In this conversational interview, Penny Kidd of Penny Wise Coaching talks with Rikki Smith, founder of Stratus Training & Consulting and creator of the Faith on Friday YouTube series. Rikki explains her two businesses—Stratus, a corporate training firm, and Faith on Friday, a weekly inspirational video where she shares personal struggles and faith‑based encouragement. She recounts her personal money story, describing a childhood without financial education, a military career, early missteps like bounced checks and credit‑card loss, and the journey to becoming debt‑free through trial‑and‑error and disciplined budgeting. The discussion moves to practical financial habits, such as planning retreats, budgeting for business growth, and using modern tools to block lost credit cards. Rikki then connects her Christian faith to money, clarifying biblical teachings that the love of money—not money itself—is the root of evil, emphasizing principles of tithing, generous giving, and the belief that God provides the power to obtain wealth but does not reward merely by promise. Both hosts stress personal responsibility, action steps, and the freedom that financial stability brings. The interview concludes with promotion of Rikki’s Faith on Friday channel and speaking services, encouraging viewers to follow her for faith‑forward personal finance insights.
Chapters
Hey wise guys, it's Penny with Penny Wise Coaching and I'm here with my awesome friend Ricky Smith with Faith on Friday and Stratus Trains and is that the right name? Stratus Trains.
Stratus Training.
Training and she's going to tell us more about that. So I wanted to interview my friend Ricky today. We are having a little business retreat together and talking about how our businesses can grow and the kind of people we want to be as well. And she's a great inspiration to me and I wanted to hear a little bit of her story and how what she does and how that influences her money and vice versa, how her money influences what she does in life. So, Rickey, I just wanted to kind of give you an opportunity to tell a little bit better and use the right name about your business and what you do and then I'm going to ask you a few questions.
Sure. So, my name is Rickey Smith and this is my fabulous friend Penny and I call her Penny. 'cause why not? I actually own Stratus Training and Consulting. It's a corporate training company. And then I also own a public speaking company, which is me, me, all things me, and it's called Faith on Friday. So that's what she was talking about.
So what is Faith on Friday right now? What does it do? Where can people find that? Wow.
What it does, Faith on Friday is an inspirational moment done every Friday. It is on YouTube and you can look it up at Ricky Smith @faithonfriday. And Rikki is R-I-K-K-I, just sayin'. And what it does, it gives people an opportunity to say, "Me too." You know, we all go through struggles, we all have things and problems, but very few people will say it out loud. At Faith on Friday, I say it out loud.
I always say, "She's talkin' to me." But if you follow her, you'll probably think the same thing. That's what I think is really fascinating about Faith on Friday is that much of what you talk about, and I know you say you just talk about the stuff that's relevant to you, you just happen to be sharing it with the rest of us, but it is so personal to all of us that we feel like, "How did you know? You're reading my mail." Right. You know, and that's always been really fascinating to me. And I know that oftentimes your subject matter, you know, relates to how to kind of show up in life and how to be a better you. Sure. And I Obviously I have a real passion around helping people be better with their money, and I wondered if you might share a little bit about your money story and maybe some times that you have not been so wise with your money.
Wow, the not so wise part is so much easier than the wise part. I, like a lot of folks, didn't learn about money. My parents were of the mind of go to school, get a good job, preferably a government job, and die. We did not learn about finances. We didn't learn about personal finance. We didn't, we knew how to do a checkbook, but we didn't really understand what that may have meant to credit scores or credit cards or anything like that. So I had to learn money the hard way. And when I say the hard way, I mean the hard way. I don't know if any of your wise guys have ever bounced a check on pizza.
No, I'm sure.
I'm sure y'all never have. Just me. I came out of that household, went into the military, had no idea about money. I was one of those people that you hear about. I thought I had money because I had checks and all that that entailed. So there were a lot of years of not wise because I just didn't know. And I did a lot of researching, a lot of soul searching, and a lot of paying additional fees because I didn't know. But my husband and I, we started figuring it out. Mostly we figured out we didn't like being broke. We didn't like paying additional fees. And we thought, surely there's a better way. And at that time, we didn't have any financial coaches. So it was just us learning it. And we did through trial and lots of error, but we became completely debt-free. My husband's a military vet, so we were in the military for the 20 years of our marriage. And so there was a lot of moving around, a lot of having to plan money, something we had never done before. So since then we have done well. We now have cars that are paid for. We have children that are in school that they do have student loans, but they have so much less debt than we ever started with. And just a quick story if I could, when Penny and I came on this trip, we were so excited, it was amazing. The short version is I lost the credit card. I instantly panicked, but not because I didn't have the money. I panicked because I was gonna have to tell my husband I lost the credit card.
And it's an old reaction too.
Exactly.
I think, you know, when you slow down and said, what's the worst thing that's gonna happen? I'm gonna have to call and cancel that card and tell my husband. Yeah, but I think our instinct is to go back to those olden days when it's like, oh my god, I lost a credit card. But because you have other options and you had other sources of money, it wasn't—
the money wasn't the problem. It was more of an inconvenience than the traumatic incident it would have been 1,000 years ago. And now, because credit card companies are so good, they have options on your cell phones and other devices where you can actually block the card, right? So wherever I drop that card or wherever that card is, it is blocked. So if anybody finds it, they can't use it anyway. If I found it right now, I couldn't use it either.
But yeah, yeah, and that's really true. And I think one of the things that we've had the conversation, because we're on a little getaway together, we don't live in the same state even, so it's fun to be able to like do this really live together, um, is that by us planning and thinking ahead that, hey, we want to go have a time together to work on our business and build our relationship it's afforded us the opportunity to do that because we had a plan, right? We budgeted for it.
Exactly.
And it's not a crisis, and we get to do some amazing things. And I think that's what financial freedom is all about. We've had some pretty cool conversations this weekend about, you know, what does having some money bring you and what kind of freedom do you have, right?
Right, exactly.
So Faith on Friday oftentimes has it reflects your faith, right?
Yes.
And what do you think your faith, how does that intersect with money, or what do you know about money because of your, your knowledge?
Right. Well, as, as a Christian and as one of those folks who will read the Bible regularly, there are more scriptures in the Bible concerning money than anything else, and a lot of people don't realize that. Yeah, they're one of— we were talking about one of the most One of the scriptures that are the most misquoted is that money is the root of all evil. That's not what it says.
What does it say?
It actually says the love of money is the root of all evil. And the reason it says that is because the next verse then says, because people basically will do anything to get it. And if you know folks like that, you know how bad that can be. So we're not doing that. So I learned there that money itself is not bad. Having money is not bad. Being a rich person is not bad. And we shouldn't hate people who are rich. This is what it says in the Bible. So between that and then listening to things and understanding and following other rules of the faith, you know, like paying your tithes, doing offerings. The Bible talks about giving and it will be given again unto you. I love the part that says not only will it be given to you, but it says that it will be given to you good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. So there's, there's a principle there. And that's what I learned a lot from being a woman of faith is that there is, there are principles to everything.
Right.
And money is no exception.
Do you think God's promising us money if we behave?
Ooh, here's the thing with that. God is not a God of rewards. You can't do this and get that. It doesn't really work like that. But God does say this in the Bible. I would above all things that you prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers. So you can't say that, oh God, I'm poor because God wants me to be poor. No, yeah, no, that's not what it says. Who would want to serve a God that says, please be broke, be poor? No, that's not good. And that's not the God we serve. He says that wealth and riches are in my house. That is so cool. So if you don't have wealth and riches, either God's a liar or something ain't quite right.
And we have some responsibility in that, right? Yes. I think it's pretty easy to sort of just throw everything back on God and say, well, he didn't bless me, he didn't do this, he didn't do that. But I think sometimes we forget that we have some action steps, and he's telling us quite clearly what's supposed to be done.
Again, because we're staying in the scripture, the scripture said, I have given you everything pertaining to life and godliness. So that lets you know you already have everything you need to get wealthy. He says also that you have the power. This is what it says: I have given you the power over your hands to obtain wealth. If you're waiting around for somebody to give you something, you're doing it wrong. Right.
You are a wealth of information. You're a wise guy to the core. So we're going to keep it short because we want to go eat dinner.
Yay!
And it's just my privilege truly to know you and to have this opportunity to share each other's businesses and, and help each other grow as women of faith and women in business.
Yes.
And opportunities to share knowledge. Yeah. And hopefully offer you guys some tips as well. So if you want to follow Ricky, I'm gonna put her content in, in the bottom here. She has an amazing YouTube channel. Which I believe you shared, but I'll put that on here as well. You can find her on Facebook on Fridays as well. So follow her, get to know her. If you need a speaker, she's an awesome speaker. Clearly she knows her stuff and she's funny. She's gotten us to know like half the people here because she's gregarious. I, on the other hand, am very shy. So, so we're happy to have you guys. Thanks for, thanks for coming on and spending some time with us. And we hope that you will be wise.
