The Liquidity Event Podcast: Episode 100
Episode 100: The 100 Things We’ve Done to Level Up Our Business (And Our Lives)
Hey losers! It's our 100th episode! Dang, I can't believe we made it this far during a liquidity event drought. Thanks for tuning in each week to hear our blatherings. On this very special 100th episode, we skip the headlines and head right to the heart of the matter. AJ and Shane are bringing you 100 things they have done to level up their business and their lives. Optimizers and optimists should pay close attention! Thanks for listening, dear listener; we love you.
Life Planning for ourselves and clients
Essentialism
Delta lounge access
Disagree and commit
Bringing on directors to run the show
Using Fathom for rolling cash forecasts
Habit tracker app
Summer Fridays, 1/2 days all summer and full days in July
Always get the cabana
Built GEM, our internal tool to plan for liquidity events
Dog walker for Charlie
Work from anywhere
Core hours
The right company credit card, lol
Building an enterprise intentionally
Be nice, Stay humble
Attending conferences - we stay up to date on the latest policy and trends and we present and make friends
Hiring an EOS advisor
Get an awesome business partner
Airdate: 06/30/2023
Read the Full Transcript:
Presenter:
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, we are your hosts AJ.
Shane:
And I'm Shane Mason.
AJ:
And this is Episode 100, 100, ladies and gentlemen, being recorded on Wednesday June 28th, airing Friday June 30th. June 30th? July 1st? What's Friday? Have we switched-
Shane:
June 30th.
AJ:
June 30th. Nailed it.
Shane:
Yes.
AJ:
Nailed it. Nailed it. How are you doing, Shane?
Shane:
I'm awesome. I have a calendar pulled up here to fact check my co-host Ms. Ayers who apparently the two of us have both lost track of time and space because we're like what? Eight timezones apart?
AJ:
It's 8:21 PM in Londontown right now. I don't know where you are which you know what that means, it's actually Liquidity Event time. This is the first time in many months that I've actually been able to drink on this podcast so aye. For those of you not watching the video, I am holding up a can of Tiny Tee's Dirty Martini. Ugh. The UK, just such a civilized country. You can get a real, not a malt beverage, a real martini in the can and the ingredients are vodka, dry vermouth, and olive brine. And I've got my hotel wine glass with my Castelvetrano olives and I'm going to pour myself a dang martini to celebrate our 100th episode. Good for us.
Shane:
That was quite a detailed description for the people not on the video. Nothing was left to the imagination there besides-
AJ:
There we go.
Shane:
Our two video locales. Our backgrounds are both quite trash today, I would say. What is going going on?
AJ:
Oh yeah, trash. Oh yeah, there's a cube kitchen. There's a-
Shane:
That's obviously your hotel because everything is all over the place. Is Nabeel there? Nabeel's not there?
AJ:
Nabeel may or may not be interrupting us.
Shane:
He'll be return returning home to clean the fuck up any minute now. It's only 1:20 where I am but I'm on vacation, I should have got a beer. Oh, we didn't do our prep work-
AJ:
Yeah, dude. What are you doing?
Shane:
Didn't do our goddamn prep work.
AJ:
Ugh, man. No one did any homework. Well, cheers, man.
Shane:
What's new?
AJ:
It's been real hosting 100 of these with you or 99.
Shane:
To our last episode. [foreign language 00:02:48]-
AJ:
[foreign language 00:02:51]. Amazing. Well-
Shane:
You're not allowed to start Spanish phrases anymore, only I can start them because every time you start them you say the most bonkers shit I don't know how to respond to. You're like, "Have you jumped ropes next week?" I'm like, "What?" I don't know how to respond to that.
AJ:
Well, did you know, listeners, that my Spanish gets 36% better with each martini that I have? So by the end of this episode-
Shane:
Oh, boy.
AJ:
I will be fluent. Speaking of this episode, we're going to do something a little bit different than we usually do. There have been some headlines but we're not going to talk about them this week. We are going to run through the 100 things that we have done to level up our business and our lives.
Shane:
Just to timestamp this episode in case someone's listening to it five years in the future which surely somebody will be.
AJ:
Obviously, the Smithsonian surely.
Shane:
They have just recovered pieces of the missing Titanic submarine, the tourist vessels, and they're lifting them out of the water. So if you can remember the viral sensation that was the billionaires' Titanic submarine trip to the bottom of the ocean which... There you are-
AJ:
All right. Before we get into it, can we just do a quick-
Shane:
A tragic accident for the record, tragic accident.
AJ:
Quick, quick, quick, quick. What was your favorite Titanic submarine exploration meme?
Shane:
Oh god. Oh, you put me on the spot.
AJ:
I'll go first. Okay. Mine was the chart that showed Titanic deaths. It was like 1906 and then the little blip for 2023. What about you?
Shane:
Yeah. My favorite was the Spotify showing how many people had played Celine Dion My Heart Will Go on and also the caption was, "None of us are going to Heaven."
AJ:
Yeah. Yeah. That was a good one.
Shane:
Oh my god. None of us are seeing heaven.
AJ:
Oh, man. That was good. That's a good-
Shane:
Which I already knew that about myself but it was good to see so many other dark souls out there.
AJ:
Well, anyways, those are all the headlines for the week so let's dive into this evergreen episode of, yeah, what have we done in our business and our lives to level up? In no particular order, we've been making this list for the past week, just dropping stuff in a G Sheet. I'd say we just rip through it.
Shane:
Yeah. I think we've gone about 40 items here. I doubt we get through all of them.
AJ:
No, there's 100. What are you talking about?
Shane:
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't scroll down. Let me scroll down here.
AJ:
There's definitely 100.
Shane:
For sure. [foreign language 00:05:16]-
AJ:
Anyways.
Shane:
Yeah. So yeah, we're just going to pick at random. We're going to see when we run out of time. Just see where the conversation goes, what's really been a huge impact on our business and our lives, right?
AJ:
Mm-hmm. Indeed.
Shane:
Personal lives as well?
AJ:
Indeed.
Shane:
Yeah. Okay. Cool.
AJ:
Indeed. Let's-
Shane:
Why don't you chop us off? Let start us off with a Ripper, one of the best things that you think-
AJ:
Ooh, Ripper. Ooh. Oh, we're not going in order. We're going all around the world.
Shane:
Yeah.
AJ:
All right.
Shane:
Yeah. I'll strike them through as we go.
AJ:
All right. I'm going to go with life planning for both ourselves and teaching our financial planners how to do life planning with our clients. Life planning, the George Kinder method of basically going through a series of questions that, I guess, force you to determine what makes you happy and if you should make any changes in your life to achieve happiness. And you and I both went to a workshop with Mr. George Kinder in Hawaii. A month before COVID started, we got life planned by some really special people and basically optimized our lives to become better, happier people, and I would say we both succeeded pretty well. Like mission accomplished, I would say.
Shane:
Yeah. For sure. My life planning involved getting a boat, buying a sailboat, life goal of mine, spent 30K on a big boy actually, and then learned that sailing is a full-time fucking job and I don't do that anymore but it's time to re-life plan me. AJ, what are the three questions? Give us the three questions off the top of your head. Can you still, Ms. RLP-
AJ:
Of course.
Shane:
Okay. Great.
AJ:
The first question, paraphrase is basically, "Imagine you have all the money in the world, money is no object, design a life that is rich and full and uniquely yours. So just all the money in the world, what do you do with your life?" The second question is, "Okay. Great. Now, you have that in your head. You've..." A lot of people say, "I'd work less. I'd see my family more. I'd travel, I'd see the world. I'd become a standup comedian," a bunch of things come up in that first question.
The second question is, "You go to your doctor, you go to visit the doctor, the doctor has some bad news and he says, 'You're going to die in the next 5 to 10 years. You'll have no notice of the moment of your death but it is coming." Are you going to change your life? What are you going to do to improve your life in this time that you have left?" So then you go, "Oh god. All right. I really got to make some changes here because I'm not living my fullest life and I have a really short amount of time to do it."
And then the third question is, "Go to the doctor, the doctor says you have one day left to live, tomorrow is your last day on earth. How do you feel? What changes would you have made?" and that's really cast things into light and most people just say, "Spending more time with the people I love." So those are those three questions, they've been really effective for me personally and then really, I think for all of our clients, we've had a few major, major life changes as a result of these questions for the better, I would say.
Shane:
Hell yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think of what my answers would be.
AJ:
We could do a episode in life planning but we have 99 more things to get through. So give us one, Shane.
Shane:
For sure. 99 minus 99 level ups-
AJ:
Don't try to-
Shane:
On the wall-
AJ:
99 problems but George Kinder ain't one.
Shane:
But a life plan isn't one. Yeah. All right. I'm actually going to list one that's not on here actually.
AJ:
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Shane:
I would go with the ideology of essentialism as one of the best things. I'm trying to think of something both for your business life and your personal life, the idea of essentialism. There's a cool little book about it, about how if something is not essentially a hell yes, then you just need to move on with your life, which is especially helpful for entrepreneurs because you get constantly bombarded with opportunities and offers, whether it's to hire somebody or to purchase a piece of software or to attend a conference or to bring on this certain client or to open up this new line of service or to travel somewhere because somebody suggested it and they want you to go along with... Whatever it is that is offered to you, when you have the power of the purse strings of a multimillion-dollar company, people are constantly bombarding you with offers or requests.
AJ:
It's so weird. No one ever reaches out to me.
Shane:
Yeah, sure. Right. So there is really not a problem of having not enough to accomplish or not enough to do, but really a problem of focus. So you can get easily distracted by shiny objects both in your personal life and your business life. So whether that's new relationships, new things you can purchase, new destinations, new employees, like I said in your business, whatever it is, if it's not a hell yes, like you're not 95%, "Hell yes, I need to do this," then you need to leave it alone so that you can stay focused.
I would say that we're getting better and better at it. We still tend to get distracted. I think you and I both have an IDS on our plate right now around joining this network of international accountants that's not a hell yes, that we're juggling, just the first thing that comes to mind. So it just really helps with decision making. I mean, you and I are super...
I mean, the other item on this list is about our partnership, for sure, has been a level up for our lives which is just spoiler alert for a later level up that we'll discuss but it's been super helpful. You and I are already really good at making decisions and it's really helpful for us to also have that additional tool of essentialism say to say, "If it's not a hell..."
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
Sometimes you need to be reminded about this and like you want to do something but your partner needs to come and say, "That's not really essential," or it isn't-
AJ:
Well, I think part of-
Shane:
An obvious hell yes.
AJ:
Part of the partnership is that I think both of us struggle with this, we both want to be better at it but we really bounce off like we really rely on the other person to help us with this, right? It's really hard to do essentialism on your own but having someone say like, "Hey, let's take a step back. This is going to be... This is not a hell yes from me." That makes you second guess your own decision because we trust each other. So if I'm excited about something and it's not a hell yes from you, I'm going to really respect your opinion and think about why it was a hell yes for me and then come to a better decision.
Funny story, last night, I was at a wine bar with some friends and they were like, "What should we order?" and someone handed me the menu and I literally just pushed it away and I was like, "I have made too many decisions today. I cannot make a decision. You order the food, you order the wine, I will eat whatever you put in front of me."
Shane:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
AJ:
And I think that's part of being an entrepreneur is like you make these... And they can be little tiny decisions like how to word an email which could have a big impact or huge decisions of whether to hire a person who's going to run your entire staff. It's very... Entrepreneurs, we need all these tools that we're going to talk about to make us in our best fighting shape to be the best leaders that we can be which is really what this list is about, right?
Shane:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right on. That just reminded me of something else but we'll have to circle back to that after your next choice here.
AJ:
All right. What are we going to do here? I'm going to give us an easy one here. I'm going to go Delta Lounge Access.
Shane:
Oh, hell yeah, baby.
AJ:
This is a-
Shane:
Nice little layup.
AJ:
Little, I would say, both business and life upgrade. We travel a lot. Getting to the airport and having a quiet place that has fast wifi, free drinks, and free food is huge when you spend as much time in airports as we do. So it's totally a life-
Shane:
There's free food and wifi there?
AJ:
Shut up.
Shane:
Damn.
AJ:
Shane only knew about the free drinks apparently. That was a good one. You're on it today.
Shane:
Oh, yeah. I'm on vacation, baby. I'm fresh out of the ocean. Ready to zing.
AJ:
All the yokes from Mr. Mason. All right, Mr. Mason. Give us another level up.
Shane:
I'm going to give you another ideal which is stolen from... Amazon made this really popular which is the rolling off of the disagreeing or having to commit to decision and you and I having things that we see as shiny objects and needing assistance from each other. You're making a ton of decisions every day as an entrepreneur and sometimes you need heuristics and ways to get across the finish line and sometimes you're not going to have consensus on something.
But what you do need to have when you are making decisions is even if you don't get consensus from your directors, which I think we're going to talk about that as another item on the list here is hiring people, like delegating to directors of different departments has been a big level up for us in the business but you're not always going to agree with them, especially when you give them true autonomy, but you do need to commit to whatever decision that they come up with or your business partners come up with.
So the ideal of disagreeing and committing as made famous by the Amazon folks where Jeff Bezos is famous for putting a lot of wood behind this arrow, especially when you're growing so quickly, is even if you're not happy with the result, you, as a team, need to commit to the strategy that you're going to deploy and that commitment that you get from everybody is where you get results. So I mean, even in your personal life, if you're just like, "Look, I don't need to make the decision. I might even disagree with the decision that we're making. I guess we're going to whitewater raft this river instead of chilling by the pool all day but I'm going to commit to making this a good time for everybody."
AJ:
Yeah. I mean, flatbreads were ordered. I would've preferred kebabs.
Shane:
There we are.
AJ:
But you know what? I ate the flatbreads and they were great. Yeah. Let's talk about bringing on the directors. So yeah, earlier, not this year, in mid-2022, we brought on an executive team. It used to be Shane and I making all the decisions, just the two of us in a room sometimes with a business coach. And then, we brought on directors of tax planning, operations, and outsourced accounting. And so now, we have great decision makers in the room with us who we trust and they really run the show. We offer our support. We still make some pretty high level decisions but they have the autonomy to do things, they have the autonomy to hire people, and that has been a major, major level up, I think, for our quality of life and for the success and health of the business. Taking you and I out of managing employees and elevating us to sitting above the forest, being able to see the forest from the trees, I got that one right, right? Yeah. Cool.
Shane:
For once. Yeah. Wow. Dear listener, that was an idiom-
AJ:
You got that?
Shane:
That AJ-
AJ:
Oh, correct idiom.
Shane:
Notoriously... AJ's autistic in a few ways but specifically in idioms is one of her weak points.
AJ:
Can't be good at everything, folks. Can't be good at everything.
Shane:
I love that response. Anytime you're not good at something, that's the best response, "Can't be good at everything, buddy."
AJ:
So yeah, shout out to our directors for crushing it and continuing to learn along with us in this journey. We trust you with our lives and our business, really. All right. You got one. Give us an easy one.
Shane:
Speaking of great comebacks, I have a no-brainer for the week and this is something I've picked up on by accident. Recently, I tend to leave things behind whenever I move from place to place, I always leave stuff from behind and it's embarrassing like I'll leave my wallet somewhere and I'll have to circle back for it or my phone or my laptop or whatever. I was at a conference and I set my laptop by the sink and I'm looking at it but somebody walks up to it and goes, "Oh, is this your laptop?" and I'm like, "Yeah. Do you want it?" They're like, "Oh. Oh, no. No, no." If somebody ever points out that you left something behind or they try to make you feel guilty for not being diligent about your things, just say, "Yeah. Do you want it?" Okay. So moving on.
AJ:
You can't be good at everything, folks.
Shane:
You can't be good at everything and you spend all your days in the clouds thinking about great business ideas, you're not really paying attention if your shoes are tied or not. All right, folks? All right. I'm going to go with a fun thing.
AJ:
That's why we wear Vans anyway.
Shane:
That's why I've transitioned to Birkenstocks with no... Just slip them right on.
AJ:
Oh, boy. Don't look back.
Shane:
Oh, you hate my Burkes. I forgot. You hate my Birkenstocks. All right. Cool. Let's talk business here for a second and let's talk entrepreneurship and things that are super helpful. Probably something that's both helpful in your personal life and your business life is what I'm calling a rolling cash forecast and this is constantly forecasting out what's happening through the rest of the year on either a calendar year, a quarterly, or a monthly basis. You should be doing this for... It's easier to do it for your business because you've got business justification to do it but also doing it in your personal life, coming up with quarterly personal financial goals like having this amount of money and a savings account means that I got to move this amount of money to the side every month which means that I can't spend this amount of money. And if you'd miss that goal, then at least you can calibrate and you can do a budget versus forecast or a forecast versus actuals comparison to see where you goofed up.
Super helpful in a business especially when... We didn't used to do this. We used to just do budgets but now with 30 employees, it's extremely critical for always to keep our eyes on the margins, on the cash balances and payroll and all that. And we have a fantastic controller at the company, Mr. Will Kavanaugh, who does our rolling cash forecast for us on a monthly basis so we take a look at forecast versus actuals and then look at the rest of the year to see what our net income's going to be, what AJ and I are making, what we can afford to implement, and that way... It just helps with a ton of decisions. You can't just do one annual budget and then roll with that.
AJ:
Yeah. Another way of saying that is, "What's your burn rate?" So you don't have to be a business, it's, from a personal level, like, "What's the income coming in the door? What are your expenses?" Just knowing what that is each month and knowing if there is anything left over, that's Personal Finance 101. If you can do that, you've got most of a financial plan. So yeah, that's a great one.
I'm going to go with... Oh, here's an easy one. Getting a habit tracker app. For those of us, like myself who are workaholics and social butterflies who just do a bunch of stuff and don't take care of themselves, getting a habit tracker app... Shout out to you, Shane. You told me about this. It's literally just called Habit and it's very simple, not a sophisticated interface. It just says, "What do you want to do each day? I want to walk 6,000 steps, I want to take my vitamins, I want to take my pills, I want to drink enough water, I want to go to the driving range once a week, and I want to read a book for 30 minutes," and that's what I do every day and that's just simple, I just go in and I check a box. That's been life changing in terms of my hydration levels and my physical activity.
Shane:
Your hydration levels.
AJ:
Really life saving like, "Hey, how much water have you had today? Oh, 10 ounces? You're dehydrated and maybe that's why you're being psycho." FYI.
Shane:
Yeah. Interesting.
AJ:
I actually recently sent to our director of operations a Etsy bumper sticker that said, "Drink some water, you beautiful, dehydrated bitch." H2O can solve most of the world's problems. That's my no-brainer of the week.
Shane:
Yeah. I'm noticing a trend in hot girls not drinking enough water and constantly reminding themselves, like there's all these articles on online about being dehydrated, lots of memes about being dehydrated, lots of girls buying those gallon jugs of water that have this many cups by 10:00 AM, this many cups by noon. It's like, "What is going on?" Oh, you currently have one right there? Amazing.
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
Like, "What is wrong with you all? Drink some goddamn water."
AJ:
We're too busy making decisions. I can't drink water.
Shane:
Good god. Yeah. All right. Got it. But yeah, habit tracker is-
AJ:
Maybe that's why we're only making 72 cents on the dollars, we're not drinking enough water.
Shane:
Right. Because you're dehydrated. Have you thought about-
AJ:
Because we're dehydrated. Yeah.
Shane:
Have you thought about... Do they run the numbers on that shit?
AJ:
Yeah. Where's the study showing water intake? Oh, maybe they're at the water cooler making deals and that's why we're only making 72 cents.
Shane:
Exactly. Mm-hmm.
AJ:
You guys, I fixed the wage gap. All right, next. What else you got for me?
Shane:
Guys are standing around the water cooler negotiating salaries. Meanwhile, you all are in the women's bathroom talking about makeup or something. I don't know. Sorry. Something less sexist maybe.
AJ:
We're talking about Succession but anyway, next one.
Shane:
Oh god. Hmm.
AJ:
All right. Your turn. Give me a level up.
Shane:
Yeah. Okay. Cool. Next level up, I'm going to go with summers at Brooklyn Fi in general. We're currently in the middle of our summer season. Let's say, we're a bit seasonal at the company, we do do tax returns and we have a year in tax planning session and we just try to chop up our year between spring and fall. So in the summertime, because we have advanced, workloads are more deadline-focused, contracted, compressed workloads in the spring and in the fall, we like to have a really fun summer. So this year, we're doing half days for about what? 10 weeks? Maybe 12 weeks? So we get half day Fridays-
AJ:
Memorial Day to Labor Day. Yep.
Shane:
Yeah. And then all day, I'm stealing some of yours here, and then all day on-
AJ:
It's all good.
Shane:
Every Friday in July is a full day off. So I'm encouraging a lot of people to also take Thursdays. I'm taking every Thursday in addition to every Friday this July, just make it a really sick July. It just really helps with that undulating balance of workload. It allows you to truly disconnect and get out of the office. I mean, I'm doing our podcast here from surf camp but-
AJ:
I offered.
Shane:
You know I like to-
AJ:
John was on standby.
Shane:
Nah. Yeah, of course. But I was able to find this 140 degree co-working room to do the podcast from so why wouldn't I do it? Dear listener, if you can't see me on the video-
AJ:
He's sweating balls. Yeah.
Shane:
I'm sweating entire fucking beads of sweat the size of marbles over here but I do it for you. I do it for the people, for the listener, for our dedicated-
AJ:
But also, yeah, I think... Let's take that and expand it which is like when you run a business, you have to run a business that can survive and in order for a business like ours to survive, which has super high stress, super high intensity periods, our clients need us a lot more at the end of the year. They need us at the close of quarters when they got to sell their stock. That's when our team has to be on, they're working hard, they're making decisions, they need some time to chill the fuck out.
Our clients are on vacation right now so a lot of our team is also on vacation. So we move with the seasons of when work needs to get done and now is a season where work is still getting done but it can get done on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and half of Thursday. And I think a lot of our employees are not taking those days off and are probably working a little bit less than they do and that is A-okay with me honestly. They work so hard the rest of the year, so I want that for them. Hey, Curtis. Hi, Dane.
Shane:
Second no-brainer of the week is if you are having a conference or a getaway with your employees, always rent the cabana, especially if you're in Vegas. Rent the cabana for one of the days and just do a chill day by the pool. It'll ROI very high for you, I promise. All right. What do you got? What do you got, Allie?
AJ:
What do I got here? I've got... Oh, let's talk about GEM.
Shane:
It's the third time I've called you Allie in six years.
AJ:
I think I'm going back to Allie Jane, by the way.
Shane:
Okay.
AJ:
All right. I'm going with we built GEM. GEM is Global Equity Management, that is our internal home-built piece of software that can inventory equity, it can plan for liquidity events, IPOs, it can tell you what your taxes are going to be 10 years from now based on the decision you're making today based on a stock price in the future. It was based on hundreds and hundreds of Excel spreadsheets that we've slaved over for five years. We brought a brilliant developer on, Matt, to help us build it and we've been rolling it out with clients and so far so good. I think it's a core part of Brooklyn Fi. And Brooklyn Fi when there are liquidity events to be had, there have not been many in the past year and a half, really looking forward to being able to help a lot more people a lot faster. Your company's going public on Tuesday? No problem. Let's hop on a call. Let's pull up GEM. Let's plan out some scenarios together and help you make the best decision for your family, your equity based on the current environment.
Shane:
Yeah. It's also been a lesson in project management. If you're going to look down the barrel of a project, especially working with vendors instead of employees. With an employee, you can fire them and replace them. With a vendor, if you fire them, there's the potential to have to start all over from scratch and not really know what the hell's going on, especially with source code and trying to bring someone else to understand what the hell the project was in the middle of something, a real technical project like that. You've done the majority of the project management for GEM, give us a high level... Your takeaway, your feelings around project management of a multi-year, multi-100K software development project.
AJ:
My feeling is that now I understand what project managers do and I think in hindsight, we probably should have carved off a lot more of my time to dedicate to it and I think that was just bad planning on our part. And it does require... It's like vision integrator, right? Where are we going? What is the purpose of this? I'm the subject matter expert. We have a person who's ready, willing, and able to build it but we got to tell them every day. We got to give them constant feedback like, "This isn't working. This is not what we wanted." It's definitely a full-time job, I would say. And I have a lot more respect for project managers who are the non-technical folks who are able to translate the needs of a subject matter expert and I was trying to be both of those, so we'll see how it went.
Shane:
I think we have an invoice for $50,000 related to seeing how it went. Right. I'm going to do a layup here. You put this one on here, I agree with you. Getting a dog walker for Charlie. It's relevant to-
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
My dog. It's relevant to also just working remotely which I'll let you take working remotely. But living in Mexico and just making that realization that I can afford certain things that I couldn't afford. Moving to Mexico, first of all, spending six months there, immediately went from middle class, especially moving from New York City, going from middle class to almost upper class was a huge level up in terms of realizing how much more time could be delegated to dog walkers, cleaners, cooking, chefs, etc. So having somebody take Charlie for a six hour walk every day and getting all that time back in my day, I mean, time is the most expensive thing, especially for an entrepreneur. I think it's been... I mean, I really miss those hours in the park, right? That's probably good for my mental health but it's not like I squander my time. So yes, thank you for the dog walker for Charlie. Charlie's actually probably a lot happier now that he's got seven buds to roll around Mexico City and sniff butts with so yeah.
AJ:
Just to be clear, Charlie is doing the butt sniffing not Shane. Just wanted to make that clear. Anyways, let's talk about working from anywhere. This idea that was... It's funny because it was not an original goal of Brooklyn Fi or maybe it was a goal but it was not a reality of Brooklyn Fi. We were in an office. Clients show up in the office. We had a few remote clients back in the day but I would say less than 5% of our clients. Everyone was coming in the office, we were meeting everybody, they were getting on the train, taking Ubers to our WeWork in South Williamsburg. COVID changed everything. We sent everybody home and never looked back and that's just been an incredible level up for the business absolutely and for our lives, I would say.
I mean, being able to pivot to being a fully remote company in the span of three days when other companies took weeks and some are still struggling with that. Being able to do that and continue to serve our clients, continue to serve our clients better. Our clients can get meetings faster. Our clients can have meetings with their kids sitting on their lap or their dog barking like, "I'm down with that." I feel like clients apologize all the time. They're like, "I'm so sorry. My kids are..." I'm like, "No problem. We're talking about their college education. Bring them in. Let's all hang."
That's been such an incredible level up and COVID for all the damage it did gave us all the permission that it's okay to work from home and it's okay to have your life sometimes interfere with your workstation and it's just okay and we gave... It's like a collective cutting each other a little bit more slack so I've loved that. I'm in London right now with my husband, wouldn't have been able to travel to London and work remotely four years ago. That just wouldn't have been a possibility and you're in fucking Mexico at surf camp.
Shane:
Yeah. And I'm going to be in Ireland and Sweden and Spain and Switzerland and then back to New York over the next few months which people... It is an amazing life, yeah, and I wish more of our employees would take advantage of it. But one thing that is also... I get this question a lot like, "How do you guys manage that?" like you've got... I mean, I'll be working like, "Well, when do you work or when do your employees work?" and one of the other items that we discovered, maybe what? 18 months ago? Was this concept of core hours because we had folks on Pacific Standard Time and Eastern Standard time and I was probably in Ireland or whatever and then we've got-
AJ:
I'm on British summertime at the moment.
Shane:
Oh my god. Anyway, so where are you in relation to the Prime Meridian? We like to joke about... One thing that AJ's not autistic about is geography.
AJ:
Cheers.
Shane:
Yeah. There she goes. Two more martinis and she'll know exactly where the prime meridian is. That's the prime martini, the prime martinian. Anyway, we just-
AJ:
Always close to that.
Shane:
Over the last few conferences I've been to I've talked to a lot of firm owners that are just getting started with remote work which is important or necessary even for small teams at this point because you're just able to compete much more easily with bigger firms that have higher salaries, etc. So offering remote is really important. So when do you guys work together? You obviously can't work the same 8 hours all day so this concept of core hours where you just try to get... You make it clear when I need to be able to reach you over let's say a 4-hour timeframe.
And as long as you get your work done outside that timeframe, you can walk your dog or whatever the hell it is, like the things that need to happen or I know I need to have you available. I think our core hours at Brooklyn Fi are like 12:00 to 4:00 Eastern, right? Because we got Pacific people that 9:00 AM works for them and then you can shift your 8-hour stretch over those 4 hours of core hours. Do you agree on that core hours being an actual big unlock for remote work?
AJ:
Totally. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I'm in London right now. It's almost 9:00 at night that we're recording this podcast at this time. But the rest of this week, I logged on a bit earlier, I got my shit done, and I had four hours of work with meetings on the East Coast and it's worked really great. Actually, it's fun working late once in a while. It's like this morning, I walked around, went to a museum. This life suits me.
Shane:
Right on. If you're happy, I'm happy.
AJ:
Speaking of if you're happy, I'm happy, the right company credit card. So I've been trying to get Shane to switch to Delta for years and finally, he saw the light and we switched our company credit cards to Delta Reserve and NEXUS and now, Shane has seen the light of the Delta lounge and the Diamond Platinum or the Platinum Medallion experience and we're never going back. Once you go-
Shane:
Once you go bougie?
AJ:
Love Delta.
Shane:
Let me save you there. Let me interject. Let me save you, pull you back from the cliff's edge there. Nabeel walks in right when you say that.
AJ:
Yeah, yeah.
Shane:
Once you go black card, you never go back.
AJ:
You never go back. You never go back.
Shane:
Yeah. Yeah. Huge fan.
AJ:
What you got for me?
Shane:
Huge fan of the committing to one airline. It doesn't always work but when someone treats you like a king, then it is really nice. Yeah. What do I have for you? Let's see. I think I'm going to go with building an enterprise business on purpose and being intentional about that from the jump. You and I started just the two of us back in 2018, really 2017, trying to figure out what the hell we were going to make and we really had two decisions: build a lifestyle practice or build an enterprise practice which is all about trying to...
A lifestyle is all about trying to take off as many days per year that you can and make as much income as you can from that business but not really try to grow it beyond your own self, maybe a few employees. Whereas an enterprise practice is obviously intended to scale beyond the owners and try to build as much of a standalone business that can run without the owners as possible.
You and I started off with that intention back in 2018 to build a enterprise, which meant that everything that we built took a little bit extra development time, a little bit extra work, a little bit extra project management to make sure that it could be delegated to somebody else, and almost every decision we've made around when we need to hire people is focused on, "If I'm good at something, then I need to delegate it. Because if I'm too good at it and I don't delegate it, no one else gets that opportunity to get good at it," so we need to delegate and elevate all of our employees constantly.
And I think because of that focus, we also were able to focus on as many clients along with our employees and grow into one of the Inc. 5000 in the Financial Times Top 500 fastest growing companies. Let's see if that growth continues into the future but I think that intentionality around the business, we might have got lucky, I would argue that we've gotten very lucky in our past and not all the growth that we've experienced is obviously 100% related to intention and commitment and hard work, of course, there's luck involved in everything so I want to make sure that we allocate the-
AJ:
Of course. Yeah. I think it was very much a right place, right time. We're good at equity compensation, we got way better at it, and IPOs had their best year ever in 2021 and we were very well positioned to take advantage of that and help a lot of people to very successful liquidity events that changed a lot of lives. So I feel very grateful for that market condition but also very proud of the work that we did and super excited for all of our clients who went through that life planning.
And actually, the answer to that first life planning question, imagine money is no object, a lot of our clients actually have that in reality. They have that financial independence. Imagine you have everything you need, all of your needs are taken care of, what do you do with your life? It's a scary question, a lot of people want to get to that point. There's all the statistics about people who retire early, they retire at 55 and the second day of retirement, they're bored because they have all the money and they can do whatever they want and they're not needed, they don't have purpose because they've spent so much of their lives going to an office and having to do someone else's bidding.
So it's a really interesting question, that idea of financial independence like, "In our current mood of society, do you need to have something that you're working towards in order to be happy?" whether it's a golf handicap, fixing up a vintage boat, or building a multi-million dollar business. I think you can have it all. I think that's the new version of having it all, is that you're successful and you're needed in business but you're also able to dedicate time and love and attention to the things that you care about outside of work.
Shane:
Hell yeah. Yeah. Hell yeah. Amen, sister. You want to do two more?
AJ:
Amen. Sure. Yeah. Let's keep going. Fuck it.
Shane:
Cool.
AJ:
Let's do it live.
Shane:
Fuck it.
AJ:
Oh yeah, I got one martini.
Shane:
We're going until you finish that martini.
AJ:
All right. Here's one. Are you ready? As I'm on my soapbox, you said this to me the other day, we were at a conference and talking to all these people and we've had a lot of success but you and I have also worked really fucking hard. We have put in the hours, we have put in the blood, sweat and tears, and at the end of the day, we're nice people. I don't think we can dilute how important it is just to be a kind, empathetic person in everything you do, whether it's dealing with clients, dealing with employees, dealing with each other. You and I get in tiffs all the time, but at the end of the day, we love and trust each other. So it's like we care about each other so we're going to be nice and move the business forward and move each other forward.
And I think you see a lot of these very successful leaders that I think they started out nice but they get to a point where they're just so above the clouds and so far removed from day-to-day interactions that they forget how to be human and I hope that we continue to do that like you come and talk to me... If you stop me in the hallway at a conference and talk to me, of course I'll talk to you. I've time for you and if I don't have time, I'll give you my business card and say, "Email me later." I think making time for... This is going to be contradictory to your essentialism but just keeping an open mind and just assuming the best in people and presenting the best version of yourself is so important in business and just that weirdly, just being nice and friendly, I think has gotten us so far. Not being a dick, honestly.
Shane:
Yeah. Yeah. I've got two things to say about that. One is that I don't know what it is about our monkey brains or what it is about our lack of memory but you don't remember what people say to you, it's really hard to remember people's names, but one thing you do remember is how people make you feel, right? You'll see somebody two or three years later after you met them and you just remember how that person made you feel, right? Even if you don't remember what they said or what they do but you just get that vibe from somebody and if somebody makes you feel good, you remember that. If somebody makes you feel threatened or weak or small or marginalized, you're going to remember that forever. And a great way to close the door on opportunities is to not have an open door to other people to make them feel warm and accepted which can be hard when you yourself might feel vulnerable or small.
Especially like, I'm going to talk about... My next one's going to be attending conferences but that's a great place to make other people feel great about themselves. It's a place where people feel vulnerable and they feel overwhelmed and they feel like they might be a small fish in a big pond or something like that but all of those commitments you give or all of those handshakes and warmth that you can provide to people, making them feel good is going to pay you in spades, and karma's real in that space for sure. I forgot the other thing I was going to say. So-
AJ:
Attending conferences?
Shane:
No, no, no, no. It was-
AJ:
There were-
Shane:
Yeah. There was something else about being nice and staying humble for sure but I forget what it is. Anyway yeah, I would also like to piggyback off that and say that attending conferences has been a game changer for both of us and not attending conferences like going for the technical expertise or what have you is great in picking up how to handle S-corps or how to go through a sales pitch or whatever it is at conferences can be really great.
But my big unlock, for sure, at conferences is meeting other people outside of the Kool-Aid that you drink or the Kool-Aid that you swim in is the analogy that I'm going to use here. I used to work at PwC, there was thousands of employees there and we drank our own Kool-Aid and never went to conferences where people from Deloitte or any other company worked or mid-sized companies or smaller companies. But then, started working at mid-sized firm and going to conferences just to better myself and meet other people in the field and then you get to swim in all these other people's Kool-Aids, so to speak, and you get to realize that the dogma of your firm is just that, the dogma of your firm and there's many other ways to live.
Especially when you're an entrepreneur, you need to... In my mind, entrepreneurism is just turning over 1 million stones so that under 10 of them, you can find what works for your company and you just got to be constantly turning over stones to figure out what is perfect for your clients or your niche or your employees or whatever the hell it is. The only way that you're going to be able to turn over all the stones is by going to conferences and talking to other entrepreneurs, other employees, other vendors, whatever it is.
So I would argue that Brooklyn Fi might not have ever become a thing unless I had gone to the conference and met Marcus Trinos who said, "Man, you're ready to go out there and start that firm," and then when I met you, I felt ready because of him and then you and I launched it, launched Brooklyn Fi. So yeah, I think attending conferences is a huge unlock. If you're not currently doing it or if you've never done it before, highly encourage it, even if you're just an employee or... Sorry for the just there. Even if you're an employee and you need to get exposed to other ways that problems are solved at other companies to increase your value to your company.
AJ:
And I will add, if you think conferences are a waste of time and you don't have a good experience at conferences, please email me directly and I will give you 10 bullet points of how to have a great conference experience.
Shane:
Yeah.
AJ:
Because I do hear that from a lot of really smart people that I respect, and they're like, "Oh, I'm not going to that conference. It's a waste of time," and I'm like, "What? That's so insane." I went to a conference in San Diego where John, our director of planning, was presenting and I literally met this guy randomly in the exhibit hall and he came up to me and he is like, "Oh, you guys are from Brooklyn Fi, da da da," and I don't remember how we got to talking but he was like, "Oh, you got to use this tool. It's amazing. You can look up all the contacts," and I was like, "Oh, word. I'll file that away," and it ended up being this insane unlock for our client process and that was just literally a random tip and I wouldn't have found that any other way and that was worth the, I don't know, $2,500 I paid to go to that conference and stay in a shitty hotel room.
Shane:
Yeah, yeah. It kind of works-
AJ:
It was just so insane and look, there have been some dud conferences for sure but if you go to five, just the ROI for us is great. So if you're struggling with getting a lot of value out of conferences, talk to us because we can help you out.
Shane:
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it's like love. You're not going to find it when you're looking for it but as soon as you stop looking for it, something shows up like that.
AJ:
Oh, is that your TED Talk?
Shane:
Yeah. You're welcome. You're welcome, listener. Conferences are like romance. That's it. That's like-
AJ:
You show up, you get drunk, and everyone gets hurt. Anyway.
Shane:
Yeah. I mean, it's not no.
AJ:
Speaking of getting a lot of value out of something, so something that we've always... Not always. What was it? 2020? That we implemented the EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. I think it was 2020 and I'm not going to go into it. Read the book Traction. It's great. If you run a business, whether you're one person or 100 people. It's a theory of running your business that you should check in once a week and you have these bigger 90-day goals.
Shane:
A framework. A framework, if you will.
AJ:
A framework. Thank you.
Shane:
Yeah.
AJ:
A framework, an architecture. We've read the book, we tried to implement it, we did a mediocre job at it, and then we hired someone whose life's work is basically to help businesses implement this system. A very passionate and wonderful individual, shout out to you, Ben, who just really helped us as a leadership team see the forest from the trees. Really understand the process-
Shane:
Wow. Twice.
AJ:
And use it to its fullest extent and really like, "What are we focused on this quarter? What are the big problems, issues, exciting things in the business that we need to do? What direction are we rowing in? What are we doing here?" So shout out to the EOS implementer network. If you're using EOS and doing it poorly, highly recommend that you get an implementer. That was definitely a level up for us in 2022 continuing into this year. All right. One more from you.
Shane:
I'm going to go with my favorite one which we didn't really dig into which is finding a business partner. Finding a business partner that is the right partner for your business is worth millions. I mean, it's invaluable. There's no way to value the right person to join you on the crazy journey of entrepreneurship. With its ups and downs, I don't know how people do it alone. I don't know how people accomplish the vicissitudes of life as an entrepreneur. The clients that fire you, the employees that quit, the negative feedback you get from anybody, somebody that tries to sue, like some vendor that tries to sue you because you didn't realize that the contract was for a certain... Whatever it is that comes up. The insanity of business ownership is overwhelming and to find that person that really helps you go through the difficult decisions, the difficult ups and downs is truly a diamond in the rough, and I've got my diamond in the rough here on the podcast with me today, folks. Raise-
AJ:
Cheers to your, man.
Shane:
Glasses and cheers to you, AJ.
AJ:
Cheers to you, Shane.
Shane:
Yeah.
AJ:
Yeah. I will say that right back at you. Yeah. Neither of us put that here but I think both of us... It's just so obvious, we wouldn't need to say it. In a list of a 100, that's the one thing that matters, right? That's the only thing.
Shane:
Mm-hmm. Yep.
AJ:
It's interesting because it is so much about trust, and you and I have gone through so many different stages of trust. Initially, it was literally blind trust. It was, "You seem like a smart, ambitious person. You seem to have your shit together. I like some of your ideas. Okay. Let's do this insane thing that's going to uproot both of our lives, be potentially damaging financially for at least a few years, and let's try to do this thing that neither of us have done before. Neither of us really know how to do. We both have unique skills that may or may not be complimentary. We have no idea. Some business books told us they might be. Let's just take a leap of faith."
So I think having a business partner who's willing to take the same amount of risk is probably a good initial step you can take like, "Yes, you should get along, you should have a drink, you should see if you guys are compatible, but are you able to take the same amount of risk?" We hear so many stories of business partnerships failing because someone's life circumstances change and you and I have been really fortunate that we've been able to take that risk, right? And we've had support from other places. We've had so much support from each other to just be able to say, "Let's fucking do this." Like, "Can't take a salary this quarter. Ugh. That sucks. Not going to make our IRA contribution this year. You know what? This is more important. I'm more excited about building this tool than this tiny contribution to my retirement," and luckily, we're financial planners so we know, we can tell exactly what impact that's going to have on our eventual wealth but yeah.
Shane:
Yeah. Calculated risk is our forte. Absolutely.
AJ:
Yeah.
Shane:
Yes.
AJ:
For sure. So cheers to you, cheers to 100 episodes of The Liquidity Event. It's been real, folks. We'll see you for another hundred. Tell us what you like. Tell us what you don't like. We'll see you next week. Thank you for listening.
Shane:
Bye.
Presenter:
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.