Wondering if you should exercise your stock options? What the tax implications of stock options are? Financial advisor John Chapman recently interviewed fellow University of Washington alumnus Vieje Piauwasdy, head of Tax Advisory at Secfi, to discuss stock options. You can tune in above.

Vieje is a CPA who works with shareholders of Silicon Valley tech companies, advising them on their stock options. Listen in to learn how his father inspired him in entrepreneurship and hard work, what he learned working for a Big Four accounting firm in New York, and what drew him home to San Francisco. You’ll also hear more about how you should be handling those options your company has granted you and when to exercise them.

Learn more about John Chapman here.

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION:

Announcer: (00:00) Welcome to the John Chapman Show, where we talk about the path of a wealthy millennial, uncovering the truth about building and protecting your nest egg. Join us on this journey as we hear the stories of millennials and mentors alike to help you plan, manage, and protect your wealth. John is an employee of WorthPointe, LLC. All opinions expressed by John and podcast guests are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of WorthPointe. This podcast should not be relied on for investment decisions and is for informational purposes only.

John: (00:29) Hey everyone, John Chapman here. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the podcast. Today we’ve got on my good friend, Vieje Piauwasdy. Vieje works for Secfi, which is a company that helps with liquidity for folks going through liquidation or exercising of ISO, incentive stock options. He’s got an awesome background and shares some technical expertise. So, anybody in the Silicon Valley or the world of private companies who’s looking for equity ownership, and an exit in the future, this is for sure something you can’t miss. Thanks again for joining us. Hope you enjoy.

John: (01:11) Hey Vieje Piauwasdy, thanks for being on the podcast today.

Vieje: (01:15) Hey John, appreciate you having me. Happy to do this.

John: (01:18) This is cool. Vieje and I go back; we met in college and were in the same fraternity, and now Vieje has had a pretty stellar start to his career, so I’m really interested. I really want to spend time talking about your current job and some of your expertise, but Vieje, tell me where you grew up and what was money like in your house growing up.

Vieje: (01:42) Absolutely. I actually grew up in San Francisco and I’m probably one of the last few people left who actually live in San Francisco who actually grew up here.

John: (01:55) Yeah, you actually grew up there.

Vieje: (01:56) Yeah, it’s very rare. I know what the New Yorkers feel like now, but whenever I find one who actually lives in New York, it’s like, oh my God, a unicorn. Anyway, I grew up in the Sunset District of San Francisco. My father is an entrepreneur; he actually started his own business, a company called Borneo International Travel. By being raised in Indonesia, I think one thing that always fascinated him was traveling. Especially, going all over the world, and what he did was, he came to the U.S. for school, for college, and he was supposed to go back to Indonesia and help run the family business, but decided he really liked San Francisco, and decided to stay, and start his own business.

John: (02:44) What’s not to like? What was the family business that his family was involved in?

Vieje: (02:49) That’s actually a very interesting story. I think after World War II, my family was pretty much an exile in Indonesia. My dad himself grew up pretty poor. He tells me stories all the time about how he grew up selling ice cubes on the street until his uncles started a chainsaw business. The family business was booming. Around when my dad hit his teenage years, they sent him over to the U.S. with hopes of expanding. Plans fell through, obviously, but my dad ended up staying here. Starting his own gig, which was essentially a travel agency. He specializes in Southeast Asian travel. Started it right around 1992, and it’s still running today, surprisingly.

John: (03:42) Oh, wow. Really? Well, I’m sure the travel agency business has probably changed a lot with the internet. So, he’s mostly—

Vieje: (03:49) Exactly.

John: (03:49)—adapted quite a bit with that.

Vieje: (03:52) Yes and no. I think obviously, he could’ve done a little bit of better a job with the internet, but at some point you’re not going to compete with the stuff online. I think what helped him out, especially, is a lot of loyal customers. Especially, the older generation, the people who still want to talk to someone they trust on the phone. Help him out and he gets a lot of connections through … they connect him to the airlines, and what not. That’s what’s kept him afloat. But, yeah, it is a dying business and I keep thinking he’s going to wrap it up for the next year.

John: (04:22) I’m sure you got to see his work ethic and learn from osmosis from him, but did he ever specifically talk about work or investing or entrepreneurship with you?

Vieje: (04:35) Yeah. Definitely a lot about entrepreneurship. I think when it comes to the money aspect, he’s always been pretty good with money, but I think maybe it’s a cultural difference, being from an Asian American background. We never really sat down and said … he never gave me the spiel of put $1 in and get the interest. Like the typical spiel dads give. I think he influenced me from a different angle on that, his work ethic and what it takes to run a business. He worked six days a week for the last 30- something years of his life. So, it’s quite interesting to see.

John: (05:14) Did you ever do any part-time work for him?

Vieje: (05:17) A little bit. I’m still doing part-time work for him. Unpaid, of course.

John: (05:21) Okay, perfect.

Vieje: (05:24) When I was a kid, I would always help him out with the little things. I built his first website I think when I was a young teenager and helped him adapt to the internet age. But whenever he has a few problems, whether it’s financial or tax problems, he’ll ask me a few questions here and there. But what’s actually happened since I moved back to San Francisco, he’s actually asked me to help build him a new website that’s a lot more modern because his clients are complaining that his site isn’t mobile friendly.

John: (05:53) Yeah.

Vieje: (05:55) Being a non-engineer, it’s a fun project for me to actually have a breath in for building a website. Shout out to Squarespace for helping facilitate that.

John: (06:05)Okay. You said First Base? Who is that a company?

Vieje: (06:08)  Squarespace.

John: (06:10) Squarespace. Yeah, sorry.

John: (06:11) Yeah, shout out to Squarespace.

Vieje: (06:13) Squarespace is great for non-engineers.

John: (06:17) Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, that’s an interesting background. Did you have a job in high school or did you ever learn budgeting on your own when you were growing up?

Vieje: (06:28)  Yeah, actually kind of interesting story. Given my background, my father’s background, he grew up from pretty much nothing as a teenager. I think he’s always wanted to just feel that culture of hard work and get what you ordered type of deal. As a kid, growing up all my friends had bigger allowances than me. Maybe more fun toys, better video games. As a young teenager, I was the guy always trying to find ways to make extra cash on the side. Officially or unofficially, I remember it’s my first official or unofficial job rather, because I got really good at this video game called Francisco 2. My nerdy side is coming out.

John: (07:12) That’s awesome.

Vieje: ( 07:14) Yeah, people would actually pay money for items in my game to get better. I realized that, and I also realized there are people out there who are cheating and essentially running the robots overnight to basically farm these items. I found out how to do that and quickly set up a shop and added a PayPal account.

Speaker 1: (07:33) Wow.

Vieje: (07:33) Actually, that was my first job. My first job that I was given constant ownership. Then from there, I had various gigs. I tried to resell a few things on Ebay. Things like that, as the internet age came up at that point, it was very interesting finding new things and trying to make money.

John: (07:52)I know virtually nothing about the videogame world. Is it called E-Sports? I guess it’s like the biggest booming sector within the “sports world.”

Vieje: (08:03) Yeah.

John: (08:04) You were early on that?

Vieje: (08:06) No, it’s quite amazing. I don’t really play videogames anymore and I haven’t since probably high school, but I just got a notification on my app yesterday, something to do with ESPN or something athletic. It goes like, “The first female has been drafted to the Golden State Warrior E-sports team.” I’m like there’s an E-sports team? It’s quite amazing. The Golden State Warriors have some sort of like minor league E-sports team, which is quite amazing.

John: (08:39) That’s amazing.

Vieje: (08:40) I’d love to be paid to play videogames.

John: (08:44) That’s super funny. Let’s fast forward, let’s go up to college. Tell us about where you went to school and what you studied while you were there?

Vieje: (08:55) I actually went to the University of Washington up in Seattle. I loved the Huskies, go dogs. Went there for four years of my undergrad and stayed for another year for my master’s. Actually came into school thinking I was going to be a computer engineer, that’s kind of what interested me. But for one reason or another, maybe part of it with hating calculus, the other part of it was most of my friends were going into business. I decided to stop, tried to take a few business classes and then apply for business school, got in. I took an accounting class and accounting was when I was headed. It doesn’t sound cool, but a lot of my friends were actually going into it. I quickly found out that good paying jobs out of college were in public accounting and I was somehow good at it.

Vieje: (09:44) It kind of just fit for me. That’s how accounting fell on my lap. Then shortly after that I took a tax class with Bill Wrestler. For some of you who were at UDub, you probably know him as the guy who walked around in sweats all day at the Foster School of Business. But probably the most influential person in my career. I took a tax class with him and he was like a tax god. He made tax somehow fun and interesting, and I liked it. Not a lot of people do, and I think right then and there I was like, I’m screwed. I’m going to be a tax accountant. Yeah, I did that. I majored in business, with a focus in accounting. I applied for Bill’s master’s in tax class. Had probably the most fun five years of my life. Well, getting a degree, couldn’t really complain about that.

John: (10:40) Wow, you can’t complain. For everybody that’s bitching about higher education or the costs of college. You maximized it from being able to find something you were interested in and then good at.

Vieje: (10:54) Yes. Absolutely.

John:(10:55) So, the one year that you did afterward, is that for the CPA designation or how did that come about?

Vieje: (11:03) Yeah. Actually, I think nowadays it’s different. Back then, it didn’t require you to take five years of schooling to go get that CPA, but I think now they officially made it required. But, I looked at it as a nice little victory lap, the wait, not joining the workforce for another year. It was a master’s in tax law, so pretty much my life consisted of going to lectures for four hours a day. Basically learning about different tax laws and then going home, and reading the tax code for about six hours. It was an interesting year and somehow, some way Bill Wrestler made this interesting. He made us have a lot of fun. We’d always get together, we’d have beer pong tournaments. He was a local favorite at this bar called the Dutchess, which as a fellow UDub alumn, you’ve probably been to. We’d go there quite often. It was a good year. I’d say it was one of the better years of my five years, despite, pretty much just being in the library 90% of the time.

John: (12:04) That’s super. Since you’ve referenced him this way and have explained him as such an impactful guy, maybe this is a silly question, but how do you feel your experience would have been different if you had a different professor?

Vieje: (12:19) I mean, that’s so hard to think of, it’s had such a big impact in my life. I don’t think I would be in tax. I don’t think I’d be talking to you right now if it wasn’t for him. I think as I get on to where I’m at now, obviously, I was happy I went that route. But in hindsight, I always wonder what other things could I have done. What would have happened if I stuck with, let’s say engineering, or something like that. It’s always interesting to see but the impact … to have the impact that someone like Bill Wrestler has. He made tax fun. He made it interesting. He gave some real-world applications. I can’t say that I’d be the same spot I am now without him.

John: (13:09) Yeah, that’s so awesome. You did your fifth year at UDub, and then where was your first job out of school?

Vieje: (13:16) I took my first job with Price Waterhouse Cooper. I think it was a natural progression, I guess. You major in accounting as an undergrad, you do your fifth year master’s, and that program is pretty good. I got recruited out to join PWC shortly thereafter. Under Bill’s advice, I decided to take my offer in New York instead of staying in Seattle.

John: (13:42) Okay.

Vieje: (13:42) That opened the door quite a bit. I think New York always interested me, and again, Bill really made it sound appealing. Bill makes everything sound appealing, including tax. He basically went out and said, look, if you can make it in New York, you can pretty much make it anywhere. The lifestyle, the fast- paced aspects of that city, and everything he said was absolutely true. I was out there for about five years. That was a fun five years, it went by so quickly. But I learned so much about myself, met so many cool people and just learned a lot in my professional period just from working out there that I don’t think I would’ve gotten out of Seattle or San Francisco. I’m glad I spent my mid-20s in New York.

John: (14:30) Yeah. Well, that’s pretty neat. I think from the outside the perception that I have of going into some of the Big Four accounting companies, there’s a lot of grinding that happens and then potentially some burnout, and I wonder what the statistic is on the turnover rate. But from the outside it seems like there’s a one- to two-year time frame that people go into the Big Four and then they turn over. So, to last five years in New York, maybe it doesn’t sound like a long time. To me, it seems like a really long time. What was the turnover rate like in your office while you were there?

Vieje: (15:06) Oh, absolutely, and they’re open about it, too. I think it’s the same at all the Big Four, but I’m going to talk about PWC because that’s all I know. But I think it’s probably pretty similar to the rest and the other three firms. I think that the moment we got there and they were very open about saying, look to your left, look to your right. There’s a very good chance none of the people will be in the room in two years. Let alone five, let alone until partnership. I think the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about it is that a lot of people go into accounting, whether it’s audit, or tax, or advisory, because it’s a pretty good paying job out of school.

Vieje: (15:45) Parents are kind of ushering kids get a good job so they can get off their books, stop sending you our money. I think with the amount of recruiting they do, it’s an appealing option. Then when you couple that with the fact that one day you can make partner and make a pretty darn good salary, and be set for life with a pension, it’s appealing, and definitely appealed to me at that time. I think that’s the first factor. I think the second factor is that there are a lot of hours; it’s a very demanding job.

Vieje: (16:16) My first two years I worked in tax and clients for hedge funds, private equity firms. I think the reputation of New York is people there work even more than any other city. I found that to be pretty true. There were a lot of late nights working in the office, so it was rewarding in a lot of aspects. But it requires a lot out of you and, quite frankly, by the time you hit your mid-20s, your late 20s, you start to get a little burnt out from it.

John: (16:47) Sure. I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it lays a tremendous foundation of a hard work ethic and you see a lot, you probably get exposed to a ton of things. I guess not to say that the turnover is all that bad, but it just is what it is. At least you got to go through it.

Vieje: (17:03) No, absolutely. I was going to say what’s great about an organization like a Big Four accounting firm is the fact that if you don’t like what you’re doing, there’s something else out there. What happened for me is that after my first two years, I was over the tax compliance and the busy season. I switched to a consulting group for my last three years. That was a much better experience, because they just digged my personality a lot better. There’s a lot of other fields there, too, so yes, there are a lot of long hours, and the job is difficult, but you get a lot out of it, too. I just wanted to mention that.

John: (17:43)  Yeah. I want to make sure to get to your current job and some of the other intricacies there, but super quick. Regarding consulting, tell me more about what type of projects were you working on. Who were the clients and what were you doing for them?

Vieje: (17:56) Yeah, absolutely. I joined a group called Tax Reporting and Strategy. We were a consulting based group that was actually, unofficially, the tech guys, the tech consultants in the tax firm. We were all tax specialists in one way or another, and what we would do is go to firms and help implement new technology to automate a lot of their processes. I focused on our hedge funds and private equity firms.

Vieje: (18:26) On one day I could be analyzing how they’re accounting for everything from a tax perspective. Then the next day I could be working with some engineers based in a different city to help build them a technology that would help them implement these technologies. That was sort of the focus there. There were a few side projects. They were pretty interesting, as we call it, a tax transformation, where a large bank transformed its entire tax department. Whether it’s your head account or technology, we worked through that as well.

John: (19:03) Wow. Super good experience. So, then five years there and then you moved on to bigger and better things. How did you learn about Secfi, and what was that process like? I’m sure you could’ve gone anywhere. I’m sure having five years at PWC on your resume is going to be super appealing to a bunch of people and you knew a lot more about the industry in your expertise at that time. So, why Secfi?

Vieje: (19:30) I actually found out about Secfi through a close friend. He was talking to the founders of Secfi, told me about the really interesting company and made the introduction. That’s how I found out about them. I think in terms of my next move, I think that after being at PWC for five years, I had that entrepreneurial itch. I come from a family of entrepreneurs, and going to one of the largest corporations went against the grain. I always had that itch and I made the decision at some point that I was going to either move to a smaller company or start my own gig on the side.

Vieje: (20:09) But when Secfi reached out, it was kind of the perfect match. They were looking for someone who’d be able to help out their clients from a tax advisory standpoint, because a lot of their clients needed a tax advisor as well as financial support. I’ll get into some of what Secfi does in a little bit, but there are a lot of financial products as well. It was a very small team at the time they reached out to me; they’d only been going for about a year. I really saw it as a perfect match, a perfect opportunity to do something outside my comfort zone, and try something new.

John: (20:56) That’s awesome. That’s very fortuitous. Then tell me about when you moved back and started working for them. When did you actually start working there?

Vieje: (21:05) Yeah, I started unofficially as an advisor helping them out with a few different projects back in the summer of last year. So, the summer of 2018, and then we officially decided I was going to start full time in October 2018. Wrapped up a few loose ends in New York shortly thereafter in November, moved back to San Francisco, and helped launch the San Francisco office for Secfi.

John: (21:34) Okay, that’s cool. I really want to get into some case studies or just some examples of some of the things you learned because obviously being in Silicon Valley and having equity in a company are fun and exciting; it feels like the carrot that’s dangled in front of hungry people who are graduating from college. But there’s a lot more ins and outs, there’s like a ton of risk. There’s some maybe binary risk and all of that, so I just want you to chat about that a little bit. Let’s say for somebody who’s currently in this world or thinking about getting into a private company and they’re being offered equity. What are some of the things that they need to be thinking about?

Vieje: (22:14) Yeah, absolutely. I think obviously in the private company world the equity compensation chain is a big deal. The idea that you can move on from a bigger company and I can speak from experience, because that’s exactly what happened to me. It was, you’re working for a bigger company, likely the pay will likely be bigger at a bigger company, but what the startup can offer is essentially equity compensation to make up for that difference with pay. The hope there is that we get equity that may be worth virtually nothing at the time — but you help grow the company and eventually the stock is going to be worth a good sizeable chunk of cash in the future when there’s an IPO or an acquisition.

Vieje: (23:01)  There’s a big disconnect to understanding the valuation of your options even to start. I think when you’re a brand new, you interview for a job, you really like the company and someone says, okay, great, we’re going to make your offer. Here’s your salary and here’s your equity comp. A lot of people read that incorrectly. I think when you look at the total value of your equity, there’s a lot of definition, like the 498 value, the preferred price. Even though the different ISOs and NSOs, and it’s really hard to put a dollar value on that.

Vieje: (23:39) Especially when there’s no readily available market for it, you can’t sell it. I think there’s an information gap out there about the equity compensation in general and the fact that most people have big jobs there, especially the ones who are new, fresh out of school, or maybe their second job, they don’t really know what equity compensation entails, they don’t even know what it means. They just signed an offer sheet saying, okay, I’ve got, let’s say, 50,000 options, great, and kind of let it sit there without even really thinking about it. Without even really thinking about how this impacts their future earnings, besides the fact that it may be worth something one day.

John: (24:19) Yeah. Your website has some really cool mini case studies and I’ve been able to learn from that. Let’s consider this guy who’s at a startup and maybe he’s got 50,000 shares that have been granted to him. When can they take action on them? I know there’s a period of years before these things vest, so give me like an example of what the common vesting schedule is.

Vieje: (24:45) I think the most common vesting schedule is to use what the tech companies in the Silicon Valley do, what’s called a four-year investing period with a one-year cliff. The one-year cliff basically says the vesting doesn’t start for an entire year, but once you hit that one-year mark, you have a full year’s worth of vesting from one-fourth of your options. That just protects the company a little bit. If you join a company and turn out to be a terrible employee, you can get fired without getting any options. So, that’s the typical investment schedule. I think typically what happens is an employee gets options that vest over four years and they can start exercising them depending on the terms within one year.

John: (25:33) Yeah. Let’s say some number of shares have been vested and then they’re thinking about exercising. What are some of the things they need to consider at that juncture?

Vieje: (25:45) This is obviously a very difficult question. I think this is where a lot of people struggle. What are my options actually worth? Do I want to put my cash in now? Am I going to get the taxed? How much am I going to get taxed? That’s really where the information disconnect is and what Secfi is trying to help employees start understanding. One of the considerations is what kind of options do you have, right? You can have extended stock options or non-qualified stock options. Each have different tax implications. How do you feel about the company?

Vieje: (26:20) Everyone has his bias of the company they work for. They should. They shouldn’t believe their company is awesome and going to IPO at a $100 billion one day. Reality is that doesn’t really happen, right? So, you’ve got to have a honest conversation with yourself, like, realistically, is this company going to do well? At the end of the day, you’re not going to realize any value from your shares until the company has an IPO or sometimes they’ll do a secondary listing. But won’t get into that now; maybe for another day. But you really got to be honest to yourself, and how do you feel about your company realistically.

John: (27:03) Super challenge?

Vieje: (27:05) Oh yeah, absolutely.

John: (27:09) Another question I have though, say you’re at a company — a private company — for six years, let’s just say, and during that time there’s been no acquisition and no IPO, and then you get a better offer somewhere else, or decide screw this place, I need something new. What happens to all your vested shares, and is there a difference in whether or not if you’ve exercised or not on some of those vested shares?

Vieje: (27:35) No, absolutely. I think that’s typically where people come up to us at Secfi. They’re looking to leave the company or they’ve already left the company and they have unexercised options. If you exercise your options and you hold back those shares, those are your shares. As long as you’re vested, they’re your shares, you can hold on to them just so you won’t have a problem. The problem is, most people who get granted options hold onto them and they wait until they need to exercise them to actually exercise them. But that typically gets very expensive. Someone that’s 23, 24 might have to pay $100,000 if not more, and not only that cost, but taxes associated with their shares. That’s the typical situation and what ends up happening is on paper they have this great number of options, this great company and they feel good about it.

Vieje: (28:31) But they may need to pay a large chunk of their net worth if they even have it. Most people don’t have any liquidity to exercise their shares. Otherwise, typically what happens when you leave a company is that your shares will expire. So, you’ll lose the value from it after 90 days. Of course, if the company allows, you can get an extension or the company may allow you to hold on to your options longer. But at the end of the day, it’s a huge problem in Silicon Valley. Really, why our founder started the company. He went through this himself and sought out to help people in situations like that. Help them exercise their shares or options.

John: (29:18) Okay. So, tell me a little bit more though. People come to you at this inflection point, they’re like, they’re going to leave a company or they have left, and so these are people who have not yet exercised some of the shares, so they need to pony up cash first of all to buy the stock and they’ve got a tax liability at that time. What are you guys doing for them?

Vieje: (29:45) Yes, I think you’re right. I think the majority of cases of people who come to us are people who have left or are looking to leave the company and need help exercising their options. Just to be clear, we don’t lend against options — if you’ve already exercised and what you’re looking for is an advance on your shares. For instance, I’ve already bought my shares of whatever company, I don’t want to wait till an IPO.

Vieje: (30:10) I’d like some cash ahead of the IPO. We can do that as well. But I’d say, typically what happens is a client will come to us, say, hey, I just left the company and have 90 days to do something with my shares. We laugh about it now, but it happens a lot more than you would think. But the employee will come up and say my options are about to expire, can you help me out with that? Or we’ll do it, we’ll use our tools and calculate there their total costs, which means their exercise cost, any tax and bill pay. We’ll find out exactly how much cash is needed and we’ll work with them and try to find the capital in order to exercise. So, they really reap the benefits of their hard work. Their equity compensation, like I said, it’s another form of compensation for the time you’ve put in building that company. I think that’s the goal.

John: (31:08) That’s super awesome. I have personal experience with this and it’s why I wanted to have you on the show to talk a little bit more about it. My story is slightly different, but still has a sense of urgency. I think it was December 2016. I had been working with a client who was super busy, and I could hardly get him in for a meeting. Then on December 1, he calls me, he’s like, “Hey, I just resigned.” I almost fell over because I was able to see that he had NSOs — non-qualified stock options — that he had not exercised. I knew from that moment the clock was ticking and he had no idea. It was somewhere between 60 and 90 days to exercise on this and the fair market value of over $3 million.

John: (32:00) So, not only was he going to lose that even if he did exercise on it, his tax liability was going to be insane. We worked like around the clock for two or three weeks, super frantic so he could exercise some. Fortunately, he had the year-end for tax purposes on his side, so he exercised almost half in 2016 and another half in 2017. I just shook my head thinking like, you’ve spent 14 years at this company and we’re exercising them after you leave. But that’s just how life works.

Vieje: (32:38) I think you hit the nail on the head. I talk to a lot of employees at these companies every single day. It’s quite amazing. I get more and more amazed every single day I do it. Just how many people haven’t thought about their options, and thinking about their equity compensation. It’s easy to put it on the back burner. There are so many myths about equity compensation. Let’s say a long-term deal that’s not worth anything yet. We’ll worry about it later when we need to, things like that. Quite frankly, that’s probably the worst thing you can do. Doing nothing with your options is literally the worst thing you can do. Maybe you make a plan, you analyze everything and then you decide you want to sit on them. That’s okay. But at least you’ve thought about it before deciding to do nothing.

Vieje: (33:33) Quite frankly, most people who come to us, very smart people, are building these amazing companies. But from a financial perspective, they just hadn’t given it much thought. When you put things in perspective … all right John, I think you need to put some things in perspective and these options are sometimes worth 75%, and not 80 and 90% of one individual’s entire net worth. Situations like you just described happen all the time. What we’re hoping to do at Secfi now, obviously we have a great product to help people out in that situation where they’re stuck. How can we help them from an earlier stage? How do you reach this? How we can help them plan and make sure they make better financial decisions from the onset so they stay whole later on down the road?

John: (34:24) You’re speaking my language as a CFP. I love it. I mean, well we talked about a ton. I really appreciate you going through this. Before we wrap things up, are there other things in regard to your current work or Secfi we haven’t covered that you want to be able to tell people?

Vieje: (34:42) What’s I’d say to anyone who’s listening is plan, plan ahead of time. Talk to tax advisors, talk the wealth planners like John. I think you’re in a great financial position having options, most people don’t get options. If you’re fortunate enough to have options, great. But the more you plan now, the more you’ll take home later on down the road. The little things like having one or two meetings a year with a financial advisor or a tax accountant, or a tax lawyer, and really making a plan of attack for your options. The returns and the ultimate income be significant when time comes for your company through IPO. Or when your company gets acquired. I guess that’s my biggest takeaway. The last thing I want to mention, make sure you plan, reach out to us, reach out to John and just plan for your options. Then we’re going to help you take on more.

John: (35:45) I love it. It’s super good. Thanks for coming on. I hope to have you on again, Vieje, I really appreciate your time.

Vieje: (35:51) Absolutely. Thanks John. A lot of fun.

Announcer: (35:54) Thanks for tuning in to the John Chapman show. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify. We encourage your questions, comments and feedback. For additional information, check out thejohnchapmanshow.com or look for John on Linkedin and Twitter. See you next week.