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Today, we’re excited to welcome Lisa Smith, a trailblazing financial 
educator and entrepreneur, to the Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy podcast. With an inspiring journey that took her from financial novice to a successful investor, Lisa’s story exemplifies the power of strategic investing and mindset shifts. By the age of 45, Lisa achieved financial independence and chose to dedicate herself to empowering others to transform their financial futures.
In this illuminating episode, Lisa delves into her unique strategy, “Nibble Bite Gorge,” which involves buying more as the market declines, thereby capitalizing on market recoveries. Her forward-thinking approach is built on the belief that the market will likely be higher in the long term, allowing her to amass substantial wealth over time.
Lisa also emphasizes the critical role of mindset in wealth creation. She shares insights on how shifting one’s perception of money from a source of stress to an exciting game can drastically alter financial trajectories and facilitate the achievement of financial independence much sooner than traditionally anticipated.
Host Dave Wolcott and Lisa also explore the systemic lack of financial education that leaves many people unprepared for wealth building. Together, they unpack actionable strategies that entrepreneurs can use to take control of their financial futures, including practical steps for managing cash flow and adapting to market volatility.
In This Episode
- Lisa’s “Nibble Bite Gorge” investing strategy.
- The transformative power of mindset in financial success.
- Overcoming systemic gaps in financial education.
- Practical wealth-building strategies for entrepreneurs.
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode on Wealth Strategy Secrets of the Ultra Wealthy. Today, we’re diving into one of the most important yet misunderstood topics in wealth creation—how to actually achieve financial independence and take control of your financial future. Most people believe that wealth is only for the select few, that you have to work until you’re 65, rely on your 401(k), and hope the stock market doesn’t crash at the wrong time. But what if I told you that financial independence is achievable much sooner, and it all starts with shifting your mindset and applying the right strategies? To help us break this down, I’m happy to welcome Lisa Smith to the show.
Lisa is a financial educator, investor, and entrepreneur who has helped thousands of people transform their relationship with money and accelerate their path to financial freedom. Lisa’s own journey is nothing short of inspirational. She started out not knowing much about money, but through education and strategic investing, she retired at the age of 45. Before that, she spent over a decade teaching 18- to 24-year-olds how to become financially independent by 35, long before the FIRE movement even gained traction. After retiring, Lisa spent six years completely financially free before deciding to pay it forward, coaching others on how to build real wealth through mindset shifts, investing strategies, and financial empowerment.
In today’s episode, we’ll be covering the number one reason people struggle with money and how to fix it, the biggest myths about financial independence and early retirement, why most people unknowingly outsource their wealth building and how to take control, the exact strategy Lisa used to retire early, including her two-stage investment plan, how to navigate market volatility and actually make money when stocks go down, the power of mindset shifts, how to turn money from a source of stress into an exciting game, and finally, practical steps entrepreneurs can take to smooth out cash flow and grow their wealth. Lisa has walked the talk, and she’s here to show you how you can accelerate your own wealth journey. So without further ado, Lisa, welcome to the show.
Thank you. I’m happy to be here, Dave.
Yeah. Really grateful to have you on the show, Lisa, and connect with our audience and really share your wisdom and expertise around my favorite topic, which is—what is wealth, how can we create more of it, and how can we learn strategies that are frankly opaque to most of us? We don’t really understand because we’re all living in this $400 trillion financial services industry that wants you to think a certain way. And I think the core of it is really all about education.
So I’m excited to have you on today, Lisa, and really unpack some of the pearls of wisdom that you have and really help empower people to kind of take their wealth to the next level. So why don’t we begin with you telling us how you got into the wealth game, how things kind of started for you? Did you have a particular light bulb moment or something transformational?
I actually started out my wealth journey when I left for college, and I realized I was not very good with money. That was something that was not taught in my home verbally. And so I thought, I need to figure this out or I’m gonna be in trouble. I kinda started out thinking, I’m not very good with money. And now I feel like it’s kinda become a superpower, which I think is available for everybody.
So I started out as a teacher. I actually taught as a financial educator—I taught time management, all of that stuff. My favorite thing was talking about wealth. So I taught 18- to 24-year-olds how to become financially independent at 35. And then I myself retired at 45, having that goal.
Really what spurred me on with that is having a mentor. I had been teaching for three years, and the guy who became my financial mentor got hired. He said, “I’m just teaching here because I wanna contribute. I wanna give back. And I’m pretty much financially independent. At 42, I’ll be completely financially independent.” And I thought, oh my gosh, you don’t have to work until you’re 65.
So that really was a light bulb moment for me. And it was at that point that I decided I’m gonna retire when I’m 45. So I actually retired from full-time teaching when I was 45 and retired fully for six years. Then I felt like I wanted to give back, pay it forward to anyone who needs help—just helping and educating people on how to have a better life, how to work with finances, and how to grow wealth. And so that’s what I do now.
Yeah. Awesome. Was there a particular insight or a book or someone who helped you realize that, you know, when you started down the path of financial education, a lot of things that were being taught were actually wrong?
Yes. So I think that’s been the biggest part of my financial journey—going from not really knowing anything to educating people now on how to build wealth. It was a process of finding what I would call milestones of understanding, realizing that the typical person—really, most people—outsources their wealth building.
Me discovering along the way that the stuff that’s actually being taught is either not being taught or the prevailing guidance is incorrect for most people to build wealth. Knowing that and realizing, okay, the prevailing mentality about wealth is not actually correct—how do I make it so that I can really learn what’s true? Books like The Millionaire Next Door, those were the things I was looking at.
There wasn’t a ton of information online. The FIRE movement—Financial Independence, Retire Early—was just getting started. So there weren’t a lot of books, but there were some blogs getting started. I read and consumed everything I possibly could about that.
And I realized that the track to getting wealth isn’t the main thing that’s being taught out in the world—or at least being advertised, I should say. And so I was able to build along with what I knew to be true and what I knew to work, which was completely separate from what is being taught mainstream.
So, yeah, Lisa. I think, really, the systemic issue is all about the lack of financial education that we have in this country and, frankly, in the world. Right? You’d think such an important topic would really be taught to us even in grade school. There should be some simple concepts like The Richest Man in Babylon, where it’s about keeping more than you spend. Really simple concepts like that should start there.
Then, in college, we should be learning about taxes. We should learn that we can invest in other asset classes—it’s not just stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. For me, the real light bulb moment was reading Kiyosaki’s book. I took the purple pill right when the book came out. When I saw the cash flow quadrant, the whole world changed for me.
I said, okay, I’ve got to become an investor and a business owner on the right-hand side of the quadrant. That was really great, but my question was, hey, there’s no blueprint for this, right? How do I get there? What are the actual strategies to that? I think it’s really great that you were able to come to that realization early on and create goals to achieve financial independence—and you knew it was possible. What were some of the strategies, the blueprint, or the roadmap that you took to achieve that?
I used investing initially. For me, I want everything to be gold standard, which means kind of hands-off. So I wanted to put my money to work for me. Understand the idea that money is something we have to earn over and over again, but wealth is money put to work. So I started investing.
For my journey, I paid off all my debt. I paid off my house, credit cards, and a little car I had. Then I started investing with earnest. I realized that if I was only going to invest in my 401(k), I wasn’t going to have enough money, and I couldn’t access that money until later. My strategy was to put money into my 401(k) up to the match level and then put everything else in a brokerage account because I knew I was making a nest egg for when I was 45.
So, I would have a 65-year-old retirement and a 45-year-old retirement. My whole strategy was having it in non-tax-sheltered accounts. Most people have most of their money in 401(k)s, and I didn’t want to lock that up. So getting it allocated correctly inside a regular brokerage account that I would have access to, and then assessing whether I had enough using the 4% safe withdrawal rate, was key.
That’s exactly what I wanted—really simple. I didn’t want to have to manage or look at the stock market all the time. I wanted it to compound on its own in the background. I love to travel and do things outside, and I still have this philosophy: I want my money working for me. That’s how I started out, Dave.
Yeah. So it’s really understanding what your expenses are today, your overall nut, and tracking to that to get to your financial independence number. Then your future number—I like how you bifurcated it there. That’s really your lifestyle, and I don’t even like the word retirement. Let’s just say “later on,” because if you have passion and purpose and absolutely love what you do, why would you stop doing it, right?
But, you know, that would be your lifestyle number, right, as the second one. That’s great that you were able to switch it. Again, I think that a lot of the philosophy is incorrect on how Wall Street tracks towards that accumulation model.
It’s funny—we were talking about Garrett Gunderson, right, because he’s from Utah as well, and he writes about that extensively in his book. The fact that if you build towards this accumulation model and then just keep taking out that 4% a year, you’re left with nothing, and you’re not really realizing that passive income today. You’re just saving for the future. You could be enjoying that passive income today, hitting that financial freedom number much quicker, and also putting in really good tax strategies as well.
Great. So, any other thoughts in terms of strategies that you’ve had to achieve that number or key concepts you’re teaching your students or in your group?
Yeah. I think one of the biggest things when I was teaching this at the university level—so I taught all of this financial independence for about eleven years at the university level—was realizing that if I only taught strategy, I had a lower implementation percentage than if I taught mindset.
What I’ve noticed is that people can massively grow their wealth by just changing their mindset. That’s one of the key components. I feel like it’s 80% mindset and 15% strategy sometimes. Because if you don’t believe that you can do it, you’re not even going to try in the first place.
Getting people to the point where they believe it’s possible is so important. I believe it’s possible for anybody as long as you have the correct mindset or that you’re thinking about money in the right way. I probably think about money differently than most people. I think of money as a tool. I feel like it’s neutral. I feel like I can put it to work for me—it becomes hundreds of thousands or millions of little employees that go to work for you.
That’s been my philosophy: how do I get as much money into investments so that it’s growing for me? That’s essentially, I think, a mindset switch for most people. Most people are like, I go to work, I work for money, and then I spend the money. And then we have to start all over again. Versus what you talked about, Robert Kiyosaki’s cash flow quadrant. That was an amazing revelation for me as well.
That’s when I started realizing I needed to be an entrepreneur on the side. So even though I had a full-time job, I sold designer clothes on eBay for seven years, doing things like that in the background, so that I could control my income and decide how much I made. That allowed me to invest a lot more and hit the milestones I was aiming for.
Yeah, 100%. Couldn’t agree with you more in terms of the mindset around money. It’s so fascinating to me, just constantly learning about this topic, and how some of our attachment to money is literally formed at the age of seven years old. Right? When we’re not even really thinking about how money is actually impacting us.
A great way I’ve heard for people to figure that out is if you were to describe when you were seven, when you were younger, “Money for me was _______.” Fill in the blank, right, and really identify it. For me, it was scarce. Frankly, we came from a scarcity mindset. I think that was my parents’ generation—mostly where they were coming from.
But really trying to make that shift into an abundance mindset and getting out of the idea of making money work for you instead of working for it. Stop grinding, and shift to an abundance mindset. Let things appear for you if you’re moving in the right direction. You want to be swimming upstream in the right current, with the right people, the right mindset, and things magically appear.
I think that’s one of the things—when people kind of get out of their own way with money. They might not realize it because they may believe it’s absolutely true. I hear people say all the time, “I’ll never be rich.” I actually like the word wealthy better than rich. But if they say, “I’ll never be wealthy,” then their mind’s going to just go to work making that happen, and they’re not even going to try.
I don’t think that the mass accumulation of money is necessarily the end goal. But this abundance that you’re talking about, Dave—abundance in relationships, abundance in wealth, abundance in health, in activity, and in time—really makes a full lifestyle. Money allows you, if you have time and money, to pursue any goal.
The point with having money is, what is it that you want to do? What is your unique ability? What is it that you want to contribute? What are you passionate about? That’s really where I want to get people to. Like, if you don’t have to stress about money because you know you have it coming in, what is it that you really want to do? What’s your passion?
Sometimes people are stuck doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. To have a life where the accumulation of money is your only goal is not going to bring you ultimate happiness. But if it’s part of an overall plan of abundance, like you’re talking about, that actually brings happiness on all sorts of levels.
Financial independence isn’t about amassing money-it’s about having time and freedom to pursue what truly matters to you.
Yeah. Where do you think people get tripped up, Lisa?
I think people get tripped up in not examining their subconscious beliefs about money. So you’re exactly correct. By the age of seven, we’ve already formed our opinions on money. Most people won’t question that—they believe that the thoughts they think about money are true. This is especially dangerous if it’s a negative thought about money.
For example, “Money is very hard to get,” or “I’ll never have X amount,” or “I’ll have to work for my whole life.” I hear a lot of things like this. Just not examining those beliefs can be a huge barrier. I think getting in the room with people who think bigger than you or who are at a higher level than you really helps.
Because then you start thinking, “Oh, if this person did that, then it’s definitely possible for me.” And then you can start questioning those subconscious beliefs. It’s just a habit of thought. Our brain is actually the biggest wealth builder that we have, and it takes instruction. If we give it negative input, it’s going to give negative output.
The same goes for positive input. If you say, “I’m going to be retired by 45,” or “I’m going to be financially independent at 45,” or whatever your goal is, your brain’s going to go to work on that. I think the biggest hang-up for people is actually just believing the negative things or their money story that was given to them, formed at age seven. Bringing that to the conscious level—what is my money story? Is money easy? Is money hard? Is money something you have to really, really grind to get?
Or is it, like Richard Branson says, “Investments are like buses; there’s always another one coming”? When you realize that there’s $3 trillion that exchanges hands every single day, you just say, “I’m going to dip my bucket down into that.” It becomes much more of a prosperity or abundance mindset. So, really just examining it—sitting down with a piece of paper, asking, “What are my thoughts on money?” and then, “What do I want to be true?”
Yeah. That’s really spot on, Lisa. And I’d really like to emphasize that for the listeners out there. This is such a key aspect of really changing your entire wealth trajectory. This requires deep work.
So you might be driving in a car right now listening to this episode, or at the gym or something like that. But you could do yourself a massive favor and actually do some of this deep work, as Lisa’s mentioning here, by going to a new environment, setting aside some time, and really thinking through what your money story was—and then changing it to what it is. And you can actually do that.
This is a great example someone did in our mastermind community. We had finished an exercise to go through that process, do some deep thinking, and really uncover that. Then, in the process of creating the new one, we came up with facts that would support the new mindset around abundance, wealth creation: “Money is easy,” “Money flows to me,” “I’ve always made money,” “I’ve always had money,” “I’ve always figured things out,” “Things always work for me.”
And then he actually plugged it into AI and created a song out of it. So now it’s one of the affirmation things that he does every day, every week, to just reinforce: “Money is flowing, it’s abundant,” and really change that.
This gentleman grew up in a different country. When I talk about scarcity—this was a whole different level of scarcity that he had to overcome. He’s been making amazing progress, but this is such a pivotal thing that people can transform if they actually sit down and do this deep work.
And, Dave, the people who are wealthy think of money as a game. It’s fun, in general. It’s a challenge. It’s something they want to take on. People who are more stuck in poverty or a scarcity mentality view money as hard.
It’s two ends of a spectrum, but it’s the same thing. So how can you make it a game? What are little goals that you can set? How do you make this fun?
My financial mentor and I, along with a lot of people I know who are very wealthy, believe that money is a game. If you’re listening to this and saying, “It is not a game for me right now because it’s stressful,” that would be an indicator. How can you change that mindset? How can you start with little things to make money fun?
Even rewarding yourself for small achievements can teach your brain that money is fun or that money is a game. It actually completely changes things. You’re not competing against the whole world; you’re just becoming the best version of yourself. No matter where you’re at right now, what’s the next level for you? What would you love to see?
Reward yourself for those achievements. Teach your brain that money is actually fun. This is a challenge you’re taking on to stretch yourself. Where do you want to be financially? Break that down, and as you say, do the deep work with it. It massively changes how you think about money.
Yeah. And what’s coming to mind for me, right, is evidence about how this can really work, really, at a macro level is, you know, how many stories have we heard about people who’ve won the lottery?
Yeah, right? They’re playing Powerball, and they probably shouldn’t even be playing Powerball. But, you know, the majority of those individuals end up finding themselves actually worse off within a few years after winning some massive amount. And it’s all because they don’t have the financial education or the mindset to actually keep it.
And another thing that we’ve seen in the government—this is another really interesting macroeconomic indicator—is that, you know, when the government put out all of that PPP stimulus money, they actually now have data to show that lower economic folks who were receiving a lot of this stimulus money basically just spent it because they didn’t really know what else to do with it. And all of those funds actually aggregated to the top, you know, with the billionaires and multimillionaires who actually know how to leverage it, and they’ve built their balance sheets. So it’s quite interesting to see that data point really prove the point there.
Yeah. I love that. With the education, the most common education I see from parents—because you talk about this generation—the most advice I see is to pay off debt and put your money in a savings account. And at the time this was happening, we were getting less than 1% in a savings account. That’s not actually money put to work. So investing it in some kind of vehicle is essential.
And I think, Dave, the shift comes with someone who’s won a Powerball—it’s short-term thinking versus long-term thinking. People who are generating and compounding wealth are definitely thinking long term. So a stimulus check—I’m gonna go out and spend this right now versus I’m going to invest this, and this is going to pay me back proceeds for the rest of my life. Being able to think more long term, even just starting with a high-yield savings account for emergency savings, trains your brain to reward yourself.
When I first started paying off debt, honestly, I felt like I was burning money in my driveway because it felt like it was going into a big black hole. I couldn’t see the immediate rewards of that, and I had to train myself to think long term. So what is my ultimate goal? It’s to pay off all of my debt. Even though it feels like I’m throwing this away because I can’t spend it right now, I had to train myself in my early 20s to think differently about money, which is long term.
So now my little dollars are having baby dollars and grandbaby dollars. They just keep compounding versus me having a one-time thrill from spending. And maybe you spend, you know, 80% or whatever, but training yourself to think more long term is definitely gonna be beneficial.
Yeah. Lisa, can you give us some practical examples of how you can put some of these strategies and tactics to work?
Yeah, an immediate thing that you can do is go into your 401(k) and allocate it correctly. Most people are put into an age-based retirement fund, which puts you in a—especially when you’re young—I would find a low-cost index, maybe for the S&P, and put your money in that. You’re gonna have a higher growth. You’re gonna have a higher rate of return. It’s gonna compound.
Often, when I go in with clients, they have a 3% to 6% overall return while the market is returning 30%. So they think, oh, wow, I’m earning so much money because I’m making 30%. But then they’re paying their financial planner 3% to 6%, and that’s what they’re earning. So at the end of the day, they’re actually not making any money.
So maybe taking personal responsibility and not outsourcing everything—learning, educating yourself. What is my 401(k) actually doing? Instead of turning a blind eye to it, I would say practical advice is make that grow, get up to your matching, and then open a brokerage account. You can invest in index funds.
For the average person who doesn’t have any financial education, you could become financially independent just doing that.
Yeah. According to SPIVA, 88% of advisers aren’t even beating the S&P 500, right?
So some of these auto allocators into the market can outperform with a fraction of the fees if that’s part of your equity strategy as well. We also like to invest in private equity assets, right, that provide that three-dimensional return where you can get passive income now, tax efficiency, and then forced depreciation in the asset as well to diversify. But also, talk to us a little bit about some strategies.
We have a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs in the community. Any tactical strategies when it comes to running businesses and how they manage cash flow? I know many people have different businesses, and it can be kind of crazy all the way around, right? With cash flow, you’ve got ups and downs or different cycles. Any philosophies there?
Yeah. I think that’s the biggest struggle for, entrepreneurs. And so what I actually recommend for, the ups and downs is actually creating a central nervous system savings account so that you always have a certain amount of money in there so that you can relax and know. I’ve got my operating expenses covered. I’ve got everything.
And this would be uninvested. So this would be in a high-yield savings account. My philosophy is that we want to have, aside from an emergency savings, we want to have everything working for us. We want to have everything invested. With entrepreneurs too, what I have found is if we, there’s a number most people are comfortable with and if they can just set that aside, it allows them, literally their central nervous system to relax.
And the ups and downs aren’t going to be as stressful as entrepreneurs are managing a lot of things all at the same time. And so basically kind of relaxing the financial or the money side of that really helps for them to focus and put things into place. So I love to have a central nervous system account, and literally, it’s just money set aside so that your brain knows, okay. We’re cool with money. Now I can just focus on business strategies.
Don’t let your primal brain dictate your wealth strategy. Create a financial plan that keeps you in control.
Wow. I really love how you label it that is a central nervous system account because that’s, you know, essentially, right, our brain is being hijacked, right, into our primal state all the time. When those limiting beliefs are coming up or, you know, whatever’s happening in your life, you immediately go back to that, you know, scarcity and protection, fight or flight. And, and especially as entrepreneurs, that literally happens to us, you know, almost, multiple times a day, right, where, you know, things things are great, then things are like, oh my gosh, you know, the sky is falling down. But really trying to manage so it’s like, okay.
If you could solve this problem by really saying, okay. Well, what is that number? Maybe that number is saying I’ve got 10% liquidity, in my overall portfolio, and that is completely accessible. You know, should, you know, a medical event come up, maybe I can’t work in the business or something like that, that allows you to calm down. So I really love that, like, taking over, you know, control of your nervous system.
Right? So we can move more into a flow state and not go primal. Really great. Anything else you can think of really, on the entrepreneurial side in terms of, you know, tactics or strategies that you recommend?
What I found is entrepreneurs are generally, quick starts. So when they find out and as you’ve talked, our minds are constantly being hijacked. For the money side of it, really, I feel like if you can have the one thing that really since we’re on this topic of central nervous system, I find that some entrepreneurs really don’t know their numbers and they have outsourced that. So one of the biggest things Dave, you talk about financial empowerment. One of the biggest things you can do is have at least a copy of or review the numbers. So our brains are going to go into this primal state.
If I don’t know exactly it it feels like they’re kind of being chased by a wild animal. If I don’t know my numbers, at least have some kind of, you know, my hands on these numbers, then I’m just going to be running and running and running. And then I and then thinking, how come I don’t have more money in my bank account? Or how come I don’t have more money in my investments? And it it really feels like most entrepreneurs are being chased by a wild animal if they don’t have some kind of connection to the numbers of their business.
So not saying that you should crunch those yourselves because you usually have somebody else who does that for you. But reviewing those on a regular basis, I would say monthly basis, and having the central nervous system account is gonna make it so that you don’t go primal. Going primal is probably the worst thing for your business and your health and your abundance. And so when we outsource everything, then we lose touch with that. And just looking at the numbers and seeing where you’re at, where you’re at kind of grounds you.
And so from that point, you can make really good decisions. And I find that people make the the best decisions if they at least are reviewing their numbers and not saying, oh, the accounting department is is, you know, taking care of that. It really makes it so that you’re not running from something and you’re actually steering the ship instead about swimming in the ocean.
Yeah. Now one of the things that really got me frustrated with the equities markets was February, ‘2 thousand and ‘8, right, going through some of these big crises. And then, you know, I could still have never forget, you know, to this day, just being at the gym first thing in the morning and just watching, like, a sea of red and just feeling helpless, right, because you had no control over what was going on. And yet we just saw it again, right, with NVIDIA and, you know, like, 500,000,000,000 and market cap was literally just wiped out, right, overnight when it seemed that all the fundamentals were great, everything was strong. Right? So how do you, you know, advise people to really navigate through all of this uncertainty? Right?
We’ve had we’ve had this polarizing election, come up. People don’t know what’s going on with the administration. Right? There’s there’s it just seems like there’s more uncertain times than ever. Although, I guess in reality, right, life has always been uncertain.
That’s the only certain thing. But how do you recommend people, you know, really from a mindset perspective as well as a strategy perspective, just navigate in, uncertain times?
I love this question, Dave. So I actually love red in a portfolio. I know I’m gonna make more money when the market goes down.
Giving you an example from when I was working full-time, I worked with two gentlemen who decided that they were gonna exit the market when everything got stressful. They ended up saying, “I’m losing my life savings,” and then they made that true because they sold at the bottom of the market. What I teach, and what I do on a personal basis, is there’s always cycles in the market—and you named some of them. We could also throw in COVID and the recession of 2022. So when the market goes down, literally, I love the equities market for this because it’s so cyclical, meaning that you’re gonna see the same cycles over and over again.
I actually teach all of my students—all of my mastermind students—we buy when the market’s down. So I have a strategy called “nibble, bite, gorge.” We buy more as the market goes down. We know that it’s gonna come back to its peak. The market is likely gonna be higher in twenty years from now. And it’s really easy to make a lot of money—millions of dollars—over time.
I’m a long-term thinker, and in twenty years—or way less than that—I’m going to be making more and more money. So do I care what the market is doing today? If the fundamentals are awesome, then we go into it when it’s low. Instead of thinking, “The market’s falling; I’m losing value,” I think, “Wow, everything’s just gone on sale.” I’ve made money every single time the market goes down using this strategy.
If the market goes up, I’m investing. If the market goes down, I’m investing even more. I make money whether the market goes up or down. It really doesn’t matter to me. If it goes sideways, that gets a little tricky, to be honest. But if the market’s going up or down and it’s driven by uncertainty and fear, all I have to do is wait.
When my mom starts talking about buying flour for her pantry because everything on the news is saying the market’s red—that’s my signal to go in really hard. Usually, when the market’s on the evening news, it means you should be buying instead of selling. Even if it’s just investing into a 401(k), or if you’re an entrepreneur, definitely investing into what you’re talking about—private equity or the stock market. I feel like the stock market is just giving us opportunities to make money. But you have to think about it differently, and it’s counterintuitive.
So if the market’s falling, most people are gonna go primal and think fear. I think, “I’m just gonna be patient.” If the market’s—let’s say—a recession officially doesn’t start until the market is negative 20%. So once the market is there, then I get interested and start paying attention. I’m gonna buy all the way down that “V” and all the way back up.
Using an example from ’08, Warren Buffett bought Wells Fargo stock when it was selling at $75 at the peak. It goes down to $7.50. He backs up the truck, loads up as many stocks as he can, and then it goes right back up to $75. That’s how you build wealth.
It’s much more active trading—only when the market goes down. Otherwise, it’s set on auto-invest.
Yeah. Interesting. And, I mean, really, mindset is probably one of the number one or number two reasons why people lose in the market over time.
Also, I think the other big factor people forget to realize is those outlier years that bring down your cumulative returns. And then, to try to get back up to where you were, it takes that much more work. That can be challenging as well. But managing your mindset—I would also throw into navigating uncertainty—and creating the plan rather than being reactive to it.
Absolutely.
Awesome. Lisa, if you could give just one piece of advice to the audience about how they could accelerate their wealth trajectory, what would it be?
I would say, kind of like what we touched on earlier, if you are doing any sort of tracking, I think that having your hands on the numbers and your mind in the numbers will actually make it so that you can reach financial independence, I would say, three years earlier than you would if you don’t. Sometimes up to seven years.
If people know and they’ve empowered themselves—just knowing your numbers, where you wanna be, and having your fingers on that—your brain starts to basically work and be creative. I think we’re only limited by our own creativity. So really empowering yourself, educating yourself by far, and working with your mindset like we talked about earlier—I think those are the biggest things that you can do.
Yeah. Great. Well, really appreciate you coming on the show today, Lisa. If people would like to reach out and connect with you to learn more about your training or just connect with you, what’s the best place?
Lisasmith.com.
Simple enough. We’ll make sure to put that in the show notes as well. Thanks again for your time.
Thank you, Dave.
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