Interview with Tess Wicks: Founder & CEO of Wander Wealthy. Tess Wicks is a Wealth and Mindset Coach and the founder of Wander Wealthy, an educational platform for online coaches and service-based entrepreneurs. Her mission is to bring financial literacy to the self-employed.
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women (& women-identified & non-binary) entrepreneurs, founders, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's why Elle DEA agents see or my personal website. Patricia, Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. [00:01:25][77.9]
[00:01:30] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. This is your host, Patricia. And today I am sitting down with Tess Wicks. Tess is the founder and CEO of Wonder. Well, welcome, Tess. [00:01:40][10.0]
[00:01:41] Thanks for having me. [00:01:42][0.7]
[00:01:42] Thank you for sitting down with us. I'm so excited to actually kind of climb through what your business is and what is it and what it does for everyone listening. A quick roadmap of today's podcast with Tess. We're going to get into Tess's academic background and early professional life. Then we'll launch straight into unpacking wonder wealthy and all of the kind of nuts and bolts within that, the who, what, when, where and why of her company. And then we're going to switch over to goals that Tess has for herself and for Wonder wealthy whether or not those are combined. We will find out for the next three years in regards to scaling and expansion and new business changes and things like that. We'll wrap everything up with talking about advice that Tess has for people who are looking to either get involved and work with her or kind of near her and what she's done with her career thus far. So a quick bio on Tess before I start peppering her with questions, Tess Wicks is a wealth and mindset coach and the founder of Wonder Wealthy and educational platform for online coaches and service based entrepreneurs. Her mission is to bring financial literacy to the self-employed to help them see that with a combination of practical financial systems and magical mindset work, they have the ability to transform their money, stories and ultimate experience. Is when it comes to making money and managing their finances, so this is a really pertinent I think for every single person I've spoken to thus far, both starting out Navis as well as the season entrepreneur test. And I'm really excited to get into Wonder Wealthy. But first, will you drop us straight into your academic background and early professional life following that? [00:03:21][98.7]
[00:03:22] Yeah. So I think it's always funny talking to entrepreneurs and finding out what they like, studied and thought they were going to be some people. No, I had no idea. I never thought I was going to go off and do anything on my own. I went to college to be an actuary, which for those who don't know, because a lot of people don't, an actuary is someone who takes statistics and puts financial problems together and finds out kind of like the probability of things failing, whether that's your car or your house or unfortunately, your life. And so it applies heavily in insurance. I actually went into the consulting world and I worked on helping huge Fortune 500 companies value their pension plans. So we had to identify the probability of when people were going to retire and then figure out from when they were going to retire until when they were going to die and figure out what that would cost the company to pay them in retirement. Probably not the most exciting thing for most people. And it wasn't exactly the most fun thing for me to be doing. I it was a great career, especially when to get started. And I had a lot of opportunity, but it just wasn't taking all of my boxes. So I leapt into the world of entrepreneurship without really having a total plan. But I did it because I just really felt that that was kind of the next step. I knew that if I wanted to create a life for myself, that I could have more flexibility around what that looked like, that I needed to take that step sooner rather than later. So my career in actuarial science lasts about two years. [00:05:12][110.1]
[00:05:13] Interesting. And then after you so you came out of university and things like that, you went into actuary science. And then what was the impetus for kind of launching into your own was a specific did it happen organically? [00:05:26][12.9]
[00:05:27] Was there a moment in your career when you thought, I've got to go off onto my own? And it sounds like there wasn't a subject that you were specifically married to, but rather the lifestyle of having your own gig, being your own boss, being your own entrepreneur. Was there a specific moment of change or did it would come about just with this realization that you needed to kind of work for yourself? [00:05:46][19.2]
[00:05:47] It was definitely a build up of realizing I needed to work for myself. I come from a family. My parents are small business owners and entrepreneurs, which I didn't really think about. They work in construction. So it's a very different gig than what I do now. But they had shown kind of that freedom and flexibility. It was like put in the long hours here, but then you can take vacation otherwise. And they did they didn't have to ask anyone for that permission to do so. So that started building up in me, especially as I was going through school and in my internships and I was working in the very corporate world. And I was like, this is not fun. I can't believe I'm going to have to do this for the rest of my life. And so it built and and luckily I was or maybe unluckily, depending on who's looking at my story, I was surrounded by a bunch of individuals. Well, we met as a collective group. I was involved in this kind of like for young leader, a conference, so to speak. So I did that while I was in college. I went to this conference, learned a lot from these people, kind of started surrounding myself with them when I graduated my roommate at the time that I moved into a place in Chicago with she we met through that conference. And so I just still had these people kind of peppered into my life and it was seeing the freedom that they were creating in their lives while I was coming home, the consulting world, I was coming home at like two in the morning, going to bed, waking up, eating a beefsteak out of the fridge and then going back to work at six and during busy season. But it was like while I was watching my roommate kind of lounge about and have this total freedom of deciding what she wanted to do. That day was very envious of that. So I didn't have the the initial, like, passionate pull out of my corporate job. It was more the passion was more towards build this lifestyle and let's figure out where I can make a difference in this world of being able to create kind of whatever I wanted. [00:08:00][132.6]
[00:08:01] And so how how did that happen? So how what was the road from, you know, kind of deciding, right, I'm going to go out on my own, I'm going to do this entrepreneurial thing to when did you come into kind of this mindset, Coach, and talking about wealth and people's own? [00:08:16][14.9]
[00:08:17] How did you develop your entire process and concept of your business? Yeah. [00:08:22][4.7]
[00:08:23] So before I had left my job, I had started a podcast with my roommate and another friend of ours at the time. And that podcast is still rolling. But I was kind of the behind the scenes girl and I was just dabbling in this world of learning about podcasting. And it's very weird that that was kind of my star and I, I quit podcasting for a while, came back to it. But that's a different story. So I had started that just to learn about this world of like being able to do anything but data and math and an actuarial science. And so then when I left my my corporate gig, I got started with just some independent contract work. And the biggest question I had when taking that leap was like, can I do anything other than what I was specifically, you know, brought up in the educational system to do? And, you know, our educational system puts a lot of weight on getting that specific degree and then going and being able to apply it and produce your salary. And so I had a lot of limitations and limiting beliefs around my other capabilities. So I got a contract gig with working with a new startup in content marketing. And I was like, I think I might be able to write, so I'll just apply. And I tried to just be as creative as possible and and got the opportunity to work with the founder of the company. And she has since grown into a multi-million dollar company. When we were first working together was just her and I and the new graphic designer that we were bringing on. And that was a really good opportunity for me to see that I could do other things. And in a lot of ways, I learned while getting paid how to create content, how to do content marketing, how to build a brand and an online business. And from there, I really started, you know, figuring out how do I want to kind of make my own name and place in this world. And I had to come to a point where I no longer not that I didn't want to be involved in the podcast I was already involved with, but there wasn't really a place for me. It was really easy to run that without me. And I was like, I want to be my own podcast host. So I started a podcast on working with women in personal finance. And the way that I got there was just thinking back to my own educational experience and how much of a minority I really felt and how I felt. You know, in my finance classes, I was one of four women out of twenty 50 people at some times, and I felt like all the guys had such confidence and ego and like they figured it all out. And if I had to ask a question, like for some reason I was going to be the dumbest question ever. Right. So I just had a lot of a lack of confidence around my own knowledge and understanding of the world of finance. And that was the corporate kind of corporate applied finance. And then we get into the world of personal finance, where luckily I was surrounded by a lot of fellow nerds, where we would talk about personal finance stuff because that was fun for us. But I knew that my peers, who I had gone to school with, who didn't get that exposure to even just the words and the terms we would be talking about, but also probably didn't have the super nerdy actuary friends that I had. And we'd be talking about all this, how to maximize your Roth IRA or optimize your savings strategy. There's not that conversation there. So I wanted to create a conversation for women to start being an open book about personal finance specifically. And then. Throughout the years of running the company, it really turned into helping self-employed women because there's a significant lack of resources and literacy for those who are self-employed and even just less less support in terms of going from having potentially some sort of benefits to no benefits at all and having to take care of all of it. [00:12:36][253.7]
[00:12:36] So, yeah, I think there's a total lack of blueprint. Absolutely. And even people who do touch on it do it in kind of this meandering way because it is such a diversified population that you're kind of ascribing techniques to. [00:12:48][12.0]
[00:12:49] And I think it's interesting. [00:12:50][0.5]
[00:12:50] It sounds like Wonder Wealthy was kind of born out of a podcast that was born out of another podcast, this concept that you're advising women on wealth management and then that population that you kind of advise towards starts to just boil down. It sounds like a very organic process as to how to come upon the constituents of your company, what the pillars therein are going to be. [00:13:12][21.8]
[00:13:13] I'm wondering, do you feel like you're some of your actuary? Obviously, there was some crossover between talking about entrepreneurial wealth management and things of that nature. But do you feel like the actuaries statistical background gave you kind of a brevity as to how you wanted to go in? And do you use any of those principles? I myself am very novice when it comes to understanding at the actuarial sciences, though I do know a great deal about statistics. And so I think that I can picture there being a couple of really core products. [00:13:48][35.1]
[00:13:49] But do you feel like that offered some of the uniqueness behind Wonder Wealthy? Do you feel like some of your background brought a different perspective than those who are speaking about wealth management with entrepreneurs? [00:14:02][13.1]
[00:14:05] That's a good question. I have never really thought about that before, I think I definitely consider all of the different options. [00:14:14][9.7]
[00:14:15] And as an actuary, you're really trained to look at every different option. Basically, look at every way that something could go wrong, which is very helpful because you're managing risk. And that is very helpful in being an entrepreneur because all you're doing is taking risk. But it can also hurt you from a mindset perspective when you are thinking about like what could go wrong all the time, that can be very harmful. So there's a definitely a balance to be had. But when it comes to me working with my clients and providing them the services that I do provide, I can really kind of paint a full picture and have them be thinking about all the different opportunities and angles to take whatever it is that they're considering in terms of an investment or something of that nature. [00:15:03][48.0]
[00:15:04] Absolutely. I think it's also a personality specific as to who and how people look at risk. I know people can be excited by it or depressed or scared. [00:15:12][7.9]
[00:15:12] Let's unpack it. Let's get into Wunder Wealthy. So when was it founded? [00:15:16][3.3]
[00:15:16] Did you have a co-founder when you started? Did you take any seed money? Did you bootstrap what was the beginning? Was the birth of wonder wealthy? [00:15:23][7.0]
[00:15:25] So wonderful. He was founded in twenty sixteen under a different name, basically as a podcast, and it was really just meant to build content and then see what I could create from that. Did not have a co-founder, did not take any investments. I really just built it from as lean as possible as I could. I built it up from there. So yeah that, I mean that's, that's it. [00:15:53][28.1]
[00:15:53] That's the starting point. [00:15:54][0.7]
[00:15:54] Yeah, it's cool. And that's I think it's a genius way to go. I haven't heard a lot of entrepreneurs talk about it and I myself started my podcast after I had built and launched several businesses. [00:16:05][11.4]
[00:16:06] So I did things very backwards. But it's a great platform. I think that with all the social media tools and things like that, people aren't usually talking about podcasting as much and that the venue and then now you have Vodcast that you can kind of throw the podcasting video format on YouTube. But I think that in generating honest and earnest material and content, it's crucial and hence what we're doing right now. But so when you how did you start to develop your clientele? Was it based out of audience members from this original two thousand sixteen podcast? And when did you finally, like launch Wonder Wealthy Proper? So it started in twenty sixteen. But when did the name come in to be and this kind of formation of a service business out of that podcast. [00:16:50][43.9]
[00:16:52] Yeah, I started taking on clients probably about a year after I had launched the podcast. It was a lot of me growing and developing in the content formats first and even getting kind of the the confidence behind my ability to coach and work with others. And there a lot of, I guess, specificity that when you become a coach, you want to identify who you're specifically going to work with and what the container is that you will be working with people. I am not a financial planner. I'm not an investment advisor. And so I am very different than what a lot of people might think of and go to when they're when they're looking for financial help, whether it's on the personal side or the business side. But where I really do play a role is helping others, helping my clients see what sort of benefits they could get from the decisions that they make in their lives and helping them even identify. I think where a lot of planners or advisors might fall short is helping people in the day to day when it comes to the inflows and outflows of their finances and identifying where their opportunities are to increase their savings or increase their investments or increase their their journey to being debt free someday. And so kind of the biggest hurdle for me was going, is it OK for me to put myself out there working with women on money without having these specific credentials, being a CFP? Right. Or taking the investment exams. And there was something very specific that I found that I wanted to be kind of nonbiased and really just help and and lead with education and then help hold the space for the women to come into their own their own kind of identity of what a good, solid strategy is for them. So that developed as I said, it kind of took a year for me to really get my grips around that and feel confident in my own ability to show up and say, hey, I can help you. And I started having clients trickle in from the podcast. Some came from social media. I've had a lot come from my appearance on other people's podcast. And I find that podcasting, as you had said, is such a great medium to go on. And I find that the best clients and the people who are willing to take this whole process of working, whether it's mindset or building a business or working on their personal finances, the ones who are willing to take that seriously come from the podcast because they're dedicated listeners. And I don't know, it's a certain personality of people who listen to podcasts, and I just adore them. [00:19:46][174.6]
[00:19:47] Yeah, absolutely. And I think you're right. I do as well. I think it's it it's an earnest interest. And like you said, the audience is is usually there to garner the information. [00:19:58][10.8]
[00:19:58] There's there's no flub around some other extracurricular intention, I suppose. [00:20:05][6.5]
[00:20:06] So I'm interested in finding out. Do you feel like you have a very like a specific industry of entrepreneur better that you work with? [00:20:14][8.3]
[00:20:15] Or do you feel like you're the tenants of your company can kind of apply to any entrepreneur? I mean, it sounds like a lot of your staples are based around. Identifying individually with each client, but do you think that there's industries that you work better with? [00:20:29][14.2]
[00:20:30] Yeah, every single client, it's very personalized, but I work primarily with the online service based entrepreneurs. So fellow online coaches, content marketers and people who are really providing a service and can mostly do their business online, usually because I do my business online and I'm actually usually operating from halfway across the world from them. So that's always better for me. [00:20:56][26.0]
[00:20:57] Absolutely. And really quickly, the year I have your website as wunder wealthy dot com. Is that still current one to get that one out there in case anyone want to reach out? We'll say it again at the end of the episode as well. [00:21:11][13.9]
[00:21:12] OK, so can you tell me a little bit about the ethos of the company? I mean, it sounds like we talked about how it organically grew and things of that nature. [00:21:19][7.8]
[00:21:20] But the other other main goals that you set up with your new clients, like is there is there like a bare bones skeleton or roadmap that you kind of put everyone into to kind of move it into this projection of where you want them headed? [00:21:35][15.4]
[00:21:37] Yes, in a way, everyone everyone has different needs and is starting from a different place, but kind of the the ideal for me is to help women and I guess you could look at it from two different angles. But it is very holistic from a mindset side. It's helping them feel confident in their own ability to manage their finances, whether it's in their business or in their personal life. And the reason why I talk a lot about personal finances is because when you're running a business so often, your business and your personal finances just bleed into each other. Or they you might even think about them as one, even though they should be separated. But you might even know it's just money. At the end of the day, it's all generalized as money. And so when one feels bad, the other one, it can affect the other. But from a mindset perspective, I find that a lot of us are having the conversations and we don't have there's not many female financial role models in the world like so many billionaire men are there. And especially when you think of like financials. So I can think of like Warren Buffett and those who are doing investing stuff and doing the big banking and and very finance specific. And you have we have like maybe one female, the founder of LLC or. Well, and then there's Suze Orman and there's that as well. But, you know, when you think of, like playing big, there's there's not a lot when you when you measure up the men and the women. And in a lot of ways, we want people to look up to who are like us so that we can see ourselves in their shoes and we can see that path forward for us. And so even just starting as small as we can, you know, I can be a role model. You can be a role model, but then building up my clients to be that role model as well. And so it's getting them from on our first call being like I have never talked to anyone about this stuff. I and in a lot of ways, I have to say, hey, I understand this is not always the most comfortable topic to talk about. And I can assure you, in no way am I thinking you're doing this bad or are you doing this wrong. I just want to start with coming to the table with what's going on, because this is probably the first time you've ever done that. So taking them from that to really feeling confident and empowered with their finances so they know exactly how to grow. And then when we get into the more the practical stuff, it's taking them from, you know, maybe having nothing to show for the work that they've done within their business or outside of their business at the end of the year to being like one of my clients just texted me like two days ago and was like, my net worth is up twenty five thousand dollars. And we started working together in March. So it hasn't even been a full year. And she's just been able to do so much work just by identifying and looking at the full picture and making some lifestyle changes or some, you know, different, taking a different approach to how she looks at her money and manages her money. And so it's having, you know, going from I have nothing to show for it at the end of the year. I don't know what happens to I have I can now say what's been happening with my money. I now see that money increasing. And for some people, it's finally paying off their debt. For others, it's finally being able to call themselves an investor. And for others, it's, you know, finally having a five figure months or not even having to work for the rest of the year because they're making they've already made enough to date so they could technically take the rest of the year off anything like that. I want them to get into kind of a more positive getting excited and feeling really empowered about their money. [00:25:38][240.6]
[00:25:39] Yeah, I mean, so a lot of what I'm hearing is like some of the like the the clarity and the transparency that it sounds like with this reintroduction and education to the financial systems that your clients have. And then you also talk about like this magical mindset concept. Can you elaborate a little bit about what you mean with that? I mean, I realize that there's some kind of like a thought process that you introduce to people, but it sounds like you have a very clear idea of what area and how you want them to be approaching their business. [00:26:14][35.0]
[00:26:15] Yeah, so a lot of us are programed to think about money as a form of survival. And when we think about money as like our means of survival, we can often get into scarcity and fight or flight mode. And we basically go into this very focused. Just tense, not really open to new ideas and new opportunities. I basically like scenario in our lives when we start thinking about money, so every time money gets brought up, we just go into fight or flight. And what happens there is that, you know, we can short circuit, we can make bad decisions. We a lot of people, if they are having trouble with money or they feel like they have problems with money, a lot of times it's because we have this deep mindset, rooted mindset, connection to money being this kind of scarce thing that we need to survive. And so we are clutched tight to it, or for some reason, we we get rid of it as fast as we can. And there's a lot behind that. It has a lot to do with kind of how your parents or even your parents, parents and generations beyond that operated around money, whatever they thought about money, how they judged others who had money, how they judge people who didn't have money, how they judge people who work or who don't work. And all of that trickles down to us. And we develop these beliefs very early on. And then they stay in our subconscious mind for ever until we kind of start thinking like, oh, what if I thought it was OK to make a lot of money and not work all the time, you know, would that be would my dad be like, that's a terrible thing. You're you're not allowed to be in our family? Probably not. But our subconscious mind, a lot of times things that. So then we'll go like, OK, well, I'll just work 80 more hours this week and may make up for it. So there's a lot of things that happen like that and it's programed in us. And what it can do is it can cause us to kind of in a way, sabotage our own success. And so the way that we think about money is the basis to our own ability to have a really nice relationship with money to get from the point of I have nothing left at the end of the year and like, here's all the things I'm going to blame for a bout with or the situation to. I am in full control. And it comes from not only having the systems in place, because I'm sure we've all tried a great budgeting system or the best bookkeeping system, and it still doesn't work for us. And a lot of times it's because we're not willing to make that work for us. So I always say, like, you can hire the best coach, you can have the best tools or platforms at your service. But if you can't show up for yourself and you can't bring yourself to the table with that appropriate mindset, in a lot of ways, we'll just figure out how to sabotage that. So a lot of it does start with the mindset and there's a lot of work we can do. And I call it magic because it's just working on a lot of the kind of like high flying, airy fairy stuff, which for a lot of people, they kind of go, I don't want to talk about that. I can't. Well, that's me. At least some people love it. Others people like me who come from a very statistical analytical background are like that makes literally no sense. You're talking about angels and fairies. And so for me, a lot of my work and a lot of teaching and educating I do with my clients is also understanding how the brain works, how we've been programed with these beliefs and how we can start identifying in our adult lives. Where we're picking from our childhood and how maybe our parents or our the town that we grew up in has influenced the way that we work and that we how we make and manage and spend and invest and save money. [00:30:16][241.0]
[00:30:17] Absolutely. And I think that that's true. I think there are a lot of models to or at least I'm seeing more. I don't think there are a lot yet. [00:30:23][6.0]
[00:30:23] But I always talk about this like decapitation that's happened with so many business models, be it from financiers all the way up to mental health, all the way through business strategy and marketing in a business. And it's these disjointed efforts, these beautiful campaigns that live in a vacuum. [00:30:41][17.7]
[00:30:42] This this concept that all the parts don't actually have to communicate with each other is, I think, where a lot of the disconnect happens. You have these really successful people that could be even more successful or people who haven't quite gotten their break yet, that it's because of the disjointedness frequently. I don't think it's that you're just completely lacking one piece, but you're not allowing the pieces to have to communicate with each other or you're not acknowledging that they do at the end of the day. And so what you're talking about is communication of getting into you know, it's a great deal of the human psyche. In addition to looking at your bottom line statistically and what you're going to do and how you're going to contribute to your five twenty nine, whatever your kids five that year. So, yeah, I mean, I think that that and that kind of whole inclusive city is what really is starting to separate for at least me and the women that I'm talking to for the past 16 months. Plus, it's separating people who have actually explored those areas and worked with people or themselves alone and kind of acknowledged all of the different facets of what goes into being an entrepreneur is what separating the titans from the people that are still struggling. So I think the concept is truly on point, and I think there's a lot of different ways to get there. And it sounds like you've you've tapped into something that is is really working for you and your clients. I'm wondering because you you've had this early success and it's been born out of this great deal of expertize from the podcast and things like that, looking forward for like the next three years. Do you yourself practice some of the things that you implement with your clients? Are you looking at growth and change within your company? Like what if if you could sit down and just say you're most idealistic? Three three goals, three goals for the next three years for your business, for wonder wealthy or for yourself personally, what would they be? [00:32:38][115.8]
[00:32:39] Yeah, that's a great question I have, but very recently, I really felt like, OK, this is it. And so I feel really good about having that finally having a grasp on, what, like three years into the future looks like because I feel like for a lot of entrepreneurs, it's like, I don't know, three months from now, I don't know. It could change at any minute. So something that I'm really hoping to lean into more while continuing working with some of my individual self-employed clients, I want to start working on certification of money, mind set training. I've been going through a certification that's very much more holistic and I find there's a distinct need for mindset. So my my certification is around kind of mindset and how the mind works, but I just didn't need on how to take that and apply it specifically to money. And there is a world of of so many wonderful evolving online coaches out there, a lot of money coaches. But also, you know, this could apply to any type of a lot of business coaches, life coaches. I mean, all of those main three areas trickle back to money. Money plays a role in all three areas for for those people. And so I find if I can take, you know, what I've been developing and how I've been using it with my clients and take that and package it in an educational form to help certify other coaches, I can thus make an impact on more people as well. And so we can just continue to kind of spread that and grow that in a way that is very natural and organic. So that's kind of my definitely three year plan, I would say, if I can get that done and in even less than three years, I'd be pretty happy about that. So that's one thing is to build out that certification and be able to train coaches in that. And then other than that, on a personal level, this is kind of personal and business blended. I would love to hire my fiancee slash husband. We are very in a complicated life situation right now. We are legally married, but haven't done the wedding because I live in Italy. So it was for immigration purposes mainly he is Italian, but with that I would love to hire him so that we could. Who hosts these certifications together and actually do it from where he is originally from at least once, maybe twice a year, which is this beautiful place in the very southern part of a region that is the heel of the boot, the backside of the boot of Italy called Salento. It's very untapped, but super peaceful and a wonderful place to visit in Italy. Not a lot of people go there. So I'd love to do that. And then we would also like to be able to split our time kind of 50 50 between maybe there or at least Italy as a proper country and the US. So. [00:35:41][182.6]
[00:35:42] So are you currently based out of Italy? Are you based out of the US? [00:35:44][2.5]
[00:35:46] I am currently in a little bit of limbo. I would say spend more time in Italy, but I'm just going through the residency process, so it's complicated. Gotcha. [00:35:55][9.8]
[00:35:56] Yeah, of course, as always, is even more so these days. [00:35:58][2.5]
[00:35:59] I've dealt with them self, hence the need for an online business and working with fellow online business owners. [00:36:05][5.8]
[00:36:05] Absolutely. Well, and you're going to have the international thing pretty fast because you're already there. And there's a lot of there's a lot of interesting strategy that happens when you really consider even I find a lot of people that work solely remotely unless they are actually living remotely and their business is coming from other parts of the world, they don't necessarily always behave like it. [00:36:26][20.9]
[00:36:26] There's a lot of flexibility that isn't really tapped into with a lot of and this goes back to kind of what you and I were talking about earlier with this this earlier mindset, this psychological makeup that we all have, that we came up with parents, that most of them went to an office. My father was a writer and his office was frequently in our house. But he went to that office. You know, there was a concept still from I'm sure from his father that that's kind of what you did. And I think that changing that it happens more slowly if you're not forced to. So having this international standpoint is going to, I think, probably change your business structure. It wouldn't. It wouldn't. [00:37:04][37.5]
[00:37:05] It already has. It's it's been actually that was one of my bigger struggles, was like going from working 60 to 80 hour weeks to oh, now I can set my schedule and I have that flexibility. And that can be really, really well, depending on, I guess, your personality. But for me, it was really difficult to not feel guilty about not working a normal schedule. And I think maybe because I wanted that break so bad. And then I had lived in Chicago for a handful of years before moving to Italy. But the move actually at the beginning, I really limited myself into what my business could become because I was like, well, I'm going to move and then it's just not going to be possible. And that was a really limiting place to come from. And I had to switch that right away and just kind of go, well, just see what you see if it's not possible and if it's not possible, then I'll turn people away. But until it gets to that point, I'm going to embrace it. And and I did that. And now even more, I found this wonderful flexibility of, you know, right now it's quarter to nine p.m., which luckily for me in Italy, it's not even dinnertime yet. So don't worry about that. But I know that if I have calls that are going later into the evening, then I'll start work later. And yeah, we do have a very specific program that is ingrained in us from childhood around what work has to look like and what work means and what you really are deserving for, for the work that you do. And that's something that I've personally one of the bigger things I've had to overcome and work through, because, you know, my parents came from construction where you're doing hard labor many hours of the day in the boiling sun, and that's what work should look like. So I really had to work on breaking that because I still hear my dad in my ear like, oh, what do you even do? Just like hang out at coffee shops and twiddle your thumbs, like shareable. [00:39:06][121.1]
[00:39:07] You go on and destruction works with the sun to a lot of the time. Right. So that even that alone you working at nine pm is antithetical to a lot of that. [00:39:15][8.1]
[00:39:16] So I'm wondering if you ran into a young woman or non binary individual, female identified person, anyone other than a white male. [00:39:24][7.4]
[00:39:24] Tomorrow they walked up to you and said, listen, I just finished I just talked to a mutual friend of ours. I just got my degree. And actually a science a couple of years ago, I worked for a company. It's not for me. I'm going to go out on my own. I'm going to deal with wealth management and mindset coaching and things like that. I'm going to start my own thing. One of the three pieces of advice that you would give that individual right now. [00:39:48][23.8]
[00:39:49] Who? [00:39:49][0.0]
[00:39:50] OK, the first one is to whatever you're thinking about doing, don't overcomplicate it and just start even if you think like this doesn't look good or this isn't going to be the best because you are everyone cringes at their first attempt. So you just have to get that done with and get it over with and move past it. And the sooner you can start and this is something this could go into. I guess my second piece of advice is any investment you're going to make, whether it's in the stock market or you're thinking about hiring that coach or you're thinking about leaving your job and going out on your own and building something, the best time to do it is as soon as possible. The best time is probably like three years ago and now is actually the best time because you can't go back in time. I say that while also saying make sure you're being smart about your financial situation if you are leaving a job. But if you are kind of you've reached that point and now you're just waiting for the right time to come. Just do it as fast as you can, because the biggest asset you have in your life, the biggest asset everyone has in their life, is the time they have left. And that is always shrinking. Not to be an actuary and talk about mortality here, but it's always shrinking. So do whatever investment you have been thinking about making. It's always the best time to just do it now, especially if you have that kind of long term length of time in front of you. You'll always be able to learn and kind of get back and recoup whatever losses you might incur on the way there. And then the third thing is to just join this with the work that I really do with a lot of my clients. The one thing that I would probably say is a lot of people and I see a lot of these mistakes in the in the world where people are trying to go out and start their business and they think, I just want to make, you know, five thousand dollars a month or I just want to replace my salary from what I was doing before, or I just want to make six figures a year. And I call these vanity numbers vanity revenue goals because they often don't have any purpose built into them. And so what I actually have my clients do is that they're purpose driven revenue goals. So they have a good goal to aim for so they can start planning what their business is going to look like, how it's all going to break down. But also know that they're taking care of paying themselves, which a lot of people don't do, especially women taking profit from their business or having profit in their business, paying and saving for and then paying their taxes and obviously having money to run the business, which in some cases, unfortunately, we need to put our business on a budget. You'd have to call it a budget if you don't want to. But we have to give put some boundaries in place for our business. So I have a free download that I can offer to your audience that helps them set their own purpose driven revenue goals. But that's one thing that it's like get a number that is meaningful to you that you also know is going to take care of the things that you need to take care of, because so many of us just kind of think, oh, you know, five K is going to do it or my previous salary is going to do it. And so, so often it just falls short. Or maybe it's entirely, way more than what you really need. Right. [00:43:23][212.6]
[00:43:23] Just getting a real number on that. I think that's something that even the most sage of us sometimes lose sight of. I agree with that. And there's very practical ways. So we have to come up with a number like that. [00:43:34][11.1]
[00:43:35] And I yeah, we'll definitely put people in touch with that free download. So your three pieces are whatever you want to do. Don't overcomplicate it. No. Two, the best time to do it is now the biggest asset you have as time left and then set purpose, revenue driven goals. [00:43:55][20.1]
[00:43:56] Those are three really crucial pieces of advice. I like that a lot and I think that they're very different from anything else I've I've spoken with. We are out of time. But I wanted to say thank you so much, Tess, for meeting with us today. And if someone wants to contact you regarding the work that you're doing or to work with you or to get advice from you, they can do so via your website. You wonder wealthy dotcom and then you have any other ways or do you have the podcast fill up that you want to mention right now? [00:44:25][28.5]
[00:44:25] Yeah, my podcast is at Wonderwall, the podcast Dotcom, and they can also I my favorite platform to hang out on is Instagram. So I'm at test underscore WX. Nice. [00:44:38][12.2]
[00:44:39] Yeah, Instagram, it's so interesting, I was just talking with someone the other day, I mean, one of the things that kind of I always find myself to be a very creative thinker. And, you know, I have four friends that are really advanced in their careers, find their next job position on Instagram, which it just always I was always so baffled by that. But it's become just this really cool platform, I think, not just for that and Snapchat. I think those tours are an interesting and of course, YouTube for the micro influencers. This is getting into a whole nother area. [00:45:10][31.1]
[00:45:11] Thank you so much for meeting with me today. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your beautiful Italian evening. [00:45:17][5.1]
[00:45:18] Thank you so much. Patricia is good to meet you. [00:45:20][1.9]
[00:45:20] Absolutely. You as well. Everyone listening. Thank you so much for giving me your time for the past forty five minutes. [00:45:25][5.5]
[00:45:26] And until we speak again, remember to always bet on yourself. Slainte. [00:45:26][0.0]
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