Ep. 10 Business Baby to Biggest Asset with Wendy Brookhouse
In this episode of the Legacy Branding Podcast, Laura Beauparlant sits down with Wendy Brookhouse, a certified financial planner, author, and host of The Real Bottom Line podcast. Wendy shares her innovative approach to financial planning for entrepreneurs, emphasizing how your business can be transformed from your "baby" into your most valuable asset.
Discover practical insights on maximizing business value, planning for long-term wealth, and redefining financial freedom. Wendy dives into behavioral finance, strategic retirement planning, and her Total Wealth Accelerator program, offering tools to help entrepreneurs unlock their financial potential.
Whether you're planning for a future transition, looking to build lasting wealth, or seeking clarity on your financial path, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you create a legacy while living a life of joy and confidence.
Tune in and take the next step toward building your wealth through your business!
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Wendy Brookhouse
Certified Financial Planner, Certified Business Value Builder, Executive MBA and Author
Wendy’s innovative approach to financial planning incorporate all aspects of your life, including your business. Her emphasis on behavioral finance and removing friction points ensures plans ARE implemented. She believes in providing clarity and simplicity while meeting people where they are – and then showing them the path to wealth and total money confidence.
Being holistic with business owners means showing them the value of their business and how they can maximize it, giving them the tools and strategies to increase their wealth, and leading a life of joy now and in the future.
Wendy is regularly featured in the Globe and Mail, Financial Post, and leading podcasts.
Book: Burn Your Budget – How to Spend Your Way to Financial FreedomPodcast:The Real Bottom Line, a top 10% podcast
Website: Black Star Wealth
LinkedIn: Wendy Brookhouse
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00:00 Introduction to Legacy Branding Podcast
00:48 Meet Wendy Brookhouse: Financial Planning Expert
01:25 The Emotional Transition from Business Baby to Asset
04:20 Redefining Retirement: A New Perspective
07:34 Holistic Financial Planning: Beyond the Numbers
10:13 Burn Your Budget: A New Approach to Personal Finances
16:09 Navigating Off-Plan Decisions
17:00 Personal Example: Raptors Game Experience
18:22 Valuing Experiences Over Material Gifts
19:21 Supporting Entrepreneur Couples
21:30 Balancing Business and Personal Life
23:25 Defining and Building Your Legacy
28:50 Assessment Tool for Business Founders
30:22 Total Wealth Accelerator Program
31:09 Conclusion and Contact Information
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Wendy Brookhouse: How am I going to take this this thing I've poured my blood, sweat, and tears into and I've loved, and I've built in a certain way, how do I make it so that it's going to provide me income even when I'm done with it?
Laura Beauparlant: Welcome to the Legacy Branding Podcast. I'm your host, Laura Beaupreland, here to guide you through the journey of selling your business and building a personal brand that leaves a lasting impact. On the show, we'll explore real-life founder stories, expert insights, and actionable strategies to help you navigate the transition, avoid post-sale crisis, and create your impact-driven legacy brand. Whether you're thinking of selling, building to sell, or already on the other side, this podcast is your go-to resource for making your next evolution your best one yet. Let's dive in. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Wendy Brookhouse to the Legacy Branding Podcast. Wendy is a certified financial planner, business value builder, author, and the host of The Real Bottom Line Podcast. With over 20 years of experience, Wendy is known for her holistic approach to financial planning and behavioral finance, helping entrepreneurs maximize their wealth and build businesses that can thrive now and into the future. She's passionate about simplifying the path to financial freedom and empowering business owners with the tools to create lasting value. Welcome to the show, Wendy.
Wendy Brookhouse: I am so thrilled to be here, Laura. Thank you for having me.
Laura Beauparlant: I feel like I should have hit record sooner because you and I were having a really great conversation before I hit record and I'm like, Yeah. We haven't even started recording and we're having such a great conversation because there is so much synergy between the work that I do helping people build their legacy brand and the work that you do from the financial space. And so I would love for you to talk about your approach with entrepreneurs to, you know, building that value in their business and really maximizing that.
Wendy Brookhouse: Great question, Laura. So I have been doing this kind of work for quite a number of years now, and I work a lot with entrepreneurs. And what I noticed along the way is that as we're doing financial planning, you know, we do a net worth statement and on that net worth statement, you would have what's the value of your business and nobody knew. And there was also this disconnect between what that value was, what it could be, and then how to bridge that gap so that, you know, all of the… when we look at the statistics around 76 percent of small and medium-sized business owners looking at transitioning in the next 10 years. That's a lot of stuff coming onto the market. And what I think is so important from a financial planning perspective is at a certain point, this business that may have been your baby becomes your biggest asset. And so we really want to make sure we've got the structures in place to maximize that value so that, you know, when you sell that business, transition that business, that is your biggest check that you'll…
Laura Beauparlant: Absolutely. And that idea, going from your business baby to your biggest asset. I mean, we don't think about our children in that regard. So, you know, but at the same time, our business is our baby. And I always remember people saying to me, Oh, are you guys going to have more kids? We had two boys. I was like, no, we have four kids or four babies. And they would be like, what? You know, knowing we have two. And so, well, we have two human babies and two business babies because both my husband and I have our own businesses. I said, so four babies is more than enough for me. And so we do, we get so attached to our businesses emotionally. And how do you find that transition from your business baby to an asset that you sell?
Wendy Brookhouse: It takes intention. And I think it's when you actually see what your business value could be that you start to think, Oh, okay, if I do some intentional deliberate activities, I can get to a bigger value. And then you're starting to look at things differently, right? Because this baby could be paying for your entire life after work or retirement, if you want to use that R word. But that's the kind of thing that you want to be thinking about is how am I going to take this this thing I've poured my blood, sweat, and tears into and I've loved, and I've built in a certain way, how do I make it so that it's going to provide me income even when I'm done with it?
Laura Beauparlant: Okay. I love that. And can you talk to me about the R word? Because I really love this idea of redefining retirement. My husband and I have these conversations that we have no vision of retiring in the traditional sense of the word. I don't want to stop working. I want to be working, you know, until the end of my days, but in a, maybe in a different way, in a way that is that I get to shape later in my life. So what does retirement mean to you and are you redefining it? Wendy Brookhouse: Well, the way I look at it is there's a number of ways to approach it, right? I like to ask, Hey, are we going in for a hard stop? Or are we kind of like doing a gradual approach to this? And like you said, there can be a couple of different ways that things that after work, maybe I'm volunteering, maybe I'm doing some consulting. Maybe I've built this business in a way that I didn't have the lifestyle I wanted. But now, because I've sold that initial business, I have the lifestyle I want. So now how do we augment it so that I'm continually being challenged mentally and that I'm happy with it? I know a couple of entrepreneurs who are now in their mid, they're 80, 81, 82. And I have to tell you, it has completely shifted my mind on what that can look like because these guys are still very active. One of them still is chairing major companies and boards of companies. One is still very active inside of his corporation and things like that. So it's like it can be what you want it to be, which really begs the question of how well do you know yourself and what do you want your life to be? Right? So when you know, I feel like once you know, you've kind of got all the money that you need to have the life you want for the rest of your life. The doors open in a different way because you're going to present differently in the world. You're going to make different decisions. You know, if you are, I got to get this business running because I got to pay these bills and I got to pay my mortgage off and I got to save, save, save. You have different energy than if, Hey, I got all I need and I know I'm going to be fine. So now what? Right. So it changes that lens a little.
Laura Beauparlant: Yeah, absolutely. Are there some common areas that you find entrepreneurs are missing opportunities with their business value? Or increasing it.
Wendy Brookhouse: yeah, well, there's eight drivers of value from the work that I do, Laura. And so it's a bunch of different things, but it really is. If we think of business as a black box, okay. Clients come in, cash comes out. What we want to do. When people want to buy that black box, we want to make it so that that box everything that's going on inside of it in terms of customer acquisition all the way through to delivery all the way through to all your systems and processes is as clearly defined as possible so that when me buying your black box, Laura, I can go. Yeah, I'm getting a business that will run itself. I'm just going to go in and steward it. And if you look, if you look at it from some running analogies, and I have a couple of these that I'll share with you, but one of them is you've been running a marathon, right? So now you're really, if I'm going to come in and buy your marathon box, I'm just starting. I have fresh energy, so I'm going to go out a bit differently to grow it. But if I'm still caught up in the day to day. It's not as valuable to me if, unless I can go in and do a little bit of a difference.
Laura Beauparlant: Yeah, absolutely. So you talk about holistic approach to financial planning. So I'm, I want to hear it because I don't think a lot of people correlate, you know, holistic and financial or behavioral and financial. They're like, what does that mean? I think money and wealth and finance are things that a lot of people don't know probably a lot about, or we hide because maybe there's shame or guilt or. Whatever those emotions are, there's a lot of emotions packed up with around money and finances and where you really are versus where you might be perceived to be. So what does that mean? Like, how do you approach finances holistically?
Wendy Brookhouse: Well, there's a couple of things. The first I like to talk about is where you should be, what you should know, all these things. Like if we could just jettison that baggage that we're carrying, when I'm talking with my clients, I'm like, that was then this is now. So we would have a fresh slate. You didn't know before we're going to learn new stuff. It's going to be awesome. And this is what we're going to put the plan around. Right. There's three things that are kind of affecting our mindset around money. And you talked about one of them, that's the money mindset piece. And I think of that is directly attributed to how we were raised. And so if our parents before the age of seven were telling us that all rich people are bad or you have to work super hard to make your money, all debt is bad. Like we took that in without a filter and it is affecting how our decisions are made. And it's in a way that's at the subconscious level. It may be affecting even about how you price your products or how you present in the market because of what you have determined you should be thinking about money that's running on the subconscious. I call it a little bit like the Intel inside. Like in my computer, there's a chip that's making all this happen. I have no idea how it's doing it. That's our subconscious mind and money.
Laura Beauparlant: Yeah. And it is running the show. Absolutely.
Wendy Brookhouse: And the second thing is about some of the way our mind works, right? There's this thing called heuristics, which is really a fancy word for shortcuts about how our mind may make when we're making financial decisions. And so we actually have an assessment tool that we use with our clients so we can highlight them because it's not that it's right or wrong. But it is affecting your decisions. And so what we really want you to do is make sure, Hey, have I looked at this in the proper manner? Because I know my brain likes to take this shortcut and it doesn't always lead to the right answer. So I could maybe do these three things to help me make sure I've looked at this decision differently,
Laura Beauparlant: Interesting. Yeah. Sometimes it's just those simple little hacks, right?
Wendy Brookhouse: right? Yeah.
Laura Beauparlant: Okay. So you have a book called Burn Your Budget, which is so fascinating about spending your way to financial freedom, which I think is not what a lot of people would associate with financial freedom. So talk to me about this idea and, and it really feels like it goes against what everyone's like talks about budgets and this, and that's the only way, but this feels like a different way and I love a different way.
Wendy Brookhouse: So let's be clear. I'm talking about your personal finances, too, because I think in a business or a setting, it's a lot easier to budget. You have controls. All those things can be set up and monitored. But when it comes to our personal spending, even if you're the best with numbers inside your business, I find sometimes there's a fatigue when you get home and trying to monitor all these things. So when we look at a personal budget, we can look at, oh, this is how much I'm going to spend on groceries. This is how much I'm going to spend on haircuts. This is how much I'm going to spend on gifts. This is how much I'm going to spend on eating out. I just got tired saying all that. So that's a lot of mental math that has to happen, right? So if I have a 200 grocery budget, I call it the week of soap because they all run out at the same time. It's a conspiracy. So then we go to the grocery store and we have to buy, the dish soap, the laundry soap, the shampoos, whatever it all is, right? So our now, we spent 250. And we say to ourselves, I'll just spend 150 next week. And then we don't. So I think of it as, um, the, the strategy I have for my clients is to come up with a weekly number that covers a whole bunch of things. Okay. Most of it is around discretionally and emotionally based buying decisions. So that way it resets every week. So if you had a 500 number every week and you go, okay, what am I doing this week? Oh my gosh, I'm going to go out to this really fancy restaurant on Friday. That's going to cost me a couple hundred bucks right there. Okay. What can I do differently this week so that I have that money at the end of the week? So it's all about living within a seven day thing and then having it reset so that we don't run into trouble. But. Life is not a straight line approach. Mental math takes up an awful lot off room in our head, and almost all the tools are reactive, not predictive, right? So they're telling us what we've already done, but they're not really telling us how much is left in the whole pool, right? They're most of the tools are still very, very segmented compartmentalized and we life isn't like that.
Laura Beauparlant: It does always feel like there's new things that come up. I feel like it's, you're right, less so in business that it is a bit more predictive, but personal life, then it's like, Oh right, I have to sign my kid up for this camp. And that's in October. And it's like trying to remember that I have to pay a big chunk towards a summer camp. That's not going to happen until next July in October, the year before. And it's those moments where you're planning or coordinating, or they just kind of, they feel like they pop up. And even if you've done it before, sometimes I, I just feel like I don't have the mental capacity because of that mental math. It's like, Oh, I'm here again. Well, this happened last year, but it still sometimes comes as a surprise.
Wendy Brookhouse: It does. And actually, you know, I think if we did introduce the concept of a budget in terms of our spending, I kind of feel like the three biggest areas to kind of set up a preset number and work off of kids activities because that can be a great big wallet suck if you're not careful, and be if you're doing this, be real with yourself. Like, honestly, look at it. Oh, my kid plays hockey. It's 3,000. That's what one of my clients said to me. And then I said, Oh, okay. Tell me about, does he do spring hockey? Oh yeah. Does he have any tournaments? How many tournaments are they? How many away nights are there? How many hotel nights do you have to buy? How many times you have to buy dinner? Oh my God. Does he buy the 100 stick or the 300 stick? And how many of them does he need? These need to be considered. So going through that exercise of being real about what is that activity actually costing will help you a lot because then there's less surprises. You know, you can just put in some buffer like, Oh, I'm going to have a thousand dollars for equipment or what have you. But thinking these things through and putting them as a number. What I see a lot of too is summer camps, right? How many summer camps are they going to go to? What's the average cost of those summer camps that you can put that money into the plan and having that piece to the other two things. I like to see people kind of operate within some guidelines, travel, and house renovations, like just kind of making some plans. Like, you know, we always should be putting money into our homes, but saying, Oh, I have 10,000 a year for it. Well, what are you going to do this year for 10? Anyway, those are some of the thoughts I have around spending plans. And because I think when you say budget, it feels like a diet. So I call it a spending plan. Because it just feels like I have control. I get to choose where it goes. I get to choose, you know, all those parameters so that it feels better and more sustainable.
Laura Beauparlant: That is interesting that correlation between a budget and a diet and a spending plan versus a lifestyle, you know, eating or whatever that might be, because it feels like something you're taking away, like a diet, a budget, it feels like a restriction and that it doesn't feel good or it feels temporary. As opposed to a long-term relationship with something. And this idea of your spending plan is a bit more, um how, how would I describe that? It just feels more open. It feels more positive as opposed to a negative.
Wendy Brookhouse: well, it feels like, Oh, I'm going to align my spending with my values, right? That type of stuff. And so I have three questions that I get people to ask if they're going to go off plan because things happen. Okay. And if you have something comes up and you have to go off the plan that you have, I have three, the three questions are one. Is it worth it? Right. So now you're starting to think about the value for the money. Sometimes it's okay to go off because it's so freaking awesome and it's once in a lifetime kind of stuff, right? Two, do I have to do this right now? And three, am I doing it for the right reasons? Right. So sometimes in certain households things may be done because we're trying to make up for something with our children, whatever that might be. So, or, there's something else that's actually playing a role in that decision. So those three questions can help you really, really get in control of things. And I have an example, a personal example I really want to hear it. So, five years ago, in May, I was in Toronto and my husband was coming up to join me and he said to me, Hey Wendy, do you want to go to a Raptors game? And I said, yeah, let's, and we talked about the amount we would spend and I said, let's go 250 each ticket because you know, it's the playoffs, right? So he buys the tickets. The next day we find out that this is going to be the deciding game. For one of the playoff games. So we have these tickets and we go and they win the East.