Jeff
Appearances
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
People and clients keep coming back to us again and again and again and again because they get results with our work. And you can too if you apply it.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
Welcome back to Twin Flame Ascension School. I am so excited for our class today.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
We've got some great content to move through and great love to discuss and healing to be had and wisdom to be shared and blocks to be cleared and love to be experienced. And expressed. Oh boy, oh boy.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
Can I help you here? Pardon me? Can I help you here? Sure.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
And go back to your inner work. Because that's what's going to bring you progress. That's what's going to help you put one foot in front of the other and actually resolve this. You have to go within and change it within. Really, we promise you, it's never outside of you. It's never over there. You don't have to accept that as reality and accept that as how things are going to be.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
Because literally, once you've cleared all that, that's all the blocks that you have to your flame. So you think this is my biggest block? Literally, that's it.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
Don't be shy about it. Go track him down. Give him the drill.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
We'll see him, tell him how you really feel, and do whatever it takes.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
And your response is, I don't give a fuck. I'm going to love you no matter what. I don't give a fuck about that shit. I love unconditionally.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
Nope, not even being a puss. Show up at his door and fucking give him the drill and tell him that he's your man.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
Welcome back to the very first juicy Twin Flames Universe Ascension Workshop.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
Do you choose to do that? I made the choice. Do you choose to love yourself? I do. Good. That's easy. That's all you had to do.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
We're starting right here. And if you don't know where to find your good, it's within yourself. Within. I have it. You have it. We all have it. If you've never seen it, hi.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
I'll give you the tools, if you haven't received them already, to feel good any time you feel bad. Isn't that powerful? To be able to feel good any time you want? And then when you feel the good thing, it can manifest as good things. Make your twin flame in harmonious union.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
All of it is yours. Everything. Everything. Everything you desire. Follow me. Follow me.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
You, too, can have your twin flame. You, too, can have harmonious union forever. Join us. Thank you, and take care. Thank you, everyone.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
Hi, I'm Jeff. And I'm Shalia. And today we're here to talk to you about something very special.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
Your twin flame is your ultimate lover, your best friend, your other half, the other component of your soul, your divine complement.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
This is not a fantasy. God created you to be with your twin flame. You were created together at the same moment. It's not some special thing.
Guru: Don't Cross Kat
What to Listen to Next: Twin Flames
Here's the secret. Everyone has a twin flame. Yes, you. You have a twin flame who you're designed for.
It's Been a Minute
Is fact-checking "censorship?" Why Meta's changes are a win for conservatives.
Hi, this is Jeff. L.A. has a food called the pastrami dip, and you can get them all over L.A.
It's Been a Minute
Is fact-checking "censorship?" Why Meta's changes are a win for conservatives.
You'll see the signs that say burgers, malts, and pastrami, and there's this pastrami that's been kind of soaking in a savory juice, and they put it on a soft white roll and squeeze some yellow mustard on there, and they put some pickles on there, and then they just pile that pastrami up and wrap it up in a white piece of paper, cut it in half, and give it to you, and... I love the people.
It's Been a Minute
Is fact-checking "censorship?" Why Meta's changes are a win for conservatives.
I love the diversity. Don't love the traffic.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
That there would be these times where we, you know, the paths were diverging a little bit and then we would come back together. Even toward the end, it's hard to jump, but when we were fighting, when we weren't speaking, I knew that we had this deep connection that was never, ever going to go away.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I remember he came over to my apartment and I remember exactly where I was standing, where he was standing in my living room. And he said, I have cancer, thyroid cancer. I cried. We both cried. I cried. We hugged. I told him he was going to be okay. And I'm not going to remember exactly the things, but I feel like he had had it for some years.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
They told him that he had probably had it for many years. And it was very slow growing. And he was supposed to have surgery, you know, take the tumor out. But he was too stubborn. And he put off that surgery until he really almost couldn't breathe or swallow. Like, he had to have it. Why did he put it off? He thought that he could treat it himself. He did not trust Western medicine.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Jeff had a younger brother who died when he was, his name was Victor. Victor was four and Jeff was, I believe, eight. And Victor was having a routine procedure. He had a droopy eyelid, I think, and something went wrong with the anesthesia and he died. And I think that that affected him for the rest of his life in some mistrust of the medical world. Doctors, yeah.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And maybe that's part of why he thought that he could use Dr. YouTube. He tried to tell me about all the YouTube videos he was watching and I didn't really want to hear it. He stopped eating bananas for a while. He really loved bananas and he was like, I'm doing this diet where you can't eat anything that doesn't grow at your same latitude.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
There was this high dose cannabis oil that he ordered online. And that he took too much one afternoon and he called me. I didn't pick up and I saw that I'd missed a bunch of calls from him. And then I had this frantic voicemail. He said he thought he was going to die because he was too high.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I was so angry. And I stopped talking to him. And I told him, I said, I will talk to you again when you do what the doctors are telling you to do. You need to get surgery. If he would call me with any kind of symptoms, any kind of complaints at all, I just, I wouldn't hear it because I said, well, you need to get surgery. I was furious. I get it. But what was the, the anger was because why?
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I loved him and I wanted him to be okay. And I thought he absolutely could be okay. And he was fairly passive about that, always. And in the times when I would stop talking to him, what I wanted was for him to pursue me, to love me enough to fix it, to say like, oh, Elizabeth's angry. Let me talk to her. Let me fix this. And that wasn't his way.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I just thought that we had time. I just thought we had forever to work it out.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Yeah, always. Every day. Every day. I started to have dreams about him. I had been angry with him. We weren't talking. And I started to have these really intense sex dreams about Jeff. And I would wake up and be so turned on. And I would think, all right, I'm just going to calm up. I'm going to go over there and we're just going to act out this dream where it's on.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Like I can't, you know, it's like, I don't care if I'm mad at him. But then I would be so turned on that I had to just take care of it myself. Yeah. So I would masturbate and then get up. By the time I was like having my coffee, I was like, you know what? It's fine. I don't need to call him.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
It didn't exactly, only because we always kind of went in and out of hanging out every day and we'd be caught up in our separate things. So I never, never thought that we wouldn't come back together. I felt like I was his person. I was his just life partner, just doing life together, including when we were mad at each other.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Mostly me mad at him, but... I also think there was an element of that the tension was building between us, that I think the pretend sex was sort of a... The pretend sex and the sex dreams, it was kind of all heading toward this, our friendship is becoming something else.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
So it was the end of May, May 29th, and our friend Ellison texted me a screenshot of a text from Jeff saying he was in the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai. I didn't even know he was in Los Angeles. We had not been in touch for some time. And Ellison said, why don't you give it a day or two? I will find out what's going on. I'll let you know. And I said, okay.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And then I think maybe five minutes later, I text him. I was not going to be able to wait. I texted him. You know what? Actually, I could...
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
i could can i pull up you have it i can totally pull them up here okay okay yeah may 29th hey blue falcon do you copy i hear you're in the hospital red sparrow i fear the worst my comrade what are they saying are they keeping you in the hospital when are you supposed to come home And Jeff said, well, everything went sideways so fast.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I came here feeling more or less okay, but everything got worse day by day until I couldn't really function. And there was some more about how he was feeling. And then I wish I could say I'm not scared.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
What I felt was I couldn't believe I had let so much time go by. Yeah. without us being in each other's lives. And that was that same night that I texted him, I really do miss you and wish we were talking and sharing all year. That's him. That's Jeff. I'm sorry. We will have a lot to catch up on. And Jeff said, I'm sorry too, love. And to that I said, maybe we should finally fuck.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
why and i truly mean this like why now did you mean that maybe we should just fuck i meant it why i meant it i i think i i just knew like all of this was just ridiculous i think i knew that i wanted to for a long time but i couldn't i couldn't go there
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
He looked really handsome. He was thin, kind of haggard. so handsome and we just hugged I just like fell into his arms and he was just holding me yeah I think I knew from the moment I saw him at LAX that this was something was different and we were going to be together together Even though he had been sick, it was like he had gotten us this really cute Airbnb.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And yeah, I went in and there was a queen bed and then a kind of a sofa bed. And I said, do you want to sleep in the big bed with you? And he said, yeah, I need you to be the big spoon. And he said, I feel really scared. But when you're holding my hand, I don't feel scared. So we got into bed and I just could feel like he felt so warm and his skin was so smooth.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I just knew I was like, I'm not going to resist this anymore. So yeah, I took my nightgown off. I cuddled right up. And as I had always suspected, he was game. I remember him saying, like, oh, I'm so curious now.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And he's just like, I think we both were just so curious to explore each other's bodies as a person you've known for almost two decades, but, you know, had never seen completely naked, had never done these things or touched these parts. And now we were, and it was very comfortable, very easy, very different than any sex I've ever had with anybody ever before.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
How was it different than any sex you'd had before? I didn't feel self-conscious. I didn't feel worried. I didn't feel like I had to be somebody else or, you know, be cute for him or be anything other than who I was. We just wanted to be close. It was truly like we had been apart for so long. Yeah. And we loved each other so much. And I was so worried and he was so scared. And...
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Having sex with him that night was just like, we wanted to get as close as we could to each other and finally know each other as well as we could.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
We already knew and loved each other so much. It was sort of like our bodies were just catching up to where we already had been emotionally. But like physically, maybe there were things that he had talked about that I was like, oh, I see now. Things, skills he had talked about having.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Jeff and I met through my ex-husband, Tom. He said, I met this guy. He's so great. He's an artist. He's a dad. His daughter's right in between the ages of our two daughters. So they were friends, and Tom would always come home, and he would have something to tell me about, oh, you know, Jeff doesn't buy his daughter toys. He makes them. He whittles them.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
His stamina was probably not as great. Did he talk about it? Did he say like, did he apologize? He said the next day, he said, I wish we had done this before I got sick because then you would have really seen what I can do. And it was when we got back home, he wasn't well enough.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, we didn't officially say, but yeah. So we flew back to New York. We got home in the middle of the night drunk. And then I went and spent the afternoon with him. I picked up some groceries for him. He seemed all right. So I went home and texted with him. And at that point, he said, you know, you can come over anytime.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And I wish that I had, but I really wanted to think that he was going to be okay and I would go over in the morning. And then... I didn't sleep with my phone next to me. I should have. I had missed text from him at 3 a.m., 5 a.m. He said, are you up? Hey, are you awake? And then at 7, he said, whenever you get this, my neighbor's taking me to the emergency room.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And then I went to the emergency room that morning. How did he look? He looked the same. Tired, thin, having trouble breathing, still smiling. We were still joking around, clowning. I was getting in the bed with him and snuggling up and we're joking around. But Jeff knew. I think he knew what was going on in his body. And he told me, I don't want to fight this. How did it feel to hear that?
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I wasn't surprised at all. I knew that he was done. I said, all right, I think... I said, I think we need a death doula. So I called up an acquaintance who I knew had just become a death doula. And then... They let him go the night before his birthday. Wow. How old was he turning? He was turning 59. And normally there's a lot of red tape to get checked out of the hospital.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And they said, we know it's your birthday tomorrow. So we're going to push this through even though it's kind of late at night. Got home. And it was his birthday the next day. So his neighbor got him a cake. My daughter went and got balloons. We texted just a few people. It was a very sweet day, really. Sounds really beautiful. We tied the balloons to the oxygen tank.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
But also, I couldn't fully take in, even though I knew what was happening. And the morning after his birthday, the morning of the 12th, that's when he woke me up real early before the sun was up. And he said, I'm I'm done. That night, I was in the bed with him, and he said, are you okay? I said, yeah, I'm okay. Are you okay? He said, yeah. And I said, I love you. He said, love you too.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And then he went to sleep. And I went to sleep. And when I woke up in the morning, he was breathing very shallowly. And I put my head on his chest and listening for his heart and just stayed there in bed with him for a few hours. And I don't even know exactly when he passed. The death doula came in at some point and told me that he was gone.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
wooden toys for her and you know oh for for bedtime story he's reading her the hunchback of notre dame and he he really just really liked him and i talked about him a lot and how did jeff go from being tom's friend to being your friend I'm trying to think when we started hanging out, just the two of us. I guess it was when we started running.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I still had my head on his chest and I said, no, I still hear his heart. I still hear his heart beating. And she said, I think that's your own heart.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
very fresh and so I appreciate it's very difficult to talk about this kind of stuff almost immediately after so I appreciate you going there thank you I'm happy to talk about it I love to talk about Jeff but yeah it is very very soon I mean even walking here and it's such a nice day today and my first thought when I walk outside and it feels like summer is oh no it's summer and Jeff's not here and that means it's going to be a year soon and
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Just the passage of time has been so difficult in that, like, it feels like it's shrinking the time that we had together. As my life goes on, that piece of my life that had Jeff in it is becoming smaller and smaller. And I hate that so much.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
We were both so stubborn, I think. I also wonder if we were meant to be romantic partners. Hmm. I think maybe we weren't. Maybe we really were just such good friends and soulmates. And having sex at the end of his life was a way of being as close to each other as we could possibly be. And that was the arc of our friendships. We'd always, both of us, wondered. We had.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Maybe not always at the same time. We had both thought about it a lot. And if he had died before we got to, that'd be all. That would be bad. And that's what Jeff said to me when I said we were kissing in his kitchen on that last morning. And I was crying and I said, we could have been doing this the whole time. I'm such an asshole. Why am I so stupid?
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I didn't know that we're supposed to be together. And he said, I think things happen the way that they're meant to. Oh, Jeff. And I think he was right.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
We lived really close to Prospect Park, so I decided I was going to take up running. And I think I was talking about that at dinner one night with Jeff and Tom and the kids. And Jeff said, oh, I want to start running. I'll start running with you. He was totally game. And we would text each other. You know, I'm leaving in five minutes.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And I would run down the block and he'd be jumping up and down, trying to pump himself up or stay warm if it was winter. And yeah, that was when the friendship really blossomed between the two of us.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
No, this was the first time that I was really like getting the right shoes and all the gear and all of that. So we were getting into it together. It was not easy. We were definitely pushing. And so we were kind of challenging each other on the there's a hill. So when we would go up that hill, one of us sometimes would be kind of flagging, usually me.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And we both loved the movie An Officer and a Gentleman. I wish I could connect with you on that, but I don't know that one. Have you not seen it? No. So maybe you should watch it. Okay. You should definitely watch it. I will. So Louis Glassett Jr. is the drill sergeant, captain, whatever. Richard Gere is the recruit. And there's a scene where he gets in trouble. So Louis Glassett Jr.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
is running him through all these hard exercises, push-ups, and spraying him with the hose and trying to get him to quit, to drop out. And... He says, like, I want your D.O.R. I think it's like drop-on request or whatever. And Richard Gere says, I ain't quitting. I ain't quitting. I got nowhere else to go. I mean, the story will not make sense to people if they haven't seen the movie.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
He loved to give me a hard time and he loved to wind me up.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
It's making sense to me. But when we were on that hill or any time when one of us really was just so tired, the other one would say, I want your D.O.R., And the other would say, I ain't quitting. I got nowhere else to go.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
We talked about everything. We would usually start out talking about how did you sleep the night before. That was Jeff. He was obsessed with the quality of his sleep. So then inevitably it would go into whatever was on our minds lately. If it was a parenting thing or he was dating someone, my marriage, we did get deep real quick. Yeah.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I was going through, I mean, I got divorced in 2011 or left Tom in 2011. So I talked a lot of that through with Jeff. He was the one. And he's very good friends with Tom. And still, their friendship remained strong. So that kind of gave me the freedom to vent if I needed to vent. I knew that Jeff was still going to love Tom.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Nothing really seemed to hurt his feelings. I don't want to make it sound like he didn't have feelings. Definitely he did. There was something about the two of us I knew that he knew who I really am at this core level and that whatever I might say, it didn't change who I am and his understanding of me. So if I was in a bad mood or if I was angry, I said something mean about somebody or something
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
You know, I didn't even have to tell him, like, oh, I didn't really mean it or maybe I shouldn't say that. He understood who I really was. We had this world that was just the two of us.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
My friend started calling him actually man. She had this big itchy bite and she said it was a spider bite. And he went, actually, spiders don't bite. And I was like, yes, they do. Have you heard of a black widow? Actually, man. Actually, the best way to lose weight. Actually, the best exercise for that. Actually, a lot of people think blah, blah, blah.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I had a neighbor who was behaving a little strangely. So Jeff and I decided that we needed to monitor his movements. Figure out, like, what is going on with this guy? And it was Jeff's idea that we would have code names. And he was Blue Falcon and I was Red Sparrow. He came up with the names. He might say, Red Sparrow, I spotted our target. He's coming toward you.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Not really, only if we were in private, because they were our secret code names. Sorry. Right?
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Yeah, I don't think it changed it. We maybe became closer just because I was single, right? I had maybe more time. I had time when I wasn't with the girls, when they were with their dad. So it probably deepened our friendship more. Yeah. So there's a little bar called Shenanigans. What?
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Yeah, I do. So they have karaoke on Saturday nights. And we would go sing karaoke. We would sing Up Where We Belong, which is the theme song from An Officer and a Gentleman. Well, it all comes back to that movie, does it not? The two of you, that was your song. That was our song. That was our song. Can you sing a little bit? Oh, yeah, yeah. Love lift us up where we belong.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Yeah, yeah. So we were at Shenanigans, had too much to drink, went back to his place, which is a block away. And I was lying on the couch and he was playing guitar. He was teaching himself how to play the guitar from YouTube videos. Also a big Jeff thing, YouTube anything. He's like, there's a YouTube video on that. Actually, there's YouTube. Actually. So he was teaching himself to play guitar.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And he was playing Blackbird, classic beginning guitar song. And as he was playing and I was laying on the couch in my drunken state, I felt sick. And I started to feel this vibe that like... Oh, my God. Is Jeff going to try to kiss me? Is there going to be like it was, you know, when the air in the room changes. So I quickly got up, bolted to the bathroom.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And I'm, you know, then it was the holding the hair and I'm puking.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I had thought about it only in that my friends had suggested, you know, you're such good friends with Jeff, don't you think? Maybe. And I was always stridently, no, absolutely not. Why? Why? I didn't look at him and think, like, oh, he's so hot. And he was my best friend. And once you make things romantic with somebody, like, it's going to change your friendship, your relationship.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Whatever he would say, actually, I would just echo it back to him. Oh, actually? Really? Actually? Then he would get mad.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And I just didn't want to do that. You didn't want to risk it. I didn't want to risk it. But I always had the feeling that I could at any time. I knew that he was game. Even when he was dating somebody, even when he was the most in love, I knew. And I would kind of think, like, I could just snap my fingers and he would drop her for me. I just knew. The glint in your eye. I mean, how did you know?
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
We had, okay, when I was, so I was very nervous to start dating again and to have sex again with a new person, right? It had been years since I'd been with somebody new. I was very nervous and I went over to his apartment one day and I said, Jeff, we have to have pretend sex and you have to tell me the truth about my body. What does pretend sex mean?
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
Like, I stripped down to my underwear and he rolled out his yoga mat. And he said, should I take off my clothes? I said, no. He took off his shirt anyway. He loved to take his shirt off. And, yeah, we just got down. I did all these, like, went through a little Kama Sutra of different positions. And I would say, okay, look here. See how my stomach is hanging right now? What about this?
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
What about that? What about this cottage cheese on my thigh?
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
He said, you look great. You're amazing. At one point, you maybe can't put this on there. We'll see. I was on top of him. And I said, look at my stomach right now. You're not even noticing this. Do you see? It's like punched down bread dough. And he said, if my dick is in you right now, I'm not seeing anything else. It feels amazing. You look amazing.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
bumping against each other so tell me about like was there kind of like a classic fight between the two of you he loved to talk about religion that was the main thing is that I go to church a lot I'm pretty into pretty into God I'm a Jesus freak. But I'm not, I don't love to talk about it. It feels very personal to me. And I definitely don't like to debate about it.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
He just had the goofiest grin. It was just so joyful and a little bit mischievous. Like there was always a little twinkle in his eye. And we had this relationship where I could say anything. I could joke about anything. There was no topic off limits.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I'm not interested in defending my beliefs to anyone or even explaining them particularly. It's just kind of my thing. And Jeff, I think he was very curious about spirituality and faith and And really wanted to know. But the way that he would ask me about it came out in this very teasing slash challenging way. And it really felt like he just wanted to make me mad.
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
And I would say, Jeff, I don't want to talk about this. This is not fun for me. But he loved to argue. He loved to play devil's advocate just to kind of get someone to debate with him. And he would just pick on me until I told him to fuck off. Was he good at apologizing?
Modern Love
Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night.
I think toward the beginning of our friendship, yes. And toward the end, no. And that's where the fight started to feel more serious. It was like... How can I do this? That's not visual. But when they're two parallel lines and they get closer together and further apart and closer together. And that's what I assumed would keep happening throughout our lives.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Yeah, a combination of things. It's always a great question in a group to say, hey, what percentage was success and what percent was luck? And it was definitely a combination. I think of it like winning a poker tournament. Sure, it's possible to not even know what you're doing and just go in 20 times in a row and win. I think, one, it was a good idea. It was my co-founder's idea.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
It was ahead of its time. But it was a good idea and we caught a wave five years in, ten years in, that picked up steam. I would say we had a good division of labor in the startup where my co-founder was a brilliant coder. He was technical, I was sales. So if it had to do with code, it was him. If it had to do with the business, it was me. And we stayed out of each other's way, which was good.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
We didn't go too far too fast. If I would have had an ability to raise venture capital early, I probably would have done it. And that probably would have been a mistake. So again, we took the long view on things, short-term generous, long-term greedy, anything we could do to get the product in the customer's hands and using it, we know we would succeed in the long run. We deferred gratification.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
So we didn't have a big fancy office. We had a crummy office for a long time while we were profitable. We didn't get hit by a lightning bolt out of the sky is definitely one. So you didn't get killed. Didn't get killed. Cease and desist letter, sued by a customer, a breach, sued by... I know we never got sued, which is nice.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
So really a combination of things, you know, Rob, over the long period of time, I mean... I don't want to shoo away any credit. I think we made more good decisions than bad decisions. I think we recovered quickly from our bad decisions. We weren't afraid to take certain risks that had favorable payoff conditions. And we weren't in a rush. We went, you know, we went, I call it bootstrap.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
We had a small amount of money from outside investors that got us over the line.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I think this is one of the benefits of being a bootstrap company. We didn't have a quarterly number that we needed to make. And that means you don't ever sell the product to someone who's not a good fit. You sure try not to. There could be an occasion where
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
there's a prospect and they really should buy your competitor's product, but you need the money or you need to make your number for the quarter. And we never did that. And then there were occasions where maybe the person we were dealing with had a very low budget authority, including our first sale of $9,920 in December of 2003.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
And you think, well, geez, this is a customer that should be $100,000 a year customer, $50,000 a year customer. and the person you're dealing with is enthusiastic about it but they can't convince their management or they don't have the budget and we'd say, what do you got? Can you sign for $5,000? And we would do that. We would do that consistently.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
The way our licensing worked as well was the product did not have a feature that would exclude someone from using the product because they'd exceeded a license count. So we sold on concurrent licenses, there's a number of ways to do it. There was also a generous way to do it was concurrent versus named users, which people liked.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
And then if we thought, hey, you're going to need let's say 50 concurrent users and that's whatever it is, 10 grand a month, we would say, I'll tell you what, first year we're going to charge you for five and take advantage of us. I mean, just rip us in half. I hope you get up to 75 because I'll catch up with you next year. And if that's a problem, we'll work with you from there.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
So you could be sitting around forever trying to get that 50 concurrent license thing, but I'll sell it to you for cheap for five because I know you're going to like the product. I know we're going to take care of you. I would say also, you know, we had a methodology or a viewpoint that like we never tried to avoid our customers. Like we had a phone number that spelled the company's name.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
And you could call that number and one of our people would pick up the phone and help you through a problem. And the idea was always let's try to give great support where no matter what, even if you forgot your password, we're not going to farm you out. to someone else, we're not going to send you through an IVR, we're going to try to get a human to pick up the phone.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
And then after we surprise and delight you with some great service, we're going to take an opportunity to say, hey, by the way, is there anyone else in the, in the company, maybe that could use the product? Or, you know, is there are there other things we could do, we could do better than when once you've done a good job serving them.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
So that's just another example of being generous and greedy at the same time.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Hey, Rob. Thanks for having me.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Yeah, it's a great question. I'd say time moved at different speeds in different parts of our history. So the first couple of years crawling over broken glass, it was like time in the dentist's chair. It couldn't have gone slower. The first few years felt like 100 years. Once we got to profitable and had a pretty good sense that we were going to be okay, that part went fast.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
So from 2007 till the time we sold a majority share, that 10 years might have felt like two. Although there were some struggles, of course, along the way. I don't mean to think it was all sunshine and roses during that 10 years. But that time was really good. We had a small team. It was a good team. We worked well together. It was small enough where you knew everybody.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
It was big enough that you could take a vacation and expect that the company would still be alive when you returned.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I'm happy to walk through the transactions if it's useful, but I think the total was about $88 million. That went to you directly? That went to me from the equity sale in three chunks.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Yeah, boy, Rob, I could go hours on this. I'll try to distill it as best I can. Everyone has a number in mind, right? If I could get this amount of money, then I'd be set and I'd be done. Mine was $10 million. And I think most people, when you say my number is 10, you really think of 20. So that was life changing.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I was down there and then first check was 21, second check was about 40, third check was 27, 28. And I remember in vivid detail the day we sold, cashing the check, taking my family out to dinner in a limousine, what we had to eat. I could bring you to the table where I sat. Second time we sold, Rob, $40 million. It closed early in the morning. I was in a conference room by myself.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I don't remember what I did. that day. I don't, I mean, we might've gotten pizza that night. I honest to God, I don't even remember. And I'm not sure how useful this is to your audience, but I mentioned this on another podcast I was on. I think most people have a default perfect amount of spending, meaning like maybe you can afford to, you know, fly first class and stay in a nicer hotel and, um,
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I don't know, have a decent car, you know, whatever it is. Everyone has their sort of ideal amount of spend. And when you have less than that, life is of course painful because you're wanting to rise up to that. There's also another side and I can already...
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
feel the eyes rolling in the audience, and my eyes would have been rolling as well, that when you're above that, if you have more money than you can spend, it creates a certain kind of an issue as well. And just some examples of that are feeling the need to maybe go do it again or give it away. And it's just more challenging than you'd think.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I made a lot of the mistakes that I think people who sold their business make. You do what the world tells you you should do. You go to try to work with nonprofits and you realize how frustrating and slow that is if you're a founder. I bought a bunch of stuff. I had four houses and a jet at one point and realized, you know, stuff isn't where it's at.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Experience and community and relationships are much more valuable.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
than uh than that and i also grossly underestimated how much i would miss the structure and the purpose and the identity uh that i had in my in my former life and i know i've been talking a long time i can hear myself talking but i just i just want to say to the audience like if you're rolling your eyes right now or you're saying like what a moron just believe me when i say when i was starting i would have said the same thing like how is it possible you know you have this giant pile of money and you don't just write off into the sunset and
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
and spend the rest of your days with frozen drinks and sunsets and boats?
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I guess the obvious answer would be I must not be that interesting. But perhaps beneath that is I like to keep a low profile just for my own safety and security. And by being anonymous, it also helps me be completely authentic with anything I have to talk about.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Oh, gosh, Rabia, congratulations, by the way, because you have accomplished something a lot of people in my situation or similar have not. Six months is a, you're much smarter than me and a lot of others that I've worked. And I stood up a group called Beyond the Finish Line It's btfl.org if anyone is in the same situation. But I can kind of distill a lot of the conversation is this.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I want you to picture a Venn diagram, two circles. One of them is doing something important with people you know and like and trust, right? It's being back in the trenches. It's going to war with your friends and being an important part and being useful in that. Okay, that's one circle. And the other one is absolute freedom and autonomy and independence to do whatever you want, anytime you want.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
And as it turns out, the joke is it's not a Venn diagram, there's two circles. There's no overlap. That's great. And so the key, I believe, is to find something as you did, and I have friends that are in the group that have found something that is worthy of sacrifice of that second circle.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
So if there's something that you feel passionate about, or you feel like you're giving back enough, you're useful enough, you're willing to say, I'm a skier. So I'm willing to say, you know what? We've got perfect ski conditions today. I got six inches of powder. It's blue skies. The lines are short. It's 20 degrees and the light's good. And I have to say, I can't do it. I can't go ski today.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
So it has to be something that's worthy of sacrificing your independence. So kudos to you for finding that. And the North Star I use now or I try to use now is energy. So if I've got something, like I'm enjoying talking to you, I was looking forward to talking with you today. If it's giving me energy, it's good.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
And it doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank, Robin, anyone else listening, it doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank. If you've got low energy, life sucks. It doesn't matter that you can push a button on your phone and have a plane come pick you up somewhere.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
If you're not looking forward to the day and you're not looking forward to what you're doing, your energy is low, life sucks. And if your energy is high, it doesn't, you know, maybe I'm working on a home repair project or something. If my energy is good, life is good. So that's the new scoreboard because it's not money anymore.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Yeah, so let me start with the negative response on that, which is the real generic ones I can't help with, like, you know, what kind of business should I start? Those I try to write, and I'll need to spruce up my website before this publishes, but I'll try to write a, you know, very basic response. you know, applies to everyone, answer to a very basic applies to everyone question.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
The ones that are useful are people that have a particular situation or problem that I can help with. If someone does, you know, business to consumer or they're trying to open up, you know, a market in Asia or something, I can't help.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
But I've had I don't know how many calls and this brings me energy so I'm so happy to do it which is why I don't need money, I don't have a coaching service, I don't have anything else, it just gives me energy.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I've been I think an authentic ear for the people who are going through it and that's where I think I can provide some good in the world from people who can't make payroll, from people who are thinking about a big partnership, thinking about selling. their spouses telling them to get a real job. I talked to a guy whose co-founder committed suicide in their apartment.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I've talked to people who are in the process of making mistakes that I've made. And I think it's really a relief for a founder to be able to talk to someone who's been through it and can say, yeah, me too. You're not alone and it's going to be okay. While not having to sort of like secretly pitch me for an investment, I make no investments. No investments in anything. That's the trade.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I'll not write a check, but I'll not ask you. I don't want any shares, warrants, options, nothing. I want nothing.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Thanks for having me, Rob. I really appreciate and enjoy your work. Nice to be in touch with you.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Oh man, the first word that comes to mind is relief. And following that, probably enthusiasm. As a bootstrap founder, it's very difficult to take a lot of risk.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
So when we sold the business the first time to a private equity firm, and if anyone wants to contact me on Twitter or wherever, I'd be glad to share details about who our banker was, who the private equity firms were, but I'm going to keep those keep those anonymous as well for now.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
But I was excited to work with people and actually be able to put money into the business and pursue some of the crazy ideas that I had as a founder. But when you've got 98% of your net worth wrapped up in your business, it's really challenging to say, hey, you know what, this is a crazy idea. And I think it's a 5x payoff if it works. It's hard to pursue those things.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
But the first thing was relief, man. If I listened to your latest podcast and your guest talked about sleeping for 14 hours. If anyone gets to retirement, I don't know if this is good news or bad news, but the best thing is the sleep. It's just so great to sleep. It's so peaceful. Oh, it's so peaceful. I went a dozen or more years where I was asleep. I was unconscious, but I was still at work.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
You know, my dreams were all involving work and to be able to actually get to sleep is great. So that was the first thing.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
14 is a great, great multiple.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
It was a combination of things. I mean, the market was very strong at that moment in time in early 2022. So that can't be disregarded. But the mental model I use when describing this to people considering selling their business is a slot machine. And I didn't know this going in, or I would have had some better numbers. But
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
you know, just excluding market conditions, you take your revenue is sort of the first reel of a four reel slot machine. And then you take your gross margin. And I'd never really calculated our gross margin. I mean, I knew how the business worked, but I'd never really dug into what our gross margins were. And we were about 90% gross margin. So it was a mature product.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
It was all our own code and open source. We didn't have any licensing costs. So we had high gross margin. That's reel number two. Third is retention. And I knew we took really good care of our customers. It was one of the reasons we had, I think, such a good outcome and took so long was our patience. But we took really good care of our customers. We had 117% net retention.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
So it was a- Negative 17% churn. Yeah, negative 17% churn. That's-
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
And happy to talk about some of the strategies that helped that. My favorite of which is short-term generous, long-term greedy, which I'm glad to talk about later. But the fourth reel is growth. And at the time we sold, the first time, we got seven times revenue. So seven, not nearly as good as 14, obviously.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
But if you think about that slot machine, our growth was only about 20-22% a year when we sold. So if we would have had 100% growth and 90% gross margin... and 117%, that would have been a jackpot. But we were kind of like jackpot, jackpot, potato for that last reel on growth.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
But perhaps the private equity company that acquired the majority stake saw that we had a lot of potential because we weren't aggressively spending in sales and marketing at that time.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Yeah, we were business-to-business security software. And if anyone wants to find me, I'm not hiding, send me a message online or on Twitter or something. Just like with you, glad to introduce myself. But it was business-to-business SaaS.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
It was an abject failure to get one-time licenses is the honest answer. That's amazing. I'm a salesman by trade, so of course we were trying to get $100,000 for the software. And then the way it used to work is you'd pick 15%, 20% maintenance ongoing. But we weren't able to do that. We were two guys and a dog, and the dog was a loner. and nobody wanted to give us the money.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
It was really Salesforce that I recall as being one of the real earliest pay-as-you-go. The difference in our case, we adopted the pricing model of a subscription, which I think was very healthy for customers and for customers and for the tech companies. But we were still on-prem. So we were shipping servers, still probably shipping on-prem servers to customers.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
But it was really the licensing that was rather novel at that time in 2003. And again, driven out of necessity, not some kind of foresight or wisdom.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Yeah, I was not working another job. I was unemployable at the time. And for clarity as well, we did raise $350,000 of an angel round. So mostly bootstrapped is how I should call it. And that was the last capital. Yeah, that was the last capital. And I said, I had a previous company that I sold.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
in a dot-com company that we, let's not venture into to waste time in the interview here, but I had a little bit of money left over from that after failing at a couple of things in between. So we were burning money at home for a long time. It was a tough first five years.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Yeah, it was the first year we did a million dollars of revenue was 2007. I think we were at about seven employees then. So it was just the two of us for a year. We did $9,920 of revenue our first year in 2003. Yes, I remember, and I have a copy of the purchase order I could put my hands on right now. That's cool. That was a big day. Yeah, a million dollars of recurring revenue.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Yeah, I'll give you one early and I'll give you one late. The one early is sort of a combination of stories, but I remember a year in, two years in, something like that. I mean, we're doing almost no revenue and it's just not working. I think we were a little bit early.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
for the market we were in and it's security software so it's difficult to get a beach head and just thinking, man, if I had any other opportunity, I mean any opportunity, like three grand a month and a dental plan and just like relief from the pain I'm going through, I would have jumped on it.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
And I remember a particular moment where I was fighting with the printer or something like that and I was just really angry and frustrated and I think that's one of the things, I mean I hope your audience takes from me and from each other is that it's hard. Man, it's hard and it's lonely.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
And having somebody to talk to authentically where you're not in pitch mode and talking about how great it is and feeling like everybody else is doing great and you're not. But it's really hard. It was hard and it was lonely. The second one I'll give you was late in the process and was a contributor to deciding to sell the business. And this was 2015, I believe.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
where we were doing well, and I had taken a loan. I built an office building for the company, and I took a loan of $6 million with a personal guarantee. I didn't have that kind of money, but the company had cash flow at that point to support that. And we had a security breach. Nothing was lost. but someone got through the first level of our security.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
It wasn't our software, it was a piece of open source code. I don't remember what it was, but we were stuck. And one of our customers said, hey, we've got a red light on the dashboard here. Somebody broke through the front line of security here and they're checking the doors to the vault. Then another customer, same thing. We were under attack at that moment in time.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
I just signed a loan for $6 million to build this. In security software, one bad line of code could ruin you. It wasn't our code, couldn't fix it, totally out of our hands. That's a moment I won't forget. That's a moment that all the ships were down and we didn't really have any ability to play the hand. Our team came together and when a fix was available, we fixed it.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
That's one that I won't forget.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Yeah, I've got plenty of weaknesses, but panic is not one of them. Equanimity, I think, is one of my strong suits. But this was a case, I'm a salesman by trade, so I didn't have any ability to understand really what was going on and had to rely on the team. And I believe it was a Friday night and we just got to the point where there wasn't anything else we could do.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
So I think we approached it rationally and then... You talk about the events that just sort of happened to you, there's just a big wheel in the sky that spins and sometimes your number comes up and that could be getting a disease or getting in a car wreck or in this case having a piece of software that you were using that had a vulnerability. Fortunately, we were able to work through it.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
Fortunately, the other safeguards that were present in our software held strong. I don't know if it's interesting, but a lot of security software you could say is like it's an alarm or it's a fence or a moat or a gate or something. We were a vault. We protected the vault. of some very important customer information, casinos, law firms, banks, hospitals, things like that.
Startups For the Rest of Us
Episode 732 | Lessons Learned Bootstrapping to a $615M Exit
So it was not a system that could fail without massive repercussions for everyone. So anyway, glad to have that behind.
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And I was like, fuck. Fuck. They're going to point me out. Yeah.
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5:30!!
They said they were on the camera and they were like, we extended our honeymoon an extra couple of days so we could figure and see if maybe the Pope would be picked and habeas pumpum. It's from Chicago.
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12 Days of TCB: Don't Stare At The Red Rocket
Where? Where? Right behind. Right in front of Jeff. Look straight up the hill. You got to look real easy. You got to turn away and look.
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12 Days of TCB: Don't Stare At The Red Rocket
Keep with him, Jeff. Keep with him. I'm going to keep an eye on him.
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12 Days of TCB: Don't Stare At The Red Rocket
No, don't you be sorry. Not at all.
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Now I'm a Belieber! (The Return Of Carl Lentz)
I could not have said it better myself, coach. Your dad is a loser indeed. Let's take a quick commercial break and we'll be back with the game.
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Now I'm a Belieber! (The Return Of Carl Lentz)
Touchdown, Jim, that's me, ran 72 yards in the wrong direction, confused by the bright lights, only to be carried back by my quarterback to the opposing end zone where the final touchdown was scored. And while I had not even made the team that year, we were six players short that day because the opposing team failed to show up and the coach made the call.
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Now I'm a Belieber! (The Return Of Carl Lentz)
This is WSHIT's head sports reporter, Jim Touchdown Jeffries. Welcome to the Game of the Week. That's right, I'm the same Touchdown Jim that scored the final six points in the State Class D Championship game back in 1976. You may remember the game as fondly as I do.
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Now I'm a Belieber! (The Return Of Carl Lentz)
And that, my good friends, is how history is made. That's how history is made. We have a hell of a game for you tonight. The Crabapple Nutbags, our boys, are facing their toughest competitors in the Sheboygan Sheep Wranglers. This, my friends, is as exciting as a 6-7 year old t-ball match is ever going to get.
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Now I'm a Belieber! (The Return Of Carl Lentz)
So let's go down to the field where Coach Derek Ponderosa is fresh off probation and ready to give his pre-game talk.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
And of course, I learned everything from Dr. Deloney.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
Well, it's really just truly a gift that my parents have prayed for. They've always prayed for wisdom and discernment over my life. And I learned to communicate well at an early age. So my mom can tell you I probably spoke too much. But being a trial lawyer certainly honed that skill of just dealing with conflict. Yeah. Okay.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
I teach that arguments are not something to win. You never want to win an argument because you start to lose the relationship. Instead, you want to see arguments as something to unravel, find the knot in the conversation and start to unravel it rather than tugging your way and me tugging mine.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
And so when you go into the conversation with something to learn rather than something to prove, you're going to walk away with a much better communication. All right, I'm going to use that tonight when I get home.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
Yeah, absolutely. And at the same time, we are trying to replace connection with transaction. Like you're meant to feel the warmth of a smile, not read it in an emoji. And so too often we replace one for the other when all you have to do is just pick up the phone. And most people don't want to do that nowadays. Why not?
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
I think it's much easier to stay safe and not feel like you can be direct or aggressive or say what you need to say. You'd much rather kind of stand in the back. But if you really want to level up your life, you have to practice the skill of disappointing people. You have to practice the skill of being direct and saying what you need to say. You can still be kind. You can still show grace.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
But at the same time, to avoid clarity is to create confusion.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
what are some tips you could give a guy like me on how to honor and respect the person that i work for but also challenge well you want to make sure that you say what you need to say right up front people believe that confidence is something that you need to say everything all at once Confidence is very quiet. Insecurities are very loud.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
And so when you're always just holding it in or feeling like you know better and you only wish I could only just say, people that are in positions of power or positions of superiority, they will appreciate the more transparent, honest conversation every time rather than you trying to be
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
a wallflower and just be a yes man every time so you you have to be able to get out front of it and say what you need to say put it up put it out there yeah every every time or else you're really doing yourself a disservice yeah
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
Yes, yeah. I think that when you come at it from a position of making them feel good and close to you, Also being very firm. My dad would say this. I would come with him with something that I didn't like and I needed to vent. He'd say, well, that's fine. You don't have to like it, but you need to understand it. And it was this idea of you can connect with somebody and still be mad at them.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
I can still love you and still be upset. And so he would always say, well, you don't have to. That's fine. You don't have to like it. You just need to understand it. And that allowed me, I mean, I didn't like it when I was young. I didn't feel that great. But now I'm seeing the wisdom in it, that he was allowing me the time to connect with him and truly be on the same page.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
At the same time, say, oh, then the breaks. This is what it's going to be. You don't have to like it. It's fine. We're doing it. Yeah. You don't have to like it.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
Yeah, I like to teach that when you set out to win an argument, you begin to lose the relationship. So if you and I were in an argument, and I, as intelligent people do, we like to send that zinger, that thing that's really going to make the point hit home and zing and hurt them. Congrats, what have you done? You still have to live with this person.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
You probably still have to work with this person. You've now just won to be first up to apologize, most likely. I mean, you've now just had to, you've earned that awkward silence when you still have to pass them in the hallway. When you set out to win an argument, you only win contempt. You have to see things as something to learn rather than something to prove.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
Rather than pushing my point, I want to learn more about why you believe what you believe. If I have my glass full and you have your pitcher full, I got to let you pour it all out before I can ever pour anything of what I have into you. And so it's being curious before you start just pushing my way, my way, the highway.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
You got it. I mean, and that's why in the book I set up this framework of how I teach communication is that when you say things, you're going to say it first with control, and you're going to say it with confidence, and you're going to say it to connect. When you really have those three main pillars to communication, it's going to set you up much better for success.
The Ramsey Show
Small Changes Now Mean Big Wins Later
I like to say that most people don't know what they're saying until they're already talking. And so what this book allows them to do is have a GPS and point true north.
The Ramsey Show
Don’t Let Toxic Money Situations Keep You Trapped
Yep. Listening and, uh, have been a, uh, been a student and, and followed David's principles pretty well. So, um, you know, I'm pretty happy today. I've got a lot of peace and contentment, a lot of blessings in my, in my life. And that kind of leads me to the call today. Um, so a little backstory.
The Ramsey Show
Don’t Let Toxic Money Situations Keep You Trapped
So I, you know, I live, uh, I'm retired, um, about two years ago and, um, I mean, I've done well in the market and I was in business for 30 years and, um, situation I have is, is on behalf of my daughter. So, My daughter has been married for two years and a beautiful family. They have two little babies.
The Ramsey Show
Don’t Let Toxic Money Situations Keep You Trapped
Um, and uh, my son in law, um, very bright, intelligent young man, a daughter's very strong willed and independent. Um, is some of the principles that are laid out, you know, they haven't followed to it. The combining, you know, finances, et cetera, is one of them, which I was always very vocal. I kind of taught my daughter baby steps. Um, and so she's been a disciple. She's getting there.
The Ramsey Show
Don’t Let Toxic Money Situations Keep You Trapped
She's got her, She's got an IRA. She's got her emergency fund. She follows a very strict budget. But then not having joint finances, we just found out this week, my son-in-law came to confession to all of us and had been day trading. And essentially was financing some of this through credit cards. And he stacked up about $60,000 in debt and lost all of his savings.
The Ramsey Show
Don’t Let Toxic Money Situations Keep You Trapped
Day trading. And so that number doesn't scare me so much because I'm confident that they can work their way through the debt. The part that I'm struggling with as a father and a grandfather is I'm trying to stay in my lane to give my daughter as much support as I can. She's never asked anything from me since she's graduated from college. She does well at her job.
The Ramsey Show
Don’t Let Toxic Money Situations Keep You Trapped
In fact, she starts back to work from maternity leave this coming Monday.
The Ramsey Show
Don’t Let Toxic Money Situations Keep You Trapped
Yeah, born in October. Beautiful little girl. So the challenge is, for her and for me, is all of this was hidden. She had no idea until she stumbled across some information looking at her credit score that had dropped.
The Ramsey Show
Don’t Let Toxic Money Situations Keep You Trapped
and found out that one of the her card he had used and stacked and maxed that out and that's how she found out and got it so it's a truck so he used her card without her knowing it so they they are very the best way i can put it their family's very close as far as the kids they don't do anything other than take care of the kids and activities are great parents um
The Ramsey Show
Don’t Let Toxic Money Situations Keep You Trapped
And unbeknownst to her, yeah, he used her card, and they do that. They might use each other's cards at times. But then he maxed it out, and when her credit score dropped by 20 points, she started digging.
The Ramsey Show
Don’t Let Toxic Money Situations Keep You Trapped
Yes. So he confessed to her and then the day after called me because, again, we're very close. I mean, we talk consistently. I talk to my daughter or text almost every day or we FaceTime. Yeah.
The Ramsey Show
Don’t Let Toxic Money Situations Keep You Trapped
She's about to go through divorce, right?
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
Well, I'm a 64 year old. I have no retirement. Um, I work at commission job. I've built a insurance agency, a passive income to some degree. And my question is that I'm living paycheck to paycheck right now with no retirement. Uh, what do I need to do when my stock, which I have no control over, we'll start holding value.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
That value should come in, they're telling us, when we go public, somewhere at $15 to $30 a share with what I have. After paying the 40% tax, I believe that is what it is. You're looking at about $600 on the low end to $1.5 on the high end that I will get when I cash those stocks in.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
What would I do? Dave, that's a problem. We were being told it could happen in a year. Could happen in three years.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
The IMO that we are a part of. I own my own agency under the IMO. The IMO is going to go public. In one to three years, they're telling us.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
I had to let go of 50% of my passive income due to health reasons, and I have an opportunity to build that back up, which I can. Or do I go out?
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
That stressed me and basically was out of the field for a while. Long story short, you have a spread with the agent underneath you, and the largest leg was planking me. And once you get planked, then you have no override. That passive income basically goes away. When that happened, 50% of my passive income, I was making about $120,000. I'm making probably $70,000 to $80,000 now.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
Yeah. Yeah, I stay in the field to some degree just to keep my licenses in.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
Well, I'm lazy. I mean, that's the question that my son keeps presenting is, do I put my time and energy because I need to go back out? I've taken some time off, which shouldn't have. But based on getting myself where I needed to be emotionally, mentally, my question is, do I put it back into the agency and rebuild that? I can. There's an upside to that.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
Or do I just go out and get a $20 to $30 remote phone gig that would... Well, where do you make the most money?
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
I'm doing that on a limited basis. The bigger piece to that is what I've let go of, Dave, is the building piece. So there's two pieces to our business model.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
Produce, which I can do with my eyes shut.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Not Too Late to Get Back on Financial Track
Well, what is a good number? Do you know what that number is with life expectancy?
The Ramsey Show
Big Dreams Require Big Sacrifices
So three weeks ago, I'm 46 years old. Three weeks ago, my wife and I paid off our house.
The Ramsey Show
Big Dreams Require Big Sacrifices
Thank you. Honestly, I'm a therapist, so I use these words, but it's a weird, open, vulnerable feeling. It's just one of those things you never thought you'd get, especially the family and finances I came through. My wife's parents were immigrants from Holland post-World War II, so they were very cool and smart with their money. So we came from different worlds.
The Ramsey Show
Big Dreams Require Big Sacrifices
But honestly, how we did it is if we had a little extra money, we just threw it at it. But then our payment was like $1,254. And for years, we've just been paying $1,700. And it's funny how... How unexciting, unsexy that is. But all of a sudden, you know, about a year and a half ago, maybe a year and two months ago, I looked at it and the balance was down to 27. Wow. Oh, my gosh.
The Ramsey Show
Big Dreams Require Big Sacrifices
What's your question today? So the 1700 that we've been using, I mean, I've been limping the car along for like 20 years, literally on May 6th, tomorrow, it'll be 20 years I've been driving that car. We've withheld putting carpet downstairs. Like we have 600,000 invested and saved right now and just letting that grow. And we keep contributing, you know, 15% or more.
The Ramsey Show
Big Dreams Require Big Sacrifices
Like with that money that we've been paying towards the mortgage each month, What do we do with that now? I mean, I have some things I could do, take care of the house, get another car. But what do you recommend there?
The Ramsey Show
Big Dreams Require Big Sacrifices
Yeah, it's interesting. Once you start working on that stuff, how you just feel blessed. Like, I can't even tell you how the Lord's just taking care of us. It's an amazing feeling.
The Ramsey Show
Big Dreams Require Big Sacrifices
Yeah. Just sacrifice just to get it done. And it feels good. You know, we're still alive, but, uh, I want to be totally done with work by the time I'm 60 and do some other things, but I'm almost 47, so hopefully I'm on the track to do that.
The Ramsey Show
The Road to Financial Freedom Is Paved With Grit
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call.
The Ramsey Show
The Road to Financial Freedom Is Paved With Grit
So I'm powering through the baby steps. I'm about halfway through baby step two. I'm paying off all my debts. And I've gotten to my next smallest debt, which is my wife's student loans. There, uh, the balance is about $8,500 and with our debt snowball, we can kill this in about four months and I'm ready to do so. But there's a caveat that I can't find the answer to.
The Ramsey Show
The Road to Financial Freedom Is Paved With Grit
So it went into default before we were married and we have now entered a loan rehabilitation program with the department of education. And the deal is if we make nine months of consecutive payments, They'll remove the default status from the loans and transfer it back out to a normal servicer.
The Ramsey Show
The Road to Financial Freedom Is Paved With Grit
So unless with two options, either a, I can get snowball this and kill it in four months, but I'm stuck with that word default on my credit history, even though it's a paid in full account. Or I stretch it out, keep accruing that interest, and go through the program to remove the word default from my credit history and just do it that way.
The Ramsey Show
The Road to Financial Freedom Is Paved With Grit
And I really don't know which one's more, or I should say less harmful to me.
The Ramsey Show
The Road to Financial Freedom Is Paved With Grit
Okay, you don't think it'll haunt me when I try to get a mortgage in a couple years?
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
We helped him work out a structured repayment plan as a condition to him coming back and getting into insurance, and that's been paid through wage garnishments since then. I discussed with him before he came back the need to stay on top of his taxes and finances because he's never been good with money.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
During that period of time, many times I'd ask him if he was on this and he'd just blow up and wouldn't talk to me about it. Three months ago he called us and told us that he was in tax debt to the IRS again and wanted his mom and I to bail him out basically using our share of our estate when we die. We thought he probably owed about $50,000 or $60,000.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
Turns out he hasn't filed any state or federal tax returns for the past four years, nor has he paid any estimated taxes for 2023. We're meeting with our accountant next Thursday to go over all this to get specific numbers, but I'm guessing from what I've seen, it's going to be over $200,000, and about half of that is just interest and penalties.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
He also hasn't paid any 941 withholding or state unemployment tax. He has no business being self-employed, obviously. So my question is, we have the assets to do that, but we would have to sell off property and mutual funds. I don't know if you need our income or what exactly.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
Net worth is probably about $2.3 million. And about roughly half of that is in two pieces of real estate, our residence here in Indiana and another home we own in Florida. I'm sorry, Jeff. Including the real estate, the majority of our assets are in IRAs, Roths, and 403Bs from what my wife taught. We've got about $130,000 in a money market fund.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
Well, he just resigned from that position because after he took it over, he ran it into the ground. He couldn't make a go of it. Right now he's doing a sales job, and it seems to be going pretty well, but he's only been doing it a couple of months. He's making about $75,000 a year plus bonuses.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
He's not married. He has an 8-year-old granddaughter that we absolutely love and spends a lot of time with us. He was going to get married, but they did it kind of reverse. They got pregnant first, and then they didn't get along, so they didn't get married. So both of them are here in town, and both of them have jobs or own businesses. And they get along fine. We all get along fine.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
I actually worked for a captive company, so they actually owned it. And when I left, they paid me a percentage of my renewals, and that's one of the cornerstones of my retirement now. So I didn't have a say in where the policy was.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
Not all of it, because it was a big agency, so they split it up among other agents. They gave him about half of it.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
I don't think he owes. He rents. He doesn't own a home. I don't think he owes anything else. He doesn't have credit card debts. The tax debt's the only one that I'm aware of.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
Yeah. The thing is, Dave, this has happened so many times, I can't count them. But you've been there to bail him out every time. Yeah, and we had to take him out of high school because of his behavior. We had to send him out to a survival camp in Idaho. Then we put him in a private school in California, and all that required a second mortgage on our house at the time.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
We bailed him out of a car loan that he didn't keep up with that I co-signed for. It's just been one thing after another.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
If it were me, I wouldn't do it. Here's what I'm going to suggest. He got a severance package from the insurance company that's going to pay out about $30,000 over the next five years, about $6,000 a year. I told him that we would help him out if he would sign that over to me to pay back what we're going to advance him, but I initially thought we could do the whole amount.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
Thank you. There's one other question to kind of take this out a little further because I don't think my son realizes how bad a position he's in. If he pays this over the next 20 or 30 years, he still may not have it paid off and we die. And that's all right. Yeah, but we have all of our assets and our real estate is in trust. And my daughter is the trustee and the executor.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
And we currently put a clause in our will that allowed my son to take our house here as part of his settlement of the estate because he loves our home. but I'm concerned that if he doesn't have this paid off, I don't even know that I want to leave that share of the estate to him because I think the IRS could put a lien on that.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
Yeah, and I want to make sure that, I mean, ultimately it was for him, but it's ultimately also to go to our granddaughter, and I don't want to... eat up our share of that estate.
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
my wife and I are in our early seventies. Uh, my son lives about a mile from us. He's in his early forties. He relocated back here to Indiana from California about 11 years ago from LA where he was working in a music business. And, uh, he was going to take over my insurance agency a few years, uh, retired about nine years ago. So he did take that over. Um,
The Ramsey Show
Debt Isn't The Problem - Your Mindset Is
He got into tax problems when he was in California because he was working for a music composer that actually treated him as an employee but paid him as an independent contractor, so he didn't know anything about paying taxes. Got behind with the state and the IRS. Ended up owing them $30,000 or $40,000, I think.
The Ramsey Show
Money Is a Tool To Create a Life You Love
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Ramsey Show
Money Is a Tool To Create a Life You Love
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The Ramsey Show
Money Is a Tool To Create a Life You Love
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The Ramsey Show
Money Is a Tool To Create a Life You Love
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The Ramsey Show
Money Is a Tool To Create a Life You Love
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The Ramsey Show
Money Is a Tool To Create a Life You Love
Well, the kids, I will say the kids... do not want for anything, but they also have got reasonable expectations as well because we've tried to, you know, raise them to not want what everybody else has.
The Ramsey Show
Money Is a Tool To Create a Life You Love
Well, you know, the oldest one, the 17-year-old, you know, it depends on the day. But the other two, you know, they're under 12. So mom and dad are still pretty awesome.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
Hello. So my question is, first of all, thanks for having me on the show.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
I have a question that I don't think has been asked before. So I can't invest in the S&P 500 and other similar ETFs because of religion reasons. So should I create my own diversified portfolio?
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
So the reason is I'm Muslim, and I'm not allowed to invest in any companies that involve alcohol, gambling, adult entertainment, all those things.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
So first, I found another ETF that pretty much is like, pulls from the S&P 500, but excludes the company that do the gambling and alcohol and all that stuff. But the problem with that is the expense ratio is so much more higher than it would be for investing in the S&P 500. Is this in a retirement account? No, this is personal.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
Yes, but through work, like 401k and stuff like that.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
I believe it's 6% match, and I'm doing 100% of whatever 6% is.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
Yes. I contributed one time, but then I stopped because I really wanted to take advantage of tax reduction.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
Well, really the 401k is something that I was contributing to already unknowingly. And I just realized how much I had in it. Right. I still haven't made a decision whether I want to stop contributing and like go full on the other direction. But right now I know since it's like my only option at work and it was already automatically being contributed. Right.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
That's not something that would be hold against me religiously.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
Yes, they start at like 2.5 or 2.0. It's really high.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
Well, do you think if I decided pretty much to actively, so I create my own portfolio that operates as a passive ETF kind of thing, right? I only pull from the companies that I do align with from the S&P 500, NASDAQ, and all that.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
I would only pick enough to have my portfolio diversified. I wouldn't go all the way into like presenting those 1% companies and stuff like that. I would worry about the top 10 and then the ones that come underneath. But when it gets to like that company that's like 0.5% of the S&P 500, I won't worry too much about it.
The Ramsey Show
It’s Time To Cut Debt out of Your Life!
Even if I'm picking the stocks, not based on what I believe are good investments, but based on what the S&P 500 is picking.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Is Rachel on the line, too? She's not. We just had our second son, so she's taking care of the baby right now.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
$1,020,000. So just right over that mark.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Yeah, so it's about $400,000 of real estate. We actually just paid off our house in October of last year, so we just paid that off. Way to go. Yeah, and thank you.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Yeah, and then we have about $500,000 in just investments, like different types of retirement funds, and then about $100,000 split into other assets, like $50,000 in cash for emergency funds, and then cars and other things like that as well.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
We're 33. Both of us are 33.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Thank you. So last year was one of our best years. We just made $330,000. Whoa.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
It was right out of college, about a little less than $80,000.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Yeah, I'm a sales rep for a software company, and my wife is a stay-at-home mom, but she also has her master's degree in marriage and family therapy.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Did you get a college degree, four-year? I did, yep. What was it in? Mine was in business finance.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Yeah, mine was about 3.3. Okay. And your wife? She she's got her master's and she's got a 4.0 in her master's. I had a feeling 3.4.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Yeah, so it's funny. It's always been a focus of mine, but we weren't really super intentional about it until about two years ago when our first son was born and my wife stopped working and things got really tight. We had a car.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
payment we had the house and all these different things and my wife and i we found ramsey while we were going through church and we got really intentional we combined everything we paid off our car quickly we and then we got really diligently focused on paying off the house and we paid off about 270 000 in two years whoa just really focused on intensity of you know making sure that we got that house payment done so this way
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
If we want to have more kids and my wife wants to stay at home, we've got that flexibility to do so.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
It was about 3.5%. Wait a minute.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Yeah, we've heard it all. We've heard it from a lot of coworkers, friends saying, you know, you're crazy for doing that. But the peace that we have, you know, now that we have our second son here and we don't have to worry about things, we can just choose to do whatever we want to do with our money and, you know, choose to do whatever we want to do with our life. It brings a lot of peace to us.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Absolutely. Absolutely, we do. What do you tell them? We also... Well, we just tell them the piece that, you know, that we have, um, about, you know, having a paid for house, being able to make decisions about what we want our life to look like in the future just brings us so much joy and that it's not about the, like, it's about the money of course, but it's not, it's not about the interest rate.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
It's not about that tax deduction. It's about the piece that comes with our house and the ability to make the decisions that we want to make for our family. Yeah.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Couldn't have said it better myself.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
We got a small gift from my parents to help pay for the down payment of the house. It was like $23,000, but that's it. Okay.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Thank you. Thank you.
The Ramsey Show
The Baby Steps Break You out of the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle
Thank you. Thank you.
True Crime with Rachel Shannon
TOXIC: Affluent Family Masterminds the Murder of a Respected Lawyer?! THE ADELSON FAM & DAN MARKEL
he was not jealous of Danny. He spent a lot of time talking to me through like, it's been a hard, it's been a contentious divorce. I mean, it's been a hard time. And so he would talk to me through things I would be upset about. Um, so, um, sorry, it's going to happen now, I guess. Um,
True Crime with Rachel Shannon
TOXIC: Affluent Family Masterminds the Murder of a Respected Lawyer?! THE ADELSON FAM & DAN MARKEL
So, you know, I mean, he's a therapist, so he would sit and let me talk for long periods of time about how sad I was about certain things or how upset I was about certain things. And he would just listen and offer ideas of, like, well, what if you tried, like, you know, if it upsets you that you hear from him so often, we have a parenting coordinator.
True Crime with Rachel Shannon
TOXIC: Affluent Family Masterminds the Murder of a Respected Lawyer?! THE ADELSON FAM & DAN MARKEL
Like, what if you ask the parenting coordinator to only have emails from him like twice a week instead of all day long, every day, five days a week, you know, like he would listen and say, I'm so sorry you're going through this and then offer alternatives. But he was never like, I'm so pissed or, you know, he wasn't, he never showed emotion towards any of this.
True Crime with Rachel Shannon
TOXIC: Affluent Family Masterminds the Murder of a Respected Lawyer?! THE ADELSON FAM & DAN MARKEL
I mean, in the sense of like, I'm so sorry for you. Like, this sounds really hard. I'm sorry you're dealing with this. You would hold me, you know, that kind of stuff. But Not like, I'm so angry.
True Crime with Rachel Shannon
TOXIC: Affluent Family Masterminds the Murder of a Respected Lawyer?! THE ADELSON FAM & DAN MARKEL
Yeah, he met him a few times. Sometimes Danny would be late to pick up the kids and there'd be like an overlap where Jeff would come and so he had met him. There was like a boys, the boys sang at the Capitol one time and Danny was there and Jeff was there. Danny seemed, I mean, I'm sure it's not fun to see your ex-wife with someone new, but Danny seemed, he was very pleasant and very fine about it.
True Crime with Rachel Shannon
TOXIC: Affluent Family Masterminds the Murder of a Respected Lawyer?! THE ADELSON FAM & DAN MARKEL
He was really appropriate and Jeff was like, They'd say, hey, hey. They wouldn't really make a lot of small talk, but fine.
True Crime with Rachel Shannon
TOXIC: Affluent Family Masterminds the Murder of a Respected Lawyer?! THE ADELSON FAM & DAN MARKEL
No.
True Crime with Rachel Shannon
TOXIC: Affluent Family Masterminds the Murder of a Respected Lawyer?! THE ADELSON FAM & DAN MARKEL
No.
True Crime with Rachel Shannon
TOXIC: Affluent Family Masterminds the Murder of a Respected Lawyer?! THE ADELSON FAM & DAN MARKEL
I think he would know where it is because I would sometimes take Trescott and sometimes not, kind of depending. If I knew the kids were there and I thought I might have the chance of running into them, then I didn't take Trescott. Um, if it was like nighttime and we were driving back from where, from somewhere, sometimes I would take Trescott and I would be like, there's my former home.
True Crime with Rachel Shannon
TOXIC: Affluent Family Masterminds the Murder of a Respected Lawyer?! THE ADELSON FAM & DAN MARKEL
You know, like it's, you know, I, I would, I would point it out with him in the car. Yeah. Um, I don't remember like a specific instance in which I did that, but I'm sure that would be something I'd say like, wow, that was my house. Like, isn't it pretty?
Unashamed with the Robertson Family
Ep 1056 | Jase, Al & Zach Absolutely Lose It over a Classic Phil Folklore Tale
That's right.
Unashamed with the Robertson Family
Ep 1056 | Jase, Al & Zach Absolutely Lose It over a Classic Phil Folklore Tale
Yeah.
Unashamed with the Robertson Family
Ep 1056 | Jase, Al & Zach Absolutely Lose It over a Classic Phil Folklore Tale
They're from Kentucky.
Unashamed with the Robertson Family
Ep 1056 | Jase, Al & Zach Absolutely Lose It over a Classic Phil Folklore Tale
Yeah.
Unashamed with the Robertson Family
Ep 1056 | Jase, Al & Zach Absolutely Lose It over a Classic Phil Folklore Tale
Yeah.
Unashamed with the Robertson Family
Ep 1056 | Jase, Al & Zach Absolutely Lose It over a Classic Phil Folklore Tale
Yeah.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
HTDE: The Perfect Christmas Present with James Patterson and Gillian Flynn
Yeah. So I use the text replacement feature on my iPhone, which lets you type in, you know, whatever word or phrase, and then it just autocorrects into whatever you want it to be. So, yeah, I have guys in there and I have it autocorrect to folks.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
HTDE: The Perfect Christmas Present with James Patterson and Gillian Flynn
Well, it's less and less because the other great thing is that it's kind of like a gentle reminder. Anytime I do it, it's like having... someone, you know, kind of following you around, reminding you. Yeah.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
HTDE: The Perfect Christmas Present with James Patterson and Gillian Flynn
Yes. All of the time. Yeah. So like, you know, like proper names of things is challenged. Like the five guys. I don't know if you have that.