Serial And Successful Entrepreneur Jeremy Straub On How To Extract Your Business And Personal Deep Wealth (#241)

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. 

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. 

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. 

When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life. 

But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time and your hard earned money wasted. 

Of the quote unquote "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it. 

I should know. I said "no" to a seven-figure offer. And "yes" to mastering the art and the science of a liquidity event. [00:01:00] Two years later, I said "yes" to a different buyer with a nine figure deal. 

Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event? 

Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing the skills that built your business are the same ones to sell it. 

After all, how can you master something you've never done before? 

Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and the 9-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the best deal instead of any deal. 

At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience. 

Jeremy Straub is a serial entrepreneur and investor. Jeremy overcame stage four throat cancer while still running large companies. His father owned multiple successful car dealerships in the Northeast and lost everything in the recession. Seeing what happened to his father Jeremy decided he would never put all his eggs in one basket. 

Today, jeremy owns nine businesses and five [00:02:00] industries with 1500 employees, 250,000 clients and generates over a hundred million dollars a year in revenue and $15 billion in assets under management. 

Jeremy's a coauthor of Cracking the Code to Success with business guru, Brian Tracy. 

Jeremy's also the host of the Upreneur Podcast, Mindset Meets Money Podcast and sits on the board for YPO. 

Jeremy's mission is to help other business owners navigate opportunities and redefine what's really possible. 

Welcome to the Deep Wealth podcast, and you heard it in the official introduction, but wow. Do we have a guest lined up for you today? I promise you, you're gonna come out of this episode thinking bigger and better coming into it because our guest is a fellow business owner, podcaster, author, thought leader, you name it, he's done it. 

Even has gone through some health challenges, came out. Victorious and victory is what we're gonna be talking about today. That'll be one of our themes. Jeremy, I'm gonna stop it right there. Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. [00:03:00] Such a pleasure to have you with us. And you know what, Jeremy, there's always a story behind the story.

What's your story, Jeremy? What got you from where you are to where you are today?

Jeremy Straub: Jeff, thanks for having me here. I'm excited to be here. Appreciate it. Story behind the story I spent 15 years as a W2 employee executive for a Fortune 500 company. And really saw myself once I got up to the executive levels, that the air was a little thin, meaning there wasn't a lot of seats you could be able to take.

You kind of had to wait for your spot or somebody to screw up and long story short, I didn't wanna wait. I was young, mid thirties, like early thirties, and wanted to start my own company and walked away from a seven digit income to make 40 grand. First year running the business and started launching from there.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Ah, you gotta love the entrepreneurial journey 

Jeremy Straub: I did not love it that year, by the way. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, what do they say? If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. Right?

Jeremy Straub: That's right.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And also proved your conviction to stay in the game with that. But for some of our listeners, Jeremy, who may be exactly where you are, they're in someone else's [00:04:00] story.

They're making a difference there. But they're saying, Hey, you know what if I'm gonna enrich all these other people, why not enrich myself? What was it? Because lots of people talk about it. I call them wantentrepreneurs. Never make the jump. But you went from corporate to being you know on your own. Wow that's huge.

That's night and day. What was it they gave you the final push to say, okay, I know I could do it, I'm just gonna do it now.

Jeremy Straub: Like many people I was fortunate to. Influenced by an entrepreneurial 

family where my, 

father had his own businesses, but there was one part that kind of stood out to me. He would talk about how if he made like one shift in one department, maybe he increased something there like they charged an hour and he used to work for he's own car dealerships. 

And increased his hourly rate. That he would charge customers in the service department by $5. Then he would extrapolate that and goes, oh, make me another $50 grand a month if I just did that. And the concept that you can make a little shift in your business, whether it's pricing or cost cutting or some gross strategy, and increase your reoccurring revenue without putting in more work.

[00:05:00] Always stuck in the back of my head. And as an executive you always had to show up. You always had to do all the effort every day. And in the beginning of the year, you started from zero and had to go build it again and what I really wanted to do, and couldn't get outta my head, was build a company where if I made good strategic decisions, and could create other types of reoccurring revenue that'll keep building on itself to create wealth and I can never get that outta my head as I was an employee for somebody and I had to go scratch that if that was the entrepreneurial side of me, it made a lot of financial sense and 

I just wanted to go do that.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Love that, and you're no stranger to startups and getting things going because at one point, and the listeners heard this in the introduction, but you had nine businesses going across different industries, close to 2000 employees. You had hundreds of thousands of clients and over a hundred million dollars a year.

I know that's changed. But when you were going through that, Jeremy, what was your secret sauce for listeners who saying, wow, if I could just do that with one company, nevermind nine companies, that's amazing in and of itself, but did you [00:06:00] find some kind of secret sauce between all the companies, a formula that allowed you to scale and to grow, or was it different, what was going on there?

Jeremy Straub: Success leaves clues, I heard somebody say that afterwards and I realized that you, no matter what industry there is, there's some general business concepts that could be applied across industries, and it really comes down to just how you're operating those businesses, how you're finding talent, how you're developing talent.

And so,, I think I was able to take I'll give you an example on one of them is we do, we build our compensation programs for a lot of our leaders based around 90 day sprints or you might have heard a 12 week year in certain books on that. And we have bonuses tied around that and that's been a really good structure for me across industries to pay leaders 

that get them focused in on the short term, don't get lost just on annual goals. That was like an example of a small concept that I was able to apply across industries. 

That being said I do find it. If you have an industry you're comfortable with, it's much easier to start businesses that are offshoots to [00:07:00] that company and offshoots to that industry than opposed to just jumping into something else.

If I jump, I jumped in the restaurant 

business. That was a heck of a lot different than financial services. That learning curve was a lot steeper than I expected it to 

be, and I probably could have took those same dollars and reinvested it into some type of subsidiary of an existing business I had that I knew better and got a better return.

But I joke that guys like cars and bars, like we always wanna own bars or restaurants, we kind of always wanna own like car dealerships and have 

nice cars or something. And so you get in these industries, sometimes it may be more of a passion project than it is opposed to something you think you could succeed in as I did start in other industries I wouldn't say that it was financially as rewarding as if I would've stuck into something that was in a similar vein of my expertise.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And speaking of cars, Jeremy, and by the way, thank you for sharing that with us. There's a lot to unpack there, and we'll get to that in a moment. Your father was in the car business, and you can correct me if I'm off base with this. That said, you saw your [00:08:00] father go through some highs, but also some really dramatic lows, and did that have any impact on you as you went into business for yourself and any lessons with that, that you can share for our listeners?

Jeremy Straub: 100%, 2008 It was a rough year for him, and he expanded very quickly before '08 and really took advantage of the credit markets at that point where it borrowed money to grow, but also built a business model around in the car dealerships around bad credit and so, when the credit bubble burst.

And then the domestic car manufacturers pushed a lot of inventory on the dealers it ended up being, he lost all the dealerships and so the one learning though I had through that was he was able to get such a good return 

Investing in his business over and over again that he didn't diversify out 

and it made sense. 

You're gonna go get 20, 30, 40% returns in your business. Why would you go invest in the market? Why would you go try other industries? And you just reinvested into there. And so,. what that taught me early on was the idea of diversification of my assets, just cause I can get a good return in my 

business.

It's not worth just reinvesting over and over in my business, [00:09:00] but trying to build a bigger portfolio of companies and of assets to make sure that if one, depending on the market condition shift, I'm not gonna be stuck. Just dealing with what happened in that exact business. That changed on how I viewed where I invest my money, 

it also changed me just putting everything into one business that I'm completely passionate about.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Jeremy, we're gonna get to your current business, Coastal Wealth in a moment, but before we get there, when you had these different companies, you put some systems in place, you had leadership teams in place. For the benefit of our listeners, how involved were you day-to-day? Were the business running without you, more or less, and you were just being there for maybe the big picture strategy or updates or how involved were you?

What did that look like for you?

Jeremy Straub: There's probably two parts to it. So vision and strategy is where I'll spend a lot of time, right? the big strategic decisions going through, big critical hires. We're slow to hire and making sure that I'm involved in the critical hires of the role. And then I run on those 90 days sprints. So in the [00:10:00] beginning of those 90 days.

I'm involved in the goal planning of all the different departments and different levels , we do a two day offsite every quarter and we review, what they did well that quarter, how they did versus their goals for those 90 days and where they were off.

And then they have to say what they're gonna do for the next 90 days. what I try to. Bulk in as much as I can in a small period of time that I can get line of sight into the business. That 

is skip a couple levels that would report to me. And that gives me a sense of what's happening. And then the next 90 days, it's just working with that president that's running that 

company and really getting a sense of how those departments are doing versus that.

And it's just a high level accountability by having a very clear scorecard. I can look every week to see where we are with that. And then, and that's basically all done via email and it's just responding back to where we are with that scorecard that week. if I start to see that we're behind, that's where I'll pick up the phone or start scheduling time to do it.

And then what I'll typically do is I'll schedule a big block of time. I won't do like a 30 minute call. I'll [00:11:00] schedule like two hours where the president can't over talk me where kind of just fast talk me through what's happening , I call it long slow take down. Right? I can like just keep ripping apart all the 

details 

to see if there's really a bottleneck we need to address before we hand end those 90 days that's kind of how I run the multiple businesses or for the bigger business, the multiple departments in a way that I feel like I'm pretty well in tune to it without having to suck a lot of my time.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Jeremy, what's terrific about that and for the listeners of the Deep Wealth podcast, who know our infamous nine step roadmap, again, this is the same system that myself, my business partners created. For our Exit , which we'll get to in just a moment. On your side there, you heard Jeremy talk about firstly, he has a professional management team a president and other leaders in the company to run the business.

Jeremy, I presume if you got abducted by aliens today and you came back a few years from now, the business would still be there and what's the systems in place? Hopefully better off than where it would've been from the day that you departed until you, you came back. Would that be the case? Would you.

Jeremy Straub: [00:12:00] Funny you say that I think we were, I was sharing before I was out for a little bit with a health issue for about four or five months, and the business actually day to day, 

Ended up running better without me. They actually got better results without me. I think the part that I have a gap, personally, that I still have to work with is they might have veered away from hitting the long-term 

strategy and might have made some good short-term decisions to get results, but it didn't fit into the long-term piece that you kind of have to unwind or overinvest.

I gotta figure out how to balance that. But the actual like numbers on a weekly basis were better without me distracting 'em is what I.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Love that. And for our listeners, you know, one of our famous questions, does your business run without you? In Jeremy's case said, yeah, it not only ran without me run. When I wasn't there for that short period of time. And you also have clarity because you have goals, you have KPIs, and it's clearly everyone knows what they should be doing, what needs to be there.

And I love how you have, okay, let's not waste time on a 30 minute call. We'll spend the time on a two hour quality call. We'll go through what needs to be done and you're not gonna, I'll talk me [00:13:00] and then have to dash off because our time is up. Some terrific strategies that are there. And let's put a pause on that for just a moment.

And it was in your official introduction, but you just mentioned it now. You went through a health issue. It was a game changer for you and for our listeners who thank goodness are healthy, Jeremy, perhaps you can just share some of your story and the importance of health and what that's from an outlook perspective, how that's changed now that you're back in the seat, thankfully.

Jeremy Straub: Yeah, no appreciate it. I just went through stage four throat cancer. Was had three different tumors. Had to get radiation and chemo for that amount of time. It was like two months of radiation every day. And then a few rounds of chemo. Luckily I'm in remission now that's positive.

For me I, I look back and go. people would say, okay, you look like you're in shape. Right. But I don't think I took care of myself where I was, burning the candle at both ends. The sleep was not as important as it should have been. Diet, as long as I stayed in a decent weight, I was okay, but I really wasn't worried about how that was nutritious to my body.

And along with that, the stress level too, I don't think I managed great. I managed enough that people probably wouldn't know on the [00:14:00] outside, but I 

don't know what it did to my body through that and after going through. Although I'm getting back to working probably about 80 or 90% of where it was it's completely changed on where I spend my time during the day and where I'm focusing in on from a priority perspective and an energy perspective.

Of where it is. The mindset, though, I had after this, and this is what I'm trying to figure 

out, was 

I didn't wanna look at cancer happen to me and this woe is me thing. And I wanted to look at it as cancer happen for me, and if it happened for me, the big puzzle I'm trying to figure out is, why is this gonna make my life better?

How am I going to take from what I learned from that and either share it with other people or somehow become a better father, somehow become a better leader to my businesses, 

somehow to become a better person in the community? I don't think I've got the answers yet on 

that of how it happen for me, it's actually a fun puzzle to start to figure out on how it's gonna actually improve my life.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Firstly, Jeremy, congratulations. What a monumental win in the most important area that you've overcome, and for the [00:15:00] benefit of our listeners. Looking back at your journey and your journey still ongoing as you were sharing with us, what would be some of the bigger changes that you've made? I'm gonna say in your life in general, because business, personal, it's really, I'm gonna blend them all together.

From a health perspective, what's changed for you today than say three years ago, a year ago?

Jeremy Straub: Yeah, a few things. I'll start with the business and then I'll kind of move to the personal side. One of the things that I found interesting is my business relationships that reached out to me, the ones that I could really feel cared about me the most 

and was like, Intimately distraught by me being sick were the people that I had the biggest impact on them developing these humans.

Not just business people, 

not just salespeople, not just executives, where I was, whether it's in leader development class, I was doing talking, mentorship with them that I had a significant impact in them. shaping the person they 

are. And as I look, as I moved up the organization and run bigger businesses and bigger companies, I started to go a lot more [00:16:00] into strategy and deal making.

And away from what probably made me successful was really worrying about development that I really think leadership is about development and developing yourself and others. it's given me a renewed vigor on how much of an impact we can have on the people we work with, not just in business, but in life, and how, the perch that we might sit on actually gives us a chance to influence people in a much positive manner than I, I ever appreciated so,.

It's changed on my development programs that I have in my companies, in, in helping grow people around me. As for the fact I'm on the personal. . It's changed on my health part, right? I've now spent a lot more time understanding longevity markers, understanding what aspects of life, increase your chance to be able to increase your life expectancy 

and making shifts around, and it's all stuff we know 

One of the things that, that I've been surprised about is the meaningful relationships you have in life. How much. Enhances how your body feels if you [00:17:00] focus in on those meaningful relationships. And so,, you know, there's just a number of things from sleep, meaningful relationships, what you're putting in your body.

Alcohol is a big one. It's, very social for us as a business. But alcohol's one of the proven like six proven things that cause cancer and it's okay. It's hard for me to have a drink now, knowing that I could be back in that situation just from something I'm drinking. so, That's kind of changed a little bit.

For me the part I'm struggling with and I'll tell you, is that you have these epiphanies of where you want to spend your time. I wanna be a better father. I wanna work out every day. I wanna make sure that, you know, I'm, having more of an impact with my family, more extended. and then life starts to get in the way 

and you start to get busy and you start to do everything else. And even with is as impactful of an experience I had. I still end up catching myself moving into the habits that weren't positive for me and the lifestyles that weren't positive of me beforehand.

It's hard cause I want to have this impact on people telling people about my story, and yet I still struggle with being able to make those changes. And for me, journaling in the morning has been real important for me, reflecting [00:18:00] back on what I learned and how I want to spend that day with intention.

And if I don't do that, I catch myself making poor decisions during.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Amazing. And for our listeners, I hope you picked up on it, because what Jeremy is sharing from his personal journey, and again in Deep Wealth, we feel if it's business is personal, whoever's had businesses and personal never had a business. Because if we're not feeling right on the inside, It's gonna manifest itself in everything that we do from the business to everything else.

Jeremy, from the kinds of food that you eat or don't eat in, in some cases, to sleep, some of the most underrated superpowers right in front of us that we tend to overlook to even journaling. I'll call all those things. On the art side of both business and life, we tend to overlook. But are such a game changers for you.

And hey, you know what you're saying. You're not perfect. You're human so,, welcome to the human race who is . But I respect and honor your vulnerability for sharing that openly with us of where you're struggling in some areas as you try and, on the one hand, be an example for everyone. Yet [00:19:00] on the other hand, getting caught up in perhaps on the older.

But awareness is key. And Jeremy, what I, love what you also said with longevity so,, in the business world, we call them KPIs, key performance indicators. And we've had doctors on the show and health professionals and biohackers and they say something similar in our personal lives for our health have your own set of KPIs.

And you mentioned some like sleep and the kinds of food that we're eating. And I know there's other ones from a metabolic side of things. Anything you care to share for our listeners of perhaps what they should be looking at that they're probably not.

Jeremy Straub: Just coming from cancer. There's a number of ways that you can have body scans at different parts of your life. And I would be recommending doing that. I had a lump on my throat for nine months and I was too busy to go to the doctor to check it out, right?

I 

sit back and look going, why the heck I did that? And after I did that, , and I told people that. There was two people I knew that didn't get their skin checked, went and got their skin checked and they ended up having something cancerous they had to remove on it. A lot of us have this to-do list 

of stuff we know we should be doing and we're not doing [00:20:00] cuz you know, we don't think it's gonna happen to us and life's busy.

Right. those are easy ones that you already know about and you can. Can pay for scans if you wanna, but the two ones and again, I'm not a doctor but I'll throw these out here. One was on bone strength and bone density and your 

ability to be able to live a long time on that.

 I lifted maybe one or two days a week, but the only way to really build a lot of bone strength is by lifting weights. And a lot of times we don't wanna lift weights as we get older cuz we're worried about it. There's clear clinical studies that say that is something that could provide longevity.

And there was one thing that threw me off, said if you break a hip over 70, 

the chance of you passing away in the next two to five years is increased by five or tenfold then I'm like, all right, I need to get my bone strong by left and raise. The second one was around grip strength. 

And I didn't realize how important grip strength was as you get older and that, and it's never something I trained on before.

 And I started testing myself on grip strength where it was, and you just see if it's going down over the years. It's getting a base level of certain markers that you've deemed important. I am literally so, novice I won't trust me on this. I'm just starting to do the [00:21:00] research and reading about it and trying to find places where I understand.

The logic behind it, and it's a of medical professionals that I believe that have the right experience for it. I'm just early on that, but those are some of the things where I said to myself, I think we were talking earlier in the show after I was done with cancer, my doctors go, no, you can go back to your normal lifestyle.

You're good. 

And that just didn't sit right with me and I know they meant that nicely, saying, Hey, you're back to healthy. You're going through it. But it didn't sit right with me because I still believe my lifestyle helped allow the cancer to progress faster than it could have if I was more thoughtful with it.

At the minimum. The fact that I had a lump in my throat and I didn't go check it out for nine months, my lifestyle bothered that one. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: For sure. And you know what, Jeremy, and for our listeners in the show notes as you're talking, I'm thinking of the interview that we have with Dr. Ovadia, who by the way, is also Florida based. He wrote the book, Stay Off My Operating Table, talks a lot about the metabolic markers that we should be looking at.

So, we'll put a link there in the show notes. But Jeremy, you're right and what the science is showing is people think [00:22:00] that metabolic diseases, things like cancer and such, it's in the genes, it's in the genetics. It really isn't. It's called epigenetics. It's the choices, the lifestyle choices that we make or don't make that really play a very strong role in if we're gonna stay healthy or not.

And we'll put that in the show notes 

Jeremy Straub: That was actually one of the things that like shocked me, like 90% of cancers are actually environmentally based or decision based. Very rare are genetic or hereditary. You're a hundred percent right.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, absolutely. I'll throw another stat out there. Then we'll get to some business stats. Up to 90, maybe 99% are some of the numbers being thrown out there that all diseases cancer included, start in the gut and from the food we're eating to the microbiome, to how we're taking or not taking care of ourselves.

If we can figure those things out and be preventative, it can save us a whole lot of struggle and. Later on in the game. And speaking of the game, Jeremy, let's transition to a different game. The business game. You're running these companies, here at Deep Wealth, we're all about two things, all about business growth, and we're [00:23:00] all about planning and preparing while you're growing your company.

Eventually for an Exit and we'd love to hear how did it go with the companies on exits, maybe getting some knocks at the door, or deliberately and intentionally selling some of your companies. What would you say to that?.

Jeremy Straub: I've sold off portions of the companies I've sold off full amounts of the companies and, obviously the bigger businesses. I've kept, one of the things I've found is a lot of people that have had lump sums miss having the cash flow and the mailbox money coming in from the companies even 

after they got their lump sums.

so, you know, for my core. Have never really wanted to 

sell, although we've gotten unsolicited offers that are big numbers that make you want to. For me I'm still very passionate about growing and building and the vision I have in my head of what the company could be is.

Not close to where we are right now. 

And 

I don't feel like I'm gonna spot to sell the bigger portion, but it goes back to that diversification piece that I got from watching my father, that it's allowed me to be able to sell some of the businesses. That have probably afforded me the right to [00:24:00] not have to sell the bigger one at that point.

I'm not stuck on if it's not my core business. I'm not stuck on having to run a business for the sake of running a business, and I'm not even stuck of extracting the full value of it. And I think you do a really good job of helping realize business owners how much money they leave on the table. When I was reading through what you guys are about and how your ecosystem's built to support it and made me sit there and regret making some of the sales that I probably did not having someone like you in my ear and putting a little pebble in my shoe, maybe not thinking about it.

 but I always looked at, personally I looked at strategic sales ones that were competitor based, that I felt like they were gonna take good care of the business than opposed to a PE base that would be extracting as much value out of it. Again, it might be cutting apart the business to do it.

That's how I looked at it for the exits I had. I'm not saying I would do that all in the future especially if it was the bigger businesses that I'm looking 

at. 

But in the past that's been the exits that I've had.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Jeremy, you know what's terrific for our listeners, what you're hearing from Jeremy is he had clarity along the way, [00:25:00] which often. We're just so, busy. We're working in the business instead of on the business. It's not running without us. We don't have that clarity. It's your point, Jeremy. We get these unsolicited offers and also your point, Jeremy, we agree with you.

Usually, not always, but most times the unsolicited offer is the absolute worst offer. That's why they're around. That's why buyers love them. It's to their advantage. Not to our advantage, but when you have the clarity, , you know what you're gonna say no to. You know what you want. And you also know, okay, you know what?

In these areas here, let's explore some kind of liquidity event. I'm not tied into it. Let's see what we can do. And that clarity is absolutely everything, as I like to say. We've gotta stop believing and we have to start knowing. And when we know that's where we have the confidence, that's where we can have the faith and that's where we make the better decisions.

Jeremy Straub: Yeah, in my mind, if I look at selling, you know, the core business, I think that's a decision that I would probably make three to five years ahead of time 

and be building the business to be sold. At that point, right? Where then [00:26:00] I would have to go educate myself with smart people like yourself to be able to do that and position it right, than opposed to not now.

 I think it was just, easier for the smaller businesses to be able to kind of take what I got and go almost money off the table and just kind of jumped on it. But I, if I probably would've put more time in, I could have extra more about it..

Jeffrey Feldberg: Fair enough. And you know what, as we like to say, how do you master a game you haven't really played before? Because the skills that built a business are definitely not the same ones, although they seem to be, but they're really not the same ones to sell it. And to your point, Jeremy, when you surround yourself with the right people, it's if I'm gonna play tennis and you're a world champion of tennis, I'd be better off asking you to coach.

Then walking up to anyone on the street, Hey, I'm playing tennis. You wanna grab a game? Maybe we'll learn from each other. You're spot on with that. Jeremy, what's going on now with how you're spending your time and you have Coastal Wealth and you also have your podcast. So, what's going on with that?

What can you tell us of how you're making a difference out there for business owners and what the focus is.

Jeremy Straub: So, else the problem is my [00:27:00] core business and that we have over 400 financial advisors throughout the southeast United States. And really that business is around financially planning for business owners on their Wealth outside of their company and how they can leverage their company to be able to continue to increase their own personal Wealth.

And been fortunate enough to work with some top financial advisors. That work with Coastal Wealth to be able to meet some really interesting business owners. Learn about where they are in the cycle and understand, can I go back to that part of this drove a lot of my decision making was that diversification piece and really making sure business owners aren't putting all their eggs in one basket with their business and just reinvesting in their business, but making sure they're diversifying out and that business is scaled relatively well. We've made a number of different acquisitions. I founded it seven years ago, or almost eight years ago now. And we've been able to do that through acquisitions and also just attracting really good talent and financial advisors to be able to join us.

And then the interesting part is, I really built the company coming from my [00:28:00] background was around assets under management and really managing money for people. 

And we've really kind of added on insurance as a big piece to it. And it's not something I understood or really thought about much eight years ago, but it's come a bigger and piece of business owners ways to be able to hedge risk inside their business, but then also be able to use it to help actually increase Wealth in other different ways too.

So, It's been a good learning.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Jeremy as I understand, your company you have insurance and then retirement planning, you have brokerage, you have estate planning, and truth be told, each one of those areas, that could be not only an episode, it could be a series of podcast episodes. There's a lot there to put you on the spot with that though, as you're working with business owners who are the same people that are listening to this episode, if you had to pick one area where as business owners we are just completely missing the boat on what would that one area be that we should really know about, but we probably don't.

Jeremy Straub: I don't know if this is a bias for what I went through in the last six months or not, 

but I can tell you it's been a renewed passion and interest of mine [00:29:00] with, regarding my business, so,. when I found out I was diagnosed with cancer, besides that first day, 24 hours, 48 hours of going, okay, how am I gonna manage it?

Is this for real? Did this really happened? Am I gonna live or 

not? Quickly, as those questions started to hit my head, I said to. Is my family. Okay. What happens if not like I'm in the business, but you know how's the business going to keep running and how are my family gonna extract value outta that business?

 Do I have enough insurance to cover liquidity of any taxes that they might get hit with estate taxes 

and probate and everything else. And although I've done planning, I had this whole level of anxiety that hit me on top of my health scare. I started to have this financial fear and so I call with my financial Advisor and going, Hey, am I okay?

and he said, I'm okay. And walked me through it and then said, Hey, you got a couple decisions though you can make real quick, that we could be able to benefit from it. One, I had a big like large term insurance policy 

that only had a certain amount of time [00:30:00] to convert to permanent, which I wouldn't have been able to get that insurance I ever again, cause my health piece we had to make a couple decisions and what I worried about. do business owners do. Our clients have that same confidence that if they had to scare like me, 

that somebody has put their whole financial house in order, that they don't gotta compound that personal health tragedy that I had by a financial tragedy of their family. Were they gonna sit there and stress at night while they're worried about their health stress that their family's gonna be okay?

Are they gonna have to fire, sell their. If something happens to them to cover the costs associated with it, or do they have the partnership agreements set up the right way with their partners that their family's gonna be taken care of and so For me, I think that's probably the most important thing that people.

Don't do and they push off cuz we all think we're Superman. And along with that it's not a fun conversation and we'd rather go figure out how to grow the business 

than worry about what would happen to us if we're too sick or hurt to work. And I think that starts with a really [00:31:00] good financial planner to be able to help you put all that in order and then partner up with the right accounts and attorneys afterwards.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And for listeners out there. You're hearing it from Jeremy. This is stuff straight from the trenches. This is not theory, this is not classroom stuff. And Jeremy, you really asked a poignant question for all of our listeners. Do they have a financial planner? Do you have everything covered off? Heaven forbid.

Should you get some negative news or something happened to you that at least you have some peace of mind in that area. And Jeremy, someone finds themself in that position that, Hey, you know what I'm not really covered. I don't have a financial planner. I've just been so busy on the business.

What should they be looking for? They're speaking to someone like yourself. They're speaking to other people. What would be some of the dos and don'ts when selecting an Advisor in that area?

Jeremy Straub: There's a couple things I would do. One is if you're doing a financial plan, you should be looking for a certified financial planner. It's like 

the CPA for accounting. Certified financial planner, people have to go through six different tests and a comprehensive, have a certain amount of years in the business to be able to use a CFP designation.

Along with [00:32:00] that, you have the opportunity to do background checks on people that are securities licensed. It's called Broker Check. It's through finra. If you just Google broker check, you could pull up people's if they've had complaints in that. Anytime you're working with a financial Advisor, you wanna do a broker check and make sure that Advisor has a clean background and they are who they say they are and they do what they say they're going to do.

Those are two easy filters you can use beforehand. And then I would typically work with a financial Advisor that charges a fee for advice. You wanna make sure you understand how they're compensated. The idea that you write a check for a fee and then you know you're getting unbiased, objective advice feels better than it's commission-based products.

Now, if it's commission-based products, that's fine. Just make sure you understand that and you can make a decision if there's a conflict or not. And being able to work with somebody with commission-based products and there's still very good advisors that work on commission-based products that are extremely intelligent and well verse.

But you just wanna understand how someone's paid to be able to understand where the advice is coming from.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Some terrific advice out there, and for our [00:33:00] business listeners and our podcast listeners, as we like to say, every episode before you go onto your next email, phone call, meeting, whatever it may be, have some action before leaving, and this could be that action for today. If you're not covered financially, if you don't have the right insurance, you don't have the right plan right now.

Whether it's calling Jeremy or reaching out to someone you already have in your circle, do it and start that process. And Jeremy, you also have for your Youpreneur Podcast Mindset Meets Money what's going on with your podcast? What's that all about?

Jeremy Straub: I just launched this podcast with one of my executives on my team. He's a doctorate in, planning. He has 34 other designations, much smarter than me. Him and I co-host it. And what we do through is we go through biases that people have with money and how that affects their financial decisions. Oftentimes what we found in working with clients is, , we can give them the best advice. We can tell them what's the right financial planning 

strategy, but a lot of times [00:34:00] their behavior ends up not being in line with the best financial advice and so what we're trying to do is break down those barriers that people have between their ears and be able to help understand what those biases are.

They can be able to realize when they're actually doing that they can make some better decisions with their money .

Jeffrey Feldberg: Love that you're taking some of the myths, dispelling them, giving them the facts, the tried, the true, the proven to really make a difference out there.

Jeremy Straub: Yeah, you know, You take a look and there's a study done let's say the average return in the market's, you know, 8% or 8.5%, the average return for the retail investor is like 4.2%. Why is the retail investors return so, much lower. It's not because they're not invested in. S and P 500 type funds or people that 

follow indexes, it's cause they end up selling at lows and they end up buying at highs and they make irrational decisions with their money.

It's the behavior that they do in investing that stops them. It's not the actual underlying investments we're starting to spend more and more time trying to educate our clients 

and trying to educate [00:35:00] and the listeners in particular with the podcast to be able to understand how they're making those decisions and hopefully make better.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And there you have it in. We will have all the links in the show notes. It'll be a point and click for our listeners who couldn't get any easier. Jeremy, let me ask you this. I mean, we can keep on going all these different rabbit holes that we've covered. We are bouncing up again some time. I'd love to ask you a question.

I have the privilege and the honor of asking every guest. On the Deep Wealth podcast, and here's the question for you. I'll give you the context. I'm gonna set it up for you. Think of the movie Back to the Future, and in the movie you have that famous and fabulous DeLorean guard that can take you back to any point in time.

Imagine it's tomorrow morning. You look outside your window and not only is a DeLorean car there, but Jeremy, the door is open. It's waiting for you to hop on in you hop on in and you can now go to any point in your life. Maybe Jeremy as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time it would be.

What would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or wisdom or, Hey Jeremy, do this, but don't do that. What would it sound like?

Jeremy Straub: First I love the visual that [00:36:00] you kind of painted through there. It gives you a whole different perspective in answering the question. And then the second it's interesting timing, my mind starts to go to what are some health decisions that I wouldn't make differently 

to have a different outcome.

But it's really hard to be able to determine that on it. There's not a lot of things that I regret or I would kind of change on it. I would probably go back earlier probably to a 20 year old self of mine and try to give a sense of what the priorities were. If I look at my first 12, 13 years in business, it was just work. . And I put aside relationships. I put aside family, I put aside health, 

I put aside everything to be able to do the grind.

And I think the way that I rationalized it in my head of what could have been a good business decision 

was more of me. Not wanting to address the other stuff as important 

and not spend time in there. And, helping that 20 year old me really understand making the decisions with each [00:37:00] hour. if it was a good business decision or should I have been spending time with family, building relationships, worrying about personal health.

I was. I didn't care what I was putting in my body and I didn't care what I was, if I was working out and I didn't care if I was staying connected with family or friends during that time. 

I was just, trying to become the best business person I could build. And you know, in Hindsight I would've tried to change that now I don't know if I would end up in the same spot, which is the hard part to decide 

that. Right. And I'm sure there's a lot of successful people that probably think the same thing. And I'm happy with the outcome in general in my life of where it's come. But that would probably be it is giving perspective to that person in their twenties of where priorities were and why. And what could be the repercussions of each of those that person could make an educated decision of? Is that what you really want longer term?

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific insights. And you know, it's interesting because you're straddling really between the two. Well, If I changed it, would I be where I am today and all the wonderful things that I've learned and who I've become or, you know what, if I were to change it, I would do that and Those two themes are the most [00:38:00] popular themes when people ask.

You're Intri company, and love that answer. And speaking of answers, for listeners who have questions, Jeremy, they wanna reach out to you. Where would be the best place online that they can find you?

Jeremy Straub: Twitter, it's Jeremy Straub Instagram. It's JM Straub. And then you can just go to coastalwealth.com you wanna learn more about the company. Or you can go to the podcast Youpreneur or Mindset meets money on everywhere you find podcasts.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. And we'll have all them in the show notes. It'll be a point and click. Well, Jeremy, it's official. This is a wrap, a heartfelt thank you for your time, your insights, your wisdom today. And as we'd like to say here at Deep Wealth, please continue to stay healthy and safe.

Jeremy Straub: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Jeff. I appreciate it. 

Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions. 

Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've [00:39:00] ever taken. The money was very well spent.

Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended. 

Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never [00:40:00] use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, [00:41:00] not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

 If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, if it added value, if you walked away with some new insights and strategies, please leave a review on your favorite podcast channel. Reviews help us reach new listeners, grow the show. And continue to create content that you'll enjoy and as we wrap up this episode as always please stay healthy and safe.