How to Become Replaceable in Your Business Noah Rosenfarb

Solving complex problems involving family, business and money – Noah Rosenfarb

Noah helps businesses streamline and outsource so the business owner can step away from the business and the business continues to run. Noah is an expert at Exit Planning too, so if you want to be able to sell your business down the road (even if it’s way down the road) you need to know this now! He also gives the 10 steps you need to be a millionaire!

Resources mentioned in the podcast:

• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
• 48 Days to the Work You Love Dan Miller
• StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath

Check out Noah’s Podcast: Divestopedia Exit Strategy Podcast

Check out his book: Exit: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise – A Step-By-Step Guide to Conquering Business, Personal, Family and Financial Issues

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript:

Jaime: Today I talk to Noah Rosenfarb and what he tells us is how to become replaceable in your company so that if you want to exit and sell your company you totally can. Not only that, but it is good to be replaceable anyway so that you can have some time off. I hope you enjoy this interview!

Announcer: Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire podcast with your host, Jaime Tardy. Real talk and real advice from real millionaires, with a sharp focus on you the Eventual Millionaire.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and today on the show we have Noah Rosenfarb. Noah owns a company called Freedom Exit Advisors and he's the author of a book called "Exit: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise". I think it's something that a lot of entrepreneurs don't pay attention to. They start their business and they don't think long term about exiting. But it's really, really important to set up your business ahead of time. So we're going to talk about that and get a whole bunch of other tips from Noah. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Noah.

Noah: Thanks for having me.

Jaime: So, first, let's talk about when business owners, in general, when they're newer and they start a business, why don't we think about exiting at the time? Tell me a little bit more about what people's mindset is, setting up a business, and why it doesn't have anything to do with exiting?

Noah: I think most entrepreneurs, when they get started, it's typically a lifestyle choice, so most people are looking to change their atmosphere, change what they're doing, change the way they live their life, enhance their lifestyle, enhance their income, so the focus is on "How do I get this business going so that I can make money, live comfortably, send my kids to college, pay my bills every month and still have a little bit left over?" That's a lot of pressure and stress and unfortunately most people don't succeed. Those entrepreneurs that get past that hurdle where they do feel confident and are successful in their business get to the point where they start thinking "What am I going to do when it's time for me to not run this company anymore?"

Jaime: Hopefully people heard themselves as you were saying that. "I don't have this stuff." When you're not confident you don't know whether you're going to succeed, let alone exit. I think one of the things that might be important for people to hear is how do we decide at the beginning on whether or not we want to exit? Should we be thinking about that when we're first time business owners?

Noah: You should always think about how you would want to exit because it will influence how you run your company. The idea is to have options and that's what we counsel our clients to have. Just have the option you don't have to sell your company, you don't have to give it to your kids, you don't have to transfer it to a management team but have the options to do what you want when you want to and put your business in a position where you can do that. A lot of it is systems based and making sure that you have the right metrics and the right counsel and that you're replaceable in your own company.

Jaime: Which is a wonderful thing anyway, though. I've met so many business owners that are so deep in their business that they can't get out they can't go on vacation, they can't do anything, let alone exit. They don't even think that far ahead. But setting up the system so that they can leave for a week and have the business run without them is an amazing thing, whether or not you're going to exit. So tell us a little bit about how you help business owners walk through that.

Noah: My clients typically have pretty well developed businesses. At the low end they usually have around $20 million in revenue; at the high end $100-200 million, so they might have a few dozen employees up to a few hundred employees. They've built a management team; they've gone through a bunch of steps they needed to go through to get to where they are. Maybe it will be more helpful for your audience for me to talk about small business owners and solo entrepreneurs.

Jaime: I have a question, then, since you work with so many people who have such amazing businesses, generating that much revenue. Do you know, when they first started, did they set up their first company knowing it was going to be huge?

Noah: No.

Jaime: Good, that's what we want to hear. So tell us a little bit about that.

Noah: It's the real world so we've got to focus first on launching our product or service and being profitable and providing good service to our customers and getting repeat business, getting referrals and making sales. You've got to do the blocking and tackling before you get to strategy. I think what happens is that business owners evolve, they get into a mature business, build a following, have their confidence and then the first step is hiring someone that's a strong number two. If you don't have someone on your team that's a good number two to you then you'll never have something to really sell. Maybe you'll find someone that wants your job and you can sell your job to them, but that's not really selling your business, it's just giving them the opportunity to take your spot and take your desk.

Jaime: So thinking about the people first starting their business when would you suggest talking about finding your number two? Because, like you said, at the beginning we're chugging along, going "I hope I can at least make some profit or some income for me, personally." What does that look like? If you could think about one of the clients that you have with a $20-100 million company and think about what it looked like when they started, the timeline of how they did things. Walk us through what we should be doing if our company is to become really successful.

Noah: I'll start with something that you might relate to, which is intuition and intention. If you have the intention to grow your business and the intention to find a number two, you would then have more intuition to find that person as you're looking around, talking to people. I guess my first bit of advice is that if you have a plan and your plan involves having a number two and you've identified what that job description looks like, you've identified what the characteristics of that person would be, whether it's a particular skillset or a personality type, once you've identified that, then you've got to put that out into the world and say "This is what I'm looking for, these are my terms.do you know anyone who fits this?" what I've started doing in my business I've launched two businesses a year for the last three years , and each time I do that now I start with a number two, or you could call them another number one, so that I can take a role that leverages my skillset and my strengths and find someone to partner with that I can identify as having a skillset that varies from mine so that we can collaborate and build something together. You can start from the beginning or wait until you've become successful in your own independent company. It really depends on your business and your vision.

Jaime: So when you're hiring the number two usually, especially for small business owners, we're told to get an assistant. Take the small tasks, give them to the assistant. But when you're setting up the new businesses that you've been setting up, you've been finding someone who is kickass really, really good at what they do. But what if your company isn't generating much revenue? How do we pay them? We all want someone absolutely amazing to work with us. How do we figure that out?

Noah: I think that becomes a higher hurdle for a business owner. Let's say you want to hire a great person, and that's a six-figure person, to take over some of your juicier responsibilities. That might not be a great place to start and maybe the VA that you can just hire on a part time basis that works out of the Philippines for $4 an hour is a great place to start because you can have someone for 10 hours a week to go through your e-mails or comb through your internet lead forms and figure out which are junk and which are real. Start with something that is reasonable for you. one of the ways I do that with some of my small business owner clients is we look at a list of their current job responsibilities and we just have them identify them,keep a list on their desk, and start jotting down the things they do all day. Then we look at high value, high priority; low value, high priority; low value, low priority, and just start stripping things away from them, starting with low value, low priority, and just see who we can give them to. Like I said, maybe it's an outsourced VA, maybe it's an executive assistant who sits in the same office as you it depends on your work style.

Jaime: I love that. A lot of people won't do that themselves. I'm a business coach and I have people do the same thing, just like that. People don't usually do that on their own. Unless they hear it on a podcast so hopefully people will do that! But knowing what's really important for you to be doing; your time is ridiculously valuable so they need to know what to give to other people. A lot of the time they know they need to hire someone but they don't know what they're going to give them, and even if they do hire someone they spend a lot of their time going "What am I going to give them this week? I don't even know." And that's not helpful either.

Noah: That's true for me too. Just to give you an example, I just hired a full time marketing assistant, based in the Philippines, and I'm not exactly sure what to give her yet. She's new on the team, we can't do face to face training yet, but I know that in three months we'll have figured it out and that's just an investment I'm willing to make.

Jaime: Let me know, because I have a marketing guy in the Philippines too, so there are some cool things I can chat to you about afterwards too. Because it's a learning curve and I think that's a really key point that you just highlighted you don't know everything either. I think it's a good decision and I think that it will work out, based on everything I know, although I don't know how to do it yet, but it will come true towards the end. So what makes you have that confidence? I know you've been in business a long time but what really gives you that confidence? That "Yeah, I'll figure it out."

Noah: I don't know that I'll figure it out, actually. I'm willing to take the risk that I might be wrong. Being wrong is okay, I've failed a lot and it's okay. I'm better for it. I've read stories of other entrepreneurs and their failures and that helps you feel like maybe failure is good, like I needed a failure under my belt. I can't succeed in everything.

Jaime: So tell us about that especially with launching two companies a year for the past three years. Tell us about that process.

Noah: Most of that is adjunct work, so my core business has been advising affluent divorcing women, so personal CFO, and I started in that business in 2007, after having a career in public accounting and testifying as an expert witness. What I found is that those clients just needed some additional things from me and the family lawyers that were making me referrals needed some additional things from me so I was able to start a few companies to help them and then, based on the investments that I was doing and the interest rates that we have, I found that I needed to create a new investment product to service these clients. We've just built off the needs of my clients and the exit planning business was a way for me to basically leverage the skillset I'd built in helping people through transition with the consulting work that I've done in the past. I actually just agreed to start a new business yesterday with another partner.

Jaime: How do you handle all of that? I understand that they're all different pieces of the same business in terms of you probably use similar networking, similar resources, etc. But what makes you set them up, first of all, as separate businesses, and, secondly, take on so many?

Noah: Part of that is the structure. The structure that I've developed is that I want to lead the sales and marketing effort and the strategy for an idea that I believe in but I need to find someone who's a great implementer. So I'm partnering with different implementers to complement their pre-existing work. For example, I have a divorce financing business where, if someone wants to get divorced and don't have access to their own capital maybe they've got it tied up in real estate, maybe their spouse doesn't give them an Amex card or they're really scared to charge their Amex card for their layer's fee so I found two partners that are in the business of financing personal injury litigation, so they already have a system, they have everything developed, they have the agreements and we were able to do a joint venture where we created that company.

Jaime: That's really interesting and something that I never knew existed. Once you got into your main business you realized that that was something important. That's something that I find with other people too, they're so concerned with finding the right idea first. I'm like "Jump into something and once you start working it you'll realize what you need and this is a good idea and this could be a good business." That sounds like what you I did.

Noah: Similar. The tough part is making sure that my resources are in line with my desired income. Everybody has limited resources, no matter where they're at, so you've really got to manage them and one of the things that I teach to my clients and to CEOs is productivity training so I've got to eat my own cooking when it comes to that stuff.

Jaime: So what is that like? How many companies or offshoots do you have? If you have to give us a number, how many do you have?

Noah: I guess there are about eight different businesses.

Jaime: I'm glad you said a number instead of "I don't know!" How do you mitigate that? What is your week like? Do you do one per day?

Noah: I tend to have my partner calls on Mondays, so an hour call with each of my partners on Monday where we just review what's happening in each business. During the week we're communicating by e-mail where we need to and doing what we need to do. My role in all of those is probably more a backseat role they're really driving it. I'm lucky in that respect. Then, in my exit planning business, which is a core business that I run and I spend my time in, that's where I have to devote my time, effort and energy to growing my business.

Jaime: How many hours a week do you work, then?

Noah: I've got a schedule that your listeners may enjoy hearing about. I tend to work 10am - 4pm. I've got young kids, they're 3 and 6, and I like to ride my son to school on a bicycle then take a bike ride over to Starbucks, get my coffee and dilly-dally in the morning. I listen to podcasts like yours in the morning so I get to multitask and then at 4 o'clock I try to cut it off so that I can be with the kids and cook dinner. Then I get back to work at 7:30 and work until 10p, if I have to. Some weeks I don't have to work any nights and some weeks I'll work four nights, it just depends on what the needs are of my clients and my company.

Jaime: I love that you have a very similar schedule to me. How do you do that with small kids? They do kind of run the house a little bit, in a good way most of the time, I'm sure. You ended up e-mailing me, talking about how to become a millionaire and I thought that was really interesting and I'm sure my listeners would like that too. So why don't you walk me through those steps that you told me about before?

Noah: At some point I wrote down the ten things that I thought were the steps required to become a millionaire and the first was to develop a prosperity mindset and I think there are a lot of people out there that think they have to be born a certain way, talk a certain way, look a certain way or have a certain type of education, but the reality is that everything is here, there's more than enough for everyone. So I'd start with that.

Jaime: Is that something that you had to develop or did you always think that way?

Noah: I developed that. I grew up with a single mom who struggled and had a tough time putting food on the table. I think her beliefs about what was possible shaped my beliefs in a different way. I read Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" when I was 11, so that's the kind of stuff I've been into since I was a young kid, wanting to create wealth and opportunity and value for others.

Jaime: I get this question a lot, it's one thing to read those books and hear that you should improve your mindset. We know that, but how do we actually do that? Can you give me an example of how you've gone through and noticed it change? Because it is a longer term process, it's not as though one day you're "I read Napoleon Hill and now I have a perfect mindset." That's now how it works so how did it work for you?

Noah: My wife decided that she was going to stop working when we were having our first kid and I wanted to start my own business so we just ripped of the Band-Aid. She quit; I quit my job at a public accounting firm that was really comfortable and started my own business. That was one of those times where I just had to have confidence that the world is great and as long as I do the right thing for the right people, at the end of the day, I'll be fine.

Jaime: Did you always feel like that or were there times when you didn't?

Noah: On the fifth anniversary of starting my company I was thinking that I was so fortunate that I didn't have one minute, not even 60 seconds, where I was thinking "Did I do the right thing?" So I'm really very fortunate.

Jaime: And you always that that mindset that the world is abundant, that it was no big deal for you to make as much as you wanted to make?

Noah: I think so and that has developed over time from reading and learning and the coaches that I've had to help me. So I don't think it will stop. Every once in a while I get a setback, like I'm building a house now, and I get a surprise bill that I didn't expect. I've just got to take it in and say "You know what? It's fine."

Jaime: Awesome. That definitely helps. Besides "Think and Grow Rich" is there anything else that you've listened to that you'd recommend to somebody?

Noah: There's tons of great stuff. You've had Tim Ferris as a guest and his book "The Four Hour Work Week" is certainly my favorite. There are so many people that write on this topic and it really depends on what resonates with you. There's "The Go-Giver", another great book. If you're out there in this space, if you're listening to Jaime, you've probably gotten around and you're doing stuff, so it's whatever resonates with you.

Jaime: I love that my guest is promoting my podcast on my podcast. This is awesome. Thank you so much, Noah. So take us to step two let's say we're working on our mindset, it's progressing. Now what do we do?

Noah: I think this is a really popular one and perhaps it's cliched but do something that you love. My father always had a saying, "If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." That's how he felt about his work and that's how I've always felt about my work. It's hard to get there for a lot of people. If you don't have the right mindset, if you're thinking "I need to make $4000 a month to pay all my bills so I have to have this job; I can't quit this job," that's reality, I get that, but there are always ways that you could do something on the side. Stay up later, sleep a little bit less if you want it bad enough, you can make it happy.

Jaime: Give us advice for finding what you love. Because I've gone through this, I read "48 Days to the Work You Love" which was definitely helpful, and a whole bunch of other books on that, but when I was stuck in it, so especially for people listening in who are stuck in it, I felt that I had to figure it out so that I could move forward. Because people know they want to start a business but they just don't know what and they're afraid to pick something. What if they don't like it later on? What advice do you have for that?

Noah: I think one of the mistakes that people make is that they start with what they're passionate about outside of work so, say, they love surfing so they'll do a surf school or write an eBook on the best surfing spots around the world. "I love going to concerts so I'll write insiders tips on how to get backstage." You don't necessarily have to equate your passions or your hobbies with how you're going to make money. It's what you like doing  so I love building businesses, I love interacting with people and adding value to their lives. There are a lot of different things I could have done that would be fun for me to do and the path that I picked was just one that weaved its way through for me in my life.

Jaime: I love that you say that. Because you didn't say "I love exit planning" or "I love talking to people about divorce." That's not what you're talking about you were talking about helping people. Normally, if someone looked at your business, they'd be like "Well that's what he's passionate about," but the things in it are what you're passionate about, which I think is a key distinction.

Noah: I would encourage listeners that are thinking "How am I going to leave this 9-5 sentence and build my own business?" to not just think "Well I really love exercise so I'm going to become a personal trainer," or "I really love nature so I'm going to become a nature guide." Think out of the box what is it about those activities that you like? Is it interacting with people? Figure out the characteristics that you want to spend your time doing and figure out what might fit around that.

Jaime: There's a great book called "Strength Finder 2.0" that helps people find out what their strengths really are and it's not their hobbies or their passions, it's what they're really good and feel really good about doing, which is not something we ask ourselves very often. I think that's a key piece of it too. It's really easy to go quickly through this! So we've found our passion, we know what we love, what's next? What's number three?

Noah: Number three, for me, is becoming an expert in your field. No matter what you do, be the best and don't settle for less. You can get to the top of the pile. It might take time, there's Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 Hours", right? How fast can you do 10,000 hours? It's going to take a lot of time, no matter how quickly you get through it, but become a student and become the best you can be.

Jaime: What does that do for us? Why do we have to become an expert?

Noah: If you want to be a millionaire, if you want to be successful, if you want to stand out from the crowd, you've got to differentiate yourself; you've got to be better than the pack. If you just want to be average then you can be average. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you want to really develop value in the world you've got to be at the cutting edge, you've got to be the one that's creating new ways to do things in your field.

Jaime: And the only way you can know how to do that is to know your field better than anyone else. That makes perfect sense keep going.

Noah: Number four is to always put your clients or your company's interest or your customers? interests ahead of your own. I think a lot of times people get selfish, they get greedy, they forget the basic human intuition to do some of that. If you have a certain level of consciousness where you make sure that you diminish your own interest to advance your client's interest or your company's interest, that's going to help you get ahead and that reputation will stay with you forever.

Jaime: I think that goes back to the first one developing that mindset. Because if you feel like you can't put their needs first because your needs are first, that's that non-abundant mindset where you feel like your stuff matters. So that's a big point too. Give us an example of how that's worked either for your clients or for your businesses?

Noah: I think my businesses are a great example because, at the end of the day, I'm serving as a personal CFO for all of my clients, I'm overseeing their assets, helping them identify whether they should acquire investment, real estate or privately held business interest or publicly traded stocks. The way my compensation works is different under each of those scenarios. If a client wants long term care insurance I earn a commission. If they want to buy stocks and bonds I usually earn an asset management fee. With real estate I may get some kind of consulting fee. I might earn a lot more money doing one thing over another and I always make sure to tell a client "This is how I get paid in each of these scenarios, so while I think my advice is totally independent, just know." I had a client once who was $1 million into an annuity contract and I got a $70,000 commission. To me that's obnoxious I don't want to get a $70,000 commission, I don't think that's fair, but that's what I get paid so just know that, going in. I don't want you to buy it because I think I get overpaid.

Jaime: I love that; that doesn't usually happen. That's one of the problems that I have with loss of insurance and stuff like that, because I don't know if they're telling me it's important to get because it's important to get or because it makes them more money. So that's a really good point. Alright, what's next? It's not a numbered list; it's just ten things that are important.

Noah: Maybe they do kind of flow, I'm not sure. Another is to either work harder than everyone else or work smarter than everyone else or do both. Some people have a hard time figuring out how to work smarter so they've just got to work harder and some people are always devising new ways to work smarter. I look at it as productivity is wisdom multiplied by action, so you've either got to apply more wisdom to what you're doing or apply more action. One or the other.

Jaime: Or both. We'll talk about productivity later, but I think one of the key pieces to that is that a lot a millionaires get really good at this stuff. Just from interviewing them, that's one of the things I've found. They're either going to work their butt off like crazy 'in the survey that I did I asked them how many hours they worked for their first year in business and the most common answer was "All of them" but also working smarter, like you said, having productivity tips makes it easier. Because you can burn out when you're working like that.

Noah: The next thing, for me, and maybe it's more of a personal value, but I respond quickly to all e-mails, phone calls and requests for my time. I think what I've found in my career is that everyone who's very responsive is successful. Not all successful people are very responsive but all very responsive people find their way to success. Take that and try it out for yourself and see how it works.

Jaime: Guy Kawasaki said that in his e-mail, and I know a lot of my friends who are successful are really quick. Seth Godin e-mailed me back in ten minutes, which is insane. How do you do that? Because I'm having a problem with e-mail right now because it's so full and with the hours that I work it's hard to get through.

Noah: Quick is an instinct. In terms of productivity, a lot of people would say don't have a popup on your screen for your e-mails - have a particular time that you check them. If you manage your calendar and when you turn on your computer do the most important task of the day don't check when you first get in, but at, say, 9:30 or 10 o'clock you're checking your e-mails and cleaning out your inbox from the night before. Maybe then turning it off again at 10:30 after you've done your first round of responding, doing some productive tasks until lunchtime and checking again before lunch. I think there's a frequency or a pattern that you have to establish that doesn't mean immediate, you don't have to have a popup going and respond incessantly. I just read a statistic that said people check their cellphones every 6.8 minutes. I do it more often when I'm away from my desk because it's fun for me.

Jaime: Isn't that sad? It totally is fun, though. So what do you recommend? Because I probably take three days to respond to the ones that don't seem urgent. My clients are always first but for everything else it's three days. Does that count? Is that responsive to you? And I have an assistant who does most of my e-mails, so this is the other ones.

Noah: I would say that, for those e-mails that I'm not going to respond to for four hours, I'd send them a note to let them know that I'm not going to respond. Just say "I got your e-mail. I'm tied up all day today. Tomorrow my calendar is full. Give me a couple of days to get back to you."

Jaime: I'm writing that down!

Noah: You might have an e-mail signature that you use to do that, so you can just right click on a message, change your signature, and that's your respond. "I'm tied up today and tomorrow, I'll get back to you in a couple of days."

Jaime: Okay, I'm writing that down. Nice, thank you for that, for helping me. Okay,keep going

Noah: The next thing is that you've got to have a plan. I'm sure that that sounds kind of simple, but if you don't know where you are now, where you want to be and how you're going to get there, yo can do all the hard work you want and maybe you'll just get lucky, but I'd rather make my own luck and I think most successful entrepreneurs make their own luck also. People say the harder you work the luckier you get. So have a plan and be willing to revise the plan don't be stuck in achieving a plan just because you wrote it a year ago. It can be fluid, you can pivot, I guess is the new word.

Jaime: That's the new, cool thing to do! I'm going to highlight what you said there for people who are listening. Really successful people, whether they're in corporate jobs or not, are pretty good at writing goals. Not as good at looking at them later, but we have them on our computers or our whiteboards or whatever, but we don't actually follow them. So to everyone who's listening right now,I really, really want you to think about that. Can you tell me, in two seconds, "I know where I am now and I know exactly where I want to be in a year or three years," or wherever that key point is. Because that's something you need to bring up over and over again. So we still have that same point. It's like going from an airport if you're wandering around without know where you're going to, you won't necessarily end up in the destination you want to be at. Awesome, I love that. Go ahead.

Noah: When we talk about money and becoming a millionaire, which is a metric that we base on currency, so you can either have that in the value of your business or tied up in real estate or a pile of cash under your mattress, a couple of pounds of gold, the way you accumulate wealth is by not spending everything that you earn. At the end of the day that becomes a key metric. One of my friends has been at Berkeley for 15 years, a college educated chemical engineer, and he tells me that every guy on the line at his job is a millionaire. They work there for 20 years and they're all millionaires, working essentially blue collar jobs, and it's because Berkeley essentially makes them save by putting money into different pension plans and deferred compensation plans. But as entrepreneurs we don't have the comfort of someone standing over us and basically shoveling money away from us, so we've got to make sure that we put something aside, whether that's in assets, just sitting around the house or in a safe; however you want to do it. It's not about how much money you earn, it's about how much money you save, so make sure your expenses stay at a point where you can save money regularly.

Jaime: I have a question in regards to that as a business owner, you know that investing money into your business usually, depending on how it goes, should get a return. So what do you advise in terms of reinvesting some of that money back into our business to grow it or putting it into other assets like real estate or investing?

Noah: I don't think there's a blanket answer because it depends on your confidence level in your business, your situation at home, what fallbacks you have. Most of the time you have to look at the worst-case scenarios and try to figure out how, in a worst case scenario, you wouldn't lose anything. Typically, as an entrepreneur, you want to have 12 months of savings so that you could get by. If you're starting a business and you don't have 12 months of savings then you'll probably have to reinvest back into your business before you can take out anything that you can save. Each case is a little specific but I would say my best investments have always been in me and in my companies because I have control over them, I have confidence in them, and the same is true for most entrepreneurs get educated, get a coach, get training, listen to the materials, buy the books, and act on it! If you're not going to act on it, don't waste your money. Invest in yourself but at the same time you want to make sure that you've put money away, currency that you have stashed aside for a rainy day, for a home, if that's a goal for you, for a new car when the time comes, so that you don't have everything plowed into your company. You might have this great business that's growing but you won't have the ability to go on vacation with your family because you just bought new equipment.

Jaime: I think that really helps as far as safety goes. I remember paying off $70,000 in debt and saving up six months? worth of savings. I remember having that in the bank and that feeling was an amazing feeling at the time that I had never had before and I think that's hugely important to run your business better, so you don't have to worry about taking money out and not being able to pay your bills.

Noah: It also helps with situational ethics so if you're got a mortgage payment due and you've got someone sitting in front of you that might write you a check, you might act differently towards them if that's the only opportunity you have. As opposed to knowing that if that person passes there will be another one next month and you'll be fine.

Jaime: So it's harder to put your customers first. I love that. What's next?

Noah: Making wise investment decisions, I think, is really critical investing in your business and other things. Most of the investments that I would encourage new money savers to make are low risk and will return. Don't try to spring for the fences by buying some hot stock tip or IPL; put money in low risk,low return assets until you have a base that makes you comfortable that you can take more risk. That might just be saving money in CDs or US savings bonds or cash in the bank things that aren't going to give you any real return on your money but they're not going to go anywhere either.

Jaime: So when should the new business owner start investing? If they left their corporate job, their 401K, and all of that stuff, and then they're like "I need to put all of my money into this to grow this," they're going as lean as they possibly can, what are the steps to realize that they can actually start investing again? Or should they be doing it all along?

Noah: It depends. If you've got a 401K you're not going to want to take that money out, liquidate it and pay the tax. You'll want to keep that invested for the most part. 99% of Americans are taking that and putting it into an IRA and buying stocks and bonds but you might want to put some of that in investment real estate and you can do that with custodians that allow you to buy alternative assets. You can buy businesses, I own a business in one of my IRAs and it's great because it's sheltered from income tax for the rest of my life. but asides from that, I made $12,000 this month and my expenses were $8000 so I've got $4000 left over, so I would just keep accumulating cash until you feel really confident that, no matter what happens to you, the cash that you have is enough to sustain you until you figure something else out, and that's when you can maybe go and invest in a new business or investment properties or stocks and bonds, depending on what your temperament is and your risk tolerance and who's coaching you along the way.

Jaime: Perfect, that's what I was looking for. So it's not as though someone who's brand new has to be like "Oh, shoot, I should be doing this too." It's one thing at a time, making sure you're building on a solid foundation.

Noah: One of the reasons I teach productivity training to CEOs is that I'm someone that's helping people maximize their prosperity, so what I say is "I might be able to get you a higher rate of return on your investments but if I can help you be more productive at work, if you can get 10% more done at work, that's going to be a great return you'll see a lot more money and be a lot wealthier overall based on your own productivity, than investing in Coke versus Pepsi."

Jaime: I like that; that's awesome. I wish I'd done this as a David Letterman top ten countdown, which I didn't do, but what's number ten?

Noah: The last one would be to surround yourself with like minded people. If you're in the middle or Arkansas or the woods in Maine and you're not sure where to find a group, go online and listen to podcasts like this or join a group like EO, which is the Entrepreneur's Organization, or find a meet up group. Do something to get out in the world and find people that want to achieve goals that are similar to yours.

Jaime: I think that totally helps with number one, too having that abundance mindset. When you start surrounding yourself with those types of people it's amazing what happens. I'm in the middle of nowhere in Maine and it was a new world when I could meet people that are doing amazing things, just like you, across the country. Being able to have that is really important. Thank you so much, I really appreciate that. We have to start wrapping up you already know my last question because you listen to the show, which is awesome. What's one action that listeners can take this week to help move them towards their goal of $1 million?

Noah: I'll give some options. One option is to listen to Dean Jackson, he's got this great 50 minute focus finder. If you search YouTube for "Dean Jackson focus" you'll find a great video. Watch that video I think Dean's advice is really great for entrepreneurs and people who are thinking of becoming entrepreneurs. Spend 50 minutes behind a closed door and do nothing but write down all the stuff that's in your head. Anything you think about all the projects you want to work on, all the people you need to call, all of that stuff just keep going for 50 minutes until it's all out, then start working on your priorities and figure out what you need to do.

Jaime: I love that you said that. This is what I did on Monday. It's right here! So thank you.

Noah: You're welcome. So that's Option A. if you've already done it, like Jaime, and you've got your list, I would say Option B is to take that list and start scheduling it in your calendar. When you have something that's not on your calendar it's going to be a lot harder to get it done, versus when you have "Buy Grandma a gift" you can be like "I'm going to do that on Wednesday at 7:30pm and then I'm going to do yoga at 8." So take that list and convert it to action steps on your calendar so that one day you'll actually do it.

Jaime: Okay, so I'll have to do that with my list, now that I'm looking at it. Awesome. Thank you so much, Noah, I really appreciate it and I hope that everyone, as they're listening to Noah, puts that in their calendar for this week take 50 minutes and watch that video and then go ahead and do that. I had David Allen on the show so I've been doing that consistently. I was doing it before but he sort of kicked me and I've been doing it really consistently for the last month or two and it's been extremely helpful so I really appreciate that as your action. Where can we find you online?

Noah: I'd like to invite the audience to connect to me on LinkedIn that's where I spend my online presence and people will get updates about articles that I write, which primarily relate to exist planning, and other content that I create. So find me on LinkedIn. You can go to my website, freedomexit.com, and you can download resources from there. One of my partners wrote a book on nine mistakes he learned from buying and selling businesses and I've got another resource on the three most effective ways to grow the value of your company, so you can download those. Hopefully you'll be able to find my book, "Exit: Healthy, Wealthy and Wise:, on Amazon pretty soon. If you want to review it, then I'm happy to mail you a copy for free. I just ask that you put your review up on Amazon. Write your own words but the book is free.

Jaime: That's very sweet. That's awesome. You have an awesome podcast, also, and of course the podcast listeners for this would like to know about other podcasts that they should listen to, so tell us about your podcast.

Noah: I have a podcast which is hosted by Divestopedia which is a website that has information for business owners and advisors all about buying and selling companies. In the podcast that I run I interview owners who have sold their companies and the advisors that counsel them and we talk about all kinds of different highs family issues, personal issues, business issues, financial issues so if any of you are at a later stage in your business, thinking about selling of transferring, and whether you're going to give it to your kids, leave it to your management team or sell it for the highest price, it's a great place to listen to more information.

Jaime: Nice. Thank you so much for coming on today, Noah. I really, really appreciate it and I hope you have an amazing day.

Noah: Thanks, I appreciate you having me.

Jaime: I hope you got a lot out of that interview with Noah. If you like that interview, go to EventualMillionaire.com and subscribe. You'll know every Monday when the new Eventual Millionaire interview comes out. I've got tons of amazing guys coming up. I've got more guys than girls, I know, that's something that I have to work on. Clay Collins is coming up on the show, plus a lot of other really amazing people, so I'm really excited, I hope you are too. Go ahead and go to EventualMillionaire.com and you can get e-mails from me telling you when they come out and you can hear about all sorts of other cool stuff like why I had a bone removed from my foot recently. Good times! Have an amazing day and take care.

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Tags: millionaire interview, Noah Rosenfarb, Outsourcing, Virtual assistance

Categories: All, Best Life, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Finances, Goals, Hiring/HR, Millionaire Interviews, Productivity

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