Your business can be worth millions on paper while you pay yourself like an employee — and sit one lawsuit, one injury, or one shutdown away from starting over.

In this episode of QueenMode, Ana sits down with financial advisor Michelle Taylor, founder of Women in Wealth and host of Talk Wealthy to Me, to unpack why a profitable business is not the same as personal wealth. They get into the difference between a lifestyle business and a sellable asset, why the business that can't run without you is also the business that's hardest to sell, and why every founder should start planning her exit years before she plans to leave.

What You'll Learn

• Why two businesses with the same revenue and profit can be valued completely differently, and what a buyer actually looks at
• The simplest test for whether you own a lifestyle business or a sellable asset: can it run without you?
• What concentration risk means for a business owner, and why disability insurance is not a financial plan for dentists and other practice owners
• The small monthly habit that starts building wealth outside your business, even if you never plan to sell
• Why "delegation is not abdication" when it comes to your own money

Key Quote

"Make sure you're doing both of them at the same time. You have to live in an and universe. It cannot be an or." — Michelle Taylor

Learn More About Michelle Taylor

If Michelle's perspective resonated with you, I'd love for you to keep learning from her:

• Women in Wealth: https://womeninwealth.co — Michelle's community helping women talk openly about money and build real financial confidence
• Instagram: follow Women in Wealth at @women_in_wealth
• GFG Solutions: https://www.gfgsolutions.com — where Michelle works as a financial advisor and business consultant to business owners

If this episode hit home, share it with a woman entrepreneur who needs to hear it.

Leave a review to help more ambitious women find QueenMode.

Stuck as the engine of everything? The Operator Trap scorecard shows you exactly where your business is running you — and what it takes to take the crown back: https://dranacastilla.com/operator-trap/

Follow @queenmodepodcast on Instagram.

anything is fixable? Anything is changeable.

Nothing when it comes to money is truly set in stone.

Well, most things aren't. So it's really just giving yourself the permission

to take a breath and think about what is most important.

What are you building this business for?

What do you want it to look like?

What do you want your personal life to look like?

And then just make sure you're doing both of them.

At the same time. You have to live in an and universe.

It cannot be an or.

What's up, Queen? I'm Dr. Anna Castilla,

orthodontist, entrepreneur, business coach,

author, speaker, unapologetic dream chaser,

and yes, I took my business from flatlining to an eight-figure exit

in just eight years. But spoiler alert,

I didn't get there by playing a safe.

I broke rules, I made bold moves,

and I became the woman my younger self was waiting for.

Queen Mode is your weekly dose of fierce strategy,

unfiltered truth, and mindset shifts that will have you leading,

growing, and living like the powerhouse you are without burning out or selling out.

So if you're done playing small and ready to rise,

welcome home.

I am so excited about today's guest,

Michelle Taylor.

Michelle is a financial advisor and business consultant at GFG Solutions.

She is the founder of Women in Wealth and the host of the Talk Wealthy

to Me podcast.

For more than a decade, Michelle has worked in financial services,

helping women and business owners think more strategically about wealth,

risk, and the futures they are building.

But her work is also deeply personal.

Michelle was diagnosed with leukemia at age 17,

an experience that taught her early that wealth is about far more than

a number in an account.

Later, after finding herself buried in credit card debt,

she made it her mission to learn how money actually works and rebuild

her own financial life. That transformation became Women in Wealth,

a community designed to help women talk openly about money

and building financial confidence.

In this conversation, Michelle and I unpack why a profitable business

is not the same as personal wealth.

What separates a lifestyle business from a sellable asset,

and why every founder should begin preparing for an exit long before

she plans to leave. Please join me,

Queens, in welcoming Michelle Taylor.

Well Michelle, thank you so much for coming on Queen Mode.

I am so excited to have you. I think this is such an important topic that

we are gonna discuss today.

And I'm very excited for my listeners to hear your point of view and your expertise.

Okay. the first thing that I want to start with it's the sentence

of the whole episode that your business is not your wealth plan

or your retirement plan.

Yes.

tell me what that means for you.

Well, I think that we need to do a better job of realizing that building wealth

needs to happen in two places instead of just one.

And we, hit the ground running as entrepreneurs and are building

a business that feels like a baby.

And, rightfully so in the first few years,

oftentimes the dollars that we see coming in have to be reinvested

in the business so that it can continue to grow and scale.

But that muscle, just like any muscle,

once you build it, it's hard to redirect.

And I think for a lot of female business owners,

they forget that. I was just on a phone call with somebody that said,

We're making all of this money,

we leave it in our business, we've already paid taxes on it,

and we don't need anything for the business,

but we almost don't know what else to do.

So I think it's really important as business owners in general that

we always check in with ourselves and say,

okay, why am I sitting on this money that I've already paid taxes on?

I need to go ahead and pay attention to building wealth outside of my business.

None of us thought COVID was going to happen.

Things always happen that can impact your business.

And you need to make sure that you've harvested enough from the good work

to make sure that your personal life reflects that.

You don't want to have a

super successful business on paper and not be living a life that feels

in alignment with that.

you mentioned COVID and I know that when we spoke previously,

you mentioned how COVID affected so many people's businesses,

of course, and we all know that.

But what are some of the things that you saw with your clients,

especially when we consider the idea that some founders can't

really tell the difference between the wealth inside their business

and the wealth outside of their business.

Right, I'll use the example of a few of my clients that worked in events

or in the wedding industry, let's say,

where they were looking down the road at what they thought was going to

be a very successful year. And suddenly they were refunding money to people.

There were no events. They had a payroll they had to consider.

And even before, PPP, that helped some.

But

Overnight their lives changed,

their businesses changed, they were no longer considered essential.

And if they hadn't done enough work on moving wealth outside of their business,

now they're just an employee they're struggling personally and then have

the stress of navigating an unknown that they've never been through

for a business and for all of their employees.

And if the ones that were struggling had only thought

To set themselves up a little bit better,

they wouldn't have had that added stress.

But, when you can't afford to pay your people,

if you had already set money aside,

you wouldn't be worrying about paying yourself.

But so often people were struggling to pay their team to keep them afloat

and they were worse off than the people they were employing.

So it's just shifting the mindset of don't forget yourselves,

your family has to be fed.

At the same time as a business.

It just has to.

And COVID is obviously a pretty drastic example,

Extreme. Yeah.

but as you work with these women and I understand that most of your clients

are women founders, how can you tell that you're talking to a woman that

is not realizing that she is really like an employee in her own business

and not really investing or pulling enough money outside

to invest in her wealth outside of her business.

Very easy because most of them start out doing that.

And I think again, what we are trained to do and to think about

as a business owner. the numbers don't lie though.

So when I'm speaking to a client and we're looking at the

PLs and we're understanding the wealth in the business and where there's opportunity

to make some adjustments, I'm able to tell pretty quickly if they're

not taking care of themselves on the other end.

And, when I sit down with someone and we're talking about their business,

the personal and the business for,

nine out of ten business owners is very murky.

It's gray, it all overlaps. There's no true separation.

And it's easy to see where like I said in that example,

if you've got an operating account that you're sitting on a half

a million dollars because you just don't know what else to do with it,

well, you've already paid the taxes on it.

Why aren't you giving that to yourself to start building your wealth

and investing in a way that will allow you to feel some wins and not keep

it all just sitting in the business like a lazy duck?

So the numbers don't lie. The people may not know

I love that. Yes.

what they're doing, but the numbers the numbers know every time.

And here's the thing I think a lot of women don't really understand,

women that are running a practice or a firm.

the two businesses can have the same revenue,

the same profit, the same overhead,

and yet be valued completely different.

can you talk to me a little bit about why that would be?

Well, when you're talking about valuing a business,

there's a lot of things that we look at.

So it's, the expenses of the business,

sure, but also you as the driving force of the business.

Do you have, a high payroll? do you have more running through your business than

you should that you could be shifting to personal.

So we're really looking at your margins when we're trying to see what

a business is worth. And people love to say,

I actually just posted something on my social media about this.

People love to say, I had a five million dollar exit,

or I had a $10 million top-line year.

But that doesn't really tell us anything,

right? We need to look at what the actual profits of the business are,

what the margins are.

And that's where you get to understand the real story of what's happening.

And that is also what's going to dictate what kind of exit you get

or what value your business is worth is not what you say it's worth.

it's really what the numbers will support.

And how you map that out matters.

And that's why, as I say, and you know that you've got to have the right people

at the table, a team that knows a little bit more or would

be experts in their field supporting you because our focus is just growing

and building. It's not always how to make tweaks that will make

a significant impact in what an exit could look like or evaluation down the road.

Yeah, and I think a lot of women sometimes don't also think about things like,

you said in the beginning, you know,

we're hustling and we're just trying to make it happen,

trying to grow the business, putting everything back into the business

and never thinking for one moment I might need to sell it someday and

so we don't think about things like transferability,

clean

Yeah.

books, clean finances, clean contracts,

Everything.

you know.

And you know, as a business owner,

we do have a lot of liberties that we can take with expenses

to support the business. And it's very important to understand what kind

of business you have. Because to your point,

if you are growing a business that genuinely requires you to run,

then if you're running things like personal expenses that benefit you being

the face of your business through the business,

that is perfectly okay. That's more of a lifestyle business,

but that's okay.

But if you are truly thinking that you want to take a business to market

and sell it, you've got to start to really be careful of what you're running through

because that's going to impact the bottom line.

Because truly your business can run without you.

It is a sellable asset. You're creating enterprise value.

And you have to approach both of those things differently.

And if you're sitting here thinking,

I don't know how to tell the difference,

you just have to ask yourself some bigger questions.

what is the difference? because I could tell you that when I was

a practice owner for a long time,

I didn't understand the difference between having a lifestyle business

and having a business that is an asset where you can build enterprise value,

as you mentioned. Those are two different things.

I remember when I bought

my practice I bought it from a retiring orthodontist.

This is a long time ago. It was in 2013.

And in my mind I thought he was retiring off of what I paid him for the practice.

Like in my mind. That's how I thought about it.

Yeah, yeah.

Like

that was his whole retirement.

And then I thought to myself like,

well that's not really that much money to retire off.

But then as I got to know him because I stayed in touch with him after the practice,

I realized that

When he saw me the practice, that was not his retirement plan.

He had built a whole real estate portfolio over the years of his career.

And that's what he was retiring from.

and so it took me a while to really understand

Takes a shift.

that difference. for our listeners that may not realize the difference because

I think a lot of people use the term lifestyle business a little bit differently,

how would you explain, the difference between a lifestyle business

and a business that is meant to be an asset,

that's meant to

Can be sold.

that can be sold as an asset, yeah.

you touched on two things. I'm gonna start there and then I wanna circle back

to something else that you said.

So the easiest way for anyone listening to know the difference would basically

be if your business truly requires you to run.

So let's pretend that you are an interior designer and it's just you

and the team that you've built.

it could be two employees, five,

ten, it doesn't matter. But ultimately it's your vision.

That you're growing your business around.

And without you, the team you have,

they could be very talented in other areas,

but they can't actually recreate or have the vision that you have,

that it's become your signature.

So if you are really required to run your business,

at the end of the day, if you tried to sell that to someone,

if I'm a buyer, I'm gonna say,

yeah, this business is very successful.

But if I take you out of it and I'm bringing something in,

maybe aesthetic isn't going to resonate with what you've built,

and then I'm gonna lose clients.

So that's the easiest way to say if they can't run the company and continue

to grow and scale it without you and your,

let's just call it like your intellectual property,

maybe, then it's more of a lifestyle business.

But if you're growing,

your

skill set.

Your skill set. That's right. But in your

example, like you mentioned, if you're buying a successful dental practice

and you're the dentist, well, a lot of people have gone to school to learn

the exact same things that you have done to build your practice.

So it's very simple for you to step back and allow someone to come in

and fill that chair. Now, are some people gonna say,

well, but

I don't want to come here anymore because I'm loyal to that one,

but maybe. But the odds are most people are going to continue on with

the business because they know what to expect.

And it's nothing that requires the unique things that made the owner the owner,

right? So that's the easiest way.

If you can sell it in the market and you can replace yourself without really

impacting the business, that is the difference between sellable business with

enterprise value.

If it requires you, then there are ways to sell.

And for anyone listening that maybe in that same example of the interior designer,

maybe you're bringing on an intern 10 years out from when you think

you may eventually want to sell.

And you're teaching that intern or that young associate or designer everything that

you know. And you're approaching it with clients as I'm the lead,

this is my company, but this is my junior designer.

And one day if you decide to sell,

maybe you sell it to her, maybe you sell it to somebody else,

but she's still got a relationship with the clients.

She's got the same vision and aesthetics that you do,

because you've groomed it to be so.

So that is one way that you can get around being a lifestyle brand and turn

it into something else, but you just need to know where you're at and quite frankly,

where you want to go.

And there's some women that may say,

Well, I have a lifestyle business and I'm not really ever selling it,

why is this topic so important for her to understand?

It's even more so important for her.

And that brings me back to what you said,

the other topic I wanted to touch on when you talked about when your sale happened

and the gentleman that you bought the business from,

he was retiring on his real estate portfolio.

Well, he did that because he was taking money out of his business because

he knew he could, and he was investing it in other things that would essentially

replace the income he was building.

And that's what I would challenge any business owner to think.

If

It takes $10,000 a month for you to live as the owner comfortably.

The goal should always be how can I slowly take money out of the business

and invest it in things that will give me that $10,000 a month

and replace my traditional income so that when I walk away,

I've already replaced my income from this business.

And now the sale proceeds go towards truly building wealth or going into another

business, whatever that may look like.

Or just like an extra bonus, but it's not something that ~ that you're necessarily

That that's right. Nothing that you're gonna have to rely on.

Because then it becomes scarier,

Exactly. Yeah.

right? Because for that same gentleman,

let's say that he hadn't done that and now he sold,

but we don't know what the market was going to look like.

So let's say that somebody had planned to sell and it was during COVID

or somebody had gotten sick or hurt,

like if he couldn't practice anymore.

Well, now that money

has become so much more important because he's not gonna go out

and do something else. And so he's gotta make sure that that money will last

the rest of his life. Right. So we've got to prepare for all scenarios

to be mapped out. And the easiest way to do that is just to continue

to pay your future self and not lose focus of the person that's built

the business for the sake of the business.

Right, right. let's say a listener is listening to us and realizes that she's

got all her money into her business.

what does she need to do on Monday?

She needs to sit down and truly ask herself how much she needs to keep

in her business and do an audit of all of those accounts.

So something that us women are not great at is recognizing when we have

too much cash sitting on the sidelines.

That's one of the biggest things I see with women,

whether they own a business or not.

We are preparing for this proverbial big emergency,

right?

And I don't know about you, but how many emergencies are hundreds

of thousands of dollars? There are none.

And I think understanding that you may want to say,

and let's say that your business,

and I'm gonna use round numbers,

you were sitting on $300,000 in an operating account.

You've already paid the taxes,

but you're keeping it there just in case.

Well, if it only costs you $20,000 a month to run your business,

then you need to reevaluate and say,

okay, how much do I really need here?

Or same with you don't own a business.

If you've got $20,000 for an emergency,

if you've got a husband or wife and kids,

take the rest of that money and you're able to put it to work for you in

a way that it will be more performative.

You'll get more interest on it,

but it's still there. So if that emergency phone call does come,

you can take it out of a brokerage account or take it out of

An account that is giving you six or eight percent because it's

a laddered bond strategy, something like that.

So that's the first thing I would say is to recognize liquid cash doesn't have

to be an emergency account. You can put it somewhere to work and still have access.

The second thing I would say is to really ask yourself,

okay, in the next six months to a year,

to three years, are there any huge expenses that I'm saving for within my business?

Am I hiring a big salaried position?

Or do I want instead of leasing an office space,

do I want to buy my own building?

Because that matters. But if you truly don't think that you need to reinvest

a ton into your business to keep it where it's at,

and maybe you don't want to grow and scale,

and ladies, you have permission to be happy where you're at and not feel like

you have to grow and scale just because the internet and all of the other people

are telling you to.

It's about building success on your own terms.

So if you feel

Correct.

that way and you think, okay, and I'll I'll pick on the dental practice again.

If you're like, you know what?

I have one location that is putting orthodontics on teeth and making them really

happy, and I'm happy, don't feel like you have to scale to the second.

If you understand what your goals are and where you're headed in that time horizon,

then you need to reevaluate when's the last time I gave myself a raise?

Or when's the last time I took a K-1 distribution?

And then ask yourself, either just you or with your family,

you know, are there any big things that our family would like to do?

And if the answer is yes, or you want to buy a bigger house,

take some of that money that's just sitting in your business and reallocate it.

And if there isn't any money sitting,

but you know that you've reached a place where you're truly comfortable,

then

Come up with a plan to start building that muscle to taking money

out of your business to feed this other set of goals that you have.

Yeah, that's great. I think, you know,

what you're referring to is just having a strategy,

having

Yeah.

clarity and having a strategy.

But I think that the difficult thing is,

as we were talking about women that have a lifestyle business and are

the ones that the business is about them and are really working in

the business you know, strategy is a high level game.

Mm-hmm.

And if you are

I call it inside the jar, you can't see the label.

You know, like you're buried

Yeah.

in the weeds. I know this happened to me that you're just so running around doing

all the things, the cash is building up and you don't even realize it because

Right.

you're just so busy. in the practice.

And I think also that feeling of,

you mentioned that sometimes we feel like,

okay, we need to have all this money for an emergency

I think sometimes that emergency feeling is a state of mind that you live in,

especially if you're in operator mode.

You have that low grade anxiety in your body at all times 'cause people

are constantly coming to you like,

this person's upset or this client is upset or this happened

Right.

or this broke and you're always like the go to person for everything.

Fix third.

And so yeah, the fixer, the doer of everything.

And so it just feels like at any turn,

like what next? You know, so I think,

it's hard to pull away from that and realize okay,

let's look at what it really is and I haven't had a three hundred thousand dollar

emergency ever and do I really need this money just sitting in here?

Well, and it can start small. So for the listener that is inside

of that lifestyle brand, it can be as simple as taking out let's just

say five hundred or a thousand dollars a month and giving it to yourself

as an owner's draw or a K1, whatever you want to call it,

and putting it in a brokerage account in your personal name.

Because ladies, if something happened,

you can take that money from the personal side and still reinject

it in your business.

So don't lose sight

Right.

of that. Is anything is fixable?

Anything is changeable. Nothing when it comes to money is truly set in stone.

Well, most things aren't. So it's really just giving yourself the permission

to take a breath and think about what is most important.

What are you building this business for?

What do you want it to look like?

What do you want your personal life to look like?

And then just make sure you're doing both of them.

At the same time. You have to live in an and universe.

It cannot be an or.

I love that. I love that line.

And you've mentioned on a few occasions now,

that women give yourself permission.

I think for a lot of us women,

we are waiting for someone to give us permission.

why do you think that's something that happens or what are the different ways that

you see that with your clients?

Because

despite all of the work that we've done and how far we've come,

we are still told from a very young age that we need to be conservative with money.

we're not risk takers. so there's some doubt with how well we're gonna invest

And I think we don't have to be more conservative or more cautious.

That's what somebody's

Hold us. and if you truly identify as that,

then that's okay too. There's still things you can do.

But I think it's, generations deep of money is not

Mm-hmm.

our forte. That's not what we're talking about.

Additionally, we've been told we shouldn't talk about money,

right? We shouldn't talk about money.

We shouldn't talk about politics or religion because those are things that

are not polite. But the guys are talking about it,

ladies. They are talking about it.

And they are moving mountains and needles.

And I've said this now so many times,

but I watched, let's say, Bridgeton,

right? Think back to even it's so good.

I love that show.

But think about it,

you know, when everyone is together in a group,

the women were going off and reading about gossip and talking about

the marital market, and the guys were the ones that were talking about.

business and politics and all of the things that mattered.

So it's time to just don't wait for someone to give you permission.

Start asking your girlfriends.

It may seem weird at first, but I promise it'll get easier.

Start asking them like, hey, what are you guys doing to invest?

Or who do you use for this? Or is it time for me to hire somebody that

can help that's a consultant in this space or a wealth manager?

Just ask the questions because somebody at the table

has the same questions and hopefully someone is doing something different that's

gonna shed light on it for you and that's how we just grassroots change that

narrative. Don't wait for someone to give you permission.

ask the questions, raise your hand and get comfortable being uncomfortable figuring

it out. Because our daughters,

our nieces are all watching and statistically right now,

women control about

$10 trillion of household assets in this country by 2030,

because of the baby boomers starting to age and pass away and transfer wealth.

By 2030, they're expecting us to own or I should say control almost

all thirty trillion of household assets.

And we've got to know what to do with it because this is our moment to shine

and no one is gonna give you the permission to figure it out.

So it's up to us.

Yeah, absolutely. I think we're so socialized to look to I hate to say

it in twenty twenty six, but look to the men in our lives,

Mm.

or we're told that we're not good at math or we're not good at numbers or you

Yeah. And

know, Excel is scary, th those kind

Yeah. And

of

let's say you're sitting here and you're thinking,

well, yeah, but I don't really love any of this stuff.

My husband's great at it. that's okay too,

right? This is about doing what is good for you and your personal situation.

But you still need to understand with a spouse,

like what is the plan? What are we doing?

Where are the accounts? What are we investing in?

Why? You don't have to drive the boat,

but you have to be in the boat.

You have to be. So that's the question.

We're gonna steal

a line from one of your episodes

on your podcast about the ownership tax,

which by the way was fantastic.

and

Thank you.

because even if, your husband is better at it and I have one of those husbands.

He loves Excel, God bless him.

He loves Excel, he loves numbers,

he loves all that stuff. and not that I don't love it,

but to quote you from one of your episodes where you said

you know, delegation is not the same as abdication.

And I

That's right.

thought that that was such a great line.

And so even if you ladies are not an Excel lover or finance lover,

that doesn't mean that you abdicate your decisions it's still your money that you're

working really hard for. and it's up to you.

Nobody's gonna come save you. and it's up to you to make sure that

you have wealth outside of your business.

Which brings me to the issue of concentration risk.

that is a phrase that I didn't hear for the first time until around

two thousand twenty one. I think it was the first time I I heard that phrase.

And it was huge for me once I understood what that was,

Mm.

because

I realized I have concentration risk.

Mm-hmm.

and I

I think a lot of times that phrase is used in investing,

you know, in the investment world is used to like,

okay, concentration risk. If all your investments are in real estate,

that's concentration

Sure.

risk. But reframe that for the listeners what concentration risk

in terms of business ownership and outside of the investment world.

Well, let's take those clients I referenced in the beginning.

Let's say that you owned a very successful dental practice

or during the COVID years, there were some event planning businesses that were

great. And on paper, could we say that that business was

a multi-million dollar business?

Yes. Could we say that technically because those people owned the business,

they were millionaires? Yes. Would anybody on the street think that they were,

Doing really well and successful.

Yes, because they were. But what I have seen so many times is with women

in not to pick on us, but with women,

we tend to like as long as the number there makes us feel good,

then that works. and it goes back to like the hustle culture,

right? Because we've swung in that direction of if you're not hustling,

it's the the girl boss era. So

The focus is on your business.

So you may be taking a salary.

You may have $2 million in your business sitting there like a lazy duck.

And then you may only be paying yourself 80 grand a year.

What happens if, God forbid, you got sued and your business fell apart?

Or if COVID happened?

That's concentration risk. So you want to make sure that when you're building

wealth, I always use

the visual of like if you're going to a frozen yogurt bar or like a real

bar and like the levers that you can pull,

right? If you've only got one lever to pull,

that's concentration risk. So think about it that simply.

If everybody comes in to get frozen yogurt or a beer and there's only one type,

think of all the clients that are gonna come in and go,

I don't like that. And they're gonna leave and go somewhere else.

It's the same thing with your money.

If you only have your business and then God forbid something happens,

you have no other levers to pull.

So you have a risk, although it's a very healthy,

stable investment. Going back to the gentleman you bought from,

if you've got real estate that's working for you,

if another 2008 happened, it would sting and it would stink,

but you wouldn't be in such a predicament that you are making life decisions

and changes. If the market goes down,

it's okay because you've got real estate,

you've got your business, you've got

commodities, you've got private credit,

private equity. I mean, the goal is to be as diversified as possible.

And to be diversified, it is impossible to be

a victim of concentration risk.

that's so true. and I think people just don't even realize

the level of concentration risk,

you know, and what they're risking.

I'm gonna pick on my dental and orthodontist queens because I see this

in dentistry and I know you have a lot of dentist clients too,

Yeah, yeah.

in dentistry, the way that we tend to mitigate that is getting

disability insurance. Because,

you know, as a dentist or another dentist,

if your hand gets injured or if you break your right hand,

your right arm or if you something happens physically to your body,

then you can't do the dentistry.

the answer we're told. We're literally told this in dental school,

just get, disability insurance.

And like that's not an appropriate backup plan.

No, especially because there's gonna be a lot of hoops that you have

to jump through to actually get those things to pay out.

For women in general, it's a lot more expensive than for the guys,

especially once you're over 30.

We have more parts that things can go wrong with.

And you can still run a business.

And this is another way that you can avoid being at risk is if you

own the business alone and you're the single person.

practicing dentist or orthodontist,

if you go down and can't see patients because something happens to your hands,

you're in trouble. But if you have another dentist that works under you,

that's another way to hedge against that,

right? Because you can still run your practice.

You can still go out and be the face of the practice.

You just don't have to see your clients or conduct surgery or do any

of the work that require those fine motor skills.

But insurance and it only covers really a small amount.

And it usually stops.

Any long term disability I've seen usually stops by the age of 67.

Well, what are you supposed to do after that?

So think about it that way. There are so many other things you can

do that don't require a huge investment that if you start and eventually

it can pay you out that same three,

four, five thousand dollars a month.

That's what you want to do.

So I'm not saying disability insurance isn't important,

but it is definitely just a conversation.

It is certainly not a solution,

really ever.

it's not a financial plan, it's

Solution.

really just something

when you're first getting started at some point,

ideally you should even be able to discontinue paying out on that policy because

Absolutely. Absolutely.

knowing

that if something happens with your business then it's okay,

you're gonna be okay 'cause you've built wealth outside of it.

Yep, absolutely.

Yeah.

I love talking about mindset here on Queen Mode.

Tell me about the resistance or the mindset that you run into when you're telling

a woman you need to pull more money out of your business and you need

to go invest it in your own personal wealth outside of the business.

what kind of resistance are you getting?

Well, not to toot my clients' horns,

but one of the big things once they're already clients is I start trying

to get them to build that mental muscle of doing that consistently.

a lot of the hesitation when women are new clients or just people

I'm having conversations with,

it's like, okay, I can pull it out,

but I know this business inside and out.

If I pulled money out of the business,

what do I do with it? I don't know where to start.

And there's a ton of research that talks about the confidence gap between women

and men. Men only need to check,

30% of the boxes and they feel that they're qualified,

they're gonna throw their hat in the ring.

Women, it needs to be over 85% before they will say,

Okay, I'm gonna do this. So the hesitation just simply usually comes from

the unknown. I don't know where to start,

And nowadays everybody's a financial expert if you go onto social media

or talk to somebody or listen to a show.

And a lot of times I will preface this by saying,

ladies, if people are giving you specific advice,

they're probably not licensed in this world.

So be careful who you're taking advice from.

Everything needs to be personalized.

And I think that that's really important.

So I think the mindset, the way you shift that is giving yourself

the permission to say, you don't have to know what comes next.

You need to know that you want to learn it and then find the people that

can help you. So I think that the mindset shift is just being okay,

saying, I don't need to know everything,

but I need to find somebody who can help me and not feeling like there's gonna

be judgment. And

Judgment a lot of times, especially finding females in the wealth management

and business consulting space,

it's not as easy. So finding someone that speaks your language

and understands where your mindset may be coming from is also really,

really valuable. And we're out there.

We're out there. I know we're it's not as many,

but we're there.

what should women owners that want to take that first step?

be looking for in a wealth manager,

in a financial advisor? how

how do they know that they have the right person?

It's very emotional, right? What is more emotional than money?

So I would say women also were really intuitive.

make sure that you feel good about the person sitting across from you.

I would say to really ask yourself and your girlfriends and guy friends,

what their experiences have been.

Because people in that space can operate in a very different way.

There's people that are going to be product-based.

And that basically means that it's not anything wrong,

but they are looking at products to take off of a shelf to meet you where you're at.

I think in the business owner space,

what you really need to look for is somebody that is not looking at products,

but looking at it truly from an unbiased consulting viewpoint.

And there's not many of us out there that are doing that,

but I think that more popping up all the time.

So you want to

ask the right questions of, how are you paid?

How will this relationship work?

What are you paying attention to besides wealth?

Because in my opinion, if you are traditional W2 person,

you don't probably need somebody that would identify as from the consulting side,

right? For the wealth management,

because you just want them to pay attention to your money.

However, if you're a business owner,

there are things that matter. If I can make a client a million dollars

in their investment account, that's wonderful.

But if we're not looking at the risk side and seeing,

what do you have in place to protect yourself personally and the business from like

an insurance perspective, right?

From and I'm not talking about like life insurance.

I'm talking about truly digging your hands into your

Workers comp, your liabilities,

your homeowners, car insurance.

I can't tell you the times that I've talked to someone that owns a business

and then has a 16-year-old driving a car that might also either

be under the business or under the same car insurance policy as the business.

I mean, things can get messy. So I would say if you're a business owner,

you really want to find somebody and ask the questions.

What makes you different? How do you work with me differently than

you would somebody that is an executive or in the W-2 space?

It's really important to understand that.

Because if someone can take what you're building because of an oversight,

then that's not the right person.

I have a lot of resources for any of the listeners that may be thinking,

what are the right questions to ask?

I'm happy to share them if they reach out to me because it's it's important.

So come armed to the meeting with questions.

And go with your gut. Make sure that the person that's building this story

for you and with you is someone that you feel good about and comfortable

and that you're okay being vulnerable and saying,

I don't know what you just said.

Tell me again, like I have crayons in my backpack.

Yeah. Yeah. And for business owners that do wanna sell and they do wanna have

an asset, a business as an asset sell it.

do you guide them through,

what they need to do to create that enterprise value or what are some

of the risks what some of the things that are putting their business

at risk because as you know we

discussed before, you can have a business that on paper have the same revenue,

but be valued completely differently.

Yes. So I always tell people that are considering an exit,

you wanna start thinking about that two to three years out just to

get the right things in place.

There are a lot of tax strategies that can be implemented if you've

got a longer time horizon to help.

But you wanna start building this two and three years,

from the actual time you wanna exit.

And I think that, an exit can look very differently.

I have some clients right now that are

Thinking about selling two of their locations and they have six.

And, you know, what does that look like?

How do we do that? So again, how you exit matters three years

from the exit. So we always walk through what's that big vision?

What's your why? What are you gonna do after you sell?

I've been part of a lot of conversations at the table negotiating

and looking at what

an exit would look like, but from the business owner's perspective,

not from like an attorney that is working for the the transaction.

You've got to have somebody looking out for you in your best interests for sure.

And I know you mentioned that you have walked several of your clients,

I think you mentioned at least fifteen clients that you've walked through,

~ business exits.

Yes.

What's the thing that they wish that they would have done or started doing earlier?

Most of the time it's that they wish they had started to think about it sooner.

Because a lot of the

I love that.

things that we can do that would impact them,

we don't have a long enough runway to do by the time they find themselves

in that situation.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely true.

I think that it's a way of building.

I think your exit strategy is a way of building your business

Sure.

you know what's funny is when you have an exit strategy in mind,

of forces operational maturity,

you know, because

It does.

because it makes you

Create something that you know could be inspection ready at any moment

and you're creating something that is sellable.

That's right. and start thinking through it because if nothing happens,

it's only gonna make you a stronger business owner and having

a better opportunity to build wealth with everything cleaned up.

No one's gonna get mad if you say,

you know what, I'm not gonna sell.

I'm gonna turn off the lights and go home or I'm gonna let my children have

But pretend that every business is an asset you're going to sell

and you're setting yourself up to be far more successful than if you didn't.

Talk to me about women in wealth.

I know that's something you started back in two thousand twenty.

And the topic of money I know has been long coming for you.

with your story and everything that happened with you,

the credit card debt and

Yeah.

and your business in Italy that you had in two thousand eight.

tell me how all of your life experiences came become women in wealth,

all your money life experiences.

Okay. it's a long story. So I'll give you guys the reader's digest version.

Ha ha.

But

~ basically I was born to parents that approached money very differently.

They got divorced when I was five.

And although they both taught me things that were great,

they didn't ever really teach me how to build wealth,

how money worked, about credit,

any of the important stuff, right?

My mom, when my parents got divorced,

she went back into the workforce and was extremely budgeted and showed

me that managing money and not having enough of it was not fun

and something I didn't want to do.

But she'd always say, Go out and build this big life that you want.

Don't let anybody else give it to you.

You go build it. And then my dad was an entrepreneur,

and you know, in the beginning,

like it's not easy. So it took a long time for him to get to a place where

he really had built wealth. And he taught me a ton about how to

Deal with people and how to be successful as a business owner in the ways that

I treasure so much, but truly not about money and how to manage it.

So I was diagnosed with leukemia at 17,

totally out of the blue. I'd never had a cavity.

I'm not just saying that because of the audience.

That's always what I say. And suddenly I'm faced with something that I

had to get treatment for or I'd be dead in three weeks.

So

One of the things that really stood out to me was going through that process

and money was part of the conversation.

It was part of, you know, with any treatments that weren't covered by insurance,

it was part of a conversation.

My doctors had said, okay, we know the path forward,

but go and get a second opinion,

just to be sure. And we wanted to go to Mayo Clinic and couldn't get in,

couldn't even dream of getting in.

And I had a family member who was in mergers and acquisitions,

had built several companies, was

exorbitantly wealthy. And we called and he got me an appointment in 24 hours.

And at that moment I didn't know what it was,

but I knew that his success had opened doors for him that I wanted to

be able to open for others. And I got better and I'm so thankful.

By the grace of God I am here today and a mama and all of the things.

I went to college and knew, okay,

I want to be an entrepreneur because that was fun and for my dad.

And I don't really know what I want to do yet.

I just know that I need to know how money works.

And so I'm picking up money magazines that I'm reading bored to tears

and thinking there's gonna be something in here that's gonna tell me what to do.

And of of course there wasn't.

So then the flip side of that coin was,

well, I'm going to look the part.

And hopefully that will help get me in the right rooms,

building those connections again.

And what it did was I found myself in so much credit card debt that literally

my friends at the time would say the confessions of a shopaholic

the movie certainly had to have been written about me.

And it was just like that. I found myself trying to buy a magazine

in the airport after coming home from Italy,

and I did not have a penny to my name.

And I think in that moment, having to look at my best friend and say,

Can you buy this magazine for me?

I have every single card to my name.

I have no money. Realizing I have to do better.

This this is not working. So I had a couple of entrepreneurial visions

and projects that taught me a ton of how to navigate building that life that

I wanted that my mom told me to do.

~

Had a lot of wins and failures that both taught me the types of lessons.

And ultimately coming out on the other side thinking,

what do I do now? So I started this practice just in the wealth management space,

knowing that I wanted to work with women so that they would never be

in the position that I was in.

And, you know, serendipitously,

it just started to be a trend that I was working with business owners.

And

I loved what I was doing and I loved the work,

but I also kept hearing the same stories from women that are like,

I don't know how I got here. This was a hobby.

I turned into a business and I don't even have a PL.

I don't know what this means. And so I realized that we needed something else.

So women in wealth was something that I started as an initiative and

it now has become its own company,

its own platform, really just empowering women to change the way that they think

and feel about money.

I have a podcast myself called Talk Wealthy to Me.

And it's really just about having money conversations,

understanding how money works,

giving people the tools and resources that they need to change their trajectory

of building wealth and what that looks like on their own terms,

not based on what someone tells them they need to do,

but what actually feels like it's in alignment for them.

And so we're here now. I have a wonderful,

amazing community that I've built.

And get to go all over the country speaking to women and hopefully changing their

future and what the generational impact of wealth will look like

for them just because they're asking the right questions and having

the right conversations.

I love how you turned your story and the credit card debt and being maxed

out and what some people, would think of as a failure and turn

it into something that's a mission.

and I love that you're doing that.

It's so important for

Thank you.

women to have their own spaces.

especially for us women, it's twenty twenty six,

but we're still the primary caregivers,

we're still the primary homemakers and all those things,

taking care of our parents even so we have our domestic fear as well.

I had this woman that told me recently,

I wish that I could be out in a golf course with the men talking.

I wish I was

out of the bars. she's a single mom that has her own business.

And she's like, I wish I could be out in the bars talking to the guys having drinks

about you know investments. I wish I could be in those spaces,

but

Yeah.

my life is different. I have to take care of my daughter.

and so I think that's sometimes we're removed from those spaces that men have.

Mm.

And

so I think it's so fabulous that you've created a space for women to feel safe.

And is I think safety is important to us as women.

where we can feel safe to talk about money,

because when we build our wealth we really what we're building is

our options and our freedom.

That's

it. It builds options and let's build our own rooms.

The golf course, I mean, it's fun to be outside,

but if that's not your thing, don't go to the golf course.

Let's build our own places to have conversations that matter,

you know?

Well, thank you so much. before we wrap it up,

Michelle, I ask every one of my guests what their three queen rules are.

So I'm gonna ask you, what are your three queen rules?

Okay, first, and I've already said it,

but it truly is talk about money.

Talk about money, talk about investments,

talk about debt, whatever you want to talk about,

talk about money. The conversation will change you and your friends forever,

without a doubt. This get

Get it out there.

it out there. The second thing I would say is that you really have

to protect your calendar and your time so,

so closely. I think that that is something that women

In general, but then also business owners are not always the best at.

Guard your time and calendar like it's sacred.

then the third thing is don't forget to enjoy the life that you have right

now that you've built. And the person you were five years ago would be

so happy with where you're at now.

She wasn't thinking about the next steps.

So don't feel guilty.

Doing the things that you want to do that make you feel good and make

you show up better as a mom, as a partner,

as a friend. It's okay. It's okay to want to buy the shoes or to have

a spa day or treat your friend to something,

or turn left when you get on the airplane instead of turning right.

Those little things you work hard for,

don't let the guilt that so many of us feel.

Around loving ourselves and celebrating the wins dictate the kind of life

you have right now.

I love that. So, ladies, you heard it.

Michelle's Queen rules, talk about money,

don't be shy, it's not a dirty word.

Ha ha.

just go out there and talk about it.

Two, protect your time, protect your calendar,

because ladies, that is a non renewable resource.

And three, enjoy the life that you have built.

You work hard for it and you deserve it.

Thank you so much, Michelle.

Absolutely. You're

welcome. Thanks for having me.

Of course, my pleasure.

If you'd like to learn more about Michelle and her work,

visit WomeninWealth.co or follow at Women in Wealth on Instagram.

I've also linked Michelle's profile at GFG Solutions in the show notes.

Thanks for tuning in, Queen. I hope today's episode gave you the clarity,

courage, or conviction you needed to stop building your business

by accident and start leading it by design.

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