Jeff Kikel: Create Your Freedom-Day Through Successfully Building And Exiting Your Business

In this episode of the Passion Millionaire Podcast, Robert Roth speaks with entrepreneur, wealth manager, and exit strategy expert Jeff Kikel about how business owners can build companies that create financial freedom instead of lifelong dependency. With more than 25 years of experience in financial planning, wealth management, and multiple business exits, Jeff shares the strategies entrepreneurs can use to build businesses that work without them.

Jeff explains the concept of Freedom-Day, the moment your income no longer depends on showing up to work every day. He discusses how to structure a business for a successful exit, avoid costly tax mistakes years before selling, prepare financial records for due diligence, and create systems that increase both profitability and business value. Drawing from his own seven-figure exit and years of helping business owners plan their futures, he reveals why planning early can make the difference between an average sale and a life-changing one.

The conversation also explores recurring income, business efficiency, AI-powered operations, succession planning, owner financing, and why most entrepreneurs fail to prepare for the biggest financial event of their lives. If your goal is to build a business that gives you more freedom today and a valuable exit tomorrow, this episode is packed with practical insights you can apply immediately.

Connect with Jeff Kikel:
 https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkikel/

Podcast Website:
 https://rockandrollyourdreams.com/podcast/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Create a life of entrepreneurial freedom with insights from successful creatives, entrepreneurs, and investors. Discover how they overcame challenges and turn their biggest dreams into reality. They share their personal success playbook so you can build the business and life you truly want. Welcome to Passion Millionaire, the podcast by Robert Roth. Rock and roll your dreams.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Welcome to today's episode of the Passion Millionaire Podcast. And today we have a very specific angle of business which I'm personally really excited about because that is an angle where a lot of value is being created for business owners and the ones who are future business owners, talking about businesses with systems that can run without the owner as well. We have a guest here who is in finance for over 25 years, is in financial planning for business owners, specifically also does wealth management exit strategy planning. And he's all about the Freedom Day. And uh one big reason why he's on the podcast is also he has pulled and exited the businesses himself, which is really exciting. He can speak out of experience as all of the other podcast guests we have. So therefore, I'm happy to introduce Jeff Kikel.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Welcome, Robert. Thank you very much for inviting me on the show. I'm excited to have the conversation today.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

100%. Let us know who you are, give us a little bit of backstory, and then uh let's hop on this train of exit strategy for businesses. And uh really excited to hear your stories about that as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Thank you. Well um give you the the quick nutshell. I um started out my career actually in advertising and marketing, and um somewhere, well, I got married and I was traveling all the time, and everybody I worked with was divorced, and I really liked my wife. So I decided that it was time to find some other business and uh got into finance. Uh, really had no background in finance. I was, like I said, an advertising and marketing guy. Um, went to work for a very large firm here in the United States that uh really taught me everything I needed to know. You know, it was it was a 17-year career of learning, learning, learning, learning. Um, after 17 years, I'd kind of hit the the wall, so to speak, of you know, what I could do at that company. And I decided to leave, go to work for somebody else, uh, which was a public company. Realized why I'd never worked for a public company and never wanted to, because they think so short term. And uh after a few years of that, I decided to go out on my own as an individual uh wealth manager. Um, it was kind of that time in my life, too, where it was it was early enough, but not I I had, you know, like I said, spent a good 22 years at that point working for other people. And it was either take the time now and go off and launch something on my own, or I was just gonna end up working for somebody else for a long time. And I really reached a point where I said, okay, if if I'm gonna do it, I've got to do it now. And so I launched off, started my own practice. It was kind of uh what I would consider a hybrid of where I worked for a company, but I was independent within that company. And, you know, things worked out well. Um, I went, I got recruited to another company, and that was kind of the point in my life where it was the last people I ever worked for in my life. Um, I really didn't enjoy it, and I came to the realization that I wanted to launch my own business, that I could create it on my own, and I could get to the point where hopefully at some point in the future, that business generated a sale, an exit for me. So I did that with a partner. We launched off, started a wealth management practice uh relatively small at the beginning, and over a six-year period of time grew it to just slightly above $250 million under management. Um, in the process of that, just to add complexity to it, uh, the real reason I kind of jumped out on my own was I also started a co-working space. Um, so you know, shared workspace, completely different from anything else I had ever done. But I saw a need and I really kind of realized that I'd always been an entrepreneur. I was just an entrepreneur inside other people's companies. So I was an entrepreneur. And um, you know, it was I always was that guy who was like, okay, here's the project. They throw me into the middle of it with very little direction and very little money, and just go figure it out. And that's what I was good at. Well, that's what an entrepreneur does in most cases. So I I launched off, had you know, two different businesses that I was starting up basically at the same time. I would not recommend this to anybody, but it was kind of a weird situation because in our industry, I would have had to have approval from my previous bosses to go launch the co-working space, and they were never going to give me approval. So I kind of had to jump in there and say, okay, I'm doing both of these at the same time. Um over that next six years, you know, I continued to build both businesses. I also found some other needs kind of out there and launched a couple of other businesses on top of that. Uh, one of the things I do best is figure out ways to make a business highly efficient to where it does not require me to be involved in it. Um, so I was able to build a lot of businesses that way up to the point where I was kind of stressing myself out. And fortunately, the uh the COVID pandemic came along and it forced me to slow down a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

And and look at life like, okay, you know, I can't, like in the case of the the co-working space, well, nobody was coming in, but we had a few people that were working at home that started coming into our offices. But my wife and I had to get up and go to work every day. We had no employees at that point, but we had to get up and go to work because we did mail for people. So we were required to be here. Um, the wealth management practice, I mean, we continued to run that mostly over Zoom and everything else, which kind of changed our business as a result. What came out of that whole thing was I made each business more and more and more efficient. And when you don't have that ability to have to get in a car and drive to a client's office or drive to their house or whatever, and you're forced to say, hey, I'm we're doing it through Zoom. That's the only option we have. It was amazing how the world changed. Um, and what had been a couple struggling businesses turned into really effective, highly profitable businesses at that point. Um, and it just kept growing, growing, growing. Um, 2022, I had started prior to that talking about what I call freedom day. And freedom day is basically the first day you wake up and you didn't have to get up and go to work that day. You have a work optional lifestyle. So I've been talking about it. Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

Yeah, let's let's dig into that again later because that's a very exciting concept. And that's that's something a lot of people are trying to make happen in their life, and maybe they don't have the the right idea or structure of how to go about it. Yeah. So therefore, let's hop onto that definitely again. Okay. Take a note of that. So I'm really excited to you have opened a lot of you know conversation strings that um we I think should deep dive a little bit. Especially you have mentioned several companies that you have started and built. So your wealth management management company, then um um the how was it called the office, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

The co-working space.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Co-working space? Yeah. Didn't get the the word right now. Yeah. So and there was was there another business as well? It sounded like there was yeah, yeah, additional business.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

So what what was the other business of then uh so uh digital marketing um opened a digital marketing agency, which kind of supported the other businesses. I I tend to open businesses that support my other businesses along the path because I'd rather pay myself than pay somebody else to do it. Um so we have a tax practice as well. Um we've done it, we do taxes for individuals as well as businesses. Um, and then we have an insurance agency focusing really on it's it works kind of part of the the wealth management practice where we, you know, use insurance strategies and things like that with clients.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

So you have four businesses currently, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Four businesses. Well, at the high point, we had seven. Um we've slowly kind of pecked away and and either merged or just either closed them down or sold them. Um so my first exit was which I call my first freedom day was 2022 when my business partner in the wealth management practice decided that he wanted to buy me out of the practice. We were kind of going two different paths. And um, I I've always said, I'm gonna write a book at some point that is how to piss your partner off enough to get them to buy you out. Um, because that was really kind of what happened uh in the process. We were just we're we're going down two paths and it was not gonna work anymore. And I I never it partnerships never work for me. It's never worked right. Um, they've always kind of turned out bad in the end. So, you know, I I always get myself into them and then it's it's just ugly getting out of them. But, you know, as a result of that, uh that gave me my freedom day. You know, I basically woke up that next day and said, well, what do I want to do for the rest of my life? Because I was 55 at the time. Um, and you know, that for me it was well, what what is it that makes me excited? What's what makes me want to get up every day? Well, I still love the wealth management world.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Let me dig into that a little bit more. So um, first of all, congratulations. Thank you. What an achievement. Absolutely fantastic. Like, love it. So, could you give us an idea also which which business was that that you sold? Like what was the size of the business? And um, you know, you choose which numbers or how you present the numbers, right? But but some context is always helpful, right? And how big was the exit, or what would what did you learn from the exit? So those those type of questions give us a little bit more of an idea.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Yeah. So I mean, the first exit was the wealth management practice that I had built. That was the the largest business at the time. Um, it was the one that paid me the most, so to speak. And um, you know, ended up my partner bought me out of the business. Um, combination of cash plus I financed, you know, over a period of time that exit for myself. So, you know, it gave me an income coming in as well as um a chunk of change. Uh, it was a seven-figure exit in the end. You know, after after everything is all said and done, it'll be a seven-figure exit uh from the business. Um, you know, I was comfortable. I would I would typically tell people, don't finance if you can avoid it.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

I knew the business about owner financing. Yep. Uh did I get that correctly? So basically he he paid you a percentage and then he said to you, Hey, I don't have the rest of the money. I don't want to take out a loan. There is no way I can leverage any resources within the company to take out a loan. I don't want to do that. Hey, let's uh figure out how um I can just pay you out over time. And then you probably did uh an agreement about he additionally needs to pay you an interest for that. Or how did you structure that? Like am I somewhere along the right lines?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

It was structured as a loan, basically. So, you know, it's owner finance loan. Um, I, you know, it was over a period of time plus interest on top of that. Um, you know, and it it worked out really well in our case, and and this is something that I I try and encourage people, you know, accountants are good at certain things, but they're really terrible at other things. Um, and they're really terri, they, they, they focus on trying to shut or trying to eliminate taxes today. And in a lot of cases, they put their clients in a really, really bad position if they're gonna sell their business down the road. Um, so I'll give you an example of how this worked in my favor. Yeah. So when we founded the business originally, now our our CPA told us, well, you know, you need to be an S-corp and all that. We were an LLC, and you know, well, you need to be an S-corp and all this because of the tax treatment and all that. Well, I kind of knew a little bit about exit. I'd done a lot of exit strategy planning, and I knew kind of what how it would end if it ended, uh, would likely be an a um a stock sale and not an asset sale. So we actually, when we formed the business, you know, like six years prior, we formed it as a C Corp. And what that's a C Corp, what happened was that C Corp allowed us to then treat the the business as what's called a qualified small business corporation. And the benefit of that is when you sell a qualified small business corporation as a stock sale, then there is no capital gain on it. So you know, that's a huge tax benefit to doing that. And you got to do some long-term planning on this because it requires you have to do this for at least five years. So this is why I always tell people when they're when they're starting to think about it their exit, you got to think about this a lot. You got to have somebody that knows what they're talking about. And two, you've got to plan ahead for a lot of this stuff because if you don't, I mean, most people kind of wait and then just all of a sudden, oh, I want to sell my business next year. And they put themselves in a position where, okay, you have no choices, you have no ways of doing things. There are still some strategies to reduce, you know, your tax costs, but you can put yourself in a situation where, okay, this is not so good. So worrying about what taxes look like today versus what they could look like in the future, I'd rather pay tax, you know, I always said this, I'd rather pay, you know, if you if you think of a farming analogy, I'd rather pay tax on the seed than the the crop at that point. You know, and and uh so we paid tax on the seed, but I didn't have to pay tax on the crop in the end in the long run.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Okay, yeah, that's that's interesting. Makes total sense. Like I did not know that you could structure it um like that. Yeah, that's anything I've done.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

It's even better under the new uh with the with the tax bill that happened over the summer here in the United States. Um, it it really they they codified this much better and they made it permanent, which is good. So we know what the rules are, you know, going forward, unless somebody dramatically changes the the tax laws, which I don't foresee happening.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

Yeah, quite interesting. Okay, so basically just to recap a little bit, like you did start this company as a C Corp and not as an LLC corp. We did. Okay. And you kept it as a C Corp and then you had this opportunity to uh actually also sell your stocks at the end exactly as you just explained.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

Wow. So that probably I mean that was a six figure gain for you to just structure it.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

It was, yeah. I mean it it probably saved me 30% of the I mean literally, it saved me 30% of the you know, the amount of the sale in the long run. So yeah, it's it's nice. I mean, I I only really pay tax on the the the loan interest that I receive and that's it out of it. And you know, okay, that's okay, I I set the loan interest here and okay, I pay tax on it, but it's you know not near as much as it would have been.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Yeah, and I w I want to point out how huge this is. I mean, that was a six-figure gain. Basically, it was set up in the beginning, right. One time the right way. That's a small cost relatively to what it will do at the end.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Well, the thing is, you have to have yeah, I mean, it costs the exact same amount in Texas where I live, cost the exact same amount to do any kind of allocate or you know, any any setup of a business, it's it's the exact same amount, regardless of the type. So it didn't cost anything different. It's just it was smart planning from the very beginning.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Um and that's what I'd like to point out. If you don't know about that, yeah, but this opportunity exists, like it's it's making a difference of a six-figure amount potentially, have or have not. Yeah. So therefore, it makes sense to talk to somebody like you to figure that out from the beginning. So and even if there's a cost attached to the consultation, right? Or to you know, um that's a very good investment.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

It's I will say it's not nearly as much as the taxes would be at that point.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

So yeah, and even you know, you never know how the company is turning out in the end. But if you're aspiring and you know you're all in with this thing and you make this happen and or you do everything in your might to make that happen, even if you have a couple tries and one will happen, like that's still a no-brainer to uh figure this out at the beginning beginning and and and have that advantage. I mean, that would be a huge mistake not to do it. Absolutely, and therefore, like it's exciting to like I'm a fan in general, like whoever I would be booking as a consultant or as an agency that I would uh bolt on temporarily or whatever for growth somewhere to work with people who have actually done the thing that they are selling to you. So that's exactly what you what you are, right? So you are the embodiment of exactly that in um the business, you know, exiting niche, and you are somebody who is helping to structure the right way from day one, and you have that experience. It's a totally different level compared to targeting some of the things.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Yeah, well, and I mean I I will say it's just it selling a business is a it's a unique challenge, I will say. And I mean, I've sold now two businesses, one, you know, where where I was intimately involved in the business, you know, where I sold to a partner. That was one totally different situation. I sold to somebody else, you know, and that was a totally different situation. Uh, there's some similarities. Um, one, it never goes as fast as you think. Uh it always takes way longer because there's attorneys involved and they have their own timeline versus what your timeline is. Um, you know, I I will say, you know, we're about ready to put up for sale another one of our businesses. And, you know, I'm like I'm making sure I get everything in order, um, which, you know, the more you're organized, the better off you're gonna be because it it doesn't um you you need to spend a little bit of time putting everything together, putting together a kind of a packet of information that you'll provide to a potential buyer. Uh, because what you don't want to do is you definitely don't want to have anything where they smell smoke, you know, and wait a minute, and they get focused on that. Um, so you don't want to give them any kind of a canary in the coal mine. You want to be as upfront as possible. You know, you've got to give them all the information. Once, you know, you've got to disclose all information. So it's best to have that very well organized. So they as they have questions, they can get the information that they need. Otherwise, they're gonna drive you crazy because they're constantly gonna be asking you questions about things.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

And rightfully so. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

I would be doing the same.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

Putting up smoke and mirrors about it, right? Then therefore, it's their job. They need to do their due diligence. They want to make sure they are investing in the city.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

If I were buying a business, I would drive them crazy too. It's it would be nine percent.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

So, therefore, behind behind what you just said is like basically if somebody is you know building a business and thinking about an exit in the future, like where the money is, the money is basically in structuring the business the right way so that it's worth a lot for somebody who is doing due diligence that figures out, yeah, this thing makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah, that it's an easy plug in for their business. Um, you know, like I said, once again, it's It's it's one of those the the the parts of a a business sale where I've worked with clients and you know we've had that exit process that we've worked through, you know, one the I mean phase one, you got to get the financials in order because that is the that's the canary in the coal mine. If you your financials are terrible, um if you basically worked out of a shoebox, you know, with receipts and everything else, you got to get your financials in order. So I would hire a good CPA that can go through those, do a kind of a minor audit of them, make sure they're in order. Uh, if you don't have a bookkeeper, hire a good bookkeeper that can actually get the books in order because most CPAs are not really good at fixing the books, uh, but a good bookkeeper can get that stuff in order really well and get it working in the right way, then have the CPA look at it and say, okay, well, this is what how we need to tweak these, you know, have those two work together to get the books right. And then once that's done, you know, you've got to get all the information about your business into some format to where it's easily accessible. I typically upload it to like a Google Drive or a Dropbox or something like that. And, you know, I'll have nice organized folders with, you know, our contracts and um, you know, employee information as far as employee contracts, anything like that, um, you know, your leases, everything else, all in one spot, so they can review all that as they're doing their due diligence.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Yeah. Perfect. And it's nothing complicated about you've touched the.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

No, it isn't. I mean, it takes time. And I mean, that's most people don't take the time. Um, you know, you also want to think about this a couple years ahead of time and not, you know, okay, uh, I'm tired, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to sell my business. Well, you're yeah, I mean, uh, they'll smell blood in the water in a minute, and you know, you're gonna get yourself in trouble because you're not either not gonna sell the business um or you're gonna get much less price than you would have wanted when they start to smell the the blood in the water.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Yeah, 100%. So a really great move, also, I believe, that you have made. Like basically the finance business, you have sold your shares to your partner. So I mean you had the customer for your shares right in your company. Yep. That's awesome. You did not have to go out and find somebody else to to buy them, which maybe even might have been super complicated because yeah, I mean, it was complicated enough.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Just you know, being yeah, selling it to a partner was complicated enough. I mean, it just there's there's so much time that it takes. I mean, it took me seven, eight months from start to finish to to close that deal in 2022. And I mean, that was a business that I knew, you know, because we had to have a business valuation done, and then we had to negotiate everything out and fight back and forth a little bit between the lawyers, and you know, then it's just kind of figuring out how you're gonna wind down the business and wind yourself out of the business at that point because I was intimately involved in that, and now all of a sudden I wasn't. Um, so we kind of had to back me out of the business to where I wasn't really interacting with the clients and really had no interest in doing that because I'm not trying to grow the business. I'm trying, I'm not trying to grow his business at that point. I'm trying to exit out. And, you know, I was kind of looking at, well, what what's my next step gonna be? And I think that's another big part of it is you got to start to figure out, well, what's your next step gonna be? And you know, I had a I had some things that I was some projects that I really wanted to work on that it basically gave me seven months of getting paid to work on my own projects at that point.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

So basically what you're saying is like you had an agreement to stay in the business while it's been yeah, to help hand it over and make sure that all the processes, everything is running smoothly until you're you kind of faded yourself out. And it's a basically an insurance for now the new owner of the whole business that nothing is breaking. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

That's exactly right. Yeah. And so I yeah, I moved out of our office that we had in the in the co-working space here. I moved to a separate office. Um, and I really, like I said, I started working on my own projects at that point. I I still was working with a few clients that eventually came along with me to my new firm. Um, but you know, I had I was I had some writing projects I wanted to work on. Um, I was launching a podcast at that time, and I was really trying to codify a lot of this whole Freedom Day concept, you know, which it was interesting that I was kind of building it on the fly. So the the book that I wrote that kind of lays all this out, it was funny because I wrote I wrote 12 other books before I finished the book that I started first. Um, and the reason was I I the story wasn't quite written yet. And you know, it took me some time to really go back and then say, okay, well, here's here's how all this laid out. And it was a lot of introspection of how all this happened throughout a you know a 10-year period of time of launching businesses and building businesses and everything else. And and I wrote the book Overcoming the Retirement Trap as a result of that, which is kind of the Freedom Day story, I guess, the best way to explain it.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Yeah, exciting. And um, I'd be curious about a couple more details. Like when you said like it took around eight months to make that deal happen. So and then you were also mentioning, okay, there were, you know, lawyers involved, and there was it sounded like some external person involved to evaluate the business. Yep. Um, can you maybe give us an idea? You know, that was a seven-figure exit, right? So, what is the the cost also involved for evaluation for the lawyers and all of this? Basically, cost of exiting uh the business.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Well, for me, you know, uh my partner had to get the the business valuation done because he was trying to buy the business. So he had to get the business, you know, it he was buying the business for me. We had to have that valuation. So he took that cost on. I don't even know what he paid, a couple thousand dollars, probably three to four thousand dollars to get a business valuation done. You know, lawyers, uh, there were lawyers on both sides of the of the the deal, which you really have to have, because they're each representing the you know either party's interest at that point, and they're the ones that do the negotiation. So, you know, my partner and I really didn't have any interaction. I mean, you know, here in the office we'd see each other and say hi or whatever, but we had very little interaction. We didn't discuss the deal at all outside of the the attorneys, and I would encourage people to do that. You don't want to be having a conversation where the attorney's not involved because you could make an agreement that you didn't know that you made and put yourself in a bad situation. So everything went through my attorney and his attorney, and then they went back and forth. Um, his attorney drew up the the sale document. Um, and then my attorney came in and just ripped it to shreds. And so I had a really good attorney. I mean, I I he he's just he's been a long-term friend of mine, um, really sharp young lawyer, and just literally took a 45-year career attorney that's been doing these things and just literally shredded him in the process. Um, you know, and it was just, you know, and it was a lot of back and forth on, well, what was the, you know, what was the amount that I would take out in cash versus what I would finance and everything else. And, you know, I mean, it was about a I financed 70% of the deal versus 30%, which I would if I was advising a client, I would never advise them that much risk. I mean, there was that's a lot of risk to take on yourself.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

If you fucks up the business uh three months later, yeah, there is screwed.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Yeah. And I mean, yes, theoretically I could step back in and take over the business, but I mean, if it's already screwed up, it's gonna be a lot of work to fix. Um, you know, so I typically recommend the other way around, maybe finance 40% of the deal and take 60% in cash at that point. Um, where now it's like, okay, I'm I'm at least taking some of the risk off the table at that point. Uh, if the business goes away, okay, I can probably step back in and try and fix it or sell it again, but it's not gonna be, you know, the big chunk of my income that's just getting wiped out as a result of that. And I've seen this happen multiple times with clients where I wasn't involved in that situation and the client basically lost everything as a result of it.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

Oh my god. Yeah, wow. Thank you for those insights. Also, it's quite uh yeah, enlightening. Yeah, so I'd be super excited to dig into those other exits that you've done as well. But maybe that's something for a future podcast because like you have this one thing you're talking about, this idea, this concept of the freedom day, yeah, right. So and you live the freedom day. You have said beforehand, like your first freedom day basically, that's the one that matters. That was the exit of this company, right? So elaborate on that concept. Like, is the only way to have a freedom day to exit a company? Is there different ways to do that? How do we define the freedom day?

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Not at all. I mean, I I you know, you can you can have your freedom day and be an employee. Um what the key to it is, is people have got to get out of the mindset. And and this is a, I mean, it unfortunately it's a result of, and this happens all over the world. Um, most of the financial firms in the world, how they make their money is gathering assets, and then they make money off those assets. So, thus, the people that work for them, financial advisors and wealth managers, they typically are going to do what what the the people that pay them, what they're what they're trained to do is acquire assets, acquire assets, acquire assets. So the entire retirement industry is built around, well, this number. And I remember when I remember this came out in the early 2000s, you know, when I was working for a large financial firm, they came up with the number. And it was, well, you have to have X amount of dollars saved so that you can retire. And, you know, what happens a lot of times is there's this magic number, but that magic number doesn't really necessarily mean anything because the number is not what you live on. Income is what you live on. The number doesn't really matter as much, but it's the income you generate. And so when somebody comes to me and says, Well, hey, Jeff, I have $800,000. Can I retire? You know, my first question is, well, how much income do you need? You know, where where are your sources of income? Where's that money coming in from? Maybe $800,000 is enough. Maybe it isn't. We need to figure out where your income comes from first. So when I when I started talking about Freedom Day, Freedom Day is not about assets. It's not an asset problem, it's an income problem. So when I talk to people about Freedom Day, you know, they look at me and say, Well, you know, I'm gonna retire at 65. Well, what what does that number mean? That time period, it's not time bound, it's income bound. So when somebody says, Well, when am I gonna get my Freedom Day? Well, when are you gonna have enough income to replace your existing income? And in a lot of cases, you don't need to replace your income. You need to have a certain bare amount of income coming in. So if you're spending every dime that you make, then yeah, you're probably gonna need to make as much as you're making today. But if you're saving a significant chunk of your money, well, you don't need to save anymore once you get to your freedom day. You just need to have the income coming in that can help you live your life. And so that's what it becomes not a time-bound question, it becomes an income-bound question.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

So yeah, so replacing active income that you work for, you trade your time.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

I trade. And you know, some people say, well, passive income. Well, passive income is maybe one way. Starting a business like I did, that was my first, what I would consider my first freedom day was the ability for me to leave working for somebody else and begin to work for myself. Now, did I have financial freedom at that point? Oh no, not even close. But I had time freedom to where I could then go and build on my income. Um, I had the ability to build multiple businesses at that time. Once I learned the technique to build a business, once I had a successful business, I just kept modeling the same thing over and over again. And I continue to do that today. I mean, I still look at every single thing and I say, okay, I'm interested in generating another source of income. Okay, here's the model for how we're going to do this. And the model that I have today is, okay, it cannot involve me being intimately involved in the process at the beginning. It has to be built from day one to where it is highly massively efficient, to where, you know, either somebody else is running it for me, or in today's world, I'm leveraging AI like crazy in my businesses. You know, I'll give you an example. My current wealth management practice, what used to take me close to a month to do research and build models and everything else and do the trading is now done in less than about four hours time per month. Wow. And I can manage, I can, I could basically develop the trading models using AI. So I have a universe of investments. I have a universal strategy or technically three universal strategies that I built that I can basically run through AI. It takes a ton of data and makes it very simple and comes up with a list of here's our target list of investments for the month. I now, you know, through the platform that I that I use for you know portfolio management, I can go in, update the models, then go in, take every single client account and say rebalance, boom, it does the rebalance. It takes me, you know, 15 to 20 minutes to do that. And then I'm off and going for the rest of the month. So it allows me the time to take a lot of the weight off and it and having another person to let's say do trading for me and things like that. I don't need it anymore. Um, so it's that it's being highly efficient and building a business specifically to where it's repeatable. I mean, somebody else could easily step in, utilize my strategies, utilize the trading. I could hire somebody to do that full time if I didn't want to be the one doing it. Um and and that's every business I build now is that same way.

SPEAKER_02 38:16

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Love the formula. Yeah. So and um I'd be curious, like your typical client, like um, what would be the questions that you hear the most? So give us the top three questions and also maybe your best answer.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

Yeah. So I mean, how can I retire tomorrow is usually the the one that they come to me and it's like, well, you we need to we need to have, we might be able to get you to your freedom day tomorrow, but we really need to have a plan. And and that's really the answer is you've got to have a plan. Um, stress in retirement is all about the not really understanding what's going on, not will really having a plan of how you're gonna generate income, uh, trying to generate all your income based on what the stock market's doing. And God knows we're, you know, I mean, today the market's up 900 points on the Dow, you know, last week it was down 500 points. Imagine trying to generate your income off of something that's moving that dramatically. So you've got to structure your income to where, okay, the stuff, my essential expenses need to be covered by things that aren't highly volatile and are guaranteed and are gonna last as long as I do. Because that's the number we don't know is well, how long are you gonna live? You know, that's my my joke to clients is when they say, well, how much, you know, how long is my money gonna last? Well, tell me how long you're gonna last, and I can do that. I mean, the problem is we're working from uh an unknown, we don't know how long you're gonna last. So we've got to do things, we've got to make sure we put things in place that ensure that you are going to be, you know, income if you live to be 110 or if you live to be 85, you're gonna have guaranteed income coming in without a fail every month. Then you can have growth and you can have some flexible income and things like that. So um my my other book that I I work with clients on, I created called the retirement income equation. And it's really laying those things out. So, you know, it's a plan first. So we we start from a plan. Uh, if they're a business owner, um, we'll sit down and say, okay, you know, when when is that exit gonna happen for you? What is that exit likely to look at? So I'm gonna ask them a ton of questions about, you know, do you think there's a business, do you think there's a business out there that might be interested in acquiring you? You know, because a lot of times they've had people come to them and say, hey, you know, do you want to sell your business? And they just weren't ready at the time. Um, is there a family member or a key employee that looks like they're going to buy the business from you? Um, so we want to have a plan for structuring the business to make it efficient for whoever might take over the business. And you might have to call a little bit of an audible in there because you might think, you know, I have a really good friend that we just helped her kind of sell her business. Her original plan was her daughters were going to take it over. And then as they started to make that adjustment and the daughters were starting to take it over, she realized that they were clueless on being able to run the business. They didn't, they did not have the skill set to become that business owner, which meant that put her at risk because she was going to finance a majority of that deal. So she had to call an audible and then ended up selling her business to another company, uh, which honestly worked out much, much, much better financially and just cleaner for her. She wasn't going to keep getting pulled back into the business, which is largely what have would have happened had that had gone. Um the question that I have for people or the questions I get from people that I call cubicle warriors, those people that get up every day, go to work for somebody in a cubicle to die a little bit every day. You know, the question I get from them is, well, okay, do I have enough saved for retirement? Well, you may, you may not, but I don't really don't want to work until 65. I'd really like to get out as soon as possible. Well, okay, you've got time now, you've got an income coming in to take care of your base needs. Either take some money out of that and put it towards not just savings, but put it towards things that will generate income. So maybe it's investing in a business. Maybe it is creating, starting a business on the side that doesn't require a lot of money, but can start to generate a side income. Maybe it is I start doing some things like investing in real estate or looking at different paths along that kind of passive income side that will start to generate income. And once you have enough of that side income, it's what I call your minimum required income, MRI, which basically covers your essential expenses plus about 15% extra. Once you reach that, you're at your freedom day because you could you could literally leave your job that day and you would have no effect on your income. You would be, you wouldn't have to worry about your house and feeding yourself and everything else. You have enough. You have a minimum required income. Now, doesn't mean you're going to take all around the world trips on a cruise, but you can do something else at that point. Maybe it's a part time job, maybe it's You know, taking more time to actually spend more time generating income to where you can increase that amount at that point in time. So that, you know, those are the three big questions or the new kind of clients that I get coming together.

SPEAKER_02 44:15

Yeah, appreciate that. Thank you for that. That makes a lot of sense. And then whoever was listening could sort yourself probably in one of those categories. So and before I'm gonna ask you the very last question for this episode that we're doing together. I'd be curious. Like if somebody wants to get in touch with you, what would be the best way to do so?

SPEAKER_01 44:34

Well, a couple places. Uh one, LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn all the time. That's probably the place you'll find me. I'm on all social channels, but that's the place you'll find me and you can contact me. Uh, second, uh www.freedomdaymethod.com is the website I set up for kind of my Freedom Day, um, all the stuff related to Freedom Day. And that links you to my book. It links you to the podcast that I do, Freedom Nation with Jeff Kickle. Um, it actually has some cherry-picked the the book has some cherry-picked episodes of the podcast that I do, uh, videos of people that I highlight in the book. The the website actually takes you to those very specific episodes. So you can, you know, if you if you want to learn a little bit more about each of these people that kind of fits a chapter in the book, uh, you can get that right off the the Freedom Day Method website.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

Awesome. Loving it. We're gonna uh link this in the show notes as well. So for everybody in the super easy, and there's lots of goodies on the website too.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

There's some freebies on there of like different um, you know, worksheets and things like that that you can kind of work through the book and uh work through the worksheets on there.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

Awesome. Jeff, last question in one sentence. What do you think is the biggest mistake that you see people make over and over that are trying to actually get to the Freedom Day?

SPEAKER_01 46:00

Failure to plan. Yeah, they have they have no plan, they just keep wandering through life. Um, whether you're working a job and you're trying to figure out how I'm gonna get to my Freedom Day, they don't have a plan to get themselves there. And business owners especially, they're they're in the alligator pit fighting alligators all day long, and they don't take the time to sit down and say, okay, well, what does this eventual exit look like to me? And they don't really find somebody like a me that is an exit strategy planner. I mean, there's not a ton of us out there to begin with, but um, you know, it's it's finding somebody that can walk you through that process, specifically a consultant or a coach who actually has exited from a business is just a must because you know, a theory's fine, but I will tell you, having helped other people exit businesses and then done it on my own, it was a totally different experience. I I I gained such insight into the incredible stress and craziness that can happen as a result of that. Jeff, thanks very much.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

Great to hear to that we that we're here. Thanks for all of the insights and uh probably see you soon. Chef Kikiller, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

Thanks, Robert.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

Go to rock and rollyourdreams.com forward slash podcast.