Are Death and Taxes Now Uncertain? with Thaddeus Gala: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like The Hustle Daily. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives and we'll be breaking down, are death and taxes now uncertain? To try to have these value bombs, I have brought Thaddeus Gala in the EO Fire Studios. Thaddeus owns a handful of multi-million dollar companies. His longevity clinics see roughly 50 ,000 yearly patient interactions. He's played basketball with George Clooney and chess with Richard Branson.

0:34He now mentors entrepreneurs on how to eliminate taxes without moving from their home state. And today, Fire Nation, we'll be talking about the ideal mindset and recognizes that life is a series of problems and you think of it as opportunities for solutions, how to recognize that opportunity favors the bold, take action and go for it, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Thaddeus and our sponsors. The Gold Digger Podcast, hosted by my good friend, Jenna Kuchar, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals, The Gold Digger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more.

1:15A must-listen episode is one of Jenna's recents on everything you need to know about affiliate marketing. Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Belay is passionate about helping your business succeed with their simple, flexible staffing solutions. Download Belay's Bulletproof Budget Template for free, which is the exact budget template that they use to grow from a small startup to one of Inc. 5000's fastest growing companies for nine straight years. Today, just text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E, to 55123. Thaddeus, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:57What is up, Fire Nation and JLD? I think one of the biggest things that people disagree with in terms of being successful is not recognizing that life and relationships and business, whatever it is you want to throw at it, is a series of problems, a.k.a. opportunities for solutions. And the sooner we realize that we're going to have a flat tire, someone's going to die, not that you can't have feelings around it, but you recognize how can I work through this, whatever's in front of me, and just look at it as an obstacle that you can overcome and there's a solution on the other side, life will become so much easier.

2:31Fire Nation, I know you can already tell that this conversation with Thaddeus today is going to be a thinker. It's gonna make you sit down, maybe hit the rewind button a few times, listen again to what he's sharing because these are some really interesting, really deep concepts. And we're gonna be talking about a lot of awesome stuff today, specifically, which I mentioned in the introduction, we're gonna be talking all about our death and taxes now uncertain. And for me, for five years now, I can tell you taxes have become very minimal, all, but I'm fascinated by this topic about death and taxes potentially now being uncertain.

3:07Now that I've achieved a certain level of success, I am all in on how can I extend this life in a very healthy way? What does that look like? And there's so many cool things coming up in these areas. Plus Fire Nation, everybody who talks to me, when you send me emails and you reply to my Instagram stories, you tell me how beautiful it is down here in Puerto Rico. And you're correct. It is paradise. It's gorgeous. And Thaddeus and myself are going to have an opportunity for you to come down to Puerto Rico. Only a few people, unfortunately, but a few people are going to have an opportunity to come down and join us for an amazing, and some would even say unforgettable opportunity coming up here very, very shortly.

3:47So without any further ado, let's just dive in, Thaddeus, because I want to talk about the first step that we need to work on towards eliminating devastating death in taxes. What does that look like? It's scratching your own itch. And one thing on the taxes is we're going to be talking today about how people can reduce or eliminate taxes without having to move Puerto Rico or overseas, or they can really stay wherever they want. But really, I think the biggest thing is scratching your own itch, right? So when I was 10, the doctor said my mom would be in a wheelchair the rest of her life. These are all the experts, right?

4:18She went to expert after expert. She was on full disability, couldn't work. So when I was I didn't have a mom. So my first career was going into natural healthcare to save my mom's life. Fast forward, now I own four clinics. Last year, we saw around 50 ,000 patient interactions. Wow. Finishing up my PhD this year on neuroscience. And my mom's in her 70s. She just started running 5K races. And now she has to find younger and younger friends to hang out with her, and she's in complete remission. Wow. I think that's the first thing is we have to realize that all the experts aren't necessarily right.

4:48And the majority isn't always right. It's like, just look at most people, most of the time, are wrong about most things. What would you say with all of this? We're scratching our own itch. We really need to figure out, okay, who are the people that we can be listening to that are aligning with our thoughts, that are actually showing us results? But of course, it also comes down to a certain sense of mindset and actually having that correct mindset, which you touched a little bit upon in the very first topic that we chatted about, which is, what do you believe about becoming successful that a lot of people disagree with?

5:19so what would in your experience this ideal mindset look like i think it comes down to recognizing again that that life is just a series of problems and i'm going to replace that word with opportunities for solutions so i always tell my team that whenever you come to me don't come to me with a problem you come to me with an opportunity for a solution which aka means they have to come to me with the solution i don't want them just to come to me with a problem saying hey here it is it's like it's like elon musk says right as ceo you get the worst problems because if it was easy everyone else would have solved it.

5:49But I think the thing is, is that it's, you have to know, and you have to recognize that the authority isn't always correct. And I still remember when I started making money in the clinics, finally, after, you know, busted my butt for, you know, years on end. And I looked down and my CPA says, or I said to my CPA, I said, so I owe, wait, I owe a quarter million dollars in taxes, but I only have$30 ,000 in the bank account. How, how does this work out when I'm working so hard and I think I'm being smart and it's just like, this doesn't make sense. And he kind of chuckled and said, Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I heard that.

6:27And I said, it was right then where I went to scratch my second itch and saying, well, I know that Amazon and a lot of other wealthy people don't pay taxes and they do it without having to move to Puerto Rico or, you know, go to, you know, set up foreign bank accounts, all these things. I said, so how do they do it? So I started researching and that was my, That's my second career. Probably for the last five or six years now, I've been helping business owners, entrepreneurs compliantly reduce and eliminate taxes, living right where they are without, you know, over funding IRAs or 401ks or whole life health insurance, but using simple, basic strategies that are available.

7:03But it's the mindset of understanding that, hey, success leaves clues. And if other people are doing this, there's got to be a way for me to do this. or the mindset of saying, rather than saying, oh, I can't do that because of X, Y, Z, given my situation, but rather it's, oh, how could I do that given my situation? So it's looking at it as a solution-based as opposed to a problem-based. So many things that I'm taking away here, Fire Nation. I'm taking notes religiously, so believe me, the show notes page is gonna be amazing here. But number one, look at problems. They are actually opportunities for solutions.

7:41Just had that mindset shift. Authority is not always correct. You need to understand that being true. And yes, success does leave clues. And Thaddeus, like when you're talking, it truly brings me back to 2015. When I had that exact same conversation with my CPA, I said, Josh, love you, brother, but you're telling me I've got to write a$250 ,000 a quarter for me, $250 ,000 a quarter check to the government. And I only have a couple hundred K in the bank. So it's like, I'm paying more taxes than money that I have. how is this even possible? Crazy, right? Crazy. It's insane. And so I said to him, just similar to you, I'm like, Hey, I want to find like a legal, like real way to diminish my taxes a little bit and make this.

8:22So, you know, I feel like I'm actually working for something like building wealth and being able to put some money away towards my future. And, you know, of course for me, you know, and just having a, at the time, girlfriend, now my fiance, Kate, we were living together with no kids and no responsibility saying, well, we actually can just pick up and go on a little adventure to Puerto Rico to see if that works out and pay 4 % tax and life is good there. And that ended up working out for us. It might not have, but it did. But like Thaddeus is saying, that's not an option for everybody because you may have a brick and mortar business.

8:49You may have really steep family ties and you want to stay around. Maybe you love where you live. That's awesome. You don't want to leave. You don't have to. And that's the point of this conversation. And you have to stick around to get more and more of this great content, Fire Nation because you, Thaddeus, have a phrase that I love, magic piggy bank. What the heck is a magic piggy bank? So a magic piggy bank is something that I stumbled across years ago and I didn't realize I was doing it. I probably did it for probably four or five years and then it's one of those things I looked back and someone said, Thaddeus, that's brilliant.

9:26How'd you come up with that? And I said, well, I don't know, it just kind of makes sense. And I think it's one of those things, right, you know, where you can kind of know where your unique ability is when other people say, holy crap, that's amazing. And you're sitting there thinking, oh, well, no, it's, yeah, it's, you know, it's like Steph Curry, right? He shoots amazing from half court and he's kind of like, oh, well, yeah, it's just what I do. And everyone's crazy about it, right? So I stumbled across this concept and it's kind of a boring old common concept that most people don't realize how to maximize.

10:00So in short, a magic piggy bank can be anything that you can put money into and it does its work and then magically is it comes out the other side and you have access to all your money again. And I use the word magic piggy bank because we all know that there's no such thing as magic. I mean, but here's the thing, like Darren Brown, right, the great illusionist, he's a master psychologist. If you want a video to watch or a Netflix show, watch The Push. It's crazy when you look at what he's able to do. But basically the premise of it, just as a little cliffhanger, is they say, can you get a stranger to kill an innocent person in 60 minutes if you stage things right?

10:46And it's crazy. They video everything. It's terrifying. Some of the people that you see, you're like, that person would never, ever push. And they do it. And the thing that I love about Darren Brown is when he's done with his show, is he shows all of his tricks. And so you're like, oh. And it's like the phrase, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And so I say magic piggy bank, but it's really just using the right strategy. So here, I'll give you one basic boring example. let's pretend that you that you're a farmer and let's and i'm gonna make a lot of assumptions here um and i'll tell you why these assumptions are important in a second let's say that you go buy a tractor and you're a farmer for a hundred thousand dollars well you buy that tractor and and now you get a right off that whole that tractor so now you just wrote that off and you just you just deducted a hundred thousand dollars from your taxes but now you're you're out a hundred thousand dollars so that okay that's great but you have a tractor the tractor can go produce value you on your farm and create revenue for you.

11:43Well, let's say that you, let's say that you found a, a bank or a lender that you could go and you could get a hundred percent loan on that tractor at 0 % interest. Well, would you do that? Well, I'm, I'm hoping that the answer was yes, because now you have a hundred thousand dollars back in your bank account. That's interest free. That is tax free money. Well, now let's say that you, now this is where it really gets magic. Uh, magical is that let's say that now you take the a hundred thousand dollars and you say, gosh, I have a really big farm, I'm going to go buy another tractor. So now you go buy another tractor for$100 ,000, write off another$100 ,000.

12:16And now you have two tractors creating double the value. And let's say the bank would then loan again. Well, let me ask, how many times would you do that if you could buy an asset that you could write off 100 % that would produce value for you and you could get that money back out of it? So at the end of the day, your net money in your bank account is the exact same and you have full access to that tax-free forever. And that's the magic piggy bank. And that's one of the things that I've stumbled across and created and refined, thankfully, to the CARES Act that came out last year and some of their even more recent relief bills.

12:55There's provisions in there that probably I've seen maybe one in 20 CPAs know about that you can set up essentially. Think of it like this. Essentially what you can do now if you're a business owner is you can set up a bank account that allows you to deduct. Here's the thing. It allows you to deduct your deposits on your taxes. I mean, Fire Nation, these are the type of things, again, that Thaddeus is bringing to the table. I mean, think about a one out of 20 CPAs potentially even know about this. I mean, this is why you can't trust just all authority when potentially less than 5 % of them actually even know what you need to know with these new provisions that are coming live for us every single day.

13:38And, you know, I love that phrase again, the magic piggy bank, you know, anything that you can put money into that does this work and comes out the other side, all yours. I mean, who wouldn't want to do this all day long? And that is, I definitely want you to wrap up this part of it right here before you move on to my next kind of question that I have for you, because we're going to talk about this in length at the end of the episode, which isn't for some time now, but I want to give just Fire Nation a little tease because we teased them at the very beginning of the episode about coming to Puerto Rico, about what you have going on, about how they're going to be able to learn some of these things like in person in a very intimate, amazing environment at an event that, by the way, Fire Nation, I'm going to because I need this content.

14:17Not to mention, I have the honor of being able to speak at it as well. So you'll get to see me speak on stage as well. But real quick, we're going to in depth that is about it later. But what is this event and how can Fire Nation find out more? This is our annual retreat in Puerto Rico. It's limited to 100 entrepreneurs. that are really committed to making more money, having more free time, maximizing their health so that they can make an impact with their family, with their team, and be more philanthropic. And I look at the entrepreneurial journey as different stages, right? When you first start out, you're hungry, you're hustling, you're working hard, you start making money.

14:51And if you're smart and you're able to avoid paying taxes, great. Then that just accelerates everything because then you just immediately get three to four months of your life back every single year. So, um, so what we're going to be talking about how you can reduce and eliminate your taxes, how you can create a self-managing self-multiplying company. So you have more freedom, um, how you can, uh, we're going to be talking about all things crypto. We're going to talk about, I'm going to share how I add a two to$3 million of real estate to my portfolio every single year without using any of my money and how you can do that as well.

15:25Um, what else are we, and we're gonna be talking about philanthropy and maybe even an option to hang out with myself and Richard Branson and a few other people as well. So we have a lot of fun things going on. Because of some of the hotel restrictions, we are limited to 100 people. But I'm looking forward to hanging out with you, JLD, and some of the other guest speakers that we have. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be great. And wherever you're at on your entrepreneurial path, I think like we said before, I'd love to give Fire Nation a handful of guest passes that we've reserved just for you and your audience.

15:55So if they're interested, we'd love to talk with them and have them fill out an application. Fire Nation, this event is thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. But listen, Thaddeus is my buddy. We're here in Puerto Rico. I'm coming to speak at the event. He is gifting me up to 10 passes, 10 guest passes for people that, you know, go through this application process and do qualify for this amazing event. So I definitely recommend you jumping on the application, theguardiansalliance.com slash guest. theguardiansalliance.com slash guest. And of course, we'll have this link in the show notes page as well.

16:33And we have a lot more coming up when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Artificial intelligence is at the top of everyone's newsfeed. So we all know there are plenty of business pros out there benefiting from AI. AI can help you save time, brainstorm ideas and tackle your to-do list. But knowing about it and putting it into practice are two different things. So what's the first step? If you find yourself spending hours each day on content creation, then meet HubSpot's new AI-powered campaign assistant, a totally free-to-use AI tool tailor-made for marketers and business builders who spend hours each day on content creation.

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17:43Every client, every decision, every detail, it's all up to you. But there comes a time when your potential for business growth depends on you letting go and hiring a team who can help. I know, easier said than done. but Belay actually does make it easy. Belay has helped thousands of business owners make the leap to scale their businesses with their simple, flexible staffing solutions. Belay's exceptional virtual assistants and accounting professionals can partner with you to help you grow your business and take control of your time. They have the nation's largest pool of US-based talent ready to work with you from anywhere and scale with you as you grow.

18:15And Belay is passionate about helping your business succeed so they're offering Fire Nation a free download of their Bulletproof Budget Template. This is the exact budget template that Belay used to grow from a small startup to one of Inc. 5000's fastest growing companies for nine straight years. Text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E, to 55123 to download the Bulletproof budget template and streamline your business with Belay today. So Thaddeus, we're back and we were talking before the break about the amazing opportunity that Fire Nation has to potentially be one of the 10 individuals who get to come down here as my guest, as JLD's guest Fire Nation.

18:52You're going to be part of my guest list to come down here for this amazing event limited to 100 people, the guardiansalliance.com slash guest. Looking forward to seeing a bunch of you down here. We're talking about the magic piggy bank right before the break. So let's kind of like wrap up that part of it and just answer the question, if this is available, why the heck isn't everybody doing this? One thing I want to go back in full transparency. So the guest passes are, they're 250 versus several thousand. So I just want to be clear that there is a small fee. And the reason is because if people don't pay something, they don't pay attention.

19:29And that makes sure is that when people, when we do give out the guest passes, people will show up, they have skin and game, and it just covers some of the food costs. But really, it's just to make sure people that we do give the guest passes to, do show up. Oh, I'm actually going to throw something else on top of this, Fire Nation. If you do show up, just because you came down to my island of Puerto Rico, and I love when people come down and do this, I am going to hand you a signed copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. I'm literally going to hand it to you, part of my audience, Fire Nation, on top of all of this.

19:56So besides the massive discount you're getting for your guest pass and just the awesome event itself, we're going to get to hang out for a minute. I'm going to sign the copy for you. It'll be a blast. So take it away, Thaddeus. It goes back to kind of my first itch that I was scratching with my mom, right? So look at it like this. 73 % of the population is overweight or obese. Life expectancy, and even before COVID and all that, life expectancy had dropped for the last two or three years in a row. So the problem is, is that again, most people are wrong about most things most of the time. And that includes authorities and experts.

20:29So why aren't everyone doing this? Well, because the vast majority of people don't, you know, they think average. And it's like that study, right? You know, it's like when they polled people, it's like 65 % of Americans think that they're above average. Well, statistically, that can't even be true. I think it's like 80 % of Americans think they're an above average driver, which is even more funny. Right, right. And that's the problem, is that when you look at something that's abstract, such as thinking, we tend, or driving, that you don't really necessarily get tested on. It's, we all, the Milgram studies, out of the 60s and 70s, Stanley Milgram found a great study.

21:09He found that people overestimate their abilities and underestimate other people. People tend to overestimate and say, and think of themselves as more philanthropic, more athletic, smarter than, so basically whatever trait it is, we tend to overthink or think that we are better than everybody else on, and it's just a default. So the, but however, we have to recognize that the default state of us and humans on any subject or topic is average or below average unless we put in attentional efforts into it. So I would say this, only one in 20 CPAs even has heard about this kind of concept of magic piggy banks.

21:49And when we teach it and we get more heady about it, it's called cash flow arbitrage, which you're not going to find on the internet because it's a term that we coined when we really magnified what magic piggy banks are and how it works. But it's the idea, again, that social proof is, like Robert Caldini says, is one of the main drivers of human influence and behavior. People look around, and if everyone else is overweight or obese, then that's going to happen. It's the, you know, you're the sum of the five people you most surround yourself with. And if you surround yourself with, with four people that are fit, healthy, uh, you know, are successful.

22:21Well, and if you're hanging out with them, well, guess who the fifth is going to be. Boom. And I think it's, it's that we're, we're in this, we're in this huge vat in the U S that, that is just surrounded with, and I don't mean this derogatory, but we're just surrounded with, um, mediocrity and, and, and we get stuck in the news and all these other things out there and that becomes that environment then shapes, molds us both physically and mentally. So when we see things that come up, we just dismiss it. And I'll ask, I'll ask, you know, the fire nation members, this, think about this. Have you ever heard wealthy people or Amazon or Jeff Bezos don't pay any taxes?

23:01Well, most people have, but then when I do my live webinars, I say, okay, well now how many of you, how many hours have you spent really researching how the wealthy and how Jeff Bezos avoided paying any taxes and he, and he didn't have to move to Puerto Rico. And usually then I just get on the, on the chat, I just get a stream of just zero, zero, zero. I had one person, you know, I said, how many, how many hours do you spend? And one person put, I put negative one. I said, what do you mean? She said, I actually put time and energy into trying to actively avoid learning about taxes because it makes my brain hurt so much.

23:31So, and that's, that's it, right? It's the mindset. Just like my mom was sick. If we had listened to all the experts. My mom probably wouldn't be here because she even said there was one time where it was so bad where she had almost lost her job. She was on full disability, couldn't use her arms, couldn't even do her hair anymore. She basically just sat in a rocking chair. And she said, you know, if there was a pill I could have taken to end it, I would have. Now, when I was 10 and I'm hearing my mom say that, like that was my first drive, my first passion was save my mom's life. And now, thankfully, as a result, we've helped tens of thousands of patients add 10 to 20 quality years to their life.