Mindy: Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my wearing his CEO hat today co-host Scott Trench.
Scott: Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here and I always appreciate you bringing such a positive attitude. We’re here to make financial independence less scary. Less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story, because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting.
Mindy: Scott, on today’s episode, we are speaking with Jeremy Schneider from Personal Finance Club about how he was able to retire early at the age of 36.
Scott: Yeah, we we usually talk to W-2 income earners, um, and the traditional story is save up, spend less, you know, spend less, earn more, invest, create, um, and gradually move towards financial independence. But Jeremy’s story of entrepreneurship is a story of attaining entrepreneurship all at once in one big moment, and very different, very fun, very interesting look into the different dynamics of it. And I hope that you’re, you know, as you listen to this episode, you’re going to think about the parallel journey that happens from a W-2 path versus a entrepreneurial one.
Scott: So, stay listening because we’re going to dive deep into the sale of his company, the emotive experience around it, um, and peel back the onion, peel back the curtain into the process behind selling a business after a 10-year entrepreneurial journey.
Mindy: Today, we are talking with Jeremy Schneider from Personal Finance Club. Jeremy, welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. I am so excited to talk to you today.
Guest: Thank you. Hi, Mindy. Nice to see you guys.
Mindy: Jeremy, you’re an unemployed bum at the age of 36. Let’s talk about that.
Guest: Uh, I mean, I was an unemployed bum at 36. Now I’m an unemployed bum at 43.
Mindy: Oh, okay. So let’s talk about how you became unemployed at 36. Or, as we like to say here, financially independent.
Guest: Sure. I mean, you know, my story is I was offered a job at Microsoft as I was graduating college. I had a degree in computer science and I turned it down. And, yeah, I know. It was, um, you know, more money than I ever had seen in my life, of course, because I was like a broke college student. Instead decide to start a company. I had no idea what I was doing. I literally was Googling, how to start company. I didn’t even know, like, do you fill out a form? Do you just shout out your window that you’re starting a company? I literally had no clue, like, even the semantics of it much less the difficult stuff like getting clients and growing revenue and things like that.
Guest: Um but you know, the first few years were rough. I think my first full year in business, I made $14,000 like top-line revenue. And then take away expenses, it it wasn’t enough to even afford to eat. And so I was living on credit cards for a couple of years. Um, I racked up about $12,000 in credit card debt, living extremely frugally, like, you know, pinching pennies at the grocery store just to make ends meet. Um, but it start, you know, kept going better. Eventually, was able to pay off the credit card debt, started hiring people. I had a team of seven, uh, and then we Then I sold the company at the age of 34 for just over $5 million.
Mindy: Oh, okay. So that was a better bet. I was going to ask you, was there any time during that first year that you were like, wow, I should have gone and worked for Bill.
Guest: I mean, constantly, you know, I think anyone who’s an entrepreneur, if you if you are and you don’t know that everyone else feels this way, then I’ll tell you right now. I think everyone who’s an entrepreneur feels the emotional roller coaster, um, constant, um, what’s it called, imposter syndrome. Um, you know, it would, you know, there’s definitely days and weeks and months where I just was like, all right, this is a massive mistake. I’m a failure. I’m bad at life. But then, you know, the phone rings and someone’s someone’s interested and you start multiplying numbers together and you had to, oh, wait a minute, I might be a billionaire here. Um, and then, you know, so it’s it’s it’s both. But yeah, there’s definitely times where I regretted going off on my own.
Scott: So, are are you comfortable sharing like revenue and profitability of the company, um, as it grew and at the time of exit?
Guest: Absolutely. I I think that there’s too much like shame and secrecy around money and so kind of one of my own personal traits I just have super transparent. I like I like love sharing all this stuff. But yeah, we were a tech company. Strangely actually in the um rental housing advertising space. Uh, I know on the BiggerPockets forum there’s lots of mentions of my company. The company is called RentLinx, which is a uh apartment advertising syndication service where you can post an apartment for rent on one website and have it automatically syndicate to like 50 different websites. That said, um, I recently got an email that they’re shutting it down now, eight years after they acquired it. Is that eight years? Yeah. So, um, if you’re hoping to use RentLinx and listening to this, you’re out of luck.
Guest: Um but that’s what it was. Um it was a it was a software company and the year that the year that we sold, our top line revenue was just under a million dollars, about, I think it was like $975,000. And our our profit of that 975 was about 25,000. So we basically were spending all our money. We had never taken any funding. We were bootstrapped. And so we, you know, we were basically just, you know, hiring as as we could afford.
Scott: So there’s a, there’s a a number that’s really important when you talk about businesses and valuing them and understanding profitability, and it’s called seller discretionary earnings, which includes the profit plus the pay of the owner and operator of it. Could you could you share what maybe that number, what estimate of that number would be for for that final year?
Guest: Very little, because my, um, my take-home salary was $36,000 a year. I was the lowest paid employee at my company. And so, um, you know, when you talk about that type of business valuation, it’s generally not used in the tech world as much, um, because we, you know, the acquiring company was more interested in growth potential and strategic advantage and the, you know, the value of the technology. They weren’t really looking for a, you know, just a a business they could collect profits from, right? The $25,000 of profit plus my $36,000 salary, whatever that equals, $61,000 or something, not very much money.
Scott: Well, the reason I’m asking is because I think what’s so fascinating about your story is that, you know, a parallel universe, you go and join Microsoft, right? And you probably earn big bucks after 10 years, and you know, I’m I’m just try to like, I I I think that’s kind of like one of the things I’d love to learn as we kind of dive into this journey is like, okay, how much farther ahead did you get from starting a company here? Surely far ahead, um from it. And what was the experience like around that because I think that’s what a lot of people, I I think that’s like the an an interest that I at least I have in in stories like yours is this world where you could have gotten that career at Microsoft, probably come out at this at 34, 35 with two or three million dollars in net worth potentially if you would invested and saved up, but not quite here and I’m I don’t know, what’s your reaction to that that thesis?
Guest: I mean, no, I’ve I’ve done that thought experiment many times and, you know, you know, my I think my initial offer back in 2003 was like $90,000 or something like that. But yeah, you project climbing the corporate ladder at Microsoft and RSUs, stock options, whatever it is. Um, there’s so many unknowns like would I have moved to Redmond and bought a million dollar house and you know, started buying speed boats or something because I hated my life, you know? Or could I have lived dramatically under my below my means and saved 80% of my salary. And um you know when I did the back of the napkin math I you know I was better off starting my own company and selling it but I also like I I exited as a founder and sold it for millions of dollars and so that’s, you know, not typical but it also was a relatively small acquisition as far as tech companies go like $5 million. Obviously a massive amount of money to me, but it’s not like you know a billion or something.
Mindy: Up next is a break. But when we’re back, Jeremy will tell us about what he did with the millions of dollars he received from selling his company.
Scott: And we’re back. Before the break, we spoke to Jeremy about starting and selling his business and retiring at the age of 36. Next, we’ll be hearing from Jeremy if early retirement is all it’s cracked up to be.
Scott: Um, well, so, if you earn $61,000, I assume in the peak profitability year, were you able to accumulate and save money from a personal financial perspective during the time you were building your company? What what what did that look like from a personal financial standpoint pre-exit?
Guest: I always personally didn’t really count the business’s money towards my personal life. I was trying to do what everyone else was, like live below my means and invest. And so I was always the lowest paid employee at my company. I was, you know, using the company’s revenue to hire employees to grow with the business, not to basically enrich myself looking for a bigger exit one day. Um and so yeah, I took home $36,000 a year and I spent about 30 or $31,000 a year, and with the other $5,000 or so, I put it into a Roth IRA. I mean, you know, the first couple years that that wasn’t true. I was like living on a, you know, credit card. The third year I was basically break even and then kind of like years four through 12 or whatever. That’s what I was doing. And so my net worth at the time, at age 34, you know, 10 seconds before the wire hit my bank account was about $100,000 or so. Um so I I had no debt. I bought a Ford Explorer Sport for $3,000 in cash, a 99 Ford Explorer that I drove, um, you know, when I was when I was negotiating this multi-million dollar acquisition, I was driving my 99 Ford Explorer that I was, you know, had been driving for the last six or seven years or whatever. Um, and yeah, and I was just trying to build wealth the old-fashioned way by living below my means and buying and holding, you know, index funds.
Scott: Awesome. This is this is so fascinating to me. So, okay, so we we’ve built this business, we’ve sold it, we have a wire for $5 million bucks. Um let’s talk taxes here. How do taxes work on a the sale of a company in terms of setting somebody up for um, you know, uh financial freedom?
Guest: So, a few years, an important piece of information here is, a few years into the business, actually my mom joined the company. She bought 30% of the company for what we called the book value, which was basically just replacing the cash in the checking account. And so she gave me $1,500 and got 30% of the company. And so the day we sold, my mom and I together owned 100% of the company, me 70%, she 30%, and we basically had a phantom stock deal with our five employees um that they get a pay payday too. So my share was about $3 million. My mom’s share was about $1.5 million. And then the other, you know, $500,000 was employees and then a little bit in uh legal fees and stuff. So, my $3 million bucks, I live in the great state of California, which doesn’t uh distinguish between income and capital gains tax, which frankly, I think politically is the right thing to do, but when it affects you poorly, it’s not so great. Um and so I, you know, I wrote a big honking check to the government, about 300, about a million bucks that year, so 300 and some thousand to the state of California and 6 hundred 600,000 some to California, or to the federal government. And you know, if you’re listening to this podcast and these numbers are just like mind-boggling to you, they were to me too. I literally, you know, I was a week earlier, I was pacing the halls of the or the aisles of the grocery store trying to, you know, look for something that’s 10% less money, you know. Um, but then yeah, on that day I wrote a like a $650,000 check to the federal government and mailed it in, literally a check and I mailed it in. And then they wrote me a letter back, a very sternly worded letter that said, “What are you doing? You can’t send us a check this big. Like you have to like go through the you know, the EFTPS system. You have to send it electronically, yada, yada, yada.” And they’re like, “We cashed it, but, you know, next time.” And I was like, I was like, “I didn’t know. I I’d always just written a check.” That’s what I thought you’re like, you’re the government, you deal with checks and so I thought. So yeah, they they cashed the check by the way, but they they weren’t they were still send me a sternly worded letter.
Mindy: People who send me checks for $600,000 do not get a sternly worded letter from me. I will say thank you.
Guest: Exactly.
Mindy: Try it, Jeremy. Send me a check for 600,000. I’ll send you a big thank you.
Guest: And Jeremy, I just want to, I want to call out here how special it is your that you’re answering all these questions that are so blunt, so direct, and so big, and with such a massive financial situation. This is going to help a lot of people and I think open a window into the realities of this world. You know, one of my reactions, maybe other people listening are feeling the same thing is, oh, you sold a company for $5 million and you walked away with $2 million. That’s actually way less than I would have anticipated uh in there and there’s there’s like a whole bunch of things. It’s a huge outcome. It’s awesome with all that. But there’s like so many things that I think are running through people’s minds that are transitioning about entrepreneurship because of your story. And I think you’re the real, you’re the real deal with what what an entrepreneur goes through um in the in a huge success story in this. And I think there’s tons of misconceptions around this.
Scott: One of those that I think you just highlighted that I’d really look to dive into is the day before close, I’m look or the week before, I’m looking at the grocery store and trying to save 10 cents on a can of beans uh over here. Um, what was the process like to, uh, uh sell the company? How long did that take? And what was your kind of mindset in the weeks leading up to, you know, going from a hundred thousand and 10 years to millions of dollars in the bank? What was that like emotively?
Guest: Well, Scott, I would like to actually compliment you because very few people ask me these questions and I I love talking about it and I think that just there’s so much, you know, secrecy around money for whatever reason, people are afraid to even ask the questions. And I, I love talking about just for the exact reason you said. Everyone has this like, you know, whatever they saw on TV or in pulp culture, the ideas of like what selling a company is like are private jets and champagne and like, you know, that’s that’s not real. It’s like, like Instagram fiction or whatever. And so, um, I love that you’re asking pointed questions and someone listening to this might be able to like hear one real, true experience. Um, yeah, I mean it started with a negotiation. We I drove up to their office in Santa Barbara, we sold it to a company called AppFolio, which I’m sure you guys have heard of is a property management software company, um who’s doing extremely well these days. Um, and on the agenda was a, you know, they’re basically introduced me to all the like, you know, different departments at their company, and then at the end of the day, they had this agenda item, which is negotiate uh, sale of the company and or negotiate price. And I’d gotten advice from other people. I’d like called a few friends who I knew who had been through something like this and they said, “Don’t negotiate in person, have a business broker.” I I chose to ignore that advice and negotiate in person because I thought that these people were operating in good, um, faith and I still think so. Um, you know, to make a kind of a longer story kind of shorter, he put up a PowerPoint on the screen that basically was going through what they liked and didn’t like about our company trying to lower expectations I think. And when I say ours, like me and my mom and the CEO of the company in a conference room. And then on the screen he basically said, we were prepared to offer you $3 million. And, you know, we when we drove up to Santa Barbara, we basically had a discussion like what’s our number? And we decided $2 million was our number. Like any a dollar less, 1999, we would walk away and be happy, but like $6 million was like the number that we thought would be like a a good price we’d be really happy with. And you know, offers aren’t exactly flowing in, and like I said, I was I was pretty broke and so even turning down 1999 seems kind of crazy. But, you know, we basically in the next 5 minutes moved back and forth and landed on 5 million and I was like, all right. Um, and then what what came after that was, um, I think almost four months of due diligence. That was like in November and the and the, the deal didn’t close until April 1st of 2015. And they, you know, they pushed it off for some like accounting financial reasons or whatever. Um, but during that time I was like kind of losing sleep like literally I was like, you know, because we were basically now preparing to be sold, you know, putting the company on hold, you know, we’re still doing business but like, you know, certainly my focus and my team’s focus was on selling the company and if it fell through, you know, we would have spent a lot of money on on lawyers and um, you know, it would be rough. So I was losing sleep. Um but then one day, you know, you know, we there’s a Excel sheet like an XLS file that had everyone’s name on it and like their bank account numbers and like, you know, Jeremy 3 million, Amanda, my mom, 1.5 million, um each of our employees like 150,000 or whatever they were getting each. And then like our law firm and that was like the wire. You know, there’s all there’s a million legal documents like this is the one that like that like matters to me. Like this is where the money’s going to actually go. And so then like on that day, I actually have a video, um, of myself videoing my checking account and clicking refresh because I had learned because I had done a wire like a like a week earlier to like clear some of the cash out of the account because it’s supposed to be a cash free deal. Um and so I learned they send you an email when you get a wire. And so I, so I I knew I was going to get this email. So like in the anticipation I opened my bank account like around the hour they’re supposed to do it and just had the screen up waiting for that email. The email came through, I started the video camera. I literally clicked refresh and so I have the moment where uh and I’ve actually shared it it’s public at this point where it went from like 100,000 in my lifetime net worth with that Roth IRA to like 2.1 million.
Mindy: So, what did you do with that $2 million? You had it was 3 million because you had the taxes or whatever. Um, and then did you invest any of that? Did you, you were were you working for the company? Like did you have the the you have to stay on for a year afterwards kind of clause in the contract?
Guest: Yeah, not not all 3 million came to me on that day. I think more but like 2 million did and then or maybe 2 point something and then, you know, I say point something like I’m, you know, whatever, a few hundred thousand dollars for between friends, right? Um and then, I think there was like an $800,000 retention bonus that came six months later, um, that they that they were also trying to do for accounting reasons trying to move some of the expense to a different quarter or whatever. Um, other than that retention bonus, I had no employment contract. Usually with small businesses like mine that get acquired, they basically require that the founder stay on or the key, the key executives or whatever, stay on for usually three years is pretty typical from my understanding. With me, I think they didn’t, you know, they had a previous acquisition. This is kind of getting into like not my transparency, but their transparency, but they thought they would better lead with the carrot than a stick basically based on a bad experience, I think. And so they’re like, if he wants to leave, let him leave, otherwise we’ll just, you know, treat him well and as long as he wants to be there. So I ended up working for the company for two more years. And then left on really good terms. Still, you know, still love AppFolio, like, you know, really appreciate that they gave us so much money. My brother now, eight years later, my brother was used to work for me. He was an engineer, software engineer, worked for me. He still works for uh, for AppFolio as well as like, probably like my two best employees. So like AppFolio is still treated my team really well. Um, and then yeah, with my money, I spent that that interim period where I, we had shaken hands on this $5 million number, but the wire hadn’t come through yet.
Scott: You you know, you were paying yourself $36,000 a year pre-acquisition. Did that base salary uh continue post-acquisition?
Guest: It did not continue. Actually, I got a really healthy raise. I think my post salary, my post-acquisition salary was 150,000. So, you know, like it wasn’t like giving me half a million dollars, but it definitely was like it was crazy money to me. Like like ignoring the $2 million in my bank account now, um like the paychecks I was getting every two weeks were wild. Like I I wasn’t spending I was spending like a quarter of them or something, you know.
Scott: So that that’s the next piece. You you go from having $100,000 and, you know, a $3,000 car and, you know, all this stuff. Now you all of a sudden you have a huge pile of money in the bank. What what do you do spending spending-wise? Do you do you immediately buy a house? Like how how does that work? What’s the the thought process and how did you what did you end up doing?
Mindy: You know, to answer Mindy’s question that I didn’t quite get to is like, did I invest any of it? During that due diligence period where I knew the we had shaken hands on the purchase price but we hadn’t yet gotten the wire, um I basically was doing all these thought experiments about what I was going to like do with the money, how I was going to spend it. I was like, should I go buy a Lamborghini or something? And then I was like, where would I park it? I would look like a douche bag driving around in a Lamborghini. It would feel so stupid. It’s like so inauthor so inauthentic to me. And so I kind of like got out, some of the spend, like the itch to spend it kind of got out of my system. Um but I also was reading about investing. I started reading every book on like personal finance and investing I could find. And I realized like, oh, all these books actually say the same thing. It’s all pretty simple. It’s like, you know, spend less than you make, invest early and often, buy and hold index funds, minimize fees. And so yeah, you know, like, you know, a couple days after the acquisition, I sat down at my Fidelity account and I bought $2 million worth of index funds, like on a single day, you know, it was uh another very wild experience where um I, you know, I was like trying to save 10 cents at a grocery store a week ago and now I’m clicking but purchase on like a million dollars worth of total stock market index fund. Um and to this day I’ve held on. you know, spoiler, like my net worth at that moment was like two million or so and today, I just actually this this past month with our nice stock stock market lately, just crossed 5 million. And so broad strokes, that’s been my financial journey since then is I’ve just basically held those index funds and now I have 5 million.
Scott: That’s unbelievable. So like you you you literally just put it, you did exactly what is supposed to but what what you’re supposed to do, right? With all the math says you’re supposed to do. And you just did it and didn’t even sounds like think twice about it, didn’t touch it for 10 years. Like, I wonder how many entrepreneurs actually follow through with doing following the textbook there. And you’ve been really well rewarded from that. That’s it’s like, it’s remarkable. Um despite that, despite the fact that that’s like, “Oh yeah, that’s technically what should happen.” So, congratulations. That’s awesome.
Guest: Yeah, there’s a few more mistakes in there. Like for sure, the lion’s share of my money, that’s true, but I also made a few more mistakes in there, but I definitely have avoided the pitfalls of like burning all my money or making really big dangerous gambles or timing the market or, you know, changing strategies, things like that.
Scott: So we we we kind of previewed the the conversation here by calling you an unemployed bum. Um when when do we get to unemployed bum and and what happens from from there?
Mindy: Well, now he’s working there for two years. I want to, before we go to that, I want to know about the dollar cost averaging that he didn’t do, it sounds like, when he bought $2 million worth of index funds because the internet uh, the financial, the personal finance community says that you need to dollar cost average and you just dumped all 2 million into the index funds.
Scott: Yeah, I don’t know if I could do that. That’s a great question. Like I I don’t think mentally I could have handled what you just what you did, even though I know it’s the right thing to do. That’s why I’m like I’m like in awe of of how you’ve handled everything.
Guest: No, I literally, I think I mean, you know, now we haven’t really gotten to, but now I basically do my my uh my passion project which is teaching people about personal finance and investing and I post on stuff very transparently. and I like followed my receipts. I was like, yep, there it is. There’s like a million dollars worth of index fund purchases in a day, you know, two million a day or whatever it was. It’s because there’s a few different ETFs I bought. Um you know, the answer is now knowing what I know now, dollar cost averaging or lump sum, they’re pretty close. Statistically lump sum is better. 70% of the time you’re more likely putting the money in as soon as you get it because the market’s usually going up. That’s what I read at the time and um, I’m a computer programmer and a math guy and I understand, you know, numbers decently well and and I just it I just did it, you know? Um because I like you said Scott, I just think it’s the it’s the mathematical correct thing to do and so that’s what I did. But immediately now I’m talking to like a zillion people about personal finance like that’s not necessarily right for everyone, you know, I think there’s a calmness to dollar cost averaging where if you do put in your two million and then the market drops 30% on the next day, you know, you don’t have to spend the rest of your life asking, “Oh, you know, what how much money did I waste there?” If you’re just putting in, you know, 10% a month for 10 months or something or whatever it is, you’d have a little bit more peace about that I think.
Mindy: Well, I think the dollar cost averaging in this specific situation, if he’s putting $50,000 in every month for two years, he’s not putting his money in the stock market the whole thing for two years. What if you have two years of growth? What is that statement? More money has been lost by people trying to time the market than by people who have been in the market and it’s going up and down.
Scott: Yeah, I I I think you did exactly the right thing. I just think I I just think, you know, you’re like, “Hey, that’s what’s supposed to happen. That’s what he did.” It’s it’s like, it’s so simple, it’s so obvious, but it’s so also probably so rare.
Guest: I’ve actually since built a dollar cost averaging calculator looking at every single month of the stock market going back to like as early as S&P 500 data goes back I like the late 1800s and saying, you know, what would be the difference if you did it over 12 months or 24 months or whatever. And and basically the end result is if you dollar cost average, all you’re really doing is instead of getting today’s price of the market, you’re getting the average price of the market over that period of time. And generally the market goes up. So if you take the average price from now until two years now, it’s going to be generally higher than the average price or than the price from today. And you’re not, you know, you’re not kind of doing anything magical about like, you know, really buying low and selling high or anything like that. You’re just getting the average price and so I’m like, well, I guess I’d rather have today’s price than two years from now price.
Scott: Okay, well let’s let’s talk about how you became an unemployed bum. You leave the company at good terms. What what what what what happens at that point? Do you just stop work and, you know, beach bum, um, you know, at at that point, what what what is the day-to-day like when we hit
Guest: Essentially yes, I put in my, you know, I my net worth over those two years had grown to I think around 3 million. just there’s a couple good years of the stock market plus my salary and all that. Um and I, you know, was realizing that while my the growth of my investments is making more than my salary, why do I need to be working anymore? And I think I think if you’d asked me back then, I didn’t even know what FIRE was, like financial independence or tire early. I just more like back of the napkining my own situation. Um so after two years I put my I put my notice and I you know, I didn’t I didn’t like hate the job or anything, but I was like, I can probably do better at something else and someone else can better, you know, because I was no longer an entrepreneur, I was just like a middle manager at this company. Um, you know, someone else can take over my job. And so yeah, I quit my, quit my job and then I think three days later I was on a plane to Venice and I coached beach volleyball in Italy for two months because there’s this like uh beach volleyball, I’m a beach volleyball player and there’s this like beach volleyball camp out there that signs up imports Southern California beach volleyball players and I’ve had friends who’ve done this. I’m like, well, I can’t even do that because I’m like I’m building a company and don’t have two months to go be a beach bum. Um but then I literally did. So I went to Italy and then I went to um Australia for a month and a half. bored one day at home when I came back, I saw an advertisement for StarCraft II and how it was now free. It used to be 50 bucks. And even though I had $3 million in the bank, I was like, oh, I can save 50 bucks. And so I I installed StarCraft II and then I got hopelessly addicted and played video games for a year, just StarCraft II. Um and I basically just did what I thought you were supposed to do like be on vacation. work out, travel, play video games. Every day is a weekend. And you know, for sure that’s fun for a while. There’s like there’s definitely like
Scott: You You’re 34 at this time?
Guest: I was 36 now. I sold the company at 34, retired at 36 or became unemployed at 36, however whatever I want to call it. My unemployment bum period basically lasted about a year. Um, and yeah, I, yeah, is traveling. I I went to Mexico, you know, where there was like, you know, in in a camper van with like no services. I was I don’t know, just trying to be a bodybuilder and, you know, eat protein and work out twice a day, just, you know, like all the stuff that like you just suddenly have time for. But, you know, after a year of that, I I don’t know. It’s got boring and I didn’t really want my life story to be, um, you know, I had a big win when I was 34 and then I was like a waste of life for the next, you know, 50 years or whatever. Um, and my own, my own like my own enjoyment of life, I think was less because there was no goal. I I think a lot of goal or a lot of joy in life comes from working, you know, making progress towards something, working towards a goal, building something. I I personally like building things. Um and so, yeah, they say the reward for financial independence is an existential crisis.
Scott: The book Die with Zero makes some good points which is, you know, the goal of money isn’t to be 80 and have the most money in your bank account as you roll into the grave. It’s to, you know, maximize your life value. And so, um, for sure at 36 I was still pretty young. but you know, I kind of tried to do the backpack around, you know, hostels thing and I I felt pretty old for that to be honest, you know. And so I, um, you know, even though I had a big win relatively young, I think we all need to be remembering to jump on these temporal opportunities to, you know, live life to the fullest when it happens because if you want to go skydiving, this is probably the year because it’s probably not going to be when you’re 80, right? Um, so even though I had a young win, I still think, you know, living your life in your 20s and 30s is a good idea.
Scott: Well, Jeremy, can you tell us from people can find out more about you?
Guest: Um my Instagram is where I do most of my personal finance education at Personal Finance Club.
Scott: Thank you so much for sharing your story. This was truly fascinating, a wonderful, you, you know, unique but but not, you know, not not like probably there’s a lot of entrepreneurs who have gone through um what you’ve done even though it’s a smaller percentage of the the population and it’s a wonderful glimpse into another way to achieve financial independence. Thank you for sharing the ins and outs so transparently. Um and and the, uh, the beach bum days too. Uh, you know, I I how how good did you get in StarCraft by the way?
Guest: I think I was like low platinum. like you know, I was I was like any 12-year-old in in South Korea would annihilate me, um, but you know, I could probably hang with the other 37 year olds or whatever.
Scott: Awesome. Thanks for sharing that. Really appreciate it and hope to to chat again soon.
Guest: Thanks so much guys. This was a blast.
Scott: Scott, that was so much fun listening to Jeremy really dive deep into how you sell a company that you own. That was really fascinating and I loved your take on how I loved your questions that you were asking him because you’ve got this business mind that I just don’t have. And that was really a lot of fun to hear Jeremy share those stories.
Guest: Yeah, and it it’s you know, as a as a CEO who who has you know, been through various investments with with BiggerPockets for example. I’ve had a glimpse into this into this window. I’ve never been the entrepreneur who founded a business of course with that. but it’s just fascinating to get a peek into what it’s like on the other side, right? Like uh you know, from I’m a W2 guy, you’re, you know, you’ve worked a long career, Carl works a long career. It’s it’s different, right? It’s it’s not what you’d expect it. It’s not like the riches pile up overnight and he’s earning hundreds of thousands of dollars. He earned very little, right? Almost basically maybe below a living wage for what people consider maybe in California for many of those years. And then had a huge pile right at the end of the rainbow, but not quite as big as the whole valuation of his business. After taxes, you know, were were there. And so it’s just it’s just so fascinating to get an insight into that. Huge outcome for him, of course, but maybe not quite as big as you would think for from an entrepreneurial uh when you’re look at on the outside looking in at an entrepreneurial journey and think about a $5 million business sale.
Mindy: Yep, that was quite eye-opening and I was so thankful that he was able to share it. Sometimes there’s uh non-disclosure clauses attached to these sales and sometimes the entrepreneur just doesn’t want to share. So I was really thankful for Jeremy to uh be open with us. That was a lot of fun.
Scott: Rare treat to get an insight into into this world here.
Mindy: Should we get out of here, Scott?
Scott: Yeah, oh and one more thing. It sounds like Jeremy, you know, probably should have moved out of California for a few weeks. Um at that point. Just kidding. Follow the laws in wherever you’re living when you go through all these things. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, let’s get out of here with that.
Mindy: That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen, shouting out the Morro Bay Skateboard Museum by saying, later skater.
Scott: If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.
Mindy: BiggerPockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kalyn Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the BiggerPockets team for making this show possible.
