Show Notes
The happiest day of your founder life might be the emptiest. The wire hits, the champagne pops, and 90 days later the divorce papers get filed, the workouts stop, and you are staring at an earn-out agreement wondering why you hate the company that just bought yours.
Cece Leung has watched it happen for more than 20 years. Born and raised in Hong Kong, she landed in Canada at 16 with one suitcase, taught piano and tutored math to get by, and clawed her way through the Big Four and Wall Street into a corner office, multiple CFO titles, and a string of IPOs. She spent nine months in dusty Chinese storage rooms hand-auditing paper contracts before AI could do it in seconds. She hit every number, then woke up rich and empty.
So she burned the playbook. In January 2026 she launched Rich & Sassy Wealth Strategies, a New York advisory firm that pairs institutional-grade IPO and exit strategy with something almost no banker will touch: philosophical counseling. Alongside advisor Dr. David Kaye and her brother Kevin Leung, who leads the firm's invitation-only QiRetreat expeditions in Guangdong, China, Cece helps founders answer the question that no term sheet covers: who are you when the hustle finally stops?
In this conversation, Ryan and Cece get into why deals take 18 to 36 brutal months and leave everyone too burned out to plan what comes next, why smart founders sign terrible earn-outs, why the shortest post-exit break Ryan has ever heard of was three days and the longest was nine months, and why Cece thinks movement, nature, and a Sunday morning coffee overlooking Manhattan beat any dashboard.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cscfo/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/estesryan/
_
#1 AI Founder Newsletter! -
Build your audience for life! -
If you're not AI native; you're not getting the job! -
Get 35% off any supplement subscription with Momentous! -
Use code RYAN30 to save $30 on your AI men's fashion stylist!
Your podcast's autonomous AI sponsorship agent! - https://gethowdi.com/
