#116 with Kelly Erb - Tax Expert Breaks Down Trump Taxes and Big Businesses Ran by Few People

Okay, sweet. So I'm here with Tax Girl. I'm here with Kelly Erb, who has a great handle and domain. I got to give you credit. You branded the hell out of yourself. So you have @TaxGirl on Twitter and you have taxgirl.com. So already you're my kind of person for having this kind of pretty interesting self-branding, plus just being, you know, most people who understand taxes don't understand social media and content, and you seem to do so. So am I, am I right in that assessment?

And when I'm on your Twitter right now, it's showing me @TaxMama and @TaxTweet as people I may like. Are these your rivals? Is it Tax Girl versus Tax Mama?

No, well, so first of all, Tax Mom is awesome. Um, she's amazing. Um, no, actually what's really cool about Tax Twitter, which is our little sub Twitter, is that they're really great people. So, um, we're not, we're not so much rivals as we are colleagues.

Great. Okay, I love it. And you had this Forbes article go viral recently that was, uh, I'll read the title. It was The Ordinary Taxpayer's Guide to the Extraordinary Story of Trump's tax returns. And I was looking at Forbes and basically I would say like, you've been a contributor and I would say your normal post will get, you know, thousands of reads or views, I guess. It shows it on the site. And this one has over 200,000 views. So this one definitely, you know, hit a nerve, which I'm guessing you kind of had an inkling it would, or did this exceed your expectations?

So the thing about tax coverage that's really tricky is that when you talk about views, If you were to look at my articles in March, you know, it's not unusual for one to get a million or two views, right?

I see.

Yeah, when I read this, this wasn't Trump is evil or Trump is the best. This was, hey, here's how you should think about this information that was released and what you can and can't draw from it, which I thought was a good kind of like just the information part that you're talking about. Okay, so yeah, this got a bunch of views. It's like, you know, selling a Christmas tree in May. Uh, you sold a lot of Christmas trees in May randomly. So I think that's the— that's what's interesting about doing this article not during tax season. So I think there's two things that I wanted to talk to you about. Number one was, you know, you say in this post, you're like, you know, I'm not gonna kind of comment on, you know, this is not an opinion piece on, you know, to give you my take on Trump's tax returns because I haven't seen them. And you should go read the article. So I do want to get your opinion on it. So even though in this thing, you said you don't want to talk about it, I am curious, like, what was your, what was your personal reaction when you, when you read the news, the New York Times article?

So one of the things that's really interesting is if you've been following the Trump tax story at all, and I've actually written about it as far back as 2015. You know, a lot of this information is not new to us. I think the thing that's so extraordinary about what the Times did is they have packaged it all at once, right? So I think a lot of the information— we've been hearing bits of this for, you know, years. A page or two leaks out and somebody talks about it on Rachel Maddow or people of, you know, Michael Cohen talks about it in his book. I mean, a lot of this information that we're hearing isn't new. I think, but again, I think what's extraordinary and what the Times did is they took other information. And that's what I think sometimes we lack, right, as just readers. You don't know if somebody— if I were to give you my 1040 and you were just looking at it in a vacuum just for this year, you wouldn't really know a lot about me. You might— could tell how many kids I have, where I live. Like, there are things you can glean from a tax return, but you might look at my business— what if my business last year was phenomenal and this year it's not? You're not going to know that from that one tax return. So I think that what the Times did, and looking at so many years, and then also looking at additional information and comparing it to FEC filings and SEC filings. It was a lot of information that they digested for the reader, which I think is really something that we haven't seen before. And, you know, to the point about a lot of people have said, well, why do we need to see it now? You know, I don't know that that's a personal decision on your part, but I will say that usually when you are evaluating presidential candidates, you'd like to know what the economics and what the finances are, not just in terms of are they successful or are they not, but where are their business interests? What kinds of money do they owe? Who do they owe that money to? And we've seen that from other candidates and we haven't seen it from this president. And so I think that's what's really both interesting and extraordinary about what the Times did.

And were you surprised? Okay, the catchy headline was Trump paid $750 of federal income taxes or federal taxes in that year. I forgot which year it was. 2016, maybe 2017, something like that. Was that a surprise to you or you were like, no, that's not shocking?

Right. So the $72 million one.

I see. Okay. All right. So that's sort of the Trump tax side of things. And Uh, the other piece of this is just we have a lot of people, um, that listen to this that have their own businesses, that, you know, taxes tends to be your biggest expense the more successful you get, um, because it scales up with success in many ways. And I know for myself, I've spent the last 6 months trying to figure out how do I reduce my own tax burden, um, because, you know It's, it's large, and I want to be smart about it. And I started from a place of completely zero education around it. And now I'm like, oh, can I go buy a building, put solar on the roof to get some credits, depreciate the bill? You know, I'm trying, I'm trying to think through what are all my options here. You know, should I be living in the Caribbean type of thing? And, and so I just wanted to get from you kind of like, I don't know, is there a 101? Is there a dumbed-down version of it that you could sort of walk people through of things that they should be thinking about or looking at if you are a business owner and you're trying to think about— trying to think about tax strategies that you think work, work well.

Yeah. Yeah. And if you could see me, I'm doing like little air quotes, I'm like, deductions.

But those are also spending money. So you shouldn't get so lost in the idea that you want to lower your tax bill that you go down the road of spending money. What you should do, and this is, I think, where you were going, is that you should think of things that will make your business better that are also tax beneficial. And that's where I think people get sometimes confused. You know, Does a third monitor make your life easier? If it does, then that's a really smart expense because it helps you be a better business owner and it's a deduction. So that's, I think, my big takeaway would be to think of areas where, where if you spend the money to get the deduction or the credit, you're also getting a benefit to the business. It shouldn't always be focused on just lowering that tax number.

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Is that right?

OK, so if you like this, you can get more there. So, so I'm a big fan of this rule called the 80/20 rule. And the 80/20 rule, for those who don't know, is basically, you know, how do I get 80% of the results with 20% of the effort? And if you look at any project you do, it tends to be that 80% of the outcomes come from about 20% of the inputs. It's a common pattern you'll see if you, if you invest and you're a venture capitalist, you invest in portfolio companies, it will tend to be that 80% of your returns will come from 20% of the companies. So I'm curious, Kelly, is there an 80/20? If you were— if you're talking about, you know, if you're, if you're somebody who's looking for what is the 80/20, what are the 20% of efforts I would take? Or, you know, what are the first few things that come to mind when you, when you're talking to somebody about their tax strategy? That if you— you can't learn the whole tax code book, but if you really just looked at these, if you focused on this, these handful of inputs, you can kind of get a reliably large chunk of results from it in terms of, you know, being smarter about your taxes. What comes to mind if you're talking to a business owner? Where do you point them to first? What's kind of 1, 2, and 3?

And to qualify, though, for business owner, you're referring to LLC, or can that include C-Corp as well?

So all of them, I think. I think LLCs, I think, but I think especially on the LLC and the sole practitioner, so somebody who is filing like a Schedule C on their tax returns. Because I think when you have a corporation— and I have, I have an actual corporation as well, mine's an S, but still— we have a corporation. I think that you, you think about things a different way in terms of how you separate home and business. When you are a smaller entrepreneur, maybe you have an LLC or you're filing on a Schedule C, I think you— the fear, at least amongst my clients, the fear is a lot greater because there's more— it feels like there's more at risk, right? You can You could lose your house if something goes wrong, as opposed to just the assets inside the C corp. So I typically talk about LLCs and pass-throughs and Schedule Cs because those are the most common. Probably if you throw S corps in there, about 80%. Not a lot of people anymore do C corps just because of the, the— they're actually tax disadvantages and more tax planning required, if that makes sense. Yep. But yeah, like a business person, I'm thinking somebody who owns their own company, again, usually as an LLC, like they use it as pass-through because that's an easy way to do your taxes. And you talk about expenses, that's another example. Something, if you're a single-member LLC, for example, just by ticking a box, you can actually eliminate an entire tax return, which saves you money because you don't need another, you know, step along the way. So you can eliminate —an extra return. So I think a lot of times, us business owners, again, especially smaller businesses, worry a lot more about— because they're looking at the numbers a lot. I think that people who are more involved in the day-to-day, they're looking at the numbers more. And so they're worried. They're the ones who are wondering whether or not that printer, because they also use it to print out their kids' homework, really was a business deduction, so they don't claim it. So in terms of what I would say, yes, to, I would say, look at the ways you spend money and see if they could be recharacterized as business expenses, because I do think that more people under-deduct than over-deduct.

I would, I would imagine, and Sean, what do you think, that most of the people listening are C-corp people, or it'll be a mix, right?

So anybody who's kind of venture-backed will be C-corp, but I think it would be because of the issues with transfer. Right. But I think for the majority of listeners, I mean, of course there are venture-backed founders listening to this, but I think the most, most people are, I own a roofing company, I'm a consultant, I have an agency, I, um, you know, whatever, like I have an e-commerce store, and those will not be C-corps typically. Yeah.

So can you kind of quickly say what the— you kind of gave a good 80/20. I mean, you basically, you said that most people under-deduct. What about for C folks?

Well, I think that's the difference is, and again, this is some of it semantics, I understand, because it's really sort of all the same pot of money, although my corporate lawyer husband would argue with that characterization. But when you have a C corp, the difference in separation is a lot more, right? You typically don't use your personal credit card for your C corporation, you're going to have the C corporation credit card, um, even if it's in your name. So even if it says Kelly Erb and then it says Tax Girl on the bottom, it's still probably registered through the corporation. It's a lot more tricky when it's an LLC that you run yourself. Maybe you're paid as a consultant or freelancer or gig economy and the money comes to you directly. Um, I think that that's where kind of the difference where you see the difference, because it's a lot— if you have an American Express card that you only use for your C corporation, you know, there, and you buy things in the name of the corporation, the separation is a lot more apparent. So when you go to put things on your tax return, you see here's the credit card. Now I advise my other business clients who are in LLCs or Schedule Cs, solo practitioners, all those folks partnerships to also keep things separate. But I do think it becomes a lot more tricky, especially now in a COVID world, right? Because a lot of us are working from home. So all of a sudden, you know, I have a microphone set up in my office because that's the work that I do. My husband, however, hasn't been able to go into his office on a regular basis. So now he has one too, even though that wasn't his, his deal. So that's where I think it gets tricky. I think it's where when things kind of overlap between home and business, you know, how do you, how do you draw those lines? And I think that that's where, when I say that I think C corporations probably deduct more reliably than other kinds of businesses, I, I think that's sort of where, where I'm going, is that I, I, I think it's that when there's not as clear a separation, it can sometimes be really easy to say, oh, I, I don't know, I write, I I drive my car for home and business, I'm just going to say it's personal rather than deducting those miles. But if the company was a company car, of course you're deducting it. So I think that that's where you see kind of the shades of gray.

And so, Kelly, let's say— here's my experience. So I have— I've had people who just kind of like do the company books, have an accountant, who, you know, helps me with my taxes every year. I've done TurboTax on my own in prior years. What I really want is I want somebody who I could say, hey, I'm paying $1 million in taxes in 2019. How do I not pay $1 million in taxes in 2019? And I want, you know, who's Trump's guy? I want Trump's guy to come to me and basically be like, oh, here's what you need to do. You need to, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, establish some domicile somewhere else. You need to buy this piece of heavy machinery. And you'll get paid for it every month. Plus, you're going to be able to write it all off for this, this year, and next year we'll do something else. Where do I find that person? Is that a tax strategist? Is that a pipe dream? And do I have to be 10 times richer than I am today? What should I do?

Sean, do you know what QSBS is?

I do, but I'd love for Kelly to say it better than I will.

I would love that as well, Kelly. And here's how I— I mean, this is how we've been thinking about it.

It's this magic pill you take, you don't have to pay $10 million in taxes.

Well, I mean, sort of. I mean, there's a lot of rules. And it's actually a relatively, it's funny, it's in the tax world, it's actually a relatively new rule. Because it's only been around since the '90s. So that actually makes it a bit of a new rule. But yeah, so it basically allows you to recharacterize stock that you have so that you can get a tax benefit for it. And it only applies to small businesses. The QSBS part of it obviously is Qualified Small Business Stock. So, but you have to be a C-Corp for that, which is, I guess, where you're going with that. So there is ways to. It is a way to reduce your tax liability if you want to go, you know, down the C corporation route.

Yeah. So I've had people do that with our company through IRAs. Yeah.

So I think it was probably, I'm guessing, a self-directed IRA is my, is my guess. Yes. And yeah, so, and there's actually, it's interesting because I haven't done it as much right now because those kinds of plans have been under attack from the IRA because a lot of them, sorry, IRS, because a lot of them were perhaps being used in ways that they weren't intended to be used. But I actually used to represent a lot of folks who did that with artwork. They did, and real estate, that was also self-directed IRAs were being used. Art and being funded by art and real estate. But what you're talking about is when you have a retirement plan, and the reason I jumped in and said tax-deferred, not tax-free, is because when you have a retirement plan, the growth inside the plan isn't taxable to you until you pull it out. And so you can absolutely put certain kinds of assets inside the plan that might be appreciating quickly. And it doesn't even have to be your company. It could be something like Amazon. You know, if you had bought Amazon back in the day and it was in your retirement account, it doesn't get taxed to you as it grows. It only gets taxed to you when you take it out. So it is a really good way to invest long-term. Now, where it gets tricky is like when you mentioned, if you're going to be— there are rules, and this is where the IRS is looking. You know, there are rules about the kinds of assets that can be contributed, whether or not there are other people in your company and what kinds of contributions they're also making. And then you have to be careful about exchanges, like whether or not you're exchanging one asset inside the plan for another. So there are a lot of rules that govern them. But yeah, there are absolutely— people are also doing this with crypto. They're doing it with gold. There's a lot of— you don't have to have a Vanguard account to have a retirement account. There's absolutely ways that you can fund them on your own. And again, the particular thing I think you're referring to is called a self-directed IRA. Gotcha.

Okay, well, Kelly, this has been great. Appreciate you coming on and dropping some tax wisdom on us. As you can see, we are pretty novice. You know, what's, what's before a white belt? Like, we're just signing up for the free seminar right now. We don't even have our white belts yet. But I appreciate you coming on. And I love, I love, I love that you who took expertise in one place and then built an online presence around it. Like, if I was going to learn one thing from this, it actually wouldn't be anything about tax. It would be about, wow, look at this, a tax attorney created an online brand around Tax Girl. And I've seen doctors doing this too. And they're making YouTube channels breaking down sports injuries and getting millions of views by being a doctor who creates content. And I think that there will be more content creators who are, you know, specialists and professionals in other verticals that do this, and you're a great example of one. Thank you.

Appreciate that. And if I could leave one piece of wisdom, though, just would be absolutely kind of going back to the thing that you mentioned before, is just if you have tax questions, whether it is a website or whether you go to YouTube, it pays to get good information. And no matter how you consume it, because I do think that using those kinds of strategies is what can make you successful. Because again, you don't want to focus on paying the least amount of taxes. You want to maximize your profits, right?

Yeah, and free tax advice is expensive. Absolutely. Okay, sounds good. All right, Kelly, thank you so much.

Everything's $20.

Right. So it's, but it's like, like someone's like, oh, I'll narrate your 30-second commercial. Right. I'll make your podcast intro. Yeah. Which is, I think how this one was done. Or at first maybe, but I would find a Fiverr job that was positioned poorly and I would reposition it and market it just like that. So for example, I found this guy who would do cartoons. I would just say, oh, I'm just gonna make it strictly dog cartoons, send me a picture of your dog, like, you know what I mean? Or I will narrate this thing for you. I'm going to turn it into like custom voicemails by the guy who sounds like blank, right? Or like Donald Trump impression voicemails, right?

Yeah, you take impression guy who does a good Donald Trump impression, you're like, okay, cool, this is Donald Trump wishing you happy birthday for $35 as a service.

Exactly. And so you just fix the positioning, right?

Yeah. And it's not like a scammy thing. I kind of presented it as a get-rich-quick kind of lazy way to do it. But of course there will be work. Like you have to vet the people, you have to make sure it gets done in a timely manner. If there's revisions, you've got to handle it. Basically, but the vetting the part, vetting the person.

I remember Brian Beagleman was the first person who I heard talking about this. I forgot what he called it, but he had a great example. He had an example of some businesses doing like millions of dollars a year that was literally just what you're talking about.

I like, I didn't, I definitely oversimplified PitchBook, but I was like reading about it. I'm pretty sure they just have a team of like literally 300 guys in India who are just scraping massive amounts of data, right?

Scraping it by cold emailing and cold calling people and then like writing things down.

And also probably just like aggregating, scraping. Yeah, which is a technical skill, but yeah.

Uh, yeah, actually I think scraping would be a great one for this, which is like, oh, I need a list of this number of— I need leads about this. And it's just like Cool. Just describe what you need. And if you pay me $200, I'll get you a list of 150 people that are like that. Or if you want 1,000 people that fit that criteria, great. And it's just basically saying, I can go scrape this for you. You don't know how to do web scraping, but I do.

So you only have a few minutes, you said, right? Yeah. So I did something the other day. I asked people how they would describe the podcast on Twitter. I said, How I hate the name of My First Million and how it's stupid and how I hate explaining to anyone who I don't know about what I do and like how I co-host this. Yeah. But for the rare person who like is like you and I, it's like an addicting thing, which is what we hear consistently. Yeah. And I said, so how would you explain the podcast? And I got maybe 200 responses in a short amount of time. And one bit of feedback you and I got, and I rarely give into this shit, but they are totally right, which is we have had almost all dudes on this podcast. We definitely need to get different types of people.

Have you noticed that? Um, so yes, I've noticed that. That was feedback we got pretty early on. We made an effort to try to balance that out as best as we could, but also we got rid of guests. I mean, literally on this episode we had a female guest, um, from a totally different background, right? Tax, tax attorney, very different. Um, so I don't know. I think yes, the feedback is valid, but also yes, we're aware of it and have tried to make strides on it. And yes, we probably also have a long way to go. And yes, I also am kind of exhausted by it and don't even like having guests on anyways. So I don't know how I feel about it overall.

I like having guests if they're like huge, interesting people, like the Tai Lopez thing. Like, we got so much.

Can I read your conversation from this morning out of Slack? This is, this is the Sam Parr experience. Okay, so Sam goes, where is it? This is what it's like to work with Sam. Um, so Abreu says, good news, we're about to sell out of ads. Uh, for the rest of the year and into next year. Sam just goes, well, how much money? Also, we need banger guests once a week, like the founder of Shopify, Google, famous people. And then Abrey says, how much? And then says, who's buying it out? Sam, that's fucking bullshit. That's way too low, period. No solution offered. Abrey, well, okay, also for guests, we have the founder of Lambda School and the CEO of Shopify coming on next week. Those, those are getting interesting. Well, how about bigger, like fucking Hillary Clinton? He's like, I don't know, dude, talk to sales. I think the rate we're getting is pretty good. We just need to blah blah blah. And then he says, by the way, today we have a tax lady on who's going to talk about Trump's returns. I just thought it was so funny. I was like, man, working with Sam is like It's like working with the weather. It's like some days it's sunny and bright and you're like, I love the weather. And then some days it's like a thunderstorm and you— but you don't blame the weather. The weather's just the weather. You don't get angry at the weather. It's like— I'm not.

The thing about me is like, I'm not actually like— I'm like one of those guys who I'll yell and then it's like, you good? Yeah, what's going on? You know what I mean?

Yeah, for sure. You're not actually angry at anybody. I just thought it was really funny. Funny the way that you reacted. Actually, let's bring Abreu in. Abreu, what was that like to be on the receiving end of that response? This is now an intervention for Sam. I'm surprised you brought it up because like, I just thought that was like normal Sam.

Like if he had responded a different way, if he had responded a different way, I would have been surprised. Were you concerned? No, I'm like, yeah, this is the reaction you get.

I know, but yes, this is the normal Sam, but is this the normal of what you are used to? Or do you like it? Do you dislike? Because some people might be like, yeah, I'm fired up. I like that. Just straight talk and tell it like it is and don't sugarcoat it. So where do you stand? How does it feel to be on the receiving end? It feels normal because I think I get Sam's personality. So like when he says that, I'm like, yeah, it's normal. And I know how he would say it.

I know how he would react to it.

So it's not like I'm not like, oh, Sam's yelling. I'm like, oh yeah, Sam.

We were recording this course yesterday and like Midway through, I'm like, I don't fucking have it today. This is horrible. And so we just had to end it. So yeah, I would say I have ups and downs.

Well, it's very transparent how Sam feels. Like, I don't like people who like kind of hide or like their personality changes. It's like, right, you hate to guess how somebody's feeling about something, about your work, about you, about whatever. And I would say Sam doesn't make you guess.

And I thought you missed the best part of that Slack exchange, which is the picture that he posted on Twitter, like right before you started reading the picture that he posted on Twitter. Oh, I thought he was going to get roasted for that. I didn't even see this. Oh, what is this? Who is this? What am I looking at?

It's a photo from a conference. So I had to fly somewhere to speak at a conference, and it was like, it was across, it was in a different country, and I was exhausted in the morning, and they're like, all right, come take your picture. And I was like, uh, I don't want to do this. And so they took a picture of me, and I look like a grown-up Bart Simpson.

Okay, yeah, okay. So yeah, there's a headshot of, there's like a professionally done photo of of Sam. And then Brady says, you look like a bootleg Carl Lentz and you're about to drop the worst gospel album of all time. And then this is what— okay, this is— I missed this whole exchange. And then Sam posts a topless picture of Carl Lentz where he's just absolutely ripped. He's like, you're right, super similar. Oh man, the whole Slack— that people should pay to just be in the Slack. I think that's ultimately—

by the way, Slack, I've decided, is a cancer to my business. I hate Slack. I hope, I hope they're not sponsoring it. Whatever. Sorry, cats out of the bag. I think Slack is the worst. It has ruined my work life. Do you like Slack?

I love Slack. I think it's great.

Oh my God. I don't want anyone talking to me. I have people who message me on Facebook Messenger, Twitter DMs, text message, Slack, email. What else is there? That's it. It's the worst. It is the worst. It is horrible. I hate all these messages.

And then Slack, 6, right? Well, to the future CEO of The Hustle, good luck, dude.

We're interviewing a bunch of ballers. We're interviewing all these people and I'm like, why is this guy talking to me?

That's great. Uh, I love it. Okay, one last thing about CEOship. Uh, you saw this Coinbase letter memo that went out. What was your reaction to it? Totally on board. Okay, so, so I'll explain it for those who didn't see it. So just go look up Coinbase memo or something like that, you'll find it. The CEO of Coinbase basically emailed out like kind of a confusing little email, but like what he was basically saying was it was definitely poorly written. It's poorly written, but he was like, hey, at work, um, like Coinbase is not gonna like take political stands around causes. And also like when you're at work, just be at work. We don't want to be debating politics and social issues. Like, that's kind of a distraction from our mission. And if we do put resources and donations and we do care about causes, it's causes related to our mission, which is, let's say, I don't know, like an open financial currency system or some financial system, which is like, you know, the crypto world. So like, we're all about growing the crypto economy. That's what we're going to focus on. That's what we're going to do at work. That's what we're going to talk about at work. Those are the causes we're going to support. And everything else doesn't have a place here. If that's not a place you want to work at, like, there's a meeting with your manager where you can go and get another job. And so that's kind of what he said. And people were really split on this, totally polarized. So I would say like, there was like Paul Graham, and who's the, you know, founder of Y Combinator, who was pretty much anyone who's libertarian, like probably me, definitely me, probably you.

I don't know what you consider yourself, was like, oh yeah, this guy's awesome. And then anyone who's liberal, or I'm generalizing, was like, um, You know, how dare you not support X, Y, and Z, right?

But there was like a, you know, a bunch of, you know, prolific people chiming in, and it was just interesting to see how split the opinions were. Um, you know, Dick Costolo, the formal former CEO of Twitter, was like, this is not good leadership. This is like, this is basically saying, uh, you know, shut up and dribble to your employees. And, um, there was other people that were like, like, yeah dude, I want work to be about work, and I don't want it to be about all these other things. And I don't think that we should be taking these stands. And I also just, I don't want that— it's already in my world everywhere else. I don't want it infiltrating work, and I don't work about performance.

Shut up and dribble analogy is actually stupid because he didn't say he doesn't want his employees to mention anything. He just said the company, like, the company is going to not stand for anything, but you can do whatever you want and don't say—

don't talk about it at work.

Yeah, and so I don't think that's the same as shut up and dribble because, um, it's It just says, while you're on my time, shut up and dribble. While you're on your own time, I support you as a human. You can do whatever you want. Right. I think that my thinking is if you have shareholders other than one person, you should try to— your only job is to make your shareholders wealthier. And all you should care about is business. And if you only care about business, you'll likely have happy employees because they'll feel like they're succeeding and things like that. If you own the whole company, I think you should make it as political as you want. You know, like, this could be your vehicle. This could be the Sean vehicle to do anything he wants.

And so the other argument is, no, we live in a society, and like, companies should basically be helping society. And if there's societal issues, like, we should have the courage, we should have the backbone to stand up and say when something's wrong. Kind of like that old quote. I don't know the quote exactly, but it's sort of like, you know, they came for the Jews, but I, you know, but I'm not Jewish, so I didn't say anything. They came for the bankers, but I'm not a banker, so I didn't say anything. And it's like, they came for me and there was nobody left to say anything. It's sort of like that where if there are wrongs happening in a company, you know, if people and companies, people of power, which is in some ways organizations, don't say anything, don't do anything, don't use their platform and their influence, then that's a shame and I don't wanna work at a place like that. That's another take that people have and I think it's gonna get split. I think you're gonna get two types of companies. You're gonna get companies that lean into the activism and people work there because they're like, yeah, that aligns with my values. And then you're gonna get other people who are like, I don't want my work life to be so political or like to take a social stance on everything. I want work to be about business. I want, you know, I want it to be about the actual mission of the business. And I think it's gonna get split and then people will self-select where they want to work.

Which, and by the way, I think that last argument you made is actually a a really good argument because in my head I'm like, well, we would hopefully know like what's actually serious and what you should like say no to. And then maybe a lot of people will be like, well, this is serious. Like, why aren't you saying? And I'm like, I would have to actually walk through that exercise on how to figure that out.

Right. And the other interesting thing was the sort of rumor mill was basically, 'cause it was like, why did you get, why'd you post this like really weird thing? It was sort of weird because it was like, this is something he was saying to his company, but he published it and was like, I want other leaders to learn from what we did. And everyone else was like, you know, so split that it wasn't like this great example of anything. And then some, some somebody on Twitter, and her name's Erica Joy, she's a Black woman on Twitter, and she was basically saying, by the way, the inside scoop of this is that he was like, you know, his hand was being forced. The engineers walked out because he wasn't saying X, Y, and Z. He wasn't saying Black Lives Matter. He wasn't the company did nothing when all the other companies were standing up and saying something. And so he was being pushed, and then this was his like tantrum back about like, okay, you forced me 3 weeks ago. Because the weird thing is like 3 or 4 weeks ago, he posted on Twitter, I want to unequivocally say Black Lives Matter, and here's, you know, here's why that's— here's what's wrong in the world and how we should work to fix it. And so she was basically saying like he didn't want to say anything he was being pushed to say it. Engineers walked out, so then he put that statement up. But this is like the retaliation weeks later of like, look, that's not gonna happen again. Like, that's not how our company's gonna run.

If that is true— and I'm going on Glassdoor right now and going clicking most recent— if that's true, then that's awesome. I think that's baller. I think that like— what, of him? Yeah, of him. If like someone threatens you, like, you know, if you don't do this, I'm out. In most cases, you should say, all right, bye, right? Like, just for that, just like that.

I would say that's, that's kind of the point I agree with you the most, which I think we both believe. You should run your company the way you want, and then you should deal with the consequences of running your company that way, rather than this general idea of everybody needs to run every company the same way, which is the right way, as dictated by the mob of Twitter or the mob of you know, X group. And then people doing shit that they don't actually even believe to be the right way to do things. It's not even actually what they want to do, but feeling like they're gonna get canceled or fired or whatever if they don't. So I think the better world is people do what they actually think they should do, and then let the chips fall where they may. And then people will self-select around joining companies that are the way they want to be, you know, the type of company they wanna join.

And by the way, I don't entirely buy that story. Simply because I'm on Glassdoor. Is like the one of the best places to get information on and learn all about a company. Typically the reviews are too good or too bad, but you could— so you got to like divide by half to get the middle. And anyway, I looked at the reviews, I don't see a thing on that. That is, this is the type of thing that an employee would quit or get fired over, and that's the first thing they would complain about. And I don't see one thing since, um, March that relates to that topic.

Well, I think some of it's definitely true. I think there definitely was a walkout. The question is, did he do this because he learned, oh, the company feels this way, and decided— made it— made some decisions? Or is it truly like a kind of a retaliation, a response to, to that? I don't know that part, but I think the walkout part was sort of confirmed by lots of people who worked there. Now, I also would say, you love Glassdoor. I never use Glassdoor. I don't know anybody who writes on Glassdoor. I'm sure obviously people do, but I don't know how on the pulse Glassdoor is. Let's say I'm not sure it's like— in the same way that I don't think Yelp is. I don't agree with Yelp most of the time, and I know what it's like in our company, and I don't know if I would agree with the Glassdoor reviews of it either. It's a signal.

It's not the answer. It's a signal, right?

But what you're saying is if nothing's there, then it's a lack of signal. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, like, it's a signal. Like, for example, if something on Yelp has 10,000 reviews and they're all positive, and something has only 3 reviews— or rather 10,000 reviews and it's only okay versus 10 reviews and they're all like perfect— you're like, what's going on here? Like, this 10,000 thing actually might be pretty good if it's so popular, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, you, you don't look at the number, you look at the variety of factors. And that's how I use Glassdoor, and I think that it's like a fantastic way to figure it out. Very cool. Um, all right, I gotta run.

But interesting episode. It's gonna be a different, very different episode. We got the tax thing and then we got just kind of random shoot the shit at the end.

So I think, um, I think we kind of crushed it in the last episode, although I didn't get a ton of feedback.

It just went out today. Okay, we're gonna get—

I haven't gotten any WAP blowover, which is what I was expecting.

Yeah, where are the tweets? Uh, okay, I gotta go. See ya.