Episode 46 – An Expat Amazon FBA Seller Finds Incredible Income Tax Opportunities Living in Puerto Rico

Are you an Amazon seller and like the idea of dramatically decreasing your Amazon FBA income taxes? Today’s guest, John Hadden, describes the tax opportunities in Puerto Rico and his experiences living as an expat on island time.

Episode 46 of the Serious Sellers Podcast covers:

• 01:05 – An Amazon Seller Walks into a Chinese Bar . . .
• 02:45 – $200 and 20 MacBook Chargers Creates John’s Amazon Seed Money
• 05:50 – Scaling Up from Those MacBook Chargers
• 06:30 – And You’ve Got to Grind Away Sometimes to Get Started 
• 08:00 – Scaling Up Means You Can’t Run Out of Product
• 09:30 – Hiring Talented, Smart Employees with Integrity Equals Success
• 11:05 – Why Puerto Rico?
• 11:55 – Amazing Tax Incentives for Americans to Move to Puerto Rico
• 12:50 – Reducing His Taxes from 40% to 4% 
• 14:45 – A Mini Silicon Valley Full of Talented and Inspiring Expats was an Added Benefit
• 16:50 – Opportunity Zone Fund Means Big Money Coming In to PR
• 19:15 – Puerto Rico Residency Requirements
• 24:30 – Puerto Rico Relocation 101
• 28:40 – John’s Favorite Puerto Rican Foods  
• 29:55 – A Few Last Words to Get Someone Off the Fence about Moving to PR
• 31:47 – How to Get in Touch with John (aka Help Wanted)

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to our podcast.

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton: Today, listen to the story of a journey to becoming a seven-figure seller that all started with a random conversation in a bar in China. Then, find out why he moved from Oregon to Puerto Rico and what the benefits are from a tax and lifestyle perspective of living there for American citizens.

Bradley Sutton: How’s it going, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast. And I have a guest today, John Hadden. John, am I pronouncing your last name right?

John Hadden: Yes, you are, sir.

Bradley Sutton: You live in Puerto Rico now, right?

John Hadden: Yeah.

Bradley Sutton: Do I need to call you Juan, Juanito?

John Hadden: Yeah, you can. You wouldn’t be the first or the last.

Bradley Sutton: All right, cool. We’re definitely going to talk about Puerto Rico today, but I don’t think we’ve ever met in person, right?

John Hadden: I don’t think so.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah. I know you know Manny, and you’ve talked to him, and you were on the AMPM Podcast before, but this is literally completely new to me. This topic about Puerto Rico and actually your history. Can you just give us a brief history of, first of all, you with eCommerce and Amazon? How did you get into this space originally? What’s your origin story?

John Hadden: Good question. I moved from Oregon to China right out of college with my then-wife, and basically, it was working—teaching English—read The Four-Hour Work Week and decided to start my own company. I was talking to some rando in a bar about it, and he suggested Amazon, and basically, his pitch was…

Bradley Sutton: In a bar in China?

John Hadden: Yes, in a bar in China—an American dude.

Bradley Sutton: So, you’re chilling in a bar in China, and that’s how you decided to start selling on Amazon.

John Hadden: Yeah, I was literally following Timothy Ferriss and his model of “before you buy inventory, throw up a website, try and drive some Google Ads to it.” And I was talking to this guy, and he’s like, “Why do you have to do your own website? Even if you get featured on Oprah—which you know, was still a show back then—your sales are going to skyrocket and your traffic’s going to the boom on your site. And then as people forget about you, it’s going to tail off.” He’s like, “Why would you do that when you can do Amazon, do all the work, the SEO, and everything once. Get your listing to the top and sit back and make residual money with a company that’s financially incentivized to keep your listing there if you’re doing better than others.

Bradley Sutton: That’s a pretty deep conversation for a Chinese bar.

John Hadden: Yeah. Right.

Bradley Sutton: What bar is this? Where was this in China?

John Hadden: This is in Shenzhen.

Bradley Sutton: Oh, Shenzhen. You went to China though having nothing to do with eCommerce, but actually to teach English.

John Hadden: I studied business, and I was involved in startups in school. My goal was to just get there and pay for it in whichever way I could because I don’t have a rich uncle or come from money. So, I had a job there that was paying the bills and then started working for a startup over there and just kind of moonlighting my Amazon business. I started with 200 bucks. That was how much I had to invest. I invested in and bought 20 MacBook chargers and send them to Amazon and then sold them. And then I had like 400 bucks and just kept playing that game. Cashflow management was a big learning curve for sure.

Bradley Sutton: What year was this?

John Hadden: 2015, I think, or 2014, I guess.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, so back then. Where in Oregon are you from?

John Hadden: All over, but Corvallis, Albany area actually.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. You know about Voodoo Donuts, I assume. Right?

John Hadden: Yeah.

Bradley Sutton: That’s the reason I don’t live in Oregon. I’m already overweight as it is. I would probably be 30 pounds more if I lived anywhere in Oregon, anywhere within a radius of Voodoo Donuts. You went from Oregon, Corvallis, left your Voodoo Donuts behind and went to Shenzhen teaching English. Did you learn Chinese while you were there?

John Hadden: Yeah, I learned some. I can’t read or write, but I can speak okay. Well, at least I could when I was there. I’ve switched mostly to Spanish at this point and forgotten a lot of my Chinese.

Bradley Sutton: I’m the same. I used to speak Japanese and then when I learned Spanish, my brain couldn’t handle three languages. So every Spanish word I learned then, I forgot a Japanese word. Did that help at all being in China, speaking a little bit of Chinese when you first started sourcing your products?

John Hadden: Yeah, I’d say I definitely established some credibility with my suppliers. Just being able to say like, “ni hao ma!”—you know, just some pleasantries. Yeah, it definitely established some credibility. However, I would say that I’ve never actually had a conversation in Chinese with my main supplier that I’ve been using for years. So I’d say professionally, it’s not been that useful except for establishing a little bit of credibility. However, while I was living in China, it’s necessary. I didn’t plan on learning Chinese, but since I didn’t have the money for a translator. Getting around and living life for a year and a half, you have to learn some basics because nobody speaks English

Bradley Sutton: Now, what kind of Visa did you have to have?  How difficult is it for anyone, like Americans would say, “Hey, I just want to move to China.” Is it easier because you were there trying to teach English or is it something that any American could do?

John Hadden: Yeah, so good question. You need work visas—at least you used to. I believe China just changed it where now I think you can be there for like a year or something without needing a visa, which is a crazy new shift in Chinese policy. But before, you either needed like a tourist visa, which would allow you a certain amount of days, or a work visa. And the work visas were not easy to get, but they have a huge need for English teachers. For any listeners out there who want to move to China, they are always looking for English teachers. You don’t make a ton of money, but it gets you there and it gets you in the right part of the world where stuff’s happening, and you can learn inside and out.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. Cool. As you said, you were just ordering 20 chargers and sent it to Amazon. I’m assuming that didn’t allow you to quit your day job of teaching. So fast forward, how were you able to scale from that size to a model that actually allowed you to start doing Amazon as your main source of income?

John Hadden: Yeah, I would say that picking a product that did not have a ton of aftermarket issues, that was my biggest problem with the MacBook chargers. I’m not an electrical engineer and I didn’t have a full quality control team. So at least for beginning products, starting with stuff that is not going to have mechanical issues and cause a whole host of problems. Things like napkins or silverware are not going to have the same issues as chargers and adapters. I’d say picking good products definitely helps. And you have to grind, man. I was working, eight hours or, sorry, nine hours a day at the office and then, I play rugby, and then I would come home and work until one or two—not every night because you’re still a human. But I remember definitely when my wife was sleeping, and I would just be up until two or three just handling stuff that needs to happen because you’re kind of a permanent firefighter when your business is first launching. So, just all those curves, man; you don’t really know until you put in the time.

Bradley Sutton: So, at what point did you move away? You said it was a year or so. Did you move away from China because your Amazon business grew so much where now you didn’t have to teach anymore, or you just got tired of living over there? How did that work out?

John Hadden: I’d say, it was a combination of it just being time go, but also that was in conjunction with finally getting the business to a point where I did feel comfortable stepping away, because I wasn’t making big money, probably in US dollars, it’s less than 30 grand a year. I didn’t need a lot of income to replace it. Essentially, I don’t mind living frugal and off mac and cheese and top ramen. Literally, all the money that I made; I didn’t take any distributions really for probably the first two years and was just managing my money from my salary very well and putting everything that I made back into the business. Any spare cent I could from my job, I put that into the business too. Because scaling is the biggest thing that you need to do; if you keep selling out because you can’t buy 8,000 units of inventory, then you need to solve that problem and eat top ramen until you do.

Bradley Sutton: Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how every college student gets through university here. So where did you move back to when you moved back away from China?

John Hadden: I moved back to Bend, Oregon, and Portland, Oregon—kind of split my time between the two, and it was pretty sweet. I love Oregon, but at least for me, I really like traveling and being in someplace that’s challenging and new and exotic for me. As soon as I got back to Oregon, I was looking for other places, especially warmer places to move to. Growing up there, it’s beautiful, but I prefer the sun on the Puerto Rican beach.

Bradley Sutton: Oregon winters are kind of rough for those not used to that. Did you continue to scale your business or what level did you get to Amazon? Was all your business on Amazon?

John Hadden: Yeah, through Amazon. I have a lot of success in Europe and a lot of success in the states, and we’re seven figures and have been probably since 2015 or so. Essentially what I really did instead of just scaling it to the Max, which a lot of people do, and if I had had the capital and the know-how that I have now, I totally would’ve done that. But being 22 years old, scaling and hiring people and figuring out the logistics of living in Puerto Rico, going through a divorce, and all that stuff definitely slowed down the scaling of sales, and also, the game is consistently changing on Amazon. What I’ve really focused on is finding talented people who maybe don’t know Amazon or anything about online marketing or affiliate marketing and really just finding smart people that I know I can trust and have integrity and training them to manage. And really that’s been my success: hiring people and stepping out because when you’re doing everything on your own—I grew up to a seven-figure business before hiring anybody, and you’re wearing 30 hats and none of these are full-time jobs, and you don’t really even know who to hire for us—you get really stuck in this position. At least I know I did. And I know a lot of other people that have, and I think my success was just taking that leap of faith, and my first few hires weren’t even successful hires. They didn’t help me that much, and I lost a lot of time training them and getting them up to speed and then ending up not working out and having to do it all over again. And it’s a shitty process. But at the end of the day, you have to go through it. You have to learn how to hire people; you have to learn how to scale and start delegating tasks. And that’s been really one of the biggest learning curves I’ve had through my Amazon business; it’s not which tactic is killing it, but how do you build a sustainable business model that’s going to run when you’re not involved anymore.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah, very important. Now, throughout what you just said and from the beginning, we’ve been talking a little about Puerto Rico. At what point did you move there and what motivated you to move to Puerto Rico?

John Hadden: Yeah, I had a list of criteria of places I wanted to move to that was just important to me personally. One was just being geographically close to a whole lot of cool places I want to visit, and the Caribbean is a great spot for that. I can go to the east coast; I can go to Europe; I can go to South America—everything pretty easily. It’s beautiful here. It’s got beautiful people, beautiful oceans, beautiful beaches, beautiful fish. The coral reefs are all dying. So at least for me, I get to explore them a lot before they all go away, not to be negative . . .  To answer your question, I was in Portland for about a year before I moved to Puerto Rico. And the other big incentive was, in Oregon, I was getting hammered by taxes. I like taxes; they’re there for a reason, but if the big boys are not paying any taxes, I don’t feel like I should. And that’s, I guess, I kind of have an ethical problem with my parents who are schoolteachers paying more money in taxes than Donald Trump. It’s a little strange though. Anyways, Puerto Rico has some very cool tax incentives that, specifically for Americans, are probably the best in the world right now unless you get into some really crazy corporate espionage, multi-shell corporations in different countries all around the world but that’s a little too advanced. But for an American, if you move to Puerto Rico, you no longer have to pay any capital gains tax on any passive investments you have. If you locate your company here, and you apply for these tax exemptions then your company only plays 4% corporate income tax and then all of your distributions after that are completely tax-free as well. You go from basically paying anywhere from 30% sales tax or 40% depending on your state, which is what I was paying in Oregon, sorry, not a sales tax, just overall tax, to about 4%. It’s a massive saving without really changing your business model or increasing sales.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. There’s a lot of terminology there that is above me because I’ve always hated taxes and stuff. I’m sure some of my listeners are as dense as myself as far as this goes. Let’s just do the taxes, right? Let do like just a scenario here. Let’s say there’s an Amazon seller. He’s grossing $1 million a year, seven-figure seller, maybe his profit is a 100K. If he lived in Oregon, what kind of taxes would he be paying on that?

John Hadden: Well, keep in mind, I’m not a lawyer or a tax specialist, so don’t quote me on any of this. But in Oregon, after self-employment tax, personal income tax, and my company’s tax liabilities, it was 40%. I think it was like 39 and a half percent in Oregon because there’s a 9% personal income tax too.

Bradley Sutton: Is it based on your profit?

John Hadden: It’s based on your profit, yeah. They would assume that a whole a 100K if that was what the company made, whether it was transferred to you or not, even if it’s just sitting in the company, you owe 40 grand in taxes.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, so more or less. Yeah. Okay. So now apples to apples, that same exact seller, the following year, he makes the same money, same profit, but now he lives in Puerto Rico. Are you saying that maybe he would only be happy to pay four to six grand?

John Hadden: He would only have to pay four grand. Flat.

Bradley Sutton: Wow. That’s a lot of money right there.

John Hadden: Yeah, it’s a big saving. The added benefit too, which I didn’t really expect moving to Puerto Rico, is that there are ex-pat communities all over the world, right? You know, in China I was hanging out with Russians and Germans and all these people and you form communities when you’re living abroad in a place that’s maybe not super familiar to you. In Puerto Rico, there’s definitely that. But the cool thing is because of these tax incentives, it’s like a little Silicon Valley. There are those most successful people I’ve met in my entire life down here; there’s like big eight-figure sellers that I’m palling around with, grabbing lunch, grabbing dinner. There are huge affiliates that are making $1 million a month, just crushing it levels that I’ve never really fathomed before.

John Hadden: I thought I was killing it when I had a seven-figure business compared to all my friends in Oregon. And then I moved down here and I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m such a small fish in such a big pond,” you know? But it’s cool because it’s this group-think mentality. And since I’ve moved down here, I opened two call centers and started a new company with friends that I met down here that are just executors. They’re smart guys that know how to take a project, from inception, idea, to making money. It really cool to be surrounded by that energy and that positivity.

Bradley Sutton: Now, what about the cost of living in Puerto Rico? Let’s say you’re making a hundred grand. Does a hundred grand in Puerto Rico go farther than it does in Oregon, for example?

John Hadden: Yeah, definitely. Okay. The cost of real estate down here is really cheap right now, and it’s only skyrocketing. Most people I know that bought real estate about two years ago, it’s doubled in value. There’s a lot of investment coming into Puerto Rico right now for two reasons. One, because of the hurricane, there’s a lot of FEMA money being dumped into it and half of the government buildings down here, fortunately, are going to be completely scrapped and rebuilt from the bottom up. There’s a ton of money coming in from that.  If you guys want to Google Opportunities Zone Fund, basically what that is, is in very downtrodden parts of America, Trump’s new tax bills said, “If you want to invest money into this area,” let’s say someplace in Mississippi that just really needs investment. They say, “Okay, if you made $1 million in stock appreciation, passive investment”, or for the example, let’s just say you bought apple stock really cheap; it has appreciated, and you’ve made $1 million. Now you owe $200,000 in capital gains tax. It’s basically 20% flat. They will waive that tax completely if you invest your entire gain that million dollars into an opportunity zone fund, which most of the time is just real estate like hotels, Airbnbs, buying investment properties. It could also be businesses, but let’s just use real estate for this example. So, you take $1 million; you invest that million dollars into real estate in Mississippi in an area that’s been identified as an opportunity zone. Basically, after 10 years, the IRS now will write off that entire $200,000 tax debt that you owe, and in the meantime, all of the income that you’ve gathered out of that investment is also tax-free.

John Hadden: Most of the US; these little pockets are in places that are not desirable for a lot of, I’d say, real estate investment. However, they’ve made all of Puerto Rico, 99% of Puerto Rico with the exception of some very high-income beachfront properties, all of it, an Opportunity Zone Fund. The big, big, big players from New York, Wall Street, they know about these tax incentives, and they’re basically playing off the Opportunity Zone Fund with these other Act 20 or 22s and investing a ton of money down here. So there’s billions and billions of dollars right now rolling into Puerto Rico, and there’s going to be a lot changing around here. Some it’s going to be for better and sadly some it’s going to be for worse.

Bradley Sutton: Interesting. So, that’s the investment part, but as far as the taxes, I’m assuming, obviously, you have to live in Puerto Rico. I can’t just buy a house and say, “Oh yes, charge me at the Puerto Rican rates.” I’m sure, pretty sure, there’s a certain ‘what percentage of the year’ I actually physically need to be in Puerto Rico to qualify for some of these tax rates, right?

John Hadden: Yeah, exactly.

Bradley Sutton: So, what are those requirements?

John Hadden: Yeah. So, the terminology is called a residency requirement, and they basically mapped out: you have to be here for at least six months a year, depending on your act and your decree because they’re kind of constantly changing these with the congress here in Puerto Rico; as it comes and goes, they alter these decrees. It depends on when exactly you get it, but you may have a requirement to own a property. You may have a requirement to pay $5,000 a year in charitable contributions depending on your decree. But for the most part, if you live down here for six months out of the year, you’re good to go.

Bradley Sutton: Okay.

John Hadden: They also have what’s called a Closer Connection Test. If you have a tiny, tiny, tiny little studio down here and a big mansion in Florida and three cars in Florida and your wife and your kids in Florida and all your friends and all of your network in Florida, it would be kind of a tough argument to be like, “I’m a Puerto Rico resident.” What they do in those cases is you have to allocate some of your income to a state that you spend that amount of your time. Right? So like NBA basketball players, I didn’t know this, have to actually pay taxes in all 50 states or in almost all 50 states because they’re traveling so much and making income in all these different states. Right? If you spend your time in Florida substantially, it will definitely be wise to pay Florida some taxes and the IRS some taxes for the time that you spent in America for sure.

John Hadden: That’s just kind of a no brainer. But for me, I love Puerto Rico, so I live down here all year. I don’t have a house anywhere else, so I don’t have to worry about any of that. I think in the spirit of these taxes, it kind of goes against it to come down here, try and take advantage of it, tuck all your money away, and spend all your time in Colorado or Florida or wherever you’re from as opposed to being down here joining the community and really just making Puerto Rico a better place because it’s had a lot of hits against it recently and for the last hundred years.

Bradley Sutton: That was what I wanted to ask you about. Were you there during the hurricane?

John Hadden: I left the night before Maria. I stayed in New York for about a month and then came back and lived without power and water for two more months. But I was lucky that I was able to get out and I had to for my business.

Bradley Sutton: Where you lived, you did not have power and water for pretty much three months?

John Hadden: Four. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton: Now how does that even work? How could you have lived there then?

John Hadden: I actually just moved in with a girl I was dating. Because she was on the ground floor, so she had water.  You just buy some camping supplies and rough it out, man. We lived that way before, and we could live that way again if we have to. It’s not ideal, but most of these places have generators, and since Maria, the infrastructure is getting a big overhaul and most people are installing solar panels, Tesla walls, and stuff. Because the grid down here—not going to lie—is definitely struggling, and it’s been struggling for a long time. It’s getting investment to fix it up, but it’s going to be years. Most of the office buildings and buildings that people live in have generator backups.

John Hadden: Power goes out, and you’re good to go. Like last night, the power went out at my place for an hour, and that’s just kind of normal. But the generator kicks on and life goes on. Maria was definitely a rare exception, and we got hit with a hurricane two weeks before that. A category 4 called Irma that barely missed the direct hit, but, uh, a lot of Puerto Rico is already without power. It had already devastated a lot of the island and it was “bulldozers, plowing trees out of the road bad.” And then Maria came. It was like a one-two punch that really even if Puerto Rico was built up like Germany, I think it still would have really struggled.

Bradley Sutton: So obviously, when there’s power outage for one hour, that’s not too big of a deal, but we’re talking about a month or two months of no power. How were you able to manage your business or get the Internet—things like that?

John Hadden: My office had a generator and power and stuff, so I would just go charge up some USB drives, charge my laptop, charge everything, and then go home and plug in a little computer fan to a USB drive or a USB charger and it was hot. That was probably the biggest problem; it was hot and there are mosquitoes everywhere and you couldn’t find bug spray. You’re just lying in your bed, sweating, and you can’t find ice. And again, I was lucky—the fact that I was able to leave the island. My employees felt obligated to stay and take care of their families and everything—totally get that. It’s just, you know when a hurricane comes, you just got to do what you got to do, man, and have empathy and sympathy for everybody and just understand that it’s going to get better.

Bradley Sutton: We talked about mosquitoes, hurricanes; obviously, these are some of the disadvantages perhaps of living in Puerto Rico. Is there anything else that you would say that people need to be aware of if they’re considering where there might be a little bit of a culture shock or things that they’re not used to like power going out all the time?

John Hadden: Yeah, I would say the power is a big one. I would say hurricanes in general though. Do have a tendency to miss Puerto Rico; we’re not in hurricane alley like Florida. This was actually the first; these two hurricanes were the first major hurricanes to hit Puerto Rico since I think the 80’s. There’s like a big one in the 80’s, and before that, the only category 4 that ever hit was back in the 20’s. It’s not exactly like you should just prep for hurricanes every year, all year, although you’d be wise to be prepared. Disclaimer here, I guess it’s not a big concern for most people on the island. However, other things, culturally, people here are so laid back and so fun-loving; like on Christmas, it’s sunny and beautiful, and I’d say in generality speaking culturally here in Puerto Rico, people love to dance. They love to party; they love to go to the beach, hang out with their friends, be with their family, and they participate in clubs to know others.

John Hadden: On Christmas, you know, we were watching this parade of Volkswagens go down—Volkswagen buses, beetles, and all these were decked out in Christmas lights with Santa Clauses on top and inflatables, and it went on for 20 minutes. And Puerto Rico doesn’t have a huge population, but the population is involved and fun. I’ve been all over the world at this point, and Puerto Rico is definitely one of my top, top places to live in the whole world. As far as just cultural struggles, things tend to happen a little bit slower because it’s island time. But if anything, I’d say that’s a good thing, right? We all need to slow down a little bit, take a deep breath, and just enjoy. And Puerto Rico forces you to do that, and I love that about it. It’s not even a negative for me.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. I still have a lot of things I wanted to ask you about, but we don’t have too much time left. So, we’re going do some rapid-fire—like try and do 20-second answers for the rest of the time. Is that cool?

John Hadden: Yup. All right.

Bradley Sutton: How’s your salsa dancing since you’ve moved there?

John Hadden: Good.

Bradley Sutton: What city should people move to in Puerto Rico?

John Hadden: I would move to San Juan, Dorado, Palmas Del Mar or Rincon, kind of depending on what you’re into. They’re all beautiful places. But you can’t go wrong with Puerto Rico, to be honest.

Bradley Sutton: You mentioned having employees over there. What are the wages for employees in Puerto Rico compared to the states?

John Hadden: I’d say you can get a working professional that is smart and educated and speaks English fluently for around 40 grand a year, plus or minus 10 grand a year.

Bradley Sutton: And that would be somebody who would make one here in the states.

John Hadden: Depends on where you are. In New York City, maybe 80 or 90, maybe 130. In LA, kind of the same thing. In San Francisco, probably the same too. It really depends on where; I would say that Puerto Rico is comparable to maybe a lower-income state.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. What is Act 20?

John Hadden: Act 20 is the act that allows your corporation if you move it down here or your LLC to get the 4% tax incentive by providing a service outside of Puerto Rico. Either consulting or there’s a lot of different criteria.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. How about act 22?

John Hadden: Act 22 is for your personal investments. So that’s how you get a 0% capital gains on all of your passive investments.

Bradley Sutton: All right. Have you been to a baseball game?

John Hadden: Okay, I have not.

Bradley Sutton: Oh, you’ve got to. I haven’t been there, but I’ve been to baseball games in the Dominican Republic, and it’s just next level. I mean it’s, it’s crazy. Baseball is one of the most boring sports in the world, for me, like here in America, but it’s crazy over there, so anybody listening, go to a baseball game anywhere in the Caribbean and you guys will be shocked.

John Hadden: Yeah.

Bradley Sutton: Let’s see, what else? Favorite foods in Puerto Rico.

John Hadden: Hmm. I’d say a lechuga con arroz y habichuelas, which is just chicken breast, and there are amazing rice and beans down here. That’s one of my favorites. They have mofongo, which is like mashed potato-type texture, but it’s mashed plantains, and it’s sweet and delicious, and they put gravy on it and throw chicken and stuff in it or shrimp or steak, whatever you want.

Bradley Sutton: Ah, so you can’t go wrong with mofongo

John Hadden: Or lechuga con arroz y habichuelas.

Bradley Sutton: All right. And let’s see. Nightlife.

John Hadden: It’s amazing. It’s amazing down here, especially in San Juan. There’s this place called Placita that turns into a block party every Friday night and it’s about 30 or so bars in one or two city blocks that they shut down all the roads and it’s just filled with tourists and locals of people of all ages.

John Hadden: You see 67-year-old Puerto Ricans dancing salsa having the time of their lives ‘til two in the morning. The nightlife is awesome in San Juan.

Bradley Sutton: All right. When I come to visit you, I’m going to expect you to introduce me to some of that nightlife.

John Hadden: Like, yeah man. We’ll play some beach volleyball, and we’ll go out.

Bradley Sutton: Sounds good. Sounds good. All right. Any last comments about if somebody’s considering moving to Puerto Rico.  What is the biggest thing that you can tell or the biggest piece of advice for somebody who’s kind of on the fence? What should be their determining factors or what should they self-examine in order to see if they should do it or not?

John Hadden: I’d say, come visit and make a decision then, because you never know, right? It’s so easy to make all these judgments of what you think Puerto Rico is like before you come here. You really just don’t know. I would just say, “Come, spend a week, travel around the island, and see what it has to offer. Keep an open mind because of a lot of things in Puerto Rico kind of look ugly on the outside and then you just walk in and it’s this amazing oasis that you never would have expected.” I would just say, “Definitely keep an open mind.” If you’re interested in good resources to speak to, my friend and probably the best lawyer on the island is creating this program with a few other lawyers where they’re basically going to handle all of everything as a one-stop-shop. And right now, it’s quite splintered between municipal taxes, IRS taxes, Puerto Rico Hacienda taxes. I have different lawyers handling all these different aspects, and it becomes a little difficult to manage. So, if you guys are interested in a one-stop-shop, my friend is building something like that so I can leave an email address for his partner. Maybe you guys can attach it to the podcast or something.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Do you have that email address handy?

John Hadden: Yes. Her name is Teresa Jimenez. And her email is [email protected].

Bradley Sutton: Cool. And if anybody wants to maybe find you or reach out to you, ask some more questions, what’s the best way to find you?

John Hadden: The best way to find me is . . .

Bradley Sutton: In a local bar in San Juan. No, but seriously though.

John Hadden: Yeah, no, that’s a good question. 

John Hadden: All right. Well, I’d say, the best way to find me is to DM me on Instagram at johnnyhadden and the reason I’m giving that out is because if anybody out there is listening and wants to move to Puerto Rico and maybe doesn’t have all their things kind of like set in a row yet and are interested in coming out here working and learning, I need good talent, and I have too many opportunities on the table and not enough time to execute personally. I need to build good teams around me, and if anybody’s interested in opportunities, reach out.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. All right. Well, John, muchimas gracias por tu tiempo. Thank you for your time to be with us, and I’ll be hitting you up once I go to San Juan again. All right.

John Hadden: Okay. Perfecto gracia papa.

Bradley Sutton: All right, I’ll see you later.