My Story
Why hello! Thanks for wanting to know more about me! Here's my story ...
Randy Couture kindly volunteering for my choke hold
Freedom - Money:
I spent a good chunk of my life trying to find my passion in regards to work. The first problem was I don't exactly do well with authority ...
Evidence of this is my short foray into ultimate fighting and putting people into choke holds ...
(please ignore the slightly pale appearance and wonky eyes, this was my academic days, to be discussed later).
Then there was the time I told 30,000 new graduates to do whatever makes them happy at my University of Texas at Austin's 2010 Spring Commencement Speech ...
So I knew I didn't want to be an employee. I started off as a mathematician. And that was great for a while especially because no one told me what to do. In case you're curious, a mathematician's job is to come up with ideas that have never been thought of before. So think about the Pythagorean theorem or even the fact that 2+2=4. Someone had to come up with that yo. Even though everyone attacked Barbie like a ton of bricks, she was right: math is hard. There were some really good things I learned from being a mathematician:
It gave me what was like an advanced MBA in creativity.
It also taught me how to be super resilient when hanging with a lot of dudes who talked really fast about really confusing things.
It also made extremely comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Problem was I didn’t really give a poo whether these problems were solved or not. Who cared if we proved a new theorem that may or may not have any useful applications in the next 100 years? Not me. Also, the pay was terrible and the environment was bad for my social life.
Money - Freedom:
The actual email I sent to the CEO of Target, with the reply!
I did some epic soul searching to find a new career. I thought of everything. I even emailed the CEO of Target. I got a reply too! And I interviewed to be a store manager but I refused to work weekends or Christmas Eve which was kind of a deal breaker...
I finally landed a job as a financial consultant at the bottom of the food chain for a start-up company in LA. By year 3, I was running a department and had over tripled my salary. By year 5, I had ? sextupled? ... that sounds weird, let’s just say it was a lot. I learned a lot of great things here too:
How to negotiate
How to make deals
How to talk with people you manage without making them cry (let's beat Kim to death with the positivity sandwhich, shall we?)
Problem was I was a slave to the job. The job owned me. The company owned me. Don’t even think of taking a vacation, turning your phone off, or even contemplating a leisurely poo. Your time doesn’t belong to you anymore.
Find Your Happy:
I realized that although I was extremely inspired by people like Steve Jobs, in particular Jobs' famous commencement speech about finding your passion, I didn’t want to be the next Steve Jobs for the following reasons:
I’m obsessed with fitness. I could easily spend at least 25% of my time as an enthusiastic gym rat at my CrossFit gym.
Happy hour on a romantic getaway in Ojai, California
I love my family. I want to build great things but not without them. I want to build great things with them and I want to build the little people in my family into great people.
I must have freedom. I want to travel the world, experience new things, and build fun projects and businesses as the ideas come to me and as i get inspired from my adventures.
Read my article on the first step to making more money.
So I finally knew the ideal life I wanted. And it didn’t involve selling all my possessions and living in a shed. The question was how to get there.
Fund your happy
I want to tell you I was sitting on a mountain and it all came to me. But honestly, I was listening to my favorite podcaster Adam Carolla who had on a new guest, Robert Kiyosaki. He mentioned his book (a New York Times best-seller with over 26 million copies sold). The book was Rich Dad Poor Dad, and it changed my life.
I learned about passive income. You see, there’s two kinds of money out there. There’s money you get in exchange for your time and then there’s passive income, or as i like to call it: happy money. That’s money that you make while you are not working. Brilliant!
Together, The Hubs and I began plotting. We analyzed deals over dinner, brainstormed business ideas with long walks in the park, and created our family five year financial plan on our babymoon cruise. In 2014, we built a real estate investing company, Iron Peak Properties, and have several more business ideas outside of real estate.
I created this website to help you - not just to make more money and not just to be happy, but to have Money + Happy. Find your happy. Fund your happy. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the journey of Money + Happy with me.
Kim