Episode 72: Women Doing Business with Stephanie Wankel and Kristen Beatty

Michelle: Welcome to the “InFLOW” podcast, I’m your host, Michelle Bosch. I am super excited to have with me today Stephanie Wankel and Kristen Beatty. They are the co-host of the weekly podcast “Frenzied to Financial Freedom.” I had the great pleasure of being on this podcast actually a few weeks back. And it was such a wonderful experience, you know, talking about money, talking about side hustles, businesses, and everything that comes with that when you are a woman which, you know, requires a little bit of more ball juggling than normally, you know, typically for our guy would entail. And so, I definitely wanted to bring them to, you know, talk about their experiences, their background, how they met, and what they’re doing to create recurring passive income, you know, in their lives. Because, you know, at the end of the day, there’s so many ways to get to that, real estate is only one possible vehicle. So, welcome Kristen, welcome Stephanie. I’m excited to have you ladies here.

Stephanie: Oh, thank you.

Kristen: Thank you for having us. We’re thrilled.

Michelle: Thank you so much for being here. So, I am actually very, very curious like I told you right before we hit record in learning, how did you ladies meet? You know, I know that. Stephanie, you are more the real estate investor, you know, you’re passionate about real estate investing. And Kristen loves to start businesses, you’re like a serial entrepreneur, you love, you know, marketing, you know, you consult in marketing and event management, network marketing. So, how did you ladies meet and how did the podcast come about?

Kristen: I love this story, because really, yeah, really we are lifelong friends. I mean, we’re at the point in the age of our lives. We met at my very first job out of college. So, we both worked for the Yellow Pages, which I always wonder if millennials or young people even know what the Yellow Pages are. But we were both in a marketing and a creative capacity together. And honestly, we didn’t spend a lot of time together back then. But we knew each other, we were in some of the same circles and had good friends and then lost touch. But as luck would have it, Facebook brings everyone together. And I was interested in real estate investing and saw all the cool things that Stephanie was posting on her New Heights page and I said, “We got to get together for lunch so I can learn more about what this is because I really wanna do it.” And I feel like that was two years ago, maybe, Stephanie now.

Stephanie: Yeah, completely.

Kristen: Not that long. And then this partnership was born because we’re just really like-minded but we also complement each other in a lot of things that we do. And when we start having conversations about what Stephanie wanted to accomplish with her podcast and not being like, “every other real estate investment podcast” out there, it seemed like a good match. So, really, it’s been years in the making.

Michelle: Wonderful. So then, Stephanie, so you got Kristen hooked on real estate. So, tell me what is your area of focus? Where do you see the biggest opportunity right now?

Stephanie: Sure. So, I’ve been a real estate investor for over 10 years. And I started with buy and hold rental houses. I was the landlord. I mean, it’s a very…long story short, I had just gotten divorced. I had young children, five and eight, and the 2008 recession came and so a opportunity to buy some rental houses came to me, and I’m like, yeah, you know, I just split half my assets. I am solely taking care of my children, I’m a single mom, I should definitely buy rental houses and I should definitely landlord them. So, crazy. I basically took on a second job and just built a portfolio over the years. The last several years I’ve been focused on moving, I still have my portfolio but moving also into multifamily syndications. So, there I focus on… I started with passive investing in multifamily. And then I’m also a general partner in several multifamily deals, and I also help other investors invest in opportunities. And so, that’s how Kristen and I connected, she was interested in becoming an investor but, like so many other people, not really wanting to fix toilets or deal with tenants.

And so, this half of the best thing [inaudible 00:04:51] that I had been talking about on my Facebook was interesting to her. So, we connected on that and then I just remembered immediately, oh my gosh, Kristen is fun, energetic, the kindest person I know. And I was like, “Okay, I need her. We need to do this podcast together, and how can we broaden it?” And, you know, like you mentioned, she brings so many interesting things to the table that really all falls under freedom, passive income, freedom with financials, but also freedom with time and side hustles. And so, together, we kind of broaden the focus, and we have a lot of real estate investors on because that’s one way that you can give yourself financial and time freedom, but like you mentioned, there’s other ways also. So, that’s kind of what I’m focused on.

Michelle: That makes sense. So then, Kristen, so now you’ve become a passive investor in some of the syndications and…

Kristen: I have.

Michelle: …how has that been because, you know, so many, you know, women sometimes perhaps, you know, if you’re busy in a corporate job. And you’re, you know, busy professional or even if you’re not a professional heck, you’ve been a mom and you’ve been out of commission for some time, but you wanna start, you know, putting your toes and having your toes in the water. And, you know, investing passively in a syndication is a very good way to start, you know, educating yourself. So, how has it been from that perspective? What were some of the things that for example, that were the biggest hurdles, either mentally or risks that you perceive that, you know, now two years into it and working with Stephanie and, you know, probably other syndications you’ve overcome now? And you’ve come like, “Oh, okay, I get it full circle this, you know, this is how it looks now being on the other side,” you know what I mean? But when you were first initially going to her and, you know, you had lunch with her and she kind of like, you know, dropped it on you. What were some of your hesitations?

Kristen: Yeah, all great questions. I think just like a lot of things in pursuing time freedom, I am an outsourcer. And I believe in it wholeheartedly that we can’t be experts in everything and where that’s why I love Stephanie so much because she’s the smarts and she does all the work. And I’m the passive investor and I trust what she will help me manage. While she educates me along the way, and I’m learning things, I have trusted where my money is going. And I’ve seen her level of success. And so, that gives me confidence to be able to do it. Just like with my financial planner and the things I do in the stock market, I have a financial person who I outsource everything to and I give them, you know, my trust and we consult about the dollar amounts that are available and what we can put out where we can put our money. So, for me, I know enough to be dangerous and I trust in the people that I partner with in investing. And so, I think the hurdle it wasn’t hard for me because I had Stephanie who I immensely trusted.

Michelle: You’ve known her all your…

Kristen: Yeah, my adult life, really. But she’s also educated me in the other options and the other opportunities out there. And so, I’ve recently invested in a fund that is a, you know, conglomerate of real estate properties. And just to try that out, and we both are, you know, sort of watching how that looks and what the interaction is with that investment team. So, it’s been fun for us to do it together because I feel like I have someone by my side and I think that’s so important, especially for women today to find someone that you trust to invest with because that will get you over a lot of the pain points. And, you know, over the two years too, I think the other question you were asking me is, what were the hurdles were having a bucket of money to be able to put forward. And so, I’ve been working on that as well to make sure that I feel like I’m liquid enough in certain spots, that I have enough money to invest comfortably for me from my comfort level to get there. So, that has been part of our journey together too.

Michelle: Yeah, that is fantastic, it makes complete sense. Now, Stephanie, from the point of view of, you know, the types of properties that you are investing in right now, and, you know, going into the fact that, you know, we are where we are. It’s June 1st of 2020, we’ve had a pandemic, you know, as a backdrop. We have the situation of, you know, a stock market, you know, that has crashed, we’re in a recessionary environment, what opportunities and what will be your focus right now in 2020 and around in timeline? Like, for example, for us, we look at, you know, Q4 Q1 of 2021 probably to go out there and look at bargains and I’m looking at 100 plus units, or are you seeing opportunities in, you know, smaller units or like what does your portfolio look like right now? And where do you see that portfolio coming?

Stephanie: So, obviously, I had been thinking about this prior but yeah, when a pandemic comes, you immediately shift from kind of like business as usual to, “Oh, wow, I’m maybe not gonna get rents in, I maybe, you know.” I have investors that are invested in syndications that are…some aren’t doing distributions like, so huge things that I hadn’t thought about that I kind of had to rejigger and re-caliber. On the multifamily side, I focus on value add Class B property. So, very conservative, all about capital preservation. And so, the underwriting is such that they’re stable, and they’re filled with tenants. And the idea is to make improvements, like, improve the units and increase the value. I’m sure you know all about that. So…

Michelle: Yeah we do very similar. Yeah. Mostly Bs but some Cs and B neighborhoods, you know, that we can do minor tweaks, not total repositioning because we do agency debt. And with that, you have the requirements of a specific threshold of occupancy, you know, when you’re purchasing. So, for us, we’ve never gone like where the places you know, 30% vacant…or occupied and you have to completely reposition, you start from scratch. So, that’s not our game either, that’s…

Stephanie: A little scarier to me. But then when something like this happens, what we’ve done, and it’s very much based on the property, on the market and the demographics of those tenants. But what we’ve done is a lot of analysis around kind of the State of the Union in that are in that asset and then make decisions like you could pause renovations, right? You’ve got tenants in units, we don’t have to add all the value right now. So, that’s an expense you can stop, you know, working…we’ve done a lot of working with tenants on what is your situation and helping educate them. Like, you could go unemployment and here and here. And so, honestly, right now, like I’m in that mode, like, okay, you know, with April went pretty well, May went pretty well, but job, unemployment is still going up. Like, I don’t feel like I’m out of the woods yet. And so, still working through the economic impacts of this pandemic, and what does that gonna mean.

I for sure agree with you, there are going to be bargains and I’m getting pretty aggressive around what area do I wanna focus in. I’m heavily invested in the Dallas Fort Worth area and I’d really like to diversify and market and really wanna jump into like the Tampa Florida area and I don’t know about it as much. I know some, but I don’t have a lot there. So, I’m, you know, considering starting with, you know, my research, spending the time getting stuff done, meeting partners, and probably venturing into another market because I do think there will be opportunities.

Michelle: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it’s very, very comparable, you know, to what we’re seeing on eye. And, you know, we, I think we were a little bit strategic from the point of view of that, you know, the three properties that we hold, two of those are in an area where I called a cones of prosperity, artificial cones of prosperity. Because there’s a big government agency of some sort, 90 units in North Carolina and we’re just a few miles from Fort Bragg, which means that my tenant base is mainly military or retired military, but I do have some workforce, you know, housing type of, you know, tenant base as well there, but it’s minimal. And I am, you know, we are at 90 to 96% collection rates, which are normal for those properties. Oklahoma City, the same, you know, about 90%,147 units that we have there, and very close to Tinker Air Force Base. So, again, the same kind of, you know, tenant base, which has been a little bit of…it has, you know, we really haven’t seen a harsh, you know, drops in there for payments of rents.

But that also means that, you know, people could have been using their stimulus checks because we’ve been, you know, firm in that if you are able to pay and you have not been affected by COVID that I expect you to pay rent, you know what I mean? And that if you do have problems, please do not hide from us, you know, let us know so we can give you the proper assistance, you know, or sending to the proper agencies that can help you and assist you so that, you know, we can see the collection rates that we are seeing. But, you know, this more than likely will extend for quite a bit of time. And then there is that percentage of workforce that could lose their jobs, and if the, you know, stimulus checks stop coming, will they be making payments? All of these considerations, but at the end of the day, I think if you from the get-go we’re very well capitalized and know that you can, you know, hold and you know what your worst-case scenarios are and how to stress test those properties.

You know, that still, you know, even, you know, the investors that are right now with us, probably like the ones that are with you, that they’ll be interested because if we can operate under these environments and still, you know, have the collection rights that we have right now. You know, and that’s it because the purchase of the asset is not a big deal, the fundraising is not a big deal. It’s now that you own it, how can you optimize it and be a great steward of other people’s money and, you know, no matter what’s happening in the economy, that’s the real test, you know what I mean?

Stephanie: It tests how, what the story, which is the truth, the story of why we so strongly believe that these are great investments and why we tell other people, right? The whole story around why they are more recession resistance and conservative. And now we just need, like, and that we also purchase based on fundamentals which are market-specific. The things you just talked about as far as the demographic whether it be military or a diverse employment, you know, all of those things for why we pick neighborhoods and assets and how we do our underwriting. Doing all those stress tests are super important because you’re gonna find out if you can go down to like 60% vacancy, and you’re usually at 90, then you’ve got some room. And also fundamentals around having funds, having reserves. That’s critical in being able to weather these kinds of situations. So…

Kristen: Yeah, and I do wanna go back to one other thing that you said because it’s so important is the compassion piece of the whole thing is that you are reaching out to your tenants and you’re giving them permission, or at least trying to communicate with them and give them opportunities to work together in this situation. I think that goes with your whole flow philosophy and I don’t want that to get lost. Yeah, because I think especially we talk about men versus women, and I know you’re in partnership with your husband. But I think there’s such an important part about us being in business because those are the things that we prioritize not just manage or deal with.

Michelle: Yeah, you can’t just, you know, kick someone out because it’s not financially feasible if they’re sick. You know what I mean? It’s like, plus, you know, you can’t anyways right now. Even if you did wanna evict, you cannot evict, you know what I mean? Especially if someone is sick or they’ve been affected, you know, how can we work with that person to, you know, have them, you know, catch up in small payments and break things up and make sure. Especially if they’ve been, you know, tenants there for forever and, you know, they’ve been good and I don’t see any reason why that, yeah, absolutely. So now, I wanted to also ask because, you know, in all of this, opportunities will be there. And so, how do you Stephanie or you Kristen right now decide, okay, if there will be opportunities in Q4 and Q1, like, how do you go about, okay, finding the liquidity in terms of being able to then allocate that and, you know, and park it over there in a piece of real estate? Like, what are some of the steps that you take, Kristen?

For example for me, you know, my cash machine is land and I flipped land and land actually has been selling like hotcakes right now. It’s a very recession-resistant asset class and that because it’s virtual and because we’ve been stuck at home, people for some reason know that they’re not gonna be traveling to Europe or to Hawai to live La Vida Loca. And they’re looking for, you know, a piece of land two hours away from their home that they can go and spend in a cabin, you know, with their family, with their children. And so, we’re actually, we can’t keep our inventory you know, long enough but that is my cash machine, you know. And that’s what I know that I if I double down on that, you know, I can produce a liquidity that is gonna bring, that is gonna allow me to bring that liquidity so that when a good deal on the apartment side shows up, I can capitalize and seize that opportunity. What are some of the things that you ladies do? You know, because I know that besides the real estate aspect that you’re in other side hustles as well.

Stephanie: Yeah, I think, well, first of all, Kristen and I also both in addition to all our hustles, we have W2 corporate jobs in technology. So, I mean, one of the…

Michelle: That’s one of your cash machine?

Stephanie: Yeah, that helps feed the beast. And one of the reasons why, like, for me personally, I always wanted to buy real estate. Now, granted commercial real estate doesn’t depend on your W2 but I also do other things. And so, it’s been hard…I haven’t gotten to the point yet, let’s say where I want to abandon that because yeah, it’s a cash generator and still able to do the side hustles. And then the other side hustles also kind of feed into that. Kristen can speak on her end, but she does multi-level marketing, she does consulting. You know, when you come to this point in life, you’ve got a lot of experiences that you can sell to other people. And that’s one way to kind of…those are ways to bring in to liquidity. Also, you know, a lot is going on in the world that can help you access money that maybe you couldn’t access. For example, if you are affected by COVID in some way, which as an investor have definitely affected, I haven’t had a syndication deal since, you know, January.

And you can move money from your employer-based, you can either just take a withdraw or borrow money without the penalty from your employer base 401K. So, there’s some things like that are, you know, silver linings of this whole pandemic, where the real estate investors or others trying to kind of collect some cash for when there are opportunities they can utilize that now.

Kristen: Mine are both similar in that, I can’t believe, even with all the amazon.com ordering and all the wine, alcohol ordering I’ve been doing to be delivered to my door, how much money I’ve saved during that pandemic. I just opened up my checking account, and I was like, “Whoa, there’s more money in here than typical.” So, I think just stockpiling is basic and then I do, I recently changed jobs so I have a 401K that’s sitting there waiting for something to happen. And I am just, you know, holding with Stephanie on when the opportunity arises to be able to utilize and leverage that hoping that those policies will stay in place for a little bit longer, which I think they will. So, that’s exciting times and then the side hustle for sure that I just started back up with a multi-level marketing company. And I’m having a ball marketing and selling stuff and making some cash on the side. So, lots of streams of income to be able to help support and get ready for when the opportunity arises.

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. Now as far as, so you both have corporate jobs, you both have all these other little side hustles going which the real estate doesn’t sound as little, you know what I mean? And probably, you know, the marketing consulting either. So, how are you ladies able… What are some of the challenges that you’ve had when you’ve had all these balls in the air like because, you know, we’re also you know, moms, you know, some of us head of households that are, you know, listening, you know, if you’re a single mom. And so, what are some of the challenges and how you overcome them? You know, I think that at least for me, just to give you an example, in the beginning, I was, I could very easily justify a new hire in our business, but I couldn’t justify support here at home. But those hours of, you know, stuff here at home, you know, can be done for $15 an hour, so that I can free up, you know, 4 or 5 hours, 6 or even 10 hours a week to be doing, you know, more, you know, where I get a better ROI for my time, basically.

But it was hard for me, like, it was like a mindset, you know, thing that I’m like, “How come I’m okay with getting support here but not here?” And that was something for me that was like a hobby, but I’m wondering how you ladies basically juggle all the balls.

Kristen: Yeah, it’s interesting that you say that because I’m the opposite. At work, I will try and figure out how to do it myself till the nth degree, but at home, especially when I had to…homeschooling landed in my lap on top of everything else, instantly hired a tutor, hired a house cleaner. And now I’m looking at hiring a nanny because my kids are still great school-aged and there are no camps available, which is actually a blessing because I don’t wanna drive them around all that time. Anyway, that’s time. That said, I do try to carve out very specific time for my family and my children because I could be at my laptop all day and all night with everything that’s going on. And so, trying to be very prescriptive about the times that Stephanie and I go paddleboarding early in the morning while my kids are still sleeping so that I can come home and, you know, be ready for them when they’re ready to wake up and have their pancake ready.

Michelle: Oh, my God, paddleboarding buddies, that sounds like so much fun.

Kristen: Yeah, oh my God.

Stephanie: We just started that.

Michelle: Talk about balance and learning to be in the flow while paddleboarding.

Kristen: That’s right. That’s right, though slow, but I’m just, I’m all about outsourcing on every aspect of life where you can and where it makes sense and where it doesn’t impact your relationship with your family.

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely makes total sense. Now, how do you ladies integrate with all of this? You know, because I find that for us women, you know, we’re more for money for what it can do for others, you know. And so we’re doing it not just for us, you know, at least for me, and I want Sophia, my daughter, to stand on my shoulders, you know, what I’ve built and for her to continue a legacy. Or, you know, we’re much more about recirculating our wealth in our communities, and so on and so forth. And so, how do you incorporate ease, faith, you know, giving back grace into your daily life and into your businesses?

Stephanie: Yeah, I think they both kind of come together, balancing, you can talk about balancing, you know, all your chores, balancing with your kids, balancing your work, but also balancing yourself and your mind and how you think things through and how you look at the world. And that is an area that I really do spend a lot of focus on because I have learned that it impacts everything else. So, I’m really committed to like a morning routine, where which started with a book I read several years ago by Hal Elrod, “The Miracle Morning.” And I have, I started with that and I actually got so into it and I joined house mastermind and really bought into…it changed my life. Because I took this hour in the morning and did things like you’re talking about. Pray, make a list of things I’m grateful for…

Michelle: Paddleboarding.

Stephanie: Yes, paddleboarding, which paddleboarding, right, you’ve got nature, you’ve got connection. So, these are all things that are really important that help you in all the other areas of your life. And for me for years, they were just on the backburner. You know, as a single mom with a career and a landlording business, I did not do any of that. I didn’t even really think it was a good use of time. Like, I thought, why would you do that and it really did take my daughter getting a serious illness that actually forced her to homeschool two years of high school. And so, she was home for two years on the computer during school and sick. And that’s when I had like a personal crisis basically, that was like, okay, how, I couldn’t control anything anymore and how am I gonna get through that? And so, I literally, like, was like, “I better get my spiritual life, I better do something, there’s something else that needs to help me because I can’t do this.” And that’s when I started really exploring. You know, coming back to things that were really important to me and being grateful.

Just, like, okay, my life seems like it stinks right now but look, “I’m alive, she’s alive,” like, just really digging deep for things to be grateful for us. So, sometimes, those personal crises really kind of knock you off and get you back in shape. And because of the things that I created together get through that time. I’m really committed to, actually, as it goes forward.

Michelle: Yeah, make sense.

Kristen: Yeah. And Stephanie, also I love this concept, Michelle, that you said about your daughter standing on your shoulders that I want Stephanie to tell you about her entrepreneurial son who’s amazing and their partnership, but also the piece about putting back into the community. The two of us are huge advocates for small business and we have entrepreneur week, and we plug every one small business, we spend a lot of money with small business, because we’re such believers in it and we would much rather, you know, pay the little paddleboard company for their rentals almost and buy own from Dick’s Sporting Goods [inaudible 00:30:37] right? Then talking about, “This seems to make more sense, it’s easier and these guys are getting money for it.” So, we really have a lens of supporting small businesses that I love in our podcast and really in our lives that are really complementary to each other. I know you probably need to move on to the next question but, Stephanie, you need to tell them about your son and what you instilled in him about building a business and supporting yourself.

Stephanie: It’s interesting because…

Michelle: How old is he?

Stephanie: He is 22, my daughter’s 19. So, when I bought those rentals that I spoke about in 2008, my son was eight, my daughter was five and they are in a kind of challenging part of town. So, we had a lot of turnovers and, really, I had at young age had to make him help me. So, he had to mow the weeds because it was not grass, and there would be alcohol bottles in there. Constantly we’d have to go paint the fence because graffiti would get on it. And those kids they hate, we call it the Julian’s those that was the street that they were on they hate the Julian’s. But what ended up happening over time is when he got to be about 18 and I started doing some other things, he really started getting in, like, all of a sudden he’s interested in real estate investing. And so, he went, he started going to…one of the things at the time that I was doing was buying turnkey out of state. Denver got really expensive so I was moving my capital from Colorado to other cash flowing places. And so, he would go with me to interview turnkey operators, interview property managers.

He was picking deals for me, finding properties in those cities and really working them front to end with me. And we’ve done some flipping, and so he caught the bug and it was not because I, you know, intentionally like this is so great. But somehow through all of that pain, you know, he saw the value. And so I think we are leaving a legacy sometimes whether we know it or not.

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. Especially because now, you know, I mean at 21 or 22, or 18, or whatever, I didn’t have these kinds of conversations with my mother. She is not entrepreneurial, she’s now a retired elementary teacher, you know what I mean? But, you know, in having us now, their level of confidence, of sophistication, of capability, just from being around it, you know what I mean? And hearing about it, and like Sophia, you know, when we started, you know, buying single-family homes, she would come also, you know, to the little, I did like, kind of little mini-open houses to get tenants in there. And I would say, instead of showing, you know, one on one, I would say, I’m having an open house, you know, on Saturday at this time, and then I had a line like of a 20 possible tenants, you know, fighting for the house, and so on. And so, I would bring her to those, you know, we’d go pick up rent eventually, you know, we, you know, our portfolio grew to the point where it made sense for us to have a property management company do it so now, you know, they are doing it.

But basically, like, you know, they’re starting in their sophistication at a completely different level than when I started, which I feel like I started a ground complete zero, you know what I mean? And now our children just from the sheer, you know, almost like by osmosis, you know, and being around us and this being our businesses, you know, they’re starting at a completely different confidence level than we are when it comes to dealing with their money. So, but I wanted to go back a little bit into, you know, the joy of the every day and, you know, because, and maybe, you know, maybe I need to go try paddleboarding. But it sounds to me, like, and this is something I think very feminine in that there’s quite a bit of yes, struggle, but playfulness. And with playfulness comes, you know, in that hour of power that you were talking about, Stephanie, comes, you know, as a byproduct that permeates throughout your day creativity and downloads and great ideas that come as a result of us, you know, finding playfulness and so on and so forth.

How did you guys decide that you’re going to go paddleboarding? I mean, the part of that one hour of power of doing something together that is fun or how did it come about?

Stephanie: I think you’re the way you describe play, right? Play and connection are both really important and, I mean, prior to the paddleboarding, Kristen was dragging me to like Zoom but now that didn’t stick because I can’t do it and we had a pandemic. But I think in general, the both of us want to do fun, have adventures and connect and have balance, right? So, if we have an opportunity to go do those things, you know, we’re really open to it. And that’s one of the things I love about Kristen, like, the paddleboarding literally, I was like, “I wanna do this” and I’m like touched at paddleboarding and she’s like, next thing, you know, she’s got us signed up and going. So, it’s really fun to have a partner in crime that’s…

Michelle: That is a quick start. She’s willing to play ball with you.

Stephanie: Yeah. Like, right, like, I can bring any idea she’s just like, yeah, let’s do it…not only let’s do it, but then like she has it booked, and we’re all of a sudden going and then we did it. And then we were like, “Well, this was really fun.” And then today, she’s like, “I booked next weekend.” I’m like, okay.

Kristen: But I also think it’s just, there’s something to be said for the power of positivity. We, I think collectively the two of us, do not dwell on the negative too long. We have setbacks, we have challenges, we typically work through them really quickly and then we’re on to the next laugh and the next joke and that is such a joy to find in a partner or a friend or a child. And I think, you know, you seek out people who lift you up, that’s the answer. And we do that for each other and it’s so important.

Michelle: Yes, absolutely. Now, if you had to give one piece of advice, whether it be, you know, what you know to be true from, you know, your journey so far in life, whether it be financial, or on a more personal level, what would that piece of advice be for a woman, you know, starting out?

Stephanie: The first thing that comes to my mind is trust your gut. Like, we are blessed with feminine instinct, whatever you wanna call it, or your higher power or all of that. And I know that there have been times in my life when, especially as a woman, you’re like, “Ah, that was probably fine or they didn’t mean that,” Or you do something to push down that intuition. And when I have done that, it hasn’t gone well. And when I listen when I take five minutes to be like, “Oh wait, why do I feel sick to my stomach right now? Like something’s going on.” It’s yourself, your wisdom inside you telling you something about that. And I’ve learned that listening to that is really important and having a daughter, that’s, you know, 19 or any age, I tried to tell her, I was just telling her last night, “You have to listen to that gut.” Like, it’s something, you can’t, the world will tell you, “Dismiss it,” you know, whatever they tell you and you have to listen to yourself.

Kristen: Yeah, and if I haven’t said it a million times already, it’s outsourced. You know, women will buy $150 pair of shoes, we’ll go get a massage for $100 and not think twice about it on sort of the self-care fun, but to me, true self-care is giving yourself more time. And if you can pay somebody to do it even if it seems a little painful to you, maybe put off buying the heels, spend it on the house cleaner or the tutor or whatever helps you have more time in your life to not be frenzied.

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. I like that. That is a beautiful ending, you know, to not be frenzied. I think that’s the story of many women. And it’s not just, you know, someone that is, you know, with a corporate job, I see that also in entrepreneurial reigns, you know, not just in six figures, but also in seven figures on part of a mastermind of women. And I’m like, I’m amazed and shocked that we still need to have this conversation about, you know, finding the support and being okay with, you know, seeking that support like you said, Kristen, because it just, it, it financially makes sense. And it’s just I think sometimes that mental and mindset, hurdles, you know, or it’s part sometimes also, I believe, of not wanting to have our courage catch up with our opportunities. And we sabotage by spending time in unnecessary things. You know what I mean? Instead of going for big things we’re like, “Oh, no,” we justify that we can’t go for that something so big. And we’re scared of dreaming of that something so big and therefore we justify it by like, “Oh, I can’t do it because I have all these things that I can, you know, that I have to do.”

So, in part, I see that, you know, in at least in that mastermind, you know, that I’ve been having now the honor of having, you know, other women because I was mainly part of male groups and I’m like, and there wasn’t that playfulness, there wasn’t that, you know, comradery of really, you know, taking off that facade of like, oh, my business is doing X and revenue and profits and so on to really, how am I doing, you know what I mean? And it’s so important and refreshing. And I think we ladies are much more open to that, you know, to taking that facade off and really being very genuine and authentic in our relationships. So, thank you so much to you both for being here with me today. If anyone wants to learn more about you and how can they follow you and, you know, to go in the sin to the “Frenzied to Financial Freedom” podcast, how can people find out more? Kristen or Stephanie.

Stephanie: Yeah, you can find our podcasts “Frenzied to Financial Freedom” on iTunes, Spotify, all the usual suspects, and you can reach out to us on social media also, Facebook, Instagram, and we would love to hear from you.

Michelle: Perfect. And you guys need to subscribe, check it out because it was a lovely show. I actually have listened to two or three episodes since and it’s wonderful now to have the pleasure of having the host here with me, on “InFLOW.” So, thank you so much, ladies.

Stephanie: I love it. Thank you for having us.

Michelle: Thank you so much

Kristen: Thank you, Michelle, this is delightful. We appreciate it.

Michelle: Thank you.