BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 140: How to Get Financial Freedom So You Can Do What You’re Meant to Do with Belinda Rosenblum

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

Belinda Rosenblum is a CPA, a certified coach and her clients include Harvard Business School, Harvard University and the SEC. She’s worked for Arthur Andersen and L3 Enterprises. She’s got money all figured out, right? Well, she does now… On today’s episode, Belinda shares her biggest money mistake - ignoring a giant pile of mail as she cared for her recovering father. Once she cleared that up, she focused on her own finances, growing her net worth to more than $1 million by the time she was 33. She quickly realized that her trajectory was NOT taking her where she wanted to go. So she pivoted. She took a new job with a huge bump in pay and rode out their boom and subsequent layoffs, taking a package to leave and using that opportunity to travel to India, a life-changing experience. When she came back, she realized she didn’t need all the things, didn’t need the stress that came with the big corporate job, and struck out on her own, filling a need she saw in her own friends - financial education. Belinda parlayed her financial knowledge into a multi 6-figures company, pivoting again last year to helping businesses strategically and consistently generate income. This episode is for anyone who has made a money mistake, anyone who has gotten past one, or anyone looking to start their own business to truly live the life they want. In This Episode We Cover: Belinda's journey with money How she worked out with her money management Emotional side of money What she did after she was laid off Her experience during her financial advising jobs Biggest challenges for entrepreneurs Talking about her business How she grow her business Unconscious spending How her clients think about taking the leap away from a job into entrepreneurship How to start a business And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums 5 Simple Ways to Create Consistent Revenue Money-Making Tracking Sheets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 140, where we interview Belinda Rosenblum from Own Your Money and hear her story of financial independence, financial mistakes, and how she's turned all of that into a six-plus figure career. So a lot of really learning how to own your money and to become unapologetic around money in your business is taking the emotion out of it. So it's coming to terms with the emotion, recognizing that mindset piece for yourself, but then recognizing that that doesn't have to. rule the show. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my business savvy co-host, Scott Trench. Minnie, I just love how these adjectives are incorporated into every one of our introductions here. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else and show you that by following the proven steps, you can put yourself on the road to early financial freedom and get money out of the way so you can lead your best life. That's right. Whether you

want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big-time investments in assets like real estate, or become a self-made millionaire in your 30s and start your own business, will help you build a position capable of launching yourself towards those dreams. Scott, today's guest is Belinda Rosenblum. She is a self-starter, a CPA, a coach with a very impressive client list. You will recognize all of the names on the list. She's worked for the SEC and Arthur Anderson before striking out on her own, taking the money lessons she learned from a corporate career and applying them first to personal finance education and then pivoting again to help small businesses figure out how to consistently earn money.

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not a bank. Bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank, member FDIC. Don't put this one off. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leeners Stronger for Fitness, the anxious generation for parenting perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful as its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible

Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more, all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Belinda Rosenblum from Own Your Money. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm super excited to have you on this show today.

You are a CPA, a certified coach. Some of your clients include Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Bentley University. I'm sorry you're not more qualified to talk about money over here. I'll see what I can do. It's only been no one. I don't know, 25 years, but I'll do what I can do much. Improve that for you, Mindy and Scott.

25 years. Well, tell us where your journey with money begins. Sure, absolutely. So I think from an early age, we could kind of tell that I was going to be good at money. Like, I was the type that would like enjoy counting money. You can imagine. You know, I would like dump out my piggy bank and like not to spend it, but to count it, you know. Or, you know, my sister wanted to use my bicycle.

I was like, that'll be a quarter, please. You know, I think there were just funny things where I like had an affinity for money early on, you know, accounting, applied statistics. These are some of my favorite courses in high school. I even had a side job working for my neighbor's business when a lot of people were cutting lawns or only babysitting. Like I was sending out monthly invoices and bookkeeping

for an alarm company. And I started to even get turned on then. I was like, this recurring revenue thing is really good. When I grow up, I want to be sending out invoices and collecting money every month too. You know, and in college, I had, I was, you know, a strong, you know, accounting student and all that. And I was on the swim team, and I wanted a side job.

So I worked for a catering company. And, you know, a lot of people are kind of the catering assistant. And, you know, like, would you like pics in a blanket? And that kind of thing. But to me, that was kind of boring. So then by, like, the second event that I was in, I started to see the bigger picture and became more of like the traffic cop. So I'm like, you know, like visually like landing planes or serving drinks over here.

And it just made it a lot more fun. So, you know, from an early age, I was like, okay, I think that there's something to this. Like, I'm enjoying earning money. But when I had just graduated college and I was 21, I was just a few months out, I had just passed the CPA exam, actually, or just taken the exam. I hadn't found out I passed yet. And my father then had a stroke. And I just graduated.

So I was like, you know, hot to trot. And it was like, boom, you know, things just like my world stopped at that point. My parents have been divorced in early age. My sister just started college. So I was the one that really stepped up and needed to help take care of them. Not to start this off on a sad note, but that was my reality. Right. And so I became family CFO way younger than I would have wanted, you know, at 21. And the thing was that because I had this, you know, accounting degree, I think that it just kind of seemed like it made sense. right? Like, oh, she'll just take over for it. But I was vastly underprepared. You know, it prepares you, college prepares you for like corporate accounting. It doesn't necessarily prepare you for like the mountains of bills that you're going to have to deal with when your dad's in the hospital, along with all the emotional everything that goes with that. And so over the next few years, I kind of bandated things together. And I had been on the road, you know, four or five days a week. And I'd put that on hold for a little while while I was caring for him. And then I was like, okay, let me pick back up my career.

It feels like it's a safe time to do that. I didn't put together that now I have all of this extra financial baggage that I had to take care of. And it was like, whoa, you know, what's going to give? Well, what gave was me opening up the mail. So again, this is not the financial strategy that I recommend for everybody. But I would be on the road. Sounds like a millennial problem. Yeah.

I have the same issue. Yeah. I was in my 20s. I guess that fits, right? And I would be on the road like Monday to Friday. get home and I would have this huge stack of mail waiting for me. Well, I got to the point where I would find any spare basket, table, drawer that I could put it on because I was like, oh my God, I just can't deal. I have to go see my dad. He was asking for me all week. And I have

wanted to see my friends and exercise maybe and do all those things. And so, man, you can kind of start to see the pattern that was forming, right? It was this disastrous like rinse and repeat. I would go back on the road Monday. I'd come back Friday and I would just have more mail. Well, pretty soon. So now I'm like 28. And my sister very innocuously asked me one day, like, how's everything going? I can tell you're really working hard in your business and like, are you handling everything at home? I know that it's a lot. And she's like a freshman now. But then I think she was in med school. But she was like, you know, I know I can't really help, but like, how are you handling everything? And it was in that moment that I kind of had this, this like, okay, I can't stop lying to

myself, you know, this moment of like, what am I going to do? And I was like, you know what, Melissa, let me get back from this trip. Let me get back to you on the answer to that in terms of how things are really going. And my dad was affected by the stroke. He wasn't going to be any use in handling all of his finances. So I come home from my trip on Friday night and I do one of the scariest things. And if anybody listening here has piles of bills and mail, you can kind of guess where this is going. I pulled, I mean, he's like on the edge of her seat here. I like pulled all of the bills and mail from all of the baskets, all of the drawers, all the counters, all the tables, whatever. And I put them all on my dining room table. Now all of a sudden,

I feel like I'm being stared down by not one, not two, but three huge stacks of bills and mail that were literally as tall as I was like sitting at the table. So what happened next? It wasn't that I was like, oh yeah, let me go tackle that. I started to have a panic attack because that's what you do when you're stared down by three stacks of bills and mail. You're like, holy crap. Like how did I get myself into them. And so then I started to like stand up and pace around. And my sister was right. Like it was a lot. I had eight bank accounts and four credit cards and two properties. I mean, you could have added a partridge and a pear tree. But it was like, it was a lot. And so then the self-talk starts. You know how like sometimes it's like our own mind is our worst enemy? So then the

self-talk starts. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like how could I gotten myself into this? You know, I was a star player at work. But what happens if they find? find out about, you know, keep my mind, I'm an accounting, right? I'm, I'm like at a big CPA firm. And I was like, what are they going to do if they find out about this? And then my heart's starting to be really fast. And I was like, could my dad get kicked out of the nursing home? If one of these bills is his bill for the nursing home or could he show up at a doctor and the doctor not help him because I haven't paid the bill, like all of this like spiral started to go. And then at some point, I was like, okay, I just have to stop. And I just sat down and I took a deep

breath. And I affectionately call this my come to Jesus moment, which is kind of funny, because I'm Jewish. But it was like this moment where I was like, okay, I have a choice here. You know, like either I can be the person that succeeds with numbers like I have been in other parts of my life, right? And I can be the person that can learn what I needed to learn or I can just keep letting these bills pile up. And then Lord knows what's going to happen. And so that was this moment that now my company is called Own Your Money. And I think that that was really the first moment where I was like, I can either own my money

or my money is going to own me because that's really what it felt like. And so then I asked for help. I literally phoned a friend. And I called her up and I remember it was like, she was like, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, it's been a rough night. And I just asked her to come over and help me

because I'd gotten to the point where it was so much that I couldn't even sit down in taxes. You know, sometimes when you just have a lot, people are like, oh, divide it up and just start opening. It was overwhelming to me. And it was like it had flipped this switch that early on, I was like, oh, I'm great at earning money. I love money to be like, oh, my God, I can't even deal. Like, I couldn't write a check. I couldn't do all that stuff. And then she was willing to come over that weekend, and she would open the mail and she would show it to me. And for any people here, I don't know if you guys have ever been through this, that have had let mail pile up for

yourself, you have to sort it so that you sort it by vendor, because other people, you're Otherwise, you don't know if you've paid that bill before. So I would have like three or four bills from each person. Yeah, like here's the sixth reminder that your payments do. Exactly. Oh, this one's red. I think this is the one that I have to handle first. So that's kind of what we do.

We'd like make piles and then we look at it. We decided we had to pay. And then she came over like both days that weekend. At some point I was like, I can't do anymore. And then she came over the next weekend. And then we went from, you know, two days to just one day. And it actually took me six months to sort through all of them. that and to, because mail keeps coming just for the record. I know there's all this craziness

with the USPS, but like it does. It just keeps coming. Even when you decide I'm going to get through all of this backlog. So I, and I think the other thing is that I decided that I didn't just want to band-aided again because that's what I had been doing ever since my dad had the stroke. It was just like, oh, like kind of catch-as-catch can. And so I wanted to create a different money management system and I actually wanted to change my own mind about how I was going to look at the responsibility that I now had for my family. And so it took six months, but I remember I was sitting at dinner with my dad and my sister one day and I could look them in the eye again because I hadn't realized the emotional impact that that shame was really having on me from not looking at it and from

being in all of that avoidance. And so in six months, I had worked out my money management. I worked at my mindset, and I just had so much more relief and hope that, like, I could do this. You know, the good news is that, although I was quite, had become quite the avoider, I was also quite the saver. So, you know, sometimes we'll talk about, like, were you maxing out your 401K? Yeah, I was doing all those things because I was like, well, at least I'll have the money when I emotionally can pay it. It'll be there, right? And part of it was that in some ways we had it. But for anyone who has parents who have gotten ill. You have a lot of more rules. Like, Social Security needs a separate bank account. And it was like all of these things needed to be handled in a certain way. And it just had gotten

too overwhelming. So good news, though, that was 28. Then five years later, by 33, I had actually become a self-made millionaire. And I honestly think that I wouldn't have been there. Yay! If I hadn't have had that moment where I was like, I can do this. And no one is going to come in and save me. You know, I was single at the time. And I think I was hoping that I was going to marry the Prince Charming and he was just going to handle the money. But at that point, I was like, had just broken up with my 10-year boyfriend. I was like, nope, he's not saving me. It's on me. So, and no events to men, you know, who can handle the money, that's awesome. But if you stop and look at it, like, women are actually really good at this,

but it's just that we don't take it on as much ourselves or we think, oh, they'll handle it. So things really started to change at 28 and then at 33. And then fortunately, that happened in time, because then by 35, I had an early midlife crisis. So, you know, it's like sometimes it happens at 45 or 50. I'm kind of an overachiever as well as a financial geek about all this stuff. So I was 35 and I'm like, the heck am I going to do with my life? You know, and I had gotten in a job that I felt like I was checking my personality at the door. I know, you know, for many of your fire people who are like,

I don't want to work in corporate in the same way that I did before. You know, that's kind of how I was feeling. It was like I didn't have to work theoretically because I purchased a property around that year of 28, maybe like six to 12 months before that epiphany moment. And I was getting rental income from that. So if I wanted to really scrape back, I didn't have to work, but I knew that I wanted to work and I had an impact to make in the world. And so 35, it all started to change.

Well, can we just quickly at least get the general gist of how you personally made the, got to become the self-paid millionaire? You know, like what was your relationship with money? Personally, it sounds like you were maxing the 401K, those types of things. But could you give us a quick overview of that? Sure. So I was maxing the 401K. I lived at home for the first few years. So actually, let's back up. So when I was in high school, I was working. Like I had that alarm company job. I was a lifeguard, a pool director. I was a good saver back then. So that all started to help and I would invest that, not significantly, but kind of indexed funds and just let that grow. So that started early and then when I was in college, I was also working. So,

and I had it, I know sometimes this is an element of the conversation, but I was able to not have student loans from college, which I know is also a big deal kind of in this equation. So I had, how do I tell us fast, but my father was a college professor. So I could either go to his college or like a sister college where he was. So I made the decision to go to a sister college. And it was Boston College. It was a great school. But part of that decision was,

how do I not burden myself with $100,000 to $200,000 of loans from school? And so I was able to save without the corresponding debt that so many people end up having. And that's why you really want to be proactive early on to make that decision and to really see, can I, that was part of my working in college, was how do I go through this without coming out of it with debt, with like a lot of credit card debt or other things like that? Like how do I at least work enough so that I can pay for the things

I want to do while I'm at college? So then I got an internship between junior and senior year. And then I went to work shortly thereafter in September, like right out of college. And so my dad, you know, he really wanted us to become independent. And so pre-stroke, he was like, you're going to live here and you're going to pay rent so that I could get used to paying rent. So now when I I left there. And then once he ended up having the stroke, then I was like, okay, well, I'm managing the household and lots of other things. You're my second job. We're going to count that as the rent. So I was just able to save a lot early on, right? That was part of it. And then I bought property in Boston. I bought a two-family home. So, you know, I had mentioned that I saved, so I had saved enough for a

solid down payment. And then I bought a two-family so that- You say two-family. Is that duplex? You mean like a two-year-old? It's like a, it's like a, It was three floors. My unit was the first two floors. Then I rented out the third floor. Got it. House hacked. Love it.

Yeah, totally. So, like, great, way back. So this was in 2000. That's what I was doing. Yeah. And then I was like, okay, well, this is actually a three bedroom. I'm single. Let me rent out a bedroom.

So I had a friend rent out a bedroom. So, you know, a lot of these things were like, I didn't have to do it. But I was traveling a lot anyway. And I was like, let's maximize the resources that I have. And I think sometimes we don't stop to look around and say, What resources do I have that I could be maximizing in some way? And so for me, it was a bedroom in the apartment, you know? And I not only was I renting out upstairs, but I also rented out one of the rooms in our apartment or my apartment. So then all of those things, I just kept tucking away. You

what I mean? I just kept saving. And then the value of the real estate started to go up during that five years as well. So those were the key components, was my investments. And I believed in investing, not just in the 401K, like I was maxing that out, but also creating an investment account with what I was saving that wasn't necessarily retirement money. At the highest level, what would you kind of say was your general savings rate during that period? Very significant.

So, you know, for the first few years, when I was taking care of my dad, that was my personal life. So I didn't spend a lot. You know, and if I did, I love adventure and I love travel. So every year I would take a big trade. but I would like do hostels and I would backpack around places like China and Africa and Russia and crazy things like that, you know, and had a great time. So I didn't feel like I was withholding

from myself because I think that that's also really important that when you're a saver, you want to make sure that you're not in this scarcity, like, oh, I can't spend. It was just that I was choosing to spend on the things that I really valued and particularly the experiences that I really wanted. And so I don't know, it would probably be like, you know, for the first couple years, maybe like 70%. I mean, it was a lot. I wasn't paying rent. I was living at home. I paid off a car. And then when I moved into the city because I wanted that experience in New York, but I got a rent control department, right? And so a lot of it is not just what can you do, but it's what do you want to do, right? And how does it really fuel the future? So it was significant.

But then I tailored it back down probably to more like 20, 30 percent maybe. Okay. Awesome. So, all right. So you get to this point and, you know, that makes perfect sense. You just, you know, it reminds me a lot of really what Craig Curlop is doing. If you've come across him or heard of his story, he's the book on house hacking for, for bigger pockets here. And anyway, so he has a very similar, I think, approach and mindset to money that you demonstrated during that period.

So you've moved to 3335, your financially independent. millionaire, self-made millionaire. Is that right? Mm-hmm. I didn't think of it as this big deal because it's like it kind of comes and goes. No one's there with like the fanfare. Like, oh, look, you're not worth now across the million dollars. Like, no, that doesn't really happen in real life just so everybody knows. You're just sitting there looking your spreadsheet and you're like, oh, look what I did. You know, and I think that that's part of it. And I would save from my job, right? But then it was also that I would have the net positive cash flow from the house and I would also save that. So I think that was also part of my quote

savings rate at the time. But yes. Okay. So we're here at 3335. Yeah. Did you have a question or do you want me to kind of pick up the story from here? Yeah, pick up the story. What changes? You know, it sounds like there's a milestone or next component to your career that starts at this point. Yeah. So sort of part two, right? So part one was all about it was in a corporate job. And it's so interesting because it's like we think that we're going to have such financial stability, right, when we're in corporate. But I left, I was in two jobs while I was in corporate. One was with Arthur Anderson, which at the time was like the premier accounting firm until Enron happened. And then we all got laid off like universally, right? So it wasn't a personal

thing, but was able to get a new role then as a corporate controller. Actually, it was just called controller at the time. And then we kind of, I didn't like between us, I didn't like controller on a business card, which is pretty terrible if you're ever dating by the way to hand a man a card that says controller, I don't recommend it. So I elevated myself to corporate controller. And so then I did that. Comptroller, right? Isn't it? But then no one understands what that is. I didn't even understand what that was. So I called myself a corporate controller and said it somehow took off the edge. But, you know, and again, you know, all along the way it was about, it was about owning my own value, right? So even when I left Arthur Anderson and I

went to go work for, it was L3 communications at the time, we made x-ray screening machines post 9-11. So it was a very big time to have to be starting there. And I negotiated myself like from, you know, 90 grand to 130 grand or something plus signing bonuses. Because I was like, hey, just because like I'm not a victim to the situation, I can make the most of it. So I had three, four different offers. I sort of pinged them against each other. And I was like, oh, this one has a signing bonus and this one has stock options and I just rolled them all up into the one that I wanted to go to. And I think that that's something for people to realize, especially early on, is that your income compounds on each other. So it's like if I hadn't negotiated that at the time,

it's a lot harder to negotiate anything once you're in a job than when you're starting a job, right? So I negotiated that. I worked there for three and a half years and then post-9-11, we ramped up significantly. But then a few years later, once we had staffed up all of the airports all around the world. Then we started to restructure down. I took a nice package at that in 2006 it was. And then I backpack around India because at that point I had still had that love of adventure. Then I went to India and I basically lived eat prey love. You guys remember that like before it was a book and a movie. And so I went backpacked around India. I went to Israel for a couple of weeks. I volunteered in Costa Rica for this underprivileged teen program there. By the way,

I didn't speak any Spanish, so I crashed course myself in Spanish for three weeks. And then I was sitting there in the outdoor classroom with the kids. And that was that early midlife crisis where I was like, what do I want to do with my life? Like I had already started looking for a job anyway. I could kind of see the writing on the wall and it just got really miserable. So I have something to jump in here with, so what year-ish did you, do you think you were that, um, achieve that millionaire status that were, you know, when I was 33, so like 2004, is. Okay. And so, and so the next couple of years, it sounds like your career is going even better and you're just kind of like really padding that net worth pretty thoroughly. And, and that's the point at which you have this, this moment, it sounds like,

where you begin to think about the next, the next, what you want to do next. And before we hear about that, how much do you think that your financial position? that millionaire status plus plenty, I guess, influenced your ability to kind of begin thinking like that or have that revelation. So that's a really good question. I think that it did actually free me up. So I took off about a year and a half at that time frame. And at first, the overachiever in me thought, oh, I should just go right back and get a job

because that's what we do. And then I took the step back and I was like, well, why have I been saving all this money? if not to give myself choices and options, you know, and decide what is it that I wanted to do. So it was a great question to really have that ability to take a step back and say, well, do I want to volunteer? You know, do I, like, what do I want to be the next step? It didn't feel like I had to go in a certain direction that was the prescribed way to go for a CPA with a six-figure job and that kind other thing, right? So I think it did give me a lot more options and a lot more spaciousness, right? Because I literally, three weeks to the day from getting laid off, I was on the plane to

India, which is not the easiest thing to arrange that because you have to get visas and like shots and all this other stuff. But I had this urgency that I put on myself, right? I'm like, oh, I want to go and then I'm going to take this trip and then I'm going to come back and then I'm going to get a job. So it wasn't more than like three months. And then when I was away, and I don't know if you've ever been India or if anyone listening has ever been in yet, it's life-changing. And you just really see how people live

and what you really need and what you don't need. Like I came home, I gave away a third of my stuff. I remember my accountant saw all of my donation receipts and they're like, what have you been doing in this year? Have you, like, turned into a hippie or something? And I'm like, no, I just, I like would see how much I know. This is like my very, you know, my male older, like a dad figure to me.

And he was like, what's going on? You know? And I was like, I know it's crazy, but like I don't, I don't need all of this. You know, and I wasn't a huge spender. So my dad was much more of a hoarder, like a retail therapy kind of guy. And after he had had the stroke and I lived through getting rid of all of that, you know? And so for some of us who, like,

like accumulate stuff, he was the type that, like, if he had a bad day, it'd stop off on his way home and buy a tie. And we had hundreds of ties we had to get rid of. Like, 436 ties. Like, I'm not joking here. Right. And so when you have somebody in your family, when you have to live through the emotion of getting rid of so much stuff,

it takes away a lot of the fun of buying stuff. Because you're like, it's just going to accumulate. And I'm just going to have to deal with it. And so then when I came back from India, and I was like, seeing how simply some people lived, actually wrote a book shortly thereafter called Self-Worth to Net Worth. And I told a bunch of stories in there. One tour guide, he, like, you know, invited us back to his, quote,

house, which was the size of a bathroom in the United States. Like, he had, like, bunk beds, basically, where you can imagine, like, a bathtub. Like, he lived with somebody else in this tiny, tiny space, but he was one of the most joyful people I've ever met in my whole life. You know, and so I just came home and I gave way a lot of stuff, And I was like, you know what? What do I want this next phase of my life to be?

And how can I use what I've worked so hard to accumulate to help support me during this time? Well, I have a quick follow-up question on all that. So this, you know, that money situation with the surplus that you created for yourself and the optionality to allow you to think like this, how could someone who's listening and who says, you know, I kind of am doing some of those same things. I think I'm going to be in a similarly strong position relatively early in life. How do I accelerate that moment by a few years or a few, you know, what are some, do you have any ways to answer that question?

Sure. So, you know, you kind of reach this place of like financial freedom, right? When your passive income or the money coming in, right, exceeds the money that you need to spend. Well, if you want to accelerate it, you reduce the amount of spending, right? Or you offset the expenses. So, like, that's when I was like, okay, we're going to have a roommate. Like, I even consider getting a second roommate, you know,

or like starting to get creative in that time frame because I was like, well, if I just spend less, my money will go further, right? And I was still on unemployment. And I mean, I shut it off when I was going on all these trips. But essentially, I had unemployment running for a little while. I got in a severance package. And I think that it's really looking at how do I tame in my spending in a way that feels good and appropriate for myself, right?

That it doesn't, like, I wasn't eating ramen noodles every night. But at the same time, like, when Christmas came, when the holidays came that year, I didn't go out and spend like maybe I normally would have spent, right? I just got creative instead. So, and maybe some people will call this kind of hokey, it was a great money, saving a thousand bucks. Hippie, right? There you go.

There's my new one. but that I took the pictures from all of these travels that I had just gone on. I took some of the best pictures. I had like a little back in the day when we used cameras. Like, you know, it was like so funny to be having this conversation. It wasn't that long ago, guys. But like, Philly, what was it? Like 14 years ago, but we actually used real cameras, not just our phone.

So I took some really good pictures. And so I made note cards, right? And so I designed 10 different note cards, and I would do packages of note cards for people. And then that way I felt like they got to experience some of what I got to see when I was traveling. And I wasn't spending hundreds or $1,000 on gifts. I was getting creative instead.

And I was doing more thoughtful experiences together. And so another key thing is that you let go of the, I need to keep up with the Joneses. You need to keep up with somebody else and really look at your own things that really matter to you and really look at how can I make my money go further and how can I maybe leverage my resources in a way that I haven't done before. Love it. Thank you.

And the shared economy really plays into that. I think when people will do Uber to better use their car, for instance, right, or rent out a room with an Airbnb or something like that. So, yeah. All right. So next question. What did you decide to do after you had your, you know, I keep using the hippie moment, whatever you're throwing?

What was the next thing there for you? Okay. Let's see. I don't think I've ever done this on a podcast. It's kind of fun. Okay, so then now we, I did Costa Rica. I ended up actually buying real estate in Costa Rica while I was there. I told you, I like love real estate.

And so I bought a mountain in Costa Rica and then I bought a little spot on the beach and kind of got that thing going there. And then I came back and I actually almost went into nonprofits because I have a real like, I want to say generous side or very like heart-centered. And so I was like, how can I help the world? with my accounting background. So then I almost totally did a flip and started to look into nonprofits. And then what I started to get to, it was actually just the same corporate job.

It just was paying less. And it was in a different kind of environment with a few more struggles. And I was like, okay, I don't think this is really going to achieve what I want. And I was networking with everybody. If you guys can ever remember the book, Mindy you have kids.

I don't know. Scott, you have kids? I don't remember. No kids. But the book called Are You My Mother? That's kind of how I felt. Like everybody that I would go and meet with, I'd be like, are you my mother? Like, could I do what you do?

And I was just curious. I was just open to whatever it was going to be. Because at this point now, we're about nine months in and I let go of going back and getting a job right away because I was like, I don't need to do that. Like, I've set myself up so that I can make it work with the rental income, with the other room I was renting with the bit of unemployment that was left. And then actually, I did get a job to supplement it because I didn't, want to put myself into debt and feel like I was like squashing all the hard work that I had just

been doing. So I actually got a job at the SEC as a forensic accountant, which sounds a lot more glamorous. Like it sounds like CSI, CPA or something. But it wasn't all that exciting. It was like piles of papers of like work papers that I had to sort through and find the fraud, which was kind of cool. But you already had that experience. Not the fraud part, but the sorting through the paper. See, it came in handy. I didn't have a panic attack when they put it in front of me. Because it's not yours. It's not your problem.

I wasn't responsible for it in the same kind of way. So I did get a job along the way to kind of give myself a little bit more time to figure it out. And I made sure that that job kind of let me do this networking, this informational interviewing that I was doing. And then I started to meet with some financial advisors. And they were like, oh, maybe you can do what we do. Right. You're a woman and you're very personable and you get math and numbers.

like you like meeting people. But then I was like, okay, let me think about this. So then I started to go and talk to my friends and my family and my network. And I was like, hey, what if I became a financial advisor? And it had about the same effect as an auditor. When I used to tell people I was an it landed with that kind of a thud, right? Except that they would almost like grip their purses and be like, oh God. Do you need life insurance? Do you open with you? Do you open with something like that? I think that's what they thought was going to come out of my mouth. next, right? So they were like, no, no, we're good, thank you. And I was like, okay, hold on. I haven't taken this job yet. I just want to understand, like, what are your challenges with money? And when I

started to talk to them more, I found myself connecting more with the emotional challenges that they were having, right? With why weren't they able to save? And what was going on, I think, like, in a former life, I must have been a therapist or something because I'm like such a good listener. and it's like I'm like a confessional for people. And so then that's what I found much more interesting. So not like a doctor, like an advisor that like gives a prescription and asset allocation and sends you on your way. I wanted to be more of like the financial nurse or even the financial therapist that would help you figure out like what's really going on with you and money. And why is it that you're really struggling as much as you are with saving given the income that you're making?

So I turned down the financial advising jobs, and then shortly thereafter, I was sitting in a workshop, like one of these like three days, like, get your millionaire mind on kind of thing. You know, everyone's like standing up and hooting, hollering. And I'm like, this is interesting. And it's so odd because at one point I looked back at my notes from my attending this first event. And I wrote down the strangest things. Like I wrote down how they did exercises, the times they took breaks. It was almost like a part of me thought that maybe I could leave. lead a workshop, not quite as hippie or hokey as that one maybe was, but that maybe there was going to be something to this. And I remember I had told my friend, you know, I didn't, I turned on

the financial advising jobs, but it's almost like a financial coach that I could see myself being. And so then it's Sunday of this event and they're handing out these like half an hour sessions with a success coach. And it was in that moment, I was like, boom, that's it. I can be a financial coach. Like there's something to this. And so I started taking my business cards, which when you're in transition, your business card just has like your name and your email and your phone. And I started writing on it, personal financial trainer, you know, a trainer for you and your money or a personal financial coach. And I was like, one hour free, call me. I was literally scribbling like mad while they're handing out these cards at this workshop. And I was like,

this is what I can do. Like I can help people because I was always like that big sister, like that friend that you come to when you're having trouble with money or you're trying to sort it out. So I was like, maybe I can even get paid for this. Like, that would be amazing. And that was the moment when in May 2007, so it was like a year and four months later after it got laid off, and I was like, this is what I think I'm going to do. Like, could I make it work?

And then I, and I'm a total student. And I was invited to do a branding workshop. And it was in that workshop. It was like 12 of us. And we had to come up with our mission. Like, if we were to do our own company, what would it be? I remember standing up and I declared this at the time, and I had no idea what was going to come from this now or 13 years later, and it was to

inspire ownership and action for financial success to open doors and create a truly rich life for you and for me and for the world. And that was where it all began. And then a few months later, own your money was born at 2 a.m. when I called GoDaddy and came up with the name. But that was really where I was like, I don't need corporate. Like, F, that job. You know, I really wanted to go and, you know, forge my own path. Keep in mind, this was 2007. And so my friends and family were very nervous and very skeptical about this working.

But I can tell you that when everything started crashing in 2008, I became very popular. So I was then like on the 5 o'clock news for NBC, locally because I at least could help people handle the financial stress and, you know, make a plan for what they need to do with their money. That was going to be the thing that I said was, hey, I remember 2007. I remember 2008 that came right after 2007. How did this work out? I mean, I know, you know, spoiler, it worked out great. I know it worked out great. But so people then came to you wanting help with their finances. That's interesting because I would think that if

if I'm having financial trouble, I wouldn't go and spend money trying to figure out my finances. How do you, I guess how do you reconcile that? Oh, that was absolutely a challenge. Because you're talking about asking for money and this emotional thing. And, you know, the first thing you, when you said that, I thought, you know, there's a lot of women in particular, but entrepreneurs in general have a hard time asking for the money that they are due. You know, I sent you an invoice and you didn't pay it. I can send you another invoice and you don't pay it again.

How do I get the money that you owe me? So, yeah, so there's absolutely is the answer, right? But it's a great question. There's sort of two elements of that. So the first one is, you know, how do you work people through paying something or investing in a course or a membership or whatever, right, to fix the problem when they already feel broke? and I actually figured out that I didn't have to market to broke people because I started out doing that.

I was like, oh, people don't have money. Like, let me go help them get money. But they didn't even feel like they had enough money to invest with me. So then I figured out, well, there are all these people that are actually making good money. So on the surface, they could be saving something, right? But they're not. And so why is that?

So then when I could start to have them see how much money they were really leaving on the table and the impact that that was having to them right now, for the next 10, 20, 30 years, if they didn't do something about it right now, then they started to open their ears and listen more. The second piece, though, that you touched on, and that first piece applies whether you're a job, you know, in a corporate job, a professional,

stay at home and handling the finances. Like, that's still a hurdle that I have to kind of talk people through, is to really see the ROI on making an investment like this. But what would happen is that I started immediately just coaching anybody and everybody that wanted my advice so that I could get some good stories and be like, oh, look, I help this person save an extra $800 a month. I help this person save an extra $500 a month, help this person save $1,000 a month. Because that's the amazingness, right? If you can figure out what's leaking in somebody's budget, right, in where they're spending, you know,

sometimes you guys talk about like unconscious spending, right? There's a lot of unconscious spending. So I had created a worksheet that essentially would highlight the unconscious spending for people. and they're like, oh, like, that's what's going on. And so then once they could start to see, oh, well, maybe you can help me find $500,000 to $1,000, because that's pretty much what we would end doing on a regular basis. And I think I actually still have that worksheet. I'll get you guys the link for that to include that. Then they were like, oh, I can see how it pays for itself. Now, the other piece, though, that you touched on is a whole another ball wax. through what I'm right around.

You know, why do we as entrepreneurs have such a challenge in asking for money, particularly money that's due to us, right? Because in the example that you just gave Mindy, like, like the one, you know, you as the entrepreneur, you did the work and you provided an invoice. And they're the ones that are choosing not to pay. And so a lot of really learning how to own your money and to become unapologetic around money in your business is taking the emotion out of it. So it's coming to terms with the emotion, recognizing that mindset piece for yourself,

but then recognizing that that doesn't have to rule a show. And I think that when it does, you take things so personally and you don't make that follow-up call, you start to self-sabotage yourself, you don't call for the invoice that's due. And instead, I just really say, like, hey, you did the work, right? So you just call it very matter-factly. Or better strategy? take money up front. Have their credit card, set up a payment structure,

and be like, okay, I'll run X dollars at the beginning, I'll run Y dollars when I deliver it. You know, and you just have to like get to that point where you don't have to tie somebody else's delay on your own value. Because they're very distinct. You have no idea what's going on for that other person in their personal life, in their business,

that's having them ignore your invoice. it could just be that they're away, they're not paying attention. Maybe they're avoiding money like I used to do when I was 28. I have a lot of compassion right now. I'm such a non-judgmental person about people's money stuff because I have had some pretty tough stories, you know, some tough shame and guilt that I've lived with. And to get to that point where it's like you you consciously choose the people that you work with and that you set up payment structures that will work for you. right? And that you don't have to feel bad for the work that you did, but that you actually set up a good structure to make sure that you're getting paid for the value of your services. I don't say paid what you're worth because I feel like, you know, you're worth so much more than the $200, $5,000, a thousand someone's paying you or more, $10,000 even they're paying you, but that it's your charging for the value

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When you started this business in 2007-2008, you know, were you still living in the house hack, the apartment where you rented out the rooms? Okay, so you're keeping your expenses very low. You had this sizable position. What was it like? How would you describe the process of your business gaining traction over that year? How many years or how many months did it take would you, would you articulate what you say to get that going? Sure. So I started in I kind of incorporated in like August. I had a lot of trouble finding a name because when you find a name, you compete with everybody around the world.

So I was like, oh, this company in Australia has the name I really wanted. Like I had pages and pages of notes. One day, it just incorporated with my name, which at the time, I'll spell this out for you. So you get it right here was Belinda Fuchs, F-U-C-H-S. I do not suggest ever starting a company with that name because it's very challenging for lots of obvious reasons, right? is right, right? I was like, I'm not going to let anything get it my way. So I started it in...

And voicing was an issue... Sorry. Right, exactly. I mean, God, I've been teased since fourth grade, so it bounces off now. Unfortunately, I got married, so now it's Belinda Rosenblum, right? But but then, like, a month later, I came up with this idea of own your money, literally at two in the morning. I called GoDaddy, and I was like, I want this domain. And I back ordered it. And then it took like three or four days and I checked and I was like, gosh, I really want, I really wanted, oh no, it was sold like crap. And so I go and I check and then it was sold to me. So they had never notified me, but I did actually get the domain that I really wanted. And so then in December, I launched my first workshop and I had all of these grand intentions. So if you have some newer

entrepreneurs that are like, oh, I'm just going to be a success right from the beginning. Like, it's not going to take me three years to make money. I'm going to do a two-day workshop. Well, I decided to do a two-day workshop right out of the gate. And this was like before coaching and, you know, now like business coaching is all the rage. It wasn't really happening back in 2007. And I remember renting a space at the John Hancock Center in Boston for like 120 people. I had like big plans for my first workshop. Well, about every three weeks, I would have to go back to this place and shrink the size of the room that I would get.

Because it would be like three weeks closer to the date and I would have two people registered, four people registered, right? So it took a little while to get off the ground. that first two-day workshop had 12 people in it. Yay! But they were 12 people who learned a lot, I can tell you. But the other thing is that I was willing to make offers to them. And sometimes it's not the size of your audience per se.

It's really the value that you're delivering. So I poured so much into them. They learned a lot there. And then I was like, okay, so I made an offer of private coaching with me. And then I made an offer of like a lower cost ongoing membership with me. So those, I'd say nine of the 12 people, the other three were like my best friend and her husband. Almost everybody bought something. I don't think they felt bad. I think they were actually really excited to get their money together. And so that's really what started to fuel things. But it was a little rough going in 2008. I think we made like 60 grand. And then so we did start to make money amidst the, you know, economy crashing. And then 2009, we were now making $1,000. We were now making $1,000. 55 grand, but this is a really important point for entrepreneurs, especially starting up.

I focused on revenue. Everyone was like, just go make money. Like, just go make sales. And so I had hired a bunch of team and I had like a VA. And now, like you can have a website for so much cheaper and you can make updates to the website yourself. Back then, again, dating myself a little bit, but back in 2007, I don't even think there was a WordPress. It was like in PHP and I had to have somebody go in and make updates and I was doing a lot of my own workshops and a lot of speaking and a lot of things that I wanted my website updated. I was doing a lot of press. So like every week I would have another like in Yahoo Finance this week and Saturday Evening Post. So I was like, oh, all that stuff has to be on my website just to help me with credibility. But it cost me a ton of

money. So I grossed $155,000 in my second full year of business. I profited. Any guesses? $10. $7.000. Oh. $3,000. That's a ton of a ton of work to do coming from a six-figure job to net three, right? And I wasn't mixing personal finance. Like, you know, I absolutely figured out like in year one, separate business and personal finance. I had a business bank account. That was all business expenses.

And yeah, I mean, maybe I put through, you know, my phone bill, like pretty much. That was all business. So I was like, something has to change. Like, I can't just follow these business gurus that are like just focused on making more money, right? And then I was like, okay, wait a second, time out here. I know what it's like to manage my personal finances from the, you know, conversation around hacking and taking care of that.

I need to put that kind of attention to my business finances now too and my business expenses. So then I was like, okay, timeout, what can I change here? How do I change my business model? So I significantly reduced my assistant because my assistant was making a lot more than I was and I wasn't going to have that for a second year in a row. So I significantly reduced my expenses. I batched a lot more things. I streamlined a lot more things.

And I hired another coach to work under me in my business. So that then all of a sudden I can make money on her time, not just expecting myself to make money on my own time, you know, with clients. And so that was great. So then the next year we gross $255,000 and we profited 96. Right? So almost $100,000 more of profit with that $100,000 more of income. because I totally reshape the business model to make it work much more successfully.

Does that help for the first three years of business? That's awesome, yeah. So it sounds like you went from controller to a certain extent and salesperson to CFO that year and reventing the business model and building those things out. So that's fascinating around that and the revenue versus expenses and income and those types of things in the early years. So what happens in the years following that going from 3 to 96? Do you continue to grow from there on out generally?

Generally, yes. What, you know, part of it too is really making sure that the business you're creating is aligning with the life that you want. Because I think that, you know, especially in the first few years when I was single, I was willing to do all the things. Like I would be on the news at 5.40 in the morning because they asked, you know? So like, okay, you know, literally the day before, and they don't necessarily give you a lot of warning.

Like the day I was on the 5 o'clock news, they called me at 2 o'clock that afternoon. You know, and they're like, we'll be over. I was like, okay, you know, and so I was doing all the things. And then I think there came a point where I was like, okay, wait a second, we're doing well enough in the business. I really want to make sure that I'm having the life that I want, right?

Because then it wasn't just about the business. And then I got married in March of 2011, which was a big deal. And then I was like on my bucket list, so to speak. that I really wanted to make happen. And then I really want a family. And so now, fast forward, now I'm 39, and my biological clock was ticking. God, you can't necessarily appreciate this part, but you have to go with me here. And Mindy's laughing at least. I appreciate that part. You're going to appreciate that part. And I was like, okay, so now the business is kind of rolling,

right? But I think I had this fear of, you know, my business was so centric on me. I was doing a lot of speaking. I was traveling in the country doing speaking. I actually had a TV show. in the Boston area at a radio show. And it was intense. I think there's a part of me that was like, okay, wait a second, can I really keep this up and have the family that I want?

And kind of like I had that moment back when I had left my job that I was like, well, what am I accumulating all this money for? If not to live the life I want, that was kind of the moment I had now to say, okay, wait, time out. If I have to, I have to rework this job

because we're actually having trouble getting pregnant. And I was like, okay, I think that I'm just too stressed out. Like, I think that I can't envision how I could do the business, the way the business was going, and be able to maintain a family and a baby and all the things. And big picture, the family was more important to me.

Like, no matter how much I cared about the work I was doing and the business I had created and now we were in multi-six figures. And so then I took a step back in 2012, hired a business coach finally. And I was like, okay, I need a business that will sustain me through a family and allow me to work less. And so I started creating products and programs in 2012, right? So that it wasn't so much like time for dollars,

like as a coaching programs and speaking and stuff. So I created, I kind of laid out. These are the three programs that I want to have that I want to sell. And so in February, I launched a five-week program. Then I delivered in March. Then I launched another one in April. Then I published the book in June. Then I have my gallbladder.

out in August, but you don't really care about that. Then in September, you do have health and life happening in between. Then September, I created another, the third of those five-week programs that I wanted. Now, keep in mind, I didn't have a lot of people in these programs, but that didn't matter. What I was committed to was creating a product that I could sell and start to leverage my time more. So that's why I did all this. You do the thing once and you record it or you write it down or whatever, and then you sell that thing multiple times. Totally. And full disclosure here,

I believed way back before it was popular like it is now and the monetized before you make it. Like I had a page where you could buy. I had an outline on the page. That was all I had when these people signed up. So for everyone that's like, oh, I don't know what I would, you know, I don't have all a course mapped out

and I don't have everything pre-recorded. Don't worry about it. Like what's most important is that you have a transformation that you want to create, for people. And that's what I had. I had a decision. I was like, okay, so I did one on making money easy, making money flow. And it wasn't making money grow, but I almost called it that. See, now this gives me anxiety to have the deadline where everybody is waiting for your thing and then now you have to go and get it. I would want to do it before then. But so how long did it take

you could? But the other one was making money joyful, actually, because I decided people needed to find more fun in their money, right? They needed to let go of that avoidance. And so that's what I created. Here's why that approach is so smart, by the way, for people listening, right? So you put up a page and you don't even have the product or the five-week course built at all, right? So one of two things is probably going to happen, right? One is nobody's going to buy it at all, right? And then I don't need to create it. Which means you don't have to actually spend the time build a product. The second is that a lot of people are going to buy it and you'd be like, oh, crap, I have like lots of people buying this. Now you know that, like, yes, now I'm going to work 100 hours a week for the next

five weeks to actually deliver this product bit by bit to them all and make it really good and actually deliver on the value prop I promised, right? And work with that. And look, if you don't, you refund some of the users, but you know that the next time you market your product, you're going to have a lot of interest because the value prop works, right? So it's just like a much lower risk way of scaling or launching a business than in making that investment up front and then seeing if it will work at the end. It's just a dramatically better risk profile. So that's something that we like to encourage here. We like to say, hey, we'll take some users and ask, would you like this product? Great. Then we build the product.

Right. And you can even say, it's everybody. Yeah. Yeah, you can even softball it out there. Like, hey, I'm thinking about creating this. Like, is this something you'd be interested in? Right. So I kind of, I did a big survey to figure out what did people really want and what did they think their challenge was and what came up across the board was that they felt like they needed some help making more money. And they all had a different theme. And I only had 20 people in each one. Like, it's not like they had hundreds of people, but it honestly, it didn't matter. And this was back in the day where it was, there was no Zoom. There was no video even. We just did it on tele-seminars, if you can remember that, right? So it was just be on like a phone line. It was just audio.

And at the time, I thought that I was going. to re-record everything. I was like, okay, this is just for me to outline. I work well under deadline. Many people probably do, right? Like you get the stuff done when you know you're going to be showing up for a class for 20 people. So I had the outline and I would just flesh it out every week and I would teach it live on this

audio. And then I thought that once I was done, I was going to make it more formal, right? I was going to make it prettier and maybe record videos and whatever. But the reality was that I had 20 people first one, 20 people second. one. Then I had 65 by the third one, because now I figured out the marketing element, figured out what did people really want, and I figured out affiliate marketing. So I figured out how do I have other people start to promote what I'm doing? Okay. So then that last one launched in September. I had a lot of momentum from that hundred people. And then I launched

a six-month group program on the back end in November. So I would start to create some recurring income for myself. I'm a big fan of how do you create consistent income in your business. And then in December, no joke here, at Tony Robbins' date with destiny, I find out that I'm pregnant. I take a pregnancy test. And lo and behold, my destiny is I'm going to be a mom. And that was December of that year of 2012. So 2013 had my first baby. So then I was like, oh, I don't have time to go pretty these programs up. I'm just going to package them up and sell them. So that's what I started doing. So then 13 had a baby, 14. I got pregnant again. 15 out of baby. And for that three years, my primary income was doing affiliate collaborations selling these programs.

Because the big thing for me was just having a product that I know worked, right, that created good stories. So I had people who went through them. That's the other reason why I love doing this like beta or pilot or monetized before you make it, is that you get real people that have done the program that can give you stories of their results. So then you can feel more confident about it. And then more people buying can feel more confident about it too. And if you don't get enough stories, you do it again. And I'll often encourage my students to sell it at half price the first time with the understanding that they're going to be giving you feedback along the way, that they're really going to do their best to show up live so that it's

the best experience and to take action. And then, I mean, that really makes a difference. And then I did personal finance for basically the first 12 years of my business. was selling these programs, was done having kids by 15, 2015. Then I launched a membership in 2016, and then really worked that membership for a while. I was like, people want to make money. Great. I can help you there. But then 2019, and I don't know if anyone has ever had this challenge, I got a little bored with telling people the same thing. I'd been telling them for 12 years. And there comes a point where it's like, okay, make more money.

And they're like, well, I'm in a job. Like, what do you want me to do? I guess you can get a promotion, you can get a raise, you can leave your job. Like I was running out of options. But with my entrepreneur clients, boom, there was so much that I could do. I think that for entrepreneurs, even if you're doing a side hustle, you have an unlimited amount of money that you can make. You get to decide how much money you make. Yes, you have to ask for it. As we talked about, it doesn't magically get deposit in your account anymore. But you just have a lot more possibilities. So in January 2019, I was sitting in a more of a business coaching workshop

and people were talking all about their challenges with their business money and making consistent money. And that was the moment that I had the epiphany there that I was like, it was physically painting me to sit in that room and hear their struggles and their fears and how they were holding themselves back. So then January 2019, I decided to keep the personal finance arm,

but really pivot and grow the business finance arm. And so that's really more of what we've now taken to over the last few years. Awesome. I guess year and a half. It feels like years. So now it's about growing a strategic profitable business. So people can work less, profit more, and really take home real money consistently. Because I think that a lot of entrepreneurs are in a lot of feast and famine,

and they never learn how to make consistent money and how to pay themselves consistently. So that's what we do know. There's something powerful to me about the concept of, hey, I have a good job. I get control of my money. I spend relatively frugally. I increase my savings rate. I build a stable financial position over time to that million error range, that lean five. The cool kids call it now. And then you've got entrepreneurship as that next step there to go after. And that's, you know, the answer is how do I increase my income at a job? Well, you know, once you get to certain points, that's, that's kind of it, right? You know, your stepping stones and how that's going to look. And so it inevitably has to be entrepreneurship if you really want to scale that income. So my question, and it's kind of parallels in earlier a question I asked for you is, you know, I think with entrepreneurship,

there are different people are comfortable taking that leap in different positions. You are comfortable with that after being a millionaire plus sub, right? Some people are comfortable with doing that with basically, nothing or going out of, you know, even with bad debt or different situations. How do your clients think about taking the leap away from a job and into entrepreneurship? And how does their personal financial position impact their comfort level with making that leap? So before I have people make that leap, I want that. This is why we haven't ditched the personal finance arm because we all have bank accounts, right we all still need to be responsible and own our money around our personal finances too

and so it's like the first step is actually looking at personal finances to figure out okay what do you need to be earning every month right and how do you either start to sock away a cushion or how do you maybe start to tailor down the income from your job while you're ramping up your business you know i'm not necessarily the like burn all the ships you know i don't whatever the the phrases, I'm forgetting right now. But, you know, it's like that when you're heading out, it doesn't mean that you have to abandon everything that's worked before, right? It's like, hey, if you're in a job, start to figure out what could I do? You know, put it out there. Hey, if I were to do this, would you buy it? Right. And to start to think of it as a side hustle.

And then you start to think about, okay, how could I make this side hustle more permanent for myself? And really think about what would I need to earn. So I help people to reverse engineer, the revenue that they need to be making in their business based on what they want to be able to take home personally. Profit and revenue, they don't have to be happy accidents. You can actually be more strategic about the money that you want to be making so that you can pay yourself on a regular basis. So I think the part of that is understanding your own personal finances, understanding the elements that you could do without if you wanted to for some short period of time while you're growing your business, right? So that then you can say,

okay, well, right now I live on, you know, $3,500 a month. But if I decide to do this business, I think I could do with $3,000, I'll just not eat out as much or, you know, I won't buy coffee. I'll just be home. So I'll make coffee for myself. And you just start to look at it. And you say, what do I want to take home? And then you literally just divide that by one minus 0.7, right? If you have like a 30% tax rate or 0.25. depending on how much you're making, just for round numbers. So let's say you want to take them $3,000, you divide it by 0.75, and you're like, okay, I need my business to net, net, so profit, $4,000, minimum.

Then you keep going to go and you say, okay, well, I'm going to have some business expenses, got to add those on. I probably need a coach, because Lord knows it's a lot harder than it looks. There's just stuff you have to learn. And there's no shame in learning. I think sometimes we think, oh, gosh, I have to like, I have to buy a course, can I do it myself? You could do it yourself. I am a fan of shortening your learning curve and just getting help to do it. With the personal finance side, with the business side, absolutely. We made money

a lot faster because I figured out, okay, if I hire a coach, I'll get there a lot faster. I'll charge more. Sometimes it's about having people who believe in you before you can believe in you. Right? And to kind reflect back, hey, wait a second, you're really good at this. Go charge more for this. And by, week two, almost everybody raises their rates because it's called own your value. Right? And it's like, wait a second. Why are you charging what you're charging? Like, look at the transformation you're creating. So then once you figure out, okay, I want to have maybe $2,000 for my business expenses, then it's like, okay, so how do I make $6,000? Like, if that's going to be my minimum goal and you just start to reverse engineer, how could I make that?

Could I do one thing at $6,000? Could I do two things at $3,000? every month? Could I do six things at $1,000? And just to take away the mystery of it and just say, it's math. Like, how do I, what do I want to sell? Right? What could I sell? You know, if someone's paying me $3,000, what are all the things that I could do for them? You know, could I talk to them every week? Could I, you know, I think of it in different levels. There's like DIY where the person is doing it. You're just teaching them how to do it. There's do it with them. And then there's do it for them. Right. So there's so many different opportunities of how people could make money. Actually have a freebie we just created called Five Simple Ways to Create Consistent Income

because I think that that element is a mistake that a lot of people make. They start the business because they're passionate about it and they don't actually think through. How could I make money? I'm not talking about a 42-page business plan. I'm talking about a very straightforward. How am I going to make money in this business question? It sounds like there's business, that business finance is a lot like personal finance. And I love that you recommend starting while you still have a job. I think that a lot of people are like, I hate my job so much. I'm going to quit and start my own company.

And yes, you might hate your job. We've all been in there. And I hate my job so much I want to quit instantly. But when you take that away, there's your safety net that's helping you stay afloat while you start your business. Because I know that I have been corrected several times. 95% of all small businesses fail in the first two years. It's a lot, though. several people have corrected me. That's not the actual quote, but there's a lot of small businesses

that fail in the first year. Some of it is honestly just a really stupid idea that nobody is ever going to buy. And I hate to say that, but, you know, that's not wrong. But others are just, you started wrong. You didn't start it correctly. So make mistakes while you still have money coming in as opposed to all your eggs are in one basket and then you drop the basket. Right. I totally agree with that. And the other thing that people don't realize is that you bring a of desperation to the offers that you're making when you absolutely need those dollars, like to eat, right? So, you know, I mentioned along the way that like I got that job at the SEC. I probably could have started to pull down my savings, but I wanted to actually fund the thing

I was going to go and do, right? And fund my personal expenses, so I didn't have to put so much pressure on the business to make money right away. And I think that that's really important. And yeah, a few stats that I think are interesting to your point. So 60% of business businesses are break-even or lose money. Only 40% are actually profitable. So all of those are like unintentional non-profits. You know, and it's like, it's up to you to figure out how can I actually make money. Because if you look at why businesses fail, 82% of businesses fail because of cash flow problems. It's because they are not understanding the money side of their business. So they're not really understanding how can I make this business sustainable. So I totally

agree that it makes sense to really take a step back and look at how can I make the money in this business and how can I maybe transition so that I'm still making some job money, but I'm starting to ramp up. And I've actually heard a stat even, like if you can make 30% of what you need when you're only working part time, if you go and you work full time, you should be able to ramp up. But I absolutely think that you should have a cushion going into doing that, you know, of three to six months of your expenses. I know we talk about that. Most people, people don't do it. But if you're going to go start your own business, I absolutely would like to see you have some sort of question there. Yes, I could not agree more. Amen.

Okay, this has been super, super helpful. If you're thinking about starting a business, this is going to really help people get on the path to that entrepreneurship. I think that you've given our listeners a lot of things to talk about. Is there anything else you want to add before we move on to our financial scan. Thank you all for having me on, first off. But I feel like there's this element of, I don't want people to wait, right? Like, I don't want you to wait to start the business. And like, oh, when I have more saved, when I, you know, when I this, when I that,

like there's no good time necessarily. You know, if you have an idea and you're passionate about it, start to put it out there, right, and start to see, like, what could I do to make this work? in a way that people could start to pay me, in a way that I could start to make money from it. And when I talk about those five ways, it's things like, you know, how can you restructure how you're making money,

how can you remark it to your network, how do you repackage, how do you resell, how do you repurpose, and really look at your expertise as valuable and as something that people would pay for. And I think that sometimes because we enjoy it or because we're good at it, we discount the value that it's providing.

And I don't want our listeners today to be doing that. I want you to really get that, hey, if people can get a transformation from what you know, don't be selfish and do them a disservice by holding it back. Instead, we really want to see, I really want to see you put it out there. That's brilliant. Because, yeah, I'm thinking to my own self, oh, I already know this. Why would I charge somebody to learn this too? Well, because they don't know it.

Okay. Okay, that's wonderful. And you can teach it to them a lot faster than they can, like, people don't have to work with us. They can try and figure it out on their own, but it may take them three to five to seven years to do it. Or it can take six weeks. You know, it's that kind of a thing. And so I think that it's like, don't trip over pennies on your way to dollars. Like if you don't know something, have a growth mindset, be curious about it and go learn it.

Instead of feeling bad or ashamed that you don't know it, just say I don't know it yet. And go find somebody else who's already done it. teach it to you. Yeah, you don't need to graduate from the school of Hard Knocks. Many people do. I think, you know, there's a whole different podcast probably, but, you know, so many people have the belief of it has to be hard, right? Making money is hard. And it's a tricky one. I grew up with that too. I watched my dad have four jobs. And it's not something, though, that you have to carry through. You can actually find a way to make it easier to make money for yourself. That's fantastic.

Okay, well then let's move on to our financial scan. We have added a new segment to the show recently called the Financial Scan. We want to know what you are investing in. Where are you planting your money so that it grows for retirement? There's no one right answer, but we all know that it will take forever to become a millionaire based solely on your W-2 job. So to improve our chances of success, we invest in stocks and bonds in real estate and other opportunities.

Where are you planting your money, Belinda? So this is interesting. I looked at my net worth statement and I did percentages. I don't really do percentages all that much. And I mean, I do with my advisor, but it was interesting to do this analysis. And when I looked at, so there's two ways I looked at it and just have people kind of take a step back at their own stuff. I looked at it from the net worth statement, right? So you look at like total assets, less liabilities. And when I looked at the total assets piece, we have a significant portion of real estate. Not so shocking, right? Because we have the two family house. We have our primary. residents. We have the mountain and the beach in Costa Rica, you know. And so it was like 72% of our assets are in real estate, you know, in terms of like asset value, which is significant. And the thing, though, is that with the remaining cash that we have, it's then I am more aggressive with that cash in terms of putting it into stocks because I view real estate as, you know, more stable. You're going to imagine that, right? So if I were to do a

normal allocation in terms of stocks, bonds, that kind of thing, then I'm not giving credence to the fact that we do have so much of our overall portfolio in real estate, right? So when you say your assets are in real estate, what do you know, does that, are those reasonably highly leveraged? So your equity would be your equity within that real estate would be a smaller concentration of your overall net worth? Not not as much as you might think, I guess, because I purchased the property in 2000, right? So we'll have it paid off in like six years or something, you know, for that is a really heavy concentration in real estate. It is a heavy concentration for sure. We got a website for you. Yeah. It doesn't mean I want to,

but like what do you do if you have one property that's worth over a million dollars, Guy? You don't have to sell the property and I'm not going to sell a, you know, a room in the property. I'm going to keep the property and I'm going to keep making rental income off the property, right? So what do you do, though, is that you just look at the rest of what you have to work with, right? And so then when I looked at the rest in terms of our stocks, you know, we have like 25% in stocks in bonds, but like 85% of that is in stocks. And we didn't change, like we kept that pretty aggressive and we're just kind of riding out what's happening now. It's ironic because I talked to my advisor. And, you know, I do a lot around the emotions around money and the tactical

finance. I don't do investing. Like, I do. I turned down those financial advising jobs because I didn't really want to do that. And so we worked together. And I kind of had a feeling that this recession was coming. Like I actually created an event called Recession Proof Your Business that released two weeks before the start of the recession. It was kind of crazy. But I generally believe, you know, you ride it.

You don't try and time it. And I, you know, I heard that, you know, with Farnush just recently, too, you know, that she made some changes. I can sleep at night because we've created enough other assets that if things waver a little bit, I'm just going to ride it through. I also don't look at it as, you know, I don't see myself retiring at 65 and pulling out all of that money. You know, like we'll have rental income. We'll have other things that will help to fund our life without needing to tap that right away anyway. Yeah. Well, I just want to also point out that for you as an entrepreneur, you know, you have a large

unvalued asset in your business, which is comprised of various streams of income that are fairly diversified, I imagine, including books and those types of things, right? So those are all items that allow your asset allocation to be relatively aggressive, you know, with that high concentration in stocks and real estate, I would imagine. Is that fair? Right. And so, so yeah, I think part of it is that I have like total faith in my ability to make money, right? So that, you know, and I just did a total pivot. But we stopped promoting what we had been promoting, and then I started promoting a whole new set of stuff. But then we just had to go make $100,000 promoting the new set of stuff. And one more question here with, you know, and I'll speculate for a second.

A lot of folks, we've interviewed a number of folks that have positions in the ballpark of what you're talking about, where you've got, hey, some real estate, a business, those types of things. Generally, I found that folks in positions like yours tend to keep a large amount of cash on hand relative to their annual spending, what would you kind of, how much cash relative to your annual spending would you say you have on hand? Years, months? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, months. It's funny because, you know, as you grow your business, you know, you start out and you're like, gosh, if I have $500 sitting in my business bank account, I'm going to be so happy, right? And then it's $1,000. And then it's $5,000. And then, like, I hire a team. And then all of a sudden, you know,

like I need $10,000 just to pay our business expenses every month, you know? And so I have an amount that I'll leave in my business account. And then we have how much we leave, you know, we sort of set aside in our personal account so that if something were to happen and I stopped working in the business, we could still pay all of our personal expenses. And then we also just keep home equity lines around. We're not borrowing against them. But I always feel like instead of tapping my credit cards, if something were to happen, I could always tap that. Because we are so house rich. You know, we're not cash poor, but we're certainly house rich. So I feel like if I ever needed to. I also kind of have that. I do have room on the cards too, but I mean, I could

always tap that if I needed to. So I think that I think we do keep a little bit more cash on hand. Like I didn't go run to do all those loans because I was like, we're going to be okay. No? And I think the part of it is is paying attention. You know, it's really like recognizing that you won't be successful until you know your numbers. Because think like, are there any really super successful people in business or in personal finance who don't know their numbers. It's hard to find, right? And the vast majority do. And you do not have to make spreadsheets your love language like they are for me. But there are ways to own your money and to, or there are ways to own your money and to be able to pay attention to it that can work for you.

Even for the avoiders like me. Thank you for that. Should we move on to the famous four? I know we're we're coming up on time here. Go for it. Okay. The first question in The Famous Four is, what is your favorite finance book? It's the soul of money by Lynn Twist. My friend, Stephanie, just gave me that book.

Oh, my God. It was one of the first books I read when I was getting into this. And it was one of those like moments when I actually interviewed her for my TV show. Because it was like, it all came full circle. I was like, oh, wow. You know, like this was one of the first. of the books that made such a difference for me, to really start to see, like, the lies that we tell ourselves around money and the abundance that's really there for us. Okay, two people now. I have to

go read it and DM me. Tell me what you think. I will. What was your biggest money mistake? It was the avoiding it and letting it all pile up. I mean, I bared it all on this podcast, but, you know, there was a while where I had so much shame in teaching personal finance and having that in my background. And then there came a time when I was like, wait a second, that actually has helped contribute to the level of compassion that I have for people, because I know that it can pile up. And I know that people can really view that as such a badge of shame, but I instead took it as a badge of honor, basically, to say, hey, if I could get through that, I can pretty much get through anything that's going to come my way. Exactly. And if I could do it again, I probably wouldn't do it

again. Open your mail. Exactly. Okay. Besides, Besides open your mail, what is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? So it's just start to save. It's that, you know, there's never a good time idea, right, that I mentioned earlier. It's like do the max you can, even if it feels like a little bit of a squeeze. And be sure to track, because this is another mistake that I think people make is that they save or they max out their 401K, but then they're hitting a credit card to live, you know, and they're not really paying enough attention so that the whole picture works together because I don't want you to live off a credit. credit card to be able to save. It's not worth that. But just start to save. I think it's because I

started to save early and often. And then as I got raises, I just started to save more until I was maxed out that I think it has made such a difference. And the PS to that is as you start to save, certainly consider real estate, even if you have to start small. Yay! You know, that it was because I bought a property back in 2000 when I did at 28 that I think has made such a different. friends for me now 20 years later. Awesome. All right. The most difficult question of the famous four, what is your favorite joke to tell at parties? Well, I asked my kids about this one because they really like telling jokes. And I have a five-year-old. So the five-year-old Rebecca tells this joke. She goes, knock, knock. Who's there? Boo. Boo. Bo who? Oh, why are you crying?

Oh, that's a next tier joke there. I love that. She's five. She's five, right? And then the seven-year-old goes slightly more. He's like, why did someone throw the clock out the window? Why? I don't know why. You wanted to see time fly. Oh, that's amazing. Well, thank you.

The runner-up was, why did the boys stare at the juice container? Oh. Why? Because it's that concentrate. Yeah. Ah. So this is a 10-year-old. When you're asked.

when you ask little kids jokes. But I don't go to parties all that much, so I rely on my hanging out with my little ones to tell jokes. But yes, there you go. Those are perfect. That's what we're looking for. Wonderful. Yeah.

Belinda, where can people find out more about you? So I am at Own Your Money everywhere. I'm playing more on Instagram. I'm enjoying that at Own Your Money. We're at Facebook. And we have this great new download that people can get, the five simple ways to create consistent revenue. That's own your money.com forward slash revenue. And I will find that tracking sheet too. I think it's own your money.com forward slash track to highlight

their unconscious spending because I feel like we did talk some about personal finances. And I want to give people a chance to be able to take control of their own personal finances as well. So I will find you that too. So please DM me and tag me and do all the things so that I know that you heard this podcast. Awesome. Yeah. We will include links to all of those in our show notes, which can be found at biggerpockets.com slash money show 140. Belinda, this was super awesome and I learned a lot.

I'm so glad you had time for us today. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Okay, and we will talk to you soon. Scott, I love Belinda's story. What did you think? I thought it was great.

I think it's like this classic, not classic, but I think it's just this great example of, you know, I think back to the game, cash flow by Robert, kiyosaki it's a it's an expensive game you know it's like 60 bucks or whatever but it's a good lesson and it teaches some things it's this concept if you get out of the rat race and then you get into the the fast track right once you get out of the rat race and after you get to the fast track

you you like visit africa you have lunch with the mayor you buy the the apartment complex those types of things and like i think belinda's personal finance story kind of like shows some of that literal, I mean, it would be this weird look right now, but bear with me for another second here. I think it shows like, hey, there's like a literal reality that that reflects in a certain sense where she, you know, was good and savvy with money in her 20s and early 30s and reached that millionaire status at 33, 35, right? Became an entrepreneur and had all of these life experiences that became options for her that were very realistic because money was a secondary concern once she crossed that threshold of having not just enough but more than enough early in life.

And so that's the thing that should motivate you if you're listening to this and you're in your 20s or 30s or whatever stage of life in the sense that you can go out and have a completely different experience in the career field and with philanthropy. All of those options are on the table once you kind of cross that threshold. I think it's just a really exciting example of one person's story about like, looking through all of those options, doing several of them, trying them, and then settling on the one that she did with her career. So how'd I do there, Mindy? I thought that was great. I thought that's a great overview of what we talked about with Belinda today. It's just she has a fascinating

story. And the part that I really like best is the mistake, that great big, oh, I didn't want to deal with it, so I just didn't pay attention to it. It shows that even people who know what they're doing, She's a CPA. She is an accountant. She does this for a living, managing the funds and paying the bills and all of that stuff. So just because you know what you're supposed to do doesn't mean you're actually going to do it. Until you get to the point where you're like, I got to do it. I have to do the things.

And it brings a more human side to the people who are sharing their stories. Hey, I know what I'm supposed to do and I still made a mistake. But I also fixed it and moved on. So it shows that everybody makes mistakes, you're not alone, and that it doesn't have to define you and end your financial life right there. Yeah, I think it's fantastic. I love the different ways we kind of, like the different takeaways we just had for the show. Like completely different, right?

Hey, you can make tons of mistakes and still succeed. I'm like, look at the horizon that she created for herself, you know, early in life and how she pursued it. And they're both right takeaways, I think. Yes, we're just very different. people, Scott. There you go. I have to say that... And her jokes were fantastic. Her jokes were... Her kids' jokes were just fantastic. Her kids' jokes were fantastic. Hands down, best clock joke I've ever heard. Oh, God. I see what you did there. So, yeah, you know, I do have to say that while I was listening to her talk about how she didn't open the mail and didn't open the mail, I'm thinking to myself,

I bet there's a lot of people who can identify with that, not me. I am still like a little kid when the mail comes, I know it's junk and I have to open it. I open it up. I'm like, yep, that's junk, but I can't just let it sit there. How can you let it sit there? What if it's a thing? Plus, somebody sent me mail. I want to see what it is. It's always a thing and it's always a pain in the rear. It's always junk. Yeah. Okay, let's share a win from our Facebook group. Richard posted a little while ago, I want to report a win as one of the Phi late bloomers. I just broke $200,000 in net worth at age 45. And then he said, nowhere else can I humble brag about this.

It took nine years to get from negative 17 to 100K and then just three years to add the second 100K. The momentum builds. There are 334 when I'd screenshot this. People saying, hooray for you, yay. And 47 comments. And Richard, I just want to say, congratulations. this is huge and good job. Yeah, it sounds like there might be a story there for us to share at some point.

Oh, that sounds like there will be a story there. I'll reach out to Richard and see if he wants to come share his story. Okay. And if you would like to join our Facebook group, you can find it at Facebook.com slash groups slash BP money. And it's just a safe place for you to come and talk about money, money struggles, money wins, questions that you might have, struggles that you know you're having in your daily life maybe with kids maybe with you know

whatever facet of your life that you need help with we would love to help you it's just a bunch of finance nerds geeking out about money scott should we get out of here let's do it oh do you accounting puns no i think we are all out of accounting puns me and you figures right from episode 140 of the bigger pockets money podcast he is scott trench i am Mindy Jensen, and we are out of here.