About Justin Maxwell
Justin D Maxwell solves a problem most people don’t even realize exists: business owners make more money than employees but often end up less wealthy.
It’s a paradox that defies logic. Entrepreneurs take the risk, build the enterprise, generate significant income and yet 95% will end up middle class or worse. Meanwhile, their W-2 employees with comparable salaries often retire wealthier. Justin’s work is about breaking that pattern.
Justin didn’t come from finance. He was on track to become a professor, earning his master’s degree in health and exercise science. But during that process, he realized research wasn’t his calling—solving real problems was. That led him into entrepreneurship and eventually into wealth strategy for business owners.
What he discovered became his obsession: the system designed to help business owners build wealth was actually keeping them trapped. Not because advisors were incompetent or malicious, but because they were applying W-2 frameworks to entrepreneurial situations. Tax strategy, investment management, entity structuring, exit planning—all operating in silos, each optimized independently but never integrated.
Coming from outside the financial industry became Justin’s advantage. He could see what insiders missed: the 5% who succeed aren’t smarter or luckier—they think like family offices from day one, building integrated wealth systems instead of fragmented strategies.
Today, Justin is a partner at Big Life Financial, where his team has facilitated over $10 billion in business exits and helped clients save nearly $100 million in taxes. He’s worked directly with hundreds of business owners and studied patterns across thousands more, identifying the structural differences between those who build generational wealth and those who stay trapped despite success.
He’s a Heroic Public Speaking certified graduate, has written 50+ articles, spoken at 20+ industry events and masterminds, and appeared on 50+ podcasts.
Eighty percent of businesses never sell. Seventy-five percent of those that do result in owner regret. Half of all business owners are forced out through death, disability, divorce, distress, or disagreement. Meanwhile, 80 to 90% of their net worth remains trapped in an illiquid asset.
Justin’s mission is simple: change how business owners think about wealth so they can build legacies that outlast them, not just businesses that exhaust them