The Seven Steps to Wealth with Hilary Hendershott

“It came to a point where I felt like I had discovered the source of abundance and money that no one was talking about, and I was so clear that I was never going back to that broken financial lifestyle.” - Hilary Hendershott   

What if I told you it is possible to go from $600,000 in debt to having a multi 7- figure net worth? It sure is, and today’s Brave By Design expert guest actually did it! In this episode she is not only sharing her 7 steps to wealth, but she also reveals the mindset shifts and reframes around money that you can make starting today to improve your financial lifestyle.

Hilary Hendershott is the founder of Hendershott Wealth Management, a leading financial advisory firm for women and couples. With 21 years of experience as a fee-only fiduciary financial advisor and stock market expert, Hilary’s mission is to empower women to take control of their finances and make their money work for them.

As her career in the financial services industry developed, Hilary became increasingly aware of a unique gap in the marketplace. Hundreds of thousands of women were eager to make wise investment decisions, but the male-dominated financial industry wasn’t equipped to meet their needs. Founded in 2014, Hendershott Wealth Management is one of the first and only female-focused Registered Investment Advisory firms in America.

Hilary hosts Profit Boss® Radio, a weekly podcast where she and her guests offer inspiration and actionable advice to support women in their financial journey.  She’s also a TEDx speaker, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, NBC, ABC, FOX, DailyWorth, Forbes, and Investopedia. Hilary was recognized as a Top 40 Under 40 Entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and Investopedia has named her one of the Top 100 Most Influential Advisors in the US in 2018, 2019 and 2020.​ With more than 30 television appearances, she’s considered the go-to personal finance expert in Silicon Valley for NBC, where they have nicknamed her “The Investor’s Voice of Reason.” Hilary has an MBA from Santa Clara University, and is a Certified Financial Planner.

Connect with Hilary: https://hilaryhendershott.com/

Remember to hit SUBSCRIBE wherever you listen to podcasts!

What You’ll Hear In This Episode: 

• How a financial professional found herself $600,000 in debt [2:38]
  
  
• What the journey from rock bottom to financially independence looked like [10:42]
  
  
• Common superstitions people have come to believe about money, and why you should be aware of them [13:46]
  
  
• The first steps to take to combine psychology and finance [18:28]
  
  
• The difference between spending money and being wealthy [21:38]
  
  
• The “7 Steps to Wealth” and why implementing each of them is critical to your financial success [25:31]

Additional Links & Resources:

Hilary’s Podcast & Episode 77: The 7 Steps to Wealth

Facebook, Instagram & LinkedIn 

Transcript

Hilary Hendershott: 0:00

came to a point where I felt like I had discovered the source of abundance in money that no one was talking about. And I was so clear that I was never going back to that broken financial lifestyle.

Laura Khalil: 0:13

Welcome to brave by design. I'm your host, Laura Khalil. I'm an entrepreneur, coach and speaker. I love thinking big, exploring the power of personal development and sharing the best strategies from thought leaders and pioneers in business to empower ambitious women and allies to bravely rise and thrive. Let's get started. Everyone, welcome to this episode of brave by design. You are in for a treat today because we are going to be going through the seven steps to wealth with the woman who created it. Her name is Hilary Hendershot. She is a mother financial powerhouse and everyday superhero with more than 21 years of experience helping women and couples preserve and grow their wealth, while eliminating financial stress once and for all. In her actionable and direct style, which Hillary I girl I am actionable and direct. So I cannot wait to go and hear from you. She is going to share her seven steps to wealth that helped to pull her out of$600,000 of debt and build a multiple seven figure net worth Hillary? wtf. Welcome to the show. Wait,

Hilary Hendershott: 1:33

I mean, is that Welcome to the show w TTS. No. It sounds like we're two peas in a pod. Hmm.

Laura Khalil: 1:42

Well, you know, because I am a pretty direct person. It's got me very far in the corporate world as a consultant. And sometimes it's really refreshing to meet someone who isn't afraid to talk about money, because I find that a lot of women really want to shy away from the conversation. So I'm really excited to hear from you today. Let's start with this elephant in the room here.$600,000 of debt. True,

Hilary Hendershott: 2:09

true fact. Hashtag true fact. I was Yeah, I was a massive over spender. My even though my father was a financial advisor, as I was growing up, you know, for whatever reason, either the lessons they tried to teach me about credit cards didn't sink in. Or, you know, I went back and ask them, did you actually try to tell me about credit cards? And they kind of said, No, I guess we forgot. I applied for every credit card, I could get on the college campus. And I never wanted to pay them back. I just really hadn't. I had just some really, really, really bad financial behavior. And I say this because you know, a lot of people think Well, that's a math skills problem. Like for a lot of women, especially we say ourselves, oh, I'm just not good at math. Well, I got an A in calculus. I used to tutor the math portion of the LSAT. I'm no Einstein, but I can hold my own in the math classroom, right? So it's not It wasn't like an arithmetic problem at all. I just when money came into my world, it burned a hole in my pocket. And so I had school tuition debt, I had credit card debt, I borrowed all I could borrow to drive around a convertible BMW. And then at the height of the real estate market in Silicon Valley, I bought a condo for $405,000. Later, I refinanced it and took cash out for $420,000. No. And then I had one of those mortgages that actually went up every month. So it was called a pick a pay or write an arm. Yeah, horrible, horrible. No one ever should have written me one of these mortgages, and I never should have signed up the paperwork. But I did. And so the mortgage balance was going up. And then mind you pretty soon in Silicon Valley, because the real estate crisis hit us hard. My $420,000 in debt condo is worth $190,000. So it's uncollateralized debt, right? Oh, my gosh. And so I had been spending and spending and spending my credit cards were getting maxed out, you know, I mean, God, I'm so glad I've seen people with more than six figures of credit card debt. But I had records that were just right around $20,000. And then the creditors just kept me out. And I lost a bunch of income because I was working in financial services and the liquidity markets dried up. No one was writing mortgages, like no one wanted to do anything with their money. And so I stopped, my income declined drastically, I couldn't pay the mortgage. So I was I drained all my bank accounts, the IRA, the 401k, the Roth, a whole thing. And then so I had multiple credit cards kept out I pulled into the gas station to get gas and my beautiful convertible BMW, my bank account was empty. My credit cards were kept out. My card got rejected in that machine. I tried all three cards, and then my debit card, and they all said declined. And I said I can't. I'm out of gas. This is literally the end of the line.

Laura Khalil: 4:58

So so this is really interest. Because were you as these debts were mounting, and you're kind of seeing things begin to crumble, but you're also working in financial services. So were you feeling like some sense of being a phony? Or were you feeling shame around this? Like, why can't I turn this around? Or did you think you could turn it wrench?

Hilary Hendershott: 5:19

No, I felt so much shame. I was so disgusted with myself. I mean, when I first started telling this story publicly, I was mortified. I was just absolutely mortified. Mind you, I'm a certified financial planner at the time, I'm literally advising multimillionaires, how to build investment portfolios, and how to plan for retirement during the day. And at night, I'm coming home to the financial disaster I just described to you, right. So it's a massive hypocrisy. And I was working for my dad in his financial planning firm, and I would have these financial emergencies. So when I run out of money, I call dad, right, right. And it's just like, I'm a 27 year old child, it was, you know, in that area of my life, I was definitely behaving pretty childishly you so you're in the gas

Laura Khalil: 6:02

station, none of the cards are working. And it's just like, it's kind of like watching, I would imagine the House of Cards is finally just really collapsing.

Unknown: 6:11

Yeah.

Laura Khalil: 6:12

What do you do

Unknown: 6:13

next?

Hilary Hendershott: 6:15

So I walked home.

Laura Khalil: 6:18

You were joking, you were out of gas.

Hilary Hendershott: 6:20

I was literally out of gas, I walked home. And I really got existential with myself. And I mean, the way I remember it, it was on that walk home, but it was in the next It was definitely in the next 48 hours. I said to myself, okay, so it's very clear where my natural tendencies with money, get me It's so clear to me what my life is going to be like if I continue to behave this way. I said, Hillary, you're smart, you have good intentions, what the heck is going on here? And I said, Okay, I look around me. And I look at the other. You know, I graduated from Santa Clara University, if you haven't heard of that school, because you don't pay attention to soccer, which is basically the only thing It's famous for outside of the state of California. It's a good school. And I have a degree in economics. And so lots of my friends are in law school and I look around I say, who are the friends that I have? They're doing well financially, and what is the difference between me and them? I said, We both have good intentions, but it's just our behavior that's different. So it must be a psychology problem. Like this has to be a psychology problem, because psychology is what leads to behavior, right? And so I just decided to become an expert on money psychology, and that is when around that time, I just got so honest and transparent with everyone in my life. I said, whatever I'm doing with money, or I've been doing so far, I'm going to do the exact opposite. So I had been hiding and pretending so I just got totally opaque. And I will tell people, I'm broke. I moved out of my condo, so I could rent it out. I slept in my mom's guestroom, you know, wow, goodness for her. Thank you, mom. Thank you, mom. Thank you, mom. And you know, I mean, literally, if it wasn't for her, I would have been homeless, I didn't have anywhere to go. And so I'm renting out this condo, and the money from the rent is going to sort of pay the debts, I did eventually stop paying the credit card debt. And I say this just so people know that. That's how I did that if you're happen to be in this situation. Now the credit card companies, they're super smart. So they wait about two years. If you and they come back just when you started making money, and they go Knock, Knock knock, hey, we're still here. So in the end, I did pay those debts off, I negotiated them down and paid them off with integrity. But at that time, I had to stop paying the debt because it was either pay for my life now or pay for the debt. I don't have enough money to do both

Laura Khalil: 8:37

Hillary so if I'm correct in understanding you did you did not declare bankruptcy? I did not. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, no credible and why didn't you just take that route?

Hilary Hendershott: 8:49

Probably a personality Reason being I'm just a fighter, and I just wasn't interested in that. And second, as a financial services professional, I would have to declare that and it would be on my disclosure forms, basically, rest of my career. So I never even considered bankruptcy. However, what I actually created for myself was kind of what the bankruptcy would have would have been. So you go to an attorney, and they either write your debts off or negotiate them down. Of course, you can't bankruptcy out of school debt. So there wasn't that big of a deal for me there. And then of course, I lost the condo, but I tried to negotiate with them. And I said to them, Look, you know, you have me in this option arm loan, and I'm have $150,000 of uncollateralized debt, you need to write this loan down, you need to take the loss and write me a new mortgage 30 year fixed for the fair market value of the condo. And they wouldn't do that at that time was the beginning of the financial crisis. I know that financial institutions and banks did do that for borrowers, as the financial crisis progressed and was so protracted, so that wasn't going to work out and then I came home one day and there was a padlock on the front door of my condo they got my stereo system was so bombed.

Laura Khalil: 9:57

Oh my gosh. This is I am like, glued to my seat hearing the story. And one thing I want to say is, it takes someone being this vulnerable and open with their story and honest with themselves, because to really begin to make a turnaround, I know there's a lot of people who are listening to this, who may be in similar situations and are completely hiding it out of all of this crushing shame and guilt and, you know, anger with themselves. So I just want to say to those listeners, if you feel like you have mounting debt, and it's out of control, you're not alone. And it can be resolved. So Hillary, like, let's fast forward. How do you from this point? At what point? Are you looking back on this? And you are in a seven figure business? How long does that take?

Hilary Hendershott: 10:52

So I took from the bottom of the bottom. Yeah, till the day, I looked at the numbers in my financial dashboard and said, Okay, I'm actually financially independent and financially independent. What I mean is I could essentially retire like I could stop working if I want to, is about seven years.

Laura Khalil: 11:08

Okay? Yeah. So tell us so it's interesting. So tell us about those seven steps to wealth and what you learned to go from just crushing debt to financial freedom.

Hilary Hendershott: 11:22

So I literally read everything, listened to every money, psychology expert read all the books, it came to a point where I felt like I had discovered the source of abundance in money that no one was talking about. And I was so clear that I was never going back to that broken financial lifestyle. And what I realized and what I learned, and it kind of clicked for me listening to Stanford neuro psychologist, is that, especially when it comes to the conceptual areas of our life, we act like our words describe reality, but what's really going on in many cases is the words come first. So let me give you an example. If I was to say, time flies when you're having fun, right, you have have the immediate experience of alacrity or joy, or like, yeah, this is a person who's thriving in their life. Yes, right. Or, versus if I was to say, every day I just work against the clock said right theories of oppression experience of pushing a boulder uphill, right? And those are just two different ways to describe time. So it's, it turns out, it's the same when it comes to money. That money we don't realize is 100% conceptual money has no nature. In reality, it has no time, distance or form, no mass, you can't weigh it, you can't measure it. I mean, you can measure it in units of dollars, right? But it doesn't have reality, like the microphone you're speaking to me on are the the door that gets you from your office to your hallway, we think, for example, cash is money. Cash is absolutely not money. It's made up by governments. And the only reason that we keep abiding by the system of money is because everyone agrees to right. And so you know, because you've heard doomsayers talk about, oh, well, you know, the financial apocalypse is coming, everybody needs to have gold, we need to have gold. Well, they're describing a, an environment in which people have stopped abiding by the agreement or system of money. So here's the only thing that's true about money in money is essentially a promise that you can exchange later for something you want. And it comes in units of value. That's it. That's it. We we basically all went totally nuts about money, like human beings all have a little crazy about money. And that's, that's all money is. Right? And so when you begin to grapple with the super conceptual, not measurable nature of money, and you think about all the superstitions that you've come to believe and by the way, until you're conscious of the superstitions, they're real for you, and I'll give you some of them. There's never enough money. Yeah, money doesn't grow on trees. Money is the root of all evil. There's always enough money. Yeah, if I'm really good, the universe will provide for me, right?

Laura Khalil: 14:25

Hillary, let me ask you about this one. And this is one that was beaten into my head as a kid. You have to work hard to make money,

Hilary Hendershott: 14:34

or money. People kill themselves for that one. Yeah, yeah, it's very common. And you can always tell when someone has that I've trademarked this term. Now the money operating system, your core money operating system in the same way the operating system dictates everything about how the computer interacts with software and hardware. Your Money operating system leads everything in your life and the human brain cannot tolerate cognitive dissonance. So for me, I'll just speak for myself. My money operating system, which I got from my mom and my mom did a great job bombing. This isn't a criticism. She was also a good earner, but she was a big saver. So she didn't really share that she just had a very strict budget for certain things. And I wanted brand name shoes. I was on the high school basketball team and we had to shop at Payless shoe source. I don't know if you remember that. I do

Laura Khalil: 15:29

know I remember Payless.

Hilary Hendershott: 15:31

So I had to wear pro wings. I used to call them like ease because I want it Nikes. And, you know, she would only give me $5 to go to to friends, birthday parties. And I was embarrassed. And I thought I looked broke and cheap. And I made up there's never enough money. So I said to myself, there's never enough money. And then I had to manifest that over and over. And so you look

Laura Khalil: 15:53

for evidence of it.

Hilary Hendershott: 15:54

Yeah, you look for evidence of it. And so how does a person manifest or evidence, there's never enough money. When you get a $10,000 paycheck, you spend 15. And that is exactly what I was committed to doing. Because my behaviors about money were super unconscious. And you know, if you look at and that's the weird thing is, so if you have there's never enough money, and I think about 65% of people do, that's just my anecdotal experience. You're either an under earner. And if it's not you listening to this podcast that is an under earner, I know you have friends or know people who are these are people who are educated, really smart, talented, and just never seem to be employed for what they're worth. You're often contractors, they spend long times without a gig, or, you know, they work in a job for whatever reason, they've accepted a compensation that's well below what they could we look out, you see someone with a similar education and training, earning four or five times as much. Yep. And so one way you can go, if you have a money operating system called there's never enough money. And then the other way is you're an over spender. And that's what I was, I was earning $100,000 a year spending 120. Right? So and that's the insidious nature of the money operating system. And that's the money operating system technology or distinction helps you really understand why money breaks up so many marriages, it isn't because people really can't work out their money, it's because they're coming from two completely different relationships, or conceptualized notions of what money is. So you can imagine if money is the root of all evil gets together with money makes me powerful, right?

Unknown: 17:37

Nothing's gonna blow up.

Hilary Hendershott: 17:38

Wait, hashtag danger. And unfortunately, you know, therapists and counselors are trained in and trained in what they do, but they're often financially not doing well themselves. And so people go out looking for help with their money from marriage counselors who don't, who aren't even managing their own money very well. These conversations are really not being had in a prolific way. And so that's what I as I stood at the end of my journey, and looked back, knowing what I knew, and I felt like I wanted to stand on the top of a hill and say, you guys, you can fix this, this problem that's plaguing you, and making you feel ashamed and worth less and frustrating you and causing you to consider divorce, you can resolve this. And I know how, and I said, Okay, it's clearly my job to give this away. So

Laura Khalil: 18:27

Wow. And you know, what's so interesting about this Hilary, is, you come from a financial background, but it sounds like you had to use psychology rather than just brute financial knowledge to get you there, which I think what most people would assume is Oh, well, of course, you're a finance person. So you would, you know, you know, better than all of us. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

Hilary Hendershott: 18:53

I am a finance person. And I understand compound returns. And I'm an expert in stock market investing. But for some reason, I couldn't do the math of$100,000 a year minus 120,000.

Laura Khalil: 19:06

I mean, but this is really powerful. So when I hear you talking about some of the neuroscience around this, the first thing I think about is one recognizing and catching in, you tell me if this is what you do, but catching yourself when you're having those thoughts and reframing them? And is there like an affirmation component into this? How do people get started?

Hilary Hendershott: 19:28

Yeah. So that's actually really intuitive of you. One of the first things I recommend people do, I mean, the first thing we do is get your cash flow manage so that you're spending less than you make essentially, you have to be growing your net worth every month. So that's the reality portion of money but then you're exactly right. You have to dig right into the psychology of it. And so I have the folks who work with me do an inventory of all the things that they say and think about money say think and believe about money. You know, I recently worked with someone who he just couldn't get Through this journaling exercise, he said I don't think anything about money. And I kept reflecting to him some of the things he would say about people and money. And then he went away. And he watched a video of a bunch of people in a group that identify as being millionaires. And so these people are on the video coming to the microphone, and they're talking about being millionaires. And he said, Hillary, I finally got it. He said, These people are talking about being millionaires. And I'm thinking, well, that's good for them. But I'm so far away from them. He said, I felt like I don't belong with them. I could never get there. That's not my life. He said, I realized I just made that up. Right. And then he finally saw how his money operating system was, there's never enough money. Alternatively, I worked with someone who realized that she would feel wealthy when the checks would come in. So this is before electronic payments, or they weren't popular. She would have the checks come in the mail, she put the check on her desk. She that's how she felt rich, she did not send it to the bank. She did not deposit it. Oh, and it would have these like problems because she wouldn't have enough cash in the bank. She won't be able to pay her bills. But she didn't realize that she was right. No, it seems obvious, okay. But if you look and you're listening to this, there's money crazy in there somewhere. So don't criticize other people for theirs. She finally when she would send the check in she felt broke. And she was able to reverse that. So the process in my experience the process of neuroplasticity, so changing your brain, which requires time recurrence and environment is really impacted and leveraged by making yourself see that your money operating system lacks truth, where the rubber meets the road.

Laura Khalil: 21:34

There's a couple things coming to me, Hillary that I want to talk about. The first and this is something that's very, very common with people who are not millionaires or multimillionaires, and there is with them. And for folks who are listening, just check in with yourself as you hear this. Do you have when you see a rich person or you know someone who's super wealthy? Do you have disdain for them? Do you hate them? Does part of yourself despise that they have that and you don't? Because how could you ever achieve something that you despise? That's the first thing. The second thing on is when I talked to people about money, and I asked them, What do you want to do? Like, why do you want money, and often what they tell me demonstrates more of an interest in buying luxury items, then being wealthy. Let's talk a little bit about that. Because as you shared at the beginning, there's a difference between buying luxury goods and having wealth. And sometimes they are in competition with each other. If you're just making money to spend it or overspending on luxury items, you don't actually have a value on wealth building. What do you think Hillary? Yeah, correct.

Hilary Hendershott: 22:47

So it took me there was a while I would say this every day, being wealthy isn't about how much you get to spend. It's about how much you get to keep that there comes a point in wealth building when you realize oh, I now have more than enough. And I'll tell you I own $100,000 BMW that I purchased for $34,000. Okay, I paid cash for it. And it was my way of making complete that the wrongs of my past the borrowing of the money, I didn't have to have that BMW convertible. But I don't own or buy diamonds I don't have, I will probably have luxury cars in my future. But I think there comes a time when you realize you have more than enough. And it's that point at that point, when you have built the skill set to spend enough less than you make to continue to be a wealth builder. You've just got to right size, your life. Most people think they have an earning problem. They'll tell me I don't earn enough money. And I look at their finances because I've looked at the finances of 1000s of people and they spend too much they don't have an earning problem. They have a spending problem. Right. And I think these you know the Ferrari and the Porsche and the luxury condo or whatever. They're idealized in this life, and maybe more in America than other places. I don't know I've only ever lived in the United States. But honestly, there comes a point when you have so much confidence and peace of mind that there's just nothing you're gonna do to upset that applecart. There's no way that you could talk me into any kind of luxury or any kind of spending that would put my financial health at risk, because I'm just never going back there.

Laura Khalil: 24:24

Yeah, and that that's a really important distinction to make. You know, my parents, as I said, they were immigrants. And there's this great book, I'm sure you've heard of it called The Millionaire Next Door. Yep. They became the Millionaire Next Door and they didn't do it. By buying the luxury items. If anyone you know, you guys can all read that book. Probably many of you have. It's pretty old at this point. But people who are wealthy are typically really good at managing how they spend their money. They're not overspending it. They're buying, just as you did Hillary used cars. They're not buying the most expensive place on The block, because that's part of the wealth building process instead of the wealth spending process, that's

Hilary Hendershott: 25:09

more of my clients. So now in my financial planning firm where we work almost exclusively for women and that said, a lot of women want to be married to men 35% of my clients are men, but I get a lot of joy out of working for women. And you know, most of them drive Toyota's and acuras Honda's maybe, right? In California, the Prius, right? We right? I don't have any. nobody's really flashy, nobody's really gaudy with jewels, people know how to protect, you know, their financial security. And then when I see people with the, you know, the I live near Santana Row. So it's this luxury shop

Laura Khalil: 25:47

in San Jose, in San Jose.

Hilary Hendershott: 25:49

Yes. And they line up around the corner in the pandemic waiting in the cold in the rain to get into Chanel and Louis Vuitton. And I just think, Well,

Laura Khalil: 25:58

I hope you can afford it. Yeah, seriously. And you know, if you can't afford it, that's great. But most of us, it's not maybe not the best use of our money. So Hilary, let me ask you have we discussed the seven steps to wealth?

Hilary Hendershott: 26:12

We have not. And I know we're at the end of our time. I can go through it really quickly. And then I can refer people to a specific episode of my podcast if that works.

Laura Khalil: 26:24

Absolutely. Let's do it. Alright, great.

Hilary Hendershott: 26:27

So literally, as I stood at the end of or the beginning of my journey in financial independence, so the end of my deadening and financial crisis, I looked back using the neuro psychology knowledge that I had, and I said, I need to make this framework easy for people. So I said, Hillary, what exactly did you do so and this is literally chronologically how it went, the first thing you want to do, you have to decide, you honestly have to make the decision to be wealthy and create your desired vision. If you're really honest with yourself a lot of your behaviors, right now, if you are in financial crisis, or are getting, a lot of your behaviors are not aligned with someone who has decided to be wealthy, right? So you can't you can't carry credit card debts, you can't spend more than you make, etc, etc. But you have to make that decision. Just like I have to make the decision not to eat pizza and drink red wine on Friday nights because it doesn't go with my health goals. Right? Right. Okay, then speak. The second step to wealth is speak your words absolutely matter, just like you and I discussed, Laura, you're going to create a catalog and inventory of your scripts, the things you're saying about money to yourself and other people. And then I offer ways to shift those disempowered scripts and empower your financial vocabulary, then you got a plan, I want you to automate your finances, I want you to have a little belly, the metaphorical equivalent of irrigation throughout your garden so that all your flowers, which are your financial goals grow. And this is an alternative to budgeting. Budgeting does not work for 99% of the planet. I am not a fan. So this is wow, totally easy. It's take some work to set it up. But it absolutely will scale infinitely. I have people I literally paid off six, multiple six figures of debt using this system. And I have multimillionaire clients who swear by it. So then that system, that's an automatic savings, at least part of is about automatic savings, correct? Hmm. And the one thing the one shift that you will make when you go through this step that is will absolutely be your secret weapon is you decide to save or pay off debt, which does the same thing to your network save before you spend. So you pay your overhead, then you save and then you spend what's left, most people spend what they want and save what's left. Wow, I flip that. The fourth step is ask you haven't got to make bigger and bigger requests of the world. So increase the value you deliver as an entrepreneur or you're increasing your skill set and your employability as an incorperate employed person and your net worth will naturally rise. And you know this intuitively, your earnings tend to go up over life. So you just really want to engage this power. And you can ask, you know, asking can involve asking for a discount or asking for an affiliate partner or asking for a raise and anything like that asking your partner to support you. The fifth step is earn obviously take inspired action to bring income and assets in your financial ecosystem, you really do have to raise that ceiling, there's only two ways to increase your financial ecosystem, raise the ceiling or lower the floor, right. So that means earn more and spend less. So there's no way around it. It feels like tightening your belt in the beginning. But as soon as you can go really get good at earning more income that can alleviate the sixth step is invest you have to harness the power of compound returns, you got to have an investing plan. And then of course, the seventh step is protect so you use habits, products and systems to limit and transfer risk. We all know someone who has built a fortune and quote unquote lost everything you don't want to do. So there specific skill sets and to be honest insurance products, which I don't sell, I'm not marketing them. You do have to have insurance in your life in order to not lose your wealth. That's as I've been calling my gosh, Hillary,

Laura Khalil: 30:11

I could talk to you for hours because I just absolutely could eat this up. I think this is such important stuff. And I bet our audience thinks that as well. So how can people learn more?

Hilary Hendershott: 30:25

Short so if you have room in your podcast lineup, I host a profit boss radio where we talk about topics like this and more. If you're specifically interested in in seven steps to wealth, I highly recommend starting with Episode 77. So Episode 77, of profit boss radio. And then of course, there's some other gems in there. And I look forward to seeing you over on the podcast.

Laura Khalil: 30:46

Oh my gosh. Fabulous. Well, thank you so much for joining us on brave by design.

Unknown: 30:50

Thank you.

Laura Khalil: 30:52

I want to thank you for joining me and remember to subscribe to your favorite app so you can stay up to date. And I would love your review. If you've enjoyed this episode. Please leave a review and comment on Apple podcasts. You can also keep in touch with me online. You can find me on LinkedIn and I'm also on Instagram at force of badassery. All that information will be available in the show notes. Until next time, stay brave