I paid 0% tax on 56% of my income...here's how..

it's not how much you make it's how much you keep and inside of this video i'm going to share with you in a single presentation everything that i have ever learned in paying over 30 million dollars in taxes in the last five years which was miserable and probably paying 500 000 million in tax preparation stuff so tax products experts accountants audits all of that stuff all the fancy things that the rich people don't want you to know i'm sharing it all with you here in this video it's a presentation it's a little different than i normally have so let me know if you guys kind of like the longer form i know some of you guys said you did and so if you're new to the channel my name is alex mozy welcome to mozy nation and enjoy after paying 22.68 million dollars in taxes in the past five years here's everything that i've learned about saving taxes in one presentation and if you don't know who i am i'm gonna prove to you that those numbers are legit in a second but let's get forward and at the end of this i'll give you my six consolidated takeaways that you can immediately use to save yourself taxes make more money all that kind of good stuff and a bonus set of beliefs that have served me well up to this point in my life and we just recently sold a 66 taken two of those companies at a 46.2 million valuation which you can look up on the internets yourself if you are skeptical which would be totally realistic and reasonable of you considering the many tubers and interweb urs that exist that are probably saying things that are a little bit stretched from the truth all right so let's dive in so quick confession i used to be obsessed with tax savings so it was literally like took up a very large percentage of my time i spent roughly 1.6 million dollars in legal and accounting fees to figure out the structure that i have today and so this will be a culmination of all my applied knowledge and beliefs related to taxes to date as a u.s citizen in a single presentation and hopefully save you five years of learning and all the money that i have spent so enjoy my gift to you all right so here's the four beliefs about taxes that have improved my life and probably made me a lot of money up to this point so number one is that tax shelters cost more than they save you might be like how is that even possible great question i will dive into it number two tax shelters decrease your net worth how is that even possible as well balderdash alex i know it's crazy number three tax shelters diminish your life how can it diminish my life i will prove it to you in just a moment number four tax realtors don't make you a better person you're like well that one i believed okay fair enough well i'll show you each one of these and more so the problem with number one which is tax shelters cough more than they save is that what tax shelters save you they cost you more in other resources so what they save you in money they cost you more in other things all right so there's three primary costs that people do not account for and that i myself did not account for when i started this journey so long ago in the business world so number one is the cost of discovery and conversion number two is the cost of upkeep and number three is the cost of unwinding and if you're like i don't know what any of those things mean let me explain all right so number one the cost of discovery is that 90 i'm going to borrow this from charlie munger so 95 of solutions are swampland and 5 are legit and so as he is my hero in many ways not just in investing i turned to him first to try and figure out what the best kind of course of action around tax was the short and simple answer is pay them and the reason for that is his quote here is that 19 out of 20 of these things are not legit and are actually going to get you into trouble and so the problem is the cost of discovery is the is the the cost of the time and the attention that it takes you to sift through all the crap to figure out the one out of 20 that is actually worth it right and let's just assume somehow you're like you know what you did all of that work you got on calls with accountants and lawyers and your legal operating structure with every one of these things and you ran through all the tests that i'm going to show you later in this slide deck of the things that you should look for in these types of structures and let's assume you did all that stuff then it you have this huge cost of conversion right it takes a lot of time to vet these things create new entities transfer all your stuff over reincorporate recreate your new contracts for all of your clients etc new banking relationships and all of that stuff so there's a cost of figuring out which of these is actually legit which 95 of them are not number two is if you actually happen to find something that might be legit right not even including the cost on the 19 that didn't actually you know were not actually legit then you have the cost of converting them but that's just cost number one cost number two is that okay now you've converted your thing you have the cost of upkeep all right so what you have to do now is you have to trade valuable attention for less valuable money by percentage all right so i'll give you a couple stories to drive this point home so a very close friend of mine um traveled 104 days a year back and forth between puerto rico and the united states so basically every weekend he'd fly back home and then you know on monday he'd fly back out and he did this every single day because he didn't want to pay u.s taxes right but guess what he was traveling 104 days a year and we were on the phone and i was like hey man do you think it'd be possible that you could make 30 more money if you didn't travel 104 days a year hmm he was like i didn't really think about it like that i was like yeah but you should and the thing is so we're trading this very valuable time and attention for less valuable money by percentage all right number two is i i have a different friend who uh counts his days in new york city to go back and forth and it's like guys like can we can we not figure out a way to just make more money within the current vehicle a different friend of mine actually missed their baby's birth because they had to get their days in right like what are we trading here and then finally on a more tactical level a close relative of mine uh was like hey i think you should do this captive insurance thing with me and i said okay let's look into it so we looked into it together and i'd already looked at captives a couple times uh because you know there were some tax savings by the way they're very marginal in my opinion um and definitely not the b cost of upkeep and so every month every quarter you have to allocate a certain percentage of funds and decide how much of those funds you need to allocate into the insurance vehicle so that you can stay legit in terms of are we really using this for insurance are we going to actually take claims out of it and then what is a reasonable amount that we can put in here and you're constantly allocating attention to this thing that does not provide value to the business number two and this is what i did not know when i was getting into this game is that one there was the cost of discovery and cost of conversion two you've got the cost of upkeep and three and here's the real one that no one tells you about especially the people who are trying to sell you these tax shelters is the cost of unwinding and fines all right and so not only do they cost more than they save up front they often don't even end up saving you anything in the long run and here's why most of the big tips and tricks get unwound in a matter of years and the reason for that is because the irs is three to five years behind and so when they see a loophole they close it right but it closed it three to five years later because they're so understaffed and all that kind of stuff right and so often people will get fined because they uh they're evading taxes right and so they'll say you were not using this clause for the manner in which it was intended so now you owe us taxes on three years ago plus fines plus interest and so then you not only have the fines and the interest but then you have to spend the cost of the legal and the accounting and all the other stuff to unwind the structure that you did under the wrong guys because you pretended to use a structure in this way as it was intended but you didn't actually do it in the way it was intended because you did it to save taxes which is not the point of the clause and i have had this happen to people i know very close to me right and the thing is is like everyone has to understand this they write the rules and so what matters most is what your intention is when you use these structures that are complex like the tax code is an incentive system you have to think about it like that they are putting penalties and incentives so that they can move the economy in the way that they believe is right so the reason real estate has a lot of tax incentives it's because they believe that they want people to reinvest in infrastructure in the company they want people to develop land they want people to keep buildings from falling apart and so they give lots of incentives to people to go invest in those things if all of the tax incentives in real estate disappeared real estate would not be nearly as attractive and a lot of buildings would fall into disarray because it wouldn't be worth it to people so then the country by extension will vote in disrespect right and so the idea here is that we have to read the tax hit as an incentive plan and that's just side note number one but the point is is that with these things they cost more to discover cost more to convert cost more to upkeep and most of the times will not actually end up saving you money in long run which is why tax shelters cost more than they save okay so that was number one hopefully we checked that box off number two tax soldiers do not increase your net worth and you're like how is that even possible i thought the whole point of this is that they're gonna increase your net worth i will show you why so what they save they cost you more and other resources i'm gonna drive this one in all right so there's three pieces here one is the people two is the thinking process and three is how fortunes are actually built and number c you're going to want to pay attention to because it's something that i did not understand until way too late in my entrepreneurial career so let's dive in all right so the people so look at the richest people in the world a lot of them live in the united states and not only that a lot of them live in california and new york which is wild right how is it the richest people in the world can live in the highest tax tax places in arguably the world how is that even possible maybe they know something that we don't which is that they're using they they know how to build fortunes which i'll get to in point c but the thing is is that if that were the case then simply going to a tax friendly area is not in and of itself is going to increase your net worth all right which i think is important and as an important side note is that when you also surround yourself with people in those types of environments especially when people move to very specific geographics only and solely for the purpose of tax sheltering right what in my opinion what happens is they start thinking increments rather than in orders of magnitude so let me explain so it's majoring in the minors it's thinking how can i save 30 chunks rather than make 30 times more money right and you've talked to those people they're going to make the argument like well i know i'm going to do both it's like no you're not because you're literally sacrificing everything that you have to just save 30 when and i'll get to the big picture stuff in a minute but the big wins are what drive your net worth right so you can spend all this time and attention obsessing about stuff right these little doodads to save two percent and one percent whatever that might end up getting unwound up later and because it's probably swampland is probably not legit anyways or you could just bought bitcoin in 2014 and been done with it the point is that the big wins the very few big wins are the things that are going to drive the net worth the most not the tax shelters and so people disproportionately allocate their attention towards these savings when that is not where the disproportionate amount of the net worth is going to come from so don't surround yourself with people who are obsessed with this stuff because they're thinking in increments not in orders of magnitude they're not thinking how can i 10x they're thinking how can i save 10 percent and that in my opinion is the wrong way to go about building a fortune which if you're watching this channel and you're part of mozination that is the point all right so see how fortunes are actually made up this one is one that i hope that you like slow down and i will try to talk a little bit more slowly than this because i really want everyone to to get this one okay so how fortunate direction me you make and i grabbed this from jack butcher f i think on twitter but this is a loose loose uh paraphrasing but you make fortunes by taking a lot of risk with a little bit of money you maintain fortunes by taking small amounts of risk with a lot of money all right so just understanding how fortunes are actually made all right now let's dive into some some math in a second so wealth comes from the appreciation of equities not income all right so how is it that all these very wealthy people live in these high-tech places it's because 94 of the force 100 growth came from appreciation not income in other words what we build builds our net worth not what we make huh interesting let's dive a little further into this all right so let's let's let's put an example like you're in year four of your business and so let's say last year your business made 10 million dollars in ebitda all right which is profit fancy word for profit sort of all right now and you can move the zeros you can make it a million you've made a hundred thousand it doesn't really matter all right you can make 100 million the point is let's just say in this case last year bison paid 10 million dollars in ebitda profit all right and let's say you it's valued at 5x which would be a 50 million dollar business okay and you receive 10 million times 0.63 um which should be 37 is taken out for taxes so you get uh 60 6.3 million dollars in after-tax dividends and let's assume that you're not reinvesting any of it in the business and you're taking all this dividends just for the sake of this simple example okay now you're like okay i guess that makes sense now pause and hold that so you made 6.3 million and your business is worth 50. got it now next year let's say you go from 10 million to 12 million indiabeta awesome good for you a little 20 growth very conservative sounds good still valued at 5x and the value wait a second goes from 50 million to 60 million huh but wait there's more you receive 12 million times 0.63 which is 7.6 million dollars after tax in dividends and so if you look at your net worth increase the net worth increase is 10 million dollars plus 7.6 million so you had a net worth increase of 17.6 million so let me break this down for you all right which is 60 million the new value of the business minus 50 million right is the 10 and then 12 million times the 37 percent tax rate gets you 7.6 you add the 10 plus 7.6 to 17.6 million but here's where it's interesting if your net tax so you made 22 million dollars in increased net worth and your after tax was 17.6 million then you were effectively taxed at 21 huh and why is that it is because 56 of your net worth increase was tax-free it was based on the appreciation of the equities of the things that you own rather than the income that you make which is why what you build builds your net worth more than what you make all right so this one i really want to drive this home if you can make the business that you have more valuable the income that you derive from the business is not the primary value that you are actually building right if you double the profit of the business and you have a 5x multiple right you were you have a double multiplier that is happening on something that you own in a very real way compared to what you're actually taking out of the business and so in a lot of ways like give yourself the salary live on the salary that you have from the business but let the value of the business compound and it doesn't even matter if you're living in the highest tax state ever because here's what's even crazier this is valued at 5x right if you look at publicly traded companies like some of the s p right now is traded at 40 which is absolute insanity i'm having to get into that but that means that if i were to increase my ebitda in this example by 2 million dollars there's a 40x multiplier which means i increased my net worth by 80 million dollars so that is why these guys can manufacture these fortunes because there's massive multiplier on equities right so it's not the income that you make that's the thing that's building your net worth and so letting that be the primary driver of why you make your decisions and where you live when how you feel about where you live is going to create far more wealth than the savings will right it's orders of magnitude not incremental thinking all right which is why tax soldiers do not increase your net worth as much as people will make it seem all right so number three is that tax shelters do not improve your life all right so a little shift here is that i call this inverted priority so saving the tax money we've heard other aspects of your life so let me explain so uh one follow this line of reasoning i want to increase my net worth so that i can live where i want to live with the people that i care about so in order to do that i'm going to not live where i want to live or spend time with the people that i care about to have more net worth so that i can wait a second something doesn't make sense here and that is correct it does not make sense because what we're doing is we're putting the means of achieving the goal above the goal itself right and this happens all the time because us as entrepreneurs we create this this reinforcing cycle of conditional behavior we get this intermittent resource which is how you create addiction right of the work that we do and we forget why we started doing the work which is we have this goal and don't get me wrong i think that work is the goal right but at the end of the day if if we claim that we want to uh increase our net worth so that we can have this level of freedom etc then we can't make the means which is money be more important than the thing so for sacrificing the goal in order to get more means it doesn't make sense which brings me to number two is why sacrifice a resource that i care about and that i can get no more of for one that i need no more of and can generate at will and as a side note has decreasing marginal utility which means that the more of it you have the less valuable it is which is not the same with time but anyways so number three um we can say and this is actually a texas change that i had with a different friend of mine um who you know i was like listen you know we can be on instagram we can be on on youtube and we can say money doesn't matter and blah blah blah but it's a very different thing to say that money doesn't matter or we can live that money doesn't matter which means it's like if you can be making these posts and making these claims about how you know you've really moved on from this and you've got this bigger picture about life and perspective it's like but all you're doing is sacrificing your life so that you can save little points here and little points there it's like it's fake it's not true like you don't actually believe that right and so i think there's one thing to be taught to talk the path and another thing to walk the path and so if we claim as entrepreneurs to want this freedom then i i hope to god we don't we don't we don't flip the priorities and uh and sacrifice our freedom to get more means and so i had a i had this was actually a real conversation which just sparked this entire presentation um is that it's hard to do the whole temporary argument so he's you know he was like what if i just go there for a temporary period of time stack enough cash then i'll come back it's like the problem is that the enough number is going to change and it's very very hard to come back from paying zero percent you know to paying a third or half of your net worth and tax or half your income and tax it's just hard mentally i'm not saying like you can still do the rational argument for why you're doing it but it's just like i think it's very hard emotionally to do it and the thing is is that if we are hard driving entrepreneurs which we are we set up these games and move the goal posts on ourselves and so you know i can promise you like my first freedom number was four million dollars in after tax net worth and then i immediately and literally when we had four i was like oh i think 10 is actually more reasonable and then 10 went to 14 i have no idea what 14 was really like meaningful to me but it was and then from 14 it went to 20 and then 20 went to 30 because that's what ultra high net worth is and then it continues like okay now it's 100. and the thing is is the goal post continues to change because you become a cus you you literally get exposed to higher levels of wealth and then what you say is like okay well this this this level of wealth allows me to live but i want to thrive and then when you're thriving then it's like well i want to super thrive and why can't i have an island in every single continent that belongs to me right the thing is you might and you might be listening to this and be like i would never do that watch your tongue because a lot of very smart people have said the same thing and experienced the same desire because we as hard driving people play to win and to stay hungry you move the goal post but in moving the gold coast you create a very difficult equation for yourself to be satisfied all right and so as a quick story to this um i could have done and this is why tax shelters diminish your life i could have done an intentionally defective grantor trust which is a fancy thing that basically functions like a waterfall of trusts where um for every five million dollars of a sale that you're going to receive you out you put it into a trust and the reason it's 5 million is because that's below the the limit and you have to wait three years before you can touch the money because that's after the trust passes the statute of limitations on trust being unwound by the irs you're like wow alex how do you know this because i've looked into this stuff right and i could have saved myself about six million dollars in taxes right roughly if i had done this right i think it would have been more than that but whatever roughly but for what right to save more money that i don't need and now to needlessly give myself something to worry about because i can't touch the money and i have to follow these stipulations and for some reason something happens then i have the irs on my back and then get audited right and that that little story that i told you earlier about the the captive uh that relative of mine they ended up getting audited and even if they do win what a headache just to save like four percent like who cares right just go and make that much more money without having the stress of a darn audit and if they do lose now they're literally gonna have lost all the all the discovery time all the upkeep time all the conversion time all the the the effort that goes into it they'll have to pay the fines and then they'll have to pay the cost of unwinding the darn thing right and all of the attention that all of that took they could have been spending on increasing the value of the thing that actually compounds tax-free which is their business crazy all right okay so i didn't do the intentional grantor trust and i just paid the darn taxes which brings me to point number four which is that tax shelters don't make you a better person all right so i only have two main points on this and i will i will drive these these home because i think these are like as as we've gone down these points uh they become increasingly meaningful for me of actually how i make decisions and so these are the only two things that i've really made the decision with which is number one is reputational risk i believe that i will be a billionaire at some point before i die at this point we have about 100 million net worth so my wife and i and uh we're you know i'm 32 she's 29 and so like if i if we just get 10 a year like we will hit it and that's if we don't make any income and we don't grow businesses which that would drive me nuts and so we will be doing that so i think that at some point we will do that but who knows by then maybe billionaires everybody would be a billionaire and an apple will cost a million bucks who knows but the point is is that um i would never want to become a billionaire and then have everyone say he did it and escaped taxes i just don't want that brand i'm not saying there's nothing wrong with that like i don't think there's actually anything wrong with that if you did it legally right um but i would just prefer to be known as the person who paid his dues and still killed it that's just me that's a personal preference that's a reputational risk for me right and i've said this quote before this channel but i'll say it again like you only get one name and you have to keep it for the rest of your life right and so it's like investing in accordingly i can't imagine like that at that point in my life if i were you know worth 2 billion or 3 billion and i could have been worth remember guys like if you're saving 30 right on your taxes it's only gonna increase your net worth by that percentage like think about it so it's like if you're worth 10 million and you had saved 30 of your taxes you'd only be worth 30 30 more than that so it'd be like 13 million right like and just think about it like that it's like so it's not like this crazy like it's just that that's all it is right so number one is reputational risk and for me i don't think i would ever sacrifice my reputation for that marginal gain all right number two 85 year old self test and uh this is my number one most tweeted tweet which is when i was 20 i wanted to be a millionaire now that a millionaire i want to be 20. and i overheard a version of this which makes me realize that when i'm 40 i'd rather just be 32 my age with nothing just to be 32 again which is a different framework gratitude that i thought i'd share which brings me to my 85 year old self test which by the way is probably the most useful decision making frame i have ever made and it's probably the thing that i use the most in thinking through everything in my life all right and so when i think about my 85 year old self a deca billionaire whatever and he's old and crass is hell and he's looking at 32 year old self alex he laughs at me at the idea of sacrificing anything for money sacrificing my youth to make more money that i won't need like i would give half of my net worth back to live my life wherever i wanted to during my youth and to make 12 more net worth if you're deciding between states like will i care if i have 9 billion or you know or or 11 billion or 9 billion or 6 billion when i die no i won't and so i feel like i can envision this conversation that i have with myself it's like don't don't sacrifice anything for me like i'm good i'm old like you're young enjoy ever like just soak in life because it's going to go away fast and like most of the things that you're concerned about won't matter and you will always have more than enough and you will never go hungry and you will always have people around you who love you and so like just live and so this idea of obsessing over these shekels that we're going to give back at the end of our life just seems silly to me and that's at least why my 85 year old self laughs at me for thinking about these things rather than just spending time in the places that i want with the people that i love all right which brings me why number four is that tax lovers don't make you a better person all right so so far we covered number one tax shelters cost more than they save number two tax shelters don't increase your net worth number three tax soldiers don't improve your life and number four tax shelters don't make you a better person all right and so if you're a mozi nation you're like okay well what do i take from all this i'm gonna give you six rules of thumb which is why i added an extra finger onto that palm and then seven beliefs that have served me well i told you i'm gonna make one presentation to rule all others for myself and you so that i can also partially make this as an answer to a question that i had which is what do you do for taxes so this is it all right so if you're not going to listen to any of the advice that i said up to this point and just pay your taxes which by the way would like to thank our special sponsor the irs um for sponsoring this video uh six rules of thumb for you all right so let's dive in real tax savings typically come from three primary scenarios number one is when you give up ownership or control that's what charitable giving is right that's why trusts tend to be vehicles that people will use because if you do them correctly you no longer own the money which is why you don't owe the taxes on it right that's the idea all right so you either have to give up ownership or control typically to do that and so some people when they really see it they're like oh like so this isn't my money anymore it's like yeah now you can make the argument like well you control it cause you control the person blah blah blah but the thing is is like there's a lot of steps there and it's up to you but like that is like when the real saving stuff comes from things like that number two is that they come from depreciation so in the tax code just like i mentioned earlier with real estate like the government wants like the the tax code is just an incentive plan right it's it's the government's way of saying we want you to do this and not do this right and so they allow you to depreciate assets that you're buying uh which allows you to not pay taxes because they basically function as losses right so if i buy a building for 10 million i might be able to depreciate four million dollars of that building and if i had made four million dollars that year then i could depreciate and have zero tax which by the way is how most people who run real estate funds do it is they don't give a lot of the depreciation of the people who are investing and they as the general partners will take a disproportionate amount of depreciation from a company from the funds that they raise so that they can pay no money which is how grant cardone doesn't pay taxes right that's the idea that's how it does through depreciation all right number three is deferral over elimination all right and so this is also just a rule of thumb is that like a lot of these structures allow you to defer the taxes rather than eliminate them and so the idea is you basically defer them until you die but you're not necessarily eliminating them so the three ways at least that i have seen that have have been the most legitimate um across times etc is are the are these concepts all right um that being said here's some of the advice i have for you in almost all of these structures there is hair you must find it make sure it's really worth it factor in the cost of discovery factor in the cost is conversion factor in the cost of upkeep in a savings cost factor in the fee structure that they're going to impose upon you to do this whole thing right and whenever you hear someone say the wealthy you've been doing this forever it's just a sales pitch when they're like oh like the vanderbilts have been doing the structure for a hundred years like it's every single guy says that so just like just move on get over it right but you have to factor in the money the time and the intentions it cost you and it and could you allocate that into your business get a much higher return something to think about right number three don't pretend to know things that you don't know don't be afraid to ask questions seriously anyone who makes you feel otherwise is not to be trusted all right i always start and this is a very true every single person my company would know this especially my finance team like when we hop on calls with like experts and all this stuff i always say the same thing i say hey i just want you to pretend you're explaining the structure to a golden retriever all right who speaks spanish all right pictures simple words i want to understand and if someone cannot explain something to you simply it's either because they're trying to confuse you or they it's because they do not understand it fully think about that people if you are confused and someone cannot explain something simply to you it is because either they do not understand it or it is because of their desire to confuse you and seem intelligent neither of those scenarios are good for you so if they kind of cannot explain it to you visually and simply i would say look run the other way all right because either they don't have the right intentions or they don't have the right skill level of skill all right so number four this is one now you're like okay i checked all the other boxes now always ask for people who've been doing this strategy for over a decade and asked to speak with them the reason for that is because the irs will unwind things three to five years after they impose a clause because they'll find out that people are using it as a loophole in order to get through and evade taxes all right and so what they'll do is that's why you need to look at people who've been doing this for over a decade because they've already gone through a full irs cycle and you can say okay you've been doing this for 11 years you've never had any audits you've never had any issues okay great let me talk to three other people because you might have just been lucky let me talk to you know a handful of people and see what was the cost of upkeep what was the cost of conversion or how much time per month you have to allocate to making sure that this continues to stay you know within the standards of the irs and then and then is it worth it right number five always do background check on the person and the entities that the owner associate with quick story on this one i had a recent person say hey i think this thing's really legit i think it checks all the boxes blah blah and so i looked into it which is not something i normally do because i've kind of like made up my mind on this which is i just pay my taxes but that being said i decided to look into this one and literally on the first google search i had of the guy who owned the entity all right there's two there's two red flags right off the bat number one is that the entity was a brand new entity which means that they're spinning up new entities uh all the time that is a big easy red flag of like why don't you have the same entities why are you trying to always change etsy's all the time that seems weird there's no reviews online etc okay second is if and after i googled this person they had literally been indicted for tax evasion and i was like what and like one of the biggest tax of agent scandals in history right and uh and you know the guy made the intro was like but they got to quit it and i'm like do you want the reputational risk of being associated with someone like that right and if someone might be like hey alex can't believe you forgive he was proven like i get it there's just other people who haven't and for me i would rather just not take the risk that's just my two cents all right so always do a background check on the people and the entities these that they own and are associated with all right and then finally don't spend money on stuff that you wouldn't just to expense it all right this is one that i hear all the times like just expensive expensive right i'm saving x percentage on this like if you if you spend money that you otherwise wouldn't in order to save money because you don't have to pay taxes on the money it's cutting off your nose despite your face right like it's like oh i don't want to pay 30 of 100 or 40 of 100 so i'm just gonna not even have a hundred dollars right that just doesn't make a lot of sense to me now if you were going to do it then by all means like if you want to reinvest in the business and that that's expensible then great then wonderful as long as it's the asset and here's the key point it's like if we can if we can if we can figure out a way that it can become an asset that's going to build value within the company and somehow it's expensible then fantastic right that's the idea but spending money on stuff that that you wouldn't otherwise just to not pay taxes is a very very very silly way of living life in my opinion and ultimately not one that is a good behavior that will build wealth over time all right so these are just my six rules of thumb that if you're not going to listen to the advice at least please do these things when you're thinking through some of these other tax structures that you come with and then finally these are the beliefs that i currently hold i'm not saying you have to hold these but these are the things that have served me very well all right so number one is that attention is my number one most valuable asset never do anything that takes it without disproportionate return number two pay zero attention to tax savings teams focus on the making not the saving number three whenever it decides to come up right number three there we go replace savings with orders of magnitude so instead of trying to think in increments thinking orders of magnets instead of saving 10 think about how can i 10x and then you'll never have to worry about the taxes again number four never count your pennies on roads untaken all right it'll destroy your spirit and have you focus on the wrong part of your life your past versus the future so if you make one of the decisions to start living the place you want to live or live in a state that you that you feel like being in whatever right don't start thinking i could have saved 12 over the last four years if i had that money right now like don't do that it'll destroy your life and probably you might not have made that money that you made now because you would not have been in this headspace that you are currently etc right at the end of the day there's just there's no benefit to it so once you make the decision move on all right number five this one and this is this is a big one all right just remember that when i die and this is me right remembering that when i die the people that i compare myself to will also be dead right and here's a crazy one we will all be taxed at 100 as in we don't get to keep it no matter what and so here's my here's the probably the best analogy that i can give you which is a casino analogy and this is this is kind of how i imagine really life in the game overall right which is that i believe all of us are given a token in the in the casino of life right and we walk in the door and we sit down to the table and there's a bunch of other players around and we can and we get dealt cards and we play the cards that we're dealt right and depending on our skill uh in the game we can continue to amass and amass chips right and we get these stacks and stacks and stacks of chips but the difference between a regular casino and the casino of life is in the regular casino you can take these big chicks go to the counter cash out take your cash celebrate etc and then you get to go spend that money but in the casino of life you have this big stack of chips and then when the grim reaper taps you on the shoulder and says you can't play anymore you have to get up from table and the chips stay on the table and what they do is they push them right to the middle of the table and everyone keeps playing with your chips and so for me when i think about it it's like do i just want to be in a nice casino or a shitty casino but at the end of the day i have to give all the chips back and so for me when i think about it like that it's like no matter what happens i'm getting taxed 100 upon death and you might be like oh legacy it's uh to me that's silly because sure multiply by 100 generations of people who don't know you change their last names and have mixed their their genetics with you you know uh one half to the 100th power and no they're just humans and no they don't remember you and no they're not your your descendants they're just humans and so all of that stuff goes away with time and so it's like we're just here to play the game and all of the chips that we amassed are going to get put back in the middle anyways and why sacrifice the lighting and the niceness and the types of people that i get to play the game with so that i can potentially keep a higher percentage to get in the table that i'm only going to give back at the end something to think about and then finally money exists to buy us options therefore do not trade optionality for it all right so um if you are new to this channel thank you um i make these videos because no one helped me learn this stuff i had to learn the stuff on my own or to pay a lot of money for these lessons either in mistakes or in experts and advice and so i hope that the pain that i experienced isn't in vain which is why i make these videos i just hope that someone can benefit from it and i like this visual here because we have these goals we fail we learn principles we improve and then we have more auditious goals and my goal for you guys is that you can just jump from audacious goals to more audacious goals because you can just use the lessons that someone else has already learned and suffered the pain of consequence for all right i repurposed that from ray dalio's principles but i just really like that visual and so um anyways welcome to mozzie nation if you're new appreciate you enjoy the video hopefully some of these takeaways can be helpful in your journey along taxes and entrepreneurship love you and i'll see in the next vid

Channel: Alex Hormozi

Views: 554,555

Keywords: Alex Hormozi, Alex Hormozi Business Tips, Alex Hormozi Gym Launch Secrets, Hormozi, Business guides, Business tips, Skillsets, Skill Stacking, The Game Podcast, mozination

Id: w5g0JiO7OdE

Length: 35min 21sec (2121 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2022