https://theoryplanning.com/
Friends today. We're talking to Katelyn Karlsson, founder of theory planning. And my cheeks hurt a little bit because I've been smiling for the last 35 minutes. Caitlin talks a lot about wealth and kind of our mindset around what it means and what becomes possible and how we think and talk about wealth. I loved this conversation. I know you will too. Let's get into it. Caitlin. Welcome to the show thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I am so excited to chat with you today. Tell us a little bit about who you are and the work you do with. Sure. So my name is Kaitlin Carlson. I live in Marblehead, Massachusetts. I'm a native Bostonian. And though I did a little tour in new Orleans for four years, and I I immediately went into finance after college. I always saw myself there, but I was a psychology major. In college. I started in the asset management industry, which if people don't know that is a mutual fund company is where I began. And when I learned what financial advisors did, I thought that would be a perfect marriage of my. Between psychology and money and helping people with their relationship with money. So that sent me into the wealth management world which took me on an entire tiredly separate journey. And that was when we were in new Orleans. So I began as a financial planner. I covered all of the Southeast. I created over 300 financial plans during my time there before becoming a financial advisor myself. And I eventually went into private wealth management. So I ended up working with some of the wealthiest families in the country, and that was a really fascinating experience. But one thing that I, I remember writing down in the business plan of mine, I wanted the ability to grow and the ability to create. And so it's funny, cause I just recently thought back to that moment and I never pictured myself as an entrepreneur, but I guess I was always telling myself that in a way. And so with my experience in private wealth management, that two cohorts were severely underserved. One of them was business owners and the other one was women. And I realized that I was really passionate about serving female entrepreneurs. So I struck out on my own and I now run a boutique wealth creation firm for female businesses. I love this. There are so much positive energy in this work of, when you can help enable female business owners to do lead and live and do business in a way that is building generational wealth becomes possible. Yeah. It's yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say, it's been statistically proven that when women have wealth, they enhance the communities around them. And the one thing that was really disappointing to me is of all the 300 clients that I worked with, not one of them was a self-made woman. And yeah, so I. Got curious, like where are the women? And I didn't want to just be a part of the existing circumstances. I wanted to be a part of changing them. So my company is very much about education as much as it is about The execution of actually creating that personal wealth. And I do it in a way. So I've heard a flat fee for my services and that's very different than the traditional wealth management industry, but it allows me to begin working with women far earlier in their business journey and really teach them the mechanics of how to think like a wealthy person and how to make decisions like a wealthy person. And it's really been inspiring to see. How much change can happen in such a short period of time. So that's been, it's been very validating that there's a need out there and I'm just, I'm so glad that I'm part of creating a solution. This mindset work of being a wealthy person, love a tactical example of kind of what the mindset is not. Wealthy and what the mindset is a wealthy person. Sure. So it's funny. Cause I just spoke about this at as I mentioned, I was speaking at a retreat in Sedona over the weekend and I began with an example of. How wealthy people are fantastic at creating money machines. So essentially I gave the example that if you have a a a hundred thousand dollar portfolio, you're typically comfortable pulling about 4% of that portfolio. So if you have a hundred thousand dollars, you can pull$4,000 a year. If you have a million dollar portfolio, you can pull$40,000 a year out. If you have a$10 million portfolio, you can pull$400,000 a year out and that portfolio will sustain itself and continue to grow. So it's really about building that nest egg of something that content can continuously give to you over and over again. And what wealthy people understand is that once you create that snowball, they understand how to create it. They understand how to maintain it, and they understand how to protect. And those are really the three main parts of becoming a wealthy person. And also the other thing that should be said is that wealthy people live below their means. That's what makes them wealthy. So there's a lot out there, especially in the age of Instagram, where everything's flashing and everything's for show and it's very surface level and superficial, but really some of the wealthiest people that I worked with, they just understood. What it took to create that sustainability. And a lot of times it wasn't very flashy. Some of the wealthiest people that I met with one of them owned a waste management site, and I had to go meet him in a trailer on a waste management site. So it's not always as it appears, but understanding that concept of sustainability is super, super important. The idea of wealth looking a very specific way. Is something that can hold a lot of people back from either believing that they can be wealthy and like it's wealth and success to me are there they're so different, but they both have this connotation of, you have to define that for yourself. Like what does healthy mean to you? And I think every business owner is defining that in different ways. And I always have been looking at it, especially lately saying what is the highest way that I can express my values using money as a resource? Yes. Money is just an enhancer of who you are. Yeah, that's it amplified. And whenever you're, if you're a giving person, it will allow you to give more, if you like spending time with your family, it will allow you to spend more time with your family. And I think another thing that's important to mention is I grew up in a middle-class family. So I grew up expecting that you go to a job in that job. Provides an income and you live off of that income. So it was a very, like you work for your money mentality versus your money working for you mentality, which is a truly wealthy mentality. And I will say that in my mind, the wealthiest people don't always have the most money. It just allows them to live the type of lifestyle that they want to live. And that's going to be different for everybody. There are some super wealthy people who only need$50,000 a year to live off of. And there are other wealthy people who need$750,000 a year to live off of. It's just exactly, like you said it's a projection of how do you want to spend your time here on earth? And the thing that wealthy people have is they have choices. Yes. So if somebody is listening to this podcast right now and they are strapped, it's almost the end of the holiday season. We may have overcompensated. And the gift giving department, because we haven't been able to gather and do other things. We maybe, like I said, overcompensating what's their next step to getting in greater alignment with their definition of wealth. One thing that I noticed is that people They tend to shy away from it altogether, if there's shame around it, or if they don't feel like it's their area of expertise. The first thing that you should be mastering is very simple. It's what are you bringing in? And what are you sending out? And regardless of how much money you have, whether it's$10 or$10 million, you need to have a basic understanding of what your cashflow situation. And if you're sending out more than you're bringing in, then you're going to be putting yourself in a hole. So I would say, sit down and get comfortable with your cashflow. That's the very first thing that I do with my clients and also take it one day at a time. It's not like you have to learn everything overnight. It's very much a journey and self-education is important and it will start to give you confidence as you. Become more familiar with it, but it is really that basic it's spend less than you make. And one thing that I. And that's been so rewarding about business ownership is the sky is the limit, and that's a really cool for someone who grew up with two and two parents who are employees. It's really cool to think that my earning ability is unlimited. So if you're a business owner, that's a really empowering and unique position to be in. If you're not a business owner, if you're an employee, it's also nice to have the security of that income. It's just making sure that your relationship with that income is healthy. It means spending less than you make. So I would say, just start with that simple equation, even if you just take the holiday season to sit down and think, okay, for 20, 22, I want to make sure that I'm really staying disciplined and the other thing is work with human behavior. I'm not sure if you've heard of Parkinson's law, but Parkinson's law is basically if it's there, you will use it. If there is a plate of cookies, you will eat more cookies. So set. Like auto saving habits where it's coming out of your bank account or going into your 401k or retirement account before you even see it, because you'll be amazed how adaptable you are. So I would say those are my first two pieces of advice that I love this, deciding how much you want to save and putting that away first, because it is Anything, it expands to the container that you put it in. Yeah. You will subconsciously find reasons to spend it. Absolutely. I also love the idea of intentionally creating tension to be more creative and spinning. So it's this Christmas season, we've decided we're going to be spending much less than we ever had before. Not because we have less ability, but because this is. And then the dollars in this particular day, like we could spend$200 per child, or we could spend$40 per child and their happiness and their experience of the abundance and the love and the joy of that day. It's going to be the exact same. And it's probably not going to be because of the extra six gifts under the tree and fact over choice. Breathe. Negativity as opposed to a positive experience. So how do we create some scarcity and this so that we can be more creative and have more excitement and energy around and then the money that we do spend? Yes. Yeah, definitely. Regardless of how much money you have, again, I've met some of the wealthiest people on this plan. And they're still emotional beings. We're all emotional beings. So people are much more inspired by memories and by hyper emotional feelings, both positive and negative. Obviously, if you have a negative emotional experience that can create something like trauma, do you have a positive, emotional experience? That's going to create this beautiful memory and that's going to give far beyond. Plastic toy of any kind. And I think that is shouldn't be overlooked, actually. It's funny. Cause you even saying that, like how do we get creative about Christmas gets my mind is already searching out for what are the creative things that we can do. And our minds are wired to seek solutions. So it's about asking those deeper questions and yeah. Money is just a tool and it's a tool all across the board and changing your mindset about money. Is. Is what I've seen creates true wealth. I've also seen it create debt. So again, it's it's comes back to knowing yourself, but it's certainly not the end all be all. It is. It does ease stress. And I would say that's a really big thing is I think what people are really searching for is a sense of peace, not necessarily a dollar amount. And so you can create financial peace of mind at pretty much every income level. And so it's just being really mindful of what is that number for me and how do I get there? I love that because it is accessible for everyone. And I think what's really funny to me is I think back to, first job out of school. And making$36,000 a year and thinking wow, I have made it. This is just a tremendous amount of money. And and it's so funny because in that season I felt very wealthy. And as I've, obviously grown up and earned more. I still get to feel that way. But I think that helps me recognize that it is a concept. It is a state of being as much as it is about the dollars and choosing to be peaceful in your relationships with money requires change that tough. Absolutely does. Yeah. When you look back at the season that you've been ramping up and creating this own work for yourself and becoming an entrepreneur, what advice do you wish you had heard when you started? I wish that I listened to my intuition more. Tell me more about that. Oh, man. I just had, I didn't have a great, I had a great and a not great experience in wealth management. I unfortunately went through a lot of sexual harassment while I was in the industry. And sadly, a lot of women who are in male dominated. Alright, I need you to, because that was really intense. And that was like, wow. Okay. Thank you. Thank you all. We just moved. And all of this office is being torn down at the end of next week to put up new walls and everything. But I was like, I cannot be in here with just the wood paneling. So I'm like, I'm going to put on my whiteboard. I'm going to do this in clearly the command strip said no noted. Thank you. Okay. We're going to take that from the top about the intuition piece, but this is important and it does. Not something falling from the walls. Okay. Start by saying, okay. So tell me more about this intuition work that you wish that you had done at the beach. Okay. So I think something that's really important is when you go into a new industry, you do go in wide-eyed and you do go in with these beliefs or ideas of how things operate and they work. And then you learned about that industry and you learn how it works. And. One stat. That was really interesting that I learned last week was they gave children and adults that creative exercise and children use 98% creativity and adults use 2%. And essentially it's saying that we got less and less creative. Over time as we learn how the world works and we stop thinking outside the box. But when I look back, as I mentioned before, talking about the creativity and abundance, I was in a way telling myself that I didn't want to just subscribe to the way that the industry was. The industry has a lot of flaws as it currently exists. And so for me, it actually took a series of failed partnerships that I got into. Against my intuition and they ended up failing and for various reasons. And fortunately but I probably could have saved myself a lot of pain and heartache. If I had listened to my intuition from the beginning now, I think you always learn from failure. But I certainly. Give my intuition more credence today than I did in my early twenties. And I spend more time paying attention to it. And I really let that guide me through the way that I'm building my company. And I don't always think you need it to be a painstaking process to finally listen to your intuition. I think that it's, if it's calling me. And I think if you take moments to get quiet, you'll get really clear on the answers that you need in your career. So that would be my, if I was talking to my 22 year old self, what I would say that's really amazing advice, regardless of if you were 22 or 32 or 52, right? Right now I think the space and the freedom. That is required to really figure out what you think and how you feel about something. That is that as well too. absolutely. I really love that. The word abundance has made its way into mainstream culture, because I do think abundance is a nice way of speaking to being spiritually, emotionally, and financially wealthy. And I'm glad that as a society, we're paying more attention to those indicators of wealth. Yeah. I don't remember when I first came to have a resonance with the word plenty, but it is one of those important words in my life that whenever I need to do with my anxiety about any of my resources, whether it's my time, my energy or my money, it is just that reminder that I have plenty. I have plenty of time. I have plenty of energy. I have plenty of money. I hope. And plenty is it is not a dollar amount. It is not, it's not quantifiable because it is. And the other thing that you're doing by affirming that is going to like the idea of neuroplasticity, right? You're rewiring your brain. To understand that you have plenty versus constantly walking around saying, I don't have enough. I don't have enough. Those train tracks get deeper in your brain one way or the other. So by honing in on that word and reaffirming that to yourself, you are. You're rewiring your brain and you're calming yourself. And you're also coaching yourself to look for evidence that you have planting. And that, that creates a quality of life change. And that's what everyone's after really is a quality of life. And it's been really interesting because when I was in private wealth, I saw people come into and then swell. Usually if business owners had sold their businesses, that was a rare once in a lifetime. Like almost like flipping the switch from someone who didn't have that much to someone who had plenty. And it doesn't get talked about often, but typically business owners do fall into a semi depression after selling our business. And it's because they're, it's not about the money, it was about the purpose. So they lose their sense of purpose. And so it's really important for people to understand that and think about. You can do that today. You don't have to sell your business for$60 million to be looking for an abundant life and looking for purpose. And so that's one thing that I started doing is I've started, I call it like having coffee with myself in five years. I start thinking about the future, me and I start becoming like a vibrational match to all those things. And then I think actually have so much of that today. I just, we're just always so like future oriented that, it doesn't, we're not the best at defaulting to that being the case. So it is an active effort. It is, but I love that. And I love that invitation for us to have a cup of coffee with ourselves, a five-year ahead of ours, our current state selves. They are, how do I elevate where I am? I think anytime. I have and I call that playing that game where I've decided what the timeline is on something. And then I just say I wonder if that could happen in a different way now or next week, as opposed to two years. I think our, my grasp on time has completely shifted in the last. I think that's super reflective of the more that we're learning about science, because we're learning more about quantum physics and how you can actually collapse time. And we have such a linear understanding of time this, and then this. And like we go through school like that and we just think that's the way it is, but understanding the laws of the universe and that you really can collapse. Time is so powerful, especially for a business owner. You don't have to. Sometimes five-year plans can feel no offense, but super masculine and super hard and boring. And I love that. We're starting to bring in this more feminine approach of intuition, of collapsing time of what is possible, what could be, and maybe it's possible a lot sooner than we think there's magic in that. And you certainly need the balance, but there is there definitely I've loved this conversation. Caitlin, is there anything that you wanted to get into that we haven't talked about today? No, I will invest to, honestly, it's brought my heart rate down. Awesome. Caitlin, where can we find you on. Sure. So Instagram's the main place to find me I'm at Kaitlin Carlson. And also you're more than welcome to visit my website. It's theory, planning.com T H E O R Y P L a N I N g.com. And there's an option on there to book a consultation call with me. I always say if anyone is interested in getting the right financial model, That is a passion project for me, whether it's me or I can send you to someone else that I highly respect in the industry. Awesome. I've got a lightning round of questions before we wrap up, what is the go-to song you put on when you went to up here? So I love caught up in the country by Rodney Atkins, the Atkins, you can act guns. I think it's like a mix of country and I was music basically, but it, for some reason, like really does get my energy up. And I started running to it. When I first found out that I was pregnant with her son. And that's just a special memory for me. So love that one. What time do you wake up? So pre-baby, I was really good at going to the six, 15:00 AM orange theory. So I'd usually be up at 5 45. Now it's a little bit more I'm on his time. But when I get back to my normal schedule, it will be back to five 40. Okay. What does breakfast look like? Breakfast changes. But I really went through a big phase without meal oatmeal, walnuts, bananas, and blueberries. And now I've moved on to Greek yogurt with the same fruit medley. No. Are you a morning person or a night? So I actually think I'm naturally a night owl, which is why I force myself to be a morning person with the workouts, with a book you've given a recommended the most before agreements. It's so simple. It's easy to remember. And I think that makes it like a great book to come back to. Absolutely. Caitlin, thanks so much for your time today. Thank you guys. It was such a pleasure.