S5E14 – Startup Tips to Save Money on Taxes with Jason Mandel

• (00:47) – Show intro and background history
• (03:01) – The importance of entrepreneurs having a work x life balance
• (03:56) – Deeper into his career history
• (07:28) – Two key strategies from the guest
• (13:14) – Commercial break (Leadfeeder)
• (13:52) – How to grow a business with just one owner
• (18:16) – Creating a healthy business culture
• (23:51) – Deeper into his tax strategies
• (31:45) – Commercial break (TYKR)
• (41:16) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Show Intro

Introducing Payback Time, the podcast for entrepreneurs looking to build and scale their startups, gain access to actionable tips, proven strategies, and valuable data that can help you avoid mistakes, skyrocket sales, and optimize profits. Your business breakthrough may just be an episode away.

 

[00:00:17.330] – Sean

When your business starts taking off, the last thing you want to do is pay more in taxes. The question is, what options do you have? My next guest started his career on Wall Street, and then he created a company that helps businesses protect their capital. In this episode, he talks about the not-so-glamorous steps to make sure your business can sustain after you leave or if something happens to you. And he talks about strategies on how you can pay less in taxes. Please welcome Jason Mandel.

 

[00:00:47.690] – Sean

Jason, welcome to the show.

 

[00:00:49.200] – Jason

Hey, Sean. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

 

[00:00:52.110] – Sean

Good to have you here. So before we kick things off, can you tell us something about yourself that most people don’t know?

 

[00:00:57.460] – Jason

Okay, that’s a good one. I guess one thing is I just recently got my health in order. I was actually, unfortunately, a very bad diabetic, very overweight, 100 pounds heavier, and I had gastric bypass surgery. I think I may have extended my life quite a bit, and I’m really thrilled with the results, but it’s been an amazing transformation, a general transformation of my life. I wanted to change the way that I was living. I wanted to change everything about life, and I’ve been successful in making that change. It coincides with my 50th birthday a couple of months ago, and I do feel like this is hopefully going to be the most exciting 50 years ahead. It’s been an interesting road for me. I’m really excited about the future.

 

[00:01:40.080] – Sean

Good for you for turning around your health. I assume your nutrition and your exercise routine is on point?

 

[00:01:46.110] – Jason

Yes, absolutely. Actually, I had a tough time because I was an insulin-dependent diabetic. I was taking so much insulin that it was very tough for me to lose weight because insulin makes you very hungry. I ended up doing gastric bypass surgery. It seemed to be the only way that I could figure out how to get my health in order. But now it’s very interesting. Most of the people that have this surgery end up failing. It’s an amazing reality of it. It’s not very successful. People gain the weight back. Maybe today I’ll be better with some of these other drugs that are available in the market might help people. But I’ve been very committed to exercise and eating right. It’s been very… I neglected myself for too long, and I made a decision that it was important. I wanted to be a good influence for my children. I also wanted to make a statement that I could do it. I felt like it was something that I wasn’t in control of it. Now I do feel like I’ve gotten control and it does make for a wonderful feeling. It really does enhance every aspect of my life, even something like going on podcasts.

 

[00:02:46.950] – Jason

I was a little insecure about the way I looked, and now I feel very excited to share some of the vision with everybody. And that’s something that has been probably one of the most exciting parts of turning 50, was being able to share some of my insights. And I appreciate I appreciate today a chance to talk to you.

 

[00:03:01.960] – Sean

Absolutely. Well, thanks for sharing that. And we’re going to get into the tax strategies and ways entrepreneurs can avoid making money mistakes. So I can’t wait for that. But I have to drill into this, which is I do see a lot of entrepreneurs that do sacrifice their health. They go all in on business. And it’s like, you can’t do that. You really got to think ahead and create balance in life. And it sounds like you’re nailing it right now.

 

[00:03:27.150] – Jason

I really didn’t do that for most of my life. You’re right. I had I had such an ambition as a young person. I had this financial desire to be secure financially, and I was willing to sacrifice it all. And I obviously have those regrets now for making those decisions. But you can’t go back in time. You can only move forward. And that’s something that I would tell people is don’t give up. I really was not in a good position, and things were able to turn around for me. So I’m thrilled to share that with your listeners.

 

[00:03:56.480] – Sean

All right. Well, let’s get into it. If you could give us or take a few minutes here and give us your career backstory.

 

[00:04:03.370] – Jason

Sure. I grew up middle class on Long Island and went off to Brandeis University in Boston and was intending to become an attorney, a trust and estate’s attorney. I was always fascinated with it. When I was a kid, I worked in a local bagel shop. At the bagel shop, there was a happy guy coming in every day. I asked him, I was cleaning the toilets and I was cleaning the store. Then this guy, I said, I’d love to get a better job. It was quite a dirty job. I said to him, I said, What do you do? Why are you so happy? He said, Well, I help people. It ended up he was a financial advisor. He took me under his wing and I worked with him throughout junior high and high school. Then my intention was to become a lawyer. In the end, I graduated college a year early. I had a year to kill. My dad said, Hey, you’re not going to relax and travel the world like I was hoping. He said, Go get a job before law school. I got a job in finance, and I never went off to law school.

 

[00:05:01.800] – Jason

I ended up staying in finance. My first job was at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center in the 1990s before 9/11. It was a jarring experience for me, to say the least, when 9/11 occurred. I had left in 1997, but I lost a lot of friends and coworkers. It did put life in perspective for me. Having so many young people that I was working with and friends with die on 9/11, it definitely changed the trajectory of my life very much. I lost, I think, a lot of the normal fear that people have. I just felt like every day was a blessing because I was actually going to go back and work there again, and I didn’t before 9/11. I had left there to join a large hedge fund called DE Shaw, a very famous fund. Then I had left DE Shaw to join a family office, similar to the work that I do now for my clients. I worked for the Leverack family in New York, a billionaire real estate family. I left the Leveracks in 1999 to start my own firm. I was very excited at the idea of bringing certain strategies that I had learned there and strategies I had identified, but I wanted to bring it to a broader base.

 

[00:06:11.640] – Jason

And one of the strategies ended up becoming a core part of my life, which is something called private placement life insurance. So I’ve always focused on risk management. I’ve always focused on tax efficiency. And we’re approaching my 25th year in doing this. It’s wild how life just goes so fast But I’ve had a very interesting career, and I feel very, very blessed. And I’m at a point now where I have the flexibility to share these ideas with others. Previously, I was engaged to a group of billionaires, frankly, that didn’t want me to share these ideas, other clients of mine, and they liked having these ideas just for themselves and their employees and key relationships. But turning 50 years old and getting my health in order and all these things, I wanted to change that. And I wanted to share these ideas and view use with a more general population. I feel that my ideas can really change the way people, not only the way they invest, but the way that they think about their life. Because when you have peace of mind that could be achieved through my strategies, it changes everything. It gave me the confidence that I needed to go out and do different things.

 

[00:07:19.110] – Jason

So I love the chance of what I’ve done in my career so far, but I’m excited about what I’m going to do going forward in being able to share this vision with other people.

 

[00:07:28.590] – Sean

So let’s dive right in into two key factors or two key strategies. One is risk, and another one is tax. For context, we got a lot of entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs that want to create a tech startup, whether it’s a SaaS business or e-commerce, it could be B2B or B2C. And risk reduction is a big focus. And you happen to be a specialist in that area. Could you talk about that a little bit?

 

[00:07:55.330] – Jason

Sure. So I do a lot of venture capital investing. I do a lot of private equity investing. And I’ve learned, unfortunately, by bad experiences, where I’ve had management teams that have failed. The product may have worked, but the personalities didn’t work. People didn’t get along. I’ve even, unfortunately, been in circumstances where management teams, there was a death or disability of a senior partner and manager. And people don’t think about that. A lot of times you’re dealing with younger people. You’d like to think that they’re not going to experience. God forbid, we had a situation with an executive with a car accident where they passed. And you think about those things and you realize that it’s a tough conversation to have. But if you look at ways of mitigating risk as an investor, you’re actually helping the management team because they’ve worked so hard to build the business. It would be terrible if the business failed because of something that we could control. A lot of times when I’m brought in to evaluate a company, there’s almost zero risk management in any way. The most that I’ve ever seen when I’ve been brought into a company is maybe a tiny little term insurance policy because someone said, Oh, you need it, and they decided to spend $200 on a million dollar 10-year term.

 

[00:09:09.880] – Jason

That’s not risk management. First thing we have to look at is who are the key drivers to the business? Is it the head of research? Is it someone who’s developing a sales channel for the business? Is it the CEO? There’s so many vital people to a startup that you’ve got to look at them. You can’t just say, Well, it’s the CEO is the the only person that’s vital. No, there may be a lot of people. So when you look at that, yes, you’re worried about an unexpected mortality, but that is rare. You are more likely going to see a disability which causes the person to be unable to work. And again, when dealing with certain stressful environments like a tech startup, you are oftentimes dealing with addiction issues. Drug, alcohol, all forms of addiction, unfortunately, sometimes come in with a stressful environment like a startup. So we look at mitigating mitigating the risks. We look at funding the costs to mitigate that risk. Another interesting concept is I don’t want to be in business with a founder’s wife or husband or child. That’s not my interest. I’m backing a business because I like the entrepreneur.

 

[00:10:16.870] – Jason

I like their team. So I need to know what is the continuity plan. And in almost every case, there is zero continuity plan. And again, everyone is more selfishly driven, unfortunately, and they’re not necessarily altruistic. So I have to position it very simply to the entrepreneur. What happens if you are not here? Do you agree that the business will fail? Do you care about anybody? And if you don’t, do you care about your own legacy? Because all these years of work and effort will go down the toilet unless you have a continuity plan. And if you don’t care about a spouse or children or anything like that, you don’t have that, what about a charity? You’ve worked so hard. Wouldn’t you like someone to benefit from the hard work? Don’t you want to see this business succeed? Most people are rational. They’ll say, yes, I do want to do something, even if they don’t want to necessarily don’t have a spouse or child to take care of. They say, You know what? I want my legacy to be this business if I’m not here. So we come up with strategies that will allow the business to not only continue, but to flourish.

 

[00:11:19.080] – Jason

Imagine if a founder is not there, the team is going to be lost. You need to recruit the best and the brightest to come in and help. You need to incentivize that team with equity. So you need to be able to buy out the founder’s estate in some way. Maybe it’s not fully buy them out, but buy out a controlling interest so the management team wants to stay there. Because practically, many management teams will defect, leave in the event of a dissolution of the business. We want to make sure everyone is aligned, and that goes even for the general employees. I want to make sure that there are golden handcuffed solutions in place, that even a top salesperson, even a a top analyst, even a top programmer, is really protected from the event that the business suffers and the event that something happens to even them. That’s an important part that most founders don’t really care about. They say, Okay, I’ve got one or two people that I want to take care of. We’re a big believer in incentivizing the entire team because we realize that a lot of these companies do not have the budget to pay people.

 

[00:12:24.930] – Jason

They have an ability to maybe give some stock options, but people are practical with a 90% failure rate. A lot of employees these days are potentially subject to a defection if they’re offered a significantly more cash type bonus and type compensation. We know how to align the employees with management. If someone’s not willing to align some of their compensation, then we have an issue. Then we know that that person may be transitory. They may not be in it for the long term. We like to analyze that and have an understanding of that scenario because we’ve seen it too many times. You give somebody that half a million dollar bonus and they defect and go somewhere else or even worse, start a competitor because they have a lot of knowledge in the space. So we can defend against that stuff and everyone is aligned in the right way if we do that.

 

[00:13:14.750] – Sean

Right on. All right, folks, let’s take a quick break.

 

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[00:13:50.500] – Sean

All right, back to the show. Now, let’s say it’s a business that’s young and they have one founder, one founder, one owner owner. How do you create a succession plan in that situation?

 

[00:14:03.680] – Jason

Yeah. I mean, if it’s one owner, it’s actually relatively easy versus a bunch of owners, because sometimes you have the other owners that say, I could take over. I have no problem with that. And they may have a completely different skillset. When there’s one owner, you obviously can make the argument that the business will clearly fail without them. They may own 80 % of the equity or some number like that or even more. What will happen? So we want to come in and say, look, you have a team of people that you’re training. You have employees employees that you value. You’ve hired them, you’ve incentivized them. They have an options program. If you want the business to continue, we can take advantage of what’s called the Laps rate pricing of insurance solutions. For a nominal amount of money, we can actually protect against the event of a death or disability of that founder. The company can bring in, could create a key person policy on that founder. The company We can have those proceeds come in, again, in the event of death or disability, because some of the plans do cover disability. Therefore, the proceeds can be used to buy out a portion of the equity to give liquidity to the founder upon the fact that he or she is no longer going to be there every day.

 

[00:15:18.510] – Jason

They no longer have the certitude of the success of the business. And again, investors don’t want to be in business with their heirs. So what you want to do is buy out all or some, normally at some majority stake. Let the employees who are running the business day to day now have a substantial amount of equity in the company to see it to success, to see it to fruition. You lock in some of the value that the entrepreneur built over the years that they were starting and developing the company because that insurance payout, call it $10, $20, $30 million, whatever the amount they want, now locks in a certain amount of money where the estate should be very comfortable in sitting tight and letting management execute. Imagine if all they had was equity in the estate’s dealing with a potential estate tax and other pressures financially. If it’s a family situation, all of a sudden the sadness of losing a family member, all of a sudden, they may force the sale of the company at an inopportune time before it’s ready. And therefore, all of a sudden the management is under this pressure from a controlling shareholder and they’re not able to execute.

 

[00:16:25.340] – Jason

So the strategies that I like to look at every… I’m not a negative person. I’m incredibly optimistic, but I am realistic. And because of my life experiences, things always take longer than expected. Things always have issues that come up. And again, if we can easily eliminate this, and again, that’s where my venture fund, that’s where my private equity investments, I come in and I point these things out. And oftentimes people say, wow, we never thought of that. Let’s add a slide or two on our deck to raise money because let’s let the investors know that we have a professional business continuity plan. In place and that there isn’t a fear, God forbid, the low probability event as it is. But if it happened, not only will the company survive, it may thrive because the company has liquidity necessary in order to hire a staff, maybe even more staff than they had on their existing budget. Those are the types of conversations. They’re difficult conversations to have, Sean. I’m not going to say that they are easy to have, but they’re important to have. And I find that very few people, I would actually go so far as I’ve never really heard venture and private equity investors talk about it as openly as I do or as early in the conversation as I do.

 

[00:17:39.110] – Jason

I use it as a bellwether test as well. If I say to a founder, Hey, these are some things that are concerning to me. If I’m going to put money into this company, I want to know there’s a plan. If their reaction is to diminish my thought or to say, This is not something I care to worry about, that says something. It’s actually somewhat selfish of that person, and then you know what you’re getting. And there’s a lot of egotistical founders. And there’s nothing wrong with that because you need that guts in order to be successful. But if someone’s not rational and doesn’t want to make sure and lock in the work that they’ve done, then I oftentimes question whether it’s the right investment for me.

 

[00:18:16.580] – Sean

Right. What you described there was a reality I experienced a few years back. This was between 2018 and 2020. I was part of a startup. This is before I started my current company, Tykr. But I was I was one of the key people to join the company, really lead the tech side, and one of the cofounders he did. Unfortunately, he passed away in a heart attack, and he passed. And because of that, the business, that was one factor. I Another factor was finding product market fit was taking a little longer than expected, but that was enough to push it over the cliff and be like, this business is going under. And there are a few key people, aside from myself, that were like, gosh, if there is some plan in place We could have picked up the baton and ran with this because we were so close to product market fit. But because of that event, we all want our own directions.

 

[00:19:10.520] – Jason

Yeah. No, it’s sad. Your story, unfortunately, is more common than we’d like to think. And it’s unfortunate that a lot of founders do not think this way. And I believe that if you’re going to employ people, you have an obligation to those employees. Anyone that works for me, I like to think about their lives and the trust that they’re putting me, and I want to make sure that they’re cared for. I think if you want to create an environment with discretionary work effort from your employees, which is very rare. If you don’t want somebody coming in at 9:00 and leaving at 5:00 and running out, and they really care about the business, my opinion is that you need to give them strategies. You need to show them that you care and value for them, value them very much. We have a lot of strategies. For example, one thing that I think is fascinating is the whole world is so set on these 401(k)s. Everyone says, Okay, I’ve got a 401(k), I’ve got a 3% match. What a great employer. Well, I actually would argue, Sean, that 401(k)s are antiquated. 401(k)s, for the most part, offer you a chance to invest in assets that are volatile, like equities.

 

[00:20:18.980] – Jason

Two years ago, the equity markets were weak, and everyone said, Well, it’s okay because bonds will do well. Well, guess what? Interest rates went up, so bonds went down. So your whole argument that most of Wall Street makes, you have an allocation between stocks and bonds, was found to be flawed, that you can’t produce consistent returns using equities and using bonds alone. There are other asset classes that need to be utilized. For example, asset-back lending, arbitrage strategies. These are all strategies that are not normally accessible in a 401(k). So one of the things that we believe and that I promote is to say to a founder, why don’t we come up with a tax-free income plan for your employees. Forget about these taxable plans like a 401k. You pull it out, you pay taxes. Well, we don’t know what the tax rate is going to be when somebody needs to pull that money out. So I want to create a plan that’s accessible for them during their lives. What if they need to pay for college for their kids? What if they need to pay for a wedding or they need to pay for a first home?

 

[00:21:23.760] – Jason

All of these things make it very difficult for people that have a bulk of their savings in a 401k where it’s inaccessible without significant penalties. We create these tax-free income plans which can be utilized so many different ways. If you tie the plan in with the duration of service for the employee, everyone’s interests are aligned. For example, we have a plan, we call it the three-pay plan. Why is it three-pay? Because it’s a commitment for three years for the employer. They’re not committing every year for 25 years. They say for three years, we’re going to put in an extra $20,000, $50,000 Whatever the number is, call it a bonus alternative or a bonus enhancement. Let’s just say it’s $50,000 a year for three years. I know we just did one for a 35-year-old woman. They were trying to figure out how to come up with a salary that was comfortable. She wanted, I think, 200,000, and they were willing to pay her 150. What we agreed was that that extra $50,000 would come in the form of this tax-free income plan. The company would own the plan for the first five years. If she She had employed for those five years, she would then receive the plan.

 

[00:22:34.480] – Jason

She would own it. She would invest in the plan fully. The plan would have this 50,000 a year for three years. And would you believe at retirement age, age 65, she was actually going to derive $150,000 a year, completely tax-free at that point every year until her mortality. So if she lived to 100, she would have 35 years of this income. It’s something that is It’s not offered by most companies, but it’s something that I like to do for my portfolio companies because I believe the retention numbers stay very high when someone says, Yeah, I know I can get $40,000 a year somewhere else by moving jobs, but I’m going to give up that massive retirement plan. Who else is giving me $150,000 a year tax-free? And by the way, those plans can be then reupped in five years if they stay on. Say, Okay, we’re going to do the plan again. We’re going to get you another retirement tax-free income plan. And these are ideas that for whatever reason, traditional advisors do not share, they do not offer. And I think it’s because they don’t pay the same fees, Sean, that traditional products like a 401k, where they manage it every year, they get a fee every year.

 

[00:23:44.740] – Jason

And I just think a lot of these big firms don’t allow their salespeople to market this stuff. And it’s a real shame because these products are incredibly compelling.

 

[00:23:52.560] – Sean

That’s good perspective there on what you can do to help retain some really awesome employees. You don’t have to fork out a larger salary right away, but you can lock them in. You explain they’re more of a golden handcuff over a longer term. I want you to really be a strategic partner in this operation over the coming years. I don’t want you to take a big bonus this next year and bam, you’re out of here. No, that’s great. Great tip there. Let’s drill into tax strategies a little more because there are entrepreneurs that they’re super excited, they’re building their business. Now they start experiencing that inflection point and revenues coming in, oh, taxes are coming. What do you do?

 

[00:24:35.110] – Jason

Yeah, it’s great. A big part of my work at my family office. So what we are is a holistic approach to helping entrepreneurs. We do invest, of course. We have the asset management side. We also do the tax minimization side of this. When we deal with an entrepreneur, we sit there and ask them, What are you doing these days? Tell us about your existing A business. Tell us about what your future investments are going to be. It’s all about structuring. We have an accounting part of our business, and we have a legal side of our business as well. We need to help people make sure they have the right structures to eliminate taxes. A lot of people think a trust is the way to go because a trust eliminates the estate tax. The issue with a trust, Sean, is that it does not eliminate the capital gains tax every year. If you’re an investor investing in multiple private equity many companies like I do in multiple venture businesses, you might have, God willing, 100X. And if you do, you’re paying full taxes on that. And yeah, you’ve got your normal offsetting losses that exist, but you may have a big tax bill.

 

[00:25:45.580] – Jason

So for me, what I discovered back in 1998 was a concept called private placement life insurance. And I actually was involved in a carrier for many years called Bastion Life. And the idea here is if you wrapped your wealth health inside of a life insurance policy, you actually can eliminate not just the estate tax because life insurance benefit passes to your heirs tax-free, but the cash value inside of life insurance grows tax-free, Sean. If you were to hold, for example, 10 of your private equity investments inside of a life insurance policy, that could grow tax-free. If you wanted to access the money On the side of your policy, you would do it the way you access any life insurance cash value, which is through a policy loan. You can borrow from the cash value, tax-free, if structured properly, and you could use those tax-free loans to live on for the rest of your life. You can eliminate the taxable income. Because if the policy is the owner of your investments, the policy pays no income tax. It’s a very compelling way of owning your assets, your portfolio. Most people own their investment portfolio in their own name, in an LLC, and maybe a trust.

 

[00:27:08.260] – Jason

These are all taxable entities. If you look at the Berkshire Hathaway and you ask, I wonder, why is Warren Buffet owning all these insurance assets? I would guess it’s because the growth inside of insurance assets is tax-free. He has some tax benefits from that. Now, we regular people can do the same thing. We can structure a private placement life insurance policy, which is Just like variable. It is variable universal life, which is a regular traditional form of life insurance, the creative part here was the ability to not only select the products that the insurance company offers, but rather to hire an independent money manager. You cannot manage your own cash value yourself. You have to hire a third-party manager who would have to diversify your cash value into at least five investments, no more than 55% in any one investment, 70% in any two, 80% in any three, 90% in any four. You end up with five investments. If you’re willing to hand over day-to-day management of the cash value inside the policy, if you’re willing to do that with diversification, then PPLI is a genius strategy to eliminate all taxation because anything that’s generated inside the policy is tax-free.

 

[00:28:24.610] – Jason

Now, the negatives there are that you need life insurance, death benefit inside the PPLI which historically has been very expensive. We’ve figured out a better way of doing it through bank financing. We can finance a new life insurance policy. The bank will actually allow us to finance 100% of the money, whereas with, let’s say, a real estate purchase, they want you to put down 20 or 30% of cash when you buy real estate. Life insurance is property just like real estate, and you can finance 100% of it. It was a great Supreme Court case, 1911, Grisby versus Russell. Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled life insurance as property. You could finance it with a bank, your property, just like you would a house. It’s a very interesting way of acquiring the insurance that’s needed inside of the PPLI in a very cost effective way. We’ve got some really special structures where there’s something called an Enhance Cash Value Ryder. These are tools that you can use that mitigate or at least elongate the way that an insurance broker gets commission. The benefit to clients is you don’t need to post much collateral because the policy itself is the main form of collateral for the bank loan because the policy surrenders for an amount of money close to what the loan was from the bank.

 

[00:29:44.250] – Jason

I hate the term, but some people think of this as almost free insurance. It’s not because if you died, you don’t get all the benefit. The bank gets paid back its money. But it does feel very compelling to finance premiums and then use those premiums inside of PPLI.

 

[00:30:01.590] – Sean

Sure. Right on. Sounds like some creative ways business owners can prevent themselves from paying high taxes.

 

[00:30:09.260] – Jason

Yeah. I mean, the other thing I should mention just for your listeners and viewers is something called a charitable LLC. A lot of people don’t realize that a charitable LLC can be set up. The government allows you to donate up to 60% of your adjusted gross income every year to charity and get a tax deduction. So we’ve got a really interesting structure which allows us to get a tax deduction, to manage the money on behalf of the charity, and to ensure the charity will get that money through a potential swap of high cash value life insurance that’s equal or greater to the cash you donate to it. But you can actually swap out some of the cash and swap in cash value life insurance that has an equal or greater value than the donated amount. There’s some really innovative things that we’ve done over the years that I think entrepreneurs would really benefit from and investors would really benefit from. Most people just, they don’t think about it. They’re just so focused in the moment that they’re not taking that long term view. In my view, everything is about taxes Everything is about structuring. It’s not about just the gross return, it’s the net return.

 

[00:31:20.220] – Jason

What did you net? I don’t care if someone says, Oh, I made 20% last year in the market. Well, what did you net? If it’s all short term cap gains and you live in New York or LA, you probably net half of it. So if you made 12%, but the gross return was net, you’re doing better if your strategy was that way. It may not have a 20% return. It only did 12, but you net it more. That’s what I care about. What do you keep?

 

[00:31:45.120] – Sean

Yeah, smart. Let’s take a quick commercial break. Do you feel like stock investing is too confusing, too time consuming, or too risky? It doesn’t have to be. If you ever considered investing on your own but don’t know where to start, I welcome you to check out Tykr. Tykr guides you through your investment journey by steering you towards safe investments and away from risky investments. I created Tykr because number one, I wanted to remove emotions from investing, and number two, I wanted to save time. If you’re interested, you can get started with a free trial. Simply visit tykr. Com. That’s T-Y-K-R. Com. Again, Tykr. Com. All right, back to the show. All right, let’s transition to the rapid fire round. This is the part of the episode where we get to find out who Jason really is. If If you can, try to answer each question in about 15 seconds or less. You ready?

 

[00:32:34.720] – Jason

I’ll try. I’ll do my best.

 

[00:32:35.980] – Sean

All right. What’s your favorite podcast?

 

[00:32:38.760] – Jason

I actually was college roommates with Guy Raz, and Guy is one of the top podcasters in the world. All of his are great. All things considered, he does podcasts with tech investors and tech entrepreneurs. Just Google Guy Raz. Any one of his podcasts are incredible.

 

[00:32:55.780] – Sean

I’ve heard the name Small World.

 

[00:32:58.200] – Jason

Yeah, he’s my roommate, sophomore. Four years. He’s a great guy. No kidding. Fantastic guy.

 

[00:33:02.640] – Sean

All right. What’s a recent book you read and would recommend?

 

[00:33:05.580] – Jason

Well, to be a little self-serving here with that answer, I actually wrote a book a couple of months ago. It was number one on Amazon in the areas of taxation, portfolio management, and life insurance. It’s called Demand Transparency. And there’s actually a digital version right on Amazon. I think it’s 99 cents. I’m not doing… I’m giving all the money to charity for the book. The concept is I wanted to share a lot of my stories, a lot my insights with the general population, and I’m thrilled at the support. Again, hitting number one on Amazon was a thrill of a lifetime. And I want to thank everybody that made that a reality. So I have to plug my own book. I’m sorry. I had to do it.

 

[00:33:43.440] – Sean

And we talked about this a little offline online, and I speak to the audience at times. Jason and I were talking about the book before we hit record. He worked for quite a few billionaires in his past life, and those tips and tricks he wasn’t allowed to share. Well, that book reveals those tips and tricks. And for those details alone, I’m interested. So count me in.

 

[00:34:07.870] – Jason

Thank you. And I have another book coming out this summer, Just on Private Placement Life Insurance as the strategy. That was chapter 12 in this book. But the publisher asked me to come up with a whole new book just on that area because the reception was so strong.

 

[00:34:20.550] – Sean

Yeah. Your publicist is a smart person because I was thinking here, I’m like, Gosh, we could dive into that for an entire episode, but I’m just going to refrain at this moment. But I’m so happy Happy to hear you got a book coming out on that topic alone. Thank you.

 

[00:34:34.080] – Jason

I’m very excited about it.

 

[00:34:34.980] – Sean

All right, let’s transition to the movie question. What’s your favorite movie?

 

[00:34:39.250] – Jason

I happen to love the movie Glen Gary, Glen Ross, and it’s just one of those classic. I know a lot of people love it. To me, it shows the abuse of Wall Street in a way, the pressures that salespeople have. I think I’m always saddened to see that some people are saying things and doing things with their clients they don’t want to do. I’ve I had these people, when they learn about my strategy, they say, my gosh, I’d love to sell this because the stuff I’m selling isn’t good and I’m under pressure from my boss to make my sales quota. I think that that movie really did show the pressures that salespeople have. I feel badly for it. And that’s why I love sharing some of these strategy with those people, and I try to get them to see the value. For example, you can invest in stocks without going down in value. There are principle-protected structures that give you the upside of the stock market and no downside. Why is everyone I’m selling stock investments and mutual funds and portfolio? It doesn’t make any sense if you have a 65-year-old that’s looking to retire, and all of a sudden the market goes down 30 %.

 

[00:35:39.540] – Jason

Now they have to work for another 10 years until they get their money back. So I feel like that movie really illustrates the pressures that salespeople are under. And I think it’s very telling. And I think consumers should be aware of that. Try to figure out why is your advisor telling you what they’re telling you? Is it truly for your benefit or is it because they have a sales quota?

 

[00:35:57.330] – Sean

Right. We could drill into that for another hour, too. But I know financial advisors that left large firms because they got sick of pushing products that don’t provide any value to their customer. Yet they have to hit their quota by selling X amount per month.

 

[00:36:11.800] – Jason

Right, Aron? For sure.

 

[00:36:12.990] – Sean

All right. Next question here. What is the worst advice you ever received?

 

[00:36:17.090] – Jason

I mean, this is morbid, but I was given… Most people thought I was crazy to leave Kanner, Fitzgerald, and it wasn’t the right fit, but that was unfortunately in the World Trade Center. And as we all know, 9/11, everyone was killed in the office there. So I was so blessed not to have been there. Of course, I was even thinking of going back to work there. I guess the advice is you got to listen to your heart. I had an opportunity to make a lot of money, but it wasn’t something I wanted to do. I guess the advice that most of my friends gave me was just go back and work there or stay there. Even when I was thinking when I left originally, most people said, How could you give that up? You’re 23 years old making so much money. But I saw things there that it wasn’t comfortable for me. I think you got to listen to your heart. You got to go down your own path. Life is precarious, and you’ve got to live your life day by day, and you’ve got to do what’s in your heart and what you’re passionate about.

 

[00:37:09.400] – Jason

You’ve got to love what you do. I feel so terrible for people that hate their jobs. They’re just doing it for a paycheck. I think it makes for a horrible life. You’ve got to somehow find work that you enjoy. If you’re not, we all have two grandfathers. I have two grandfathers. One grandfather had a business, worked so hard, and unfortunately, retired at 65 and died at 66. My other grandfather, who’s 101 years old, still works to this day and loves his life. And I think that’s what’s elongated his life. He loves his work. And I think that’s an incredible part of the advice is do what you love.

 

[00:37:45.190] – Sean

I love that. Great advice. All right, flip that equation. What’s the best advice you ever received?

 

[00:37:50.530] – Jason

Yeah, I think the best advice I ever got was for me to be on my own. I wasn’t meant for the corporate world. I remember people telling me that there was no way that somebody my age, I started my own company at 25, and I just had a passion, and I wanted to do it. So the best advice I ever got was to follow my heart and just to be who I am and not to follow the herd mentality. And the best advice is to look at opportunities that are outside and try to be as early as you can be. Last year, we started to look at quantum computing as an area that scares a lot of people. And this idea of the cyber security Security can be turned around. These are areas that a lot of people said, don’t focus. I hate gambling. I don’t believe in. I’m not a gambler. I hate taking risk. And when I was 21 years old on my birthday, I lost literally every dollar to my name because someone brought me gambling to Foxwood Casino and got me drunk, and I lost everything. And after that, I never gambled after my 21st birthday.

 

[00:38:55.670] – Jason

The best advice I got was still look at those opportunities. I’m now an investor in the Cataba 2 Kings Casino, and that was everyone told me not to do that. It was terrible because it was not a chance. We didn’t have a certitude. We get approved as a casino. It was very early, and it took many, many years. So I guess the best advice is, again, follow your heart, do your due diligence, work hard, but again, be passionate. Whatever you do, be passionate. If you just go through life and you don’t find that reason to give discretionary work effort, you will never succeed, in my opinion. And even if you do financial Actually, you won’t be happy. I have so many clients that are very wealthy, but they’re miserable. And I think in the end, having money doesn’t give you any real happiness long term. What gives you happiness is purpose in life. By helping others, you will achieve that happiness. So find something, hopefully it pays you a decent living, but find something that you’re passionate about, where you can help others. And I’m blessed to be able to do both. I can make a good living, but I can also really help others with the work that I do.

 

[00:39:56.800] – Jason

So that’s what I give as my best advice someone gave me. It’s just Follow your heart.

 

[00:40:00.930] – Sean

That’s awesome. All right, time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

 

[00:40:10.060] – Jason

I think I would probably give myself the advice that I ended up following, but I had this weird thing when I was a kid where I said, I’m never going to get married till age 40. I’m going to just work, work, make a lot of money, and then I’ll look at love. And it really was 9/11, frankly, that changed me seeing how precarious life was. And I was very blessed blessed to meet my wife, Dana, right around that time. And I’ve been blessed to, thank God, not follow the advice that I was giving myself. So if I go back in the time, I would say that nonsense advice I missed out even on my early 20s and having my heart open to love. But I was lucky I did because when I finally got smart, I was able to meet my wife, and I’ve been very blessed to be with her since 2002. But that would say I’d like to go back to myself as a kid and say, Don’t be so rigid about life. Take Do things day by day and don’t have those odd, rigid rules. But instead, give all your passion every day and open yourself up to love and to the world and helping others, because that’s what’s going to bring you the happiness that you need in life to survive and thrive.

 

[00:41:14.940] – Sean

I love that story. That’s inspirational. All right. And where can people reach you?

 

[00:41:19.630] – Jason

Well, I’m going to do something funny here. I believe that if you want to send me a text to my cell phone, that’s probably the easiest. I respond right away. So I’m going to give out my cell phone. I’m sure nobody’s ever done that. But my cell is 917 area code for my New York days. 917-603-2365. 917-603-2365. You can text me there. I’m Happy to set up a chance for us to chat, hear about what your concerns are. I have a website, The Mandel Family Office, and you can reach me there. I’m all over LinkedIn. So if you go on LinkedIn, you type in my Jason Mandel, the Mandel Family Office. You’ll see a lot of my content there. And feel free to look at it. You can send me a LinkedIn message, and I’m very happy. I think YouTube, there’s a whole bunch of things we posted. So any way somebody wants, but I like to respond directly. I do have a team of people that help me, but I do always like to have an initial conversation with somebody. So feel free to reach out and share with me what your concerns are.

 

[00:42:24.770] – Jason

I’d love to help you solve the problems that keep you up at night. And that’s what drives me. That’s what motivates me every day is solving people’s problems.

 

[00:42:33.570] – Sean

What you wish for. You’re about to get a wave of text messages coming your way. I’m ready.

 

[00:42:37.760] – Jason

Bring it on. I love helping. I love helping. Feel free. And I do shut my phone off at night when I sleep. So Feel free. You can text me any hour. It won’t disturb me. No problem. Right on.

 

[00:42:47.550] – Sean

Smart man. Well, Jason, thank you so much for your time. This is great.

 

[00:42:51.990] – Jason

Thank you. Sean, really appreciate the work you’re doing for entrepreneurs. Thank you again and appreciate the opportunity to share these ideas today.

 

[00:42:58.580] – Sean

Thank you. We’ll see Hey, I’d like to say thanks for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. And if you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple Podcasts and leave a five-star review. The more reviews we get, the higher this podcast will rank. All right, stay tuned for the next episode. We’ll see you.