Building Extraordinary Wealth

You guys know how much I love it when you come to the Boutique Summit and you meet brand new boutique friends and you go home, stay in touch, and you grow your businesses together. Well, I'm telling you this, and I love it because the exact same things happen to me. In fact, today's guest on the podcast, Candy Valentino, her and I met at a Mastermind event which we're going to tell you about on the podcast today. But when I met Candy, I knew this girl was awesome. She had to be a friend of mine and. And she really was going places. She recently was exiting a business of hers and knew she was on the path to coach others to do exactly what she had done, and that is create extraordinary wealth in her life. So today, I couldn't be more proud of my friend for authoring the book Wealth Habits, Six Ordinary Steps to Achieve Extraordinary Financial Freedom. And today, we're going to break those habits down for you so that you're not just focused on building a business and building a single revenue stream, but you're actually focused on building lifelong wealth and whatever that might entail for you. You guys get ready to meet my friend, Candy Valentino, an author, speaker, coach, and longtime business owner. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat, You guys. You know how excited I get when I have real friends on the podcast. And today I am so pumped about this. Candy Valentino, I was just telling you. This morning I randomly opened Spotify. I randomly pull up a podcast I'm going to listen to, and it's Ed Mylett. And what do I see but your face on his podcast today? I am so proud of you. This is just amazing. I can't wait to get to share your story today.

Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for having me. I'm just glad to be able to see your face. It's been way too long.

It has been way too long. So a little backstory. You guys know I'm a huge advocate of any type of coaching, like mentorship community, right? And it's not always about just what you learn from the mentor themselves or from the event that you go to and the speakers on the stage. But it's the people you surround yourself with and the people that you get to meet when you're there. And Candy, we have the coolest story. I'll let you tell the story of how we met in a Mastermind and what we were up to that day.

Yeah. So it's so crazy how. And I agree with you 100. No matter where you are in your journey, there's always another level and there's always something new to learn. And even if you come from the place with, just meeting new people that are on the same path is so powerful because we can either learn from mentors or our mistakes, and the latter is a lot cheaper to do. Yes, but we met at a Mastermind and I remember, like, we sat down and had dinner and it was just like instantly connected and was like, oh, my gosh. And I just loved you, loved how you showed up and the fact of what you do in my prior life, just so your audience is kind of looped in. When I met Ashley, I had just exited my last company and I had done product manufacturing. I had a, you know, multiple brick and mortars. I had a jewelry line. Had all of these different things. And we're like sitting. I'm like, wait a minute. Like, where were you when I was in business for 25 years? Trying to figure this out. So I love what you've built. I just think it is so invaluable for people.

You know, it's funny, I remember you and I were getting on a bus. I think we were. But this mastermind had us going on a boat together for dinner or I don't even know what we were doing.

It was a yacht. A boat. Come on. It was a 125 foot yacht. Let's. Let's be real. Let's break it down here.

It was kind of a big boat. You know, especially you're like, from the Midwest, like me. We're like, okay, kind of fancy. So I sit on this bus next to you to go to the yacht and you start talking about, like immediately you're talking about exiting your business. And you're like, okay, tax efficiencies and numbers and saps and you're like going down this rabbit hole and I'm like, who are you? Like, we do need to be friends. This is amazing. And so, I mean, we've kind of stayed in touch since then. But fast forward to maybe like a year ago. Someone was telling me about this woman. They started to follow on TikTok and how on TikTok, she's given these business tips and tax tips and all this, like, really tangible, focused advice. I'm like, well, who is it? And they say your name and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this comes full circle. So I just am so excited because not only do we get to tell this story today, but you're also here today as a new author. You have a book that is dropping today. And so I couldn't be more proud. My, like, mama heart is just exploding for you and all that you've created. So congratulations.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And I love to hear how people take my content and think that it's really hard hitting. It, like, makes my inside smile because that is something that I had hid for so long and I kind of tried to play the fluff and, you know, the lane that maybe was more popular on social media and it's just not who I am. And I love being able to meet people who are okay with who you are just as you are. And so it's really cool. And I think that's what's so important about community too, is it opens you up to. Maybe it's not you, maybe it's the environment you were once in and maybe you just need new soil. So I just. I love you. Thanks so much for having me on. And it's so crazy that I have a book hitting stores, literally as we speak.

I love it. Let's talk about the book. So your book is all about building wealth, right? Wealth, habits. And I want to know, I just want to start with this question. Define for us what is wealth?

Well, it's interesting. Wealth means something different to everyone. And I think the most common misconception about wealth is that it's a lot of money. And sure it's that. But if the only reason you are working hard, trying to invest, want to buy the book is because you just want to buy a bunch of things and accumulate a bunch of money, I promise you that you will miss the point. And actually, if you just want to buy boats, buy cars, and buy fancy Rolexes and do all of those things, don't buy my book because you're going to completely miss the entire reason I wrote it. You know, I started my first business when I was 19. Grew up in a trailer prior to that in a really small rural town, like population 2,000, an hour and a half away from the major city. And it was very blue collar. My dad was a mechanic. My mom cleaned houses and didn't have the best childhood, you know, People, we were all about survival more than intention. And so anytime you have that survival mentality and people working and just trying to do the best they can, two teenagers, 16 and 19. How the heck do you know what to do with a baby anyways? Right? And so for me, it was realizing that there was something more, something bigger and knowing that just because my perception of the world was really small, that I still get to choose what I want my life to be like. And I think that's really what wealth is. It's not just the accumulation of money or things, but it's, it's being able to find the richness of life and really being able to understand that life isn't about all of that, but it's actually more about what you can do, who you can serve, who you can show up for, who you can inspire. You know, I've done a lot of contribution work and we can get into that or not. And that's really what wealth is all about. Like doing all of this, but leaving a legacy behind to serve and help others grow. To me, that's what, that's what wealth is. In a very long answer to your question.

Well, I think what you hit on number one, you and I grew up in a very similar way, in a similar sized town, similar story. And I think what you and I also share, and I've heard you talk about this is wealth for me, was always put on this pedestal and it was like, only the rich get richer and money is the root of all evil. And there was a lot of negativity around wealth because my, my family didn't believe it was something we had access to. So we just had a real negative connotation when it came to it. And so there was a lot of unraveling for me of, okay, how do I make this a beautiful thing? Like what is the opportunity in this and how can I not be scared of it? Because as a business owner, I think a lot of times we self sabotage when we try to create wealth because we don't feel like we're worthy of it. So I know for you, talk to me about the unraveling of. A lot of people define this as money mindset. How do you start to unravel money mindset so that you set yourself up in a place where you can look at money as a mirror and money as an opportunity to do good in the world?

Yeah. So money is very simple. It's very, very simple. Humans, we like to complicate things with our emotions, our feeling of worth, our ego. But Money is very simple. It just magnifies who you already are. So if you are a kind, giving, honest person with high integrity, you are going to be even more of. You're going to have more access to give and help and serve and even have more integrity for helping more people, paying your staff more. Like there's so much that it magnifies. But if you're a jerk and you're honest and you're, you know, devious and you just want to keep all of this, like it's going to magnify that too. And so I think the most important part, and it's why it's one of the very first chapters in the book is breaking through our BS beliefs. Because there are a lot of things in life we are pre programmed with. Because when we are a child we might be taught certain things, but what we actually do is we catch a lot more. And whatever your beliefs, if anyone listening, if you haven't done the work on like figuring out what you really think about money, I promise you, you are carrying around previous programming that other people gave you. Because we're not taught this in schools. It has to be our own evolution of life and our accumulation of data, right? That's just like business. It's just data and numbers. When you really boil it down, money's the same way. And so I think a lot of people become like, think it's this mystification or there's secrets to it and it's really not. I mean, I have no degree, no corporate background. I told you how I grew up and it was still accessible to me. But what I first had to do was decide. And I had to make the realization and the understanding that I could not control where I was born, how I was born, who I was born to, any of the circumstances, circumstances in my childhood that happened to me. But I did get to control what I did next. Because we're not a product of our circumstances, we're a product of our decisions, of our choices. And so for me it was realizing that we have all the proof we need. We have proof that, oh my gosh, I didn't make such a smart decision with this money, so maybe I'm never going to be successful or oh my gosh, my business is actually doing pretty good this year, so maybe I can do this. We always have proof around us from ourselves and others to see what's possible. What you choose to focus on will determine your results.

I love that. Take me through the next step after you've made that decision. Right of what you're going to focus on and, and how you're going to use this new belief system that you've uncovered. What do you think is some of the first, or what are some of the first steps when it comes to actually building wealth? I know this is something you started very, very young.

I love this question because oftentimes people leave their audiences, the people that fall, they leave them with only that first part. And we can't sit around talking about we're going to have wealth, we're going to have money, and still have the same habits we did before we adopted that new belief. Right. It's delusion is what it becomes, it's what you do with it next. Ideas will not change your financial life. Ideas will not build your business ideals will not make you millions of dollars. It's the implementation and execution of those ideas that will. So I love that you asked me this. This is my jam. So what do we do next? Once you are growing your way to more wealth, which is what we do with our mind, then we have to learn our way to more wealth. And it's really about the solid principles of actually what works and the studies behind it. If you follow any of my stuff, like I'm all about the facts, it's data, it's super heavy. I don't do a lot of fluff stuff stuff or my opinion, I'll do stuff based off of my obviously 25 years experience and what I see. But so much of it is super data rich. So when we did the studies and really tried to dive into what the broke habits of American really are and then what the wealth habits, what we actually need to kind of break through them. It's amazing that it's all simple, boring things. It starts with bad debt, like making sure that you're not taking on bad debt. And these are all things that you have to learn your way to more wealth. So it's developing the confidence. Right? I find a lot of people, I don't know your demographic, but women specifically, I feel like they get tripped up and I don't know what to do about money. I don't know anything about finances. Well, okay, I'm sorry, but when you had a baby handed to you in the hospital and we're driving home, did anyone freaking tell you what to do with this baby, right? No. But you kept this baby alive, right? Like you were able to do things in order to make him or her thrive and you figured it out along the way and when you, you didn't have the answers, you Talk to somebody else who was a mom, or maybe your mom or your grandma on what to do. And then that develops the confidence. It's like picking up the first five pound weight. It develops the confidence to move forward with better decision making because you already have the data. Money is the same damn thing. So with money, we need to learn more about it so that we can make better decisions. And here are the facts. There is no greater destroyer to your own wealth than debt. So you have to get rid of debt before we can even have the conversation about investing. So that's first using, I'll give you a little tack, a little litmus test that anyone that's listening can take. If you say to me, oh, I don't know if I'm, if I have, if this debt's bad, or I don't know if the. If the item you purchase depreciates in value upon you purchasing it, it's bad debt. So your credit card loans, your car loans, your boat loans, your bag that you like to carry around to make yourself look rich, feel good, and have an ego, but it's actually draining your wealth. You're appreciating assets, your business, rental properties, houses, stocks, those are all things that are appreciating assets. And the only thing you ever want to leverage, if you ever hear that word, opm, other people's money to buy. And I don't want to get into the weeds and lose people because it could get to be a lot. But the litmus test is, is if you can't start saving 20% of your income so that you can invest it, you are overspending. Because we will never be able to keep up with inflation if we're only living off of our earned income. Our earned income from our jobs, our businesses, our side hustles, those are all earned incomes. And it's the highest amount of tax that you'll ever pay in your life. So you need to take that 20%, pay yourself, pay your future first so that you can invest, and then start to live off of your money, making money and printing money while you sleep and having dividends. So that's really the first step, is learning those so that you have, you can move forward with more confidence. That's kind of like the very first tippy toe into the water.

I love that. Something you talk about a lot and directly related to this is making sure you're living below your means so that you can take those dollars and invest them in the future. And I love what you're talking about. Your earned Income, Right. There's a lot of talk today about multiple revenue streams and how important they are, and I'm hoping you can walk me, like down that path of how do I live below my means so that I can not just live off of this one revenue stream and take that and invest it. As you're saying, what's step number two in that scenario?

So, business and personal finance, very similar, very simple. You can take all of the things you hear about both and boil it down to what I'm about to tell you. In business or in personal finance, you either make more money, make more revenue, increase your sales, all kind of the same thing, depending on what we're talking about, or you decrease expenses. That's it. So it's like, okay, I need to make more money, I need to decrease my expenses. And now we're going to widen the gap so that you have more to invest, because that's really the name of the game. So you're going to pay down debt, you're going to make sure you don't take on any new debt. Then you're going to take a look and say, okay, how can I make more money? Because I want to pay this debt off a lot faster now that I know that it's destroying my wealth. So can I earn more money? Can I do something on the side? Can I work more? Can I open up a small business? Can I freelance? Right. Like, there's so many ways that's a whole other podcast episode that you can earn more. And really, if you're, I know you have a lot of the business owners, which I love. And so there's only four ways that you can ever increase your revenue. Again, all the things you hear boiled down four things. You either acquire new customers. Customer acquisition. You either get your customers to spend more from you every time they buy. Increased ticket, increased average cart, you get them to buy more frequently. Buyers frequently number buyers, frequency number three. Or you get new or you raise your prices. Number four. That's it. Customer acquisition, buying frequency, average cart, raise your prices. Most people try to go to number four. It's actually typically not the right one. And number one, new client acquisition is going to cost you the most. Where the gold is, is having people buy more from you with an existing customer or buy more frequently. So when you look at that and you, if you only implemented that one thing us listening today and you actually got a customer acquisition strategy in place, you will automatically start to make more money as long as your profitability is under control. Because really, to have a Business, we need sales. But to sustain a business, we need profitability. So in our personal lives, our family, our income, we either have to be bringing more in from our businesses and, or I like and, and not spending as much. And people don't like to talk about it because it's not sexy. It's not fun to talk about what we can't have. But here's, here's the most important thing that I can tell people, and this is probably, I'm so grateful that I learned this one thing, because this is really what enabled me to retire before I turned 40, is if you will say no to things now, you will be able to say yes to anything later. So the question is, what are you willing to say no to so that you can say yes to something bigger, bolder, grander, later. When I was 19, 20, 21, my friends were in college. They were partying, they were at the bars. They were doing all the fun things that we like to do when we're in our early 20s. I was figuring out how to run payroll, how to do a flip. My first rental property when I was 21, I was, you know, trying to figure out how to hire people, how to get customers, how to advertise in the yellow pages back then, like, you know, all the things. And so. But because I delayed gratification, because I didn't buy the fancy cars, because I didn't buy brand new vehicles, because when I wanted to buy a brand new vehicle, I saw a house for sale that was a foreclosure, and I bought it instead and kept my old car for a couple more years. Because I delayed gratification, I got to do what very few people are blessed to do before they're 40. And now I get to do whatever I want. Flip more properties, have more doors. Chat with you in the middle of a Thursday. Like, I mean, there's so many things that I get to do now that if I wouldn't have had the discipline and decided to play the long game, I would have missed out on the opportunity and the blessings of what I have now.

You guys, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. And I'm so excited to make a personal invitation to you. You guys know, behind the scenes at the Hub, we are always looking for new ways to serve our industry. Both our community of retailers, but also our community of wholesalers. And so for the last two years, we've been working on one massive project, a brand new wholesale marketplace built by the industry, for the industry. And you're invited with so much of your feedback along the way. Today we're so excited to announce the grand opening of hubventory.com that's hubventory. H U B V E N T O R Y. You're invited to come make a profile to shop your favorite curated and vetted brands handpicked by the boutique hub. But not only to shop, because you see, Hubventory is a different kind of wholesale marketplace where we want to help you buy smarter each and every week. We want you to invest in your inventory rather than buying on a whim. So when you sign up for Hubventory, not only will you be able to find your favorite brands, but we'll encourage you to follow those brands and then start to pin products to boards to build boards that are designed for your next new arrivals launch or an upcoming collection by product category or even by uploading your open to buy plan and buying with your budget. So you're welcome to join us today on hubventory.com to plan and buy smarter and to follow the vetted, curated and trusted wholesalers that we all love. I'll see you on hubventory.com so good when someone is listening to you, when a business owner is listening and they're like, okay, Candy, I've got that piece. Like, I've got the revenue piece figured out. I have really leaned my business out. I'm working on scale now. I just really need to make sure I've nailed down investing. What are some of the best places for a business owner to start investing so they can start realizing some of that cash back, that opportunity back.

So if you've already nailed earn more and you're doing great, we have to just make sure that we can optimize that and we're saving more, which is a little bit of what we're talking about, but also just making sure that you have some of the tools in your toolbox as a business owner, having a great tax strategist, having a great business attorney, a lot of the things that are going to save you and your business from detrimental expenses down the road, right? And a lot of times because our brains cannot process what you know, they can, only our brains are so old. It's only like, oh, what am I going to lose in this situation? How much is this CPA going to cost me? But we can't always measure what we're going to gain. We can't always measure what it's going to save us from. So it's really important to be saving where we can and paying less tax. And the other way that we do that, aside from having those people in our toolbox, is by being able to move earned income into passive and portfolio income because they are taxed at a lower rate. So you're going to pay the most amount of tax on your business earnings or wages. You're going to pay less on dividend, stocks, rental properties, all of those types of passive and portfolio income. So the sooner you can take that earned money and put it into investments, and depending on where someone is, that next step is going to vary. If you have a Roth IRA already maxed out and it's eligible for you, check if you are. If you have a solo or self employed 401k for you, your family, your team, or a SEP and you're leveraging tax deductions by being able to take the most amount, put $56,000 in there every single year and you're already doing that. Check if you have a. If you own property already and you're living in your home, that home might be your greatest asset to leverage. If you're currently renting, this is the number one hack that anyone can use, depending on the area that you live. Because if you live in like la, this might be hard to do, but for most everybody else, you can do this. Instead of paying rent somewhere, buy a duplex, a triplex, a small quad apartment building. You live in one of them, you get an FHA loan, which is only 3.5% down, as opposed to 20% in a conventional loan. You live in one of those units. Instead of going and buying your dream house when you're 25 or 30 or 35, with 20% down in the white picket fence, do this hack first, and then you can buy a bigger house with a bigger fence a lot later. What it'll do is it'll pay for all of your living expenses. You stay there for a year, and then you just pull yourself out of that, put a renter in there, and you rinse and repeat and do it again. We have, when we study the chart for the book, over 40 years of data, the S&P 500, which is what, like a Roth IRA, a 401K is kind of the benchmark that we typically use. Some years it's up, some years it's down, depending on what's going on in the markets and in the economy overall, it had a 9.3% growth rate when we did the averages over 40 years. Real estate, there has never been a time in 40 years, 40 years of our country's history, that There wasn't a need for rentals. It's like this infinite supply. It's, it's an infinite, infinite demand. But there's a small, small supply issue depending on where you live. And so I think that's the most important thing to remember in business. If we know that there's a huge demand for something, we would be carrying that in our stores. Right. It's the same thing in investing. I always look to see where is the demand coming from and when we have challenges in the market, which is what we're, what we're in right now and what we're going to continue to go through. So when there is instability, people are more cautious to buy homes. Interest rates as we know, are through the roof. So now instead of buying a $675,000 home, the exact same payment now as it was just 12 months ago, you can only buy a $380,000 house. That's how much interest rates affect home buying. So when that, that kind of like median house range, which always fluctuates around 300, 350,000, when they can't get loans, they need to rent. And if there's ever trouble in the housing market in those lower areas, those are the homes that are going to get foreclosed on and those people need to rent. So it's a great place to look. If you've already done the roths and the IRAs, and you already have all of those things, what do you want to do to diversify your income? Possibly real estate, something to look at. And here's why I like it. If I want to buy a million dollars in Tesla, I need a million dollars liquid. Typically sometimes you can do it on margin, that's a whole other thing. But typically you need a million to buy that stock. If I want to buy a million dollar rental property, I may only need 250,000, 300,000. I might not need any of my money because I've been doing it for so long. I can use other people's money because they don't want to do the work, but they'll lend you the money for interest only loans. So there's so many ways that you can really grow your level of assets and your net worth through real estate as opposed to all of the stocks. But you always remember this, the 60, 2020 rule. I talk about it in the book. 60% of your investments should be in medium risk, meaning that you know they're going to come go up over time. You're going to expect some market volatility. But over time, it's pretty safe that everything's going to continue to go up because we have the data. 20% if you want to play around with some risky things or unclear or unstable markets like crypto. And then maybe 20% in things that are so boring it'll make you yawn, like Treasuries and mortgage backed securities and things like that. By being able to do that, you can get at least some above average returns, but only if you play the long game. It works not just in wealth, it works in business, it works in relationships, it works everything. So make sure that whatever you're investing in that you make sure it's something that you're able to keep your money in for the long game. This is not, you know, grow it up in a year and pull it out.

That's.

That's probably depending on where someone is. That's the best way I can condense all of it into a couple sentences.

I hope everyone listening just took like 47 pages of notes, which I'm sure they did. So thanks for that.

I.

You hit on so many different things. I could go down so many rabbit holes, but I want to stick with this. There's so much fear in our world today about what's happening in the economy. And I know you've done the research and we all know the highest highs come after the lowest lows. And when it comes to investing, we do have to play the long game. But fear makes us make these irrational choices, right? Like cutting payroll, cutting marketing, when really this is maybe a time to double down and use this as an opportunity to grow and invest in our businesses. I'm sure you get asked this question a lot, so I'm curious what your advice is for a business owner who is kind of teetering on the edge of fear and what choices to make next. And in cloud, the.