Episode 59: Winning at Business and Life with Christine Teh

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.

Yeah, hi, Professor Pete. So I'm a finance money coach. So what I do is that I help people with their relationship with finance, um, so that way they can have a good relationship with finance so they don't have to stress about it.

Oh, excellent. Christine, it's wonderful to have you on the show. Question number 2: What's the best thing about working in your industry?

Yes, the best thing about working in my industry is that we all need money, right? So, so basically, yeah. So working in my industry, you get to know how to handle money and be really good at money.

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Everybody needs it. Question number 3: I have a book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?

Chapter about building your own business and having a great strategy, strategy for building that business. Either you start as an employee, then you start as a side hustle, then have a good exit strategy before you quit it and become a full-time entrepreneur.

Ah, excellent. Question number 4. Other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for customers, What advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?

Well, to get your finances in order. So I mean, like, if you're a business owner, end of the day, you have to be profitable, right? So you can love what you do. And then some people, oh, I don't want to charge people because I love what I do. But then end of the day, you don't have a business if you don't make money.

Okay.

So it's still about profitable. So you have, it's still about the numbers. So you have to be practical about that. So the best thing is you love what you do. And you still make a lot of money from it.

And it's true. I mean, someone, a business owner who doesn't understand their cash flow, that could be critical to being able to survive or be successful or just go out of business because they don't know where their money's going. Is that correct?

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, because I know a lot of people were in, you know, they just don't pay attention to the money, just keep invest, invest, and then they just think, oh yeah, money will come later. But you have to look at the cash flow even from the start. So for me, I don't like investing in stuff unless I know I can pay for it. So if I really have to buy it, then I look at my savings, can handle that. And then I'll be like, okay, can I make up for this the next month? So I'm more, I guess, you know, I like to play it safe for me. But some people, they like to invest, invest, invest. They might even have loan, but I don't really like that because I like to spend what I'm earning. So it's the same concept with personal. I think it's the same concept with business.

Yeah, I would agree with you. I mean, you don't want to have too much debt. Is that what, if I'm understanding you correctly?

Yes, yes. Some people get into business debt. They think, oh yeah, I'm going to invest all this stuff and I'm going to make up for it later. But that's not, I disagree with that. So unless maybe you're a huge company, you're like, okay, we can do all of this. But then if you're just like a solopreneur, so I'm just talking about solopreneurs, like, you know, me and you. And so yeah, you need to look at your cash flow. You can't otherwise, what are you going to do? Like, you know, have the business debt. And then the, you know, the interest rate isn't even that low, even for business debt.

Absolutely. It's very wise of you. Question number 5: What other business leaders like yourself would you like to acknowledge as a leader and invite to be on my podcast?

Yeah. So since I'm a financial coach, so I think, yeah, you can talk to some of the great tax people. So tax experts, tax attorneys. So I'm primarily a finance money coach, but I also do— I'm also a tax professional and enrolled agent. But that's more a supplement to my business. So some people are primarily just a tax professional. So I think it would be good to talk to them too. And there's two types of tax professionals, one that just focus on individuals and some who focus on that and the business. And then, or some that just focus on business because some people, they like to just focus on business because they make a lot more money doing that, like corporate taxes, partnership taxes. Estate taxes. Well, me, I like to only focus on individual because that's what I do. I'm a personal finance coach. And then so the tax is a supplement to that. So I can still offer that sort of almost like a full service already.

Yeah.

So I think any tax expert, if you, you, I think you want something in the business, then you can find someone who's an expert in the business world or a combination of both. But I think it's very hard to be really good at in both unless they really love, you know, doing both. But chances are, the one that I found, those who does the business, they tend to slowly get out the individual because then they become very busy doing the business stuff. Yeah.

That's very wise. Thank you. And question number 6, please tell me about your first job.

Well, okay, so I moved to, immigrated to here to United States at age 20. I was born and raised in the Philippines. I'm Chinese born and raised there. So my first job here was because I didn't— I pretty much had to stop going to school because the first year I was a non-resident and I didn't want to pay the very expensive non-resident, you know, community college fees. It was like $100 per unit and I had no money at 20 years old. So I looked for my first job. So my first job was data entry. So that's how I become a very fast typer. If you ever see me type, I'm very fast at typing. People always say, "Wow, you type so fast!" Like, you know, so, and that was because I did the data entry job. So when I started, I was, you know, I wasn't that slow, but I was slower, but because that's all you do the whole day, right? And I was working like, I was working lots of overtime. So I even wrote an article, "I'm an Immigrant," on LinkedIn. Then it's like, you know, I was telling them that I was working overtime, I wanted to make a lot of money. You know, it was from Philippine peso to US dollars. That was a lot of money. I was like, wow, a 20-year-old, I'm making a lot of money. So I think I was, yeah, I think, what did I do? I think I was probably working, you know, so 40 hours is normal. So I was probably working at least 50 to 60 hours a week. So I was working lots of overtime. I didn't have a life at that time. And then you're only allowed to work 6 days a week. They don't, I guess California law, they didn't allow you to do 7 days a week. So they, If they allow us, I would probably work every single day just to make money. But that was at the time. I just wanted to make money. I wanted to have some savings so I can go to school and then pay my way. I didn't want to have any loans or debt. And I went to college. I was working full-time. I mean, other jobs, not data entry anymore. I was studying almost full-time at night. And I had grant, Fed loan, no, not Fed loan, just the grant. And then, um, yeah, I didn't— I only spent maybe a couple hundred dollars for my entire college here. So yeah, the, yeah, the first couple of years it was all paid for. Then they only max out over your certain lifetime, so I had to pay for the last semester or last quarter. And then that was all I paid for. And then, and then because I had a job, so I didn't have any debt.

That's awesome.

But then I had no life either because of the way I did it.

True. But then, but it set you up the no debt, so it was setting you up for that, the whole finance experience.

I see so much of my clients with lots of debt. So it's, yeah, it's not fun. A lot of them don't like it. And then the interest rate is very high. They're not there to help you get out of debt. And then, you know, if they could keep you in debt, they'll keep you in debt forever. So it's, yeah, I've seen 6-digit student loans. It's not fun. And then nobody teaches you. There's no financial literacy of how to handle student loans. I think if I could advise everyone, if you can work and study, do it, you know. And then, or if you really don't, you want to go to school full-time, then I think save as much money as you can so you don't have to have a lot of loan. Or have, um, I don't know, like what other things, like, um, you know, student work there, um, like an assistant professor, whatever. Just do something that you can make some money so it's not all loan.

Absolutely. Very sound advice. Christine, thank you so much for being on the show. How can people find you?

So, um, yeah, so you can go to my website, uh, www.teh, that's my last name, Christine Teh, tehfinancialcoaching.com, or I'm on LinkedIn. So connect with me on my personal profile, Christine Teh, and then, um, just let me know that you found me through Professor Pete's podcast. So I'll know how you found me. And, um, yeah, I'm mostly hanging out on LinkedIn. And, uh, if you have Instagram, you can find me, Teh Financial Coaching, and you can follow me there too.

Perfect. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.