Albert Zdenek on Mastering Cash Flow, Financial Freedom, and Smarter Money Decisions

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In this engaging interview, Albert Zdenek shares his inspiring journey from geologist to successful entrepreneur and fintech innovator. Discover his insights on financial literacy, building meaningful relationships, and the mission behind the Cake-Club app to empower Gen Z with personal finance tools.

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Albert Zdenek (00:00)
And so one thing I learned at that time is being raised from ⁓ greatest generation family, you you didn’t ask for help, you suck it up. Asking for help was a weakness. And so I just try to handle this all myself, but then I’m so desperate. I finally asked someone for help and they just…

Quentin (00:08)
Hmm.

Albert Zdenek (00:20)
helped us pour down the woodwork. I couldn’t believe how people wanted to help me.

Quentin (01:59)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and you see this big smile on my face. I think I smile most of the time, but today my smile is especially bright. Cause this gentleman, we’ve had some conversations off camera and he has really, really been refreshing to say the least. And I mean that. And y’all probably heard me say this before, but I always have a saying.

Not always, but I say it quite frequently that if you refresh others, you in return will be refreshed. If you refresh others, you in return will be refreshed. And this gentleman kind of said that in his own words, he talked about how when you help others, things always, they seem to help you in return. And so he just believed in that ecosystem. And trust me, we’re going to talk about that.

Albert Zdenek (02:29)
Thank

Quentin (02:49)
This gentleman knows business. has, I believe, successfully sold off two businesses. If I’m reading my notes correctly, we probably gonna talk about wealth management, but we’re also probably gonna talk about a personal finance app that I’m gonna let him kind of dive into. But I just want to introduce you all to Mr. Al Zdenek Zdenek, I think Zdenek. How did I do Mr. Al? All right. Mr. Al, welcome sir. How you feeling today?

Albert Zdenek (03:11)
You hit it right. You hit it right.

I am feeling super. Thanks a lot, especially with the conversations we had before. It’s brightened up my day. Thanks a lot.

Quentin (03:23)
Absolutely. No, thanks to you. Listen, people, told him don’t send me no bill. I don’t want no invoice of consulting bill from him because he really helped me out this morning. what I want to do, Mr. Al, I want to dive right in, right? I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. Mr. Al, we love origin stories. So if you kind of want to walk us through the journey, kind of how you got up to where you are now, we love origin stories.

Albert Zdenek (03:29)
you

Quentin (03:52)
And people would love to know where you are geographically. So what are you up to now? What’s your origin story of how you got there and where you are in the world? think the people want to know that too. So Mr. Al, sir, you have the floor.

Albert Zdenek (04:03)
Okay, well, where I’m at right now, ⁓ I’m the executive chairman of CakeClub. It’s a fintech company, creator of the CakeClub app. It’s a personal finance app. And ⁓ it’s an extension of where I’ve been in my career, which is basically contributing to people and helping people make the best financial decisions, live the life they want, and achieve financial freedom in the timeframe they want.

So it’s a continuation of my career. Now, when my career really started, I went to college to be a geologist and that didn’t seem to work out. I didn’t like the job choices. So I chose business, got into taxes, became a CPA and I specialize in tax work. But you know, I have an entrepreneurial bug in me, so I wanted my own company. So after working for a big corporation, a New York accounting firm, I started my own company, a CPA firm.

that specialized in taxes. ⁓ And being a high-energy person and an entrepreneur, I got into real estate. I probably had about six or seven private placements. I was ⁓ developing commercial property, buying and selling property, managing property, residential development. And if there was an extra 15 minutes in a day, I had another project. And what I did in doing that, though, is I took my eye off the ball of

what’s called watching your cash flow. And then we had a recession a little bit and I almost had my head handed to me. All those projects overnight were all negative cash flow, even my own company, the CPA firm was in negative cash flow because I wasn’t paying attention to it. So I was, ⁓ I remember going home one night and sitting down with my wife and I told her, the time I clean up this mess, I’m not even sure we’re going to be able to keep our house.

I had two young sons at the time and she cried and then said, what do we have to do to clean it up?

And so one thing I learned at that time is being raised from ⁓ greatest generation family, you you didn’t ask for help, you suck it up. Asking for help was a weakness. And so I just try to handle this all myself, but then I’m so desperate. I finally asked someone for help and they just…

Quentin (07:00)
Hmm.

Albert Zdenek (07:12)
helped us pour down the woodwork. I couldn’t believe how people wanted to help me.

And of one person especially, a CPA down in Dallas, Darrell Kane, I wanted to see him because he had a product financial planning that I wanted to add to my company, because I was trying to generate cash flow. And he made me sit down and actually do my financial plan. Now, I knew I was in really bad shape, but when I sat down to do that,

I was stunned how really bad I looked. And I thought to myself, my God, I’m going to be working until I’m 80 and I’ll never be able to retire. So my kids to college, whatever. But they said, now, that’s how people feel when they have problems like this. And if you’re going to help them, have to understand that. So he said, now, let’s help you out. Let’s show, let me show you another perspective of finance that you can clean this up. And I thought I was a hotshot financial guy. And I realized I was a hotshot.

tax guy, but I didn’t know personal finance as well as I should. So I did that and I basically transformed my company. I started selling off the real estate and I started to really recover from that. I kept some of it, but I concentrated on the wealth management company and I turned it into where we were out to help people. Like people helped me. I wanted to help people make the best financial decisions all the time.

I wanted them to be able to know that they can achieve financial freedom sometime in their life when they wanted to, but they could live life the way they wanted along the way, not skimp and save and sacrifice to live tomorrow. So I did that. We grew the company. It was called Troussos Wealth Management. I made speeches, wrote a couple of books. But then around in about 2018, I sold that company because

I wanted to make sure there was a success succession plan for that. And by the way, I’ve sold quite a few companies over the years, so I knew how to do that. But I found out when I sold the company and I stayed with them a couple of years, I said, you know, my mission was to be a positive, powerful, successful influence in lives of others and help them make the best financial decisions. And I found out when I sold my company, my mission was still the same. I didn’t have the company anymore, but my mission was

And so I was trying to figure out how to use that. And then, I started writing on LinkedIn articles and so forth. And this young man, Amin Boroamal, who’s a PhD data scientist, he reached out to me and said, Al, I read your book, I read your articles. He said, you know, I’ve gone through like 12 years of education or more than that to be a PhD doctor. I don’t know how to make a financial decision. And all my colleagues are in the same boat.

He said, if I don’t know how to do it, they don’t know how to do it. That means a lot of people don’t. So why don’t we put together an app ⁓ and try to change their lives, try to affect the lives of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions around the world to educate them, again, ⁓ make the best financial plan all the time, decisions all the time, live the life they want and be able to reach financial freedom.

I found myself there today and our app is functional. So as I was you beforehand, we have a personal financial app. It’s basically a budgeting app with some bells and whistles to help you find some cash flow. But in our next six months, the challenge is to take this from a nice app to a wow. People see that they have to have it because it’s going to educate them so much and help them so much. And that’s the phase I’m in now.

Quentin (11:37)
Mr. Al, thank you, sir. Thank you for the journey. And I’m just writing stuff down as you talk. And I think the last thing I wrote down was the mission is still the same, right? And one of the first things I wrote down was helping people make good financial decisions. But in the middle of that, you talked about how you went to school. And I think it was to be a geologist. Did I hear that correct? Be a geologist. Mind up being in your CPA. ⁓ You came from a family that really didn’t

Albert Zdenek (11:37)
So now, we’re going to turn it over to Brian.

Right.

Yes. Yes.

Quentin (12:06)
ask for help, but then when you started asking for help, help started coming in droves, you know, you wrote books. And so Mr. Al, I have a saying, I say probably once every podcast is that destiny has no wasted moments. Meaning like, as you go through life, these moments, they become the amalgamation or a compound of moments make like who you are today. And so,

Albert Zdenek (12:12)
Alright.

Mm-hmm.

Quentin (12:35)
You always held in your heart, helping people make good financial decisions. And then when you went through all these transitions, you was like, hey, the mission is still the same. So what I would love to know, Mr. Al, you went through the motions, you went through these different changes, sold off different companies. What has this journey, what has destiny, what has these moments taught you about yourself? Has it taught you resilience? Has it taught you to be humble? Has it taught, like, what has these moments taught you about you, Mr. Al?

Albert Zdenek (13:07)
What a really great question. What’s, you know, I guess it has taught me that it taught me for one thing, my weaknesses. When I was a, when I was young man, I, I not by the way, I’ve contemplated this many times with coaching. I was a righteous person. I knew all the answers. Cocky, you know, I didn’t trust people.

and it’s kind of hard to scale or have partners if you don’t trust them. ⁓ And I knew again, and I never rely on anyone. ⁓ by the way, I don’t think you really change. I still today think I’m a righteous person. I know a lot. I don’t, but I think you basically, you have a different conversation with yourself. If you continue to be that way,

It’s like if you continue not to use the words, you hold resentments, right? If what you learn, and so you, I don’t think people basically change. They just know who they are. So when you see that come on, when you see that come about, you say, okay, don’t want to go there. Don’t want to go there out. So I think I’ve learned to better be a better communicator with myself. I think people, they take courses, sometimes to be communicators with other people.

Quentin (14:13)
Mm!

Albert Zdenek (14:31)
but we don’t have courses to be better communicators with ourself. ⁓ so I think that you have to learn that you had this 24 seven conversation with yourself and a lot of times it’s ungenerous. You’re not good enough. You’re going to make mistakes, whatever. And you got to sort of like say, well, get off it or stop it or clear. So I’ve learned to understand that I had this conversation.

I do talk to myself and it’s one of the most powerful things that you can have because only you can give yourself permission to do things. Right? So I think that’s it. So when you say, what have I learned? I’ve learned to that this conversation, I’ve learned that to listen to it, I’ve learned to ask for help. I’ve learned I still I’m continually coached to this day. I started coaching three some years ago and ⁓

And it’s a journey, by the way, if you continue, if you go on this journey of self-examination, self-looking at yourself, it never ends. It never ends because again, you don’t change, you’re still the same person. So you gotta keep on reminding yourself, you can’t have to keep on exercising that, how do I say that, that philosophy that you’ve developed.

Quentin (16:33)
Mr. man, you said so much. I’m going to tell you three sayings that I say to myself. I would say periodically, these are kind of centering statements that I make to myself. And I picked all of these up from different mentors in my life. So one, when you know who you are, you know what to do. That has been a statement that has really been a bedrock. Because like you said, you’re having these conversations with yourself.

You are, you’re being honest with yourself about who you are. And so when you know who you are, you know what to do. If you know you are a hot tempered person, I mean, I may know somebody like that, y’all. You know that you got to slow down your amygdala. Like you got to breathe. Like you have to take time to breathe. Another saying that I say, I got from one of my mentors, what doesn’t come out of your mouth in words will come out of your body through actions. So you told me,

Albert Zdenek (17:12)
you

Quentin (17:31)
Y’all wasn’t here for, but he told me keep saying my words. And when he said that, that immediately resonated. You’re talking to somebody who’s lost over a hundred pounds twice in his life. I’ve lost it, gained it back, lost it, gained it back. Because when I started closing my mouth, I would actually open my mouth to do another thing. But I wasn’t letting my words come out. Therefore, my coping mechanism

Albert Zdenek (17:51)
Yeah. ⁓

Quentin (17:59)
So my body started reacting to my coping mechanism. And so my body started doing things that I did not want it to do in an unhealthy way. And then the last, the last thing I say, Mr. Al that I got from a mentor is if you lie to yourself, you truly have nobody else you can trust. So with all these things, these are like, like you said, making me self-evaluate myself and my word for, and I wasn’t looking for this word, but it came to me because I know everybody got new year resolutions.

Albert Zdenek (18:15)
Mm, that’s very good.

Quentin (18:28)
Normally there’s something that kind of smacks me in my face to be like, Hey, this is kind of what you need to work on. And for me, my word for this shit is being curious. I’m curious about everything. Curious why I get angry, curious why I eat what I eat, curious about why I do what I do. And so I just said all those things to kind of drop home the point, what you just said. Like the conversation that we need to have most is with ourself. And you got to tell yourself the healthy, the healthy words because

Albert Zdenek (18:53)
Okay.

Quentin (18:57)
If you don’t have this real healthy conversation with yourself, you’re gonna be building your life on a bunch of lies, a bunch of resentment, a bunch of shame. And so, did any of that kind of resonate, Mr. Al with what you were saying?

Albert Zdenek (19:05)
Totally agree.

Totally agree and people don’t realize how essential that is to success, whether it’s in personally with your marriage, personal relationships and in business. You know, when if you approach it that way in business, you’re going to be you, you really have to say you lower a lot of the obstacles that most people face. You’re not, you’re not worried about certain things. If you learn to ⁓

communicate with yourself, be committed to communicate with others, you know, basically being of contribution as much as you can.

Quentin (19:45)
loving. So let’s talk about CakeClub. I got a two part question about CakeClub. One, love the name. So I would love to know where the name came from. And then two, what are your next goals? Like what are you looking to scale next with CakeClub? So tell me about the name and tell me about the goals.

Albert Zdenek (19:52)
you

Well, all right, so CakeClub, this is basically an app, a personal finance app that’s aimed at Gen Z. ⁓ And we wanted to play, we were doing some research, again, my partner’s a data research scientist. And it seemed like Gen Zers like different names, like there’s something like Mint out there and other things too. I I come from a generation where you call it what it is, it’s a personal finance app.

Quentin (20:31)
Yes.

Albert Zdenek (20:31)
Well, so,

but we found that resonated with people. It was fun. ⁓ Actually, the most important part of it is that we got my morning people got the idea because I worked, my father was a baker and I worked for about 12 or 13 summers with him in a bakery. So I’m actually a baker too, by the way. ⁓ and then we found out we can play with it. Like, you know, have your cake and eat it too.

Quentin (20:47)
Mmm.

Albert Zdenek (21:00)
It’s easy as a slice of cake. You know, have your cake with the cherry on top. We had, we got fun with it. And so just about that way. Now, so, and, but you said, what are our goals this year? Well, again, we just, we had a soft launch this past two or three months ago, just to get data from our users and what was the most important and all that. We’d like to have a

Quentin (21:12)
I love it. I absolutely love it.

Albert Zdenek (21:28)
about 10,000 users ⁓ sometime during the year. And we’re actually out to have over a series of a couple of years between 60 to 100,000 users. ⁓ So those are our overall goals with that.

Quentin (21:42)
Yeah. I love it. I love the goals. I love the, the, the logo. I love everything. I love everything about it. So I want to ask this question. I think maybe we’ll kind of round out with this one. Cause I’m always, I’m always interested when I do this podcast about relationships and it’s interesting cause you and I talked about relationships and a whole different kind of dynamic, but I actually would love

to hear your take on relationships within business, and I guess maybe even interpersonal relationships, because business is about people, right? So it’s about building good business relationships, but it also is about just building good, healthy relationships, period. So I would love to know, Mr. Al, multiple businesses, partnerships. I’m sure you came into contact with a lot of people. What is your philosophy on relationship within business?

How do you go about building it? Has it served you well? Like, what is your philosophy?

Albert Zdenek (22:46)
Well, what a great question that a lot of people don’t concentrate on as relationships. So when I was a young man, I had all these partnerships that first began. I was out for me. I was out to get what I could out of the partnership. And I didn’t really care about my partner. I mean, I liked them, whatever, but I didn’t know what they wanted out of it. I learned because once things go bad,

you lose partners, know, but these are great. Partnerships are great when they’re bad. And we had, had a lot of problems with a lot of partnerships that I had. I had some successful ones too, but I learned again through coaching, communications is a learn what your partners want. Learn what their, what their goals are within the partnership you have, and then become an advocate for their goals.

and let them know what your goals are. So that you have a partnership that’s basically where you have partners that are advocates for each other’s goals within what that business is trying to accomplish. If you do that, it’s like a marriage, by the way, you say personal. know, if you, when you, when you go out with someone or you’re courting or you’re thinking of marriage or living together, you better understand, you better learn.

what’s important to that person and what they’re trying to accomplish in life or what they want out of their relationship. Because a lot of relationships, people just go in getting what they want. I want this, I want that, I want to live here. They don’t really, they don’t really know the goals or the wants of their partner. But if you know the goals of your partner, and by the way, when you’re exploring that, it lets you explore their values.

what they’re standing for and you share what you are. I think that if you do that, just like in business, there’s a greater chance that the partnership will last a long time or when it’s challenged, right? Personally, health-wise, it’s going to be a strong partnership.

Quentin (25:01)
So often when I say, when I talk about relationships, I bring in the word community. And I say healing happens in community. That’s what I tell people. Healing happens in community. That’s philosophy, I believe. Some of the things, ancient texts that I read, it just seems to be true. And healing means to be made whole. And so when you have a culture or a community of people helping one another,

Albert Zdenek (25:02)
you.

Quentin (25:28)
It’s an ecosystem of healing. You use the word advocate and I’ve never really thought about it that way, but you say become an for their goals. I looked up the word advocate while you was talking. It’s a person who publicly supports, pleas for, or defends another person. They champion that person. So again, that’s a communicable aspect. If you have somebody who’s advocating for you, pleading for you, supporting you,

Albert Zdenek (25:31)
Right.

guys are right.

Quentin (25:58)
How could you not be whole? How can you not feel supported? How can you not feel uplifted? And that’s why I say healing happens in community because as you so eloquently said, you advocate for the other person’s goal. You’re just not in it for yourself. And if you’re advocating for theirs and they’re advocating for yours, again, that’s an ecosystem that just continues to give. And so I think that was beautiful. Yeah.

Albert Zdenek (26:21)
It’s a powerful bond. It’s almost,

it’s hard to break it.

Quentin (26:26)
Hard to break it. ⁓ I love it. ⁓ Mr. Al, thank you, sir. Listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about CakeClub how can they reach out to you, sir?

Albert Zdenek (26:40)
If they want to learn more about me personally, I have a website, www.alzdenek.com. ⁓ Be pleased if they went to the CakeClub website, it’s called cakeclubapp.com. I will say there, if you go there, one of the uses of AI we have, on every screen at the bottom right, there’s a little circle icon. If you click on that, another sub-screen will come up and you can ask Albert,

whatever financial question you want and I will answer. It’s our own chat box, but it’s based on all my work. And by the way, one of the things we’re doing to make our app a wow is to take that and put it on the phone. And maybe when you’re asking questions, it’s actually my voice that’s going to answer you. So they can do that. You go to on Amazon and if you want to hear, if you want to read some of the books I’ve written, one’s called Master Your Cash Flow.

The key to grow and retain wealth. The other ones, to master your cash flow. Grow the company you love and live the life you want now. And I’m actually publishing a new book probably around June. Again, master cash flow, let them eat cake and grow wealthy.

Quentin (27:56)
That’s what you call the mic drop moment. I love it. I love it. Listen, Mr. Al, let me say three things to you, First, thank you for your time. You could have been anywhere in the world, but you came here and your time has definitely brought value to me. I’m sure other people that’s listening probably feel the same, but I definitely know your time has brought value to me. Secondly, thank you for your story.

Albert Zdenek (27:57)
Thank

Well, thank you.

Quentin (28:24)
Thank you for the gift of your vulnerability, the gift of your transparency. I’ll put a premium on stories. I tell people all the time, stories have a way of planting seeds in other people. We may never see the growth, but your story, people’s story, plant seeds that people can pull from later on. And so I thank you for your story. And lastly, thank you for your perspective, your mindset, and bringing that mindset to this platform. Mr. Al, I truly appreciate you, sir.

Albert Zdenek (28:54)
My pleasure. Thank you very much.

Quentin (28:56)
Absolutely. So listen, y’all heard Mr. Al. You can’t tell me you didn’t get the value. Look in the show notes, all its context, how to get in contact with him, how to get on the websites, how to get to a slice of cake. can go in there, go look in the show notes, get in contact with him,

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Albert Zdenek on Mastering Cash Flow, Financial Freedom, and Smarter Money Decisions

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