 Okay, you get up every day in the morning and you say to yourself, who am I going to be today? And today you answer the question with Roger Epstein. Yeah, that's a good answer. That's the answer I want every day. And he is an international business consultant with low-cahee consulting in the process of leaving Cade, Shawnee, Fleming, and right after 44 years there. 4-4. 4-4. There's magic about that. Yes, there is, there is. 5 years with the IRS, so let's see, had I stayed until June of 2017, I would have been practicing tax law for 50 years, 50 years, nobody wants to be able to say that. Well, it's too late, I could have had a shot at it, but it didn't work out. So tell us about your beginnings and how you got into this 44-year thing, 5 plus 44-year thing. I went to school at the University of Maryland back in 1963. College Park, it was a wonderful place. College Park was terrific, it was so much fun, I didn't really want to do any work. So that didn't coincide well with myself as a math major. Math, is it so? So after two years I thought this ain't work and I switched to accounting. I took a class in business law and it hit me that I would really enjoy being a business lawyer. I want to mention the fact that my mother was a secretary for the Solicitor General of the United States. That's the number one lawyer. Attorney General is a policymaker, she wanted me to be a lawyer, is a good Jewish boy as you know, I decided to be a lawyer. So I got out of school where I had a wonderful time, fold around and I went to work for the Internal Revenue Service because they really wanted me. The other accounting firms said your grades aren't so good and why would we want you? But the Internal Revenue Service said, yeah. We like you. We like you. Well you graduated from the University of Maryland instead of Ben Franklin Accounting School will take you. So I worked there for about six months and I realized that this was, the government was not for me. And I should go to law school and now I had enough worldliness to know that you better do something or you're going to be stuck in some hole. So I applied for a number of schools and I got in amazingly at Georgetown Law School which was far and away the best school in Washington DC where I grew up. And what I did Jay was I worked all day and I went to school at night. Really? Yeah. So I have such admiration of people who do that, no kidding. Well the reason it went well was because I was scared out of my mind. Oh there you go. I was so sure I was the last one admitted and that they had made a mistake. And once I was in the door man I wanted to stay there. So I went to work at 8.15, got off at five, walked up to law school about ten blocks, five thirty-quarter to six, went to school till eight, came home and studied for two or three hours, five nights a week and a half a day on Saturdays. And at the end of my first year my grades were good. I was in the top ten percent of the class. I got on a law review another twenty hours a week. Yeah, just the law review. But that's important. Oh it was important. It defines your life to be on law review. Well interestingly in those days it was the sixties. So they were trying not to be too objective about it. Everything was subjectivity. So they changed the whole grading system at Georgetown. It used to be all numbers. Well the whole class was like between seventy-two and seventy-eight. So if you were seventy-two you're in the bottom quarter of the class and if you're seventy-eight you know so it didn't make any sense. So they changed the grading. The pass, fail, distinguished. And then they said well if you're really good you get an exceptional. And if you're not so good you get something else that was a D. So it was like A, B, C, D. I see five possibilities. But it was all kind of kappakahi and you didn't really get ranked anymore. But if you were on the law review you were in the top ten percent of the class. So at that point you were either there or the bottom ninety percent. That's the message that speaks to people. That speaks to the law firms at Wall Street. Well it took me into a whole different world honestly. And I really wasn't disciplined in college. I had a wonderful time at college. I'm still good friends with these guys I was in a fraternity with. Fifty years later. That's another story. What fraternity? Taw Epsilon Phi. That's my fraternity. No. Roger! How come you didn't mention this before? We just started talking. All right. You know Larry David? Yes. Larry David wrote the Science Fellows show. You know my fraternity does. We just got a big tepere union while he did a Broadway show. Okay. Fabulous. Okay. Back to me. All right. So it took me to another level. College like I said was fooling around. But here I was an honor student at a really good law school. And what I found was the farther you got away from DC the more in demand you were. Now I had been working as an internal revenue agent for two or three years. And then I moved to the National Office of IRS where they issue rulings on complicated transactions and they answer very technical questions. So I had five years with the IRS. I had an honors degree at Georgetown. And I wasn't competing with you know these Harvard Law School guys who had been doing all this other stuff. Yeah. By the way when you were the IRS answering the complicated questions you were probably specialized on a certain kind of question. What was it? Well I started out in the accounting periods and methods division and then I was in consolidated returns net operating losses and we were an adjunct to the reorganization branch. So if you wanted to do a complicated reorganization you wanted to know whether it was a net operating loss carrier whether it was limited how you filed your consolidated return. So we had about 15 code sections. This is great. By the way I want to make clear that none of this is intuitive. You really have to know the law however arcane the law may be and the regulations. Did you know I had a degree in tax? I have no idea. I have a master's degree in tax from NYU. Do you really? I have no idea. Don't you wish you went to NYU? No. In fact I tell kids all the time they say I'm going to get out of school and I'm going to go to NYU and get a LLM and I say you'll learn a hell of a lot more working a year if you've got a good tax practice. That's true I have to say it was true. But I mean there's you know you learn a lot. I took some LLM classes at Georgetown while I was there but I had no idea you had to. Well I found the tax law extremely interesting. It's like a jigsaw puzzle okay and and when you know what the rules are like you know what the pieces are you can put them all together and create really fascinating things and when I so I fell into this job at Cades through somebody I had worked with at a very large law firm in Washington D.C. when I was a revenue agent he was a senior partner handled this case for this tax exempt organization and a couple of years later when his firm came around Hogan and Hartz and Big when they came around I said say hi to this guy see more mints he called me up the next day and seen him in two years and he said look we're not looking for tax lawyers but we're affiliated with a firm in Los Angeles and one in Honolulu and if you want I'll give him a you know your resume and give you a recommendation click yeah I said where's Honolulu 1971 on the East Coast but I took a shot I came out for a couple of years and what happened was Cades had an outstanding practice you know we represented three at a big five companies Amfac A&B Davies we represented First Hawaiian Bank I met you through Davies yeah and Dick Griffith that's right Dick Griffith was the what chief tax man he was the dean of the tax law he was a wonderful man terrific guy I had a drink with him in D.C. and that's it just one drink with him in D.C. offered to come in bring me out to my wife for an interview kind of guy he was and we were just terrific friends yeah he was a wonderful I wouldn't say a mentor he was more of a guy who I was helping him and when I got to a point where I needed help he was doing his own thing but he was a wonderful guy to work with and we really did a lot of good things a lot of interesting you know when you got a hundred million dollars and you're trying to figure out how to buy this business and how they can work it out so it's tax-free and you and it's all totally legal you just got to know the pieces and you got to have a little creativity it was hard to be a tax lawyer in those days though because there wasn't that much tax going on here in Hawaii no you're wrong AIDS had a terrific maybe they had a corner on it it was very small practice but but yeah we had three we had 23 publicly traded companies a lot of real estate deals you know we represented Kualoa Ranch we represented some families on the big island that own the huge properties that they were trying to figure out what to do with you see the movie The Descendants yeah sure that's what they were trying to do to make it so there was enough income coming in so the younger generations didn't want to sell it all and get out John Morgan true story John Morgan's done a done the yeah I know that family the over on the big island but John Morgan's done a wonderful job keeping cool over in his 3,500 acres that's not a housing still together still in business wonderful you go over there it's it's beautiful yeah with innovation in every corner of it and I remember when it was father ran it and his grandmother as a cattle ranch and broke even every year yeah and everybody was like hey I'm worth a hundred million dollars how come I ain't got any money and and and that's the true that's a true that descendants is reflective of 10 families I know I know why over my 45 years you guys had a lock on the tax practice in those days you know there was a guy at Goodsville who left what was his name anyway there were two or three firms that were that we're doing some tax and Dick and I were a good team and we really knew what we were doing we made sure we did it properly and we would have a lot of fun just sitting around brainstorming how do we do this how do we do that and then we had a lot of litigation because the IRS was auditing these big companies and and that was a lot of fun you know you get these complicated tax issues and you understand it I mean the iris got 20 cases for every one you have so you can prepare dramatically more than they do and and everything's gray anyway so that was a lot of fun you know half the practice was planning for acquisitions planning for real estate development or real estate exchanges and the other half was auditing you know I might have three clients that had five ten million dollar issues every year so age one was like its own case so I had a terrific practice until the big five started leaving at the end of the 90s into the 80s excuse me and Dick left in 85 to become the CEO of Amfact I came out in 72 so I had about 12 13 years with him and then I gotta take over this senior man now yeah and I had some other wonderful clients Bill Mao was a good client you know the Waikiki shopping Plaza whole loader's loham motors nice man bill I think he died about five years ago lived into 90s but I knew all the old comma Ainah families it was really a great practice you saw changing I mean you so for example the mainland law firms are coming into Honolulu and doing a lot of work here yeah you know I don't see that so much as an issue the thing that I see happening is all the ownership has left so the big five companies we still have a and B but they don't own Madsen anymore so it's not quite as it's half the size that it used to be Madsen's located here and there's still a little bit of work but they're basically out of San Francisco in the operations but Amfact no longer exists the old Davies doesn't exist as you know a that's how I met you through I think was through your office was in the Davies both representing Davies yeah yeah that's right everything I was right well they were acquired by Jardine Matheson out of Hong Kong and this this is interesting for me an interesting part of my career Jay what happened was in 19 this is the most interesting buddy I'm the most interesting part of my okay because because this is the part where I want to take a break take a break you know it's a cliffhanger you're gonna find out where it's arguably the most interesting part of Russia's career you don't know yet what it was but the minute you will we'll be right back Aloha and welcome to think tech Hawaii I am in a tank I am the guest host for small business Hawaii with Rache Baker to tune in every Thursday at 2 p.m. and watch us Aloha hi I'm Ray Starling and I am co-host for Hawaii's Wednesday afternoon state of clean energy and with me today is Leslie Cole Brooks and she's going to tell you what's happening this month with our shows hi everybody I'm Leslie Cole Brooks the executive directorate of the Distributed Energy Resources Council in this month is the focus is on distributed energy resources we just had a great show on smart grid technologies and the rest of the month we're going to discuss storage different strategies micro grids and then we're going to have live man and woman on the street from verge so it's really exciting very informative lively and just worth doing so see you next Wednesday you've been sitting there at your computer waiting for the answer to the question what is the most interesting part of Roger Epstein's life now you're gonna hear this is on the record Roger okay okay I'm taking this seriously now let's go back to 1973 I came in 72 in 1973 two things happened to me one I got started in my international career Jardine Matheson bought the Theo Davies company in December 1973 and they began investing from Hong Kong through Holland into the United States it was really fascinating tax stuff because you could do anything you could you could work it out so they could invest a hundred million dollars and not pay any tax on their income in real estate not pay any tax on the capital gain oh wow they wiped that out in 81 82 but that's where we were the second thing was run run Shaw his son son-in-law was Paul Lou ran Dean Witter now Morgan Stanley's office here Paul had been investing some of his money in the stock market and then he wanted to get into real estate so he hired Milton Cades to invest this money from Hong Kong in real estate and movies run run Shaw the Shaw brothers created the kung fu industry in the 60s they created the whole genre yes so now I had two big clients Jardine Matheson the biggest British company and and run run Shaw one of the biggest Chinese companies in Hong Kong and I had a travel company that that needed me to go there small travel company out of San Francisco in order to help them save taxes when the tourists got there and they were making a lot of money going to nightclubs and things so some wonderful stories of age 30 meeting run run Shaw and his senior part is CEO and CFO entertaining them in my two bedroom suite in the penthouse of the Hyatt hotel so I got into that I also hurt my back and and hurting my back I had a nasty divorce I got married just before I started going to law school my wife got me out here I'm in the same house we were in I'm still in that house 42 years later but I hurt my back when we got divorced and I ended up going to an acupuncturist and the acupuncturist turned out to be the 64th lineage holder of the Longhu Shan Taoist monastery and I went with to China with her in 1994 so after she healed my back she said you know what you really want to do is learn how to do Qikun so I started studying Qikun Chinese movement with her in 1974 and learning about Taoism so I grew up as a kid and you know a small lower middle-class Jewish neighborhood in Washington DC I move here I get to Chinese two big companies out of Hong Kong perfect I get in with the Chinese Taoists and then one of my friends is studying Tibetan Buddhism and he asked me to look at their articles and bylaws perfect so I intersection yeah and so oh well the same thing with the Taoist she's I said you got a church you got a clinic and you got a school if you put the church on top you get a really good tax break so she said well would you do that for free I'm sure so I did that and then she says now that you reorganized you got to be chairman of the board so I became chairman of the board of the Taoist acupuncture school for about 18 years well these things reflect a change in your thinking a change in your life oh it's tremendous just it's like open up your whole mind and and actually what really happened my divorce opened up my heart this is this is what I my wife when she left I I we were not happy but you know you get married at 23 you think it's supposed to be forever especially 50 years ago right and so I was I had been rejected and I just was miserable and my heart opened up and I began to have empathy for people instead of being this arrogant East Coast Jewish tax lawyer I was now a heartbroken arrogant Jewish to anyway between that open in my heart and finding these different religious studies and you know the eastern studies are so fascinating because they're about bringing peace to yourself they're about living in a way where you're not greedy where you're not demanding and and that this is the way to enjoy life and and the truth is Judaism's the same thing it talks to you about being of service it talks to you about maybe there was a resonance there it was a terrific in fact here's what happened okay so so I learned about those two I became not just a practitioner but the the lawyer to the to the master in both of those traditions this to this now this Tibetan Buddhist monk here Lama Lama Renshin wonderful guy at 29 I'm sitting on the floor he's in his robes after I gave him their articles and bylaws revised teaching me how to meditate very appreciative he was and he's appreciative he taught me to meditate so at some point I began to take on some other religions I my my second marriage was to woman was raised in Catholicism so I call myself the only Jewish Christian Buddhist Taoist Sufi tax lawyer in Hawaii maybe in the world I think you've got it no competition in 1990 J I was asked to form something called the Joseph Campbell Foundation for Joseph Campbell's widow who's an Erdman and a Campbell old comma Inet families here Joseph Campbell became very famous in 1987 doing the power of myth with with Bill Moyers and so we formed this foundation Campbell had studied thousands of religions and look for the similarities and he had studied them and I've been practicing them so this was another academic opening to the kind of spiritual opening that I had found perfect and if you if you stay open you hold yourself open these things come to you they did they really do they really do and you know how I approach things now honestly I accept everything is true until proven false careful how different than most lawyers this is careful I'm careful how I act on that but I'm totally open to things that I don't know because I know how much I don't know and how much I've learned and I and I also found that this is totally consistent with the practice of law if you practice law in a way that your clients come first you're of service to them you want to be totally in ethics with them you want to follow the Dow you know the Dow is about being awake and seeing what's happening and and go with the flows but not in a superficial way in a meaningful way so someone comes into your office as a lawyer you you're totally present what are you telling me I'm not thinking about you're a jerk I'm not thinking about you owe money I'm not thinking about what I did last night I'm completely there with them this is very Buddhist you know be in the moment be here now yes so once you learn that then you say to yourself what do I need to do to be of help here and if you know the rules then you can give them the best results possible and people want to cheat and they want to cut out one of my first experiences as a lawyer was a guy who came in and we looked at all this stuff I said you should have come here six months ago we could have worked this out why don't we just backdate the document six months what do you do at age 27 when this guy is your client remember I had five years experience with the government I didn't start at the bottom I was given the senior partners advice you understood so I had to make a early decision and what I said was two things one hey we're just talking about money if we backdate these documents and we get caught you're going to jail and I'm going to jail we don't want to go there secondly we can't get that but here's the closest we can if we do it properly so two things this is a bad idea to break the law and secondly here's another alternative that's as good or almost as good and that served me in good stead over the years yeah now at some point you became friendly with a guy named Brutaco Ronaldo Brutaco yeah Ronaldo Brutaco wonderful very imposing character and I know you spent a lot of time with him you're still friendly with him very can you talk about him and what he stood for Ronaldo with a guy named harm Willis Harmon created something called the world business Academy and this is really consistent with what I've been talking about in my own life so the world business Academy believes that we're going through the biggest change in the history of the world since Copernicus discovered that the sun does not result revolve around the earth because important well it changed the whole world because at that time the church was in charge of the physics and the metaphysics and they said you know if you say that again Copernicus will kill you so they waited till he died and his book was published posthumously and then they they had to admit that they know what the hell they were talking about when it came to the physical world so they said we'll take the metaphysics and you guys take the physics so the meta the physics went like this and the metaphysics went like this but all of a sudden the physics said hey you know what we're all energy we are to e equals mc squared I mean what could be simpler energy equals matter times a constant squared energy equals matter you you are energy as well as matter see you know what c squared is 4 trillion feet per second if you could shake your hand 4 trillion feet would disappear because it's energy okay so here get to the point Roger so the idea is that this energy is what people talk about the great white spirit kakua God it's a universal energy that your body is really energy the air is just energy if you took an atom and you blew it up so the neutrons and electrons were the size of tennis balls the atom would be the size of the earth you and me the air this table we're all made up of 18 tennis balls circling the earth the rest is energy so we're not just close to each other on an energetic level we're connected yeah so now that we see we're connected we got to treat each other differently because we're connected if I screw you over I'm just shooting myself in the foot this is what Jesus said this is what God this is what all the great most noble statement of mankind but here's the difference and this is what the World Business Academy says now we've proven it scientifically we understand that the energy that these great masters talked about in the religions talked about are real scientifically and the World Business Academy says hey you know what business is the most influential institution in the world and if business live from this consciousness if business live from the reality of our connectedness that would change the world it's more more significant to people and then religion or politics it finds people together it it cuts to the chase right away it's not just some theory it's like what are we doing every day we conduct ourselves how we conduct ourselves every day so the World Business Academy has wonderful masters dedicated to the idea that we need to live and do our business from the reality of our connection Roger we only have a minute left but I'd like to know what your plan is going forward okay with what is it low kahi consulting and life yeah well low kahi consulting I'm I'm helping the Chinese invest here in a proper way doing this properly for them not cheating them not you know really helping them for life I'm committed to this doctrine of living from the reality of our connectedness I've done workshops on this I'm working with Shamunad University now to create a master's program on what we call a loha in business or island business but running your business from the reality that we're connected and that's what I see at 71 years of age I'd like to keep doing for the next 40 50 years yeah whatever it is yeah that's that's where I am Jay that's wonderful and you know what it shows me is that you fully appreciate the notion of having multiple chapters in life which I think is very important and possible in our time but also that we which you get from one chapter you give to another there's a continuum and you know you you've been picking up these lessons and ideas and visions of the world in one chapter now you bring them together in your own way in the next chapter which I wish you well in that right really nicely stated thank you thank you thanks a good pleasure Roger Epstein low-key consulting we'll have it back he'll tell us more we will learn