$250M Founder Reveals How The Rich Avoid Taxes (Legally)

Episode 541: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) are on a campaign to make sure no entrepreneur pays more taxes than absolutely necessary. They’re joined by Ankur Nagpal, the founder of Teachable and resident tax genius, to share the 10 tax loopholes every founder should know. No more small boy spreadsheets, build your business on the free HubSpot CRM: https://mfmpod.link/hrd — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (3:00) Biggest secret to pay less in taxes (6:20) QSBS - the most generous tax break available (15:30) Do NOT move to Puerto Rico (20:00) There's no true alpha in investing (25:00) Sam's credit card tax hack (29:00) Solo 401(k) (33:30) Your CPA is not is not your tax strategist (41:30) Owning real estate to lower your tax bill (43:00) 4 triggers to happiness (47:30) Putting the Indian diet on blast — Links: • Ankur Nagpal Twitter - https://twitter.com/ankurnagpal • Teachable - https://teachable.com/ • Carry - http://carrymoney.com/ • Mo Points - https://mopoints.com/ • Points.me - http://points.me — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Moneywise - https://joinhampton.com/moneywise-podcast • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  Today, we're talking taxes and we're talking taxes because taxes are my favorite subject. They became my favorite subject when I paid way too much in tax when I sold my company and I was so happy and so sad at the same time. Today's guest had the same problem. He sold Teachable for over $200 million and then decided, you know what? He's going to go on a renegade to make sure that no entrepreneur pays more taxes than they need to. We basically invited him here and he was like, you know, I could talk about my story. I could talk about my life. We were like, dude, talk about taxes.

• 0:41Shaan Puri?

  Ankur, welcome to the show, man. And it's a long time coming.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm excited to be here. It's weird how I've now accumulated a lot of specific knowledge in this one kind of very narrow topic and I'm excited to share it.

• 0:52Sam Parr?

  And the summary of your story, and we'll talk about it a little bit later in the episode, but we want to talk about taxes. Summary of your story is prodigy entrepreneur, had a bunch of stuff, started in college. You started a company called Teachable, sold it for $250 million when you were 31. That was like a courses business. Now you've got a new thing, was called Kerry, now, or no, was called Ocho, now called Kerry. And it's like a 401k, like a self-directed 401k thing?

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. It's basically the bigger vision is how do we help people build wealth by saving money on taxes? And the solo 401k is our first product. But yeah, that's the story. The quick sort of other bit is I did not grow up in America, so I knew nothing about the US financial system. The country I grew up in never had taxes. Taxes were just not a thing that existed in Oman where I grew up. So the first time I heard about taxes was when I was 21 years old. And I was like, wow, you actually have to give money that you earn? This is crazy. But yeah, you got most of the story.

• 1:42Shaan Puri?

  By the way, before we talk taxes, I know we're supposed to just start with the taxes thing. You, you have earned your seat on My First Million. You made your first million bucks when you were like 20 years old, right? With something pretty funny. Well, can you tell that story? Can you tell the fast version of that story?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I was in, I was in college at Berkeley and at the time, Facebook released a Facebook platform. So you could, you know, send gifts to people, answer quizzes and all of that. And I built these viral Facebook applications, starting from when I was 18 all the way to 20. And it was really fun. I mean, you know, we created personality quizzes like you could answer a few questions and find out how good a kisser you are or which friends character you're most like.

• 2:17Sam Parr?

  If you have to take a Facebook quiz to figure out if you're a good kisser, you're probably a bad kisser, right?

• 2:21Speaker 01

  The funny thing is, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna name names. One of the Facebook founders actually took that quiz multiple times. And I know that because you get their Facebook user ID in the database. So user ID number, not gonna tell you which number it is. He is was in our database and we're like, wow, this person really wanted to know. But anyways, yeah, so we created these personality quizzes and then friend quizzes and stuff. And yeah, you know, millions of daily users was able to make a million dollars before S21, which was pretty cool.

• 2:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's amazing. So you've earned your, your street cred here for us on my first million. All right. So let's talk, let's talk taxes. If I'm an entrepreneur, what are the biggest things I need to know about taxes? What are the things I should be knowledgeable of and doing in order to save money?

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Cool. The first thing I think everyone should know, even people who are not entrepreneurs yet, is the US tax code is rigged in favor of business owners. It's very intentional, but you can look at a country's tax code and learn a lot about what it stands for. And in America, two things stand out. The tax code is rigged in favor of people involved in real estate. It's the most tax advantaged asset class and two people who start businesses. So the first thing I tell someone is if you are a full-time W2 employee somewhere, if you are not yet a business owner, consider becoming a business owner since it is the single biggest thing you can do to optimize your taxes. Like that is just written into the DNA of this country. And it's something that I never realized until I started digging and was like, wow, there's

• 3:43Speaker 01

  the playbook for what you can do to pay less in taxes is 10 times bigger if you are a business owner.

• 3:49Shaan Puri?

  So it's rigged in favor of business owners and real estate. And most people kind of ignore this. I would say like the advice I got growing up was, you know, go to a good school so you can get a good job. That's what winning was. And, and even the advice around money, which was kind of like, you know, hope, you know, try, try to get like a raise, maybe 10%. You know, try to save, but the hard part about saving is that your biggest expense is taxes, right? Your, your, your taxes might be 30 to 50% depending on where you live and how, what bracket you're in. That's your biggest expense and that's every single year off every dollar you make. Unless you're able to shield it with some of these, these things you're gonna talk about.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  I think, I don't know if you remember, but Warren Buffett back in the day had a famous quote where he's like, my secretary pays a higher tax rate than, than, than I do, right?

• 4:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. What an asshole.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Well, I think.

• 4:37Sam Parr?

  I think the issue, though, it's not an issue, it's just it is what it is. If you have W two income, I'm almost positive there's close to no way that you can reduce that, your tax liability, other than maybe like minor percentage points.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  You can do crazy stuff by using your spouse. You can have your spouse become a real estate professional. So then you, as a couple, can write it, write off real estate depreciation. But you have to get pretty fancy to do things with W two. So you're right, there is a universe of things, just much smaller.

• 5:07Sam Parr?

  And then like, let's say I make a million dollars a year as a business owner. Like, I, I actually don't know what the savings can be. I know with Q S B S, I saved a huge sum, but I don't know what I could do, reduce my, my taxable income by as a business owner. But I know it's a lot, whereas the W two, it ain't.

• 5:23Shaan Puri?

  Well, let's tell the W two story real quick, because I know people in San Francisco that have high paying jobs at like, you know, a Facebook or a Google. And, you know, they're marrying somebody and they're like, hey, guess what, honey? You're a real estate broker now, they're like, what? I don't want to do real estate. You want, you're a real estate professional now. It's like they have to get, get the status and then they're buying Airbnbs in order to offset their, their W D, W two income.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  We literally say that like tongue in cheek, right? We have a presentation on like, how do you lower your tax bill as a W two professional? Point number three is marry a real estate professional. Like, it's like tongue in cheek, but it actually, it actually is one of the very few things you can do as a W two professional. But I don't think anyone pays more in taxes than highly paid tech employees, like in terms of tax bracket. That's about as bad as you can get, you know? Two people in San Francisco making $400,000 a year together, cool, you're paying half of it in taxes.

• 6:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, and it's before it even comes to you. It's just taken out of your paycheck before you even get it. All right, so let's say we are an entrepreneur. Sam mentioned Q S B S, I'm guessing that's going to be number one on your list because it's such a huge advantage. Explain what it is and then explain the kind of beginner level and then the advanced level version of doing it.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Cool. So four big letters in the US tax code. This may be the single most generous tax break available today. It's called QSBS, Qualified Small Business Stock. This is insane. So when you look at all these tech companies being built and sold, the reality is most of them are going to have shareholders that pay very little in taxes. And that's because of what's called QSBS, which roughly says if you hold shares in a C corporation for five years, you pay no taxes on up to $10 million in gains. It applies to founders, it applies to employees, it also applies to investors. And it's such a generous tax break.

• 7:08Sam Parr?

  You're forgetting the up to 10 million or 10 times your basis, whichever is greater.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Great point. It's a great point. It's either $10 million or 10 times what you pay for the shares. As a founder, it's most likely going to be 10 million since you buy your shares for almost nothing. But this is, this is massive. Like when I sold my company, I live in New York state. And in New York state, even New York state doesn't charge you taxes. So I only had to pay New York city taxes on the first $10 million in gains. And this is just by size of benefit, it's absurd, right? Because you think about W2 employees getting taxed so heavily. And here you have startup founders, employees, investors paying nothing on $10 million when they sell their company.

• 7:48Sam Parr?

  Sean, I think California is the only state that doesn't recognize QSBS.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  There's actually six, there's actually six or seven states. There's a couple that partially don't recognize it. Forty-three don't, forty-three, you'd pay no state taxes as well.

• 8:00Shaan Puri?

  If you're not paying any taxes on 10 million in gains, you would normally otherwise pay long-term capital gains, which would be roughly 20%, plus there's like a 3.6% something extra fee. So it's like, you know, basically 2.3 million is what you get net extra, correct? That's, that's the actual in-your-pocket.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  In New York, substantially more. Don't forget there's another million plus in New York taxes that I'm not paying.

• 8:22Shaan Puri?

  Okay, cool. So yeah, so for California, you'll pay another 13% on top. If New York, if you're in one of the QSBS, you know, free states, then you're saving another, let's say, million to 1.3 million in, in additional state taxes. So about two and a half to three and a half million dollars in your pocket.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:39Sam Parr?

  Or, or I've got a friend who had a company who was, I won't say publicly, but Anker, you and I are very close friends, who had a company that was, I think, an S corp. He converted to a C corp at a $30 million valuation. And so eventually, when he sells, it will be 10 times 30, so 300 million dollars. So that that difference, which is, I can't do the math, but 270 million dollars gain, that will be the tax-free portion.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  I was, I was saving that for the advanced strategies, but yeah, there's a, there's a lot you can do to truly like multiply this benefit. So I heard about the 10 million thing and I was like, wow, this is insane. Like really, really cool. But then I found out that the limit is per shareholder, per company. So where this gets interesting is if I give some shares to my mom, my brother, my dad, each of us now have our own 10 million dollar limit. So it's a family, we have a 40 million dollar limit. Or if you go down the estate planning rabbit hole, which it's a little complicated, but at a certain point, you know, hire an attorney, figure it out. You can set up trusts. I set up trusts for my future children, trusts for charity. And each of these trusts get their own 10 million dollar benefit, which multiplies this theoretically as many times as possible. Personally, for me-

• 9:54Sam Parr?

  Wait, so what happens if you, what if you set up for three future kids and you only have one future kid?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  You can basically set up, like, so what I did, for instance, where I have no kids, is you can set it up for future beneficiaries as well. So it's any of my future children are entitled to, to have the trust. What's important is it's an irrevocable gift. You can't take it back yourself.

• 10:14Sam Parr?

  Okay, but when, if you don't have kids now?

• 10:17Speaker 01

  It has to go to either my parents, my brother. I've named a bunch of different beneficiaries.

• 10:21Sam Parr?

  So there's like a line, there's like a, there's like a order, order of operations.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:26Sam Parr?

  Yeah. You're like the only brown parents who are like, oh, Anker, it's okay if you don't have children, it's okay, as long as you're happy, as long as you're happy, it's okay.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  I wish, I wish, honestly, that would be, it would be worth the 10 million dollars to not be harassed by my parents.

• 10:43Sam Parr?

  And so this is called like stackable trust, right? Like-

• 10:45Speaker 01

  This is called Q S B S stacking. So a couple of things I didn't- Realize the first time around that I'm doing differently this time around. So the first time around, I was the only person to hit the holding threshold because I didn't realize how this works. But this time around, I've given all my early team members shares instead of options. So they can start their clock ticking. That's a really important thing that a lot of people don't realize is you have to own the shares for five years, not options.

• 11:09Shaan Puri?

  The way that companies get around this, right, is you do the eighty-three B election, right? Uh, and you basically buy your shares at the super low price.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 11:17Sam Parr?

  We should explain how archaic the IRS is. So there's this thing called the eighty-three B, which I don't exactly know what it means, but it's basically you may, whenever I start a company, I have got to write a check to myself for a hundred dollars. So I write from Sam Parr to the name of the company, Inc. And I have to mail it to the IRS and I like handwrite on it and I write a letter to them and I say, this is Sam Parr, I'm writing you one check for one hundred dollars. And I'm literally writing this out by hand. Will you please, uh, send this stamped envelope back to me? That has proof that you received this. It's literally like the tooth fairy, dude. Yeah, it's like the tooth fairy and you write the I, you write the address and you just write like IRS.

• 11:56Sam Parr?

  Like, uh, I forget where it is in California. And by the way, you have to do this three weeks, I think, or ninety days.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Thirty days.

• 12:04Sam Parr?

  Thirty days. Thirty days after you do this, they have to get it. And so right when you file the company, you've got to run to the convenience. So I get your stamp and envelope and hurry up and do this thing. And then you'll write this out and somehow this works. And what's even crazier is the IRS won't check in on you to make sure you did this right unless you get in trouble and you have to like save this like envelope like, gotcha bitch. I got the envelope. I filed it away. Like, it's crazy how this works.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  And if you don't do it, you have to pay millions of dollars in taxes. Like, it's a very, very high.

• 12:32Sam Parr?

  Hundreds of millions.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a very high stakes document. Yeah.

• 12:35Sam Parr?

  It's a high stakes document and you like have to write it. I remember like thinking like, I gotta make sure my seven is perfectly clear. So that's not a T. Or like, it's like a very stressful thing and you have to write it out by hand. It's crazy how like archaic it is.

• 12:48Shaan Puri?

  I, I didn't understand this rule. Um, but our CFO was like, hey, did you do your eighty-three B? And I'm like, no, no, it's be fine. She's like, no, no, you have to do it within thirty days. And I was like, okay, well, can you just like, you know? Where's the form? Can you send me the link? She's like, no, no, you have to print this out. You gotta go take it to the post office. And I was like, oh, man. And she looked at me. She's like, you don't do those types of things, do you? I was like, no, I don't run errands like that. I just simply don't. I'm out of the postal system. Like, I don't mail things. I don't check my mail. Like, I'm out of that whole system in general. Yeah, you're like, how many samples do I need? Like, 50, 40? What part do I lick? And so I'm like licking the form and I'm like, then I, I finally have it. And I realize I'm on day 37. And so for the next five years, it just haunted me.

• 13:32Shaan Puri?

  I was like, I didn't do that goddamn form. And then when my company finally basically failed, I was like, didn't matter. I was like, it didn't come back to bite me because I was, for five years, had been dreading that my lack of, you know, belief in doing shit, like doing annoying paperwork things was gonna bite me. And I was so happy when that one entity failed and that the other entity was the one that sold. I was like, this is, this is amazing. But here's the crazier part is you can claim you did it in time, right?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  So very technically, what the document means is it says, I am like taxing on what the value is today. I'm choosing to be taxed upfront. But if not for signing this, anytime your company grows in valuation, you could theoretically be liable for taxes. Can you imagine what a nightmare that is? Like, let's say you raise a Series A, a Series B, a Series C.

• 14:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you would not, you wouldn't have money.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  You wouldn't have money, but you'd have a tax bill. It's like, really, really bad. So.

• 14:23Shaan Puri?

  There's a dark side to this, which is that sometimes if you join a company later, like I think Bolt got, Bolt was pretty popular. This happened at Bolt. So Bolt was like, hey, we are lending our, our employees money to buy their shares. That was such a shit show. At a like $5 billion or $10 billion valuation. And they were like, see, this is great because now they're gonna start their clock of owning the shares. But people were like, okay, so what happens if the valuation goes down? And they're like, now, not only do my shares become worthless, I owe the money for those shares at that premium valuation. And people were like, this is not gonna end well. The full story hasn't played out. Bolt is still going, so it's unclear exactly what's going to happen with that.

• 15:03Sam Parr?

  It's trending in the direction like that was a bad idea.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  I think it's undoubtedly a bad idea. It was a 2021 valuation, like tens of billions of dollars. Like, it's not good. And people saw it coming and it's really bad when you now, like, I'm hoping they forgive those loans because otherwise you have, not only are you making nothing in equity, you owe $800,000 just for working there.

• 15:25Shaan Puri?

  At our company, our investor was like, here's the promissory note. You don't have to come up with the cash and we'll forgive this if this ever happens. And I was like, can you write that? They're like, no, we can't write that down. They, it's like, you just have to trust us. I'm like, okay, I do trust you. And they did.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  If they, if they were to write it down, it's taxed to you as income. So that's why they can't write it down, right?

• 15:43Shaan Puri?

  All right. I want to go to the counter opinions. So we got friends who, you know, they're like, oh, the number one thing, get out of California, you schmuck. Come to, come to Texas. No, no, no. Forget Texas. You're still in, you're paying federal tax. Come to Puerto Rico.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 15:56Shaan Puri?

  What do you think about that? Should you, should I move to Puerto Rico to save money on taxes, according to Onkar?

• 16:01Speaker 01

  So to me, this gets to the meta level, right? Like, why do we have money? What is the point of money? And I think there's two camps of people. Camp one is like, they look at their life as this vessel to make as much money as possible. And other people look at money as a tool to live the life you want. So I very firmly fit into the latter camp where money enables me to live the life I want. Yes, I don't want to pay more in taxes than I have to. And, you know, gamifying the tax system is also fun just because like, I'm a hustler and it's kind of fun to do. But I want to live the life I want. And to me, that means living where you want. So I, I would, I would personally never, ever move somewhere just to save on taxes.

• 16:41Sam Parr?

  Well, you've done the exact opposite. You, you, you live currently in, you live in the highest tax place in America, I believe.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Correct. And I'm totally fine with that because again, like, money enables me to live the life I want. I just tend to think, and it's ironic because, you know, I'm running a company that helps people save money on taxes. The kinds of people who spend all their life worrying about taxes are some of the unhappiest people I know. So I don't ever want to get to that point. And sometimes when you move to like, you know, a utopia with zero taxes, you're surrounded with everyone else that moved there for that reason. That's your group. Your friends are other people who hate taxes. And I don't know if, you know, that's the social circle I want.

• 17:20Sam Parr?

  Dude, we had John Lee Dumas on the pod. Do you remember this, Sean? And we were talking about taxes and now he was like bragging about how he moved to Puerto Rico or something like that.

• 17:26Shaan Puri?

  Dude, he was glowing. I thought he was pregnant. I was like, wow, this guy's so happy he moved to Puerto Rico.

• 17:31Sam Parr?

  And he was so happy about it. And then he started making fun of me that I didn't live in Puerto Rico.

• 17:38Sam Parr?

  Do you remember that? He was like insulting me and I was like, John, we're not close enough that you can make fun of me that hard.

• 17:45Shaan Puri?

  This is a podcast, man.

• 17:48Shaan Puri?

  You know, I think that the thing, you know, a lot of people who listen to this podcast, we all share one goal, probably. We've been to different goals. One we share is we all want financial freedom. And most people think financial freedom is, oh, I'm free to buy what I want, do what I want. It's the financial leather jacket. You're a financial badass now. All right, cool. But I think the real financial freedom is when money doesn't have a hold on you. So it's not about you being able to buy and do certain things. It's that money no longer dictates your decisions. Money does not control you or make you do things that you don't want to do. And so it's more of freedom from money, not freedom to spend money. You had a point on this thing I want you to explain, and it's really a direct attack at Sam.

• 18:32Shaan Puri?

  You said, "The point of having money is to not worry about money. If you are wealthy but still stressed about money", which I see all the time, you're missing the point. All right, Sam, look this man in the eye and uncle, tell him.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Dude, I don't blame, I don't blame him if it's him or anyone else. Cause these are beliefs we form very young in life. Like to some degree, they're not even fully conscious beliefs. So if they're not conscious beliefs, you try and sort of program it. But yeah, I have so many like super wealthy friends, friends, you know, with hundreds of millions of dollars who are stressed about the pursuit of more money. They are hundred millionaires who want to be billionaires or something. And again, like you said it really well, right? The whole point of money is to be free from it and do what you want. Like to me, the best thing I bought with money was being able to say no to a job that would have paid me tens of millions of dollars in equity, because guess what? I don't need it anymore.

• 19:20Sam Parr?

  Can I just say, Sean? So, look, I let me defend myself. I came on here and I express my belief on money and how I'm fearful of it and how I want it to make me happy and it doesn't. But you did Camp MFM, you told me about Joe Gebbia. Joe Gebbia is worth $10 billion. And you told me this crazy story and it blew my mind about how happy he is and everything like this. And so I radically changed my opinion on money and happiness. And now I realize I just need 10 billion to be happy. That's all I need is 10 billion. So like my opinion has been changed. It's no longer about scarcity mindset. If I have 10 billion, I will be happy.

• 19:57Shaan Puri?

  I'm glad. I'm glad you've been enlightened. All right, Uncle, um, give me a couple other quick hot takes before.

• 20:04Sam Parr?

  No, you're gonna make fun of Sean now, which is there's no true alpha.

• 20:07Shaan Puri?

  Let's frame it. You said there's no true alpha in investing. I realize that's sort of a fool's game. That's why instead I realized I can, I can optimize my tax setup and make more money that way than try to beat the market. As a guy who has been attempting to beat the market for quite some time now, successfully.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  How's that been going?

• 20:26Sam Parr?

  Wait, answer the question. What are the wins and what are the losses? And we're not talking about private. We're talking about, uh, have you been, have you, did you try to beat the market in terms of public too?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  He looks kind of sheepish. He looks kind of sheepish. He's, he's like.

• 20:37Shaan Puri?

  Are we trying to make me cry? What's happening here?

• 20:39Sam Parr?

  No, no, no. I, I don't know. I actually don't know if you pick and choose stocks. I know you pick and choose private companies, but that was like your job.

• 20:46Shaan Puri?

  I agree that most people cannot beat the market. I do not agree that nobody can beat the market over.

• 20:54Shaan Puri?

  I know that that's an unpopular opinion and I know that, you know, the famous Warren Buffett bet. I know all those things. I just refuse to believe that it's, it's not a bell curve. So, um.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  I think the people that beat the market spend all their lives doing that with their own capital, right? Like think about Jim Simmons, right? His hedge fund has returned like 40% on average. They're not taking outside capital. What I think is a little bit of a scam is a lot of the financial services industry that tries to promise you outsized returns.

• 21:21Sam Parr?

  Who promises that? Like, like, like, what's that stereotype? Hedge funds? Cause I, I've never met like a financial advisor that'd be dumb enough to promise that.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Any actively managed fund, right? So yes, hedge funds are a big, big sort of thing. Any active stock picking fund. I mean, there's a lot of stock picking funds that charge you one to two, 1% a year. And their portfolio, they say will outperform or whatever. Um, so does every real estate fund, venture fund. Basically like anything that charges outsized fees, anything that charges more than a Vanguard fund.

• 21:48Sam Parr?

  That's crazy that that people like buy into that, though.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Correct. So our our thesis is always like, okay, fine. I do think better tax strategy can actually create alpha. Alpha is a, you know, finance term for like, you will outperform. And using that tax alpha to just put more dollars in the market, I think is a smarter approach and the approach I like and, you know, I'm taking with my money as well.

• 22:10Shaan Puri?

  Out of 100% of your net worth, is 100% of it in the S and P index?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  No, absolutely not. Like, I have, I have a lot of it not in the S and P index, but that's my fun money. I think there's a good chance I don't outperform. And a lot of it is in private, private investing, which are funds that I own. But I think I'm the only person I know who has a fund as big as mine and charges no management fees. The average venture fund charges 20 to 25% just in management fees. And the average person does not realize that we charge 0%.

• 22:41Sam Parr?

  Sean, do you know how I tell you that I don't buy individual stocks?

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:46Sam Parr?

  I real, I looked at my portfolio the other day. It was the first time in a year that I looked at it and I realized I was wrong. I've done it twice or three times. The company that I did it on was Playboy.

• 22:59Sam Parr?

  I had read, I had read their annual report.

• 23:02Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. You can't just call their magazine their annual report, dude. That's called their monthly calendar.

• 23:08Sam Parr?

  Yeah. But yeah, actually their annual report, they have a lot of photos.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:13Sam Parr?

  And

• 23:15Sam Parr?

  oh, Jenny old Jenny McCarthy picture holding up the balance sheet. That's nice. I, I did that because I was like, oh, well, like their prop, their, their, their real estate asset is worth more than what they're trying to sell the company for. And I was like, that's smart. I'll do that. Did not win on that one. So loss on that one. Also did Coinbase at the IPO.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 23:35Sam Parr?

  And then I sold it two weeks before it popped, like three months ago or whatever, whenever it was.

• 23:41Shaan Puri?

  Like 400%.

• 23:42Sam Parr?

  So I've, I've, I've done two.

• 23:44Shaan Puri?

  No, you've also done it with HubSpot. You got HubSpot stock. You could have sold it and diversified. You decided to hold. That is a decision to buy.

• 23:51Sam Parr?

  That's correct. And, and with Airbnb. Yeah, correct.

• 23:54Shaan Puri?

  The two biggest holdings in your portfolio. Correct. So you do it too. We all do it.

• 23:58Sam Parr?

  Those aren't my, those aren't my two biggest holdings. The, my index funds are significantly larger. But, uh, yeah, I have done it. So I've done it as well.

• 24:06Shaan Puri?

  So I'm like you, Anker, I have my fun money thing. It's just that I happen to have a fun money stash that's 80% instead of 20%.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, at the end of the day, as long as we realize what we're doing, it's fine, right? Like, I, I, I think we all have to learn this lesson ourselves. In 2021, I thought I was a damn genius. I was like, these index funds are stupid. My portfolio is up like 300%. I should just be a stock picker for life. And yeah, then you come back to reality and then realize.

• 24:32Sam Parr?

  What was the, was, was there a day where you're like, ah, huh? That's not the way.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  It was many, see, because again, if you remember, there's such an insane run up for a while. You couldn't lose. Every company was up 100% day on day. It was when investing was the most fun. It should not be that fun. And then, yeah, there were numerous days of like, cool, I've lost $300,000 today. Cool, down half a million dollars today. Cool. And just that happening, happening repeatedly while the S and P 500 kind of just kept chipping away and growing. And, you know, Nvidia comes out of nowhere and all these stocks that I only held because I had index fund. Otherwise I had no exposure.

• 25:08Sam Parr?

  Sean, let me, and Anker, let me tell you this crazy story about tax stuff that I learned. This is like one of those tax hacks. I'm not the biggest fan of tax hacks, but this is actually a good one. I met this lady, she was speaking at one of our events. And I don't want to say her name of her company, but she was on the commercial for this credit card company. Because she loved the credit card so much and her business was doing, let's say 50 million a year. And she was putting a lot of it on a credit card. And it was giving her $300,000 a year of either points or cash back. And according to the IRS, a cash, cash back from a credit card is considered a rebate. And I believe you get up to, I don't remember what it is, I don't know what it is now, but three years ago, when she told me this, she said it's $300,000 a year of, of rebates.

• 25:52Sam Parr?

  Is that, you know what it is nowadays? Is it same?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Something like that, depends on the card itself, but yeah.

• 25:58Sam Parr?

  Oh, I, I thought it was by the government. I thought it was limited to the government, must have been limited to the credit card. She was getting $300,000 a year of cash back, of which she was like, that's my salary. I don't take a salary or I take a very unmeaningful salary for my company and I'm living off my credit card points. And that was pretty wild.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Did you know you could actually pay your taxes on a credit card? And for some people, you could actually arbitrage that where, again, this is insane. I would never do it, but it's just, I just found it interesting. You can pay your taxes on a credit card. There's not a very high extra fee. And in a lot of cases, you can actually end up slightly better. It's a very painful thing to do.

• 26:30Sam Parr?

  David, David Hauser did it. David Hauser sold his company Grasshopper, I think for $200 million. And he paid his taxes on his Amex and he called Amex and he told them what he was gonna do. And so I don't, I don't remember what the bill is, but let's say 20 or 30 million dollars of a tax bill. He paid that on his Amex and he goes, I've got, I just got, you know, a couple of decades worth of flights.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  That's hilarious.

• 26:53Shaan Puri?

  That's insane.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  But that's the, that's the other thing with credit card points is once you learn how to use them for travel, the cash back feels less good. Like, yes, the cash back has a theoretical value, but there's so much more valuable applied to travel once you kind of learn how the game works.

• 27:06Shaan Puri?

  What's the smart way to do it?

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Okay, so the thing you always want to avoid is never spend the points on your credit card website. That is the thing almost everyone does and you lose a ton of value there.

• 27:16Sam Parr?

  I do that.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so what you want to do instead is create an account with an airline. Like I do it with Emirates a lot because I fly internationally or with Air France, KLM. The international airlines are the best. Look up a flight on their loyalty program. Do the transfer. It takes like 30 seconds and you'll probably save 70% points right there.

• 27:34Sam Parr?

  No way, 70%?

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've, I've tested this a lot because what these airlines do.

• 27:40Shaan Puri?

  It says transfer, like there's a tiny link that says transfer partners. And you have to, that's where you send your points. You never spend it in the thing.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  That's gonna save you so many points.

• 27:49Sam Parr?

  No, I've, I've spent, I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on flights over the past 10 years through Chase, my Chase card.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  I, I found this out two years ago and it was life changing. Yeah, absolutely.

• 27:59Shaan Puri?

  What? You got, you got hosed, bro. That, it's so bad to do it.

• 28:02Sam Parr?

  Wait, you knew that, Sean?

• 28:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I paid for this guy Mo Points. He's like this guy who'll call you, he'll teach you about credit card points, or like he'll just be like, what's your situation? Here's what your credit card setup should be, and here's how to use it. And so he showed it to me. And I was like, wow, that was like the best $300 I've ever spent because that one session, which I thought, oh, 300 bucks to do this call, that's kind of a lot. Of course, I mean, the savings and just understanding how to book the flights better. Cause he's like, this is luxury travel. You want to travel first class all around the world? Here's what you need to do. And for me, I have an e-comm business. We're spending millions of a year in ads. So he's like, you need this MX gold because it gives you Forex on every Facebook point that you, every dollar you spend on Facebook, Google. And so you're getting Forex multipliers.

• 28:47Shaan Puri?

  He's like, but then you got to transfer it out and then you got to use this website, a website like points.me or whatever to be able to search for points across all the airlines.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think just transferring out is the 8020. If you want to tell someone in one sentence, how to do better, transfer your points out.

• 29:05Sam Parr?

  Do you have any more of those little tricks? What else you got in your hat? Come on magician, pull something else up. That's pretty awesome.

• 29:13Shaan Puri?

  Solo 401K. So that's the one that you have on here that I don't know anything about. What is a solo 401K?

• 29:17Speaker 01

  So solo 401K, this is the first product we built and I had an LLC for a while. I was earning some, you know, some random money and I saw, I found this account called a solo 401K, which is like your own, like your corporate 401K, but it exists exclusively for you. And with that, you can do really cool things. So one, you can put in up to $69,000 a year. Typically, if you max out your corporate account, it's very hard to hit the max because your company match is not enough. But with a solo 401K, you can put in $69,000 a year, get that as a tax deduction. The second thing is you could do the whole thing as a Roth contribution. So if you read about Peter Thiel and how he grew his, you know, billion dollar Roth IRA. Traditionally with the Roth IRA, you can only put in $7,000.

• 30:01Shaan Puri?

  Can you tell the Peter Thiel story real quick? How did he use a Roth IRA to make billions?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Oh, man, this was both genius and kind of possibly illegal. But what he did is he bought his founder shares at PayPal with his Roth IRA. So he spent like $2,000 to buy PayPal shares that became worth $27 million when PayPal sold. And then he had $27 million to just make all kinds of investments. He allegedly bought his like Facebook shares, 10% of Facebook from his Roth IRA. So he's gonna turn 59 and a half in a year. And he's gonna have $5 billion tax free, which is pretty wild.

• 30:38Shaan Puri?

  The wildest part about that, what you just said is that Peter Thiel only made $27 million selling PayPal.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:44Shaan Puri?

  I didn't realize that me and Peter Thiel are sort of, uh, we're sort of, you know, apples and apples, I guess.

• 30:52Shaan Puri?

  Right, Sam? Like the hustle and PayPal netted the founders, very similar amounts of money. That's kind of amazing.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Well, what we don't know is if Peter Thiel had other shares not in his Roth IRA, which is quite possible, actually.

• 31:04Shaan Puri?

  Ah, damn. News too good to be true.

• 31:09Sam Parr?

  Probably not.

• 31:10Shaan Puri?

  He's gonna have to show that to me for me to change my opinion.

• 31:13Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I'm not gonna let facts get in the way of beating Peter Thiel. What about, uh, can a person have more than one 401k?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's what's cool is if you have a full-time job and a side hustle, you can have a solo 401k for your business while still contributing to your employer 401k. But because it's your own 401k, you can invest it in anything, right? Your employer 401k has like a list of very specific assets. With a solo 401k, you can invest it however you want. If you need liquidity, you could borrow up to $50,000 from it. It's simply the most powerful retirement account in America, but it's not available unless you have your own business.

• 31:48Shaan Puri?

  Isn't the normal 401k kind of a racket? Like the thing where they're like, you can only buy these, these funds using our 401k? Is that because they get a kickback?

• 31:57Speaker 01

  No, it comes from the 401k provider. The long answer is, uh, corporate 401k plans are subject to ERISA laws, like Employment Retirement Investment Something Act. And those, those acts are just there to protect employees. But as a result, employers can't do things that help them. Like there are limits on how much you can contribute to yourself if your employees are part of the same plan, limit to investments. But if there's no employees, go crazy.

• 32:22Shaan Puri?

  So the solo 401k, you could put that in, could you like put in real estate? Could you put in anything? Is it like?

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely. If, yeah, the only thing you can't do, which is where the whole Peter Thiel thing may be slightly illegal, is you can't have a self-dealing transaction. So I can't invest in my startup. I can invest in Sam's startup. That's totally fine, but I can't invest in my own company. I can't invest in my house, but I can do commercial real estate.

• 32:43Shaan Puri?

  Gotcha. Okay.

• 32:45Sam Parr?

  That's not self-dealing for him, is it? If you, that's just a, a, a major angel investment.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  He was the founder too, which is why it's sketch. He was the founder of PayPal, remember? If he was just an angel investor, it's fine.

• 32:56Shaan Puri?

  Oh, I was. You shouldn't say too much. He, he, you know, we might, eh, it might be an accident for Ankur. If you keep talking like this out loud, he's got $5 billion riding on nobody paying too much attention to this.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, so people, because now people ask us all the time, can I do what Peter Thiel did? And I was like, look, it may be fine if you don't own over 50%. I wouldn't because again, like the thing with the IRS is a lot of these things are not clear rules. There are rules written a certain way. Someone interprets them somehow. The IRS challenges it. Sometimes the IRS loses in court and that's how loopholes are established, right? So.

• 33:28Sam Parr?

  So like the problem that I have with my, my personal bookkeepers or accountants, my CPA, like they're pretty reactionary. So it's like at the end of the year, like we are dealing the problems and then everyone makes the same thing where they say, next year I'm doing this right, but I'll worry about it in like two or three months. And then two or three months becomes like way later.

• 33:48Shaan Puri?

  That's the real New Year's resolution, to be honest, is the three weeks after tax, after you file your taxes is the, the real New Year's resolution.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  To be honest, candidly, that's the problem we're having because right now we're realizing we have to educate the CPAs a lot. And almost everyone that comes to us, this is a biased sample, they do not like their CPA. And we don't do that yet, right? Like maybe there's a world we'll do it.

• 34:07Sam Parr?

  But who do you have? Like, do you hire like a tax strategist who is like more offensive? And do they, would they work in tandem with your CPA? What do you do?

• 34:16Speaker 01

  So for me personally, once I've, you know, gone down this rabbit hole, um, we're doing this internally. We have a program where we help people with the tax strategy part. We don't do tax filings. So I'm basically using our, our own services. But yeah, there's a big part that's tax strategy that is not the person signing off your tax return.

• 34:32Shaan Puri?

  Should they be separate?

• 34:33Speaker 01

  The way the world is written today, the like just laws and stuff, it is because the person filing your taxes typically doesn't do that much strategy. It's sort of just why, like, even if, let's say you want to set up a trust, you need an estate attorney who is different from your financial advisor, who's different from your accountant. And to the average person, you're like, why, why can't one person do this? And those are the kinds of things worth thinking a lot about, like, how do we productize this in some way, shape or form? While still being compliant, because compliance is a big, big, big part anytime you try and build these kinds of businesses.

• 35:04Shaan Puri?

  So I was so, uh, you know, stressed out last tax season, uh, you know, that I was like, okay, how, how am I going to do things differently this year? So I, I was like, I'm going to treat this like it's, it's my own business. It's its own product. It's its own company I'm starting. And so I was like, I'm going to go on a roadshow and I'm going to go and basically see who's out there, you know, go give me your best pitch. And I created a data room. I was like, this is my tax setup and I put all the time in like, here's a flow chart. Here's my prior year's returns. Here's what, here's what I paid in taxes. Here's what my expectation is for next year. I was like, here's a turnkey data room. So I don't even have to have a phone call with you. I'm like, I have the phone call and I, on the phone call, I tell them exactly what I want.

• 35:47Shaan Puri?

  Cause for some reason I would like go to these tax people and I think it's insecurity. It's like, because I don't know as much about taxes as you, I kind of defer everything. And I almost become like, I work for you. And then I'm like, like splash water on my face. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, I'm paying you. Hold on, wait, this is backwards. Yeah. You work for me. I forgot.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:04Shaan Puri?

  Why am I pretending like I, I have to tiptoe around even asking you for what I want? And so I go in and I'm like, I felt this way. I never want to feel this way again. I want somebody who's going to take care of everything. Uh, you know, everything from, I want you to literally, I want you to be able to pay bills if I need you to, up to filing my, my returns for all of these. You know, I got 12 entities, all 12 entities.

• 36:30Shaan Puri?

  And I need you to do strategy and I need you to be coming to me every, you know, every quarter with proactive suggestions about what I should be doing. That's what I want. Who can provide me that? And I went on tour basically, and it's such a better way than I was doing before. I highly recommend this for anybody who's like. Has enough income and kind of business value where that makes sense to do, which I don't know what that number is, probably different for a lot of people. It wouldn't have made sense for me three years ago to do that. It's like, ah, whatever, you're paying a couple hundred K in taxes, or even a million dollars in taxes, probably not worth that much effort to go do. But as you scale, I think it's important to do that, I'm realizing now.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Yep. And I also think it has to be a collaboration. It's very hard. A lot of people are like, oh, if I had a tax guy that would solve all my issues. But a lot of the best strategies, they're like long-term, right? Let's say you want to start a business to get acquired five years later. That's the kind of stuff that you like, need a partnership to be discussing and have someone you're working with somewhat least quarterly, right? Because there's a lot of this stuff that like, the more you know, the more you'll push them and the better the things you'll achieve.

• 37:34Sam Parr?

  I'm actually going to do that data room thing. That's the second thing that you've said in the last few months, that it's like going to have a change in my life. That's really smart. The first thing.

• 37:41Shaan Puri?

  Bro, we talk twice a week on this podcast. That's the second thing in months. That was good.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:47Sam Parr?

  Well, the, well, like a lot of the stuff you say, I'm like, I'm either already doing that or I don't want to do that, or like, I'm not sure if you're right, or that's only okay. But the, you said that data room thing is actually a really wise, wise way to look at it. The other thing that you said, it was, it hit me, I was like, that's brilliant. And it was when you were selling one of your, your house in San Francisco. You, so like, I forget what real estate agents make, 6%, but you're like, but 6% is not, that, the difference between 2 million and 2.2 million is like 6% isn't that meaningful for the realtor, but it's really meaningful for me as the owner. That's a six-figure difference. So I'll just give you my real estate agent. I'll tell you, hey, if you get anything above my asking price of like 2.1,

• 38:32Sam Parr?

  which is my happy number, but if you get anything above that, like 2.2, I'll actually give you like 30% of the fee. So I'm selling a piece of property now and that's what I told my, I just, right after the, the pod, I went and called her right away. I go, hey, how about this?

• 38:45Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I didn't do 30%. That's crazy, but I did more. I did more than the 6%. So you uh you messed that one up a little bit, but that's okay.

• 38:52Sam Parr?

  Well, but but but the thing is, is like even I don't remember what I think you said like.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Additional dollar, right? Each additional dollar past that is like.

• 38:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, you said like 10%. I think you even said like you'd buy this person a burka bag. You said something like crazy.

• 39:04Shaan Puri?

  I had a negative incentive too. No, no, I said, and if you don't get me the price that you comped me when you when you won this listing. Okay, there has to be some incentive or disincentive if you don't live up to your word. What what real estate agents do is on the way in, they're like.

• 39:20Sam Parr?

  They woo you.

• 39:21Shaan Puri?

  Oh, we're gonna, this will be great. I've done such similar sales. I think we can get you. What what price do you think? Oh, yeah, I think we can get you that price. And then afterwards, two weeks later, they're like, oh, just the market is so, you know, right now, you know, the thing is blah, blah, blah. And then then then they're just nagging you and they're trying to reduce your expectations so that when an offer comes in, you'll take it, whatever it is. Because they just want to turn the deal over, right? Because they're they're getting 3% on 2 billion bucks. They don't really care if it's 2 point. If it's 2 million and 50,000 or 2 million, they'd rather just get the deal done. And so I knew that they do that nagging. So upfront, when I said, when he's promising me the world, I said, all right, cool. But if you don't do it, you got to buy my wife this bag. And um he was like laughing and I was like, I let it sit there for a second. He's like, oh, you're for real?

• 40:05Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, yeah. He's like, okay, deal. And then literally when we were coming, we were coming to do the deal. He's like, I really don't want to buy your wife that bag. Let me go back to them and see if I can get more. And he got an extra like $30,000 after that, uh, you know, that last comment. So I appreciate it.

• 40:20Sam Parr?

  The reason why it broke my frame was because these are like a realtor is like, uh, you you think like, well, for some reason, you think this is just the law. Or like, there is no negotiating, like, this is how it's always been done, and I must do it this way. I'm just and and when I was thinking about it, I was like, no, that. The way that he actually said is 100% better. I didn't realize that I could like question them.

• 40:40Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 40:40Sam Parr?

  Do you know what I mean? And there's actually like, what's crazy is there's people who do that with the IRS as well. So for example, Sean Parker, I believe, is the guy who created, he either created or he was uh important with helping create it with opportunity. Opportunity zones in real estate.

• 40:54Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 40:54Sam Parr?

  And like, I remember like. Reading about opportunity zones and I'd be like, oh, Sean Parker created. I'm like, wait, what? And I guess like the story is, is he was young, he was still in his twenties and he convinced the government that it's wise to invest into opportunity zones, which is real estate that's in areas that are impoverished or we want them to be better. And I'm like, how ballsy of that kid to go and convince the IRS or the government that this is the right move. And I, and I love like stories like that. And that was, it was a wild story.

• 41:25Shaan Puri?

  Let's do a couple more before we, before we finish. So you said owning real estate with your business. What's this one?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. So another great example, right? So Sam said, okay, what if I have a million dollars in business profits? Like, what can I do to lower my tax bill? Just buying your office building, or if you have a physical building connected to anything you're doing, whether it's your office, whether you have a retail location, if you own that real estate, you can use depreciation to offset 20, 30% of the purchase price as a business loss that year. So, which is why you'll see a lot of old school businesses that actually own their properties. They're not just renting since you just save so much money. People take this, you can also do this with cars and, you know, buy a vehicle attached to your business. You have the whole like insanity where you can actually depreciate more of the purchase price if your car weighs over 6,000 pounds,

• 42:12Speaker 01

  which is insane and why you have the whole like G-Wagon tax write-off meme. But yeah, owning real estate with your businesses is massive.

• 42:18Sam Parr?

  That's like the classic like immigrant story, which is like a mom and pop like came here from Vietnam and then they bought, they just, they eventually bought their corner store building and then they, the, the building becomes worth significantly more than the corner store.

• 42:33Shaan Puri?

  And then they bought their G-Wagon.

• 42:36Sam Parr?

  And the G-Wagon.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like, again, like business owners were already very favored, as were real estate developers. But when Trump was in office, he actually took it to the next level with the tax cuts and jobs act. That basically doubled those benefits. It gave an extra benefit to business owners where they get to deduct 20% of their income called qualified business income deduction. And it allowed real estate developers, and your boy Nick Huber talks about it all the time, to do what's called bonus depreciation and depreciate 20 to 30% of the purchase price upfront. So even though the code is already written this way, there's always new incentives to further make it even better for business owners and real estate developers.

• 43:15Shaan Puri?

  Let's do some of these other things. You had a good thing on happiness. I want to read it to you. Basically, you were like, happiness, it's not that complicated. What is the kind of, what are the four things that that actually matter when it comes to happiness?

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, after I sold my company, I spent two years traveling, chilling, you know, it was like, wow, you know, we spent all our lives waiting to like retire. What if I just live the retired life now? And a lot of it was like, okay, fine. What are my happiness triggers? And I found for me was very, very simple. The two, two like critical things for like my environment were plenty of time outdoors, ideally with sunlight, like constant movement, like Sam been believing when I told him I walked 20,000 steps a day at producer seats. Doing work.

• 43:57Sam Parr?

  That's an insane amount.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  That is an insane amount. Three and a half years. It's just, it's just what keeps me, it keeps me going.

• 44:02Sam Parr?

  Dude, my, my trailing 90 days, because we had the baby, was 3100 steps a day.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, to me, that's misery. Like, I, I just need to, I need to be in motion.

• 44:10Shaan Puri?

  What do, what do you do to get those 20,000 steps? Like, do you have, did you like replace meetings with walking meetings or something? What, what did you do in your habits?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Walking meetings, phone calls, like, um, a big part of my routine, playing sports every day, though again, like it's winter here, and that's why I hate winter, because like now I'm not getting my outdoor time and my walking has come down a lot. But yeah, so happiness triggers movement, uh, being able to spend time outdoors. Having a higher purpose for me, that's work with meaning, but for other people, you know, it's religion. It's just something that is like bigger than themselves. And four is like relationships that count. I can like simplify my life to these four components and like reprint, like that's all it takes for at least me to just be very, very happy.

• 44:52Sam Parr?

  Are you dating anyone?

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Uh, not right now.

• 44:55Sam Parr?

  You probably crush it, though, in that department, right?

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I mean, again, I, I enjoy, I enjoy being single, uh, but at the same time, look, I'm 34 years old and the parental pressure is ramping up. We'll, we'll see how it goes.

• 45:06Shaan Puri?

  You're like, I can defeat the IRS, but not, not the parental pressure.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. How old were you, Sam, when you, when you and Sarah got together?

• 45:15Sam Parr?

  She was twenty two and I was twenty five.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Oh damn, you're young.

• 45:20Sam Parr?

  It didn't feel that way because I went pretty crazy between like nineteen and twenty four. Like I, I, I did some fun things.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm actually, I've actually drank a beer with you. There's not a lot of people at this chapter of your life that have done that, but yeah.

• 45:33Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:34Sam Parr?

  That's true. And I had a lot of fun. I did this cross-country motorcycle trip and after I just sold the company and I didn't sell it for a lot of money. I had like fifty thousand dollars in my bank account, but I was like twenty three riding my motorcycle across country, telling people I just sold my company on Tinder.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Was this apartment list or whatever?

• 45:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was two apartment lists. And, and I, and, and I just hosted a conference, so I had money and like it was, I was the coolest guy ever for like eight weeks. And then I met my wife like right when I got home.

• 46:02Sam Parr?

  But, uh, yeah, we've been together for a while. It's honestly awesome. I like, I, I don't even like talking about this because I remember when we got married, we had to go to like and talk to a priest because we got married in Catholic church. And I was like telling her, I was like telling the priest, I was like, yeah, we, uh, you know, we're a good partnership. We talk about like business and stuff all the time. He's like, well, what about love? It's so like, I don't even like mentioning this, but like basically dating someone who is smart and you eventually want to marry, it's actually makes you more money. That's not the most important thing, but I think like what I've learned is having a good relationship, I think actually was the greatest financial decision I made.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  I mean, you're not, you're probably less distracted, right? Like people in, people in relationships are like eventually like once are kind of more stable, I think. I remember when I was, when I was selling my business, I was negotiating with the dude who like runs General Atlantic, big, big private equity fund. And he's like an old school guy. He's like, are you married? I was like, no kids, no. It's like, I don't like that. I can't trust single people. You have nothing to lose. I, I don't like it. I would feel much better about this deal if you were married and had a family because you're scared or you'd be more nervous, more scared of stuff.

• 47:09Sam Parr?

  You're like, for, for two hundred fifty million dollars, I can get a thirty day fiance right now, sir. What, what do you need?

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so.

• 47:16Sam Parr?

  Sean, when your wife goes out of town, are you like me where you're like, uh, what the hell am I supposed to do? Like, what do I, what do I do?

• 47:22Shaan Puri?

  It's three hours of heaven, but anything beyond three hours, I'm like, oh, this is boring. Like this is, this sucks. Like it's so quiet in here. Like I started walking around in circles like my dog or something. I don't know what to do.

• 47:34Sam Parr?

  I want to talk about one more thing. We have a large Indian listenership.

• 47:39Shaan Puri?

  You're welcome.

• 47:39Sam Parr?

  Yeah, thank you, Sean. I feel like everyone in my life is, is like all my best friends are Indian. You're like going on a tear on social media saying, like, particularly, you're like, you know, East Asian people. We've got this stereotype of us not having a lot of muscle. In reality, it's just because we eat like shit. Or what did you say?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  The Indian diet is just by default, not great for building strength, for staying in shape. And things are really bad right now. Like, an Indian person living in North America, right? So we have the same exact, like, upbringing, whatever. Is anywhere been four to six times more likely to have heart disease, diabetes? Like, it's just, it's real bad. And now that, I guess, I have more of a voice on social media and people are listening, I feel like it's something worth talking about since, I don't know, like, if I, if I could have some impact over the next 10, 20, 30 years to change that, that would go a long way. But the hardest part is there's this, like, cultural, like, you know, deniability, where Indian people get really mad when you tell them that.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Um, if every, even, even now, I mean, you know, if you try tweeting out the Indian diet is like traditionally unhealthy or something, you'll get all these people in India, like, getting super, super angry about it. But ask anyone who's ever, I don't know, do you ever count macros, Sam or Sean?

• 48:53Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I, I, I use my fitness pal every day for like the past four years.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Okay, cool. So there's not one person who's ever counted macros who will fight the Indian diet is healthy? Like, not one. It's impossible. It is actually impossible if you track it to, to see it. Um, yet it produces this passionate response. I mean, I ended up commenting on an Indian cricketer's physique. And an Indian newspaper, the Hindustan Times, ran this, like, article about me saying, "Indian-American entrepreneur fat shames like cricketer." And I had to, like, turn off my Instagram because I got hundreds, thousands of comments, like, just attacking me, my family and everything I stood for because I'm not being like, you know, a proud Indian or whatever. So.

• 49:34Shaan Puri?

  That's hilarious, man. They, uh, the, I went to an Indian grocer. Sam, you probably don't know this. There's actually just like Indian grocery shops. We have our own separate secret.

• 49:41Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I go to them.

• 49:43Shaan Puri?

  Okay, so most of you don't really realize this, but if you walk in. Every single aisle literally is the shittiest food that you could possibly eat. And I went in there and I was like, you know, Jim Carrey in The Truman Show when he's like, wait, this guy is actually like a wall. Like, what is this? What's happening in here?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:03Shaan Puri?

  And I was literally like running down the aisle like, what's happening in here? This is fried. It's all fried. Why is everything fried? Literally not one thing.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  And no protein, right? It's like fried.

• 50:11Shaan Puri?

  Zero protein. It's literally fried carbohydrates with some fat. And like, that's everything. And you just see the moms just putting things in there for their kids. I'm like, don't, don't do this shit, man. This is so bad. It's literally so bad. And to the point where I was like, should someone create like a, just a better for you Indian food that goes into the Indian grocery? So the only skew in the store that is not like, deep fried terrible everything, or like, you know, just canned galab jamun or something. It's like this terrible, terrible food. And that's not even like the home food. That's like the grocery store, right? So if you're in, it's like garbage in, garbage out. It's like, if your inputs are all terrible, then the outputs are also going to be terrible.

• 50:52Sam Parr?

  Why? They just don't care? It's not part of the, it's just not part of the culture?

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Protein is just not really deeply embedded in, in Indian food. And it is, it isn't small parts, but it's just not really a big deal. And it's compounded when you live in America. But I think about it this way, right? I joked about this, but like, I think the spelling bee is the only time I see Indian people on ESPN. Obviously an exaggeration.

• 51:14Shaan Puri?

  That's the ultimate burn, dude. That's so good.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, look, as an Indian person, I can say it. I don't think you can say it, Sam. You'll get cancelled. But yeah, it's like, it's, it's, it's really not good. What I think is optimistically, my generation, we're seeing people being aware of this. We're, we're seeing this changing. A lot of South Asian people, right? They're always like, even like Balaji was on a podcast. He's like, oh yeah, I did like, as well as I could for my South Asian genetics. I actually think that's kind of bullshit. I think South Asian genetics are honestly not bad at all for people who work out and, and kind of eat clean and whatever. I mean, all the Indian friends I have that have put in the effort have seen results. But the whole stereotype, I think, starts because of the diet.

• 51:54Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I've been on an Indian food kick lately and it's been all like coconut milk. And so I've just not been using that or coconut. It's just all creamy shit. And and it tastes so good going in, but it does not feel wonderful.

• 52:05Shaan Puri?

  It's so funny to Indian parents when they feed you, because I'll be like, Mom, why did you give us this? And she's like, this is good for you. I'm like, why is this good for you? And she'd be like, gives you energy. And I think they literally took the idea of calories as like, you know, calories like a measure of energy. It's like, they were like, gives you energy, this carbohydrate, you're gonna have so much energy. And I'm like, not, that's not how it works. And then even though like, oh, doll, doll has tons of protein. It's like lentils, basically. It's like, yeah, but has like, you know, the macros on dollar, like 20 grams of protein, 35 grams of carbs, and then you add butter, ghee, and like oil to the thing to make it taste good. It's like, well, that's not really gonna help then, right?

• 52:46Speaker 01

  And doll is your protein in the rest of your meal, right? So you have all this other stuff and you're like, oh, for protein, I'll have doll. That's a great example. And yeah, like Indian people will, like the Indian Express actually ran an article being like, yep, we thought doll had a lot of protein too. Like the awareness is increasing now, but it's it's pretty slow.

• 53:03Sam Parr?

  I went to a, what's it called? Is it a holly or holy? A holy celebration and it was naan with ghee, is it ghee? So like that clear butter and then tons of buttered buttered chicken. But instead of chicken, it was cheese.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 53:21Sam Parr?

  And then it was like, and then it was like, the dessert was fried dough and maple syrup. What do you guys call that?

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Glab jam. And it's delicious. By the way, it's delicious. So like, don't.

• 53:31Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's, yeah, yeah, it's good for you because it made me smile and smiling is good for you. But it didn't feel great two hours later.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And here's what's changing though, is now Indian people are really wealthy. There's four million Indian people that have an average income of $100,000, the wealthiest ethnic group. So I do think things will change, like it used to not be a very viable market, but now there's a lot of fuzz and it's a very big market. So I think all of these businesses also make good commercial sense.

• 53:58Sam Parr?

  If you read in our comment section on YouTube, the most recurring comment is, Sean, you look great. Sean, are you losing weight? Sean, that beard looks wonderful. So Sean, it's gonna be a sex icon.

• 54:08Shaan Puri?

  $10 on Fiverr, you can get that. Anybody can get that for you. You should go pay on Fiverr, you can get people saying how good you look on YouTube.

• 54:15Sam Parr?

  Everyone's commenting on Sean's looks. Except for like, they'll, either they'll make fun of his outfit because he wears like a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. Or they'll be like, Sean, your workout program, it's working so well. Like, people are just sucking up to him so much.

• 54:29Shaan Puri?

  Well, yep, thank you. And, Anker, where should people find you? How do they go and use your product to help them with taxes?

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. We're called Kari. We're at kari money.com. And if anyone wants to set up a solo 401k or just get better at what they pay in taxes, check us out.

• 54:46Sam Parr?

  Appreciate you. Thank you.

• 54:47Shaan Puri?

  Thanks for coming, man.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Sweet man, this was fun.