Lunch & Learn - Session 14

Hi there. Welcome to 2026 and the very first lunch and learn of this year and brought to you by the Founders Office, which part of our Founder's Office team is myself, Tom Powell. And joining me today is Jackie Kuyper, our general counsel and one of the leaders of Women Talk Finance. And we're loving to be doing that here on our Wednesday lunch and learn. And of course, Candace Powell, who's been a longtime business associate with the Founder's Office and family member, part of the family office and all that wonderful stuff. And then we have a special guest today. So can I frame this now? If you're a founder or operator and you're doing well on paper, but still feeling like money is heavier, more taxed, and more complicated than it should be, you're not the problem. The system is. That's why I want you to listen closely to Chris Jarvis. Chris is a mathematician and a financial architect. He starts with consequences, not products. He looks at what's already in place, runs the real math, and asks one question. Is this actually serving you your cash flow, your enterprise value, and your future? For more than 30 years, Chris has helped founders unwind unnecessary taxes, excessive fees, and overbuilt structures that quietly drain momentum. He doesn't sell complexity, he removes it. And what this means for you is simple. More clarity, stronger cash flow, cleaner businesses, and better optionality, whether you're growing, exiting, or planning what comes next. Chris is also a dear friend. I trust how he thinks, how he teaches, and how he seriously takes the responsibility of advising people about their lives and their money. So don't listen for tips, listen for shifts. Because one shift can change everything. And Chris, that was a fancy intro. More so just. Thank you for joining us.

You're welcome. That's a lot to do in this six hour lunch and learn. So we're going to have to get to it and I have to get practice.

Well, first of all, where did you just return from earlier this year? Well, last year.

End of last year.

End of last year.

End of last year, after I was with you at your fantastic Capital Edge Summit, I left there and went to Antarctica. Wow. Was able to. I was invited to speak with Deepak Chopra on a mindfulness cruise to Antarctica. And it was. It was life changing. It was life changing. That's about all I can say. It was a pretty special group of people to a very special place. And no cell phone, no wi fi, no 5G, no 4G, no G, just real G. And it was great.

No G. Well, we're super pleased to have you. Here, you got to sit through while we did a number of shark tanks and worked with our founders and entrepreneurs. And the great thing of working with is not only do you have the founder's mindset, you also understand the trouble that these founders get into on the financial side. And I think your brain literally never stops thinking about how you can solve problems for them, which is just. Just a pleasure to be around. But before we start there, I want to talk about be the giraffe. And I don't know that this is the right way to talk about the be the giraffe, but, Jackie, were you. What was your. You were a penguin, is that right?

I'm a penguin.

Okay.

And, Candace, I'm the apple to your tree. What do you think I was?

I don't know. An elephant?

No.

Eagle. Eagle. So you're going to have to go through that a little bit, Chris. But I. But it wasn't really so much about what we were. It was what we were willing to sacrifice.

Yeah. So one of the gifts that everybody who's watching this is going to get is you get to take the wild factor, which, during COVID I spent, I don't know, over a year and a few hundred thousand dollars of my own cash just building something out. Because when you can solve math problems, you can solve financial problems. But the problem that very few people ask is, why the hell are we doing this? Not just, is it more money, is it cleaner, is it a higher roi? It's what is this? What is the money actually doing for you or doing to you? And so I built the wild factor because I wanted an assessment that would help me help people understand their behaviors, not pigeonhole them into I'm a six, I'm a quick start. I'm a blue. I'm a. You know, there's a lot of things that don't mean anything. So I spent a lot of time thinking about the five areas of life that mattered to me. Finance, career or purpose, health, relationships, and fun. And so, depending on how you score on this, how you assess yourself on this behavioral matrix. 20 questions. The link is in the notes. Founders1 is the password that makes it free. If you don't want to use that code and you want to pay me 20 bucks, I'm happy to take it. But founders one makes it free. And if you don't follow directions, that's what it's going to cost you. And you're going to take a quick test, and you're going to find out whether you're an eagle, elephant, Monkey, dolphin or penguin? Eagle, Elephant, monkey, dolphin, penguin. And it's going to help you identify whether what you're doing well or what you're spending a lot of time on and what you're sacrificing. And ultimately, what's really important to understand is you can have everything you want in life. You just can't have it all at the same time. And that's a really important thing for a founder. Because when you're starting a company, nothing else matters. You are tunnel vision. This is what you're doing all the time, 24 7. And if you're not, you'll see on Shark Tank, are you doing this job full time? Anybody who's not, they're not interested. Like I need you to, if I'm going to give you money, I need you in this thing all the time. Right. But then when you're launching, you know, that's a big deal. And then when you have people who are thinking about selling their company, as you know, you've done, I've done a handful of deals. You've done countless deals. That when you're selling a business, selling a business and running a business at the same time is a recipe for disaster. You can't do them both well. You just can't. Like it's so difficult. Raising money is a full time job. Selling a company is a full time job. Running a business is a full time job.

And so go through those, go through those five again. Chris, you said finance, which of course.

Was the first one I got.

Which was my eagle? Health.

Career. Career or purpose? Relationships.

Relationships.

And fun.

And fun. Okay, so the interesting thing to me, and we were chatting yesterday about the show before we got started with my team, and we have been focused on our founders isolation paradox as one of those primary pieces. And what that founder's isolation paradox is if you think of a Venn diagram. So you take the five circles around and you say, okay, here is your spouse or family member that's part of your, your founding team. Because that's usually what happens. It's usually somebody else that they talk to and they kind of coerce them into coming into it. And then as you grow and you get to this $10 million level, you oftentimes have an outside CPA, an outside attorney, you have an outside banker, and then you have your executive team. And right in the center of those five circles is the founder, even though their spouse is part of that. But they're still making these decisions and the decisions of those five, even though they interact on that single Circle at the end, they don't cooperate with each other as far as they have separate goals, even though it makes the founder better in the total. Right. And so in thinking about that when. And part of it is, is that with your be the giraffe and your matrix that you've come up with, it was who do you sacrifice? And so as an eagle, we were going to sacrifice some level within there, which was mine. Was monkey first, right?

Yeah. So what you're talking about is a high score and a low score. Eagle is finance, career is elephant, relationship is penguin, dolphin is health and monkey is fun. And so, yeah, when I did this for the people at your event, the high score is the thing that you spend the most time on. And when you get to that place of you can have it all in life, you just can't have it all at once. Is when push comes to shove and you don't have enough time, which is every entrepreneur since the beginning of time, what's the first thing you sacrifice? What's the easiest thing for you to give up? Do you just throw money at the problem? Do you sacrifice your fun? I don't have time for this. Is it relationships? Is it your health? I'll stay up late, I'll go to the. It's too big of an opportunity. I'll stay out late, I'll eat the meal, I'll have the drinks, I'll do all the things I shouldn't do. Can't work out in the morning because work, you know, business calls and you just have to sacrifice your body. Like, what is that thing? And then the big question is, when I do the keynote of an opening conference or when I was even at your event, I said, you shouldn't watch me or Jen or Tom or Candice or Jackie speak and ask whether or not you can do what we're talking about. The question is, is anything that this joker is saying going to help me improve an area of my life that I want to improve? That's the part that's so important, is what is it? You be aware of what you're sacrificing and then sometimes you're sacrificing things and it's okay because it's. The thing you're doing is so important. It's not a. There's no judgment that your health is last. Maybe that's what it has to be right now. Until it, you know, until health has a way of reminding you. And then you. Then it. Then it can't be last. It's the only thing but but sometimes you just have to sacrifice things.

Well, so, so in, in doing that. So Candace is an eagle, but which one do you sacrifice most, Candace? Is it fun or is it health?

Health, Health, health. Which felt it was funny because when I was talking to Chris about it, he. His second question was, what's your last one? Because it shows that it's also important in this overall makeup. And I, I kind of appreciated that, that the lowest score also had importance because it's not that you need to focus on it, but at least the awareness. And when I, when I said it, I was like, well, this seems obvious.

But you know what's so funny about that is, you know what Candace probably picks me, picks on me the most about. It's not family. It's not, you know, relationships. It's not about even having fun. It's about my health. Right. So as, as she says it, the.

Oldest figured out how to cryogenically freeze you yet?

I think, I think Tom's. I think Tom's working on that more than you're working on that. Probably, you know, like, you might be, you might be second in line on that one.

So, so. And then Jackie, you are the penguin, which is relationships, which is so true. And. And the other thing that I love about Jackie is she is one of the best, other than. Than probably my youngest daughter at setting boundaries in a lot of cases. Right. So I mean, they're both really good boundary setters, which in that scenario. And I don't know if that's because of. It's. The relationship is so critical. You know, it's curious because I'm horrible at times at setting boundaries. Right. So what's your. What's your. What's your.

I've had to be very intentional about working to set boundaries, and it's still like, I would say work in progress, but it's something that's very. I'm very aware of the need for me to do that. And yeah, that's. It also goes to trust and maintaining relationships because if boundaries are crossed, especially continually crossed, that will deteriorate relationships for me. And I don't sacrifice relationships. The my. They're pretty close. Career, health and Fun are all pretty close to tied, although career will take the hit first.

Really? Okay, well, that's. That is super cool.

You know what I like about the high and the low is like the other way to frame this. Once you take this, and for everybody who takes this, I'd encourage you to have your team do this. We do a lot of really interesting workshops with this with this with team dynamics. But when you're identifying your behaviors, your high score is the dominant voice in your head. It's the one that you can never ignore. It's always there. It always has a seat at the table. It always chimes in. So when you make a decision, if Candace makes a decision about money, it doesn't mean that it's wrong, but when she makes a decision, that's the right money call. The suggestion from the report for me, since I wrote it is just second. Just ask yourself, is this money decision actually, is it worth it? Are you aware, Just take a second look at this and say, am I sure that this is right? Because this is my natural tendency to make that one win. I'm always considering the roi. And so whatever that thing is, you just want to be aware when you're leaning towards something, you always lean into, take a second look and say, am I sure that this isn't something that, like she's doing the, wow, this food was a lot cheaper. So I'm going to take this meal. But it's like, maybe you shouldn't have McDonald's for the fourth time this week. I think you can, I think, I think you can afford to have a salad once. Like there's a right, like there's, you know, there's an opportunity.

Chris, it's going to sound like I'm taking this way off topic, but I truly am not. So yesterday we're also having the conversation around what it requires to be a founder's executive assistant, personal assistant, however you want to describe that. And Candace is describing the role to me as a specifically, most specifically, sounds biased, but a mom of a toddler, of a four or five year old toddler. And so she's going through this and she's like, so you're packing everything up and you've told them five times to bring their water bottle, but if they don't bring their water bottle, guess who pays for that? Mom does, right at the end of the day or I don't know. Candace, you had like, at the end.

Of the day, it still wasn't, wasn't the kid's fault. It was, it's mine. It's my ownership. I have to solve it. And I speak as a parent of a five year old. This. And I also have to convince her that things are her idea. So we need to go potty before we leave the house. If I delegate to go potty, it's not going to go well. But if I make it her idea and she can take ownership of it, then it's, then it's fine. And I think that's how a lot of executives, a lot of founders are. And the people in their corner looking out for them, they're kind of taking on the role of health, relationship, fun, you know, anything that's like kind of in that lower bucket, they're taking on that ownership.

The things that I will sacrifice. It's critically important that the people around me actually make sure those things happen. Because what Candace has said is that even though I will sacrifice those Maslow's theory, my health and my fun and other things, there comes a point that then I'm so damn grumpy or my brain's not operating its most efficient manner that then that's not there. And so this was the whole tie in around this of back to the founders isolation paradox and as well as how powerful the work that you do because these five segments feed into that centerpiece which is, it's about keeping the whole organism as healthy as possible.

Yeah, I think your childhood. Most entrepreneurs are very childlike and I don't because we have to be. There's. It is, it is. It is a game of make believe. If you're a founder, you would never. If you can't dream, you are not an entrepreneur, you are not a founder because you're imagining. Not only do you imagine a game that's never been played, you make up the rules and you convince a whole lot of other people to play this game that they don't know the rules and you're going to make them as you go. It is chaos and it's so much like a child. But you have to be so into it and believe. No, really, I'm Batman. And to do this you have to be so focused on the thing that you're doing. I can remember when I started my first company, it was during the dot com era and we were talking offline about somebody who's one of the richer people in the world and his company started in one of my classmates garages and she recently passed. Sad story. But this whole idea with the entrepreneurs, I can remember when George Pang asked me, when do you call it? When do I call what? When is enough enough? When is enough what? Like when is that? When is what it. And he's trying to ask me because all these guys are making so much money in the dot com world and I was running a publishing company and a finance firm and it took us five years to make money. And what he's trying to ask me is when will you quit this thing that you started and go make a bunch of money like the rest of us. And I couldn't even understand the question because it wasn't even like we just kept like we had a company that started as a pharmaceutical ad agency, then it became a legal referral business, then it became a financial referral, then a finance firm, then a franchise of financial people around the country. And it just, it just changed so many times. I couldn't even fathom the question that what if this doesn't work? And I wasn't trying to be belligerent. I, I just, it just hadn't even crossed my mind in any way. And so that like a child, they're so focused on that thing, they want the cookie. You don't give them the cookie, they lay down and scream in the grocery store. Like that's kind of the entrepreneur mentality.

Kind of. My dad and I did it. That is kind of how I explained it. He and my 5 year old have a lot more in common than, than I think most realize. And I think a lot of other founders are in the same boat. You're very singularly focused.

And.

Sometimes logic isn't working. I'm just kidding.

Logic doesn't work at all. Because with logic we wouldn't have done this like exactly in their right mind.

Yes.

Nobody in their right mind who doesn't, who has no unresolved childhood trauma and self esteem issues would ever go into entrepreneurship because it's a completely ridiculous, low roi, low probability event. You wouldn't do it if you didn't have.

Well, half of my job is keeping her from doing something dangerous that is going to cause her a lot of harm. And I feel like that's a lot of what my job is with my dad too, so. And most founders in general, so kind of putting in those risk barriers along the way. Some bumpers occasionally help. So I think in this conversation it's one, it's, it's great to be aware. We encourage you guys to do that. If you've done it, go ahead and throw in the chat. Like what yours were. We'd love to see like how many, how many eagles do we have? How many penguins do we have? Do we have dolphins out there? I say dolphins out there because I, I'm lowest on dolphins.

Did we have any dolphins? Did we have a dolphin?

I don't think we just in our group, which tracks because I, we, we do all collectively take a health dive when, when things sacrifice. That was healthy.

Yeah. Health is your primary as a dolphin.

Okay.

Yeah.

You know what's so funny is even. Even with Riva, she is not a dolphin.

Oh.

And she sacrifices most is fun and health. And what I sacrifices is fun and health. And it's crazy because I spend so much money and time on both. I mean, I ski an unbelievable amount of time.

Thank you, Erica. Chat is disabled, so go ahead and put them in, like, the Q A if you want, because it'd just be fun to know. We also open it up for you guys to throw in questions as we keep going. Oh, okay. We've got a penguin. Jackie.

Penguin.

Penguin. We've got an elephant. This is fun. Yay. So I would just encourage you guys do what I mean, Chris did with me was the next question is, what. What is my. What am I sacrificing? And I thought that was a very. Like, what is.

What is your. Well, that's. Because that's so. I. Most times. Most times I've taken this. I've been. I mean, I've taken this so many times. I've been a. An elephant. So it's all about career and purpose. But it's. But penguin is always high. Is always my number two. Relationships are important to me. And it's the question what you do well is one thing, but when I ask you what the last question is, I want to know what you don't have enough of. Because if I'm going to be. If you go to the be, the draft book and the chapter feed differently, which I think is chapter 10. It's a cool story about the acacia tree and the giraffe and how they have this very interesting symbiotic relationship. But the idea is, if I want to be valuable to you, if you're an avid wine collector and you have a thousand bottles of wine, sending you a bottle of wine is an easy gift. But I'm not doing something for you that you wouldn't normally do. Right. If the problem is you don't have fun and you don't take time for yourself, getting you tickets to the opera, a sporting event, a music festival or something is me actually helping you. It's not the easy gift, but it's the most valuable gift.

I'm going to go even further than that, Chris, because this is the thing that I have found because I am high on relationship and high. Definitely on finance, obviously, but that fun thing. And so when Candace and the other kids were little, I actually went and took a program on how to have fun.

Right.

So learning how to get into the inner childhood. And if you remember, Candace we'd go to, like, Chuck E. Cheese, and I'd rent the whole place like nobody's there except Chuck E. Cheese employees. And we're having ball fights and playing. Cause I literally had to learn how to do this stuff. And we went and closed out Toys R Us. Huh? Toys R Us. That's right. Rode the bikes around Toys R Us plane in Toys R Us.

And you're why they went out of business. I think that probably.

I think probably it was not as.

Probably insurance went through the roof. Yeah.

It was like one of those things where it was just absolutely crazy. But there's nothing more valuable to me than. Than either something that is memorable, that's an experience, or more so the experience.

Right.

Because it's something that money doesn't. And it's not, you know, it's even the health of the relationships or anything else. So I love that. But you were just about to touch on a point that I think is critically important in teams. So we just gave like 70 of your books to one of our companies that we're helping to grow. Right. And they're going through some challenges at this point and things. So from the teamwork, we took your product and said, okay, here's it is. And you came in, you talked to them. And it's not as much about that. Jackie's a penguin and Candace is an eagle. It's about what does Candace need most, which is focus on the health and who in our group that that's their focus and so that they can buddy up and help get there. And I think that's where you were going with that. But tell more about that. How can we utilize that?

Yeah, well, one of the things that I do in a presentation, and I'll even answer Ernest Moore's question in a minute. The one of the things I'll often do in a meeting is I'll ask people in the audience to think about again, usually I'm talking to people who are older, who have kids. And, you know, usually the audience is some. Is 40s, 50s, 60s, sometimes older. And I'll say, okay, imagine as a parent, the time that you were the best. You did the best thing you ever could have done for one of your kids. And you're not going to have to share it. But imagine the time that your kid had a serious problem and you did something. And if you don't have kids, imagine the time that your parents that you had a problem and your parents did something. Really, they were great for you. And it could have been a kick in the Ass. It could have been a shoulder to cry on. It could have been a story, a relatable story about their childhood. It could have been that they just listened. It could have been they gave you space. It doesn't matter what it was. But once people lock in a moment like their highlight real moment with. As a parent or their parents highlight moment with them, say, great. Now imagine the next kid in the birth order had the same problem, and you handled it the same way. How would that have gone? You're shaking your head, Candace. Why?

I find it hard to believe I could handle any situation the same between my two children because they are beautiful individuals.

Great.

Who happen to share DNA.

They share DNA, but they're different.

They're wildly different.

So at home, we all understand that kids need to be treated differently because they're different. But then we get into the office, and we have one website, we have one employee handbook, one incentive program, one newsletter, one sales manual. And anybody who doesn't fit, we say isn't part. They're not a team player. Like, that's on us. You have this expectation. You can't do it with your own kids who rely on you, who can't opt out. But you expect employees, salespeople, customers, newsletter subscribers, audience community members to all respond to the same thing. And so at the end of the day, the question that Ernest Moore put out was, how do you handle when you're scaling and people aren't on the same page? Well, that's on you. Because we're all different people. You have to figure out, how do I make. How do I get Candace to get her goals met her needs met by helping me meet mine. Like, that's the whole thing about being a good leader, a good manager. It's not coming up with strict rules and then having an iron fist. It's about, how do I find a way to get. To give people what they want? It's the Zig Ziglar, right? You can ever.

It is Zig Ziglar. It's totally Zig Ziggler.

You can have everything you want in life if you get people what they want. So that's the part is if you understand what they need. So let's assume this is a sales program, and these companies do big sales boondoggles. Maybe Jackie's an introvert, and the idea of spending all of her working days with us and then going away with all of us to the same place sounds like hell, right? Like she's shaking her head. Right? So. But what she might want is, let's just say. Instead she says, I'm a big fan of the America's cup or of F1 or of some sporting event. She's a big fan of Manchester United. Great. Then I'm going to say to her, hey, if you hit your numbers this year, I'm going to send you and three of your friends out to the event or out to the Olympics or whatever the thing is. And then we talk about it leading up to it and she tells her friends, by the way, if I hit this number, I'm going to be able to go and take you guys on this event. Now all of a sudden her friends are actually encouraging her, checking up on her, possibly giving her referrals, like, try to find a way. It cost me the same thing. Whether we take her to a place she doesn't want to go or I send her and her friends, how do I align? Like in the incentive program, Align things differently. Or maybe some people want to make more money because they're saving up for a house where somebody else just wants time off. So you say, hey, work for work, three 10 hour days in the summer and work for 75% of the pay and I'll give you Mondays and Fridays off and you can have, you can have a four day weekend every weekend, like maybe that. And it saves you money and they still do the same amount of work.

How so? I love this. And it's, it's, I, as you're talking, I'm thinking of how my husband and I gift. If gifting were on my husband, he would go to Costco, buy a value pack of gift cards and everybody's getting a gift card to Ruby Tuesdays or whatever they have in the pack.

Right.

And I spend all year curating a gift cabinet in our home of like I was out at an antique store and I saw this limited edition for somebody and it's really nice. Or I, I want them to be personal and they may be infrequent, like, but I care more that it was like custom than just something. How does a founder with everything on their mind? And I will say my dad's particularly good at this. He also follows my strategy of like it's not, it's not all the time, but occasionally he'll be like, I mean he sent part of our team to the World Series, you know, because it was important to them and they're.

And they were Dodger. They were Dodger fans.

I mean it was painful.

It was a huge stretch.

Hugely painful. But that to me, I'm like, I know how Ex.

It is.

It's like another mental load task to. To do that. How do you. How do you add that on?

Some people are wired that way, right? For me, I'm wired that way because I was the oldest kid. My parents got divorced. The only two people in the world who would die for me wouldn't sit in the same room. And that just didn't work for me. And so I've been like. My ability to connect people and connect with people is all through proxy because I never was able to do it for my parents. Like, I understand the worst thing in my childhood was the thing that made me really good at what I do now. And it's good to get to that. But some people are really in tune with that. They just are. And we've had conversations. I'm not surprised that you and your husband are different from the conversations we've had, Candace. But some people are in tune to that. If you're not in tune with that, then find somebody on your team who is and give that person. My mother was that person in her company. Like, even when she retired, they gave her the. She was essentially the, you know, ambassador of. You know, ambassador of kindness who still sent cards and packages and things to customers and did things. Like, some people just. That's their thing. But if you're on the spectrum, a touch of the tiz, as the kids call it now, like a touch of the tism. If, like, if you're not. If you're just socially not connected like that way, then find somebody else who is. Right. Somebody on your team can be the relationship person. It may not be the technical person.

Some of us. I like this tiz thing because it used to be Aspie's rule. No, I'm gonna put a damper on now. It's tiz.

I serve on too many committees.

We're actually. I'm gonna be the timekeeper here. It's normally Jackie on this scenario, but she's. She's being very, very quiet and stoic on this moment. Let's move beyond the social fabrics of being a giraffe and into the mathematician and how you actually save very wealthy people a lot of money in their transitions and exits. But why that strategy also works for the general population of founders, and they should be putting away. You know, we do believe. And this is not a product of ours or anything else, but we do believe that insurance is a big part of this. And I know you utilize some insurance products and things to help develop that maybe. And we got, like, 10, 15 minutes left so not much time to talk about big subjects.

So here's the first thing. If you, if you make more than, well, anybody who advertises any. Anything in a magazine. Now, it used to be magazines and TV shows. Now it's podcasts and, and YouTube and Facebook. Everything is. If something is. If something is in a medium, in a media that is advertising driven, then it's probably not for you. If a company has their name on a building or on a blimp, or on a sporting event, or does commercials on television or has a big audience, it's not for you. Once you get to the top 5%, let alone the 1% or the 0.1%, everything that's conventional wisdom is unconventionally terrible for you. It just, it just is. Because you've outgrown. You've outgrown it all. Like, all of it. Cause it's all done to scale. The simplest one is people always. I use this one all the time. It's a very simple C Corp. You should have a C Corp. No, I shouldn't. There's double taxation. Okay, do the math of double taxation. Corporate taxes, 21%. Individual tax rates, highest 1, 41%. Last I checked, 21's a lot less than 41. And I also know that the number one thing that entrepreneurs say they need other than time is more money. They spend too much time trying to find money, raise money, sell a company for money. The trade offs for money are the single greatest ones that cause the most pain in this world. Right? Most wars, divorces, fights, arguments are about money. So if you can free up cash flow by using a C Corp, So you have 800,000 instead of 600,000 because you used a C Corp instead of an S Corp for the million dollars of profit. Now you have $800,000. If you shut down that C corp, you pay 24% tax on the 800. You end up with 620. Like you end up with $20,000 more. And you get to use $200,000 for 10 years, 20 years or five years, however long you had the entity. Like, how much would you pay for a zero interest loan? So, like, something as simple as that will miss all the time. We set up loans between generations. Tom wants to give money to Candace, but the tax rate is going to be 40% on a gift. If he loans her the money at 5% for the rest of her life, which he's allowed to do, she could spend 2% of that money to buy a life insurance policy to pay back Tom and keep 98 of it.

I'm going to give you even a better one on that. What's that paper?

Yeah.

Hey, Chris. So but now we can't talk taxes here, but as an example, it can even be better than that because it could have been. The corporation is allowed to lend to Candace that has that in there, which is oftentimes a strategy that's within there. So I am a very big proponent of don't own anything, irrevocable trust and a number of other CRTs and all the things that we go into that we don't generally talk on the show. But it is. And the best time to set that stuff up is when you actually don't have money because it's much better than moving your money into their scenario. So it's not too early to be setting those things up. How do you, how do you give me on the massive scale? We were just talking about how you could save someone or earn someone $100 million on their exit scenario utilizing some taxes. And let's not get into specifics because I don't want to get too, too specific on the show and then have, have an agency call on us. But I do want to say that with, you know, all the things that are going on in the economy, in the world and such, are there strategies to be able to figure out you're in a high tax state in a high tax country. Are there strategies to be able to look at your estate? And even if you're not at $10 million or above, you still should be looking at these things to how do you maximize that? That how does someone go about that? What's the first steps?

Like anything else, the biggest challenge is finding people. And I'm not saying that to be self serving, but it's finding people who actually understand multiple disciplines. I call it the Amazon effect. That Amazon is great. If you know what you want to buy and you know the serial number, you can find it and get it. I'm in Dallas. I can get most things in three hours. But you can find the thing, but you can't shop like the time that you guys rented out the Toys R Us. Like shopping on Amazon, not easy. So the problem is people now are super subspecialized and they sell one thing. They do the one thing that from a regulatory standpoint they're allowed to do. So they can only sell you legal solutions. They can only do tax returns. They can only. I had in this room, in that seat, the head of family office for one of the big four accounting firms talking about his Billionaire families need the psychological coaching and the things that I talk about, you talk about all the time. And he said, we don't have a code to bill for it. I'm not an expert at it. I'm afraid to talk about it. We might lose the client. It's the most important thing. We can't do it like that. It happens. So, like finding people. I don't.

I don't know how. I don't know how you do. How you help founders, especially in building and exiting companies without getting involved in that. Because the part that is always.

Ethically.

You mean ethically, yeah, Right. Because it's not a mathematical thing. It's a. It's a. It really is a family integrated part to all of that. So even if you don't build this.

For what is the goal, what are we trying to accomplish? So you got to find people who actually care. To the point of asking Candace, what's your low score? Because I want to know what you need help on. Not know what you're good at. You're already doing what you're good at. You're already giving that a lot of time. You don't need more attention on that. You need more attention on the things that you don't give it to. So with the tax stuff, it's. It's. The right solution, is always. The most efficient solution, is always a multidisciplinary solution. The same way the most effective team is a. Is a team of diversified people with different experiences, different gender, different upbringing, different education. Right? Like that's. You get the best results when it comes from a diverse.

You're speaking my language.

A diverse team. Right? Because if you had 20 Indian programmers who were between 40 and 45 years old, like, you're going to get a lot of people coming from the same, you know, same job, same same orientation, same experience, but as soon as you add one woman to the group or you add, you know, somebody who's from a different part of the world, it changes the dynamic dramatically.

Generational differences.

Generational differences, all of it. It's so different.

Step back for just a second. And Jackie or Ken, as you probably remember it, Chris, you've probably read it at some point, but that EPI survey that said how many founders after exiting within two years are they regret. What's.

What's the.

What's the percentage?

It's a super high 50%.

I think it's higher than that.

I was gonna guess 73. I kind of have a thing for numbers, but that's just a random it.

Might be 70%, but between 70 and.

80, I thought, yeah, that's what I think too.

And it's so one of the things, and there's a reason we're called the Founder's office is because we are founder first in everything we do. All of the business things add value to the founder and that's really critical. But we are founder focused. We want it to be about them. What do they value? Is the pathway that they're heading down adding value to them personally? Is it supporting their needs? So we really take a very holistic view. And I think that's where, that's why we are attracted to you so much. We have such a good friendship and a good relationship is because for a mathematician, for somebody who's lived and breathed taxes, tax strategy, finance strategy, to create something like this, that takes it down to the person level and see that synergy is really like a special person because there's, there's a lot of people that, that do the, the job of finance or tax strategy.

Right.

Very few have found that niche of tying in value, personal value. And I think that's what makes you really special.

Well, that's, I, I appreciate that. And, and I think with every question, if you ask the question person, why, why are you doing this? And then the questions have to go a little deeper. Having good answers doesn't come from being the smartest person. It comes from asking really good questions and listening to what's said and what's not said. And so when you ask somebody, why do you want, what do you want to do? I want to sell my company. Why? Because I got to get out from this. They're really not saying they want to sell their company. They're just, they're saying that the way their business is structured, they're sacrificing way too much and they're not getting what they want. And that could mean restructuring your business. You could have a lifestyle business that you still control. I read in the ultra high net worth wealth report that we're coming out with shortly, 84% of the family offices are still running a primary business. Like the idea that everybody has money because they sold something. I worked with a family office that, let's just say they had a ketchup company. Like they, like they still have the business. Like people still run businesses and have a family office. It doesn't mean you sold it. And then you're sitting around just sitting on a pile of money figuring out, what do I do with it? Most family offices actually are running a Business. Yeah. And so. Or businesses or many businesses. I think they said the average family office is doing like 200 tax returns a year.

I mean it is, it is amazing. About that. I'm going to cover two quick questions because I want to make sure that they get covered. I can't, I can't answer Joseph's question specifically. But Gary, first of all we really focus on the fact that about every 90 days you should ask the question of should I exit? Is it the right time to exit? Or what do I do to exit?

But would I be ready to exit?

Yeah. Will I be ready to exit? But. Or, and in that scenario, because we have this with our, our team, I have no plans on exiting. We've built this thing so that it can last forever in generations. However, it may not always be family members. It may be other people or other parts that are owners within there. But at any given time I don't want any of us to be enslaved by the opportunity. And there's been plenty of times in my life that I have become enslaved by the business because usually because I did something really stupid like Candice said and I'm being a five year old toddler and temper tantrum mean my own way into it. The other. I don't know if that answers it but we. I am a full fan of you don't need to exit, but you do want to have a business. Especially if you're going to hand it down to family, you want to run it as though you are exiting it. And every 90 days, looking at it from that standpoint, I think that's a real strong point. Second part is, can I add a point?

I think you should always make every decision as though you were planning for an exit. For instance, so one of my businesses, when I started the business, even something as little as a lease, I didn't read my lease for when I was going to sell the business. I didn't hold onto that business for 10 years. I sold it in three. And my lease almost killed my sale because I didn't actually approach the lease in a way that would have made it so that I could sell the business in a really easy transferable way.

And you just helped a client, a very close client in the same scenario. That's two things. By knowing that you save that client a million dollars in personal guarantees. A million dollars.

Right.

And then the second part of that is, is that they're, they're looking at that. That what if they sell the business in three years because.

Exactly. So it's not about Planning for the exit. It's about not sabotaging any potential future exit. The other thing is, I can't tell you how many times we get a phone call that somebody, I've got a buyer interested, and I'm like, that is too late to start exit planning. Like, we need to start exit planning like, well before that. So sorry, just to jump in on those, that, that question, Jackie, I, I.

Don'T want to put you on the, the irrevocable trust thing, but. Because I can do it. Just the basic answer, which is it depends, like a good lawyer.

But the tax question.

Yeah, trust question. So it really, it's the thing about that on the irrevocable tax question is it really has to do with how you structure the irrevocable trust. Like Chris said about C Corps, and why we even use LLCs taxed as C Corps, and is because that can give you so much flexibility within how you set up the documents. So the taxation is one side, but then you can also set up these pieces. So when you're setting up that, you know, working with your attorneys, there are ways to say, you know, what's the descendants taxable estate and how's it going to be treated in this scenario? So great question for you to have with an estate attorney, but I love the questions we're getting. I don't know if anybody's got an answer to the first one.

I would encourage you to have actually in when the stakes are high and if it's your family trust, I would say the stakes are high. Great. To have an estate planning attorney or a trust attorney and a tax attorney.

Absolutely.

And have them talk. Because estate planning attorneys can be fantastic at what they do, but they can be very, very specialized. And I wouldn't assume they know tax unless you ask them that and they say, absolutely, I, I specialize in estates and tax. Otherwise I would say best to get both in the room.

These things are so complicated, though. Jackie, have you found. And I know I kind of beat this a lot, but, you know, you can have an attorney and they are a fantastic attorney at personal injury. That does not mean that they're a great intellectual property, which is also.

If they're great in one area of law, it probably means they've spent their career specializing in that area of law at the expense of learning other areas. Unless you're someone like Chris Jarvis and you can learn everything everywhere all at once. Yeah, it'd be rare.

But it's the same way with. It's the same way with accountants and Financial planners and every single one of these things out there.

Right. Well, this is, this is actually a really big thing is who are their clients? Like that is such an important thing because you are going. You've heard you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. But you also, you can feel really good when your client says, you're my A plus client. I love you, Tom. I'm so glad to have you. That sounds really great from an ego standpoint, but what it should mean for you is that I'm way out over my skis. Right. If you're so great and you're my favorite client, maybe it's because I don't deserve to work with you because I haven't practiced with anybody who understands your situations. And if, and if you're an advisor who's trying to get to a higher level, like what I did when I first came out, I wasn't born into having a lot of clients. I just asked a lot of questions and asked people what problems weren't getting solved by their advisors. And then I went out and found answers. Like, that's how I got this knowledge base, because it was what's not working. You already have advisors. What aren't you getting that you would like to get that. If you got it from me, you'd work with me. And then I went. And when you find answers that have a pattern, then you then all of a sudden you got something.

Well, I'm going to go back to what you said about the, you know, there are financial planner, family office type level. I'm just. Why the finance. The family office continues to grow so much is because you need the whole thing.

Right?

I mean, it really is funny. As a toddler, I need someone to help me figure out how my dry cleaning gets picked up. Right. Because it's a stupid thing, but it's like. Yeah, but then if it, if it's not, then it falls on somebody else's shoulders that day for to get it taken care of or my water bottle or whatever that stupid thing is, it's. Well, are you helpless? No, it's just I'm focused on these things. So finding that in your group of all of those areas and understanding that just because someone has three initials or two initials doesn't mean they've got that. That answer. And so that's working with a group of people. Chris, I want to close it out on here with a lightning round of. Jackie, I'm going to start with you or Candace. Either one of you can jump In. But ask Chris one quick question that he's got to answer in. And this is hard for Chris, he's got to answer it briefly, like succinctly.

Who is the first person in your animal kingdom that you're going to call to your side to help you implement your vision? Name the animal.

Name the animal. You're.

You said you're. What's your main animal?

Elephant.

Elephant. So as an elephant, who do you need by your side? An eagle, eagle?

Somebody who's going to put money first and just make sure that happens because that's my. I'm not going to lean to that.

And as I'm going to go towards like finance side of things because I think we see this a lot. On the surface, a founder looks like wildly successful, right? They seem to have all the good things. But what is the most common financial decision that you see that looks smart, that is like the buzzword of smart things, but is like under the surface costing them both money and time?

Taxes. The idea that people are looking to zero out their taxes, so they're looking to write off everything and everything they can possibly write off. And that's what people do when they have one entity. But if you had two entities, an operating entity and a management entity or an IP company that was a C corp, you change your thought process to I'm going to maximize profit, not I'm going to try to balance out the tax. Because you can't be thinking, you can't. Like the same way you can't be agitated and be grateful at the same time, you can't be working toward max profitability and cash flow and be reducing your taxes like it's just a different thing. So people get so caught up in the taxes, they end up losing out on so much cash flow, so much opportunity for acquisition, opportunity for growth. I think that's the biggest. I think that's the biggest one.

I love that. And that's going to throw you into another question too, though. For a fair amount of times, if you maximize always for the least amount of taxes, you also limit a lot of banking options because bankers can't see see that. And then borrowing at a lower cost of capital relative hurts your arbitrage level. And so that not calculate. I think what that really is, Chris, is not calculating the cost of what the true cost is, the real cost at the end of the day. Right. And so I think that's a great question. All right, so my question is how does, and I think Angela put it up there, but how does someone get in touch with you in all. Not just the be the giraffe, but in your area of expertise, which is you've got an opportunity and you want to pay less in taxes, finances, have a better financial plan. How does somebody get in touch with you? And this is how.

Yeah, the email Chris jarvisethejiraffe.com is an easy one. You can go to bethedraft.com and there's books and links and the TV show and how to find me and try to give it to people in whatever mechanism they want. Do they want to learn? Do they want to talk to somebody.

Happy to help get out on Amazon and give you ratings on your be the giraffe and say what you are. And Bettina says she's all five animals. That happens on occasion, right? I think we had one in our event. They're like, they're all equal numbers or really close. Does that happen?

Not often. Nope, not often. A few people here and there, but that's, you know. The question I would ask Patina then is, what area of your life would you like to be better? Like, is there something that you actually. I mean, it's very possible you could be in a place where you're really happy and you don't. The way the quiz is written is it's written. How often do you feel like you make sacrifices? If you feel pretty balanced and you don't feel like you make any sacrifices and that you have a really good balance, then like, you should be on the panel and I'll come watch your set because you got a better handle on this than I do.

I agree.

That would be a good one. By the way, like the answer the question that's been up there for a long time from Joseph in the whole, like, do you have a tool? I don't have a tool for intrinsic or extrinsic, extrinsically motivated people. One is, is it something that you get from a feeling intrinsic or is it extra money things? I would say even if you. I'd say you have to ask people what they want. Like, what is it you want out of this? And then, you know, then you get. Then you also open up the can of. Or the whole idea that can you trust the thing the person says? Because people, when, when you ask people or you survey people at work, there's a tendency to answer things in the way you think your boss wants you to answer versus doing it. Doing it honestly. So I think asking them what they want and then giving it to them and seeing if that actually works like this is going to be, oh, you wanted more time off, great, I gave you more time off. And did productivity go up? Great. If it didn't, well then obviously that wasn't. That wasn't it.

I think seeing how people work too, a lot of this you can get just by getting to know building relationships which we've done lunch and learns on that as well. Like there's people in our team who truly just, they value, they value travel and traveling with their, with their family is so critical to them. We have team members who really, really value their, their self care, taking care of themselves, prioritizing the time to take care of themselves.

So I think, and I remember a senior manager that we were hiring that through the interview said I take off a month a year to go to Bali to teach a bunch of yogis and by the way, I'm going to be the head of your legal department. But you know, that's okay. And I'm like, that is the person we want to have on our team because. And they know how to set the boundaries. Right. Jackie knew what their priorities were. Barely.

Barely.

I was like, I can take 3am calls every day.

He's doing lunch and learns at 2 in the morning.

Yeah, yeah. Well somebody else toddler wise knows how to get still open up the door and go like did you.

Were you serious?

No. You weren't really serious about that.

You sneak into my bed in the middle like that's the five year old is like, okay, so I had to sleep in my bed. But I slept now.

But that was two minutes ago.

But, but you meant that for everybody else, not me.

I mean come on.

I did fall asleep in my bed for a few hours so now it doesn't count.

Yeah, that, that is, that is the light. Well, thank you so much. Our first, first lunch and learn in the bag for 2026. Thank you all for joining us. Thanks for the questions too. Those were great, Chris. And as always, we look forward to working with you not only through this year but for a long time to come. And we appreciate you and your friendship and the value that you just bring to all the people out there. Thank you everybody. Join us. Check us out. The founders office. Founders office.com and we've also got a. I'm just going to put it out there. Just ask dad me. Candace has been pushing me. Yeah, I know. Ken's been pushing me. So sometime in a good way. And the other team members because they asked me these fun questions and so you can go put them in there. And, and I'm answering those throughout the week at different times. So fun stuff there. So that's kind of the fun stuff. We're working on the whole person. Everybody have a great week and we'll see you next Wednesday. Chris, thanks for joining us. Take care.

My pleasure.