Confidence Classic: Build Wealth Without Becoming Trapped in Your Business with Candy Valentino

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Head to chime.com slash competence. That is chime.com slash competence. Don't risk your business on unreliable lenders. Go to nerdwallet.com slash competence to find the funding you deserve. Andera Inc. N-M-L-S-I-D number 1-2-4-0-0-3-8. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash competence for free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash competence. You've seen the buzz, but let me give you the inside scoop. Live shopping on whatnot is exploding right now. Visit whatnot.com slash sell to start selling. That's w-h-a-t-n-o-t dot com slash sell. The difference between building a business and a job is a job you always are going to trade time for money. A business you build a machine that generates revenue, generates wealth so that you can invest it and do anything you want. You want to make sure that your goal as a business owner is growth, vision, and building with intention. Do you want to exit this? Do you want this to parallel into something else? Do you want to be acquired? Do you want to merge with another company? These are conversations I noticed that we're really lacking in the space. Nobody was talking about it, but it's really one of the most important fundamentals that you can have when you build a business with a purpose. I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. I've never come in diversity and set you up for better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close time. Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week? We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to, so these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet my guest today. Candy Valentino started her business at 19 years old. I was slinging drinks at 19, by the way, with no degree, no corporate background, no money and PS, there was no internet back then. She successfully started scaled and sold businesses in service, retail, e-commerce, and product manufacturing. Oh my gosh, we need to talk about that. In addition to creating a vast real estate portfolio as a flipper and investor, at the age of 26, Candy founded a nonprofit charity that is so amazing. Through her success in business, she bot and donated a building to the organization since then, having saved thousands of lives, and Candy has been actively involved, personally raising millions for the charity. During her two and a half decades as an entrepreneur, she has been named to top business leaders 40 under 40, top 50 women in business, 10 people making a different top 10 business consultants by Yahoo Finance and was the youngest female to receive the Governor's Award in Entrepreneurship in Pennsylvania. Candy was recently selected by Success Magazine as one of just six women of influence, and additionally listed to leaders who get results like Will Smith, Gary Vee, and Bernie Brown, leveraging her 24 years of experience, a mass from creating successful businesses in multiple industries, Candy created Founders organization, with unmatched business development and entrepreneur education, Founders organization supports entrepreneurs in their pursuit of growth, scale, and profit in their business. She's been featured and interviewed on numerous TD radio magazine. Listen, this lady's everywhere, she's incredible. I'm so excited for you guys meet Candy today, Candy. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me, and I am so sorry that I've been doing this so long that that was so long of an intro. Oh my gosh. Listen, and you and I were just talking about this before we started recording, and I think it's important for my people to hear this. Unfortunately, we live in a world today where anyone can proclaim themselves an expert, proclaim themselves a business strategist, a really position and personal brand themselves, any way they see fit without any credibility, without any reason or justification for these statements. So I do feel it's important when I need someone like you, it is important to note those accomplishments and really hear, there's so much more credibility beyond you saying, hey, I'm really strong in business. Yeah, right? And we have people that I think because, you know, to be a doctor and engineer, you need that piece of paper. So I think we have people that don't have any credentials, don't have any experience in teaching what they're teaching, and it's putting a ton of misinformation out there, which we shared. And it's really doing a lot of damage and costing people a lot of money. Oh my gosh. It's so funny. I remember when I first launched my personal brand, which was a year before I was fired in corporate America. And I remember saying, gosh, how do I title myself? Right? Because it's easy when you work for a corporation, you're the chief revenue officer of the corporation. That's been given to you. You've been anointed that. But now I was trying to proclaim myself something in the world separate from the company I work for. And I thought, well, what do I call myself a sales expert, a sales leadership expert, a business strategist? I don't know. And I struggled personally with, should I say that I'm something, what if someone to approve this? Do I apply, do I need permission? And then I kept seeing, to your point, Andy, I kept seeing these people that were 21 years old, in bikinis saying that they were a sales expert. And I'm thinking, that's bizarre because when I look at your resume, I LinkedIn, there's nothing in regards to sales experience or expertise. So it's just funny to me that I struggled so much with how to give myself permission to make a statement about my 25 plus years expertise in an industry. However, others, don't struggle with that. Did you ever feel that same way? Oh my gosh. I also was like, so first we have people that are telling other people to just as long as you're one chapter ahead, you can then be teaching whatever topic it is. And so I remember trying to think, well, how do I differentiate myself that I'm not one chapter ahead, I'm 25 years in this. And also, how do you sum up 25 years in a title? It's not just been business, it's been investing in real estate for two and a half, two and a half decades. It's been exiting companies in scale and growth. So I really never settled on a title. If you look at my Instagram profile, it just says 24 years in business, 22 years in real estate investing. I'm like, that's what I've done. I don't really know outside of that because I don't, you know, business strategist, anyone can say that. So I didn't want to call myself that coach. There's obviously great coaches, but there's also a lack of integrity in this space. So, you know, it was kind of like, I'm just like, well, I'm an entrepreneur, which is what I am. I'm a founder, which is what I am. And I'm an investor and a philanthropist. Like, those are the four things that I have cred in. And, you know, other than that, that's about it. So it has been really tough, you know, coming from, I don't even want to say tough, it's just been different. I'm working from being behind the scenes, building a company, working with teams, scale, growth, like, managing everything. And then now being front stage, as I like to call it, sharing the information, teaching other people, because I've been such a doer. I've never really thought about what, like, two years ago, I was like, well, what do I do? When I actually had to like, stop and think, like, what do I actually think about when I'm looking at a company? Like, if I was looking to acquire another company, like, what would that, what do I actually think about? was the hardest part was taking 25 years and like whittling it down to put it in a freaking book like that was really hard rather than writing a book to build a platform right there's a lot of different ways that people do things but I think it's just important to make sure that you're not wasting money with misinformation. Absolutely. All right let's for people who don't know your backstory because I love your backstory. If you could share with us you did not grow up wealthy you did not grow up you know with a silver spoon in your mouth going to Harvard with you know all the Ivy Leaguers give us a little bit of insight into how you came up and and how you were able to do it with basically it seems like without leadership or a mentor advising you and directing you. Yeah so I grew up in a trailer really small town my parents were teenagers my mom was 16 and 19 my mom was 16 my dad was 19 when they found out that they're gonna have me so my grandfather rented a piece of land like a little patch of grass if you will so that my parents could buy a trailer from like a trailer lot and park the trailer there and so when you are operating from a place of survival as opposed to intention within your family unit you don't have a lot of direction you don't have a lot of guidance and truthfully what probably most people would think is so sad and maybe there were there were times because of some of the things that happened as a child I'm also so grateful because it's given me the ability to figure things out it's given me confidence to know that I don't always need somebody else to tell me how to do it or give me advice or even need our own cheerleaders I hear this all the time in the space like you know you don't have to do this alone and we all need mentors and cheerleaders and of course there's truth and that can be easy but if someone's listening that doesn't have a cheerleader doesn't have someone in their corner you can do it too like it starts with us making the decision to decide to do it and then taking the next steps to figure it out and I find oftentimes especially in business people wait to hear the external noise or validation from someone else but if they just get quiet and still oftentimes we already know the answer it's like we already kind of know that we should pivot we kind of already know that we should leave the relationship but instead of doing we let our kind of our brain kick in and tell us why we should or should not do that I think I just got really good at like listening to my instincts because before there were manuals and social media like that's all I had and so I think that served me and I think it'll serve a lot of entrepreneurs if they really start to dial into what they already know and listen more and what was that first business and the beginning of you launching your own business went again you had you didn't have anyone to model after you were just setting out trying to figure out how to do it yourself yeah so my dad was a mechanic so he had a little small auto mechanic shop he was self-employed it was just him working on cars and he had like one helper he called him like I think an independent contractor so every day I got dropped off at my dad's garage so every day after school I didn't learn a sport I didn't go home I didn't have a snack like I lived the rest of my day in the garage so I learned a lot of entrepreneurial skills I learned a lot of hard work I learned kind of like observing what my dad even at 20 in his early 20s he think about it when I was five he was 24 you know trying to figure out how to run a business on his own and I watched a lot of that so it didn't seem to be anything but natural for me to start a business when I was 19 you know even though he didn't build a big business I knew that I wanted to because I watched him miss a lot of things I watched that he wasn't available to do things because he was always working always at the garage and so I thought maybe there's a better way to do this and although I knew college wasn't the path for me because I just I wanted to get out and not be poor and just you know make money and I didn't want to delay four years and rack up debt and all of that stuff I just knew that building a large business was what I needed I knew that I needed a team because I saw what the opposite did you know right it's like we either have the the lessons from people that tell us what to do or we have lessons on what not to do more of my life has been lessons of what not to do and to try something new because sometimes we get so stuck in what we have and we're so afraid to change we forget that sometimes it's like the pain of what is has to be great in order for you to want the unknown and for me wanting the unknown kind of came natural so I got a small business loan I opened the doors brick and mortar I mean this is 1999 there was no like boss bay movements there was no like women empowerment it was actually more exclusion like who do you think you are where's the owner like I mean I had to walk into every room and really prove myself like I was wearing suits at 19 years old just for someone to try to take me seriously while my friends were like you said party in go into college having fun on the weekends I had to say a no to a lot of those things and so I started with an SVA loan brick and mortar and I started a wellness spa before they were a thing 1999 doing like there were hair salons massages weren't even on the scenes there was facials and medspas weren't on the scenes like it was only like big resorts and there were none of those in my area but I had traveled and it was the first time I kind of like left my state and I was in New York and I remember seeing these big things called spas and I'm like these are amazing like the women are amazing like every woman should have access to this and so I literally left that trip and came home and I was like this is what I'm going to do so started a wellness spa with no understanding of how to operate no one else in the industry no one even to model around because the closest one was like an hour and a half and literally just figured it out figured out how to run payroll how to balance inventory how to do all of those things and just did the hard work necessary to scale and grow and you know obviously built other companies from there invested in real estate along the way and here we are 25 years later. 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competence for free shipping and 365 day returns quince dot com slash competence candy one of the things that's interesting to me because I didn't do it is many of us and this is you know this goes for me we get into a business and we develop some success some expertise some knowledge some confidence right and you start feeling like i'm sure you did finally at the in the wellness wow i like broke this you know industry wide open this is innovative you know i feel really great about it we're doing well how did you then think wow maybe i should start investing in real estate and diversify what i'm doing ideas like that never cross my mind hmm so that is really self education it's what i talk about in my book is like really always expanding our mind and learning our way to build more wealth i didn't have the the visual representation of that in my life i mean i feel like there was maybe one or two guys in my small town that like how to catalact and that was like the rich guy right or the guy that wore a suit but i read a book at a really young age about and it just made sense like about bad debt and depreciating assets and appreciating assets in real estate and so i was twenty twenty one twenty twenty one years old first couple years in business making things work i had a six week run rate on my sba loan to figure it out like six weeks or i was going to be out of money so talk about your backup against the wall and needing to figure it out but i feel like that leverage is what was like i will not fail i will make this work and i think sometimes we're a little too soft on ourselves and i feel like we're in a little bit of a culture that's kind of weak that we you know put down hard work and we put you know we want to wrap hard work up into like hustle culture and think that it's like some demonizing thing but if i didn't work hard if i didn't say no to a lot of things have the long nights i would i'd still be in the same place that i was back then so the story is you know it's really kind of interesting i just think it's i read the book i walked out of my business i was going to buy at twenty one years old my dream car which was a jeep at the time because what twenty one year old doesn't want to jeep and i was sitting down with the numbers i had already went and looked at the car and i was doing a cost analysis because i learned very early that numbers is where you really learn how to build business so i diligently started studying accounting and all the business finance so that i can develop my business acumen when i was nineteen so then at twenty one i was looking at the car and i walked down this this house that had a foreclosure sign on it and i was like foreclosure what is that you know duct tape to the window well the next day i had a client that came in and her name is marion she was an agent and we're ill state agent and i'm like hey there's a house down the street that's a foreclosure like what's all that about how's that work and she started telling me all about it and the foreclosure was twenty three thousand dollars my jeep was like thirty five thousand dollars fast forward to today the properties worth hundreds of thousands of dollars has cash flowed every year for twenty years and the jeep maybe i get three grand right so i didn't buy the jeep i bought the foreclosure and then i realized really quickly that that twenty three thousand dollars made me money and the jeep would have just been something i drove and i was instantly hooked so i realized that while everybody else was doing fun things on the weekend if i could leverage my money and invest in real assets that i would be basically doubling my efforts taking my business money that i'm making investing in assets and now i did one type of job i worked in the spa but now i'm actually getting two types of income and that's all i needed to know to do it over and over and over and over and over again flipping properties long-term holds short-term holds air bmbs and then just really started testing investing to see what vertical i really liked while i was building businesses investing became fun it became a way that i could test my knowledge grow but then also it was the hobby that instead of like a hobby that takes from you golfing takes time takes money or whatever somebody may enjoy i looked at it was a hobby that gave to me it gave to my network it gave me more money and that that enabled me to be able to do what i set out to do when i was nineteen i said i don't want to work until i'm sixty five i want to do this for twenty years and i'm out and i literally sold exited the last company right before my fortieth birthday that is incredible and such an amazing inspiring story now for people listening they're going to say okay obviously this woman is incredibly smart was business savvy just didn't know it yet what do you say to those people no i always say like i wasn't and that's the most important thing to remember because all of those things we want to point to because it's easier to say oh this person has this because they were really smart Heather has this because she's really beautiful like everyone wants to point to these different things all of that is is fear you're trying to use an excuse of why somebody else has what you can go out and do i was not that smart i was not connected i had no money people even like whoa your dad had a business my dad barely made anything he just made enough for us to get by and to live it wasn't like he had a you know car dealership or something like it was just a little auto mechanic shop in the basement of an auto parts store and so yes i learned real life principles that were amazing and super valuable if there's anything that i had that people didn't have and it was just watching that there was a lot of things i didn't have that i had to overcome i had to be you know overcome being abused as a child of being sexually abused and like just dealing with having to figure things out all the time and not having parental guidance not not having a lot of value and still and trying to figure things is along your way so there were definitely some blessings for sure but smarts connections money none of those things were part of the equation it was far more deciding it was literally deciding i remember when i was 15 i was watching an infomercial it was the very first time and if there was anything divine that happened before it would be this i was 3am i imagine this i was lived i lived in this little white trailer it was the the flowered couch that anyone that grew up in the 80s probably had in their home you know this like flowered couch and the the kind of like big TVs were still in and i was flipping through and it was the first time this infomercial came on and said something around the the way of you are not a product of your circumstances your product of your choices and the way i interpreted that was that what i could what happened to me the circumstances that i grew up in what happened to me as a child i can't do anything about that but i get to decide what's next and that puts such a fire in me because i realized that none of this that's around me my visual representation of the world does not have to define my whole life it's just a moment and so from that point on i remember taking out a sheet of paper the very next day in school and i wrote down three goals at 15 and i said i want these three things by the time i'm 30 because that seemed so old right 30 when you're 15 and it was things like a certain type of house and a certain type of car and a certain type of job and i had every one of those things and then some before i turned 23 but that was staying focused being diligent a lot of times people want to say at some other thing what they're doing is they're discrediting focus in playing the long term gain i said no to so many things in my life so that i could say yes to anything now so i think that's the most important part trade instant gratification for long term gain and anyone anyone could do what i did okay so you kind of glazed over very lightly that you were abused as a child and i went through something very similar to what you did and believe me this is not something that can be glazed over for anyone listening right now if you don't know someone who's gone through any type of abuse or you never have it truly in my opinion the worst thing that ever happened in my life and for most people i can't you know speak for others but it's one of the most horrible things that can happen to a child what did recovery from that or growth from that look like for you in your life while you were building a business so i think that a lot of times when we go through something like we start to run from things right like we're running from so i feel for me a lot of my my life up until even when i started the first business i was running from that pain that life like you know i didn't want i wanted to make money because i didn't ever want to have to depend on anyone like i wanted to be successful so that i had power and control over my decisions and my autonomy so that's i was running from the interesting thing was i even once i got longer on my journey i never chose what to run towards because i was running so hard so long from things now if we talk specifically about the abuse i never talked about it other than when it first happened i literally bottled it up stuck it down inside and for 20 years never uttered a word and looking back it's interesting how our survival mechanisms that are so strong in us will kick in and will really get us through whatever we need so for me it was about just always grinding always focusing because i didn't realize then that i got so caught up into who i wanted to become and how much how far i wanted to get away from all this situation that i was really just trying to create the life that i wanted because i didn't want to acknowledge what was and i didn't probably address it i think i was close to 30 before i ever really talked about it and really i've only opened up to talk about it publicly in the last couple years is for me it was one of those things where everything started to connect my life started to to be so much clearer when i started to open up because i think that we are we have as much pain as great as our secrets and i think when we're hiding from something and we're trying to minimize something we're trying to just completely compartmentalize something no matter how hard you try or how good you are at it which i was really damn good at it it will surface in other ways it will surface in choosing the wrong partner next it'll surface in making a bad choice in hiring someone or having you know who you're going to sleep with or who you're going to marry or i think that you choose you choose bad decisions when you aren't really healing what you've already gone through and so i you know it was definitely a journey that then took me to like really talk about it and open it up but the interesting thing was one right before i'd probably talked about it for the first time i had bought a building because i was investing in real estate commercial building and had no idea what i was going to do with it but i just loved commercial real estate at the time so i would buy any deal that i could find and i bought this building it was sitting there vacant and i was driving leaving the business you know i'm like rushing and pushing and i'm like climbing so many mountains and and i made this like mech a little place that like everyone wanted to come to and we were really known to be like a pioneer in the space on these coasts and like all this stuff and yet i felt so freaking empty i felt so unfulfilled i accomplished every one of those goals on my list when i was 15 and yet i still was driving by that building and thinking is this it like that i that i do all of that that i get out of all of this abuse for this for this feeling and it was like in that moment the best way to describe it Heather is like i i recognized everything that i've done and then everything that i still didn't have and at that moment i was driving by this building and i thought what am i going to do with this building like this has been sitting here for a year i got to do something with it and it was like a voice like we're talking said put your animal shelter there and i was like i never wanted to open an animal shelter i never wanted to have an on profit like those weren't things that were ever a conscious decision for me and but i did it was like a gut it was like a gut check and it was something that i immediately did and of course because everything also figured out like why can't i figure this out too so figured out how to start a 501c3 and you know turn that building into a kennel and everything that we needed it's needed to house animals and it was through that it's interesting i built a nonprofit to save animals but in the process they saved me i didn't realize that throughout life because i felt so alone that i turned to animals to heal my dog that i would see you know the the rabbits or cats that i would save and want to bring every stray animal home and so i i look back and think if i didn't have all of that happened to me i wouldn't have the heart that i have now to help end suffering and to not want to see other people go through it and so it was really through a very unconventional way that i truly healed and it was through pure contribution wasn't the achievement of my goals it was through giving and being in service to others when you're ready to start your business north west registered agent helps you do more than just file paperwork you get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one a business address website phone number operating agreement free guides and more at no extra cost north west registered agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and 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that okay so back to business because this was something you know looking through all of your content looking at your book one of the things that you talked about that was helpful to me incredibly as someone who's on this journey now working you know 25 plus years in corporate america which i know like the back of my hand i don't know this new entrepreneurial i'm only a few years in so i'm a rookie and learning as you go which is exactly what you did figure it out a long way which is fine however it's helpful sometimes when someone's ahead of you and they give you some tips and you know hearing you explain the difference between someone who's working alone like your father did versus someone who becomes an entrepreneur like you did what are some of those hacks and differentiators that you can share with us the biggest thing to remember is oftentimes people think they're becoming an entrepreneur they think that they're building a business but really what they do is they end up building themselves a job because they didn't build the business with intentionality of how they want their life to look if they're ever going to exit this company because you know and it's fine if somebody wants to be a self-employed person nothing wrong with that some people love what they do and they want to continue to be the artist or the talent but they never sat down to identify are you really the entrepreneur or are you really great with managing people or are you the talent artist within your business and you're the one that should be front stage as we call it as opposed to building the business and directing the growth so it's really key you can build anything you want but what I see most people do is they don't recognize the difference so social media has glamorized being an entrepreneur i have no idea why when i came out of my ex i didn't even have an Instagram profile like so when i came out of my exit and like saw this i'm like why is all of this being glamorized like i've been pulling my hair out for 20 years i've dealing with employees lost it's like you Nate like all the things um business structure and you know what i mean it's just been nuts so i was like i don't understand and then i really started diving in and that's when i was like oh okay well most of these people actually haven't built a business so that's why they're glamorizing it because they can take a laptop to the beach and that's supposed to be some fun thing until they realize that they have to take the laptop to the beach because they have to run the webinar they have to do the thing they have to have the workshop they have to connect with the team so if you're not intentionally scaling and growing a business if you're not intentionally building systems and having efficiency in the business that other people can run you will always be tied to it and that's a job and actually it's harder than just having a job because people think oh i want time i want to be able to do what i want by time when you're an entrepreneur oftentimes you have no control of your time because if your team someone calls off you have to step in if all of a sudden the event's not going as well as you want you got to jump in and handle things or this ball was dropped and you got to jump in it's actually maybe you actually just want a job and then you can take your money and build assets so that then you can do whatever you want the difference between building a business and a job is a job you always are going to trade time for money a business you build a machine that generates revenue generates wealth so that you can invest it and do anything you want if i did anything right it was by reading books in the beginning that taught me that and i've always been able to if i do anything that i'm good at it's identifying patterns which is why i can jump into someone's business and like really see things or jump into someone's investment and be like oh that's because this this this is wrong based off of two and a half years or two and a half decades of seeing different patterns if you want to build a business it is a totally different skill set and just being really good at something that you do another is right or wrong neither is bad or worse but just make sure you know what you're building so that you don't end up in golden handcuffs i see a lot of times people end up in these golden handcuffs they they think oh yeah they look like they're doing great but really you just had to sit on back to back this or you had to go do all these coaching calls or you had to do out like and yes it's nice that you can do it from anywhere but you know what's even nicer to be able to do it from anywhere and not have to drag your laptop around unless you really want to like that is really what building a business is all about you want it to build wealth so that you're not constantly trading time for money tell me if you agree with this the most epic fail around the example that you're giving in that you're teaching right now is really doing a job holding a job but behaving as though it's your own company and you're the entrepreneur because that's what was just resonating with what you were saying for me you're talking about when you're an entrepreneur you're all in you're the person has to jump in and fix and solve all the problems you're the one that has to save the event you're the one that has to post if nobody else is going to post ps that is how I live my life right now but that's also how I live my life when I worked for a company I acted as though it was my own and that to me is the most epic fail ever that I cared more about the company and the job than the CEO even did yeah so I think what happens is when you're in a job doing that even when you're an amazing employee and you care and I had some amazing employees that truly treated my companies like their own and when when you have that though you still get to go home you still don't have the weight of the growth you don't have the weight of payroll you don't have the weight of pivoting now because covid just happened you don't have the weight of like okay is there going to be a recession like the brain power that an entrepreneur goes through to pivot and think and direct is way greater than any employee even when the employee cares a lot but what happens then is because you're always taking that home what costs entrepreneurs a lot of money is when they have really narrow focus when they're really focused on one thing I got to fix this I got to fix this because sometimes we're so focused on what we think we need or want that we miss what we can actually have we miss that we can actually build it completely different and we can actually have a a business that gives us a life building wealth isn't about just money it's about building a rich light so that you can say yes to things that you want to do and you don't have to do all those things that distract you during the day a lot of times entrepreneurs are really majoring in very minor things it's like they think a lot of the urgent is also important but they don't always equal just because something is urgent doesn't mean that it's important and at the every single time you jump in to be an employee in your company you're also teaching your other employees to constantly need you so it's like the child that throws a tantrum and then you go oh my gosh and you coddle them and they're just going to throw more tantrums to get your attention business is very simple when you have people that are like oh my gosh well let's just reach out to Heather she'll be able to know the answer and then you do you're teaching them to always come to you that's not leadership that's management so now you're managing people as opposed to leading of a true entrepreneur is leading people so that they can be empowered to make their own decisions then they don't need you my whole goal is to hire the smartest people around work with them groom them and then be like have them be able to have total autonomy to make their own decisions their own and I want to go to them for their expertise expertise like I don't want to be the smartest person if you're the smartest person in the room you've built the wrong team you're in the wrong room wrong table wrong team you want to make sure that your goal as a business owner is growth vision and building with intention do you want to exit this do you want this to parallel into something else do you want to be acquired do you want to merge with another company like these are conversations I noticed that we're really lacking in the space like nobody was talking about it but it's really one of the most important fundamentals that you can have when you build a business with a purpose not your purpose like sit on the couch my purpose it's like what is your business's purpose is it just for you to work by yourself or is it just is it for you to actually build wealth build a team be acquired neither's right or wrong just decide what you want oh it's so good all right now let's get into wealth habits your new book six ordinary steps to achieve extraordinary financial freedom why did you write it you know it was interesting the book I talked to you about reading when I was a kid I read three great books and they all had men pictures on them and I remember thinking I'm so grateful that I read those books and I know that in the late 90s it was a totally different time than it is now but I feel that we've missed a lot of the fundamentals I feel that we've missed and complicated a lot of things but business and wealth is very simple when we take everything away and we strip it down you can only grow business by increasing sales or decreasing expenses that's it you increase sales decrease expenses simple how do we increase sales we either add a new customer get an existing customer to buy more frequently get an existing customer to buy more average cart average ticket or raise our prices every single other strategy in life to business growth falls under one of those four and the first customer acquisitions always the most expensive the fourth razor prices is what most people go to and it's typically wrong because they don't have the business acuum on on their finances to even know what their profit margins or their gross profit is to know if they should raise their prices so I wanted to write the book to make it easy and accessible for everyone to understand I take very complex business topics and break them down so that everyone has the data and the numbers in order to know what to do next so it's more of a playbook than it is a book of theory and ideas I would say ideas won't build you a million dollar business and it won't create a million dollars it's the execution and implementation of the idea that does and that's what I feel like is really lacking people want to talk about ideation which entrepreneurs love to go down the squirrel rabbit hole of flashy objects and things they can create but oftentimes we only have so much time to create a few so what's really going to move the needle in your business and personal finance and when I looked at all of the data of what I've done over 25 years nothing's extraordinary I didn't have some earth shattering innovation or invention I didn't charter a rover to Pluto or anything fancy that was all the non sexy boring things that most people don't want to talk about because they want some little hack or angle or like give me the secret to building wealth the secret is this there's no secret it's just there's no magic bullet it's just doing a lot of ordinary things over time living beneath your means earning more income so that you can invest more more quickly you know we're coming into some economic turbulence for lack of a better word you know some instability in the markets all that means is there's opportunity for the little guy to get in and start investing so I think that's why the book is so important to me I also think it's important because as women we need to talk about money we need to talk about wealth when we did the study women are actually better at managing money overall obviously this is general generalization to the nth degree better than then and so I think it's important for women to have the conversation and so that you don't end up being down the road in your life tied into a relationship or into something and not have the tools and knowledge to have your own financial independence I see that happens so much is people I don't I don't know so and so take care of that my husband handles that I don't need to know like you are running a risk of being on your own or destitute or out someday if you're not paying attention to the numbers you know I've heard stories where you know their husbands went and racked up or vice versa women went up racked up debt men with like the spouse had no idea of the other until they go to get divorced or some you know horrible thing happens in their marriage and then they find out like oh my gosh my financial situation that I thought was secure is ruined we have to take responsibility for our own finances and I think that it's such an important time and an important message for women to understand and everyone to understand it's not a book for women but just because we're talking for for everyone to understand that anyone can build it it's not an elusive club but you just got to be willing to do the work so who is the book for so the book is for anyone for I mean it could even be for someone you know 16 18 21 years old that's starting because these things aren't taught like anything anything that we are walking around with and less we've been diligent at really looking into our our money mindset our beliefs about money how we spend money and our habits because it's not just think and get rich you also have to do to get wealthy so it's really about what the the social and school systems are not teaching us it's really about the facts about money how to build it and how to keep it because it's actually really easy especially in good times to be successful in business or even build some wealth it's really hard when market shifts and the vertical that you may be in is different to sustain wealth and sustain success so the book is more about teaching people the fundamentals even if you already have a multi-million dollar net worth I guarantee there's things in there that you haven't thought of I remember being a business my gosh I think I was in like 10 years doing very well and I remember hearing like wait I need what contract like you know I was in like a room where I was the smallest business at the table and these women with you know 50 and a hundred million dollar companies were like oh yeah you need this non disparagement clause and work for higher contract and I was like wait what so you know it's the little things like that that we don't know because we haven't done it before so anything we can do to really like close the gap and fix the link to help people sustain wealth is really who it's going to be for and it's it's gonna it's gonna change their life for sure just because I think it's it's good to know that it's available for anyone where can everyone find your new book wealth habits and where can they find you so anywhere books are sold Amazon Barnes and Noble and we're doing a bunch of cool like we've an event we have all things so if you go to wealth habits book.com it'll tell you that upload your receipt you can get access to all sorts of free things and then I'm candy Valentino everywhere candyvalentino.com and Instagram TikTok all the things all the things well candy please keep doing the amazing work you're doing I wish I had this book when I was 19 but I'm grateful that everybody's got it now guys go check out the book wealth habits everybody needs it these are the simple tactics you need to implement now so you have wealth for your future until next week guys keep creating your confidence journey I decided to change that I couldn't be one say that you were one year start learning and growing inevitably something will happen no one succeeds alone you don't stop to look around once in a while you can miss it I'm on this journey with me