Episode Transcript
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>> Tanisha Souza (00:00):
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 a
big sound system or, you know, a 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
(00:23):
it's better to have your passive income pay for all that.
Like, 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. Ah, my assets that produce passive monthly
income.
>> Wendy Valentine (00:38):
Hey midlifers, welcome to the Midlife Makeover
Show. Are you ready to break free from your
mundane midlife? Are you feeling trapped in a
vicious cycle of rinse and repeat days? No
matter if you're experiencing a divorce, hangover,
job burnout, or you just have the midlife
blues, I got you. Hey, I I'm
Wendy, your hostess of the midlife mostess.
(01:00):
I too was hit by midlife like a freight train.
I too felt stuck in the same dull
chapter. I wanted the clarity of how to create a
new life beyond divorce and the courage to leave
an unfulfilling career. But I kept telling
myself that I wasn't worthy and it was just easier
to stay in my comfort zone. Until I found a
little secret the freedom to live my
(01:23):
life my way. In this podcast,
you will learn how to achieve a vibrant midlife mind
and body, how to create solid relationships
through love and loss, and how to create an
awesome second half of life. Grab your
grande latte, pop in your earbuds, and let's
get this midlife party started.
(01:44):
Ladies, are you ready to wake up to your greatness?
If you're feeling stuck, unfulfilled, or
navigating midlife changes like an empty nest,
career shifts, or relationship challenges,
then my book Women Waking up seven Steps
to Midlife Greatness is for you. Women,
Waking up is designed to help you break free from
limiting beliefs, reignite your passions,
(02:07):
and step into your next chapter with
confidence. This empowering guide is packed
with real life stories, practical tools,
and actionable steps to help you reclaim your
joy and create a life filled with purpose.
And here's the best part. When you join the wait list,
you'll be the first to know when pre orders open
and you'll unlock a ton of free bonuses.
(02:29):
So what are you waiting for? Head to
womenwakingup.com and get on the wait list.
Today, 2025 is your
year to wake up and thrive.
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
(02:51):
attorney who turned her expertise into a third
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
(03:13):
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.
(03:36):
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. But also secure.
Please welcome Tanisha to the show.
Tanisha.
>> Tanisha Souza (03:59):
Wow. That. I love that intro.
>> Wendy Valentine (04:01):
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, 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
(04:21):
like one of my favorite movies by the way. Show me the
money.
>> Tanisha Souza (04:25):
Oh my gosh. That's so. It's a hilarious movie.
>> Wendy Valentine (04:27):
I 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
(04:50):
it ever too late to learn and to
invest? You're. I know you're going to say no, but.
>> Tanisha Souza (04:56):
Of course not. Yeah, yeah.
>> Wendy Valentine (04:57):
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.
(05:18):
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 (05:31):
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
(05:52):
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,
(06:12):
you know, cover your butt 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 a hundred thousand dollars a year
(06:35):
fresh out of law school. And that sounds like a lot of
money, but when you have a hundred thousand dollars 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
(06:55):
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 work. I had a,
I drove a 1989
Volkswagen Fox and
yeah, yeah.
>> Wendy Valentine (07:15):
I had the veto Jetta. Yes.
Yeah.
>> Tanisha Souza (07:19):
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,
(07:41):
you know, I'm trying to cut back, I need to save, need to
pay off this debt. But 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
(08:04):
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.
>> Wendy Valentine (08:18):
And then, 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 (08:26):
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 (08:32):
But, I tried that once. It only lasted like two weeks for
me. I was like, I'm not carrying an envelope.
>> Tanisha Souza (08:39):
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
(08:59):
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
debt. 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
(09:19):
little over a year. Right. I think maybe it was like almost
8,000.
>> Wendy Valentine (09:22):
Yeah.
>> Tanisha Souza (09:23):
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,
(09:44):
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,
(10:04):
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,
(10:24):
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. 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
(10:44):
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 (10:56):
But you were at that point where, like, I'm taking this risk. Like,
you could. Yeah.
>> Tanisha Souza (11:01):
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
like? Well, so, so we, we,
(11:22):
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 (11:35):
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 (11:44):
Like, it was insane. It was
unreal. It was absolutely.
>> Wendy Valentine (11:48):
I have goosebumps. 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, it
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
(12:11):
though.
>> Tanisha Souza (12:12):
Okay.
>> Wendy Valentine (12:12):
Yeah, yeah.
>> Tanisha Souza (12:14):
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, at
the biggest law firm in, in Hawaii. And then
on top of that, every evening we'd go to this
house, we're digging up, you know, put planting
(12:35):
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.
(12:56):
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.
(13:18):
Rich dad, poor dad, my best friend, gave me the book.
>> Wendy Valentine (13:20):
Yes, I know.
>> Tanisha Souza (13:21):
You know, that's like, I love.
>> Wendy Valentine (13:23):
Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah.
>> Tanisha Souza (13:25):
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, flipping that house. The result turned
out well, but, but it was an awful experience. Let me tell you this
one part that was just nuts. At the end of all
this, we, we bought the house, we fixed it up, we worked every
(13:45):
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
and we did not buy title insurance because I didn't, I was like, oh,
(14:06):
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, we've
put $30,000 into it, another $20,000
in fix up costs through credit cards. And you're telling me we can't
(14:26):
Even sell it because we don't own it. And they said there was a problem
in the foreclosure 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 peop. 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 (14:45):
But that's where loss. That's where law school really came into.
>> Tanisha Souza (14:48):
Play for you,
right?
>> Wendy Valentine (14:53):
I don't like my job.
>> Tanisha Souza (14:54):
But yeah, it helped. 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
(15:16):
gonna, that's what's gonna 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 still have insurance, still going to have
maintenance, still going to have, you know, have to pay for
your car, you know, repairs, everything
(15:36):
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
(15:57):
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 free. 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. We,
(16:19):
we lit. And so that was our, was that
our first, that was our first rental property was
a strip mall.
>> Wendy Valentine (16:27):
Oh my God.
>> Tanisha Souza (16:28):
1.125 million dollar 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 1031 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.
(16:50):
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 ended 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 crazy,
you know, and all we need to do is cover our bills. We'd have to, like,
you know, exceed my income. But we did.
(17:10):
Now, again, I don't recommend people that
have never, like, invested before to, like, buy a strip mom.
That's, like, crazy. Kind of 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
(17:31):
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 (17:40):
You know, you're, like, so chill about. They're like, wow, Tanisha's
so chill now. Why is she so.
Why is she being so nice in court?
>> Tanisha Souza (17:49):
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
know, 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.
(18:09):
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
were 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
(18:32):
this, and I'll, ah. 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.
I, 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
(18:52):
to, you know, where we ended up.
>> Wendy Valentine (18:54):
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
(19:14):
I mean, that's 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
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
(19:37):
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 just pushing through because
how many attorneys especially, will
literally stay in their job because, well, well,
I, 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
(20:00):
job that I hate, you know, and it's awful.
So good for you for pushing through that.
>> Tanisha Souza (20:07):
Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting. When I left,
I, I told, you know, everybody, hey, you know, I'm quitting,
I'm, starting 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
can do it too. Yeah, they wouldn't want to
put as much like, work, hard work and effort. I
(20:27):
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 gonna have
kids. I'm not gonna 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,
(20:50):
but, but it was one of those things that I, I, I did.
I learned from every single mistake.
And, and, and I teach my clients, I tell them, I say, hey,
learn from my mistakes. You don't have to make mistakes. I
did. There's much easier ways to do these things
than, than the way that I did it initially.
>> Wendy Valentine (21:07):
So I've always said there's one common thing that every
single one of my guests had on the show is that they're
all, they're guinea pigs. They're guinea pigs for all of
us. So like, 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 (21:23):
Exactly, exactly.
>> Wendy Valentine (21:26):
So passive income, I mean, silly
question, but what is passive income and
what are different types of passive income?
>> Tanisha Souza (21:35):
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
(21:58):
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
(22:18):
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 basket of the 401k
or the mutual funds in the stock market, which you
(22:41):
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 two, three, four million
(23:02):
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 stock. Oh
gosh, yeah, there's a war. You know,
(23:23):
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
(23:43):
too late?
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 (23:52):
Yeah, that's going to be too late. It's too late.
>> Tanisha Souza (23:55):
But I have, I mean I have clients. I have
one in particular. Her name is Kathy,
Kathy Carjalon. She doesn't mind me saying her name because she's, she's
on our, on our testimonies on our website. But she,
she actually started this when she was 70.
She. Wow, there's a craziest story. She's
Crazy story. She was in her
(24:16):
30s, so I think she was maybe 35 or something.
And she started investing in an Aira. 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 five hundred dollars a
month 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.
(24:36):
Fast forward 65, I think
maybe even 68, something like that. She
had like, it was like less than
$300,000. Ah,
okay. Can 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 (24:55):
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 (25:06):
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
(25:26):
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.
(25:49):
You can accelerate it the,
the goals if you have a better system. But I think the
traditional system is very slow and. Yeah.
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 (26:08):
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So the income snowball. Yeah, I like
(27:12):
how it sounds.
Tell us about that.
>> Tanisha Souza (27:17):
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
(27:38):
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
(27:58):
job, you're gonna Stay in that job or find another job, hopefully
that you like better, but you're still gonna 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.
(28:21):
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
(28:41):
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
(29:02):
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,
(29:22):
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 in that industry. So I'm thinking
a little out of the box. So I found
these investments that,
I call short term amortized income investments. At
(29:42):
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 real small and. But it
produces monthly income for you for a certain period of time
for 18 months or 2 years or 3 years
or 5 years. And so I found these investments and I
(30:02):
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
(30:23):
five to seven years. So
that was kind of like the, 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
patents. 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, blah. What about this? What about
that? Tested it all and they're like, yeah, it looks like it works.
(30:45):
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
(31:06):
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
(31:28):
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 going to make $100,000 or 150,000
flipping a house. I mean, it's just. Especially nowadays. So,
you know, the likelihood of that happening is very, very slim. And
(31:49):
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,
(32:09):
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
(32:32):
only way for the average person. I could see why they would want to do
that. 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
(32:53):
you pay off your debt first. Right.
>> Wendy Valentine (32:56):
And you know, if you carry that envelope around
and.
>> Tanisha Souza (33:00):
Right, right.
>> Wendy Valentine (33:03):
I need a bigger envelope. Huh?
>> Tanisha Souza (33:06):
Right.
And, and some will say don't pay off the debt.
Like if it's like a, 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. Well, with
my system, you don't have to choose. You can actually do both at the same time.
>> Wendy Valentine (33:25):
Time.
>> Tanisha Souza (33:25):
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
(33:46):
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 (34:03):
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 this? You know?
(34:24):
Yeah, yeah.
>> Tanisha Souza (34:25):
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
(34:45):
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
(35:05):
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 for you. And
it, and it shows you like the, the
graphs and the chart shows you everything that's happening. So
(35:26):
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,
(35:46):
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 the, you're getting so much money
(36:09):
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,
but we're talking about our investments where you can put in say
5,000 or 10,000 and get 300 or
$400 a month or 500 from
(36:32):
a tiny investment, you know,
comparatively. And the reason is because
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 reason why
Nobody wants a 15 year mortgage on their house. Right. They don't
(36:53):
want. 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
(37:15):
interesting system and you start with a little bit of
leverage. And I'm, not talking about 30 or mortgages and stuff like
you would for, for a rental. Those are great.
But 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,
(37:37):
never liabilities. Right? People will borrow money to
buy a bigger car or to put rims on their car,
a big sound system or, you know, a 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
(37:58):
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 and I were
renting our entire, you know, all the way up until
we. When did we, when did we buy? M.
(38:18):
So when I had 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 with three. You know, I was like, I don't, I don't understand.
We had, we owned buildings and, 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. And we're like, okay, so we bought our
dream house and we still live in it. And we got, I think we got it for
one and a half million. It's probably worth about 3, 3.5
(38:41):
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
(39:01):
passive income to cover those things. Things. And so that's really the
key.
>> Wendy Valentine (39:05):
You had, you had a big snowball.
>> Tanisha Souza (39:07):
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 (39:18):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
>> Tanisha Souza (39:19):
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, 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
(39:39):
that's, that's what I love. It's, it's make. Giving
people peace of mind.
>> Wendy Valentine (39:44):
Yeah, exactly. So they can live and
enjoy their life.
>> Tanisha Souza (39:49):
Yeah.
>> Wendy Valentine (39:50):
So what's involved in becoming a client of
tardis?
>> Tanisha Souza (39:54):
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
(40:14):
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
(40:34):
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, that
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
(40:57):
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.
(41:17):
And, and, you know, we, 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, 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
(41:38):
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 wrote a book that
goes into the things you should do, the things
(42:00):
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
definitely recommend that as well. 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. Oh, nice.
>> Wendy Valentine (42:22):
Okay, good. I'll have to put that in the show notes too.
do you, do you also help with what to
invest in?
>> Tanisha Souza (42:31):
Yes.
>> Wendy Valentine (42:31):
Yes.
Okay.
>> Tanisha Souza (42:32):
So I mean, we're 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, 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
(42:52):
show them. And then here's, here's a really big
key that I think a lot of investors and we, 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 and your dad. So you do like a risk
(43:15):
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.
(43:36):
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 asset? You know,
(43:56):
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 mil, 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
(44:16):
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 (44:28):
And then do you provide the coaching throughout the
whole process? Nice.
>> Tanisha Souza (44:32):
yes. What. You know, it's basically very
handholding. So what, 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 an. A car accident. My
car got totaled. I had to put a $6,000
deductible. That changed my cash flow. No big
(44:54):
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 snowball is going to pay for your daughter's college. It's
(45:15):
fantastic stuff. I mean, it's, it's great to have a
coach because we know what, 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 (45:30):
Yeah. Story of my life.
and what if I could do.
Do you work with clients outside of.
>> Tanisha Souza (45:38):
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 countries as well. Yeah.
>> Wendy Valentine (45:46):
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 US 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 (46:05):
Yeah. it's fun.
>> Wendy Valentine (46:06):
I want to do it.
>> Tanisha Souza (46:08):
Yeah.
>> Wendy Valentine (46:11):
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 (46:18):
Or we have free strategy call.
>> Wendy Valentine (46:21):
Okay.
>> Tanisha Souza (46:21):
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. Not
the Amazon, you know, online version.
And it's better to get the hard copy, too, because I've got.
>> Wendy Valentine (46:33):
You can. You can mark it up. Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
>> Tanisha Souza (46:37):
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. And
people. People get in there and they go, oh, wow, okay, this
is interesting. Now I see where I'm at and where
(46:57):
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. Important.
>> Wendy Valentine (47:03):
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, damn, I should have done that.
(47:24):
You know, like, I'd be sitting on the beach right now if I'd done
that, you know, and not having to continue to work.
>> Tanisha Souza (47:30):
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. 15 years later, he reads my
book. He he schedules the strategy call
and signs up. He is now
(47:50):
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, three years, two or three years
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,
(48:11):
that's. So this is accelerated. We, 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.
>> Wendy Valentine (48:31):
Yeah.
>> Tanisha Souza (48:31):
I wouldn't want to try to rely on the tradition
that takes 30 to 40, 40 years and cross your
fingers that that money's there. Yeah.
God forbid we have another 2008. Right. And you're,
you're 401K. No. You know what I mean?
>> Wendy Valentine (48:45):
Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly.
>> Tanisha Souza (48:47):
Turns into a 101k, you know, I.
>> Wendy Valentine (48:49):
Mean, just like you said, you can't put like all your eggs into one
basket because what if that. One basket.
>> Tanisha Souza (48:54):
Exactly, exactly.
>> Wendy Valentine (48:56):
Thank you, Tanisha.
>> Tanisha Souza (48:58):
Yeah, yeah. No, this is fun. Thank you.
>> Wendy Valentine (49:00):
I'm so glad you were a good little guinea pig.
You went through all of it. Yeah,
yeah. Good for you
though. Yeah. And you're making such a difference in the world.
Think about like, 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,
(49:22):
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. Right.
>> Tanisha Souza (49:35):
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. 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 testimonials or, you know, people say I want to do,
(49:56):
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.
>> Wendy Valentine (50:05):
Huh?
>> Tanisha Souza (50:06):
Yeah.
>> Wendy Valentine (50:07):
That's so cool. Thank you so much, Tanisha.
>> Tanisha Souza (50:09):
Yeah, no, thank you for having me. This is fantastic.
>> Wendy Valentine (50:11):
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, and I'll eat
dinner.
>> Tanisha Souza (50:18):
Yeah. Yeah. It's already my day over
here. I know.
>> Wendy Valentine (50:22):
All right, thank you so much, everyone. Have a great day.
Did this podcast inspire you? Challenge
you? Trigger you to make a change, or spit out your coffee
laughing? Good. Then there are three ways you
can thank me. Number one, one, you can leave a written
review of this podcast on Apple iTunes.
Number two, you can take a screenshot of the
episode and share it onto social media and tag
(50:45):
me Wendy Valentine. Number three,
share it with another midlifer that needs a makeover.
You know who I'm talking about. thank you so much for listening to
the show. Get out there and be bold. Be
free. Be you.
>> Tanisha Souza (51:01):
Ra.