In this seven‑minute interview, Professor Pete Alexander talks with Krisstina Wise, founder of a money‑education school, investor, and Airbnb super‑host. Krisstina explains that her mission is to teach the financial fundamentals that are missing from college curricula, while she builds passive‑income streams through real‑estate and investing. She emphasizes a profit‑first mindset for entrepreneurs, urging them to start with the amount of profit needed for their desired lifestyle, then reverse‑engineer the required revenue and cash‑flow. Krisstina highlights the plight of micro‑business owners who let their businesses own them, and advises leaders to know their numbers, create sustainable cash‑flow systems, and avoid the month‑to‑month hustle. She recommends fellow financial‑planning podcaster Mark Willis as a valuable resource for entrepreneurs. Krisstina also shares how her first job waiting tables taught her customer service, time management, and emotional intelligence—skills she still values. Listeners can find her at kristina.com.
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This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.
My name is Christina Wise, and I have a money school that teaches everyone what we should have learned in college about money, but they didn't offer that class. And that's what I do by day. By night, I'm an investor and an Airbnb, Airbnb host, I guess, super host, and just really live a fun and exciting life about creating as much space through passive, passive income as possible to not be so busy.
Christina, it's so great to have you on the show. Question number 2, what is something that makes you smile and/or laugh about working in your industry?
You know what, I think, I don't know if it, I mean, it's smiling in a way of, I find myself almost every day really amazed about something like money, how we just don't understand it. We don't know how it works. We're good at making it. We're good at spending it, but that's about it. So like every day I get a little chuckle like, holy cow, like super smart people. We all are, but very few people who really understand how to play and win the money game.
It's very true, very true. Question number 3: I have a fictitious book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?
Oh my gosh, well, it depends. Like, if you're a company or business owner, if it's an entrepreneur, it's reading the chapter about your financials and understanding the difference between income and profit and really going for profit first. And to— and then to— that's reverse engineered back from a number. That's how much, how much money How much money is enough to live my good life? And then based on how much money does it take to live my lifestyle, now we can determine how much profit we need. Now we can turn it how much revenue we need. So versus starting at revenue and going that direction, we wanna start at how much money is enough and then push that back up to determine how much revenue we wanna build.
Mm, I love that insight. That's so strong, especially because if you do it right, then you avoid all the stress that, uh, the problems with money can create. So I'm assuming that's, uh, uh, what you've had in your experience as well.
Yeah, I mean, many— I really focus on what I call micro-business owners. So, they're small, small businesses. And what I find to be true for at least this category, but really many entrepreneurs, is that their money, their business owns them. They don't have a lot of time freedom and ultimately, they're still month to month. So, it's just being in the hustle for so long where each month you have to show up to pay that month's personal household bills. And then even in the business, it's reinvesting everything back on the business, betting on the come. So, that's kind of the natural progression of things unless we structure it and completely create it and build it differently.
Mm-hmm. Very insightful. Thank you. Question number 4, other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for customers, what advice would you give to other business leaders?
I just go back to the same message, which is know your numbers. There's great— everything that we do as a business and take care of our customers, provide better customer service, generate more business. But at the end of the day, it's to know how much money is enough How much profit do we need to create and what's in it? How are we taking care of ourselves in the process? And how are we building just a really solid, sustainable cash flow for ourselves, our families, and our legacies? So it's just taking the money a little bit deeper and understand why as business owners are we in business? Yes, we have our offers to take care of customers and there's a lot of satisfaction at that. At the end of the day, we spend all this energy to have the financial and money currencies come back in the form of profit. So that we do have and we can build that surplus and that space to be able to enjoy our life. Otherwise, our businesses just own us as entrepreneurs, right?
It's, it's like, uh, I remember, uh, talking with people who used to talk about the fact that, oh, my business is just my job, and that's, you know, and I, I'm assuming that that's not the right attitude.
Yeah, I mean, we, we do usually have a job in our business, but we don't want it— we don't want to own our business to own us, meaning we're never free from it. I mean, a lot of this, the thing is we need to systematize it and understand to know the numbers and the financial operations so that it's a business system that we own. And sometimes we're in it, but sometimes we can close it as well. I mean, if we want to go on a 2-week vacation, we can do that. But very few people set up their businesses that way. And a lot of that comes from not understanding their numbers and their financials and really running their business as a cashflow machine.
Mm-hmm. Very insightful. Thank you. Question number 5, what other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to to be on my podcast?
You know, I thought about that one, and I think somebody would be really good. His name is Mark Willis, and he's got Your Not Your Average Financial Planning podcast. And he has a really great way and different way for good business owners and entrepreneurs to think about money and wealth and balance sheet and retirement. And it will just help the listeners start thinking about the future of their money as opposed to just like the presence of their business.
Great. Well, thank you for that referral. I'll reach out to him. And our final question, question number 6: Please tell me about your first job.
My first job outside of just being a kid that would do door knocking to sell Girl Scout cookies, you know, I kind of had the built-in, you know, my parents didn't sell the Girl Scout cookies for us. I got all those badges because I wanted, I wanted the badges and I wanted to go sell those cookies. So obviously that, that payment, that first job was in the form of badges on on the lapel. But, but my first job outside of college was waiting tables. And I even remember like how that felt. At first it felt like, man, I have this college degree, I'm waiting tables, and I just felt, I don't know, a little bit ashamed that that's all I was doing like at the beginning. And it ended up being like one of the best learning experiences. I learned so much about customer service, managing time, counting change, believe it or not, making people happy, happy. Being in the weeds and how to manage my emotions and how to handle other people's feelings. And so really, I even required that my kids wait tables when they were teenagers so that they could get that same type of experience that I think is actually really good experience, business experience, that, uh, that, you know, is that learned thing from that first job. So yeah, I waited tables.
Oh, I love that. And, you know, as you were describing that and all the different things, including the emotions, it reminded me of a quote that I saw that that said that you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat their waiter, their server and stuff. So I'm assuming you probably had a whole host of different personalities that you had to deal with in that job as well.
Yeah, and you couldn't just like, you know, say what you thought when you got treated terribly, you know, you'd get fired. So yeah, really managing all of those different types of personalities and that's business. I mean, we have all different types of clients, all different types of employees and yeah, I learned, learned so much for, for that year and a half of waiting tables.
I bet, I bet. So Christina, thank you so much for being on the show. How could people find you?
You know, the easiest way is kristina.com, and it's just my name is spelled with a K and two S's when you think of Christina. And I've got some downloads and podcasts and all my work that I do. So yeah, it's easy for people to find me, or just Google for that matter.
Perfect. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.
