Building Wealth, Adapting to Change & Mastering the Future | Chris Rivera

What I can't stand is in the media when the media is trying to persuade people to have certain opinions. And one of the things they say is Trump doesn't pay taxes. Yeah, like to me, that's one of the stupidest things in the world.

I think Trump will be really great for US entrepreneurs. The founder of eCommerce Accountants in 2019, which specializes in tax, accounting, and business structuring for eCommerce companies, including digital marketers, dropshippers, Amazon automation, Amazon FBA, internet coaches. He works with some of the most high-profile and influential individuals and businesses in the e-commerce space. Chris Rivera. I always tell entrepreneurs, I always encourage them to educate yourself. Like, you're never going to be a tax expert or an accounting professional, but you got to kind of need to know enough to make you deadly. What I tell clients all the time is if you're a US citizen, you're kind of screwed.

The media loves to just like attach and assume and then just spread.

And then people blindly follow. I mean, it's kind of sad to see.

But if you can work without the stress, the lack, the scarcity, the fear, then work becomes passion and mission. What's up, Zen Hard listeners? This episode is sponsored by Zendrop. Zendrop has a very special place in my heart, not only because I started the company, but because dropshipping is really a life-changing business for me. You see, I tried tons of things when I first got started, and what I love about dropshipping is that there's always an opportunity to sell a new product to a new person. There's billions of people and millions of products you can sell, and you never need to touch inventory. All you need to do is pick a product, run ads to it, and if people buy it, you make a profit. So if you're interested in getting started in your e-commerce journey, check out Zendrop.com and get started today. What's up guys, welcome to the Zen Hard Podcast. On this episode, I'm interviewing a good friend of mine, Chris Rivera. We've worked together a long time. We actually went to college together and the journeys have been incredible. Uh, Chris is the founder of the E-Commerce Accountants and don't worry, we don't just talk about accounting the whole time. That might be boring. We talk about a lot more fun things. With some accounting and tax strategies intertwined. Stay tuned though, we talk about AI, cryptocurrency, and a lot of fun things. I hope you enjoy. Yeah, so we have a very unique relationship. SUNY Albany. Yeah, you went into the corporate world, we started working together for— how many years did we work together?

Depends when you start accounting. I mean, I started my accounting firm and you were one of my first clients when it was like a very, very small side hustle, um, and I was helping you with bookkeeping stuff on your first online store. I think it was the, uh, you were selling rafts or something.

Oh, the inflatable loungers.

Yes, people call them rafts.

Yeah, they're not rafts.

And you had a partner, Jack, or— Jack McCall.

Great guy, fantastic partner. Yeah, it was great content, very cool, knew all the influencers. That was fun. So you had You actually— but you were working in one of the Big Four accounting firms at the time.

Yes. So I was just trying to figure out my path. I was in corporate America and wanted to start a business and started moonlighting, doing bookkeeping and tax returns and just trying to find my own path. And yeah, so I was— I was working a lot with the same business entity that you have now.

Or did you start it like a new entity?

No, same, same business. Really? Yeah.

So from back before the Ecom Hacks days and Zendrop days, you had the same business all the way through.

Yeah, I mean, it changed at one point in time, actually heavily influenced by you. We were just general back in the day when I first started. It was, you know, if you were a lawyer, a doctor, police officer, an entrepreneur, you name it, and you had a tax return, I'll do it, you know. So I was doing all kinds of work, and actually you were my first e-com client. And, um, we— I started looking into what you were doing because you were doing really great in the beginning, and I was like, wow, should I be an e-commerce entrepreneur? Should I do this? And that's when I discovered that you know, there's really no accounting firms in that space at that time. Now there's a bunch, but yeah, yeah, that's around when I got started.

What was it like working in Big Four accounting?

Um, a lot of hours. You learn a ton. There's a great camaraderie because you're working a lot of hours. You're working around a lot of smart people. You know, those firms, they recruit, you know, some of the smartest accounting minds at whatever colleges they, they recruit at. Um, I really don't have a lot of bad things to say, even though I worked a ton and I had a lot of stress there.

Yeah.

Um, but yeah, it's kind of like having Harvard on your resume in the accounting world, you know. That's— it's really cool to have. So the experience was great. I learned a ton. Um, have some really great relationships that stem from that. And, uh, yeah, overall it was really great.

So do you think it's like a certain type of person that can do accounting? Because like, I remember when I my accounting course in college, like, I, I literally couldn't stay awake. Like, it was like so hard for me to focus. I couldn't imagine doing that type of work for like 8 hours a day. Yeah, there's a certain personality type or brain type, or—

for sure. I, I always tell people there's two different types of accountants. First of all, you have to like accounting, and you have to be pretty decent at math to be a good accountant, right? So that's like a prerequisite to it. Um, but once you go down that path, it's it kind of shoots into two directions. There are people that are, you know, good with people, good with relationships, networking, et cetera, and still have that skillset of being good at math and that kind of stuff, and your mind thinks in that accounting sense. And then the other subgroup of people is it attracts kind of a strange, you know, bookworm type of person. You know, I've met people back when I was at Ernst Young that could like, literally recite the code from memory, like freakishly good memory, or like ridiculously smart. And, um, a lot— oftentimes those people had stranger personality types.

So yeah, um, yeah, hard to start a business when you're that type of person.

Yes, I agree.

So having both of those skills is probably great for starting some kind of firm.

Yeah, I, I typically— the firm owners are more that other category, the people you know, good with people type of people.

So you were at Ernst Young for what, 2 years?

No, I was there for, from 2011 through 2018. So 7 years.

Oh, 7 years. Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow. I don't have the memory like you do. I do remember flying out to New York though to sit down with you and recruit you for the big vision.

Yeah. Zendrop. Yeah. So it's a really great story. Uh, At that time, I was actually quitting my job. I don't know if you remember. Um, and that was the whole reason you said, perfect timing. You know, you helped me out with bookkeeping for this other project that you were working on at the time. And I really want to bring you on to be the CFO for this, you know, big vision I have. And in my mind, I'm like, is he crazy? I'm not quitting my job to get another job. And you said, no, no, no, you have to understand. I'm going to fly up and see you. Oh yeah. So you came up like the next day or something like that. And we had dinner in New York and you convinced me over that dinner to take a shot. And the one thing you told me was the only catch I have is you have to move to Florida because everyone's going to be in Florida.

Yeah.

So I was like, wait, so I'm going to quit my job, have a work for a cool new startup, and it's going to be sunny every day and I can wear shorts to work like I'm in. Oh, and no state income taxes too.

That's better.

Yeah.

You know, it's hard to get really talented people to join something when it's new and when you're a new entrepreneur. I put a lot of energy into trying to figure out how to bring you into the organization, like flying out, dining. Like, as the company— as companies grow and your reputation grows, more people want to get involved. In the beginning, it's really hard. Takes a lot of grunt work.

Yeah, 100%.

Have you had any of those types of, you know, situations bringing people into your firm?

Not so much. Um, it's a little bit different because I own an accounting firm, so I'm kind of working with accountants to convince them to join my vision within an accounting firm, which is a background they already have. Um, you got to understand that with accountants, a lot of them are very risk-averse. So I don't think I ever told you this, but when I quit my job at EY to go work for Zendrop, right? I remember people thinking I was crazy because the traditional career path is like you went to school, you got into this major accounting firm, and then now you're quitting to go work for a startup company that's not even funded yet. The, the quintessential path or the more ordinary path for those type of people are you go and work for like a HesCorp or Barnes Noble or Squarespace, which those are my clients, you know, then some of those companies offer me jobs.

Yeah.

You know, so that's a more traditional path for someone at Big Four. For me, I was definitely deviating from that in a big way. So I had to deal with, you know, people that I've been working with for years that, you know, I really built up a lot of trust with them and them not really trusting my decision and thinking it was a good one, but it all turned out great.

Yeah, one thing I really respect is like when we were having that conversation, you were negotiating things that I was just like, who cares about, right? Like, you were thinking about things in the future that, like, someone who's risk-averse would think about. And you secured some things that ended up paying off for you big time. Like, when we sold the company, you ended up doing really well because of things you negotiated years before. So are you always, like, thinking far ahead in the decisions you make? And is that kind of how you operate?

100%. Yeah. Um, in that situation, for sure, I wanted to make sure that even if things didn't work out, I still had something in my back pocket that could turn into something someday. Um, but I really did trust your vision from the beginning. Um, I, you know, I knew you since we were in college and back when you were promoting boat parties and foam festivals, and I knew you were very talented, so I knew that it was a good opportunity for me to get in super early. Whereas if I went to go work for a startup company that was already funded, already had their leadership team in place, already had, you know, you're kind of late and you, you're, you know, a lot of that pizza pie is already cut up and, and spread out amongst a lot of people. So, um, part of me was like, this is a good opportunity to get into something early. And it's somebody I know that's talented. I mean, it kind of makes sense.

Did you invest in that boat party I did?

No, but I remember it very well. I don't know how well you remember.

I got scammed.

Yes, I— well, one of the first things you ever said to me when we met each other was like, oh, hey, bro, I'm throwing a boat party. You want to invest in it? And it was like, I just met this guy. There's no way I'm investing. But, but something that shows your character. We share a friend, Kyle. He's like my brother, my best friend still to this day. And, um, he did invest and it turned out to be a scam. And I remember that, um, you felt really bad about it. There were other investors and you hustled your way to make money in college and you paid everybody, everyone back. Yeah.

Yeah. For anyone listening, I, we were, we were in college and, you know, we were kind of at a partner and we're like throwing events and, and someone approached us about a boat party and he's like, yeah, You know, if you invest $5,000, you'll make back— I think it was like 10 or 15. And I raised, you know, I'm in college, I don't have any money. I was like $200 a week maybe, or $200. I don't even remember to like live on. It was like almost nothing. And I raised money from my friends that had like a couple thousand dollars and we put together the 5 grand. And then when I flew out, it was supposed to be in Miami on Memorial Day.

Yeah.

And I flew out to go to the boat party. And the guy who was throwing it wasn't answering my calls. And then I'm like, I call the marina where the boat is and the guy's like, yeah, we don't, we don't have that boat here. And I'm like, yeah, I found out I got completely scammed. The guy stopped answering me.

Yeah.

And now I owed people money and I had to fricking hustle my way to paying them back. Funny enough though, the guy who scammed me has continued to try to be my friend to this day. Maybe he's listening to this. Is what it is. He did pay me back in a different way. It was a couple years later when I lived in Miami. He gave me a penthouse for a year. Oh, so it worked out in the end. Yeah, but quite stressful in the beginning for sure. Was your first impression of me like, this dude's crazy?

Uh, I probably had like $3,000 or $4,000 in my bank account in total, like that I was saving up. Oh yeah, when you're 19 years old, it's like I work so hard for this money and I need to protect it, you know, by any means necessary. And I remember you were asking me like, oh, we're raising thousands of dollars, like how much you want to invest? In my mind I was like, I don't even know you, I'm not going to invest anything.

Yeah, you were kind of like in a different crowd in college.

Yeah, for sure.

Similar friend groups though.

Yeah.

So, um, what is like if you did stay your path with Big Four accounting and let's say Like, what is like the dream for people that go down that path? Like, what's the best case scenario if they stick that path?

Yeah. So it kind of goes off into two categories. If you stay at a, like in the accounting firm world, you stay at like a PwC or Ernst Young or something, one of the Big Four. If you can make partner, those people make a lot of money. I remember the day—

it was a lot of money.

Yeah. So the day I was leaving back then, I left in 2018. One of the top guys in New York called me into his office and he was trying to convince me to stay. And he showed me a sheet. He's like, I just want to let you know, if you decide to stay, this is your potential for lifetime earnings for being a partner. And it was like the average partner makes $800K a year. And if you're a partner for 20 years, like it turns into a number, it's pretty substantial. And now with inflation and everything, I'm sure the numbers are even better. So for a lot of people that go that route, that's appealing. Um, you can jump over to a company, they call it going private. You could go work for like a corporation, like a, like a Squarespace as an example.

Right.

And you could work your way up to being VP of tax or VP of accounting or something, or, um, not as traditional, but some accountants work their way up to that CFO role. Um, so that's an option too.

So in corporate America, and it's pretty funny, I don't know if you know, 2 weeks ago I interviewed the ex-CEO of 7-Eleven and he was the CEO of Blockbuster when they went under. Okay. Jim Keyes.

Okay.

We're actually releasing the podcast today. Great conversation. But it was fascinating to me that he was able to become the CEO of a company that has hundreds of thousands of employees. It's like, in my mind, you have better odds of starting a, you know, $100 million company than working your way all the way up the ranks. Like, how would one work their way up the ranks of an accounting firm?

Yeah, so in the beginning, it's definitely seniority and time spent. So when you, you start off as a staff, you do 2 years, then you become a senior, and that's pretty much given to you. And then you make manager. For that, you have to be licensed. And then from there, it's really, you have to earn your way up. So you can make it to senior manager, but then you kind of have to present the fact that you have to make your business case for why you should be a partner. You have to be able to prove that you can get your work done correctly and keep your clients happy, but also network your way into getting more business.

But there's a lot of partners, right? Yeah. But I'm saying like, how do you become like on the C-suite of a firm like that?

Oh yeah. That would, it would take a very long time. Um, and it's, you know, I was in New York, so it's like, uh, you know, there's a lot of corporate sharks. So you got to really claw your way up to the top for an accounting firm like that to make your way up to CEO. It takes a long time, a long time.

And like unbelievably low odds. I feel like even if you're incredible, it's like you have to know the right people. Politics get involved.

100%.

That's why I was so fascinated when I interviewed Jim. That he worked his way up in the 7-Eleven organization up to CEO. It's like, yeah, just mind-blowing. It's like winning the lottery. Yeah. In a sense.

And I feel like with a lot of those companies, they're not founder CEOs. Like they're even companies that are newly public. A lot of times the, the founders get taken out and they get replaced with an experienced CEO. And I always wondered why that was the case. But you're 100% right. I mean, it's if you work your way up in a more in an older company, Um, you know, it's— it takes a while to claw your way to the top.

Yeah. So, so when it comes to taxes, and you know, a lot of people listening are entrepreneurs, and everyone's always looking for like the secret sauce. I remember when I first started making money, I'm like, I don't want to pay any of it to the government. I'm looking for all these secret sauce tricks. And eventually I conceded to like, you kind of have to pay taxes. But where do people like yourself, or like people in general learn about the kind of the tricks and the secrets of the trade in taxes? How do you learn those types of things?

Yeah, so I always tell entrepreneurs, I always encourage them to educate yourself. Like, you're never going to be a tax expert or an accounting professional, you know, but you gotta kind of need to know enough to make you deadly. Number one, so you know the opportunities that are right for you, but also number two, so that you know that if you have an accounting or a tax partner, you know, let's say you outsource your accounting or tax services, you know that they're doing the right things and you're being strategic. Yeah. In terms of tax strategy, it's so complicated. I mean, with us, with our firm, we have foreign entrepreneurs that are not U.S. citizens and live outside of the U.S. and sell in the U.S. We have Americans that sell outside of the U.S. We have, you know, all kinds of situations and there's different tax implications for everyone. And really great tax strategies as well. But it's like, it kind of depends on what buckets you fall into.

Yeah, I remember you and I would sit down in a room with a whiteboard and strategize, and like, having a little bit of knowledge was really helpful to be able to use your abundance of knowledge to figure out the best strategy. Because like, it's— is it correct to say that there's an incentive for accountants to stick directly to the books because there's risk to them if they're taking, you know, doing things that are a little bit gray. Yeah, like if you're not pushing things a certain way, like it's not a high likelihood that accountants will kind of figure that stuff out for you.

Yeah, so the idea is, um, as a, as a licensed professional, like I'm licensed with, um, so I have a CPA license but also have a tax ID with the IRS. So what happens is if I take positions on your account as my client that are a bit more aggressive. If the IRS were to happen to come across these, audit you and find that these are like egregious positions, these are not positions that she should be taking and you as an accountant should know better. You know, my tax ID is tied to you and all my other clients. So it's like if one goes down, there's a really high chance that pretty much every other one of my clients. Yeah.

Have you been through an audit?

Yeah, plenty.

Really?

Yeah. There's some audits or if you do something wrong, but there's also a random You know, there's random audits that happened. Pick your name out of a hat type of deal. You know, I own an accounting firm that we do bookkeeping and taxes and it's the same team that does everything. So whenever one of our clients get audited, it's pretty clean. And we've even gotten situations where it's favorable for our clients.

Really?

Like where there's adjustments that are favorable in their favor. And you're in a situation where you're getting a refund from the IRS. Each and every situation has been like, obviously a previous accountant did the work. Work. The client didn't want us to fix it. They get audited, and then we're reviewing that work, and we're like, oh yeah, IRS agent, by the way, this old accountant, they recognize this item wrong, and it's actually favorable for our client. Um, so that's probably happened 2 or 3 times.

Really?

Yeah.

So is there a correlation between the amount of money you make and the chance of getting audited?

No, not necessarily.

Really? So if you're making a lot of money, you're not more scrutinized by the IRS?

Well, So kind of a loaded question. I'll give you a simple example of where that could be the case. So if you work with a payment processor, right, and you have $50,000 in sales through a payment processor account, that payment processor will take your tax information and report it to the IRS and say, hey, Jared's got $50,000 in sales through this, through this payment processor. So the IRS has an expectation that you're going to report that, right? If you're an entrepreneur that has $200 in sales, that payment processor is probably not going to report those sales to the IRS.

Right.

So there's definitely some aspect of the more you make, the more that there's automated triggers that the IRS can flag you. But just because you make more money doesn't necessarily mean that you're more likely to be audited.

Really?

Yeah.

It's like for the IRS, it's not really worth— I mean, I would imagine it's not worth going after people that are making under a certain amount of money because of the time and resources you have to put into it.

Yeah, with our clients, it's been across the board. We've seen some big clients get audited, smaller clients, even clients that had losses that were reported to the IRS get audited.

Really?

Yeah.

Do you know what percentage of people end up getting audited?

Not off the top of my head.

No? That's not like my biggest fear, but I would hate to like have to go through that process. It seems like such a pain in the ass.

If you're organized, it's not as bad as you think. You know, if your books are in order and you're filing tax returns, correspond to those books.

I mean, not that bad.

It's really not.

Do you think that politics have an impact on this type of stuff? Like, for example, Trump getting into office? Yeah. Is the IRS going to be cut? Are there going to be less audits? Is it like— does the political kind of flavor of the society change this type of stuff for people?

Yeah. So I think Trump will be really great for US entrepreneurs. Right now we're in a weird situation, at least from what I see. I work exclusively with e-commerce entrepreneurs. And what I tell clients all the time is if you're a US citizen, you're kind of screwed. You have to pay taxes on your worldwide income. So if you have a business entity in China, you have to report likely in China, but also you have to pay income taxes most likely in the US as well.

Right.

Even if you move out there and start a business out there, it's, it's a situation where you as an American will be stuck paying US income taxes, whereas we have foreign entrepreneurs that live outside of the US, maybe do fulfillment from China, and they have US customers, and they can get away with paying a 0% tax rate.

Really?

Yeah, we have guys in Dubai that make millions of dollars a year in profit, and they pay zero in the US, zero in Dubai, if it's structured in the right way.

Dubai is like a hotspot for stuff like that?

For e-commerce entrepreneurs, if you have US-based customers primarily, then yeah, it's a really, really good place to be. But you can't be a US citizen. So like, I get clients all the time that are like, hey, I was born and raised in Miami, can I move to Dubai and, you know, seek out those tax— right, if you— right, if you renounce your citizenship, that's an opportunity, but may not be so strategic.

Can you get it back?

I'm sure. I don't know the details. We did have a, a client that was looking into renouncing, and instead of doing that, they did Act 60, which is you live in Puerto Rico and you get the 4% tax rate, and you can keep your citizenship, but you get that drastically reduced tax rate, which is, in my opinion, that was the better decision.

Remember we went to Puerto Rico? I was looking to maybe buy a house there a while back. Yeah. And was that the worst decision I ever made, not buying that house? I remember we were looking in that neighborhood.

Yeah.

And I thought, what was this, like 2020, something like that? 2021?

No, it was right after COVID, I think.

Yeah. 2021. We go to Dorado Beach.

Yeah.

And I remember we looked at a house and they wanted like $3.9 million. I'm like, that's way too much money for this house.

Yeah.

I think that house just sold for like $12 or $13 million.

Like, really?

Yeah. Craziness.

It's a good opportunity if you're a US citizen. I mean, look, paying taxes sucks. Like, it's never fun whether you do quarterly taxes, you pay once a year. It's just you're paying taxes to a partner that adds very little value to your business, you know? So it's not, it's not fun to pay taxes. But if you're open to relocating, Puerto Rico is a really great opportunity for US citizens.

Paying taxes, it sounds like, oh yeah, you pay 37% of your money, whatever it is. But over the course of 20 years, like the compounding effect of that money. Yeah. Like, what does that math look like? I mean, you're like, you know, if you're making a million bucks a year, you're paying out, call it like $400 grand of it, and that money is going into investments. Like, I wonder what the spread would look like on someone that didn't have to pay any taxes versus someone who paid taxes. Yeah. The net worth is gonna be way more than 40% more because of compounding wealth.

Well, going back to your original question regarding the politics, um, Trump is talking a lot about this tariff situation and trade wars and all that stuff. Um, and I'm not a, you know, trade type of person. I don't know the background, but I bet there is some money to be made there for us as a country where instead of going after our citizens and forcing them to pay more in taxes, we can go after some of these foreign countries that price gouge us in some areas. I mean, even when I was working with you on Zendrop, we had partners that were doing manufacturing and supplying products that, um, when we kind of unlifted the veil and for some of our customers, it was like, wait, there's, you guys are making a little bit too much money on some of these products. So there's definitely situations where You know, um, there's, there's opportunity for sure, I believe.

Yeah. You love Kamala Harris, right?

No, I did not vote for Kamala Harris.

Uh, yeah, I assume not. Um, but anyway, did, uh, you know, when people, people are like, I, what I can't stand is in the media when the media is trying to persuade people to have certain opinions. And one of the things they say is Trump doesn't pay taxes.

Yeah.

Like, to me, that's one of the stupidest things in the world because people that don't understand taxes, they could just attach themselves to it.

That's so true.

But there's so much taxes. Like, he pays employment taxes, pays income taxes. Of course he takes losses sometimes. He's paying sales tax. Yeah. Paying taxes on things that he purchases.

Like, right.

Well, how, how would you describe that to someone?

Yeah. So it's definitely a jaded story. I mean, the— it's like Trump is a very wealthy guy and he did not pay income taxes. And what I looked at when the documentation was released is it was one year's worth of tax returns that indeed he was not paying income taxes.

Yeah. Income, to be clear, there's other taxes.

Oh, 100%. Right. There's payroll taxes for your employees. There's who knows what else he had going on. Sales tax. There are things that are not reported on an income tax return that are taxes that you still have to to pay.

Yeah.

So, uh, we're talking about one period that was at that time like 20 years in the past. And keep in mind, he had done some— he had taken some positions. I think he invested in, um, was it the Jersey Shore, or what was the casino area down there?

Um, uh, what's it called? In Atlantic City.

Atlantic City. So that, if you look into the details, that's where a lot of his losses came from. He had some bad deals down there. So, I mean, you're talking about one period. We don't know how long those losses carried forward and if he indeed stopped, didn't pay income taxes all those years. But the other thing is he's a real estate guy.

Yeah.

Real estate is an extremely tax-friendly business to be in.

Yeah.

So, you know, it's kind of a jaded situation where you really don't know the details for why he did or did not pay income taxes all these The media loves to just like attach and assume and then just spread, right? And then people blindly follow. I mean, it's kind of sad to see, but I had an argument with someone the other day.

I was talking about Elon Musk, and I really like Elon, and they were like, um, you know, Elon barely pays taxes. And he's like, well, you know, I pay 30%, he should pay 30% also. And I'm like The guy has— I don't even know how many employees that he's paying. Employment tax is very substantial. He's creating tremendous amount of value and wealth for his shareholders that are also paying taxes. Like, his contribution to society through taxation is tremendous. But it's really easy to, like, point at one thing and then create a narrative around it.

Right. But then the other thing too is I get feedback like that all the time where it's like, I can't believe someone like Elon Musk doesn't pay income taxes. And my first response is, how do you really know? Like Tesla is a completely separate company from him, as is all the other businesses he owns.

Yeah.

Um, even when he bought out Twitter, a big part of the deal were loans that he had to put up against his equity in his businesses in order to acquire Twitter, right? Because if he pulls out money through a dividend, you have to pay taxes on it, right? So he's in a situation where, you know, it's— you don't really know what his tax situation looks like, to be clear.

I I think a lot of that stems from society praising people that want to be victims. Like, they want to be able to say, oh, I'm not that because I'm better than that. And it's just like an excuse, and like, it kind of makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside when you're not doing the things that you have the potential to be doing. Yeah, like, that's kind of why— where I think that stems from. But I don't really understand why the media would be incentivized to spread these things?

Politics. Yeah, they want a different person voted in.

Yeah, luckily the media is no longer what it used to be, and, and right, you know, there's a lot of other outlets that are much bigger.

Well, so if you think back 3 years ago, and I'm, you know, kind of an in-the-middle guy except for this last election, I was definitely pro-Trump this time around. Yeah, um, you know, Trump I mean, I'm not Trump. Um, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan were both blue guys, right? And I mean, there was a big conversion getting them to go the other way. And, you know, it's crazy, um, with how quickly things change.

Yeah. And, you know, I believe that people's opinions are simply a product of the inputs they receive, and the inputs they receive are the media and the things they hear. But I couldn't even understand the people that were supporting Kamala Harris. Yeah, I didn't know if it was because of the inputs I'm receiving about how bad things were, but like, I don't know, if you lay it out on the table, like, she was proposing taxes on unrealized gains. Did you know that?

Yeah.

Yes, that would crush the economy, right? Would it not? I mean, you have to pull your money out.

So a bunch of wealthy people.

Yeah, well, you'd have to pull your money out and to pay the taxes, which would make the economy go down.

Yeah, 100%.

That makes no sense, right?

Right.

But then, I don't know if you know anything about the history. If you look back, I think it's like 40 or 50 years ago, there was a time when taxes were very high and the economy was stimulated. Do you know anything about that?

No, but the period I do know about was in the past. Trump mentions this, and I've never really verified it, but he said back in the, um, Civil War days, there was no income tax. I think income tax came around in like the early 1920s or some early 1900s, and that our country was making most of its money from tariffs, external parties, right? So, you know, it's— yeah, but that—

but there was a period, I think, in like— I don't remember if it was the '60s or '70s when income tax was at like 70% or something ridiculous. And there's data to show that, that society was like the best it was back then. But then there's like, when I hear that, it's like you can take data and paint so many different pictures with it.

Exactly.

Yeah. Like you can paint whatever picture you want by taking data and manipulating it to look that way.

Exactly. And you can polarize people by presenting it in a certain way.

Yeah.

And that's, that's politics. Yeah. So I think that's how you can get someone like, and you know, I, I didn't hate Kamala Harris. I just didn't understand a lot of the things she was proposing. The thing is, you know, I'm in the middle because a lot of times on social issues, I actually lean left.

Yeah. You know, what type of social issues?

Things like gay marriage or abortion or, you know, stuff like that. Right. But then there's trickle-down economics and tax and things like that that I definitely lean more right.

So I'm definitely not polarized one side or the other, but, you know, I will not dive into abortion conversations on this conversation right now because that will spark lots of different feelings. I was at dinner, actually, a group of friends. We went to the Hamptons like 4 or 5 months before the election. Yeah. And one of my friends was like, you know, having a little bit to drink and there was like maybe 8 people at the table. And we started talking about abortion and politics, and it became like— I'm fine having the conversation, but some people get so uncomfortable.

Yeah, well, beyond uncomfortable, they get like enraged. Yeah, if you don't agree with their views. I never really understood that. I mean, it's like, it's almost like a sports team. It's like fighting over the Yankees and the Mets and like getting emotionally attached to it. It's like, at the end of the day, these are people that you're voting to represent you, and these are your views, and You know, you can't be emotionally tied to that. You know, you still have to live your own life.

I can see can cause people to get upset, like things about like abortion when you're talking about life and babies and things like that. But most things, you know, my father-in-law and I, we have very different political views. And we took a drive from Texas to Florida when I was moving here because I had to take the dogs. My wife luckily got to hop on a plane and I drove 24 hours, you know, take the valuables. Yeah, and we had a lot of time to talk about things, and almost every political issue that we had disagreed on, after we actually talked about it, we, we had the same views. So just like, you can paint it a certain way, but at the end of the day, most people I think agree on most things, right?

And the other thing too is there's something to be said about respecting someone else's opinion. Like, you could have a different opinion than me, and I don't have to agree with it, but But I should respect your opinion and respect, you know, that's his view and that's based on his experiences and he believes in it for any whatever reason. You know, I shouldn't get upset at you because you don't agree with me.

Yeah. But there's also an element to psychology and I don't remember the term for it, but it's like once you come up with your opinion on something, it's very hard for someone to change your opinion on that thing because you've already invested into it. And you've already created an identity around it. So changing it's very hard, right? So people are so polarized.

I wonder if after lifting the veil and understanding that, if it's easier for someone to change your mind on things and be open to more ideas.

I think being aware of that fact that, you know, when you go in on an opinion and you talk about that opinion and you consume a lot of things about that opinion, it becomes a part of who you are. Knowing that it's really hard to change the mind, if you're open to like, oh, okay, there is that element, I think it could cause a lot more kind of open conversation.

100%.

Being aware, I think, is a pretty key element to it. You know, society is more divisive than it's ever been because we are a product of the inputs we receive. And there's more inputs than ever and there's more polarizing inputs than ever. And media companies and social media got really good at figuring out an algorithm and a formula to persuade people. So people take these inputs, they create their opinions, they get fed more and more of it. They build this bigger and bigger wall, and then it's really hard to agree on things.

How do you think that's going to change? I mean, I'm sure you, you heard Mark Zuckerberg coming out and talking about changes in policies, obviously with Elon Musk buying Twitter. You know, my gut tells me some of that will change, but curious as to your thoughts.

I think people— there's probably a lot of people that are much more well-versed on how society is going to transform on things like this. Um, it does feel like we went through a time where many people were scared to talk about their opinions because there was like a group of people that thought they had the moral high ground and then a group of people that thought they were idiots, but if they said anything, they'd get canceled. Right, and I think that more and more people are saying things now and feeling more comfortable saying things, which will lead to more conversations at least, right? Which will maybe bring people together. There's either that, or there will be some kind of global conflict where we say, fuck politics, we're on the same team. Yeah, or some kind of conflict where even countries have to be together, like, you know, the drones in, in New Jersey. Right. Like, I don't know, I heard a theory that like there's a plan to have like a fake UFO, um, sighting and like cause this kind of global panic and disruption so that you can have kind of one world government where everyone's like, well, I hated this country, but now we're humans versus something else. Right. Like that, it could be getting boiled up to kind of make a big transformation to like one leadership. I don't know though. Yeah, what do you think?

Um, that would be crazy, um, to control that many people under one government. I don't know, that seems a little bit far-fetched, but I guess we would see if there was some kind of global conflict.

Yeah, so what— I mean, what do you think these drones are?

I don't know enough about it, um, but I've read the headlines and I followed a little bit. Honestly, technology is so great nowadays that it can be anything. It can be, you know, some foreign government that has new technology that is whatever. It can also be, you know, a group of people within our country that have another motive. You know, I don't— I really have no idea. I couldn't begin to speculate.

I will say I don't think it's just a people having fun flying some things out there. It's like, it's so far beyond like what you or I have access to. It's like, it has to be something, right?

And they said the size of the drones, some of them were the size of like SUVs, like large drones.

So, and they're, they're spraying things. Yeah, have you heard that?

I did not.

I heard they're spraying things now. Yeah, it's fucking crazy.

I just, I don't know, I read so many things online, I just don't know what to believe anymore.

That's a big problem. Yeah, it's a really big problem not knowing what to believe, right? Because then it's hard to make change. It's hard to make progress. You learn something, you subconsciously don't believe it. What are you going to do about it? Right. I'm just going to do nothing. That's what's happening at scale. Yeah. I saw a video on, on X and it was a group of Israeli soldiers and then there was people in Palestine and there was a conflict. And I saw this video posted twice with different narratives. One narrative was that the Israeli soldiers dropped off food and then when they were there, they started getting attacked by the Palestinian soldiers and then they fought. The other headline was they lured in a bunch of people so they could kill them.

Right.

Same video, different narrative, totally different perceptions. And you consume one or the other, it changes your entire perception on the situation.

Right. And you really have no idea what the truth actually is. The reality is it most likely is someplace in the middle. But it's— I mean, all that stuff that's going on in Israel is terrible.

But how do you figure out the truth on things? And like, and then you throw AI into the mix where now there's image generation that looks real and now there's like image-to-video software that could take images and make them into realistic videos. Like, where does this— I mean, this is not an accounting conversation, but where does this lead society?

Yeah.

Um, from a—

I, for AI, from a business standpoint, I think it's going to be quite good. A lot of people are, are worried about AI in terms of a ton of people losing jobs.

Yeah.

Um, I, I believe it's going to be similar to the internet or computers or, you know, somebody told me a story recently, a fellow accountant that said, you know, they were coming out with a big tax software in the late '90s and they were saying that this was going to replace all accountants And you know, it actually created more jobs for accountants. It enabled firms to take on more work and just compete more in the marketplace. So I think there's going to be similar situation with AI. From a social standpoint, I have no idea how it's going to impact us. What I do find interesting is that I've played with AI and it's impressive. Like just to put it into perspective, like I, We've paid tens of thousands of dollars to law firm partners to help us with research.

Yeah.

International tax issues for specific type of entrepreneurs and very complicated stuff. You deal with case law regulations, you name it. So just for shits, I tested AI, gave fact pattern. You know, this is what our customer avatar looks like. What would happen in XYZ situation? Eloquent research. Yeah. Cited its sources like really, really great. On par with like our, our law firm partner. Yeah. What amazes me though is that I can see it like I can see how powerful this is. There's still so many people out there that don't, don't experience it, don't test it, don't just don't know very little about AI. And that's, that's something that's concerning.

It's funny actually that you mentioned that. Right before this podcast, I was in my office and I was trying to figure something out that was in like a 90-page contract. I was trying to understand something and I started like, you know, Command+F, like searching words and reading. And then I'm like, let me just call the lawyer. And he's like, yeah, I'll call you in 30 minutes. And I'm like, let me just, uh, upload it into ChatGPT and ask it a question. And gave me exactly what I was looking for in like 1 minute. And it told me why and it told me how. Yeah, it was unbelievable.

And you can continue to chat with AI too and figure out like, oh, now that raises another question about the document. What is your position on this? And it'll lay out and you could say, hey, I want both sides to this argument. If I was to argue it the way that's not in the contract, what would be your recommendation? And it'll be like, well, in subsection 7D, they have this one blurb that maybe you can use to your benefit. And it's insane.

It's unbelievable. Somebody asked me to review a term sheet the other day and it was like 6 pages long and I was like driving somewhere and I'm like, I don't really feel like reading this. I threw it over to ChatGPT. I said, give me a— give me something that'll take me 1 minute to read that will give me all the information about this term sheet.

Yeah.

And I understood the whole term sheet without even looking at the term sheet. Yeah, it's great.

We had a team member that wasn't so great with communication with clients. Super bright, but just wasn't, wasn't so great with explaining, you know, tax and accounting issues related to clients. So I said, why don't you just take your thoughts, put them in ChatGPT and just say, hey, if you were to simplify this so that a non-accountant would understand, can you just give me the blurb? So now this person literally does that and completely changed their career.

And you can not only that, but you can learn from it.

Yeah.

So we had a similar situation where someone's communication was a bit over the top internally.

Yeah.

And it's like, all right, well, take what you wrote that you were going to post, ask ChatGPT to simplify it, and then give me a reason or give me some kind of thoughts on how I could have simplified it myself. They get the simplified version, they read it, they understand it. Now they're better next time. Yeah, it is pretty powerful for sure, but it has its kind of pros and cons. Now, the original thought was like, is it going to take people's jobs? Is that a problem? If you think about— I mean, I read something, you know, Naval Ravikant. He's Naval, N-A-V-A-L, on social media. Okay. He's like a modern-day philosopher, like Silicon Valley guy. I think he owns AngelsList. Really, really intelligent human being. And I read something from him years ago, and it was, it was basically the discussion whether society is a I don't remember the terminology, basically where in order to gain something, someone else has to lose something. Or can everyone gain because as society we have enough resources for everyone to gain? Like, can, can everyone in society be rich or do people have to be poor for other people to be rich? And AI actually comes into this conversation a lot. His stance was that society can all be rich because what is rich? It means you have all your needs met, you're comfortable, life is convenient. Money is just the tool to get those things.

So, but is rich also— is there an abundance aspect to being rich instead of just all of your needs being met?

Is it— yeah, like, think about if you're rich and you want things, you can eat whatever you want, you can go wherever you want, you can, you know, get whatever items you want. And in order to do that, you need to have an abundance of those things and need to pay money for it. But if you have AI and machines basically running the foundation of society and producing things that humans need, there's enough of everything for everyone. Eventually you'll have robots that can manufacture luxury items and cars so that the cost of those things are just one fixed— you're an accountant, right?

Yeah.

You pay one time for the resources and they produce things forever. So the consumer technically, you know, with one investment won't have to pay anymore.

Right.

So if AI and robots take all of our jobs, it just creates abundance for everyone in society.

Yeah. I'm not sure I'm 1,000% on board with that because I believe that in your example, you know, you need to acquire resources to put together this luxury car that you put it, but where that one person is using their resources to put together a a Bentley, right, with their AI robots. Another person could be figuring out how to use their resources to enhance more so they get more opportunities. So I think there's always going to be some sort of hierarchy.

Yeah, but I don't think it's a zero-sum game, right? Like, I don't think someone needs to be poor for someone to be able to be rich. If you define poor— like, poor now is, you know, you're, you're struggling, you can only eat certain food because you can't afford other food, you can't travel certain places. Like, I think we can remove that poor from society.

100%. I think there's definitely the ability to raise that floor for sure. Yeah. So I agree completely. I just think that there will always be a spectrum.

Yeah. But imagine, imagine, you know, you have a grocery store and the grocery store is run by not humans. There's a checkout, which is already happening, right? You could just check yourself out. And imagine that the trucks that deliver the food are automated and the, you know, the people that load the food onto the trucks are now machines.

Yeah.

And now this whole ecosystem is running itself and you don't have to continue to pay maybe a little bit of money to maintain it. Now you're producing things at basically one fixed cost over the course of 100 years, 200 years, 1,000 years, 1 million years. It becomes virtually zero, right? Because, yeah, 1 divided by a bigger number becomes less and less and less.

Right.

So society gets all of its needs met through advancing technology. So it removes that version of poor from society.

100%. In that example, yeah, I agree completely. Or a similar example would be shelter, people having a place to live. I, I think that would be another good example. But, um, I think there will always be things that people have to work harder to obtain. So I think that Maybe the floor increases for ultra-poor people and maybe the ceiling comes down for ultra-wealthy people that have more opportunities and maybe the poor don't. But I think that spectrum will always exist to some, some, some version of some version of it. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. I just think that when we were talking about the positives of AI and technology, I think it'll lead society to a point where there's less human suffering from having a lack of things that make them happy.

Agreed, 100%.

This is really interesting to think about, which is why we should be perpetuating people like Elon Musk as opposed to trying to beat them down.

1,000%.

Yeah, loops back into that one pretty good. So he's not paying his income taxes, he's still providing a lot for society, right?

Right. And people forget he's not born here in the US, so I mean, he's a very, very brilliant guy. I'd rather have him on our side than elsewhere.

Yeah.

So he's, he was born and raised in South Africa and he moved here for his, you know, business career. And, or I think he moved here to go to college. So, um, yeah, I, I agree completely. We shouldn't penalize people like that that are, um, enhancing our future.

But the, the, the other side of that is, okay, let's say as society, all of our needs are met and, you know, people don't need to work to meet their needs. Well, as a human, a lot of your purpose in life is driven by your work. So what gets replaced? Like, where does purpose come from? I think purpose will begin to come from things that are creative, like art or music or, you know, things that are abstract that are not just produced. Like, what do you— like, you know, if you just got a billion dollars and you don't have to work anymore, and your work is not needed, like, where does purpose come from? How do you be happy?

I mean, I'm a bad example because I love to work, so I would find something for me to do work-wise, you know, to, um, just to find that purpose. So I, I don't know. I, I believe that humans are here to work, and that's a big part of who you are. And I think even in an environment where Um, you know, food and shelter taken care of. I think there's always going to be things that can further us.

Yeah.

Um, and there's always going to be opportunities and places for people to work.

So, and those will be the people that are proportionally more rich, right? I do really think that poorness can be pulled out of society through advancement of technology.

Yeah.

If you define poorness as having a lack of things that you need and a lack of time to get the things that you need.

Yes. I agree.

I heard someone say, I think it was Tony Robbins, he was like, there was like, um, well, what would you do if you got, uh, you know, a certain amount of money, a billion dollars? The person was like, I'll go on, I'll just go to the beach and drink margaritas. And it's like, or maybe it was Jordan Peterson. Okay. And he was like, okay, you go to the beach, you'll have a margarita, then you'll have another one. The next day you'll do the same thing. Like, how many margaritas are you gonna have, right? After about a week, your life's gonna fucking suck.

Exactly.

It's like Working is important, and that's why I think finding your path and starting something— that either you start something or join something long-term brings a lot of fulfillment to life, for sure.

Yeah.

Have you seen a lot of entrepreneurs you work with that made a bunch of money and then don't know what to do next, or do people tend to jump on to something else?

They always continue working. Um, we've probably seen 20 to 30 exit events. Our biggest client sold for $400 million. Which was a big deal for us. And typically what happens is they'll go on vacation, they'll take some time off, travel with family, that kind of stuff. But literally every single time, you know, they're hitting us back up maybe 6 months later. Hey, I'm back up and going again. We started a new brand. You know, we're bringing the team back together and we're doing it all over again. So I never typically see an entrepreneur that's like, I made it, I'm done, I'm not gonna work anymore.

Yeah, work towards something.

Yeah. Yeah, and they typically go right back to, you know, you know, the business that they were in, maybe selling a different product or something like that. But that's typically what I see.

I think if people— I think the reason why a lot of people associate working with, with suffering is because they have, they have a lot of things to be stressed about. Yeah, but if you can work without the stress, the lack, the scarcity, the fear, then work becomes passion and mission. It's like, you know, if you have nothing, you're worried all the time. It's painful. You're working to combat that pain.

You know, that's something I never really understood in my own path. I did both. I did corporate America and I did 7 years in an accounting firm, and then now I have my own firm. And one thing that still I don't fully understand about myself is I remember being excited on a Friday that, wow, it's the weekend, is here, I'm free, you know? And then Sunday night at around 5 or 6 o'clock at night, I'm like, shit, I gotta go to work tomorrow, you know? And there was that, that weird feeling. And it wasn't necessarily that I was stressed or I, I didn't hate my job, but now with my business, I get to Friday and I still get that feeling. It's like, oh cool, it's the weekend. It's definitely not as much of a rush as it was in the past. But now Sundays come along and it's like, oh yeah, I got to work tomorrow. It's just like another thing I'm doing. It's like, uh, it's not a hobby, but it's just like, oh, that's— it's like going to the gym. It's like, I gotta, I gotta put in my, my time tomorrow. Just gotta get it done.

Yeah.

And it's not, you know, tied with a negative connotation. It's— I'd never fully understood that.

Well, I— you and I haven't really had too many like spiritual conversations, but I do believe that you know, there's a balance between your mind and your soul, you know, or your ego and your intuition, whatever you want to call the things. And I think that when you're working, your, your mind is kind of in the driver's seat. It's analyzing things, it's, it's strategizing things, doing tasks, and your soul is like craving some time to just be free. I think the weekend represents that. Yeah, and then your soul on the weekend's like, ah, all right, we're gonna have to give it back to the mind. And then, you know, you get back into the groove. And the more times you do it, just like going to the gym, yeah, you create that groove, you create those neural pathways of, all right, I did it 100 times, like the 101st time is not hard or anything like that, right? It's just a balance.

Have you read a book called Relentless? No. It's written— it's this book that's written by the trainer of, uh, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and Dwyane Dwyane Wade. So really, really good book, and it's about people that are immensely competitive and they have like a purpose and they do whatever they can that drives them towards that goal, right? So I read that book and it was eye-opening for me. I'm not an athlete or anything like that, but when I'm working, it's like I am in my zone. You're, you know, making this— I am, I'm in, I'm on it. I love it. It's like the day passes by super quickly. I love what I do.

Yeah.

And then the rest of the time, it's not like I'm having a bad time, you know, going to dinner with my girl or spending time with my family. But— and the book talks about this in a way I probably can't, um, reiterate so greatly— but you wear a mask. So you're— there's a certain part of you that is, this is what you do, this is what you're put on earth to do. For Michael Jordan, it's playing basketball and winning. But then when he's around his family at a cookout He's wearing his mask. He's not being himself. He's being the version of himself so that he can fit in with other people. And I feel like that's a big thing with me. When I'm working, I am entirely in my zone, and when I'm not, it's like, okay, let me pretend to be like, yeah, everyone else.

That's why you're the e-commerce accountant.

Yeah, right?

That's who you are.

Exactly.

Yeah, and you're blessed to have found that path. How would you— I mean I don't know if you've ever talked about this before, but how would you advise someone who doesn't know their path to find it?

Yeah, um, very difficult. Um, I guess it depends on what— where they are in their life. Um, I do truly believe that if you do what you love, the money will come, right? So, so many people get stuck on, well, you know, I don't love, you know, uh, law or you know, but I want to be an attorney because they make a lot of money. So they force themselves to go to school, then go to law school, then network to get that law firm job. And then they're working at a job that they're miserable at for a long period of time because they made a decision when they were very young that that's the path I want to go down.

Yeah, right.

Um, and I think a lot of parents are responsible for that, you know, for pushing them in that direction. Um, you know, at this day, at this day and age, we have people that play video games for a living and stream it on the internet, and they are immensely wealthy. Like, it's crazy. We've done sales calls with, you know, really popular streamers, and it's like insane, you know, how well some of these people do, and they play video games for a living. That's what they love to do, and they're just— you know, they followed that path all the way up. So if you find something that you love and you are committed to being world-class at it, The money will come. I truly do believe that. So if I had any advice, that would be—

that's good advice. I think a big problem is that the person that decides I'm gonna be an attorney because I want to make a lot of money and they commit a bunch of time to it, yeah, they just like in politics, right? They've validated, they've, they've made their decision. So changing their minds very hard and they need to get to a point of enough pain to make a change. And most of the time people don't get to enough pain. They're just kind of lingering at this level of like bearable, but not great. Right. Which is— that's— I think that's the hardest part, like way to make a change in life.

I have a friend from high school that I've for the most part lost touch with, but his journey was like a perfect example of, you know, if you follow what you love, you may not end up where you think you're gonna end up, but you end up in a really great situation where you're really happy. Um, he used to make music. He was a rapper when we were in high school. He was very talented. I thought he was really good and he really pursued that. And his parents told him, do it, like, you're good at it, but also go to college so at least you have an education to fall back on. And I know we differ on that opinion, you know, people seeking out college and stuff, but in his situation, he kept doing the music and he got educated and, um, he now is, um, I forget which company he works for, but he's like a big shot in one of these big record companies, and he gets to network with famous artists and does all kinds of cool things. So, um, you know, he didn't become Drake or Lil Wayne, you know, but he is in a position where he loves what he does every day, and that's his— that's his path.

I mean, you know, people look at Drake and Lil Wayne and they're like, oh, they idolize their lives, but people that are that famous, like, you might— there might— there's so many things that are stressful and painful that most people cannot comprehend about it, right? Like, look at Britney Spears.

Yeah, right?

Like, you look at her and like, when she was in her prime, like, every girl would trade their lives to be Britney Spears, right? And now she's like— I mean, I don't know her, but based on the few videos I saw, she's like psycho and like, you know, dancing and you know, she's like chubby and like, yeah, does not look happy, right? Crazy.

You never know with people.

Yeah, but I think another problem is people idolize other people's lives and, and just kind of sell out. They're like, oh, I'm not them and I can't be my best self.

100%. And it, and it doesn't help that with social media, especially Instagram. I'm sure you can relate, but like, you're looking at the highlights of someone's life And, you know, it's sometimes people that maybe are less fortunate or in a rough patch in their life. It may not be a nice feeling for them to see someone else doing so well.

Right.

So whenever I post something, I'm always like, man, do I really want to post this? Because at the end of the day, what is really the intent? I mean, I'm going to get a dopamine hit by people liking and commenting my picture and being happy because I bought a new car. But really, how does this How's this going to benefit me? Yeah. How is it going to hurt someone else?

And how is it going to hurt you too? Because now you're reliant on other people's validation for your happiness. 100%. I went through that too. I think a lot of people go through that in their journey. Like if you start to actually, you know, make money, you know, you kind of have— I mean, most people go through that. I went through that in my 20s when I buy a Lamborghini, I put, look at me, I want everyone from high school to see me. Yeah, like, you know, and deep down inside, I'm not like as happy as I look in the photo. There's still a void. I'm still worried. I still have problems. I still have stresses, right? But, you know, a thousand people like it, people comment on it. It's like, okay, and it becomes addictive. And then now you're reliant on external things to make you feel valid and, and whole. And like, I think that's so poisonous.

And I don't know if you've experienced this too, but sometimes people can treat you differently too, not always in a good way. So I always, you know, and I say this to my girl all the time because she's big on the Instagram and posting pictures on social media when we're traveling and things that we're doing. And I'm like, you know, I just personally, I like living a private life. Yeah, better because you never know. You know, with people, how they're going to perceive it, how it's going to make them feel. Like, what do you really gain from doing that?

Yeah, unless your like business is driven by being an influencer and, and, you know, but I totally agree, like I'd rather be behind the scenes. Yeah, but until you go through it, it's hard to know it. Like you could hear this conversation and, and be like, yeah, I understand them, but I still want to do this stuff.

100%.

The problem is most people never get to that point where they could learn it. They just spend their whole life chasing it. Yeah, and they never go through that kind of lesson. A prime example of something like that, I'll talk—

you can make up a name.

You know, there's a guy—

okay, I'll just say, do I know this guy?

Tai Lopez. Okay. Yeah, I have qualms with him because I had invested in his company and he treated investors very poorly, but I think he went down that path where he got so much external validation and he built up this whole— like, I think he's got this whole life built on a very, like, narrow and shaky foundation that could all crumble at any time. You know, it's like, got all this validation on social media and the girls and the money, and, and he has to keep that going or he's just gonna get crushed. Yeah, I think it's not a good place to live.

100%.

Yeah. It's something you kind of have to go through. But anyway, I do want to go into a different topic because it's kind of top of mind for me. Are you in crypto?

I was. I just sold out.

Just sold out.

I timed the market literally perfectly.

You sold out all of your crypto?

All of it. Yeah. So I got in. So it wasn't a ton. It was BTC, ETH. And I had some Sandbox. That position hasn't done so great, but I had like pretty substantial amount of BTC and ETH that I got in when BTC was about $20,000. I think I was cost averaged at like $20,500 recently when it was down or like years and years ago. Now this was like 2021, 2022, around then. I held it for maybe 2 years or a year or something like that. If you look, it shot up maybe 2017, 2018, then it came back down again. Um, and that's when I got in. And, um, I just got out when BTC hit $100,000. So I sold out of my ETH and BTC. I did a 5x on my BTC, and then ETH was like a 2.5-ish.

Um, what are you gonna do if it continues to rise? Are you done?

You know what, I definitely want— I wanted to keep the money in, to be transparent with you. Um, but from a financial goals standpoint, my goal is pay my house off.

Yeah.

So, um, I, I just bought my first house almost 2 years ago and I'm almost done. And it's been like, uh, a situation where, um, you know, if I have a business, uh, uh, investment that's doing super great, I'll pull the cash out now. There's going to be more opportunities in the future. Let me own the roof over my head and that way I'm not paying interest. You know, if you sit down and do the math for compound interest over time, I'd rather be earning that, not paying that out, you know? And you know, with an investment, there's definitely volatility. The truth is, I don't know. I don't know how much the experts know. All I know is I've 5x'd on my money. I mean, how much better can I really do? So let me take that journey to just own the roof over my head, and then in the future, I can definitely invest again.

I wish I had that in me. I hold everything. While it grows, while it burns. I never— I just never have it in me to sell.

Well, you know what, that's a lot of times the secret sauce is when it takes a hit and it hurts, you gotta hold on. I mean, you can't be stupid if something's going way wrong, like, you know, you're invested in a Fortune 500 company that is now obsolete because of technology. Like, obviously there are situations where it's like, okay, let me pull my money out. But a lot of times when companies, you know when they go up, they don't go up like this. They kind of zigzag their way up. So you got to kind of take the good with the bad and hope it trends in that—

the one time I didn't hold on was the biggest mistake I've made in investing. It was probably 2 years ago when the markets were down a lot. I think Meta was at like $80, and, um, you know Carvana?

Yeah, the car company.

It's a car vending machine. Yeah, back when I was living in Atlanta like 10 years ago, I bought a Nissan Maxima on Carvana.

Yeah, it was like a vent— you told me the story, it was like a vending machine.

Yeah, the car comes down.

Yeah, that's funny.

And so I was like kind of getting heavily into investing 2 years ago, and I read books on stock trading. And one of the books was, you know, one of the, the things it was telling you was like really dive in deep on like one stock and like really learn it and understand the patterns and read the news about it and like make one big position in it. And I'm doing this, and I found Carvana. It was down like 97% from its peak. It was at, uh, like $300-something, and then when I looked at it, it was at $3.80. And I'm like, Carvana is my stock. And so I threw in— I think it was like— it wasn't— it was maybe $100 grand I put into it. And, and now I'm like You know, since I'm, I'm doing the trading now, I'm spending a lot of my energy on the trading. I'm, you know, refreshing Robinhood, flicking it down, like, when's it gonna go up? When to go, you know, a few days. And I'm just now I'm trading options now because it's so accessible. And now my brain is like spending way too much energy on stock trading. And I'm like, dude, what the fuck are you doing? Like, it's not worth your time. You're spending way too much energy on it. Take the money out. Carvana went down like 20 cents. It was at like $3.60. I'm like, just get rid of it. So I just pulled all my money out of the market like a week later. Now I haven't looked in the last 2 weeks. Last time I checked, Carvana was back at $200.

Wow.

I missed out on like almost 100x. Yeah, on—

I mean, it— but you can't really hold yourself accountable for that. It's just a situation where it's so much more painful than losing.

It's so much more painful than losing.

You really let it get to you?

Oh, anytime I hear Carvana, like just talking about it now, I just Yeah, slap myself in the face.

You know, I'm not a major investor. You know, I've, I've dabbled investing. I invest in cryptos. I've done stock investments, a whole slew of things. Um, but I do believe the most return on investment you're gonna get with your own cash is investing in yourself. Um, whether that's you're investing in a startup company that you believe in because you know that space and You know, or it's you build a team and you go after whatever segment of whatever market you're going after. Um, in my opinion, typically the cash always does better if you're betting on you.

Yeah.

You know, putting that money right back into your business is gonna, is gonna, um, get you a better return on investment than, you know, taking your chances with businesses and sectors and people you've never met.

I agree on that until you get to a point where a sure amount of interest covers your expenses. So if you can get to a point where you have like, call it $10 million in something that earns you 6% per year. Yeah. And you can live on $600,000 a year, like just keep it in there and then start fresh and other things.

So I agree with you, but from a return on investment standpoint, if you were to sit down and do the math, you're probably talking about a very conservative investment that's going to yield you 6 to 8%, let's say, versus if you pump that money into whatever, that, that new business segment in Zendrop or that new target market, the return on investment most likely— well, maybe not most likely, but if it hits, it's going to be well above that 6 to 8%. So I do agree there is a space for investing in scenarios like that, 100%. Um, well, I think it's—

it— that's like, that should be the goal for everyone. From a wealth perspective, maybe not everyone, that would— that was my goal. And I think that's a really good goal to have, which is get to a point where your life is free based on the interest on money you have put away somewhere. It's a great place to be in.

100%.

You're like, I don't really need to do anything. You still want to do things, but you're not worried about continuing to make money, right? That should be like the first goal for people to get to.

And you can get a little bit more aggressive too, because you don't have to pay the bills, you know, you can keep reinvesting that cash in whatever business you're in. Yeah. So yeah, I'm on the same page. I definitely think it's strategic for sure.

Going back to crypto though, crypto is, you know, it's complex. There's different cold storage wallets and different, you know, chains that you can be trading. And it gets very messy when you're going in and out of trades. And the doing the taxes on crypto is like such a mess.

Yeah.

Do you handle any crypto taxes for people?

We do the returns. There's a bit of a rat race right now to figure out how you can automate crypto accounting, but it's highly complicated. There's a ton of companies out there that are fundraising saying that we can fix the crypto accounting problem. But yeah, You know, there's cold storage, there's all kinds of different platforms. Yeah. So it's very complicated because the way it's treated from a tax standpoint is any time you trade, it's a taxable event, right? Well, gains or losses, right? It's a taxable event. So you have to keep track of your basis, which is really difficult. If I trade $1 for 1 Bitcoin, right?

Yep.

That Bitcoin that I bought, its basis is $1. Then if I sell it for 5 ETH, right, you have to figure out, okay, it was $1 before, now it's 5 ETH, what is the gain loss? And then my basis is now 5 ETH. So it's like you're never-ending chasing your basis.

Would your 5 ETH be the new basis if you trade for something else, or is it always that $1?

No, so it changes when you pay taxes. Ah, so if you were to trade— yes, exactly. That's what makes it so complicated, is if you keep zigzagging back and forth between dollars and Bitcoin, like a, like a simple investor like me, like I just bought Bitcoin and I sold Bitcoin and got my US dollar back. Right, right. Pretty simple because your basis is what you paid. So like if I invested $30,000 in Bitcoin and I walked away with $150,000 as an example, simple. My gain is $120,000. Where the difficulty comes is if it's at $150,000 and instead of going back to USD, now I trade it in for ETH. Now I have to pay taxes on that gain.

Yeah.

Which I never recognize in US dollar, but still a gain in the eyes of the IRS. And now I have to track the new basis in ETH for whatever that gain amount was.

Yeah. And it gets so complicated because let's say you're starting out, you put, you know, $100 grand into like Coinbase, you buy some ETH, you know, you put ETH into a MetaMask wallet so you can buy some shitcoins. You convert some of that ETH into Solana, you go buy some Solana shitcoins and you're in and out of it on Solana, you're swapping one shitcoin for another and then you're staking certain coins here, right? It's like, you know, Albert Einstein could barely figure that one out. Yeah.

Highly complicated from an accounting standpoint.

Where does, where does like regulation go? Like, what is it going to look like?

So I don't know. I mean, the IRS, literally, they have a checkbox on your tax return. You may have seen it. That's like do you trade digital currencies? And it's a yes or no.

Yeah.

Um, and it's like, really? That's all we've got so far? Um, the bigger trading platforms do have reports that show you what your gains or losses are, right?

Um, once you get out of those platforms, yeah, and you have different wallets, and right, dude, like, have you seen, um—

and oftentimes, just before I move on, those platforms can be incorrect on your gains or losses too, because if you transfer from Coinbase out to a platform, then you go back into Coinbase Coinbase doesn't know the activity that happened in that other platform. So Coinbase no longer knows your basis, right?

It looks like more basis. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. So they don't know what it was worth when it came in. So those reports that these major platforms give you, yeah, are often times not accurate.

So you're saying if you put $100 grand at Coinbase, yeah, and then you send it to a MetaMask wallet and you lose $80,000 and then you put the $20,000 back into Coinbase, it looks like you put in $100 grand, you took it out, and then you put another $20,000 in. It looks like you put in $120,000.

Exactly. That's exactly right.

Yeah. Now it looks like your base is $120,000.

Right, right.

Yeah.

So it's, it's complicated.

Yeah. And then you got staking. So like I have things staked for like 2 years and it's like this one has 6 months left and it's like, well, does that count as gains yet? Yeah. Like if I didn't pull it out yet, does it? It's massively complicated.

So we tried, um, years ago we tried to build a practice around cryptocurrencies because we actually had clients that did business in cryptocurrencies. We still have a couple. And I mean like paying contractors in cryptocurrency salaries, you know, contracts with other companies, you name it. And we were like, wow, these clients are doing really well and no one really represents them. Similar situation to what I, I found with you where it's like really no one's representing e-commerce entrepreneurs. But in the crypto front, it's highly complicated. Now there are firms out there that say, oh, we specialize in crypto.

Yeah. Um, and in my mind I'm like, I hired one of them and it sucked.

Really?

Yeah.

And, and there's softwares that tell you the same thing, like, oh, we, you know, we have it figured out. And what's funny is we've partnered with a handful of them.

Yeah.

And the same issue we have, they're like, oh yeah, yeah, we'll automate everything. And they're like, oh, but you have to enter in your basis, dude. And it's like, wait, so who's going to calculate that? Because I know my client's not.

You know what they're really good at? They're really good at sending you an invoice.

Yeah, yeah, right, exactly.

I remember I paid this company and then for a year I got nothing out of it and I just kind of gave up on it.

Don't you love it when that happens?

Love it. Or spending way too much time on something and paying them. Great. So do you have any clients or have you had clients that have been very successful in crypto from trading?

Um, marginally. I mean, nothing to write home about. Like, I probably have never had a client make more than, let's say, $1 million profits in crypto.

Gotcha.

There was the— what was it? GMC or GME or GameStop? GameStop. And then what was the other company? The AMC?

Yeah.

One of our clients made like over a million dollars in gains, and then he thought he was a big stock trader, and then he kind of squandered it the next year.

Friend that put a million dollars into GameStop and turned it into $40 million.

Wow, that's crazy.

When the new CEO came in, the new CEO basically was like, GameStop is not really a gaming company anymore, it's now a hedge fund. Okay, they're— they have all this cash now, they're just turning it into more cash.

Got it.

He turned $1 million into $40 million. Yeah. Shocked me when I heard that.

In my experience with our clients, our entrepreneurs, and they're very, very bright at what they do— marketers, you know, branding, you know, they're really, really good at their subset of skills. Typically when they invest in other things, sometimes it goes well, sometimes it goes bad, but it's not really polarizing. Like I've never had a client that like, oh my God, I lost everything, or like, I can give up on e-commerce now because I really crushed it selling stocks.

So who are the people that are doing the best for you overall as clients? Like, what type of business owners are they?

Brand owners, for sure. You know, we get people come in, so we start taking on consult calls when entrepreneurs are doing about $1 million a year in sales. Yeah, right. So they're pretty close to the beginning in their journey. And most of the time those people tried dropshipping and tried a different type, a bunch of different types of brands, and they figured out that one winner. And they're, you know, growing their brand and they're focusing on the customer experience, the unboxing experience, the just everything that makes it a true brand, right? Retail, you name it.

Right.

So typically they grow from there. And our largest clients, probably We only have a handful, but probably right around the $100 million mark in annual sales. And those guys especially are focused one brand. When they get to that level, they're probably in Target or—

Does a big part of the business come from retail at that point?

No. Still with our bigger clients, direct to consumer. Actually, that's not entirely true. When it gets to that stage, it's typically a little bit more balanced between direct to consumer and marketplace, mainly through Amazon.

Amazon.

Ah, so typically I would say at around $10 million in annual revenues, that's when they're like, okay, let's get this offer into a marketplace. Pretty much every time it's Amazon.

Yeah.

And then, um, what happens is their ads actually convert better because then, you know, that customer that's like, oh, that seems like an interesting product, I don't know how legit it is, let me search it, and it pops up on Amazon. Um, so that happens a lot. And then once they get to, I don't know, around $30 million a year in annual revenues, that's when retail, right? We had one of our biggest clients just get into Target. I think they might be nationwide now. So it's really, really cool.

It's exciting. What about TikTok Shop? Any clients on there?

Yes. It should be interesting to see what happens there. I haven't kept up with the, you know, the news today, but it seems like they're going to shut everything down, right?

That's what they say.

Or Sunday or the 19th. Yeah. So We have a lot of clients that are on TikTok Shop. Um, I've heard rumblings that it's a bit more saturated now. TikTok is definitely, um, getting more specific in terms of what brands they let in or out. Um, so yeah, I definitely— there's been a surge in it, but it's kind of dying down a bit and people are returning back to more, you know, traditional direct-to-consumer through like a Shopify or WooCommerce or something.

I'd be surprised if TikTok actually shuts down.

I mean, we're talking about 2 days from now. I don't know, it might be temporary.

Keep hearing that, you know.

Yeah, we'll see. There were, there were talks about an extension, and then I saw, and this could just be headlines, but, um, they were interested in potentially selling to Elon Musk, which I thought would be really cool. Yeah, um, it would be cool. Yeah, we'll see what happens. Yeah, I think it's going to shut down at least temporarily.

So there will be something that happens. Yes, but of course they're doing it right before the day Trump gets in.

Oh, that's right. I didn't even think about that.

Yeah. Yeah, I'll have a decision to make on the 20th, right? You think he's gonna make it into the office or something gonna happen before he gets—

nah, I'll get him again.

You don't want to go deep down the conspiracy theory.

Well, let's hear your side here.

No, I don't have a side. I don't have a side. I'm not going down with conspiracy theories. There's probably a lot of people that don't want him to get in though.

Yeah, I mean, it's scary.

People that are flying those drones, you think so? I don't know.

Well, it's, it's just scary how— and Joe Rogan talks about this on a couple times on his podcast too, how this guy's running for president, there was an assist, multiple assassination attempts.

Yeah.

And it's like they'll talk about it on the news for a few days after, and then it's like radio silence, right? And it's like, I don't even know how much either of those situations were really investigated. I mean, yeah, it's, it's kind of a scary thought. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't know.

And then you get distracted with, you know, the drones are going up. Yeah, again, I don't want to go too deep down conspiracy theories, but I did hear that those drones are, um, they're, they're powered by anti-gravity propulsion. Yeah, they're coming from submarines under the ocean. And it's like, I don't remember where I heard, I think it was on like Sean Ryan's show.

Okay.

Or like a clip from that show, which is very, you know, far in that direction. And it's like these drones are so far advanced, like far beyond like normal technology that we know about. And it's like now that they're here, it's like checkmate. It's like China, that's here. It's like, oh, we just put this over the White House. It's like game over.

Have you— I forget this guy's name. He was actually on the Rogan podcast. His name is Bob Lazar, or Bob Lazar or something.

UFO guy.

The UFO guy. Yeah, he, he talks about the propulsion stuff and how he actually worked on a craft, um, and just some of the stuff he talks about is insane. And I, I, I think even with him, he's not even sure that they come from out, you know, outer space or anything like that, like a lot of these— a lot of stuff can be happening underwater, places that we haven't really explored yet.

So, I mean, if you think about it, we're talking about how ChatGPT can get us answers on 100-page documents in 1 second. You know, Google just announced their new quantum chip. Did you see that?

Yeah, I heard about it.

Did you know— did you hear the stat, the crazy stat?

No.

This new quantum chip can solve a problem that takes the fastest computer in the world, 10 septillion years— I don't even know what septillion is. Yeah, unfathomable. Millions of times longer than the, the life of the universe. It can solve the problem in 5 minutes.

Wow.

You know, you can— you, you pair that with AI, like, there's no way that technology can't be figured out. I mean, it's a very broad statement, and I'm sure that, that specific problem that it's solving is what it was geared to solve. Yeah, but you can do so many different tests, like simulations, to solve for technology that we don't understand yet. They're probably pretty dangerous if it got in the hands of humans.

100%. I mean, it'd be really cool if we could figure out how to do tax returns really quick for our firm. But yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's crazy. Technology is out of control right now. Yeah.

Do you see the future of accounting moving towards AI?

100%.

Do you think your job's going to be taken?

No. Um, well, eventually I'm sure that things will get simplified because, you know, with AI, maybe it'll be simpler to determine how much people are making and how much they have to pay in taxes and collection gets easier. So I think, um, for a while, at least for my lifetime, there's always going to be a space for strategy as long as there's complicated tax law. Um, so I do think that there for a while will have to be some, like an individual, like a human pulling the levers. Um, but I'm seeing it now with tax research.

Yeah.

You know, I can prompt AI to come up with some really cool cutting edge tax planning strategies. Whereas, you know, you go back 10 or 15 years ago, you're looking at a person that's opening up a book and reading, you know, codes and regulations and case law to try to piece things together. So I definitely see it changing. I don't think the accounting space will be absolutely obsolete within the next 10 to 15 years, let's call it.

Yeah. So I do think that advancements in technology are going to be coming faster and faster and faster exponentially. So something that might feel like 15 years away could be like 5.

I'll tell you something that blew my mind. I went to Arizona maybe 2 to 3 years—

or you were there on that same trip.

We went to an e-com event. Maybe 2 or 3 years ago. Um, or maybe it was Brad. It was Brad. That's right. No, it was, it was Brad was there. He, me and Brad went to an e-com event. Anyways, I was walking around Phoenix, just ran. I had never been to Phoenix before. And there was this funny looking car. It was one of the cars that Jaguar makes, but it had like cameras all over it and it was driving around and it looked like no one was driving. And now it's all over social media. You've probably seen this before. But back 2 to 3 years ago, you know, I've seen— I've been in Teslas where it's self-driving, but they have actual taxis in Phoenix that drive themselves.

Wow.

You get inside and it's like you order an Uber, right? And you pick a destination, you get in the car, and it just self-drives its way to the airport or to the grocery store or wherever you're going. And it's like, I couldn't believe it. I was like, why did it look like no one was driving that car? And sure enough, one of these cars drives by me and like you just see the steering wheel turning and it's driving itself.

The only thing that slows that down is regulation. The technology is there.

Exactly.

Elon just came out with the Robotaxi. It doesn't even have a steering wheel. Yeah, you just get in and it just takes you there. I mean, that will be soon. It's as fast as the government will approve it.

Yeah. Have you seen the humanoid robots that, that he puts in? I think you can buy one already. They're like $30,000. I saw that when they, when they get released.

$30,000?

Yeah, $30,000. To buy one. Yeah, I, I agree.

I don't know what it can do for you. Same. We'll get one. We'll make it walk around the office all day. Yeah, make sure people are working hard. Well, great conversation. Appreciate the time, Chris. Always good to catch up.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah, absolutely.