Welcome to Getting Rich Together, the show for successful women who are looking to take their financial futures to the next level.

I’m your host, Shama Bunton. When I started my wealth-building journey, nobody knocked on my door to give me all the answers. So I want to talk to the experts who’ve done it and bring the answers to you so we can discover the right opportunities that will help us achieve the financial futures we’ve always dreamed of together and have fun doing it. So let’s dive into this episode and start Getting Rich Together. I am here today with the gorgeous Sal Watts. Sal, most people know you as being a serial entrepreneur, most recently as the founder and CEO of WattsNext PX, but really as being just an overall incredible human being. I’m so grateful to have you here today on Getting Rich Together. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. What a way to start.

I feel like I want to tear up. Well, Sal, anyone who’s known you for any length of time will know that you are an incredible business owner and entrepreneur. But as we both know, our show really focuses and centers on your entire life and all that you are.

And so with that, I’d love to start off with a young Sal, maybe someone who’s about seven, nine, 10 years old. Darling, where were you in this beautiful world? What was life like for you?

And what was money like for you as a little girl? Yeah, I’m Australian, you can probably tell. At that stage in my life, I was living in Australia. That was not a great time, seven, eight, nine. There was instability and insecurity in my life. There was domestic violence in my life.

My mum had left my dad and then everything was very unstable and unsafe. I mean, I think about that time a lot because obviously those moments have massive impact on your different behaviors. I remember certain things really clearly in relation to money back then.

I didn’t have any sense of money at that point. A little bit later, like as I was going through my teenage years, it was quite interesting because I went to a private girl’s school and I was the poorest out of everyone. My mum and I lived in a unit or a flat. We had the crappiest car and we rented this flat and all my friends had huge houses with pools and tennis courts and Mercedes Benz like serious money. It’s funny because I don’t have a scarcity mindset around money.

Considering how I was growing up, I was very aware and embarrassed. But I remember mum always used to say, you get what you pay for. That’s why I remember her saying all the time, you get what you pay for, you get what you pay for.

So I sort of always had this view about quality and that we use money to get the things that you want. When I think about how we were living, whilst I didn’t feel like I was going without anything, I was very aware that all my friends lived a certain life and I lived a very different life and I had some embarrassment around that. And so while you were in high school, usually the first opportunity is that most of us get to get a job, have our own money, have some ownership over the decisions in our lives. To some extent, did you find yourself gravitating towards working and trying to make some extra income? Were you heads down in your studies in high school?

What was that experience like as you were starting to come into your own? Yeah, so I wasn’t head down in my studies. I wanted to be an actress and so I put all of my effort into my drama classes and everything else got no attention whatsoever. I wasn’t naturally disciplined and I didn’t have a home life. I had guidance and support and accountability to what I needed to do.

So I was naughty, not terrible by any means, but I was nowhere near living up to my potential. It’s interesting now because I never felt like I didn’t have access to money, but once I got a little bit older, my mum used to kick me out of home. So we’d have a fight, we’d have a terrible relationship. She’d kick me out and that was such key part of me becoming an entrepreneur. I didn’t start my business until I was 30. It was very much driven by if you can’t even rely on your parents to support you, you’ll never be able to rely on anyone. I have to look after myself.

I can never trust that anyone else will be there. Sounds really negative. At the time and as it drove me in a positive place of being an entrepreneur and being independent, it was coming from a negative place, but I was using it for good. It wasn’t until I was quite a lot older, like in the last six years, five years, I was like, oh, I’ve got a nice little moat around me and don’t let anyone in and perhaps I don’t need to be like that anymore.

I can actually just chill in that area. I’m 15 next year. So the last five years has been like, oh, okay, that really served me and helped me throughout my life. And now it’s run out.

It’s like, that’s no longer something I need. I have to work on that narrative. But it certainly drove you to some powerful places, right? I feel like we can never be unscathed when it comes to life lessons. We need to become the people that we are meant to be. So as you’re progressing from high school to university and deciding what you are going to evolve into, how did you reconcile the desire to be an actress and wanting to experience yourself in that way and sort of choosing to go to college and start to apply yourself and think about things more, let’s say, succinctly?

Yeah. So my eldest son is about to go off to college and the college situation here in the US compared to Australia is completely different. You go to university, you stay at home, you don’t go away, you’d go to the local university and you know, whatever. I went to university three times and dropped out three times very quickly. I never felt that I could learn that way. I was trying so hard to do whatever everyone else was doing.

When I didn’t get into acting, and that was purely because I hadn’t been disciplined in my other areas that I needed, I didn’t know where I fit. I knew nothing about entrepreneurship. We’d never been taught anything about. We didn’t have economics classes, business classes, everyone, you know, our college, our school counsellors would be pushing everyone at law or medicine because, you know, that was good stats for the school. We didn’t know what I wanted to do. I went backpacking around Southeast Asia and had no real direction. I didn’t get started until I was 30 and then, you know, started a business with no experience, no qualifications, no money, nothing.

I just, but I was driven by that I want to see if I can and I don’t want anyone to be able to control me and tell me what I can and can’t do and what I can and can’t spend and whatever it may be. So, it’s funny because when I was like in the first few years of the business, I didn’t tell anyone about my sort of story. And then when it got to five years and I’d like, you know, got a few runs on the board and then I could start saying, well, actually, you don’t have to follow the path that everyone says.

Like I haven’t, I don’t have any credentials and I really didn’t go to uni and I didn’t have like whatever and I still managed to build something out of nothing with nothing. So obviously, you know, there’s a good 10 year period where you’re like, okay, you’re being handed a set of life experiences that are unique, possibly unusual, and and certainly have guided you now into this next 20 year plus career you’re entering into as a very independent, self-sufficient mother who’s really on a trajectory. But those 10 years were also very influential. So, you know, what were some of the more influential experiences that you had and how did you sort of navigate the amorphousness of that time, right? And also what the key learnings were about yourself. You know, the like the things I had when I started the business was a really clear vision and a whole lot of naivety and no idea, no understanding of how little I actually had.

But throughout those 10 years, I did a lot of packing and travel. I’d worked in dynamic industries like recruitment and ones where your personality and how you connect with people gets you a long way. So I was sort of on a normal career trajectory in the sort of recruitment HR space.

I went and started working for a young recruiter and she was very dynamic. And what came to light from my time with her was I could not see my potential. I was just so messed up. I couldn’t see what I was capable of at all. I actually resigned. I said to her, I just can’t, I’m just no good at this.

She was like, but let’s look at all your KPIs and your stats. Like, it’s on paper, right? It’s right here.

There’s evidence here. You are good at it. Like, no, I’m just not, I’m just not any good at it. And she was like, this is so frustrating.

I’m sure we all have met people where they just don’t get how good they are or how awesome they are at something or whatever. She said, you know what? Like, okay, you need to, if you feel like you need to go and downgrade because I was going to go and downgrade into an internal role, which just so not me.

She said, that’s fine, but I want you to do, I’m going to pay for you to do one session with my life coach. And so this is like, I was 27. So 20 years ago. And back then, life coaching was very not heard of. You wouldn’t ever say to anyone that you were doing seeing a life coach because everyone would be like, what is that?

That’s ridiculous. I spent an hour with this guy over the phone. He was in Melbourne. I was in Adelaide and spent an hour.

And then afterwards, I remember going downstairs onto the road calling my husband saying, I need to do this 12 week coaching program with this guy called Ross. And it’s going to cost us $1,000 ,000 that we can’t afford. And I have no idea really what it’s about, but I have to do this. We have to work out hard to get the money. And so from that, I started this one on one life coaching with him. And I was the worst client because I pushed back on everything. I found it really confronting.

I wouldn’t do my homework. I kept pushing sessions, like rescheduling. Like I was a real pain.

It’s interesting that he didn’t go, you know what, you’re not committed, which would have been totally fair. But we pushed through and I did the 12 weeks over. I don’t know how long it took me, maybe a year.

Then I did another 12 session program. I started to really open up about understanding my potential and working on those insecurities and those stories that we tell ourselves that make us smaller. Suddenly, I was like, whoa, I actually can do anything. And it was this incredible transformation with a lot of hard work. I was putting a lot of time and money into personal development with Ross, any book he told me to read, any course he told me to go to, everything.

So I became this personal development junkie. I remember ringing him, it changed my life. And I had not seen him in person at all, been over the phone.

There wasn’t any zoom back then. I remember at one point I called him, I said, I wish I’d never met you. And he was like, what’s happened? And I said, I don’t fit anywhere. Like I can’t be around the people that I used to be around with because now all I see is this limited belief and this victim mentalities and this negativity that everyone has. It just all became so obvious that I just felt like I couldn’t be where I used to be in the same groups I used to be in because I could see something now. And I said, I just want to go back to how I was, where I just didn’t know all that stuff.

I just remember that call. I was really struggling with the fact that I felt like I didn’t like anyone and I couldn’t relate to what you are. And that’s why things like EO have been so important because you’re around like minor people who are focused on their personal development and who are putting the mirror up every day and going, you know, what am I doing that’s not serving me? That was the game changer of my life. I remember saying to him, I’d love to have a job where you change people’s lives, like what you’ve done to me, you’ve changed my life.

That must feel amazing. He said, well, you could do that. And I said, I can’t do that because I could teach you to be a coach. I was very passionate about young women not seeing their potential. Like people like me mid to high twenties that had the world at their feet and just couldn’t see it.

I was very passionate and getting very frustrated with the fact that there were so many of us like that. And he said, I’ll train you. And so he did. And then I’d got some clients and then and so what’s next was started as a life coaching business. That’s really what was the change for me.

That’s so incredible, Sal. And so were you able to then see like, obviously, you went through this transformation, you saw yourself differently in terms of, you know, what you if you can give an example, like, especially when it comes to money, I feel like sometimes, you know, we hold ourselves to limiting beliefs around what can I earn or what can I ask for or what do I deserve. And it sounds like you might have some interesting stories around how you went from, I’m going to take this downgraded position here, give us some more context into how this transformation affected the way in which you saw your financial world. I started coaching with him took this internal downgraded role. And I got a role that I wanted in a law firm. I was there for a couple of months. I went to the CEO and I said, I want a 20 grand increase. Must have been a couple, it must have been three months, because I could show what I’ve done.

I said, I want a 20 grand increase. And this is why I went, this is what I’ve done. This is what I can tell you is the reason that things aren’t working and just put a completely different perspective and actually being in that recruitment world of that very dynamic commercial industry, but also learning about business and personal development. I was just looking at everything at a completely different perspective when I came in, she said, okay, I’ve written a blog about it. I wrote a blog about it.

Oh my God. How did that feel? You know, it was like, I am worth this because I’ve come in here, I haven’t known anything and I’ve done all of this stuff. I’ve realized that, wow, I’m really valuable to this company in this role.

And I’ve really made a difference already. And so I’m going to ask, it wasn’t sort of, oh, should I, you know, this is pushing the boundaries, you know, I was like, this is how I feel. Well, you own debt. You were like, I want more money. This is how much I want. This is why I want it.

I think that’s incredible. At what point from the stability of someone else paying you to then moving into what I consider to be the most embodied version of yourself, when you say, you know what, I can trust myself to provide for myself and can navigate what this world looks like outside of this maybe false construct of a corporate job. At what point did you decide you were going to have this business full time and how did you and your husband think about structuring home life?

And obviously life is different when you have corporate jobs and then you start to move into entrepreneurialism, which certainly can have high returns, but can be challenging to start to see the flywheel. So what was that conversation like at home and how did you make that decision? So I started doing this life coaching on the side and we had an opportunity to move state. We moved to Brisbane and I said to Ben, I’d really like to not get a job and try and get this business happening.

He’s like, okay, and so I was doing that and then I feel like I need to do something. I felt pregnant with my first child, which we planned. I really would like to get a job so that I can put some money aside. So I applied for all these jobs, pregnant and wrote in the cover letter, I am six months pregnant or whatever it was, three months pregnant to see whether anyone would actually invite me in for an interview. This position that I ended up doing was the catalyst for me starting my business. So I got this role as in a company of about a hundred people and they had a payroll person. It was the first time they’d had a HR role. And so I applied, I’d written in my cover letter that I was pregnant, came in, did the interview, they gave me the job and then I said to them, oh, also I’d like to work four days because I want to do my coaching on the side. And they said, okay, that’s fine.

And then it’s like, I’m only going to be there for a lot of many months until the baby. And then I said, I’m in a HR role. I can’t be open plan. I need an office. They built an office.

They built an office. Like now I think about it. Now we’re talking about like how these things happen.

I just was like, I’m just going to ask. I’m going to, I’ve always thought go out with exactly what you want and then negotiate from there. Go for what you want and then see what you’re willing to sacrifice or whatever. I did that role and I had this amazing owner. When I went on maternity leave, he left and this new woman came in and I didn’t want to go back. And I was like, I have saved enough money, nine months worth of money before I have to go back to work. Put the money aside so that for nine months, I could pay my part of our, I was like, I need to get a business started in that time.

So by the time the nine months hits, I can support myself as far as our family, my contribution. The owner, he had other businesses. So he engaged me to do some recruitment for him or whatever. My son was three months old and I launched the business. It’s going to be 18 in August and I got the invoice. I was charged $60 an hour to recruit a CEO.

Wow. And it was like five a hour, but invoice is done in Excel. It’s like, you know, $60 an hour.

This is Australian too, by the way, for however many hours for CEO recruitment. I mean, crazy. But I was like, I’ve got nine months until I run out of money. So like I had a three month old baby sitting here. We moved from another state. So we had no network. I didn’t have parents around us. Didn’t have any money. We were like, we were okay.

We were earning this. What’s your husband like? Okay, this sounds like a good plan. Was he fully on board? He’s always been very sort of like, I don’t have any aversion to risk, but he does. And I would always like, it’s going to be fine.

I’ve got this. He was very much always wanting me to do what I want to do. So I was very lucky in the fact that he, I backed myself, always have, and he supported that and was like, okay, well, you know, if this is what she wants, she’ll make it happen. Seven years later, he had left his job and joined the business.

I remember sitting in this spare bedroom with the baby there. And I was like, I’m going to build a international consulting firm that’s going to disrupt the HR space and blah, blah, blah. Like, I don’t have anything in my toolkit, except for this vision and this naivety. Like I was, I didn’t realize I didn’t have anything. It wasn’t until five years later when I started getting asked to do talks about the story.

I remember the first time that I sat down to prepare for a talk and I was, wow, I really had nothing going for me. Oh my gosh, this is really quite incredible, this story. I didn’t really realize until I had to sort of think about the journey and look back and go, whoa, I had no idea. But I had this vision and I was like, I’m going to, you know, this is what I’m going to do.

I’m going to disrupt it. When I look at the whole journey, left and moved to New York City when I was 45 with three kids and a business and just left to start all over again. And there are so many times where I look at my life now where I’ve been in situations, have truly lived and thought, not consciously knowing at the time, but you know that saying, I’m like a bird is never afraid of the branch breaking because it knows it has its wings. I look back now, I realized that that’s how I have been.

I’ve always backed myself. It’s like, well, if everything disappears because I never had anything, I’ve always been, well, I never had anything anyway. I never got given anything. No one gave me any money.

I didn’t borrow any money for the business. Everything I just built myself slowly and just with hard work. And so because of that, because I didn’t have this stable family or, you know, parents I could fall back on, I just always was like, well, I have to make it happen. And whilst I had my husband, I never thought about it that way. I just always backed myself. Now, when I walked away from everything that I had built to start all over in the most expensive city in the world, on paper, none of that makes sense. But it’s like my heart just needs me to do that.

So I’ll just do it somehow. You mentioned your husband quit his job and joined you seven years into the business. Now, two questions. One is obviously building a business. You know, some people I think really over glamorize building a business, but really, it can be tough to pay yourself, right?

Sometimes there are tradeoffs between what do I take for myself? What do I put back into the business? You know, at what point did you feel secure to start drawing a salary that you felt really good about? And how did you think about the next levels of saying, okay, well, now I can put money into some savings again, right, or start to replenish what you’re drawing down on to start the business. How did you think about managing these early days of the cash flow? And then how did you decide to bring your husband on board? And what the hell was that experience like?

But let’s start with the first one. What point were you able to start to draw a meaningful salary? Yeah, so I remember it was getting close to five years in, and I just put everything back in the business.

I worked all the time. I had two kids at that stage. And we lived in this house that we had a mortgage on, but it was this little house that was nowhere near okay for two little kids. Everything was hard.

I didn’t have a cleaner. Everything was going back into the business. I invested very early in staff. The business wasn’t built on my billable time, if you’re, if for one of a word or word, we never built for time. But if you know what I mean, I went into it because I wanted to grow something. I remember, oh my God, Paul Ben, I remember him coming home one day when I was in that little spare bedroom and, and that, you know, there’s the spare bed behind me and, and the business decided I like tiny weenie and he came home and can’t visualize growth in this space.

Like, how can I visualize growth and being an international company in this space? I need to go and get an office. And he was like, but you don’t have any money. And I’m like, I found a place that I can pay by the month.

And so as long as I can pay for that month, then I’m not locking myself into anything. thing. And then I was like, and also it’s really silly for me to be doing all this administration.

I should have an employee so that I can focus on sales. This is like right at the beginning. And he’s like, but you don’t have any money. And I’m like, yeah, but the reason I don’t have any money is because I can’t do the sales. And if I had someone and I had an office where I could visualize growth, like seriously, if I was in an office where I could visualize growth and I had assistant or whatever, then I could make money. Well, I was like, okay, I’ll get an office where it’s pay by the month. So I’m not locked into anything. And I’ll get a temp person.

I found a medic girl at a conference and who was happy to do part time hours and whatever. And so I said, okay, I’m not locked into anything. But I went for it. And he was just like, oh my God, you’re doing all of this when you have no nothing like you haven’t got anything. But I really believed that you need stuff to generate like you really need to.

And so I was always like that with the business. I remember me and my assistant, she said, I said, oh, can you do a phone list for us to put on the wall back in the day you’d have a phone? I said, can you do a phone list? And her band, her boyfriend, her mom, our IT guy, and that’s about it. She printed out this phone list for us to put on the wall.

And it just looked a bit shabby and whatever. And I said to her, if we were a 100 person company, and we had people all around Australia, and you had to do the phone list, would you be happy with that? And she was like, no. And I was like, we have to act like we are 100 person, we have to act like where we want to be. She’s like, okay, she did this beautiful phone list with the logo and whatever like four people on it, we stuck it up. And I was like, I need to get proper branding, proper cards and whatever. Ben was always like, you’re acting like you’re this established company. I was like, yeah, because I’ve got to act like where I want to be. I did that from the very beginning.

But anyway, so that just, I think that has been a mentality that has helped me. And I don’t really know where I’m from. But in relation to taking salary, so I remember five years in, I didn’t have any help. And I was just really pushing it hard. I got this business coach. And he said to me, you need a bigger house, you need a better car.

You’ve shown that you’ve got consistent income. You’ve got a team of five people, you actually need to do that. Because if you don’t, you won’t go any further.

You can’t keep living in an environment that makes everything harder. And so we bought a proper grown up house. And with a pool, I got a nanny. And I got a, I’d always had this car that I’d wanted. And I, the day I started the business, I said, if I, if the business lasts for five years on the five year anniversary, I’m going to get myself this car. And I never ever really believed that because I was not someone who had that type of car. But I had that picture.

We moved offices four times because we kept growing. I take my picture, take my picture. And so this coach said, you need to get a proper house. You need to set yourself up so that you’ve got the right support and foundations around you. Because you’ve got a serious business now.

It’s always a million dollar business. And I was like, Oh, can I do that? And it’s funny because once I did that, it’s again, it’s like that, okay, now I’m ready for the next stage.

I’m serious. And yeah, so I don’t remember, I know that I never borrowed a cent and that I, like, when I would get paid an invoice, a client paid me $1,000, I put 20% into another account for the tax payment. I was so aware that I don’t have anyone to fall back on.

And so I just made sure that I never had to worry about when tax time came or when the whatever I always had everything where it needed to be. When he said to me, you need to make this easier for you. It’s really getting out of control. That was a big change. And then it got to the five years.

And my couple of my staff at the time came in and said, So five years is coming up. You’re going to get the car? You’re going to get the car. And I was like, I don’t think so. I don’t think I’m going to get the car. Anyway, then that same day, one of those team members came back into my office late at night after everyone left and said, you have to get the car.

I’ve got goosebumps. I said, Oh, she said, if you don’t get the car, what hope have I ever got of getting that sort of car? And so funny, at the time, I had clients that were like, I don’t know what to do about where I parked my car because my employees see that I’ve got a nice car and then they think they should be even paid more. And I’m like, that’s a culture thing.

I didn’t really realize that at the time. But when she said that to me, it just gave me a whole nother view of like, you got to do this for all those behind me as well. Like I mean nothing and no one helping me. And I’ve been able to build something not astronomical, but I’ve been able to build something from nothing. And you know what, I should start sharing this and I should start showing people that you don’t have to have all these things and you don’t have to have come from the best family.

I’ve had the best childhood or got the best qualifications. Like you can just want to do something and then back yourself basically. And yeah, so I got the car. Oh, I love that.

What a fantastic story Salve. And so that must have been then two years before you hired your husband and brought him into the company. How did you guys decide to have not just your feet committed to the business, but now have four feet, right? Two heads of the household providing for children, deciding to sort of be in business together.

Yeah, well, it wasn’t really planned that way. I was like pregnant with my third son and he was quite senior in his job. So his job needed, you know, the extra hours, whatever. And then my business is growing, we’re about to have three kids. So I said it would be so much easier on the family and the business if you didn’t work there, we could just balance everything better. You help with the kids more and then you can help me with some projects like things that I really want to get done in the business, but I just can never get to set.

We had very different, we’re very different sort of like he’s really good operations and I’m visionary. So he wound down his time at when he was working, he started to do a consulting back for three days a week. I ended up taking time off with my third son, which I hadn’t done with the other two. I started the business at the same time. And the goal was that he would come in, I put, I created an employment contract and I said in it, you have to play golf every Wednesday.

He never did that. And it’s really about you can work and get some projects that are going to make the business so much better. We don’t have to worry so much about one of the kids to see all that stuff. It was a disaster.

I would do so many things differently now. But a lot of the times when this, when a spouse comes into a business, often it’s the stay at home mum who comes in, does some part-time hours doing bookkeeping or whatever. When you’ve got a man who has got his own career, has been very successful in his own right. And then you say, come into this small business that is awesome, but is small and just do stuff. Like you don’t have a big team that you’re leading.

You’re not in the leadership team anymore. We didn’t realize the impact that would have and how challenging that was for him to adapt. He tried to be me and it was a disaster.

It was a key part to our marriage breaking down. But just to jump to the happy ending, he runs my company in Australia now so that I could come and chase my dream in New York. So you know, crazy story.

But yeah, so that was very, yeah, it was just stuff we just couldn’t have known. Yeah, of course. I mean, it’s not easy to be in business with the spouse.

And then certainly, you’re also learning so many different things about each other in a different context, right? It’s like, never we were in business. My business always been still to this day. My business, I’m now entrepreneur, I started it and he came to work in it. So it was never about us being in business together. And that I had some, have had many issues over the years because everyone assumes it’s his business, you know, and he started it, or we must have started it together.

And that has happened. Like ever since he came in, everyone has assumed it’s his business, or we start together. And so I, and he’s, he makes it very clear to everyone, this is self started this, I didn’t come in until it was seven years old until it was established and couldn’t look after our family.

So and even to this day, like he’s the CEO of Australia office, he’s brilliant and has done an amazing job. And he says, I’ll start it. I mean, it’s, you know, so it was self brainchild or whatever.

So, but because I would just get so frustrated with you. Well, yeah, how awful, right? I mean, you’re like, oh, you guys, and also because the business has my surname, which is my married name, it frustrates me so much that people make the assumption that he started it, or that we obviously started together. There’s no understanding that I did this completely and made it successful enough for him to be able to leave his high powered job. Yeah, wild.

I mean, and it’s, you know, I wish I wish there were more stories of the opposite, but there are far more that are affirm your experience around what that narrative is. So fast forwarding, you’ve owned this business now for over 17 years, you now have a location and you’re building business in New York City, and you just moved to New York City about five years ago. Talk to me a little bit about the trajectory of this business. So what was the impetus or how did you think about savings and security to then start to be able to say, okay, this next big dream of mine is something that I feel like I can go after? Did you have a certain was it I’ve hit a certain amount of money in my savings account? I’ve now invested in these areas.

What were some of the things that you did and where did you park your money for some security or stability as you decided to make these next big decisions? So you’re going to be happy horrified by what I say. Horrified. Go for it. Clause, do not follow this advice.

Do not do what she did. I’ve been coming to the business. We had, in 2016, I nearly lost the business.

I had employed someone that caused a lot of trouble and they tried to sue me. I lost a lot of stuff. Like it was just a disaster. But that really knocked me and I was really unhappy just generally. I was unhappy in my marriage. I was unhappy in life. And so I kept running away to New York. I’d come to New York for like three weeks, staying in Airbnb and people would say like, what are you doing there? You’re doing business? I’m like, no, I just need to be here. So I was running away. There was no planning or savings or business plan.

There was nothing. I was just running to New York to get away. The problem is you can’t get away from yourself, which is really what I was trying to do. I spent, I just kept doing that. And the business was at a point where it was a really great lifestyle business, putting off good cash. We had a really nice house. We had all the fancy things and blah, blah, blah.

We could do great trips and whatever. And I was not responsible. I was really burnt out, like really, really burnt out.

All these things I didn’t recognize at the time, right? I’m running away. I’m unhappy. I’m burnt out. All of these things, I didn’t know that that was happening. If I knew that, then I would behave differently, maybe. But I didn’t.

I just spent 18 months here living on different couches and going back every month to see the boys, trying to work out how I could move here. There was no plan, no preparation, no money preparation, nothing. And the business just funded me to chase this thing. And I just kept chasing and kept chasing.

And then it was like the middle of 2019. I had been doing this for a year and I was really not making much progress because it’s really hard to move to America as an entrepreneur and start up here. It’s really hard. I went back over the summer and I’m a big believer in coaches and mentors. I had this coach who coaches world champion surfers.

And I believe there’s a whole lot of alignment to coaching for sport and coaching for business. And so I got him and I was like, I’m trying to do this New York thing. It’s not working. And I know that if I give up on this dream that I will go into a depression and I’ll recover. And he said, we just need to go back and try again. And I said, but I’ve done it, been doing that for over a year away from the kids. So much judgment.

The things that people would say to me about my mother, being a mother was so cruel. And he said, just got to go back and find another way. And I said, but I’ve been doing this. Find another way.

And if that doesn’t work, find another way. So I came back, had six months and I was like, okay, I was the one walking down the streets in New York City crying, going, find another way, find another way. And then I got a few clients and the boys, I got the boys to move over with the view that they’d come for a year and we just have an experience. They got here and six weeks later COVID happened and everything shut down. Then who had not been away from, apart from the kids, could not get into the country for 10 months. Australia would not let him leave. He applied to come and visit 11 times to see his kids, denied, denied, denied. I said to him, why don’t you put in that the purpose of the trip is for business? Put that in and they approved it.

And you can come out. How bad’s that? The boys have been here for six weeks. They got into school. Everything’s completely different. Like it is so different to our world in Australia.

COVID happens and Ben can’t get here. The boys are at home in an apartment. We’ve been living in a big house and whatever. I’m not domestic at all. I’m like, I can’t cook. I’m done how to use a washing machine.

I’m hopeless. Suddenly we’re all together in this, not with not knowing anybody in the country, in the city. It was just wild. Yeah. So it was like, it was crazy.

And so then people were saying, you need to come home. It’s disgraceful what you’re doing. It’s cruel to Ben.

It’s irresponsible. It’s not like, I just got smashed. And I was like, I’d spent two years commuting, like being away from my boys to try and make this dream happen. I can’t go back. If I go back, we’ll never get here again. And so I said, we just need to hang in there.

I was also like, very Australian, but like, this is bullshit. This will be over in two weeks. Oh, this will be over in two weeks.

I did that for 18 months. This will be over soon. This will be over soon. And it was like, New York, New York City, it’s going to have an amazing comeback.

Everyone’s leaving and selling their properties. And you know, I’m like, no, it’s going to be the most amazing comeback in a month and then two years later or whatever. Oh my God. So how has it been now that you’ve been in New York for five years, you’ve established a New York City based business, you are thriving. How did you get to where we are today?

What was the linchpin? What happened? So now I’m not thriving.

I’m not there yet. COVID put a huge, like it stopped everything in my business. And luckily for Australia, that was an established business. And so it could get through, it’s got through a number of different economic crises and we could get through.

And that’s business supported me to be here on the disgusting exchange rate, which makes me want to vomit in my mouth. But you know, everything stopped. And I had to rebuild. I went through a real personal crisis. I’d been away from the boys, I got the boys here, then I was getting the business going and then COVID happened. And I just didn’t have any traction here. I wasn’t going to give up. I had so much criticism, people think so mean to me. But I was like, I’m just not going to, we’d have family meetings. Is everyone cool to keep going?

Everyone cool to keep going until this time? Yep. Yep. Yep.

So we did a lot of that. But no, I’m like, I’m not thriving. I’m just trying to get us to a place where I don’t have to rely on my Australian business. And I can be fully independent here in the US, which I can’t.

I need my Australian business. And that means I need Ben working in that puts a lot of pressure on him. But we’re here. I’ve got clients and a network and connections and my, you know, son who was coming here said, I’m only going to come for six months is now about to go off to college and loves it.

So I’ll call you when I can say, I’m ready to talk about the thriving part. Probably another five years back when I first started, the beauty of naivety and the beauty of not having ever had anything like now I’ve had, I worked my way up to have lots of things. And that’s very hard to like, you know, I’m older now, and I want to do the shit that I did when I was, you know, 30 and starting out with the boys are different and they need different things. And I mean, I’m now in a completely different city.

What I realized was I kept trying to build this business like what I did when I started the first one, why can’t I do it the same way? Why am I not like I was really fought that for a long time until I went, you know, I’m a lot older. I’ve had a lot of different views of the world. There are certain things that I’m just not prepared to do that I’ve got my boys are, you know, completely different stage. I can’t look at this about what I used to do, what I did the first time, I have to start this whole thing from who I am now. And so all of this has been happening over the years, like it’s taken me years to like work out all this stuff and why I made stupid decisions or self sabotaged or trying something and it’s just not working because it worked the first time like the whole world’s different.

I didn’t have social media when I first started my business, you know, like it’s like, I can’t try and build it the same way. I have more on the line than I did. This has been an incredible self development journey and continues to be every single day. And I’m sure if we talk again in six months, there’ll be a whole another crazy hour stories to share. Well, you know, so the thing that’s really clear out of this conversation is you are deeply in touch with what you are wanting. And you are not afraid to really examine all that you are for all that you want to be and create. And I think that when it comes to letting go of who we are and stepping into our greatness, think your story does a fantastic job of really sort of highlighting what does it look like when you fully commit to your dreams or yourself? It also begs the question, there are so many people, especially women who never dare to dream of what is fully possible.

And partially it’s because it’s fucking scary. There’s this component which is can it happen? Yes, it’s happening. What does it mean? If it means that you can go from a thought to a thing many, many times, that means that you’re simply just not done living yet, which sort of begs me to my next question, you know, we’re all sort of living these days much longer than I think we should, you know, dare I say you’ll be living to about 120 because that’s just the way science is moving. But as you sort of think about your way of being in the world, that would almost put you at having six or 10 other locations you might live and starting other branches of the business.

I mean, how do you sort of look at legacy or life going forward given all that you’ve experienced so far? Yeah, well, I will say one thing about what you said before, my life mantra is no plan B. And I have it tattooed on my arm. And it’s because I believe if everyone just went and did what they really wanted to do, and they didn’t worry about what people thought, and they didn’t worry about it might failing, we would be so much happier.

And people would be surprised by what they’re capable of and what you can make happen. If there’s no plan B, you’ve got to make it work. You’ve got to make it work. I live by that mantra every single day because I am so passionate about the fact that it upsets me that people aren’t living, aren’t prepared to chase their dreams. I’m starting all over again, as far as my legacy goes. I imagine that I’m 111.

That’s how long I’m going to live to 111. And I’m sitting there with all my grandkids and great grandkids in a rocking chair on a porch. This is what I visualise. And there’s all these generations sitting in front of me. And they say, so, grandma, so, or whatever, so, so, tell us about your life.

And I say, well, have I got a story for you? And that is what my legacy is. And that’s what I’m living. I can’t tell you what it’s going to be because I’m in it. That is the goal to be able to go, well, gather round because I’ve got a story. And I’m not even halfway through yet. So that’s how I’m living.

I love it. The hero’s journey. I have two final questions. They are two of my favourite questions. You know, often we talk about money in terms of struggle or not having enough or, you know, what the sort of logistics or, you know, the hard questions around money. But I also really love some of the fun things that money can do for us, right?

Some of the ways in which it can put a smile on our face and contribute to special moments and opportunities. What are some of been your favourite ways to spend money recently? What’s been making you happy or feel good when you’ve been exercising your capital? Travel always. Travel experiences always.

You know, any chance I get to go on my own or take the boys to have experiences in my own little world? I love fashion. I like wearing eclectic things. I really enjoy investing my money in buying nice clothes. I don’t buy Chanel clothes, but buying things that I really love and get a lot of enjoyment out of that. I didn’t spend anything for the first five years and then seven years. I remember the first time I bought myself a pair of shoes that were $250 or you started going to a more expensive shop and you open the gates and it’s like, whoa, how awesome is this? And it’s funny because now I look at things like I went through the whole like buying the beautiful bags and all, you know, and now I’m like sort of done that. I don’t like, I like it and I would do it, but it’s not as missing where buying cool clothes and stuff I really enjoy. But otherwise it’s always about travel and experiences for all of us. The more you travel and experience other cultures and other people, you realize that your stuff doesn’t matter. Like it’s all cool. Don’t worry about it.

It’s ultimately this tiny speck and you get out into the world and you’re like, why am I worrying about what my mother-in-law thinks? And then my last question, Sal, is, you know, the audience loves to support the guests who are on the show. So what is it that you’re calling in right now? How can we support you? Oh, thank you so much.

I love that. You know, I’m trying to build my business with culture architects for founders. We come in and go, what do you want to achieve in your business?

Right from a people perspective, we’re going to work out how to get you there. And it’s really cool work. It’s interesting and it’s about achieving the dream for the client, but it’s also giving employees an amazing experience. I just really want to get into as many businesses as I can to show them that you can have a really cool people experience built from the goal of the founder.

They’re not separate. I want to connect with people who have their own businesses with staff and that’s, I just want to build this business out now. Beautiful, wonderful, Sal. It’s been incredible having you today on the show. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Getting Rich Together. Please take a minute to subscribe. And if you liked this episode, I’d love it if you could share it with your friend who is ready to elevate their financial future. Until next time, let’s keep getting rich together.