From Survival Mode to Financial Sovereignty | The Daniella Devine Strategy

Join us as we unravel our deep-rooted relationship with money, from earliest memories to eureka moments and building wealth. Birth to Net Worth with me, Trystan Trenberth. Hi and welcome to another edition of Birth to Net Worth with me, Trystan Trenberth. Today we have an amazing Daniela Devine. She is a San Francisco-based business buyer, businesswoman, and commercial real estate broker. We knew each other about 3 years ago, kind of lost contact, but reconnected in the last few weeks. And it's a pleasure to have her on today. Daniela, welcome. Welcome to Birth to Net Worth.

Thank you so much for having me, Trystan. Uh, it's really great to reconnect with you. It's been some time and I know both of us have had a full circle journey around the sun on what we're doing and what we're focusing on. Um, I, I, we could start in a million different places, but how are you?

Great. Very well. Thank you. Very well. So Daniela, can you give the audience a little background of, you know, where you've come from, where you were raised and, and, you know, a bit of your background?

Yeah, absolutely. So I was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and my grandparents started small flooring businesses in San Francisco in the 1960s. So I'm the third generation of, um, family of small entrepreneurs and I've sort of followed in that vein. So I've been an owner-operator for over a decade and I'm in the middle of a business purchase transition currently. And a couple of years ago, I got into commercial real estate because I was ready to invest and dabbled a little bit in residential, figured out really quickly it wasn't for me. And I was much more comfortable in facilities that I grew up in with this flooring background, surprisingly enough. So I became a commercial broker. I'm kind of an ethnographer, if you will. So when I get into something new, I really want to learn every angle of it. And I honestly am quite nervous and scared when it comes to investing. So anything I can do to mitigate my own risk is something that you'll probably find me doing. So these days it's full-on commercial brokerage and bird-dogging for myself and business buying and stabilization.

Fantastic. So ethnography, is that the expression you used?

It is.

I've not heard that before, but I like it. Let's go with that. So, so let's dive into the, the main question. So, and I think some of it came out in what you shared with us just in that intro. Tell us about your first memory of money.

So my father was an owner-operator and, um, of a small business and was always very transparent about money. And at the time it was I mean, I suppose it still is in most circles. It was very taboo to be discussing money and reality with young children. But I mean, I have multiple memories of this at a very early age, maybe 4 years old, possibly 5, where my dad started to understand I was very ambitious and he wanted to give me a dose of reality that my ambitions had to be married with obsessive hard work and that owning and operating a business and even climbing the ladder in a corporate world was an incredibly challenging feat. So I remember him talking to me about a few different things. He would always ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I always would say a CEO. That's all I knew is I wanted to run stuff. And he's like, well, simmer. That's going to take a lot of work. But a memory that I have vividly were that my storybooks changed very early due to this intuition from my father, knowing that I was ambitious, instead of just telling me, we can't afford that, it turned into him telling me about my grandmother and her group of friends who invested in real estate and how they sort of took their futures by the balls and grew net worth. And that allowed them to empower themselves and choose what their life was going to look like. And Stories about money were daily. They really were. I mean, it was such a forefront part of my childhood. It's, it's strange. I was obsessed with understanding how people got it. I was even more obsessed with understanding how people kept it. Um, and the work, like the journey. I didn't care that they had a nice house or a nice car. I wanted, I actually started informational interviews as a really young child and I just would go, hey, "what do you do?" And I just wanted to hear the journey. I really wanted to hear the granularity. How did you do what you did? And to this day, to this day, I will open up conversations with people I don't know well and say, "Please tell me everything." I think that's amazing stuff.

That's incredible to have that familiarity with money so young. In the sense that it's not a— it sounds like an abundance mindset around money, at least discussing it, whether there was money or not. Just having those conversations is, is very open, and, and I think that's a, a huge foundation for you through, through your life so far. Um, we've had many guests on here, and some are— some's memory of money is the alcoholic father that was being shouted at by the mother because they couldn't afford to pay the rent or the the phone bill, that sort of thing. So very often it's the 'we can't afford it,' you know, 'we don't have the money.' So not shutting down 'we don't have the money,' but talking about how to create the wealth. And your insightful nature to be able to be inquisitive with, with unfamiliar people, that confidence and the courage to have, you know, unusual conversations with, with people at such an early age. And I think that has massively set you in good stead for, you know, your youth and your adulthood in just having conversations that other people aren't willing to have. But your comfort with those conversations becomes a comfort for them to interact with somebody that doesn't make it uncomfortable for them. Would you agree?

Absolutely. I mean, it was— and I do appreciate— I appreciate your words. I really do. Because as a child, I mean, this was strange. And, you know, it was the late '80s, early '90s, and you didn't talk about this kind of stuff. You know, I think I got around a lot of that awkwardness by being just a really young, curious girl and very excited. Like, it excited me to hear about what people's lives were like. And I found myself Understanding that curiosity was going to continue to serve me. Um, I mean, we would be in environments where there were plenty of other kids, and I would have rather talked to the adults. And so, you know, my dad was a champ, and so was my mom, and they always, um, encouraged me rather than sort of like shooed me away and kind of like pushed me off into corner with the kids. And that also continued to serve me, just My father to this day has brutal realism, which is really rooted in a deep, deep scarcity mindset and fear because he was the generation that kind of came from nothing. And so, you know, he understood that he couldn't just get mad at me like, we can't afford it. We can't afford another this. We can't afford another that. He understood that he had to teach me that if I wanted these things, I was going to have to understand how to earn money. And how do you earn money so that you have options? It's not so much about things. It wasn't so much focused about experiences. It was just a global perspective of you want, you want, you want more, more, more, more. Great. Figure it out. You're going to have to figure this out. This is going to be on you. This isn't about marrying some guy and some guy takes care of you. Good luck with the inheritance. You are going to have to figure this out, Daniela. And he would have conversations with me like that when I was really little. And, um, you know, it definitely helped ground me. That's what I needed. I needed to be grounded. I needed to be focused. And, um, to this day, like, all of those things, they continue to push me forward.

Beautiful, beautiful. Um, I just hear from there, just, uh, cutting through from changing the legacy he leaves from the legacy he inherited, or the legacy he didn't inherit was the gift to you, was nurturing your inquisitive nature, nurturing your curiosity, and supporting you in supporting, you know, finding those goals and meeting those visions that you had instead of shutting them down. Even though there was a scarcity foundation for him, seeing the vision that you had was probably inspiring to him to see that come from where he had come from and something that he could share with his daughter in a way that was inspiring and, and growth-oriented for you and lifts him up. I'm sure he's super proud of you and, you know, loves, loves seeing your progress every, every, every day and, and seeing the changes that he's seen through your life. You know, being a parent, yeah, it is proud, you know, almost whatever the kids do. And, um, it's the willing to allow failure for ourselves that creates the road of success, because success is paved with failure. And allowing our kids to see that there are failures that also lead up to successes. And it's the, you know, tenacity and the, you know, resilience that is the success, not the individual events that are either black or white— it worked or it didn't. It's an experiment. Imagine if Edison had given up after 200 experiments on the light bulb. We wouldn't be looking at each other in a computer screen right now, I guarantee it. You know, but the light bulb was not perfect. Still, there are newer and newer light sources, even the LEDs in the screens, that they're still iterating. So for our parents to give us that vision and, you know, know that that tenacity is, is the key, and the curiosity to what can I adjust to make things different, create a different outcome, and support us in that is, is amazing.

I was really lucky. I still am. I mean, to this day, I, I was a business partner with my dad for many, many, many years. I'm purchasing his business right now and retiring him on August 31st after 45 years of this business that he never meant to own or operate for this long. And, um, You know, it didn't really matter, Trystan. I mean, we— my dad and I, we've continued to talk every single day about business since I was just so young. And so he's sort of my consigliere. But, you know, there's so many nuances to the relationship, right? Because he does still come from a place of a lot of scarcity. So now I'm in a place where I'm so much more evolved and I understand that failure is a part of it, right? And exactly what you had just mentioned. And I can tell as I continue to grow, I can see fear from him, like, don't grow too fast, don't borrow too much money, don't over-leverage yourself. You know, I can see him, him holding himself back. And we've talked so many times about the offer, like the choices that you make that change your life and where he held back. Because he was too scared. And so it's this thing where I am so intertwined with him, but I also have had to learn and seek growth opportunities outside of him to help me. So it's, it's sort of, um, that's a really interesting relationship. I'm very— I'm deeply grateful for it.

I, I hear an alignment in parallel to your dad, that he's come alongside, you've aligned with him, but you also are on your own path, which is related to him, but it's ultimately going to, you know, take you to different places, greater highs, maybe greater lows, who knows. But, you know, we're in a cyclical world. But, you know, let's talk about a little bit about your dad's life. Um, he's in a season where he's working towards exiting a business to his daughter. What have you learned as far as, um, through, through you observing his business where to look for towards retirement and how is he invested towards creating retirement? Maybe he hasn't. Maybe this is simply his retirement plan is selling the business to you, maybe seller financing it so he has income over time. How have you learned from him as far as retirement planning and wealth management through that? Is it simply a business or are there other assets that he's taught you along the way? Put some money here, invest in this, create some liquidity. Is it a single business or is it multiple income streams that you've seen him create?

This is a really good question and it is so relevant to people in his position that were owner-operator for a really long time and may or may not have enough money to retire. This was always a really, really, really big fear of his. So, you know, the flooring industry is an antiquated industry, like like a lot of other home service businesses in the United States. And we are seeing a huge wave of people his age where it's time to retire and can they, and what does that look like? So for him, really, really early on, my grandmother actually, who came from a really poor background, she was obsessed with wealth building and she was a really good stock picker, strangely enough. I think she just had a lot of luck about her. She was a really positive person. She just got lucky. But she never spent anything. So she kept rolling all of her gains into the next thing. And so my dad never really was a big stock picker, but he understood mutual funds and he understood the 401, the retirement. He understood the multiple vehicles, the Roth, the limitations of the Roth, whatever it was. And he was always putting money away, but he knew it was never enough. He knew it was never enough. He struggled to buy his first home. My grandmother didn't buy her first home until she became divorced after 37 years. So it wasn't as if they understood or felt capable of investing in real estate. And it was about 20 years into my dad's business where— so my grandmother and him co-founded it together. She actually became divorced from my grandfather after 37 years. And in her divorce settlement, the only thing she got was a truckload of carpet. So my dad was touring in Europe, playing guitar with an afro out to here, and she asked him to come back for one year, just help me liquidate this. And we'll be done. And 45 years later, they were all still kicking. My grandmother obviously passed away, but this is relevant because they understood that they were always subject to being kicked out of their facility. They were leasing. And my father kept thinking to himself, if I can just buy a building, if I can just buy a building, One, our business will be secure. And two, if I can focus on paying that off, that is going to be my retirement. I'll be able to rent out my facility. And that is going to be what's going to take me from a meager— my meager savings to, you know, being more than comfortable and having opportunities and options. His whole thing was, I can't go back. I can't go back. To where I was when I was a kid. I can't. So he saved everything and he, to this day, buys everything at Costco, including all his clothes. He only buys cars at government auctions. So he's very frugal and he's a big saver. So he has diversified in some ways, but it's always been very, very conservative. So long story short, my grandmother would read the newspaper every morning in their facility and she found a building that City College of San Francisco was auctioning off, my dad showed up to the auction and he was the only person there. So they got a— yeah, they got a bit of a deal. But he will openly say that he had to beg, borrow, and steal to get into the building. He had to leverage all of their homes up to the 9th degree. And he worked furiously 7 days a week, for 8 years during the recession, and he paid off the building in full. Wow. So that building, I mean, the purchase is like a cherry on top. He never thought he was going to be able to sell his business, but it's the lease agreement that I signed with him that I procured myself because I'm his broker. And, um, you know, it's only 2/3 of the facility and it's about $18,000 a month. And that is just— there's no debt on it. So he just gets to collect that check and he's making another $8,000 from the tenant in the back. So if you think about it, you know, decent retirement savings, variation in the market, diversified portfolio. He now owns my grandmother's house who had passed away, who's mostly paid off. His primary residence is mostly paid off. But it's this lease, it's this building, it's one asset.

Yeah, how incredible. That's a beautiful story, really, really is inspiring. Um, yeah, as you and I know, real estate is such a powerful vehicle, but it's not the only vehicle. And, and like, like we see in, in residential right now, it's a mess in many states, it's great in a couple of states, and it's, you know, just hanging in there in a lot of other states. So yeah, having the business, a business tenant, as we know, is, is a far better tenant than, you know, a regular, you know, retail home tenant from the, the lack of out-of-hours support and, and many other things. But whether it's a triple net lease or whether it's a regular lease, you know, it's, it's certainly a very strong piece of real estate to have. There's a guy in Chandler here called Michael Pollack here in the— I think it was like 20, 25 years ago when, you know, the mid-2000s, everything was down. He bought a load of— a couple of strip malls for, you know, pennies on the dollar. Now everything is Pollock Cinemas, Pollock Plaza, Pollock this, Pollock that. And now his son's in the business and, and starting to take over the property management and, you know, running the portfolio of properties. Um, I think he moved here from like New York or something in the, in the '90s, but 2000s. But yeah, it's, it's definitely one of the most powerful things, and you can leverage and leverage other people's everything. I mean, Bethany Laflamme— I don't know if you come across that— Other People's Power of OPE. I love that book, really, really love the book. And, you know, having read Who Not How a few years ago, it really, you know, put into more depth in more of my context the Who Not How, or, you know, hit theory, but expanded into using other people's everything. And I, I've certainly sat on the sidelines of collaboration for many years, and it's been a challenge. I've found many people that are more like my visionary sort of thinking. We have great conversations, but things don't continue. But, you know, like, there's obviously some similarities there, but there's obviously some great contrast there that allows you to function together, you to learn from him, mentor through him, or, you know, be a mentee to him. And he's helping elevate you and he's taught you some great skills as you've expanded and amplified with people around you, other deals and experiences that you've had that are putting you in the position to be able to buy your dad's business and rent from him to support his retirement in some way, shape, or form. You're his broker and goodness knows how else you might be able to help him bring some more income streams in. Now he's bring himself with the business, has a little bit more time on his hands, and I'm sure he's probably not going to sit on his hands at any time soon by the sounds of it. But now he may be able to take more interest in what you're doing outside of his own business and, you know, see other opportunities to not necessarily invest with you, but see investments that you're making and start to enhance his and the rest of your family's life in that, in that, you know, estate planning moving forward.

Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because I mean, it took me finding a few different mentors to help me understand how, right? Who, not how, that concept and really understand it. And how can I finance things and what can I buy creatively and what creative tools make sense at what time? You know, because they don't always make sense every single time. And I think for him in the background, he's, he's been kind of watching me like, oh boy, I just hope she doesn't get herself in trouble. But, um, the more work I've done in commercial brokerage, the more I've helped clients, the more transactions I've closed. And strangely enough, I've focused in retail and strip malls and, you know, helping other small business owners find places. And my favorite thing to do is helping them find permanent homes because I know the fear that my dad and grandmother lived with for so long. So it's really, I'm really excited. He said to me multiple times, "Why don't you go out there and show me what you say is true and then we'll talk." And so I'm in motion of being able to do that finally. And it's just fun because I get to do it for other people too. I really do enjoy helping people. And you know this so well, every deal is so different. So you get to learn from other people I just feel really fortunate to be in that situation.

Yeah, and he's obviously seen you grown and you've shown him so many times in different levels of where you've evolved that you know what you're doing and that, that he's— he obviously clearly trusts you. But I think it's incredible that it, it still is inspiring for him to use it. I'm not saying it's a game in a bad way, but it's a game for him to support you but help you up and, and allow you to ask his advice when you want his advice, and he's going to give it to you. He's going to support you, but he's also going to let you go and learn and find out what you need to find out and support you wherever he can along the journey. I think that's great. Absolutely. So talk me through kind of what you saw around you when you were growing up. You know, you've spoken about your family themselves. That's where most of the influence, I would say, comes from for a lot of people. We're also affected and at the effect of those around us as well, through elementary school, high school, you know, in college. What did you kind of see around you through, you know, the eyes of growing up in a family that had a business? I think thinking differently than most families that went to work and came home on a 9-to-5 and didn't necessarily have that ongoing responsibility, um, for making sure other people's, you know, built, you know, paying other people for their wages instead of just being paid themselves for the exchange of time for money. What did you see around you with kids around you and families around you? Was it, you know, primarily scarcity? Was it abundance? How did you, um, see contrast between your experience growing up, you know, around the topic of money and, and thinking that way, um, through your early day or earlier days?

Um, you know, it's interesting because It's one, like these businesses that my family has been able to have, and it's really been multiple, but it really, the last 45 years, it's been one primary flooring company that's gone from like residential doing homes to doing San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco University, like San Francisco State University rather, multiple large government contracts and amazing work. It's been amazing trajectory, but I'll be honest with you, you know, we were middle, lower middle class, you know, they struggled for a long time. I mean, my grandmother and father didn't make money in that business for almost 20 years. So when I hear entrepreneurs struggling now and they're 1, 2, 3, 5 years in, I'm like, you gotta hang on, you gotta hang on, you gotta pivot, you gotta keep going. Um, there was a lot of scarcity around me growing up. And on my mom's side of the family, there was a lot of addiction. So, you know, there really wasn't anybody that had an abundance of money or an abundance mindset. It was more so survival for sure. And I definitely latched on to friends who had a successful parent, who had a successful parent in a stabilized home where there wasn't addiction or there wasn't, you know, I mean, I had family, a lot of veterans in my family, they served the country and they came back from Vietnam and they had problems. And I latched on to families that didn't have those problems. You know, my dad, while he was working this business with my grandmother all those years, was not making enough money to support our family. And my mom dealt with a debilitating disability that left her in a body cast. She was, you know, in sales. She did— she was the VP of an international shipping company. She was incredibly successful. And overnight, she couldn't work anymore. She could barely walk. And I was a baby. Baby. So, um, there was just a lot of weight and how are we going to make it. And my dad, you know, although he came back from Europe to run this company, he put together a band and he gigged every freaking night to help us pay the bills. So, um, I latched on to people who had stability and a successful parent because I wanted to understand how Who are you? What did it take? How do I create this environment for myself? And it wasn't about necessarily getting away from my family. It was just about seeking something that I wanted and understanding who you had to be on a day-to-day basis to get that thing. And I would say that I had to toe the line with a lot of these friends because as soon as I would try to engage their parents and have like adult conversations or bring up money, like things got weird real fast. Um, my last name, my maiden name is Cohen actually. And I had friends that casually called me, oh, she's just being a Jew. I mean, that was very casual and common my entire childhood up until I was in college because I had a propensity to be frugal and to talk about money and to be really interested and passionate in business and what people did and kids didn't get it. Like, they did not get it. So I found myself holding myself back a lot and just being very careful so that I didn't make people uncomfortable. Looking back, I have never really looked back on it like to this extent, but looking back on it, I probably was sort of a weird kid to a lot of people. But I was passionate and excitable. And I think that that's what helped me, that, that helped me navigate, you know, like soften that edge of people going, hmm, like, what do you mean? You know, so it was weird. I had a, I had a very, I had a little bit of a checkered childhood. And it wasn't until, it really wasn't until my mid-20s where I sort of just owned who I was and was like, I'm not going to fit in any of these molds and I'm just going to make people uncomfortable. So I really have to find the people that are comfortable and excited talking about the things that I, I don't identify with anything else. You know, I'm not this person that identifies with things or like, this is who I am. It just took me a while to be proud of that rather than going, I have to be careful about it. That makes sense.

I think it's accepting ourselves, not comparing ourselves to others or You know, they always say if you don't— didn't know the weird kid when you were a kid, you were the weird kid. But yeah, I relate into that too. I, I didn't fit one particular friend group or another, um, necessarily, but I had friends in all of the sort of demographics really, you know, across the school year. I remember that. And I, I was just thinking about this a couple of weeks ago. One of my friends at college got diagnosed with cancer, and my first skydive was raising money for, for, uh, some nurses that ran a nonprofit that looked after him. And another cancer patient ended up looking after my mum near her end as well. Um, but I went knocking door to door at the age of like 18 years old in town, raised £500, which back in 1995, a lot of money. I didn't know who I was knocking on the door. In most cases, I just went up the streets which seemed a bit more affluent than others, and it wasn't a particularly affluent town, but friends, family, you know, it's about $500. I think it's probably worth $2,000 or $3,000 now of what I raised in probably 2 or 3 weeks, I'm guessing. This is before social media, internet, or the other thing. This is, this is Shanks's pony on my two legs, you know, walking around town rain or shine and banging on doors asking for support. And, and amazingly, I did it, but I had that confidence. I didn't fear rejection at that point. But there are other things in life where, you know, I hesitate to do things. And I look back on this, this situation, which was a defining moment really. I was very confident going and finding summer jobs. I happened to get a job same place my brother used to work, so that was an in already. So I was confident with that. It was, uh, after that I was knocking on doors here, then got into hotel management, which was the college I was at. But yeah, it was just shifting perspective, asking different questions. I wasn't clear on what my career path was at the time, um, but even now it's, it's different levels of acceptance of who we, who we are, who we can be. And, you know, it's not looking to see who we were to recreate who we've been in the past, but really looking at the future of what drives me, what excites me, and who do I need to become to do, you know, to do the task, to complete the, the mission, or, you know, get moved towards the goals that we choose. And, you know, even, even this, this Midlife to Millions has been an exercise of thinking courage. I know I'm confident, I've got the knowledge, I know, you know, many other things about what's going on, but the courage to actually just put itself out there and value myself for what I know because I take it for granted, the experience that I've had, that many other people don't have that experience, even though it's been so compressed in the last sort of 5 or 6 years. A lifetime of people don't have a core of the experience I do in this specific area, but I also don't have that specific experience they have in their specialist areas. But it's, it's value to each other, and it's exchange of value, whether it's an exchange of money transactionally or transformationally. Of exchanging knowledge and information between people, I think, is the key. And obviously most parental relationships are transformational one way or another. Brings me back to the, you know, the story about the two Russian brothers. One was in jail, a thief and an alcoholic, blamed his dad because his dad was an alcoholic. The other son was a multi-millionaire because of his dad. Same, same blame, different context and different response to what that foundation was. And, you know, it's up to us, up to us to choose and recontextualize our past. I'm— one of my friends was telling a story about, um, somebody's coaching. This woman had had a traumatic experience in life. Don't know the details, but it's unimportant. But she keeps feeding back to this experience with so many things that she relives— not the specific experience, but the fear of experiencing that again. Is a block for her moving forward. And my friend said to her, how many times did that happen? She said, well, once. How many times is it— have you replayed that in your mind? So who's doing it to you now? So it's us putting our block in the way of ourselves by fearing something might happen. But if we're doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, yes, it's going to happen over and over again.. But if we shift what we're doing to create the different conditions for a different outcome, yes, it may not work, but it's not going to work in a different way than it didn't work last time. And now we have a knowledge of how it's— how it doesn't work in this context. Now we can make another adjustment. Coming back to Edison, thousands of iterations and experiments till he got to his result that, you know, was, was the one that he mass-produced, you know. And in his iterations of ourselves that every, every iteration of ourself is valuable and important. But once we get to that one which we're, we're comfortable with, we see that it's not eliminating flaws, but it's just being confident in the strengths and leaving the flaws behind and leaning into the strengths, I think, which gives us that confidence and the courage to, to be ourselves and, and, uh, you know, proudly and broadly share ourselves with the world and with the value that we have.

It's an amazing insight because I think that most people, you know, don't ever get to that place. And it's not anyone's fault. It's just that, you know, we're all in, you know, everyone talks about this rat race, but really it's a physical and psychological and financial rat race. It's, it's this race to survive and do what do what your family thinks you should have done, do what you think you're, you know, whatever preconceptions you have, expectations of yourself, whatever expectations society has of you, you know, to grow a family or to not, whatever it is. And it's really, I personally believe that it's just really rare to do exactly. It's really hard to do exactly what you just said, which is, you know, to let go of the things that ultimately are weighing you down, whatever they are, and to just sort of step into who you are because there's consequences to those actions, you know, that the life that you build, what you understand about what it's supposed to look like, right? You hit this point in your 30s where you go, Wait a minute, I did everything they told me I was supposed to do and my life doesn't look the way I thought it was going to look. And I feel like you hit that— you hit like that shakeable point once a decade in your life. But most people don't make dramatic choices to change their path. And so, you know, your whole concept of like this, you know, midlife, what you do and more— it's more so for most folks what they don't do. And it's, it's by no means anyone's fault. I think it's just, it's so much deep-set fear, you know.

I think it's the Pearson principle: what you measure improves, what you report and measure accelerates. And I've just read The Gap and the Gain twice, maybe 3 times in the last 3 weeks, and, and it was so insightful. So many of us look to what we didn't achieve, what we haven't got to yet, that we've— we made $80,000 instead of $100,000. I only made $80,000. Well, it's $80,000 more than you previously made, and now it's still on the journey to making $100,000 or maybe $150,000. But the next step is going to be potentially larger if you set the goal higher. And it's not about exceeding every goal by a magnitude of 2 or 4 or 10, um, But it's just understanding that it was a win nonetheless, that you're further away, further along. Because as you've heard in The Gap in the Game, if we're all living into ideals, it's like trying to land on the horizon. The horizon never gets— we never get to the horizon. It's always changing. And we do need to navigate. We need to change direction because our goals are here. Now we realize that, oh, that's no longer my goal. Now I've got a greater or different goal. And you need to be flexible to get to a new place. And if it's only measuring backwards that allows you to see how far you've come and how— not how far you need to go, but how— what your next step is to just make. I'm, I'm sending Jeff every day right now 3 things that I've done today, 3 things that are my goals for tomorrow, like waking up early, going for a run or going to the gym, and then something towards this Midlife to Millions platform that I'm building. And there will be other things, but it's building in those consistent wins with the getting up earlier because it's hotter. I need to run with the dog earlier in the morning, right? That's a win and it's a consistent win, but it's not, you know, they say it's not habit until you've done it for 60 or 75 days in a row. And it won't be necessarily I'm reporting the same thing for 75 days, but I'll just be getting into that habit because the summer will be close to an end in 75 days. But I just love doing this because it's measuring it, it's reporting it to my friend, and he's feeding back on great stuff, or, you know, how can he support me in that and how can I support him. And he was— he had a goal a couple of weeks ago of calling 5 people a day, or 3 calls a day, to build a group of 35 people in his coaching program. And he reached it in a much shorter time because we're reporting it and, and continuing towards those goals. So Everything's so important with, with measuring, not just measuring but reporting. And whether that's a journal to look back and, and every week, every month, look back at your wins for the last week. And I'm not doing the, the weekly thing yet, but that's something I slipped my mind, but we'll probably start to do. Where have you had those things where you can report back and you, you can show that you've grown? Where can you look back 6 months or a year or 2 years and realize that all of the gains you've had? And it sounds like you have that, that gain mindset, not the, oh, I haven't got this, and, you know, I didn't do this deal, or I didn't get that deal done.

Oh my gosh, that's, that's a Pandora's box right there. Um, you mentioned something that's so relevant to, to what you're talking about— accountability. But the fact that you have a person to be accountable to and vulnerable with, yes, that is trying to develop themselves. I'm, you know, I'm constantly dealing with this where I feel like I'm surrounded by people that don't care what I'm doing, don't care what problems I have, are not interested in it at all. And frankly, they're not really people I want to talk to. And it's not as if you need to have somebody that's obsessive about what you're doing and pushing you. But being around other people that want to develop themselves, that want to grow, that want to be accountable to their futures, that's a huge part of the equation. You know, um, I struggled. I struggled with looking backward. I really do.

I think they talk about relationship types in romantic relationships, but I think we need to look at the same traits in business and personal relationships as well. I, I'm looking for people that are on a similar trajectory of personal growth that I am, you know, similar trajectory of business growth and business mindset and just mindset overall. And they don't have to be, you know, millionaires or billionaires, but they just have be somewhere further along than I am in certain areas of life, and I would love to be able to contribute to them by being further along in another area of life that they're not. And it comes back to Napoleon Hill's Mastermind Principle: people with different skills sitting in the same room and having different objective views of problems and, you know, lifting each other up by sharing the perspectives on different perspectives. There's a, there's a story, I think it was, uh, my friend's, uh, brother, keynote, keynote speaker, was talking about a NASA problem. They had a rocket problem. They had 100 rocket scientists working on this problem, couldn't solve it. Hired another 10, 20 rocket scientists, couldn't solve the issue. They hired a, a less experienced rocket scientist that happened to be a musician, and within 3 weeks the problem was solved. Now, arguably This could be untrue, but the belief is that because that person had a different way of thinking, had a more creative style, it wasn't him that solved the problem, but it was the shift in energy, the shift of perspective by different conversations happening. Maybe it was the, the resonance of something that came up in line with music and, you know, vibration, or whatever it was. Something shifted that was different that allowed the, the gain to happen. And, you know, I think we can look at many businesses. That, that's why people go on Dragon's Den, because they've got their own niche area that they're focused in, but they need one of the Dragons' experience to come in, or one of their team to bring in the part that they're missing in the jigsaw to allow the full picture to, to be, be seen.

Oh, this is incredibly relevant, and I, I wholeheartedly believe what— and can— I've personally been there where you're struggling as an individual to find the path, whatever the path is, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're trying to build wealth for your family or your— whatever it is, personal, psychological, emotional, financial, and you struggle. And I think that being in the right rooms with the right energy is what you need to push through. And this changed for me because I, I did go through a huge transition, um, and it was really challenging for me. And it was because I wasn't around like-minded people with the right energy. And as soon as I got around like-minded people with that energy and I opened myself up to different opportunities, that's when I felt a little bit of a slingshot effect for myself. And now, I mean, I think that for me, I'm in a place in my career and in my life, I'm really— I describe it as I'm at critical mass. I mean, I've taken on a lot and I have a lot going on in my life. I have 3 very young kids and I take care of my household. I'm the default parent. My husband has a very demanding career and he's incredibly helpful when he's available, but I'm driving the ship. And there's times and there's days and there's moments that I allow myself to have this victim mentality where I allow myself to just go, I'm not moving fast enough. And if I didn't have to deal with—

You've muted yourself.

Can you hear me now?

Yeah, you got excited. I could see the passion.

I was saying that, you know, I put myself in a position, I allow myself sometimes to move backwards into victim mentality where I, you know, convince myself and allow myself these moments of, if I didn't have these roadblocks, if I didn't have these responsibilities, you know, I'd be, I'd be so much further ahead. I'd be here, I'd be there. And at the end of the day, those are weak moments, you know, because I'm not being kind to myself and I'm not sitting in my progress. And I'm not measuring how far I've come. And so I'm trying to be more conscientious about that. And I've been writing it down, writing down quarterly and weekly goals. And then I look back and I go, oh shoot, I did all that. Okay. You know, instead of me waking up and allowing myself to sort of sink under the weight of my responsibility, I dial in the night before and my calendar is like, I don't just time block like, okay, 3 hours for commercial brokerage, 3 hours for business. Within those time blocks, there's specific things I have to get done because there's never going to be a world where your entire checklist gets ticked off. And if you're somebody that relies on lists and you go, oh, I'm, I'm never finishing, you, you feel poorly about your progress. So I've, I've learned to give myself grace. I've learned it's okay to never finish the checklist. You know, I've learned that you have to hit the top things and do them well. And I've also learned that I'm a human being and I'm not a machine. There's going to be really great productive days, and there's going to be days where they're— it's just shit.

And I think we also have to realize that a lot of these lists are impulsive. We put things on there that really aren't as important. And, you know, I remember when my mum was diagnosed with cancer in the UK, I was able to— thankfully with my job, they were very flexible, I could work from the UK. But so many other things that seemed important at the time disappeared. Everything got done. I got my work done. I flew to the UK 4 or 5 times within 4 or 5 months. And, um, It's amazing all of the important shit got done and none of the stuff that didn't matter got done and it didn't matter. And it's just constantly, it's like a sliding window. It's, we see the priorities as they are kind of like the horizon. The priorities are, we need to fly towards this particular place, but oh no, now we're going to Los Angeles instead of San Francisco. So now we just adjust course. Now we forget about San Francisco. Now our focus is on that. So those other bits fall off the list. That's no longer important. Maybe it goes to the parking lot list for later, right? Maybe it sometimes gets seen, maybe it never gets seen, but we don't think about that again. Um, but you know, you're a creative person and there's a lot of things that we want to do. I, I've always said yes to too many things, and most of those have been helping other people and not focusing on, on myself in the sense that taking care of my own needs. Um, and, and reflecting on where you were saying about being in rooms with people elevated and, and, you know, the, the people that you want to learn how they think because of an abundant mindset of joining and, and bringing value to those groups. Leading the community here that I had and parts of other communities that I've led here. I was, you know, you never want to be the smartest person in the room, but I'm not saying I'm the smartest person in the room, but I was always the person being fed off from information and I never had people around me that were able to provide me what I needed and I lost sight of that through helping so many other people. So I got, you know, resentful. Only realizing later that it was my own lack of priority on myself that was to blame, not the others, because I just allowed them to do it. Not making any of those other people wrong, but again, it's those realizations we get through life of what is right, you know, what's going on and what's strengthening us and weakening us. And if we're holding on and saying yes to too many things, then we've got to start saying no ruthlessly. And somebody told me that 2 and a half years ago, and I still haven't been ruthless enough. With the things that I should be saying no to. My friend Matthew's got a definition of integrity. Part of it is saying integrity is letting somebody know when you won't get done what you promised to do and letting them know as soon as you realize that you're not going to get it done at all or on time. And then reneging is saying, and not in a negative way, but in, with best integrity as possible, it's just finding somebody else to do it for them or suggesting something else as a solution for those people. And whether it's someone we said yes to, people are going to understand. They're not going to hate us forever. They may hold a grudge for a period of time, but if we're clear in ourselves that this is not moving my goals forward, this isn't moving me forward, in fact is a detriment to me and my family, um, it's not to blame the other person, but just say I took on more than I could chew. And this is one of the things that I've I unfortunately have to say bye to, but let me try and put you in touch with somebody else, or, you know, help, help you solve the problem that I, I did hope to solve with you. And I think that's so powerful for ourselves, is respecting ourselves in the way that we can't spread ourselves that thin.

That takes a lot of strength, especially for yes people and people pleasers. Oh my gosh, that's really hard. It took me, um, same as you, like, probably becoming chronically overwhelmed over a series of a year before I had to go, what am I doing? Like, this is not— I'm not helping my family. I'm telling myself I'm doing this for my family, but I'm not. I'm wasting time.

I'm not in alignment.

And, you know, when you are searching for that personal growth, it takes a while to go, ooh, that's my lane, you know, and to not, uh, focus on what everyone else is doing that sounds fantastic. I mean, I've got— you and I have a bunch of people in similar circles that are doing fantastic things in different asset classes. And if I turned my head every time somebody did something great, it would it would undo me because I would constantly be comparing myself and I would be constantly losing focus. You can't build anything when you're not focused. So, um, it took me a few years to learn how to say no. Earlier this year, I had to separate myself from a partnership, from a company I co-founded, and go, I have to take this off my plate. This is now the smallest priority on my plate. It's not fair to you. It's not fair to the future of the company. It's not fair to other partners that want to grow that I'm holding you back. I have to say goodbye. And I'm very lucky that went well. But there have been other things too, Trystan, I'm sure for yourself, where it's like, I cannot do this anymore.

Yeah, you cannot.

Yeah. For me, it was being, you know, I've heard recently an analogy that the most dangerous person in the room is the person that doesn't need any help, doesn't need anything. And from losing sight of my goals and having few goals because of helping other people, I was probably that person because there weren't the people in the room that had the, the knowledge and skills to help me. So it was like just helping others. And you mentioned the term people pleaser. There was a book called, uh, No More Mr. Nice Guy that I read about 9 months or a year ago, and it was a very powerful book. And it was frightening how, how it sounded like me, all of the, you know, a lot of the things in there, you know. And, and I, there are a few books that I've I've read like that, which is great because you're finding the right book at the right time that resonates and is powerful. Even one of the coaches from a program that was spawned off, um, No More Mr. Nice Guy, was on, on the podcast a few episodes ago. Yeah, we've had some great conversations, you know, about that, and I've shared it with a few friends as well, and I think it's a powerful awareness to have to then, you know, stop being the martyr in your life by giving benefits to others and at the detriment of yourself. Avoiding the self-serving people that are after benefits themselves at the detriment of you because you give them away. Avoiding the people that are creating deficit to themselves and others that are, you know, I can't remember the term, destructive people. Yeah. Looking for those people that are really in alignment, that are really in that transformation or at least transactional situation where there's benefits for both parties involved, you know, delicate balance. Yeah. You know, I think The Go-Giver was a book that, you know, somebody suggested I read a while ago and I did. That was part of the reason that I think that I didn't interpret the book as well as I could have done because there was a lot of go-takers in the community that, that I was part of as a result of people giving so much that there was no, no return of any value. Um, where, you know, that first rule is give more, more value than you receive in financial reward. But there was just, when there's nothing coming the other way, it's, it's difficult to keep doing that. And, and it burnt me out.

It's incredibly difficult. You know, you hear this strategy from multiple people and it's like this generosity first thing. There's nothing wrong with it unless you don't have really firm personal boundaries. Um, I met somebody who— we ran, we ran in the same circles and we both owned a similar business model, and I was wasting way too much time with free consults. And I reached out to her and I said, I don't understand how you're making the money that you make. Like, Help me understand. And she goes, talk me through what you're doing on a day-to-day basis. And she goes, oh no, no, no, I have a timer at 15 minutes. I say, call's over. I'm so sorry to interrupt you. Um, if you want to pay for an additional consult, I'm texting you right now my payment link. You can pay and I'll stay on the phone for another 4 or 5 minutes, but if not, I have to go. You know, it's so great to meet you and talk to you, but best of luck. And she's so curt and it's almost like for me, it's almost a little shocking how curt she is, but she almost always gets people to transfer that free information that she just gave them for 15 minutes into a paid service. And for the folks that don't, they don't, they don't convert. But I think it's really misleading to go, we just have to give, give, give, give, give in hopes of the universe circling back. I mean, there has to be— I have to be healthy, I have to be focused and aligned with my goals. Is this serving me? You know, and again, for yes folks and people pleasers, it's really hard to create those boundaries, especially when you have somebody on the phone that is emotional and they are in desperate need of your expertise. It's really hard to say I've given you 30 minutes of my time and now I have to go do something else. It's really hard.

And the difficult thing for that other person is that you, you have the big heart, you're trying to help and, and listen, but there's so much in the minutia which is unimportant in that, in that priorities list of what they tell you. So few of those things are really priorities where it's a blind spot and And that's the skill that, you know, you and I and many have is enlightening people, their blind spots, the things they don't know that they don't know, or they can't see in themselves or the situation that allow them to step outside of the victimhood and the survival to see, oh, shit's not so bad.

Exactly.

If I just ignore all those things that are the emotional things, and there's nothing wrong with emotion, but, you know, emotion creates thoughts. A thought creates a thought pattern and often a repeating pattern that just drags people down and holds people back. I know from experience. And, you know, knowing that and being able to share it with a— share it with people in a, in a way which is, um, which is relatable, that they feel safe, that you're not, you know, just saying, right, bugger off now, you're not paying. I understand what you're going through. I understand some of these things. Um, I'm happy to solve your problems. But yeah, there's, you know, I wanted to hear whether I was a good fit for, for helping you, whether I can introduce you to somebody. But yeah, this is the 15 minutes where I listen, um, and I'm happy to share my, my advice with you. But here's the swipe link for $250 for, you know, the next 30 minutes for me to feedback to you on what this is. And it's gonna be a shock to some people.

Oh yeah. I mean, I think that for me, the, the, the gentlest way I have found to say this comfortably is to go, I would love to keep talking to you about this. I love this. Like I'm super passionate about this topic and I have a lot of experience here, but if I stayed on the phone with you all day and, and everybody else, I, I would have no money making. I would be doing no money making activities. Activities, and I've got 3 kids I've got to eat, I've got to feed. You know, it's this thing where it's, it's not personal and it's not all about money, but it's also not all about me playing Oprah all day, every day. You know, at the end of the day, um, there has to be— I don't think it— I don't know if it's pride or if it's a mixture of pride and boundaries, but almost this idea that I have something that's valuable. I know something that's valuable, and I'm okay with talking openly about it. But I also have to respect myself, just like you said.

Right.

You don't associate the two off the bat. You don't go, oh, I have to guard my time because that means I'm respecting myself. That took me a while to figure out.

Yeah. I think, I think the boundary and the valuing ourselves is the biggest thing here, is valuing our own time, that it's so valuable to others that we're not arrogant in the sense, but we're confident the fact that we have something that somebody else needs or wants, but we're not going to try and charge money to the person that we can't solve the problem for, you know. And, and that's where, you know, David Meltzer has that introduction sheet where you can create an introduction to somebody, you know, make maybe introduce somebody to a venture capital fund, they're launching a new product, and you can put yourself in the middle where you make maybe a half percent or a percent of anything, any business that happens, you know, as a result of you making that connection. I haven't found a place to put that yet. Again, that's valuing my time and valuing myself in making that creation, that connection. Um, but yeah, very, very much so, boundaries respect of our time and valuing ourselves to a point where, you know, it might just be I do one of these calls a day because it's a non-revenue-generating activity unless the person is, is willing to pay for my time. And you get 10 minutes, I'm going to listen, I'll help you. And I do this every day for one person so I can help one person. It doesn't always result in me making a charge, but if you're using my time to respond and help you, there's, there's a $250 charge, telling you now, right?

And I think that's fair.

And, and, you know, maybe that's in the— maybe that's in the booking form, you know, where it says, you know, 10 minutes is, is here, and know that, you know, if you go beyond that, maybe some people don't sign up, but great, because we don't waste 10 minutes 5 times. Yeah, the 6th person does that, and they also to put their, their, um, them set their own value on themselves to solve their own problem rather than just be the, the person that goes and asks for fish, free fish at the, from the fishermen every day instead of learning how to fish for themselves and paying somebody to show them how to fish in whatever context is that they're, they're learning.

You know, there's a weird reward system for this go-giver mentality where, you know, it's wonderful to be complimented. It feeds your ego. Oh, this person helped me so much. This person helped me so much. You know, they're such a go-giver, such a go-giver.

And that's wonderful.

Everyone's getting fat while you're starving. Yeah, you can't survive. You can't. And as an entrepreneur, that's a hard lesson to learn when you're trying to grow your business. It's really hard. Um, I let a lot of business walk away because they argued with pricing, they pushed me on pricing, and I got to a point where I did so much discounted work, just said, nope, this is what I'm worth, this is my price, this is what it's going to take, would love to work with you, totally understand if I'm out of your price range or you're not ready, totally understand, respect expect that. Maybe you'll be— maybe you'll circle back with me in a year.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah. Yeah. I very much agree with that. It's, it's, yeah, just saying no and giving the other person the chance to say no where they're not, not getting something necessarily completely for free, but they're making their own commitment to themselves. It's like, I remember the first real estate thing I put in that I joined. I was on a 6-figure income. At the time. And I went on the first day of this 3-day, you know, $500 course or $800 course. And the end of the first day, he said, bring in your, you know, credit cards and bank accounts. We'll see how much leverage you can make to invest in real estate. Where really they were asking you to bring in to tell them how much you can invest in their course. So I invested tens of thousands of dollars, multiple tens of thousands of dollars in their course, which was probably one of the worst courses that I invested in, but 2 or 3 relationships I made through joining the course were the value that came out of it and gave me, you know, the, the basic steps to find the, you know, the, the knowledge I have now. Uh, we wouldn't be speaking right now. So each of these mentorships, masterminds, whatever you want to call them, I've made— the biggest win is always the relationship that I've really— I don't feel I've monetized the knowledge that I've gained from the relationships yet until now with this, the culmination of the, the, uh, disparate information types that were related to investing one way or another. And now, now that's the, the way forward with, with Midlife to Millions.

Well, you have a fantastic thing going here and I can't wait to tune in and hear everybody else's stories because I know that hearing other people's stories and their journeys and how they push past different challenges or mindset barriers in their life It's what helps me to keep going. So, um, and it helps me open up my mind, you know. There's, there's beauty to not being somebody that knows everything. I am always wanting to learn. And so cheers to you and to the future of the show.

Yeah, thank you so much. So I'll ask a couple more questions. So as far as your retirement planning, because Birth to Net Worth We're having net worth that we can retire with. We ask you about, you know, you mentioned about your dad's plan, how, how, how a result of knowing how your dad's planned or not planned to this point, and he has his strategy now, how has that affected and inspired your family's planning for, you know, retirement, whether it's 401s, retirement plans, other things. I'm not asking you personal details, but sure, you know, how have you spread that, you know, to spread that diversity? Well, I think I'm planning—

I mean, for me, it's— I do appreciate, you know, retirement vehicles like your 401k, like, you know, um, you know, investing in stock market and whatnot, but I'm, I'm a lot more excited about real estate. I'm in California, I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area. Property appreciates here really well. I would never buy residential property here, but I would absolutely buy commercial property here. And for a while there, I was just maxing out all of my retirement accounts until I found out about SDIRAs, so self-directed retirement vehicles. And when I learned that I could grab all of my sleepy $10,000 here, whatever, $40,000 here, and put them into one vehicle, I mean, now you can even— you can buy crypto, you can buy real estate, you can lend money, you can do so many things. You can actually, for business purchases, you can lend yourself 50% of the balance in your SDIRA and pay yourself interest. There's just so much flexibility. So for me, I am— I'm feeding that and going, okay, this is the fun account. I get to do— I get to dabble in the things that I'm not going to focus on and spend energy on myself. I know a couple really successful fix and flippers. I know people that are investing in different kinds of commercial real estate assets that I have no interest in learning how to invest in, but they're very successful, very profitable. I trust, like, and know them, and I've seen their returns. And so This allows me to get involved into multiple things, and if I ever get into a situation where, um, I need to utilize these funds for another business purchase for myself, there's, there's a way I can do that too. So between exercising and continue to contribute and grow my SDIRA account, I am focused on commercial acquisitions, and, and really it's like land business acquisitions. The business in and of itself is, is what makes the active income. And the land and the building, or the FF&E, the furniture, fixtures, and equipment— less the FF&E, more the building— that's what's appreciating. That's the hard asset. So I've seen what my dad's done with his building. It's one building that's completely changed his life. He purchased it for $2.1 million at an auction. It now appraises for over $7 million in the span of 17 years. That's one building. So I don't need to be Warren Buffett. I don't need to— I don't need, need, need all of this money. I would like to create options for my children and options for my husband and I. And so that's what I'm going to focus on, those two things.

Fantastic. So one of the things I've just recorded in Midlife to Millions is educating the next generation. You were educated by your dad by having those conversations openly. I'm sure they're very open in your household right now. Your kids, I'm sure, are very different from you in some ways, but have, you know, some similarities too. How are you trans— I don't know, how are you conveying the intention for your legacy building and the legacy they will receive so they understand what your intention is with it and how it can be used to maximize their return. Instead of— most people are going to, you know, inherit a house, they're either going to move into it because it's their parents' house and that's where they grew up, or they sell it and then blow the money and go to Vegas or a big cruise, and 6 months later they're done. How, how are you preparing your kids and it may not be a full plan, but it's just the ongoing conversations that have them understand what's going on around them too. They don't do what they're told, they do what they see. What are they seeing from you and your dad and your husband that is inspiring them to, to learn and see what's coming towards them and how they can build with you? And then obviously, like you with your dad, take over from you, I'm sure, is probably the succession plan.

Well, you know, it's funny, right? Because I was the first to go to college in my family. There was a lot of pressure. I mean, from a very early age, like, your only job is to get a degree, because if you get a degree, you're going to have options, right? Well, funny enough, I got a degree and I ended up in the flooring industry anyway. So I think for my kids, it's all about Showing them what's possible. That's my main goal right now. You know, when, when they were babies, they would come to our industrial facility with me. I had a separate room. I had bags of like, I was the bag lady. I would come in with food for them, bottles, special cups, and, you know, all little baby things and toys. And I mean, they had, I had a small daycare going on in a corner of my office.. And they always knew about— they call my dad Bapu. They always knew about Bapu's shop. And recently they go, Mama, are you going to Bapu's shop? And I'm like, no, I'm going to Mama's shop. And they're like, what are you talking about? I'm like, well, Bapu's retiring and I'm buying the business. So, you know, when you get older, you can come earn some money at the warehouse. They love the forklifts. They're young boys. And I'm like, you can learn how to do inventory. You can learn how to help me manage the warehouse. If you want to, if you want to. You know, my husband is a 30-year electrician. He is at the top of his field. He manages a lot of men. And for us, I'm going, hey, you know, it'd be great if he got into a fix and flip and you showed the boys how to flip a property and what that delta looks like, and that they could contribute a portion of the profit, of their profit, you know, You can show them, hey, we're going to split up the profit. This is how it's going to go dependent on the kind of work you contribute. And a portion of your profit goes into this account where, you know, Mama Does Her Stuff, and you get to choose how you want to invest it. And the other portion gets to go towards something that you— it's important to you, an experience that is important to you. You know, I used to backpack a lot in my 20s and, um, My youngest is always asking me, are you going to take me to China? Will you take me here? You would take me? I'm like, well, that costs money. So we got to figure out how to get around that bit. And so I want to show them that by doing different things, they have different kinds of opportunity. I don't want to tell them, and I don't want to force them. I want to show them how to create options. So by the time they're 18, they can go, oh, I could totally go into the trades. I could become a GC and build houses myself. I could become a flipper. I could go work at the shop and learn about commercial construction and commercial flooring. You know, Mama and Papa, they have these other things that need to be taken care of out of state. We can go deal with that. I really want— this is so, uh, I don't know how to explain this, but I want them to be It's a little kitschy, I'll admit. I want them to be people of the land. Like, use your hands. Be able to use your hands and be able to lean on the power of your mind to choose how to make money. That's all I want for them. I don't want to hand them anything. I want them to take interest in something and learn how to nurture it and we'll go from there.

Yeah. Fantastic. Well, I think that's a great place to, to wrap the, the conversation. Thank you so much for spending the time with me, Danielle. This is amazing. Let's, let's stay in the studio for a couple of seconds afterwards and I appreciate you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.

Of course. Well, everyone, we'll see you next time on the next edition of Birth to Net Worth. Thank you, Daniela.