The Liquidity Event Podcast: Episode 43

 

Episode 43: Travel Tips for the End of the World

On this special episode of the show, our hosts are in Portland, Oregon on the semi-annual Brooklyn FI company retreat. Let’s be honest, our hosts are having too much fun. The IPO market continues to be soft and the stock market is experiencing volatility that reminds some pundits of the March 2020 dip. We’ve got Elon and Twitter, a very generous gift from Snapchat founder Evan Spiegal, and a man who has been to every country in the world and also to outer space. In tax land, we’ve got the IRS destroying payroll records and a real estate investor who lost big time. Oh, and the Mexican pizza is back at Taco Bell. This one is mildly spicy.

Read the Full Transcript:

Speaker 1:

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered tax or investment advice. Welcome to The Liquidity Event. A show about all things personal finance, with a laser focus on equity compensation. Hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI, each episode will take you through the week's news on FinTech, IPOs, SPACs, founder wins and fails, crypto, and whatever else these nerds think is interesting. Learn more and subscribe today at brooklynfi.com.

AJ:

Hello, and welcome to The Liquidity Event. Trying this again, having a bit of a technical difficulties in beautiful Portland, Oregon. This is episode 43.

Shane:

Do you need to tell them that there's difficulties?

AJ:

I think it's funny. It's the second time. So this intro is going to be a little more lackluster than the first one. Anyways, we're your hosts. I'm AJ.

Shane:

And I'm Shane.

AJ:

This is episode 43 being recorded on Wednesday, May 18th, airing on Friday, May 20th. How you doing Shane?

Shane:

I'm good. Really good. Enjoying beautiful Portland, Oregon today. It's a sunny day, which you can never predict out here. We can predict is how pretty the city is. It's just a luscious, pre-Cambrian, what's the island from Jurassic Park? Isla Nublar? I'm getting a nod from Curtis, one of our employees. We're filming this one live at our retreat.

AJ:

Hey, Curtis.

Shane:

It's our very first live recording of The Liquidity Event, so it's going to be a goofy one if you couldn't tell from our introduction. But yeah, we're hanging out with 16 of our employees here in Portland, which is really rad to see some of them for the first time ever in person. And a lot of them are meeting each other for the first time ever. And AJ just high fived me, which we rarely get to do, because she lives very far away from me because I don't live anywhere.

AJ:

Anyways. Yeah, it's cool. We brought everyone out here. We've been doing a mix of work and play, mostly play. Today a little bit of work left on the docket and then we're going... We have a very packed evening today. We're going roller skating and then we're going to karaoke.

Shane:

After the shooting range, but before the [inaudible 00:02:18]. I actually did that. No, definitely not doing that. I actually did go to a shooting range for a company retreat in Texas, when I worked for PWC in Austin. They're like, "Oh, we're going to go shoot shotguns at clay pigeons." I was like, "Dope." Definitely want to do that.

AJ:

24 year old. Shane was like, "Hell yeah."

Shane:

I really wasn't excited about it. I mean I grew up in Mississippi. I've shot plenty of guns. I didn't need to do it with my colleagues. Anyway, what you got? We typically do, what are you drinking, what are you reading? We went to Powell's Books for the literature heads here, listening to this podcast. Beautiful bookstore, which you don't see very often these days since Amazon burned them all down. Little independent bookstores, Portland unsurprisingly has a lovely one. They also have a great arcade. This is weird city, y'all.

AJ:

Yeah, they have a three different arcade bars in the city in Portland proper. Pretty cool. But Powell's Books is pretty special. I spent some time there yesterday. What am I reading? What did I buy yesterday? I don't remember. Oh, biography of Rockefeller. A book about remote work and a book about wine in France and World War II.

Shane:

Sick.

AJ:

Oh, but I'm also reading a great science fiction book called Ministry of the Future. One of Barack Obama's favorite books in 2020. Highly recommend.

Shane:

Barack's back. He's doing stuff.

AJ:

Oh, he came out of retirement?

Shane:

Didn't he narrate a National Parks episode on Netflix? He had a show on Netflix?

AJ:

Good for him.

Shane:

That's when you know you've made it, not being a two term presidential winner.

AJ:

Yeah. First black president. Anyone could do that really. Much harder to narrate some penguins.

Shane:

Yeah. I'm trying to be the next David Attenborough. Trying to dethrone the man before he is dead. Imagine being David Attenborough and Barack starts-

AJ:

Barack Obama.

Shane:

[inaudible 00:04:10] nature documentaries, and you're like, "Son of a bitch."

AJ:

Is there anything left for the rest of us Barack?

Shane:

Yeah. Need some jocks for the rest of us. What are you drinking?

AJ:

I'm drinking some water. Portland's a beer city.

Shane:

Wow.

AJ:

I know. Portland's a beer city. I'm not-

Shane:

I'm sorry I asked.

AJ:

... a beer drinker. I have been drinking delicious cocktails in Portland, actually. Lots of tequila drinks seems to be the liquor of choice here.

Shane:

Yeah?

AJ:

Yeah.

Shane:

I missed that.

AJ:

I've had six different exciting tequila drinks that I've never had before.

Shane:

I've been drinking a lot of absinthe.

AJ:

On different nights, by the way, that wasn't six in one night. You're drinking what? Absinthe? Speaking of the green fairy.

Shane:

Yes.

AJ:

We have-

Shane:

Let's get out this nightmare of personal-

AJ:

A company went public. Bright Green, which is a... What are they? They're in the cannabis space. So, that's hot, of course. What do they make? They do medical testing for cannabis products. So they're like a foot in healthcare, a foot in cannabis. They did a direct listing, not an IPO, which is very interesting. So they did not need an investment bank as an underwriter. They just put up those shares on the open market. And the open market said, "Looks pretty good to me."

Shane:

I don't think they get a choice.

AJ:

Because they were priced at about $8. They were just guessing what that price was going to be. And they ended up trading at about $18 a share on the first day, and now we're trading at $48 a share just a few days later. So that's a pretty nice return since IPO, almost a 200% return. So arguably, from where I'm sitting, on May 18th, the most successful public company listing of 2022 so far.

Shane:

Yeah. That's not saying much though, considering we're living in a state of panic and fear in the market, in the IPO market. How many IPOs have we had this year? IPO number check, quantity check. 10?

AJ:

Nah, it's something like 60. Of course there's a bunch of SPACs. SPACs muddy the waters a little bit. According to the NASDAQ, which doesn't include the New York Stock Exchange, there have been 70 new listings raising a total of $9.1 billion. The NASDAQ PR people would like to add, that is more than four times the amount of the New York Stock Exchange.

Shane:

Shots fired.

AJ:

Yeah. Shots fired for serious. And 43 of those 70 were SPACs. Yeah. About 30ish. A little less than 30 IPOs on the NASDAQ, and a quarter of that on the New York Stock Exchange.

Shane:

Yeah. Really interesting. This Bright Green company has no revenue and they deal in medical marijuana, a B2B, business to business sales. So therapies in the marijuana space, that's the Bright Green titling, and all the research that we see. It's based out of Fort Lauderdale.

AJ:

Later Dale?

Shane:

Fort Later Dale. And they have two employees, according to our research-

AJ:

I saw that.

Shane:

... which is surely flawed.

AJ:

Yeah. The research that we look up appears to be a bit out of date for... I have noticed it's been out of date for a lot of these cannabis companies. So I don't know what's going on there.

Shane:

Well, yeah. I mean all the IPOs that we're seeing are just kooky little companies. I mean, this one doesn't have any revenue.

AJ:

It's pretty big.

Shane:

2020. I mean, how is this big? They have no revenue.

AJ:

They raised a billion dollars. Or their market cap is a billion dollars.

Shane:

Yeah. But I mean did they raise a billion or was their market cap a billion dollars?

AJ:

Yeah. It's the market cap. Yeah.

Shane:

Yeah. I mean how much did Palantir raise? Just one IPO by itself was over 10 billion. [inaudible 00:07:30] listening. Which is more than has been raised all year on the NASDAQ.

AJ:

So far. Yeah.

Shane:

Yeah. In five and a half months. So still existing in a state of fear in terms of listing your company for public sale, which is probably a good idea if you want to have a successful listing. Unless you way under price it at $8, then it jumps to 50 in the next few months.

AJ:

Right. And with a direct listing, we often don't see lockups. So in their S1, there's no lockups for the current shareholders and they issued a bunch of stock earlier this year at various prices from $1 to $4. So post shareholders probably did pretty well where if they decided to sell their stock in the first couple days of trading with their shares priced at there... Got them for $3, get to turn around and sell them for 48. That sounds pretty good.

Shane:

Yeah. That sounds great. Cool. Anything else you want to talk about? Anyone? Talk about weed anymore?

AJ:

A little bit because we're in Portland where I think all of the people on the road appear to be stoned.

Shane:

Oh my God. Drivers out here are incredibly wasted.

AJ:

But they're not [inaudible 00:08:34]. It's this really interesting phenomenon where they're driving so slow and so carefully that it's dangerous. I've been in Ubers a bunch of times where we're driving down a wide two way street, plenty of room. Someone opens a car door that's parked. And our Uber driver literally goes like 20 feet out of the way when they just could have definitely just kept driving straight.

Shane:

It's a weird city.

AJ:

Keep Portland Weird.

Shane:

Keep it that way. That's part of the vibe, just drive extremely weird.

AJ:

It's to keep people like us out of here. Speaking of Portland, on Sunday night, we went on a crazy hike, which almost destroyed me. And then when we came back from that hike, we wanted some Taco Bell and Taco Bell was closed at nine o'clock. But for those who are interested in Taco Bell, the Mexican pizza has returned to Taco Bell and fans can get early access to that Mexican pizza by redeeming an offer available through the Taco Bell app. The Liquidity Event this week is sponsored by Mexican pizza by Taco Bell.

Shane:

I was just about to say, this week's episode brought to you by the Yum! Group. That's our first article is The Mexican Pizza is Back at Taco Bell. Countrywide, nationwide?

AJ:

Yeah. but you got to get the app. They're encouraging you to download the app. You get early access to the Mexican pizza on Tuesday and Wednesday, which is today, but Thursday it'll be available to everyone. So by the time this airs, folks, you will have access to the Mexican pizza at Taco Bell.

Shane:

So you're trying to get that [inaudible 00:09:55], you got to get the app, because you want to post it on the 'gram, you get the pizza first.

AJ:

Need the app.

Shane:

Gotcha. Do you have the app?

AJ:

I do not have the Taco Bell app.

Shane:

All right. Well you're not a true [inaudible 00:10:07]. I'm a Bellhead. What else do we have this week? Oh, Elon Musk. Surprise, surprise. In the news.

AJ:

Oh, he is not buying Twitter now?

Shane:

I guess the deal's on hold.

AJ:

On hold because there was a loophole where... There was no due diligence done on the deal, but there was some line in some report that less than 5% of Twitter users are bots. Elon thinks-

Shane:

Well, their public filings. Yeah. In their 10 K filings with the SEC where you're not allowed to lie.

AJ:

But Elon has decided to run his own test to test that theory by sampling 100 accounts.

Shane:

Well, we've heard people complain about the bots on Twitter for 10 years and we want identity verification. A lot of people are pushing for identity verification on Twitter, which will slow down user growth because you got to imagine out of every 10 people that go to sign up for Twitter, if it requires identity verification, it might 10%, 20% less will pull out their ID and submit a photo of themselves. But the con of that is that you got a million bots that are just running amok and using artificial intelligence to spam or flood the tweetosphere with bullshit, whether they're Russian bots or what have you. So apparently Twitter did their own analysis and said it was less than 5%, disclosed that to their user base or to their investors via SEC filings. And everyone can tell just by cruising through Twitter that it's way more than 5%-

AJ:

It's all bots.

Shane:

Yeah. So for whatever reason, Elon is using this, whether this is true or not, this is his excuse for putting the deal on hold, but it's supposedly more than 20% bots on Twitter.

AJ:

Do you think it's the bots or do you think it's Twitter's current share price is the real reason he's putting this on hold?

Shane:

Oh, it's definitely a combination of the two because his price of purchase is fixed. So that's not indexed for fluctuations in the market. His price is $54 a share that he'll have to buy the shares at. And what's the current price? You're going to do a live lookup?

AJ:

Yeah. We're at $36 right now, and markets are just closed.

Shane:

So knowing that somebody is definitely going to buy the shares at $54, why is it priced at 36? Because people think the deal's going to fall through. Otherwise people would just be buying, buying, buying right up to $54. It can't go above $54 unless you think the deal's going to fall through and the price should be higher, which was pretty optimistic of you. But yeah, that is a fun little reflection of people's confidence in the deal going through. That's your insight [inaudible 00:12:30].

AJ:

I don't know. I'm not interested in this.

Shane:

You put it in here.

AJ:

No I didn't. You did.

Shane:

Don't make me audit the G sheet.

AJ:

Going back to our initial conversation about Musk. Everything is about getting as much attention as possible to have the largest platform to potentially make a future dangerous political move is my prediction.

Shane:

He has 100 million Twitter followers now.

AJ:

Yeah. Said he is going to put former president back on the platform who is currently banned from the platform. I've enjoyed that former president not being on that platform. That's definitely been out of my media diet since he left.

Shane:

Did he already get put back on?

AJ:

I don't know. I don't think so.

Shane:

I think he was allowed to get back on, but he's not doing it because he owns his own truth social.

AJ:

Oh, because he has the Truth... What was it called?

Shane:

Twitter. Elon doesn't own it yet. I don't know. What's going on. I just really hope he doesn't get fucking back on Twitter, for the love of God.

AJ:

The Liquidity Event folks, where we sort of know what's going on.

Shane:

We're right there with you listener.

AJ:

Speaking of being completely out of touch and not knowing what's going on.

Shane:

What's next? What's going up?

AJ:

Well, this is just a wacky article that we've got in celebrities and billionaires. A wacky billionaire built this mansion in Bellaire. Mansion is not really a word to describe it. It's more of a maybe compound, a super-sized compound. It's just a ridiculous, ugly, huge, huge house, way too many bedrooms. Six movie theaters, 15 car garage, pools. And I've seen pictures of this house floating around Instagram for almost a year now, and people are like, "Who would actually live in this house?" The answer is no one because the guy who built it put it up for auction, was listed at 87 million dollars, but the highest bid came in at just under 45 million.

AJ:

So this guy is shit out of luck. His reactions are pretty funny. He was interviewed as saying, "Horrible, horrible, horrible." This guy's name is Kadabi, characterized the auction results to CNBC. He filed for chapter 11 protection two weeks ago, right after putting the home on the market last year. So spent a bunch of money to build this thing, was hoping to turn a profit, did not because he built an ugly monstrosity that no one wants to live in. And the end of the article, the quote was, "Nobody told me this thing's going to go below this level." Yeah man. Things do lose value. I think the current sentiment right now is a lot of disbelief that things go down.

Shane:

Well. I mean, this is one of the hottest real estate markets of all time for sellers. So I kind of feel the guy here.

AJ:

Oh you have sympathy?

Shane:

I wouldn't say I have sympathy-

AJ:

You have sympathy for the devil in this case.

Shane:

I think he's guilty of bad taste for sure. All right. So the level of income, according to science, according to data that-

AJ:

Here we go with this.

Shane:

With what? Where do you think this is going?

AJ:

That this person should have stopped doing ridiculous things at $110,000 of income, which is the happiness threshold.

Shane:

Well, 70,000-

AJ:

Sorry. I thought got-

Shane:

... on average. I think you're thinking about my number, which I always think about high cost of living cities like San Francisco and New York, is 130,000. So that's the level of income supposedly once you get beyond that, there are very steep diminishing returns on your income level beyond that. Like if you score a 91 or a 92 on the happiness level, to get to a 93 requires a million dollars a year of income or something. That's very difficult to get to. Like 5 million a year. So what's the happiness level on the size of your house?

AJ:

I would say the bigger your house, the more unhappy you are.

Shane:

So it's not just diminishing returns, but-

AJ:

It's negatively correlated. Yeah.

Shane:

Negatively correlated because-

AJ:

You have more shit to take care of. You feel guilty if you feel lonely in all those empty rooms that should be filled with your friends and family. And they're empty because you've alienated all them because you've been yelling at all the contractors and your spouse and making your kids crazy. And you're unhappy. People have too much house.

Shane:

So you agree with Elon on that regard who has sold all of his homes and is living in a trailer with his friends?

AJ:

Yeah. Kind of. Yeah.

Shane:

She can see the other side occasionally. Interesting.

AJ:

Yeah. I agree with that. I mean, I think the idea of a home should be cozy, not cavernous. And I think there's a lot of flashy wealth, especially if you like turn on any television or Netflix, it's like Selling Sunset or Million Dollar Listing. And that's the current reality taste, and reality TV is an oxymoron. It's not reality. Most people just live in nice [inaudible 00:16:49].

Shane:

I'd never heard that before. Reality TV is an oxymoron. That's actually kind of funny, but very true. Speaking of flashiness, Snapchat co-founder flashed his wealth and paid off the student debt of... What? 240 graduates of a college I never heard of before in California.

AJ:

Yeah.

Shane:

Well, you're from California.

AJ:

Yeah. I moved college.

Shane:

It's a small liberal arts school in California. Of course you've heard of it.

AJ:

Yeah. Otis. A bunch of friends went there from high school. It's a very well known design school. Artists aren't necessarily on the high earners list. When you graduate from art school, you're typically not making a bunch of money out of school and typically you have student loans. So following in the footsteps of another billionaire who paid off, it was like 48 million. Who was that? Robert Smith. Yeah. Was a couple years ago, paid off... I'm sorry. 34 million dollars at Morehouse college, an HBCU. Evan Spiegel following in his footsteps. They wouldn't disclose the amount, but they said it was their largest gift. So we don't know how much it was. We assume it was several million. Pretty cool. I love this story. I mean, if we're not going to tax them, we might as well shame them into paying off student loans.

Shane:

This is very much a Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Baron, move of the old days.

AJ:

That's why I bought that, for your pals, I bought the Cornelia Vanderbilt biography.

Shane:

You and I were at The Breakers in Rhode Island just last year, his compound on the side of a cliff.

AJ:

I don't remember that. Oh, right, right. Rhode Island.

Shane:

Oh, right. I couldn't make it because I broke my toe and you left them a five star review, that Airbnb. How can I forget?

AJ:

[inaudible 00:18:23]. If Shane and I ever break up, it's going to be over this fucking broken toe at this Airbnb

Shane:

People don't forget. People don't forget. Speaking of traveling, what is this? A Bloomberg article? We're doing more Bloomberg stuff lately. It's like the bougie journal. About this guy that's been to 200, or 194 countries. He's the only one to do that and go to space. He's just a regular civilian, probably a wealthy entrepreneur, sold his business. And he's got some tips for us about how to travel comfortably. There's six tips in here. AJ, what do you think?

AJ:

All right. Number one, when packing, bring a cheap shirt, but leave your wedding ring at home. Disagree, agree?

Shane:

I feel like you're going to take this so far out of context. Did you read the article?

AJ:

No, I did read the article. I'm getting there.

Shane:

Making eye contact with me about leaving your wedding ring at home. I know what you're trying to get me to do here.

AJ:

No, it's funny, because the headline and these... When you list out the tips, it makes this guy sound like an asshole, but he's actually not an asshole. And these are actually based on stories of his travels around the world. And obviously when you're going to every single country in the world, we're not talking about travel tips, like, "Use Trip Advisor," or like, I don't know, "Bring a toothbrush." This is like, you are going to be in a place that you are very unfamiliar with, don't speak the language, and are going to be an eyesore. So don't draw attention to yourself by wearing your wedding ring that probably costs more than most people's houses in that town that you're in.

Shane:

No, it's a man's wedding ring.

AJ:

Yeah. Which could be gold or platinum, which could cost more than-

Shane:

No, he's saying like don't let people know that you have a wife.

AJ:

Yeah, yeah.

Shane:

Because they will ransom-

AJ:

No, no. It's literally about the wedding ring. And then knowing that your... This line, he's like, "If someone kidnaps me, my wife will definitely pay the ransom." It's like, "Oh, okay." I would count that as a positive. Right?

Shane:

Yeah. That's great. If your wife will not pay the ransom, definitely don't wear the wedding ring.

AJ:

Anyways.

Shane:

All right. Second tip. Don't eat a restaurants offering great views.

AJ:

Because the food is crappy, I guess is the takeaway there?

Shane:

Yep. You're paying for the view.

AJ:

I like to pay for the view sometimes. I paid for the view this weekend because I can't walk right now. Anyways.

Shane:

Ah, I see what you did there. Climbed a mountain, paid for the view.

AJ:

Yeah.

Shane:

In terms of you can't walk. Your knees. Yes. Why you should keep and customize a spare credit card. You should have a spare credit card on you.

AJ:

I actually thought this was a very interesting tip that I may do. He's saying you should keep an extra credit card in your shoe or somewhere non-obvious like your wallet in case you are parted from your wallet, but he has this thing about customizing it. So you can like actually go to your... Usually it's a debit card. I don't know of credit card companies that do this. But you can actually put your face on your credit card. So, that's like a second form of identification. So when you're between a rock and a hard place, you can pay for stuff.

Shane:

And you'll have another form of identification. And so you got to go to the embassy to get a new passport. On a long trip, one thing he won't leave home without, a bed sheet.

AJ:

I agree with that. I travel with top sheets.

Shane:

No you don't.

AJ:

Yes I do.

Shane:

Do you really?

AJ:

Sometimes. Yeah.

Shane:

I'll go check right now.

AJ:

Well they have top sheets here. I've stayed here before. It's Europe and other places that don't have top sheets. My husband calls me Topsheeta Jones.

Shane:

That's actually pretty good. [inaudible 00:21:32] if you're listening, high five for that one. Okay. Tip number five, there's much more to tourism in Africa than simply going on safari.

AJ:

I wouldn't know. Never been. Bucket list for sure.

Shane:

Yeah. The whole continent is a bucket list.

AJ:

Yeah. Every country. I'm going to beat this guy. Challenge accepted.

Shane:

You're going to go to space?

AJ:

What's this guy's name? Jim? Of course. Jim. Jim Kitchen.

Shane:

I don't like how you don't like this guy because he is a white dude.

AJ:

Pretty much.

Shane:

Not enjoying that element. And when you're planning a trip to space, this is what astronauts tell you to wear. So this guy went to space on Blue Origin, the Bezos Dick Rocket-

AJ:

Dick rocket.

Shane:

I can see your eyes rolling as I tell this part of the story and-

AJ:

I can't wait for Kate to cohost with me.

Shane:

Yeah. So he wears a diaper. So if you do go to space, dear listener, wear the diaper. This guy's been to every country. You got to listen to him. He wears credit cards in his shoe. He knows what he's doing. He drinks Baileys out of a shoe, dear listener.

AJ:

Oh boy. Well, since we've been talking about nonsense for 25 minutes, should we talk about some taxes?

Shane:

Yeah, for sure. I love you just pick a random [inaudible 00:22:48] the list for me to just transition into as you maintain eye contact with me. My favorite transition, honestly. Yeah, I mean go ahead.

AJ:

Tax professionals are horrified by the IRS decision to destroy data on 30 million tax filers. So what did they actually destroy? They destroyed payroll records, which will have basically your W2, payroll records from small businesses. So how much money you made, how much money was withheld and paid in taxes, which kind of sucks. Makes it hard for us as tax professionals, if there is a notice, if there is an issue with your tax return, to verify the data, because those records no longer exist.

Shane:

Yeah. Most governments have a triangle of information between tax payers, tax professionals, and the government. And that triangle, the three points of that triangle is information is shared with the government, whether it's the IRS or Her Majesty's Revenue Service in the UK or whatever it's called in-

AJ:

The lady or whatever?

Shane:

The Gray Lady is the name of the central bank of the UK. And you're the Anglophile that should be paying attention here. Anyway. So the taxpayer, the government, and the tax professionals have a three way communication, and they destroyed 30 million records that would go to the IRS in this case. So there's going to be some mismatching of information that's going to make our jobs as tax professionals and taxpayers harder to do next year.

AJ:

Shocking.

Shane:

Yeah. I mean it's probably not going to be that big of a deal, but it'll be just one more weird email I have to write or our tax managers will have to write about, "Well, actually the IRS probably destroyed this specific piece of information. So while I told you we could get it, there's always exceptions to the rules and..."

AJ:

This is the exception. Should we just type up those letters now and send them out and then destroy them and then tell our clients that we tried to warn them, but we were following the IRS guidance to destroy them because we were taking up space in our database?

Shane:

See look, now you're livening up a little bit on this podcast. I like where your head's at now. It took about 26 minutes to get you nice and loose. But well, now that you're nice and loose, you want to talk about these home productivity statistics, work from home productivity statistics to carry us out.

AJ:

Yeah. I mean, that's the problem. I'm not working from home. I'm not in my element.

Shane:

Right. You're in the office.

AJ:

According to this study, I am 13% less productive. Because Stanford did a big study of 16,000 workers, over nine months, they found that when you're working from home, you're 13% more productive. The increase in performance is due to more calls per minute, attributed to a more quiet and convenient working environment. Suppress, press, press. We were forced to test this theory that working from home would work. We didn't think we'd be working from home forever, but we are and it's been going great. And actually this week hanging out with all of our team members [inaudible 00:25:29]. Yeah, it seems to be a great part of working at Brooklyn FI is the ability to be flexible.

Shane:

Speaking of flexible.

AJ:

Oh boy.

Shane:

What's the last burrito you had?

AJ:

I don't know. Recently, two weeks ago.

Shane:

Well, if you challenge college students to make burritos more edible, you may be surprised what you get because some Hopkins students created burrito tape that you can eat. So have you ever been eating a burrito and it's falling apart all over your hands because you're driving a 2011 Honda Civic and you're in the left lane for some reason, and you're starting to swerve a little bit because your knee's not what it used to be? Good for you. There's now tape that'll hold that burrito together so you can maintain top speed.

AJ:

My favorite part of the story is that in order to showcase their invention, they had to dye the tape blue because it was-

Shane:

Somebody had to die.

AJ:

It was so invisible on the burrito in its clear form that they wanted to actually show that it worked. So it looks disgusting, was gross blue tape.

Shane:

A bandaid?

AJ:

Yeah.

Shane:

A burrito bandaid.

AJ:

Oh boy. Lots of Mexican food on the show today. You've been a great audience. Thanks for listening to The Liquidity Event. You can find us at Brooklynfi.com/episode... 43? Are we at? Yeah. 43. Here we go.

Shane:

You're stoned too. I knew it.

AJ:

I'm not stoned yet.

Shane:

Leave us a voicemail. We'll play it on the air. Show notes are at brooklynfi.com/episode43. BKFI [inaudible 00:26:59] can leave us a review if they want to be weird about it. Thank y'all.

AJ:

Later.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to The Liquidity Event, hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI. Head on over to Brooklynfi.com where you can subscribe to the podcast or YouTube channel, or if you want to learn about their full service financial planning, tax, and investment firm, specializing in tech professionals and creatives on the path to financial independence. We'll see you next time on The Liquidity Event.