Pre-IPO and Financial Planning with Aaron Rubin

 

[00:00:18] Tom Wadelton: All right. Welcome to today's episode of the Modern CPA Success Show.

[00:00:21] I'm Tom Wadelton. I work for Summit CPA Group, a Division of Anders CPAs + Advisors. I'm one of our full-time Virtual CFOs. As usual, I'm joined by Adam Hale. Adam is our Chief Operating Officer, also a partner at Anders CPAs + Advisors. And our guest today is Aaron Rubin. 

[00:00:39] Aaron is a Partner at Werba Rubin Papier Wealth Management. Aaron is also an accountant and lawyer, so lots of letters with cpa, cfa, jd, all behind his name. I'm jealous, Aaron. As we talk about that, I learned he started his career at Deloitte, so  he had some kind of big accounting experience working in tax, and then now works with a significant number of young tech clients in the San Francisco area.

[00:00:59] So Aaron, I'm curious, you told us a little bit about what you do, like a lot of work with pre-IPO stock options. Maybe starting with just kind of how you got into doing that and that expertise. 

[00:01:09] Aaron Rubin: Thanks for having me. I am looking forward to the conversation. I think several years ago we were sort of that standard wealth-management tax firm.

[00:01:19] And we were looking for anyone who has assets, such as retirees, widows, orphans, that sort of thing. And then all of a sudden, I think it was probably three or four years ago Zoom became a client before they went public, and we're helping them out, thinking through some of the tax issues.

[00:01:41] The investment problems, they were going to qualify for small business stock, all the things that people at pre-IPO companies struggle with. Obviously they went public, and we started helping them through, ‘okay, this is some of the strategies that you should do.’ 

[00:02:01] We had that experience and I walked into our managing partner's office one day and I said, ‘We do this really well. We should do this and he's like, ‘absolutely, totally agree; let's make that our focus.’ 

[00:02:21] And so, We've never looked back, and it's been great. I'll say there is no shortage of leads; a lot of them want the tax help mainly. But our main model for revenue comes on the wealth-management side of things. And it's just been fantastic. 

[00:02:37] Tom Wadelton: I wanted to joke that working with young tech startups, it's really hard to find those if you're living in the San Francisco area!

[00:02:43] You said you got a bunch of Zoom clients. Is that people interacting with you on Zoom? 

[00:02:56] Aaron Rubin: The people who worked at Zoom. Oh, literally Zoom the company. Our office was literally across the street from Zoom headquarters. We actually got referrals from an attorney who worked with a lot of clients at Zoom, so the stars just sort of aligned in that way.

[00:03:16] Tom Wadelton: And when was it that you were doing that? 

[00:03:18] Aaron Rubin: This was pre pre-pandemic. I think Zoom went public in either late 2018 or maybe it was mid 2019.

[00:03:30] Tom Wadelton: Zoom is one of the early companies I saw that just exploded during the pandemic.

[00:03:33] Adam Hale: So you helped Zoom the corporation?

[00:03:37] Aaron Rubin: No, no. Mainly working with the individuals who work at Zoom. So we don't really do a lot of corporate work. If someone wants us to come in and present to clients, to present to employees of theirs, we'll obviously do that, but a lot of our referrals come from people who come to our website looking for information and need help.

[00:04:01] Adam Hale: okay. So is it the corporation though, that comes to you and says, ‘Hey, I've got a bunch of people on my team who are about ready to do this thing. Maybe they could use a little bit of help.’ 

Then you end up working with multiple people, putting together kind of a master plan for a lot of the  upper management for a pre-IPO company?

[00:04:20] Aaron Rubin: I wish. I would love to find the key to unlock that one. I haven't found it so far. A lot of it is word of mouth. We play in a really small sandbox and people that find us are oftentimes going through other vendors who are also known in the space.

[00:04:37] So no, we don't get those invites. I think we should. A lot of the time, it's who you know.

[00:04:47] Adam Hale: But the individuals will eventually come to you, or some of them will come, one off here or there, and then refer a friend or somebody else on the management team or something of that nature.

[00:04:57] I think a lot of times that companies probably just don't realize a resource like this. You know what I mean? They're too busy kind of thinking about the next step for the company, and they're focused more on the enterprise level. Not to say that a lot of tech startups aren't very conscious of their leadership team and things like that, but they're just kind of assuming that can all be taken care of at an individual level and probably just don't realize that a resource like you would be available–like an employee benefit, if you will, of having you come and educate the upper management team on what their options are and how they could do some advanced tax planning because I'm sure there's probably some stuff on the backend that you see at the corporate level too, that if the corporation would have maybe done things a little bit different or changed some stuff up, it really changes the options for an employee.

[00:05:44] It's like, oh, if your company would've done it this way, you could have actually done this, but since your company did it this way, you have to do it that way. Is that true?

[00:05:53] Aaron Rubin: Yeah, Adam, that's a fantastic point. I say that all the time.

[00:05:58] You know, it's like, gosh, how many clients or people that come in and I say, well, can you early exercise your stock options? It's a lot of ‘no.’ Some people say, oh, it's a cost thing. I'm thinking, how could it possibly be a cost thing? 

[00:06:16] Just because you're really extra stock options, it shouldn't increase, right? All you're really doing is you're prepaying for the stock. Instead of going to your vested account, it goes to your stock that you already own.

[00:06:30] So I will talk to you a lot about that. So that's a fantastic point. You know, and I think another part of it is there. There are companies out there like Carta who are really trying to be the one-stop shop for everything. Carta isn't of itself, right? It’s a company that's trying to go public at some point.

[00:06:49] And so they have their tax I wanna say offering. It's not really an offering. Sure. They have their tax advice page. Right. The CFOs or the CEOs or the HR groups are like, ‘okay, well gosh, we'll just add this onto our Carta subscription and our people will have the access they need.

[00:07:09] I've seen some of the modules, and I haven't been terribly impressed. It's not advice; it's information and there's a difference.

[00:07:20] Tom Wadelton: So you talk about pre-IPO and stock options. You wanna tell us a little bit about that and then maybe what are some of the main things that you're dealing with when a client comes and has those to help them kind of understand it?

[00:07:31] Aaron Rubin: A lot of times, it's the AMT issue that people are biting, so incentive stock options. I know this is a show that a lot of CPAs listen to, so I don't wanna get too basic. But it's an AMT preference item.

[00:07:47] That bargain element strike between the strike price  and the fair market value, which is the 490. Which is usually an annual thing or whenever there's a fund raise. It's a preference item that shows up on the AMT and all of a sudden, you know, maybe it costs you $10,000 to buy the shares.

[00:08:05] But the tax cost might be in the millions based upon what that 499 is and what your strike price is. And so a lot of people come to us because they have a problem, and they want to figure out, ‘Hey, how much is this gonna cost me? What do I do about it? Do I get it back?

[00:08:22] As a CPA, we all know that the ATM is the IPO bargain element; the preference item is a deferral item. So eventually it comes up as a credit, hopefully. We talk a lot of people through that, but I mean, they also have issues with non-qualified stock options.

[00:08:38] If there's a bargain element there,that shows up on their W2. And if you're a preIPO individual, that means you have to come up with the cash because you can't sell the stock usually. I mean, there's exceptions. And. Thinking through some of those issues and what do people do when they have that, right? When they'll owe millions of dollars but can potentially save millions of dollars if things time out right, and there's vendors all over the place that's willing to loan money. So, whether it's a loan or whether it's prepaid, variable forward contracts, which we get a lot of questions about, or maybe just straight up forward contract, we look at all of those things and say, ‘okay, this is what happens if you do this. How much is this money gonna cost you? Okay, well think about it.’ 

Again, it's taking the position on the returns, that let's say it's a prepaid variable forward contract, it's an open contract because the price isn't known, the quantity of shares isn't quite known yet.

[00:09:38] So eventually when you go to report it, it's gonna be reported. You know, when you transfer those shares over and then you are gonna, usually you can substitute cash or a higher base of stock for whatever you owe on the variable forward contract so it can get messy a little bit.

[00:09:55] Tom Wadelton:  I'll bet you find yourself just teaching a lot of people about what a stock option is and how they work, I would guess. You've got a lot of non-financial people, I assume, coming to you, and they've been given something with a whole bunch of pages and a bunch of legal language and probably don't really understand what they're holding.

[00:10:11] Aaron Rubin: Right. And also tax repairs as well. If you're not versed in it, I've seen people get bad advice from tax people. Now, usually they're not CPAs, but again, even CPAs make mistakes sometimes, or they're not as deep in the knowledge as they need to be, and they create this huge AMT bill for their clients.

[00:10:34] And they don't necessarily realize it, or I've seen it where they take that AMT difference, and they don't put it as a deferral item. They put it as a permanent item. And, now you've sort of done away with the credit, which is a major part of the IPO transaction, using the credit in later years. You have to know that stuff.

[00:10:57] Adam Hale: So what you're saying though is, it's not too late. So for all the tax professionals and everybody getting ready to do all this stuff here in a couple months, whenever their client comes in with all this paperwork that says, ‘Hey, congratulations, you've received these options,’ or whatever that looks like, it's not too late. Is that what you're saying?

[00:11:15] Or maybe they should be having these active conversations with clients that are in the tech space and telling them, Hey, if these kinds of things come up, you need to get a hold of me right away. Or how does that work? I mean, once they get the documents, is it a done deal?

[00:11:27] Aaron Rubin: There's lots of different ways and every plan is different.That's what makes it super difficult; as I said, some plans do allow for early exercise, so then you have to talk to your client. If you have clients who are going into some sort of high-tech role, you want open lines of communication, right?

[00:11:49] Because you're gonna have to do quarterly planning, most likely you're gonna have to do year-end planning for AMT purposes at least. And certainly someone comes to you and says, I just started this job. Okay, well let's see what you got. Can you really exercise? Make sure you get the 83B election on time, right?

[00:12:03] Cause you only have 30 days. It's not usually too late, right? Hopefully it's not too late when they come to you, as long as they haven't done the exercise and then waited to tell you they did the early exercise, and missed the 30-day window for the 83B election.

[00:12:23] Adam Hale: Either way, it sounds like you still need to have a pretty proactive conversation with them regarding all that kind of stuff. And you're right. A lot of accounting firms just don't do this very often. I've probably only had to deal with a handful of them in my life, and every time I do it just felt like I had to totally reeducate myself again and go, ‘are you sure this is the way we're supposed to handle this one?’

[00:12:41] Because they're all a little bit different, like you mentioned. And it can be frustrating, especially for clients realizing they just got smacked with AMT for something that they don't really necessarily have the cash for. And, frankly, I didn't realize something that you just kind of glossed over there, but I didn't realize that there were loans available to those people either.

[00:13:01] I've heard of situations where employers have extended some lines of credit to people and do those kinds of things, but I didn't realize there was actually a service out there for these people. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:13:15] Aaron Rubin: There are a few major players in the space for getting loans. And usually, they're either structured as a loan or prepaid variable forward contract. So just name a few, Quid is a big one. Liquid stock. They're all sort of the bigger players. And there's a guy I know in San Francisco who's whole business model is helping people negotiate those packages. 

So he'll go to the secondary market and he'll say, ‘what's our best offer right now in the secondary market? 

[00:13:54] He presents it to the client like, ‘Hey, this is the one I would do, and by the way; let's negotiate this.’ 

You can imagine how expensive it is to get that loan, right? Because you're talking about not non-liquid stock, which may end up being worth zero some days.

[00:14:11] It's not cheap money and, oftentimes, there's an interest rate. It used to be like 6%. I think it's closer to 10% now. And on top of that, they have a loan origination.

[00:14:31] And depending on how long the loan goes, we're gonna take somewhere between 10 and 15% of the shares as compensation as well. So it costs a lot of money to do these. But if you're up against a gun, and let's say, you know, you just left your company.

If I'm a CPA out there right now and someone says, I just left my pre-IPO role, you need to start asking questions. You know, like, are they ISOs? That means you have 90 days to figure out what to do with them. Or maybe they're gonna convert to non-qualified options.

[00:15:05] There's a risk there, right? Because if it's non-qualified, now all of a sudden it's all W2 wages when you eventually decide to exercise, there are choices to make. If you have a client that's going through a transition, you gotta ask questions.

[00:15:20] But, the loans are available and if there is a cash need, there is a lender somewhere willing to make that loan. It's just a matter of how much you want to pay.

[00:15:29] Adam Hale: Just like you said though, the collateral is a little sketchy there. So yeah, I didn't really realize that was kind of available. But the secondary market is also kind of an interesting option as well, like being able to take it there and shop it. 

[00:16:22] Tom Wadelton: Aaron, to Adam's point about feeling like you'd have to reeducate yourself, and I certainly would, if a tax professional or CPA is listening now and saying, I have a client like this, are you a resource they can turn to for advice in this particular area as an expert? And I'll be honest, a tax professional is not gonna risk losing that client that you end up saying, okay, let me take the whole client.

[00:16:44] Do you work with people who come and say, can you help me with this part? 

[00:16:48] Aaron Rubin: Yeah. Our business model for our firm, most of our revenue, actually all of my revenue and, and just in terms of the firm, nearly all of it comes from the wealth side of things.

[00:17:01] For us the tax side is a lead gen. It also makes the clients stickier. So, getting a tax-only client is not really exciting for me. We have had situations where clients say, Hey, you know, I like my CPA a lot, but they just don't know the  prepaid variable forward contract.

It's an open transaction now maybe it closes two or three years after it's opened, and now you have to report all of the different occurrences that happen in the transaction in the current tax year. CPAs who don't work with that often aren't comfortable. So, we’ll consult if necessary.

[00:17:43] Adam Hale: Okay. For us, will you prepare the forms and do those kinds of things and the calculations and everything form? 

[00:17:48] Aaron Rubin: No one's asked us to do that yet. I think once we explain everything and kind of what goes into the transaction, I think it's, it's all scheduled D type stuff.

[00:17:56] You just have to do the basic calculations correctly. But I mean, obviously, we will do whatever anyone would need. 

[00:18:07] Adam Hale: So you would be able to help them out and then walk the client also through any kind of elections that they need to make and things they need to consider, and put together the plan for them Do you do that as well? 

[00:18:18] Aaron Rubin: Yeah, we, we, we do limit engagements you know, for sure. Easier to do them, you know, between the months of, you know, April. You know, August and then, you know, November through December. Sure. But but you know, during the year, you know, we, we do have some capacity, you know, with our people that we can do a couple of Islamic engagements during busy season.

[00:18:35] But I try not to do that to our, to our people too much. They'll hate me. 

[00:18:40] Adam Hale: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And then but what about so some tips for people listening that have the, you know, what should they be listening for, you know, when should they get an expert involved? That kind of thing. 

[00:18:50] Aaron Rubin: Yeah.

[00:18:52] To me it's you know, transition out of a business. So leaving your role at a pre IPO company is a big one. Also when, you know, in IPO that happens, the actual IPO can be, you know, a little tricky, and especially if they have some of the more complex kinds of contracts that are out there you're gonna wanna get some help on it.

[00:19:13] Those are probably the two big ones. Or if someone's looking to buy their shares and you wanna make sure that you're gonna be planning right. That could be a thing. 

[00:19:23] Adam Hale: Well, that's why I was wondering just from a financial planning standpoint, it would seem to me that if you were even just in that position, and that might be an opportunity, that there's a planning opportunity there from a wealth management side to kind of incorporate that kind of stuff.

[00:19:37] And that's where, you know, people listening that are doing the tax preparation they might not have wealth management built into their practice, but is that something that they could, you know, partner up with you and help build out like a plan, a financial plan for 'em that incorporates some of these conversations about what to do with their stock options and those kind of things?

[00:19:56] Aaron Rubin: Yeah. So we're not an hourly group, so you know, we[00:20:00] don't really do plan. Just as a one off, you know, it's part of the overall wealth management package. So you know, again, you'd probably wanna engage a CFP out there, you know, who does the outwardly work for that.

[00:20:15] Tom Wadelton: Okay. Does that mean the best partnership then is But I'll continue to retain someone as a tax client, but I don't offer the wealth management services. And your firm might offer the wealth management piece to that client. 

[00:20:26] Aaron Rubin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's great for us to not have to do the tax work.

[00:20:32] I mean I have clients like that. You know, where they had their liquidity event I, that was referred by a CPA and you know, and the client was like, Hey, well should I move my stuff to you? Which I get why she's asked and, and usually my response is, look, you know, you've gotten really good service from this other cpa.

[00:20:50] You know, if I were you, I'd stick with them. You know, to me having a tax repair that you like and trust, you know, it's sort of like having a dentist that you like and trust. Right. You know, I like my dentist that I go to. He's very expensive and like, and insurance doesn't even really touch it, but you know what?

[00:21:12] I will pay that premium. I will gladly pay that premium for a service that I put a lot of value on. So, and I think having a tax repair similar. Yeah. You know, I tell people you know, it's possible we'd be cheaper cuz you know, for our, for our, and, and, you know, full disclosure for our clients that, you know, have over a certain amount we'll include the cost of their of tax prep and and projections sure in into one fee.

[00:21:38] But you know, as I said if you, like, we have a couple clients that, that we don't do their. That their taxes are accounting for. And that's perfectly fine. You know, I don't like to get in the way of of a good relationship there. 

[00:21:52] Tom Wadelton: Yeah. Is there a tax director sitting in the office next to you who's like, freaking out cuz you're like, I don't want the taxes.

[00:21:56] And he's like, what are you doing? Trying to turn away? I'm doing this . [00:22:00]

[00:22:01] Aaron Rubin: No, you know, it's, you know, we within our organization, you know, we try to align. So, you know, when our tax people give us referrals on the wealth side, you know, they get compensated pretty well for that sort of thing.

[00:22:13] So they're definitely incentivized to, yeah, to get wealth clients.

[00:22:17] Tom Wadelton: If we broadening, cause I know wealth management is your big area that you look at, if we broaden and beyond just the IPO as people come into you, right? They've probably gotten all sorts of advice. Any sort of top couple tips where you're like, here are the biggest sort of mistakes that I see is people walk in things that they're believing or strategies they've done, which is a fairly common thing that you're saying, Hey, we really wish people knew something else.

[00:22:39] Aaron Rubin: Yeah. You know, I think a lot of people you know, they look at their wealth and either they have those prefu stock, right, they're either bullish or they're not. And the people that get bullish, it's hard to pull them from their bullish position and to say, Hey, by the way, you know, yeah, I know you have, you know, XYZ stock, but.

[00:23:03] you're also, you know, employed there and, you know, and you may want to diversify, you know, not just your current income, but your, you know, your current assets as well. And so a lot of people sort of fall in love with their company stock. Mm-hmm. , I think, I don't think it's as big as it was probably like before, like Enron, right?

[00:23:22] Cause Enron sort of dispelled , everyone's, you know, vision of, oh yeah, this is gonna go great. But I think that's the one thing people fall in love with their stock and they say, oh, my CEO said that this thing's going to 200 a share. It might, you know, but hey, what if it doesn't, you know, because you know, for every story that I have, you know, where, which I call the Apple story, right?

[00:23:49] You know, cuz I've been telling people to sell their Apple stocks since 2007 and you know, and thankfully a lot of them didn't listen to me. But you know, for every one of those, there's way more people that. [00:24:00] lost way more money holding onto their shares than those that made by holding on their shares.

[00:24:05] So yeah, you know, it's have, to me, it's all about having a plan to start to divest from that concentrated position. . 

[00:24:13] Tom Wadelton: So do you have any particular rules of thumb? And I'll just say a quick story. I had worked for a large public company and at one time was having a conversation with someone who reported the CFO.

[00:24:22] So pretty big job. And he was bragging, he was a finance guy bragging 98% of his wealth was in the company stock. And I just remember the time thinking. I mean, he was the one who would give common or talks about diversification. I thought, what are you thinking? And then as you can imagine, five years later, the company's on hard times.

[00:24:37] I'm like, man, that just seems crazy. But I'm curious if you had someone who, you know, you work for the company and you've got all these options or maybe actually shares, do you have certain rules or things that you would say, Hey, here's what we think is a smart practice?

[00:24:48] Aaron Rubin: Yeah. And and I think this sort goes back to something that Adam was talking about with the financial planning piece.

[00:24:54] You know, and it's looking at the financial plan saying, Hey, you know, by the way, if you sold 25 or 50% of whatever this position is, you could solidify your retirement at this point. You know, and you could, you know, if you view your life and, you know, several different sort of buckets like the, you know, bare minimum bucket or the retirement bucket than the aspirational bucket, than the, you know, whatever, beyond aspirational bucket, 

[00:25:20] Tom Wadelton: stupid money bucket, something like that, right?

[00:25:21] Aaron Rubin: Stupid, right. You know, and you say, Hey, you know, we could, Hey, if we get rid of this 25% of your holdings, you know, we could, we could fill up that first bucket. And, you know, and, and even if things went to hell in a hand basket, you know, you, you got your bucket filled, like, no worries. Yeah. You know, and so it's, it's using financial planning as a way to communicate what needs to be done.

[00:25:45] Now, the mechanics behind it, in terms of, because people hate paying taxes. I dunno if you know that. But people hate paying taxes. And if you could say, Hey, by the way, you know, we we're gonna try to construct something that gets you the most tax efficiency that we can, you know, we can fill up that bucket a little more quickly and then maybe move on to some of the other buckets at the same time.

[00:26:06] So again, I don't think there is a rule of thumb, oh, it should be 25% or you need to. So, I mean, you know what, what I like to say is, Hey, how about we secure your financial future and your kid's financial future first? And then, you know, sure. Take if you wanna ride, you know, that wave of whatever your concentrated positions, you go ahead and do it.

[00:26:28] But I don't think, but everyone's a little different.

[00:26:35] Tom Wadelton: I think those are some great tips. Any sort of closing, I mean, we've talked about, we know a lot of CPAs list this. Any kind of closing thoughts that you want or something you really want people taking away that may include if you have this kind of a client, here's when they want to call in you and say, bring in this kind of expertise.

[00:26:51] Aaron Rubin: Yeah. So, I would say that, you know, and I think we were talking, I think it was before we started recording that I think that if you're a practitioner, tax practitioner mm-hmm. , I think that there is great opportunity to go upstream. And I think there's a dearth of people that have knowledge

[00:27:10] in that pre i p space and people that have it realize how critical tax is. And so you know, if you're CPA now, or if you're tax in the tax area, now, I think if you honed your skills and you held yourself out as an expert, I think you could probably, you know, get clients that are bigger and are stickier because they'll appreciate what you do.

[00:27:30] So I'd say, you know, you know, my first piece of advice is, You know, just to specialize a little bit and then hold yourself out as such and charge what you want. You know, your expertise is in high demand, in short supply. So I guess that that would be the first thing. And then you know, if you can build in, you know, that financial planning piece or wealth pieing and you're gonna, you know, it's a good opportunity if you're working with those kinds of clients to convert them over as well.

[00:27:57] Yeah. When to call us. And again, if you have a[00:28:00] transaction that you haven't seen before, again, I think prepaid variable forward contracts in particular. Go ahead. You know phone us up, you know, we, we'll talk about, you know, what, what your expectation is and how we can help. You know, we're, we're all over the place, you know, so, you know, our website's a great resource. 

[00:28:14] If you have, you know, general questions, if you want like a good background on ISOs, we have three different articles on 83 B elections. You know, you're welcome to check all that. That's at wrp wealth.com and hop on Facebook. You know, we're on WP Wealth on Facebook and also WP Wealth on Twitter.

[00:28:31] And then I just started tiktok-ing like a month or two ago. So, but it, that's mainly geared it's more dance moves. Yeah, 

[00:28:42] Aaron Rubin: No, it's a lot of it is really boring videos about me speaking about tax issues.

[00:28:51] Tom Wadelton: You're not selling it very well.

[00:28:54] Aaron Rubin: Yeah. So that's where Ipo graphs.com. I'm sorry. At IPO graphs. 

[00:29:01] Adam Hale: Okay. Yeah. Aaron, I think you know the points that you made there is something we always kind of come back to the important of having a niche. So, you know, the ability to really go a mile deep and only be an inch wide is really important.

[00:29:14] It does allow you to. Charge what you're worth and, and you'll be worth a lot more. So I think point, kind of noted there that this is a little bit of a, mystical area and for those that don't wanna do it, there are resources out there or if they find themselves in a bind with current clients that.

[00:29:29] You know, there again, there's resources not only from an advisory standpoint on your side, but also from a financial perspective on the loan side, which was new to me. And definitely something I'll keep in mind whenever clients come to me and we have to give 'em the unfortunate news of how much money they owe, because they didn't say anything to us until, you know, March.

[00:29:48] Tom Wadelton: Yeah, right. 

[00:29:48] Aaron Rubin: Exactly. But I'll say also with the niche stuff, it's more. You know, when I look back at, like, my practice before, before we really focused, I was uninspiring to me. And, if [00:30:00] that's the case, you're in the, you're doing the wrong thing. And, once we focused. One I started working with.

[00:30:05] I mean, and I love all my clients, but you know, I started talking with some of the smartest people in the world. And it was, it's fun. It's really fun to, to hear what people are doing and like the problems they have. Like, it just, it's way more engaging. So again, I'm with you do, do the niche as soon as you can because it, you'll be more passionate when you talk to people and you'll be way more engaged.

[00:30:27] Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm full on board. 

[00:30:30] Tom Wadelton: And on the pre ipo, not that you have to tell 'em now, but I assume some of your clients have hit it big with they did go public and things went well, which I can only imagine how fun that is to have a client that you've advised and say, Hey, maybe someday, and then you watch that come true.

[00:30:42] That has to be pretty fulfilling.

[00:30:42] Aaron Rubin: For sure. And our clients are great. You know, they're philanthropic, so like we help them, you know, do their family foundations, you know, we help them, you know, work on their] charitable trusts and all that, and it's great.

[00:30:58] They're making impacts and they're doing great and they're doing great things, so that has to be really fulfilling. I love all my clients.

[00:31:04] Adam Hale: they make great wealth management clients when they finally do . Yes. 

[00:31:09] Tom Wadelton: Yeah, that was good to put last. Well, Aaron, thank you very much. I know I've learned a ton today, and this is really helpful.

[00:31:15] I haven't thought about that. IPO and pre IPO for a long time is really helpful. Thanks for sharing that with us today.