More Than A Side Hustle
More Than A Side Hustle
10 Tiny Habits That Made Us Millionaires (Anyone Can Do These)
Want to know the real habits that helped us become millionaires — without needing to be a genius, come from money, or get lucky? In this episode, we break down 10 tiny habits that changed our lives financially — and the best part? Anyone can do them.
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Think about what you're talking about. Think about what you're consuming, think about the conversations. Think about what you guys are engaging with. Think about what you guys are learning from each other. Think about that. So you are the average of the five people you hang around the most. So if you say I'm hanging around four broke people, you know who's gonna be the fifth. Welcome to another episode of the more than a silo podcast, where we help non-defilers create more impact, income and influence outside their jobs. My name is anthony and I am ginoka.
Speaker 2:We want to thank you for coming back and listening to us week after week or every other week. However, you're listening to us and wherever you're listening or watching, because we also have full videos on YouTube. So what are we talking about today?
Speaker 1:Today we're talking about how we went from 114,000 dollars in debt to millionaires using these 10 simple habits.
Speaker 2:And I'm just going to say, on top of that, many of you I don't know if some of you came along in this journey during that time when we were talking about our debt payoff story. You came along during the cleaning business time, but it kind of all comes together anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is not going to be more about debt freedom. This is going to be more about sharing the wealth building secrets that literally anybody can use, and also our small daily habits that compounded and changed our lives, and most people overlook some of these strategies we'll be talking about today.
Speaker 2:You said you wanted to talk about some tariffs.
Speaker 1:No, we're not talking about tariffs. So stay to the end for a bonus habit. That I promise you has accelerated our journey and these 10 or 11 habits could change your financial future yep, starting with the first one, wait what number one, number one, number one, number one, number one. I want to before. This is actually now. This is a bonus one. We got to talk about how you give it a bonus at the beginning, the bonus at the beginning. So let me see, let me see let me see.
Speaker 2:I thought it would stay to the end for the moment all right, cool, go ahead.
Speaker 1:What I'll get into that one, I'm gonna add it to another.
Speaker 2:I just thought about one as we were getting started, okay so the first, the first habit that we had is checking your money and net worth daily. So how do you know where you're going if you don't know where you're at is the biggest thing? Um, and you may be like what is the net worth first of all? Can you just, can you explain?
Speaker 1:Yeah, your net worth is what you own minus what you owe. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So checking your check-ins account, you're having awareness tracking it. If it's every morning, if it's during lunch, your savings, keeping track of that type of stuff. It may be another way for you to even know what's happening if there's any fraud or anything happened on your account, if there's any fraud or anything happened on your account. But checking your spending and net worth daily helped us to see where we were going, how close we were, how far we were and also I think it's important many things that you may not think about can be part of your net worth as well. I think most people think about houses and then your bank account, but there's also jewelry would be part of your net worth. What else would you include in that? Your car could be part of your net worth.
Speaker 1:What else would you include in that your car could be part of your net worth, your jewelry, like you said, obviously, your investment accounts, your bank accounts, anything that would be considered an asset, something you could sell. I wouldn't go into little things like your computer and stuff like that, unless you got a $10,000, $20,000 computer or studio equipment or something like that. That could be part of your net worth as well. So we thousand dollar computer or studio equipment or something like that that could be part of your net worth as well. So we have a little section for miscellaneous that we have for our watches and some jewelry, but, um, anything that you own, minus what you owe, would be your net worth, and what are some of the, the habits that we use to do that.
Speaker 1:So one of the things we talked about was obviously checking your money every single day, but you could use apps to do that so you could check your net worth. Um, using personal, personal finance, personal capital. Mint was another app. You could use every dollar to just manage your money and that's something that you still do to this day. Like I will wake up and you'll just be logged into the account.
Speaker 2:I'm like, yeah, good so, yeah, you, you know it's like are you good? I'm like I'm. I just like to keep, since we've been doing it now since 2017, so we're closing what? Eight years now. It's become part of our everyday. So I just like to keep tabs on the money, make sure not make sure the money is still there, but just see where it's going.
Speaker 2:If there's something I noticed there that I don't know about, I'm like or know where it came from, like hey, from like hey, is this you? So it just helps us to keep track of that type of stuff, and it's motivating to see your net worth grow, very motivating for you to see a number similar to like when you're losing weight. Very motivating to see the numbers dropping, um. So that's the reason why we say check your net worth and with these uh apps that you mentioned, I think like personal capital, you basically just connect all of your bank accounts to this website and it kind of calculates everything together. We're talking Roth, ira, 401k, everything. You connect all your bank accounts and investment accounts that you have and it can help you to show you what your net worth is currently and then adding in houses and all the other things that you have going on.
Speaker 1:Now I might say not to check your bank, not to check your net worth during this time. You want to check your bank, not to check your net worth during this time. You want to check your bank accounts, you want to check your saving, you want to check your investment stuff, like you want to check those things, but don't, maybe not check your net worth during this time, because you might be a little sad right your 401k drop, you know, 10, 15 you might be, you might be po'd about it, might be pissed off about that.
Speaker 1:So maybe you don't check that during this time. Um, which leads me to number two, which is different from number one. We said checking your money in net worth daily. Now it's about managing your money, um, using an app. One app we used during our debt freedom journey was the every dollar app yeah, and we still use we still use to this day.
Speaker 1:So we use that for zero base budgeting, which means that at the end of every single month you know exactly where your money went, and your budget should be pretty much zeroed out. Yeah.
Speaker 2:When we started budgeting because we were spending money, I would say, responsibly. But when we started budgeting, we started to see that we had like, oh, $1,200, $800 left over Because, as he said, it's a zero-based budget, which means that you budget every single item. So maybe you know debt, payoff, ubers, brunch, whatever You're budgeting every single dollar that comes into your account. And when we started budgeting, we saw money left over and that helped us to throw it towards the debt, the leftover money. I say it like this because it is money that had to go somewhere and we were spending it somewhere before we started budgeting. We just didn't know where or how, and the budget allows you to see. You had a saying about budgeting.
Speaker 1:We used to say budgeting is telling your money where where to go, instead of telling so you get you know where it went, say that again, so budgeting is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah. So that's just important. If you're not budgeting, I highly recommend that you do so. No matter how much money you have coming in, every company and the business, everyone should be budgeting in some, in some capacity. So I think, like with anything, as you start to do these habits, it becomes part of your routine, it becomes part of your daily life. It becomes exciting. I know there's some times you're like, oh, maybe you become becoming a negative, maybe something happens. But budgeting it became like a game and important for us to do because it helped us to know where our money was going. Same thing with the net worth. It helps us to be motivated, um, to continue to do it and know and be excited about it, right. So I highly recommend to budget and over time it just becomes part of your life and I'm part of who you are and, if you don't know, every dollar is owned by Dave Ramsey and his team.
Speaker 2:But there's tons of other budgeting apps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's tons of apps you can use, but that was the most simple one for us. It fit our lifestyle, it was easy to use and obviously he's the budgeting goat. And if you guys don't know, I got my Dave Ramsey signature book right here, total.
Speaker 2:Money Make Signatured book right here, total money makeover From his team and we were on the debt freedom screen.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Thank you for being on our team Once we became debt free and it says Thank you millionaires. So we got that from Dave Ramsey and his team. So shout out to those guys. And this is the Total money makeover book.
Speaker 2:Is that the redo?
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh okay, he did it a few times, so shout out Dave Ramsey, his team, that's my guy. Listen to him earlier today too, you know, him personally. Yeah, literally Okay. I'm going to call Dave right now like yo, what's good how you doing.
Speaker 2:Doubt it, but okay, the third habit that we have is review your goals weekly and monthly, which these first three just is reiterating that you need to be looking at your money, you need to be paying attention, you can't set it and forget it. It's not one of those things I think, especially when you're first starting out. You can't just set it and forget it. There may be a time where it becomes automatic and things are just flowing and stuff like that. But reviewing your goals weekly, monthly. When we were paying off our debt, it was part of our conversation, probably every day, probably every day, and then slowly, weekly, monthly. To this day Now, we still do monthly check-in on our goals. We do quarterly check-ins on our goals. So definitely kind of keeping it visual is important because you know, like, like you have a checklist, the same way that you, you prioritize that when you see it every day, when you write it down, it will be the same thing for your money, for you to get closer to that. You know millionaire status and you may be thinking.
Speaker 1:I got to set up a long meeting to do this, like this one here, reviewing your goals every single week. But you could do a 30 minute check-in with yourself, especially if you're you know, solo or you're individual you're you know solo or you're individual, you're not a couple, whatever it is you can do a quick 10, 15, 20 minute check-in just to review are you getting closer to your goals every single week? Again, this kind of goes back to if you don't know where you're going yeah, and it's like what's working, what's not.
Speaker 2:It also helps you to kind of maybe celebrate yourself a little bit. Now, if you're going towards, you know, millionaire status, you don't want to go buy a car to celebrate yourself and making progress. But what little things can you put in place to celebrate these small wins, because nobody just wants to do, do, do and not, you know, be celebrated and be excited about it. So if that's a goal of yours, you're working towards that, making sure that you are celebrating by also reviewing your goals all the time.
Speaker 1:So how about number four? Pay off that debt now? People ain't gonna agree with that this is a. This is a uh this is one of the ones that people always debate, like oh, if you a millionaire, you need to have good debt versus bad debt I don't say there.
Speaker 1:I don't give my debt a personality. Debt is debt, whether it makes me money or whether it loses me money. Debt is debt, right. So people will say, well, I took out debt in order to make more money, that's great, it is still debt. Well, I took out money and I gambled with it, that is great, it is still debt. So you may be thinking, oh God, no, go ahead. I was like you may be thinking, thinking well, the debt that made me money is that considered good.
Speaker 1:Debt doesn't have a personality. Debt doesn't have a trait. Debt is debt that means money that is old, essentially. So, regardless if it makes you more money or loses you money, it is still debt. So once we understand that, we can understand with it. Now there may be people like I'm going to invest in this business and it's going to are trying to get to that millionaire status and may not make the most amount of sense go take out a huge line of credit or take out a huge amount of debt in order to get there a lot faster, because obviously there's some challenges that we got to get around managing our money, especially in our community. We have to be able to manage our money before God gives us more. There's a reason why we don't have more money than we actually have because we haven't managed the money that's currently in front of us.
Speaker 2:And I want it to be realistic and you got to be realistic with yourself. The percentage of Americans that can actually do that in regards to borrowing debt, pay it back on time and all that type of stuff to make more money is very low. And it may not be you, and that's okay, but I don't think people are very realistic when it comes to that. When it comes to the credit cards and the debt, like you said, of like I'm going to do this to make more money, many people cannot manage that and we live in a society where we think we can, but most of us cannot. So how do you kind of manage that? Paying off your debt? We paid off $114,000 of debt and that was our personality. As people say, this has become your personality, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Was we spoke about it with everyone, didn't I say he was recording? Oh, no, you wasn't. We spoke about it with everyone. We had it on our fridge. It was visual for us. We spoke about it on podcasts. We made content around it. So it became our world, because it was the thing that we wanted to do and we knew that we wanted to do that, and the method that we used was a snowball method. Sorry, can you explain a little bit of what that is?
Speaker 1:Yeah, debt snowball means that you are putting your smallest debt first, and the reason you do that is because you're going to be building momentum. So let's say you got a $1,500 credit card and you got a $15,000 credit card, you're going to start with the smallest debt first, no matter the amount of interest. Where you might be saying, well, the smaller credit card, the larger credit card with the smaller interest, I'm going to focus on that one because interest is lower. But this is more about momentum. So if you're seeing yourself, okay, I'm paying this fifteen hundred dollars off quickly, you're going to be more excited to move on the next one versus starting with the fifteen thousand dollar credit card. And now you're like this is taking me forever.
Speaker 1:So the debt snowball is a game of momentum. The avalanche is the complete opposite. You put the largest to the smallest and you work your way down like an avalanche. You start with the big snowball and it rolls its way down, or you take the small snowball and you roll it up. So those are the differences between the two and we use the debt snowball method because our personality, we need those with that momentum, we need those quick wins and we need it to be able to celebrate, so highly recommend it and every extra dollar, like we spoke about that leftover money, went towards that.
Speaker 2:Like, if you're serious about this, if this is something that you want to do, can you put the extra money that you have once you've budgeted everything, once you budgeted your fun time, once you budgeted, budgeted everything, your essentials can you put this extra money towards that to kind of get the process rolling quicker. The longer that you take, the less likely you probably are to continue because it feels like it's taking too long. You know, just like with anything, if I'm, if I don't feel like I'm gaining anything, it's kind of like what's the point, right? So if you can be aggressive with it as much as possible, that would help you to continue to want to pay off that and to reach that goal of paying it off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and debt is more. It became more psychological for us. It was like this is something that we want to do. And it became less about financial, because when we first started, you were like, listen, everybody's in debt. Why are we doing this? It's not a big deal. Well, like she said, a little later, this became part of our personalities Like we want to get to this goal. We want to get there fast. We didn't want to drag it on and it became more of a mountain that we wanted to climb. It became a game. It became something that we wanted to overcome and accomplish so that we could check that off right. So that's definitely something that you want to do. Like I said, these are small habits that we created in order for us to become millionaires no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Where can I now put this $3,000 that I was putting, or the $500 that I was putting? Can I put it in investments account? Can I put it? Can I get a property which that's something that we did, you know? How can you then utilize that money once you're able to put that?
Speaker 1:debt aside. So think about it in that way that first month we paid off our debt was december 2019, going into january no november going into jan december number 20.
Speaker 2:When did I turn 30?
Speaker 1:I don't know well that first month, that 2018, december 2018, we paid off our debt yeah, so that first month where we didn't have that debt payment it was like five thousand dollars that we had to do whatever we want extra money extra money that we were putting towards debt aggressively now became our money right, so we took it.
Speaker 1:We were able to. I think that first month we did have some fun with it, but after that it's like, okay now, yeah, what a bag. You did buy a bag which is not an asset, but neither here nor there it can be an asset actually if you look at it birkin is not the only bag that has assets we can't resell. I go to right to canal street and get another one of those you go to canal and get a birkin too.
Speaker 2:That don't mean nothing. The point is, it doesn't have to be an asset. Okay, the point is that we celebrated once we paid it off and we had this extra money that we were throwing towards that, that you can now do whatever you want with it.
Speaker 1:Essentially, yep, yep, yep, which takes us to habit number five investing in yourself, so learning something every single day.
Speaker 2:Now I'm gonna be honest, and I'm gonna lean on you for this one, because I do not say that I actually learned something new every day. I don't consume well, I don't consume the same things that you consume, so this is more of a thing that you have done and excelled in, to be honest, yeah, so I'll say five, six and seven are around mindset habits.
Speaker 1:So we talk about number five learning something every single day, day. So I became committed to financial education. This was a path we were on. You brought it home, so I wanted to consume as much information, right? So I like, I said, the dave ramsey book. I got tons of financial literacy books here. I wanted to learn about paying off debt. I wanted to learn about investments.
Speaker 2:I wanted to take his class we took his financial peace class you want to talk about that exactly what that was so financial peace is just like a workshop to kind of go hand in hand with his book and the things that Dave Ramsey teaches, and we started with listening to his methods. Now, we didn't follow everything to the T, but we are here because of what he spoke about his show, hearing the debt freedom scream from different people that motivated us to get into just paying off debt and millionaire status and things like that. So Financial Peace University was a way for me to kind of give a offering to say like, okay, I know you're consuming this and this is a way that we can do this together. Did we go in knowing a lot of the stuff that he was teaching? Yes, but it was something for us to do together, be serious about it. Like we cut up our credit cards in that class accountability.
Speaker 2:It was just something you know as a married couple as well that helped us to get on the same page. So, even though I may I was not listening to the podcast, I still was gaining information through that or things that you were bringing home and sharing.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so learning something every single day, like you said, coming home, sharing with the family, so we all are. If you are commuting, you're on a train, you're on a bus, you're in a car what are you doing during that time? Can you use that to change your financial situation? I was listening to a podcast and this guy said I got into real you make this guy he was.
Speaker 1:I got into real estate because I was listening to a podcast. He ended up a lot of the things that we were listening to during that time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's crazy that we ended up being on those same, like his and her money I don't even his and her money, I'm sure is still around, like we were on that podcast at the very beginning. So we kind of found our tribe of people, especially when we started to share and just people that were doing the same thing or just interested in the same thing. So finding that tribe of people I think is important Once you start to get the information, getting around people that maybe want to do the same thing as you. For us, we had each other I wouldn't say necessarily like our closest friends were doing the same thing, but over time some of our closest friends decided to pay off their debt. So I think just being around other people is important when it comes to you know you a goal that you have in mind being around like-minded people yep, so that is habit number six you're around like-minded people.
Speaker 1:Oh it, it is. Didn't realize that? Yeah, so you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and that is a true enough statement. Think about the average five people you spend the most time with. Think about what you're talking about, think about what you're consuming, think about the conversations, think about what you guys are engaging with, think about what you guys are learning from each other. Think about that. So you are the average of the five people you hang around the most. So if you say I'm hanging around four broke people, you know who's gonna be the fifth. She looked at me like ain't gonna be me. So more than likely, you're gonna be the fifth. You hang around four millionaires. You know who's gonna be the fifth one. More than likely you, it's going.
Speaker 1:It's almost impossible to hang around people at a certain level who have these goals and not have any of that stuff rub off on you. Yeah, this is why I have different circles, right, I got my friend circle. We talk about sports and we got those things. I got my people who are entrepreneurship got people in business. I got people who are, who are fathers and husbands and stuff like that. So you have to have I'm not ever going to say you got to cut your friends up, but you got to have different circles that you're always able to you want to be the smallest person in the room?
Speaker 1:yeah, when you talk about circles like that, you want to be the smallest person in the room if you talk about consume it, you talk about relationships, you're like that you want to be the smallest person in your room so you can consume it. If you talk about relationships, you're like all right, I want to be around people who've been married 15, 20, 25 years. What can I learn from them? I want people who have kids that are damn near my age right, 10, 12.
Speaker 2:Well, that's too far ahead. That's too far ahead.
Speaker 1:I want to have versions of success that I can see. Yeah, I want to have versions of success that I can see. All right, they've been married for 50 years, 30 years, and their kids are 20, 25, and they seem like pretty decent humans. What did they do in their upbringing so that we could teach our kids?
Speaker 2:And that may be changing your social circles or just maybe adding on to it finding it right. So a lot of times you know we don't grow up or we haven't at least us people that look like us haven't grown up, maybe with an entrepreneurship mindset or just getting out of debt. That's not something that we're really taught about. Like he said when we first, when he first brought it to my attention, I'm like well, everybody had debt. Like why are we trying to get out of it? What's the point? Maybe you just never heard of it, like you've never even thought about it, and now it's a possibility for you. So those things sometimes you have to get around different people, which is hard in itself.
Speaker 2:But if you're serious about making a change in your life, whatever that looks like um, you got to do it. I mean, that's why people have accountability partners, that's why people get trainers in the gym. That's what people you know get a partner for the gym, because maybe you've never done that thing. You're like the support of other people helps you to keep going and that was important for us and in anything that we do, we look for that. Like is there? There's nothing that we're inventing at this point in life. I don't think another Amazon is coming around, so there's nothing that you're probably inventing. So someone is out there doing that thing. Can you get around them? Can you consume their podcast? Can you go to a workshop, anything like that, to be around them?
Speaker 1:so so habit number seven investing in yourself, so which the highest? Return on investment is going to be yourself. So there's this, there's this quote that people say the s&p 500 is the highest return on investment but they say the sme 500, meaning you're investing in yourself. It's kind of like corny, but I ain't never heard that in my life. Sme like, instead of investing in the SMP, the index fund, you're investing, I get it it was like Alex Hermosi or something like that.
Speaker 1:Sme 500 it's corny, but it makes sense, right? Your highest investment that you can make is probably going to be returned on yourself, so, instead of trying to invest in something else, investing yourself. So your own skills, your own knowledge, your own teaching and one of the biggest habits that helped us become millionaires was investing in ourselves. So spending money on coaching, spending money on courses, spending money on conferences. We could even talk about one conference. We spent what four thousand, probably five thousand dollars all in to a conference, and that that was um the EYL event.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's it into the VIP. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that returned networking opportunities, where we were sitting in a room with millionaires and billionaires, um, getting around them, and then also the people we work with on the back end. And then the long term form of it, right so, connecting with people just on a proximity, speaking of you wearing a shirt too, so oh, yeah, yeah, I haven't worn a shirt in a really long time right. So we spent almost five thousand dollars investing in the vip experience probably more than that investing in a vip experience in total, yeah and it was like that return on investment was unmatched.
Speaker 1:just by being in a room getting our names out there, people's like, oh yeah, I know you guys from social media and it's down in thirds and connecting with people.
Speaker 2:Now, it doesn't have to necessarily be at that scale but can you invest in some type of way.
Speaker 2:Generally we have no problem. We see college as a way of investment for us. We have no problem, and that is thousands of dollars. More than half of us is in that type of student debt. We student debt. We see that, we understand that because that's been ingrained in us. But are there other things that we can do that will help us to grow financially, maybe to help us grow socially? Just knowledge, all those types of things that we don't consider, I think is important as well.
Speaker 1:I was talking to my guy literally just came up to I was talking to my guy, andre C Hatchett Shout out to Andre, mobile notary genius we were talking about. He showed me a comment of somebody saying oh, I can't invest in your stuff because I got to save up for it.
Speaker 2:No, they were like.
Speaker 1:I can't see myself investing in your stuff or something like that. But I told them I was like, if you had the opportunity to buy a Lamborghini for $10,000, would you buy it? Would you do it? No, because you think something's wrong with it. All right, let's say nothing. That's number one. So let you know the value. That's value, right. You put a value to it. So you know the value of the lamborghini's like, why is it only being sold with ten thousand dollars? Let's say nothing was done to it and you didn't have ten thousand dollars, would you be able to get it absolutely?
Speaker 2:why? Because it's a sale to me.
Speaker 1:To me, it's like a sale, exactly so if the Lamborghini is $10,000 and you know for a fact that it's worth $250,000,. You will find the money.
Speaker 2:Is that how much? They call $150,000. I was just wondering Jesus.
Speaker 1:But that's what you do on investing and stuff. You will find the money, you will find the opportunity. You would take out a loan, you would do everything in your right mind to find that $10,000 to buy that Lamborghini. Because the problem is you don't see the value in the opportunity most of the time. So, investing in yourself, you have to know the value of the opportunity.
Speaker 1:And I just literally told somebody like my investment of $10,000 that we had made it was no guarantee. There was no um course. There was no. At the end of this, you're going to make a million dollars. It was just you get access to me and that was it. It was $10,000 and I paid it and that investment. I just told him that your investment made us over a hundred thousand dollars. But there was. There was nothing like I knew the value of what I was investing in, because I knew where we wanted to get to. So when I say one of the habits that made us millionaires had been investing in ourselves, we do it time and time and time again and we continue to do it yeah.
Speaker 2:So when we started out maybe it looked a little smaller the amount we're able to invest and the people we were able to be around. But as we continue to grow and make more money, we understood that the kind of way we speak about the marketing type part of it is like we put money in and we, more than likely we may see we're going to see a return. Now the return may not always be financial and I think that's something that most people look for, like if it's not financial, they don't find the value. But we always assess the things the coaching programs and things that we're a part of, like did we get something from it? Did we get something from it? Did we implement it? Did they ask the question Is there any data? Is there something we could have gotten from it that was of value for us? And 97% of the time there is, there is some type of value.
Speaker 2:So investing in yourself is important and you should continue to do it. It doesn't stop right. It's important and you should continue to do it. It doesn't stop right. You should continue to invest in yourself.
Speaker 1:And that goes back to one of the first investments we made in a program was at a higher level, over $1,000 was Daniel Leslie and I think that was what $2,400, $2,500 or something like that and we did it Maybe, yeah, but the problem was we did nothing with the information at the time. But looking back, getting exposed to the industry has made us multiple million dollars at this point. So, yeah, we did not. We went through it, we learned it, we understood that, okay, there's an opportunity here. Yeah, we didn't do anything right then and there, but looking back, you can't erase the information too yeah, once you have it.
Speaker 1:So that was one of the things we invested in ourselves and that's made us multiple million dollars. And it's also we met her in person, right. We were exposed Like that was the first program that we invested in, right. So sometimes it's not going to be the ROI, like you said immediately. Sometimes it's going to be the learning opportunity. So continue to invest in yourself Super important.
Speaker 2:This should have been part of number one or two. Lowering your expenses helps you to get to millionaire status. Now we if you've heard our story before we are not one of those that we like don't eat the coffee, don't go out, don't I don't know, don't do nothing, don't stay at home and do nothing. However, are there things that you can cut out? Can you audit your bills? Have you ever audited your bills? Have you looked at all the subscriptions you got for hulu, disney, paramount, apple, for all of those? Can you get on a friend's plan and use their stuff right? Negotiating things you can negotiate rates with different people. You can threaten to leave and a lot of companies may lower percentages, may lower oh, we can throw in this $30 off a month.
Speaker 2:I remember when I finally was leaving Sprint I was with I don't know. It had to be 15 years, years. Finally, I was like okay, I'm going on a plan with Anthony AT&T, I'm leaving. They're like okay, we can give you about $35 off, I'm gone, I'm gone already. So you know what I mean. Can you negotiate with these people to lower your cost and at the same time, like I said, I don't want you just come back, cut back on if you had to. Um, maybe the type of gym not saying don't work out, but maybe it's the type of gym you're going at a lower cost for now, or is it? The amount of vacations is the amount of times you eat out? You know things. You can't change your mortgage, your gas to get to work, those things you can't really change. Um, but can you negotiate? Can you kind of really take an audit of what you're spending on and cut back on those things?
Speaker 1:You just did that with a medical bill, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What'd you do? Can you give them the framework of that I?
Speaker 2:said I can't afford what you're asking me to pay. I told them so it's a medical bill from July. We are in April. Medical bill of July of last year for our child, amaya Insurance, covered what they covered and there was some leftover that they were chasing me for. They've mailed. I mean, I played this game with Alani as well, so I knew that I could negotiate um down, and so they were calling hagging either. I answer I won't. And then I was like, yeah, I can't afford it. And they're like, well, we can do this. I'm like how about this? And they settled like 50 percent less of the bill. I think the way they see it is at least we're getting something, because probably most people don't pay them. Like I said, it is April. I paid these people this week. I have a child in July. So we're coming up on a year from them chasing me and I'm just like, yeah, I'm not going to pay it. So negotiating those type of things as much as you can is important.
Speaker 1:Negotiating those type of things as much as you can is important.
Speaker 2:The medical industry. When it comes to bills, it's like the wild, wild west, because they don't. Does it not? Go on your credit or something I don't remember, I have no idea, I don't know, but I just was like whatever Y'all going to get it or y'all not.
Speaker 1:The medical space, when it comes to bills, is like the wild wild west. They take what they could get. They Wild Wild was. They take what they could get. They'll chase you down but at the end of the day, tell them you can't afford it and they'll cut it in half, which is nuts.
Speaker 2:And I think also, when you do that audit in regards to lowering your expenses, you may see that you don't need that much to live on. I know we think that we need so much, but sometimes we really don't need as much as we think. But you to even get to that conclusion.
Speaker 1:So habit number eight lowering your expenses. Habit number nine making more money, raising your income. Side hustle and starting a business. You know this is where we thrive at, this is where we shine at. One of the limits you can do is one of the limits you have in life is the amount of expenses. You cannot live on zero, Even people who live without homes. They have to have some swarm of income, but there is no limit on how much money you can make. So starting a hustle, starting a business, raising your income, this is one of the habits the small habits that we started with that has made us millions.
Speaker 2:That was a game changer for us. It maybe it's small, but it was a game changer for us. So while we were paying off debt, we got and was doing multiple jobs. We worked at a gym. Both of us worked at a gym. That was about $9 an hour.
Speaker 1:We were doing half the work.
Speaker 2:After our 9 to 5, we worked at a gym. We were watching Dogs on Rover. We were renting out our cars on Turo.
Speaker 1:Raise my income.
Speaker 2:This is 2017 to 2018. These are the things that we did. I am a therapist, so I was also doing private practice. My 9 to 5 job was not private practice, so this was on top of that doing private practicing and clients privately. And then we started our cleaning business.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I don't know if there's anything else I missed, but those are the things that we were doing to raise our income to pay off the debt, um, to be able to still kind of live some type of life that we wanted to, and, you know, get this debt gone to help us to get to million or millionaire status quickly, quicker, another thing, before we even started talking about paying off debt, we were talking about paying for the wedding, and then I also was flipping sneakers.
Speaker 1:So I was um, buying and selling, reselling sneakers, and then also I picked up like a door dash job at a week, at for a week, and then I also remember I did the job in harlem, oh yeah, with the um the um mentally, mentally challenged.
Speaker 2:You were doing it for them, so I worked in information technology for 15 years.
Speaker 1:So back then I went to craigslist and I found an IT job in Harlem where it was a couple hours after work and I was helping people set up social media pages, learning Microsoft Word, and some of them were rehabilitating, coming out of jail and some of them were mentally disabled and they were just trying to reacclimate to the workforce and I was teaching them basic skills that I had in my job. So is there? So are there any skills that you currently have at your 9 to 5 that you could get paid for outside your 9 to 5? The amount of money you can make outside your job?
Speaker 2:is limitless. Sorry, I did the census as well. You did census as well, I forgot about that.
Speaker 1:So when we're talking about raising your income.
Speaker 1:There are so many things that you could do and obviously you're talking about side hustles. So one of the things we did was we built our cleaning business and we were able to do that with less than $1,500. And we built it to almost a $3 million remote cleaning business. And remember, we were doing this outside of our jobs, so we didn't have to go out and clean houses. We built a fully remote cleaning business that was only $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a month outside our 9-to-5. So you can do the same by going to CleanItBusinessMasterclasscom, where we teach you how to start and scale a remote cleaning business without cleaning your house. And if you want to clean houses, that's totally fine. But again, we built systems, we hired people and then we focused on marketing.
Speaker 2:And those jobs that I spoke about. It was helping us to bring in anywhere between $1,000 to $3,000 a month. Mind you, we still had our 9 to 5 as high-income earners, but we also had this because we had that goal. Remember, I told you that $114,000 of debt became our personality, became something that we wanted. It was like okay, we're going to pay off this debt, which will help us to get to millionaire status, if that's something that you're interested in. So raising your income, there is no, your job, it's your salary, and maybe you have commission at your job and that's that. There is no, you know. So you can do, if you have the time, things outside of your job to raise that income.
Speaker 1:And I remember when my job found out that I worked in a gym and they were like why are you? You make six figures at your job, why are you working at the gym for $9 an hour? And I told my manager straight up. I was like you're limited as to how much you could pay me. The end of year raise is going to be what? 3%? You know I'm working at the gym. I can work as many hours as I want. I can do anything I want to do in terms of raising my income.
Speaker 1:So I got a debt freedom goal. That's my goal for myself and my family and obviously you could help me with that by giving me more money, but you are limited by how much you can actually pay me. I can make as much money as I want outside of my job. He said fair enough, as long as it doesn't interfere. And then, even that we were interviewing for the gym, they were like why do you guys want to work here?
Speaker 2:like yeah, because we're not, we weren't their average applicants that they were getting. It was a lot of college people, college kids and people who were of stuff, people who were unreliable yeah, they were there for a good time.
Speaker 1:Not a long time. We were there for a short. We was actually there for a long time. I became a manager at the front. You could have became the CEO of that gym if you wanted to.
Speaker 2:I became a manager and then finally quit when COVID hit. But yeah, that was a time, but we did what we had to do to get where we need to go and that's going to be. That's like how we operate in general, because it has to happen or it has to happen. It is what it is.
Speaker 1:So making more money, raising your income starting outside out. So you know that's where we thrive at, so you know where to find us on. That Link will be below.
Speaker 2:Know where to find us, where we at. And then habit number 10. When it comes to this, you know, tithing is something that is important for us Now, paying off our debt. We did kind of slow down on that or we weren't paying.
Speaker 2:I don't think we were paying any of it or it was a lower amount than the 10% that they say to give. But once we paid off our debt, we increased that and the money doesn't necessarily belong to us, right, it belongs to him, if you believe in that. So the more that we're able to give, the more we see back, right? So if you I know a lot of us is like it's my money, I work for, it, understood, but without him you wouldn't have that money. So we're big on making sure that we can give back as much as possible. You know, being able to provide to a friend I think we had a friend their mother's home burned down we were able to give a substantial amount. So being able to kind of help others is important for us. When it comes to you know millionaires and the reason that you want to get to that right Like you want this money to do what? Like to help others more than likely or help people around you. So that's something that is important to us.
Speaker 1:Money is a money's a resource. Resources are meant to be moved around. Resource is not meant to be hoarded. So if you are hoarding your money, it can't grow. Right, when people talk about you know having a closed fist, you can't grow anything with that closed fist. So when you have money, your goal is to deploy it. Deploy it in yourself, deploy it in investments and deploy it into others. Deploy it into other resources so that it could continue to grow. Money always comes back to you and if you keep deploying it, it will always come back to you. Now I'm not saying give away your money, but it's meant to be a resource, treated as such. It is not meant to be hoarded and this is coming from someone who hoards or used to hoard money. Right, I used to be very closed fist. You know I'm not doing anything with it and it's like now let's throw it away, let's invest it, let's grow it.
Speaker 2:Let's share it and then like true wealth is like what you can give right, so charities or family or friends, and however you can help, those type of things just feel good. And I think that's the whole point of getting to a certain point for most of us maybe not everybody, but for most of us.
Speaker 1:So it's like the three goals is to make a million, the goal is to save and invest a million and a goal is to give a million. And that's that's, like you know, grand goals.
Speaker 2:Imagine if you're able to give away 1 million dollars a year how much money would you have to make in order to do that?
Speaker 1:right. So you have your personal goals, you've got your professional goals, and then you've got your spiritual goals, and that could be giving it away to charities, friends, family, investors, whatever it is so you're able to do that. So that was one of the habits that we still practice today.
Speaker 2:That's made us millionaires.
Speaker 1:And millionaires and your bonus that you want to give away at the beginning. Now's your time of my time, so this one was just focused on the small victories. I know we talked about, you know, the the 10 small habits that you know. Anybody can practice. Anybody can do any of these 10 things that we spoke about. This one is to enjoy the ride, reflect and and take in any tiny wins. So focus on the small victories, not just the big ones. And this habit changes the more bigger your goals become, because we just hit a big goal and I said it before that it was just like, okay, cool, all right, we moved on. But I want to always remind people just to focus on the small habits.
Speaker 1:We pray to be here, so you celebrate each win paying off a single credit card, getting your first client in your business, picking up that first side hustle, starting something on the side. We want you to start celebrating those wins, no matter how big. And this one, I added, because I think in our community one of our students was saying oh um, I feel like I'm moving slow, or I feel like I'm going slow and I'm like comparison. I was like slow compared to who.
Speaker 2:It's like you're comparing yourself to other people so you don't feel like I'm moving slow or I feel like I'm going slow and I'm like comparison.
Speaker 1:I was like slow compared to who. It's like you're comparing yourself to other people, so you don't feel like you're making any progress. And I know, with social media and a digital age, we got a lot more things that we can compare ourselves to. But I want you to compare yourself to where you were yesterday and not where everyone is that scene today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think weekly celebrations is important. I'm not saying going out and spend every time, but, like in our community, we do a Wednesday, a Wednesday Wednesday, and we do it every single week and we get tons of comments. I think it's also a place to just remind yourself. There are things happening, there's progress that you're making. You're probably just not recognizing it, you're probably just not showing it for yourself. So can you do that in your day to day? Can you do that when it comes to this journey? You know, writing down those wins that you have, big or small, whatever it may be.
Speaker 2:And financial independence is a marathon and not a sprint, right? So for us, paying off the debt became a sprint, but then the financial independence of it all, being able to have assets, being able to purchase homes, those type of things we knew wasn't going to happen right away, but it was something that was a focus of ours. So that's what we work towards. So we hope these tips help you. You know, for those of you that are looking or just wanting to listen in on, what does it mean or what does it look like to even start to become or work towards being a millionaire right, it doesn't happen overnight. You have to implement things, you have to do things to get these things in place, and I'm sure there's more we could dig into about investments and stuff, but that ain't my lane so I ain't going to really talk about that much.
Speaker 1:But we want to talk about the things that everybody could do. You don't need to have money to do any of these habits that we spoke about. So we went over uh number one checking your money daily.
Speaker 1:Number two managing your money daily. Three reviewing your goals weekly, monthly, paying off debt, learning something every single day. Get around like-minded people investing in yourself, lowering your expenses, raising your income, helping others and taking time to reflect the small wins. Any single person will listens to this episode. These are the 10 small habits, with the 11th being the bonus that we implemented that helped us become millionaires that anybody could do right.
Speaker 2:So can you do any of them this week? Maybe it's one a week, maybe it's one to two a week. Can you start small and kind of just grow from there?
Speaker 1:Put something in the show notes. Let us know what you guys thought. Subscribe to our page. Comment. What was your biggest takeaway? What is something you're going to implement this week, this month, this year? Any one of these small habits that you are adding to your routine, and we'll see you next time. Thank you, peace.