In this episode, Justin and Jared discuss what to think through if you want to buy a business. Should I buy a business in retirement? What type of business should I buy or start? When will the steady path of a W2 career result in more wealth?

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Welcome to Financial Planning for Oil and Gas Professionals, hosted by certified financial planners Justin Brownlee and Jared Machen of Brownlee Wealth Management, the only podcast dedicated to those of you in the oil and gas profession to help you optimize investments, lower future taxes, and grow your wealth. Learn more and subscribe today @brownlee wealth management.com.

Welcome back to another episode of Fpong Financial Planner for Oil and Gas Professionals. This week on the podcast, we're going to talk about should you buy a business, right? What are the considerations?

How does it fit into your financial plan? What kind of business? We get this question a lot and I think, you know, we have some pretty strong feelings about it as business owners.

So Justin, short answer. Should you buy a business?

Jared, when you asked me that, my immediate thought is surely we have that disclaimer somewhere in the podcast that this is not professional advice, right? So I'm glad we have that disclaimer.

I think my short answer is yes, I'm a big fan of buying or starting a business, but I also think that it just requires an incredible amount of thought. It requires a huge amount of kind of pause before you jump into it. I am a little biased in that obviously I am an owner in this business, as are you.

And so I have obviously chosen this path for myself.

And then in some of the later topics that we will discuss, I think you're also going to see that I am massively in favor of the W2 route when it comes to wealth creation. And so those are kind of contradictory thoughts. And that's just, it's a really hard question. And what bigger topic is there?

You are effectively deciding the arc of your career.

You are making the single biggest decision when it comes to wealth creation because it's going to determine are you going to pursue a path where benefits and maybe it's equity compensation combined with retirement plan benefits combined with just regular W2 income is your path to creating financial independence and significant wealth? Or, or are you going to go the route of a privately held business? Those are two wildly different paths. Both have an incredible amount of opportunity.

And Jared, I'm going to throw it back to you. Is owning a business the best path to building wealth?

Oh, that's a very targeted question. Wow. Yeah, I don't know. I would say yes, it is the best way, but it's also a lower probability way, right?

Like if you think about the top 100 people, 100 wealthiest people on Forbes list, all of them own businesses, right? 100%, very few of them created the substantial wealth by being a W2 employee.

But if you look at statistics in small businesses, like, odds of you succeeding are pretty low. Right. And so you kind of have to balance those two things. And you know, I think you're talking about, hey, business creation is wealth creation.

But also, you know, a segment of our audience is kind of in the decumulation phase thinking about their second act. Right. Of like, hey, how do I use this money? Or how do I like define meaning and purpose?

In my second season of life, I'm no longer fully employed and I want to, you know, remain intellectually engaged, but I don't necessarily want a full time job and I want to do things in my own terms. So there's also kind of that audience that I want to make sure we touch on too while we talk about this.

That's a great call out and what a perfect. You know, I think both of us, when we ponder that question, our immediate, our immediate answer was silence.

We both kind of stumbled and stuttered to answer that question.

And I think that that is the perfect picture of how difficult it is and frankly, how difficult it should be when you begin to approach this, this question.

Yeah, when you sign up to be a business owner, you sign up for a wider range of outcomes.

Yes.

And that could be really good or really bad. And it's also like a function of how you are wired and what will resonate with you. Right.

Some people like the philosophically, the eat what you kill model, if you will, of like, hey, I have all the liability and all the opportunity. Or some people will say, hey, I want to de risk and constrain my outcomes a little bit.

And I'm okay with maybe a lesser outcome, but a higher probability outcome.

Justin, so tell me more about what you think about W2, because I feel like our generation especially there's this notion that self employment equals wealth. And so I'd love for you to just talk about the idea of a W2 income as building like a meaningful retirement.

Yes. And so I think this first topic, Jared, is almost number one. Here's why you should not buy a business.

And when you think about the paths to wealth, it feels like every business guru on maybe it's TikTok or Instagram, whatever, social media, it feels like every business guru is challenging their listeners to, to quit their job and start a business.

And the prevailing message within kind of financial TikTok, if you will, is that the greatest path to significant wealth is to own your own business and start a business. But on this point, I want to convince you why you shouldn't own a business.

And that's because, Jared, the easiest path to financial independence, in my opinion, is emphatically W2 as a career path.

It is to work a high paying job at a company and accrue significant benefits and then use your salary and turn your salary into a high savings rate, a high investment rate. And so I think it's important to highlight some of the words in the first sentence. I said the easiest path to financial independence is a W2 career.

And so, Jared, I think the first call out there is, I'm saying the easiest path. And we're talking about financial independence. We're not talking about varying degrees of financial independence. You make a very good point.

There is no one on the Forbes list who is a middle manager at Chevron or ExxonMobil. Right. There's absolutely no one. So that is, if you want to be worth over a billion dollars one day, that should not be a path that you consider.

But if your goal is not to be a billionaire and instead it is to be financially independent, then, well, yeah, I really think the easiest path doesn't mean it's the best path, doesn't mean it's the path you need to choose. But I do believe the easiest path, and let's get more specific, to 5 or 10 million dollars as a nest egg by the time you hit retirement.

The easiest path is a W2 role and continuing to just do great work inside of a super major or a large company. Bonus points if it's in a growing area like Texas.

Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing. It's kind of like the tortoise in the hare. Right. It's like, it's like not fun advice to say, hey, W2 can get you there.

But. Right.

If you can save and have a meaningful budget and kind of control your cash flow and inflate your savings rate above and beyond the rate of inflation and do your job well and like it enough to do it for decades. Right. Like that's all you need. Right. That plus the tailwind of. I would say, you know, those things could be true.

But if you live in Manhattan, the number of W2 income you need to be able to meaningfully save in a taxable brokerage account on top of 401ks is pretty high. Right. I would say the other caveat, and I think you would agree with this, is like, hey, the W2 path with demographic tailwinds.

And I would say Texas has some demographic tailwinds where, you know, it's much.

I would Say the economic economy is very vibrant and you can get awesome housing with awesome schools for your kids that are under a million dollars, which there's a lot of metro areas in this country where that's not true. And so I think, you know, the W2 path with the. With the Texas twang on it, I really think is. Is the. Is the easiest way.

Okay, that's helpful. And, Jared, what I'd love to go into next is I. I'm going to make this statement and let's, you know, talk about how you get there.

I do believe that the W2 path can result in a $10 million nest egg by age 62. Now, I will follow that up and say you do need to optimize that path.

So you can't just kind of, you know, sleepwalk through your career and trust that you're going to wake up at age 62 with $10 million. You need to be sharp.

You need to really have a plan and optimize your entire career path, and you need to emphatically optimize your savings rate, your financial plan, your investments in order to get there. But, Jared, what I'd love to hear from you is I'm saying that the easiest path to a $10 million nest egg by the time you're 60, 62 is the W2 path.

What does someone need to do over the arc of their career to make sure they are optimizing their W2 path and that they hit that level?

Yeah, I mean, I would say this is the. So if we say $10 million is the bogey, just for an example, I don't think there's any easy path, but I would say this is the easiest. Right.

Like, this involves a lot of, like, employment commitment. Right. So I think. I think the way you do this is by finding a company and really going all in on it. Right.

Building relational equity and just getting on a leadership track and, like, enduring or doing that and then taking a really compelling opportunity somewhere else.

I would say it's employment discipline of, like, finding your skillset and saying, hey, I'm going to really go all in on this and hang my hat on that part of the career. And also kind of on the balance sheet side of things, I don't think you get there by having a large income of, let's say, under.

It's gotta be over half a million dollars a year.

And I would also say you have to get your savings rate, you know, north of 20%, and you don't do either of those things without being really intentional. Right? Cause it's really easy, you know, it's easy to make that amount of money and then spend that amount of money.

Yep.

If you're making 500 grand a year and you're only fully funding your 401k and you're not meaningfully contributing to a brokerage account, you're not spending 200 grand a year, you're spending 400 grand a year. Right. And so really building a plan to pay yourself first and make sure saving is a priority.

And then also, like thinking about, hey, if I'm going to hang my hat here, does the opportunity set make sense from a compensation perspective and how do I double down on that expertise so I make myself, you know, critically important to this, whatever segment of the business that I want to be a part of.

That's very helpful.

The first thing I heard you say there is, you have to be intentional to make sure you are on a path that your income can get to a level where it's possible. I think I agree with you. I think household income probably needs to reach 500,000 a year in order to be on that track. Maybe a hot take.

I think it can be done if your highest, let's say 10 to 20 years of income is closer to 400. But if that's the case, you have to have a huge savings rate. But also I mentioned household income.

So that path could be two spouses that are both in the industry that are eventually making 250,000 a year. And again, you don't need to even be there by the time you're 29. You know, like, you can take a decade or two to get into those higher income years.

But step number one is you have to have the ability to have a significant income. Jared, you mentioned the tailwinds of Texas.

We've talked about this on the podcast a little bit before, and I won't hijack this podcast episode, but I do have a pretty strong belief that there are two very different economies in America today.

I think there is just a wildly different economy if you're in one of the seven or eight largest cities relative to being in a much, much smaller metro area. And I, I think the call out there is the thing that shocked me.

The thing that, and I would easily say, other than the sheer magnitude and the highway systems that you see in Houston and dfw, that shocked me coming from my life. I grew up in Kansas, so that was a shock.

But the other thing that truly shocked me about Texas was after a year or two working in financial advisory services in Houston, I really came away thinking that by the time you're 40 to 45, there are an enormous amount of people that are nowhere close to the C suite and they're never going to be close to a C suite job and they still make 250 a year. That is not remotely true where I came from.

And so I do want to call out that where you decide to plant your flag, build your career, it matters a tremendous amount. When you're a young person, the key to this path is you have to ask and accurately assess, what is my ceiling here?

And I think that's two questions and two different answers. What's my ceiling if I'm a top 2% performer? But Jared, I think the much more important question is a different question.

Don't ask what a top 2% performer achieves. Ask what does the median person achieve? And if is the median person, does the median person in this company have a high ceiling?

If yes, that's a sign that you're on a path that can really optimize your career track and your future earnings.

Yeah. But it's interesting because even when you start, this makes a difference, right? Like $10 million is a very arbitrary number.

That income number we gave was also arbitrary. But if you think about joining the employment force today, we don't have pensions. The generation before us did.

So the answer, the percentage of your contribution that you're responsible for to get whatever nest egg number you want.

Yes.

The percentage of that that you are responsible for funding is way different than the generation prior.

Such a good point. And I think we've talked about this here in the last month.

And every year that goes by, those numbers got significantly larger, which means that company matching and employer contributions ended up being higher, which results in more compound over the last 30 years. But I do think it's important to call out the distinction you just made. Pensions are going away.

Equity compensation is becoming significantly more widespread.

That change means that you have significantly more agency to do something that you just mentioned, Jared, and that is you must have a high savings rate. You are not going to stumble into a $10 million nest egg after a 40 year career. You have to intentionally have a high savings rate.

So we were just working with a family last week about this topic, thinking through different career options and a potential track that would result in the ability to not just max out retire retirement savings plans, but to invest 100,000 a year on top of all retirement into a non retirement brokerage account.

That type of savings rate, that type of intentionality is how you wake up when you're 55, 60, 65 and you have significantly more than you're ever going to spend in your life.

So what's the case for buying a business? Right, because we spent the last 15 minutes talking about the W2 path. And I think that's an important starting point.

Because if your goal is to make a meaningful amount of money that you're not going to outlive, the highest probability way to do that is W2.

So other than being a risk taker, having a high conviction idea that you won't be professionally satisfied unless you take a stab at it, what are some of the reasons why somebody might buy a business?

I think one reason is the end goal, financial independence, which you can reach that without having an enormous amount of generational wealth. So is the end goal financial independence or is it a really, really substantial amount of wealth?

A privately held business can go way, way beyond the numbers we've mentioned. Obviously we know that, our listeners know that. And so I think that's part of it.

Significant financial reward that is so far beyond the W2 path is available. But I also just think having an entity that you get to build, that you get to shape, that you get to put your DNA, implant your DNA in if you will.

And so that's, that's meaningful. You have so much more control over, over your day to day and what you're building and what you want to look like. But what would you add to that?

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think like you have to figure out what you're Solving for and financial implications are only one. Right. Like, I think we see a lot of people who do the entrepreneurial route.

It's a function of, hey, I want to make meaningful contributions professionally just on my terms. And like, that's awesome. And I would say if that is you, you don't need, I wouldn't buy a business.

I think the better place to start would be, hey, how do I use my expertise to help people? Fractionally, like as a consultant. Right. That's like the easiest way.

It's like much less capital intensive than like buying a Build a Bear franchise and hoping that it works out. Right. Like, it's like, how do you monetize the thing you already have, which is your intellect and you give that to a wider audience.

So like, you know, should you buy a business?

Like, if you want the financial, you know, if you want the, if, if you want the greatest financial outcomes, maybe, but it's higher, you know, higher risk if you want the flexibility.

I, I might argue that, hey, doing a, a one person agency you're trying to monetize your expertise is a much, much better, more educated bet than you know, just buying a business, especially in a you might not know anything about.

I think that's a great point. You know, maybe Build a Bear should be the primary wealth creation vehicle. My kids love Build a Bear.

I need to keep them away from malls because I'm really not looking to give them any more business.

Man, I like, I'm surprised you, I don't even know the last time I thought about a mall. Like, I moved to Fort Worth three months ago and I don't even know what mall I would go to. I don't know what malls there are.

You know, that's a good point. I say my kids love Build a Bear. They saw it in a mall like five years ago and I don't even know what mall. Maybe the Woodlands Mall.

Yeah, malls, they're a dying breed. But Build a Bear could be on the rise.

Yeah, that's. Well, yeah, I wouldn't buy, I wouldn't buy a mall franchise. Wouldn't be high on my list. But.

Yep, but.

Right. Think, thinking about like, okay, what am I solving for?

But, but kind of tangentially like, like if you are going to buy a business, so like, again, we are just building a case that stacks the odds against you. So like, I'm not saying you shouldn't buy a business, but I think your default answer should be no. Unless there's a bunch of reasons why it's a yes.

Right? So I think like, that's a good starting place. Start at no and then get convinced to yes versus like, oh, I should buy a business.

Because regardless of what it you're trying to scratch, there's probably a lower risk way to scratch it.

Yep, yep. Jared and I, I do think there's two ways to enter this.

We sold our home and used all of the proceeds to fund this business. And so that would be an example of just going all in. And obviously I'm glad I did today. Hindsight looks pretty good, but I think that's one track.

You go all in, you put all your chips in. And there could be a component, like you mentioned, where you're doing it for a better lifestyle. You don't want to have a boss.

You want to be your own boss. You want to be able to create the environment that you're going to live and work in.

But then I think there's another way to do it, Jared, whereas you're maybe not all in and you kind of treat it like a side hustle at first.

And so what do you think about that in terms of the trade off between you're all in and it's everything, there is no other source of income versus kind of slow playing it?

I think it's more responsible. But again, I don't think you're ever gonna really know what your business is capable of when you're giving it your leftovers. Right.

So like, I think like just going into it with. But again, if. If the reason you are creating this business is not to financially optimize, proof of concept is super valuable.

And you know, if you were, if you have, let's say you're making a quarter mil a year and you can get your revenue without quitting the job up to $100,000, that's a much easier swing than going from 250 to nothing. Right?

But it becomes a little tougher because, you know, if you can get it to, let's say a million dollars a year, I think it'd be tough for you to know that as you're building it part time because you can't give it the attention and energy. And I think business success is a function of focus. Right.

Like, how do I do one thing really well and with divided attention, it'll be tough to give it the focus it needs to understand.

And if you do a part time business owner thing and it takes longer than you think to take off, you could come to the conclusion that this is a bad business idea. And it might not be.

It might be a good business idea that just hasn't been given the attention that it needs to grow because of how intensive it is to get off the ground.

So I think it's an interesting option, especially if you're doing the single person agency where you're trying to monetize your expertise and kind of like proof of concept, but with the caveat of if you're doing this for wealth creation, you're not going to have asymmetric outcomes by putting an underwhelming amount of effort forward is how I think about it.

That's a really good point. I really like what you said. In terms of it almost is a little bit more of a responsible path.

But on the flip side, a business is only going to grow when it has your entire focus. Yeah.

I do have a good friend here in Fort Worth who he owns his own business with a partner and he actually worked for seven years as a full time W2 engineer while he was operating his business. Almost. I mean, I say side hustle in quotations, but this isn't side. There's nothing side hustle about it.

He was legitimately working two full time jobs and it's interesting to hear him talk about it because it truly was a scenario where he gave his employer everything that was required of him. He put in at least 40 hours a week, but then he would also put in at least 40 hours a week on his own business.

And Jared, he actually did this for seven years now. It is fun because, gosh, I mean, I believe that he started down this path more than a decade ago. He is now crushing it. He's doing very well.

So this is a success story. It's an example of. It truly did work out.

But I think it's interesting to note that this is seven incredibly hard years that it took for this to happen.

And I do think there is an element where if you go down that path, how do you make sure that you're putting in the focus required because you never want it to be again, quotations, side hustle. You want it to be a legitimate enterprise. That's the end goal. Right. And so I think it's a tough call, but there is an element of both.

On the positive side, it's significantly responsible. Um, it is more Responsible than the path I took. Right. Of, of selling everything I had. Um, but yeah, there's less focus.

It's going to take longer, most likely.

And I would say more desperation. Right. Cause part of like running a successful business is just being gritty. Right. You had no contingency plan.

Yes.

Right. You sold your contingency plan.

Yes.

And like this guy, you know, your friend, like he had a full time job, was at any point he could. And it's like it almost makes what he did even more impressive because he had a backstop the whole time.

Yep.

Right. Like he could have easily just opted out.

But I think if, if, if you are your friend's inner circle, but you don't know him well, you might come to the conclusion that, oh, he just did this on the side. I could do this.

Yeah.

And Mrs.

Everything that went into it and all the sleepless nights and all the long weekends and like, there's just so much that goes into it that I think you have to be mentally prepared for.

Like, I mean, whether you're doing the half business or the, the half baked business, kind of building in parallel with what you have going on or full, full bore, like, what does success look like? And like, when do you hang it up? Cause I mean, so many entrepreneurial journeys are. It's just about perseverance.

Like, hey, if you really believe in the idea, like you kind of stop at nothing till it introduces itself in the marketplace. And so it's kind of like this weird thing of like, how far do I push? And if you're doing the half employment thing, it's probably farther.

Cause you're not giving it all your attention and energy.

Yep. And Jared, I think at the end of the day, I think you can do both paths very, very well. Because you just mentioned something that I think is so true.

It cannot be something where it's getting part of your attention. And it is again, quote unquote, side hustle. And my friend who was able to do this, that wasn't at all what he was doing. He was all in on both.

And that's why he crushed it. That's why it's worked out so well.

But then again, if you take the path that much more, in many more ways, the path that you and I took, and you're just all in from the beginning. Yeah. That also. It's a matter of being all in. I sometimes joke that selling my house and selling my car, liquidating savings to do this.

What's that, Batman?

Is it the Dark Knight where he's in the jail that's like a giant dungeon and people try to, to climb the wall and jump out, but he's only able to do it because he didn't, he jumped without a rope and that's how he's able to get out. That's kind of how I felt because like you said, there was no plan B. I was all in. There was no rope. We were making the jump and we had to make it.

So I'm curious, how do we think about this question or how should our listeners think about this question if you're already retired? Right. Because some of the people who approach us about this have already been built like they've retired because they've successfully accumulated.

So, like, thinking of that person in mind, what advice do you have for them? Because, like, they're not going to burn the boats. Right. Like, they don't, they don't need to go all in, like, because, Right.

Like they're scratching a very different itch. So how might somebody in that demographic, what might you say to them?

That's a great point. Okay, I'm trying to think back. I want to say I was like 30 or 31 at the start of BWM. Jared, how old were you?

Yeah, I was 27.

28.

Yeah. 26.

26. Okay. So let's paint that picture. We are in wildly different positions. We are at the beginning of our wealth building journey. Right.

So we're trying to create an enterprise that can compound at an incredible rate and build something special for a long, long time. So now let's go to the total other end of the spectrum. You already have reached financial independence.

Maybe you're about to retire and kind of back to number one, maybe you executed that path to building significant wealth through a W2 job, but you can really turbocharge it if you're able to be creative, a little bit entrepreneurial in retirement and have any income that's coming in on your own terms that lowers the distributions you're taking from retirement assets. I'd put it this way, Jared. Maybe some of our listeners love this idea. Maybe some of our listeners don't love this idea.

Let's say that you've reached financial independence and maybe you have in between 5 and 10 million or maybe even more than that, and you are wanting it to continue to compound. You want to leave $50 million to your kids 30, 40 years from now.

Well, the best way to do that is to get creative, get a little bit entrepreneurial in retirement and, and produce some income on your own terms.

That would Absolutely be a massive factor in your assets continuing to compound later in life because you're not spending them, you're investing them. So what does that path look like?

Yeah, I mean, you know, kind of like the one person agency. It's like monetizing your skillset. Right. It's like the easiest way to do that.

You could also buy a business, you could buy a franchise, you could start a business. Right. So there's really a few different ways you could do that.

But I mean, thinking about this demographic, I wouldn't like a good framework is don't risk what you have for what you don't need. Right. Like you don't need this business to be economically viable for you to retire. Right. You've already done that.

So like I don't get excited about this demographic like buying a really capital intensive business where like if you try to hang your shingle out as an entrepreneur, I don't know what the startups cost, but they're in the tens of thousands. If you try to, if you try to a franchise or a restaurant chain or like a physical business, you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah, right. So like the, you have to think of the range.

What's the best case and worst case scenario and not jeopardize what you have for something that you don't really need it to work out economically. Right. So like I would also think about, hey what, what really energizes you. Right.

And be very picky about that because I think being a business owner is demanding of time and energy and attention and how much of those things do you want to give in this next season?

I think that's so good. It has to be a completely different equation.

So seven or eight minutes ago, in the prior topic, we just made the point that there has to be an incredible amount of focus for you to build a business that builds enduring wealth. But in this stage of life, the question, it's completely different.

It's not how do I go all in and build something meaningful, it's how do I make sure that my assets continue to compound, how do I make sure that that train is continuing unhindered and how do I complement it, not compete with it? When we started bwm in many ways we were competing with our existing career track, we were competing with our existing savings investments.

We were taking them, putting them all in bwm, right. That's a completely different equation. You are not trying to compete with the assets you've already built, you are trying to complement them.

And so Every business venture that you take on, it really has to work through that lens. Is this in competition to the net worth I've already built or will it complement it?

Yeah. And I mean, also I think of how capital intensive is that business, right? Like, how much in resources does it pull versus potentially push out? Right?

And like, I think for somebody who has accumulated mass, massive assets, like, you have them, but that doesn't necessarily mean you need to spend them. And the only thing that could jeopardize it is like pulling it out, right? Like, it's like it involves your time.

Like incremental capital, I think is one of the most misunderstood ideas, right? I bought it for X, I sold it for Y. It's like, yeah, that's great. But how much money did you put into it along the way?

And how many sleepless nights did you have and place in times, you know, if you buy a service business where you had to step in and do a job that beneath your pay grade because you had a human capital problem or whatever it is, right. There's so much incremental cost that goes into the business ownership equation that's just, it's easy to ignore.

And if it's a labor of love, that's fine, but it is a cost.

That's so well put, Jared. It reminds me of. It feels like every two or three months there's some ridiculous social media business advice that goes viral.

And it's something along the lines of, you know, 401ks are a scam and you shouldn't invest in diversified mutual funds or index funds, and instead you need to go all in on a business or your business. And that's really what we're talking about here, is that's ludicrous advice for someone who already has $50 million.

And it's also ludicrous advice for someone who already has 5 million and they're 65 years old.

There is a reason why just about every investment advisory firm registered with the SEC in this country on some level, is promoting, to varying degrees. But on some level, just about all of them are promoting diversified portfolios.

Because the game plan when you're already well past significant wealth is different than the game plan at the start. The game plan when you're 25 is different than the game plan when you're 65, because again, you're not trying to compound assets at 21% per year.

Guess what?

When you're 33, if you go all in on a privately held business and it works, you can, you can have the ability to Compound wealth at a really incredible annual growth rate. And you could do that for decades. And that's why, you know, Jared, we joke all the time.

The Forbes list is wildly underestimating how many people are worth 10 million, 100 million, 1 billion, because there are so many privately held businesses that a media publication is going to have no idea how they're valued, who all owns them, what's the entity structure, and then ultimately what it's worth. But I do think that's an important idea is where are you at in the wealth creation journey and what's the end goal and stuff?

Yeah. And what itch do you want this to scratch? Right?

Like if you want intellectual stimulation, there's much more capital, light ways to do that versus buying a business. Right. You could mentor younger people in your profession. You could start a one person consulting shop, allocating your expertise.

You could be a podcast guest on financial planning for oil and gas professionals. Right? There's just a lot of different ways to scratch that itch. So I would just be really clear about like, hey, what, what is this?

What is this going to take from me and what is this going to give me? Right? I'm being really critical about that equation.

So I don't think, I don't think business ownership is bad, especially if you find something that lights you up, right? Like, I think one of the things we didn't talk about is like, like finding work that is meaningful is a cheat code, right?

Like, like if, if you, if you, if it energizes you like the, the scenario you outlined of, hey, if you want to have x dollars by 62. No, no, if you do work your love, you'll, you'll be doing some form of that work your entire life and like, you can make substantially less.

But if it's work you love and you never need to retire, you actually never need your nest egg, right?

And that doesn't mean you shouldn't save, but it just means, you know, if you find work that really lights you up and gives you a tailwind and I would say in your flow state, right, that's really, really valuable. So like, I don't want to dismiss that and I think that's super valuable and worth finding.

But the question is, how does buying business X, Y, Z in a sector I've never worked in before satisfy that itch? Right? And so I would just be very methodical in terms of what business am I buying, why am I excited about it and what do I hope to get out of it?

That's a great point. I mean, how rare is it for someone to truly love their work, find meaning from their work?

I mean, King Solomon literally said, that is nothing short of a gift from God. It's a rare thing. And so finding that and pursuing that is a big deal.

And also, I mean, honestly, having it at a pace that makes it enjoyable. Right?

There's a lot of people who love consulting, but the way that match burns is it burns bright and you're going to get 10 good years and it's going to take everything out of you and you're looking for the, the exit doors the whole way because the pace is scalable. Right? So you got to find work. You love doing it at a speed that you like and with people you enjoy and for a purpose you're passionate about. Right.

And so, I mean, in summary, I think, should you buy a business? Probably not. Should you start a business? Maybe. Kind of depends on what you're solving for.

I love it.

Cool. Well, awesome.

Well, if you think if you have a good idea for a business or want to come on the podcast and tell us why everyone should start a business or buy a business, we'd love to hear from you. Always love hearing from our listeners. Podcast@brownleewealthmanagement.com we'll see you next time.

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