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In this episode, I talk with Christina Wise about the journey to creating true wealth and financial freedom.
Christina shares her story of growing up in poverty, hustling in real estate to make a high income, only to find herself struggling financially and fighting over money in her personal life. After hitting rock bottom, she realized that wealth isn’t just about making more money—it’s about creating passive income and living a balanced, healthy life.
Christina explains how she began investing in real estate and how building assets, rather than just earning income, led to her financial independence. We dive deep into the difference between “working income” and “non-working income” (passive income), and how important it is for business owners to understand how to create income streams that work for them, rather than constantly hustling.
We also discuss how comparison and chasing success can trap business owners in a rat race, and how true wealth is a combination of financial, emotional, and physical wellness.
TRANSCRIPTS
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Passive income comes from assets.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
And I know you see this too. Business owners are just in their own rat race, aren’t they?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
What causes the rat race is comparison. And now I’m making more money, hundreds of thousand dollars a year. Again, more money than I could ever imagine possible. I
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert in anti financial advisor. Welcome Schultz for you. Those that work so hard for your money and you’re now ready for your money to start working harder for you today. You want to become work optional where you work because you want to, not because you have to, as you have enough passive to become, to live the life that you love with those you love. But most importantly guys, it’s not just about getting rich, it’s about living a rich life. Because as you’re blessed financially, as you prosper and grow, you have a greater ability to create a ripple effect in the lives of those around you. Thank you for tuning in today, guys. Appreciate allowing me to create that ripple effect through you. You’ve been binging, you’ve been sharing this with other people. Allow us to be the top 1% of Podcasts Nation, well really worldwide.
(01:10)
So again, thank you so much for being a part of us today. As a reminder, if you haven’t done so already, go to money ripples.com. There’s lots of additional ways to learn and grow. There’s even great things on infinite banking or even passive income. We’ve got passive income calculator. You can find out how much passive income you could create in the next 12 months. Check that out now. All right guys, I’m bringing on a special guest today that you would swear it’s like my sister from another mother. Okay, so I’m bringing on Christina Wise here. Now, Christina actually has a very similar path. I want to talk to her about this a lot more because like me, she actually got to her freedom number. She had enough passive income to get herself to be financially independent where she works, she wants to not because she has to. And on top of that guys, she’s actually teaching other people how to do this, especially how business owners can take this money, take their profits and use it to create more income, more freedom, more time. So, so excited to have Christina on here with us today. So Christina, welcome.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I know. So just to start out, you’ve got the wealthy, is it the Wealthy Wealthy Podcast or Wealthy Wealth? How do you say it exactly?
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Wealthy. Wealthy. It’s just the second one’s. It is wealthy. Wealthy, LTHY. So it’s a play on the name. And really my brand is to sum up in a brand, everything that you just said is that, yeah, we want to create financial wealth, W-E-A-L-T-H, but for the sake of living a life that’s well, like wealthy, full of wellness and all of these life categories. So it’s not just about the money, it’s the money for the sake of living a good life. A wealthy, wealthy
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Life. Exactly. That’s huge. I know that what good is financial wealth. You have true wealth, right? Like Rockefeller, I share that story with people sometimes where age 50, who’s the richest man in the US age 53, he was almost dead. Doctors gave up. Then that’s when he created his foundation to give everything away, and all of a sudden his incurable disease just disappeared. He could actually eat again. His hair grew back in and he lived another 45 years after that, right? All because he realized money didn’t matter at all if he lost everything else in his life. Well, tell us more about what inspired you to go down this path.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Oh man. That’s always like we have 20 minutes. So my life journey’s too long to sum up very quickly, but probably where it all started for me, the life event that started was I grew up very poor, trailer home poor and a lot of dysfunction when it came to money and alcoholism and all the things. And so I was very motivated from a young age to make money thinking if I make a lot of money and I become rich, all my problems will go away. And so from a young age, very motivated by money, love making money, wanted a lot of it. And so put myself to college. Ended up getting married and I found myself in this career called real estate. And I didn’t intend to get into real estate, but I wound up there and I just happened to be really good at it.
(03:59)
I loved to work. I hustled very motivated by money with real estate. There’s no real ceiling to the income. So I got great at all the things. I started making a lot of money, especially from where I came from. I grew up in a teeny tiny town. It was just kind of a poverty stricken type environment. So I made all this money. And just a long story short, a couple things that really stood out to me is that when I grew up, there was fights about money all the time behind closed door, like knockdown, drag outs, and now I’m making more money, hundreds of thousand dollars a year. Again, more money than I could ever imagine possible. But behind closed doors, I’m fighting about money all the time. It’s like I’m reliving my childhood,
Speaker 2 (04:39):
But
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I have more money. So it’s like, wait a second. I thought money was going to solve all my problems, yet I’m just basically replicating everything as a child. And then fast forward a handful of years, two babies, and it was just a really kind of bad dysfunctional marriage for many different reasons. Get divorced and what did we fight over? We fought over all this stuff that we’d accumulated that today just, it’s like shameful the behavior fighting over these things that money bought that meant something. But I wound up single mom, totally broke, lost my car, moved out of the big house in the suburbs, teeny tiny, one side of a duplex and cockroach haven in Austin, Texas and couldn’t pay my bills. And the only thing that got us actually survived was peers at work actually pitched in to put the deposit for the utility bill and put food in the refrigerator and gave us sheets and blankets and hand-me-downs for furniture.
(05:37)
So we’d have some things in this new little place and a couple of things that happened. Again, I was number one at everything. I was number one in sales. I was number one in the city. I got all the awards, all the plaque, I was on all the stages. And here all that money I get divorced over money and now I’m completely, so it was just this head scratch. None of this makes sense. I thought everything about life was just to hustle hard, work hard, and make a lot of money, and that was the name of the money game. Then all these shameful feelings are coming back because as a child, the only thing that got us along was that we got handouts that paid the bills or all my clothing were secondhand and everything was second or third hand. And now what’s getting me after making all that money, the only thing that’s causing us to survive is secondhand like these handouts.
(06:32)
And I was really grateful, thank God that I had friends that did this for me, but I just felt so ashamed and embarrassed. I was number one and I’m taking handouts to actually feed my babies. And so that really, it was that moment and just total despair. Didn’t know what I was going to do, single mom, a hundred percent commission job, hundreds of thousand dollars of debt because I didn’t understand how to pay taxes. So I had tax lis and didn’t understand debt, so everything was a lot of laden with debt. So I finally just got out of my pity party and realized, Christina, no one hears to save you but yourself. But really what stood out was I was so confused. The money thing didn’t make sense. And so I just realized I went to the library. This is pre-internet, basically. I went to the library and asked the librarian, Hey, can you send me to the money section?
(07:24)
And I just took a book off the shelf, coincidentally, didn’t even know the book to read. And it just happened to be Rich Dad, poor Dad back in the day that any of us that have been on this money journey, many of us, if not most of us, started there. And that just became my awakening, what I just call my awakening to the real money game and what wealth really is and what financial freedom is and how it’s just so juxtaposed to what we believe to be true about money and what we’re told and taught. So it was just that moment and from there just have studied money and the principles. And I think it really started with I don’t want to replicate this generational thing that my family grew up in. I want something different for me and my children. And I just studied money and learned that passive income is the way you build wealth, and it’s not complicated. There’s pretty simple formulas for doing so. And that became my life journey. So here we are today.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Wow, that’s it, huh? That’s all that happens.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Other few bumps in there, but we’ll save those for another day. Of course.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
No, I get it. No, it’s the same thing with my story too. Our listeners get that too. Well, so obviously you kind of got into the real estate space, right? Tell us what happened there.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, well, I was kind of one of the big ahas when I read the first book and understanding that there’s income and there’s wealth
Speaker 2 (08:50):
And
Speaker 1 (08:51):
That the way you ultimately get more time is through this thing called passive income. And at first I was just selling houses, so I sold a lot of houses and I made high income and I was just always chasing the money, chasing the next deal, chase the next commission, and then if I got low on money, I’d just figure out a way to sell another house. And I was on that hamster wheel for many years. And one thing that really stood out outside of the story I just told was come December, in December, they had all the top producer awards. So I’d be on the stage and in December I’d get all the awards for top everything for the year.
(09:27)
And then started on January one, I realized I have to start over, I have to do it all again. And the first two or three years I was fine, but around four or five, I thought, I’m starting at zero. I have to go through this whole thing again. And again, these light bulbs started going off. But when I started realizing this and why am I selling real estate? Why don’t I buy real estate? And that’s where I started realizing that I can start creating passive income. Once I started doing this. For me, my way to do that was real estate. I was good at selling it. So now I wanted to get good at buying it and holding it, investing it, and creating passive income with it. That became my journey. I started, I bought my first piece of property seller financing, didn’t have a dollar to my name and just got really creative.
(10:14)
And it is just gone on from there to now my real estate and other holdings fully fund the cost of my lifestyle, but it was a long journey, but I did it through real estate. But there are many ways to do that. The key takeaway is just understanding that passive income comes from assets and that we have to have this journey of building assets and creating net worth through asset accumulation, if you will, to be able to have any chance passive income. So that’s it. I just started buying real estate slowly but surely. I’d made a goal that I was going to figure out a way to buy a piece of property every three to four years. And that became my goal. That was my number one financial goal, was to be able to buy a piece of real estate every three to four years. Sometimes it was shorter, sometimes it was longer. And I organized all my finances around that. That’s been the journey ever since.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
That’s great. Now, I know a lot of people, they get confused about passive income. We know the accountant’s going to call this passive income. I mean, in your experience, how passive are you with your passive income?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah, so since the name of your show is basically passive income, I don’t really like the word passive income to your point. It can be a little deceiving, but I like to call it working income and non-working income. So my working income, I have a business is called Wealthy Wealthy, and I spend a lot of hours in my business every day, every week, every month, every year to build profit, to do all the things you do as entrepreneurs and business owners to make money. But then I have kind of what I call my side hustle, if you will, but my side hustle isn’t working for Uber or starting something on the side. My side hustle is managing my real estate. So my managing my real estate, I call that more non-working income because I’m not in it every single day, 40, 50 hours a week like my business.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So
Speaker 1 (12:10):
What’s interesting out the stage and what I like so many entrepreneurs to understand in this journey is the goal is that where your non-working or asset income replaces your working income or matches your working income, and that becomes a journey. And so what’s interesting now, it’s not passive. I manage all my real estate, but I’ve got it down to kind of a science now. So it’s pretty easy in the grand scheme of things, but it’s not fully passive to your point. I get phone calls, I’d have properties come up for lease, I have to do all the things, but it’s passive relative to my working income because I make three X the money from my passive income than I do from my working income, from my business. Yet it takes one 10th or probably less than that of the time to generate three times the amount of money now. And that’s where we want to get is where we’re spending all the time in our business, but to understand our money can just outperform and outwork us at many X factors. And even though it’s not fully passive, we’re spending time maybe to manage or those types of assets, it’s a fraction of the time of what it takes to generate sometimes not even the same amount of money in our business or in our working life.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, that’s so true. When I talk about passive income, a lot of times it comes back to stewardship. It’s not that you just set it, forget it. Every financial advisor teaches you to do. It’s more of how can you manage it? You manage your stewardship, but you don’t have to be the one that’s babysitting all the time. You don’t always have to be working in it.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
But again, it’s just I manage it and I love managing it still my money and like you said, of all of our money, if it’s in our business or our household or investments, I’m like you the anti financianal planner. But it’s this desire to want to manage it, the desire to kind of want to grow it and look at it and be responsible for it and talk to it and move it or do all the things. But yeah, it is a good stewardship across the board of all of our money, wherever it’s stored in these different places.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah. Well, tell me more about the wellness aspect that you teach. Obviously it’s not just about creating a lot of money. There’s so much more to life than just that. And I know you kind of shared that as part of your story, your beginning as well, and how you realized money wasn’t solving your problems. Tell us more about your advice that you give, whether it to your listeners or to your clients about that.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah. Well, the inspiration for the name came from, I mean, the name just kind of dropped me one day, which I’m like, that’s it when I started this business. But it came from, that was the first story. The second story of my money journey is that, yeah, I’d learned those. I wanted to create wealth and financial freedom. And I was young in those days. My babies were small, and so I was doing all those things, but that’s like a 20 plus year journey to do that. So while I was just doing the little bits, I could invest and do the things, as I was growing my business and really trying to make more income, I was really in the hustle culture, Chris, and I mean, I hustled and I worked and I did all the things. And I spent 10 years grinding to build this business.
(15:19)
And I built a business that was a national business, multi-six figures. I was nationwide. I was known in the industry. I was a top leader in the country then I versus winning local awards, I was winning all the national awards and just had this really great career. And I built this business. I had 50 employees, all the things, and it was just growing year over year. And then of all things, I was actually on a stage speaking to this audience of real estate leaders. I was a keynote speaker and I was on stage doing the opening keynote for this. There’s like 850 people in the room. And about three quarters of the way through this talk, my body paralyzed. And I heard this screeching sound in my ear. Imagine a train track that’s going full force and just hits the brakes and its screeches that sound I heard in my right ear and I was paralyzed and I’m on stage, just stood there.
(16:16)
Now it’s probably only 30 seconds. So the audience didn’t really catch on. And then I came out of it, I finished my talk, and then I leave the room and a break and people are saying, Christina, can I book you for this and this? And I had this, Chris, I had this thought, I kid you not that Christina girlfriend. You started in a trailer home. You’ve made it. You’ve made it. You can name your price. Everything was exponential from there. Not already built a good business, but now I could do kind of whatever I wanted in this space. And within 24 hours I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t do anything. And I just went downhill from there. And I lost my health really quickly. And the domino, the first domino of what happened on stage is I actually had a stress stroke on stage in front of 850 people.
(17:10)
And I was just grinding all the time. And I was always chasing more success, more achievement, more awards, more identity, more. I was just chasing success. Enough was never enough and it came at a consequence. But I had a lot of other health things that I didn’t know about too, and my whole body basically just gave me the finger. So the moral of that story is that I went down and my business went down with me. So my business that I’d worked 10 years, scraping Kline, everything to build this thing when I couldn’t be there, my business, just like I said, it just went down with me. And then what was paying me money then actually was costing me money. I was trying to fund my business to keep it going while I was trying to save my life and spend all this money on all this healthcare and stuff to figure out what the hell was going on.
(18:01)
And I mean, it was just a financial shit show is what it was. But kind of the big takeaway there was a couple different things is one, I was still in the building stage. I wasn’t anywhere close to financial freedom at the time, but I was able to sell a piece of real estate and make a quarter million dollars that enabled me to pay for all my healthcare that ultimately saved my life. It wasn’t my business to save my life, it was this asset thing over here privately I was doing. And then I had another two piece of real estate that provided just a little cashflow that kind of paid for some things and kept the household going. But the takeaway is like I spent 10 years building this damn thing, and it went down as fast as I did when I couldn’t hold it up.
(18:44)
And it just kind of reemphasized this thing of like, oh, that’s why passive income, we don’t know when our last day of work might be, and our business isn’t wealth. Our business is just an income creator. But other than that, the biggest takeaway is in financial terms, my body’s my number one asset and I treated my body terribly. I mean, I didn’t sleep, I eat poorly, I did all the wrong things, and it came at a great cost. And that when I chose I was going to do this again. And it’s like I chose what is a good life, how much money is enough, how much, what size of business is big enough so I don’t have to maybe do the trade-offs that I did before? And how do I put my health at the forefront, my financial health, my mental health, my physical health, my emotional health?
(19:33)
That’s what this is about. Because when you lose your health, none of the money matters. All you want is your health back. So that came at a great lesson, but now I just want to say when we’re teaching money and wealth creation, all the things to understand, it’s not about the money. You don’t have your health, you don’t have a family, you’re lonely, all these things, money doesn’t solve those problems necessarily. So that’s where I was just like, it’s a balance of understanding money’s a tool and offers all these things, but it’s for the sake of underwriting a good life. But we have to know what a good life is first and what is, like you said, a rich life outside of the money. And that’s where the wealthy part came as part of this whole equation of money and success.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, that’s so true. I’ll tell you, I mean, and I know you see this too. Business owners are just in their own rat race. They, it might be a higher level rat race than maybe some with a JOB, but they’re still in a rat race.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Oh, it’s a rat race for sure. Absolutely. Well, and it’s a rat race. What causes the rat race is comparison. And so when we don’t know how much money’s enough and we don’t have money, that’s based on our value system and what a good life is to us. And that’s not with a lot of clarity in coming up with those numbers. And just again, philosophically, what is a good life and how much does it cost to live it? All we do is compare ourselves to everybody else. It’s like what are they driving? Where do they live? What type of vacations are they doing? And then we’re just trading. That’s the rat race. It’s like we’re trading, we’re working hard and hustling for money, and then we spend it all to keep up with the Joneses and look good to our friends or to try to out success them or look better than them.
(21:10)
And that’s what keeps us in the rat race our whole life. And it’s a lose game. There’s no win. And it just makes me think you and I are mastermind together. And what I find interesting and our mastermind’s great, it’s about business and marketing, but it’s all about more hustle. It’s all about, and again, I like to hustle. I like to work these things, but we’re not having a conversation in this business context about how much money is enough, what is passive income? Are we on track to do these things? What are we investing in? What are the different vehicles or tools or sharing those type of wealth building ideas? We’re just talking about how do we make more money in our business? And a lot of maybe ego that can be fed into there like, Hey, I’m making more money than rest of the group so I can feel really good about myself. So yeah, I think a part of the happiness equation when it comes to money is we have to get out of the comparison game and just really get connected to what is a meaningful good life to me and my family.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Amen to that. Yeah. Well, Christina, before I ask you the final question here, I know we’re running short on time. Let just ask where can people follow you? Where’s the best way they can do that?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Where I’m really pointing everybody today is my YouTube channel. So it’s just at Christina Wise, KN two Ss on YouTube, and it’s a newer channel, but I’m just really inspired to share more story and just more practical wisdom like you and I are talking about today. My last name is Wise, so I call ’em Wise Dems. It’s Wise Dem that I’m sharing. And yeah, I just like to really break down this money conversation into just small parts. And so at Christina Wise at YouTube and then anybody they want to read my book, I have a free digital copy called Just Falling for money.com. And that’s the two best places, one’s YouTube, and one, if you want to get on my email list, then falling for money.com will give you the book and keep you on the list.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Awesome. We’ll be sure to put that in the show notes. So this is great. Last question for you is we talk about money Ripples, that ripple effect you’re here to create. What kind of ripple effect do you feel like you’re here to create, Christina?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Well, there’s ripple effect. Of course. I really want to save people from all the mistakes I’ve made and I’ve learned a lot of lessons. So that’s my work that I do today as far as public work and doing what you do with my podcasts and my books and my YouTube and yada yada yada, and my wealthy wealthy business. But beyond that, the ripple effect is with my children and this real desire to want to change the generational wealth. And I started where I started, my parents were on my payroll until my dad passed. And so that was that legacy. And now the ripple effect is my kids are good with money. We have dinner table conversations, they know where all the money is, it’s not a taboo subject. And that ripple effect is I want them and their kids to have a different relationship with money and a different understanding so that they have less financial distress in their life, and hopefully money can be more of a positive than something that can just uproot everything.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
I love it. Well, that’s great and you’re definitely in the right place, Christina, so I really appreciate it, everybody. Hey, if you want to follow Christina, be sure to do so. We have that in the show notes there, whether you want to get her ebook, definitely follow her. Christina Wise at Christina Wise with two S’s and Christina, follow her YouTube channel for sure. This great content’s coming out on that channel right now. So everybody remember, it’s not just about making the money, it’s about creating that rich life, creating that wellness in all aspects so that you live that real true life of true wealth. Go and make it a wonderful and process week, and we’ll see you later.