I'm 32 today

I am writing this on an airplane to New York City to spend the 4th of July with my entire family in suburban Connecticut. It's Thursday morning, 7:06 AM. I overestimated how many people would be in line at the Starbucks outside of gate 13 at Love Field and thus ordered my breakfast sandwich a little too early on the app—by the time I picked it up, it might as well have never been cooked. It's in the trash. We are somewhere between Lindale, TX and my hometown, Shreveport, LA. The airplane is cold, but I remembered to bring jackets for myself and the 3 boys. First win of the day.

Today, the day you are receiving this, is July 5th, my 32nd birthday.

As a kid, I noticed my birthday was perfectly positioned on the calendar relative to Christmas to get presents every 6 months. I still think about this haha. But more than opening presents, at this stage of my life I think I enjoy the cocktail of silence and opening a word doc on an airplane.

Below is a story of my career. It's about being obsessed and curious. It's about looking for people in the desert who are desperate for water, then going and finding the water, then delivering it to them.

The first thing I ever remember loving was baseball. I was obsessed. But it ended harshly.

It wasn't a crazy injury. It wasn't a loss in the state championship. But it was sudden, at least it felt that way.

I was the 90-pound second baseman who had no future. When I squared one up, like really got a hold of one, I could barely muster enough strength to dink it over the shortstop's head for a bloop single. Everyone saw it coming, except me. It was abrupt to me.

Even though playing baseball wasn't a part of my life anymore, I probably watched over 100 Rangers games each season for the next several years. This was right when Josh Hamilton was making his comeback and the Rangers would find themselves relevant in the postseason for the first time in a LONG time.

I ended up going to Baylor after high school. I had a signing day ceremony to tell my parents that they were on the hook for $40k a year of tuition.

I thought after Baylor I'd be prime for a front office role in the MLB. Baylor had a program called S3 to prepare people for a career in sports. Hell yeah.

After my freshman year of college, I drove to Omaha, Nebraska to work for a AAA baseball team that summer. I didn't have a place to stay. I remember crying the night before I drove from Louisiana, scared to go.

But I did it. I found a place to stay—a furnished studio apartment at 108th and L. I had a bottle of Crown Royal, plenty of Copenhagen wintergreen, golf clubs and NCAA Football 2013. And I'm so glad I did it, because I learned that I did not want to work in sports after all.

So back to school in the fall to figure out what to do. I knew I wanted to own a business. So my dad and his friends said to major in accounting.

Okay, I will.

I think I barely got into the accounting program. At some point, I remember my dad getting a letter that my GPA had dropped below the threshold to stay on scholarship. Not getting a single A freshman year was a big contributor to that.

We turned it around.

You’re supposed to go into Big 4 public accounting after finishing Baylor's accounting program. So I did. I graduated with my Masters on December 19th, 2015 and got married the next day. It'll be 10 years here in a few months.

Maddie got into a PhD program at Vanderbilt so we moved to Nashville and I luckily got my offer transferred and joined my start class as the so-called 6th man. Utility guy. A Ben Zobrist type.

I was the last man in so I traveled a ton. I had all the status at Hilton and American. 100+ nights a year in hotels, working on only what I presume is now outsourced to countries with lower standards of living or to an LLM in the sky.

Then my wife got pregnant. We were 24. Making 5 figures. Combined. Haha.

So I found a job in financial planning. And I loved it.

It was the perfect combination of technical and relational. I believed I was made for it. But I also believed at one point in my life that I was created to bring the Texas Rangers a World Series, and we see how that turned out.

I loved it. I was obsessed with it.

A year in to my financial planning career, I now have 6 letters after Crandall on my LinkedIn chyron and realized that there is ZERO CHANCE IN HELL that someone is going to pay a 24-year-old $12,000 a year to buy index funds on their behalf.

So how am I going to provide for a growing family?

It's 2022. Now we have 3 kids. My wife is a professor, the world has opened up post-COVID. We live in Dallas, I work with a different firm, but still have the same underlying stress: how in the world am I going to get clients myself?

The truth is I have a great job. Flexible. Easy hours. Good people. Good pay.

But I also am 28 years old and ready to build something.

That's when I find a few CRE brokers we work with are very unhappy with their CPA. And the truth is they don't really need a financial advisor. They just need a great CPA.

Lightbulb moment.

A friend and CRE broker told me to do what Mike Salmon on LinkedIn does for his clients.

I have no idea who Mike Salmon is. Is he related to Angels legend Tim Salmon?

But I clicked the follow button on LinkedIn and sent him a message.

Next thing you know, I'm writing a white paper for CRE Brokers, and have created my own marketing engine to refer to local tax preparers. I found the people in the desert, but didn't have any water at my traditional wealth management firm.

So after much deliberation, after all I had a great job and had 3 kids under 6 years old, I decided to team up with Mike at Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo. They had the water. Years of experience. Tax Prep. Bookkeeping. Payroll.  I was going to come onboard and start finding more pockets of folks in the desert in need of this water and play matchmaker and advisor.

I took a 30% pay cut, with 3 kids, 3 private school bills, a wife whose college program she taught in was closing down and the desire to adopt a baby soon.

This niche at MFT only had 100 CRE broker clients, so they didn't have the economics to pay me what I was making before.

So it was time to take a risk. I deliberated more and more.

I did it.

My first day was November 4th, 2024. Since then we've added 55 incredible CRE brokers as clients. We've helped brokers save thousands in taxes through proper S Corp optimization, eliminated the stress of tax surprises through proactive planning, and given them back hours each month by handling their bookkeeping and compliance tasks. One client told me, 'For the first time in years, I actually understand my financial situation and have a plan for the future.'

It's working.

I’m now 32 when you are reading this. Probably somewhere between well-rested and ready for a cold beer. But as I finish editing this, it's 10:12 AM on the east coast. I think we are over the Chesapeake Bay.

30 minutes to landing. A great flight. The kids did great.

As my sister says, once they turn 2-3, you can just plug them into the matrix on airplanes and they are happy to watch bluey for the 1,000th time.

Thanks for reading until the end.

Jake

PS - If you're a CRE broker who's tired of reactive accounting, confused about your S Corp setup, or just wants a financial partner who actually understands your business, let's chat.