How to Plan for Succession and Secure Your Legacy

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Eric Brotman is the CEO of BFG Financial Advisors with over 25 years of experience as a trusted advisor. He believes financial literacy is the key to well being and is the author of multiple books on personal finance and the host of the Don’t Retire, Graduate! Podcast. Eric’s approachable and actionable financial advice has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, The Baltimore Sun, and others.

And before we start the episode, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the Deep Wealth Mastery Program. Here’s Sanjay, a graduate of Deep Wealth Mastery, and he says, the investment I made in the Deep Wealth Mastery Program, it’s a rounding error compared to the value created today and the future value I’ll receive.

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Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. You heard it in the official introduction. We have a fellow business owner, an author, a thought leader, a really smart individual who’s going to teach us a thing or two, but for all of you out there in deep wealth land, I have a question for you. Actually, I have a statement and a question.

Number one, you’re richer than you think, believe it or not. And number two, the question is, hey, when it comes to ultimately you moving on to the next chapter in your [00:03:00] life, whatever that looks like, if it’s a year from now or 20 years from now. What are you doing in terms of succession? I know it’s a fancy word, but what are you doing about that?

Or is that just a nice word that you don’t really pay much attention to? I’m going to put a stop on it right there. Eric, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. Eric, I’m curious there’s always a story behind this story. What’s your story?

What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Eric Botman: Well, I started Brotman Financial Group in 2003. So we just celebrated our 20th anniversary as we record this. and I started it completely by accident. So I was not a deliberate business owner. And my story, like most great financial advisors, I started as an English major.

And I studied English and psychology in undergraduate school and went to work in a legal department for a brokerage firm and fell in love with the financial world. And then spent close to a decade working in other firms, working for other people and starting to grow a practice within that infrastructure, kind of like the agency system where it’s a silo [00:04:00] practice, where you have your own practice, your own clients, but you’re within this network.

Jeffrey Feldberg: YouTube.

Eric Botman: And it was pretty unfulfilling actually, and I worked with great people and I loved what I was doing. But it was a little bit unfulfilling because it was not building something that had real worth and it was not creating my own identity and it was not playing to my own visions. So I became what I will refer to as a reluctant entrepreneur at a moment in 2003 when our firm decided that the firm was only going to work with clients with over a million dollars. Which, at the end of the day, is a relatively common strategy in the financial advisory space, but as a young advisor myself, the vast majority of my clients were not million dollar accounts at the time. They were folks who were up and coming. They were what I like to refer to as Henry’s, high earners, not rich yet, we’re on our way.

And we were growing together, and we were in our 30s and 40s and so forth. So, I decided to start a firm that did not have an asset minimum and to buck that trend. And [00:05:00] today, 20 years later, I went from a startup with two people to now being 19 people in the organization, six financial advisors I have four other shareholders in the firm.

I have been selling shares gradually to try not to create a situation where I’m a hundred percent owner and then want to find a succession plan and there’s no path. So I started my succession plan before my 40th birthday. And people thought I was nuts. They said, you don’t sell the watermelon on the vine until it’s fully grown because you sell it per pound.

And I said, well, at the end of the day, I’d rather. Sell the watermelon now, then wait until it’s ripe on the vine and maybe not have a buyer and let it rot. So that’s the way we did it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, you are taking a page right out of our book, Eric, from Deep Wealth. We’re all about preparation, doing things today that may not go into effect maybe a decade or a few years, whatever the case may be, a few decades. Absolutely love that. But let me ask you this. Let’s go back now to really the basics here and we’ll build a foundation, see where that takes us.

So for our listeners out there, and I’m going to make an assumption, Eric, because you could easily come [00:06:00] back after the question I asked and say, well, Jeffrey. It really depends on the person, where they’re at in their career, what kind of business they are doing, how big it is, all those other kinds of things.

Generally speaking though, I want to know if we can lean on Pareto’s law or the 80 20 principle. Are 20 percent of the same issues causing 80 percent of the problems that you’re seeing when you bring on board a new client who you’re going to help go from where they are to where they need to be? 

Eric Botman: Funny, the 80 20 rule applies to so many different ways, to so many different things.

And I’ve seen it applied to revenue and profitability on a regular basis. I’ve not seen it applied in the way that you just implied it, which is which is related to the actual problems that we’re seeing with various families and so forth.

But I do think that there’s an enormous amount of commonality, despite the fact that all families in all situations have their unique elements to them. I do think there’s an enormous amount of commonality of the things that folks are struggling with, dealing with, facing. When we send a basic questionnaire out to folks before they do their initial consultation with us, and the [00:07:00] responses are eerily similar.

And it doesn’t matter whether you’re 60 or 40. It doesn’t matter whether you’re worth 10 million or 100, 000 the worries, I think, and the things that keep people up at night are still really similar. And rarely are they the things that maybe will make the biggest difference. They’re the things that are talked about at the water cooler, the things that make people nervous.

I mean, everyone wants to know, do I run the risk of outliving my money? That is a scary thing. I don’t care how much you have or how old you are, the idea of one day still being alive and not being able to function in the way that you’re used to function is a very scary thing. So we do hear that and we hear that from people who have wealth that they arguably cannot spend and will not spend and they’re absolutely fine but they still are losing sleep at night about it.

And then we lose, then we find it with others who are really just either just getting started or they’ve had some setbacks professionally or personally or maritally or any of these other things that they were medically. And have to start [00:08:00] rebuilding a little bit. And so regardless of where you are, I think in that path, the answers are yearly similar.

I mean, it really is. Am I going to outlive my money? Am I going to be okay? If something goes wrong, is my spouse going to be okay? Are my kids going to be okay? My loved ones? It’s really all about the same stuff. It’s the people. And it’s making sure that we have the resources it’s rarely about investment returns or specific types of plans or all the jargon that, that’s used in the industry really is almost irrelevant.

It’s really, am I going to be okay?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting. And so when a business owner, and I like what you said, whether it’s a million or 10 million or more than that, or less than that, really the fears are more or less the same, perhaps just some different numbers that go along with that. So what are you doing with that, Eric? If I walked up today and I said, okay, Eric, heard you on the Deep Wealth Podcast, let’s put something together.

What’s your secret sauce? What’s your process? What are we doing? How long does that take?

Eric Botman: Well, it always starts with the same step and that’s inventory. We have to figure out where we are before we [00:09:00] can possibly figure out where we’re going or how to get there. So where are you? That means being incredibly transparent from a financial standpoint. But also in other ways, it means understanding your family dynamic.

Maybe if it’s a family business, that’s a different dynamic than if you’re in business, either alone or with non family partners. So those are our roles. We have to know the cast of characters. And by that, I mean, who are the key people in your organization? Who are the potential successors in your organization?

Do you have a stable of people who would like to help you retire and would like to buy you out or not? Because you have to figure out what are the possible paths before you can possibly figure out what’s an ideal path.

And then I ask people the same question and I, I’m not going to put you on the spot and ask you this, but I ask everybody the same question, which is, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And, by that, what I really mean is more than just what you want to do, I mean, we equate who we are with what we do in the Western world if people say, hey, Jeffrey, tell me about yourself, the first thing you’re gonna say is what do you do for a [00:10:00] living?

People say, oh, I’m a, I’m an architect, I’m an engineer. But that’s not who we are, it’s what we do. And our identity is so tied to that and our businesses are our babies. If we started them, or if our family started them, there’s an attachment to them that is not objective and is not… Always rational. And so we, we have to sort of put our cards on the table. So I would say you begin with inventory and transparency and open communication that’s honest. You figure out who the cast of characters are. I typically, when I engage a business client for consulting or other things, I will actually, I’ll do one on one interviews with all the key people and be looking for either commonalities or outliers. Are people really singing from the same hymnal, or is there a great deal of disparity there?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting. And so let me ask you this because we’re talking about Pareto’s law. So from Pareto’s law to different patterns or trends, are there some, I don’t want to use the word generalities, but are there some themes that you tend to see more times than not as you go through this process?

Eric Botman: [00:11:00] Well, some of them, yes. think every business owner, just like every homeowner, thinks that their business is worth more than it is,

And every buyer thinks there’s fleas on that dog and it should be worth less than you’re requesting, and that’s true whether it’s a townhouse in the suburbs, or whether it’s a multi million dollar enterprise there’s an incredible disconnect between what buyers think and what sellers think, at least initially, until you can come up with some metrics that make sense.

and most business owners think that our business is priceless. And of course it’s not. There’s always, whether it’s a multiple of EBITDA or whether it’s based on certain revenue metrics or whether it’s based on industry standards, there are ways to do this quantifiably and qualitatively.

And think there’s the commonality is the disconnect between what a willing buyer and willing seller really, you don’t start right at the same number very often.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And I’m wondering, as we’re going through this, Eric, so you’re working with some business owners, perhaps this has happened, perhaps it hasn’t, where someone hasn’t done this, which is usually the case. I mean, most business owners, when it comes time [00:12:00] for their liquidity event, and that’s usually when succession starts to come up because you have all these zeros now in the bank account.

Okay, what am I going to do? What does that look like? We’ll put aside the lost opportunity cost, a very real cost for tax savings because they didn’t do anything about that either. And so Uncle Sam is walking away with a much larger share than otherwise would have been. But have you come across a situation where the business owner is just beside him or herself?

I only wish I would have done this earlier because had I done this, I would have avoided A, B, and C. What would A, B, and C be?

Eric Botman: don’t know that I’ve ever met somebody who didn’t say, I wish I had started earlier. And that’s true of all these different variables, and I don’t know that anyone can pinpoint, you talk about A, B, and C, I, I think a lot of business owners don’t really know what that looks like it’s nice to have choice.

And in order to have choice and flexibility of timing and of buyer and of, the whole process I think it really is important it’s important to start early. There’s no question about it. And to give yourself some [00:13:00] options, there’s been an enormous amount of attention paid to private equity and venture capital and all of these sort of corporate roll ups and all of this and it’s sort of that quick check.

But unfortunately, there are winners and losers in those situations. And if there’s a sole business owner or a a majority business owner, that check is going to benefit the majority owner significantly and might really impair the non majority, the minority owners of the firm and the employees. A lot of times, and by the way, the clients or customers aren’t always well served in that either.

So, you have all of these different stakeholder groups that you want to take care of and when you get involved with private equity I’m not disparaging private equity, there’s a place for it. In fact, I’m an investor in it, and I understand it, but private equity is so bottom line focused and so less interested in culture fit that I think sometimes you get lost in the balance sheet and in the income statement, and you lose the humanity behind the business that you’ve spent decades [00:14:00] building.

Jeffrey Feldberg: So true. We’ve been really a part of these very large negotiations and it’s amazing to me, you have all these very smart people around the table, but when it comes to the details, well, you know, we’ll take care of that later, or it just gets washed out to really the business owner’s expense when all of a sudden done and all the more reason to do that.

So Eric, let’s flip it. I’ve been taking the glass is half empty. Let’s talk about the glass is half full. We’ve actually done what you’ve suggested. We’re now preparing well in advance. We’ve been working with you now for a while, a while could be 10 years, one year, something in between. How does that dynamic change?

What is that looking based on what you’ve seen?

Eric Botman: Well, you have to be nimble because life is not linear, and the pro formas that you’ve done and the plans that you’ve made and all of that are subject to change in an instant because of macroeconomic conditions or interest rate conditions or somebody’s health or other things. but. If you’ve done a good job of planning and you have the right people on the bus,

then it really comes down [00:15:00] to how do we make this a successful implementation? How do we market and communicate it properly? Because it’s not just the internal handshake and the stock swap. It’s also what is the messaging to the public?

What is the messaging to customers or clients or other consumers? What is the messaging to employees? Employees in an event like that are often scared to death. Even if they really like the incoming team, they’re scared to death because there’s going to be change that they have very little control over most of the time.

And so I think communicating this and making it it sounds cliche, but making it sort of that win where all the stakeholder groups benefit and you can articulate the ways in which they benefit. Not that it’s perfect, it’ll never be perfect, but Articulate the way customers and clients and consumers are going to benefit from this.

Articulate the way employees are going to be benefiting from this. Maybe even include employees in some of the financial windfall that is created in a situation. We’ve certainly seen cases where that makes [00:16:00] sense, where if there’s a capital event and there’s a major shift, employees participate in that.

And even in some modest way, it makes a difference because then folks are still pulling in the same direction. absolutely have to The whole team to stay through that process, because if you begin, succession plan is going to take 24 months, and that’s certainly, it can be longer or it can be shorter, but let’s say it’s going to be a 24 month transition, you have to have your key people there the whole time.

And beyond. Because turnover at that moment will be disruptive to the process and the people. So I think you have to incent people to stay.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Spot on, we say the same thing in different words actually in the Deep Wealth nine step roadmap. This is in our 90 day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. Step number five, winning mindset. We’re looking at what you’re talking about. We call the key employees. So the people who are going to be with us through what we call the liquidity event or the succession or the sale of the business, whatever that looks like.

And we don’t stop there actually, Eric, we actually say, okay, [00:17:00] make sure that your key employees are on the same page as you. You’re all in the same alignment. Maybe there’s a success fee. You can talk about that and see what kind of currency, maybe someone’s currency isn’t money. Maybe it’s something else.

Who knows? You find that out. But then at the same time for your advisors, because so many businesses want to say, well, listen, I’m writing the check. The advisors are working for me, quote unquote, and of course they’re on the same page. Of course, we’re with the same alignment as me, and that really, most of the time isn’t the case.

And so we go out of our way to say, hey, can’t assume it. You can’t believe it. Why don’t we make sure that you actually know it and do A, B, C, and D to get that in line. So Eric, from what you’ve seen from the trenches here. And it actually circles really nicely back to actually a question that you asked me earlier, what do I want to be when I grow up?

And that goes into your podcast, don’t retire, graduate. So what are you seeing in that incentivization and really getting to know the key people around us of how to keep them engaged in the game? I’ll throw one last thing out there, this is a long winded question, and you can agree or disagree. [00:18:00] For us as business owners, in our mind, we have this terrific vision, or this movie, that we’re writing off into the sunset, we’ve put our legacy in place, it’s been decades of work, oftentimes for the employees, yes, we’re writing off into the mindset, but it’s a different film, we’re writing off into the mindset with all these zeros, but they’re the ones that have been really moving the needle forward, and they’re day in, day out, and really slugging it forward, and it’s not fair, it’s not right.

So what should we know when it comes to our key employees about getting them engaged and really motivated to want this?

Eric Botman: Well, first, push back on the it’s not fair. Because we certainly all hear that in lots of aspects of life. Whether it’s in employment, or whether it’s in school, or whether it’s at home. It’s not going to be fair. Business owners generally take on an enormous amount of risk. For which they are compensated, ideally in a way that is appropriate for the level of risk taken.

And a lot of times it means, for me, when I started the company, I borrowed from everywhere. I was 30 years old. I had what was functionally a negative net worth. I mean, I [00:19:00] really, I was worth nothing, I had to borrow from everywhere to start the company. So, do I feel like it’s gonna be fair and everybody’s gonna have unicorns and spit bubbles at the end of this?

No, I don’t. I think at the end of the day, that risk and those years absolutely will tip the scales in, somewhere in my favor. That said, if the pendulum swings too far you will run the risk of losing important people who are important to you as more than just cogs in a wheel. They’re important to you as human beings who you’ve spent lots of time with and lots of years with and rolled up sleeves with and solved problems with and so forth.

So, I do think it’s important for the incentivization. And I do think there’s lots of ways to do that, but the ideal way that I can find, and at least in our organization, is going to be windfall of some kind,

because what I can’t do if I’m disappearing is I can’t promise ongoing employment, I will no longer be in charge, and so the last thing I want to do is be disingenuous and say, oh yeah, we’ll make sure that happens when I then have no control [00:20:00] over it necessarily.

Jeffrey Feldberg: No, you

Eric Botman: I want to make sure everybody benefits, I want to make sure everybody, I also want to over communicate. I over communicate all the time, we share our financials with our employees.

The P& L, the balance sheet, the budgets, the actuals. We don’t share individual compensation, of course, but basically everything else.

And as a result, sometimes there are questions asked about that because, an employee might see the profitability in a firm and say, wow, they’re, the owners are making a whole lot of money. And some of that has to be considered return on investment, that’s not sweat equity. What are we being paid for the work we do?

Well, that’s a salary. What are we being paid for the investment we have and the risk that we took? And that’s your distributions, that’s your profitability. And employees don’t necessarily understand that. And so over communicating I think is generally a good thing. At least it’s worked for me.

I would rather be transparent and honest and open and not try and blow smoke and just say, this is where things are, this is what I’d like to do, and [00:21:00] how do you feel about that? And then listen. Shut up and listen. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, absolutely correct. It’s interesting, Eric, you’re right in everything that you’re saying. The one little twist I’ll put into that, we call it the world’s favorite radio station, depending on who you’re speaking to, but it’s the same station, WII. FM, the What’s In It For Me radio station, And yes, Eric, from one business owner to another, sure, we take huge amounts of risk.

And when the lights are out at the business, the lights aren’t necessarily out with us. We’re thinking, potentially worrying and trying to figure things out while the team hopefully is off relaxing what they should do. And so yes, it’s not necessarily fair from that perspective. We are getting our share of what we’ve invested and it is a risk and there are no guarantees.

That said, though, sometimes it’s so easy to get lost in the translation, all depending on the person’s perspective. And when we tune into WII. FM, and I love what you’re doing with that, you’re really open books with the team. So they’re saying, Hey, you know what? I’m making this up. Eric, you, the company had a million dollars of profit, it looks like, but you know, along the way, you’ve shown what the [00:22:00] expenses were and how you have to pay this off.

Well, it’s not really a million dollars because we got to do this and we have to do that. But I’m wondering, because there’s always a debate with business owners, am I open book? Am I not open book? Was there a particular situation that had you say, I’m going to just go open book and where it goes, it goes, but I’m just going to put everything out there.

Eric Botman: Do you remember the movie Jerry Maguire?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Of course.

Eric Botman: Okay. Do you remember the scene when Jerry is leaving and he’s grabbing the fish and saying, who’s coming with me?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yes. 

Eric Botman: Because that’s the way we started, arguably I was all in with our first two employees from the day they started. I agreed to pay them a salary before I took one.

I didn’t take income for the first year. And we had to make ends meet. And I basically said, we’re in this together. And I’m going to share openly because you’re taking risk coming with me. It’s that joke in the elevator in Jerry Maguire saying, we will have dental, right?

I mean, it was really a leap of faith. And so that’s risk too. There was career risk and financial risk and family risk taken by our [00:23:00] early employees. Today, that’s not true. Today, folks come in and it’s like a well oiled machine and they think it’s always been this way. And, some of them were barely born when we started, and so it’s difficult to translate that into here’s what really happened.

Here was us sleeping at the office with our IT company at three in the morning because stuff wasn’t working, we needed to be open at eight. We can tell those stories, but that’s no different than hearing this is what happened in 1910. Like just something that’s unattainable, inaccessible to folks.

But early on I went open book right away because I was with people who said, I’m with you. I believe in what you’re doing. We had clients who came with us who said we’re on this bus. We believe in your mission. We love what you’re doing. And we’re in. And a lot of them, most of them are still clients today, almost two decades later.

So, and now our first two employees are no longer employees. But they spent long tenures with us and parted on good terms and everything else. And ultimately they gained from this experience and it allowed them to take steps in their careers too. So, it’s been [00:24:00] special for me and I like to share. For better or for worse, I like to share. I don’t like to do this alone. I’m glad that I now have four other equity owners, minority partners who are involved, because I like having that executive team, that shareholder council, those discussions. It’s lonely to be a sole business owner. There’s no one to talk to who sort of gets it. Revenue and profit are not the same thing. And so when employees see a big chunk of revenue come in, they think, woo hoo, gravy train. What they don’t necessarily see is what’s going out the door unless you share that. And so for us to have a multi million dollar payroll, which we do, changes the profit dramatically, as you might expect.

And so as a result, I think oversharing is a win. think it’s better be transparent. It’s better to be transparent in a good year and say, we crushed it. And it’s especially important in a bad year to say, this was a really tough stretch. Here’s what we think we’re going to do about it. Let’s work on this together.

We’ve got to right the ship here a little bit, [00:25:00] but you’re okay. Knowing that you’re, and in 2000 and in 2008, we learned some valuable lessons about that. And in 08, just keeping the lights on in the financial services arena was a challenge by itself. When you take a 40 percent hit in equity markets in six weeks, all bets are off. That is not something and then the credit dries up and everything else that we lived through, it was 15 years ago. And some of our employees were eight years old. So even that doesn’t resonate with them. But the fact that you do go through those experiences and that clients know you’ve been through them and other business owners have been through them, I think that’s a helpful thing.

So it’s, it, I think it’s good to have a mix of experience and youth and exuberance within a firm. We have a very young team. I’m the old guy in the corner office. Which isn’t a terrible place to be, I never thought it would happen this soon, Jeffery. I still think I’m 27 until I look in the mirror and go, oh my god, dad.

But other than that, happened fast, but I’m the old guy in the corner, so I’m trying to mentor and coach and teach rather than manage. I’m no one’s [00:26:00] supervisor. I’m a terrible manager, so I don’t do it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Good for you. It sounds like the business is really running without you. That’s one of our tenants at Deep Wealth.

Eric Botman: Yes.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Let me ask you this, so you’ve built a very transparent culture, which is terrific. It takes some of the guesswork out and the gossip and the rumor mills and all those other things, which is wonderful.

Eric Botman: it takes some of it out, Jeffery, but not all of it. I assure you it doesn’t take all of it out.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Fair

enough,

let’s now transition from internal now back to the community, your community, our community here at Deep Wealth. I know there are some business owners or founders or entrepreneurs are saying, okay, Eric, I really what you’re saying.

The truth of the matter is my wealth, like 90 percent of most business owners, it’s locked up in my business. It’s not liquid. And when I think about it, succession planning, financial planning, it’s really an exercise for the wealthy and they don’t feel wealthy. They don’t feel that they’ve earned it or that there’s enough actual zeros in liquidity to do that.

So for that listener, what would you tell them?[00:27:00]

Eric Botman: I love this question because wealth is so relative. When I wrote Don’t Retire, Graduate a couple of years ago, one of the things that I put in there was a comment from the great philosopher, Chris Rock who said that if Bill Gates woke up tomorrow with Oprah’s net worth, he’d want to jump out a window. And the point was that wealth is incredibly relative, and it is. So, I think business owners tend to be poor, rich people. And what I mean by that is you’ve reached a level of success, your balance sheet is beautiful, but you’re not sure how you’re going to handle the next surprise financially at home, or tuition, or other stuff.

And so, financial planning is actually critical for folks like that who actually have not only some tax issues down the road, but who have liquidity and cash flow issues now. I also think it’s why you begin your succession long before you’re leaving. If I worked for ABC Corporation and I had a ton of ABC stock in a stock purchase plan, and I met with a financial advisor, my financial advisor if he or [00:28:00] she’s doing a good job, is going to say, you’re a little overweight in your company stock.

Let’s pare back over time in your company stock, let’s be tax smart about it let’s time it, but let’s make sure that your entire retirement plan isn’t being jeopardized if the company has a bad year. It doesn’t matter what company it is. We’ve all seen this happen. Enron is the scariest one, but there’ve been others, right?

I think anyone worth their salt would say, well, I hold way too much BFG stock in my portfolio. I am over weighted in micro cap and financial services. That’s what a portfolio analysis would show. So I started selling and I started turning what was ongoing ordinary income into capital gains events while capital gains rates were favorable.

It reduced my tax liability, and it created liquidity, and it created cash flow, and at the same time, it brought other people onto this bus who ultimately would like to be my successors entirely. There are built in buyers who already have skin in this game, [00:29:00] and equity is never given. Let me make sure that’s clear.

It’s never given. It’s always either earned or bought.

It is never given. And frankly, I’ve sold stock. We’ve also twice acquired other companies and we’ve wound up having them own stock in the larger organization by the time that’s done. And I think we’re going to continue to do that.

I think growing organically is excellent, but when you can grow by M& A as well I think it can spearhead lots of exponential growth rather than more linear ones. But ultimately. business owners need to be doing financial planning, they need to be doing tax planning.

Succession planning is a fancy word. It is. It’s, and people think of that and they’re like, well, I’m not ready to retire or I want to die at my desk or I’m going to be, I want to work till I’m 80. Doing a succession plan and working less or being part time or doing consulting or any of the things we want to be when we grow up, they’re not mutually exclusive.

Right now I own 64 percent of our company. There will come a day where I own less than that, but that doesn’t [00:30:00] necessarily mean I’ve been put out to pasture.

It means that the amount of my portfolio that is in closely held stock is lower so that I can be more diversified so that I can do a better job financially for my family and loved ones and so forth.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, I really like what you’re saying there. And let me ask you, I’m going to circle back to the book. And by the way, for our listeners in the show notes, everything is points and click. You can click on the link, don’t retire, graduate, building a path to financial freedom and retirement at any age. And Eric, what I really appreciated of how you took the theme from the title into the book itself, you started with, okay, we’re going to start with the freshman year.

And then from there we go to the sophomore, junior, senior, and then graduation day. Very nice how you did that. I’m, I don’t know, it’s maybe a loaded question, maybe putting you on the spot, I’ll throw it out there anyways. It may be an easy one for you, or you may say, Jeffrey, you’re asking me to pick my favorite child, but I’ll throw it out there anyways.

Eric Botman: Yeah. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: maybe the answer changes over time, but in the book, at least as of today, as of this recording, when you look at the different strategies, the different chapters or [00:31:00] the different semesters, as you have in 

Eric Botman: Uh huh. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: is there one that resonates for you more than the others as you look at it today?

Eric Botman: For me the graduation, the final chapter is by far and away the most. Impactful, because it forces us to think about our legacy, and it forces us to think about what immortality looks like to us.

And, I contend that immortality is not slapping your name on a building.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Huh.

Eric Botman: Where I went to school, every building had a name on it, and we knew what the name was because we had to go to class, but we didn’t know who these people were, and we didn’t care.

I think there’s a lot in the book about not only leaving a legacy, but About philanthropy and about ways to make a difference and ways to make sure that your vision continues. We talk about doing legacy videos where you can record your own thoughts and stories and memories and share them digitally for, other generations.

So that’s not financial planning, that’s life.

And so, there are strategies in the book to help build wealth and ultimately to make work [00:32:00] optional. But I think the most powerful part of the book is rethinking retirement and frankly not doing it. In the traditional way, because retirement is a fate worse than death.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yes.

Eric Botman: I don’t think you go from working 50 and 60 hours a week and building a vitae and building a network and being engaged in all these things and then suddenly doing, shuffleboard and daytime TV is a healthy decision. People don’t live very long.

Jeffrey Feldberg: That’s the irony, if someone really plans for the day they’re going to quote unquote retire and they’re dreaming about this, they’re putting everything off and you’re so right when they go retire, a very short while later, it could be six months, it could be a year, maybe a few years, usually not much more.

It all ends, they have the final exit, if you get my drift,

Eric Botman: Yeah, well, and they don’t thrive. They get sick. They’re bored, silly. I don’t know what I would do with a month off, much less 35 years. that just doesn’t make sense. So, I think it’s important to stay engaged. It doesn’t, if you’ve reached a level of financial independence, true financial independence where you don’t [00:33:00] need a paycheck, you can arguably do anything you want, but you have to know what that is.

And so I think planning to retire and talking about succession, whether you’re a business owner or what have you, some of it is qualitative. Some of it is what do you want to be when you grow up? What is your Wednesday going to look like two years from now if you’re not in the office?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. Eric, as you talk about that, you’re having me reflect. So when I had my nine figure deal, I really dropped the ball on day one of my post exit life. I was so focused on growing the business. I was so focused on crossing the finish line. The post exit life, or succession as you may call it, in terms of living it.

Never crossed my mind until I had something called a non compete, which had some teeth in it, which also meant some of my friends I couldn’t speak to because I would put them in danger. They could lose their jobs or they’re at a client and it just made things very awkward and difficult. So I took the high road on that and I was miserable.

I came to later find out I’m [00:34:00] not alone. Many post exit entrepreneurs do not find their happily ever after. And I’ll take it further, Eric, to say that some of the biggest mistakes didn’t happen leading up to my liquidity event. It happened in my post exit life, and I’m still cleaning some of those up today, believe it or not.

Thankfully at the tail end of it, but there was a whole slew of them because I didn’t have that purpose. I didn’t have that focus. And so for our listeners, what Eric is sharing is not gold. It’s platinum, as we like to say here at Deep Wealth. When you can follow that. And really get your momentum today.

So on day one of your succession or your post exit life, whatever that looks like, you’re not starting from no momentum, which is not the really nicest place to be, and it’s boring and no one wants to come out and play with you because they’re busy living their lives at their businesses or their careers, whatever that’s going to be, and you’re bored out of your mind.

So we definitely don’t want that.

Eric Botman: Yeah. No, I think you hit it right on the head. And think it’s important to figure out what are the things that you’re going to do in advance. [00:35:00] in a digital world, most telling example of this is if you go on LinkedIn

And you look at someone’s profile you’re meeting new people and you’re on LinkedIn and someone says, Joe Smith, retired.

No one is clicking that to be like, here’s somebody I got to get to know. And I think it might as well say deceased. If your profile says retired, knock it off, there’s got to be something. It could be that you’re a volunteer, you’re a grandparent, consultant, you’re an advocate, you’re anything, but you’re not retired because it’s just it’s literally the word retire in the U.

S. means to disappear or retreat. In the U. K. it means to go to sleep.

Who wants to do that?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. Not great. And be advertising that I’m absolutely with you. Purpose, which leads to a passion, which leads to really having a life. And it’s a little bit off topic, but on topic, I’ll throw it in there anyways. When you look at some of the centenarians that are there, so they defy the odds.

They’re healthy. They’re having a [00:36:00] really satisfying life. There’s a purpose. And usually with that purpose, there’s some kind of social environment that they have friends and activities and it’s community oriented that we tend to, at least here in the U S we tend to perhaps overlook or ignore, or just, it’s all about the dollars.

And I’m just looking at the zeros in the bank and that’s it. So there’s a lot to what you’re saying, Eric, let me ask you this. Before we go into wrap up mode, I’m wondering, is there a question that I didn’t ask? Is there a topic we haven’t spoken about? Or is there something you just want to get out to the community?

That’s something that’s on your mind.

Eric Botman: That’s incredibly open ended, Jeffrey. I would say I would say your interview has been thorough. I think we’ve talked about most of what we would have anticipated. That said I think knowing where some resources are, so that you can begin to figure this out and not have to do it by yourself.

It does make a difference and certainly we’re one of those resources, but there’s lots of them. And if you have financial advisor, if you have a, I wouldn’t say tax advisor, this [00:37:00] is a financial advisor or a life coach or an executive coach. I mean, business owners who don’t have coaches. Remember years ago, Andre Agassi, when he was the best tennis player in the world, had a coach and people thought, well, why bother?

You’re the best in the world. He goes, well, how do you think I’m going to try and stay that way?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Exactly,

Eric Botman: Having a coach, consultant, a mentor and then figuring out ways to give back and to do the same for others is going to make a difference, but I think have people to talk to who’ve done this before. Either in their professional capacity or because, like yourself, there’s been a liquidity event and you made those mistakes. Having somebody be able to tell you those stories, we don’t do a good job of learning from other people. We like to make our own mistakes as human beings you’ve been told not to do certain things and you do them anyway and by gosh, you wind up with the same kind of result.

But maybe if you’re open minded, find people who have been through this before and have breakfast. a phone call or a Zoom or anything, just spend a little time with people who’ve been [00:38:00] there who can share those stories. You get a nugget of wisdom out of that, it could change your life.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific advice. And you may have answered my next question, but I’m going to ask that anyways, just in case. And that would be wherever possible out of every episode, we love our listeners before they go to that next activity, whether it’s a meeting, an email, a call, whatever it’s going to be. Is there one action item that they could take that maybe it’s even a low hanging fruit, Eric, that can really make a difference for them?

Anything that come to mind and maybe what you just said, maybe it’s something else.

Eric Botman: Well, I’m going to go self serving on and make it a 20 second commercial, and that is to check out the resources that we have online that are free, that talk about these kinds of things. And you can go to brotmanmedia. com and find podcast episodes. You can find books and white papers and online courses and all kinds of things.

The vast majority of them are free. And it’s a way to just begin that process. And, the book itself comes with a workbook. And if you choose to do the workbook, you can build a [00:39:00] financial plan for yourself. And so I think it’s, an incredible exercise. I hope you enjoy it. And if you do, I hope your audience will as well. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: And again, for our audience, it’s all in the show notes as a point and click. Why not take Eric up on his advice? Get the book, get the workbook. Eric, I’m going to take it one step further because really as business owners, we want to save time. We’re busy. Sure. Do the workbook. Put together your financial plan.

See what that looks like. Why not circle back to Eric and team and then have them give you some insights and a bit of a rhetorical question. Would you complete, unless you’re an accountant, but if you’re not an accountant, are you doing your year end or are you going to an accountant who’s going to do that for you?

Well, why would it be any different? With something as vital as you call it financial planning. I’m going to broadly call it wealth planning, but that’s really what it is.

You’re really making people richer. If I can use that term through the wealth planning and the financial planning that you’re doing, why not do that?

So absolutely. And for listeners, it’s all in the show notes. Well, Eric, why don’t we do this? I would love to go down so many other rabbit holes. We are bumping up some time. So, and I know I say this on every [00:40:00] episode. It really is a truth. It’s a privilege. It’s an honor. It’s a tradition here on the Deep Wealth Podcast.

Where I get to ask the same question. It’s a fun one. Let me set this up for you. when you think of the movie back to the future, you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time. So Eric, the fun part is it’s tomorrow morning. You look outside your window. Not only is the DeLorean car there curbside, the door’s open.

It’s waiting for you to hop on in, which you do. You’re now going to go to an earlier part of your life. Maybe Eric, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time that would be. Why don’t you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom, or hey, Eric, do this, but don’t do that. What would that sound like?

Eric Botman: have two answers for you because if you can ask a question like that impactful, I’m going to give you two answers, a serious one and a playful one.

The serious one is I would go back to when we were expecting our first child and ultimately became parents and knowing what I know now I would have begun the process of working less and spending more [00:41:00] time at home then.

I do a great job of it now. I’ve achieved work life balance, work life integration that most people never see coming. I would have done it sooner because it’s more important.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Huh.

Eric Botman: And so you can’t make up for lost time. I have a wonderful relationship with my daughter. wish I had been home a little more when she was really young.

I do think that would have been good and I was traveling and working and doing all the things that we do trying to make our family’s lives better when really what they want is us. And so if I could do it again, I would do that. And the second one, the playful answer is I would go back to May 13th, 1974, and be at the Stanley cup game when my beloved Philadelphia Flyers won their first Stanley cup.

Had I known at the time and I was two Jeffrey I didn’t care at the time had I known I was going to be a fan for decade upon decade and be tortured as a fan and never see a cup, I’d go back to that.

Jeffrey Feldberg: For our listeners offline, Eric and I were just chatting and the topic of [00:42:00] hockey and the Flyers came up and Eric shared the very sad facts that he is a Flyers fan and it’s just painful. So my heart goes out to you on that one, Eric. Hopefully those worries and that anxiousness will be put to bed sooner than later.

Eric Botman: I just want one before I die. I just want to be there.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Fair enough. Well, Eric, let me ask you this, and I know in the show notes we have some resources. If a listener, though, they want to reach out to you directly, where is the best place online that they can do that?

Eric Botman: The best place to go online, our website, our company website is

bfgfa [dot] com and you can go to that website and you can actually click on a link that will allow you to schedule a call with me directly or call our office. We have an incredible client relations team that will set up a call with me or with one of our advisors and we’d love to chat with you see if we can be a resource for you and walk you through what it would look like if you chose to work with us.

We’d love it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. There you have it. For our listeners, it’s a point and click. It really doesn’t get any easier. Just come to the show notes. Point and click is all there from [00:43:00] the workbook to the book to reaching out to Eric and the team and all those other free resources that he has for you. Want to take him up on his offer.

Well, Eric, congratulations, it’s official. This episode is a wrap, and as we love to say here on the Deep Wealth Podcast and on behalf of the Deep Wealth team, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Eric Botman: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it’s more of a personal favor. Did you find this episode helpful? Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

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So all that said. Thank you so much for listening. And remember your wealth isn’t just about the money in the bank. It’s about the depth of your journey and the impact that you’re creating. So let’s continue this journey together. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much. God bless.