Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. This is a special edition. And today I'm going to share a

bittersweet announcement. What's going on everybody? I'm Scott Trench, CEO of Bigger Pockets,

here today with a very special guest for a very special episode and my last episode as CEO of

Bigger Pockets here. And that's the big announcement I wanted to make today is after a

decade of leading this incredible organization, I've made the decision to step down as CEO and

refocus my energy full time on Bigger Pockets money alongside Mindy Jensen. And as part of that,

I'm welcoming the next leader of Bigger Pockets here,

Ale Aesteraan. How'd I do? Did I pronounce that right, Alley? Yes. Well, welcome to Bigger Pockets.

Welcome as the new CEO. Thank you, Scott. I'm super excited to be here. I actually don't formally start until next week, but of course, you know, this is a big milestone for the

company and I'm really pumped that we're doing this this way, you know, actually letting the

community know first, obviously lots to discuss, but I'm really excited to be here with you today.

Awesome. Well, we couldn't be more thrilled to welcome you and in a few minutes, we'll get into your background and all those kinds of things. Before we get to that point,

I did want to share with the Bigger Pockets community some of the reasons why I made this decision

and kind of the context behind it. So we'll jump right into that. The first reason is that this

company, Bigger Pockets, has been more than a job. It's been my passion, my purpose,

and maybe to an unhealthy degree, a little bit of an obsession here for the last decade.

I've spent the entire time helping people retire early. It's time to take a little of that for myself here and practice what I preach. So I'm going to take a step back, doing the Bigger

Pockets Money podcast, even full-ish time, I think that's the right word,

foolish time, will be a much more sustainable workload for me and my family.

And I'm looking forward to spending Tuesday afternoons, maybe on the mountain bike or on a hike

on those types of things.

That's the first part of this.

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