Elizabeth Shea welcomes Joe Strazzeri – tax attorney, serial entrepreneur, and business advisor – for a candid conversation about the complexities of business ownership and exit planning. Drawing on his experience building and exiting multiple companies, Joe explains the difference between running a business for cash flow and building one for equity value, why tax planning can dramatically affect what owners actually take home, and how to approach the decision to sell, transfer, or continue growing a business. They also discuss the complexities of family dynamics and succession planning as well as the unique nature of entrepreneurs, whose relentless drive to build and succeed can sometimes strain the very relationships they're working so hard to support. Throughout the conversation, Joe emphasizes the importance of clarity, trusted advisors, and remembering that the ultimate measure of a successful exit isn't the sale price, but how well it serves the people and the life you've built.
Connect with Joe on LinkedIn here or check out his website at https://caretoknow.info/
Elizabeth Shea (00:43)
Hello everybody, and welcome to the latest episode of Branching Out. I am very excited to have with us in our studio today Joe Strazzeri, whom I met just about probably a few weeks ago at an Exit Planning Institute event in Washington, D.C. He was one of our revered speakers. So, happy to have you here, Joe. How are you doing today?
Joe Strazzeri (01:02)
Good morning, Elizabeth. I'm doing really well.
Elizabeth Shea (01:05)
Good. Well, I know it's bright and early out there on the West Coast, so let's just jump right in and get started.
Joe, I've heard your story as you spoke to our group, but can you share for our listeners today, you know, how did you get your start? You’re in a very complicated space, but a very interesting space and one that's very valuable for entrepreneurs and business owners. So, tell us your story. How did you get to where you are today?
Joe Strazzeri (01:25)
Sure. So, it'll end up that I'm a tax attorney that's this odd duck of a combination of being an operator, business owner who's exited three times and still going with three current companies, along with being a tax attorney, along with being a business consultant that helps other businesses do what they do, along with a relationship expert that helps with toxic business and family relationships over a two or three-day resolve area. So, that's where it ends up.
Where it starts out, I am this product of a batshit crazy Sicilian who came with nothing to build his world, who marries a German Iowa farm girl who's meek and timid, 16 years his junior, who turns out to be the strength of everything and the wind beneath his wings to allow him to do what he does. I developed this incredible work ethic . . . but wait a listen. Early on in life, I wanted to become a lawyer when I was a young man and my parents forbade it.
Elizabeth Shea (02:23)
Really?
Joe Strazzeri (02:23)
Because lawyers are people you buy and sell, not something you become. And what I knew as a child, everybody was in construction. Everybody either built stuff or were developers or you had a job or a business in order to save money to do it. Because as my father would say, God created the land, the landlord, and the tenant in that order. And thousands of years later, he created the stock market. Real estate is not an alternative investment fund.
So, as you can tell, I'm still highly influenced by the man who I lost 25 years ago. And I still have the joy of taking care of my mom. So, I go and study civil engineering, realize that construction and land development was where all the money was. I do that for a long period of time with family and outside of it, because what you do with the family earns you no money, just adds to the family wealth. But what you do on your own allows you to save money to become married and have children, like I did with my lovely wife Annie, and our two kids, Sal and Maddie, named after my parents, Salvatore and Madonna.
Elizabeth Shea (03:22)
Oh, all kinds of fun facts!
Joe Strazzeri (03:25)
So, it tells you I'm a kind of a traditional boy. I am successful in and sell two different companies in that arena. And at some point, decide I want to become a lawyer. I, at 30 years old, go back to school, and in two years graduate from law school and then launch a law firm. During that time, I still do some remodel type stuff just as a side gig. I sold the companies to have some cash to make sure if this law thing didn't work, I'd have a seed to do it. My parents didn't find out until I was part of the way in. And then got very upset with me by second time of being disowned.
Elizabeth Shea (04:01)
You're lawyer after all!
Joe Strazzeri (04:03)
Well, my father ends up taking credit for law school at the end, saying it was really his idea. Well, God bless him.
I end up wanting to be a criminal attorney but then get some terrible people off and meet victims in a hallway who . . . this one shorter gal pounding her finger in my chest and speaking in another language, basically saying not nice things. I have a crisis and I drive out, I see my mentor in this firm that I'm in, and he says, “Joe, this is going to be your life.”
So, I drive out and see another mentor. I jump on from the Palisades, I hop get onto the 10 freeway, and I go east. And in Tucson, I meet my other mentor. And he says, “hey, stupid, you know real estate and construction. You're a licensed lawyer. You're in your young 30s. The money's all there. What are you worried about?” On my five-and-a-half-hour drive home, six-hour drive home, concoct that I'm starting a law firm helping construction and real estate people.
And once I do that, I meet a guy who can be my mentor, my silverback, who I end up getting handed this estate planning and income tax thing as a side gig. And I realize that that's where all the game is. That getting contractors out of trouble and resolving real estate issues were these long, drawn-out, miserable experiences. But I could make a difference by setting things up right for asset protection, setting things upright for income and capital gain tax planning, and setting things upright for an estate tax planning. And I can make a business out of that rather than a job of being a lawyer.
So, I end up setting up a firm that does that, setting up an educational institute, Southern California Institute, that does over 200 programs a year for the last 25 years, that teaches in the trades, legal, financial, and tax to bankers, trust officers, CPAs, attorneys, financial advisors, value of acceleration experts like yourself. Steve, my partner, who was a silverback to me at the time, and up being the main show and then realize we could have others be the main show and not us all the time.
We still own the Southern California Institute. It now teaches only to advisors. What it used to teach to business owners has now broken out to something called the Othership Institute, where high-net worth clients and business owners or successful families of business owners teach each other with no advisors in the room. And I do a dozen events like that a year for our own clients and others. The second firm other than the law firm was Founders Group, 25 years as well, that was a value acceleration firm, like you do, Elizabeth, that help — like you do — help business owners with that decision you face with them all the time. Do I keep and grow my business, or do I transition it to my family, my key employees who got me here like my family, or to a third party, in whole or in part, now or in the future, for compensation or not?
And for 25 years we did that work as value accelerators. Last year, there were so many people in that space now, because it was nobody 25 years ago. In the last ten years it's creeped up, last five years it's become sexy. So, there's lots of it.
So, I give it to my friends like you, but we kept the one slice of business owners in controversy who want to resolution a path forward either with their partners, their family, or themselves. So that conflict stuff we do inside of a weekend to help business owners gain that clarity, because we've got this diverse background of operator and a tax attorney and business consultant and relationships such that we've seen so much, we don't tell people what to do, we help them think through it as groups.
Elizabeth Shea (07:46)
Right, right.
Joe Strazzeri (07:47)
It stems from what the law firm did for families of affluence. That money and documents drove them apart. And it became Steve and my life's mission to not only save in tax but do it in a way that didn't drive families apart. So hence the third firm that started it all 28 years ago, when I partnered with Steve Mancini, my best friend, and our mothers would say . . . God bless his mama . . . our mothers would say we're like brothers. He and his wife are like grandparents to my kids.
And we started a law firm that did estate planning, about 250 plans a year of the $1 to $30 million net worth client. About 30 or 40 of those are going through a transition. And then about 50 clients a year of the $30 to $300 million, and the above that is sporadic. So, and we primarily do the tax planning: income, capital gain, asset protection, estate tax. Because there's an event coming but blending it into their future deployment and their relationship with the assets in themselves. Not all of those clients, but some have relational issues that they need solving first. So, we'll do that before we make our plan and sometimes on its own.
So, that's a long Italian way of saying I love what I do. I'm surrounded like with Mason who's next to me, with 25 team members that are simply amazing. We've got offices in San Diego, Orange County, which is about an hour north of here, and then one in Honolulu because my wife loves Hawaii. So, I have a two-attorney staff firm out there so I can go visit it for a month at a time.
Elizabeth Shea (09:23)
That's amazing. Oh, a great story. So, it sounds like you wear a lot of hats.
Joe Strazzeri (09:27)
I'm an odd duck. Like my partner and all of my . . . I don't have any junior attorneys except for one, my son who just became a lawyer.
Elizabeth Shea (09:36)
Oh, congratulations.
Joe Strazzeri (09:37
But he's been around this for a long time, thank you.
Elizabeth Shea (09:39)
So, you didn't share with him that “no you can't become a lawyer” because of your you know, whatever. . ."
Joe Strazzeri (09:43)
I tried him to get him to not do this. He wanted to. I want him to go to the real world for five years or ten years and then come to us if he wants to. But my business partner, Steve, who is twelve years my senior also has a wife who's got some health challenges. And I don't know that Steve has five or ten years left of wanting to do this. So, he's now sixty percent time having it taken care of her and really living a great life by balancing the two. But it's my son's opportunity to practice with Uncle Steve. So that's why he's started right away.
Elizabeth Shea (10:16)
Right, right, right. That’s amazing.
Joe Strazzeri (10:18)
So, I face the same things my clients do. What do I do? Do I continue? If I'm down or if I'm not here, who gets control? Who gets access? Should I thank the people that got me here? Should I reward the ones that . . . how do I balance my team? How do I balance a child coming in the business? One who says she doesn't want to, but I'm starting to smell that she sees there's things called equity and that income and equity are two different things. Cause she asked her brother, “why are you going to go work for half the amount of money you can make somewhere else?” He says, “Cause there's equity at the end of that road.”
Elizabeth Shea (10:53)
Yeah, so many of the listeners on this program are people that are considering what that transition needs to be. And you make a very important point, which it doesn't always have to be a sale to a third party. It could be a transition to family members, it could be a transition to employees, it could be just continuing to grow a good business and living your life and enjoying what you do. So, when you look at your client base, and I've also heard you say before that your client base is you, who you've been, as a business owner and as you continue as a business owner.
Can you share what kind of decision tree points are important for a business owner to think about? You know, how does one take this all out of the alphabet soup, if you will, to say, this might be the path to go, or this might be the path to go? What's the right way for them to consider, either working with you or working with advisors, to find that clarity for themselves? I imagine that that's not an easy thing to do.
Joe Strazzeri (11:52)
Well, I would argue the word clarity is the biggest word in everything you just said. We've written seven legal, financial, and tax technical books over the years that are for the professions. But last year we wrote a book called Motive — it's on Amazon, Motive with my last name Strazzeri — in order to pull this back. And I'm writing a what's called a monograph, which is when you take a book you write and you take a slice of it and you do more on that subject, called Nuance.
And I would contend that most business owners of my age built a business for cash flow, not for equity value. My godson Andrew took courses in college about buying a business and growing and selling it or starting your own business to sell that did not exist in our world ten years ago. So, the idea of building something to sell for equity value is something that happened as a byproduct before but not a goal. And even the group my age are now starting to see it and saying, “maybe that's the way out.”
But then I've got to take my bucket of asset, turn in my machine that I know how to run, that has little risk because it's on me, and it gives me money that I can take more or less what I want, and I take extra money to buy real estate or other investments for passive income . . . take that and exchange it for a pile of cash. And then trust others to run the pile of cash and take whatever risk that is that I got to learn about. And that scares us. It also scares us because during the transition from one asset to the other types of assets, I lose money on the cost of sale, and the rate of return is lower than my business.
So, I often say, I currently take X out of my business in salary and bonus, plus Y in benefits for a total of Z. And whenever I need emergency money, I can pull money in or put money back. If I go through all this, I may get only half of X. Why the hell do I want to do that? So, number one is getting our heads around changing the way our business runs so somebody pays more money for it. It's different than taking more money out. And it's a different accountant and attorney that helps. Number one. So, it's not just chasing the number. So, I change the way I run my firm to cause the bigger number — which means less of me, more of my team members, less drawn money out that aren't ad backs that I got to argue about. And we're looking for cash flows, not long-term growth, but history of profit, which is different on how I lay money out and who I pay, to be equity value.
The second one is a focus on the number, not the net number. Because if I set it up six months to two years ahead of time correctly, I don't have to lose 20 to 40 percent of my sales price or 20 to 50 percent of my sales price to taxes. So that way when I cross this river and I get on the other side, I've got a big enough bucket. So, as I'm going across this river, I spill a little bit on the cost of sale and due diligence and et cetera. Then at the top of the bridge, I spill a lot of my bucket for income taxes and depending on how I plan for it, income or capital gain tax on the investment in the future.
And then when I'm stepping off the bridge on the other side, I have this emotional or relational tax. Most business owners don't spend enough time on the problem at the top of the bridge and getting off the back side of the bridge until they're already there and it's too late. Business owners don't need a new purpose. We know our purpose. Where we spend our time is not our purpose. We spend our time there to serve our purpose. We may have to spend our time differently. And the idea that I've got to run a bunch of financial people to make sure that my money doesn't get taken in taxes, da-da-da-da all the rest, is not why I busted my tail and woke up at four o'clock this morning. So, the people that we help are in the same dilemma that I am. I've got batshit crazy personal use assets, more than my financial advisors say I should, but it's mine. And it's how this machine runs, that's how I show love to the people around me. And I've got investments that are passive, but I don't watch them as much as I should because I'm watching the monster of these three businesses. I am my client.
And then, like my wife told me, we were driving through the wine country with another couple, Trey and Tony, good friends. And we were in the back of this Mercedes thing, and I was hearing my wife talk to her girlfriend. And apparently, my wife and I had a conversation and we made a decision, and I don't remember any of it. And she was explaining the plan that we had of after we empty nested, within a couple of years I was going to go halftime and then eventually retire. And I don't remember this conversation at the time. But it's interesting for me to hear as Trey is talking to me, I'm listening to the ladies talk. And then I hear Tony tell my wife, as we're pulling up to this winery — and this is our third winery, so there's a little wine inside of all of it.
Tony says to my wife, “let me understand, you want full-time, full tilt Joe. All of that energy you want in your life with all of the efficiencies on your dishwasher. And I go around to open my wife's door, and she's got two large tears pouring down her face. And she looks at me and she says, “apparently you need to work part-time.” 'Cause she wanted time with me, but me one hundred percent of the time was a lot. And she figured a way to live our lives with me with the available time I had. And, you know, in the early days, I remember working the day after Thanksgiving. Now we spend a month at a time in Hawaii or a month at a time in Europe. And that's joyous, but apparently at the end of the month she's happy to go back to our life. I don't know if that was the answer to the question, but that was the Italian attorney answer.
Elizabeth Shea (18:00)
Yeah, no, I think that from the standpoint of, you know, you have a lot of choices to make, and maybe full retirement isn't the right answer, or it just depends on your circumstance. There are a lot of different circumstances, but clarity is important to at least have a sense. You know, you and your wife, it sounds like you have some clarity. You know?
Joe Strazzeri (18:16)
Well, you do need some clarity on timing. Most of us are so tired. We say, “you know what, can I just take a year and wake up late and walk in a Home Depot without a plan of how to get through fast? Can I just not have twelve things to think about, not take a call on vacation?” But then there's how do we get back? So, for me, my next goal is to open companies with my children so they can build things cause I can teach them that.
The other part that I think often doesn't get focused on, we as entrepreneurs have a byproduct of damaging relationships. We do the best we can, and we've got great big hearts. We get called all sorts of negative things like type A and narcissists, whatever else, and it's not true. Yeah, there's a couple of us, but for the most part, we're all from the jazz singer dancing as fast as we can.
And we constantly have to juggle the time that we dedicate to different things. And when we risk things that nobody knows about, and we take a business risk, we take that pressure, it affects the rest of our life. If I go through a sale, that intensifies because I have the thing to run, I'm going through a sales process with a bunch of people that I never wanted to interact with that are no fun, to consider a different financial life while I'm balancing my personal life.
It is possible that there are characteristics that I have with a lot of my friends that are entrepreneurs, that their spouses have adjusting to us, and the children have adjusting to it. We provide fabulous lives. But distribution of assets is not as intentional as we'd want. It's more about rewarding behavior or being grateful or letting them know we love them. But then we realize the way we've distributed maybe has hurt them. But if we back off, how do we do that? If we have all this money, what do we do? So, it’s this other stuff to do with the big number that we need to talk about. And just for the record, I'm not ready to die. But I've got to sign a bunch of documents to say if I'm down or I die what to do and saving taxes.
So, I spent about a third of my life on legal, financial, and tax technical. I spent about a third of my life on business owner conflict or families in conflict who A) want a resolution and B) want a path forward together, not knowing how they got there. Typically spend two or three days when we resolve those things, not the let's get a job for life.
Elizabeth Shea (20:48)
It sounds like that's pretty common that there's potentially challenges with either succession planning or family planning. Has that been your experience?
Joe Strazzeri (20:58)
It is because of this misunderstanding of facts because everybody sees what has happened during life differently. If you and I stood here with Mason and looked out this window and we saw two people engaging with each other, and Yaz who’s my assistant walked downstairs and didn't watch but listened, we would have four different perspectives on what happened, none of which would be right because it would all be missing data, and it would also be based on that action not knowing that it's a reaction to prior dominoes. So that misunderstanding of actions that are reactions and perspective mound together cause this assignment of motive that we would have to each one of them and then to ourselves. And we build on those misunderstandings and that nemesis doesn't have to exist.
And oddly, for entrepreneurs, we cause more misunderstandings than we clean up because we think it's obvious or because we don't want to talk about it. And my daughter more clearly remembers the day I was so upset; I was tired, I got up early in the morning, I wasn't feeling well, it was dinner time, somebody was trying to get me, one of the family members was grinding at me, they wanted something different than I thought was better for them. And my daughter dove on a side that wasn't mine. And I knew I was going to say something stupid. So, I said, “I have to go to the bathroom” and I got up. And she followed me. And I said, “honey, I need five minutes. I need three minutes.” She said, “we're at dinner.” I said “I need two minutes.” Because I knew I was going to spew my words out of my mouth I couldn't put back in. I actually walked out of the house down the driveway.
Thinking I have a minute to take a breath, and I whispered something under my breath that was not intended for her, that was a feeling I had at the moment but was not true overall. Do you know she remembers that moment more than all the joyous things I've done? And more than all the mundane, average loving things. Cause that's the way the human brain is wired. We remember fear and shock more than we remember joy, more than we remember the mundane sitting on the back porch talking about life. So, we create these things that stack on each other and over time it comes up. I have a loving, caring family. But the misunderstandings are still there that we have to work on. And it's funny, the skills that I have to run this company or these companies, the skills I have to work with clients, are not the same skills that work at home. So, we do spend a lot of time with our friends and colleagues helping clients work through, the what do I make as a business decision getting to wherever I want to go.
And yes, how do I save on tax now, at the event, and afterwards? And yes, how do I think about deployment now, midterm, long-term, if I die, et cetera? And my relationship, the asset, and the family. And what the client says about their about their estate, about their business, what the advisors tell us about them, all of them, what the documents say, and what the tax returns say never match. So, with all that, it's a matter of gaining clarity, you're right, in the static what you've got, and then what you may do, legal, financial, and tax, and also how does it serve the people you love?
It's a confluence of those things. And if you were to ask me the biggest concern that I have for business owners and successful families and entrepreneurs, is that the more dysfunctional we are, the more the trades make money. The more functional we are and the more we understand, the less everybody makes money. So, they're not motivated to make me understand. Okay? On top of which, I make better decisions when I'm calm and I have all the facts. I make worse decisions when I'm under pressure and I don't have the facts. So, my advice to your listeners would be: remember the moments when you're calm and it comes to you? More of those. Remember the moments with your family that felt right? More of those. And if you seek outside help, find the people that get you in that space more and create a place for you to think because you created all this and most advisors haven't paid off their mortgage.
Elizabeth Shea (25:40)
Right, right. So, who do you think should be in the room when you look at when you're talking to a client? I mean you bring a couple of different hats to the table, but who else really makes sense to be part of that advisory circle? Cause it's very, very important.
Joe Strazzeri (25:55)
Well, there are tacticians. So, the tactical people. The people in your business that can do the things that you don't want to do because you no longer want to be chief cook and bottle washer. So, there are technicians in your business, most of which do things that you could do, maybe do some things that you can't or don't want. That's the first group. Then beyond that, because we live in the United States, and I happen to live in California, we need experts that talk about the structure of the business, the structure of the business for asset protection while I'm running it, and income tax and capital gains tax reduction while I'm running it. That same person that talks about those taxes should talk about the taxes of the rest of my business or the rest of my life and how I invest. And if I'm disabled or die, what would happen? Then that's probably an accounting firm or a tax attorney.
Then we need, inevitably, we need the lawyers over asset protection and the blending. Now we need a ringleader. Who could be a ringleader? Let's choose somebody who gets paid on a regular basis, so their economic model is there. Wow, that might be a financial advisor. But I need one that works with successful families and business owners. I don't want to be their biggest client, and I don't want them to tell me they know how to run my business. Because a financial advisor that has that works at a bank or warehouse or has a team of ten that's never had to cover a six-digit payroll with not enough money can't tell me how to run my business. But they can help guide the other advisors around me and be my sounding board. And maybe be really good at investments.
And then if I've got a business, I probably need an outside person that looks at businesses to change them from income producing only to creating value in equity, like you, Elizabeth, who can say, do we keep and grow? Or do we one day (or now) transition to our families by giving them something stable? Or to our employees, because we're grateful, or to a third-party buyer, any one of those for compensation or not, and how much, now or in the future, in whole or in part. So that's where somebody like you, Elizabeth, becomes important because you're an expert in that to work with a financial person to say, what's the ramification now, midterm, long-term of that? Who works with the attorney and accountant who all have different motives and different possibilities. So, that's kind of the beginning of the team. And then you'll need specifics like you did for your company. If I went into real estate development, I would have to have a different financial team than if I placed money in the stock market than if I chose bonds, or I chose alternative investments, or God forbid, I tried to invest in startup companies afterwards so I could lose all my money. The best way to create a small fortune is to start with a large fortune and invest in restaurants, horses, or other companies. That's the best way to create a small fortune.
Elizabeth Shea (29:03)
Okay, yeah, I love that. So that's advice you hear to hear first. Okay. So just the last question is we look to round this out. This has been very interesting and a lot of ways to look at the perspectives of what business owners need to consider. You know, I come across too often business owners who say, “well, yeah, but I don't have money now. Like why do I need to get a financial advisor involved? Why do I need to tax plan now?” What advice would you give some of those folks before they look to prepare for an exit?
Joe Strazzeri (29:33)
I was talking to a gentleman who provided the first drones to the Ukraine at the time. So very, very large government contractor. And my conversation with him was “you are treating your personal planning differently than you treat your business, and shame on you. You would never tolerate this behavior in your business. In your business, you would want to know your winners and losers, you want to have economic indicators, you would want people to interact with you, you'd send them away, and then we'd get the project 80% done. They come back and report to you, and then you'd say, ‘this is what you missed, and two that can't be right,’ and you'd get them 80% of the 20%, so it would come back 96% done. You would make them give you reports on a regular basis. You would not show up to the meeting unprepared. You would look for the economic indicators. You are not doing that with your accounting firm. You're not doing it with your law firm. You're not doing it with your financial advisor. And you're not doing it with your business consultant. You're abdicating and you deserve the shitty results you've got. If you'd start to treat this planning like you do your business, you have those skills. You'd knock it out of the park.”
Part of it's what you require out of them, but part of it is showing up, ready and prepared to have important conversations. And this is the biggest business move you're ever going to make in your life. It deserves your time and attention. It deserves seeking people. Now let's first of all get people that are talented. That's their ticket in the stadium. But their ticket on your field is you have to look at them and say, “I intuitively trust you.”
Reagan quoted a Russian proverb to the Russians: “trust but verify.” I'm still going to trust you. I'm still going to verify sometimes, because that's who I am. I need people that have my back now. And I'm going to say this without getting emotional. And if I go down, you've got my back for my people. You need to find them. I have on my CaretoKnow website at caretoknow.info at the very bottom of the footer something called my shared purpose filter. When I look at a large client engagement, when I look at a new team member coming on, when I look at a business relationship, there are six things I look for beyond the technical. That if they're true in both directions, I'm in, and if one or more are not, we talk about it. Everybody should have something like that.
Elizabeth Shea (31:54)
I love that. What was that website again? If you can share that?
Joe Strazzeri (31:57)
Caretoknow.info that's C-A-R-E-T-O-K-N-O-W dot info. If you scroll to the very bottom in the footer hidden in a light blue color, there are three sets of words. One of them is shared purpose filter. Take a look at that.
Elizabeth Shea (32:13)
That sounds fascinating. Well, excellent. Well, I really appreciate your time, Joe. Very illuminated as always. How else can people reach you? I know you can be found on LinkedIn, but where else?
Joe Strazzeri (32:23)
On LinkedIn is easy. On that website you can link to it. It's a platform website that links to three of our firms, Southern California Institute, Founders Group, and Strazzeri Mancini. Any one of those, if you reached any of them, they're all kind enough to remember who I am.
Elizabeth Shea (32:39)
Okay, that's amazing. Any last pieces of advice for our listeners today?
Joe Strazzeri (32:44)
You know, I would share with people to spend some time with Elizabeth. She has such a wide variety and background. As somebody who's been an operator who's sold up to a company larger than through private equity, so she's been through the gig. And she's advised people on branding and marketing before that. And she brings all of that talent to what are you going through without the taint of having to have the money. So, getting somebody like Elizabeth and getting a sounding board very important to you. Elizabeth, thank you for time today.
Elizabeth Shea (33:15)
Wow, well thank you! I didn't expect that little commercial, but I'll take the shameless bug.
Joe Strazzeri (33:19)
Well, you know, I get worried for my successful families of business owners that run into somebody in a discipline who will make money by the choice and therefore limit the amount of information that goes to a client. Either because that's all they know . . . on one side, well intentioned, but that's all they know. In the middle bucket, those that that's all they know because they've done a bunch of research, that's all they got trained for. And then the last bucket, which is the most advice, given because that's how the advisor gets paid and that's how they see the world and they're trained to see the world that way. Somebody like you looks at the entire chessboard and says you're agnostic as the choices, you're it's important to you that the client makes a choice from a greater variety of choices.
Elizabeth Shea (34:11)
Right, right. And that's the right one that they've soul searched for, so . . .
Joe Strazzeri (34:15)
And that that goes from what I said before, do I keep and grow my business? Or do I now or in the future transfer it to my family for money or not? Or part money or not, in whole or in part. Do I transfer it to my employees now or in the future and part or not? Or a third-party same thing. Do I take the ride? That decision. It's got lots of convoluted financial tax personal things, and it's not about just the number. The number can be radically different. My daddy used to tell me, son, it's not about what you get, it's about what you get after the tax are there. It's not about what you get, but what you could have gotten. It's about the quality of your life. And son, you're doing this for your family. Don't forget that. The measurement's not the number, it's how it's going to take care of your people. We as entrepreneurs are servant leaders by definition. Elizabeth, thank you for giving me time today.
Elizabeth Shea (35:09)
I really appreciate it. And thank you so much and look forward to seeing you around. Okay.
Joe Strazzeri (35:13)
God bless.