He Walked Away From $500k in Monthly Income and Actually Feels Better

Imagine walking away from $500,000 hitting your bank account every single month. Most people would agree that's insane. Marshall Haas calls it the best decision he ever made.

In this week's Moneywise episode, we caught Marshall just weeks after selling his company Shepherd for $26 million—a business that was not only profitable but actively printing money for him personally. While most entrepreneurs desperately chase cash flow, Marshall deliberately abandoned his. The twist? He's actually sleeping better.

Like all Moneywise episodes, Marshall breaks down his net worth, income, portfolio, and monthly expenses and then I, your humble host, pick it all apart.

The conversation challenges everything you think you know about successful exits. We dive into the psychological burden of ownership that nobody talks about, why having a CEO run your business still isn't enough freedom, and the counterintuitive approach Marshall took to avoid the depression that plagues so many post-exit founders.

Below you'll find my summary of the episode along with the entire transcript.

And by the way...this podcast, the concept of it came from Hampton. Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs. If you run a company or are the CEO of a startup of any size, check it out at joinhampton.com. You'll be placed in a core group of eight people who have similar business sizes and challenges as you. This group becomes your safety net where you can discuss anything, plus you'll have access to thousands of other members and a whole bunch of events throughout the year. If you're a CEO, founder, or business owner, check this out. New Moneywise episodes come out weekly.

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Now, below are the notes and the full transcript.

The Numbers

• Net Worth: Approximately $30 million
• Exit Amount: $26 million total package
  • $18 million in cash at close
  • $8.2 million in a seller note with interest
• Pre-Sale Monthly Income: $500,000 per month in personal cash flow from Shepherd
• Monthly Expenses: $30,000-$50,000 for living expenses
• Charitable Giving: Approximately $25,000 per month (separate from expenses)
• Shepherd Revenue Growth:
  • Year 1: $100,000 in profit
  • Year 2: $600,000 in profit
  • Year 3: $2.4 million in profit
  • Year 4: Approximately $6 million in profit
• First Million: Reached at age 28-29 in 2018/2019
• Previous Business: Peel (phone cases) reached nearly $10 million in revenue at its peak in 2017

From Bootstrapped E-commerce to a $26M Exit

Marshall's entrepreneurial journey began with small side projects while working at an architecture firm. His first venture that made money was All Rendered, an architectural rendering company where he outsourced work to the Philippines—an early sign of his future success connecting businesses with overseas talent.

After dropping out of college to pursue a startup opportunity in Chile, Marshall eventually co-founded Needwant, a studio that launched several e-commerce businesses. The most successful was Peel, a minimalist phone case company that reached nearly $10 million in revenue and provided Marshall with his first million dollars in personal wealth by age 28-29.

As Peel faced increasing headwinds in the competitive e-commerce space, Marshall began Shepherd on the side in 2019. What started as a small project with modest expectations quickly grew beyond all projections: "I had very low expectations for that business... It wasn't like, I'm gonna, this is my next big thing, and it's going to be, you know, $10 million a year business. That wasn't until a couple years in when I was like, okay, like, I really need to focus on this and go all in."

The growth was remarkable:

• Year 1: $100,000 in profit
• Year 2: $600,000 in profit
• Year 3: $2.4 million in profit
• Year 4: Approximately $6 million in profit

The Decision to Sell: Trading $500K Monthly Income for Peace of Mind

The most fascinating aspect of Marshall's story is his decision to sell a business that was generating $500,000 in monthly personal income—an astonishing $6 million per year—and was still growing rapidly.

Marshall had already hired a CEO to handle 95% of his day-to-day responsibilities, so time wasn't the issue. The problem was "mindshare"—the mental bandwidth the business consumed even when he wasn't actively working on it.

"You can delegate yourself all the way out, but when you get to that level, like it's no longer about the time that you're working on the thing, it's about the mindshare that it takes up in your head and you can't really, like, get rid of that when you're the majority shareholder," Marshall explained. "It's still hard to be present playing with your kid or, you know, on a date night with your wife. You're still worried about things. It's ultimately still your responsibility."

When considering the sale, Marshall weighed two types of potential regret:

1. "Regret of greed" – selling and watching the company become much more valuable
2. "Regret of loss" – not selling and watching something happen that destroys value

"Of those two, you know, it hurts way worse to have regret of loss," he concluded.

Structuring the Exit to Avoid Post-Sale Depression

Unlike many founders who sell their companies entirely and then struggle with the sudden change, Marshall carefully structured his exit to provide ongoing benefits:

1. He retained a significant equity stake to maintain cash flow
2. Secured a board position to stay involved strategically
3. Received a life-changing lump sum ($18M cash at close)

"I talked to a lot of friends that had sold. And there's a thread of a few themes that I noticed, which is one, like the guys that completely sold out the whole thing, they immediately go into worrying about they have money coming in and now they're worried about, like making it last. And that's a different kind of anxiety that I don't want to have to deal with. And the other thing is, just like they don't have any action, they get really bored. Maybe they get depressed."

This approach allows him to:

• Live off cash flow without touching his principal
• Stay connected to the business without day-to-day responsibilities
• Have financial security without the full weight of ownership

Life After the Exit: Managing Wealth and Identity

Just one month after his sale, Marshall is still adjusting to his new reality. He plans to maintain similar spending habits rather than dramatically increasing his lifestyle.

His current monthly expenditures include:

• $30,000-$50,000 for living expenses, travel, and "toys"
• Approximately $25,000 for charitable giving (which he doesn't consider an expense, but rather "money that's not mine")

One of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs after a sale is the loss of identity. Marshall noted that this is a common struggle: "A lot of guys struggle with depression. A lot of guys like struggle with loss of identity... I've always been Marshall, the business guy is what some of my friends joke about. Or Marshall's all business."

He believes having multiple identities—as a husband, father, and advisor—will help him avoid the post-exit depression many entrepreneurs face.

Other Key Quotes

"I had the opportunity to sell for life-changing money. And of those two, you know, it hurts way worse to have regret of loss. So that's kind of how I thought about it."

"It's funny, if you ask my wife, she thinks I'm still like she was making jokes to friends the other day of like he's more worried about money post-acquisition."

"I think having cash flow, like I started to get spendy when the business was doing well and I had cash flow, like it's a very different psychological thing of having cash flow coming in, still spending less than what you're pulling in and knowing that you're going to have just as much coming in the next month."

"All my rich friends sold too early, and to me it was always like, yep, you know, when I was in my going back and forth, you know, should I sell to Nick or not? It's like, you idiot. Like it's a life changing sum of money."

"I've kind of ratcheted it up over time and figured out what I value, what I don't like, got into like dabble, different things. So I don't know. I mean, as weird as it sounds like, I think spending money also just kind of is like a muscle."

Links You Might Like

• Shepherd - Marshall's company that connected businesses with overseas employees
• Peel - Marshall's previous e-commerce business selling minimalist phone cases
• Need/Want - Marshall's studio that incubated several e-commerce brands

Full Transcript

[00:00:03] Marshall Haas: When the offer came in, I was pretty consistently personally bringing in about $500,000 per month in cash flow, and it was growing.

[00:00:13] Sam Parr: You guys, my feet are sore. Why? Because I've been running around trying to find you more money. Wise stories. Finding a wealthy person who's crazy enough to be transparent about their wealth like today's guest, is hard. However, I've got a winner today. Today's guest is Marshall Haas, and he's special because I just spoke to him only a few weeks after he made over $20 million. And as you just heard, when he sold, he was making $500,000 a month in personal income. Which begs the question, why sell if he was looking to work less, why not just step back and hire someone to help him run the business?

[00:00:51] Marshall Haas: You can delegate yourself all the way out, but when you get to that level, it's no longer about the time that you're working on a thing. It's about the mindshare that it takes up in your head and you can't really get rid of that when you're the majority shareholder.

[00:01:04] Sam Parr: The decision to sell came from an unexpected opportunity, and he did not take that lightly. And the sale, as I mentioned, happened just a few weeks before our interview. So we're talking to someone who's post-exit and still in the honeymoon phase. We'll talk about the process of selling, including the anxiety and stress that goes with the exit period. Also, why he decided to ultimately go through with the deal, despite almost bailing a bunch of times and the mental adjustment that comes from trading in massive cash flow for a huge lump sum.

[00:01:39] Sam Parr: I'm Sam Parr, and this is money wise. It's easy to scroll through Instagram for just 30s and see a ton of stuff on how to make money, but there's not a lot of content out there that teaches you how to handle life after you've made a little bit of something. You see, I'm the co-founder of a company called Hampton. It's a community of CEOs and business owners. Our members range from new startups with ten employees all the way up to publicly held companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. And so because of this, I'm able to see all types of private conversations. And in my opinion, these types of conversations about money and wealth, these things that are typically done in private, I believe some of them should be done out in public and hence this podcast money wise. With money wise, we talk to people who have made a lot of money, and they're radically transparent about all of their numbers, their monthly expenses, their portfolios. And also, and this is more important, all of the personal issues and problems and some of the thoughts that come with being successful and how they're trying to solve them.

[00:02:33] Sam Parr: And of course, if you're the CEO of a startup or a business owner, you got to check out Hampton, join Hamptons.com. You'll be part of a group of eight people who have similar lives and businesses to you, and also have access to thousands of other members and access to hundreds of in-person events. So check it out. Join Hamptons.com. Selling a company that brings in over $500,000 in personal cash every month is not an easy choice. That's over 6 million bucks a year in take home income. Giving up that type of income, that's a huge mental adjustment, that type of repeatable, recurring financial security that is hard to beat. But as usual, one's ability to say, I don't really need that comes down to their foundations. For some of us that grew up financially insecure or with parents with a bunch of messed up money issues, it can be difficult to undergo that mindset shift and just let go. Fortunately, Marshall's foundation was pretty stable. You grew up in Dallas?

[00:03:34] Marshall Haas: Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, suburbs of Dallas.

[00:03:36] Sam Parr: What did your parents do growing up?

[00:03:39] Marshall Haas: So my dad was always like a computer tech. He would go on service calls to fix, like as 400 systems. I think I'm getting that acronym right and, like, printers and stuff like that. He always had a job. My mom was a stay at home mom when we were young and then had a career later. But he there was like a day when I remember he like was up for a promotion to manage people and he like turned it down and it like blew my mind was like, oh wow, we're very different. But my mom was like a career woman, worked in HR, eventually got to like a director level. And she's gonna retire here in probably like two months. So I'm more like my mom when it comes to career stuff. But super middle class upbringing.

[00:04:21] Sam Parr: What made you interested in business because your parents weren't entrepreneurs, right?

[00:04:25] Marshall Haas: Yeah, I had no idea about, like, no one in my family had a business or anything. Never was exposed to it until, I think growing up watching video games and like the E3 event that they would do when they announce everything and these guys get up on stage and I got super interested in like, who's making these games? You know, you catch wind that like some small studio is like a guy. I was handed a rich dad, poor dad by a cousin when I was super young, maybe like 15. And then I used to wanna be an architect, and I worked at this firm that did, like, insane. Like, money's no object, like Bruce Wayne Manor type stuff. And of course, I was like, the grunt or whatever, but I remember, like, asking about clients like, what the heck do these people do? And you notice a pattern, like, this guy owns a law firm on the boring end. Like, this guy started SketchUp and he sold it to Google. And this guy has a plumbing company and this guy has this. It's always like company, company, company. You're like, huh? Okay. Like, kind of broke my frame of reference of, like, how do people afford these things? I went down the rabbit hole of, like, Steve Jobs and Bill gates and all that and learned about those guys.

[00:05:37] Sam Parr: Like many entrepreneurs in the early years, Marshall started his career with a bunch of small side projects.

[00:05:43] Marshall Haas: My first thing that ever made a little bit of money was I was called All Rendered. It was an architectural rendering company. I started when I was working at that firm. I knew how to talk to architects and I knew the lingo. You know those signs outside of a project in the physical world of, like, you know, coming soon, it's a high rise or it's a house or whatever. It's rendering what it's going to look like. We did those, but I farmed out the work to a group in the Philippines, and that's kind of how it was my first step into overseas stuff as well. So it kind of all came full circle. But no, I did that. Then it was dabbled with iPhone apps and wanted to start a tech company.

[00:06:21] Sam Parr: What he means by full circle, by the way, is that the overseas work concept, it's pretty much what his company, Shepard, did, the company that we're talking about today. We'll explain more about that in a bit. But back to his timeline. About midway through college, the urge to become a full time entrepreneur got the best of him.

[00:06:37] Marshall Haas: I dropped out, I did about a year and a half. I think I was like one class shy of technically being able to get an associate's. But this opportunity came up to go down to Chile for basically like equity free grant from the Chilean government. And I got into the program, went and started a basic project management software company that kind of floundered. And then we got acquired by Metalab, actually. I ended up there, no cash. It was just like an equity thing. Told my parents I was going to take a semester off. And, you know, it was like my my back pocket goal was just like, this is how I'm going to justify to my mom that I'm dropping out of school. And then I just never went back after that. I was able to make it work from there, scraping by.

[00:07:21] Sam Parr: And was the first business that made significant money. Need want.

[00:07:25] Marshall Haas: Yeah. That's right.

[00:07:26] Sam Parr: What was the need? Want? It was. It was a website where you were one of the early guys blogging about, like your journey and what you were doing, giving a lot of people behind the scenes looks, building a company. But you guys had like 2 or 3 businesses, like you had a smart sheets. I think it was it was a sheets business, like bedding, smart bedding.

[00:07:43] Marshall Haas: Yeah.

[00:07:43] Sam Parr: Smart bedding. And then you had uh, peel, which was like iPhone cases. And then you even had like emoji faces, which was like mask or stuffed animals that looked like emojis, right?

[00:07:53] Marshall Haas: Yeah, it was Halloween masks. We went a little viral, I think Halloween like 2014, something like that. Yeah. And then we had a notebook company called Mod Notebooks, kind of like a moleskine. The cool part was in the back of the notebook there was a pre-paid shipping envelope. So when you finished filling your notebook, you could send it back to us. It wouldn't go to us, but it would go to this scanning facility and we would digitize your notebook for you. And then there was this very small software piece, and it would link up with your Dropbox and your Evernote and all that. But yeah, Needwant was basically just like the name of the quote unquote studio that we called the collection of all these little e-commerce ideas. We were always trying to incubate more, dabbled in some software stuff as well, but it was always the e-commerce stuff that paid the bills and made good money.

[00:08:39] Sam Parr: Did any of them make significant money?

[00:08:41] Marshall Haas: Peel was was by far the biggest. We eventually decided to sell off everything but peel to focus on that. That was kind of like my first million came from peel.

[00:08:51] Sam Parr: And how much were you making from peel?

[00:08:53] Marshall Haas: So we had a peak, I think, in 2017. I think we got near 10 million kind of collectively. I think we still had one of the other businesses at this time. I'm kind of putting all the revenue together.

[00:09:06] Sam Parr: Could you take a million a year from that business?

[00:09:08] Marshall Haas: No, I was just stacking, you know, year after year and eventually hit a million in, like, my own proceeds from that business, but not in a single year, and not until we sold that business.

[00:09:19] Sam Parr: How old were you when you made the first million?

[00:09:21] Marshall Haas: 2018, I think, is when I hit it 18 or 19.

[00:09:24] Sam Parr: So you must have been 28 years old then?

[00:09:26] Marshall Haas: Yeah, I was 28 or 29.

[00:09:28] Sam Parr: That's pretty awesome.

[00:09:29] Marshall Haas: Yeah, bootstrapping is great, man. Yeah.

[00:09:31] Sam Parr: What did that feel like?

[00:09:33] Marshall Haas: I didn't feel like, honestly, I still had tons of like, oh, is this all going to go away? It was like, okay, I've got money in the bank. But e-commerce was going up and down for us. Like there was a lot of headwinds. Things were starting to get very hard by the time I hit that number where I was like, I think I need to start something new. And so I had a lot of like, just like worry. It was all going to go away and I was a mess. Psychologically, it was tough when you're like, okay, great, you have this money in the bank. But like, this thing's, I don't know if we're gonna make it another year or two with this thing. It was a weird feeling because you have money, but the thing that made you that money is starting to feel like it's failing.

[00:10:20] Sam Parr: That anxiety of losing that income continued to grow.

[00:10:23] Marshall Haas: I basically got really into tracking finances around like 2017, 2018, similar time where I actually knew how much money I had, and you start paying attention to it and analyzing it and was like, all right, if this thing goes to zero, how long do I have to like continue our lifestyle? Because I'm married by that point and supporting my wife. And you just start to feel like the the responsibility of it all. I was very worried about money back then. It was a tough time.

[00:10:51] Sam Parr: So around 2018, 2019, Marshall starts to let go of some of those e-comm businesses at need want and makes a little bit of money.

[00:10:58] Marshall Haas: Yeah like mid six figures.

[00:11:00] Sam Parr: He does hang on to peel, but then he starts to slowly shift his focus to something else, something that would end up being much bigger. A new company. And that new company is Shepherd.

[00:11:09] Speaker4: That'll do pig. That'll do.

[00:11:13] Sam Parr: No, not that type of shepherd. You see, Shepherd is a company that basically helps connect companies with highly skilled employees overseas.

[00:11:20] Marshall Haas: A year prior, I had traveled with my wife for six months. One of the stops that we made was the Philippines and this guy, Jomer, that had worked for Needwant for a few years. Him and I had become friends. He was kind of like a generalist, did a little bit of everything. You know, he'd kind of always expressed an interest in starting something. And so while we were there, kind of like, agreed. Like, yeah, let's start something together at some point, just kind of was in the back of our minds of what that thing would be. And so he wanted to do something very like BPO based, just like, let's find people to do customer support and upsell their time. I didn't know how to, like, break into that doing that. There's a million people that do that. And I read in a book in passing about this term, headhunting and what people pay when you place talent with them. I was like, huh, that's interesting. You know, the goal was to make just like a little bit of money for both him and I and right out of the gate, like, I started making tens of thousands a month in revenue and really good profit margins. I had very low expectations for that business, and I still cared about it and tried really hard with the website and copywriting and positioning and everything. But it wasn't like, I'm gonna this is my next big thing, and it's going to be, you know, $10 million a year business. That wasn't until a couple years in when I was like, okay, like, I really need to focus on this and go all in.

[00:12:41] Sam Parr: Now from that first tens of thousands in revenue, shepherds revenue kept ramping up higher and higher, and so did the profit. In year one, they did about $100,000 in profit. In year two, it went up to $600,000. By year three, they hit $2.4 million in profit and year four roughly $6 million. And the business is still growing. And this is frankly, where I was a little bit confused. Those numbers are great. Why sell outright when it's just ramping up? That's something we'll learn right after a word from our sponsor. All right. So why did he sell? The answer to that starts a little bit earlier in Marshall's timeline.

[00:13:23] Marshall Haas: About a year prior to the offer coming across for Shepherd, I decided, okay, I'm going to sell all my other businesses and just go all in on Shepherd. Again, it was like I think about things as mindshare. I had peel and I have basically a boutique hotel in downtown Saint Louis as well, much smaller than the other two. Peel was the first one to kind of go up for sale and, you know, go through that process. And we closed, I think, September of last year. And it was fucking brutal. And it was a much, much smaller, like very small deal compared to Shepherd. And I kind of peg it to one, the buyer that you're working with. I don't know, they just were just very culturally different. They wanted, you know, dot every I cross every t spent all the time on like picking apart financials over like how are they actually going to run the thing. Like had maybe a 15 minute conversation of like what's my vision when they pick it up after me?

[00:14:25] Sam Parr: From that sale, Marshall learned a valuable lesson, one that he didn't realize would come in handy right after learning it.

[00:14:32] Marshall Haas: That closes. And it was like, this is awful. And I told myself, if I ever sell Shepherd, I want to sell to someone that I know and like, at least know enough to know how they are as a person. Like there's that quote of like, you can't do a good deal with a bad person. If that doesn't ring true for the peel stuff, like we just butted heads a ton in that acquisition.

[00:15:04] Sam Parr: So the plan was to sell the remaining of his two side projects and go all in on Shepard. But those plans changed at the same time. He was working through selling peel and his hotel. Two different opportunities came up for Shepard, and they both happened to be from people he already knew pretty well. The two guys he's going to reference in this story are Nick and Andrew.

[00:15:23] Marshall Haas: My deal with Shepard. Nick already had ownership. He was a minority shareholder in the business and knew the business and wanted the whole thing. We had another offer come through from someone else. I can say it because Andrew and I talked about it in his podcast. Andrew and Tiny made an offer originally and I brought it to everyone as you need to, and we all decided not to take it. So when we were going to reply back to Andrew, you know, we're going to pass on the deal, Nick made a passing comment of like, but I would do that deal. You know, it's like, well, what do you mean? Obviously? Fast forward. Nick had to raise the money from private equity guys and put the deal together.

[00:16:03] Sam Parr: Of which I'm one of those guys. My company's a very small investor of it.

[00:16:06] Marshall Haas: Nice. But yeah, I mean that going into it was okay. I know Nick, we've worked together for two years. I like Nick, he's a good dude. I think this will be a much smoother process. Part of it, too, is just like quality of the business. A lot of the stress is just like, well, you could walk away and it's like, well, do you want to walk away? I wanted to sell peel. I would have been okay hanging on to Shepherd. So, you know, like negotiating points and stuff are a lot lower stress when you're willing to hang on to it. But no, we had a very easy amicable deal process. Due diligence was very minor just because he already was a shareholder in the thing. So yeah, it was it was a very smooth process compared to the appeal sale.

[00:16:53] Sam Parr: And here's the good part. Here's how much he ended up making.

[00:16:56] Marshall Haas: I got about 18 million in cash at close. There's about 8.2 million of a seller note. But there's there's heavy interest on that. So I'll should see more than that over time. And then of course, what I already had pulled out over time from the business as well. Yeah, my total package is about 26 and change.

[00:17:18] Sam Parr: Add in the cash that he was banking while he was running Sheppard and his net worth is pretty good.

[00:17:24] Marshall Haas: 30 million mark is probably pretty accurate for like total net worth.

[00:17:28] Sam Parr: That's a ton of Big Macs. Good job Marshall. Like we've learned, he wasn't looking to sell Sheppard. In fact, he was looking to get even more invested into it. And again, Shepherd was going great. Revenue was growing, profit was growing, and he was making a ton of personal income. So what convinced him to sell.

[00:17:50] Marshall Haas: When the offer came in? I was pretty consistently personally bringing in about $500,000 per month in cash flow, and you could do anything with that kind of cash flow year. And it was growing. I didn't feel like it was peel, or it's like, oh, maybe it's going to fall apart tomorrow. And so, you know, strong offer came in. Obviously we negotiated and everything, you know was trying to get the highest number. But by the way, like I basically delegated my entire role. Like we hired a CEO prior to hiring the CEO. Like we had a CEO that came in place that took off 95% of my duties. So it's like amazing cash flow. And I don't really have a day to day role necessarily. Why sell? And the way I thought about it was a few things. There's basically two types of regret I could have. I could have regret of greed where I do sell and this thing goes to $1 billion. And man, I could have been even more wealthy or regret of loss where something happened or, you know, it fell apart in a few years, or, you know, we got sued out of existence or, you know, whatever, something happened and it goes to zero or it becomes much less.

[00:19:00] Marshall Haas: And I had the opportunity to sell for life changing money. And of those two, you know, it hurts way worse to have regret of loss. So that's kind of how I thought about it. The other thing that contributed to like deciding to ultimately sell is like even with PL, I had hired a general manager, like I got really good at delegating and you can delegate yourself all the way out, but when you get to that level, like it's no longer about the time that you're working on the thing, it's about the mindshare that it takes up in your head and you can't really, like, get rid of that when you're the majority shareholder. Mindshare, you know, is real. It's like, don't really have day to day duties, but it's still hard to be present playing with your kid or, you know, on a date night with your wife. You're still worried about things. It's ultimately still your responsibility. You know, I have young kids, I have a wife. And it was just like, you know what? This is life changing money. I think it makes sense given all those factors.

[00:19:58] Sam Parr: But even after deciding to sell, there was a lot of time between when the offer came in and when the sale actually went through, which means there's a lot of time to second guess yourself and give yourself way too much anxiety over things. I remember when I was selling my company, the process was horrible and it made me never want to do it again. It's an emotional roller coaster because the process after signing the letter of intent, it could take months for the deal to close. It took me 90 days and every day it felt like something could ruin the entire process. And so I get why Marshall felt all types of different feelings during this process. The biggest feeling he had was hesitation.

[00:20:35] Marshall Haas: I flip flopped probably like five times. Never really like let Nick know. But like internally I was like, okay, sleep on it. Like, don't just fire off a text. Yeah. I went back and forth because like, all the while we're growing like, it's not like we're flat lining or declining. Like, I got to get this thing sold. The number just keeps going up. Should I just keep this? Absolutely. But I kept coming back to the original reason that we talked about, which is just like, I want to take the pressure off. I get to hang out more with my family, and then I'm going to take a lot of time off. But I'm sure I'll start something again one day. And I think the pressure to get that thing off the ground will be a lot less. And I just think it'll be more fun because, like, I'm just purely, you know, in building mode and not building plus survival, trying to support my family mode kind of all wrapped in in one. I think I'll run it a little bit differently.

[00:21:36] Sam Parr: A question I have for you because you're so new and these emotions you're still in, like maybe phase one of this post-exit life. There's this great book I read called The Life After the Exit, and the author is the guy from Dynamite Circle. He's a cool guy. He basically has this book where he contemplated selling his business, and he was like, well, I want to sell my business because I'll have more time and I'll have more money to afford some of the things I want to do. And then he was like to his audience, he was like, but I would question that thought of, can you build more life and more or more time and more money into the life that you already have without selling? Because once you sell, that thing is gone, whereas is there a way that you can use it to fuel the life that you want today? And maybe you could have the best of both worlds, which is to still have your business and to still live the life that you want to live. Now that your post exit, is there a chance that you could have had the life that you wanted to live without selling?

[00:22:27] Marshall Haas: Yeah. I mean, for sure, like I had a ton of time still, like I said, like we hired a CEO, like I didn't have a day to day role. And even prior to hiring that CEO for about a year, when we brought in that COO, 95% of my duties were gone. I think it was just like, I still like I come back to the mindshare thing. I wanted to taste what it felt like to just like, pass the torch to someone else fully. To me, like a CEO is like a babysitter. Obviously, you hope that they're going to be with a company for a long time, but at the end of the day, it is temporary, whereas majority shareholder like they're the ultimately the one responsible for everything. I was always majority in all the things I did. I was always CEO. Like I was always the leader in all the things. I never got to taste what it was like to go along for the ride. But ultimately, like, if shit hits the fan, I don't have to be the first one to jump in. There's a big deal or whatever. So I think it was partially just like motivated by that as well, wanting to know what that feels like. And I can always go start another thing if I want to go back to the driver's seat. This is why I struggle with it. I still kind of struggle with it, but I'm happy I did it.

[00:23:46] Sam Parr: You're only, I think 4 or 6 or something like that weeks past the sale. Do you feel relief?

[00:23:53] Marshall Haas: Yeah, I.

[00:23:54] Sam Parr: Do have a smile. You have a smile on your face?

[00:23:58] Marshall Haas: Yes. It is very fun, for sure. Like, I'm very happy I did the deal. First month has closed since we did the deal. Business is still growing. I'm really excited. Like, I get to do more stuff and, you know, wake up and not have to worry as much about things and hang out with my kids and know it's. It's been a lot of fun, for sure.

[00:24:22] Sam Parr: There's still a ton of cool stuff about how we optimize his deal to keep a bit of that cash flow coming in, but first we're going to get to the fun stuff how he spends his money. And we'll tell you that right after a quick ad break. And we're back. So here's how he spends his money.

[00:24:37] Marshall Haas: We spend anywhere from 30 to 50,000 a month on, you know, living and toys and travel and random expenses. And bass, I think is about 25 to 30. And then, you know, if you have big vacation or buy some furniture for the house or whatever, that's where those big swings come from. And then on top of that, I think last year we spent about 25 a month on charitable giving. This year will probably be a bit higher than that. That's kind of more of a factor of income is how we think about it. And that's where that number comes from. So I don't really think about it as expense. It's my background. I believe in, you know, a portion of your income going to some charitable causes. That's why we do that.

[00:25:20] Sam Parr: And we had a big episode on that. And I think it was the best episode we've ever done, where we talked to a person who gave away a very large percentage of his income. My takeaway was, is that stuff probably feels significantly better than a Porsche.

[00:25:32] Marshall Haas: It does. Yeah, absolutely. It's fun to do, like, see a cause you believe in and be able to help it out in a small way. Like there's a lot of fulfillment and joy that comes from that. I just think reframing how, not thinking about it as an expense, that money's not mine. We're going to put a portion of that to this kind of stuff. And so as money comes in, I think about taxes. And then I think about then that percentage after taxes go into charitable giving and then everything after that can go to lifestyle. And then whatever's left going to go to savings or stock portfolio and all that.

[00:26:07] Sam Parr: And do you feel like you have everything you want?

[00:26:10] Marshall Haas: We have the capacity to have just like desire to infinity. And I think obviously the trick is like being content and being happy with where you're at. Again, that's another muscle is just like practicing being content. So I'm very happy with where we're at. Like I don't have massive desires to Have a lot more than what we already have.

[00:26:34] Sam Parr: Now, like you said, he's only a month post deal, which means his monthly spend. It's probably mostly based on what he was doing and what he was bringing in while he was running Shepherd. Now that the cash flow has been replaced with the huge sum, his mindset has changed a bit.

[00:26:49] Marshall Haas: It's funny, if you ask my wife, she thinks I'm still like she was making jokes to friends the other day of like he's more worried about money. Post-acquisition. I don't think that's true. I've just told her like, hey, look, we're not going to level up our lifestyle a ton, like we can do a little bit. And so I'm just, like, very cautious of doubling up from where we were. Post-acquisition. But no, I mean, I think having cash flow, like I started to get spendy when the business was doing well and I had cash flow, like it's a very different psychological thing of having cash flow coming in, still spending less than what you're pulling in and knowing that you're going to have just as much coming in the next month. It takes the pressure off, I think. And so, you know, it's still that way. Like business will fund my lifestyle with cash flow. It comes out. So I think that is the big difference between guys that have cash flow businesses or have a big, you know, don't make any money along the way and then have a big exit. And then it's going from like 0 to 100 of all of a sudden having money and then having to get good at spending it. Like, I've kind of ratcheted it up over time and figured out what I value, what I don't like, got into like dabble, different things. So I don't know. I mean, as weird as it sounds like, I think spending money also just kind of is like a muscle. You know, it's obviously it's easy to spend money, but spending it on the things you actually value and figuring that out, you know, I've made a lot of mistakes and bought stupid stuff and like, I kind of regret that.

[00:28:18] Sam Parr: Now I realize what I'm going to say is going to sound illogical and sort of like, woe is me, like a rich jackass. But this is the Moneywise podcast, so here goes. Marshall's situation is a bit unique because he had a lot of cash flow coming in before the sale, but for a lot of people, a lot of startups at least, and I know I was in this situation, things aren't always that great before you actually sell your company. For example, in the first three years of my business, I think I paid myself something like $20,000 and then $40,000, and then year three, it was like $80,000. And so on paper, I had a really valuable company, but I was cash poor. I can't really pay rent or buy a home with my paper gains and my privately held company. And then when I sold, I was wired a ton of money, and suddenly there's something crazy, like 10 or 20 or some people, hundreds of millions of dollars wired to you. And it feels overwhelming. It feels strange that overnight things changed dramatically. But like we discussed for Marshall, the mental hurdle wasn't really going from 0 to 100 or whatever it is, what a lot of people go through when they sell their company. It was actually losing that stable income. However, having that type of profit and income, it's actually a major tool that Marshall used when he was selling the business.

[00:29:32] Marshall Haas: People think about an acquisition as like a binary all or nothing kind of thing. That's not true at all. Like everything's negotiable. So when I started considering selling, I talked to a lot of friends that had sold. And there's a thread of a few themes that I noticed, which is one like the guys that completely sold out the whole thing, they immediately go into worrying about they have money coming in and now they're worried about, like making it last. And that's a different kind of anxiety that I don't want to have to deal with. And the other thing is, just like they don't have any action, they get really bored. Maybe they get depressed. And so I kind of optimize for a few things in the deal. One was to hang on to a considerable amount of equity, to still have cash flow, where I wouldn't have to cut into my principal and live off of that. I can just let that compound and then live off of the cash flow that my equity that I would hang on to would still spit off. I still get to see action like I'm on the board. I'm advising the company. I don't have a day to day role. The torch has been passed to Nick and the new ownership. But you know I can help when I'm needed. And then, of course, you know, there's a life changing sum of money where you don't have to worry about working ever again, which is, you know, obviously the first motivation in selling. So I hung onto equity to basically optimize around all that. And I think that was I'm very happy with doing it that way.

[00:30:54] Sam Parr: And here is his parting advice. Fresh off the exit.

[00:30:57] Marshall Haas: A lot of guys struggle with depression. A lot of guys like struggle with loss of identity. That made sense. Like I've gotten depressed before. I think I was smart about optimizing around protecting those things. Identity is and still is a big one I worry about. Like I've always been Marshall, the business guy is what some of my friends joke about. Or Marshall's all business. But you experience this having a kid like your identity evolves and is added to when you have a family, and I think that definitely helps and kind of grounds you protecting against, like, I'm not just a founder, I'm not just a CEO like I've I'm a husband. I'm a dad. Like those other identities I think help with that risk of everything. So I don't know that I don't think I'll struggle with having gone up the ladder. And not just it was a giant windfall all at once, and I didn't have any money before. I'm very thankful for because I already figured out what I value and don't, and what feels like a good number. I don't know, I think the other quote that really stuck with me when I was debating it all was all my rich friends sold too early, and to me it was always like, yep, you know, when I was in my going back and forth, you know, should I sell to Nick or not? It's like, you idiot. Like it's a life changing sum of money. To me, that take away from that quote is like, these guys still got rich, and you can't perfectly time this whole thing. And so I have a great opportunity on the table. You should take it. So I have no regret with that. But yeah, I don't know. It's still so early. Like, maybe we should talk in a year and see how things have changed. I don't know. I swear, you're the gold I've been running for on it. Like I woke up in one the top, bro.

[00:32:44] Sam Parr: I was excited for Marshall to come on the podcast because he was so new off of his sale. I didn't want some revisionist history or looking back, but I wanted to hear about someone who was going through it as we spoke. And in a year or two, we're going to have Marshall on again to see what has changed, if he feels any different at all. And so that's this episode of Money Wise. And by the way, I have to tell you again, you have to check out Hampton. If you run a company, if you're the CEO of a startup, check it out. Join Hampton. We're a community of CEOs and entrepreneurs who run businesses anywhere from a million in revenue, all the way up to hundreds of millions in revenue. You get put into a core group of eight people who have similar sizes and types of companies as you, and it becomes your safety group where you can talk about anything, and you also have access to thousands of other members where you can have these types of conversations that we have on Moneywise. You can have them all the time. Plus we do hundreds of events throughout the year. So check it out, join Hamptons.com, and I will tell you, Marshall's a member of Hampton, which is how I found him. And of course I have to give a quick plug to Lower Street. Lower Street is their website. They're the people who made this podcast. This podcast is really, really hard to make because all the narration, editing, finding people, the storytelling, it's a pain in the butt. But it's easy for me because Lower Street does all of the work. I work with Harry and Jackie over there and it is sublime. They have made making this podcast much, much easier on me. So check them out. Lower street. All right, that's the end of this episode of Moneywise and I will see you next week.