How can you move beyond the negatives and maximize the positive potential of the challenging pandemic environment? That’s the issue that Courtney Epps, international speaker, author and accountant, tackles in this interview, with a focus on bettering yourself and family financially despite the difficulties confronting us. Courtney goes Off the Cuff with us, and lays out a strategy that will allow those who heed her suggestions to flourish when we come out of the COVID-19 lockdown.
Watch The Full Interview on YouTube
Courtney Epps Interview Key Points
In this interview, Courtney gives her valuable insights on the following topics:
- The immediate outlook for the stock market and the real estate markets in light of the current environment
- The importance of refinancing to reduce debt right now if you are able
- The time to put money into the stock market and real estate
- The importance of freeing up the money you are making today
- The smartest thing we can be doing with our free time right now from a financial standpoint
- The importance of developing a growth mindset
- The smartest way to use government stimulus checks
About Courtney Epps
Courtney and her team operate a full-service accounting firm in Greenville, South Carolina. However, they are able to work with Americans everywhere, from Puerto Rico to Hawaii and every place in between. Her whole focus is to help free up money for her clients. She uses tax strategy to help people find money they didn’t know they had. She also helps businesses to make sure that they are structured properly for maximum income retention.
Two years ago, Courtney developed a concept called ‘social giving’. For every dollar that OTB Tax generates, they provide a serving of whole food nutrition to children in need all across the world. So far, they have been able to provide 1.9 million serving of food to children all over the planet. In addition, OTB Tax is involved in Operation Underground Railroad to help free children from sex trafficking.
Courtney recently released the top-selling book More Relaxing, Less Taxing, which has proven to be a goldmine of sage advice for small business owners during these unprecedented times.
Find Courtney Epps online
Watch The Full Interview on YouTube
- (electric music)
- I think the stock market is going
to plummet even more.
So if you’re going to put money into it,
you know, that we can talk about that all day long,
but I think it’s not time yet, right?
Real estate is going to plummet.
You know, so it’s not time to put money there yet, right?
It’s more along the lines of paying off what you have,
especially if you have high interest rates,
you know, it’s a good time to refinance.
If you can possibly do that,
I know things have definitely changed along those lines.
But you know,
what I’m focusing on for me and my business
and for my family is to pay off as much debt
as I possibly can in these times.
And you may not be in that situation to be able to do that
so that I don’t ever have to worry about losing my home.
So I don’t ever have to worry about, you know,
losing my cars or you know,
that’s been kind of my focus.
And then once everything kind of plummets
and I’ll put money in stock market
and I’ll put some money probably in real estate.
But right now, it’s all about focusing on
how do I free up the money
that I’m currently making today. - Right.
- And if I didn’t make any extra dollars,
how can I free that up?
And so, you know,
when I deal with someone,
I’m taking or trying to change their,
shift their mindset, I would say,
and teach them, look, if I can earn a hundred dollars
over here as a business owner,
I’m better off than earning $60.
Or excuse me, if I can make $60
over here as a business owner,
I’m equivalent to a hundred dollars as a W-2 employee
because of the tax savings.
So right now, I would say,
find, use the stimulus money, right?
I would use a couple hundred bucks, find a business,
get started.
I would, your mindset,
right now is the best time to grow your mindset,
to watch video content,
to get on a platform,
to learn about how you can increase your health
and your wealth and vitality
because you have time to do it now.
You know, I think before it’s like,
who has time to do all these things?
I want to do all these things,
but I don’t have the time to do it.
Now you do.
So if you focus on growing your mindset
and making yourself a better person,
when this is all over with,
you will thrive instead of that.
And that’s what a lot of people are focused on right now is,
is the bad that’s coming out of this.
But what about all the good, you know,
and if you utilize this to,
if you utilize this to your advantage,
then your life will never be the same again.
And so that’s fortunately, you know,
I get to see it from all aspects.
I get to see the clients
who are brick and mortar restaurants,
who can’t go back to work, you know.
I get to see it from chiropractors who, you know,
they’ve lost massage therapy and acupuncture.
They can’t do that anymore.
And then, you know, you’ve got network marketers
who are, you know, massively exploding,
sharing stuff online and you know,
you’ve got an accountant.
And as much as it’s not fun, right?
It’s not that fun to be an accountant. - Right. – But everybody needs it.
So, you know, that’s kind of my focus is to find a plan B,
put a couple of hundred bucks into it,
learn and educate yourself while you have time to do that.
And then, after you get out of this,
the sky’s the limit. - No, that’s awesome stuff.
So, you’re saying that there is a way
to take these stimulus checks and thrive from it,
you know, if used right as opposed to just taking it
and you know, continue the kind of workers mentality
of like I get paid and do the same thing, you know,
and keep running the,
it’s like a hamster on a wheel, right? - Yeah.
- You know, and like you said,
you’re just a W-2 employee and a lot,
and I’ve always kind of looked at it like that
to where people just go to work every day
and, you know, their money gets pulled from their check
and they work all these hours per week
and they never really find time to you know,
to expand who they are, you know, as a person,
to really take them to the next level
to be able to make more money.
But I think you you hit the nail on the head with like
now is the greatest time more than ever,
to try to find something maybe a new passion
or a new line of work, especially, you know,
I tell a lot of my friends,
digital space, anything online in digital
where you can do that type of stuff.
And there’s so many courses available out there
and not very expensive
to where you can invest a little bit
to kind of get that knowledge going
and try to generate, you know, some income.
So I definitely think people should be looking
to take these stimulus checks and, you know,
to take these stimulus checks and, you know,
benefit themselves so they can, so after this is over,
they can, you know, truly benefit.
