351 Krisstina Wise: Wealthy Wellthy

Money. Profit. Revenue. Passive Income. Do you start to squirm when talk turns to dollars and sense?  Money – we all want it… or do we, because some of us have a hard time attracting it… or a hard time holding onto it. There is a money game and yet few business owners know how to win it. Do you?

MELINDA

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who truly knows her numbers … and how to make the numbers work for you … so you too can win the game of money.

Krisstina Wise is a real estate mogul, Millionaire Coach, best selling author, and creator of several multi-million dollar businesses including Goodlife Luxury, The Paperless Agent and now WealthyWellthy. I love the name of her current business because it’s all about becoming wealthy without sacrificing your wellness. Because too many entrepreneurs – especially female founders – spend their health … growing their wealth … and then spend their wealth … to recover your health. We’re going to talk about how to avoid that trap … and play the game of money in a way that supports abundance in ALL areas of your life.

Krisstina Wise will be here in a minute and first….

And it gets even better because Krisstina Wise is one of our featured speakers at Wings of the Empowered Woman – and she will be working with all of us at the Retreat and through the year in the Mastermind to help you master your numbers, grow your wealth in a way that supports your health and the lifestyle you want … so you can step into your full potential because everyone deserves to have the life of their dreams. WingsExperiences.com/apply

Now back to the inspiring Krisstina Wise – investor, serial entrepreneur, and wealth expert.

Today we’re going to break down any false beliefs you may have about money – any blocks standing between you and the independent income that will give you the time freedom you crave. We’re going to talk about how to avoid the trap of entrepreneurial poverty – and how to think like an investor so you build assets with your money … so that you can live off those assets… instead of your hard work.

Does that sound good? I think so.

Krisstina is a real estate mogul, investor, serial entrepreneur, international speaker and author of the Amazon Bestseller Falling for Money, A Romance Novel For Your Bank Account.

After nearly losing her life in 2013 and spending almost half a million dollars to get it back, she is changing the world again by inspiring others to build extraordinary wealth and optimal health. Named one of the 100 Most Influential Real Estate Leaders in the country, Krisstina shares  her extreme successes and abysmal failures, Krisstina reveals the elusive secrets of the uber wealthy (and why health is where to invest first). Through cutting-edge, research-based education, access to the world’s top wealth strategists and doctors, Krisstina is helping millions each year discover the true path to wealth, health, and happiness.

So are you ready for Krisstina Wise? I am. Let’s fly!

Melinda Wittstock:         Krisstina, welcome to WINGS.

Krisstina Wise:                 It’s such a pleasure to be here, thank you.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m so excited to talk to you because we’re going to talk about money, numbers, passive income, all these good things that are near and dear to my heart and also how women can avoid the trap of entrepreneurial poverty. Tell me, what got you on this course of helping entrepreneurs win the money game?

Krisstina Wise:                 Yeah. First of all, it’s understanding that there is a money game but very few of us understand when there is a money game, we don’t know that there’s a way to win it and how to win it. That’s the first thing I like to share is that there is this thing called the money game. We as women business owners, all of us, everybody needs to be good at money game if they ultimately want to win.

How do we know we’ve won the money game? That’s always a good question I like to ask. Everybody listening are like, if there is a money game, how do we know when we’ve won it? That’s a question I like everybody to think about and answer because it’s like, I don’t know.

Melinda Wittstock:         I guess it’s different for everybody too, right? Everybody has a preconceived notion of what the money game is. Is it a white picket fence? Is it Manolo Blahnik? Or is it a business that’s spinning off lots of passive income or what is it?

Krisstina Wise:                 Yeah. My definition of winning the money game is a word that’s thrown out around a lot so I don’t necessarily like to use overused words. If we use the over word concept to the financial freedom. What is financial freedom? Yes, the word financial freedom is different for everyone because that number is different for everyone. Ultimately, what is freedom, and freedom, what we’re looking for when we’re going towards winning the money game which means financial freedom, what that means … what it means or translated to is time, time and space.

Whether we get trapped in this entrepreneurial game and entrepreneurial grind that leads to ultimate burnout is that we have no space. We’re just constantly in the grind to grow or try to win this money game. We think if we build our business bigger or whatever the case is and we’re just in that trap like you said. If we’re out there winning the game and if we believe that winning financial freedom, financial freedom means we have all the time and space to do what we want, when we want, with whom we want and how we want it.

How do you get there? There’s only two types of income, ultimately. There’s working income and non-working income. When we’re in our businesses and we’re grinding, we’re putting all of our time, our money, our energy, our space, our sacrifices, everything, all our energy is going into our businesses to create, to make impact, to win as women just a ripple effect is huge. Many times, we’re draining ourselves and we don’t even have time and space to even know how I’m doing or how I’m happy or what’s going on.

Ultimately, what we want all that space back. If it’s true that there’s only two types of income working income and non-working income, we have a strategy in our business for working income to make this thing called profit, to build our businesses, to make enough money in our business hopefully that allows us to live the lifestyle that we want. That’s only one strategy and that’s the business strategy people are teaching that all the time.

How to build a bigger business? How to do be better business people? Yada, yada, yada. The conversation that’s missing in most of the … all of the places I go where we’re talking about money, where’s the strategy to build non-working income, passive income. Then, I follow with what the hell is passive income? Passive income is money that comes from assets. The idea is that if we’re going to have passive income, meaning non-working income, meaning that my assets are producing the money that my body doesn’t have to, then I have the space because my assets pay my bills I don’t have to.

Ultimately, that’s the goal is what is my financial freedom number? What is my good life number that when I have the asset value that produces enough cash flow that pays my bills, then I have all the space that I can use to put anywhere I want. I may also put a good portion of it in my business but that means by business doesn’t own me anymore. I actually own my business. We think we own our businesses, but we really don’t. Our businesses own us because the day we step away, there goes the income. Or, there goes something.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. Unless you’ve built an asset, I know so many people who built businesses that is so much … it’s entirely dependent on their own work and them continuing to work on the business. Or perhaps, they’re the face of the brand or whatever. Even if they’re the face of the brand, however, there are still ways to step back from that and create an asset. I found that a lot of business owners aren’t really thinking in terms of assets, even within their own business.

Krisstina Wise:                 What’s understanding as well is that there’s only two types of business strategy. We need to know this going in, because a lot of times, especially as women, we go because we have the love and then we get really good at this and then we’re building this business. There’s not a real strategy at the beginning. We understand there’s only two types of business strategies. One is a business strategy where we’re actually building the business as an asset.

Again, asset is the keyword in all these money conversations I listen to, the most important word in the whole money game is the one word that’s not being discussed, asset. Asset, that’s the word that … all the work that I do, it’s like I want everybody to incorporate and just hold on to this word called asset. In a business strategy, there’s two types of strategies for our business. One is an asset strategy. What I mean by that is going in and usually a lot work like this is we get some VC funding or whatever the case is. The strategy there is we’re growing our business and building it as an asset that we can sell.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. We’re thinking about valuation, we’re not thinking just about revenue or profit even. It’s like, what is the asset that somebody is going to buy?

Krisstina Wise:                 That’s it. That’s the strategy that we’re building our business around that’s … whatever the valuation is, that’s one of the key factors of course. The mindset, the understanding is that my business strategy is to build my businesses and asset that I can sell. Let’s just pretend that that’s it and my goal is do whatever I’m going to do in my business to sell that asset for $10 million.

That asset, that business strategy is to build that asset that I can sell it. Meaning, I can pull myself out and I can put that 10 mil in the bank. Then, I invest it somewhere and so then that $10 million, I’ve got the cash flow that will make me about a million dollars a year cash flow if I do that. Then, the strategy of my business is to go towards that trajectory, so I’m banking on that one asset is going to be my exit strategy. That’s the exit strategy that we’re going after.

That’s a strategy for business that’s build in businesses and asset with a big win at the end that I sell and the exit. That’s the only exit strategy people are talking about. The second type of business strategy is a cash flow strategy. Most of my businesses, including the one that I have right now are cash flow businesses. What I mean by that, I have no exit strategy for this business. If I sell it and somebody wants to buy this thing, great. I’m so involved in it and my name is such a big part of it. The value of my business really is me.

Within these cases, I’m building my business to produce a certain cash flow. It’s a cash flow business, that’s the strategy. How much cash flow is going to end out of my business that now I use that cash flow, in this case, let’s call it profit that now I move to my household. The concept that I teach and the programs is to understanding that how we build wealth assuming that our business is with the exit strategy, the asset that we just talked about.

The only other way to build wealth and get to financial freedom is we have to treat our household as a business, we have to be the CFO of our household. We take profit first on our household and we invest that and we buy assets that live on a balance sheet. Then, it’s the accumulation of the purchase of assets over time. We don’t spend all of our cash flow from our business on our lifestyle, we take a percentage of that cash flow from our business and we invest it. That then the exit strategy is the asset value that we build by buying many different assets and our business is just one piece on that pie chart potentially, that may be has some valuation.

If not, then, we over time, we’re building this balance sheet of assets that the aggregate of that diversified integrative, holistic pie chart like portfolio that we buy assets over time, we buy foods, we buy clothing and we buy lifestyle but we also have to buy assets and we buy assets first. That’s the second type of exit strategy. My exit strategy is building my asset so that the assets and the cash flow just spun off from the assets pays from the cost of my life style so I’m free. That’s what we’re working towards.

There’s a misunderstanding that there’s two types of exit strategies and there’s two types of business strategies and there’s only one that’s being talked about. When our business is our only exit strategy and it’s our only asset, it’s really risky because we’re not diversified.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s literally all your eggs in one basket. The diversification around the cash flow, I saw you describe this extremely well at the Unicorn Club of which we’re both members. It’s sort of a secret society of women with seven, eight, nine figure businesses, Krisstina, I thought how you explained it there was so brilliant. Because you were talking about these three columns, you’ve got your personal finances, you’ve got your business finances and then you have this other third column, assets.

Entrepreneurs often get trapped using the personal to fund the business and the business to fund the personal. As the business succeeds, your standard of living goes up so suddenly you’re spending more personally and then the business needs more. You get trapped like running around that little circle. To get specific, how to take, say … would you take, say, 15% out of your household? Say, your household is going to make a profit of 15% or 20% and then you park that over not necessarily in your business maybe part of it in your business and part of it say in real estate or the stock market or invest in another female entrepreneur for instance. Things like that. What do you recommend getting just down the brass tacks of how much from each column to build those assets?

Krisstina Wise:                 That’s exactly what I teach. I call it the millionaire formula. There are actually percentages and models that we can just model and follow. The concept is like I’ll earn, spend and invest. Three categories that you’re referring to is we earn money. Let’s just pretend, let’s go that we’re in the cash flow business. We’re generating half a million dollars profit from our business. Let’s just say, a million dollars. We’ll make the math very easy. We’re making a million dollars profit from our business. That’s business.

What we do is we pay ourselves from our business. We move that million into our household as a business. A key takeaway here is how we build financial freedom assuming we’re not building one asset with the exit strategy. What we do is now our household is our business in a way that how we build wealth and financial freedom is all about how we manage our money through our household as a business and being a CFO of our business.

I call it The 20-80-20. A 20-80-20 really looks like this. It’s taking 20% off the top of that million dollars and we put in our investment bucket. We’re investing right up the top to buy assets. People talk investments and these things so it can be very confusing to clean it up, to buy assets. We have budgets where we buy all sorts of different things for our lifestyle; we buy mortgages, we buy cars, we buy clothing, we buy healthcare. We buy.

At the very top the profit, of the top of the profit repairs first profit, and we save a certain amount of money that we use that money to buy assets forever to constantly build that thing called the balance sheet.

Then, what we have left over after we pay for taxes in that type of thing. We have left over 80% of that what’s leftover which in a business world we called Gross Profit. We run our household books just like a business books. We have revenue off the top but as opposed to taking profit off the bottom, we’re taking profit off the top that we’re going to invest. What’s left over after taxes is called gross profit just like we do in our business books. Now what’s left after, that 80% goes towards our lifestyle expenses and 20% goes towards liquid cash savings because we need liquidity and we need assets.

Once we do that, that’s the second category. How well we run our household finance, and understanding the modeling how the money works, tells us how quickly we’re going to hit our financial freedom number. That is prescriptive, it’s not methodical. It’s a model that can be followed.

Then, the third category and the fun category for me is it takes a lot less time but I’m just as excited about my balance sheet as I am without my business because my business is awesome but I work to my ass off in my business. My assets, I’m getting over excited over here. Every time I buy an asset, I’m looking at that net worth and that valuation and the future cash flow benefit that that’s so exciting.

The juicy piece is on my pie chart, if we think of our balance sheet as a pie chart; our personal, that household business, that’s our personal PNL, that’s our profit in law statement. Now, when we move over to our balance sheet, and I call it balance sheeting, and then balancing sheet thinking and we’re building a pie chart of assets, then I give a model for percentages even to have this really diversify portfolio where our business and capitalization to put more capital on our business, might be a piece of our pie chart, but it shouldn’t be the entire pie chart. Most business centers I will look at everything on their balance sheet is their business.

Again, that’s not diversified. We’re just looking at our balance sheet. We’re building it at out overtime of according to model of what percentage would we want to have, because my best returns are in my business I want to have a piece of the pie chart that’s money allocated to invest back in my business but not everything because that’s where we get stuck.

I have a percentage of my balance of assets that I buy or growth assets. If I were to invest in and women owned business, I’m looking for extra strategy with that. I’m going to probably tie that money up. If I’m looking for certain return on that investment, of that growth of like say five to seven years. I have cash flow assets, like real estate that just throw out cash flow. I have semi liquid assets like life insurance that’s in there that I can use that many.

We understand that there are models to follow that tells us exactly what to do for our household finance so that we know what our spending ratio should be and our investing ratios. We have a model to how to build this balance sheet. Then we move backwards, do we know how much money we need to earn from our business to be able to hit our numbers on the end? We have to reverse engineering. We’re starting with our business and trying to get to the end of this thing called retirement where it’s [inaudible 00:33:46].

We need to start with how much money is enough that is the cause of our lifestyle, how much asset valuation do I need to build just to throw off that cash flow and how does that translate to how much money that I’m going to spend in my household business, and then how much money do I need to make to be able to hit those targets according to a certain timeline.

Everything needs to be reverse engineered starting with this end in mind as oppose to if I just work hard and I build this business and I put some money away. Some days I’m crossing my fingers it’s just all going to work out.

Melinda Wittstock:         Krisstina hearing you explain this it makes so much sense. Yet, I can’t help but think that I rarely hear anybody talking like this, that the education system certainly doesn’t provide this kind of knowledge, even financial planners don’t. The entrepreneurial community doesn’t really talk so much about this at all. Why? It’s astonishing to me that that so many of us are so ignorant about how to leverage money.

Krisstina Wise:                 I don’t know. It’s not taught and it’s just not commonsense. There’s two ins of it and the middle pieces being missed which is the most important piece, which is a foundation and fulcrum of understanding money, which is household finance.

There’s tons of business models. No matter what business we’re in, there’s a business model for that. There’s models. If I’m in an internet marketing business, there’s a model that’s a pretty easy model to follow but if I’m a doctor, maybe there’s a different model. There’s different types of business models based on the type of business you’re in.

We use models to model after and to work inside that type of business model. What people don’t know is there’s household finance models and there’s asset creation models that nobody talks about but the models are there. That’s what I teach. I teach models so that you know exactly what to do that takes the guessing game out. We’re just guessing and making shit up and hoping it will work.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well yeah.

Krisstina Wise:                 [crosstalk 00:36:35] that these models exist. On the financial planning side, that’s just all crap. They just want our fees and they want to manage our money, so we advocate. We don’t think we’re smart enough. Building a balance sheet by an asset is so easy, but we’re advocating it because then it becomes around this thing called retirement. Screw retirement. Who is going to retire? That’s an antiquated industrial age concept and it’s still the only thing talked about.

Again, what’s missing is we buy assets. We own those and we build them and grow them according to our financial freedom members. Now, do we need experts to help us make choices? Maybe on some of the assets or what’s that type of thing but it’s not set in … Forget it. We don’t get rich by giving your money to the planners, paying fees, minus inflation and hoping this can work out with some 401K or ROIs and all this retirement nonsense.

It’s advocating. The planners and the entire financial industry has this thinking that we need to give our money to them. Do they care about our kids going to college? Do they care about us actually hitting financial freedom numbers? Do they care about our children and our legacy? No. They want their fees.

Now that doesn’t mean we don’t need experts. I have an incredible team of experts that I always use to check my thinking and I’ll buy assets or place different investments. That group is gotten very small but it’s just not one financial planner. I have, in each piece of my pie chart, I have an expert in every piece of my pie chart that buys helps me make decisions. I’m not very specific category of assets.

You can’t get rich setting and forget. You have to move your money. You’re buying assets. You’re selling them. Sometimes you put in your business. You’re moving it back. If there’s an extra strategy that I invested with a woman business, they have a great exit. Great, I produced the return now I can use that money and we invest it in something else.

We need lots. Money is energy. It has to flow. It has to move. It has to grow. We have to have our hands in it. We have to tinder it. It’s our money. That’s one piece.

The second piece that I really like to put in this for women is understanding the spiritual connectivity of money that we put our heart and soul and spirit into everything we do. What we get back, the reason why we want to honor our money, it’s a way of thanking ourselves for the reciprocity of what we’re getting back so we can hold the money we get spiritual because it’s a love of self for what we’re gifting the world and we’re getting a currency back for the currency we put in. Then, we want to be very connected to that. We want that. Don’t give it away to others to lose the spiritual connect in sense. We want to grow it and get good with it and just understand that this whole asset game is a really fun game that’s just as fun as business and far less complicated, and it’s the only way to get out of the grind.

Melinda Wittstock:         Hold on just a second, for some reason I forgot to mute my phone. The good news is I record on two track and you’re speaking so that means that it’s not a problem. Sorry. I love to tape.

I love what you said about the energy of money though. Realizing that it’s not really just a thing, it’s a tool and it’s an energy. There were something else that stood out though is the reverse engineering of this. Really thinking where you want to be and building a business and an assets strategy around the life that you actually want to lead.

In all the women that I mentor, Krisstina, and I’m always shocked when you say, “Well, where do you want to be in five years, or 10 years, or 20 years?” They can’t really answer you. I guess it’s hard to know because someone we just don’t know even what’s possible for ourselves. I have a question for you about this because this keeps coming up in lots of conversations that I’m having with a lot of women right now, about the concept of playing bigger.

Those two words together, play bigger, tend to cause look of dread. Even if only for a split second in women eyes because it sparks this thing like, “Oh, man. That means I’m going to work harder,” or, “What? I’m not doing enough,” or, “What?”

What I mean by this like play bigger in the sense of really dream of what’s possible that we live in this abundant world where anything’s possible. We can do these amazing things.

If you have a lot of money and you have assets, you can use that money to do really important great work on improving our planet or helping other people. It’s leverage. It’s power. Yet there’s something that makes us as women just play a smaller game.

I’m curious your thoughts on that when you work specifically with women and women entrepreneurs in the wealth building part of this, what is it that makes us afraid to play bigger?

Krisstina Wise:                 Yeah. Such a dangerous world in a way because what I think of play bigger, what that means is just max out my potential. Just play big in a sense like don’t play small by being less than what I’m capable of.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. That’s how I mean it too.

Krisstina Wise:                 Yeah. It doesn’t mean bigger is better as far scale or size [inaudible 00:42:10] revenue numbers or numbers of zeroes.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Krisstina Wise:                 To me, the bigness comes when I know my numbers because if you really just do a really work and if we take out … Let’s pretend our house is paid for. We have zero debt. We don’t have any debt. We don’t have a mortgage. We don’t have car payments, for example. Life really isn’t that expensive.

If we just use some calculations to take out the mortgage and the car payments and any debt how much does it cost to live a really good life? Because what we do, it’s the numbers … It’s actually outstanding that we think that these numbers have to be so much bigger because we’ve been told this than when we actually do our math. I call it millionaire math. Let’s just do some numbers.

We look at this like what’s the cost of our lifestyle when we take out all debt including the mortgage. Now, we can add on to it what’s the amount of debt for the house payment. Do we want any other type of lifestyle on top of that, like expensive vacation, one of the cases.

When we look at what our numbers are, what I call our freedom number, and then we have strategy for assets it just takes out all the anxiety and stress that allows us to play big because we get to play big according to the number this big enough for us and we’re not playing big according to everyone else’s game.

We can play so much bigger when we know when all the anxiety and stress because we understand money, we know these simple numbers. We understand we know we’re going to get there. We know we’re in a strategy towards this long term play. We’re just getting bigger year-by-year, iteration-by-iteration but the more financial freedom, and time and space and assets that you have, allows you to actually have the space and the energy and less fear to go play even bigger.

I just go keep going. The simplicity of it is once you know the money game and you’ve build your strategy and you know some simple numbers, you do the reverse engineering, then you go as big as you want to go.

But the bigness is according to what your definition is big for maxing out your contribution and lifestyle and knowing what freedom is. To me, could I probably grow my business much bigger than it is? Absolutely. The revenue of my best businesses is far smaller than many of the people that I spend time with but my asset value and the fact that I have financial freedom means that I can play more in my business and do different things. My definition of freedom is I don’t want to be handicapped to my business. I want to be free. I want to be able to play in my business and do these different things that I only have that opportunity to do now because I have all my assets build on the other side that allows me a lot of space freedom.

I guess the big is … Again, it’s just I know what my numbers are and I can play big according to what my definition of big is which means that I don’t want to ever grow to the size where I’m still in the chase and I’m trading my time for some bigger number.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Krisstina Wise:                 I want to be able to come and speak at your events or do this or do that with and just feel … I don’t know, less stress about it. Like true, I’m choosing this.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. In essence, size does not matter. Really, it’s the lifestyle. It’s like does your business support you. Because I think what happens is we build businesses sometimes when we build the businesses we think we’re supposed to build or what we think we have to build or we have to get to eight figures or nine figures or whatever. These things that are so arbitrary and actually like understanding what is it that you enjoy, what is it that you want and then how to get to that freedom place that you so eloquently talked about with your assets so that you can really enjoy a journey.

I guess I have to ask you; this knowledge, did you have this starting out? You’re a serial entrepreneur, Krisstina, how much of this did you learn along the way just by learning what not to do or did you always have this financial acumen?

Krisstina Wise:                 No. My gosh. This is a lifelong study. Where I started … All of us, we learn along through … I’m one big failure that through these failures had since somehow learn from these colossal failures and in turn those colossal failures into success.

Now, what I hope to do is to keep people from making my colossal failures so they can get to these places of freedom and success far quicker than I. But I didn’t know anything about money. I’ve been sort of as an entrepreneur type mentality from a very young age but at the very beginning, since I grew up very poor … I started in a trailer home. I mean, very dysfunctional upbringing. No concept of money, just a very dysfunctional, impoverished lifestyle.

When I first started my career, I got lucky. After putting myself to college and got an accounting and finance degree I was interested in the money thing then because I didn’t like being poor growing up but then, I got into real estate. The great thing about real estate, I got into real estate when I was 27 years old. The great thing about real estate is there’s really no cap to income. From a poor kid who was making now all this money, it’s like I won the lottery but I didn’t understand money. I found myself in my mid-30s divorced, single mom, completely broke $150,000 of tax liens and debt and paying child support and all this craziness. I was in existential financial despair like, how am I going to feed my children? I had nothing. I’m right back where I started.

After bawling on the floor in tears to, “How am I going to get myself out of this?” In complete despair. It’s just, “Okay. There’s got to be an answer to this money game. It’s not about earning because I just made a bunch of money and here I’m in a holistic financial situation.” I was broke and in debt and had no way out of it. I was a hundred percent on my own as a single mom.

That took me on this journey of, “Okay. There’s got to be more to this money game than just earning it. It’s not about earning because I’m broke when I was a pretty good earner.” Because what does the poor kid do when they make a lot of money? You buy everything you didn’t have as a kid and then some. That took me to this first place to the journey of really understanding money and I made it a hobby, I made it a study to learn the money game and study from people that actually built well.

Then my first thing I think was like a Rich Dad Poor Dad workshop or something. That took me on like over a decade of rigorous study of understanding money, learning, building, growing, becoming an investor. I was always even curious like I sold a lot of real estate at the time and I was, as far as sales, I was always top in the city, I was top of the country so I did great on income but I was always an amazed with all these real estate agents that I used some money to buy a lot of real estates I thought, “Dude, real estate. The great thing is I can buy all these real estate as assets.” Slowly but surely, I started building that but I was still on the case, I was still in the grind.

Then I got really sick. I completely burnt myself out and because I was in the story of more and more and more and more, build, build, build; grow, grow, grow. Go bigger, bigger, bigger. Just put more of myself into it and into it and into it and then I had a huge health crisis. What I learned during that health crisis; 1, I was out of the money game because I didn’t have my health; 2, I had to spend a quarter million dollars of my hard-earned money to get my health back. Thank gosh I had it. Then 3, I learned that this whole chase is ridiculous. Why am I in this crying? For what? What trophy did I get? I’m sitting here dying so what? I have my Range Rover and even though it was all paid in cash, I have my Range Rover on my house, I’ve my boat of my lake house. I have these expensive vacations. I didn’t give a rip about any of that when I was sick. All I wanted was my health back and I so full of shame and guilt for the sacrifices I made for the chase of money and being in that external reward game and wherever I got to, it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t good enough so I had to get to the next thing, the next thing, next thing. I was just so in that.

I learned this real lesson of the chase is bullshit, more numbers is bullshit. It doesn’t buy you any more happiness. In fact, it might just kill you. When you’re in the grind and burned out, there’s no reward to that. That was my big wake up lesson of, “Holy shit! My body is my number one asset.”

Melinda Wittstock:         What’s that phrase is that you spend your health to get your wealth and then you spend your wealth to get your health.

Krisstina Wise:                 That’s exactly what I did so I had to really reach this starting at starting over place. That was a big lesson there and then that took me to this next phase of the journey of time, time is the biggest asset. Time is a non-renewable resource. Time for what? Time for love. Time for relationships. Time for space. Time for connection. Time for things to actually have real reward and return outside of return on investment.

That changed my whole thing and that’s where I had to learn that was the asset game that wasn’t build my business bigger and just invest in have a great big net worth number that I got to brag to you to all my friends. It really just changed the whole mentality of this lifelong journey of understanding, “Oh, I get it. This is the real money game.”

The money game is knowing your enough numbers to have a strategy and a plan and a model towards building that and just enjoy the hell out of that journey.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s beautiful. It’s interesting how many women that I know that are in that constant go mode where we become tasked … We live life on a task treadmill thinking we have to do it all to have it all and how many of us end up with some sort of health crisis in that pattern. It doesn’t wear well on us.

I got to a certain point where I had no hormones left. It’s like, “Hmm. Okay. That’s not good. Something really has to change.” It did and it comes as a wake-up call that I … There’s so many of us in this particular generation where I think our only role models were men, for the most part, and we did it like them. We’re different. We’re wired differently. Just to borrow your surname, we’re wise when we’re still, when we can you know what we can stop being in this frenzy of activity where we can’t … I don’t know, connect or connect into intuition or source or inspiration.

How do you see women at this time changing the game of business or how business is played just by leveraging, really, what’s more of our, I guess, our authentic feminine power. I guess all those things that were described as soft skills that are uniquely, I guess, archetypically feminine where I see those things as being real strengths but for many times, we got hoodwinked into thinking they were weaknesses. How can we leverage that, that more feminine side in business to really change business for the better?

Krisstina Wise:                 I’m just getting there myself because it’s been a very masculine world. Interestingly enough, this last weekend I went to this workshop. It’s a workshop by a woman named Allison Armstrong. The workshop I went to is called it’s called Understanding Men which was really fascinating. They even had this panel of men and really, just the honor of the femininity because we think we do have to play masculine and we do put on our masculine hat that type of thing but I think it’s giving in touch to what do we really care about, what is important to us and just being good with that. Not playing anybody else’s game but our own game.

What we’re building for ourselves, the legacy that we’re building for ourselves, how we’re loving and taking care of ourselves and playing business is a game in a way that’s fun and loving and we add our spirit, we add our impact, we have we add our compassion, we just do it our way.

I think if we can just do it more our way and understanding that bigger isn’t always better, that we can just play it and be ourselves and that this whole business and life journey is about growth and we’re not … There’s no … Like I said, when there’s no there out there, we don’t get any trophy at the end. If our external validation is to how many zeroes, then we’re just going to be trapped in that. If we can get out of that and come back to what is important to me and my face, what do I care about, how much money is enough, what is a good lifestyle to me, how much does it cost to fund it and what impact is my business making in the world and that there’s no finish line. This is my life’s work and I get to be in it, I think it just takes off this pressure.

What we’re learning about health is stress as a killer. If we’re stressed out all the time, it’s not worth it. It’s just not worth it. How we bring back our femininity is like how do we change our life and situation in a way where we give or give our self life back and we get out of the stress, we get out of the rat ways, we quit trying to compare ourselves to others and we just know … I just call it the good enough. Good enough, I don’t mean it to sound like status quo because none of us are like status quo but good enough in the sense that life is really good in a certain situation.

If we can create that and build in that and use our businesses to make impact and make enough money to hit good enough numbers and just being at peace with that, then we’re out of that rat race, masculine, competitive, more and more and more game for this ego rush and more like, “No. We’re just in our femininity and we’re just in it with lots of love and compassion and empathy and caring and our businesses are making the world a better place but we’re taking care of ourselves at the same time.”

That’s what money does. The spiritual aspect of money is that when we can understand the money that comes to us and we can be connected to that and we appreciate it and say, “Krisstina, wow! Look at the money that came in.” That’s because of the impact you’re making in the world so let’s just slow down and honor this and take time with it right now and be grateful for what it is today, and then tomorrow we can build or do it or we’re going to do but it’s just it’s the pause, it’s the reflection, it’s the understanding just in the love and grace of why we’re doing it and why we’re doing it is the reward of what we’re getting back, the energy exchange for the goodness we’re putting in the world.

But we can only take that power back if we get out of the competition and measuring up that I’m not good enough or I’m not a good enough businessperson if I don’t have six zeros after my number.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh gosh, I can’t agree with you more. Actually, the day that I had that epiphany it was actually my daughter who is 13 at the time and it was a particularly hard day and I was struggling. She just came up to me and said, “Mom, you’re enough.” I was like bawling. I was just … It was so revolutionary to me and that it took a 13-year-old girl to be able to say that to her mom for me to really begin to see.

It was it was one of those moments. You have these moments in your life where you look backwards and you see these little bread crumbs and your own growth and really the revelation that’s so much of business growth for me, has been personal growth. They’re both the same thing in the end.

Krisstina Wise:                 Absolutely. Absolutely. Just remember too, the connectivity that we as women, we need to connect. We need to spend time. We need to have conversations and the more we can connect and help and just be in this space, I think that’s where the juice is. But as long as we’re in the external rewards system and the measure up and the competition and trying to hit certain numbers to then when we’re there, then we’ll be good enough. There’s always the next place to go. There’s always the next the next up. We just have to get out of that game.

To me again to just complete where we started was, how you get out of the game is just knowing some simple numbers, following some simple models and then you’re in your life’s work and you’re just building and following the money game. You have a number for when you know you’re winning and you have a strategy for doing it. That’s my goal is just to take out the money nonsense, to take out the stress, the anxiety. To take out some of the ignorance and things because when you know the simple things that I teach, you can just relax. You’re like, “Really? It’s this easy? Now that I have my models, my business model and I have my household model and I’ve my model for how to build my balance sheet and I know my asset number and my freedom number,” then it can be so much more playful and we can get out of that more game.

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely. Krisstina, I can hardly wait to have you at WINGS of the Empowered Woman which is the retreat and mastermind that I’m hosting with the amazing Amy Stefanik. It’s coming up later this year. We have these two dates and all your wisdom, I’m so excited that you can share that with everybody who’s attending and our wider community here today on this podcast.

Thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Krisstina Wise:                 It’s such an honor to be here. With that in closing, I’d encourage women. We’re so busy we’re not coming to the retreats like you’re putting on and the beautiful retreat you’re putting on is the love and taking time and putting love in back into ourselves. The retreats you’re creating are so needed to get us out of this busyness and craziness, to create the space to learn but to connect. We have to connect. The whole world is disconnected now because of technology. We have to find space, no more excuses that I don’t have the time. I think we don’t have the time not to start doing these retreats and getting together and connecting and building friendships and sharing love and sharing stories and just being human and real and being women with one another and putting the self love back into us because life is more than just business.

I honor what you’re doing and what you’re building and reminding us of this holistic nature. It’s beyond just business, it’s life and we as women have just so much life. We bring life into the world. We have so much life to give but we have to give ourselves life too. We do that person-to-person through connecting and loving and sharing.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh gosh. It’s so, so true that we need time for ourselves and we need time to honor ourselves and that connection, I think we’re wired for connection. I think that in business, every single big leap forward I have usually comes at a time when I’m not working, when I’m at some sort of retreat or I’m at an event or I’m just doing something that’s not work like I could be walking the dog, it’ll be anything but that’s when all the big epiphanies come, that’s where all the value creation comes, that’s when the real thinking, the real creativity and the real innovation comes every time.

One of the reasons I love to do this podcast is because it’s a way to really connect on a deep level which I love so. This idea of having like in this case, these are very intimate retreats. There are 36 women so everyone gets a chance to really connect deeply with everyone else and everyone gets the chance … Everyone has so much to give, everyone has so much to receive that everyone comes away with new business, new ideas, better epiphany about where they’re going with their lives and a way to really make an impact that they want to make on the world.

Oh my goodness! I’m so excited that you’re a part of it Krisstina, I can hardly wait. I want to make sure that you give a shout out to everybody for how people can find you and work with you. You’ve got an amazing podcast too. How can people find WealthyWealthy and connect with you and work with you?

Krisstina Wise:                 Yeah WealthyWealthy is my podcast. It’s money wealth and then Health Wealth Wealthy and then krisstina.com is my website. I’m easy to find. Just Google Krisstina Wise and there I am. I’m so looking forward to your retreat.

In closing, just one thing I’ll say is that I’m going through a really difficult personal situation right now, it’s really taking me to my knees. I’m in a place of deep just pain and … Yeah, I guess just that. Just this place where I’m crying almost every day like this real life stuff that’s happened.

Here’s the thing about women. I don’t even know how to get through this situation if I didn’t have women like you, you being a friend and reaching out to me during this tough time. I’ve had these women that are just … They’re my wings right now. When my wings aren’t spread because I’m going through this time and that’s the beauty of building these friendships and taking time space because when life happens, we as women care and we can be the wings for others sometimes and so that’s why we have to get together and build these relationships, get face-to-face, get real, be authentic, be women because like I said, I didn’t know how I’d be making through what I’m making it making through other than this feminine energy and all these women that are just coming to saying, “We’ve got you, Krisstina. You’ve held us before and now we’re holding you.”

That’s life and that’s what matters. I just encourage everyone to come to your retreats and do the self-love, do these connections and again, I just honor you and your work and what you’re trying to do to help bring these communities together of just incredible women who care.

Melinda Wittstock:         Krisstina, so much love to you. I am inspired by you. All that you’re doing for women, your strength even at a time of difficulty and what an example to all of us so thank you, really, for taking the time for all of us today and everything you do in the world. Thank you.

Krisstina Wise:                 You’re welcome. Thank you.

 

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