Natalie Franke
Did you know that 34% of entrepreneurs have zero retirement savings plan for themselves? That statistic is scary, but not entirely surprising. It can be easy when you run a business to put things like saving for retirement on the back burner, because, frankly, you’re busy. You’re trying to grow this business and you’re working in it, but the idea of working on it and working on your personal finances can not only be daunting, but an easy thing to procrastinate for far too long. That is why in today’s episode, we are sitting down to talk with the co founders of Osho oto wealth is a new startup that focuses on supporting entrepreneurs in helping to turn business income today into generational wealth tomorrow to voters co founders on corndog, Paul and Jessica toric. Sit down with me today to talk more about why independents struggle with saving for retirement, how we can reframe our mindset around creating wealth, and give you some tactical tools that you can implement today, especially if you’re somebody that is in that 1/3 of business owners who doesn’t have a retirement savings plan. Hey, everyone, this is your host, Natalie Frank, and you’re listening to the independent business podcast, more people than ever are working for themselves and building profitable businesses in the process. So on this show, I sit down with some of the most influential authors, entrepreneurs and creators to break down the science of self made success so that you can achieve it.
Natalie Franke
Gorgeous, thank you so much for joining me. I am so excited to have this conversation.
Jess Catorc
Thank you. Thanks for having us. Looking forward to this.
Ankur Nagpal
Yes, super excited for this going to be fun.
Natalie Franke
Awesome. All right, it is gonna be fun. I am jumping in with not quite a softball. I don’t know, maybe it’s a softball. But I need to know, does money buy happiness? And if not, what do you believe that it buys.
Ankur Nagpal
So I’ll take I’ll take the first one, I think money can buy happiness, like indirectly. And I’ll give you an example. So I think a lot of people, they make a bunch of money, and then they’re like, Wow, actually feel exactly the same. And you know, they sort of get into this trap where they feel like money did not directly buy happiness. For me money was able to buy happiness by buying freedom. Like I was able to, like not do the things that were stressing me out. And that in turn made me happy. So I’ll give you an example. Like towards the end of running, teachable the last couple of years, I was very burnt out, we had, you know, I didn’t feel like the work I was doing was making me happy. And being able to step away from that, because of having money made me happy, or like spending money to have time to see my family. So there’s all these roundabout ways. I think money can truly make you happy, but it’s likely not by you know, buying more shit or whatever.
Natalie Franke
Yeah, it’s not the money itself is what it sounds like. Yeah, just you agree with that.
Jess Catorc
I agree. But I think it’s also like, people forget about lifestyle creep, because I think that everyone has like a number where they’re like, Okay, you know, yeah, maybe Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it certainly will take the stress off. If I have X amount of I make this amount of money, my business, I earn this amount of money, and then you get there. But then there’s more problems that come because now you’re comfortable, but you uncover other things that, you know, are stressful. And so I think that, it’s also just important to recognize that like, there’s always going to be something else. And then just getting to the core of like, you know, like what you’re saying or like, you know, if you have money, you can travel to visit your family more they can come to you which I think at its root that causes happiness, it’s not necessarily the money directly.
Ankur Nagpal
And all of this obviously is true if like your past a certain point. I mean, what’s the having having money isn’t everything not having it is like right, like so if you’re at a point where like, not having money is causing, like stress in your life getting past that will absolutely make a big difference.
Natalie Franke
The reason I start with that question is because it is one of the most commonly asked questions in regards to money. And as someone that’s run an independent business, multiple of them over the past decade and a half. I have always been shocked that oftentimes it’s questions like that, that we talk about. And that’s where it ends. That’s where the conversations around money. And for a lot of us now, as you grow in business, you sit at different tables, and at different tables, we have different conversations, which is part of why I started this podcast to bring those conversations a little more into the open. But one thing that I feel is starting to change and I know that both of you and Ocho is contributing to this is a wider conversation around money around wealth around how to generate it. And so I want to kind of take us from the common ubiquitous question into the double clicking of why is that why don’t we talk about money? Have you experienced that? Is that something you’ve come up against in working with you know, independence, both with your time at teachable. Now at ojo? Do you see this as something that’s common? And if so, why do you think it is?
Jess Catorc
Yeah, I think it’s such an interesting question. I think that it goes to I mean, if you think back When you were a kid, or when you’re growing up, I think for most people, the things that we don’t talk about our politics, money, religion, right? Like, there’s just certain things that just generally people are like, oof, like, be careful talking about that. And I think the problem with that and not being able to see like the nuance within like talking about money is that then we get older. And you know, when we’re in high school or college, we’re not really talking about money, or spending or racking up credit card debt. And we just assume that everyone else is either doing the same thing, or we just assume that, you know, it’ll work itself out. And then you get to entrepreneurship. And everyone’s focused on making money, because I think that is, for whatever reason, the metric that we determine a success, how much revenue Did you generate in your business? And then no one wants to talk about the like, oh, well, I don’t actually really know how to allocate my money, or I don’t really know how to budget, I haven’t really even thought about retirement. And then we kind of go back to that old phase where we’re like, everyone else probably knows what they’re doing. So I’m not going to be the one to say that I don’t, at least from my perspective, I think is what I see there.
Ankur Nagpal
I also think a lot of these beliefs are just internalized what our family does, without really thinking about it for a long time, like, by parents are Indian and like an Indian culture, it’s pretty crude to talk about money. And for a long time, I did not because like I was like, okay, you know, I’ll just do what my family does. And then, as I started to form my own opinions, I was like, actually, when you talk about it, it’s empowering, right? The more you talk about it, the more people can even find out what’s what’s happening, and how they stack up and all of that. So, right now, at this point, we have different beliefs, like my parents would never talk, like in their friend group, no one has ever talked about how much they make, how they invest any of it. It’s just considered like a taboo topic. But you know, I think for our generation of the people, I know, things are changing. But by default, I think we just sort of do, we do what our family did without questioning it.
Natalie Franke
Yeah, that was similar in my house as well, we didn’t talk about money, I was raised by a single mom. And often if we did talk about it, it was from a standpoint of budgeting and how to get more of it. And not that it was ever rooted in a scarcity mindset. But I do think there was a lot of fear that I experienced kind of at different points in my in my upbringing around money. And I know, I’m not alone in that a lot of business owners come from from backgrounds like that, where they entered the business world where, you know, even just operating your own company requires a lot of financial knowledge that isn’t readily available for so many, or at least in the past, it hasn’t been. And that’s part of why when I hear statistics, like the fact that 40% of independent business owners, entrepreneurs, they’re not confident that they’re going to be able to retire by retirement age 40%. And that, that stats from score, you know, it’s very scary, but it’s not shocking. It’s not surprising, because I think, you know, there is such a knowledge gap and such an opportunity, right, at least it especially, I would hope it in your eyes as you’re creating something so valuable for independents that are in that position, to change the trajectory of their savings of their life of the retirement that awaits them. But I’d love to know, you know, with that stat in mind, what what do you think, you know, is holding business owners back from saving for retirement from creating that type of generational wealth that we all desire to see for those in our community?
Jess Catorc
So I think that I think we need to like break it up into a couple of buckets, because like, I think the first hurdle of like, why people don’t feel like they’re ready for retire, they don’t think they’ll be ready for retirement. I think on one hand, there’s a lot of focus when you become an entrepreneur. It’s like, I’m doing this because I want to do what I love. And part of that, you know, subconsciously is there like, Okay, well, you know, when you’re working a nine to five job that you do not like, you’re like, I cannot wait to retire, the focus is on retirement. And then you start doing things that you love, and you’re like, Oh, this is great. You know, I’m living in the moment, even if you’re stressed, it’s still like you want to be doing this. So I think there’s potentially that mindset element of like, not thinking more in the present of making money generating revenue, doing what you love, and not like, what will this look like, if you do want to take a step back, just to create that safety net. And then the other thing too, is I think there’s just also, you know, we talk about having access to knowledge and information when it comes to finances. If you don’t understand how things work, it can feel incredibly overwhelming. Anything in the last 50 years has been like 150,000 words added to the tax code. So it’s already just such a daunting task that I think it’s so easy to procrastinate and feel like, I’m not not doing this. I’m just kind of pushing this off until I can learn everything, rather than just taking one initial step which is, well, how can I at least budget so I have some money to put wherever I decide to put that for retirement?
Ankur Nagpal
I also think there’s a bigger retirement problem in this country like yes, we can talk about business owners, but I think in general like retirement is it’s pretty scary and it’s totally broken in this country. Like I think for a long time, like the government is sort of just passed the buck to the employer. Bigger Picture And even now, every two or three years, they realize that like Social Security is in a really bad state 401, k’s and stuff are not getting contributed enough to like, as recently, as, you know, December 30, Biden set aside the secure act to and my guess is they’ll keep having newer and newer legislation, as they realize that like our generation specifically and onward like isn’t a really broken position for retirement because of the onus that has been passed on to companies, right, back in the day, you had pension plans, there was much more robust infrastructure around it. Not anymore and obviously exacerbated if you don’t have an employer or you become your own employer, which is, you know, where we come in. But I mean, this is kind of depressing, but I think it’s, it’s messed up for everyone and pretty systemically and not just business owners.
Natalie Franke
I agree. 100 100% Absolutely agree. 100%. And the lack of infrastructure is something that we talk about a lot are that dependence on the employer to kind of support the individual. And once you go independent, you don’t have right that that existing infrastructure, whether it’s good or not, it disappears. Now, with that in mind, you know, where does someone begin? So if you are an independent business owner, let’s say, you are either in the 34%, that you know, doesn’t have a retirement savings plan? Or maybe you do, but you’re in the 40%, that isn’t sure it will, you know, enable you to retire. What are you supposed to do? Where do you begin?
Ankur Nagpal
I think it depends on sort of where you are, and what is sort of the best account for you based on what your income level is, I think if you’re, if you’re just starting out, if you don’t have you know, if you’re not making, if you’re in a lower tax bracket, it may be beneficial to think about a an IRA, where you don’t have to get like our our core product for the solo 401 K. So this is not even self serving. Like I think if you’re, you know, an IRA has a limit of $6,500, which, if you’re going to stay under that it’s the easiest type of account to set up, it’s portable, you can take it anywhere you want. If you’re under $150,000 a year, you can also make it as a Roth contribution. And if you don’t, if you’re not served by any other retirement plan, you get a tax deduction for it if you set up a traditional IRA, so some mistake I’ve actually seen people make is setting up a solo 401 K, which is what we often which is sort of the best retirement plan if you want to get go beyond that amount. But setting a solo 401 K up can preclude you from getting a deduction on setting up an IRA. So it’s something that, you know, we want to also highlight to people to be careful and know how much they want to contribute because you want to contribute about $1,600 a year or less, you’re probably better off setting up an IRA. But once you want to go beyond that, a solo 401 K is the best type of account for an independent business owner because you can get up to a $66,000 tax deduction this year, you can make Roth contributions, unlike a traditional corporate 401k, you can invest in, you know, any assets you want. And the best part is, of course, it keeps compounding tax free. So it’s really there’s not many things in the tax code that, in my opinion, are like a gift from the government, and like built specifically, you know, to benefit you. So we’ve been doing a lot of education around, you know, how people could be leaving money on the table by not pre funding, you know, their benefits.
Jess Catorc
I think just to add on to that, too. I know, like people are like, Okay, well then how like, where do I find this money to contribute and obviously depends on like, what your your revenue is and how much you’re making. But I cannot stress slash encourage people enough to actually take the time to do a financial forecast. I think when people hear it, I think we need to come up with a better name than a financial forecast. Because that just seems like just the most boring, daunting thing. But really, it’s just mapping out what you’re doing now. And what you will probably be doing the next 12 months or you know, however much you want in the future. Because I think people and this isn’t, you know, going back, this isn’t just entrepreneurs, you know, people, w two employees also, don’t prioritize paying themselves first anything, if you have bills within your business, you’re paying them most likely or hopefully. And so I think allocating a certain amount of money for your retirement and for your savings, whether that’s in your salary, or how you want to budget that. Because if you don’t map out what your business is going to look like, over the next few months, we can fall into the trap of, you know, maybe it’s like seasonality, there’s certain seasons of the year, you know, especially if you’re like a photographer, maybe you have certain products where you’re like, wow, business is great, okay, I can contribute, or I can pay myself more this month, and then it goes down and then you’re panicking. And then you’re just like, Okay, I’m not gonna do anything. And so just really understanding what does your business look like month over month for an entire year on average, will allow you to just be able to be more consistent and regular with allocating money for retirement.
Natalie Franke
Oh, I love that though. And the word forecast is a creative, it just gives me it already makes me a goof. You know, but I completely agree. And we’ve seen similar things with just supporting business owners on on mapping their client flow, for example, taking that moment to work on the business, not just in the business to really kind of put on the CEO hat or the CEO or the CFO in this case, hat and, you know, look look into the future. It’s so critical. It’s so important. I’m curious, though, how much is enough? You know, how much is enough to really support somebody into retirement? Is it a percentage of their income? Is it a certain benchmark by a certain age? How should we be thinking about it?
Jess Catorc
I think like, the just like, the best practice is cuz I think if we were to say like, you should be saving 20% of your income, you know, every month putting that towards retirement, it’s easy to hear that and be like, cool. Well, that’s not possible. So I’m not going to do anything. And I mean, just like really thinking about the power of compound interest, it’s like consistency is going to be your friend over just doing bursts of like, random large deposits when you can. And so I think, you know, just like creating a habit, what is like the least amount that you can allocate towards retirement? And can you do that for the next six to 12 months? And if you find that, like, month three, it’s actually quite easy, okay, I’ll increase it a little bit. But you never go beyond or below that amount that you set, because otherwise people, you just people will just like wait or push it off until they can and then that’s in the long term not helpful.
Ankur Nagpal
Another realization we’ve had that’s actually, that’s something we’ve, or at least I’ve changed my mind on since starting this company is I thought not I thought financial planners were something we could kind of replace. But I’ve come around to that thinking, I don’t think we’re going to replace financial planners, because there’s so much individual stuff to think about, like, for instance, as as you bring it up, like, one of the big questions is like, what kind of lifestyle do people want to maintain retirement is such a big variable, right? Like, we can’t prescribe the same one size fits all. So we’re adapting our product and technology to also now be like, Okay, we actually might have to do some personalization. Because there’s one size fits all approach isn’t for everyone, and which is why sometimes, you know, having a planner or someone to talk to, can help because everyone’s situation is unique. And what they want from retirement is, is unique, and accordingly, like, have very different philosophies. Like I’ll give you this really this book, I don’t know, if you’ve read it, it’s called die with nothing. And it’s a more extreme perspective. But this year, the person argues, you should actually front load your spending, like too many people die with too much money, because of this fear of running out. And your utility from you know, money goes lower and lower, the older you get. So the average person ends up, you know, saving too much for retirement. And it comes from a place of fear. I personally don’t agree with that. But you know, like, but that’s just shows a sort of spectrum of viewpoints when it comes to, you know, how much to save for retirement.
Natalie Franke
I love that last tidbit right there. I also, as you’re talking, kept thinking about my partner and I, my husband, you know, are even within like, we have had to have those conversations about retirement lifestyle. And it’s funny, we have such different views. So working on the compromise, where I’m like, I want to live in an RV down by the river, you know, like, give me an air stream, and I will, you know, like, and whereas he’s like, No, you know, it has a different has a different vision. So even just like it’s something that’s a good place to start for anyone listening to this, like, have you really thought about it, if you’ve taken the time to think about the lifestyle that that you want in that season of your life. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That’s amazing. Okay. One of the things I love that both of you I’ve seen, both of you do on social and in your content, is you talk a lot about sort of these underutilized, you know, financial tips, tricks, tax savings, opportunities, things that people just don’t know that they, you know, like we talked about, it’s not spoken about, or, you know, there’s just not a lot of awareness around. And so I’m curious if you’re willing to share any of those with us, you know, what are some of those underutilized aspects of generating wealth, creating wealth saving on your taxes that you wish more people knew?
Jess Catorc
Oh, I mean, you got two hours, we can
Ankur Nagpal
talk about go through a webinar right now, seven simple steps.
Jess Catorc
But it’s i This is such a great question. And topic. I just I love it. i It’s so interesting, because I think most people assume that like these huge strategies and tricks and everything that you know, maybe we’ll share now or that you’ll uncover. It’s like, okay, well, they’re usually tax loopholes, like, you know, all these tricks, like, they’re just like, there’s shady things, or it’s only for the rich in the elites to do and the sad thing you know, with basically, you know, what, what we’ll be sharing now is, like, this is pretty standard, it’s not hidden, it’s just that if you don’t have access to this information, it’s not even on your radar, which I think is one understandable but to also empowering to know that there’s so much that you can utilize and you can leverage, you just need to hear about it. I would say like, just starting like foundationally The first thing is just really looking at your expenses as a business owner. A lot of people most people will, you know, they’ll claim expenses on their their taxes. That’s, I think for the most part, people understand that. But we often forget that especially if you work from home, there’s so much that you would be paying for out of pocket anyways that you can leverage. You know, if you think of if you’re, let’s say living in like a two You bedroom apartment, you have one like this room right here, this is a second bedroom, we use as an office, that for the proportional square footage, of course, you can claim all of your rent, but that can come off your taxes. So let’s say if you’re, you know, spending, let’s say $5,000 a month on rent, if you live in New York, that’s also very believable. And you’ve got one bedroom 20% of the entire space. You know, it’s about like, $12,000 a year that you can take off your taxes, your internet, your utilities, your rent, like all those things, I highly recommend people looking at what they’re currently paying for out of pocket and seeing like, what is in fact, a business expense? And then yeah, there’s, there’s more like even like leveraging credit card points, which we can talk about in a in a sec. But yeah, and even switching to an escort if you want to talk about that younger,
Ankur Nagpal
very quickly, but quick checklist to tell everyone to like think through is incorporation Are you incorporated in the most intelligent way, which for like, let’s say you’re a startup founder, you want to be set up as a C Corp, because you pay no taxes if you sell your business after five years. But if you’re a service provider that makes over $100,000, you probably want to file for an S corp election. So incorporation, the first place place we look to expenses with Jess already spoke about the third big categories, you can fund the benefits you want. So solo 401 K retirement account health insurance, you can literally pick the best benefits for you, your family or partners. Because you know, it’s your business. And you get to control that, if you want to start getting fancy, and like this is the point at which it gets like advanced, but like people really want to like, do dramatically different things to pay less in taxes, I think, you know, the world of real estate opens up a ton of different opportunities. But that’s more of an advanced tactic if like, and I also think it’s very important to, you know, figure out what is the return on return on hassle or return on return on how painful some of these things are, because you can go deeper and deeper and deeper and dig yourself, you know, save marginally and marginally more amount. But, again, a lot of this also comes to like, what are you optimizing for how important is like how painful your life becomes versus like marginal tax savings. But that that’s the quick checklist.
Jess Catorc
I love it to also clarify for incorporation structure. And this is, you know, most people, if you’re just kind of starting out, or maybe you haven’t, like looked over the past few years of kind of how you’re running your business, what your income looks like, just the standard incorporation structure, people will be their sole prop or an LLC. And, you know, that’s great. However, if you are listening to this, and you’re making an about it, let’s see, like, between 80,000 $200,000 a year or more, a lot of the times most of the times it actually is more advantageous to switch and be taxed as an S corp, you save on self employment taxes. So it’s not applicable to everyone, but also just a really helpful tip to remember that if you are an LLC, or you are a sole prop and your business is doing well, once you get into that threshold, you know, that’s where when you can save. I mean, if you’re making $100,000 a, depending on what you pay yourself as a salary. I mean, you can save, you know, 1000s of dollars with that tip alone. And then yeah, the credit card points thing I think is like kind of getting into the weeds. But I it’s something that I’ve recently, like fully leveraged after talking to experts and you like really can, if you have expenses that you’re paying for anyways, with a credit card, you know, especially for your business, you can start to leverage and maximize how many points are earning, which in itself can then turn into like free flights, upgrading flight, which is just a huge, huge saving. But yeah, that could be a whole other conversation.
Natalie Franke
I love the Credit Card Points conversation, though. That’s something that you know, I speaking of like mindset shifts and transforming the way that we think about money. My husband has always been the point sky in our house. And I’ve always run the other way from credit cards in general. They’ve scared me until recently until I started to realize, oh, with the proper amount of, you know, financial education and consistent diligence and ensuring that we’re really taking advantage of the cards that we have. We I mean, we’ve started flying business class on points not paying out of pocket, but on points. And so I do think that’s a really interesting avenue that for a lot of business owners again, it’s if it wasn’t something that was discussed growing up, if credit cards were something that you know, were shied away from or demonized in some way. It might feel like very unfamiliar territory for them. So I do love having that conversation. I love getting a little bit into the weeds on it. I think it’s something that you know, we shouldn’t be afraid to explore and something that really can have a lot of benefits. So if you have anything specific that you’ve learned that surprised you on that front, like I’m even curious, you know, with a business credit card, can you use those points personally, like, how does that even work?
Jess Catorc
Yep, oh, Natalie. There’s
Ankur Nagpal
everything. It is basically, because it’s in this weird tax gray area. It’s sort of an untaxed benefit to you. So you’re a bit you can spend money on your business credit card earn points use that personally and because it’s, again, the IRS has said the look into it, right? It’s not that this will be like, totally fine forever. But for now, it’s fit into this like nice little gray area where you absolutely can. And we know of business owners, especially people in like running construction business by millions of dollars of materials, putting that all to their credit card, or let’s say you have an online course business, but you’re spending huge amounts on Facebook ads, same thing, put it all in the credit cards, you know, have the points and use it for personal expenses, which is what I was doing. Now that we’re a startup, it’s a little bit different, because we have investors and stuff. So in those cases, we’re just opting for cash back. But if you are, if it’s your own business, where there’s no other stakeholders, a big fan of you know, using the credit card points for personal use,
Jess Catorc
and then just to kind of break it down. So, you know, when it comes to credit card points. The first thing is I think people think that you need to obsess over loopholes like I know people that like love reading the fine print to find I know someone who actually had their credit card, they were banned from this credit card company because they found a loophole,
Ankur Nagpal
but basically you’re talking about.
Jess Catorc
So like there’s extremes, but what I would say is, so the first thing to maximize how many points you can get, and again, the I cannot stress this enough, you need to like one ensure that you do have like a good, relatively good credit score, you need to trust that you will be able to pay off the debt do not pay the minimums paid off every month, because the benefits that you’re going to be getting, like with interest and compound interest. It like it doesn’t make sense. So but the first thing is, the way to get the most amount of points in a short amount of time is one looking at signup bonuses. So so many credit cards will have like, you know, 100,000 60,000, signup, bonus points, but also looking at analyzing your spending. So if you’re looking for a business credit card, and you’re spending a ton of money on ads, there are specific business credit cards that give you like multiple points for ad spend. Don’t just go for the AMEX platinum, because everyone you know, has it actually look at what is my spending, what are like some of the biggest categories, and which credit cards are actually going to give me more for that. But with the signup bonuses too, there’s a thing called pathing. So to get a signup bonus with credit cards, most of the time, there’s a certain amount of money you have to spend within a certain amount of time. So don’t sign up for five credit cards. And you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m gonna make 500 gain points, if you have to spend more than you actually financially can in like three months. So the strategy is called pathing, where you start with one credit card, you leverage those, you know, the signup bonuses, and then you can go on to another one. Usually you start with a chase card and then Amex at the end. But that’s a really great place to start. And then yeah, transferring your points out department programs.
Natalie Franke
Oh, I love that I love all of that. I like getting into the weeds, we’re not cutting it in half, we’re gonna have everyone re listened to it twice and execute on it immediately. I want to double click into the solo 401k. I had never heard of this until y’all launched. And I’ve been running businesses for a very long time. Well over a decade. And I’m not embarrassed to say that because I’m learning more every single day. But I guarantee there are a lot of folks out there that don’t even know this exists. So for a second, can we just talk about like, what is this? What? What is it? Has it always been around? Is it something new? Any information you can share on how we should be thinking about it?
Ankur Nagpal
Yeah, absolutely. I had the exact same journey when for the first time I had an LLC a couple years ago. So I was looking into retirement accounts. And I googled it and I stumbled upon the solo 401k and solo foreign kid works like a corporate 401k. But the big difference is you were both the employer and the employee. So you can custom build your own 401k plan to do exactly what you wanted to do. And when I started reading about the plan, my first reaction was, this sounds too good to be true. Like it’s got sort of the best parts of all the plans like, like, why, like what’s going on here? Why isn’t everyone talking about this. And then I went down a journey of actually setting one up, and then I started to realize why no one was talking about it. It’s because all the providers were sort of terrible, even though you are allowed to do all these things. Like for instance, invest in, you know, any asset class, whether it’s stocks, real estate, funds, no matter what, and have full discretion over that most providers actually weren’t allowing you to do that. So if you go to Charles Schwab, you could set up a solo 401 K, it would take a lot of time, but you’d be limited to what Charles Schwab allows you to do, and they wouldn’t let you have the benefits like having a Roth account under your solo 401k. So none of the providers honestly focused on it too much. And my hypothesis is because they thought it’s a very niche product. They thought how many people are out there, and for a long time, there really weren’t that many independent business owners to make it make sense. But as that change, we’ve realized it was a really interesting wedge for us to enter the market and initially built a product literally because I could find one for myself last year. I tried to you know, six months and I’m like, Ah, damn it, guess you got to start a company now. And, and yeah, that’s that’s where we are now where I think it’s the best retirement account for someone seIf employed because it gives you the highest contribution limits your money, compounds tax free, you invest in anything, you can make Roth contributions. And it’s even got good like downside protections. Like for instance, let’s say you end up needing your retirement money for other reasons, you can borrow up to $50,000 from your own solo 401 K at no interest, no penalty, nothing and paid back later. So it’s a very, very flexible account.
Natalie Franke
I love that. Just anything to add there.
Jess Catorc
Yeah, the one thing to just the The caveat is, you know, we’ve had people are like, okay, great, I’m gonna set up a solo 401 K, you know, I’ve got all of my like, five full time employees. So 401 K is if you are like you don’t have employees, full time employees under you, I think that the difference, it doesn’t count if it’s your spouse or your partner. But having if you have full time employees, then it’s not the right fit. But yeah, and I think it’s, um, either way, it’s just definitely worth looking into, or if you know, someone that is self employed, and doesn’t have any employees, like send them this or just send them all the resources because it is such a game changer.
Natalie Franke
Who I love it, I can’t I wish I knew about it. I wish I wish I had existed when I was the solo with no full time employees under me, because, you know, back then I was so young and had no idea what to do. Alright, and the world is changing for the better. And with all that you’re building a dojo, you’re making it easier for business owners to create that generational wealth. As we wrap up this episode, I love to end with a final question. And I would love to get an answer from both of you. This is a podcast all about the science of self made success. And so I’m very curious, what you believe differentiates the businesses that succeed from the ones that fail,
Jess Catorc
avoiding the like mindsets, I do think there’s a huge aspect that is mindset of like, obviously, believing in yourself. And you know, like, actually, you know, putting yourself out there. Because I think that that’s probably a common thing that people will think or maybe assume. I do think though one of the most important things that I’ve seen both from creators and startups is one being able to listen and pivot. Because you can have the best idea, but if even if the demand was there, but it shifted, or if there’s like a more nuanced approach that you could take for a problem or pain point that people have, I mean, even if you just look at you can we could talk about personal finance, or is it personal finance for business owner, like, there’s so many things that you can do, but I think that you just have to humble yourself and listen to your customers or the audience and be able to read like, okay, what are the opportunities there and being able to pivot I think, has been a trend that I’ve seen very successful people.
Ankur Nagpal
Yeah, my answers were very similar. Like once you get past the, like, actually doing it like the most cliched is to just, you know, just do it. The biggest thing that holds people back is never doing it and talking about it. But once they actually get to the point of doing it, it’s it’s rate of iteration. Like even as as a startup or anything, our chances of finding success or like, how fast can we iterate on what we’re doing until something clicks and it’s the same thing when you’re trying to start up a business or anything is like, if you try things at a fast enough rate, it is inevitable you will find something ironically enough I find sometimes dislike hustle porn culture of like, you know, working on your idea for like 16 years and never see any traction is actually damaging. You should be absolutely willing to be like, Wow, no one likes us. I’m going to try something else. And like just doing that rapidly, I think increases the odds of finding success. Who
Natalie Franke
What a way to close this out. Both of those answers were so incredible. Uncle Jeff, thank you both so much for joining me today, I am going to have to re listen to this one myself. This was so good.
Ankur Nagpal
Thanks for having me for
Jess Catorc
having us this one
Natalie Franke
that ends our episode of The Independent Business Podcast. Everything that we’ve discussed today can be [email protected]. Head to our website for access to show notes, relevant links and all of the resources that you need to level up. And if you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss our future content. Drop us a review and leave our guests some love on social. Thanks again for listening.
