SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

In this episode of Screw the Commute, Tom Antion discusses how to fight burnout in business by incorporating passion-driven projects that generate income and provide tax deductions.
Key Takeaways:
• New Challenges Keep You Engaged: Tom attributes his ability to avoid burnout over 31 years to the ever-changing nature of internet business, which keeps things exciting and fresh.
• Turning Hobbies into Income: He advises finding a hobby you love and monetizing it to maintain enthusiasm while benefiting from tax deductions.
o Example: His love for tennis led to fatsoTennis.com, allowing him to deduct expenses related to his passion.
o Example: His interest in protection dogs led him to Protection Dogs Elite, where he earns commissions by referring trained dogs to buyers.
• Starting an Online Business is Simple:
o Create a website (cost-effective options available).
o Sell a digital product or promote affiliate products.
o File a Schedule C for tax benefits (in the U.S.).
• Tax Benefits Help Offset Burnout:
o Expenses like equipment, training, travel, and home office costs can be legitimate deductions if part of a business venture.
• Upcoming Projects: Tom is taking a temporary break in anticipation of his upcoming documentary release and a new project, Highly Educated Idiots, launching in 2025.
Conclusion:
By integrating income-generating hobbies into your life, you can maintain enthusiasm, reduce burnout, and enjoy financial benefits. Tom’s advice encourages entrepreneurs to explore passion projects that are sustainable and rewarding.

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Episode 970 – Fighting Burn Out
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 970 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about fighting burnout, something that I've been doing for a long time, but I'm still very, very productive. So I'll give you a tip on how to to fight burnout in your business. And I hope you didn't miss episode 969 that was on sink jacking. Sync jacking. Browser sink jacking is more technical, and this is something you really need to know about to protect yourself from these advanced hackers that want to grab all of your stuff. So. So check out episode 969. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. That was 969. Also pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com.

[00:01:24] Okay, let's talk about fighting burnout. Now, I've been kind of lucky in that for the last 31 years, out of my 48 years in business. I started my first business in college in 1977, so that makes it 48 years. I've been in business continuously, but I've been really lucky in the last 31 years, since the commercial internet started in 1994, that everything I have to things are new all the time. So it wasn't like a grind where I've been doing the same, you know, making the same product for 30 years straight and all.

[00:02:05] I want to shoot myself in the head. No, there's always something new on the internet. And that's what keeps me fired up about learning and keeping up with things. And I'm kind of obligated because to teach, my students say so. So for the last 31 years, that's been lucky for me to fight burnout. Now, I will admit, in the last year or so I have felt a little bit of burnout. And luckily not luckily. I mean, I built myself to this position. I got plenty of money coming in where I could take a break. So I haven't written a book for a year, but I got 25 other ones working for me, right? So I kind of deserve a break here. And then also, I kind of know what's coming up. So I want to get a break in now this year because the documentary about me is coming out and I don't know, first quarter of next this year, sometime after all these years, it's been threatening to come out. It's getting ready to come out, and once that hits, I'm probably going to get buried with new students. All right. So I'm going to be off to the races again. So I'm kind of taking a break this year just doing a lot of my stuff. Now how is this any of this apply to you? Well, one of the things I've been preaching forever is how to make your hobbies tax deductible.

[00:03:29] See if you can take a hobby that you really love doing, and justify doing it by bringing money in with it. Then boy, that's fighting burnout as it is because you're getting to do the thing you really love, and you're and you can justify it because you're getting tax deductions and bringing in money for it. And I've been teaching that for years now. A couple examples for me is my tennis like I have fatsoTennis.com. I was a tennis nut, so I created a DVD set on tennis, a blog on tennis, and that makes my tennis rackets and tennis balls. And my court. Upkeep and ball machines. And I even got to travel and interview a famous tennis coach for the blog. So that is, you know, how can I get burnt out when I'm doing the stuff I'm really crazy about, right? And then the other the other thing is dogs like Protection dogs elite is a company that sells family protection dogs. It's different from police dogs because police dogs can go chasing after the bad guy. But a family protection dog has to stay with you and protect the family. You can't send it somewhere because if it bites the criminal that's running away, then you'll get sued by the criminal. That's kind of the crazy world we live in. There's an exception to that.

[00:05:01] If the criminal was screaming, I'm going to the my truck and get my gun and kill you, well, that's different, all right. But for the most part, you want the family protection dog to stay with you. So I started a business doing this, and the way I got into it in the first place was because a big company asked me to do a full day training, and they asked me how much I charge them. And I'm thinking, all right, it's $20,000 a day. And so but I'm thinking, in this whole time I said, man, I haven't had a nice big dog for years. And boy, I love these German Shepherds. And that's what I one of my first dogs. And so I did the full day training. And then the president of the company was thrilled to death because I saved him a fortune on the the stuff they were wasting their money on, on their website and all that. And so he tells the marketing director, hey, give give him Rubix and and the marketing director, like, almost turns white, like Casper the ghost. Right. And and the the CEO thanks me and leaves. And I said, hey, John, the marketing director. What's what's wrong? You look really crazy when he told. And what's Rubik's anyway? I don't even know what that was like a Rubik's cube. He said, no, that's the dog you're going to get. And I said, oh, great, okay.

[00:06:22] He said, but why are you so whacked out about it? Was that your favorite? Or you don't want to get rid of him or what? He said, no, he's worth $50,000. That's what he said to me. And I said, oh, oh, okay, I'm into it. So I took the dog, fell in love with that dog and the training and all the advanced training we did with to protect the dog could get out of my I mean, I can be in my suburban, hit a button, the dog comes out of the back and takes care of the bad guy and then jumps back in the back, and I never get out of the vehicle. Right? That kind of stuff. But took hundreds of hours of training. But it was so much fun. And so I made a business out of it. And then I take the orders, and then I pass on the training to professional trainers, and I just get a commission off the top, see? And these dogs start at 20,000 and go up to like 60,000. See? So. So how can you get burnt out when you're playing with dogs all the time and having fun? And and my dogs are like the models for it. So anyway, that's just another example. But I have other hobbies too that keep me busy from burnout. So, you know, I'm into survival stuff. And I have my brutal self-defense website, which is, you know, I've been studying that stuff all my life, and I was in gunfights and knife fights with bikers trying to kill me when I ever had my nightclub.

[00:07:48] And I'm rehabbing an antique 4x4. I drove with one of my dogs all the way to Idaho to pick it up and brought it back, and then spent a whole summer rehabbing this antique 4x4. So all of this stuff keeps me from burnout. Okay. And it's all tax deductible when you make a business out of it and you say, well, how do you make a business out of it? Well, it's not it's not as daunting as you might think. All you have to do is create a website. And of course, in my other trainings I've told you don't spend $5,000 on a website when you can make a world class website for 150 bucks. We have a course on it for 97 bucks to do it, and even you can even talk to our tech guys if you get stuck on anything, you create a website and then you got to make the website bring some kind of money in. And there's two major ways that happens. One is you create a product. Digital products cost you nothing to create pretty much. Or you you go find an affiliate product where somebody else creates the product and you get a commission when somebody clicks through your website to buy it.

[00:09:00] Either way, now you are in business. Even if you don't get an LLC or a corporation, you file a schedule C in the United States. I don't know how you do it in other countries, but it's no big deal to start a business like that online, and then you can do more and more of whatever that topic is. I mean, I had a golf site, even though this is kind of crazy, I hate golf. I don't want to go on a golf course. And I had one of the top golf sites, one, 2 or 3 on Google for 12 years straight. There was golf articles. I think it was golfarticles.com or net. I forget, you know it's it's gone now but but for years it brought in money from Google AdSense from ad revenue. So there's all kinds of ways to do this. But all of these things, if you're doing things that you love, fights burnout, which was the topic of this episode. So I highly suggest you look into that. If you're starting to bog down and you're not being as creative as you used to be in your business, and or if you're just starting a business, you don't want to burn out right away before you even get going. If you can channel that stuff into something you really love that's in demand, you have to. You can't love something that's so obscure that nobody's ever going to give you money for it.

[00:10:20] But if you love any kind of mainstream hobby or topic, then you can apply this, this method and be and I always say tax deductible. I should say legitimately tax deductible. See, there's no there's no law that says you have to be great at business and make a gazillion dollars. As long as you are legitimately bringing money in, you have tax deductions and you're, you know, I'm not giving you tax advice per se, but I've lived this my whole life, and all the accountants and lawyers that have been in my mentor program say that the advice is sound, but you get legitimate deductions for part of your your home, your computers, your insurance, part of your insurance. You know, when I say part of if you're just putting your toes in the water and this isn't full time, then you can't really, you know, say, buy a Learjet and say, oh, well, I'm taking that off taxes. And I never brought in a nickel. Selling anything? No. You know, it has to be legitimate and reasonable. But this is a perfect way to do what? More of what you enjoy, get paid for it, get tax deductions for it, and avoid burning out in your business. So so that's something I just felt the need to bring out because like I said, I've been kind of floating this year and just doing about the bare minimum to take care of my students and haven't really developed new stuff that much.

[00:11:51] But I know when the documentary comes out and then I do have that new thing I've been working on called Highly Educated Idiots. And so that's probably coming out within the first six months of 25. So anyway, you just keep your mind busy doing stuff you like, but as long as you can keep the money coming in and keep the the tax deductions coming in, and guess what? Some of these tax deductions would come off your regular income if you are still going to the dreaded J.o.b. and getting a W2 in the United States. So some of this income can defray your tax liability from your job. See? So there's all kind of good things. Check with your tax advisor about it. And of course they're conservatives and always want to say no about everything. But I've been living this life for 48 years now. All right. So? So it works. And I never get in trouble with the IRS. All my taxes are perfect all the time. I'm not suggesting anything untoward. I'm suggesting a way to love what you do, bring money in and avoid burnout. Okay, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org and I will catch you on a next episode. See you later.