But while that's true, the under discussed thing is that if you have a great song you still need to get people to hear it and part of that is pitching to those gatekeepers who if they let you in will allow the song to get heard by enough people that your great song will have enough people hear it who will then tell others about it so it actually spreads. Whether this is playlisters, writers at websites, or even the director you really want to pay tons of money to who gets lots of requests, you need to get them to read a pitch and actually hit play to hear that song. So in this video, I'm going to tell you how to write that pitch so doors get open for you and the world starts to hear your song. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fan base from zero to 10,000 fans and this is Muse Formation. So this is part of my series on how you talk to your community and while you don't have to watch the previous part of this series to get what you need from this video, you really should watch them since in the other parts they complete the puzzle and will teach you how to find the people you pitch to. So if you want to go deeper, I highly suggest you do this by clicking the link in the description or clicking the link when it comes up on the end screen. So whether we're pitching a blogger, Spotify for an editorial playlist or an influencers playlist or someone you want to get on your team, the first thing we need to do is establish an angle for the pitch. There are two routes I generally go down and what I encourage all of you to do who've never done this before is to explore both paths I'm going to outline as it will help you get to know yourself as an artist better and when one isn't working out, you should try switching to the other path and alternating to the other choice. So what are your two angles? The first is telling someone what's exciting about you. If this pitch is done well, it can excite the gatekeeper enough to listen to your song and give you opportunities. The second is creating curiosity and getting the reader to cross what we call the curiosity gap and listen to your song since their curiosity has been peaked and they want to hear what it sounds like. So let's first talk about how you get someone excited at a pitch since it's my optimal mode of pitching. Knowing what makes you special and how to sell it to other people is what opens doors for musicians. I would even argue that a lesson I've learned is when I wonder why a mediocre band gets bigger than another band that is just as mediocre as them, more times than not, the band that's getting better opportunities is better at selling themselves. Well, many people perceive this as connections. There's some truth to that, but the sale of what's exciting about them I think has become more and more important in recent years and those connections get made because they're getting more opportunities. So before we even pass go here, I need you to figure out what is exciting about you because this is where these pitches often fail. Even when the music is good, more often than not, the pitches here are, we rock, just listen to our track. This will get your fist pumping like Paul E.D. after a few monsters, pimp. Now I know a lot of you always ask for exact examples of this, but the very problem that makes this difficult is this is what artist development is and you can't make one that works for everyone or else it wouldn't be exciting. When you hear about artist development, a lot of time people think it's just making a good music video or the A&R throws them in with a mixer who's really good at their job. What it actually is is the artist figuring out how they are the optimal version of themselves and what their strengths are and how to describe it to people in a way that gets other people excited and trust me, this is even more crucial when you blow up than the level you're at. Since every time you're trying to get an opportunity when you're a huge artist, whether that's getting on a tour or playing an award show, you have to know the exciting artist pitch that will get you ahead of all the other huge artists who are also exciting and trying to get the same opportunity and you want to be the one they choose. And let me tell you, when you're wondering why an artist got an opportunity compared to another, oftentimes it was the pitch or that they had a better connection to the person making a decision. So many musicians say they want to figure this out and they hate promoting themselves, but the fact is understanding this helps you make better music and become a more optimized version of yourself as well as being good at pitching yourself. But let's get some practical advice for you here. Let's talk about what a pitch that gets somewhat excited to listen looks like. You need to ask yourself what's exciting about you and if your answer is you don't know, you were basically someone who expects to get a reward without doing the work everyone else did and that's a bad way to be. So for each person this is going to be different, but try to get in this mindset. Ask yourself if someone told this to me about an artist, what would make them hit play?  What's something you have going on that few other artists do it and tell people about that? Here's a few types of vibes you could go for. If you thought Travis Scott and the baby were getting people riled up, you haven't heard what we're doing. Just wait till you hear the lyrics for our latest track. In Cell Hype Beast has written seven songs with seven different artists, all of which have over a million streams. There's countless tweets from when people hear this song that say they want to burn their local police department down. You want to be bold and a little hyperbolic and really sell this thing. I mean you do have to deliver when they hit play, but you know some exaggeration really does help. You can also go the route of showing other people care about you.  But telling people you collabed with two other artists that are somewhat well known really can open a door. Especially if this person knows those artists, this can trigger excitement especially if the person you're pitching knows your community and these are artists of note that will help open the door. But let's go over what's not it. Since there's some things I see artists do when they're writing pitches or Spotify bios that are not it chief. If you weren't in a semi-popular band before this or a famous actor, telling people the members names is the opposite of exciting in a quick pitch. While it may be exciting to the townies at the local pub that Jim Gallucci and Perry Rosenbaum have come together to make a musical panoply of songs reminiscent of Radiohead before they discovered bleep bloops, I gotta say no way outside of the five mile radius of your high school is going to find that exciting and frankly I doubt many people there will either. Focus on describing your sound and approach you take to music or something that makes you unique from the 60,000 artists or posting music each day that a stranger would be excited to hear. If you think writing songs from the heart or the old school is exciting, you're definitely not using your imagination. We gotta do better than cliches here and what really works here yet again is to get somewhat excited and cliches are not exciting. Okay, let's go another route though. Let's try to write something that will make the reader be like wow I want to hear that or ooh what's that sound like? So finding a way to describe your sound that's intriguing will make the reader click because their brain is spinning at the thought of what you said. I mentioned a curiosity gap before and when we write headlines in media and as you may know my day job involves this we have to make the headline exciting that they jump the curiosity gap which is not just mmm I know what that sounds like already or two that's just not that interesting I don't care to click on it so here's some ideas on how you can make someone jump the curiosity gap. If periphery had the pop vocal choruses of Taylor Swift you know the first time you heard a hundred gecks and you wondered how anyone could combine those sounds well in cell hypes takes that ethos one step further you've heard of math rocks complex rhythms will ayahuasca edge break go the opposite way by making the simplest most minimal songs that still entertain listeners all of these make you wonder what could that sound like now the biggest problem with this method though is that music is highly emotional and specific so that person you're pitching isn't necessarily intrigued by the curiosity you've peaked because they really don't care what it would sound like if you mix the cure with ska then they aren't going to actually be curious this is why I prefer trying to get excitement from the gatekeeper since even if the music is not for them they will give more of a chance to something that just sounds exciting since they want to make sure they aren't missing out on something they should know or an exciting opportunity but just say you're across a bob dillon and john mayor isn't exciting there's tons of people who have that extremely insufferable playing wonder wall on an acoustic guitar in a corner at a party vibe you have to find some way of describing this that will make someone say oh I gotta hear what that sounds like no one is thinking that when you're across between kodak black and roddy rich inspire the listener to be like I have to click this this is gonna sound crazy and if you really don't have much depth here to go past these obvious comparisons and you're getting no listens you may have to start to question if you're developing your music enough that anyone would want to hear it this is a two-way street here people even the people who a lot of people regard as just writing great classic songs have some way of describing themselves that's exciting and have figured out sub-angle to take to music that makes it exciting to people who listen to it okay so let's say you figured out your angle here but there's something I want you to do next I want you to write it five different ways now I know a lot of you are giving me the look like the teacher you kind of liked but who just crossed the line with totally out of the line homework assignment but hear me out this is literally one of the things where you could put in very little effort and it goes really really far I mean if it goes well your whole life can change course so getting this as tight as possible really does matter I want you to make sure you've done this pitch in as many ways as it can be said and it's phrased as concise and perfect as it can be that I want you to show it to a couple of people because I've read your pitches before and the word coherent or tight doesn't always come to mind so if you have a loved one or a team member who has a command of what the English language looks like I implore you to let them see it since this may be the difference between failure and success okay so now that we have a tight pitch you need to set it around it and here's some tips for knowing how you do this effectively for the different types of people you'll be pitching if you're pitching a potential team member let's keep this under two paragraphs the first paragraph should be the most exciting stuff about you and if you have any good metrics let's remember business types love metrics these days there should be a call of action at the end as in an ask like if you're looking for the director to direct your next video make that clear and the same goes for pitching potential managers or influencer playlists but really here's the formula introduce yourself with the pitch tell them your most exciting metric whether that's monthly listens who you've clapped with or the 26 people have tattooed your best song lyrics on them find something that shows enthusiasm toward you and then make the ask and drop a link to your socials and where they can listen to you and be sure to leave your contact info it really is that simple don't overthink it but I'm sure you're wondering about Spotify editorial playlist where you pitch in the Spotify for artist page this is a long subject I've made a video on already so if you want to go down this rabbit hole I don't have enough time in this video so please head to the description for that okay and type for some last secret sauce whether it's emails that go to junk or sometimes my assistants put things in the wrong folder or I don't feel much urgency from the email it really is the follow-up that gets through to busy people especially since for so many of them the go-getterness is appealing and there's sometimes a feeling that you're missing an opportunity when someone has the ambition to follow up with you but pro tip as I deal with publicists who pitch me all day to get their clients booked on the insanely popular podcast I produce I see the tricks of the best of the game and here's what they are they follow up in short enough time that it won't be unfamiliar but not so short that it's psycho it seems the sweet spot is three to five business days and trying to time that follow-up to not be a Friday when people are crabbing to get out of the office or Monday when they're buried under emails from the weekend increases the likelihood your pitch will get through greatly and remember people you're going to pitch these people again in the future so maybe if they didn't bite on the exciting pitch the next time you either tighten that up or you go with the curiosity pitch pitching isn't a one-time shoot your shot type of thing as much as an ongoing thing you will do till you have a relationship with someone and they are a part of your community okay if I missed anything in this video on the third week of every month we do a Q&A to answer user questions so you should leave them in the comments as I'd love to follow up on this on this channel this is the type of stuff we discuss so if you're interested in that you should definitely like subscribe and most of all get notified so you don't miss my most crucial videos I post for helping you build a fan base I answer every comment below that doesn't ask why my nose is so stuffed up on the screen now is a video on how to build your community or how to get your music noticed as well there's one last one on how to blow up on Spotify in 2022 click and keep learning thanks for watching


Hey, what's up? I'm Zeke and welcome to the Dream Green show. This video is not gonna be about dividends or residual income or real estate or the stock market. I tried to record and make one of those videos earlier this week but I couldn't find the... I couldn't do it. My heart and my mind was somewhere else and I know as a YouTuber we supposed to stick to our niche, our topic, but when it comes to something like this, what's going on in the world, George Floyd, it directly effects me. And if you guys haven't found out yet, I'm from Houston. I'm from Houston, Texas. This is where George grew up. I know many people that knew him, that grew up with him, that worked with him. And today I actually marched with his family in a nonviolent protest downtown. Let me start this right now so it doesn't get lost in the video. If you want to donate, my channel is too small to start a fundraiser, but if you want to donate to help the cause at all, go to Jonathan Morris channel. He's a tech YouTuber, awesome guy. He made a video about this. He's feeling kind of down about it too. So he made a video about this. A lot of people are not talking about this on YouTube because they feel that they're going to lose their subscribers. So if I lose subscribers, I think I might actually lose a lot of subscribers. But for the subscribers that watch this that I don't lose, just go ahead hit the thumbs up button just so that to show support if you guys don't want to donate. But I'll try to leave a link right here to Jonathan Morris page. He has two million followers. If not, the link would be in the description. Just go over there and comment that the Dream Green show sent you his way. And then you could just click on his video down have a link and then hit the donate. You could donate a dollar to fifty dollars. It doesn't matter. Anything helps. But a lot has been going on in 2020. And I have to wake up in the South where the Klan still have rallies. And I marched today to combat police brutality and to see his family members and to look on their faces and to see the support that Houston have. Houston is an amazing city. Everyone showed up African Americans, Africans, the whites, the Hispanic culture, the Native Americans, the Asians. Everyone from Houston is like a melting pot and the city is amazing. And they showed up and they showed out with signs and nonviolent protests. While I was there after I left, who knows what happened. As far as I know, everything went awesome. We marched from Discovery Green all the way to City Hall. The family gave a speech. The police officers had snipers on the roof. So just to show who was to display, I don't know, but they had snipers on the roof. So I just don't want to live in fear anymore. I don't want to live like today could be my last day on earth just from getting pulled over. And I wasn't going to make a video about this because I've been working very, very hard these last years, these last two years to grow my YouTube page. And I finally got monetized. So to all my new subscribers out there, I don't talk about anything personal on my page about my life at all. But this video, I feel like anyone my age or younger might because that's my audience on YouTube. When I look at my different demographics is 50 and under 40 and under that I could show support through the platform that I use, other than not saying anything at all, like a lot of other YouTubers. And there are a lot of YouTubers that are saying something, some that I looked up to that are saying some things and some that have many more subscribers than I have that are afraid to speak up. But I'm pretty sure they are doing everything that they can to help out their own community. But I'm gonna cut this video short before I start rambling and going crazy and just have a black screen to show respect for George Floyd and his family until the end of this video. Once again, Jonathan Morris, awesome creator, awesome channel. The link to his video will be right here up in the links or will be down in the description. But other than that, I'm gonna try to get out a great video later on this week if I can recover. But this is Zeke from the Dream Green show and I'm out.


The fastest way is to become a UX designer.  Or, or... You can design for free. You can work on real-life projects. And you can build your own portfolio. Your choice. So the secret is this.


Oh, hello. Welcome to Roman's book report. Today, I'm going to talk about this wonderful book, The Driver by Garrett Garrett. Two of my entrepreneurial friends say that this is their favorite book of all time. And I can see why. It's about an entrepreneur who everybody doubts, who risks his personal fortune and his family's fortune. He has to face the government trying to drag him down once he starts becoming successful. But despite all this, he believes in himself and he perseveres and he works hard and he earns a fortune. He prevails. It's kind of like the famous novel The Great Gatsby, where that main character or at least the character around whom the plot revolves is not the main character in the book. The protagonist is sort of a passive observer. I'll share a couple of my favorite moments from the book. It begins with the Coxley's army, which is a historic event of a protest that we're underway. And here's according to this fictionalized account, they were doing this march across the country to go to Congress, to demand from Congress a law by which unlimited prosperity and human happiness might be established on Earth. Sounds a lot like Occupy Wall Street. Another one of my favorite moments comes when the narrator first meets this entrepreneur. And this entrepreneur knows that the narrator's been reporting on Coxley's army and he asks him, wasn't there plenty to eat? And the main character says, people were very generous along the way. But wasn't there plenty to eat? He asks, repeating the question aggressively. There was generally enough and sometimes plenty, I replied. Then I added rather sharply, I have no case to prove for the Coxleyites, if that's what you think. I know you haven't. And then he goes on to say, he goes on to say, those people are out of work, that's bad. But people who will ask need not be hungry.  The unemployed eat, you've seen it yourself. Do the Ravens feed them? What are you driving at? I asked. They all eat, he repeated. It ain't that extraordinary. It doesn't seem so to me, I said, they have to eat. Oh, do they? You can eat merely because you have to, can you? Suppose there wasn't anything to eat. I love that exchange. Some libertarian reviewers of this book, and you can see why libertarians love this book because it identifies commerce as the force of creation and government as the force of destruction. But some libertarian says that it gets the economics perfect. I disagree with that very slightly for two reasons. First of all, it contributes, it contributes the bust, just the kind of mass delusion. And it refers frequently to just people's superstition on Wall Street. There's a little anecdote about grass growing through a crack near the financial exchange. But I can't blame him for that. The Austrian theory of the business cycle, which really explains crashes, wasn't even out until the 30s. And this was written, I believe, in 1920. So no fault there. And certainly from a literature standpoint. Who cares, I guess, or at least I don't. He also sometimes portrays commerce as win-lose, like Darwinian, and that's the frequent criticism of capitalism. And I think commerce is really win-win when it happens, when it's allowed to happen. Here's one little example of that. The profession of dynamic men is arms. It has never been otherwise. Only the rules and weapons change. Wall Street is a modern jousting place. The gates open. Anyone may compete. There is no caste. The prizes are unlimited. The tournament is continuous. Capital is not an essential. Well, he goes on. So those are my two very, very small disagreements with economics in this otherwise great book. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this book and why it has sort of a cult appeal is that it seems and rand copied a lot of things from this book, which is a big deal because unlike me, Anne Rand was a very fervent believer in copyrights in that intellectual property is property. So the entrepreneur in this book, his name is Henry Galt. Anne Rand's Atlas Shrug begins with the line who is John Galt. And not only that, but twice in this book, the line is featured very prominently where everyone sort of quietly having lunch on one of those instances. And then somebody finally speaks up and breaking the silence and says, who is Henry Galt? And everyone kind of reacts to that question. So it's pretty clear that this influenced Anne Rand and for other reasons as well. This book's Henry Galt is a railroad tycoon. And there are other similarities too that you can search for on the internet. But it's a great read. Writing wise, I think it's very good. Occasionally, like the expectations aren't met, for example, there's a lawyer at the end who's just described excessively as just the most tricky, the most knowledgeable, the most sleazy lawyer in the world. And then his questioning of Henry Galt doesn't live up to that. It's great questioning. The dialogue is really funny, but it's kind of like mismatched with his description. So very minor criticisms like that. But great book. And I highly recommend it for its cult appeal. And just for the story of an entrepreneur risking a lot and succeeding, I found it very uplifting. And uplifting to know that the left and the socialists do not own all of literature. Please tune in next time. We'll be another one real soon.


This is Planet A and you and I and 7.3 billion people share Planet A with about a million animal species and half a million plant species. This is home and there is no Planet B. We also have Plan A and if we look at Plan A that involves agriculture in which we use a tiny proportion of the biodiversity of the planet to feed 7.3 billion people. Wheat, rice, maize and soya provide 75% of the world's food. Will those crops be sufficient to feed 10 billion people in the hotter climates of the future? Just take one crop, maize. Not only does maize feed people and provide food, it provides fodder, it provides animal feed and increasingly it's a source of material for biofuels to feed our engines. Is this the basis on which we should be looking for agriculture for a hotter climate? Our diets are increasingly uniform and we have ingredients that are shipped vast distances around the world from ingredients that are far from, to places where they are far from their centres of production to produce almost identical food across the planet for more and more people in the new developing countries. If we take Europe and Asia we see supermarket aisles in which identical products are sold from very, very few species transported long supply chains in which those supply chains are increasingly vulnerable to provide identical products across the planet. Now in September the United Nations announced the sustainable development agenda and six of those sustainable development goals are related to agriculture and we can see those goals in terms of agriculture, consumption life on land, zero hunger, climate action and partnerships for those goals. We need a plan B that looks at agricultural diversification in terms of clean energy, in terms of sustainable and responsible production systems, in terms of diversification of land use and landscapes and particularly new crops that can be used to diversify agriculture in the hotter climates. There is no plan B for a plus three world. There is no plan B for a plus three world. That means the crops we now use to produce the majority of the food on the planet will increasingly be under pressure and the place where that pressure will occur will be in the developing tropics in which we see the yields of the major crops decline and we see other parts of the world which are the major exporting regions in which the yields of those crops will increase. What will we do in regions in which those crops can no longer be grown for the local production systems that increasingly depend on those long supply chains from elsewhere in the world? We need to find clever, intelligent diversification options for crops that are people's crops that they grow themselves but they have at the moment limited markets and limited external uses for those crops. We need to see how those crops can actually be intelligent options for us because those crops contain nutrition, they contain ingredients in which we can actually find potential markets and of course they are closest to the centres of production. They are people's crops and we should find chains and opportunities to find new ways to develop those crops into crops that add to the major crops of the world. We can't just grow them in fields, we've got to find the whole research value chain in terms of growing the genetic resources of those crops, the proximate composition analysis, cuisines and desirable products that consumers in their markets actually want to have those crops because not only are they marketable, they're nutritious. We need smart agriculture for landscapes that is climate smart and smart in terms of end uses for products that are more than just the three crops grown as monocultures around the world. They're giving us new opportunities, enormous opportunities for agriculture to diversify into a new paradigm. We take something like an intercrop here, enormous opportunities for us to use information technologies, new ways of looking at systems, remote sensing, modeling and using those crops to find production and end uses closer to their markets to replace the major monocultures, in this case you can see all palm in the background. We need now more than half the world lives in cities. We need agriculture to be in cities. We need to redefine our urban landscape to include agriculture from diverse production systems closer to those people who actually need those crops and can see the products from them. We've got to look at how we look at urban agriculture as a productive and economically sustainable and natural resource management system that uses new technologies, uses new market opportunities in cities where the majority of people will live. Can we find agriculture that actually delivers just-in-time products to the end user within meters of the place those crops are being grown? Why do we use food crops to feed fuel engines? Why don't we use crops that grow on marginal lands on saline soils, on poor soils in which we can find feedstocks to find diverse uses of bioenergy beyond using the main crops over and over again. We can find on marginal soils a number of crops and we can look at feedstocks in engine systems and gasification systems in which those crops not only will provide feedstock, they can provide green chemicals, they can provide biomaterials and end uses to diversify the entire agricultural system. Now for all of this, we need an action plan, a global action plan for agricultural diversification that on Monday we will launch in Paris. We want you to sign that declaration, the Paris Declaration on Agricultural Diversification to show that this is actually an opportunity for us to find green energy, to find sustainable production systems, to use the land and the landscapes in a more climate smart system and opportunities for us to find uses for crops because plan B is the plus three world for which we have no alternatives because there is no plan B. Thank you.


while you're in, you don't have to like all the rules, but we get paid to follow them. And like that was what really blew, like for my next three years that I was in till I got out, like, like that changed the way I thought about everything. I can show up and be like, I don't like this. I will do this for you and I will do it the best I can, but I don't like it. I don't have to like it, but I mean, I do like getting a paycheck every two weeks. So I was like, you know, and it was just a really cool, like a really cool thing to get me in this senior math sergeant or both the same career field. But for him, he absolutely loved maintenance. And so like a lot of the pros stemmed off of that for me. I didn't really care for maintenance. It wasn't what I was passionate about. It wasn't what I wanted to do. Am I thankful that I learned a lot of maintenance stuff? Yeah. Cause I didn't know how to do a lot of that stuff before I joined, but I'm like, it's not what I'm passionate about. So like for him, he had this huge like list of pros, you know, and like we had the same career field, but he was just like, that's totally cool. If you want to get out, there's nothing wrong with that.


You're not supposed to trust the government, and that's from the edge of the narrative matrix. I still can't get over how brazen the Biden administration is being and just announcing it's their place to determine who should be banned from social media platforms and how little backlash there is against this. Just imagine the outrage if Trump had done this. Seriously, imagine it. The Biden administration instructing the world's largest social media platform, Huda Sensor, is the biggest imagine if Trump had done this moment so far. They said we need internet censorship because of Russia. They said we need internet censorship because of COVID. They said we need internet censorship because of election security. They said we need internet censorship because of the capital riot. They said we need internet censorship because of domestic extremism. Pretty sure they just want internet censorship. The US government is without exception the single most corrupt and destructive force on this planet. They are the very last institution on earth who should be in charge of deciding what online content is true or false. Absolute dead last. I trust the wisdom of the collective to sort out what's true infinitely more than I trust the wisdom of the US government and Silicon Valley plutocrats to do it for us. If people think their government is lying to them and trying to hurt them, it is entirely the fault of the government and no one else. You're not supposed to trust the government and governments aren't supposed to act in a way that requires your trust. If you find yourself ruled by a secretive power structure which demands your blind faith in its righteousness, something has gone horribly wrong. Perhaps the US could end domestic extremism by switching to governmental policies that don't make everyone want to light the country on fire. Funny how we all grow up watching movies about evil villains trying to take over the world and kill millions of people and those movies were all made in the nation that is that exact villain, except the villain succeeded. It's fine to think all governments are bad as long as you're also aware that one of those governments is far far more powerful and destructive than any of the others and that the behavior of other governments is often a defensive response to the aggressions of the worst one. If your anti-state commentary doesn't reflect this reality, then it can only ever benefit the agendas of the most powerful and murderous state on the planet. Just firing indiscriminate scattergun criticisms at all states equally only advances US imperialist propaganda agendas. It seriously seems like half the time a black flag anarchy account shows up in my Twitter notifications it's to promote US imperialist propaganda narratives against Syria, China, Russia, etc.   Before they launch missiles they launch propaganda campaigns. Before they wage siege warfare they wage narrative warfare. You are responsible for the narratives you choose to circulate in the world. You are responsible for choosing to participate in imperialist aggressions. The US government is waging wars around the world circling the planet with military bases, ramping up nuclear standoffs and working to destroy any nation which disobeys it, so naturally the news media are urgently warning us about the horrible tyrannical government of Cuba. The correct answer to what should be done about Cuba's problems is for the US to end the blockade.  Well I oppose the embargo but the Cuban regime, you shush your beautiful mouth. The US government has all the billionaire media outlets in the western world conducting propaganda for it. It doesn't need your help, just oppose the embargo. The embargo isn't why Cuba is poor, it's poor because of communism. Okay well if it makes no difference can you please end the embargo? No. Cuba claims it can care for all its people using socialism yet it experiences poverty when we deliberately impoverish it. Checkmate commies. You think communism is so great then why are people fleeing communist countries to live in imperialist nations that became wealthy by generations of mass-scale theft and murder, huh?  There's no good reason to let the push for US military intervention in Cuba turn into an ideological debate about socialism versus capitalism when the far stronger argument to be made is that US interventionism is literally always disastrous and literally never helpful.  The answer is never ever ever ever US military intervention. Ever. It's always the wrong tool for solving any problem. You're never going to make things better using something that literally always makes things worse. It's amazing this even needs to be said. The Empire's goal is to fracture and neuter the left and carve away class analysis and anti-imperialism from whatever remains until we're nothing but tiny groups of irrelevant assholes arguing about how hard you should punch a turf. The ultimate factor in determining what will happen in our world is not control of capital nor control of government nor control of resources nor control of weapons but control of narrative. See this and you see why governments, plutocrats, and media behave the way they do. And in the end it turned out that killing the ecosystem was easier than taking away rich people's rocket money. Political discussion forums are like a couple bickering about dishes in the sink while trapped in the bedroom of a burning house. Everything is headed for collapse. The ecosystem, capitalism, the US empire. Assuming we don't all wipe ourselves out in a nuclear war first. It's so easy to get lost in the bickering and bullshit. I know I do from time to time. But it just looks so insane when you take a step back and look at the minute nature of the arguments we're having compared to the multiple massive existential crises looming on our horizon. You'd think this would bring us all together but instead we're being driven further apart than ever before. Truly, if ever there was an adapt or die moment for a species, this is it. We are being asked if we want to wake up and become conscious or go extinct. That is the issue we should all be looking at. And we should be looking at it together.


Income tax 2022-2023. Dividend income software example. Let's do some wealth preservation with some tax preparation. Here we are in our example form 1040. We populated using tax software. You don't need tax software to follow along, but it's a great tool to run scenarios with. You can also get access, support accounting instruction by clicking the link below, giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. To the form 1040 related schedules, related forms at the IRS website, irs.gov, irs.gov. Our starting point here as normal. We've got the single filer, Mr. Anderson. No dependence, 100,000 on the W2 income standard deduction at the 12,950 to get us to the 87,050 taxable income. We're mirroring that over here on our tax worksheet. 100,000 up top standard deduction, 87,050. We're dependent on the software to calculate the tax on page two, which is 14774. This is going to be a key point right here because when we look at qualified dividends, then we note that they might use something other than the progressive tax tables. So we want to be able to kind of see that. So we'll get back to that shortly. So that's the 14994. This should be 14774. That's what it should be, 14774. And then we have the 15,000 payments that bring us down to the 15,000 payments to the 226. Now our major focus is going to be recalculating the taxable income, but also we have to jump on over here to page two because there might be a different kind of set of formulas or tables that are going to be used when we talk about dividend income when we have the qualified dividends. Okay, so let's go back to page one and add some dividend income. So notice that you're usually going to get a 1099 div, something like that. The major focus when you get one is going to be on the boxes one and two. So box one is usually going to be all the dividends that you get box two then is not usually going to be saying, look, these are dividends over and above you got in box one. They're saying that the dividends that are reported in box one A of those dividends, this is the qualified portion of them. That's the general kind of way to read that. And then again, you might have some of these other items down here as well, such as the total capital gain distribution, which is kind of like a distribution that was received, but it's not being categorized as a dividend because it didn't come out of the retained earnings and therefore needs to be populated as like a capital gain possibly on a schedule D instead. All right, so let's add some dividend income just for the fun of it. We're going to be over here on the first page of the form 1040. We're looking dividend income. So let's jump on up to a dividend income. See if I can just jump there like that. And I'll say this is corp one. Now remember that in practice, you might have somebody that is investing. Most individual investors are going to be investing in mutual funds oftentimes if they're long-term investors and not like day traders. And oftentimes much of their investment is going to be under the umbrella of say an IRA or 401K plan in which case you might not get the dividend income because it might be part of under the umbrella of a retirement plan. My lifestyle is my retirement plan. So just remember if you have normal people that have money in investments, you're going to think about the reporting that might look a little bit different depending upon whether it's under the umbrella of a 401K or an IRA. If it's not under the umbrella of a 401K or an IRA and they have some investments that are not under that umbrella, then you would expect that you would get reports, 1099 div and interest and whatnot that would be showing the returns that they received from them. All right, so then we're going to have the total dividends. Let's just start with the total dividends of let's say 1,000 here and then let's say none of that is qualified. So let's say that would be like box one had 1,000 and box two, no qualified items. So let's go back on over and say, all right, what does that do then? So now we've got the 100,000. We've got the dividends at 1,000. That brings us to the taxable income of 101 standard deduction still at the 12,950 brings us to the total income or taxable income of the 8850. Let's mirror that on our return here. So I'm going to go to my schedule B. Notice that schedule B wasn't populated yet because our dividends are below the threshold of 15,000. But over here, I'm still going to call my tab, the schedule B tab. I'm going to go into the dividend areas, call it corp one, corp one, let's say, and say we have the dividends of 1,000. So 1,000 on the dividends and that's going to bring us to our total 1,000 which pulls over to page one, 101,000 and standard deduction is the same, 8850 and that brings us to the tax, which is now calculated. I'll depend on the computer to do that. It comes out to the 14,994. So 14,994. Let's kind of compare that to what it was before. Let's put the old number here, 14774. And this is now going to be the 14994. So then if I subtract this out, we had a 220 increase in the tax. And basically we had another $1,000. So if I had $1,000, I'm going to say 220 divided by 1,000. If I make that a percent, that's like a 22% that was applied to the tax, right? Because it was a, and why would that be if I go back on over and I go to my tax summary and I look at my good old rates down here, the marginal rate, the highest rate is 22%. So it got taxed at ordinary income rates, the highest rate, not the average rate of the 22% because it wasn't a qualified dividend and it got taxed at the highest rate. Now let's say, okay, well, what if, what if that dividend was all qualified? So now it was in box one and box two. So it's a qualified dividend. Okay. So I'm going to go, let's go back on over and say that 1,000 is here as well. So forms. So notice no change in terms of the total income. You got the hundred thousand, but now you do have it in the qualified dividend section on the left, still over here on the right and included to the total income. So no real change in the total income and no change in the standard deduction. We're still at the 88,050 just like we were before, but we're going to come up to a different tax. So if I go to page two, now we're at 14,924. So before, so last time, so now we're going to say we were at, we were at 14774 before and then if it was ordinary income, it was 14994 or non-qualified. And now we're saying that it's at 14,924. So 14924. So 14924. Hold on a sec. Is that the right number? 149, where did I get a seven from? Where did you get that seven? Huh? Huh? Where'd that come from? Anyway. So now if I compare that to what it was before, the difference is 150,000, right? So 150,000 compared to that other $1,000, it's now being taxed at the 15% rate. So notice we have a different rate that is being applied over here. If I go to my taxes, you can kind of see that if I look at my little tax worksheet and you can go down here and I won't go through the whole thing, but it'll kind of go through in a step-by-step and you can kind of see where the breakout of what that $1,000 is basically being taxed at the 15%, as opposed to what it was before, which I think was like the 22%. So notice it had to apply a whole different tax schedule. You got the progressive tax schedules and now a different tax schedule for that $1,000, which had to be at 15%, because the income threshold for this individual was a single individual and they were between this range, 100,000, therefore it taxed them at 15%. So you can see what it's doing. It's just trying to pick a percent where it's going to tax at a favorable rate and that happened to be the 15% in this case. So let's go back on over. Now if you were to change the scenario to say that the income was below a certain threshold of 40,000, then the rate would be zero, right? 15%. Let's say there are 15%. It would be too high if you wouldn't get a benefit from the favorable rate for lower income individuals. So if I change this down to their income, say wages to like 35,000 and say this is zero and now we're going to say, okay, so now we've got 35,000 and let's say that we don't have any dividends at first. Let's pull the dividends out. Let's pull the dividends out to start with. No dividends, boom. 35,000 W-2 income and so let's mirror that over here. 35,000, 35,000, boom. And then standard deduction and that gets us to the 2350 standard deduction but I still have 36 because I still have the dividends in there. Let's take the dividends out and so there we have 35. That gets us to the 2250. 2250, page 2 calculated at 2444. So now we're at the 2444. And then if I add the dividend income so let's say, all right, let's add dividend income, boom, dividends, dividends. That's not dividends. What are you doing? Capital, let's just make it ordinary so they're not qualified so it should be taxed at the ordinary income rates. So now we added the dividends. So I'm gonna say, all right, let's do that on my worksheet over here. Dividends, schedule B, 1,000, boom. And then that pulls over to the 1040, 36,000. We should be at the 2350. And so if I go to page, or the bottom of the page 2350, tax is now at the 2564. So let's say it was before 2444. Now it's at 20564. No, that's not right. That's quite high. It's at the 25464. Where did I get the zero from? Where did that come from? That's a little bit different. Slightly different number, 2564. So that's a change of 120, which means it was taxed, that extra thousand dollars was taxed at 12%. So if I went back on over here and said, okay, what's my tax rates? The ordinary rate, the highest rate is 12%. So if I then said the dividends were taxed at just a flat 15%, that would be a disincentive to invest. Therefore it has to be some number that's under that so it should be taxed at zero. In other words, if I went back on over here and said, okay, $1,000 qualified dividends. Now I should have the same first page, except now they're qualified dividends included in here. The taxable income has not changed 2350, 2350, but on page two, now we're at the 2444, which is basically what it was before because we didn't have any tax applied to it. So it had the zero rate that is being applied to it. So now we're at 2444, and it didn't tax, even though we included or increased taxable income, there's no tax. Now, so notice the software pretty nicely and easily does that calculation for us. But when we explain this now to a client and we say, well, what's the benefit of having something in ordinary? What does that even mean? What is it doing? What is it doing? Well, the government's trying to give us a tax benefit for putting money into the, I'm trying to find, they're trying to give us a tax benefit for putting money into the corporation and deal with this double taxation stuff if they're U.S. corporations and qualified corporations and whatnot. But you're going to see that tax benefit not in your taxable income. It'll still be included in taxable income, but it's going to apply a favorable tax rate is the general idea. Now, let's make this go over the threshold. So Schedule B will show up now. So I'm going to say, let's go back to the other scenario. Let's say that it was 100,000, back to 100,000. And let's say we had 15,000 here. And then let's say that we had another dividend. Let's say another dividend from a 1099 Corp. Corp 2, Corp number two. And let's say this was 13,000. And let's say 500 of it was qualified or whatever. 500 of it was qualified. So now if I go back on over, now you're going to have on page one, the amount here of the 1,500 are qualified portion of the total, 14,000 total dividends between the two. And we now have a Schedule B, which is going to show the dividends over here, Corp 1 and Corp 2. So we've got the total dividends kind of listed out by Corp that pulls in to the first page of the Form 1040. I won't run that out on our Excel because we're getting kind of, it's going kind of long. I do want to point out on Excel though that over here you might, like this is pulling into the income line, but you might want another column like this for the qualified portion, just for your data input, qualified purposes. So you can kind of see it over here. Even though whether it's qualified or not, it's going to pull over to the income line. So if there was a portion of this that was qualified, I could say, okay, I'm just going to show that on my form over here. And I could say whatever of the 1,200 was qualified or whatever the whole thing on that one was qualified. Let's see if this is spelled right. Did I spell that right? I did. Of course I did. Why am I even checking? I'm crying out loud. Did I spell it right? Who do you think I'm a spelling master? Anyways, let's take a look at a situation where we had a capital gain situation now. So if you see something on the capital gain, we'll talk about capital gains later, but capital gains, you usually think, well, that's the sale of the stocks and bonds for most people. But you might see it on that 1099 div. Most data input software is going to have this box for the capital gain distributions. And if I just put whatever's on the 1099 in this box like $300, then it's going to pull over not as a dividend, even though it was distributed in kind of a dividend, but rather down here in the capital gain schedule D situation item. So we'll talk about capital gains more later. But the general concept, if you see that here, would generally be, you might have a question like, why would that be put there? Because the distributions that came out were given like a dividend. May they make beautiful dividends together. But they didn't come out of like the retained earnings. They came out of the investments from the original issues of the stock or something like that. That's why you might have like a distribution, like a dividend distribution that's reported this way and being reported like a capital gain kind of situation possibly, even though you didn't actually sell the stock. So if you were to just plug that into the software, that's what it will come up to. We'll talk more about the schedule Ds because that can come up to another situation where you have these capital gain rates, which might be different than ordinary income rates for another similar kind of reason. So we have another kind of situation where the actual tax calculation over here usually is based on the progressive tax system, based on filing status. But now we have this other exception for a different whole set of progressive tax systems. If we had qualified dividends and then when we get into capital gains, you might have a whole nother set of tax rates and whatnot that are based on capital gains for other reasons we'll get into in another time.