The Liquidity Event Podcast: Episode 52

 

Episode 52: Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Out of the Supply Chain

In this week’s episode of The Liquidity Event, our hosts are delirious from the summer heat, and you can sense their deliriousness. AJ’s freshly inspired from attending an Equity Compensation conference (they do exist!) and Shane makes a sad attempt at innuendo. We have people getting hung out of windows and Janet “Yellin” Yellen trying to define the relationship with South Korea. Also, we finally have an IPO to get excited about, but the team has uncovered some whacky loans and a failure to launch in the company’s history. Finally, we uncover why you didn’t smash the purchase button on that round-trip ticket to Cancun. This one is delirious.

Read the Full Transcript:

Speaker 1:

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered tax or investment advice. Welcome to the Liquidity Event. A show about all things personal finance, with a laser focus on equity compensation. Hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI. Each episode will take you through the week's news on FinTech, IPOs, specs, founder wins and fails, crypto and whatever else these nerds think is interesting. Learn more and subscribe today@brooklynfi.com.

Shane:

Hello, and welcome to the Liquidity Events. We are your hosts, Shane.

AJ:

And I'm AJ.

Shane:

And this is episode number 52 of the Liquidity Event. We're airing this on July 29th, 2022. Today is July 27th, 2022. This list this week, we've got articles on fake charities that the IRS has been approving. We've got some Elon Musk, of course. And then we've got some recession proofing from Google's CEO, some Janet Yellen in here, women in finance, and then Mr. Bill Gates. A lot of, oh God, lot of billionaires again this week.

AJ:

Why is it Janet always yelling at me? I'm just trying to go buy a quart of milk here.

Shane:

And we have an IPO to explore this week, finally. Amongst the desert we have an Oasis, coincidentally, it is a solar technology company. AJ, how you doing? Where are you?

AJ:

I am in the desert. I'm in Palm Springs. Speaking of deserts, I had a, yeah-

Shane:

That was a triple entendre.

AJ:

I'm in California.

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ:

I like to go a couple layers deep, like a muskrat in the desert. I flew from New York to San Jose, California on Monday to attend the Silicon Valley National Association of Stock Plan Professionals meeting. So yesterday I hung out with a bunch of really smart industry insiders and leaders, the folks who actually work at public companies and a lot of private companies who actually implement equity compensation plans. So that was a really cool use of time yesterday. I learned a lot. I have a lot of takeaways to bring back to Brooklyn FI and our clients. Huge, huge event. It was also great to be back at a conference. COVID shut the conference space and you and I love going to conferences. We always leave so inspired, so that was a nice win for me.

Shane:

Give us one of the takeaways.

AJ:

That was a long way of saying where I am in the world.

Shane:

No, no, no. I got you.

AJ:

Yeah. One of the takeaways, we look at the markets right now. We look at the IBM market and we keep saying, it's a desert. It's really dry, the mood is kind of sour. The mood at this conference was very positive. The mood was, "Hey. Great job everyone for handling the most incredible spike of IPOs in history in 2020 and 2021. We did this. Good job. There's a bit of a lull right now, but let's use this time to get our plans right, get the right staff in place, educate our CFOs and our finance teams on what it takes to get these companies to go public. Let's educate our employees on what types of equity they have. Let's give people more time to exercise ahead of the IPOs." So, the key takeaway was, yes, there's no active IPOs, but everyone is gearing up for the market to come roaring back. Don't know when. Could be this winter, could be next year. It might take a little bit more time, so that was my main lesson is stay positive and use this time wisely.

Shane:

So you're telling me a conference where in everyone relies upon IPOs to get paid is optimistic about there being IPOs in the future?

AJ:

Yeah. I was surprised by that. I think the mood could have been, "Wow, are we going to be out of a job because there's going to be no stock plans to administer anymore?" It was more of like, "We've seen this." What I mean by that is these are seasoned veterans. They were here in the twothousand.com crash. They were here in 2008. They have seen this before. They know it's cyclical, so that was just nice confirmation of that.

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ:

Made me feel better.

Shane:

All right. Right on.

AJ:

Where are you in the world?

Shane:

I'm still in Greenpoint. I'm up here in Brooklyn, New York. It looks like your background's updated. Last time I checked in on you, you were in your Palm Springs house. It was the white room from the architect's room in the matrix wherein there's just, like a white event horizon behind you. Now there's actually some contrast and some colors here. What do we have?

AJ:

Yes.

Shane:

Give us a house update, AJ. How's the Palm Springs pad?

AJ:

A house update. My gracious business partner, Mr. Shane Mason here gifted me a beautiful, it's like a photo painting. It's like a painting of a photo of, I believe that's Suma beach is where the ocean meets the desert. It's a very symbolic, nice reminder of water in a desert Oasis here. So thank you, Shane-

Shane:

I was not fishing.

AJ:

For beautifying... Yes, you were. Shut up.

Shane:

I was not. That's literally a nice big couch back there. There's some yellow happening.

AJ:

Oh boy. You were totally fishing for that. Anyways.

Shane:

Let me look up where... There's your birthday present two weeks after your birthday. So you're welcome. It was three weeks after your birthday.

AJ:

Yep. Yep. That's okay. That is okay. Other life update, I played my first round of golf.

Shane:

That's the content that we're here for.

AJ:

I wasn't terrible.

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ:

I went into it expecting to be a drag on everybody else and ruining everyone's game and slowing everyone down, but I kept up. I kept up. I just think it's funny that we got into the financial services industry as outsiders, but really I've always wanted to learn how to play golf and it was awesome. Golf being associated with, which we're going to talk about a little bit later, golf as a mechanism for business deals in the financial services space.

Shane:

Yeah. It's a little backwards of you to get started in music journalism, and then get into finance and then get into golf.

AJ:

You know me.

Shane:

That's a very circuitous path there.

AJ:

So speaking of circuitous paths to IPOs, we have an IPO on the docket this week. We're going to do a deep dive on Solar Max. This is a Riverside, California based solar technology company. They identify and procure solar farm systems to sell to third parties. They have not that many employees, right? Small, smallish company. Have what? 150-ish employees?

Shane:

125.

AJ:

Yeah. Let's see. What's your take here? I think you had some figures for us.

Shane:

Well, it's a solar consulting design and installation company. So they will figure out if your warehouse has the capacity to support a certain square footage of panels. They'll design those panels for you and then they do the consulting on it and then they install it. I've seen our clients in the Brooklyn area have consultants that go so far as to predict the amount of their federal rebate in terms of credits that they would receive on their 1040, whether they're a business or an individual. I imagine this company does that as well. So that's a nice little deliverable for you. Of course, they use that in order to show you how much you will save on the cost of the installation. Of course, that is one of the policies that our government has put in place in order to subsidize the installation of renewable energy sources, which is a huge goal for us to hit zero carbon emissions by 2050, or net neutral, what have you.

AJ:

Delta is going to do it next year, but whatever.

Shane:

No, no, no. They're not. I'm reading a book about how fucked we are. And I got bad news. The airline industry isn't going solar anytime soon. If we electrified the entire grid, which is an incredible feat, like moving cargo ships with renewable energy would require intense batteries, like just gigantic batteries. That's one of the biggest problems is storing the actual electricity that is produced. Where does it go? Do you know how we do that in places where we don't have batteries? It's kind of silly.

Shane:

We literally pump water. Let's say that California's cranking out a ton of extra solar, like more than we're consuming and we don't have a place to store it. They literally use it to pump water up a mountain and then that water sits in a reservoir. And then when it's ready to be used, let's say there's no sunshine out and we need more energy, then they let the water flow down through an electric dam. So they use the electric to flow up and then they use the gravity to store it. Although it would be much easier to just use a giant battery, which I believe Tesla's working on.

AJ:

Yeah. That's where we're headed. Yeah. There's a lot of solar tech, it's like the healthcare industry. There's medical tech. There's huge billion dollar companies that just make one type of machine part that is needed for a robot surgical machine. Right? So the solar industry, it's newish, there's a lot of key players, but we're going to start to see these companies that do one specific thing as part of this big shift to use more of renew energy.

AJ:

I was curious about this company. What I thought was curious is that they've lost, in 2020, their revenue was 132 million and then in 2021, it was 38 million. So we have a 70% drop in growth. So that's interesting, curious time to go public. Another thing that's curious is that in 2020, in June, they actually filed to go public, but then they canceled that IPO. When during that IPO, their post money evaluation was going to be almost 300 million. And right now we're sitting just under 200 million at 190 million. So they're actually shrunk. So I don't know what is quite going on there or why they're going public. Haven't seen much news coverage of this or any journalists trying to figure out what's actually going on here.

Shane:

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Why do they shrink so much? And then you had noticed while looking at their financial statements that they had acquired a PPP loan, right? That disclosed in our [inaudible 00:10:21] profile.

AJ:

Yeah.

Shane:

And then you looked it up on Pro Public how much they had received and they took two bites of the apple.

AJ:

Yep, yep. So PPP, if everyone remembers the Paycheck Protection Program that we talk about all the time, struggling businesses during COVID had access to government funds to keep employees employed and to keep things on the rails while the world was shut down while we waited for a vaccine for this virus. But yeah, they got a 1.6 million PPP loan in April of 2020. And then again in January of 2021, and both of those were totally forgiven. So they got a nice cash injection of 3.2 million to keep things going. And now we're going public about two years later.

Shane:

Yeah. Yeah.

AJ:

That's a lot of gov money to keep it going.

Shane:

Well, what's also interesting is that the very first thing that they mention in their S1 about what they do for a living is that they consult in China. We don't have a revenue breakdown about what's going on with their Chinese operations, but they are heavily engaged in developing solar panels and consulting in China and the United States. And they're based out of Riverside California. It's interesting that China, United States and then Germany are the top three producers of gigawatt energy hours in terms of solar. I was just curious, how much does California produce in solar gigawatt hours as compared to Germany, which is not exactly the sunniest country in the world? I think only 20% of the time in Germany is actually sunny. It's really embarrassing how much further ahead the Germans are even then specifically, California. And Germany itself produces 50 gigawatt hours a year from solar energy. How much do you think California produces? The sunshine state, not the sunshine state, but a very sunny state.

AJ:

50 gigawatts?

Shane:

With an overall population and production larger than Germany, 29. Almost half the amount which is very embarrassing in my opinion. Anyway, we've been talking about this IPO for a while. You want to move on to articles?

AJ:

Yeah. I had a good segue and then kept talking, but it's fine.

Shane:

Classic. That's what you get for freeloading a segue. Once you get ahold of the segue you just got to jam it in there.

AJ:

You got to get it in there.

Shane:

All right. Let's go back.

AJ:

The segue was-

Shane:

PPP loans.

AJ:

I forget where we were. But the segue was, we were talking about what's going on with their China business. And part of this is a supply chain where, how do we get the energy between these different producers? How do we store it? So talking about partners and the supply chain, and when you need a certain good or service from another country, are they a friendly country? Are they a friend or are they an enemy?

Shane:

You can't do this to me. You can't segue into a random article on our list and expect me to be able to take the Baton.

AJ:

We don't do in order. We always jump around. Segue's just come to me.

Shane:

No we don't. Only you jump around.

AJ:

Jump, jump, jump around.

Shane:

Dear listener I will share the-

AJ:

Jump around.

Shane:

I have a cough. Don't make me laugh.

AJ:

Anyways.

Shane:

I can't breathe.

AJ:

Moving on, Shane's dead. Janet Yellen says the US and it's allies should use friend shoring to give supply chains a boost. What's going on here? The gist of this article, which I did not read very closely, is that you should keep your friends close and keep your enemies out of your supply chain.

Shane:

AKA, you did not read it at all.

AJ:

So what is this article about? Oh, you're dead. Okay. Anyway.

Shane:

I'm dead. No, Janet Yellen is a-

AJ:

She's yelling at us about supply chains this time.

Shane:

You hear our advocates or government bureaucrats talking about things like this pretty routinely. They talk to the IMF, they talk to the WHO. I don't know how much power they have to actually-

AJ:

Who?

Shane:

Do these things or whether it's signaling that administration... What? Did you say who? Oh my God. Anyway, other adults in the room, please continue with the thread. She came up with a new word, which I-

AJ:

Oh, I'm just on fire today.

Shane:

You're a little loopy today, for sure. It's that sunshine for the listeners that don't know, as soon as AJ touches down in Palm Springs, she-

AJ:

Could become a lizard, a different person.

Shane:

Her anxiety levels go from 11 out of 10 to about 8 out of 10. So anyway, so Janet Yellen's talking about friend shoring, which is a new vocabulary word, as opposed to on shoring, which is bringing businesses from overseas and back into your country. What Donald Trump thought he was going to accomplish with whirlwind or Whirlpool and all that bullshit. It doesn't happen, not in a globalized society.

AJ:

What scorch earthing all of our international treaties? Anyway.

Shane:

Right. And yeah, tearing up the various Accords, the Penn.

AJ:

Paris. That's going to go.

Shane:

Well that's climate change. I'm thinking of the one in the Pacific. I don't remember the one.

AJ:

Oh, like Pasia or whatever. Yeah. I forget the acronym.

Shane:

We're great hosts of this podcast.

AJ:

Anyways.

Shane:

Anyway. And then there's offshoring, obviously, which has been happening since the late seventies, mid eighties. That's why you can't raise a family of five on a high school diploma anymore. Now we have friend shoring which is another way of saying that we are going to work with our allies only, instead of working with... Or more specifically, she was speaking about South Korea very closely. Taiwan would be another place that we would have an opportunity to friend shore with, because China would be freaked out by that. I think instead of just going to the lowest cost provider, whoever can produce the iPhone to the cheapest, it would be somebody that we can rely upon for exclusive access, kind of like a loyalty program. A frequent flyer miles with South Korea.

AJ:

Right. So it's basically like China playing nicer if you want to be on our friend shoring. If you want to be invite to our friend shoring party, you got to get on board with US policy is what I read this says, or not red, but what I'm interpreting it as without their article. This is a China we see you, and we're going to try to find alternatives, right?

Shane:

Yeah. Yeah, essentially.

AJ:

Yeah.

Shane:

We need to diversify our manufacturing processes across Southeast Asia and not just focus on China now that they have the power to limit production or to... I think all the masks that we had purchased prior to COVID, like a hundred percent of them were produced in China prior to COVID. Maybe even just a handful of factories. If you only have one place you can supply them and that place needs those masks. By the way, China is still in a pretty intense lockdown. I've got Chinese friends that cannot leave the country and we cannot go in there and they can't get back to Beijing and stuff like that. I think there's high suicide rates. There's lockdowns, like there's police on the street saying that do not go outside your house, like COVID in April of 2020 here in the states.

AJ:

Yep.

Shane:

Anyway.

AJ:

That's not good.

Shane:

Anecdotal evidence.

AJ:

Yeah. We need to not get everything from one place and I apply that to my own life with friend shoring. I get certain different things from my friends.

Shane:

Yeah, multiple therapists. Multiple unpaid therapists.

AJ:

I don't have a good segue here. We wanted to talk about this last week, but we didn't get to it.

Shane:

Well, I don't know which article you're jumping to so I can't help you out.

AJ:

Well, now I'm jumping back to the top of the list obviously.

Shane:

So now we go linear.

AJ:

Come on, get with the program.

Shane:

How charitable you.

AJ:

Oh, nice. This dude basically created 76 fake charities and the IRS approved them all.

Shane:

Did you hear that deer listening? The connection charities charitable.

AJ:

Yeah, we got your segue. Oh God. Anyways. Mr. Hosting prosecutor said spent the money on mortgage payments, credit card bills and at liquor stores.

Shane:

Wait, wait, wait. Explain.

AJ:

I did very wrong and I know that.

Shane:

Explain what's... Oh my God.

AJ:

I'm getting to it. I'm reading the lead. Okay, fine. You explain it.

Shane:

Somebody that's created charities with the IRS before. All you do is submit some stuff on their website. It does take a while to fill out. There was a controversy a few years ago for those that were paying attention around the IRS being more scrutinizing the charitable applications of more conservative organizations. So the IRS has the ability to say, "All right. We've read your mission statement. We see your intents with this charity and we think that this is either a qualified charity or not." Based on some frankly qualitative items that they need to come up with.

Shane:

I think that it used to be a 15 page document where you would submit to be a 501 C3. Now it is mostly automated and only 1 in 2,500 applications are rejected as opposed to about one in a hundred was the old way that it was done. And this is the IRS saying, "We're underfunded. We're in trouble for scrutinizing. So you know what? Everyone gets in, everyone gets through the door." And now you have a guy that created about 75 charities that all shared one mailbox in, was it Staten Island?

AJ:

Staten Island.

Shane:

It's always Staten Island. And he created, he's a career long grifter. He got in trouble for fraud in the stock market. I think, what else did he do? He's got-

AJ:

And he actually held some guy out of a window threatening him.

Shane:

Right.

AJ:

Was one of the charge.

Shane:

Also violent crimes. Yes. Anyway, so he created charities such as the United Way of Michigan and the United Way of Georgia. And often when you're on a website, as long as you're an approved charity, some company will say, do you want to donate to charity? Your extra $2 or $3, like to round up from $1.47 to $1.50 and then it'll pop up a list of charities that the IRS has approved. And if you live in Michigan and it says the United Way of Michigan, you're probably more likely to do that then the United Way in general. Little did we know-

AJ:

There's no such thing as the United Way of Michigan.

Shane:

Right. And the United Way had even complained to the IRS multiple times that this guy is a fraudster, but the IRS just has no money to deal with shit like this. So yet another great reason to fund the IRS. I think he made like 200K off this deal just like chilling and going to the liquor store, as you were saying earlier. Lottery tickets.

AJ:

Yeah. It's funny. I was talking with some folks yesterday and I was like, I'm going to write a children's book called My Daddy Works for the IRS and it's about a proud little boy and his good doing raising funds to fund hospitals, like the IRS. It's like let's turn around the American taxpayer's opinion of the IRS. It's not the IRS's fault. It's Congress is sucking funding away from an organization that is desperately trying to hang on. That's understaffed by what, 50% right now? It's just wild. Anyway, coming to a bookstore near you.

Shane:

Love it.

AJ:

Daddy Works for the IRS.

Shane:

I love that. Yeah. That's what I say on first dates. Anyway, so in this next article is about Google CEO.

AJ:

Oh, now we're going in order again?

Shane:

I've always gone in order, yet again. Our 50th episode with John, these two were both out of order. I was freaking losing, my head was spinning.

AJ:

I prefer John's style of co-hosting. It's like, where are we going next?

Shane:

Just wild west. Okay.

AJ:

Keeps it interesting. All right. Since we're going in order-

Shane:

We have always, for the record-

AJ:

Google's-

Shane:

We have always gone in order.

AJ:

Google's CEO has a brilliantly simple plan to recession proof his staff and any business can use it. It's like, "Oh, this is cool. Let me click on this article." And the gist of this article is like, "I'm not giving you a raise and we have a hiring freeze, so you all better figure out how to do your job better and be more efficient."

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ:

Which if I was an employee, I would be like, excuse me? What?

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ:

As a business owner, I get it. There's two sides to this point. As a business owner, it's like, "Yeah. Hey, shit's rocky right now for whatever reason, whatever industry you're in, whatever challenges you're facing. We might not be able to hire for the next six months, so you got to figure out a way to do your job better because we got to make it through this and you are the only person who can solve this problem because I can't give you the funds to hire the help you need." So what are the three steps here? We got to leave your comfort zone, be resourceful-

Shane:

Right. The three bullet points on how to continue to excel and despite the recession.

AJ:

Mm-hmm. And number three, get motivated by challenges. So if you do those things, we should be fine.

Shane:

Here's my breakdown on these three things. Leave your comfort zone means do more than what's in your job duties that you were hired for.

AJ:

Yeah.

Shane:

Be resourceful means that you should steal resources from other people or other organizations in order to get your new job duties that aren't in your old description. And then get motivated by challenges means work harder.

AJ:

Take on more work. Yeah. Take on more work than you are able to in a 70 hour work week. Yeah.

Shane:

Yeah. You have to understand work. My favorite analogy for a company that is struggling with a downturn is that there's just less food to eat. Right? So there's just not going to be as much resources to go around. All three of these things are just about stretching yourself and just being on a diet, which nobody enjoys.

AJ:

Yeah. It's having good leadership in the company to explain why and that's what he's trying to do here. Like, "Look. Yeah, we got to get through this. Here's the reality." Although it's hard when you hear a CEO or something say something like that. Then you look at their annual compensation package. It's like, "Okay, I'm sorry. Marketing assistant in this department, you don't get help for another 18 months because we have a hiring freeze and there's also a salary freeze, but with my stock compensation, I made 18 million this year." So it's a bit of a hard pill to swallow as you would say.

Shane:

Speaking of hard pills to swallow. How about that summer?

AJ:

I was going to say that, but it was the worst segue ever. So I'm just going to skip it altogether.

Shane:

I take one in the hand, AJ. One in the hand. All right, so this is just... I love how this articles is just a-

AJ:

Why are flights so expensive right now? Seinfeld voice.

Shane:

What's up those flights?

AJ:

Why are flights so expensive? I went to book my summer holiday and my flights were a hundred dollars cheaper than I'm used to paying. Friends at Scott's Cheap Flights, shout out to Scott's Cheap Flights newsletter.

Shane:

My no brainer of the week, by the way, is to sign up for Scott's Cheap Flights. How much fun is it to get?

AJ:

So much fun to get texts from Shane seven times a day like, "I'm going to Portugal. I'm coming to visit you in Palm Springs." At a time that makes sense for nobody. Anyway.

Shane:

That wasn't for me, that was for you. That was just letting you know, if you need to get back and forth.

AJ:

Thank you. Always looking out. Right. Always looking out for me is the motivation behind most things you do... Not. Anyways, the TLDR here is that flights are expensive because it's the summer and flights are always expensive during the summer because that's when people like to travel and people wait till the last minute. These other factors that people like to blame, like oil prices because of the Russia, Ukraine conflict are only responsible for a very small, insignificant increase in flights. Basically, it's your fault that you waited to the last minute. If you are looking for cheap flights, it's a great time to book now for the fall and the winter. My life hack is to be a psycho, like we are at Brooklyn FI, which is to have a G sheet and a Google calendar that talk to each other that lists out your entire whereabouts and travel itinerary for the next 365 days. That way you can get great deals, you know what's going on, and if you plan ahead, you don't have to complain to your friends that flights are so expensive right now.

Shane:

I love it. Yeah.

AJ:

My friends think I'm crazy. I showed my friends, my travel G sheet and they called me a psychopath, but anyway, I'm an organized psychopath who goes on a lot of great trips for not a lot of money.

Shane:

Yeah. You've helped me with that. Now when I invite my friend, like when I tell my friends I'm trying to book New Year's Eve in April they're like, "What the fucks wrong with you?" I'm like, "All right. Well, you pay an extra twice as much and not know where the hell you're going."

AJ:

Yeah. How do you afford to go on all these trips? Well, because it cost me $200 because I booked it 6 months ago. Anyways, I feel like braggy right now. I don't like that. But anyway, book your shit early. If you're able to plan ahead, you're going to save a bunch of money.

Shane:

We don't all have the ability to use G sheets, AJ. We didn't all go to business school. I remember somebody that wasn't so good with an Excel spreadsheet before they met me.

AJ:

Fair, fair, fair. This kind of Excel spreadsheet does not require any formats.

Shane:

I remember seeing word docs that should have been Excel spreadsheets, many, many times coming from that.

AJ:

You know, what growth is MVP. Most improve or no, what's it called? Most improved player.

Shane:

Most improve, MIP.

AJ:

Yeah. Most improved spreadsheet user.

Shane:

It's minor in possession. Is that what you want to be?

AJ:

Anyways, minor in possession of a-

Shane:

Spreadsheet.

AJ:

Too much Excel power. Macros. Let's close out this episode with a lesson in golf, which is that if you're going to go golfing, if you're a Congressman or really anybody, and you're going to go golfing with an executive at a publicly traded company and they tell you something interesting about that company or any acquisitions it might make in the next six months to 24 months, do not make stock trades based on that information, because that is called insider trading. If you want to have a safe golf experience that won't land you in prison, when you go golfing make sure you go with your friends, or if you're going to go with your business associates do not place securities trades based on any discussions that happen on the golf course.

AJ:

Our friend, Senator Byer attended a golf outing with a T-Mobile executive and learned of the companies then non-public plans to acquire other cell phone companies Sprint. And essentially the next day Byer goes on a shopping spree and buys a bunch of Sprint stock for him, his buddy. I think he opened brokerage accounts for his wife and his daughter. Merger goes through, it becomes public information. He immediately pockets about $100,000 and that's just textbook insider trading. That's former Congressman folks, so that sucks. Don't do that. Wish that we had harsher punishment for insider trading. He'll get a slap on the wrist. Maybe he'll do a few months of easy jail time in a comfy prison and maybe get a fine. I believe that the punishment for that should be much harsher, because the average American does not have access to that information.

Shane:

How are the senators going to get rich? They only make a few 100K and they have free healthcare. I don't understand.

AJ:

For life. For life.

Shane:

I'm confused.

AJ:

Anyways, love to end on a dig at senators. This has been the Liquidity Event, folks. You've been a wonderful audience. You can find us at brooklynfi.com/episode52. You can email us at liquidityevent@brooklynfi.com. B FI fans can leave us a review if they want to be weird about it, that helps us feel better about ourselves. Thank you for listening. We love you. See you next week.

Shane:

Bye.

AJ:

Bye.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to the Liquidity Event, hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI. Head on over to brooklynfi.com where you can subscribe to the podcast or YouTube channel, or if you want to learn about their full service, financial planning, tax, and investment firm, specializing in tech professionals and creatives on the path to financial independence. We'll see you next time on the Liquidity Event.