CANDY VALENTINO: “I think it's really important for most entrepreneurs to know that the very last skill set, that 95 percent, when we did the research, 95 percent of entrepreneurs learn is finance because it's not taught in schools. We don't understand it, typically, even in our own personal finance. But business finance, once you understand the data and the numbers and we don't emotionally attach ourselves to the result, we can make such better decisions in our business based on the data.”
INTRO: I’m Amy Porterfield, ex-corporate girl turned CEO of a multi-seven-figure business. But it wasn't all that long ago that I lacked the confidence, the budget, and the time to focus on growing my small-but-mighty business. Fast forward past many failed attempts and lessons learned, and you'll see the business I have today, one that changes lives and gives me more freedom than I ever thought possible, one that used to only exist as a daydream. I created the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast to give you simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies to help you do the same. If you're an ambitious entrepreneur, or one in the making, who's looking to create a business that makes an impact and a life you love, you're in the right place, friend. Let's get started.
AMY PORTERFIELD: Let's talk about a podcast I am loving. Inclusion and Marketing, hosted by Sonia Thompson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Inclusion and Marketing digs into important topics like belonging, customer experience, and diversity, and how you can practice inclusive marketing authentically. Because when you lead with inclusivity, you win the attention, the loyalty, and the trust of a broader group of consumers. I think one of my favorite episodes to date is when she shared about cultural appropriation and inappropriate use of a culture not your own. Such an important conversation. You can listen to Inclusion and Marketing wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, hey, there, friend. Happy Thursday, or whatever day you may be listening to this episode. Thank you so much for being here and joining me. I know there are so many podcasts to choose from, but by you being here, I know you're saying yes to your future, saying yes to your business, and saying yes to a life that's 100 percent on your terms. I also know that if you clicked on this episode, you're interested in hearing some business and financial strategies that you can use to help build long-term wealth.
And oh, my goodness, do I have something really special for you. In this episode, you're going to hear from Candy Valentino, a business and finance expert, who started her entrepreneurial journey at just nineteen years old, with no business background, no experience, and went on to create a multi-million-dollar-business empire. She's been focused in Forbes, Success magazine, Fast Company, and her book, Wealth Habits: Six Ordinary Steps to Achieve Extraordinary Financial Freedom is the number-one new release in three different categories on Amazon.
Now, one thing I absolutely love about Candy is that she skips the fluffy “think and grow rich” mentality that you hear touted by so many “financial gurus” out there. And instead, she breaks down wealth creation with practical, actionable steps that anyone at any stage of the game can use. In fact, Candy is living proof that achieving financial freedom is possible, even if you start with absolutely nothing. She has an incredibly inspiring story, one that you'll hear a bit about in this episode.
And because we're in such a, let's say, interesting financial time right now, not only with Tax Day coming up, but with the uncertain state of the economy, Candy is also going to share some of her business-tax strategies that can save you tons of money, along with simple things you can do to recession proof your business. So if you're ready to take some serious notes, let's do this.
Hey, there, Candy. Welcome to the show.
CANDY: Amy, thank you so much for having me.
AMY: Oh, I’ve been excited to have you. I got to come and speak at one of your events when your book came out. And I love your energy. I love your audience. I love everything that you teach. So I thought, “I got to get this girl on this podcast.”
CANDY: The feeling is mutual, so thank you so much for having me.
AMY: I'm so glad you said yes.
So here's the thing. You've had an incredible journey. Behind stage, when we weren't on stage, we got to talk a little bit about it, and I thought, “Wait. This story is really good.” Things didn't start out as easy as it might be for some others for you. So I wanted my listeners who may not be familiar with you, can you share a little bit about where you started and where you are today?
CANDY: Yeah. I grew up super poor. I started on growing up in a trailer on government assistance with two teenage parents. My mom was sixteen, my dad was nineteen when they found out they were going to have me. Neither of them had graduated from high school. My dad is a self-taught mechanic, my mom cleaned houses, and so I grew up, really, watching two people work really hard. Life was about survival, about making it work.
And so, you know, fast forward to getting a little older. I was in my dad's garage every single day. Like, most kids might learn dance or soccer or a sport; I was dropped off at my dad's auto mechanic shop from the time I was five until I was sixteen. So I thought I wanted to be the first in my family, right, to go to college and do all these things.
And what I realized really early on was as I was in a business class for the first time, and I was talking to my professor, and I was asking him, like, “What type of business did you have before you became a professor?” And he's like, “Oh, I never had a business. Like, I've been teaching here.” And I remember thinking, like, “How can you teach me how to have a business and actually do the grunt work and build it if you haven't done it yourself?” And it was just like a switch flipped. And I realized that college wasn't my thing, that I wanted to get out, build a business, create wealth so that I didn't have to have a life of struggle like in my childhood.
And so I started researching. I got an SBA loan at the age of nineteen, figured out how to hire people—I had seven staff before we even opened—and I had a six-week run rate with an SBA loan to just figure it out. So talk about leverage and talk about pressure in order to make sure that you make it work, right? So that was kind of the first part of my entrepreneurial journey.
AMY: Okay. So two questions about that. What inspired you to start a business at such a young age, and what did that business look like? And then, also, you were nineteen years old, no degree, no corporate background, no real money—you were given that loan. How did you even have the confidence to do something like that?
CANDY: Okay. So two, so the first question, it’s all about what we hear. And prior to being fifteen years old, you know, we're all a product of kind of what is either caught or taught in our environment. And in my environment, you know, my parents were super young. They were just trying to figure it out. So a lot of my big dreams, although they didn't intentionally try to squash them, a lot of my big dreams were kind of met with big resistance. Kind of like, “Nah. It's going to be too big for you. I don't think you should get into that,” right?
But I had a very divine moment when I was fifteen years old, at 3:00 a.m., when I was laying on the couch. Couldn't sleep in that trailer that I grew up on. I'll never forget the flowered couch. If anyone grew up in the eighties, everybody had the same brown and yellow, flowered couch.
AMY: Same.
CANDY: Right? The—what's that called?—the wood paneling on the walls, right? And the TVs that weren't flat screens, but they had the big box behind them. And I remember this coming on TV, and there was this guy that was sitting in the most beautiful location, with all of these palm trees, with a sparkling pool behind him. And he said, “You're not a product of your circumstances; you're a product of your decision, and that nothing that happened in your life will define you unless you define it.” And that was Tony Robbins selling his Personal Power tapes.
And so I had the money from businesses that I had and babysitting and things, and I said to my dad, “Dad, I just need to use your credit card so I can get these cassette tapes.” I said, “But I have the money.” And he said to me—because, again, not that he meant it in ill will in any way, but his limitation, right? We're all a limitation of our own experience—he said to me, “All you’re going to do is give that guy your six hundred dollars, and he's going to be a millionaire, and you're going to be right where you are.” And thankfully, I have a little bit of a challenging personality, so I took that as a challenge and not as a defeat. And I said, “Oh, yeah. Watch me.”
So I realized that I needed to be resilient in the moment, and I needed to find a solution. The only thing that was keeping me away from what I thought that I needed was a credit card. So the next day we were at Sears, when back in the day Sears was the thing. My dad was buying tools, and I took a Discover Card application, because back in the day, you know, you had to fill them out. You didn't get online and do the application.
AMY: Yes.
CANDY: I fraudulently filled it out. I do not recommend anyone doing this, because it was a totally different time. But I was honest in the fact that I paid it back. But I did lie about my age and my income because I was only fifteen. And lo and behold, about two weeks later I got the Discover card at the age of fifteen. So I used that card, bought those tapes, sat and listened to tape after tape. And I wrote my first set of goals at fifteen in my high school cafeteria and achieved every single one of them by the time I was twenty-three.
AMY: Oh, my gosh.
CANDY: So my divine moment was being exposed to Tony at a very young age and not knowing otherwise. Right? I think sometimes we have so much conditioning in our environment of what we should think and what we should believe. And because I didn't have a lot of that and I had to figure it out on my own, I just heard something that sounded different, but that it hit. It just spoke to me in some way. And rather than questioning it, I just went for it and made it happen. And that literally was a pivotal moment in my life that made me think that if this guy said, who's sitting in this beautiful place, that we can become a product of our decisions, then I'm going to decide to have a different life. And I just took the next steps to do that.
And your second question is, what gave me the confidence? You know, I looked back at all of the things that I had overcome—you know, growing up with teenage parents, being sexually abused as a child, having so much adversity that I had to overcome—if I was able to get through all of that and to be able to survive 100 percent of my worst days, then starting a business is nothing. Figuring out how to make money is nothing. Like, I felt like I had already made it.
I had the chance to be an 87 percent statistic. When you grow up in the environment that I did, having the abuse that I had to deal with, I remember reading a stat that 87 percent of most people that do that, they, too, become a teenage parent; they, too, have other issues in their life; they, too, typically get addicted to drugs or some other sort of substance. So I was like, what about the 13 percent? If 87 percent of people are doing that, what about the 13 percent? And I think we get a choice at any time in our life that you can become part of the 87 percent, but you can also become part of that 13. And so that’s what I hung my hat on. That 13 percent of women that I never met in my life, that’s who I focused on and thought about and remembered that if they got through this, if I can get through this, then I can certainly figure out how to build a business, too.
AMY: Boom. I love that. I love hearing more of your story and the Tony Robbins connection. I mean, I went through a really bad breakup with a boyfriend, and I watched all his infomercials at nighttime, and then realized I needed to buy his tapes, and I couldn't even afford them because I went to the library and got them in the beginning. So I love that both of us have that in common, and it changed our lives.
CANDY: Yeah. I did not know that. That’s amazing.
AMY: So many people in my audience either want to start an online business or they've already started an online business. And financial stability and financial security is a topic that we talk about a lot, and it comes up a lot, and it actually keeps people frozen from going after what they want because they're, like, stuck in a nine-to-five job because they want that regular paycheck. So I want to talk about money, but something we've never talked about on the show is tax benefits. And you definitely are an expert in this area. So can you talk about some of the tax benefits associated with having a business, even if it's, like, a side hustle? And that's the first question I have for you.
CANDY: I love this question, right, because I think this is really missed. And when I exited my last company in 2019 and I came on to this online world for the first time, I was like, “Why is no one talking about these things?” because they're so critically important. So if we break it down simply, if no one's ever heard this before, I'm going to make it super simple, because if it’s simple, we can duplicate it. We understand it. And that is what really is the most important part about finance, because most of the time people talk over our head. So then we think we can't learn it. But finance, just like learning anything else in your life, it's so easily done if you have someone that can explain it.
So let's take away the three different types of income. Let's start with that. The most amount of tax that anyone listening will ever pay in their lifetime is on earned income, earned income being your W-2 employee—that you're going in, and they're taking money from you out of your check, right? The second, the two other types are passive income and portfolio income. The way that our tax system is set up is that the tax system, the basis points, are just meaning that you're paying a lower percentage of tax on passive and portfolio income. The advantage of having earned income inside of even a business is it gives you the ability to take tax deductions, write offs, that are common and useful to actually have a good or do a service or have a course.
So the other thing that courses are really special about what you're doing is if it's an ancillary revenue stream to something else in their business, it actually could be taxed as passive income because the government says that anything that you set up once and that you're not actively involved in is passive income. Typically, it's for, like, real-estate property, and then portfolio income is typically like stocks, bonds, and all of that kind of stuff.
And not to get into the weeds, but a course is a really great way to do two things: earned income, because it increases your income and it's typically something that once you have it, you can set it. Of course, you have to tweak it and massage it and do all of the things, but then you can pay a lower tax basis. The interesting thing about owning a business is when you are able to open yourself up to all those tax deductions, now you're able to keep more of what you make. Most people think you got to earn more, earn more, earn more. But as you earn more in your lifetime, you'll realize that there's a second part of that. There's, like, a little sister. It’s also you've got to keep more of your income. So it's not always what you make in your paycheck; it's what you do with it that matters. And so I think having a business is an incredible reason, because you've got tax benefits. It's going to open you up to things that having just a normal nine to five isn't going to. So a side hustle is a great way to do that. Also, another great way is real-estate investing as well.
AMY: Oh, good. I'm glad that you gave some examples. And also, speaking of taxes, there are a few strategies that you talk about in your book, that can help any business owner give as little money to the IRS as possible. Please do tell.
CANDY: Yes. So, oh, my gosh. So I am very fortunate, when I was nineteen, that my very best friend was going to college for accounting. So here I am having a business, she's going to college for accounting, and she's working an accounting job. And I was going to buy a vehicle, and she’s like, “You know you can write that vehicle off.” And I'm like, “What? What do you mean?” And so she was, like, “Yeah, there's this thing.” And sure enough, like, I had to research it for myself and look into it. And there's a thing called Section 179. So anyone listening, if you have never heard of that before, go to section179.org, and it'll give you all kinds of examples that business owners are able to use Section 179 to do tax deductions to reduce their taxable income. So that's one of them.
Oftentimes, if you drive a vehicle, that's why you'll see a lot of people that have businesses drive Range Rovers and Escalades and T wagons because for as long as I've been in business, which is a really long time, this has always been a rule, that any vehicle with a six-thousand-pound gross vehicle weight or more has the ability to write it off. Now, taxes change every year. Sometimes it's twenty-five thousand, sometimes it's a small portion, but then the last few years, it's been 100 percent of the business use. And you have to use it for at least 50 percent of the business use in order to do this.
There is a lot of, obviously, things that you need to know, and I don't advise anyone to file their own taxes on their own if they have a business. But what's interesting is if you're not going to the right person to have these conversations, you are going to end up paying far more in tax than you ever need to. That's just one example.
Another one is anyone that has kids. Rather than just giving your kids money for every single thing that they ask for, you can put them on payroll and actually pay them income that will go to them, under a certain amount. Right now it’s around thirteen thousand dollars or less. They won't pay taxes on it. And then you can also do things like open them up a custodial Roth IRA, which if you did that for your kids and just invested until they were eighteen, they would be millionaires by the time that they retired. So those are just two of the little things that we always talk about.
The third one, anyone can Google to get more information. It's called the Augusta Loophole. And I have a whole video series on Instagram about this. It's how to rent your home or another property that you have tax free to your business. So it's a way that you can take money out of your business and put it into your pocket tax free.
So these are just some of the, like, fun ones that most people don't know about. But the reality is that even if you have a home business and you own a business—like, you literally have an LLC or an S corporation—you can also write off part of your home office, your utilities, things in your home that are valid deductions because of you operating a business.
The thing to remember is when you earn an income from a paycheck, the government takes out that money first. When you have a business, you get the money first, and then you pay taxes later. And the amount that you pay later is determined by your knowledge on the subject and who you work for, as far as with your tax strategist. So there's nothing that we can do about the tax code when we have a paycheck because that's just what they take out. But when we have a business, all of these big, fancy corporations that have millions of dollars, that have lobbyists pay our federal government to have all of these deductions, we, the little guys, get to take advantage of them, too.
AMY: Absolutely. So Candy goes over this and so much more in her book, Wealth Habits. And so we'll talk about that a little bit more near the end. But these are the strategies that we absolutely need to know as entrepreneurs.
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One of the mistakes I think—I haven't ever talked about this—but one thing I wish that I was better at early on, like fourteen years ago when I started this business, is understanding all these tax advantages because I love what you just said. It's all about your knowledge and understanding. The more you know, the more you save.
CANDY: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really important for most entrepreneurs to know that the very last skill set, that 95 percent, when we did the research, 95 percent of entrepreneurs learn is finance because it's not taught in schools. We don't understand it, typically, even in our own personal finance. But business finance, once you understand the data and the numbers and we don't emotionally attach ourselves to the result, we can make such better decisions in our business based on the data.
So one of the things I always say is, like, if you wanted to start to learn Spanish, what are you going to do? You're going to sit down with a Spanish book, and you're going to start to learn the language. If you have a business and you've never intentionally sat down to do this, I want to encourage you that within the next month—so have your bookkeeper prepare all your information, or you do it if you're doing it yourself—and sit down, make a money date with yourself. It doesn't have to be boring; it can be fun. Set up a date for two hours. Go to your favorite coffee shop or resort, have a glass of wine, whatever it is for you, and sit down with your balance sheet, your profit and loss, any accounting software that maybe if you have a CRM program, or a POS, if you’re brick and mortar, if you have a course, like, what is the data from Kajabi saying, and start to look at that. Even if you have no clue what it is, it's the same as looking at a Spanish book for the first time. Start to look at that so that you can do the work, pick up that first five-pound weight so that you can develop the muscle and really understand business finance. That's when you can start to make really good decision and really help your business grow and help you save on taxes in the meantime.
AMY: Ooh. I love that. So have a little financial date with yourself. That's a great idea.
So another thing I wanted to ask you is that, as you know, we're in uncertain times with our economy, and some people are saying we're in a recession; we’re heading for a recession. Who knows? But how do you feel about starting a business during a recession?
CANDY: Oh, it's the best time to start a business.
AMY: Why would you say that?
CANDY: I love this. I've never been asked this question in, like, a hundred interviews. I love starting a business in a recession.
So when we did the research for the book, the most amount of billionaires—billionaires—in any time in human history came out of 2020. What happened in 2020, right? The whole world shut down. More billionaires were created. There will be more millionaires that come out of this time than any other time in our lifetime, because here's what the research shows us. There are only four to five times in a person's lifetime that we get an opportunity like the one that we're coming into right now. And it is an opportunity.
So when you hear these words recession, volatility, market pullback, I want you to remember this podcast, and I want you to just literally flip the script for that word. When you hear those words, I want you to say, “Okay, Candy and Amy said think opportunity.” That's what I want you to think about because when times are tough, that's when most businesses, they actually do have some volatility. So it actually opens up the market for the little guy to get in, whether it's investing or business, more easily.
But how do you do that? You want to make sure that you've got a recession-proof business. And a recession-proof business is something with a really simple business model. So something that doesn't need a ton of innovation. It's not like we're going to try to build an electric truck or anything, right? It's something that exists, but it's just you're bringing your genius, your experience, the way that you deliver it in the market. You’re bringing your own personal stamp on it. That's what's going to make something more recession proof than some flashy tech thing. As we see, there's all kinds of volatility in the tech markets right now, and that's because all of the new technologies have a harder time sustaining through a recession.
But there are a lot of things that are more simplistic, like what you teach people about a course, that no matter what, are going to stand the test of time. So I love the fact that people are even thinking about starting a business in a recession.
The other reason it's so important is the more you invest right now—it's kind of like going to a shoe sale, right? When you go to a shoe sale, everything’s on a discount, half price. That's the way stocks are right now. So if someone hasn't developed, like, a Roth IRA or hasn't invested before, it's a great time to start because you can start to invest in stocks and bonds that are maybe at a lower place than where they were just a year ago.
AMY: Ooh, I love that. Absolutely.
Can you give me a few other ways that my listeners can recession proof their business? So they already have a business. Are there things they can do right now to take advantage of what's happening in the world?
CANDY: So you got to remember when we've got market volatility, and everybody's acutely aware of this word, you may have to shift your messaging, right? When you're in a really great time and everything is really pushed up, that's the way everybody is feeling. So it's easier for them to come along that boat, if you will, and start to work with you.
But when we have volatility, you may have to start to shift your messaging and your offers to what’s going on, right? So it might not be a Cadillac product. You may have to have, not to say you have to do away with it, but you may want to allow the other people to get in on whatever it is that you're offering, and shift that messaging. I think Dean Graziosi told me one time, it's like sometimes people are looking for a life boat; they're not looking to go on the yacht. So it's like, how could you shift your messaging to have more of a life boat of how your product or service is going to help people now or what it's going to prevent them from?
That's why I like what I do is really key right now, because this is in my book. Like, who would have thought when I was writing my book, I actually had a chapter “How to Recession Proof Your Finances” in the book that came out right when—because when I wrote it—
AMY: So perfect.
CANDY: —we were in a great time. The market and everything was really shooting up. Real estate was doing great. So it's just think of that life-boat messaging. How do you change your messaging? How do you have to tweak your offer in order to allow more people to come in with what you're doing now?
So like, let's say, for example, which I know this isn’t the case, if the only thing Amy offered was a twenty-five-thousand, “I create your course for you,” well, in this type of market, it would be beneficial to have a thousand-dollar product that's more DIY, right? So it's just kind of how can you shift your messaging and your offer for what people are looking for in this moment? Because that's the thing with business: it always changes. Like, the way it was in the late nineties compared to now is radically different. So the more flexible that you are and the more that you can adapt in these different markets, the more successful you'll be.
AMY: Amen to that.
I want to talk about your book, but before I do, I have one more question for you. So one of the things that's unique about you is you have a really great understanding of the power of a mindset that serves you. And I'm wondering, can you tell us about the mindset you have when it comes to building long-term wealth?
CANDY: Mmm. Well, so a few things. One, if you don't, in some point, intentionally trade your instant gratification for long-term gains, you'll be working forever. Instant gratification is where people are trying to get the labels. They're trying to get the flashy thing. They're trying to look rich, look successful, as opposed to be wealthy. So my question is, what are you willing to give up now? What are you willing to say no to now so that you can say yes to anything later? Like, if I looked back at that nineteen-year-old kid that started a business, I wouldn't even be able to articulate how my life looks right now because I couldn't even visualize it. I couldn't even see it. And that's what I think’s so important for everyone to remember is when you play the long game and you delay gratification and you really go all in, not just for the quick hits but for the long game, you will be able to create more success, more wealth, and a more-rich life than you can even imagine. So that's I think one thing is playing the long game. What are you willing to give up?
And then, I have this question that I obsess on, and I've done it for probably twenty years is, does this decision take me closer to or further away from my true vision and mission for my life?
AMY: Ooh. Say it one more time. One more time.
CANDY: Does this decision take me closer to or further away from the vision I want for my life? But here's the thing. It's easy to say that; it's hard to do it. When you get that answer no, this does not give me better health; no, this does not give me better contribution; no, this does not add to my wealth; no, this doesn't help me and my family's goals; when you get that, it's then not doing that. It's not taking the step. It's deciding on something else. And that takes discipline. And I know it's a very unsexy word that people don't like to talk about, because most time we want to feel like we're in this really happy place. But I promise you, if you have a little bit of discipline, you will be able to have a happier place than you can even imagine by playing the long game. So I think that's a really important question.
And then really getting clear of, what are you willing to trade? Like, rather than wanting the Louis bag, how about buying the Louis stock so that when everyone else that's your friends are carrying their Louis bags, you know that your dividend’s going up and that stock price is going up. Like, rather than going to Starbucks at six bucks a pop, every time you do that, just invest in the Starbucks stock. And then in twenty years from now, you can message me on whatever social media there is and say how much money you have by this one thing, right? So the iPhone, if instead of buying these iPhones when they first came out—they were 500 bucks, depending on the storage—if somebody would have just bought five hundred dollars in Apple stock instead of or in addition to the phone, they would have millions in the stock right now.
AMY: Oh. I mean, come on. That is going—I've never heard anyone say anything like that before. Like, that is powerful stuff.
And speaking of something powerful, let's talk about this book. It's called Wealth Habits: Six Ordinary Steps to Achieve Extraordinary Financial Freedom. Tell me why you wrote it. Tell me who it's for.
CANDY: So I wrote it because I wanted to take twenty-five years of what I wasn't told, what nobody said, all the mistakes that I made, all of the expense that I had to go through, and condense it down into a book to help someone else. And I also did it because back in 1999, ‘97, ‘95, when I was reading books, the only pictures on books were men that wrote business and finance books. And so although my picture is on the book—and I actually fought that. I didn't want my picture on the book. It was actually my publisher that said, “Wouldn't it be nice that Candy would have been able to see a picture of a female on a finance book?” And I said, “Okay, sold.”
AMY: Yeah.
CANDY: So that's the reason.
But the book is broken down into very specific—it's a playbook. It's not theories and ideas. This is we introduce an idea, we explain and back it up with data, and then we introduce a behavior to take and what the action actually is. So it's very much like your book. It's a play by play. It's not just theory. But it's important to understand that the very first part of the book was written intentionally, because I can talk to you about the taxes, what you invest, all of this, but if we don’t first go back and fix all of the things that we've been taught or have caught in our lifetime and what we believe about money, about success, about finance, if we don't first identify what beliefs you actually want to have, and if you have any broke beliefs that are keeping you from building wealth and success, we address that first, because you and I can teach all of the tactics that someone needs to do, but if they don't have their mindset right, we're going to be swimming uphill together. So mindset isn't the whole piece, but it's a really important part, and we start with that. And then we go into all of the ways that you can earn more money, how you can take what you know and package it into a product or service and sell it to a market that needs it.
And even if you don't want to quit your job, because I know there's so many people that out there preach, “Burn the boats. Go all in.” But if you have a family and responsibilities, that can be really dangerous and irresponsible. So I often say it's easier to keep what you have, do something on the side until you get some stability so that you have more confidence in order to go all in. And then we go from there. Again, it's not what you make; it's what you keep, and it's what you do with it. So then we go in through, basically, the DNA of money and what it really means and how you can make more of it, how you can invest it. And then, also, of course, with me, I have a nonprofit that I founded when I was twenty-six as my way to give back. So the very last portion of the book talks all about contribution, Like, it's not just what you make. Like, people think it's the wealth is the accumulation of assets, but wealth is truly what you can do with it. It's who you can serve. It's who you can bless. It's the freedom that you can have in your life. And so we end the book by making sure that people don't get so focused on making money that they forget to build a rich life.
And so that's kind of the whole premise of the book. And so a lot of good things, all the study. We did a forty-year study on all of the markets in order to give people the information that they need, but it's all written in a very simplistic way. I always say that my dad has an eighth-grade education, and anything I tell him, I need it to, like, land so that he's totally go with it. And that's the way that the book is written.
AMY: That’s fantastic. I love that.
So where can people go to grab this book? Anywhere online?
CANDY: Anywhere online. Candyvalentino.com, I have all the links there. And Instagram, I’m @candyvalentino, and TikTok and all the places.
AMY: Perfect.
Candy, thank you so much for coming on the show. Truly appreciate your insight and knowledge.
CANDY: Thank you so much for having me. It was so good to see you. And thank you for sharing me with your audience.
AMY: Of course.
Okay. So isn't Candy just great? You know that I'm all about creating systems, and I love that she's literally created a system for wealth building. The way she explains things is down to earth and refreshing, and she honestly just makes a subject that can be really intimidating so much more approachable. And the fact that you learn about where she came from and her story and where she's taken herself and where she's going, it impresses me beyond belief. So make sure to grab her book. I think that's the next best move. You will be so glad you did. And I love that she talks about different strategies in order to make more money in your business to keep more of your wealth and also those tax strategies. I mean, bring them on, right? So hopefully, you love this episode, and you'll go grab her book. And listen. I'm going to be back next week, same time, same place. So I'll see you there.
