Puerto Rico Cruisin' and the Caribbean Dream with Daven Michaels

0:01Boom! Shake the room, 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 Product Boss. Today, we'll be breaking down Puerto Rico cruising and the Caribbean dream. To drop these value bombs, I have brought to Davin Michaels and to EO Fire Studios. Davin is a renowned entrepreneur. He's the founder of 123 Employee and Michaels Press. He's a world traveler, international speaker, New York Times bestselling author of 10 books. And today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about the tax benefits of this amazing island called Puerto Rico.

0:42We will talk about cruising, creating great, deep relationships. We'll talk about Davin's number one growth hack and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Davin and our sponsors. Online Marketing Made Easy podcast, hosted by Amy Porterfield, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with a focus on online business, including digital courses, list building content, and more. Online Marketing Made Easy breaks down big ideas and strategies into actionable step-by-step processes. A recent episode that will help you get more results with a whole lot less stress is on four ways to avoid burnout.

1:17Listen to Online Marketing Made Easy wherever you get your podcasts. Is now your time? Visit thrivetimeshow.com to see testimonials of how Clay Clark's business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 entrepreneurs to dramatically increase profitability. It's month-to-month and less money than an average minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today at thrivetimeshow.com. Davin, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What up, Fire Nation? It's Davin Michaels coming to you from Puerto Rico. JLD, thanks so much for having me.

1:54And I think that so many gurus out there say, hey, follow your passion, follow your passion. And I agree. I mean, it's all about following your passion. But if you're just getting started, I think sometimes you have to do what you can get passionate about. Because I've met so many people that are following their passions, and they're broke. And I will tell you, being broke will kill your passion real quick. So sometimes you have to do something that you're passionate about to get to the point where you can follow your passion. I have first seen experience in that, actually, because I did want to talk to cool entrepreneurs back in the days I was thinking about launching a podcast.

2:32I had no passion for podcasting. I had no passion for like actually the technological side of creating audio and all the things that went around for it. But guess what? As I started having the conversations, my passion for the platform blossomed as I got better at it, as it started generating revenue and as I started seeing the possibility. So what I always say is like, listen, find a real problem that you can create the number one solution to. And then you will be shocked that as you start to create that solution, the impact that you're having, how your passion can blossom from that very thing that you're taking.

3:10I agree with that. And it's interesting how passionate you can get once you start making some money. Doing what you're doing, right? It changes everything, doesn't it? Well, and then you move to Palmas del Mar, Puerto Rico and start keeping that money that you make, which is one of the things we'll be talking about here today. And not only is Davin actually in Puerto Rico Fire Nation, I can literally step out of my kitchen terrace and see where he and I are talking to and from today. It's just one of those cool things in the same community down here in the lovely Enchanted Island, a.k.a. Puerto Rico.

3:42And we're talking today about Puerto Rican cruising and the Caribbean dream, which we are both living right now. And you and I, Davin, we've been soaking up the Caribbean sun and these amazing Puerto Rico tax benefits for quite some time now. I mean, I'm over seven years now. I think you're over six or at least over five years. Yeah, five. Fill Fire Nation in on this opportunity. Absolutely. So if you are a U.S. citizen and you jump through the legal hoops and you make Puerto Rico your actual home, then we essentially pay almost no taxes. So we pay 4 % federal income tax. We pay 0 % cap gains, 0 % dividends.

4:24And it's a massive game changer for several reasons. So one, and JLD, you always say this, you work for the US government 4 % of the year and then 96 % of the year you work for yourself, as opposed to so many people that work 50 to 60 % of the year for the federal government and then the rest for themselves. So, yes, you save a lot more money, which allows you to amplify everything you're doing in your business, in your life. In addition to that, what a lot of people don't talk about is the deal flow because you're hanging out with happening people because if they're trying to avoid taxes, they've got something going on.

5:00And so the deal flow is magnificent. But also, I think just your state of mind living in a tropical paradise that has perfect weather almost every day, every day period, and is absolutely gorgeous is, you know, good for the psyche, right? It's good for the psyche. It's good for the soul. And I always like to say that, hey, Palmas Del Mar specifically in Puerto Rico in general, it really has this funnel because we all know about business funnels. But the people that we surround ourselves here in Puerto Rico are here because they've gone through their funnel of their own, whether they know it or not.

5:31Number one, they are financially successful because you don't move to an island for tax benefits unless you're making a lot of money and you can minimize those taxes. So they're financially successful. They're adventurous because they're coming to an island 1 ,200 miles off the coast of the mainland. So we are out in the Caribbean. We are out in the Atlantic Ocean. So we're not like, you know, right next to like, you know, neighbors in the homeland, so to speak. So we have that going for as well. And they're location independent. So they can really do cool things, which is actually something else we'll be talking about today.

6:02But I mean, you know, in the past, I've gone on a nine day Caribbean cruise with just 20 people that just picked up and did it like the week before because we can because we're location independent, because we're financially independent, and because we're adventurous. And then I just got back from a 23 day European river cruise with 16 amazing people from our community. I mean, it's just like insane, like what people you're surrounding yourself with like these life partners that you're creating because of these things. And I think that kind of does lead into the next thing I want to talk about, which is, you know, besides these tax benefits, which are massive.

6:34And, you know, as a little aside, like I love what you shared about the 4%, 96%. I actually love putting dates around it. Like when I was in San Diego, I would work for the government until June 15th of every year. Like I literally dated it out and then I'm like, okay, now I'm finally done. Now I can actually start keeping the money that I make. In Puerto Rico, it's January 17th. By January 17th, I'm done and I work for JLD for the rest of the year. So what am I doing now? I'm being incredibly more philanthropic. I'm investing much more money into my business. I'm obviously being able to make unbelievably sound and not so sound investments that have a chance to 100x or 0x, but at least it's either going to a black hole called the government, or it's going to a company that may explode.

7:20And like one thing that I also like to say is when I moved down here and I bought my house for$2 million in 17 months, I had paid, I'd saved more in taxes than my house costs. So if I just stayed in California for 17 months, I would have paid that exact dollar amount to the government. Instead, I owned a$2 million mansion on the Caribbean, which is now appreciated to well over$5 million. So think about what happens when you're able to do these type of things instead of essentially writing your soul away, at least half of it, every single paycheck to taxes. So besides the tax benefits, what are some other amazing aspects that you have found about Puerto Rico?

8:03I'm so glad that you mentioned that. And by the way, your house is absolutely stunning. It's such a great house. And the view ain't bad either. Stunning. But there's so many benefits to being here. It's awesome. But what so many people don't realize is there's all kinds of benefits living in Puerto Rico. So if you ask the average person from somewhere in the world, so many people still think that we don't have power since Hurricane Maria five years ago and that we're struggling and this and that. And, yes, of course, we are certainly not a first world territory, if you will. We're certainly not third world.

8:36We're kind of somewhere in the middle, like second world. but the government of Puerto Rico, which sometimes doesn't make the best decisions, also makes some pretty incredible decisions, right? And we have what we call acts. And JLD and I came out here on what's called Act 2022. It's more recently morphed into what's called Act 60. They kind of took all the acts and put them under this umbrella. So for us, there are some acts that help us in taxation. The one that we talked about that drops our income tax to 4%, federal income tax to 4%. But also, we have another act that allows us to not pay cap gains.

9:17But there's several other acts that are equally as cool. Like for example, let's say you buy a Tesla in the state, let's say you buy a car in the states, and you want to import it to Puerto Rico, you're going to pay a 30 % import tax, which is common. But if that car has a plug on it, like a Tesla, you pay no tax because this is an act that Puerto Rico enacted to make the island greener, which is super cool. Let's say you want to come here and shoot a movie or a television pilot. So my cousin Danny just shot a pilot for Amazon. She came to Puerto Rico to shoot it. They were actually, I believe they're mimicking, it was supposed to be Cuba, but they shot it in, And so it looks like Cuba.

10:00They shot it in Puerto Rico. She received a 40 % tax rebate. I mean, that's huge. Let's say that you're a real estate investor and you're into this opportunity zone thing. Well, guess what? Almost 100 % of our island is an opportunity zone. 98%, I believe. In addition to that, we have a hospitality tax incentive. So if you're building something that kind of resembles a hotel that's kind of a smaller boutique hotel or bigger, I believe it's seven or eight units. you can get a, I think it's a 40 % tax break over four years. And you could sell that tax credit for 97, 98, 99 cents on the dollar. And that's just some of the tax incentives.

10:44There's actually plenty of tax incentives and other incentives that I don't even know about. And in a few minutes, we're going to talk about kind of a way that we're all going to learn about that together. And I'm excited about that conversation because I'm going to be a part of it, Fire Nation. and we will dive into details when we get back from thanking our sponsors. If you're anything like me, then you're looking forward to a lot of outdoor time this summer. I'm talking about hitting the pool, going on epic hikes, and maybe even getting in a few pickleball matches. But in order to do all that, you and your team need to work smarter, not harder.

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13:42Your loved ones deserve a financial safety net. You deserve a smarter way to find and buy it. Visit policygenius.com or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com. Devon, we're back and I want to talk about cruising. I want to talk about masterminding. I want to talk about creating deep relationships. Go. Okay, great. Well, I think I'm going to give a little backstory here. So JLD, as you know, for the last decade, you know, you and I are both speakers. We speak all over the world. For the last decade, I've been speaking on a cruise called the Marketers Cruise.

14:19And it's all the top marketers throughout the world, about 450 of us. And we love doing it. My girlfriend, Liz, and I, we go, I love speaking on the cruise every year. I love going. But through the last decade, there were three sort of by products of that cruise. One is I made a ton of money from all those relationships. They were all marketers. Two, those people were from, it was a global audience. They were from all over the world. And so I made deals with these guys, like all types of joint venture and affiliate deals. And then they went back to their respective countries and spread the word of me, which made me a household name globally in my space.

14:57And then lastly, we ended up with some of our greatest friends on the planet. As a matter of fact, now there's almost no money for me to be made by going on the marketer's cruise because I'm doing business with everyone on the cruise already. But now we just go every year because our best friends are on the cruise. We know we wouldn't see each other if we didn't go. And that's how cool this sort of business slash cruising is. And so when we came to Puerto Rico five years after Maria, sorry, what am I saying? Five months after Maria, it was definitely not the right time to do a cruise. But as soon as I got here, I thought, gosh, I really want to do a cruise.

15:31So let's go back five years. So five years ago, I started a little cigar club here in Puerto Rico because I'm a big community builder. I love building community, as do you, John. You created our community here. And so I'm a big community builder, and I started a little cigar club. And just after Maria, we would get five or six people that would show up to our monthly little cigar club. Well, let's fast forward five years later, and we kind of broadened it out. We took out cigars for everybody now. And today, the San Juan Social Club has over 850 members. And we do curated events once a month at amazing locations across the island.

16:08And from day one, when I first got here to Puerto Rico, I thought, gosh, I want to have a cruise. And so sure enough, here we are five years later, two weeks ago, we announced the launch of the San Juan Social Club cruise. And it's a cruise for Puerto Rican residents and people that are interested in the amazing resources and opportunities that Puerto Rico has to offer that want to cruise, make friends, network, and learn about all of Puerto Rico's amazing resources. And so we made the announcement two weeks ago, and I'm so, so excited to announce that in just the last two weeks alone, we've had over 125 people register for the cruise, which I can't believe how into it people are.

16:48I'm so excited. We're cruising on Virgin, which is the hottest cruise land on the water. We're going to be on the Brilliant Lady, which is not even in the water yet. I think the first cruise is in December on that ship. So we'll have a brand new ship. and I can't wait. I'm just so excited. We have an amazing list of super high-level people, super high-level speakers, including yourself, JLD, and I'm so excited. I can't wait. I mean, when I say the definition of no-brainer, this is what I look at, Fire Nation, because this is going to be a cruise where you are literally going to be surrounded by amazing, game-changing human beings, entrepreneurs, people who are shaking and moving, and I've been on a lot of cruises recently, both business and just pure pleasure cruises and I can tell you one thing for sure, the relationships that you build in an environment like that is like a year's worth of just like meeting up at a conference and having like a conversation over a drink and then getting swept away somewhere else.

17:51It's like we were seeing these individuals for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, for talks, you know, for actual excursions, you know, at the poker table, you know, playing craps next to them. I mean, it was just this unbelievable environment, which is why when Davin was talking about this and said, hey, it's going to be on the Virgin. So there's going to be no kiddos. Nothing is against kiddos. But I mean, you know, this is an adult only cruise and we can really enjoy that aspect of it. And he said it's going to be focused around business, around networking, and of course, around some awesome possibilities around Puerto Rico for people that have questions about that.

18:23I said, brother, you know, I'm going to have like a six month old boy at that time. And I'm not going to want to spend a lot of time away from home. But this week is one of those weeks that I am. So let's get a little more detail. We got the April dates. Let's share that exactly. And a couple more cool things. Sure. So we set a sale April 13th of next year, 2024. We are on the water from the 13th to the 20th. We leave out of San Juan, Puerto Rico. So if you don't live in Puerto Rico, I highly suggest roll into town two or three days early or stay two or three days later. We plan to just be showing everybody all around Puerto Rico together.

19:03So that's going to be a blast. We're certainly going to do a bon voyage party the day before, I'm sure. So definitely come in early. And I just want to say a couple of things and sort of build on what you were saying, JLD. So, you know, now we live in the virtual age, right? Everybody wants to stay home. Everybody wants to be on zoom and it's so convenient so incredible i mean you can connect with everybody and see them and so on and so forth but now we're even having less and less in person but when i've always found that my best connections have always been the ones that i met in person at events because the deeper you can go with somebody you break bread with them you have some cocktails you get to know them you get to know their needs their wants their desires and you just get to know them personally you go deeper and you make more money the more you understand of person's needs, desires, problems, et cetera, the more money you're going to make.

19:52And you totally nailed it, John. When you spend a week with somebody and you create that bond and that friendship and you learn so much about that person, when you're hanging out with them at midnight, having some pizza after hitting the club or something like that, that is just absolutely where the gold is. And also, I just want to say, JLD, thank you so much, man, because when I shared this with you, you totally got this. And I want to tell you, I shared this with my team. I shared this with a lot of friends. I saw this in my head. Like I saw the whole thing unfolding. And I feel like you did too.

20:29A lot of people on my team did not. They really didn't catch my vision. But you've had the experience of this. I've had the experience of this. We've been through Puerto Rico together. So you get it. And I just want to thank you because the first night we announced it at one of the San Juan Social Club events. You know, I didn't know. And a lot of people didn't know. And some people were telling me, I don't get it. And I announced it. And you came, you showed up and just kind of ran around, told people, hey, I'm going to be there. You should come. And anyways, I just want to say, I really appreciate that support.

20:57It was very cool of you. Well, I received that, brother. Thank you for the kind words. And I do look back to actually 2014. You know, Kate and I made a very bold decision at that point where we were going to throw the Podcasters Paradise Cruise. So this is only two years into our business. We haven't even built this massive audience yet. And it was a risk, but we knew that it was just going to take everything to the next level. And it was really a risk, but we went ahead and did it. It immediately sold out. We were shocked. We're like, wow, like there was so much more desire than we had anticipated of people wanting to have these kind of intimate experiences.

21:32The speakers that we asked, I mean, we just went across the board. We're like, okay, here's our dream 20. Let's start with one through seven because we wanted seven speakers. and then we'll hopefully by 20 have like seven yeses. We didn't even get to speaker number eight. Everybody said yes. You know, Pat Flynn, Chris Ducker, Chris Brogan, Andrew Warner, Chase Reeves. I mean, the powerhouses in podcasting at that time and still some of them still to this day were just like, absolutely, like let's flip and go. And it was such a fun experience and kind of a cool side note. My parents and Kay's parents both went and at this point they were still kind of like, oh yeah, we know you've been doing this podcast thing for a couple of years.

22:09It sounds kind of weird because they are of the older generation. We didn't really get it. After that cruise, they were on there like, wow, we get it. We met the other individuals and podcasters, Paradise. They are so passionate about podcasting. We understand what's going on. They attended some of the sessions. It was really cool that we kind of used that experience as well to bring our family on board to what we were doing in this world. So there's going to be some things that come out of this Fire Nation that you're not even aware of. And to give you an additional side note, Dev, I don't even know if you know about this, but we did a podcast episode about a month and a half ago about this Montana Mastermind experience.

22:48It was very high level. It was$7 ,500 tickets. There was only 15 spots, so it was limited, but it was specifically for people that wanted this five-day backpacking journey in the Montana wilderness, um, with, and the individuals that run it are just unbelievable. Like they just do a couple of these every year, just a couple. So they're very exclusive. Uh, but it's like just this unbelievable, you learn how to fly fish, you learn how to bow hunt, you learn how to make fire celestial navigation. Like it's insane what you do during these five days, not to mention like really challenge yourself. Well, we did this episode and many of you that are listening, remember that episode, um, like a month and a half ago.

23:26And I was like, yeah, maybe like one or two people in Fire Nation can make it happen because it's a huge commitment financially and time-wise. It's in the mountains of Montana. It's eight miles of backpacking. And so it's physically arduous. And the next day, all the spots were gone. It was just like, boom. And I just got back from that, Devin. And I got to hang out with my listeners, with Fire Nation, and that kind of intimate experience. And I know a lot of them are listening right now who are on that Montana trip. And it's like, how amazing was it to spend five days just masterminding and learning some amazing life skills as well.

23:59You know, it was an insane experience. So if you're listening right now, Fire Nation, you're like, man, it'd be cool to go on a cruise. It'd be cool to like meet John in person and David in person and the other speakers in person. And then the other amazing attendees that we have, you know, that, that'd be cool. Well, check it out. Like, come check it out. You're going to get to hang out with us. It's going to be amazing presentations. You can write it off as a business expense because you will be talking and learning business and you're going to take away unbelievably valuable value bombs from this entire experience.

24:31Not to mention, I like to call these things lifetime experiences. And we only have so many of those. This will be a lifetime experience. So Davin, if Fire Nation is drooling right now, which I know some of them are, what are the next steps? Yep. So we make it really easy. You can simply go to SanJuanSocialCruise.com. That's SanJuanSocialCruise.com. And for a limited time, it's a$300 deposit that gets you on your way. And then we'll just take the money the rest of the year until December, until you're paid off. You can see all the options when you go there. We have some great, great bonuses when you kind of jump on this week.