Noah Rosenfarb 12:19
Yeah, so I guess to help you with the context, before that, practicing as a CPA, I worked in my dad’s CPA firm helping him scale it and eventually sell it. And while I was there, I had an expertise in divorce forensic accounting, so family lawyers would hire me to testify in court about how much money people made how much their businesses were worth and what they spent their money on, and where the assets were. And so I had relationships with family lawyers. And what I noticed was that we had about $200 million a year changing hands between husbands and wives in the divorces that we’re working on. And unfortunately, for many of the non-titled spouses, which were often homemaker women, they would get a financial settlement.
And I saw many of them get taken advantage of by people that, you know, to take advantage of their unfamiliarity with money. And so I decided to leave the family business, the comforts of, you know, working with my father, to start a family office for affluent divorced women. And I went to those same lawyers, and I said, Listen, you know, me, you trust me, I believe I can help these women, I’ll I’ll help them with their budgeting, I’ll help them with their bill paying, I’ll prepare their tax returns, I’ll manage their money, I’ll make sure they have an up to date estate plan, I’ll help them, you know, be responsible with what they’ve received. And so I built a business which was focused on that niche, using and leveraging the contacts that I had made in my prior business.
John Corcoran 13:54
I want to ask you about that and some of the unique challenges of building that business. But before I do a forensic accounting firm, you must have had some stories. So I have to ask, What is the craziest story of something? Obviously, we’re going to anonymize it.
Noah Rosenfarb 14:14
But crazy, you discovered one of the saddest stories and in many ways, one of the stories that influenced me to leave the business was, we had a really unfortunate situation where a very blue collar couple had incredible financial success in their blue collar business to the tune of, you know, 10s of millions of dollars. And the wife was responsible for the finances while the husband was out, you know, turning wrenches, and when they were going through divorce, there was so much distrust, that the husband didn’t understand where the money was and how it got there.
And there were literally hundreds of accounts that the wife was opening and putting money in and closing was ending and moving. And he figured there must have been fraud. And he paid me over $400,000 to try and figure out where the money was. And at the end of the day, it was all exactly where it was where she said it was, she just had something inside of her, that was causing her to open accounts and close them and move them. And it just felt really horrible for me to be profiting from that situation. And so they really, in many ways caused me to leave the business.
John Corcoran 15:33
And it’s, it’s another parallel between you and I, because when I practice law, that’s what bothered me the most is that I was enabling people to fight. That’s what I didn’t like about practicing law on it, it drew me away from the profession of doing that.
Noah Rosenfarb 15:47
Yeah. The more people flocked, the more money I made, and I, my preference was to get things resolved quickly, fairly.
John Corcoran 15:53
And you so your interests are not aligned with what the business model is, yeah, it’s not great. So you’re gonna talk to me a little bit about what it was like, you know, working with divorce, women who, you know, are coming into a sum of money, you got to build trust in them. So they trust you, while they’re going through one of the most emotional experiences of their lifetime. And that’s not an easy task, either. Either to build trust, or, or to build a business with that amount of emotion wrapped up in it.
Noah Rosenfarb 16:23
I’ve always been very empathetic. And I’ve also, you know, I’ve had that experience growing up of trying to help my mom manage her money, even as a young child. And so I think I was, in many ways, designed for that type of work of being in a highly emotional situation, dealing with money with someone that’s uncomfortable with it, and feels like a beginner. And I’ve also always been a good teacher. And so I think the skill set that I had, and in many ways, my good nature and my, you know, trustworthiness, which comes from really wanting to be genuinely helpful to people, I think all of that mesh really well with my technical skill set to be able to create a business that required high trust, high emotional threshold, high empathy. And it worked out really well for me as well.
John Corcoran 17:20
That’s amazing. And if you’re going to start a business that has to do with investing, starting at the bottom is a great idea. So 2007 actually ended up being a good idea, because you’re investing money and the economy ends up, you know, there’s a tougher couple of years, but after a few years you get gone again.
Noah Rosenfarb 17:38
Yeah, and so I had the wind behind my back, which was certainly helpful. But in, you know, I found that it was still not easy to figure out how to transfer trust from the lawyer in me, to the client, to me, and, and so it wasn’t, you know, fishing fish in a barrel. But it was a really great business that I was happy to grow and eventually exit.
John Corcoran 18:09
Yeah. And you end up moving to Florida in 2011. So a couple years into this business, what inspired that?
Noah Rosenfarb 18:16
My wife and I were walking on the boardwalk in Hollywood, Florida, where her parents had a second home. And we were strolling down there with our nine-month-old son over Christmas, where we had a break, and we were on vacation. And I’d like to play by
John Corcoran 18:30
the way, say no more that say no more. That just explains it right there. You’re always in winter, you’re there. You’re like, why don’t we move somewhere warm?
Noah Rosenfarb 18:39
Well, so I bought this lottery ticket. And this has been a theme in my life where I like to buy a lottery ticket, because I am so money motivated. And I’d sit down and think if we won, what are the things I’d start doing? And what are the things I’d stopped doing? And who are the people I’d spend more time with? And who are the people I’d spend less time with? And when we looked at the answers to those questions, one of the things that came up was we live in Florida. And so I was, you know, thinking that the reason that I like to play the game is because many times I don’t need more money to do what I really want to do.
I just need more courage and more thoughtfulness and more planning. And so we decided, You know what, let’s make this leap. And let’s leave our families. Let’s leave the business. Let’s leave our network. Let’s leave everything we’ve ever known and go for warm weather, blue skies and no snow. And we haven’t looked back. That was a really great decision that we made. And certainly we could have more money if we had stayed in New Jersey, but I don’t think we’d have a better life.
John Corcoran 19:38
What were some of the challenges around starting the business over if that’s even what you did, or rather like building your network in a new place while you started the business? Because this is way before the pandemic This is before a lot of businesses were remote.
Noah Rosenfarb 19:52
Yeah, so I was commuting back to New Jersey at first twice a month, then, you know, twice a month for three days. And twice a month for two days, then, you know, every couple of weeks. And eventually I realized, that’s not the lifestyle, I wanted to get back to that lottery game, you know, I really didn’t want to be on a plane. And so I was regretting it and lamenting it. And that’s what ultimately led me to sell the business and essentially retire for the first time.
John Corcoran 20:19
Yeah, but that didn’t last very long. What did you find after you’d retired? Um, yeah, so
Noah Rosenfarb 20:25
I was a professional investor, you know, I’ve always been a good investor, and someone that was, started investing in stocks when I was just nine years old. And then I started investing in real estate when I was 22 years old. And obviously, I started a business and a business when I was 19 years old. So I had been exposed to different asset classes, and always enjoyed the process of investing. And so I just decided, you know, what, I’ll invest my own capital. And then I had some families that I had worked with over the years, we were buying real estate together. And I figured that would be enough for me from an active income standpoint.
And the rest would just be living off passive income and having my time to myself and really focused on philanthropy. And unfortunately, for me, philanthropy wasn’t filling my cup in the way that I had expected it to. And I got antsy and bored and I was binge watching a little bit too much at Netflix and looking at my wife saying, Is this really the life? Is this the contribution that I want to make to our world? And I felt like I was underutilizing my talent. And it wasn’t in many ways, and I guess it’s somewhat odd to say it, but I didn’t feel like I was making the contribution that I should.
John Corcoran 21:40
Yeah. And so you end up deciding I’m going to start a business again, even though I don’t have to. And that’s what became Freedom Family office,
Noah Rosenfarb 21:49
I believe. Yeah. So yeah, I would just the natural order of business was, you know, friends would come to me like Joel Bandera. Friends, like Eric Rosenberg, who’s been on your show, and people would ask me for help, hey, can you help me? Can you look at my investments? Can you look at my insurance, and can you help me or my estate plan? Can you look at my tax return, because people knew that that was not only a business that I was in, but it was something that is something I enjoyed talking about? And I was doing unique things with my own money and my own family.
And so people wanted to learn about it. And I kept saying, No, you know, I don’t really have a business, like, I’ll go out to lunch with you. But they needed more. And I realized one day, that these are really the people I want to help, you know. And so while I was working on these nonprofit boards for causes that we care about Jewish causes education and food security, it wasn’t really being able to contribute my highest and best use to the planet. And so I took a look around, I took all these people that were asking me for help, and I decided to build a business to really serve them because they’re, they’re the people I care about most, which is right.
John Corcoran 22:59
And so it’s no longer it serving divorced women, but rather families. So talk a little bit about, you know, what was the market you decided that you’d be serving? And how would you do it differently for them?
Noah Rosenfarb 23:12
Yeah, so I started a family office for entrepreneurs, I would say that the vast majority of them are selling their business. And so they come to me before they’re going to sell their company. What may be a little part of the story that we skipped over was in 2013, I wrote a book called Exit Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, and that was just more of a passion project. Because I had a client, I helped them sell their company. I thought I was doing the best job I could for them. They told me they wanted 50 million bucks. After a number of years working together, I got them there. 50 million bucks.
And then six months later, I was in the therapist’s office, and they were talking about getting divorced. And I figured man, how did this happen? Like I was supposed to be this trusted adviser to this entrepreneur. And yet I led them astray by not knowing that what they were telling me wasn’t really what they really wanted, was broader than that. And so I had written that book and kind of left it on the side I had attempted when I moved to Florida, to start a business working with entrepreneurs, and it was just too much effort and too much of an uphill battle. And I was too, you know, content with my life and my income that I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to fight for it.
But, you know, as time marched on, I found this opportunity again, presenting myself to meet with people coming to me with questions. I saw that I could really serve these entrepreneurs in a way that no one else in the marketplace was doing and really, in many ways appeared the same to me as it did when I started serving these affluent divorced women at a time back when there weren’t designations like this certified divorce financial analyst are there weren’t people focused on the divorced women community as in serving them financially?
John Corcoran 24:55
How, if at all, have you done this business differently? In order to ensure that it’s something that you get up each morning wanting to commit your time to and it doesn’t. Like in many cases, I talked to entrepreneurs who end up working too many hours on the new business and doing things that they didn’t want to do, even if they didn’t have to.
Noah Rosenfarb 25:18
So I think there was the good fortune of COVID, in that instance for me, because I did have to work, you know, 40 and 60-hour weeks, which isn’t something that I was accustomed to. But I was happy to do it during COVID, because there really wasn’t much else that I was going on. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So kind of the timing worked out well for me. And now I’m back to the schedule that suits my lifestyle. I tend to work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, Wednesdays I spend with my wife, Friday, I do things that are fun for me.
And so I kind of have a good balance on a typical week, and then I tend to work about 40 weeks a year and take off about 12 weeks a year. I shall have a nice, you know, call it 1000 hours a year that I work, and that that’s a good pace. And I would say what’s different this time around was that I recognized early that in order to build a business that allows me to live the lifestyle that I want, I’d have to put a team in place that would be better than me doing it myself. And I’ve been able to assemble a team of accountants, lawyers and financial planners that I think each individually have deeper technical skill sets than I have. And so when you aggregate them together, they’re way better than I am alone.
John Corcoran 26:33
Yeah. And so what is the process now for clients that come to you that want to achieve some happiness want to exit their business and not end up in the therapist’s office six months later, like you have a particular process that you take them through to discover what that rich beyond money means. And then actually following through on implementing it.
Noah Rosenfarb 26:55
We do, it all starts with a small consulting assignment. So we get a chance, what I call a paid interview. So they get an opportunity to work with our team, typically over about a month’s time. They pay us for, you know, some advice and guidance as to where they are now, where they want to be and how they’re going to get there. And we do that work on their behalf to help them discover from their own perspective. And you know, we do that work with married couples, often if they come to us as married, or sometimes with a life partner, sometimes when they’re single, but helping them think through what is the ultimate goal they’re trying to reach?
We refer to that as their true north. And we have some exercises to help them visualize what that’s going to look like, what do they ultimately want out of their life? And then we reverse engineer, how are they going to go from where they are today to that future that they want, and figure out the optimal path. And what I like to say is the optimal path isn’t always the fastest path. Sometimes the fastest path is to sell your business, capture big chat, and boom, you’ve got the liquidity. But usually, that doesn’t produce a great result. And so what we want to do is help them optimize for the ultimate outcome, which is to have that life that’s rich beyond money.
John Corcoran 28:07
Yeah. This has been, this is great. Noah, I love that you’re helping people in Britain, kind of basing it on your life story and your life experiences and being able to kind of give back in that way. You mentioned earlier, you’ve been dedicated Jewish causes. I wanted to ask you about the last six months, four months, three months, something like that has been hard, too. We’re recording this. And in 2024, of course, in October there were some horrible, terrible terror attacks that happened in Israel. What have the last few months been like for you?
Noah Rosenfarb 28:43
A challenge for sure. I think as somebody whose last name is Rosenfarb, it’s pretty obvious to most people that I’m Jewish, as soon as they hear my name, and to see the anti-semitism that’s so out in the open and so blatant. That wasn’t there before October 7 was really challenging to witness, like.
John Corcoran 29:07
What was there, but we didn’t know, right?
Noah Rosenfarb 29:11
Yeah. Yeah. And my grandfather survived Auschwitz, and the death march and, you know, my father’s mother as well, who I never got to meet. And so it’s amazing to me that just, you know, 80 years from when he was liberated from Auschwitz, there’s so much vitriol and hatred towards Jews for what they believe. And I guess it’s a problem that’s been around for 1000s of years. And so I shouldn’t be surprised that it still exists. But it’s a challenge in the lesson. And I’ve got a 17-year-old son who’s soon going to be off to college. And it amazes me that even before October 7, we were doing research on will he feel safe on a college campus as a Jewish student after October 7, you know, that’s just been amplified.
John Corcoran 29:58
Yeah, I’ve talked to others who a friend of mine who is Jewish said her daughter was at one of these universities that we’ve seen in the news and was just not feeling comfortable at all on campus because of a lot of the different things, protests that were happening right after the attacks.
Noah Rosenfarb 30:19
Yeah. So I think for any of you listeners that maybe know somebody that’s Jewish care about somebody that’s Jewish, I would always encourage you just to reach out, ask somebody, how are they doing? How are they feeling, because often, for many of the Jewish families that I’m speaking with, they do feel alone, they feel ostracized, they feel like, you know, they’re the bad guy in this situation somehow. And so if you could extend that olive branch, extend that, you know, not acknowledgement to them that you’re thinking of them. I know, it’ll be appreciated.
John Corcoran 30:50
Ya know, I really enjoyed hearing your story. And I’d love to wrap up with a question that I always ask people, which is the big fan of gratitude, especially expressing gratitude publicly for those who’ve helped you along the way in your journey. And I’d love to just hear if they’re, you know, few peers or contemporaries or other entrepreneurs, other founders, who you’d want to call out and thank them.
Noah Rosenfarb 31:16
There’s dozens and dozens, you know, nobody gets here alone. I’d say one, really formative experience that came out of the EO Entrepreneurs Organization of which I’ve been a member for 11 years, I’ve been in part of the shape Forum, which is a component of EO where I meet every month with the same eight other entrepreneurs had been in the same group, since inception, people have come and gone, but the group is the same. And there was a time, you know, recently in my life, where I was always struggling with what is my capacity to achieve financial success and business success, given My strong preference to have a lifestyle that I enjoy, and one where I can prioritize what’s important to me, which often isn’t spending more time at the office.
And so I had this, you know, incredibly self-limiting belief that took me a long time to work through and my forum was really helpful in getting me to understand that, you know, Richard Branson, somebody I admire Mark Cuban, someone I admire, that they’re able to operate with the same 24 hours in a day that I have, and that my peers have. And, you know, the amount of time that I might spend toiling on my business is not necessarily going to be directly correlated to the financial success, or the business growth that we’re gonna have. It’s really about working smarter and not harder. And so that’s, in many ways, what’s motivated me to create another business when I didn’t have to, because I wanted it to be part of my portfolio of life and the things that I do that are important and rewarding to me. But I didn’t want it to detract from all the other good things that I have, like my freedom of time and, and freedom and money.
John Corcoran 33:12
Yeah, Noah, this is great. Where can people go to learn more about you and the work that you do?
Noah Rosenfarb 33:17
So if you had an interest in talking with my team, they could go to talktofreedom.com and book an exploratory Call to learn about the type of work that we might do to help you become rich beyond money. If you connect with me on LinkedIn, I post there about wealth and lifestyle and real estate and taxes. So you could always follow along there, and my business website is freedomfamilyoffice.com.
John Corcoran 33:42
Noah, thank you so much. Thank you.
Chad Franzen 33:47
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.