Financing and partnerships
SPVs, Stupid Tax, and Focus: Lessons From Jeremy Neilson
Jeremy Neilson breaks down how SPVs really work, who sets the terms in an equity raise, and why he shut down a business to focus on one product.
When I sat down with Jeremy Neilson for The Owner Meeting, I wanted to understand the part of a deal most investors hand off and never look at again: the legal wrapper that holds everybody's money. Jeremy started out in law, figured out fairly quickly that he wasn't built to work for other people, and turned that into a career inside the private asset investing ecosystem. Today he runs a software company called Sally, built entirely around SPVs.
What I got was a clear explanation of how equity structures actually get decided, an honest accounting of the mistakes that cost him, and the best framing I've heard in a while on why serial entrepreneurs should pick one thing.
What an SPV Actually Is
SPV stands for special purpose vehicle. Jeremy's definition: it's the legal structure required if you're going to aggregate other people's money to invest into a private asset.
You can always go direct: pull money out of your own pocket and go straight to the CEO, the real estate project, the oil and gas deal. But if you and two other family offices and a handful of other people want to pool your money and send one check, that vehicle is an SPV. Maybe you're doing it to hit a minimum. Maybe you want to take some carry. There are lots of reasons.
Once you pool the money, you need documents, an entity, tax returns, security filings. As Jeremy put it: you find the deal, you find the people, you call me, I take care of the rest.
The part that surprised me most was how little the wrapper changes across deal types. Fund of funds, syndicate, SPE, sidecar, drop-down, fund of one: Jeremy says they're all the same phrase for essentially the same thing. You're setting up a Delaware LLC or LP either way. It doesn't matter what the asset is or how much is being raised; the documents run 95 to 99% the same between deals.
The real difference is the economics. The documents say who's in charge, who does what, and who gets what. Am I able to take a carry? Do I get a promote fee, an org fee, a backend? Is there a hurdle? That's the structure of the deal, not the structure of the entity.
Whoever Has the Money Sets the Rules
On this channel we talk constantly about sequencing a deal: start with the opportunity, line up the debt product so you know your total pool of money, then solve for the remaining equity. So I asked Jeremy the practical question. Say someone has a deal and a conventional bank product at 75% LTV. They need the last 25%. How do they decide which equity structure fits?
His answer was blunter than I expected: it comes down to the investors around the table. You may have a structure you want, but the people with the money tend to determine what it's going to be.
Plenty of investors will simply accept what you present. The sophisticated large checks come with red lines and suggestions: we're going this way, take it or find somebody else. And that gets more true the larger the deals get.
It's good to come in with a game plan. Just expect them to come back with how they see it working. Equity is the last phase of the negotiation, and like every other phase (the deal, the debt, the equity) it's a give and take.
Sally plugs in after that negotiation happens off-platform. Once terms are settled and it's time to sign documents, send money, and handle the paperwork and the edge cases, the software anticipates all of it so closing and ongoing admin are smooth. The user is the group aggregating the investors: typically the family office that found the deal, did the due diligence, is putting in most of the equity, and wants to invite smaller family offices and individuals in while being compensated with a promote, an org fee or a carry.
The Phone Call in the Backyard
Jeremy's path into this wasn't strategic. He spent seven years at the Utah Fund of Funds, which is how he got into private asset investing. Then he left, tried to do his own thing, and (his words) failed at everything for two years.
Then AngelList called. The JOBS Act had just passed, there were a lot of unknowns coming online for private asset investing, and they asked: can you figure out how to do funds in bulk?
He was in the backyard pushing his youngest on a swing. He said yes. He told me he didn't even know what they were asking: he just knew he was an entrepreneur, so he said yes and then went and figured it out.
He figured it out manually first. At the beginning, people were handwriting documents and mailing him actual checks, and he was walking into the bank with a stack of them. That's how these SPVs got done.
Why Partial Software Tripled His Workload
The most useful operating lesson in the episode had nothing to do with real estate.
Jeremy built a little bit of tech, and it was okay. Then he built more, and it was really bad, because it tripled his work. That sounds backwards until you understand how an SPV behaves.
An SPV is a contained entity. Ten investors, whatever the number, it's a closed box. Running that box in software is great. But the moment anybody squirts out of the software and off-platform (because it doesn't accommodate that profile, doesn't handle side letters, doesn't have whatever specific thing they need) you have 80% inside the software and 20% outside it. You've lost your single source of truth. And now you need an umbrella process just to combine the two.
That's how partial software doubles and triples the workload instead of cutting it.
So the destination became a four-walls complete software package (all the modules, all the features, all the edge cases) because only then does the work actually collapse. He eventually shut his previous business down; the admin was too much and the software wasn't good enough. He took what he'd been building and turned it into Sally.
He's worked on it for three and a half years with nothing else alongside it, and released it a year ago. His description of where it landed stuck with me: he doesn't have an admin team and doesn't need one. He sits and stares at the software and grins, because he's seen what that world looks like without it.
On the name: his branding requirement is that you have to be able to spell it if you hear it and pronounce it if you see it. It turns out sally and venture are synonyms.
For go-to-market, LinkedIn works best right now. He reaches out through a connection and asks to show someone the product; the goal is a demo. Email hasn't worked as well, ads haven't worked as well. In private asset investing it's a trust-based business, so it takes time. The best marketing will eventually be current customers telling their friends.
Working With Your Wife Without Wrecking the Marriage
Jeremy and his wife ran his previous business together for ten or eleven years. I brought it up because I'm in the same boat: my wife does everything well that I don't, and it's a total fluke. She started as a school teacher. I started as a sales rep and worked at the CoStar Group for years. I can start things, pitch, get the engine going. Put me in a repetitive process and I lose attention. That's where she thrives, so bookkeeping and overseeing construction projects go to her.
Jeremy's version: he was the industry expert closing SPVs, and everyone who does this knows there's a tail of admin, taxes and reporting after the deal closes and everybody relaxes. He was figuratively throwing closed deals on the floor and under the desk, telling himself he'd clean it up later. His wife said, no, I'll take that. She picked up all the post-close work and then built the processes, the systems, the reporting, the bookkeeping, HR, financing, and the marketing. Looking back, he said, he's not sure he did much beyond saying yes.
Two things made it work:
- A personal policy that the marriage comes first. He wasn't going to let the business destroy it: you can always shut the business down.
- Naming which conversation you're in. They frequently had to call a time out and ask: am I putting on the husband hat, or the co-CEO hat?
He also said something refreshing: that he loved having his favorite person intimately involved in the thing he spends all his time on. Deep, engaging conversations at night. He compared it to sharing a favorite sports team: you go to all the games, you know all the stats.
That matched my experience with the Robin Hood Village Resort. My wife and I tackled that project together, and today we've signed a corporate lease and have a full-time music venue on site with multiple concerts a week. Visioning it, staffing it, and watching something genuinely hard become a good thing is hard to replace in a marriage. It can also break marriages, and it seems to do that about as often as not.
The Stupid Tax
We ask every guest for their highest stupid tax: the most expensive price they paid for being dumber than they are today.
My own is the resort. Wrong partnership structure. It cost me well over a million dollars to buy out the partners and over half a million to fix: roughly a $2 million mistake I hadn't accounted for going in. It works and makes money now. But to solve it I had two and a half years to earn a million dollars net of taxes, and I'd never earned a million dollars in my life. Fixing the resort alone wasn't going to produce that, so I had to grow my other businesses to a level that could. If I went back in time, none of my companies would be the size they are, because they only got that big since I had no option.
Jeremy's answer was different in kind. He has a strong ability not to regret things and to see the value in them. His costliest mistake was acquisition offers he turned down: offers he should have taken on a pure money basis. At the time the valuation felt too low. Looking back, what he'd change is the framing: you get wrapped up in the business, the growth, the team, the vision, and third parties whisper in your ear that an offer is amazing or terrible. If he'd stepped back and asked what's most important in our lives (our marriage, our family) he thinks he'd have taken more offers, and that it would have been meaningfully beneficial.
Why He Only Works on One Thing
Jeremy describes himself as less risk-averse than most. If he weren't married with a family, he says he'd be off the charts. His wife and family ground him, and he's grateful for it.
That's the profile that usually produces a serial entrepreneur running a million projects at once: the thing every accomplished entrepreneur tells you not to do. So where does the discipline come from to stay on one product for three and a half years?
Two sources. First, experience: he's been through the scattered phase, and looking back he can see the real value came from the core product. Second, and this is the line I'll keep, Sally is in its infancy, like a human baby. It needs nurturing and he can't get distracted. Every time he tries to turn his head, the child cries and needs attention. He assumes that once Sally is a toddler or a teenager, his brain will start freaking out with more ideas again.
That lines up with the best advice I ever got. The best manager I worked for was John Hickman at the CoStar Group. Right when I started, he told me: for the next 90 days, make this job your baby. Live it, breathe it, eat it, sleep it. For the rest of your career you'll have all of the knowledge and you'll do unbelievably better. My pay doubled from any prior year and never went back: from about $125,000 to about $250,000 in sales, consistently, until I started my own companies.
Sure, you can have twins or triplets. Most people shouldn't. One at a time means more focused attention, and your odds of success are highest when you do one project, get it standing on its own, and only then add something that vertically integrates with it. Where I see businesses fall apart is people doing too much too early, or running unrelated projects: one company, then an AI company because AI is cool, then a sales agent because the selling went well. You end up with a hodgepodge where everything is kind of okay.
Key Takeaways
- An SPV is just the legal vehicle for pooling other people's money into a private asset. Syndicate, fund of funds, sidecar, fund of one: the documents are 95 to 99% identical; the economics are what differ.
- In an equity raise, whoever has the money sets the rules. Come in with a plan, expect red lines, and treat equity as the final negotiation phase after the deal and the debt.
- Partial software is worse than no software. If 20% of a contained process leaks off-platform, you lose your source of truth and add an umbrella process on top.
- Working with a spouse can work with two rules: the marriage comes first, and you name which hat you're wearing before the conversation starts.
- The stupid tax isn't always a bad deal you did: sometimes it's the offer you turned down because you were too wrapped up in the business to ask what actually mattered.
- Treat a new venture like an infant. One at a time, head down, until it can stand on its own.
Watch the full episode for the whole conversation, including Jeremy's AngelList origin story and more on how he thinks about risk. You can find Jeremy on LinkedIn, the software at sally.co, and his YouTube channel All Things SPV if you want to nerd out on entity creation and legal documents. On our side, my mentorship is at multifamilystrategy.com, there's a free course on getting started in multifamily investing, and our free Skool community comes with a deal calculator.
Read the episode transcript
0:00 Hello and welcome back to the Owner Meeting podcast hosted by Multif Family Strategy. I'm Christian, your channel host today, joined by Jeremy Nielsen. Uh 0:08 Jeremy started out as a law career and a lot of people who go into law uh realize 0:13 that's not exactly what he wanted to do in the conventional sense. So he's going to talk about how he became an entrepreneur and how he bled the worked 0:20 experience and the law degree into a series of companies. I'm actually really excited for this podcast. Jeremy, 0:26 welcome to the pod. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So, for those who don't know you yet, give us 0:32 the quick overview of Jeremy. Where did you start and where are you at today? Yeah. Uh, started as somebody that 0:40 wanted to get a lot of schooling in order to do something cool. I I wasn't quite sure exactly what I wanted to do. 0:46 I wanted to have that toolkit to do big things, maybe CEO of a company or 0:52 consulting or be an entrepreneur. So, went to a lot of schooling. uh that then 0:58 parlayed into my understanding about myself that I don't want to work for 1:03 other people. Uh so that uh you know how long did that take by the way between between school and realizing 1:08 like oh shoot I don't want to uh work for other people. Yeah, it uh I kept I kept fighting it over the years like no 1:15 no no no like surely I can work for somebody but the the the dy is cast on 1:21 that one that that I am not I'm not somebody that works for other people. Nothing wrong with that. I've just got 1:28 this unique I guess uh gene if you will. uh so parlayed that into different 1:34 careers, different jobs all in the private asset investing uh ecosystem and 1:40 today I have a software company called Sally. It's all around SPVS and 1:45 providing that structure for people that want to invest into private assets. Awesome. And for and for those who are 1:51 listening, you know, we talk a lot about multif family, about business, about different structures. We certainly have a lot of uh fun legal on here. SPV, give 1:58 us the the high level overview. Sure. SPV, it's an acronym for specialurpose vehicle. And the kind of 2:06 the description there is it's a legal structure that is required if you're going to aggregate other people's money 2:13 together in order to invest into a private asset. You know, you can go direct, which is pull money out of your 2:19 own pocket and go direct to the CEO or the real estate project or oil and gas, whatever it is. But if you said, "Hey, 2:26 me with two other family offices, some other people. We want to pull our money together and then send one check. Maybe 2:33 you're hitting a minimum. Maybe you want to take some carry. Lots of reasons to do it. If you're going to pull that 2:39 money into one vehicle, that's an SPV. And when you do that, you need documents, entity, tax returns, security 2:46 filings, all that stuff. That's my world. So, you find the deal, you find the people, you call me, I take care of 2:53 the rest." Well, that's something we talk about on this channel all the time is is when you're buying and this is true for business as well, but when 2:59 you're buying a piece of real estate, you start with the actual opportunity. So, you find a deal and you're like, okay, good. This is going to make money 3:04 for me and can make money for others. I like to line up the debt product. So, I know, okay, what is our total pool of 3:10 money here? that remaining equity. That's where you come in and go, okay, what the equity structures if this is 3:16 syndicated, if this is a fund of funds, there all there's a lot of different angles you can take at this. When 3:21 someone's evaluating a deal, what so let's let's keep this in the word of the deal equity. They found an opportunity, 3:28 they have a uh bank product show, so we'll go with conventional debt for this 75% LTV. So they find the last 25% of 3:35 the money. How do they make the determination generally speaking on which equity structure is going to be 3:42 right for the opportunity they've created? Um, well, it's a great question. You know, typically it comes down to the 3:49 investors around the table. Meaning, you may have a particular structure that you want. What I have found is that those 3:56 people with the money tend to determine what that structure is going to be, right? You you present to them, hey, 4:02 it's going to be this way. And many times people just accept that sophisticated lark checks, those 4:08 individuals come with red lines, suggestions. Hey, we're, you know, we're 4:13 going to go this way. Either take it or find somebody else. Yep. And that tends to be the case, 4:18 especially the larger the deals get. Uh, whoever has the money sets the rules. You're going to need to do a little bit of tailoring. It's good to come in with 4:25 a game plan of this is how I see this working, but they're likely going to come back with, okay, this is how we see it working. It's the last part of the 4:31 negotiation. You go through each phase individually. the deal, the debt, and the equity. And the equity like every 4:36 other phase, it's a negotiation, and it's a give and take. Yep. Absolutely. So, what uh what structures do you find 4:42 most I'd be interested in this at at what deal size do you typically see different structures start playing? 4:47 Because someone who's a smaller investor, you may have two or three partners. You're probably just going to do a joint venture, right? uh you get 4:54 into those low millions, you might just be into a very standard basic syndication either 506 BC, but like 5:00 family offices, just kind of go through the different quick overview, but go through the different flavors of what 5:06 are the SPVS and the structures that are the most common at different deal sizes. Yeah. Well, an SPV is a very broad term 5:16 or phrase for it could be a fund of funds could be considered an SPV. Um, a 5:21 syndicate's an SPV, SPE is an SPV, um, sidecar, drop downs, funds of one. I 5:28 mean, they're all the same phrase. And so, the the structure is typically the 5:34 same. You're going to go set up a Delaware LLC or LP. So, it's it's it's the same. The real difference here is 5:40 becomes around the economics. So, you got documents and those documents are 5:46 going to say who's in charge, who does what, who gets what. And so it's been my experience that it doesn't matter what 5:52 the asset is and it doesn't matter how much money is being raised. This the SPV 5:58 rapper whatever whatever term you want to put on it fund of fund syndicate SPV 6:03 is is used and so the the the whole approach then becomes am I going to be 6:10 able to do a carry? Do I get a promotion fee? Do I get an org fee? Do I get a backend? Is there going to be a hurdle? 6:16 like all this other stuff is really about the structure of the deal. Yeah. Uh but you're going to use very similar 6:23 documents. The documents are going to be 95 to 99% the same between all these 6:28 deals. Um the you know the absolutely structure 6:33 of that is going to be in this SPV type structure. What I do is I do software 6:39 that just allows it just be really simple, right? this negotiation off off platform or 6:45 this negotiation around what the structure is, the terms, all that stuff. Now, it's time to sign documents. It's 6:50 time to send in money. It's time to deal with all this paperwork, structure, the 6:57 edge cases. I've built software that that that anticipates all that and just makes it really easy so that the ongoing 7:04 admin, and the closing of the deal is is smooth. But that's your latest. That's the uh Sally, 7:12 right? Yeah. Oh, that's that is super cool. So, if someone's using this platform, is is it designed for end users, for law firms? 7:19 Where where does Sally plug in? Uh plays into that person or group that wants to aggregate the investors. So, 7:24 let's say a family office says I find the deals or I found this deal. And you 7:30 typically one person's leading it like they're going to put in let's say 50% of the equity, but they're going to invite 7:37 other people in. Maybe they're going to put in 85%, but they're going to allow for some other smaller family offices, 7:42 some other smaller individuals to come into the deal. And so they're going to need to do an SPV. It's them that uses a 7:50 software that that launches the SPB that's kind of in charge of the SPV. And many times it's I stepping back, it' 7:57 probably be the group that's actually leading or wants to get a fee. So if a family office says, "I found it. I did 8:03 the due diligence. I'm putting in most of the money, but I've got smaller family office friends. I'm allowing them 8:09 to come in, but I want to be compensated. Be it a promote fee, an org fee, a carry, something like that. 8:16 They're the ones that are going to launch this SPV. They're the ones that are going to be in charge of it. Oh, that's fantastic. 8:22 Well, where did you find when you were because this goes back to that that entrepreneurial gene. At what point did 8:29 you go hey this is this is what I want to do and this is the problem I'm going to solve because to software anything is not as 8:36 easy as it sounds in your head it's always a huge project and there's a lot of hurdles 8:41 where did you at what point did you go this is what is missing and this is how I'm going to attack yeah so it goes back to um kind of the 8:49 whole beginning of this SPD SPV thing for me I had um worked at the Utah fund of 8:56 funds I was hired to do this Utah fund of funds things. It was amazing. It's how I got into the private asset investing experience. It was kind of a 9:03 government employeeish and uh did that for seven years. I left that and again 9:09 my my lack of ability to work for other people. I tried to do my own thing and 9:15 failed at everything for two years. And then one day, [laughter] one day I get this phone call and it's 9:23 Angel List. and your listeners may or may not know that group, but they're a 9:28 big platform out there in the space. And they were brand new. Jobs Act had just 9:34 been passed. A [clears throat] lot of unknowns and new things coming on online for private asset investing. They called 9:41 me and they said, "Can you figure out how to do funds in bulk?" I remember I was in the backyard on the cell phone pushing my youngest on a 9:47 swing. And I'm like, "Yes." I I didn't even know what they were asking, but I was like, "I'm an entrepreneur. I do 9:54 [laughter] whatever. So, I just said yes. And um I I had a 10:00 lot of experience, but I needed to put all those pieces together on the table. So, I didn't even think it up, right? 10:05 Like I wasn't there like I I need to figure this thing out. I just was opportunistic. I said yes. So, I figured 10:12 it out, but I did it all manually first. And then I was like, if I could figure 10:18 out some software, some processes, some online, I could improve this. Because at 10:23 the very beginning, people were handwriting documents. They were typing it. They were mailing me checks, actual 10:28 checks. I was walking into the bank with a stack of checks. That's how we started doing these SPVS. So, how can we make 10:34 this better and smoother? I built a little bit of tech. It was okay. Then I 10:39 built more. It was really bad. And what happened was it tripled our work. And 10:46 you may think that well, you know, why did that happen, right? like because you were adding some help, some flows. But 10:52 with SPVS, it is a contained entity, right? So 10 investors or whatever that 10:58 is, it's a contained box. This is this vehicle. And when you do it in software, that's 11:04 great. But if you have anybody that squirts out of the software off platform 11:09 because your software doesn't accommodate that profile, doesn't have side letters, doesn't, 11:16 you know, add this this thing, right? whatever it is, if they kind of squirt out of it, now I've got 80% in the 11:23 software and I've got 20% outside the software, which is a mess. So now I don't have a source of truth. I don't 11:28 have a place to go. And now I need another process to combine the two. So I have like an 11:34 umbrella process. And so I found that I was now doubling and tripling my 11:40 workload by having partial software. So that was the entire journey of if I 11:47 could get to the final destination of a four walls complete software package 11:54 with all the modules, features, edge cases, then I think I can really really 12:00 really decrease this work. That's kind of been my my passion, if you will. And so my last business I shut down. The 12:07 admin was too much. The software wasn't good enough. I then took what I had been 12:12 building and just just did Sally and and now it's amazing. I I sit and just stare 12:17 at the software and it just works. I don't have an admin team. I don't need an admin team. I just sit there and 12:23 stare at it and grin and people if they saw me just be like, "You're weird." But that's just because I've seen what the 12:30 world is like without an amazing software and I'm just so pleased that this one works. Oh, that's amazing. So, how how long has 12:37 the has the Sally project been the uh the core project? I've been working on it for three and a 12:43 half years as as kind of nothing else but that. Released it a year ago, so I've got active clients and and and 12:51 constantly working on it now, but uh so it's been three and a half years since I shut the other one down and just been 12:58 focused on selling. Oh, that's awesome. Where did the name come from, by the way? Yeah. So, uh, for me on a branding basis, I personally 13:05 have my own my own kind of requirements, which is you have to be able to spell it 13:10 if you hear it. I like that. And you need to and and you need to be able to pronounce it if you see it. So, 13:17 that's kind of my core premise. And then, uh, I just spent a lot of time looking for a word around venture or 13:26 investing, whatever. And so Sally is a synonym for venture or venture and sally are synonyms. 13:31 Oh, it's perfect. Oh, I I love that. It's simple. It's easy. It's memorable on a branding standpoint. You really hit 13:38 all the major benchmarks and it's unique enough where I would never forget. Oh, 13:43 Sally is the software that we that's great naming scheme. What is what does marketing look like for you on on 13:49 software? So, so you officially launched you're doing nothing but Sally that focuses on that. What is the go to 13:55 market strategy for a piece of software like that? Uh for me it's just getting people to 14:01 take a demo. That that's ultimately the goal. And what I found works best is LinkedIn 14:08 right now. So Oh, nice. I reach out through LinkedIn connection. Hey, I've got something. Can I show it 14:13 to you? That works the best way for me. Um email doesn't work as well. Um ads 14:21 haven't worked as well. So, and you know, in private asset investing in this world, family offices, investing, money, 14:29 it's a trustbased business. So, it's going to take some time. Uh, the best it 14:35 will be when your current customers tell their friends about it, that's going to be the best marketing, right? Yep. So 14:42 until the flywheel really grows and you've got hundreds of clients and it and it becomes more ubiquitous, right 14:50 now it's uh the LinkedIn channel is what works best for me. That makes sense. When it's corporate 14:56 relationship, LinkedIn would be my first thought as well. That is the most lowest cost, highest return, simplest channel 15:03 to turn on. advertising for that type of pro project works, but you would have to spend like your your return on ad spend 15:10 is going to be much much much much lower than I would assume on a LinkedIn. So, yeah, that sounds like you're going about it 15:16 right. Definitely a relationship based product. You had mentioned uh we talked a little bit before and you had mentioned that you work with your wife. 15:23 Now, I people have mixed reviews on this. I very publicly uh my wife does everything well that I don't and it's a 15:29 total fluke. She started as a school teacher. I started as a sales rep. worked at the co-star group for years and years and years. Um, so the odds of 15:36 both of us taking to being an entrepreneur with no background in like 15:41 no entrepreneur families, no teacher and like sales, you can kind of see how I would make the jump going from 15:47 kindergarten teacher to entrepreneur. She's amazing and she rounds out all the things I'm bad at. I'm I am I can start 15:54 a lot of things. I can pitch, get the engine going. you try to keep me in a like repetitive process, I just lose 16:02 attention. It's so hard for me. That's where she thrives. So, when we get into the bookkeeping or overseeing 16:08 construction projects, I she's amazing. Most people aren't that lucky. You had 16:14 mentioned that you have the privilege of working with your wife as a as a business partner, which can go, I've 16:20 heard, good and bad. So, talk to me a little bit about what it looks like in your marriage because I'm I'm very curious about this. So we're not 16:26 currently working together on the Sally project. It was the last business that we worked together. So we did that for 16:34 10 11 years. Wow. And very similar to your story which was 16:39 Angelus called they said can you figure this out? I said yes. I they immediately 16:44 sent me some business and I was figuring it out and I was doing it and I was the I'm the I'm the industry expert, right? 16:50 The SPV, the lawyer. And when you do SPVS and you make these investments, 16:55 everyone knows, you know, you hustle around to do the deal and then the deal closes and everyone kind of relaxes, but 17:02 there's this tale of admin, taxes, and reporting and, you know, all that stuff. 17:07 I was getting these deals closed and I was just throwing them figuratively on the table or on the floor or under the 17:14 desk and say, I'll just clean this up later. And my wife's like, no, I'm I'll take 17:20 that. So she came in and she just picked up all of the postclo stuff and she just 17:27 like you detail oriented. She built the processes, she built the system, she 17:32 built the reporting, she did bookkeeping, she did HR, she did the 17:38 financing, she did a mark, she did the marketing. And as you look back, you're like, you know, I didn't do much here, 17:44 but I did, you know, say yes, right? So I get a little credit there. But she 17:49 just brought in so much of the value of of the business. Um, how does it how did 17:56 it work for us? Yeah, that was be my question is it can work well in a business. Does it also 18:01 work well for the two of you? Yeah. So, a couple things. One was um 18:08 for me personally, I have a internal personal policy which is the marriage comes first. So, I wasn't going to allow 18:15 the business to destroy the marriage. like we can shut the business down and so long as we have 18:20 each other right you know romantic right into the sunset. Um, but we also had to 18:27 come up with the is this a business conversation or is this a marriage home 18:34 conversation? like we many times would have to pause time out like am I putting 18:39 on the husband hat or am I putting on the you know co-CEOish hat here with 18:45 this conversation and and that was that was difficult um at times right um and 18:52 then I'll I'll I'll speak to this as as a man as as a man I loved 18:59 that my wife my favorite person in the world was intimately involved with the 19:05 thing that I spend all my time with. And what I mean by that is like at night 19:10 like like we could have these deep deep really fun engaging conversations that 19:15 were really really enjoyable and um and I've talked to other husband wives teams 19:21 and the wives tend to say that they, you know, in their minds it kind of gets all mixed together and it's not as fun and 19:29 there's lots of frustrations. But as a man I'm just like this is so awesome. And it's like, you know, my favorite 19:34 sports team and we love this sports team together. We go to all their games and we know all the stats. I mean, that's 19:41 kind of how it just felt. And like it just was so much fun to work with my favorite person. And I just 19:47 if she got upset, I just rolled off my bag. I'm like, I think you're awesome. This is so much fun. I don't care if 19:53 you're mad. This is awesome. I I find the same thing. It it especially the projects that we're really tied to. So, I mean, I have 19:59 several businesses, but one of them is the uh I have a resort called Robinoodville Resort, and it's it I'm 20:04 going to ask you about your your most expensive mistake you've made in your career uh upcoming here, but my biggest 20:10 mistake was wrong partnership structure. Uh it ended up costing me well over a million dollars uh to buy out the 20:16 partners and then over half a million dollars to fix. I mean, about a $2 million mistake. Fortunately, worked and 20:22 now makes money, but I didn't account for any of that $2 million when we went in. So, not good. When we did that 20:28 though, my wife and I tackled that together. And today we both have so much fun. We signed a a corporate lease 20:34 recently. So we have a music venue now on site full-time, multiple concerts a 20:39 week. We run it just it's become this amazing music thing that it never was before. Getting to do that together, 20:46 visioning, staffing, staffing, and then watching something that became really hard actually become a good thing. It's 20:54 hard to replace that in your marriage. It's a very unique thing to go through. It's stressful. It's hard. 21:01 And you vision it and get through it together. It it can be amazing. Also, it 21:06 can break marriages. Um, and then you see that it seems like that seems to happen as often as not. Uh, so it it's 21:13 really fun to hear someone else. I think it all starts with your principle of no matter what, the marriage comes first. 21:19 And that's a conversation we had all at the end of the day. If this didn't work and we lost everything, all we know for 21:26 sure is that we have each other and we can build it back again with less mistakes the second time. We already 21:31 know how to build it once and we made the mistakes, which transitions us really nicely. Um, when 21:37 you are new, you're the dumbest you'll ever be because then you'll learn things. You'll be smarter. What is the highest stupid tax that you paid to be 21:43 dumber than you are today and get where you are now? Yeah. Um, it's a great question. I have 21:49 a strong ability to not regret uh things and be able to see the value of it. And 21:57 so there's many things I think about like that was dumb or wish they didn't have to do that. Um but I also look back 22:04 and be like I wouldn't have learned something either. Yes. Um we got acquisitions offers that we 22:11 turned down uh which we should have taken if you know on a pure money basis. Um, I would say that the I mean the idea 22:19 was the value that we were receiving on the acquisition offer was too low. 22:25 Right. Right. It's it's worth a lot more. Yeah. But if we would have stepped back and just said, what's most important? You 22:31 get you get wrapped up in this business. You get wrapped up in the growth. You get re get wrapped up in the team and 22:38 the vision and all this stuff. But you usually step back and say, "What's really most important in our lives?" our 22:43 marriage, our family. Uh I think we would take more offers. We would do 22:49 things better. Uh if we don't, you know, you get you get third parties like whispering in your ear like, "Yeah, you 22:55 know, this is this would be amazing or that's a terrible offer or whatever." 23:00 And so looking back, I think taking taking some offers that I I I should 23:06 have taken would have been meaningfully beneficial to my wife, my life, my 23:12 marriage. H Well, that's the thing. All all of the the the stupid tax has just 23:18 become it was a phrase we used early on in the podcast. Now people every time I don't ask the question, we get we get 23:24 absolutely destroyed in the comment section. Uh, so I I actually love paying 23:29 the stupid tax because it's something that we you do learn from it. It's never a negative if you growing it better. And 23:35 so I I have a very similar outlook to you. If I didn't buy the resort, I had 23:40 to find out and I never in my life earned a million dollars. I had to figure out, okay, to fix this, I had two 23:46 and a half years to earn net of taxes a million dollars to solve the problem. So 23:52 what did I do? I'm like, well, I can try to fix the resort, but it's not going to make. It's just not a million dollar excess project. So, I have to grow my 24:00 other businesses to a level where I can solve the problem. So, if I go back in time, none of my companies would be the 24:06 size they are because they got as big as they are because I had to do it. I I had to earn a million dollars. That there 24:12 wasn't an option. It was do it or don't. I can't say I go back and regret doing that because it made me where I'm at. 24:19 Definitely if you could learn from me doing that and I can pay that tax for you, I want to share that on a podcast. 24:25 Like that's that's the valuable stuff and I I think that's what you did there is like it's an opportunity cost thing. 24:32 Would you generally say as an entrepreneur you generally more or less risk adverse 24:38 to if it just say like the standard entrepreneur if normal risk tolerance what side of the the table do you 24:44 usually fall on? I am less riskadverse than most. That would that would make I would say I would say that if I was 24:51 not married with a family, I would be crazy. I'd be 24:57 off the charts risk-taking. My wife and family center me. They ground me to be 25:03 like, you need to calm down, right? Um and so it's I think which is very helpful. I think it's what marriages do 25:09 for us completely and are, you know, all about our personalities and and rub off those rough edges. And so I'm grateful 25:16 for it. But yeah, if I did not have responsibilities like a wife and family, 25:22 I would take more risks than I On the same train of thought, how do you 25:28 decide which projects to work on? I see. So typical of people who have a higher risk tolerance and are uh 25:35 entrepreneurial, don't work well for other people, work well with, but maybe not for other people. They all seem to 25:42 have a habit of starting a million projects at a time, becoming the the serial entrepreneur, which any 25:48 accomplished entrepreneur typically tells you not to do. How do you decide like you mentioned like, hey, Sally is 25:53 the the thing and I've been focusing on it for three years. Where do you get the discipline to say this is what I need to 25:59 work on even though I'm sure you have 30 other ideas that you've thought of in this time that you've been going through 26:05 this? I think really right now the reason I can focus or it helps me one is 26:10 experience right so I've gone through that scattered and this that this that and and seen ultimately where the real 26:19 value came from you know looking back I tried and tried and tried the real value 26:25 came from this core this core product the other thing right now is that Sally 26:31 is in its infancy and just like a a human baby. I really need to nurture 26:36 that and I can't find myself uh distracted. Uh and so once Sally gets to 26:45 be a toddler or a teenager, I'm sure my my my brain will uh start to freak out a 26:53 little bit more, more ideas, more distractions and whatnot. But right now, 26:58 every time I try to turn my head, right, this this child cries, if you will, and needs needs attention and and and so I'm 27:06 I'm staying head down, very disciplined uh on it. So, both experience and just 27:12 the stage uh is is kind of requires me to be head down. The the best manager I ever worked for, 27:18 his name John Hickman with the with the Co-Star Group. Uh worked for him for years. Right when I started the job, he 27:25 he used almost the exact same line. He's like, "Hey, for the next 90 days, make 27:31 this job your baby. Just just for 90 days, live, breathe, eat, sleep, go 27:37 star." What it will do is for the rest of your career, you'll have all of the knowledge and you'll do unbelievably 27:43 better. And what ended up happening is my pay from any prior year, and I'd worked for the company for years, it 27:48 doubled and it never went back from that point. I went from making about 125 to about 250 in sales consistently for the 27:55 remainder of my time there until I started my companies. I took that and I still teach people this. When you start 28:01 a project, make it your baby. And so perfect analogy that speaks to me incredibly, but your b your company is 28:08 an infant. Sure, you can have twins or triplets, but [laughter] but I don't think most people are are looking to do 28:14 that. It's much easier to have one kid at a time. As a father of one with another one on the way, I'm super 28:21 grateful that we're not going into twins or triplets. Uh one at a time is easier 28:26 and which it means you get more focused time and attention. Your odds of success are the highest if you can focus on one 28:34 project at a time and then maybe later you have a mature company and now you can do something that vertically integrates and now you can have company 28:40 that complements each other. Where I see people's businesses fall apart is they do too much too early and that almost 28:46 near zero success rate or they try to do unrelated projects. There's no vertical 28:52 integration. You do one company and they're like, "Oh, this AI stuff's cool. I'm going to start an AI company and oh, 28:57 we did really well at selling that. Maybe we should do a sales agent." Like I see people with this weird hodgepodge of businesses. And all of them are like 29:04 kind of okay, right? or it can do one thing excellently until it can stand on its own and then add to that ecosystem 29:11 which I I it's fun hearing that you know you get all sorts of different mindsets on 29:17 the on the podcast. It's fun hearing a very mature and measured approach from 29:24 someone who does have a high risk tolerance and I'm sure has a million ideas of things that you could be doing. 29:29 I app I appreciate that deeply. That's a great takeaway. If someone wanted to find you, you said something in this podcast that like resonated with them. 29:35 Uh they're interested in the Sally software. Maybe that's exactly what they're looking for in their company. How would they find you and how would 29:41 they find Sally? LinkedIn, obviously talked about it. You can find me on LinkedIn. Uh sally.co 29:48 is the website. And then I also have a YouTube channel called All Things SPV. 29:53 So, if you want to nerd out on legal and entity creation and legal documents, uh 30:00 I do a podcast, not podcast, YouTube channel on um all the nerdery around uh 30:06 SPVS. Oh, well, we love that. And if you're listening to the podcast, wherever you listen, uh this will also be posted on 30:12 the Multif Family Strategy YouTube channel. Uh we love we love nerding out. I like nerding out about real estate, 30:18 which means we also talk a lot of legal there. So, I'm guessing you have found the right audience. If you guys want to 30:23 hear more about this, Jeremy obviously goes much more in depth than I could because he has the legal background. So, 30:29 uh, check out that uh, check out the YouTube channel that'll be linked below as well as sally.co 30:34 if that is a good fit for exactly what you're looking for. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us today, man. It's been awesome having you on. 30:40 Thank you. Thanks for the conversation. Loved it. Absolutely.
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