 So in Russia, they have a saying, nobody talk about how they make their first million dollars. I'm gonna tell you how I made my first million dollars. And I'm gonna show you how I made my first million dollars, both gross and net profit. And there's a big difference between these two. You'll hear a lot of marketers talk about how much money they made gross, but that doesn't mean they took it home at the end of the day. And I'm also gonna go over four strategies for you to keep as much of that income as possible. Now, note that I'm not a financial advisor. I'm just a dude who's good with taxes. The first million dollars I made gross was between 2013 and 2014. I earned over $1.3 million. Two years after I had started my business, I made my first million dollars. And in that time period, I made roughly 50% net profit. Still not a millionaire yet at this point, but well on the way to becoming one. Now, the way I made this money was two ways. I was running a little ad agency. I was doing work for clients and earning about $1,000 per month per client that I was managing their Google and Facebook ads for. And then I was also doing affiliate marketing, which actually made me the majority of my money during this time for a gold investment company in the financial services niche. Again, people were doing moving parts of their retirement over to gold. And I would make a percentage of whatever they decided to move over. Now, my first million dollars net was made the following year. And this is in 2015. I earned $2.7 million gross. Gross means that's the total amount of money that I made. It's not the money I kept in my pocket. And that year, I also put in $755,000 profit in my pocket. So you add that all up. And this became the first year that I was a millionaire. I had over a million dollars in the bank. It was mine. And if you're on that path, if you've done it, congratulations to you. But this is everybody's goal. And this was almost purely through what is known as affiliate marketing, where it's your marketing, other people's businesses, and you're earning a commission if you can sell their products. It's similar to realtors, insurance agents. Really, most many professions out there, if you insurance agents, they sell insurance and they get a commission. Realtors, they sell houses, they get a commission. Same thing, but I'm just marketing products on the internet. Whatever it is, supplements, backpacks, t-shirts, whatever you name it. Specifically, I was marketing supplements. I was marketing nutraceutical supplements that helped people build more muscles. And for the gals, it helped them have better-looking skin and lose weight. So I had a couple different supplements. I was marketing to earn this money. And I was using Facebook ads to reach people. So that's how I was able to scale a business, because I had something called leverage. And in any business you go into, you want a degree of leverage, so you can scale things up very quickly. Now with this YouTube channel, I have a degree of leverage, because here I am spending whatever it is, 15 minutes of my own time. But thousands of people around the world will watch this video. And in any business you go into, you want to look to, where can you create those areas of leverage? Because earning $1 million, earning $3 million in a year, is not going to happen if you don't have a degree of leverage. And starting an internet business is a fantastic way to get started. If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing, there's a link in the description. I have a training course if you want to learn more about that. But I'm going to go into the four ways that I actually kept this money, because making money is not as important as keeping it. Nobody, really, earning money is meaningless if you spend it all. The goal, to get rich, you need to keep it. Not just earn it. Now, the ways I was able to keep the money, there are four different methods I use to not pay all of my money out in taxes. And one of the major ones is $240,000 a year in retirement accounts. Most individuals here in the United States are only able to put aside $24,000, about a 10th of this, because they are in the system and they're doing what they think society tells them to do. Whereas I'm able to write off $240,000 a year off of my tax bill and put that money aside for safekeeping because I'm using what's called a deferred benefit plan. And I'm using that to put aside a lot more money than most people are able to. Now, so going back to this example, when I say I put aside $755,000 in profit this year, I also put aside a quarter million dollars, tax-free, into retirement accounts on top of that. So that is added to this. So it adds up to about a million dollars in profits, right? I put a quarter million in my retirement accounts and I have $755,000 in cash. Now the second tool that I use to not pay as much money in taxes, and you might be thinking, John, why are you talking about taxes? You're supposed to be talking all about earning money. Well, again, I'm talking about how I made my first million dollars profit. It's important to keep that money, okay? Taxes is understanding and being able to keep your money and not pay as much in taxes is the single biggest correlation I see among wealthy people that I am friends with. Actual wealthy people who have multi-million dollar homes, who have private jets, who have boats, who have exotic cars, understand how to keep their money. They understand the tax laws of their particular country. So this, when I am focusing on this, I'm focusing on it for a reason because you need to know this if you are going to get ahead in life. Otherwise, this money that you are earning, whatever it is, $666,000, that will be cut in half. And you'll end up thinking, the whole year you think you're earning all these profits, but all that money is going away because you focus simply on earning and not on keeping. And I have lots of videos, if you wanna learn how to do affiliate marketing and how it is, the specific tactics, I have lots of videos, I'll have my editors link to them above so that you can start going out if you wanna learn how to do affiliate marketing. Now back to the second thing here, and this is called research and development, and you can get a tax credit for research and development. If you are doing activities in your business that are not necessarily profit producing, for instance, if you are paying for programming work to be done on Fiverr or Upwork, that can be expensed. And again, I'm not a financial advisor here, so don't take anything I say, it's all entertainment, right? But that can be expensed as research and development because you're not sure if it's actually gonna work out in your favor to earn you money. It's coding. The third tool to reduce your taxes and keep that money that you're earning is called accelerated depreciation. So just to give you an example of accelerated depreciation, any of my computer equipment is accelerated depreciation, meaning if I spend $5,000 on my computer, I can write that all off in the first year off of my taxes through a measure called accelerated depreciation. Typically, people don't write any of these things off, but you can with accelerated depreciation. The other way you can use accelerated depreciation is you can actually buy, you can buy a private jet. Let's say it's $5 million, you put 20% down for a million dollars, you can write $4 million off of your taxes for buying a private jet. So it's almost like it pays for itself and you don't even have to put that much money down. And rich people do this all the time with artwork, with yachts, with exotic cars, with private jets, with multifamily housing. All of these categories can be, you can use accelerated depreciation, but they're relegated to the rich and the super rich to use this tactic. They don't let you know about this. The government doesn't encourage anybody to know about the tax code, because again, the world would be crazy if everybody is rich, but you are. So I hope you take action and leave a thumbs up on this video if you are learning something and make sure to subscribe to my channel somewhere down below if you are interested in more marketing content and success and all that sort of stuff. The fourth tool to write more stuff off your taxes is donations. Now if you give money anything to donations, I know many of my followers are Christians here and believe in tithing and donations are a great way. You can just write those off your taxes. I forget up to a certain amount, but all this stuff is great and it just reduces the amount of money you have to pay. And it was through a combination of working hard and earning money using my online business and also saving money that earned me my first million dollars and made my life a lot different from where it was before. So I hope you enjoy this video and if you're looking forward to more killer content, we're coming out, we got a new office here. I don't know if you guys see it all around, but we got some cool stuff here. We're gonna be making it look a lot nicer for you all very soon and I'm excited to bring you into my new space. So talk soon, have a great day.