s just. It’s phenomenal. It’s. It just. It makes my day. Whenever I get one of those, It’s. It really makes my day. Yeah. Huh? Yeah.

Wendy Valentine: That’s so cool. Thank you so much, Tanisha.

Tanisha Souza: Yeah, no, thank you for having me. This has been fantastic.

Wendy Valentine: Yeah. And you’ll. You’ll be. You’re over there in Hawaii. You’re going to eat breakfast, and I’m over here in Portugal. M. And I’ll eat dinner.

Tanisha Souza: Yeah. Yeah. started my day over here. I know. All right.

Wendy Valentine: Thank you so much, everyone. Have a great day.

Tanisha Souza: Thank you. Bye.