• 42:05
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
portfolio, people, sell, talk, life, paycheck, money, business, taxes, great, put, planning, tax, started, financial planning, pay, podcast, taxable, exit, thinking
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, John Browning
Damon Pistulka 00:00
All right, everyone, welcome once again. The faces of business. I am your host, Damon pistulka and I am excited today because we’ve got none other than John Browning with us. Today, we’re going to be talking about financial and retire, or financial planning for a great life after the exit. John is a financial and retirement planning expert, a financial speaker. He’s an author and podcast host. John, thanks for being here today. Man,
John Browning 00:32
hey, it’s great to be here. I’m happy we finally got together. We had some had some fun with scheduling, didn’t we? Yeah, some technical difficulties.
Damon Pistulka 00:40
We have it. That’s the way it goes. We get to get those things taken care of in a way we roll so John, we always like to start the show out the same way, by letting you tell us your bit about your background and how you got into helping people the way you are today.
John Browning 00:57
Sure this was, this was something that was born over three decades ago, and I started out in a Wall Street firm, you know, Hello, how can I help you today? You know, on the phones and, you know, taking 120 calls a day, and that kind of same thing in customer service. And from there, just sort of learned the financial trade customer service first, analysis, security analysis, portfolio analysis, risk management, and eventually became one of those annoying guys that you see on the movies and corner office and Wall Street and and, and really, that that really hit me after 911 which we just passed, of course, yeah, the anniversary. And those of us are who are who lived that, you know, we can’t get through that day without thinking about, and I was actually on a plane yesterday, and it was just thinking about, man, it’s, just strange being on a plane on 911 and it will be for the rest of my life. Yeah, and but that’s when I kind of started this whole idea of I’ve given too much of my life away to Wall Street and working and flying around the country and away from my kids. So I started the planning process, but that was 15 years before I actually exited. And what I love about what I do now is that you don’t have to have millions and millions of dollars to talk to me. And I tell people, it’s a lot less fun, or it’s a lot more fun, but a lot less lucrative, which is fine, because, you know, my kids are, for the most part, out of the house, and I can afford to do that, and it’s just like I said, it’s just a lot of fun using what I learned on Wall Street, which was great. Got to sit across from some of the smartest people, frankly, in the world, and learn from them, and now I get to apply that to individuals.
Damon Pistulka 03:02
Yeah, very cool. So were you actually working in New York on 911
John Browning 03:08
I was actually on the trading desk in Chicago. Oh, okay. And I had, this was back when you had the, the actual phones, you know, the headset, and I had, and we would do this, you know, you’d have the one side of the trade here and the other side on this, and then you flip them, yeah, and one of the gentlemen was in the the second tower worked at Morgan Stanley at the time, and the other one was in the Bank of New York, which was just about a block away. And it was, we just heard the a boom, and I heard it through the phones, and wow, we were just kind of like, what was that? I don’t know. It was, I don’t know. And then the guy from the Bank of New York down the block said, Well, it looks like, I’ll never forget it. He said, It looks like a ticker tape parade, but I don’t remember anything happening that would be a ticker tape parade, because the papers were falling, and that’s what he was seeing a block away. And then, of course, it came across the TV about, you know, 510 minutes later.
Damon Pistulka 04:11
Yeah, wow. It is. So it’s a day that you just remember, and people that are, uh, you know, old enough to be remember being a, you know, relatively close to being an adult that day. You just remember where you were and and how it changed, yeah, into everything.
John Browning 04:27
Yeah. It was, it was very surreal. I remember the the day that it happened. It was like you didn’t know what to do, you know, yeah, you were just sort of walking around in a daze and, and they sent us all home. But then they started to realize, hey, we’ve got a this completely turned the financial system upside down for several days. All the people that worked in New York couldn’t work, yes, even if you weren’t in the towers. Because you couldn’t go back downtown people in Chicago, especially the executives in Chicago, for the next year, our life was just a blur, putting things sort of back together and figuring out how we were going to move forward, in addition to trying to help our people, yeah, that, yeah, that really went through it right there on the ground. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 05:25
quite a, quite a thing, and it’s hard not to really, really think deeply about it, yeah, because it’s because it was the first time for you was talking to somebody about this yesterday. It was the first time when something really like this happened on our soil. That’s
John Browning 05:43
right, yeah, I mean Pearl Harbor, but that was different. There’s just something
Damon Pistulka 05:48
on the mainland, on the mainland, on
John Browning 05:50
the mainland and and there was a war going on, yeah, for Pearl Harbor, yeah. But this was really completely unexpected by anybody that I know
Damon Pistulka 06:02
anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the way it’s changed everything, and then subsequent events and all that. So it’s it and, and it’s interesting now too, that we have a generation, or even more of people that have grown up with this just the way it is.
John Browning 06:19
The my, my 17, soon to be 18, year old daughter, had to write a paper on 911 and of course, she doesn’t know anything. Yeah, she really doesn’t. She doesn’t remember anything about it. And so she said, I need to interview somebody who lived through 911 Can I interview you? And I said, Well, yeah, and I can put you in touch with people who lived it on the ground as well. So that’s kind of strange. It’s part of getting old, maybe, yeah, but it was really strange for me to have that,
Damon Pistulka 06:51
yeah, yeah. Well, it’s, it’s, it’s it will. You know, we’re past that. It brought us together in a lot of ways, and, and, and I think we’re, we’re going to be stronger eventually because of it, and that’s good. So as you, as you were, you’re saying, though the 911 was kind of a turning point, and you said, I need to do something a little bit differently, but it took you 15 years,
John Browning 07:21
and lead the plan. Yeah. What was
Damon Pistulka 07:23
your planning and executing? Did you really see yourself doing what you’re doing today, and that was part of the overall plan, and were there a lot of zigzags on the way there?
John Browning 07:34
I think this was something I always thought would be very interesting, because I used to travel around and I would speak in front of investment advisors and and I would look at their portfolio, their bigger portfolios, it would bring to me and say, Hey, what would you do? And I always thought that would be just really fun for me. I would really enjoy that and really seeing the impact, as opposed to being behind the big portfolio and not seeing how it impacts people’s lives. So it was always part of the plan, but I didn’t know how I would get there. So there were a lot of zigs and zags, and was way harder than I thought. Of course, yeah, to get done, yeah,
Damon Pistulka 08:17
yeah. So you, you written a book. It build a life, not a portfolio, Amazon, bestseller. What inspired you to do that?
John Browning 08:29
I had a lot of a lot of my friends say you should just write a book. You should just write because I used to write things every morning. I do the morning update. When I was on Wall Street, and I would, I would send that out to all our sales people and and all the executives would get it as well. And that kind of grew, and they you should write a book about, like, your experiences. And I was always, no, no, I’m not gonna do that. Plus, it’s really hard to do when you work for a big firm, because then it’s got to go through compliance, right? Yeah. So when I when I started my own firm, a gentleman got in touch with me, and he name of Michael Delon, great guy. And he said, Why don’t you write a book? And I said, don’t have time. I’m starting a business. He said, Have you ever started? I was like, Yeah, you know, I kind of put some thoughts down. He said, Why don’t you talk to me? Why don’t you talk to me? And my editor said, because I find your story interesting. And we’ll do we’ll do the writing. You send us what you have, we’ll do the editing. And they put it together, you know, my thoughts were all jumbled and all over, and they put it together. And they said, What do you think? We think it would make a great book, and we’d love to help you. And so there, there it ended up. And it ended up being a Amazon bestseller, which was kind of weird and cool at the same time.
Damon Pistulka 09:51
Yeah, yep. So now your practice, tell me, tell us about what you’re doing today, because I think this really brings us. Full circle around to how your Wall Street experience, the trading experience, your desire to change your lifestyle, and how you’re helping people today, kind of it really brings us full circle and brings a lot of meaning to it.
John Browning 10:15
Yeah, I think I’m a very, shall we say, different financial advisor, wealth manager, then, you know, I’m more like a family office, frankly, because, you know, there’s you won’t find mutual funds in my portfolios. You won’t, you just won’t find that thing. Because I understand and I know how to put together portfolios. Is what I did for 30 years. Yeah. And, and we really dig down deep. And start first with the Start with Why? Like the Simon Sinek, Mm, hmm. And I become the Y guy, because it doesn’t matter how much money you have, if you’re not happy, it really doesn’t More money’s just going to make you less happy. You know, that’s more unhappy if you’re happy and you have money, you can use that money to do things that make you happy, and that works, but you gotta know why you’re amassing all this money. I’ve known, I’ve known multi, you know, 100 million heirs that were just miserable, and that’s, that’s the real thing that I wanted to help solve. So I end up with a with a group of clients that are in that that don’t have 100 million plus, and I’m happy with that. That’s fine. They have, you know, they have, maybe they have a few million. Maybe they have a few 100,000 but they’re just really good people. I get to pick and choose my clients. So yes, if I tell people, I will talk to anybody, which is another thing you can’t do on Wall Street. But if you find a really great person, like one of my podcasts, I’ll only take six at a time. I don’t know why I came up with six, but it takes six people who I really, frankly, I can’t put food on my table, but they need help, and they’re willing and consistently working towards something. And so I’ll take six people, and I did a podcast with three of them one time, and they just told their story, which was just really, that’s really what it’s all about, if you can help somebody who struggled and finally got their life together and is trying to get ahead, or maybe a young person that no financial advisor is going to talk to, but They’re really dedicated to consistently doing something with and preparing for retirement. That’s a lot of fun for me.
Damon Pistulka 12:44
Yeah, yeah, because you can make a difference in someone’s life, right? A meaningful difference. Because another, another 5 million for someone that’s got 100 million, yeah, that’s nice and everything, but, you know, 20% more for somebody that’s that’s looking to be able to retire is a huge thing. That’s right, that’s right, yeah, yeah. Good, good, good. Well, as we talk about this, you know, the topic of the day is planning for a great life after the exit. You know, you’re going to talk to, you talk to business owners, you talk to, you know, all kinds of different business owners. What are some of the common things that you see on that first conversation when you’re talking to someone that’s contemplating a business exit or just gone through one
John Browning 13:32
so yeah, probably the most common thing is they really haven’t thought a whole lot about it. They just started thinking about it, and they want to do it tomorrow, but they haven’t. And what it really takes, especially if you’re a business owner, to do it right, to think of start thinking about it and start managing your business and managing your finances five and 10 years before. That is really the perfect way to do it. If you give me five years, we can, we can really make a difference. If you give me 10 years, we can really make a difference. We can do, you know, it can be just entirely different. Your experience can be entirely different and better if you start 10 years out. But most people that I talk to are, like, a year away or something like that, and we’re scrambling and doing the best that we can. So that’s that’s the number one thing. As you know, they do such a good job with their business. They’re very successful in their business, or even if they’re a busy executive, and they’ve made all this money, and they’ve conveyed everybody, pretty much knows I should contribute to my 401 K, I should do a few things and but then it’s like, wait a second, my 401 K, it’s all taxable now. So my million, $2 million that I’ve saved in my 401 k is all taxable, money coming to me in retirement. Well. Does that do? Well, that raises the amount, if I’m taking the amount that I want to take to live my best life as Yes, I define it, it might put me in a whole different tax bracket. It might raise my medic Medicare costs, right? Because I’m in a different bracket there. Yeah, and my Social Security might be taxed. Probably will be if I haven’t put money in the right types of accounts, and had some accounts doing one thing, and other accounts doing another thing, putting those puzzle pieces together well in advance can make hundreds of 1000s of dollars worth of difference, and people just this not I do it every day, so I think about it every day. Most people don’t. Most people are doing what they do. Great,
Damon Pistulka 15:47
yeah, yeah. So as you’re helping people do this now, what are some of the things that you see trends in the industry that you’re excited about that can, can uh, you know that are you’re just excited about in the industry right now.
John Browning 16:06
I like there’s, there’s a there’s a lot of things I don’t like that. I see that are going on out there, but there’s,
Damon Pistulka 16:12
we’ll talk about those too. Well, I
John Browning 16:16
think, you know, I’m a big innovation and investing guy, I talk about that a lot, but investing in innovation has to be done the right way. You have to understand it. You have to understand the cycle behind it, and you you need to understand what’s profitable and what’s not profitable innovation. Yeah, so we look at what then happens within the financial industry, and we see artificial intelligence coming in and and what, what I tend to see is, I tend to take these portfolios over, because it’s really, it’s simple, right? It’s, it’s kind of like the whole idea that, Oh, I’ll just invest in the s, p5, 100, and that’s, we’re good, right? That may be fine when you’re 20, maybe even 30, but there’s some real things we should talk about. If that’s all your strategy is that’s I want to make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. Think Einstein maybe said that. So the the idea behind just putting your portfolio into an artificial intelligence and having that run the portfolio, it just, in my experience and opinion, it just ends up being a mess. And just as an example, one that I recently got had over 300 different positions in there in the portfolio, some of them were less than one half of 1% so I’m not sure what good that was really doing. Yeah, and, and when you think about it, if you invest in the s, p5, 100, you kind of have the same thing you’ve got. So the the definition is, you’re going to have a lot of things that are just junk, right? And you’ll have but the good news is, you’ll have all the good stuff too. So So AI is something that I think is overused and over relied on, not just in the financial industry, but other places as well. I’m excited about it, though. I’m excited about what it can do and how it can make you more productive, but I think just AI without the other AI, which is actual intelligence. I think one in the absence of the other is not a good thing. So that’s, that’s one thing I don’t like that I see, and it tends to make us complacent and think everything’s okay, yeah, might not be. Let’s see, in the industry, I see one of the things that I see, and people will disagree with me on this, so apologize if I offend anyone, but I do see like the charge by the hour folks. So do investment advice by the hour. And there’s some good folks doing this, good people doing this. But what I think that opens you up to is, number one, I don’t want to call my financial advisor when I should, because I don’t want to pay them. Number two, it starts going the opposite direction, right? So as if you’ve ever worked with a lawyer, sorry to all the lawyers out there. I mean, if they think about your case for five minutes, you know, late at night, then they’re going to charge you for that. So it it lends itself to wait a second you charge me for the 15 minutes, the, you know, I just called you and you charged me for half an hour, or what you just lends to that kind of stuff. And the record keeping and the mess that that is likely to create doesn’t seem like a good thing. I like the assets under management. And I think one of the things that kind of went away was the commission based structure, which had its issues, absolutely. But if you think about it on on the fixed like fixed income side, you buy some of. Be a CD. It might be exactly the right thing for their portfolio, but you’re going to pay three or 4% for that. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, either. So I think the regulations are good and sometimes well intended, and then they get distorted. You know, you put humans and people who are, unfortunately, you know, there are bad actors in every single industry out there, and they’ll twist whatever, whatever they come up with, they’re going to twist it. Yeah, so I think it’s really, it’s really difficult for individuals to really find someone that they can they can trust that is has the experience that they need. And sometimes the the new technology gets in the way. On the flip side of that, you can now do the same things I was doing in billion dollar portfolios, in $100,000 portfolio, and yeah, that’s what I really like, because I can do some pretty cool things for people that didn’t even exist even five years ago.
Damon Pistulka 21:10
Yeah, that is pretty crazy. In five years there’s been big changes like that. Big changes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s exciting. So when, when you’re helping people like this, what do you enjoy most about it?
John Browning 21:27
I love when I can tell I mean, I’ve got some stories with I’ve got stories on either side. But I think my favorite part is when somebody comes to me, and I’m thinking of one individual right now comes to me and they need to retire because of a health issue. A health issue has come up, and they’ve been like, they were my client for a while, and they’re like, I know that. I know the plan was, I was going to retire in five years. I got to retire now. I’ve got this issue. I just can’t work anymore. Yeah, to be able to say, You know what, your plan is flexible, because we planned before, and this is how we’re going to solve this issue, and this is what your paycheck is going to be every month, when I and then see their face light up because they were devastated. They were so worried about that, that’s there’s just That’s priceless when you or you take, you take a mom who was a single mom and raised three kids on her own, spend all our money on our kids to wherever they needed to go, and to be able to take her and her situation at like, say, 50 or 55 years old with, you know, zero, and suddenly be able to show her a path. Yeah, but, you know it’s gonna take some time, but yes, there’s a path here, and then show it working. And just every time you get on the phone, she’s like, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. And she’s, she’s overjoyed, and that’s so much fun.
Damon Pistulka 23:07
Yes, I can imagine, I can imagine. And it is, it is about helping people, you know, see things that they don’t. And that’s it’s gotta be a lot different for you being able to help who you want, how you want then, when you’re working with the big firms, and you don’t even see, honestly, who owns that money, even when it comes down, right?
John Browning 23:28
Yeah, that’s right, you don’t even know, yeah, good stuff.
Damon Pistulka 23:36
So what are some of the things that people may not be thinking about in, you know, business owners, they’re getting ready for this exit. They’re just thinking about it. It could be five years it could be 10 years away. What’s one or two things that you go if they just thought about this and talk to somebody, it would be a huge start.
John Browning 24:02
Oh, what is the tax ability of what they’re going to have, you know, I tell people, taxes are a thing. They’re not the only thing, yeah, but it’s not, you know, I’ve seen people hold on to a business or a particular stock or whatever, because, oh, I don’t want to pay the taxes. And then you see the stock just, you know, plummet, you know, especially like busy executives that have a stock purchase program through their company, they end up with this huge slug of XYZ shares because they work. I don’t want to sell any of them because of tax complications. There are strategies, there are tactics we can use to help you with that right. Don’t leave yourself overexposed to that and and then with the small business owner or midsize business owner, you know, they may get, you know, maybe it’s a couple million bucks if, if they do it right. So one of the things that small business owners. Will tend to do is they won’t w2 themselves, you know, they’ll just take a draw or whatever, which is a fantastic strategy at some points in your journey. However, as you get closer to selling that business, you you want to show some profitability, because you’re also trying to avoid taxes, so they may actually, hey, it’s great we’re not showing any profitability, so we can lower our taxes. That’s fantastic. Great if you’re getting ready to sell a business you want to show profitability, because normally they’re sold based on, you know, x times sales or x times revenue, all of that stuff depending on the different business. So thinking about that. And then if, when you sell it, how you sell it, will you get a big lump sum payment, which is all taxable, all at once? Do you sell it over a series of payments? There’s even ways that if the, if the you don’t want to do a seller finance deal, which I completely understand, and that can be really tough and maybe not a great idea. Sometimes it is. But if you don’t want to do that, to to put the money into a different entity, there’s, there’s strategies for not getting it all at once and then having to pay massive, massive taxes all at once. The next thing again, tax related, is a business owner gets to the point where they, number one, want to pass it to family and then figure out, I haven’t talked to my family about that, and nobody wants it. Yes. Or number two, have an event that they can’t work anymore, and they’re the key person in the business, and they have to sell it at fire cell prices, and they have to sell it however they can sell it. And then maybe they even pass away. And then the family gets, has to sell it, but they don’t get the cash enough to even cover the taxes, and suddenly you can have a family go literally bankrupt. Wow, I’ve seen this happen. So not planning has just a myriad of different consequences that you may never anticipate. You know, we all think we’re immortal. We’re never going to pass away, but it can happen in an instant, right? We talk about it, but yeah,
Damon Pistulka 27:25
yeah. Well, you make a great point here, and that the taxability of proceeds, most people have not thought about that in our experience at all, at all, and, and, and, to to the extent it affects your net proceeds from it’s significant. I mean, it’s significant money if you don’t plan ahead and and as as I’ve learned over the years, you know, if you’re selling something that’s multiple 10s of millions of dollars, and you start, say, you start a decade ahead with the planning and the preparation and doing everything you can, it can make millions of dollars of difference in the tax that’s right, and it’s and, and I had no idea starting at how much of a difference that would be on a business that size, but the take that down to somebody like you said, is selling a $2 million business, it can still make hundreds of 1000s of dollars of difference in what they take home if they start planning ahead of time, right? And then I’m just not even thinking about you rob the thing about family if you, if you just want to transfer some of the wealth to your family and doing that the right way, there’s just so much to think about that. The the taxability is what you brought up. And I, I’m just doubly emphasizing that, because we see that so much. You go, Wow, I’m getting X million dollars, but my net proceeds are this much. And it’s kind of that disappointing tone that you hear there. It’s like, Yeah, you look, here’s your you got to take the taxes out. That’s what you got to get out of that. And, and it’s a, it can be a disappointment if you’re not ready for it.
John Browning 29:10
Yeah? You remember, probably, as I do, the first time you got your first real paycheck, yeah? And you’re like, wait, I’m getting paid X number of dollars per hour, or whatever your salary was. So you you’ve owned a doll divided out, and you get that first paycheck. You know, who’s this? Fica guy, yeah, who’s taking all my money? What do you mean? Yes, it’s kind of that same thing, only it is that’s the last paycheck you’re gonna get. Yeah. And then what do you do with it, right? And that’s really where I come in, is, what do you do with it? Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 29:42
and like you said, too. Then you mentioned this as well, the taxability of your long term income too, after the sale, you mentioned, you know, I’m dumping a bunch of money into a 401, K, well, that is all taxable coming out. But there are other things, just like for the business owners getting ready to. Sell that you can do prior to make some of that income not taxable. That’s
John Browning 30:06
right. And, and one of the misnomer so I just want to mention this right, is that, oh yeah, I know all about the Roth. I know all about the Roth, but I’m limited to, you know, if I’m over $58,000 or or I can, you know, maybe they know, oh, I could, I could convert it, but then I still have to pay the taxes. Well, how much do you convert? And when do you convert? But that’s just one. The Roth is just one thing. There are lots of other ways to not get around the tax issue, but to mitigate the tax issue, we will pay our taxes, but there’s no reason to pay more than you should.
Damon Pistulka 30:44
Yes, and that is really what it’s it’s not about skirting taxes. It’s about using your your available means to mitigate and reduce the amount of toll taxes that you have to pay. That’s
30:57
right. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 30:59
so taxability is one thing. When we’re talking about business owners in their exit and some of the things that they they could do, what’s one other that that you think could help them?
John Browning 31:12
I think it goes back to what am I going to do with it, and realizing that it’s not cash that is king. You’ll hear me say this a lot in my podcast. Cash is not King. Cash flow is king. And creating that cash flow in the right way, because if you sell maybe a $2 million business, you may want to increase that a little bit. You may want to you. Maybe you need, you feel like you need 3 million to retire comfortably, right? If you sell a 50 or $100 million business, you know what you’re mainly concerned about, keeping it. Yeah, you want to keep it. You don’t necessarily need to purchase the latest hot stock that’s out there and grow this thing even bigger. What you need is consistent cash flow so that you can go do what you want to do, and if there. And so that cash flow and managing that and and making sure you still have a paycheck. Yeah? You convert that asset into a paycheck for life, for the rest of your life, and maybe you create a paycheck for your family or for a charitable organization or whatever you’d like, yeah,
Damon Pistulka 32:35
and that’s one of the things, too. You bring up a great point as as over the years, we’ve seen that a lot, that people and we’re not financial planners, right? Would you see who they work with and what they do? But if, if you really want to put some of your money into philanthropic causes, starting that planning for that early again, like everything else, it just multiplies the amount that you can help those organizations. When you get ready for that exit, it’s, it’s amazing how that can do that. So if you’re one of those owners, that’s like, liaison, I’ve I’ve got what I need. I’m my family’s going to have what I need. They don’t need all that. I want to help this organization. You though those organizations will benefit from this planning ahead of time. That’s
John Browning 33:28
That’s absolutely right. And you can not just, you know, gifts to those organizations. You can create a charitable remainder trust that lives on for an extremely long period of time. I don’t It’s not forever, but I want to say it’s like 100 years. I’m like, I’m not a lawyer, yeah, you can create that. You can create. You can multiply by using a, you know, a life insurance policy, you know, or you know, you can for, you know, you can give somebody a million dollars by investing, you know, in a IUL or whole life policy for maybe, you know, half that, yeah. And suddenly they’re getting all that, you know. And if it’s not a charitable, charitable organization, not a 5013, c3, they still get it tax free, because it’s life insurance proceeds. There’s, I could talk about this stuff for hours and bore everyone to tear so I won’t do that well. I
Damon Pistulka 34:22
just think, I think it’s interesting, though, as we talk about this. And you know, financial planning for a great life after the exit. And part of if, part of your life after the exit is to be able to go out and do this stuff with with these philanthropic causes, don’t just focus on, I have enough money. I don’t really need to do financial planning. Well, yes, you do. Because if you want to help those organizations more, whether it’s the other boys and girls club, or your church or whatever the heck you want to help, that’s the is, like you said, A, five, one, c3, they will benefit from this as well. So it’s another reason why that. Don’t wait too long, and you could, because you can make a much bigger difference.
John Browning 35:04
Yeah, if you look at those big, famous families, right, you know, the Rockefellers and some of the other ones that are out there, a lot of them, most, most, you know, big, wealthy families that last for maybe one, maybe two generations. If you look at the Rockefeller still going because it was set up correctly, and there’s a process and a consistency and an execution to it. You can do that even if you’re not the Rockefellers and have a billion dollars. You can do that with, you know, millions of dollars, or whatever it is that you have, you can create that for the long term, for the long term, exactly,
Damon Pistulka 35:49
yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. And some of these, some of these business owners, it’s, it’s a shame if you’re leaving this opportunity or not taking advantage of this opportunity, because they’ve given up so much throughout their lives to create these businesses, and they could, they could have an even larger impact if they, if they did this planning. Yeah,
John Browning 36:16
and I don’t know about you, but you know, I I see, you know, I watched, and I help the the lawyers and the insurance guys and some of these blue, these white collar businesses that have been created, but the the ones that I I wish I had more of, I’ve got a couple, but I wish I had more, are the blue collar guys that they are out there. They’re building America, right, yep. And to a large extent, you know, when I was growing up, was all like, Oh, don’t go into the trades, you know, get a college degree and all that, yeah. And you look at it, I mean, if you go into the trades now and you have no college debt, which is just ballooned to a crazy number, yes, you can be well ahead of those guys. And if they started their own business, they’re great plumber, they’re a great pipe fitter, they’re a great electrician, whatever it is that they’re great at, normally, not always, normally. The last thing on their minds is, how do I sell this business? Or, Yes, how do you know? How do we do financial planning? But they’re making, they’re making good money. They’ve got this really valuable business that they could sell. And I see so many of them, maybe they sell it for probably a quarter, yeah, or their families have to sell it for maybe a quarter of it, because they never, never thought about it. Yeah, they could prepare, because after after a while, you know, you you know, I don’t know about you, but, you know, my knees hurt a little bit more when I’m getting up there. You know, after a while, you might not want to do that for the rest of your life, right? Yes,
Damon Pistulka 37:51
yes. And it’s right, a lot of, lot of the, you know, yes, those kind of companies built America, and they are continuing to build America today. And you see them in the in the construction companies, you see them in the manufacturing companies. I get to work with a lot of both of those kinds of people and and it really is something when you can talk to somebody. And you know, Susan, she she started off as a machinist. Now she owns a machining company, and it has 100 employees, and now that’s that’s pretty darn cool, when you think about that, and what we can do in the US, and then to combine that with your resources and how you’re helping people with financial planning to make to really maximize their impact of that as they’re Preparing and exiting their business. Is super cool. Yeah, super cool. So John, if there is any one piece of advice before we leave today, what would you give to a busy professional or business owner listening today,
John Browning 38:58
do what you do best and call a professional for the rest. There you go. That I that’s, that’s a little bit of a slow in there, but that’s, that’s what I would say. And make sure that you’re thinking about your taxes, not just today, but in the future, and you’re also thinking about your cash flow, not just in the future, but also today, because your cash flow today, you know you’re your biggest asset when you’re in your earning years. But also, if you look at this concept called dollar cost averaging, even if you’re in the growth phase of your career and you’re investing more towards growth, having cash flow in your portfolio is still king, because that helps you dollar cost average into those other things. So those were the things that I would leave you with. And I’m, like I said, I’m always happy to chat with anyone, and I’m I don’t try and sell you anything, but I’ll try and add some value. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 40:00
yeah. Well, John, the other thing I want to make sure of too is is we once again talk about your book. Mention that to me, because I wrote down the title and I’ve built a life, not a portfolio available on Amazon. They can go out there and do that. You also have a podcast with the same name. Where can they find that and make sure I want to,
John Browning 40:21
yeah, you can go out to our YouTube page, which is at sign Guardian rock wealth, and the podcast is there. It’s on Apple. It’s on every place you get your podcast. It’s it’ll be there, building your life with John Browning, if you want to look for that. And then every morning, if you want to cut through all the noise, I’ve got a five minute five. Sometimes it goes to eight, nine minutes, but usually it’s about 567, minutes long, just where the markets are, what’s going on and what not to pay any attention to, because it just doesn’t matter. Nice way to work, whatever. If you want to listen into that, you can find that on any of my social media channels, and there’s a place to subscribe on a place called sub stack, again, building your life with John
Damon Pistulka 41:07
Browning, nice, John. Well, thank you for being here today. And for those of you that came in here late, go back to the beginning. Start and start from the beginning. We were talking with John Browning today from Guardian rock wealth. He is a financial and retirement planning expert with a wealth of knowledge. Here we and just go back and listen to it, and we will be you just won’t be just disappointed. I’m just going to say there’s a lot of great stuff you shared with people today, and we’re talking about financial planning for a great life after the exit, and just thanks for being here today. John,
John Browning 41:46
yeah, absolutely, thanks for having me. This is this has been great. I enjoyed it.
Damon Pistulka 41:49
Good, good. Well, everyone, we are going to sign out for now, and we’ll be back again next week. John, hang out. We’ll finish up offline. All
John Browning 41:58
right. Sounds good. You.