563 Greg Brogger

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Paper Wealth Problem

Jeffrey Feldberg: What happens when the wealth you worked years to create is real on paper but trapped where you can't fully see it? Greg Brogger has spent his career answering that question before most people even understood the problem existed. As CEO and co-founder of Collective Liquidity, Greg helps founders, executives, early employees, and unicorn shareholders unlock liquidity, diversify concentrated private company equity, and think more strategically about wealth before the traditional exit window arrives.

And Greg hasn't just participated in the evolution of the private markets. He's helped build the infrastructure behind them. Before Collective Liquidity, Greg founded SharePost, one of the earliest and most influential marketplaces for private company shares. SharePost helped open access to unicorn equity before companies like this were regularly talked about outside closed investor circles. The [00:01:00] company later merged with Forge, further shaping the private market liquidity landscape. Greg launched and led Nasdaq Private Market and the SharePost One Hundred Fund, giving him a rare vantage point into how private wealth is created, concentrated, protected, and eventually unlocked.

For founders and high achievers, this isn't just a conversation about liquidity. It's about timing, control, regret, risk, and the quiet pressure of having life-changing wealth that still feels just out of reach.

And before we start this episode, a quick word from our sponsor, Deep Wealth and the 90 Day Deep Wealth Mastery Program. Here's Jane, a graduate who says, and I quote, the Deep Wealth Mastery Program prevented me from making what would have been one of the biggest mistakes of my career. I almost signed on the dotted line with an unsolicited offer that I now realized would have shortchanged my hard work and my future had I accepted that offer. Deep Wealth Mastery has tilted the [00:02:00] playing field to my advantage.

Or how about Lyn? Wow, he gets right to the point, and I quote, Deep Wealth Mastery is one of the best investments ever made because you'll get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anyone who doesn't go through this will lose millions. 

And as you're listening to these testimonials, are you wondering if you have the time? Are you even thinking that you've got this covered, you have the advisors or people in your network? Well, I got to tell you, these myths, they're often behind the 90 percent failure rate for liquidity events. Think about it. You have one chance to get it right for your financial freedom. You really want to make it count.

And when it comes to time, let's hear what William has to say. We just got in this testimonial, William says, and I quote, I didn't have the time for Deep Wealth Mastery. But I made the time and I'm glad I did. What I learned goes far beyond any other executive program or coach I've experienced. 

So what do you think?

As I hear that, that's exactly what gets me out of bed every day. That's my mission. That's the team's mission here at Deep Wealth to literally change the social fabric of [00:03:00] society. One business owner at a time, one liquidity event at a time, and my Deep Wealth Nation, what I want you to know, the Deep Wealth Mastery Program, it isn't theory.

It's from the trenches. It's the only one based on a nine figure deal. And that deal, that was my deal. You know my story. I said no to a seven figure offer. I created the system that later on, myself and my business partners, we said yes to a different buyer, a different offer, a nine figure deal. That's what we now call the Deep Wealth Mastery Program or the Scale For Ultimate Sales system.

It's built by business owners, for business owners, so if you're interested in growing your profits for preparing for a future liquidity event, and that may be two years away, it could be 22 years away, whatever the time may be, you want to do this now, and you want to optimize your post exit life, Deep Wealth Mastery is for you.

To get started, email success at deepwealth. com. Again, that's success. S U C C E S S at DeepWealth. com. You'll receive all [00:04:00] the information about the Deep Wealth Mastery Program or better yet, why not hop on a complimentary strategy call.

We'll go through exactly where your business is today and what's standing between you and your financial independence and your dreams. So that's where you want to be. You want to be with other successful business owners, entrepreneurs, and founders, just like you they're looking to grow their businesses, create markets.

Market disruptions and unlock their financial freedom to get what they deserve. And whether you've been in business for three years, 40 years, you're a startup, you're manufacturing you're in high tech, low tech, whatever the case may be, coming in and network with other business owners, it's a safe space.

It's a confidential space with business owners, with businesses just like you, because they all wanna lock in their financial freedom and enjoy both success and fulfillment. So again, the 90 Day Deep Wealth Mastery Program, it has your name on it. All you need to do is take the next step. Please send an email to success at deepwealth. com.

Golden Handcuffs Intro

Jeffrey Feldberg: Deep Wealth Nation, welcome to another episode of the Deep Wealth Podcast. Well, Deep Wealth Nation, let me ask you this. [00:05:00] You started your business, you've grown it, you've scaled it, it's incredibly successful, but do you have the golden handcuffs? I'm not talking about the golden handcuffs where you are the business, the business is you.

I'm talking about your liquidity, your wealth, and you're not quite sure what to do or how to deal with that, or maybe that it's even there. We have a very special guest in the House of Deep Wealth. We have a fellow founder. In fact, he's a market maker. He's done some remarkable things on something that's not talked enough about.

You're gonna learn all about that. I'm gonna put a plug in it right there. Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. Very excited to have you in the House of Deep Wealth. Welcome. There's always a story behind the story, and wow, you have quite the story. So what's your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today?

Greg Origin Story

Greg Brogger: First, Jeffrey thank you for having, me on the podcast. I'm super excited to share whatever insights I have with your audience. But what got me to where I am? Well, in the kind of overarching grand story, I started with as somebody as a child that, started little businesses, everything from paper routes to delivery services locally, [00:06:00] and I've never kinda stopped working in that space.

I did take a brief detour to kinda get my career started in Silicon Valley as an attorney at Wilson Sonsini, which is a one of the law firms in Silicon Valley that, that represents a lot of tech companies. They incorporated Apple and Google and, many other companies. It was a great way to break into the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

I really didn't like being a lawyer much. I was there for 24 months before crossing over to the entrepreneurial and business side of things. Had a couple of successful exits with a co-founder and with a team of people. 

Why SharesPost Started

Greg Brogger: But what's really relevant for what we're doing or what I'm doing today in my current company, which is called Collective Liquidity, starts in 2009.

this company that I started in 2009 was called SharesPost, and it was founded really on the premise that private companies were gonna be staying private longer, and that's something that I think we kinda take for granted today. But at the time people were thinking that [00:07:00] what we were seeing was just a kind of a cyclical downturn in the number of IPOs, and that nothing really structural had changed.

And if you believe that, if you believe that companies were always or were going to continue to go public at valuations in the $300 million kind of size, then you didn't really have a need for liquidity in that marketplace because by the time the companies became valuable enough for people to be able to sell shares, they were already public companies, and the public markets were very good at creating liquidity.

no need to solve the problem on the private side of the divide. But I saw... I thought, some really fundamental changes, both regulatory and market structure, and I'm happy to go into that if that's of interest. But I suspected that this was not just a temporary downturn in IPOs, but this was gonna become the dominant way that people or VCs and founders built companies.

It was keep them private as long as they could. And really the first example and really the catalyst for this observation was what was happening at Google because this is ancient history at this point, but I think, [00:08:00] pre-Google, every founder thought about going public as the end destination.

You ring the bell on the New York Stock Exchange, that is your victory lap, and most founders didn't even have an idea what would happen after that. It was just like, "If I can go public, then I've been successful." And the strange thing that was happening with Google and then with Facebook and with Twitter, they were dragging their feet to go public.

In fact, it was the SEC and some of these regulations that forced them to go public. And I said, "Look, if the, if the most successful companies in the world are choosing to delay their IPO as much as possible, maybe this is the front end of a trend. And if that's the case, you're gonna have employees and executives and investors that need liquidity because it's...

Most individuals and employees that get stock options are not like institutional investors. They can't hold for the 10, 11 or 12 years it takes for companies to go public in today's world when you need to be at a billion-dollar or more valuation." And so that seemed like it was not quite a problem yet, but it was gonna [00:09:00] become a very big problem.

And that's why we started SharesPost, which is a marketplace to connect buyers and sellers of pre-IPO shares for the first time.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's incredibly forward-thinking. And as you're talking about this, actually, Greg, you're taking me to step one, the very first step of the Deep Wealth 9-step roadmap. You found a blind spot, an inflection point of, okay, companies don't want to go public so quickly, but whether it be the founders or even the early employees, they've got their wealth tied up in this.

And I love how, okay, this is a potential problem. Let me create a solution for that. You're one of the early ones in there, and you were there, you've been there, you've done that. And from there, you could have stopped. My goodness, you could have said, "Look what I've done. I had some incredible success with that."

But you didn't. You kept on going and, you know, here we are today with Collective Liquidity. So what was that gap from the SharesPost incredibly successful to the Collective Liquidity where you said, "I'm gonna put my [00:10:00] hat in the ring again. Let's go on to this next

Greg Brogger: started again. 

From SharesPost to Collective

Greg Brogger: Yeah, I ran and built SharesPost for about a decade. And we ended up, trading or connecting buyers and sellers in about $10 billion worth of transactions and in about 350 plus unicorn names. So 350 different companies we created liquidity. And so that, felt good.

And I... it made sense at the time that, in a nascent market you pick the simplest models to create liquidity and make the market more efficient, and the very simplest model is broker. Find a buyer, find a seller connect them in a transaction. And that, you know, starting from zero where no shares were trading in any kind of online marketplace, That felt like that was a do they say?

A big, hairy, audacious goal in and of itself. But the market moved in, moved on, and developed and deepened, and more and more companies started to trade, and there were other marketplaces that got started. More and more capital came into the market, and as more transactions happened, the market became more efficient naturally.

And [00:11:00] so, felt at one point that I was getting as far with that model as I could, with the broker-dealer model. We became an alternative trading system. We started a fund. We built out pieces to support the core business. But I felt like there wasn't anything else that I really had to offer.

And right about that time, COVID happened in, whatever kinda 2019, 2020 type timeframe. And so that was a time of kind of free fall for, some period of, six months to a year in the market where nobody knew what was happening and all the transactions kinda went away. Everybody was on the sideline in financial markets.

And so it seemed like it was a time potentially to get bigger faster. in size there's at least some amount of safety. And so we merged with one of our competitors called at the time Equidate, and combined into a company called Forge Global. And Forge Global ultimately went public, and then was not so distant past acquired by Schwab.

And so that, was, I thought, you know, a great we'll [00:12:00] call it journey and a great destination for that business idea and that business model. But when we merged SharesPost and Equidate, it gave myself and the key members from my team a chance to step back and say, "Look now that we're 10 years later and the market has developed in all these interesting ways and deepened, are there new models, new ways to create liquidity and provide value to the members of this ecosystem that weren't available when we started SharesPost back in 2009?"

And out of that came Collective Liquidity.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so a few things before we talk more about collective liquidity. And for someone in Deep Wealth Nation, they're hearing us talk about some of these terms. You and I may take it for granted in terms of what's there. 

What Unicorn Means

Jeffrey Feldberg: But when we're talking about having unicorn shares or a unicorn company, they may have heard about a unicorn company, but they're saying, "Oh, unicorn shares?

Never heard of that term." So what is that, just to What the background... Sure. Yeah. I've been in this particular part of the financial market so long, I the vernacular has just become such [00:13:00] second nature. I assume everybody knows what some of these terms means, and obviously that's not the case. So, unicorn...

Greg Brogger: And actually here's a little fun fact. Most people today, use unicorns to talk about companies that are pre-IPO, pr- private companies, venture-backed at a billion dollar or greater valuation. And at this point, most people don't really remember where that term came from or why we call them unicorns.

And it's because really it was Facebook. Facebook was the first, I think, venture-backed technology-led company that reached a billion dollar valuation in the private market without going public. Every other company before Facebook Had gone public long before they reached that billion-dollar threshold.

I think Apple was a $300 million-plus company when it went public back in whenever that was. So, it was called a unicorn because it was such a rare thing, that there was nothing else like it in the forest of the financial markets, and we called it a unicorn, and it's just kinda funny you fast-forward today, and there are now a couple thousand of these companies or more [00:14:00] that are worth, depending upon kinda h-how you value them, u-upwards of $5 trillion. And so it's... what w-once was a rarity has become essentially the mainstay of the American economy and potentially, the world economy, and certainly where all of the technology and growth is. And just, w-why is that? And the simple logic is if you are a founder, if you own one of these companies and you're growing at 30, 40, 50, 60% per year, would you rather be in a private company where you have control over your company and don't have to report to investors?

Or would you rather be making quarterly earning calls, and if you miss your earnings during this period of enormous growth by a penny or two, you can lose 20, 30% of the value of your stock in a day if you're a public company. and that's just one reason. But yeah, as I said, it's become the dominant way to build these companies, and so I don't see any change in the number of unicorns.

I think that's gonna continue to increase for a bunch of reasons.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And what's interesting as we're talking [00:15:00] about this and where you've been, what you've done, and currently what you're doing, Greg, this is not a political podcast. I'm not gonna get into that. This situation has begun to change, but with certain administrations, it was just not feasible to want to go public.

In fact, it was almost as though certain powers that be didn't want these companies going public, and that didn't happen. It's only now we're starting to see These companies that are considering going public. So we've had, probably for the longest time ever, these companies huge in value, but they remained private.

And although they may have wanted to go public, they couldn't, so the employees suffered, the initial investors suffered. And so for someone who's listening in Deep Wealth Nation, and perhaps they're in one of these companies that was still a private company, they're one of the early employees, they have a good number of shares that have gone up in value perhaps are even in the AI space.

And interestingly, Greg, I was just having a conversation where I'm not gonna name names of the company some of the employees were selling their shares, and they capped it [00:16:00] at no more than $30 million an employee in terms of what they can sell. You know exactly who I'm talking about with that, but we'll keep the names out of it.

So the dynamics have changed today. The valuations have changed today. But for someone who's in that situation, they may be literally sitting on a gold mine but not realizing it. So let's talk about what you're doing and the dynamics and the choices that they have through you that they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Greg Brogger: Yeah. Yeah. 

Liquidity Options Today

Greg Brogger: No and that is a predicament which, if you think about it you measure it either just as kind of scope to size of the problem. So if you think about, the either in terms of dollars or number of people. So on average, very ballpark figure huge outliers on either side, but on average, most unicorns have about 1,000 employees.

Let's say there's 3,000 unicorns at this point, something, on that order. talking about now millions of employees that are on paper millionaires or multimillionaires, and yet can't access that because that wealth is tied up in illiquid stock. They can't go to their Schwab account or their Fidelity account [00:17:00] and press a button and turn it into cash.

So when it comes to buying a house or putting their kids through school, they're rich but cash poor, and that, that is a fundamental problem. And it, again, as I mentioned I think earlier, it's not a big problem if you have to wait for 24 months or 36 months. But if it's 10 years, 11 years, 12 years, that becomes unsupportable.

And it, undermines one of the key ingredients of success in Silicon Valley companies, which is Equity in the company, stock options in the company is one of the primary, recruiting and retention tools. But if you can't turn that into something you can spend on a house or college tuition, et cetera, then the system kinda breaks down, and so it becomes very important to provide liquidity.

And what are their options in the world today? So there's a few places that these employees can go for liquidity. So one place, the most obvious place, is on the online marketplaces like SharesPost or Forge or EquityZen. And the market is quite fragmented [00:18:00] but there's, probably seven or eight different marketplaces where you can post your shares for sale on a, basically a broker-dealer, and that platform will attempt to find the other side of the trade for you and facilitate the transaction.

The challenge is most of the trading volume is concentrated in a relatively small number of companies and some of them are AI or otherwise. But in a lot of companies there's very few to no buyers, just because private companies are very hard for investors and buyers to research, so it's hard for them to feel comfortable putting a bid out there in the market because there's so little information.

They don't know what they're buying. Another issue, even where there's lots of information and people can value the company, is, and particularly in cases where you're talking about the most successful companies, the companies want to control who their investors are and, as a private company, have the ability to decide whether or not to permit a secondary sale.

And so it becomes a very what, a sensitive [00:19:00] topic both for the CEO, the CFO, the board, and the employees as to who gets to sell when and how much. And so there's a... you can unpack that whole conversation about the pros and cons from the company's point of view of allowing a marketplace like that.

But then there are other, a variety of other solutions, this is what I meant when I was talking about As the market deepens and there's more and more capital tied up in it, more and more players, you start to see other solutions emerge. 

Collective Exchange Fund

Greg Brogger: And so for example, what we do at Collective is we provide a way for over-concentrated stockholders, employees, stockholders that have the bulk of their net worth tied up in their company, they can exchange some of their shares into our diversified fund tax-free as a way to put a floor under their net worth.

And then if they need liquidity, they can use their LP interest in our fund, either borrow against it or redeem it for cash, and use that, that cash to buy the house, put the kids through school, et cetera. And it's much... You know, our fund is [00:20:00] designed to create liquidity for its investors, for those LPs that exchange their shares into it, in a way that- Individual private companies are not.

And so it, it sort of unlocks liquidity in, I think, a really interesting and a really efficient and much needed way.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And what's interesting about that, Ian, preparing for today, when I was going through some of the numbers and what's there and going through what you're putting out there, you're comparing, okay, sure, Jeffrey, you have these shares, and yes, you can do the traditional kind of stock sale over here, or you can come over here to the collective and do what we're doing.

And it wasn't a small difference. It was close to double and significantly, I'm going to say, not to confuse simple with simplicity, but simpler and didn't have the tax repercussions. Walk us through that of what

practically 

Tax Free Wealth Math

Greg Brogger: this is the initial idea for what we do at Collective, it really came out of the public markets. So this notion of an exchange fund has been [00:21:00] around since the 1960s. I think the largest example is a firm called, or a fund called, exchange fund called Eaton Vance.

They manage over $500 billion worth of this. It was acquired by Morgan Stanley. But Goldman Sachs has an exchange fund, UBS has an exchange fund. All the kind of major wealth management firms do, and there's a reason for that. It's an incredibly powerful wealth-building tool that's been around again for decades.

And if you think about it, if it makes sense for someone with a concentrated position in the public markets to exchange to get this diversification without triggering tax because they're over-concentrated, it makes even more sense in the private market. Why? Because you have even greater appreciation, so the capital gains are even greater.

So if you can do it on a tax-free basis, you save even more money than you would if you had lesser appreciated shares, and you have even greater over-concentration, so the need to diversify is even greater. But just to run through an example, You've got $100 worth of stock in your pre-IPO company.

You [00:22:00] could sell that and probably pay, if you're in California, state and federal tax, maybe as much as 46% uh, your gains, and then another probably 4%, 5%, or 6% on brokerage commissions. And so you might be fortunate to clear less or more than 50 cents on the dollar. And once you've gotten that 50 cents on the dollar, that's what you got.

That's all you're left with. On the other hand, with an exchange fund at Collective, you can take that $100 worth of shares, exchange it for $100 LP interest in the fund. You're diversified, you pay no tax. And then if you want cash, you can borrow against that LP interest, say at a 50% advance rate. You get the same $50, but you keep, at the same time, your interest the exchange fund.

You haven't sold that interest, you've just borrowed against it. And so that interest appreciates tax-free more or less indefinitely, and that's where the difference is. So i- if I was to crystallize that down to something shorter than what I just said, if you [00:23:00] take the tax savings from an exchange fund and you put it to work at long-term venture capital rates, that's why in four, five, six or seven years, you end up with twice as much after-tax wealth as if you had just sold your interest for cash upfront.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And I suppose, Greg, it's always easy if I'm working at, particularly in AI today, everyone knows who these companies are. We don't have to throw the names out there. Names change over time. If I'm working in one of those companies, sure, it's probably a whole lot easier, as you mentioned, to be able to have a whole number of different options with that.

But if I'm off to the side, it's a really good company, it's just not as well-known, there's likely a small to realistically no market for that. So this now provides some very realistic options for me that I wouldn't otherwise be able to get. And if I'm in a company that's not as well-known, I'm probably gonna pay a penalty.

Not a physical penalty, but probably a penalty because it's illiquid in the sense that, well, there's probably not that many buyers for the stock that I hold. And so now it's gonna be at an [00:24:00] even more discounted rate. And before I know it, it's almost, well, why bother? Let me just suffer through it a little bit longer and, and see where that goes.

So when it comes to the collective, if I'm sitting here in Deep Wealth Nation, okay, Greg, remarkable story you have. Seem like a terrific guy. How can I trust the collective? So I'm gonna now hand over a part or all or some of the precious stock that I have in this very valuable company. How can I trust and why would I want to trust the collective?

Greg Brogger: Yeah. 

Building Trust and Valuation

Greg Brogger: So, what's call it unique or certainly different about the private market as compared to public companies, right? Is that private markets have enormous amount of control over who their shareholders are. And so we knew from the beginning that it was, mission-critical at Collective that we built, a solution that worked not just for the individual, but for the company as well.

Because if the company didn't, welcome us onto the cap table then the transaction wouldn't happen and we wouldn't be in business. And we knew that we also, we talk about trust in the [00:25:00] context of an exchange fund. The primary thing you're really talking about is, are you gonna give me fair value for my shares?

And then equally important, are you gonna give fair value to everybody else's shares so that I know my shares are worth a lot, but if you let a lot of crappy companies into the fund and/or you overvalue their shares, then my piece of this fund is worth a lot less than I thought it was because the rest of the portfolio isn't gonna amount to anything.

And so y- we had to solve... that's the primary trust problem we need to solve. And so the way we did that was by, and it's really the core IP of the company today is a valuation algorithm that allows us to use the same quantitative mathematical pr- valuation process to determine what value we're going to give to the shares when they come into the fund, everybody else's shares when they come into the fund so everyone's on a level playing field.

And also very important, when you decide to redeem your interest in the fund for cash, we use exactly the [00:26:00] same algorithm to value the portfolio. So there's no real possibility of playing games with saying your shares are worth a little when you come in or a lot when you come in, and then we're gonna value them for something significantly less using a completely different valuation process when you tell us you wanna exit the fund.

We use it as a kind of an apples to apples comparison and for all purposes. When we work with lenders that are lending against interest in the fund, we provide complete transparency to them into the algorithm so that they know the collateral to the loans is worth what we say it's worth.

And it makes our system much more scalable. So rather than like a traditional venture capital firm or secondary fund where each deal is handled on a case-by-case basis, you don't quite know how the buyer got to the value they got to know, you, you enter a weeks-long negotiation process. We have one price that's based on our valuation process, and it's frankly sort of a take-it-or-leave-it price.

we don't typically end up having to negotiate because sellers and shareholders understand that even if they think we're [00:27:00] undervaluing their shares, because we use the same system to value everyone else's shares, they get the right percentage of the fund, everyone is equally disadvantaged.

That means no one's actually disadvantaged in the case of getting fair value for their shares. So I think that's the primary way we create trust. And then with the companies and with the boards of directors they have to trust in order to permit the transaction for us to become a shareholder of their company They have to trust that we're gonna be good shareholders, value-added and, not problematic in the ways that, private companies worry that some shareholders can be.

So we are a long-term, long-only institutional investor. we're known in the marketplace. the team that we've acquired, our chief investment officer, our investment team, our operations people have been at, premier institutions, the names everybody knows, JP Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, et cetera for many years and, and/or have been in the private markets with me and the places I've been at previously at SharesPost at Nasdaq Private Market and other places.

And [00:28:00] so, it gives them comfort that we're going to be supportive and a good shareholder throughout the course of the company's journey from private to public.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And what's fascinating about that, in so many ways, you're like the Switzerland out there. You're dealing with all the different counterparts, and sure, I may not like necessarily what you're having to say, but at the same time, what I'm hearing is what someone else is gonna be hearing. And so you have that mutual trust, and you have that track record.

And so Greg, it could be on base, off base, you can share this with me. I'm thinking now of a founder in particular, because right now we've been speaking potentially founders, but also the employees who have locked up wealth that's in there. So as a founder, either I'm gonna be starting something or I already have something that's valuable, and I'm thinking about next steps.

Greg Brogger: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. could I begin or what would it look like to begin to work with you? 

Founder Programs and Best Practices

Jeffrey Feldberg: "Hey, yeah, Greg, I heard about what you're doing on The Deep Wealth Podcast. Here's our company. How can we [00:29:00] build a program together with you that I can build it into our culture, into our bylaws, into what we're doing to make it really easy as an off-ramp, an exit, an off-boarding process for my employees to make us more attractive in the marketplace?"

Greg Brogger: I think from a founder and from a board's perspective, we offer them, essentially kind of a, a pressure release valve for the liquidity demands of their employees, right? So, secondary or marketplaces like SharesPost and others of as much, I think, benefit as they bring to the market, they do create problems for issuers, right?

So they fragment the shareholder base. One seller could turn in to 10 buyers on the market, and you don't know who they are, and you don't have control over that. And there, there's other problems as well, but that's one of the real benefits that Collective has from the founder and the company's perspective, right?

We consolidate the shareholder base, right? We take lots of little shareholder employees- And they exchange into our fund, and we are one shareholder, again, long only, institutional management friendly, et cetera. So that, you get to know us and we can [00:30:00] provide a fair amount of liquidity as opposed to a marketplace where there's probably many buyers that you would have to get to know.

So that's an advantage. And then the other thing is we, we, recognize that each company has a different perspective on the liquidity for their employees. Some companies want to put a cap, say only up to twenty percent of employees' vested equity can be made liquid. And so we observe those.

Or the company may say, "I wanna reserve the available allocation for your exchange fund to certain employees. So employees that have been here 10 years or more, I wanna reserve what you have just for them 'cause I wanna treat them specially, or just for the executive team or whatever." So I guess what I'm trying to say is we work with companies to achieve their objectives.

We observe the parameters they wanna put on how we interact with their employees and what kinds of transactions we are willing to do with them.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's somewhat of an unfair question but I'm gonna ask it anyways in the sense that when you're working with a founder in a company, [00:31:00]

every founder has a different view of the world and the

culture. I suspect, though, as you've been going down this journey now, not just with The Collective, but when you started out, when you essentially created the market that didn't exist and had that off-ramp for people to begin to create liquidity where they didn't have it before, you've-- I suspect were saying, at least in the back of your mind or to yourself, "Wow, that worked really well.

I'm gonna keep in mind that best practice and let's build it into what we do and perhaps even suggest that to other companies." Or, "Wow, yeah, I know that worked for that founder, but if this were my company, I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole." So all that said, if you had a clean slate and a founder came to you and they're worth a trillion dollars, I'm just throwing numbers out there, we'll have some fun with this, and they said, Greg, this really isn't my specialty what you do.

I wanna..." Again, I'll use the F word. "I wanna make this fair. I wanna make this fair for me, my company, the board, our investors, but I also wanna make it fair for our employees where the stock ownership, [00:32:00] it's something that gives us a competitive edge. We're gonna be working with a collective. They're gonna have an off-ramp that is not punitive on either side.

And, maybe I don't love it 100%, they don't love it 100%, but from what you've seen over your years and decades, wow, it's a rocket ship. It's gonna work because you've got the market experience. You know what to do, what not to do. What would be some of the best practices that you'd be saying, "Jeffrey, let's do this"?

Greg Brogger: I think best practices for a secondary or liquidity program is to recognize why you're granting it in the first place, right?

Which is and from a company perspective not from an altruistic I wanna be just good to my employees. That has a place too, and that's... I don't mean to diminish that. But, you know, often, companies are run to, achieve, build wealth for shareholders, and that's how the VCs on the board look at it.

So why do they say yes? 

Equity Beats Salary

Greg Brogger: It's because they need to recruit and retain the best employees, and particularly in the most, successful or the sectors with the greatest momentum. AI, of course, is what we're talking [00:33:00] about now. The competition for talent is just astronomical that's not changing.

So how do you create wealth for your employees or create wealth opportunities by being at a company? You can't really do it effectively through salary. You need to do it through equity ownership. That is a proven part of Silicon Valley companies' formula for success for decades. But you have to give those shares, th- options value in a reasonable life or time horizon for the employee.

And so you need an equity program that shows, provides some liquidity along the way in order to recruit the best people, and once you have the best people, to retain them. 

Liquidity Keeps Talent

Greg Brogger: Because that, another sort of dynamic that boards and, founders need to recognize. If you don't let them diversify by either selling or exchanging or finding some solution- the only option you're leaving them with in order to diversify to reduce their risk is to leave your company and go to another and get another block of options at the next company.

And so by [00:34:00] providing liquidity, to the individual, you allow them to basically take the risk of continuing at one employer for a longer time period, and that's good for the board, the investors, the founder again the employee. So I think that's what you gotta recognize.

Cap Table Control Risks

Greg Brogger: But at the same time, the other side of the coin that you're trying to balance is I don't want my employees to cash out and take all their chips off the table and have no incentive left in the company. I don't want to end up with 1,000 shareholders on the table that I've never had a conversation with.

I don't know who they are. I don't know if they're litigious. I don't know if they knew what they were buying into when they bought these shares. I don't know if there's any regulatory or, concerns. So a lot of these I'll just take, one example, SpaceX, from the very beginning, one of their primary concerns is, are there shareholders that are getting proprietary information that would be of use to, you know, this competitor in building a competitive product?

So they're very valid reasons why private [00:35:00] companies, particularly technology companies Need to control who's on the cap table. And then there's a bunch of other kind of accounting and regulatory issues with having, uncontrolled secondary liquidity in your shares as an issuer.

Exchange Fund Solution

Greg Brogger: I think, and obviously I'm very biased, so we-- frankly, you know, we designed the company in order to solve this problem in a balanced way. And so what an exchange fund and maybe I won't even say collective, but what any exchange fund allows you to do is bring in-- basically provide an unlimited amount of liquidity.

You set the thresholds. as I said, it could be twenty or twenty-five percent of the vested equity can be exchanged at any given time period. It could be twenty-four months or thirty-six months, et cetera. And it also, part of what issuers also are concerned about is just the operational difficulty of supporting liquidity for their employees.

So the CFO and the finance team and the legal team, they have a day job, right? They have building the company's primary business is what they need to focus on. And to the extent that they [00:36:00] have lots of employees knocking on the CFO's door saying, "I'm trying to find a buyer. I found a buyer."

do they wanna use this kind of form to buy the shares? they don't wanna follow the policies that we put in pl-- It, it's a distraction and a headache, and a lot of them, that's a, big part of the reason certainly in the early days of the market where some companies just said, "No liquidity.

We just don't want any secondary transactions 'cause we don't want to permit one but not another, and then have this employee so, having an exchange fund as a liquidity partner, the advantage is you can talk to one liquidity provider. You can put in place policies and limitations and restrictions that you think are a fair balancing between the employee's need for liquidity and the company's need to control the cap table and keep everybody incentivized and aligned.

And then you can just share financial information with that one fund rather than dispersing it across the market or who knows where, what hands that ends up in and what use it gets put to. And because, essentially as an exchange fund, we're printing our own currency, we never [00:37:00] run out of capital to provide to employees that are exchanging, because what we are paying with is not cash, but with is a share in our fund.

So if we have a hundred companies that are all doing the same thing, then, the fund can grow very large but we never run out of an allocation or the ability to do a next exchange.

Turnkey Employee Off Ramp

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Greg, what I'm hearing you say, and again, Jeff, you're on base or off base, as a founder or as the board or as the principal investors in a particular company, when we're onboarding the new team members and they're getting ownership in the company vis-a-vis shares, we're saying right up front, "Hey, at one point, if you want an off-ramp, there's one source that you can do this with.

It's the only source. It's the collective in this case, and we've chosen them because of, you know, A, B, C, and D. But they know all of our information. We have that one-to-one relationship with them. They are a third party. They're not us. We're not them, and they're independent, and they have all the financial responsibilities that go along with that.

But that's your choice of how you're gonna do the [00:38:00] off-ramp 

before we go public."

Greg Brogger: Yeah, and that's the turnkey solution. That's the, the... You know, rather than talk to the CFO, you can talk to somebody at Collective "This is what I'm trying to accomplish. This is the cash that I need for, again, to buy a house," or whatever the use of proceeds is. What's the best way to do it?

And so, that is from the company's point of view, bringing in a third party that takes responsibility for advising or helping their employees meet their financial objectives is you know, th-there's a lot of appeal to the management team for that kind of solution.

Tender Offers Explained

Greg Brogger: one of the other major ways that companies provide liquidity, particularly some of the AI companies and larger companies, are tender offers. So I'm not sure if your audience has run across that, but those are the called the three major sort of solutions in the market.

And again, there are trade-offs with them. But a tender offer is one where the company goes out and finds a buyer. And a lot of times it'll be done in conjunction with the company's own financing, so they'll go raise $100 million to finance the growth of the company, and they'll say, "But we [00:39:00] also wanna do something to, provide liquidity to the employees.

So we'll raise an extra 20 or 50 or 100 or a billion," or whatever, it just depends on the size of the company, and we'll go to the employees and say, "We'll buy back your shares at a particular price, and you can opt in." And that's really the, program that we invented at Nasdaq Private Market.

That was a joint venture that we did with SharesPost. that works for some companies, and it works for some employees. But, we tend to think that matching a, tender offer program with an exchange fund gives your employees kind of maximum flexibility depending upon their objectives.

Making Liquidity Simple

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Greg, I'm gonna share a story that on the one hand has nothing to do with what we're talking about, but on the other hand has everything to do with what we're talking about. I remember at my e-learning company, we wanted to give the maximum number of options

Came to benefits and healthcare and all those other kinds of things.

And we were a scrappy startup, so if we can find a win-win where it's a win for the company, a win for us, terrific, let's pursue it. And the very simple story, almost too simple, is we gave [00:40:00] the team a choice of, "Hey, here's what we would spend for you on healthcare.

Greg Brogger: Yeah.

Jeffrey Feldberg: If you wanna find a company on your own and do that, we'll just write the check and you'll probably save some money, we'll probably save some money.

Everyone's a winner on that." Very few took us up on that because they said, "Jeffrey, it's too complicated," or, "I don't even know where to turn," or, "I'm too busy doing what I'm doing here. I can't turn my attention. Just make it easy for me. Just put in what everyone else does and tell me what the program looks like and what you signed up for."

And so from that very simple story that's nothing to do with what we're talking about, but everything to do with what we're talking about, it's human nature. I would imagine that at the collective In many ways, it can be a sigh of relief for the employees, for the team members, because, hey, we can't tell you what to do or when you can do it, but if you want to do it, we've already laid out the foundation for you.

Go speak to Greg and team. They have all the answers for you, and they can walk you through it. How am I doing with that?

Greg Brogger: think that's exactly right. And a-as complicated as healthcare is, I-- let's say [00:41:00] finding liquidity in the private market is at least on a par, and for some people more complicated. 'Cause they don't necessarily know what their shares are worth. There's no kind of, the process that they'd have to run to get a market-based, valuation where, you're going through a marketplace.

You probably contact two or three marketplaces, but probably contact Forge or Zenbato or, different platforms. You start conversations with many buyers, the-- most people are just not in don't wanna spend weeks negotiating over the phone. That's not their, again, it's not their day job.

They'd rather be doing something else. So if the company, either through a tender offer or by approving an exchange fund that has a, evaluation methodology that seems objective and fair, that's the first kind of key problem you're solving for people that they don't wanna solve for themselves or can't.

They're not venture capitalists. They're not in the marketplace frequently. They just want a fair price for their shares, and then they want a process that, is easy. It's an online process. They can see the documents. [00:42:00] There's no, hidden gotchas and they worry about and keep them up at night.

Yeah.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. You're really taking the friction out of it, and with all the scams that are going on out there, it's removing that. And from a big picture, I'd also imagine you're helping the company and doing them a favor. I've spoken with too many founders. "Jeffrey, I don't know what I've created now because my team members are speaking to all these different sources.

Some of them aren't even reputable, and now there's all these rumors that stock is worth this pre-valuation or it's worth that. Everyone's focused on that and what they're gonna do and how they're gonna retire, and we're starting to suffer internally in terms of our productivity," all those other kinds of things when there's-- that's-- the whole distraction's off the table because it's reputable, it's consistent.

Everyone's getting the same treatment. 

AI Valuations Shift Market

Jeffrey Feldberg: Let me turn for a moment, Greg, to AI, and maybe it's AI in terms of what it's doing right now, but I want to turn to AI as an industry 

in terms of, wow, we're seeing the first trillion-dollar companies. We're seeing companies that before AI would have [00:43:00] substantially more employees than what they do now, and we're seeing the hype, the valuation, the potential, and the amount of time to reach these milestones never before seen in the history of business.

So when it comes to what you're doing at The Collective and what this means for valuations and big picture-wise What's likely gonna change or is anything gonna change? Hey, Jeffrey, just bigger numbers, but it's all the same or yeah, we're in for some major changes.

Greg Brogger: Well, yeah, and it's called in different levels or different ways it's impacting the market. But obviously it's it's no great insight to say that, AI is, remaking business in many different ways. But one way is just the, the role that AI is, is playing in the marketplace or in the venture capital ecosystem.

So the opportunity is so enormous and the capital needs are so great it is absorbing a lot of the venture capital and it's accelerating exactly what I talked about before, which is, private companies staying private longer and longer. If, [00:44:00] the most exciting AI companies, over the last decade from not just the model that the LLMs, not just Anthropic and ChatGPT, but Cerebras, which was one of the, the companies, or it still is one of the companies in the Collective Exchange Fund, chip makers, et cetera, is happening on the private side and it's absorbing a lot of the venture capital.

It's, It's creating a, an inequality of access to capital where AI companies are absorbing so much of the capital and the rest of the market is wouldn't say necessarily struggling. It's certainly better than it has been in prior years. In 2022, 2023 were very difficult years for companies and founders trying to raise venture capital.

But there, there's just a marked difference between those companies. That's why you see so many companies that have very little to do with AI somehow putting AI in all of their investor decks and claiming to be AI companies because that optic seems to drive investment interest. So, for us, you know, I mentioned the valuation methodology that we use. It's very [00:45:00] difficult to incorporate a company that is valued at 100 times earnings or more or revenue with the rest of the world and more traditional venture market or capital systems. We have a little bit of a way to do that in that we rely on what third-party investors do.

So when Andreessen or Sequoia invest at a particular valuation, that becomes a benchmark that we feel that we can use. But trying to value companies off of the fundamentals in the way that people have done it historically, it just doesn't work. And it's not to say it doesn't make sense. I think all of us would love to have shares in these companies because we do believe that the growth curve is unlike anything else- That we have seen.

And it's just the way it percolates down you know, into our daily life. I think all of us are probably all of your listeners I'm guessing, find themselves u- just spending more and more of their day interacting with AI tools because they're just so much more useful. They save you so much time.

it's a daily event. And so I believe in [00:46:00] that story, but that, that is, the concentration of capital in that particular sector has ramifications, and the difficulty in rationalizing their valuations compared to everything else has ramifications. you know, that's how I think it's affecting the market.

AI Boosts Productivity

Greg Brogger: I think the other, how it's affecting us as a company and me as a founder is there's remarkable productivity. Like we, have a very small development team now, but it does a lot more than it used to. And I think what it puts a premium on and this is just in the coding side. So this is, it's in investment research, it's in marketing, it's, across the company in terms of the way AI accelerates productivity and efficiency.

But what I, think it has meant for us is that having the idea, having the product and having the, call the judgment to use and leverage the results that AI get you is what is gonna differentiate some companies from others. So it's not necessarily your access to capital 'cause you need a lot less capital.

You can build what, used to take, a year, you can build in a month or [00:47:00] less using, CloudCode or any of these other tools, Cursor. So, think it allows smaller companies to compete with larger companies much more effectively, to be much faster in iterating, and to get to profitability much sooner because the number of employees you need to bring a particular product to market is greatly reduced.

And so just in my day-to-day life I like dealing with fewer people. So my focus is on getting fewer people, but getting the best, the smartest, the most driven, the most creative people that can work together cohesively as a team that leverages AI to bring the product to market and scale

Jeffrey Feldberg: And hindsight's always 20/20, and I agree with everything that you're saying, Greg, on that side. 10 years ago, if I would've back in the day said, "Hey, Greg," and didn't necessarily mention AI, "There's gonna be an industry, and here's where the valuations are gonna be, and here's how long it's gonna take to get to those valuations, and here's what's gonna be happening [00:48:00] because of this one particular technology."

What would you have said, do you think, back in the day?

Lessons From Dot Com Era

Greg Brogger: we've seen similar things happen, just not at the scale. So I, for example, I, I'm gonna age myself but I'll say, was around at the... You know, I was really starting my career as an entrepreneur at the dot-com practice. I was kind of in my mid-20s. Or the dot-com r- run up.

And I remember in the first couple of companies that I was involved with that were successful, just to build the server infrastructure was millions of dollars. It was months of development team, and it was a team of 10, 15 engineers to build a kind of a, national scale product. And then I think part of what happened is Amazon came along with web services, and this is a relatively, simple innovation or relative to what AI is. And that had profound impact, 'cause that meant with a credit card and for like $30 a month, I got a server farm and infrastructure that I could scale up or down.

I didn't need those engineers, means I didn't need that [00:49:00] capital. And It's not talked about much, but I, my personal observation or my speculation might be a better way to put it, is I think that, when you look at companies like Facebook and Twitter and how they became unicorns and how they grew so quickly, a big part of what happened is the founders of these most successful companies, for the first time, had the ability to say they didn't wanna go public and they wanted to stay private because as the founder, that was a more comfortable place for them to be.

Why was that the case? I think it's because they had to raise a lot less capital than they previously had to, so they were that much less beholden to the venture capitalists and the investors in those companies. And they had the ability to say, " I've got super voting common stock. I don't need your money.

I can build on all the existing infrastructure that's out there very inexpensively and very quickly." if you think of that dynamic happening with AI, I think that accelerates it. I think, companies that used to require 50 people to get a product to market can now get to market with five people, and that means the [00:50:00] speed and the capital necessary to bring new solutions to market are, is greatly accelerated.

And what that means to the venture capital industry and the public-private market divide don't think anyone can really... Or I know wouldn't even hazard a guess. But we've seen tectonic shifts of that kind in the past with much milder innovation than what we're seeing now, so I think it's gonna be really exciting.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's interesting that Lisa and Greg, I'm right there with you for my e-learning company, Embanet, where we had three data centers. I'm talking the real data centers where we were responsible for the servers and the bandwidth and all those other things. It was a huge cost, huge time, the engineers, the staff, everything else, and people don't appreciate like what you're saying today is just a credit card away and poof, you have not just a national, you have a worldwide network, and it's done for you, and it's a fraction.

But what's also interesting, just an observation data point of one from my side, before we got to this scale-up in terms of the investment dollars where we are now for these AI companies, I know there's some talk and some [00:51:00] concern, what are we gonna do with all these investment dollars? Because the future companies are gonna be a fraction of the people, fraction of the cost, and they're not gonna need the private equity or the venture capital.

But now it's the build-out of the energy generation and for the chips and the chipsets and everything else, that's now taking up that gap, if you will, of what AI has created on the business side. It's interesting.

Greg Brogger: and I think, the supply and demand for people in different industries is going to shift radically. And of course, the hope and I'm an optimist, so I like to, I think, agree with you, which is, ma-many functions for capital and for people are going to change radically.

But hopefully at the same time, new opportunities are created that absorb that capital in new and different businesses. And, again, been an entrepreneur for a long time now in Silicon Valley. And so, I'm an optimist and like to think that these companies make people's lives better.

It's a cliché and, But, you know, I think that generally is the case. And so if there's more ideas and more solutions coming to market and, hopefully those more than [00:52:00] offset the losses and the shifts in the direction of capital in a really positive way.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Greg, I'm right there with you. And before we shift to another question, I'll just share with you that to me, AI today is like who controlled the seas back in the day, because whoever controlled the oceans controlled the world, at least for the next 100 years. And we're in this AI race, if you will, and what you're doing and having the ability to unlock some liquidity and give some capital out to the team and just make some things possible with the collective, but also further the industry is something really needed if we're going to maintain our values and how we do things, which is not perfect, far from it, but relative to the other choices out there, we're the best game in town and would love to see that.

Is there an important question that you and I haven't yet covered or even an insight or a topic, a theme, a message that you want to get out to Deep Wealth Nation before we do go into wrap-up mode?

Founder Takeaways On Incentives

Greg Brogger: If you're a [00:53:00] founder, obviously you're thinking about AI and how that changes your business, and you're thinking about, how to surround yourself with the best people.

So, thinking through how to incentivize and retain and recruit the best people has never been, I think, more important than it is, and that's only gonna increasingly be the case. And so, thinking through a, what compensation structure needs to look like I think is critical.

And whether it's with Collective and an exchange fund or it's a tender offer program or, there are a bunch of, solutions. But, I think finding and attaching and aligning your, the best people to your team is, has never been more, critical and I think is probably maybe if you had to pick the single most important thing, particularly at the startup stage.

It's one thing if you're talking about a later stage company that already knows its business, doesn't need to pivot necessarily. It's just sort of optimizing the day-to-day business that they're already in. But I think, if you're finding your business model, if [00:54:00] you're, needing to react to market forces quickly, then having again, the best people is the most important determiner of success.

And getting the best people means having a way for them to share in the success of the company and not just someday, 10, 12, 15 years down the road, but in the kind of timeframe that, that matters to them. The day-to-day of the f- of dealing with real world expenses is important.

So I I'm not sure that's that helpful, but that's what I would say.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Greg, I think it's a huge insight. Not I think I know that's a huge insight because I found there's the founder distortion.

So as a Founder, my time horizon typically, not always, but typically I may be thinking years and years down the road. Whereas for most team members, most employees, it's, "Okay, look, I got a mortgage," or, "I have aging parents," or, "I have kids that need to go to school."

And so liquidity is on a much shorter timeframe. And what I love about what you're doing I think the server before AWS is a great example. [00:55:00] So building out a data room and the servers and all the technicians and the engineers, it was complicated, it was time-consuming, it was expensive. Versus today, I just get in the cloud and off I go, whether it's AWS or there's other providers as well, I can look to do that.

With what you're doing with the collective, to me, it's taking that old, you gotta own your own data center, let's put it off to the side, it's in the cloud That's to me what The Collective is today, that a founder can begin to work with you and the team, and it's effortlessless and it's seamless for the team members.

"Hey, here's a collective. Look at who's running it. The names speak for themselves. It's a terrific off-ramp for you. We've already vetted it for you. It doesn't get any easier if that's what you want. If you have longer time horizons, you want to wait with us, terrific. That's there for you as well. But if it's shorter time horizons, we've already thought of that for you."

To me, that's it's an act of kindness. It's making it simple, and it's giving some very real choices. So I, I love what you're doing on that side and only continued success with that. 

Back To Future Advice

Jeffrey Feldberg: And actually, it's a great segue [00:56:00] for us to go into wrap-up mode now. We're here on the Deep Wealth Podcast. It's my privilege, it's my honor.

It's our tradition here, every guest is asked the same question. It's a fun question. Let me set this up for you. When you think of the movie "Back to the Future," you have that timeless and fun DeLorean car that will take you back to any point in time. 

And now, here's the fun part, Greg. It's tomorrow morning.

You look outside your window. Not only is DeLorean car curbside, the door is open. It's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do. You're now gonna go to any point in time, Greg, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be. Greg, what would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or life wisdom, or, "Hey, Greg, do this, but don't do that"?

What would it sound like?

Greg Brogger: Wow that's a great question, and I had nothing prepared for that. But yeah if I'm going back in time, then I'm either going back to, make a better decision, presumably about some... one of the companies that I was building or maybe a life point, you know, in terms of, a more personal choice.

And [00:57:00] so, I guess maybe I've got sort of a combination of, both of those, which is I think many founders, I mean, if, if you've been a founder for a while, like Jeffrey, like that you are and been on this course and paying the price that entrepreneurs pay. And, maybe it's because everyone focuses on the, what happens when you're successful.

But the stress and the uncertainty the long hours and the just the difficulty it takes building something of value that's sustainable, it's not something most entrepreneurs know, can know before they get started. But it can become your whole life pretty quickly.

It crowds out family, friends, even health can be put on the wayside 'cause it always feels like it's a desperate time at the moment. Like, It's urgent that I must get this done now, and if I get this done now, then I'll be in a place where I'll have more time down the road. And I just, you know, may- maybe people have done it better than I have and have gotten to that place.

But, and maybe I'm kinda getting to that place now in my life as, you know, in my later stage of my career. But [00:58:00] I definitely feel like I, missed a lot of those times, and there never really is or was a point where I could just rest and stop. I think, if I'm telling myself one thing that would've maybe improved the quality of my life the most over the subsequent decades of my career, it would be to find a sustainable pace for myself.

To put limits on the amount of time that I gave to building the companies that I was involved with because that, is obviously time you don't get back. And there's, more to life than business and wealth creation. so, I still think that, even with speaking to my younger self, I would still expect, work-life company building to be where I spent the bulk of my time and put the bulk of my energy.

I just wouldn't want it to become the all-consuming passion that, you know, certainly for parts of my life that it became because that's what it felt was necessary. And I guess, again, just to crystallize it isn't as necessary as it seems. There isn't any [00:59:00] one, technology sprint or product release that is going to be the difference for you between success or failure or almost never.

If your business depends on a single release, then your business is probably not gonna succeed in any case. So to build something that is sustainable and something you can nurture over many years, you gotta include yourself and your ability to support the business and still have a life that you know, e-enjoy living requires at least a certain amount of balance.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. It's really words to the wise, and Greg, as you're talking about that, I love, hey, there's more to life than only business and wealth creation. Sure, it's important, but there's more to it than that. It reminds me of that old story. Look, I can spend nine months learning Spanish and-- or any language for that matter, and I can be 90% to 95% proficient, or I can spend five years and be 100%.

And as founders, I know for myself anyways, let me spend the five years. I want to be perfect in this and that, and it's, hey, it's way too much. Go for the 90%, 95%. The [01:00:00] rest you'll figure out, and have a life outside of the business is as important as sometimes... Not sometimes, most of the time even more important that you have really all cylinders of your life are where they need to be.

So some terrific advice. 

How To Reach Greg

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Greg, someone in Deep Wealth Nation, they want to speak with you and the team. They have some ideas they want to run by you for their company and how the collective might be able to help. Where would be the best place online to reach you?

Greg Brogger: Sure. Well, so two ways. One, if you wanna learn more about what we do and how we do it of course, collectiveliquidity.com, easy place to visit we're easy to find. Hopefully there's a lot of information there. But if you wanna email me directly, it's just Greg, G-R-E-G, @collectiveliquidity.com.

Happy to answer audience members has a question I'm happy to help.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Deep Wealth Nation, my goodness, it doesn't get any easier. Go to the show notes. It's a point and click, and Greg put his own email out there. He's a market maker. He's seen the future. He's been there. He's done that. He's doing it right here, now, and today. And especially you founders, speak to Greg. He's making [01:01:00] it so much easier for some off-ramps for the team that makes you more competitive.

Take him up on his offer. Speak to him. You'll come out a whole lot better than when you came into that conversation. And that said, Greg, it's official. Congratulations. It's a wrap. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Greg Brogger: Yeah. Jeffrey, thank you so much for having me. It was a fun conversation

Final Wrap And Subscribe

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. 

What did you think? 

So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. 

Did you find this episode helpful? 

Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? 

And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

Are you ready for it? 

The dramatic pause. I'll just wait a moment. Drumroll, please. Subscribe. Please subscribe to the Deep Wealth podcast on your favorite podcast channel. When you subscribe to the Deep Wealth Podcast, you're saving yourself time. Every episode automatically comes [01:02:00] to you, and I want you to know that we meticulously craft Every one of our episodes to have impactful strategies, stories, expert insights that are designed to help you grow your profits, increase the value of your business, and yes, even optimize your post exit life and your life right now, whatever you want that to look like.

And every time you subscribe and a fellow entrepreneur subscribe, it's a testament to how together, Yes, we are. We are changing the social fabric of society. One business owner at a time, one liquidity event at a time. So don't let the momentum stop here. Subscribe now on your favorite podcast channel.

You'll never miss an episode. You'll be the first to hear from the top industry leaders, the innovators, the disruptors that are really changing and shaping the business world, and maybe you're commuting, maybe you're at the gym, maybe you're taking a well deserved break that we spoke all about on this episode.

The Deep Wealth Podcast, it's your reliable source for the next big idea that could literally revolutionize your business. So once again, please hit that subscribe button, stay connected, [01:03:00] inspired, and ahead of the curve. And again, your next big breakthrough moment, it might just be one episode away. Maybe it was even this episode.

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

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

Thank you so much. 

God bless.