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Today we have an extraordinary guest joining us, Krisstina Wise. Krisstina
is a multimillion-dollar entrepreneur and a thought-leader in redefining the concept of wealth. With a journey that began in a challenging upbringing, Krisstina’s story is one of resilience, growth, and profound transformation.
Krisstina started life in a trailer park with alcoholic parents, but she dreamed of a different future and worked tirelessly to achieve financial success. She made her mark in real estate, becoming a top agent and accumulating significant income. Despite this success, Krisstina faced a life-altering event that reshaped her approach to wealth.
In this enlightening episode, Krisstina shares her personal and professional journey that led to her redefining wealth beyond mere financial metrics. In 2013, a health crisis prompted her to reevaluate her values and life purpose, leading her to focus on meaningful and fulfilling wealth rather than external validation.
A key aspect of Krisstina’s message is the importance of self-awareness and clarity in aligning life’s journey with personal values. She discusses how unresolved childhood traumas can affect financial behaviors and the significance of moving from a mindset of accumulation to one of distribution and giving.
One of the highlights is Krisstina’s “DASH Method” for financial planning, offering a practical blueprint for achieving financial sovereignty.
In This Episode
- Krisstina’s journey from a challenging upbringing to financial success
- The DASH Method for financial planning
- The transition from wealth accumulation to distribution and giving
- The importance of self-awareness and clarity in financial and personal fulfillment
Christina, welcome to the show.
I’m so excited to be here. Thank you.
Yeah, so excited to have you on the show, Christina. I know we think alike with so many different things and how we view wealth, how we view health, how we view the world. And, you know, I really wanted to bring you on today to share your powerful story with the audience, the learning progression that you’ve taken and really help enlighten people about how they view wealth, how they can achieve it and what’s really important. So thanks for being here today.
Yeah, you’re welcome. I’m excited to dig into this conversation.
Awesome. So why don’t we start with your origin story and tell the folks how everything started for you.
You know, my story is funny, you know, at this stage, you tell your story so many times and I always think like, which story should I tell? We always have so many life experiences. I think that, I mean, my origin origin story is I started in a trailer park with a very dysfunctional upbringing to alcoholic parents. just say neglect. was a very loud household with a lot of yelling.
Why I tell that story is one, I just like to say, hey, I’m a little bit of that rags to riches. And as a woman, I like to say, I didn’t marry my money. I certainly didn’t inherit my money. So the wealth I’ve created as a woman and as a single mom and single woman for a good portion of my adult life, I like to say like, hey, anything’s possible because this is where I started and I’ve wound up in a pretty good financial place, even after making a lot of mistakes.
Growing up in that environment, was that I was very motivated from a young age to make money, to get out of that situation. And I was just a dreamer. I dreamed of something different. But the interesting thing is, is that I grew up in such a small town that we can’t dream what we’ve never been exposed to. So I didn’t even know how to dream, I just wanted to, my biggest dream was just to get to a safe place basically. But that’s where it all started.
And from there, after graduating from high school and getting myself to college, I really just made it my life’s mission to get rich. I mean, honestly. And that was a very shallow, it was a very shallow goal at a younger adult age. And then it became, I’d more meaningful and deep the older I got. But yeah, it’s just a journey of a story of starting with nothing and turning it into a lot, losing it all.
And then, I don’t know, establishing a new set of values and criteria and building it again to something that has a lot of meaning and a lot of fulfillment.
Yeah, for sure. It’s amazing how many stories, origin stories from either great athletes, entrepreneurs, I mean, you you name it, come from such adversity and it really becomes the cause. I mean, that’s even Tony Robbins, right? That’s why he’s feeding so many people because he didn’t always have food on the table, right? And your biggest, you know, weakness becomes your biggest strength for what you can bring to the world. So it’s really fascinating to see that correlation. But tell the audience also about 2013, what happened for you.
Yeah, was so, so as part of the story is that again, from that young age, I was very motivated to make money. So I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was probably 10 years old, I think like you that many of us, many of us that we just grew up with that entrepreneurial mindset and desire to make something, create something, maybe very motivated to get richer, to make a lot of money. But I always had that in me. And then in my mid twenties, after I kind of started working,
I started making money, I got into real estate and I started making a lot of money in sales and I started like making a lot of money in flipping and I just loved real estate. And so I did very well from an income standpoint. But then after about, I don’t know, three or four years into being real estate sales and I was, I went from, you know, zero being in my mid twenties to three or four years into my real estate career.
I was number one in my company, was like top 10 in my city, which was Austin, Texas. I got all these awards and again, I was very motivated to make a lot of money. Real estate sales was a pretty good way to make a decent, a pretty good income, but I was also very motivated by achievement. I love the awards, I love being on stage, I love being recognized for being number one. And I think being number one was more motivating to me than even the money was.
And so I just had that desire and that drive to be number one, to make a lot of money. And the first three or four years into real estate, that was great. In December, I’d get all the awards and I’d hang them on the walls and I’d feel really great. And then, like I said, several years into it, on January one, like the third or fourth year, I realized that one, I have to do it all over again. This is getting kind of old. Like I’m at the end of the year, I don’t have any money. I have to start all over. I have to start at zero.
And that’s kind of when the first little light bulb went off that something’s doesn’t quite work here. But if I have to start at zero every time, but then a year after that, I ended up getting divorced. was, it was a terrible divorce. It was a terrible marriage to begin with. But the, what I did is I found myself as a single mom, I was completely broke, meaning my car was getting repossessed.
I had to move out of the house, had to sell everything. We fought over the few things that we had, which was so dumb at the time, just fighting over stuff and this nasty divorce. And I woke up one day with realizing that I’m a single mom. I’m at a hundred percent commission job. I can’t pay my bills. They’re taking my car away. I can’t turn on the utilities. And this was his first milestone moment of me wondering how the hell was I number one year after year after year being recognized, having all these awards, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, 20 plus years ago, and I’m here with nothing.
And so that became that first light bulb moment that there’s gotta be more to this money game than just making money. So that’s really good at making it, but I didn’t know anything after that. So then I learned money and then I moved from just real estate sales to becoming a real estate investor and started building net worth in addition to income and just starting to do what we’re taught to do, which is earn high income, take 20, 30% of that, invest it and do that until you become financially free.
That’s basically the formula for financial freedom as we know. But then bump into 2013, 2014. And what had happened is still that childhood need to be recognized and what I didn’t know at the time, but it just, enough was never enough. It didn’t matter how big my business got. I had a multi-million dollar business. Didn’t matter how many accolades and awards.
I spoke on the biggest stages in the country. I was in all the magazines. I got all the awards on national levels for my brokerage and all these things that I was doing in real estate from a national perspective. But it’s never enough.
No matter what I achieved, it wasn’t good enough and I’d have to try the next thing and the next thing and next thing. And after that, I was actually on, I was speaking, the keynote speaker at an industry, the main industry into your conference, 800 people in the room of real estate leaders. And I was on stage 80%, 90% into my talk, I froze. And I just froze on stage in front of all these people. And imagine a train that is going full, you know, just full blown as fast as it can go on the train tracks and all of a sudden it hits the brakes and it goes screech.
That happened in my ears from one end ear to the other. I was paralyzed and I had heard the screeching sound in my ears in front of all these people. And I mean, I’m just kind of in my head freaking out, can’t move, wondering what’s going on. And I don’t know, it’s probably like five seconds, 30 seconds max. I don’t know how much time it was. The audience didn’t even really notice. They thought it was part of my skit.
But what happened is on stage, I had a stress stroke, a TIA or T-A-I, whatever they’re called. And I had a stress stroke on stage. So the moral of the story is that I built this multimillion dollar business. I was paying myself over a million dollars a year. I was on all the best things and I still wasn’t happy. I still wasn’t filled. It was never enough.
And ultimately, almost killed myself accidentally by being stressed out and not sleeping and not eating well and just always trying to chase the next trophy. So that, and it took me down. And what was interesting, I’ll stop telling my story after this. What was interesting after that is that within three days of that stage appearance, I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think. I started deteriorating. My hair started falling out and I just got sicker and sicker.
And we couldn’t figure out what was going wrong, but it was this stroke, this mini stroke that actually, that was the first domino. So I went through a very dark, horrible 12 to 18 months where it wasn’t just the physical stuff that was so dark and scary because it took forever to figure out what was wrong.
But that also all that childhood trauma just started surfacing, I guess, because I didn’t have my physical and mental strength, so it just started surfacing. And just all these PTSD moments where, I mean, just horrible memories that I’d suppressed and couldn’t remember. So I just got hit with everything at the same time. And then add on to that, the third phase was this business that I’d spent 10 years grinding and hustling and doing all the things to build.
Within nine months, it went from paying me a million dollars a year profit, to where I had to start putting money into it. Within nine months, this business didn’t take care of me, I had to start taking care of it. So all of that was just this big wake up call that what the hell is going on? Like, is this, what are we taught or what are we, what is the system that we’re in that’s always about more, it’s never enough, motivated by, I don’t know, external validation and money and things and stuff.
And I just realized that I had it all wrong and I wanted to do over. So I actually had this conversation with the universe and said, mother, you, I think I’ve got the lessons. I think I’ve kind of, I kind of get why you had to take me out at the knees because I’ve been living life all wrong. If you give me another chance, I’ll do it radically differently. I’m going to, I’m going to do it the opposite. And I’m going to then teach what I’ve learned and then what I’ve done. So here we are.
Fast forward what about nine, 10 years later, that’s what I do today. I just get to talk about that life isn’t just about success. It’s not just about money. It’s just not about accumulating more. Life really is about establishing meaning and how much is enough and what’s important and what are our values and how much money does it cost to underwrite it and build obviously as much financial abundance as we can to be able to fulfill these meaningful dreams.
So that’s what I do today, is I get to talk about life and money and wealth and that balanced with joy and fulfillment and meaning.
Wow, such a powerful story there, Christina. How would you define wealth today, given your experiences?
You know, it’s there. I can answer that so many questions, so many different ways. The first thing that popped into my head is top of mind because I just did this on a YouTube video here. And it’s, I was trying to just, because somebody asked me, there’s a difference between being rich and being wealthy? And I didn’t really have an answer. I mean, I didn’t have a crafted answer, but when I started thinking about it and thinking out loud, what I said was this, is that being rich means like cash flow, meaning we have enough cash flow coming in that more than funds the cost of whatever we want to buy, whatever we want to pay for.
So we’re rich if we want our cost of our life to be a million dollars a year, and we’re able to make a million dollars a year to fund the ability to spend a million dollars a year or whatever the number is. Means there’s plenty of cash flow.
To be able to buy what we want, do what we want, that type of thing. And so that’s being rich. And of course there’s a spectrum of that, but that’s all. Rich is about cash flow. So when we have cash flow, we can buy a lot of things if we want to buy a lot of experiences. Wealth on the other hand is asset value, its net worth with the idea that it produces cash flow. So over time, the more wealth and asset valuation we have, it pays off more in dividends, returns or cash flow.
So the difference between being rich and being wealthy, and I’ve been in times in my life where I’ve been rich, meaning I was making a million dollars a year, but I didn’t really have the wealth or the net worth, meaning if my business dried up, I wouldn’t be able to pay that lifestyle anymore, because I didn’t have any passive income. And then I’ve been in periods of my life where I had a lot of illiquid net worth, but my cash flow was very small.
I mean, just my kind of my liquid cash flow. So anyway, it’s kind of this idea that in this money game, it’s really until the day we’re retire and we don’t need to have to want to earn any more money through working income, then it’s really this journey of creating riches through cash flow to be able to fund a nice life while building this net worth and wealth.
So that’s kind of the difference between being rich and being riches and wealth and wealth. But then really wealth, I like to go to the place that I like to teach now is because especially probably for a lot of listeners that are, they, your listeners have done well. They have produced a lot of wealth. They have produced a lot of success, but it’s been able to reach this place of determining like how much money is enough.
Like when is enough enough? Meaning I no longer motivated by this need to prove myself anymore. I don’t need any more to be fulfilled, to be happy, that my identity isn’t attached to more money or more wealth or whatever the case is. And really the definition of wealth is the, in the sense of wealth is that we have enough net worth and cashflow from that net worth to create some level of financial freedom that’s enough money to pay for a life that we are satisfied with, that we’re happy with, and that we’re content with, and it’s enough.
And if we choose to continue working like you and I, it’s then out of a desire to make impact, to teach, to be the elders, to help others maybe avoid the mistakes that we’ve had to make. But it comes from this internal desire to want to help and make a difference and versus this coming from this desire to have to achieve more to get to that next place. And this internal, it goes from external to internal, but this internal drive might take us to the next place, but it’s not about getting there anymore. It’s just about the contentment and moving from that kind of growth and accumulation stage to this giving and distribution. So again, long answer to a very simple question, but I like to kind of unpack the different layers.
Yeah, a hundred percent. Really good insights there and just like to kind of unpack that one and give, you know, my view on that as well. And it’s kind of interesting, right? Because, you know, we’re, think we’re trying to teach our kids whatever age your kids are really, or those around you, you’re trying to share what does wealth really mean? And, and from my perspective, I see rich as social media, right? Someone’s got a bigger car, a night, boats, amazing vacations, six-pack abs, right?
All of these things or material things in their life that on the external surface, they appear rich because that guy has driving around a Lamborghini, so he must be rich, right? But there are so many people in life walking around that may have the income rich, as you say but they are so disenchanted with their lives internally. Their health is not dialed in. They have poor relationships. And so when I think about wealth, and that’s kind of why I wrote my book, The Holistic Wealth Strategy, it’s really trying to think about the things that really matter. Like how much time do we have in our life? Do you have income, but how much time do you, do you have time to work on your health? Do you have time to spend? On your most important relationships, you know, or are you working 60, 70 hours a week, you know, just to make it work?
Because to me, that’s what I see as true wealth, right? The people who have time, they have relationships, they have freedom, right? And they’re creating, you know, as you say, you know, impact because they have freedom of purpose, right? To wake up every day and do what it is that you want to do. And to me, that’s like the ultimate amount of wealth.
And I love the concept that you’re talking about too, which is, know, when is enough enough? And a great metaphor to think about this with is a feast. If you’re to go and have a feast, you’re going to become full, right? So even if you were to have something else, it’s not going to change how you actually feel, right? You’re full, you’re satiated.
So understanding that for yourself is I think is super important and and I really appreciate you sharing, you know your origin story a friend of mine at a mastermind just said the other day which is such a just a great way to describe it is that we’re all wounded children walking around in adult bodies So we all have this childhood traumas that we either consciously or subconsciously, you know, don’t even understand, right? But a lot of those things are really dictating how we act, how we think about money, how we think about our relationships and all those different things. And one of the interviews we had earlier in the year was Charlie Garcia, who runs the Centimillionaire community and one of the questions I asked him was, you know, what is the most important trait, you know, that you see? And he said self-awareness.
Right, so super powerful and really understanding yourself, right, to see if there are any of those traumas, limiting beliefs, things that are holding us back, right, in life. And we’re having that control how we think about money, how money is dictating us, our thoughts, our actions, all of those things.
Yeah, you know, I found in my work now that there’s like these four buckets or categories of money mindsets kind of across the board. So I’d be curious if if you would agree or see anything the same or different. But the first the first bracket bucket category are those that just can’t earn enough. So there’s some limited mindset around self worth value.
But no matter how hard they work or what they do, they just can’t ever seem to up their earnings. And so there’s some mindset there around, I just can’t earn enough and whatever’s rooted underneath that. that’s the first category. The second category of those, like my early story, which was, I make a lot of money, but it burns a hole in my pocket. And I think that had a lot to do that I was very motivated to make a lot of money, but I wasn’t, didn’t feel worthy of keeping it because I was just so, you know, based on my childhood trauma.
Like I was motivated to be seen. So that’s what all those awards were is that my parents never saw me. They never came to anything or did anything with this as kids. And so I, what I was trying to do as an adult is play out that need to see me thinking, and because when I was grew up, I was a straight A student and I was a star athlete and I kept trying to be better because I, didn’t know at the time, but I was trying to get my parents’ attention, I was hoping if I was good enough, they would come see, come hang out, come attend something.
So that was that desire to get the trophies, but I didn’t feel worried to keep the money, because I still trapped in a poverty mindset. Like life had to be really hard, and I had to survive and grind or something. There was some value to that. I was stuck in that mindset. Then the third one is that those that make a good amount of money, save a lot of money, but they can’t spend it.
So they’re so afraid of loss. They’re so afraid of spending that they can accumulate millions and they won’t spend anything. So they have some mindset that I don’t deserve to spend the money or what if it all goes away? So all these have some attachment to not worth it or fear of loss or something of that nature. And so yeah, they can enjoy life because they’ve got plenty of money, but they don’t spend it on their family. They don’t spend it on doing things.
They’re the ones that die with millions of dollars and everybody thought maybe they were completely broke. So there’s some worthiness underneath that one. And the fourth category is those that it’s just never enough, meaning they made a hundred million dollars, but they still feel like a failure because they’re not in the billionaire club yet. Maybe they sold the money, their company for 900.
You know, 900 million, but it’s like, I’m not good enough until I can hit the billion dollars. So again, plenty of money, but it’s just never enough because they still have to hit that next echelon before they feel worthy inside. And they feel like they’re going to measure up to whatever, you know, level they they want to put themselves in. So the one of my friends said that the interesting thing is that almost everyone has money trauma or we’re all traumatized children, like adults that you know, we’re traumatized children, but it plays out in money. it all like money is just like this mirror where we can kind of see out how we play out these childhood traumas through the lens of money and through these money mindsets.
And what he said was that I just thought was just so illuminating is that most everybody’s traumatized by money. So money was a trauma in the household and most household. And then money is the one trauma that we chase our entire lives. Like other traumas we’re not chasing, we’re trying to separate. But money, if we don’t ever clear that out, we’re chasing this thing that’s traumatizing our whole life, wondering why that no matter what happens or how much money we have, nothing ever really changes.
Yeah, it’s so well put there, your frame of reference on those mindsets. it’s interesting because I think most people, rather than thinking about unpacking the psychology and what’s really driving them, they’re spending more time on figuring out what’s that next stock pick that I can get or that next investment or things like that.
Or frankly, we’re really just too busy, right? We’re busy with raising families. We’re busy with our careers and we just don’t really have time. which is why one of the things, you know, we advocate strongly for is just creating this overarching wealth strategy to understand, you know, first of all, where is your destination? Where are you going? Where are your goals? You know, creating this vivid vision for what you want the future to look like.
And then starting to make a systematic progress over getting there because building wealth is really a system and if you can create boundaries for yourself to guard against some of those shortfalls you might have, right, if you have this gravitational pull to, you know, jumping into something quick, you can create some boundaries.
And those are the people who do really well, know, that’s, you know, Buffett’s philosophy. I mean, some of the greats, right, is that you create these processes, you stick to it, and you protect against that. But sadly, you know, not enough people have truly thought through the money strategy piece of it. And so you end up constantly always chasing your tail.
Yeah, and something that I was a framework I taught my kids that really applies to anything, but money included. Like I called it, I always called it the dash method. And one of my friends, Jim quick, he said frameworks equal fortunes. And so I’ve always loved frameworks and thinking in frameworks. And I don’t know, it just makes life easier when there’s a framework, but the dash method framework is start with a destination. Like what you said, like where do we want to wind up?
What is that end goal? How much money is enough to fund the lifestyle that I want that, like we said, is good enough in determining what those numbers are? And then A stands for Atlas, which means we need a blueprint. We need a map. Like, how are we going to map that out to be able to, you know, how much per year? What type, how much do we have to invest a year? What are the different milestones?
What different types of savings do we need to do if we want to save to buy a first home or my kids are getting the age of getting married. So save for weddings or, know, so we need liquid cash usually for the most part and milestones for savings and milestones for investing and, tracking how we’re going along that journey.
And then S stands for systems again, like what are, what are the automations? What are the systems that, that we’re going to use the tools, the systems and tools we’re going to use to make sure that we’re able to follow the plan. And then H is habits. And what are these habits that are financial habits and just our lifestyle habits and make sure that we’re on track and to make sure that everything then is fully aligned towards our destination, but also congruent with our values. Because a lot of people, think so much of meaning is missed because we’re living outside of our values.
And when we’re incongruent, think that incongruency from an internal standpoint that causes a lot of anxiety and depression and sadness or, you know, fill in the blank.
Yeah, that’s excellent. I love that framework. So can you just repeat the high level so people have that?
Yes, Dash, the Dash is everything, anything we need to, anything important in life. Like what are the goals and outcomes? We always need to know where we’re going. That’s the first point. The point is where we’re going, the destination. A is the atlas, meaning how are we going to map out how to get there? And there can be different maps and models, you know, and I teach something, for example, I teach a money management model for those that just cannot manage their money and don’t know how much money to save, don’t know how much money to invest, don’t know how much their lifestyle costs.
Money is just chaos and they can’t get it under control. So I have a model that I teach that help people just model this money management. So that’s what an Atlas is, is that we can model others when there’s a blueprint, when there’s a formula, when there’s a map, that’s all the Atlas piece. And then again, the S is for systems and tools is what type of systems and tools do I need to be able to, move towards my destination.
Like there’s always system and tools that are needed. And then H again is our piece. What are the habits and practices, the standard daily standards and practices, their alignment of achieving those goals.
And tell us what does your sovereignty number mean to you?
Yeah, so sovereignty, sovereignty is a bigger word, just like the word sovereignty. So in my, what I teach is my framework is called curbs and it’s this, and it’s a money framework for those that are month to month. I work with what I call a lot of high income broke people, meaning they’re making high incomes, but they’re not getting ahead and they cannot figure out why they can’t get ahead.
And so this framework called CURBS, is that what I have my clients do is the first thing that they do is they categorize their money and they give their money these different jobs and categories and to start separating it. So all the money in, separate it into these different categories. You, I have them uncover and find where money’s going that’s un-meaningful, like what I call meaningless expenses and all this frivolous meaningless expenses and spending, this more toward these external expenses versus things that are actually aligned with our values.
R stands for ratio, which just understand how much, percentages of your income do you need to save and invest. B stands for buckets, which means setting up these different accounts to match those categories. But then the reason why I say that is stands for sovereignty of curves. And sovereignty is agency, ownership, accountability.
And it’s creating like our own, like I do a lot of be your own banker, infinite banking as well as part of my wealth model. But it’s kind of in that sovereign that we don’t have to rely on the banking systems. We don’t have to be so concerned with what’s going on in the rest of the world. When we can create our own sovereign space, meaning our family and our financial situation and care about that and making sure that’s really solid and strong and safe and secure, we feel this sense of sovereignty, again, agency, ownership.
And with that comes a sense of self-reliance and security that just feels good. It’s a strong foundation, standing on a strong foundation. And then so that’s kind of the philosophical sense. And then the money part to that is the financial freedom piece.
And that’s how much money does it take to be financially free, which is a part of creating that family sovereignty. So that’s what sovereignty is, again, with financial freedom. And you made the point earlier, it’s not about financial freedom. Like that’s the goal, the goal is our time. The goal is our wellbeing. The goal is having control over what we get to do with our time and creating financial freedom is just what allows us to do that.
The goal is our time, the goal is our well-being, it’s having control over what we get to do with our time and creating financial freedom is what allow us to do that.
But I think some people just aim for, I want to be financially free or I want to be rich or I want to retire, whatever that is. And it’s like, no, that’s a means to the end. The end is, what do want your life to look like? What would you do with all your time? What, how much does it cost to live the life that if you could do whatever you want to wanted to do without, within the 12 hours of day that you are awake every day, how do you fund that?
And again, they’re just very simple. It’s very simple numbers and math, but a lot of people, think they’re just trying to save for retirement or, you know, taking these, I’d say pieces of money advice that we find on YouTube or on podcasts. It’s like, should I invest in a Roth IRA or a traditional 401k or those aren’t bad questions. aren’t wrong questions, but, they’re, they’re still superficial. It’s like,
What’s missing is really what’s underneath that is what is a good life to me? How much does it cost to live it? What would I do and what will I do with all my time if I got all my time back? What is the meaning of life? What is my purpose? What do I care about? What are my values? What are our family values? What makes me happy?
How do I make the world a better place? Like those are like, I think the questions that are being missed are not answered because we’re just focusing on kind of these superficial money things. But when we start here, then we go up. It’s like, okay, if this is my life and my time and my family and my dream and my creation, then how much money do I need to earn to be able to finance it? How much money do I need to save to be able to have that liquidity? How much money do I need to invest that I have 100% of that time?
During a certain age and then it’s like, okay, what type of maybe investment vehicles are going to enable me, meaning kind of the systems and tools that vehicles are kind of like tools of whatever those investment vehicles, for example, are that’s going to help me be on track to be in the journey and attain those life goals and dreams.
Love that Christina, you’re definitely speaking my language there. And I think it’s just so important for people to start with that higher level. It’s interesting too, because right in my journey, as you think about that, right, sometimes we can get trapped in our goals too. We want to set that destination. But most of the time, it’s not actually reaching the destination. It’s who are you becoming along the journey?
And there’s so many things and, just to give the audience, a specific example, as I was kind of, you know, working through, you know, one of these exercises, the other, just last year, you know, I thought, well, if I had more time, you know, what are some of the things that like, would spend more times with my aging parents right now. Right. And in reality, that’s not going to cost me anything more than another plane flight and a day or two off of work here or there, right.
But understanding that that’s was really important for me and thinking through that process really gave me the clarity to say, Hey, this is, know, what I need to do is to spend with my time. So it’s really fascinating that you’re right. We get so hung up on this, you know, financial freedom number, or, know, just chasing this thing. But in reality, there’s so many things that you could be achieving right now, given the proper thought process.
Most of the time it’s not actually reaching the destination, it’s who are you becoming along the journey.
Yeah, right. Yeah, proper thinking and to go back with what you’re saying too. It takes lot of self awareness. Like you just, you have to be self aware and ask yourself the hard questions and look in the mirror and be able to say that, you know, I’m out of alignment or being incongruent or I’m being hypocritical or I want to do better or I’m doing great in these places. But it’s that part of the journey is.
Looking in the mirror and just checking in, checking in with ourselves and having that type of awareness. It’s otherwise, you one of my favorite authors is Napoleon Hill. And we know we’ve probably all read Think and Grow Rich and probably everybody listening has got it, you know, earmarked and underlined and annotated like mine. I’ve gone through several copies at this point. Great book, especially when I was young, just to really help me learn how to think.
But his second book that I loved of his that I thought was even better was Outwitting the Devil and it’s just, it’s a great story. It wasn’t even released, I think, until 50 years after he died, because his whole family was terrified that if people read it, what it might do to the family reputation, because Napoleon Hill just really calls out the systems out there. The financial systems, the educational systems, the political systems, the healthcare systems, all of them.
And he wrote this, I don’t know how many years ago, 50, 75 years ago, and he’s calling things out then and you’re reading it now, it’s like, my God, did he have to have a crystal ball? But anyway, what he talks about is that a couple of different things, but if you don’t have self-awareness and you don’t have clarity of what you wanna create for your life and for yourself, then you just drift.
And he just calls it this harmonic rhythm where you get just in this rhythm of mediocrity. You’re just doing what everybody else is doing. You’re just drifting along and we’re not sovereign. We’re not in control of our own life. We’re not creating, inventing and creating and manifesting and building the futures we want. We’re just doing what we wake up and do that day and hope that everything’s going to work out in the end.
But yeah, this concept of drifting, he just talks about its the power of kind of the human condition is just a drift. And there’s a current to that. And to get out of drift, you almost have to swim up current by being so intentional, by thinking, by being an actor in your life, by doing things that others aren’t doing, know, going left when everybody else is going right, which takes a lot of courage and it takes all these things. So again, it just goes back to this aware. It’s a self-awareness, I think, matched with this desire and clarity for what we want to create for ourselves and our lives and our families.
Yeah, well said. Where do you think people really are going wrong? What are some of the biggest mistakes you’re seeing for people?
You know, I’d be curious, I’d love for you to answer this back as well. One, you know, this has always been the case, but what I noticed or observe is that, especially with this thing called social media, that the danger is comparison. And what it looks like through social media, and as we know, the highlight reels, is that everybody is doing better than we are.
Everybody makes more money, everybody’s richer, everybody has more things. And then we feel bad about ourselves and it happens. I mean, I’m very aware and it happens to me. I’m looking at some of my peers or those that are in my space, what they’re doing on social media. And it really pushes my buttons. like, why am I not doing that? And my God, am I falling behind or they getting ahead or they doing better than I am?
And I’m very aware of what’s happening and it’s still happening. So imagine if we’re not aware of this, and especially with kids these days. So I think that’s one of the toughest things today is that to create real sovereignty that we’ve talked about in financial freedom when it comes to the financial piece is that we have to get out of the comparison game.
Just to have to get out and have to just get to be very clear on what we want to create for our own lives, do some numbers and live each day to work, to be the person we want to become and to be able to create the futures we want to create and enjoy the journey, the ups and downs as much as we can. And like you said, and look at who we’re becoming along the way.
So I see that’s one of the dangers and especially, it’s across all board of life, but when we just look at it through the lens of money, how that plays out is people, like you said, they spend everything they make on a lifestyle that looks rich so that they can prove to their friends and everybody around them that they’re just as rich or richer than their friends are by evidence of the house they live in and the cars they drive, the type of clothes they wear and the watches they have, and it just keeps going.
And so I think it’s dangerous from a psychological mental health, meaning fulfillment, contentment perspective. And then how it’s played out is, is buying that by being broke month to month broke because we spend everything we make on a lifestyle to try to impress people that we don’t even necessarily like.
Yeah, for sure. mean, I really think the root cause of a lot of the issues today are really around education because we’ve never had financial education. It doesn’t matter what domain, whether you’re a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, an entrepreneur, an executive, there is no, and you’ve gone to the top schools, you’ve got your MBA, there is no school on financial education. And it’s really one of the most important things that we should understand, right, how to do, right?
Like you should literally have your own university, you know, where you’re teaching people these concepts so that as kids graduate college, they have a firm understanding of, you know, how I need to build assets, how I need to build income, and all these things that are really important, you know. So from my perspective, I think that’s where it really starts. To your point, though, in terms of you know, comparing yourself to others, you know, a couple of key points to share with the listeners here is that to help with this is understanding that you will never win someone else’s race. Right?
You have to create your own chess game and play your own chess game and a great book by Dan Sullivan, who also wrote Who Not How, right, with Ben Hardy, is called The Gap in the Game.
Mm.
And there is something about our, you know, society that we’re always looking to others and comparing ourselves to others. But why should I compare myself to Elon Musk? It’s completely makes no sense, right? However, if I was to say, Dave, look back on my life over the last decade or two decades or three decades and say, look how far I’ve come, right?
What have I achieved with my relationships, with my family, with my wealth, with my health, right? All those things. And I can see that type of progress, right? That gives me a basis to move forward. So it’s measuring backwards is really the key. So always ask yourself, how well did I do? And it’s 2024, how well did I do this year?
You know, look how far I’ve come and give yourself credit for that because that’s what really counts.
Yeah, that’s really important because I think for most of us when we look back, it’s like, wow, look how far I’ve come. And there can be some satisfaction and some healthy pride in that. because to create and wind up in a, I don’t know, life that’s got nice financial numbers to it and a good marriage and healthy children and a healthy body.
You did a lot of things that most people aren’t doing because I think, don’t even know what the statistics are, it’s some crazy number, but something like 60% of Americans are obese. I mean, that seems absurd that the number would be that high, but something like that. There’s the 7.8% of all Americans are millionaires or more. Less than 8% are net worth millionaires.
A statistic that I saw recently is that over one third of all Americans earning over $150,000 a year are paycheck to paycheck. And we know the divorce rate, like 55%, 60% for second marriages. So we look at these statistics and that’s the status quo. So anybody that’s doing better than that can look back and be able to say just that like.
Hey, I think I’ve done some things pretty well here, even in the midst of all the mistakes and failures and crises and things. So, you know, that is holding maybe that container of being able to look back and be able to take pride in what it takes just to succeed in life. And then, you know, keep that and then be fully as much as we can present and be present in the present moment, not connected too much to the past and not too much to the future.
But then also always have that next series of healthy goals or desires that keeps us stretching, that keeps us a little bit uncomfortable, to keep us moving so that we don’t atrophy. And it’s kind of all those at the same time, which makes it a little bit complicated.
Yeah, excellent. Christina, if you could give just one piece of advice to the audience about how they could accelerate their own wealth trajectory, what would it be?
Wow, that’s a good question.
The piece of advice that I give most often is just to know your numbers. Just know your numbers and how much money is enough to retire? How much money is enough to be financially free? How much money is enough to pay for them to write the cost of the life that’s meaningful to me? How much do I need to save? How much do I need to invest? How much time do I want? And kind of the questions that we’ve asked, but I think at the end of the day, just, have to know your numbers and money. have to have a relationship.
I’d say, you know, clean up those, the dysfunctional pieces of our relationship with money, develop a healthy relationship with money, ground it in numbers, and then make it a fun game. It’s fun to, mean, where money is fun. Its is a game and money is a game and most people lose, but you can play to win.
And to play to win the money game means that, we have these financial goals and dreams. We know the numbers. Then part of each day, especially as entrepreneurs, the amazing, awesome thing to be an entrepreneur is we get to wake up and create every single day. Like to invent and to create is part of that manifestation of dream of the future that we want. And that’s what I say, just making money fun. It’s part of the process and enjoying.
Again, just enjoying playing the game.
Awesome. Really appreciate you coming in today, Christina. You have provided so much wisdom to the audience. Really appreciate you sharing those thoughts. And if people would like to learn more about your training or what you’re doing at your company, what is the best place for them to connect?
So the best place to connect right now, I’d say the easiest place is that is my YouTube channel, which is at Christina Wise, the KN2Ss and that’s where I just do my little sound bites of things that we’re talking about now. It’s a great way to just listen in and then it YouTube, there’s always easy ways. If you want to connect with me or set up a phone call or send me an email, I make it very easy. So that’d be a big easy spot to go find me.
Excellent. Thanks again, Christine. I really appreciate it.
My pleasure, thank you, Dave.
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