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

22:50I've done it twice or three times. The company that I did it on was Playboy. I had read their annual report. You can't just call their magazine their annual report, dude. That's called their monthly calendar. Yeah. Actually, their annual report. They have a lot of photos. Oh, Jenny McCarthy picture holding up the balance sheet. That's nice. I did that because I was like, oh, well, 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 lost on that one. Also did Coinbase at the IPO. And then I sold it two weeks before it popped like three months ago or whatever, whenever it was.

23:41So I've done two. 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. That's correct. And with Airbnb. Yeah, correct. The two biggest holdings in your portfolio. Correct. So you do it too. We all do it. No, those aren't my two biggest holdings. My index funds are significantly larger. But yeah, I have done it. So I've done it as well. So I'm like you, Ankur. I have my fun money thing. It's just that I happen to have a fun money stash that's 80 % instead of 20%. Yeah. I mean, look, at the end of the day, as long as we realize what we're doing, it's fine, right?

24:17I 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 realize. Was there a day where you're like, ah, huh, that's not the way. It was many. 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.

24:52Cool, down half a million dollars today. Cool. And just that happening repeatedly while the S &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 an index fund. Otherwise, I had no exposure. Sean, let me, and Ankur, 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.

25:26And 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 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 rebates you know what it is nowadays? Is it the same? Something like that depends on the card itself but yeah Oh, 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.

26:14Did you know you could actually pay your taxes at a credit card? And for some people, you could actually arbitrage that where, again, this is insane. I would never do it, but 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. 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 him what he was going to do. And so I don't remember what the bill is, but let's say$20 or$30 million of a tax bill.

26:46He paid that on his Amex and he goes, I just got a couple of decades worth of flights. That's hilarious. But that's the other thing with credit card points is once you learn how to use them for travel, the cashback feels less good. Like, yes, the cashback has a theoretical value, but there's so much more valuable applied to travel once you kind of learn how the game works. What's the smart way to do it? 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. I do that. Yeah, so what you want to do instead is create an account with an airline.

27:21Like 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. No way, 70 %? Yeah, I've tested this a lot. Because what these airlines do... It says transfer. There's a tiny link that says transfer partners. And that's where you send your points. You never spend it in the thing. That's going to save you so many points. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on flights over the past 10 years through my chaser for a card.

27:56I found this out two years ago. What? It was life-changing. Yeah, absolutely. What? You got hosed, bro. It's so bad to do it. Wait, you knew that, Sean? Yeah. I paid for this guy, Moe Points. he's like this guy who'll call you who'll teach you about credit card points uh 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 300 bucks to do this call that's kind of a lot of course i mean that is like the savings and just understanding how to book the flights better because he's like this is luxury travel you you want to travel first class all around the world Here's what you need to do.

28:34And for me, I have an e-com business. We're spending millions a year in ads. So he's like, you need this Amex gold because it gives you 4X on every Facebook point that you, every dollar you spend on Facebook, Google. And so you're getting 4X multipliers. 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. Yeah. I think just transferring out is the 80-20. If you want to tell someone in one sentence how to do better, transfer your points out. Do you have any more of those little tricks?

29:08What else you got in your head? Come on, magician, pull something else out. That's pretty awesome. What's Solo 401k? So that's the one that you have on here that I don't know anything about. What is a Solo 401k? So Solo 401k, this is the first product we built. And I had an LLC for a while. I was earning 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 a really cool thing. 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.

29:46But 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 billion dollar Roth IRA, traditionally with the Roth IRA, you can only put in$7 ,000. Can you tell the Peter Thiel story real quick? How did he use a Roth IRA to make billions? 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.

30:21And then he had$27 million to just make all kinds of investments. He allegedly bought his Facebook shares, 10 % of Facebook from his Roth IRA. So he's going to turn 59 and a half in a year, and he's going to have$5 billion tax-free, which is pretty wild. The wildest part about what you just said is that Peter Thiel only made$27 million selling PayPal. Yeah. I didn't realize that me and Peter Thiel are sort of apples and apples, I guess. Right, Sam? The hustle and PayPal netted the founders very similar amounts of money. That's kind of amazing. Well, what we don't know is if Peter Thiel had other shares not on his Roth IRA, which is quite possible, actually.

31:05Ah, damn. News too good to be true. Let's just take a deal. Probably not. He's going to have to show that to me for me to change my opinion. Yeah, I'm not going to let facts get in the way of me beating Peter Thiel. What about, can a person have more than one 401k? 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 a list of very specific assets. With a solo 401k, you can invest it however you want.

31:39If you need liquidity, you can 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. Isn't the normal 401k kind of a racket? like the thing where they're like, you can only buy these funds using our 401k? Is that because they get a lot of them have fees? No, it comes from the 401k provider. The long answer is corporate 401k plans are subject to ERISA laws like Employment, Retirement, Investment, something act. And those acts are just there to protect employees. But as a result, employers can't do things that help them.

32:14Like 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. So the solo 401k, you could put that in, could you put it in real estate? Could you put it in anything? Absolutely. 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.

32:43Gotcha. Okay. That's not self-dealing for him, is it? That's just a major angel investment. 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. Oh, I was thinking he shouldn't say too much. He, you know, we might, 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. Yeah, I mean, look, so people, because no, 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%.

33:15I wouldn't, because again, like the thing with the IRS is a lot of these things are not clear rules. They're 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.

33:49around the world. And the old way with our more traditional bank that shall now be named, I try it online. It would say no. It would freeze my account. Then I'd have to go in, book an appointment, speak to a specialist who would try to upsell me on something I didn't need. And then finally, after 30 minutes there, then they charge me 50 bucks for the pleasure of that terrible interaction. And now with Mercury, I just go online, push two buttons, and I'm done. It's such a seamless experience. It's very intuitive. Everything's under one place. They basically took all the things any company would need for their financial tech.

34:17And they made it super easy to use to put it into one platform. So highly, highly recommend it. If you're not using Mercury, I question your judgment. So that's it. You've heard it on My First Million. For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details. So like the problem that I have with 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.

34:53That's the real New Year's resolution, to be honest. It's the three weeks after tax, after you file your taxes is the real New Year's resolution. 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. But who do you have? Like, do you hire like a tax strategist who is like more offensive? And do they work in tandem with your CPA? What do you do? So for me personally, once I've gone down this rabbit hole, we're doing this internally.

35:27We have a program where we help people with the tax strategy part. We don't do tax filings. I'm basically using our own services. But yeah, there's a big part that's tax strategy that is not the person signing off your tax return. Should they be separate? the way the world is written today, the laws and stuff, it is because the person filing your taxes typically doesn't do that much strategy. It's sort of just why, even if, let's say, you want to set up a trust, you need an estate attorney who's different from your financial advisor, who's different from your accountant. And to the average person, you're like, why?

35:56Why can't one person do this? And those are the kinds of things worth thinking a lot about. 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. So I was so stressed out last tax season that I was like, okay, how am I going to do things differently this year? So I was like, I'm going to treat this like 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.

36:31Go 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. Here's a flow chart. Here's my prior year's returns. 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 on the phone call, I tell them exactly what I want. Because for some reason, I would go to these tax people. And I think it's an 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.

37:03and then I'm like, I splashed water on my face. I'm like, whoa, I don't know. I'm paying you. Hold on. This is backwards. You worked for me. I forgot. Why am I pretending like 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. 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 returns for all of these. You know, I got 12 entities, all 12 entities. And I need you to do strategy. And I need you to be coming to me every quarter with proactive suggestions about what I should be doing.

37:42That'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 has enough income and business value where that makes sense to do. Which I don't know what that number is. It's 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.

38:13And 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, they 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 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 the more you know, the more you'll push them and the better the things you'll achieve. 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 we talk twice a week on this podcast that's the second thing in months that was good well a lot of the stuff you say I'm either already doing that or I don't want to do that or I'm not sure if you're right or that's only okay but that data room thing is actually a really wise way to look at it the other thing that you said It was it hit me.

39:09I was like, that's brilliant. And it was when you were selling when you're 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, 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.

39:43So I'm selling a piece of property now. And that's what I told my... I just right after the pod, I went and called it right away. I go, hey, how about this? Yeah, I didn't do 30%. That's crazy. But I did more. I did more than the 6%. So you messed that one up a little bit, but that's okay. Well, but the thing is, is like even... I don't remember what you said. an additional dollar, right? Each additional dollar past that is like... Yeah, you said like 10%. I think you even said like you'd buy this person a burka bag. You said something like crazy. 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 won this listing, okay, there has to be some incentive or disincentive if you don't live up to your word.

40:22What real estate agents do is on the way in, they're like... They woo you. Oh, we're going to... This will be great. I've done such similar sales. I think we can get you... 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 they're just negging 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 getting 3 % on 2 million bucks.

40:51They don't really care 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 negging. so up front when I said when he's promising me the world I said alright cool but if you don't do it you gotta buy my wife this bag and he was laughing and I was like I let it sit there for a second and he's like oh you're for real and I was like yeah he's like okay deal and then literally when 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 last comment so I appreciate it the reason why it broke my frame was because these are like A realtor is like, you think like, well, for some reason you think this is just the law or like there is no negotiating.

41:35Like this is how it's always been done. And I must do it this way. And when I was thinking about it, I was like, no, the way that he actually said is 100 % better. I didn't realize that I could like question them. 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 important with helping create it with opportunity. the opportunity zones in real estate. Yep. And I remember reading about opportunity zones and I'd be like, oh, Sean Parker created it.

42:04I'm like, wait, what? And I guess the story is that he was young. He was still in his 20s. 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 love stories like that. And it was a wild story. Let's do a couple more before we finish. So you said owning real estate with your business. What's this one? Yeah, so another great example, right? So Sam said, okay, what if I have a million dollars in business profits?

42:39Like 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, they 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 buy a vehicle attached to your business. You have the whole insanity where you can actually depreciate more of the purchase price if your car weighs over 6 ,000 pounds, which is insane.

43:18And why you have the whole G-Wagon tax write-off meme. But yeah, owning real estate with your businesses is massive. That's like the classic immigrant story, which is like a mom and pop came here from Vietnam and then they eventually bought their corner store building and then the building becomes worth significantly more than the corner store. And then they bought their G-Wagon. And the G-Wagon. Again, 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.

43:55It 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. 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.

44:29What are the four things that actually matter when it comes to happiness? Yeah, I mean, look, after I sold my company, I spent two years traveling, chilling. I was like, wow, we spent all our lives waiting to retire. What if I just lived a retired life now? And a lot of it was like, okay, fine. What are my happiness triggers? And I found for me, it 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 didn't believe me when I told him I walk 20 ,000 steps a day I had to produce receipts doing work that's an insane amount that is an insane amount three and a half years it's just it's just what keeps me it keeps me going my trailing 90 days because we had the baby was 3 ,100 steps a day yeah to me that's misery like I just need to I need to be in motion what do you do to get those 20 ,000 steps?

45:18Did you replace meetings with walking meetings or something? What did you do in your habits? Walking meetings, phone calls, a big part of my routine, playing sports every day. Though again, it's winter here and that's why I hate winter because now I'm not getting my outdoor time and my walking has come down a lot. But yeah, so happiness triggers, movement, being able to spend time outdoors, having a higher purpose. For me, that's work with meaning but for other people, it's religion. and 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 that's all it takes for at least me to just be very, very happy.

45:58Are you dating anyone? Not right now. You probably crush it though in that department, right? Yeah, look, I mean, again, I enjoy being single, but at the same time, look, I'm 34 years old and the parental pressure is ramping up. We'll see how it goes. You're like, I can defeat the IRS, but not the parental pressure. yeah how old were you sam when you when you and sarah got together she was 22 and i was 25 oh damn you're young it didn't feel that way because i went pretty crazy between like 19 and 24 like i i i did some fun things 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 yeah that's true yeah 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.

46:45I had like$50 ,000 in my bank account. But I was like 23 riding my motorcycle cross country, telling people I just sold my company on Tinder. Was this apartment list or whatever? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was two apartment lists. 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. But yeah, we've been together for a while. It's honestly awesome. I don't even like talking about this because I remember when we got married, we had to go and talk to a priest because we got married in a Catholic church.

47:18And I was telling the priest, I was like, yeah, we're a good partnership. We talk about business and stuff all the time. He's like, well, what about love? And so I don't even like mentioning this, but basically dating someone who is smart and you eventually want to marry, it actually makes you more money. That's not the most important thing. But I think what I've learned is having a good relationship, I think, actually was the greatest financial decision I made. I mean, you're probably less distracted, right? People in relationships are eventually more stable, I think. I remember when I was selling my business, I was negotiating with the dude who runs General Atlantic, big private equity fund.

47:58And he's like an old school guy. He's like, are you married? I was like, no. Kids? No. He's like, I don't like that. I can't trust single people. you have nothing to lose 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 you'd be more nervous more scared of stuff you're like for 250 million dollars I can get a 30 day fiance right now sir what do you need yeah yeah so Sean when your wife goes out of town are you like me where you're like what the hell am I supposed to do like what do I do what do I do it's three hours of heaven but anything beyond three hours I'm like oh this is boring like this sucks like it's so quiet in here I started walking around in circles like my dog or something.

48:38I don't know what to do. I want to talk about one more thing. We have a large Indian listenership. You're welcome. Yeah. Thank you, Sean. I feel like everyone in my life 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 the stereotype of us not having a lot of muscle. In reality, it's just because we eat like shit. What did you say? 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?

49:13So we have the same exact like upbringing, whatever. Is anywhere between 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 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 cultural deniability where Indian people get really mad when you tell them that. Even now, if you try tweeting out the Indian diet is traditionally unhealthy or something, you'll get all these people in India getting super, super angry about it.

49:53But ask anyone who's ever, I don't know, do you ever count Macro Sam or Sean? Yeah, I use MyFitnessPal every day for like the past four years. Okay, cool. So there's not one person who's ever counted macros who will fight the Indian diet as healthy. Like not one. It's impossible. It is actually impossible if you track it to see it. 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 just attacking me, my family, and everything I stood for because I'm not being a proud Indian or whatever.

50:39That's hilarious, man. I went to an Indian grocer. Sam, you probably don't know this. There's actually just Indian grocery shops. We have our own separate secret shop. Yeah, I go to them. Okay, so most people 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 and I was literally 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 and no protein right it's like fried and there's 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 do this shit, man.

51:27This 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 you're the only skew in the store that is not like deep fried, terrible everything or like, you know, just canned globjaman 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. If your inputs are all terrible, then the outputs are also going to be terrible. Why? They just don't care? Is it not part of the culture?

52:01Protein is just not really deeply embedded in Indian food. It is in small parts, but it's just not really a big deal. And it's compounded when you live in America. Well, I think about it this way, right? I joked about this, but I think the spelling bee is the only time I see Indian people on ESPN. Obviously an exaggeration. That's the ultimate burn, dude. That's so good. Yeah. I mean, look, as an Asian person, I can say it. I don't think you can say it, Sam, you'd get canceled. But yeah, it's really not good. What I think is optimistically, my generation, we're seeing people being aware of this.

52:36We'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 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. 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.

53:05It's just all creamy. And it tastes so good going in, but it does not feel wonderful. 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'll 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 yeah 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 you know lentils basically it's like yeah but has like you know the macros on dollar like 20 grams of protein 35 grams of of carbs and then you add butter ghee and like oil to the thing to make it taste good.

53:50It's like, well, that's not really going to help then. And dal 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 dal. That's a great example. And yeah, like Indian people will, like the Indian Express actually ran an article being like, yep, we thought dal had a lot of protein too. Like the awareness is increasing now, but it's pretty slow. I went to a, what's it called? Is it a holly or holy? A holy celebration. And it was a naan with ghee. is a ghee so like that uh clear clear butter and then uh tons of uh buttered buttered chicken but instead of chicken it was cheese oh god and then it was like and then it was like the dessert was fried dough in maple syrup what do you guys call that but it's delicious by the way it's delicious like don't yeah it's yeah yeah it's good for you because it made me smile and smiling it's good for you, but it didn't feel great two hours later.

54:44Yeah. And here's what's changing, though, is now Indian people are really wealthy. There's 4 million Indian people that have an average income of$100 ,000, the wealthiest ethnic group. So I do think things will change. 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. 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's going to be a sex icon. If you just pay$10 on Fiverr, you can get that.

55:15Anybody can get that for you. Go pay on Fiverr, you can get people saying, how good you look on YouTube. Everyone's commenting on Sean's looks. Except for, either they'll make fun of his outfit because he wears a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, or they'll be like, Sean, your workout program, it's working so well. People are just sucking up to him so much. well yep thank you and uh where should people find you where how do they go and use your product that helps them with taxes yeah absolutely we're called carry we're at carrymoney.com and if anyone wants to set up a solo 401k or just get better at what they pay in taxes check us out appreciate you thank you thanks for coming man sweet man this was fun i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to I put my all in it like no days off On the road, let's travel, never looking back All right, this episode is brought to you by Mercury.

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