Only Fee-Only
This podcast interviews fee-only financial planners to learn about how they are helping their clients and serving their specific niches.
Only Fee-Only
#144 - Roadie. Atlantic Crossing. RIA Founder: The Shane Mason Story
Want a founder story that includes spreadsheets, a stint as a roadie, an Atlantic crossing, and a will-signing party that packed the room? Meet Shane Mason of Brooklyn FI — a CPA/CFP who went from Big Four tax to touring life, then teamed up with AJ to build a 20-person advisory firm rooted in transparency, productized service, and genuine hospitality.
We dig into the early days: running a tax practice out of a bar booth, pricing low to get at-bats, and taking weekend prospect meetings to sharpen the offer. Shane explains why he and AJ decided from day one to build an enterprise rather than a lifestyle practice, documenting workflows so every client gets the same quality of service no matter who’s in the seat. That mindset shaped their hiring, retention, and their eventual shift from serving creatives to working with tech employees navigating ISOs, NSOs, RSUs, and liquidity events.
The conversation gets practical fast. Shane shares why most equity compensation issues are really tax issues, why offering refunds can be a reputation-saving move, and how turning estate planning into a social, notarized event helps clients finally take action. We also explore the difference between small giants and scalable firms, the value of serialized advice, and what happens when founders step back from client work to rethink the business. Plus, a look at Gemifi, the fintech platform Brooklyn FI built to help advisors visualize vesting schedules and future balance sheets.
If you’re building or scaling an RIA, this episode is full of hard-won insights on niches, processes, client experience, and leading through growth.
Shane's Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanemasoncpacfp/
What's up everyone? Welcome back to the OnlyFe Only podcast. And as always, thanks for being here. In this episode, we talked to Shane Mason, who is the co-founder of Brooklyn FI. He and AJ started it together and really have built something special. Over 20 team members over there now. And so we talked to Shane about what was it like in the early days. How did you guys scale? Did you know you were gonna be an enterprise from the beginning? And also talk about his interests and how he kind of got to the point where he started a business with AJ. So all of it full circle, really cool story. Shane's done some awesome things, been all over the world. So this conversation was absolutely awesome, and we really appreciated having him on the show. So without further ado, enjoy this episode with Shane Mason on the Only Fee Only Podcast.
SPEAKER_02:What's up, everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only Podcast. I'm Peter Travolo. I'm here with my co-host Brock Buckles, and today, very excited to have Shane Mason on from Brooklyn FI. Really excited to have him come on, share his story, and share what they're building over in New York. So, Shane, welcome to the show, man.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for having me, fellas. It's good to see you guys at XYPN this year. Happy we could reconnect uh here and uh and chat. So excited to chat.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, likewise. So for those who don't know who you are, you want to give a quick overview before we dive into the full conversation?
SPEAKER_00:For sure. So for the majority of people that don't know who I am, uh I am Shane P Shane Mason, uh CPA CFP, got started at uh I went to Ole Miss, got started at PwC in Austin, uh worked in the tax department there, and then worked on the corporate side of public companies, taking care of their equity compensation, ISOs, non-clause, RSUs, and then moved to New York uh in my mid-20s and worked for a mid-sized firm, had a lot more fun. It was like a whole period where I dropped out of accounting for a while, quarter life crisis situation. But I realized how much more fun it is to work with individuals uh and help them with their problems. So I got my CFD license and um started helping people out with their personal taxes and then personal finances, equity compensation. Questions were uh flying around Spotify's IPO, and realized that there was a lot of work to be done and helping people with their equity comp. So started an RIA with my business partner AJ about eight years ago, and that is called Brooklyn FI. Can you guess where we were living at the time when we founded that company? So, yeah, Brooklyn FI has been around eight years. We now have about 20 employees, um, about 450 households now, about 550 million of assets under management. So it's been uh hard to come back eight years, 15 years, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So you guys started Manhattan, right? That was the that was the that was the birth Queens, actually. Yeah, right. Queens actually. No, that that's awesome, man. You know, we we've gotten the chance to have her on the podcast, and it's just always a great conversation. But what were the things like early on in your career, man, that kind of got you interested in like the numbers or wanting to pursue kind of that route? Was it like something you always knew you wanted to do, or like do you want to be an astronaut when you were a kid? Like, how'd you how'd you get there?
SPEAKER_00:That's a great question. You know, I started selling bubblegum when I was in fourth grade, uh, which is kind of like being a drug dealer in fourth grade because it's you're not supposed to have it, you know, it's like being always under desks. So yeah, I've always like I've always had this entrepreneurial spirit. I I've had all kinds of 1099 jobs, a bunch of jobs in high school. And then when I got to college, you know, I didn't really want to frankly go to the college that I went to. I went there for football, and then that didn't work out, and that's a whole other podcast. But I was like, all right, what do you guys have? How am I gonna get the hell out of Mississippi? That's where I grew up. And uh they have a top 10 accounting department, and everybody said it's like the language of business, you can really work anywhere with this degree. And you know, before I knew it, I was had a master's in accounting and then a CPA, and then I was working at BWC, and I was like, oh, I took this pretty seriously, and it got like the big boy pants put on pretty fast. Um but you know, I was always a bartender as well, so I was always like front of house, so to speak, in like extroversion, and then I like worked on my skills of data entry, Excel numbers, so to speak, back of house, so to speak. And so like I always I put those two things together in my 20s and and created DKFI. So I didn't have any like explicit desires, I just knew I wanted to get out of out of Mississippi and then get into a larger town where I felt like my my people would be at no no shade on Mississippi. I I go there all the time. Um but I just knew I wanted to get out.
SPEAKER_02:So if you don't mind sharing with the what so getting out was that the quarter life crisis, or what was the quarterlife crisis?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, I you know, I was working at PwC for three years, and I think I got like a bad performance review or something, and my my dad got sick for the last time. And I'm like, what am I doing? Like I started this accounting journey like seven years ago, and I I paid my dues, and like I want to figure something else out. So before I went home to be with my dad uh as he you know toured while he was in hospice, and I was there for that, and then my friends' tour, uh my friend's band went on tour in Europe. Like I ended up being a roadie for my friend's uh band for like three months, and then got a job as a sailor on a catamaran and sailed from France to Boston. And then when I landed in Boston, I went down to New York to see my other friends that had got out of uh out of the south, and I ended up like bartending again and be like, I don't know if I want to be an accountant, like trying to take some time to figure out who you know adult Shane was gonna be or the second phase. Joined the Peace Corps, started a wood shop, um, all kinds of stuff, you know, just really poking around. The most interesting man in the world.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I gotta ask, like, what were those days like in the middle of the ocean? Like crossing from uh France to Boston. I mean, like, like it's just yeah, Christopher Columbus at that point.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was really awesome, man. It was like a 42-foot boat, so it wasn't a big girl, but we and it was really slow because she was a sailboat, so the top speed was essentially like 15 miles an hour. So we just like putt-putted across the ocean uh for a couple months. And there were honestly, we had a really salty old professional captain that was in the US Navy for or the British Navy for uh I want to say like 10-15 years before he left, and he was a navigator. So like we always waited for great weather windows, and we never we only hit rough seas when we got off the coast of Canada, and you can't really predict you know, weeks in advance. So we were totally fine. But the best part about it is the nature, obviously, the dolphins, the whales, and the Milky Way in the middle of the ocean in the middle of the night is as you can imagine, zero light pollution, just an incredible rainbow of dust and stars and with a full moon under it, and like the waves ripping, and you're by yourself because everyone else is asleep and you're on watch. And it's incredible. Yeah, it's it's really, really cool. It it started my love of uh sailing and and being on boats and being in the ocean.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's sweet. I have to ask you about the roadie situation, man, because I've always been like my my spirit animal's always been being a rock star, being on the road with a band or something. I'm like, sounds like a cool experience. How was that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I know that about you, Brock, based on our conversations that did awesome. I can see that for you. Yeah, I've had a lot of my friends, like I was in accounting school, but all of my friends were in like the music, like in mute, like getting English degrees and had bands in college and stuff. And one of them has this like rock uh band, it's like a garage rock group called Bass Strom of Death. And they hit like they released this album in 2013 that like blew up and they had a world tour. And I I happened, I wasn't like officially the roadie, I just like called them when I got to Europe and they're like, join us. Like all my friends were in the band, like, you're here, like come join us. Hopped in the van, and like next thing I know, I'm loading them in and out of all these venues and selling their merch in France, and like Jean-Apolpay Francais is the only thing I can say in French, which is just sorry, I don't speak French, although we can speak English, and I can sell you these albums and shirts, you know, in English. And uh yeah, and so I did that for a couple of months, and then the meeting I was still poor, right? So I was like looking for a cheap way to get home from Europe at that point, and I found a job on a boat uh as a as an employee, so to speak. So that's the how that all kind of came together.
SPEAKER_01:That's crazy, man. It's like Jack Sparrow in the flesh. Uh no, that that that's cool, man. So, like, fast forward, how do you meet AJ and you guys like come up with this idea where you're gonna be like, we're gonna start a firm?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So I was plugging away with my tax firm. I uh so remember that bartending job I had when I got back into accounting because I I picked up a part-time job doing like I didn't want to lose my CPA license. So I did one tax season at a small shop, and it was mostly women there that were on the earned income tax credit that had like three or four kids, and they would like play with my hair while I did their taxes. And I was like, damn, this is actually really fun. Like, this is like the opposite of PwC. So I was like, let me get back into the accounting space. I turned down the offer in the Peace Corps to go to Namibia, like I'll do that later, which I might still do. And I got back into it, and I had all of these questions coming from my clients and my customers about um equity compensation. And I also started freelancing on the side when I realized how much I loved working with individuals while I had a day job. And I bring up that bar because I couldn't find an office. In New York City, offices are mad expensive or wild expensive. So I went to my old boss at the bar. I'm like, hey man, can I do can I use a booth in the back of the bar as an office? You'll get all these new people coming in here because you know, this is where we do the job, this is where we do the interview, and I do people's returns, you'll get new people in, and then I get an office. And we signed up for that, and that like blew up in the local news. And before I knew it, I was on like national, I was on the local news, local Fox News, and then I was in Wall Street Journal, and then Maria Barterromo picked it up on her show, and I was on the national news one day, and so that really accelerated me like quitting my day job because I got all these inquiries. And then AJ, I did AJ's taxes, AJ's friends' taxes, and AJ was looking for a cool tax accountant to interview for her podcast. And her friend, who had I just on her taxes, like, you gotta meet my friend Shane. He's like chill, he's not like your uh Poindexter, like typical, like stereotypical accountant, like you can have him on the podcast. So the first time we met, I was no shade on accountant. I love most accountants, they're not like that, it's just uh the stereotype. And uh before I knew like I was on her podcast to discuss accounting accounting for creatives because I had a lot of uh creative clients, and uh I met her. You see, you can hear the first time that we ever spoke to each other because it's on her podcast, which is called Money Splained, and like you can pull up Spotify or whatever podcast player and go to Money Splained episode seven or whatever, and it's me meeting her on the podcast, which is cool because now we've been like best friends for like nine years now, so it's pretty rare to like have that as a part of a friendship, uh, which is cool. Uh, but like I met her on that podcast, we talked about taxes, and then sh I was heading to Japan. I know I'm giving you like really long answers to all these questions. No, I love that. That's what we're doing. I was heading to Japan soon. Uh, so after the podcast, she she was like, Let's get together and talk about Japan because I know you're going, and I've got all these lists. If you know AJ, she has a list for every country. She's got hotels, restaurants, experiences. She collects them, and that's like her greatest joy, her love language is when somebody ticks her up on a recommendation and they go to the restaurant that she recommended or the hotel. So she we got together at a bar to ostensibly discuss Japan, and all we ended up talking about was financial planning because I was about to start this term. And she was really interested in it. And she had gotten into it because she started making money for the first time ever in her life in her late 20s. And in AJ fashion, she went over the top in the research space and was trying to figure out how to do estate planning and tax and uh, you know, insurance planning that she just had a whole podcast about and spent like hundreds of hours researching it. And so she fell in love with financial planning. I was about to start a financial planning firm, so we became partners. Uh, and I just had like kind of a technical background, and she had more of a PR marketing, front-of-house background, so to speak. So we complemented each other very well, we worked together really well, and and that's you know, been made evident in the growth of BK5 over the past eight years.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah. Love it. How did you guys stumble upon XY Planning Network? I mean, you guys have been very active members, have been able to grow within, you know, where did the relationship start with XY Planning Network?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I think you know, I was getting in, I got my CFP designation back in 2014 or 15, and I ended up going to like local New York City CE events where you would rock up to an RAA's office, and somebody would talk about social security for an hour and it was free. And I met someone that has his name is Eric Gabor, and he was a very early XYPN member, and he was in his late 20s as well and started his own firm after leaving ACO. And he put me on to XYPN. He's like, You should really think about joining this network. I think there were like at that time like 150 to 200 members.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I think they're at like 1500 or something now. I haven't checked in a in a long time, but they they've grown quite a bit. And so we were relatively early in there, but not like alpha users when they were just trying to figure out their the business model. So we got a lot out of XYPN when we joined, and I'd never worked on an RAA before, so I was like, all right, these people like they help RA set up from a compliance. Like I remember asking somebody at XYPN, they had brought up someone mentioned the word ACATS. Like they were just like going through the jargon about investing, and I was like, uh, what's a what is ACATS? Like, I don't even know what that is, you know. Like, I just come from a different background. So it was really humbling, but also like a really safe space to walk in there not knowing how to run an RIA, and then being able to hold your hand uh through the onboarding, the compliance, the getting clients, the choosing a business model or like a revenue model. And we, you know, we started with a net worth-based fee, and we've changed that fee like 17 times over the past eight years, but they really helped with all of that getting off the ground stuff. And and now we're we're still members, mostly for the community, and that's how we met you guys. So yeah, for sure. It's obviously a lot of value in continuing to be part of it.
SPEAKER_01:It's still the gift that keeps on giving, man. Yeah, um, I love it. No, we had a good time in Austin for sure.
SPEAKER_00:So we guys are like Trump impression if I hadn't been a member of the city.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my goodness, that's right. That and many others. Um, so I mean, like when you guys first started, you're like, we're gonna be partners, we're gonna do this thing, right? What was like you guys kind of had an understanding about what the dynamic was going to look like? Because you mentioned like you had more of the technical skills, she had more of the marketing experience. So you kind of looked at that. So when you guys started, how long was it before you started being like, okay, I think we're gonna bring somebody else on? And then ultimately, how did that evolve to like 20 employees, man?
SPEAKER_00:When you say like uh bring somebody else on, do you mean like when I brought AJ on or when I was after you guys like were doing it together, right?
SPEAKER_01:And kind of had your base, like what was that like next hire? And then how did it kind of snowball into where it is today?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so the early days was still like there's still ripple effects from those early days because when we created the RIA, like I had a tax practice back then uh called Mason Tax LLC, very creative name. And I had that going on for three or like I think three or four years before I met AJ. And so we created an RIA, we created those two separate entities side by side. So our actual first few employees as like partners were actually in the accounting and tax space, which is a lot easier to manage. And because your first few employees are so hard. Like you're gonna if you're making 75k a year, like that's you're doing great as a financial advisor in the XY space. Like if you didn't have a book that you brought with you from a larger firm, and so then to like, but that's a lot of work, and if you hire somebody at like 60k, you you're back to zero. So like you got to do this bizarre cycle of being absorbently profitable to almost making no money to making a lot more money, but your your capacity is pushing up against the the edges of all of your relationships, so to speak, and like everyone wants to kill you, including your clients. And uh anyway, so it was nice to have first of all two people to absorb like the ins and outs of of all of all those swings, so to speak, and also two people to like do financial planning, do taxation. That's like it just like double, it like kind of smoothed things out because we had two people instead of just one person by ourselves. Anyway, to answer your question, we started off in the tax space. Our first hire was a tax manager because we needed somebody to duplicate me and uh do additional tax returns. Uh and like you can pump you can make a really good living as a tax uh uh manager and a tax firm just like doing tax returns and helping those out, especially complicated ones. And then AJ was handling essentially the whole financial planning practice. Uh and so then we started hiring associates to help her out. And uh to answer your question, that was you know, that was seven, eight years ago. I'd have to go through the old org charts to see like how we built those bricks. What I can tell you is the people that we hired in the beginning were definitely not the people that we have now, right? Like the type of person that wants to work at a firm of three people is not also the same type of person that wants to work at a firm of 20 people, right? There's just like different risk tolerances, there's different experiences, work history, and the level of expectations from the clients, from the other employees, from the partners, those all change as the firm gets bigger, more established, the brand changes, shifts. Like we actually in the early days focused on creative clients. Like if you look at, if you go in the Wayback Machine on Brookmanify.com, you're gonna see a lot more focus on creative clients. But all of the creative clients' spouses worked in tech, and over time they just like soaked up all of our questions and frankly had a lot more money to throw at having their questions solved. So our niche shifted over time. So the employee base has just changed a lot from who we started with back in the day to who we have now.
SPEAKER_02:Um, or maybe some other shifts, right? Or maybe some other kind of the initial business plan compared to the business plan now. Like, what are some other major ones?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I can tell you that we definitely overserved our clients back in the day and prospects. Like when we were we were just getting started, like our our knife was blunt, so to speak. And so we were just trying to get in in front of as many shopping blocks as we could and get as many clients as we could so we could sharpen that knife. So AJ and I would meet with prospects on Saturdays and Sundays. Like if you went to our Calendly and it was a prospect meeting, it was on Saturdays and Sundays, including Monday through Friday. So if you as a prospect didn't have time Monday through Friday, we would go to the office on Saturday and Sunday. We had a WeWork back then, it's pre-code, of course. And we would bring people in. We had a PowerPoint, it would be both AJ and I on either side of the screen, and we would go through this PowerPoint, you know, we'd giving the clients a beer from the WeWork keg that everyone has, and then we'd probably drink with them, and sometimes we'd have three or four meetings, hopefully on a Sunday, like before you know it, we're like stumbling out of the office. Uh uh. But we were younger then, so it was easier to manage. And we had a lot of fun. We've always had a lot of fun. Um, no matter what. We don't we don't really thrive in relationships or business situations where we're not having fun, frankly. So um and our clients you know recognize that. And like we had an event last night that had an open bar uh that our clients came to, and it it was a lot of fun. And and yeah, our clients don't there's plenty of stuffy big old RIEs out there for them to go work with. And I think a lot of the success of BKFI was just uh like a frankly, like I don't know the the PG rating of this podcast, by the way. But it was just I don't know if you cursed on this. Okay. Um curse. Okay, yeah, it was more of like a like a fucking mentality where we're like, listen, there's no secrets. Like, we have worked in this for a long time. We'll tell you all of the secrets. There's we're gonna be very transparent about how everyone gets paid, and like there's no uh mahogany desk, there's no like all that old stuffy stuff is uh what doesn't work for us. We don't we don't the reason that we created the firm is because uh and a lot of millennials that resonates with them, right? Like if you don't have pricing on your website, they often do not hit the contact us button because they are they grew up in the age of the internet where everything is all information is available and they don't want to pick up the phone, Gen Z too, right? So we've just always con the core value of transparency has been in our core values since the the beginning, the early days of BKFI. So yeah. Um damn, I lost track of what the hell we were going on about.
SPEAKER_01:Now, your your event last night, I think, was the original thing. Martini's immortality.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I mean, one of the problems that we've always had with clients, uh one of the things we've always focused on at BKFI as well, is that a financial plan in and of itself does not nearly have as much value as an executed financial plan, right? Like you actually have to do the work, it's just the beginning of the work. And estate planning is one of those things that is really hard to get done, both from a psychological perspective of thinking about your own demise, but then from an actual execution perspective, a lot of people do not go to the notary to get the will notarized. And even if they do go to the notary to get the will notarized, you need two witnesses, and the notary needs to know what they're looking at. And it's also like you're putting a document in front of a stranger that has all of your last wishes on it. So it's just like it's hard to do, people don't want to do it, and it's intimate, and you're giving it to a stranger, and after you've already done all that, you don't feel like you uh you're not even sure if it's if it was done right, because then you go home and you scan it. Anyway, so we had an event last night, and we do this multiple times a year, where any client that's in New York, we hire notaries to come to the events and we rent out a bar and it's open bar uh for the clients, and then we offer anyone in town a time slot to come in, and there's witnesses there, uh, and they come in and they get their estate plan notarized. And it's like your financial planner is there, so if you have questions, you can get them answered. Uh if you're waiting because the person before you or the person after you is taking a while, just like a haircut, there's an open bar. So enjoy that. Uh, there's food too. And then also there's like a networking aspect of it where there's other clients there, which I always love. So, since all of our clients work in tech, there's always a conversation between someone that works in, you know, say Meta and somebody that works at Google. And they're like, what's going on with your like at your firm? What's going on at my firm? Um, right. And so you get like a bit of cross-pollination, uh, not only in business, but also occasionally, you know, after eight years, there has been romantic cross-pollination. So it's it's fun, it's cool. And we we tend to bring out our financial planners that are in the northeast area. Uh, and sometimes we do events in San Francisco, and uh, we were gonna do one in Austin for XYPN, but our our clients there told us that they were all good, they didn't need one.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, sparks are flying over at Brooklyn FI. I love it. Um, yeah, so how do you take your martini?
SPEAKER_00:Drive of the twist. And if they have Plymouth, that's my preference, but not every bar has Plymouth, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the man knows his preferences. Well, man, for people, for people that are out there that are like, you know, getting this thing started that might look at a firm like yours and be like, man, I just would love to get to that point one day, or I'd like to get to that place to where, you know, I feel like I've I've I've made it a little bit, right? Like, what would you tell somebody that's just getting up and running, trying to navigate it and and just trying to like get one foot in front of the other right now?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, I think that we one positive takeaway that we took from XYPN was that you should focus on a niche. Um, so even though we focused on creatives at first, we were able to pivot towards where the niche truly was, uh, where we could have the biggest impact for us, which was EquityComp. And I must say there's a lot of equity comp firms out there. Um, and I have a deep respect for all of them. I highly encourage anyone that wants to go into EquityComp to also heavily focus on the taxation of it because it is the majority of the problem, it is probably a taxation problem. Um so I would, you know, get your EA, get your ECA, and maybe even your CEP. I met some really cool CEPs in at Savant Wealth earlier this week. Um, not to derail the conversation, but I do have a software solution that helps with equity comp. So I've been speaking to uh for advisors and I've been speaking to a lot of equity comp advisors lately. And they're a great, they're a great crew. So it's a great, it's an example of a great niche, but like figure out what that niche is that you want to work with and just go all in, man, and be incredibly curious and definitely over-serve your clients at the beginning. Like if you ultimately want to charge a thousand dollars per month, I you know, start a lot lower,$200,$300 per month, just so you can get the at bats necessary to look behind the curtain on what their true problems are, get feedback on how you're doing, and then pivot. Don't take things too personally. You got to be a risk taker in the entrepreneur space. So you kind of have to fake it so you make it in certain aspects of what you're offering your clients. Um, and then if you don't satisfy uh what they need, feel free to refund them. Uh we've refunded quite a few clients for experiences that they didn't enjoy just because we promised you something and we didn't execute. Your brand and your reputation is everything. So if you never don't execute, just take that L on the chin and chalk it up to um, you know, experimentation and so that next time you do it, uh, you'll do it a lot better. And a lot of times in the early days, if we were doing something that we'd never done before, say like a solo 401k setup, a TD back when that was a thing, we would often do that for free just so that we can get an ad bat with the client, and then they wouldn't feel like they weren't charged for something that we're learning how to do on the fly. So you gotta really look at it as an investment. And like if you love the work that you're doing, then you would do it for free, you shouldn't do it for free. But if you're doing something new, right, you get a new skill that you then get to take to everyone else in your target market, then see if that can make sense for you. But there's a couple I can talk about that topic about turning corners and growing up and leveling up uh all day. Uh having a business partner is is really crucial as well, somebody that compliments you in terms of style or skills. Um, you know, night owl versus morning person, extrovert versus introvert, technical versus front of house, whatever it is, the yin-yang, peanut butter and chocolate is really important uh because then you get to fully compliment. Uh whereas if you get two people that are the same working together or separately, you don't really get the uh the dynamism that you can get from a more complimentary partnership.
SPEAKER_01:That's always a joke, man. I've said this on this podcast a million times. It's like if there were two Brocs, you'd meet a lot of people and then nothing would ever get done after that.
SPEAKER_03:You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01:Like you have to find the people that compliment like what you know you're not good at, or or they just bring ideas to the table that are different um than you. But you said something there, man, and I want to dial in real quick on that just a little bit more. It's like you're gonna take some L's, right? And I think a lot of people have this expectation of like, well, we're gonna do this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna know everything, I'm gonna have everything together. And then like they have a client that gets frustrated one day, and they're like, Well, I didn't know that was gonna happen, or I didn't expect that to happen. It's like, it's just a part of growing, right?
SPEAKER_00:Well, some things you can't control. Like, you can't I definitely don't take responsibility for things you can't control. If the market's down, that's not that's not your fault. Yeah, you gotta do some client education there. And but there are there are other examples where you you just did your best, and the you know, not everything is uh a guarantee. Like, for example, if you're giving equity, we have clients recently that have come to us because we give equity compensation advice and we talked them into selling their shares in Palantir, for example, or an Uber or a Spotify or what have you. And we probably secured financial independence for them for the rest of their lives, but that stock has gone up 3x since we had that conversation. And it's like you can't, you know, that's that's it's it's financial advice. Working and dealing with the future is a very interesting place to live in. Like, especially coming from the accounting space where all they deal with is the past and all focus on is execution, and there's not like a psychological aspect to it. Moving from dealing with the past to moving into the future requires a different set of skills. And you're working with humans' emotions. And so uh yeah, I wouldn't take L's or like you gotta be able to separate the difference. But even sometimes I I always err on the side of refunding or fixing things or doing something special for the sake of your reputation because we look we work in a reputation game. If you work in the service-based business, I'm not saying anything new here. All of your listeners know this, but I'm just leaning into it.
SPEAKER_03:For sure. For sure.
SPEAKER_02:Any other golden nuggets that you'd give out to people that are listening? Was there anything you wanted to share? That are starting up? Um, no, maybe just in general, like what's been on your mind, right? Like you're most people would say small boutique, you know, and you guys are getting into that larger firm size. Like, what's on your mind? Like, what's Shane thinking?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we get a lot going on lately. I mean, there is once you're at 20, 25 people, you get to delegate a lot of that work. Like anyone, I guess like something that I think about a lot is the difference between a lifestyle practice, a small giant, and an enterprise. And there was a frank discussion and a decision that AJ and I had at the beginning of BKFI, and we decided, like, we actually knew about these problems, right? Like we knew that if you built a firm that was designed to create a great lifestyle for the owner, it's gonna be a little bit easier to accomplish. And then you're gonna be seeing clients for the rest of your life. And some people love that. And they, you know, you get three or four people to assist you, and you do like a Matthew Jarvis or traditional RIA uh type practice where you're the one that sees all the clients, but the enterprise itself doesn't have a ton of value if you were gonna try to sell it because whoever buys you is ultimately gonna need you to sit in front of those clients because they don't trust you. So AJ, or they don't trust that the clients will be retained at the ultimate company. So AJ and I made a conscious decision to build an enterprise uh from the junk, and we built everything to be delegatable, which was, of course, actually pretty required for us because there was two of us. So we weren't building things in parallel. We had to build everything so that we could delegate to one another in case someone was on vacation, which ended up working great as we started to hire people because all those workflows were built out, and it kind of productized the service as well because we always knew everyone would get the same experience. If you've got 50 different clients getting 50 different experiences, or just like, I am at your beck and call type of experience, then it is it's just not something that a firm will want to purchase from you. You have to productize and serialize uh all of those services. So we did that for the past seven years, and then worked out great. We're able to bring on 20 people, and AJ were and I were finally able to both step away from seeing clients at the beginning of 2024. And then we spent like the last year and a half not seeing clients and uh not like not spending 40 plus hours a week in the business, and you know, idle hands and idle minds are really interesting, but really tough. Like things that didn't used to bother you because you're not distracted by work start to bother you. Like, we used to think that retirement in your late 30s and your early 40s would be an amazing thing, and then you realize you got out of school before everyone else did, and you're just kind of hanging out by yourself and you're wondering why people don't want to hang out with you. It's not anything, it's not your fault, it's just because other people have normal lives. Like most of us don't have that opportunity. So that's just like stuff that's been on my mind lately. And AJ and I have recommitted to a bigger initiative from 2026 to 2027 that are gonna get us a lot more invested and active in the business. And we took some nice, kind of like a half sabbatical, uh, and now we're back in, which is really exciting. Uh, we're really looking forward to 2026. And, you know, we started our fintech platform, Gemmify, uh, that was originally just a part of BKFI for our advisors, and now we're working with third-party advisors and we've got paying customers, providing feedback and contributing to the development costs. Uh, and there's definitely some a lot of work to be done on the platform, and we're really excited about the roadmap for it. So we got multiple irons in the fire now, and we're recommitting to growing everything in 2026.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, for sure, man. That'll be awesome to see you guys do that. Just out of curiosity, when you were at that like 35,000 foot view, when you had gotten to the point where it's like, oh, we can go take this half sabbatical. Like, what were some of the cool things about that? And then what were some of those things where it's like, why am I thinking about that? This is ultimately where I wanted to be. So, like, why is that even on my mind? Type deal.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, give you an idea of like what I did, so and takeaways that I got, like, it's interesting. I think everybody uh entertains the idea of like going back to school to some degree, right? Like maybe I should get a master's, or maybe just like the work I'm doing in my business is better than a master's degree or what have you. Or, you know, I was entertaining, like getting into other fields. Like, I've always wanted to get like a history degree or stuff like that. And like I'm a person that is always like, as you can see from all the different labs I was talking about earlier, like entertaining other uh other things, which I think enrich your experience as a financial advisor because you're constant, if you're talking to other clients or your own employees, you can just talk and you can have an emotional intelligence and you can put yourself in other people's shoes, and you know, you can talk on a wide range of topics if those are your interests, which I find cool. So uh I I've always wanted to uh get the CFA uh and I was like just always so curious. It's just been bothering me for years. So I did level one and I kept track of all of the things that I learned from it. And there were some fun nuggets in the in the finance space, and I never understood how they work before, like how the treasury issues bonds, yield curves, derivatives, stuff of that nature. Now, was it worth the 350 hours uh to go through all of that? I don't think so. And then level two and level three aren't happening. So there's fun stuff like that. Like I spent some time sailing, and there are some software. I spent a lot of time sailing actually, and there are some softwares in the sailing world that visualize how the future will look, and it shows the wind forecast into the future. And it's a really interesting way to view something that's going to happen in the future. So I'll be incorporating some of that into the software that shows your future vesting schedules and your future balance sheet within Gemify. So I think you can take inspiration from all over. And so the half sabbatical, I think everything informs everything else, and everything is related. And if you approach life that way, I think it's it's more fun. So I love it, man.
SPEAKER_01:I love it. Well, man, this has been fantastic. You've got uh an awesome mind. It's it's cool to kind of hear you just talk about all the things that you've done and what you guys have built. So for the people that are out there that want to follow along with what you're doing, uh, what's the best place to do that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, my LinkedIn uh, which is Shane Mason CPA. Um, we have a newsletter at BKFI that I think is fun. Uh, and then yeah, I'm not gonna give you my personal Instagram because sometimes uh lot more on there, but it's not hard to find. Uh but yeah, just I'll see you at a conference. I'm gonna be at like 25 of them in 2026. So I look forward to seeing you guys and anyone that's listening. And um I am super approachable. I love everybody, and I'm an optimist about human beings. So if you see me at a conference, please come have a beer with me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I can vouch for that for sure. Great guy. So thanks for the time, man. Yeah, thank you guys. Good to see you guys. You too. Likewise.