What separates entrepreneurs who walk away from their businesses with life-changing wealth from those who leave millions on the table? According to Anthony Englert, founder of ALFA Advisory and former Goldman Sachs wealth advisor, the answer isn’t luck—it’s intentional planning.
In this episode of Build It to Billions, Brett Swarts sits down with Anthony to uncover how the most successful entrepreneurs architect their wealth long before the sale of their business. From increasing enterprise value and reducing tax exposure to building a coordinated team of advisors, Anthony shares the strategies he’s used to help founders transform their businesses into powerful wealth-building assets. Together, they explore why the top 1% don’t build wealth by accident—they design it with purpose, discipline, and a clear exit strategy.
Whether you’re years away from selling your company or actively preparing for a liquidity event, this conversation is packed with practical insights on maximizing business value, protecting your wealth, and creating a legacy that extends far beyond the closing table.
Episode Highlights Here:
Brett
Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward, scale to billions, and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I wantyou to do is to click the subscribe button right now. I love your support. It’s incredible to see your comments, and we’re just getting started. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing; it means the world to me. Welcome to the Build to Billions podcast, where we get successful entrepreneurs and investors on their journey from millions to billions. We believe the key to scaling and compounding your wealth in life starts every single day with the mindset and practice of stewardship over ownership and applying billionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goals have to scale and compound your wealth in life, so you can give more all the way to help MVPs. My name is Brett Swartz. Today I have an amazing guest that I’m going to share with you in just a minute. But I want to let you know we’re also streaming on CapitalGainsTaxSolutions.com and our podcast and YouTube channels there as well. So, you can check us out. And if you have a large exit coming up, consider going toCapitalGainsTaxSolutions.com to build your next exit plan. I’m excited about our next guest. He’s out of Denver, Colorado. In fact, he started at Goldman Sachs, and they taught him how to build real wealth, but they didn’t let him deliver it to entrepreneurs. And so, he founded a group called Alpha Advisory to fix that. And you know, most financial advisors build wealth strategy around what can set what they can set aside. But entrepreneurs need more than that. They’re putting everything into they’re business, and so they need the financial structure that turns their business into wealth generator. Generator, as an advisor, this next guest is going to help you do just that and so much more. Please welcome through with me, Anthony Englert. Anthony, how are we doing today?
Anthony
Doing great, Brett. Really happy to be here. I can’t wait for our conversation.
Brett
Excellent. For let’s just get to know for the first time. Would you give us just a little more about your story and your current focus?
Anthony
Sure. So, I work with entrepreneurs who have a bigger vision and want to have the kind of wealth that lets them achieve it. Most advisors are going to build a plan around what you can set aside outside of your business, but you know if you’re familiar with the 8020 rule, that’s like the 20% And so the whole point of our firm is to start and end with where your wealth actually lives-that 80% inside the business-but kind of how I got here to that question, you know, I grew up with entrepreneurial parents. My mom’s an architect, and she and my dad to this day continue to operate the same firm. I watched them win awards for their success and the projects and the great outcomes they delivered for their clients, but the financial results of those things never seem to come to our family. In fact, the business seemed to put our financial standing in jeopardy more often than to provide it. And so, I kind of grew up with this negative view of entrepreneurship, thinking who would ever want that. In college, I figured out what does that actually mean. There’s a big difference between entrepreneurship and being self-employed, and how you structure all of that, and a little entrepreneurial adventure of my own in college led me to decide that if I wanted to understand how real wealth gets built, I want it’s a I better do this on somebody else’s dime and have somebody else teaching me and showing me and mentoring me, and so that’s what led me to Goldman Sachs, where I spent 15years there working with entrepreneurs. But as you correctly pointed out earlier, you know Goldman is only interested once you’ve had the big exit, and there’s a lot of missed opportunity along the way. And so, I wanted to help people capture that opportunity so that they didn’t have to have six or seven exits to finally hit the home run, but that they could build that wealth correctly and you know in a compounding way from the start.
Brett
Love it, love it, Anthony. By the way, if you want to learn more about Anthony, what he’s doing, go to alphaadvisory.com, alphaadvisory.com, and his last name is spelled E-N-G-L-E-R-T. And so, you know, my last name is Swords, but is you know, and people think Z has to be a part of it somehow, and I get that one quite a bit. And so, so I make sure everyone can spell that correctly. So yeah, being an entrepreneur is really different. I think right. I mean, it’s and you’re right. 80% or sometimes even 90% of the total wealth is tied into the business, right? And so, I love the approach of taking the 8020. So, walk us through what that looks like when clients hire you to help them with that. What does that practically look like?
Anthony
Yeah, so let’s start with the most basic business equation, right? Revenue minus costs equals profit. Hopefully, all your listeners can follow that one. I think when we get to that profit piece, that’s where the differences start to show up. So, we often talk about the difference between a lifestyle business and a legacy business. For us, legacy business doesn’t mean that you’re going to go public or sell for billions of dollars. It just means that you’re purposely building the business to be bigger than you and to outlast you, right? Because a business that relies on you dies with you. And so, if you’re building a legacy business, then you’re building a functionally different vehicle of different system than a lifestyle business. So, in the analogy we like to use as a car versus an airplane, so in a lifestyle business like a car, it’s easy for one person to operate. You can bring a few friends. It’s you know reliable. It’s efficient, but it’s not meant for long haul travel. And so, in the same way, a lifestyle business is built to extract ahigh amount of income. But when I hear income, I just hear tax, and so then the problem becomes extracting income from. That business and how to do that in a tax advantaged manner. If you’re building a legacy
business,
Brett
so, if you like this little, short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watchthe full interview, and please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody.
Watch the episode here:
Important Links:
About Anthony Englert
Anthony Englert is the Founder and Managing Director of ALFA Advisory, a wealth management and business advisory firm focused on helping entrepreneurs and business owners intentionally build, protect, and transition their wealth. A Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA®), Anthony brings extensive experience working with successful founders, executives, and families to align business growth, exit planning, investment strategy, and long-term financial goals.
Before founding ALFA Advisory, Anthony spent nearly 15 years with Goldman Sachs Wealth Management, where he served in leadership and advisory roles and worked alongside entrepreneurs, executives, private foundations, and other high-net-worth clients. Today, through ALFA Advisory, he helps business owners take a more coordinated approach to wealth—building enterprise value before an exit while preparing for the financial opportunities and decisions that come after it.
Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
- capitalgainstaxsolutions.com
- Capital Gains Tax Solutions Facebook
- Capital Gains Tax Solutions Twitter
- Capital Gains Tax Solutions Tiktok