Krisstina Wise: How Losing Everything Twice Led Her to Financial Freedom | Capability Amplifier #149

What happened to me when my body came out? What happened to my business? Did my business go up or did it go down?

Yep, totally went down.

Money is to live a really good life. Yep. And money is so that you have money when you need it in this situation. So it's my private stuff over here on the side that I was studying. So I was studying this money that actually ended up saving me. Not my business, not my success. It's so simple. Everybody has worked with me. I haven't had anybody yet that hasn't worked with me. That said, Christina, you're telling me I've been putting this off my entire life, terrified, thinking I couldn't do it, and it all is this simple. I'm like, yeah, money is the best employee. Money is the best business.

It just gives you money.

Koenigs here. Welcome to another episode of Capability Amplifier. This is Christina Wise. I want to tell you a Christina Wise story. First of all, I met her about 15 years ago and immediately had a great connection with her because she's really, really smart. And we had something in common, which is she grew up in a little tiny town like me. In fact, she grew up poor in a trailer park. Both of her parents were poor minded, poor thinking. But she managed to go to work, make a lot of money, lost it all not once, but twice. And now she's worth over eight figures. And she lives on Passive Inc. Everything she does is a matter of choice. And she's also a mother of two. Now, she also lost that money because she married some wrong guys. Okay, so she has some fantastic love stories, but here's why it's so important to you and why I had her on today is because she has a great story about most of us as founders who our answer when we don't have money is we go out and hustle and make more. We're great at making money. Usually we have high income, low net worth, and most founders I know are ashamed about that, as I've been, which is we've worked so hard, we've made so much, and we show so little for it. And there's no way you could get off the hamster wheel and actually live on passive income. So big reason I had Christina in today is to talk about what her formula is, what she's been doing, and how she's been helping other founders, just like you and me, get to the other side and get off the hamster wheel. As I like to say, you know, at some point, you want to get out of that circus and quit being A monkey. So, Christina, I love you. It's nice to have you here today.

Glad to finally be here.

Oh, my God. So it is. It's so awesome. So why don't we begin before we get into, like, some of your strategies, your tactics, and how you built this remarkable business.

Where'd you come from? Give us a little more of the story.

Yeah, well, there's a little story of where I came from, and you pointed that out already. So that's. That was the beginnings and certainly from a poverty mindset and from those upbringings. And it really. When I think back, like, where I am today compared to where I started from, like many of us, it's like I don't even know how that's possible. Like, I never could have imagined living the life I have today based on those beginnings. But really, the story I like to tell is I was in the real estate industry, and I had made it to the top. I was nationally known. I was an icon. I was in every cover of every magazine. I was speaking at the biggest stages, and I had had this one stage that I had wanted to be on. And this was the stage of all stages. This is where all the technology people, like founders, household names that you know of people, when we think of real estate, we type our address into those URLs to find out our value of our. Our houses, so on and so forth. So I, speaking on the stage, keynote speaking. There's about 750 people of the real estate leaders in the audience. I was the opening keynote. And I had been waiting and waiting and practicing and practicing. And this was the stage that if I could make it on this stage, I knew I'd made it. And I made it to the stage, and I made a stage as the opening keynote. So I am speaking. I'd practice this whole. I'd rehearsed this. I hit every mark like a Broadway play type thing. And so I'm on stage giving this talk. It was going perfectly, and all of a sudden I heard this little, like, click in my brain. It was very fast, and it took me off for a second. But luckily, I was able to get back on track and deliver this performance. Standing ovation again. These are the leaders in the industry. I get off stage, there's a break. People are, like, clamoring after me. Christina, can I get your phone number? Can I get your name? Da, da da. So the funny thing about this story is that I'm walking out of the room and I'm telling myself, like, I'm like, christina, girlfriend, you Effing made it. You did it. This is your dream come true. Everything that you've done was for this moment. You can name your price from here on out.

Yeah.

And I just was, like, relishing in that feeling of success and accomplishment. And not six hours later, I was in bed and couldn't get out of bed. My entire body was breaking down, and I had to deal with the fact that I might never be in that place again.

Right.

And what had happened at that moment, it was like this. The snap of a finger. But what that sound was is I'd had a mini stroke on stage, and the dominoes just went down from there. And then it ended up being a year of just one breakdown after another after another, and my body was just basically giving me the finger.

Yeah.

And what I kind of thought about reflecting on that is like, I was the entrepreneurial poster child. I did everything everybody told me to do, and I made it, and I hit that level of success.

Everything right and everything wrong. Right.

What happened to me when my body came out? What happened to my business? Did my business go up or did it go down?

Yep, totally went down. Yep.

And it started breaking down. So now, while I was breaking down, my business was breaking down. I'd had no energy or anything. Effort to put in the business. And it started crumbling, and bad things were happening with maybe bad business partners. And a lot of us have been in situations like that.

Never happened to me.

That's true. Exactly. Because when you're not paying attention. So what happened is this where I've been studying this money, this private money and been building this wealth. And I had, you know, some beginnings of assets at that time and had some cash and things. It was that money that ended up saving my life for sure. Because I had the money and I had some passive income that was able to pay the bills. So that just created this new awareness of, like, oh, what is the money? For one, money is to live a really good life. And money is so that you have money when you need it in this situation. So it's my private stuff over here on the side that I was studying. Cause I was studying this money that actually ended up saving me. Not my business, not my success. In fact, what was so amazing? Just our egos. You know, my ego is, I'd say, pretty big at the time because I was so important. But do you think the industry waited around for me to get well, or did they go on and find the next.

They're gonna find the next guru and the next guru and the Next guru.

In two seconds, right? Two seconds flat. So I wasn't even as important as I thought. I. So coming out of that whole experience, what I realized is that there's so much, this money equation, especially for entrepreneurs, that just. That doesn't make sense. And so so many entrepreneurs and founders is they're working so hard, but they don't have anything to show for it. And that's what I call the entrepreneur trap. The entrepreneurial trap is we just make money. The amount we, the more money we make, the more expensive our lifestyle gets. So we go back to make more money to have a more expensive lifestyle. And that lifestyle is really awesome. But every month we go to work is to pay for the cost of our expensive lifestyle. And then we keep working harder and harder and hustling more and more. And then one day we just wake up tired and burn out and think, what the hell am I doing this for? Why am I taking all these risks? Why am I not sleeping at night? Oh, my God, I need to make payroll again. Over and over and over again, thinking, one day it's just going to all work out. The truth is, it usually doesn't. So that's why I do. What I do today is to really help entrepreneurs understand, understand money, get good with their money to build real net worth and wealth so that they're not trapped by their business.

Yep. Well, and I'll give everyone full disclosure here. You know, we've worked together, we've known each other a long time. I've watched you go through at least one of your cycles that I'm aware of. I don't know if we were that close before where I. I got to see a previous one, but I knew you, you know, you've always been super straightforward. You, like, you have no shame in the sense of, yep, here's what happened to me. You're an open book. And, you know, when I was telling you this, we were having a little lunch today, and I said, one of your greatest qualities is how curious you are and how humble you are. And I think when you get close to death, that's a very humbling experience when you really have lost it all and you've got to ask for help and really figure out what works. And I look at you, and I've also had the good fortune of getting inside your business, interviewing a bunch of your clients and asking them, like, what's the experience? What did you learn? What did you really learn? Like, what do you think you're buying and what do you think you got when They've worked with you. And that's part of what I want to talk to you about is I, you know, I don't just want to know this story. I want to know how you've managed to do it and get it back. Basically, this is your third big win. I'd call it, you know, let's say you made it. Lost it, Made it, Lost it, Made it. Is that right? Has it been three times or two?

Yeah, that's right.

Okay. Okay, good. And you know, it isn't an accident at this point. And each time was a different thing, a different lesson to learn. Right. And some people would just quit. So I think before I get into some of your customer stories, I want to know, what do you believe makes you so resilient? Why do you keep on fighting, other than the fact that you had two babies to feed? I mean, you had your kids, so that's certainly a damn good reason. And you're not a quitter. But what do you think it is? It just kept you going. Cause you could have just quit. You could have started some seriously bad habits, run away.

Yeah, you know what? I've never been asked that before.

And I, I know I'd never asked it before. That's why I thought of it just now. I'm like, damn. And I really want to know.

I don't know, I think some of us are just wired that way. You know, there's just that mentality that if it's up, if it's going to be, it's up to me type of thing. And I guess also in my head that.

Anything'S possible. Like there's just not a quitter mentality. And there's always a solution and everything's temporary. And even we've all experienced dark moments, the lowest of low moments, but I always know that there's another side. And then part of the journey is to understand that there's a lesson in every journey and that there's always going to be that good on the other side. So it's just, you deal with the shit. Sometimes you have to hang with the pain for a little while, but it always serves a great purpose. And I don't know, maybe that's where that resiliency comes from. But just quitting is never an option.

Yeah, I can see that. I think the last time I saw you in probably a dark place where you were really struggling, some of it was health related, some of it was a love loss. It was a combination of both. And, and you definitely don't lose hope. So that's something that we share is the optimism and hope and genuinely believing it's just going to work itself out. You know, like that's something I, I'm, I never fall apart for that exact. I just know it's just going to be fine. And it, you kind of, you know it's going to work out or you're going to be dead and either way you're really whatever. Right.

So I guess it's just like an eternal optimism.

Yeah.

I always, I just always anticipate things are going to work out and they're going to be great at some point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's good. Well, so I'm going to ask you some specific questions because I interviewed, I can't remember when we were working the last time we interviewed four or six of your customers and we asked them a lot of questions about working with you and what they learned. I don't even remember if we did all of them together or if I did some separate ones. But the bottom line is, here's what I heard over and over again was.

Before your systems, they're confused, not confident, focused on top line revenue, which I've certainly.

Heard you talk about. And I know for me when I talk to Vivian about money stuff, always good at making it. And you even asked me today, you know, like, well, how are some of your investments going? And I'll be like my greatest, I'm going to call it my flat out investment mistakes have been making a bunch of money and investing in other people just like me. More VC deals. I've got a dozen outstanding right now. One out of 1314 has really turned liquid and the other ones are people I know, deals I know. But you learn that VC deals are oftentimes unless you get really good at it and that's a full time job. Even though statistically the numbers aren't that different. It's like they're high risk, zero interest, indefinite period loans with someone who might not grow and change with the times because a whole bunch of stuff gets thrown at you. And knowing what I know now, instead of being fearful of real estate, for example, I would have gotten involved a lot sooner. But back to your customers. Structure, confidence, clarity, path, a rule set and control and choice that came up over and over again. So I want you to sort of explain the frameworks you've developed, why they consistently work so well and then maybe we'll dive into a couple.

Of some of the core lessons that I've seen and witnessed and also learned by going through your material is that cool? Yeah, that was a lot of stuff. I know it's a big ass setup, but I want to give you a lot of directions to go. So I gave you some time to think about, like where to take this first.

All right, well, the first thing that I like to start with everyone, like where I was before, again, where I was and part of that story to where I am today. And I was trying to think like, what was the problem then? Because I was working on business, like I said, I was working separately on money. But things were still completely screwed up. Everything fell apart. So I thought what was wrong there, especially being the poster child of trying to do everything right. And what I landed on is like the fundamental problem is enough was never enough. So no matter where I got or how much money I made or how big the business was, it was never enough. So there was no, there was no like destination. There was no place where it's satisfactory, where it's a place of fulfillment. And so that's where it was, is like it was just more is better. More is better. So more money, more things, more status, more materialism. Whatever it is, it just. And I believe that so much of our, just our cultural influence is more is better. So that's where we always start is what I say. It's broken down into these kind of four places. And one is to understand that business and household are separate. So as entrepreneurs, we conflate these two like they're the same thing. Like they overlap so much that there's no separation. So we can understand a business is for the sake of like when we're talking about, in financial terms, hopefully we like our business, there's some fulfillment in there. Many of us, you know, we enjoy so many elements of our business.

Do work to live or live to work kind of things.

Right.

I get it.

The business at the end of the day, from a financial standpoint, it's to make an income, one income. And that one income from our business is called profit. And that's the money from our business. But business isn't about fulfillment. It might add some fulfilling things, like if we're in our purpose and that type of thing. But it doesn't even have to be like if we make a lot of money and you know, it's just a good business. It's not like we're, I don't know, living our purpose, so to speak, but we're making a really good profit. Where we enjoy our money is in our household. So when we pay ourselves enough from our business, we move that Money to our household. And that's where we spend our money. That's where we buy, pay for our houses. That's where we pay for our cars. That's where we pay for our vacations. That's where we get to create memories with our family and friends. That's where we all the money that we spend that actually brings enjoyment or actually has any type of really material worth to it is household finance. But we're so focused on the business that we're not paying attention to the fulfilling piece of money through household finance. But what we do, since we're not paying attention, we don't pay attention to the money in our household. We just spend all the money. And that money in that lifestyle becomes so expensive that we have to go back to the business. And that's what I call this entrepreneurial trap is we make money in the business, we spend it all in our household living our lifestyle. Our lifestyle is really expensive. So we have to go back to the business. And sometimes it's like, oh, I need to even sell more because I want to even and spend more money. And that can go on forever thinking one day it'll all work out and I'll have enough money. But what we're not doing is we're not building wealth. We're just focused on making more money in the business without understanding the income and wealth are different. So the truth is, is wealth isn't created in our business. One income stream is created in our business. Passive income's not created in our business. Hard working income is that we're going to work.

Our business is to create our income, our households, to create our wealth. Wealth is created in the household. And it's a four step process. The first thing is how much money is enough? Asking the question how much money is enough and how much money is not enough?

Pretty sure that rhymes with aliens. Starts with a B.

Not really, but it's to know the number. So everybody has a number. And that's a philosophical question because how much money's enough is organized around what is my good life? So your good life, Mike, is different than my good life. So it's like really specking that out. And I call it lifestyle architecture is like, what is my lifestyle? And then how much does it cost to live it? And we need to know that number. So when we're looking at, like you said, the framework, it's really just four simple parts. First of all, it's to understand that I want to be wealthy. And what wealthy means is I want enough net worth. That throws off enough passive income that covers the cost of my desirable lifestyle. That's not business income. This is asset income. Because our business takes 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week for most of us. And we want to get out of that and have more control. So that's the first thing. So when we're looking at this, it's like, first, I want to be wealthy. So the first step in this is we need to know how much money is enough? How much wealth is enough? What is my net worth number? Call it a freedom number, a sovereignty number. We have a financial independence number, but you need to have a number. But most of us, we're working our asses off and have no clue how much money is enough. Like what day we can say, I quit if I want to. Right. So that's step one is how much money is enough?

Hey, action taker Mike Koenigs here, and I just wanted to interrupt for a second and let you know that if you're ready to reinvent yourself and your business, go to connecttomike.com to learn more and book a conversation with me right now. All right, back to the episode.

We have to know those numbers, and part of that is knowing what our gaps are.

And I'm just going to ask you one question. Has yours changed considerably? Has it gone up or down or stayed kind of the same?

You know, I mean, it's. It's. It's gone up over time, but it's been gradual. But the thing is, is it's gone up a little bit, but not really, because when we're doing how much money is enough? The way to the lens to say if it never got better than this, it would be good enough.

Yeah.

So when you've reached that number and it what cost and what sacrifice also. But when you reach that number, it's like a little bit more might. Might be better, that type of thing.

Yeah, I was curious about your psychology there. So keep on going.

So that's step one. How much money is enough? Step two, then there's a rule that says wealth is created in the margin. What that means is we have to create a surplus. So when we're paying ourselves from our business and we move it to our household, the entrepreneurial trap is it's called expense creep, or it's called Parkinson's law of money. And Parkinson's law of money says expenses will always rise to match income. So that's just what's happened. Business makes more money, our lifestyle goes up. That feels really good. We have more status. We have more toys, we, we get to fit into a different group, then that keeps going up and up. So that goes on forever. Make more money in the business because we're working harder and be more successful and we spend more. But wealth is created in the margins. So what that means is we need a margin between the money we pay ourselves and the money we spend.

Yep.

Very simple, right?

Yep.

But the question we don't ask ourselves is how much margin. And that's based on some pretty simple math that we have to do. That's step two. We have to understand the principle is wealth is creating margin. And two, how much margin do I need to create on an annualized basis that I can buy assets and build future net worth? Then step three is that we have to have a system that matches our strategy and it's called a gap strategy. We need to know what are gaps. That's part of doing that. How much is enough, what are my income gaps, what are my net worth gaps, and how long is it going to take to fill this. So now we have to have a financial system that allows us to track our money to cash flow to make sure we're moving our money. Because money needs velocity, money needs movement. Many of us were just so work. We work hard to make it, our bills, spend it, and that's all we do versus being intentional to move our money accordingly to make sure we're tracking all of the money, how it's working, where it's not working, and if we're on track or off track to hit our numbers. And then the final piece is we have to put our money to work. Meaning we have to take the money from the margin and invest it in places so it can compound and grow over a certain period of time. And that money's what makes us wealthy, not our hard work. So when we start using that margin and consistently, consistency is really the name of the wealth building game. And continually build our net worth and buy those assets and build out that profit portfolio to hit our number and that number then when it reaches the point of paying for the cost of our lifestyle, now we're financially free. So each one of those elements are always need to be at work. But very simple principles. We've all heard this before, but it's really now the final piece of the what, how you, you know, wrap that and put a bow on it. It boils down to our mindset with money. Like really how we feel about it, what we believe about it, what our relationship is to it, meaning we want to manage it. We Want to spend time with it, we want to grow it, and then our behaviors with money, what we do and don't do. And those, those are all the ingredients for the recipe of if we're going to stay on the entrepreneurial trap and just hustling it and just being financially stressed one way or another all the time, or we're constantly creating that surplus and that financial success to financial, you know, security and eventually financial freedom. So it's just very simple.

Right? Well, so I'm listening to you going, okay, that's the wax on, wax off system. And you know, I really watched you teach this. We did a joint event and I really got you sink into this and I was around a bunch of your clients and also I got to do this with Vivian. So she really resonated with it and loved the psychology. So I want to just again put that in a box and say it's a really good process and it's so simple, yet it's something you don't think about. Now, one thing I've noticed about you, if I jump onto another topic, is.

Like how you've created your own wealth. So there's a lot of nuance in your thinking, at least through my lens, because I've watched you, I've listened to you, I've seen the way you do it, and to me, you do it effortlessly. It genuinely looks that way because you have a great simple lifestyle. You do basically whatever you want to do. As far as I can tell, you don't have any have to's in your life. It's want to's, you know, how you fire up your business. It's lifestyle compatible. And I don't want to forget to say this. One of the things that we put together here as a gimme is a how much is enough worksheet. So I just want to remind basically tell everyone right now, you can go to wisemoneymethod.com.

Free to get that. So I didn't want to forget to drop that in, but now I'm going to get to the question I was leading up to, which is the nuance. So one of the nuances is where have you grown and accumulated your best net worth that's given you the most freedom? And if you were going to do it all over again, knowing what you know now, what would you do different or the same to get to where you are? And again, I'm going to just say it's over eight figures. Okay, so you've got a great base of wealth, but what would you do now, what have you done? What's been most effective and knowing what you've. Because you've been through enough cycles now. You've been through the bull and the bear markets at least twice. So let's start there and then I've got another follow along question.

Okay, well, I guess the answer to that question is a little bit more complicated. OK then, you know, it's not easy to answer. What I mean by that is because what I notice is that the question I get asked most often is really in that vein is what did you invest in?

Sure.

Meaning if they invest, if people invest in the same thing I invested in, then they would have the same net worth. I do, of course. Like there's some secret.

No. And I. Yes, and I'm glad you brought that up right away because I know that's not the answer, but I'm going to get into the psychology of.

Yeah, I'll answer that. But it's to understand that we have the wrong question like what to invest in. It's like if it were only that simple because I've made a lot of abound investments as well, like everyone has. But again, to make sure, just to reiterate, there's a very specific order. First of all, we need to know how much net worth is enough. So let's just say it's 10 million.

Yep. I think that's pretty solid for most people. I know they know that with that if they're making, you know, let's say anywhere from 5 to 10% on that money, ba ba ba ba ba half million million bucks a year, that's a damn fine living.

And that's what we're looking at. So let's just take a $10 million net worth and you're probably going to be looking at pulling out of that 500 to a million dollars just based on how much you're pulling out. So that's where we want to start with. And then you have to look at how much time do I Want to take? 5 years, 10 years, 20 years? How long is it going to take me?

Tomorrow. I would like it to be tomorrow.

Yes, right. If it only work. Money takes time and that's part of the compounding and why we need to start. Because yes, we can put money in, but when money starts working on money, it starts compounding like that snowball. So it takes years for it to really compound. But it's not like you just put it in there and forget it. That's really the long game. If we want to shorten it so there's three buckets of money that we want to pay attention to. And in entrepreneurs, most of all of our money's. Our, our money focus is just in our business. And mostly it's just focused on revenue.

No money, it's no money. It's like, go close the deal and boom, I'm going to have some cash and then I'll pull out a little bit of that and stack up. You know, that's been my grind forever. Which at the end of the day, I'd be like, you know, there's always plenty until there isn't exactly. Or an emergency comes along.

But it's just this focus on revenue, more revenue, bigger revenue growth, skill bigger, and it's all revenue. And again, that's just a fatal flaw for entrepreneurs. One, we want profit, profit, profit in our business to be the key metric, not the revenue. Revenue is a byproduct of knowing our, our profit numbers. But profit, then how much profit's enough? So what we need to do is if we have a $10 million net worth, and we know we probably need to invest a certain amount per year to hit that, well, we have to invest a certain amount of our business income that we pay ourselves into creating this net worth. Let's just say it's 100 grand a year. That means if we're paying ourself 300 grand a year, 100 of that straight off the top is going to build that net worth. So that means we can only live off 200 grand of it. But if we reverse engineer and the numbers showed us that, okay, we need to invest 100 grand a year, then I can reverse engineer from that and said, okay, if I, I'm going to invest 100 grand a year, and the cost of my lifestyle is 250,000 a year. And let's say taxes are 100 grand a year, that's $450,000. Now I need a profit for my business. Let's round it up to say, half a million dollars. So now we say, okay, my business. At a bare minimum, I need a business strategy that profits me $500,000 a year. And based on my profit margin, now let's just say it's a 50% profit margin. I need a million dollar a year business just to keep it easy, simple. So now we can say I only need a million dollar business. So Mike, one of the people you talked to, you know, he was grinding and grinding and taking all these risks and investments to try to go from 1 million to 3 million to hit 10 million and he lost everything. He was doing great at a three million dollar business. He's making his $500,000 a year. He was enjoying it. Life was simple. But everybody told him to scale. He reinvested everything, started building some technology. Everything went bust and he lost all of it. So for example, when we did this work together and he realized like, oh, now that I know reverse engineered, he landed on I only need a two and a half million dollar business to profit the amount of profit. I can do that in my sleep. It's super fun. Now I can organically grow. After that, I don't have to make all these investments and I get to live my lifestyle and I'm going to hit my future self numbers. So it's just an example of we need to reverse engineer and we can get out of this. More is better. We can actually know. Do I need a million dollar business, a five million dollar business, a $10 million business just based on reversing and filling in all these numbers?

Yeah.

So that's, that's kind of the piece. So we have our business lens and we need to understand our profit and loss and our balance sheet in our business and understand what our profit numbers are based on how much is enough. Now we need to manage, pay ourselves and manage that money powerfully and intentionally in our household to make sure we keep that $100,000. And now the third lens is our investment portfolio. And if it is at $100,000 a year, it's like where are we putting it? And that's the answer to your question. But just understand, like when we're looking through money, there's one lens to look at our business, there's another lens to look through how we're managing it and passing it through our household. Then the third lens is how do I create financial independence? And based on how do I hit this $10 million in this certain period of time. And that's the third lens. So the nuance to that is like you said, is that there's more to it. It's not like you just go invest in a few things. It's a strategy. So it's knowing that, okay, I have a strategy. Now. If you looked at my portfolio, there's like over time, and that's what I was showing at the workshop is like I took this amount of money, I took this, I took different pieces, I reinvested portion of that over here, sold this, reinvested this over here, this million dollars turned into $3 million. And so I'm constantly moving the money. There to really optimize each asset and investment and build out this portfolio. But the entire time I knew what I was doing and I made mistakes. I knew the numbers I was after. So I was always making these financial investment decisions. When to buy, when to sell, what to buy, what to sell. And that's. And always looking through it in that lens. But it was very distinct and separate than these other two pieces.

Good.

So over time, you know, it's been a lot of real estate. It's been. I've invested in different companies, the whole life insurance. You know, there's just a really nice portfolio. And the way I teach that is you look at it like a pie chart. And I can send that out as well. That I can just maybe wisemoney.com pie chart. And I'll just show a pie chart of a really good way to start making sure it's kind of balanced. What I call balancing your portfolio so that we're not over invested in maybe just VC deals and we've got a really nice portfolio. But what you invest in is less important. It's really just all these other pieces and having a strategy and knowing your numbers. Because I've made, I'd say, most of my wealth in real estate. But some of my peers that have the same net worth I've done, they've done it in stocks or they've done it in crypto. They've done it in different places that have kind of been their expertise. So if you ask them, they said, oh, do it in the stock market. If you ask me, I'm like, oh, do it in real estate. Yes. Somebody else is like, oh, do it in such and such. What you invest in is least important. It's really, again, just having a strategy, making sure that you're following your plan. And none of this is rocket science. It's just that we don't do it.

Yeah. When I think about this, as you were talking again, getting back to the nuance. So I think the biggest thing. I'll tell you what my biggest mistakes have been and what I've observed in other people who think like me, which is make more money, make more money there you can always pull out more and just take as much as you can and invest it. Shoot, that doesn't work out well. And I just hadn't. I had no set amount other than Vivian was ritualistic and sucked it away. You know, it was like. The story I tell is one day I went into our wealth manager sat down, they gave me a piece of paper, and I was thinking to myself as I walked in. You guys aren't aggressive enough. Okay, well, I sat down and we literally had an extra $1.2 million I didn't even know about. I was like, well, that isn't because of me. It's not my behavior. You know, I'm a good money maker. I was a terrible wealth creator. It was because Vivian ritualistically took it out and put it into a vehicle that we didn't have to think about and manage.

But the other big mistake I made was, I'm going to build this business so I can sell it to get my number. So the my behavior was, who cares how I live? Who cares how much is coming out? I'm going to sell this for 10 or $100 million. And that rarely works out. Okay. Out of five big sales I've had, like, the amount I got, the amount I kept after I paid everyone, paid taxes, paid the bills. Like, instead, if I would have been using a very disciplined behavior and knowing what number I wanted to hit in 10 years, and it'd be like, okay, let's say it was five or ten million bucks. Whatever it would have been, I know I could have made that money intentionally and pulled it out and adjusted my lifestyle intentionally. I could have invested in something. And looking back at 57 now, I would have started buying real estate a lot sooner. But I was afraid of it, terrified of it. And I always looked and my mindset was, it's just too expensive. What if it goes down and through the lens? Now I know, well, it doesn't stay that way, not for long. You know, it's like there's always need for that and the leverage you get, the tax benefits. But I felt my story was, I'll never get good enough at it or as good as someone else, or it's too complicated, and I'd rather focus on the thing that's going to give me the big payday. I think that was a huge, foolish mistake. So when I look back, lack of a system, which you've got a system. I've watched it and observed it now, seen it new. And the mindset of, oh, I'm going to wait for the big prize versus chip away at it every month or every year. And, you know, now we had the courage. This is, again, not my. Not because I did it. It's because of Vivian, of developing in Mexico. And that thing's going to not only create a lot of wealth for us, it'll create a community. It'll create a mindset and a behavior and a Discipline. It's required a lot of discipline. And frankly, we've learned a lot and made a lot of almost mistakes. But I think again, knowing what I know now, listening to you and thinking about how you think.

Like, you are so curious. You're just willing to jump in and put the work in that, you know, you're fearless. That's another one of your greatest qualities. So I did a lot of talk in there, but okay, back to you.

Well, I mean, listen to what you're saying. When you know your number and that number becomes a strategy, then everything in the realm of investing is all part of that strategy to hit that number, and it becomes a business in and of itself. So you have your business business. You treat your household like a business. I teach. You run a. You run a household.

Profit and loss. Brilliant. I've never seen anyone do it like that.

The profit first is the pay yourself model, where you're taking the profit off the, off the top of this 100,000, whatever it is. And that's what you invest. And then you look at your investments as your business. And the game is, is that it's so funny, like, you don't even know this happens until it happens. But at first, you know, all the time is in the business, it's lopsided, especially when you're younger and early in your career and doing these things. And what's amazing, it's like. And it takes 80 hours a week or whatever you're doing at the. Especially at the beginnings and all that. Then all of a sudden there's this tipping point where your assets start getting closer equally in the amount of money that you make in your business. For most small business entrepreneurs.

Yep.

But your assets take an hour a week to make the same amount of money. And that's where it's like this aha moment. It's like over here, like, even on a slow week, we're putting in 40 hours. As a business owner.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, that's a low week if you're only putting 40 hours in. And this is a career of this one way or another, and managing people and putting money and making payroll and all the stress and time away from the family, even if we love it. Yeah. So that's what's amazing. All this time, risk capital over investing, reinvesting. And that's what entrepreneurs knew. They put all the money they make and they reinvest it back in the business to grow the business. So there is no diversification whatsoever. But all of a sudden, over here now, your Money's been working there becomes a day where it matches the income from your business at a fraction of the time.

Yeah.

It's like, that's where it becomes so obvious. It's like, money is the best employee, Money is the best business. It just gives you money. Now, does it take some management if you're going to build a $10 million net worth, usually you have to spend some time and spend some time there and have a strategy and review your numbers and look at your assets and make some switches. But I'm no rocket scientist and I'm no hedge fund manager, and I've done okay with my very simple brain. So I'm just saying anybody can manage assets to a place to create a $10 million net worth. If you ask me to make a billion dollars, probably not. That's beyond this body and brain's capacity. But 10 million is possible for everyone. 10 or 20 million, it's not hard. It doesn't take some level of investor savvy sophistication to do it. You just have to have a plan and a strategy and you have to be intentional and, and you need to treat it like a little mini business. But it is the best business because like I said, it pays and it doesn't take a lot of time. So now to manage the assets and do the things and stuff, it's super fun. Money keeps growing, it keeps building and compounding. My business is so much harder to keep the same amount of income coming in. Right. So that's, that's what we're not realizing is that's what we're giving up by reinvesting everything back in the business. And maybe one day it will sell. Yeah. But I'm like, worst case, at least go ahead and build your portfolio to hit these numbers and if you can still sell your business, but even selling your business, you're gonna have to put that money somewhere and put it to work. So I've sold businesses before. I've been, you know, I've been the entrepreneur. I've built so many businesses and I've had a couple decent sales, you know, small sales, but that was money. It's like, oh, I took that little thing, I built there, created some, some enterprise value, sold it. Now I took that and I put that back money back in the portfolio and it just expedited how fast I could grow it because I'm very intentional about growing that, that nest egg, that portfolio. So that's where it's just, it's a mind shift where we want to move just so much intention off the business and at least take out a little piece of our mental real estate and time real estate there and put it over to having a desire to build this portfolio. And once you have the desire, I can teach everybody the basics again. It's so simple. Everybody that's worked with me, I haven't had anybody yet that hasn't worked with me. That said, Christina, you're telling me I've been putting this off my entire life, terrified, thinking I couldn't do it and it all is this simple. I'm like, yeah, yeah. Because it's one big rig system out there that's trying to make it seem really complicated so people can keep taking your money because nobody wants anybody to know that it actually is this easy.

Yeah.

So it just takes a little bit of time investment and learning investment to create this literacy that we can use to actually build a net worth that's good.

Well, I wanted to do two things right now. One is I want to tell everyone where to go to get the how much money is enough worksheet and the pie chart so that it's at first of all, wisemoneymethod.com free. Okay. There's some goodies there. And if you want to see Christina's Systems, which is Wisemoneymethod.com shop, there's a link on the website as well. But I want you to describe your business because, yes, I know it's hard. Like running and growing a business is never easy. But I think you've got a really cool business because you've got two core, what's three offerings. You've got work on the personal side. So it's think right about your money and growing your wealth side. There's think right about your business. So you got one for personal, one for business. But you also have to do the one on one where people get to spend basically a weekend with you and just do this all at once with you.

First of all, I love the business model because it's simple and it's elegant. And also I've met your customers. I've interviewed them and talked to them because I wanted to really understand it. But what can you tell us about the curb system and that part of the business just so people have a good sense of what it's like to work with you and what they get?

Yeah. So curbs is. It's an acronym, but basically that's the framework that I teach. And curb stands for something. It's understand categories of money and each money needs a job. It's uncover. U stands for uncover, which is uncovering our behaviors, our mindsets, uncovering where the money's going, where it's not going, uncovering our gaps, uncovering how much is enough. So it's really uncovering in what I say, get to know your knowledge numbers and covering your numbers. Our stands for ratio. Like I said, like wealth is created in the margin is to understand what is that ratio, what is that profit first. How much do I need to pay myself to build my future self nest egg. And that. That financial independence portfolio number that I want to. Want to grow towards. And so. And know the ratios. And so it's understanding that there's actually a formula that we can follow to know how much money start putting away. And then B stands for buckets. And it's to. With these different categories, money needs to be in separate places. We need to give it, we need to separate and move it. So this money here is for this. This money there is for that. This money over here is for that. And so that's what curbs is. It's this very prescriptive money management cash flow system to make sure our money is moving and has the velocity. And we're setting it up to grow in these different categories. So that's what curve stands for and why it has the acronym. And it's funny like that curbs doesn't have any meaning to anybody that's been through it.

No. I can remember the first time I heard I like, this is just a terrible name until I had to sit through it and see the elegance of the system. And you know, I, I knew you a long time before I got to dive into your systems and see, like, I remember looking at going, God dang it, this is brilliant stuff. And like, you didn't come across as being this systematic mindset. Y person. Like, I, I could. I didn't know how to decode you until I understood more about what you'd accomplished. You're like, you're not an easy nut to crack. Honestly, that was likable immediately, you know, But I was like, what? I just, I did not get it until I dug in and saw the elegance. Okay, how about the. The working with you part of the show? Because that's something that again, I think is brilliant. And you and I are alike on that. I think getting in and getting your hands dirty with real people is what sharpens everyone's blade. It's so fun to just work face to face, one on one. I learn more and get more out of doing that than the other person. It's the way I feel. Even though they'd say exactly the opposite. But why don't you talk about your experience?

Yeah, sure. So I really have three offers and one like you said is the one to one and that's a weekend. And this is for those where there's more money than there is time. And we just want to get everything that I done, I teach done in a weekend. So that's my one to one. I only work with kind of a half a dozen people a year for that offer. And anybody just reach out to me if you want to do everything that I teach pretty much over weekend. But we get all of your finances set up. We know your net worth number, we know all your gaps, we get your financial system set up, we get all your buckets set up, we get your QuickBooks online set. Like everything's done for you over the weekend but you get very intimate with your numbers with the system. And then I have my entire financial team that will help make sure that we have everybody help you keep that going. It's like having the coach and trainer after you've put on all your muscle mass to make sure you keep and stay on track.

Yep. And I have a link to that too. It's wisemoneymethod.com start.

So that's, that's just the one to one for those that want to do it over a longer period of time. There's, there's money. Like I said, wealth is created in the household. Very few entrepreneurs pay attention to their money in the household other than paying their bills.

Yep.

So this is what I call curbs for household which is the personal finance piece and understanding how much money to run through your household. How much money do we need to pay our ourselves. Setting up these different buckets, doing all the things that I teach. But it's really getting, it's to, to understand how to manage your money according to these wealth numbers that you create. And we get all that set up systematically and that's in a 12 week class and program and people go through as a class and then business finance. So again I work with so many entrepreneurs. They're working really hard, but they don't run a profit and loss. They don't understand the balance sheet. They're just spending money and reinvesting in the business. They have no metrics, they have no KPIs, they're not. And see what money is, especially in business, it's a mirror. It tells us what's working, it tells us what's not working. There's a certain amount of money we need to set up buckets in our business. One of those is an invest reinvestment bucket back into the business. We need to do a profit first system to make sure we're paying ourselves. But again, a lot of entrepreneurs love making money and they're, they're putting out all the fires and doing the things, but they don't understand money. And ultimately they're burning way too much, they're keeping way too little. My business owners I work with, we usually bring six figures to the bottom line just within a few weeks because it's understanding how to look at the money and seeing where it's not, where they're losing it, where it's just being burned and not paying attention to. Yeah. So that's the business class, then there's the household class and then the one on one.

Yeah. And it really comes down to it isn't just a system, it's a whole bunch of very fascinating psychology that is non obvious. And again, as I listen to you, I don't know how I'd interpret this interview if I didn't know you and if I hadn't sat through your classes, if I hadn't spoken with your clients and customers. Because.

On one hand it's so simple, but it's so elegant and there's a lot of uncommon thinking woven into it. And that would be my message to you. Watching or listening right now.

Just head on over, just at least grab Christina's tools like the, you know, the how much is enough worksheet. She's got a bunch of videos, she's got a really good podcast, a lot of great content. If you want to do one of her classic, it's really worth it, it's really smart. I have some very close friends who, one of which comes to mind, very wealthy individual, really succeeded and she told me she learned so much and it changed her mindset throughout. And then if you've got the inkling to work one on one, head on over to wisemanymethod.com start and so anything else that we should talk about before I let you go?

I don't think so. I just think, you know what's funny is that in business we talk money all the time, right. It's like, ah, let's five figure business, six figure business, seven figure business, eight figure business. We throw, we throw millions around like nothing. And so it just becomes, it's kind of a pragmatic conversation like hey, what's your revenue? And here's my Revenue and are you increasing your revenue? And maybe we'll talk about profit. Profit's not talked about enough, but it's usually too revenue focused. But again.

No big deal to talk around this money word in business. But once money goes to the household, now it's personal. So the work that I do, I do the personal side. That's where the emotion is. That's where I'm hearing the stories every day when I'm on the phone.

Like, well, it's the shame of a lack of wealth for high net worth. Like you say.

High income, always broke.

Is that high income broke people?

Yeah.

So the high income broke means we may be having a lot of success and status in our business and faces, you know, can be very influencer. But I get the behind the scenes stories of in household, the shame, the guilt, the fact that, you know, they had to put more money in the business, the mounds of debt that have been just adding up over time. So so much debt. You know, the truth, like the true behind the scenes, behind the curtains, the arguments with the spouses, the fear, the, you know, the reality. Even though things look great in the business. So that's again, that's where we want to clean things up. And like you said, so much of it is mindset and psychology. It is the behaviors and the feelings. And so what I say is for anyone listening, we work so hard in our business and it's to understand money is a mindset, but money's a skill. Like it's knowledge based. We're illiterate when it comes to money. We don't understand it. Even though we're great at making it, it stands to reason that we're good with money all together. It's like, no, there's something to learn, there's something to do. So if there's any financial stress or.

Fear or uncertainty when it comes around money, it's easy to fix. And that's what I do. I help people fix their money.

Yeah. Well, and I'll add one more thing. This is a good shameless plug for you that I really like about you, is for anyone who's got an audience and you want to bring in an entertaining and engaging, thoughtful emotional female speaker. Okay? Because great finding, great talent who are engaging is always difficult for someone. You have something that's very complimentary to any business we're talking today. One of the things that we're doing is we're reaching out to someone I know in the financial business who it makes sense to bring you in because the best there is there's two ways to create retention in a business. One of them is make sure your customers are alive and healthy and the other one is make sure they can continue to afford you. Okay. They're going to be grateful. So bring in Christina as a speaker and as an entertainer and a high engager. That will create an enormous amount of loyalty to you. How's that? And where do they go to engage with you? Just to talk to you as a speaker? I'm glad I remember that.

Yeah, exactly. That's a good thing. I mean, for everybody listening here, I would just say to email me probably the best thing to do, which is just ChristinaRistina.com that's a K and two S's like KISS.

You have Christina.com K R I S I S S T I N A. No kidding. Good job. All right, well, I'll put that in the liner notes as well. That was fantastic. Okay, well, let's wrap this thing up. I want to thank you. I adore you, I love you. You're one of my favorite people on the planet and. All right, good. And for you, for your kids at home, you know what to do. Head on over to Christina's website, engage with her. I guarantee you're just not going to regret it. And more importantly, you're going to make a really good long term friend on top of it. Someone who's going to be there for you and evolve with you because she's always growing, evolving and engaged in something that will be complimentary to you in your life as well. Follow her on all of her channels and podcasts too. So with that, this is capability amplifier. If you've enjoyed this, make sure you share it with your spouse, someone you care about, because money matters. Where are the biggest arguments? What's the biggest cause of divorce? What causes the biggest problems in your business relationships? I guarantee it's this. And this is a great way to fix and heal that wound as well and get you and your spouse on the same page. So with that, thank you so much for listening, watching and make sure you star share, etc. Etc. Thank you. I'll see you in the next episode. Let's say goodbye to everyone.

Bye.

See ya.

Bye.

Bye.