EP 336 – What Every Woman Needs to Know About Financial Independence – Pauline Kirk – Femvestorsglobal

Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):

Michael Waitze 0:12
Here we go. Hi. This is Michael Waitze, and welcome back to the Asia Tech Podcast. Pauline Kirk, who was born ready is the Founder of Femvestorsglobal, is with us today. Pauline, thank you so much for coming to the show. And before we jump into kind of the main part of this conversation, let’s give the listeners a little bit of your background for some context.

Pauline Kirk 0:36
Thank you Michael, and thank you for having me on the show today. It’s my pleasure. My name is Pauline. Thank you. So as Michael said, my name is Pauline. Pauline Kirk. I am the founder of femvestors Global. And then our mission is really supporting women around hashtag. Be financially fabulous and hashtag. A man is not a plan. A

Michael Waitze 0:55
man is not a plan. Keep going. I love it,

Pauline Kirk 1:01
and I talk about this because when it comes to looking at the statistics of women and our finances, we’re not where we need to be when 56% of couples is my husband does it all, we have a 48% divorce rate, and on average, women are living six years longer than men. So this is why I talk about the importance of having our own life jacket when we look at the increase around the world around domestic violence, and many women are not in position around control of their finances to enable them to make different decisions when it comes to their own money, so and therefore they stay in relationships. Yeah, that they should. They don’t have an alternative.

Michael Waitze 1:38
Why? Why is this right? I think one of the things you put on your website or on your LinkedIn profile is that studies have shown that women in particular face unique challenges when it comes to financial literacy and empowerment, right? Why is this? Can we start with that? If that’s okay,

Pauline Kirk 1:52
yeah, 100% Michael, so I call this the Disney effect, and the reason for that is when we think about, well, well, childhood, we think back to our childhood. Yeah, if we look at the toys that we play with, the books we read, the movies we watched, it’s all around women playing caregiving type roles. We play dress up. We play with dolls. You know, I was given the kitchen as a child and a doll, and, you know, in Cindy and Barbie, and it was all about looking good and pretty, and this has made its way through into society as we age and get older, because we believe we’re going to be provided for, protected and looked after. Our Prince is going to come and save us and rescue us, and therefore, on that basis, we don’t often think about our finances, because we’re busy with maybe aging parents, our careers, our businesses, you know, kids and money is down the list of priorities for a lot of women, outside of paying the monthly bills,

Michael Waitze 2:50
you came up with this phrase, which I love, a man is not a plan. Um, I don’t think this is something that you came up with, like, lightly, and it probably took a lifetime of getting better understanding like, I think one of the best things for me about my age is that I feel like I finally learned a lot of things. And I will say this to you too. And I said this kind of in joking beforehand, right? That like women show up to the podcast early and men are generally they’re right on time or late. The difference in, I think, maturity of a 25 year old man and a 25 year old woman is like, night and day, at least, that’s been my experience. I found that over time, right, the women are just way more mature, and yet something about, like, the finances you’re right, the way that people are raised, like, what’s gonna have to change to make that better? And I guess, I guess that’s why you started femvestors Global. Like, what do you what do you do in that context, so that, like, your daughter, and I use that metaphorically, right? Doesn’t have to exist in the same way that you and your generation and my and my generation, which are different, did,

Pauline Kirk 3:55
yeah. I mean, there’s a few areas. I mean, part of it is around, look at pay gaps and pay parity, and women taking child, you know, time out for childcare. There’s one scenario where, you know, we haven’t put our hand up more to ask for certain things, because most of us have sat back and played small in a comfort zone, or it’s easier to do that than feel like I don’t know how to ask for a pay rise. So there’s one area there. There’s another area around, well, I’ve just never thought about it, or I’m too ashamed, or I have guilt and embarrassment that I should know about these things, and I’m very successful in my business and my career, and therefore then I should be successful in my finances. And I haven’t even considered it, because it’s something that’s not front of mind. Yeah,

Michael Waitze 4:36
yeah. I mean, I will say this like I have a daughter. I don’t talk about this a lot, but one of the things that I’ve started to do with her, and she’s 23 I want to say I should be 23 this year. 24 actually, wow. Yeah, no, 23 is to just create investments for her along the way so she can learn about, like, the value of money, discounted cash flows, compounding all these things. That I that I 100% believe they should teach everybody in school, and I don’t mean at university. I mean, like in middle school, these concepts are not hard, I think. And it never, I never understood why. Like, by the time I got to college, I didn’t understand compounding. Because even if I had a paper route, which I did do when I was 12 years old, I should have been taking some of that money and just putting into the s, p5, 100 No,

Pauline Kirk 5:24
100% Michael, and this is, you know, even there’s a study done quite recently that we actually pay our children differently if you’re a boy or a girl, yeah, because we sort of feel like we have to give our boys money to get motivated to do things, and girls just do it because, you know, it’s the right thing to do. I’m seeing my parents struggle. And you know, this comes back to the caregiving and mentality. I’m just going to do it anyway, because I’m going to help my parents out. And they sort of bribe our boys to go right, go and put the rubbish out, and I’ll give you some money, or go and mow the lawn and I’ll give you some money. So our children at that level are already getting a different pay incentive to get motivated.

Michael Waitze 6:04
Exactly, can I ask you something else too? Like, I think maybe there’s and you tell me if you think I’m wrong about this, right? I feel like there’s a part of you that’s very creative with words, right? Like, I always ask all my guests to provide me with some kind of framework within which they want to have these conversations that we record. And one of the things you wrote to me was turned my mess into my message. And I just thought that was so great, and maybe you can just run through with me, first of all, like where that creativity comes from, but also what that means, right? Because I think it’s actually important. It’s kind of a catchy phrase, but it’s also really important.

Pauline Kirk 6:38
Thank you, Michael. I’m not going to take credit for it, because it actually came from one of my mentors. So he’s an American gentleman by the name of Dean Graziosi, and he’s afraid he used the phrase my turn my mess into my message. I love it about his own story. And I was like, That is such a beautiful gift, where I do the same thing. You know, people talk to me all the time about Pauline Moyes, so passionate about women in investing is because I’ve gone through my own journey of having some money, then having no money, then having money, then having no money, then having money again, through variety, various points of my life. So now this is why I talk about it quite openly. You know, I was I carried a lot of shame and guilt for a long period of time, and where people are like Pauline, people need to hear your story. People need to understand what you’ve gone through about why you do what you do, because you don’t want people to go through your experience. So then this is your gift around people benefiting from your learnings. And that is very much my story. So in the early days, I actually said, funny enough, your previous guesses are in the military. I was also in the military. I served in the Iraq War, 2002 2003 and I know we spoke about it briefly before Michael, yeah. And for me, when I came back from Iraq, PTSD was never diagnosed. I’m going back 2000 2003 era. So no one really spoke about PTSD back then, and it was not a thing. It was never really diagnosed. I just knew that the person who went back and came back from Iraq was two very different people. Yeah, and for me, my only way of coping was to put money in my credit card and feel good about myself, which was to go out and spend money on clothes, bags, shoes, looking a certain way to make myself feel better on the outside, even though on the inside, I was feeling very, very different. So then this is where my emotional spending became out of control, to the point where I had 10 credit cards, 86,000 pounds worth of debt at the time, which is about $120,000 you know, and I wasn’t earning anything near that to then justify paying that money off, but it was my coping mechanism. And then I had to find a way, because I’m on the page of bankruptcy now, because I’ve got no money. How I then make that decision to go, do I see myself through and push that into button on that keyboard, or to Foxy and have that black mark against my Name forever in my mind and carry that. For me, it was shame and appreciate people have different views on it. But for me, Daddy’s Little Princess, who was an officer in the military, was about to follow the bankruptcy, and I didn’t want to have that stigma, and had decision which to basically pull my head out the sand and come to terms of where I’m at and make a change to do something about it and actively look to reducing that debt and paying it off.

Michael Waitze 9:15
Can we talk about this a little bit more? If you don’t mind, I think actually this is a lot more common. I have this theory that I call the fallacy of now, and that fallacy is that you always are the person that you were today. So if people meet you today, they always think, Oh, she was always financially secure, or she was always financially savvy, or she was always financially literate, because that’s who you are today. But I think it’s a fallacy, because nobody understands like where you’ve been and what you’ve done along the way, unless you sit down and you tell them and you’re right. I broke down these two words shame and guilt, because I think they’re really important actually in this context, and that is like, the amount of money you have should not have any any bearing on how you value yourself or how other people judge you. Zero, and for those of us that have been bankrupt or close enough, that shame and that guilt is real like it really is real. And I wish there was a better way to communicate that to the listeners, so that they can understand that they probably have friends and family that are going through something like that, male and female to be fair, and that the stigma around that somehow needs to be removed anyway.

Pauline Kirk 10:28
Yeah, I totally agree. Michael, you know, I talk about fail, you know, and fail everyone see that as a negative connotation. I actually see it as a very positive connotation, because fail means the first attempt in learning. That’s my acronym for fail. I like it, and I’m like, fail fast, fail forward, and realize that, yes, that is our own story, but it doesn’t have to be our future. Our past does not dictate our future. We can become, you know, feel a certain way, and become rock stars at the other end. And this is why I deliver the message in the way that I do, is because people just see me. I live here in India. They just see perception of a rich, white foreigner, and that’s their perception of me here, without knowing my story around why I’m trying to do the things that I’m doing fine. I’m trying to create and remove the stigma of money, making it taboo talking about money in societal settings or a cultural setting. And we should be talking more about money. And you know, so many there’s so much behind the scenes, like we’ve got households who don’t talk about money. We don’t talk about money with our children. In workplaces, we have to sign non disclosure agreements because we’ve got pay rises and bonuses and someone else never. So this whole we it carries through, throughout society, or our culture, around our finances, and we talk about everything else in society today. But when it comes to money, money’s been around for a very long time, we still don’t talk about money in the way that we should.

Michael Waitze 11:46
Yeah, it’s very strange, and you just reminded me of something. There was a guy that I worked with who I knew, like more about his intimate life than I knew about how much money he had, right? Because I had no way of knowing how much he got paid. He sat next to me, and I knew that, like they had surrogates to have their kids. Do you know what I mean? I don’t need to know that it’s none of my business. But I did know that that was okay to talk about. But like, if I turned to him and just said, how much was your bonus last year? Like, never gonna get an answer. No,

Pauline Kirk 12:17
exactly. And this is why it becomes so difficult to make a emotional comprehension around money, non emotional, because there’s so much emotion attached to money. And when we look at what is money really, it’s just an energy exchange, it’s just a tool, but we put so much emotion behind money and how it makes us feel, and then we start linking money in our zeros, in our bank account. Self worth is our net worth? Yeah. Uh, yeah. And it shouldn’t be that way. But unfortunately, you know, this is how it is today, and we need to break these taboos and make it start talking about it more, whether it be in our businesses, whether it be, you know, even businesses, we talk revenue, we don’t talk profits. This is the same thing that made millions of revenue. That’s great, but then, you know, I’m on the verge of bankruptcy because, you know, I’ve got all these debts to pay, you know, but we, we only focus on the revenue number Exactly. So we see it throughout everything that we do and how things are reported to sell this good news story, as opposed to, you know, not everyone is in a position where they can afford to be in a certain position. And then it’s around. The only difference between a billionaire and anyone else and a refugee is their environment. We’re all humans. We all have 24 hours in a day, and seven days a week. Is what are we doing with our time? But the only difference between a refugee and a billionaire, to my opinion, is our environment and the people we surround ourselves is whether we’re going to be successful or potentially not successful. So so how

Michael Waitze 13:41
did you go? And this is, again, in your own words, go from being almost bankrupt to no longer worrying about money, like, what was the process? And I think there’s like, habits need to change, for sure, right? But tell me, walk me through, like, how you do this isn’t how you teach other people how to do this as well. If that’s okay to ask,

Pauline Kirk 14:04
yeah, of course it is. Michael, it really starts in between my ears, right? My mindset is what’s going to shift the needle. Because if we’re constantly in this position where it’s self doubting and we’re we’re in this negative self talk, or we’re buying things to make ourselves feel good, we’re never going to get out this situation, and for me to get myself out the situation, I had to sit there and go right. What are my options here? And I can only control what’s in between my ears. I can’t control my external environment, but I can control my internal environment, and that’s what’s going to move the needle with focus.

Michael Waitze 14:38
I need to ask you this, because I’ve kind of been following the career of Tony Robbins for, I feel like decades now. And my view on that guy, not him personally, but the guy that does that thing that he does changes you. And I think it swings from extreme to extreme, to be fair. But do you don’t just know him like you work with him. Is that true?

Pauline Kirk 15:13
Yes, I’m part of, I’m now part of Team Tony. You

Michael Waitze 15:16
got to talk. You got to talk to me about this. You got to talk to me about this. What what is this Tony Robbins thing? I really want to know from somebody on the inside, like, I really want to know, I’ve seen some of the videos, I’ve read some of the stuff. I just need to know what this is.

Pauline Kirk 15:30
So he’s a biggest life coach world, you know, in terms of his mindset. And, you know, he’s been doing it for 45 years. He was, you know, people talked about coaching in the athletic space, but no one ever talked about coaching Outside of athletics. And he was really the pioneer in this area to then start talking about, let’s have coaches for non athletics in simplified terms around how we can bring out the best in selves. And that’s really where Tony comes into his own, whether it’s, you know, there’s lots of different versions of Tony Robbins, whether it be the DE SILVA method or various other methods. You know Tony is Tony on stage, and I’ve been very blessed to have supported him on his events. I’ve done all of Tony’s events in terms of all the body he offers. And then I’ve also crewed his events. And then I’ve promoted the senior leader in the Tony Robbins community, which basically means that I support other people and participants who go through the same programs that I’ve been privy to, and how I can support them with their own journey around breakthroughs, mindset, understanding the content of what he teaches. So when they finish that event, they have all their questions answered, and then they can take themselves to a whole nother level and maintain that consistency. So we use telegram in the virtual world, so we actually keep, you know, connected with each other through telegram. And there’s an accountability piece, and there’s partnership piece, and we’re all in it together. And what I love about the community is that no one has a bad word to say. You know, it’s a very positive environment having a bad day, and you put in there that you’re having a bad day, there is so many people that will pick you up and make you feel amazing. And if you were to put that on standard social media, you get torn apart very quickly by trolls. Yeah. So this is what I really love about the community that Tony Robbin rated, because his mission is to end world suffering, whether it be the people he feeds across Feeding America programs, or some other work that he’s doing around child trafficking with maritzi. So he’s doing these amazing things and really opening up people’s minds to then go we can choose to be different. We can choose around what we focus on. We can choose how we show up in the world. We can choose to be the positive person in the world and not have this negative because there’s so much negativity out there, whether it be through the media, the people we spend time with, the toxicity in the world, or we can choose to be someone different. And I choose to be someone different because I want to be the best version of myself, and I surround myself with people who think like me, who going to elevate me and challenge my thinking, but in a positive way

Michael Waitze 18:02
I need to learn, I need to learn more about this. Sorry, go ahead.

Pauline Kirk 18:07
And we need more people like that in the world.

Michael Waitze 18:10
Can you talk to me about how important, like I said,

Pauline Kirk 18:12
if you look at the media right now, go ahead. No, go ahead. Yeah. Sorry. I was just gonna say, if you look at the media right now, it’s all doom and gloom. It’s not good news stories, right? And a lot of people are focused on the world’s going to end tomorrow, or this. YOLO, you know, you only live once, and this is then replicates into our financial position. Because we’re like, well, I might not be around, so I might as well enjoy my life and throw my money into something, or I’m not happy in my job, therefore I’m going to spend money at the weekend to make myself feel great. And it’s around I live life of gratitude. Now, a lot of people focus on what they don’t have. Every day, I focus the things that I do have, and that is things that even the simple things I get to, wake up every day. Most people don’t get a chance to do that. I wake up every day. My feet touch the floor, I’m breathing and I have my mind. Today’s a great day. How things people take for granted. You know, they don’t see every day as a blessing. When you’ve got someone lying in a hospital bed, it doesn’t matter how many billions, millions they have in the bank account. They just want to get to the point where they can get out of hospital enjoy life. Yeah, most of us get to do that every day. We’re not enjoying our lives.

Michael Waitze 19:19
So I think it’s

Pauline Kirk 19:22
living this beautiful world that we have, and seeing, yeah, seeing the positives in the world, and not always the negative, and looking at who you spend time with. And if you’re spending time people are naturally, like always, you know, disgruntled and frustrated and angry. And if you’re spending time with those people, then you’re going to become one of those people. If you’re spending time with people who think a different way, with positivity and energy and excitement, wake up every day with passion and obsession and want to do great things in the world, then naturally, you’re going to be like that, and you want to be surrounded with people

Michael Waitze 19:53
like that. I like it. I think that you and I have had similar experiences, actually, and I did not know this before we started recording. I. Think that when you get on the brink of disaster, that if you can recover from that right by learning new things. And I want to get back to this habits thing, because I want to be a little bit more specific about what those things are and and the things that people need to learn potentially. But I think once you recover from that, that everything else just feels like it’s so much easier. Because once you’ve been like, as low as you can possibly be, and I know I’ve been there, I feel like everything else is just like, up and to the right, if that makes sense. But I want to talk about because you mentioned earlier the importance. We talked about a little bit the importance of, like, good money habits, but maybe you can give a little bit more detail about what some of those things should be, so people that are listening can

Pauline Kirk 20:39
actually learn. Yeah. Thank you, Michael. Before I just move on to that topic, I just want to pick up your last point. Go ahead, I always say that your your worst day is someone else’s better day. Yeah, because it’s always going to be somewhere who who’d love to have the day of your worst day.

Michael Waitze 20:56
Yeah, that I know for sure.

Pauline Kirk 21:00
So and then I say, this is where the gratitude comes from. This is where the inner peace comes in. This is where the quiet mind comes in. And that takes time. You know, that’s not something that you just naturally now. And it’s focusing on the things that how do I become the better version of myself? How to quiet the little voice? How do I step into my super power? If you want to put it that way, every single day, and be the best version that I can be, and live a level 10 life with a lot of energy and fun, excitement, enthusiasm and passion and you know, and how this beautiful luck about in the world, because I don’t focus on it. It goes on, but I don’t choose. I i talk about, what do I let into the gateway of my mind? What I let in the front door? What do I what do I allow myself to focus on? What do I allow myself to think about? Because if I’m focusing on the things that are going on, then down to a certain level of energy. If I focus on things that I’m passionate and excited and obsessed about, that brings down a different set of energy, and that’s what I focus on

Michael Waitze 21:57
exactly. Sorry, go ahead, let’s talk about habits again.

Pauline Kirk 22:02
Yes, habits my favorite, one of my favorite topics. So, you know, so when we talk about habits, habits is what’s going to really move the needle. So if we don’t have good habits in us when it comes to our finances, specifically around finances, I’m going to talk about, if we don’t adopt good habits for our finances, then it’s going to be to the point where, you know, we never live this beautiful life we want to create, we’re going to have to keep, as Einstein said, thing, over expecting a different result. So if we’re someone who wakes up on a Monday and we’re already not happy, and by Friday, we’re already not happy, and in the jobs of the businesses that we’re in, and then suddenly we spend all that money the weekend to make ourselves feel ourselves feel good, and then we repeat the process. And suddenly, five years has gone by, nothing’s going to change unless we change. So it’s around, why am I out of bed every day? Most people can’t answer that question, and I challenge my audience a lot of the time. Question number one, why do you get out of bed every day? Yeah, what are you doing? What is it that you want? Because millions of people can tell me what they don’t want, but when I ask people, What is it they do want, they don’t actually think about what is it they actually want. So why are you getting out of bed every day? You know, what is it your money for? What life do you want to create for yourself? How much money you actually really need for the life you want to create? Most people haven’t thought about those questions, and therefore, if you haven’t thought about those questions, we just stay in this vicious circle of I’m getting I’m dragging myself out of bed, I’m pressing snooze on the alarm 50 times. I’m dragging myself to work. I’m not happy, I’m exhausted, I’m stressed. I don’t really want to do this, but I don’t really know what I want to do either. And then I get to Friday, and then I’m excited because it’s Friday, and on Sunday, I’m already grumpy because I’ve got to go and repeat the process again the process again the following week. Or, I mean, or it’s February, for example, and I’ve got my one holiday year coming up in September, and I’m literally wishing my life away till September for my one holiday year. Or for me, my example was I hit my fees, and I was like, woo hoo. 25 years to go before I get to retirement, and I’m literally counting my life ago, when I’m retired, these are all the things I want to do. So when we start living that life, that’s not an exciting life, and we’re only here once, so I want to be here for a great time. I might not be here for a long time. I want to be here for a great time.

Michael Waitze 24:16
You remind me of this story that I heard. It’s more of an allegory, I think, of like a wall street type meeting, I’m gonna say, like a Mexican fisherman. And he was like, and this guy was like, super happy. He was just like, fishing, you know, he caught like five fish a day. He could feed his whole family. And every day he spent, like, just enough time on the boat to fish. And the guy was like, you know, if you bought five more boats and you could catch a lot more fish, you could then you could then sell a lot more fish, you could make a lot more money. And at the end of the day, the guy was like, Yeah, but I have enough food and I have enough money, and all I really want to do is sit in my boat. I don’t want to do any of those other things, because your vacation is what I do. Every day for my life, which is sitting on my boat and going fishing. So why don’t I just keep doing that, as opposed to your like idea to make more money? I don’t know. I’m not telling it great, but it just reminds me of that thing too. And I want to ask you this because you like, I spent 25 years. I spent 23 maybe, in the corporate world, and I would never do it again. I think it kind of like destroyed my soul. I talk about it all the time, and I think this is one of the reasons why, even at my age, I don’t feel like I’m almost 60. I feel like I’m almost 30, because I feel like I have way more control and way more agency, if that makes sense. So I’m wondering if one of the things that you do in your financial literacy conversations through femvestors global, is to try to encourage people to build their own businesses like I know it’s not for everybody, but there is a certain amount of agency that comes with it. And since you did the same thing, right? You spent 25 years in the corporate world like I did, but now you don’t do that. I’m presuming. Do you try to encourage people at a younger age to go do that instead of going to work for some big company?

Pauline Kirk 26:07
I love the fact you asked this question. So with my niece and nephew, with my I’ve got step with them. A lot of people talk around I’m paying my kids for chores, and I’m like, chores are life, okay, if you’ve got it, we’ve got a maid or someone to look after that and do that. That’s great, but chores are life, and therefore I don’t reward any of my kids in my life. Reward them for their replacing their time for money, because that’s what chores are. And therefore we’re thinking our kids to be employee mindset. I do it, are going to get paid. So what I do is I actually teach the people in my community to teach their children to read books and learn skills, and they will get paid that way. So I actually go right here. We’re going to go through chapter three. I’m going to ask you some questions. Every question you get right, I’m going to give you some money that way, because when we start challenging your children around thinking differently, I don’t want my child to grow up in an environment that we were certainly taught that the definition of success was to go out, get a job, get a better job, go to university, get a better job, get an even better job, get a fancy job title, have get married, have kids, you know, retire and die in simplest terms, and that is our parents and grandparents and great, great grandparents version of success, yeah. And I’ll challenge anyone to think, what is your definition of success? Because your definition of success is going to be where your head is at, yeah. And therefore, then you get to create your definition of success and what that looks like, because we certainly see it. You know, there’s so much great free resources online today. And I certainly didn’t grow up in the world of the internet. You know, this isn’t, you know, I’m in my 40s now. I learned typewriters at school. You know, I was in my 20s when we knew what surfing the web was. And I didn’t grow up in this environment where you see kids today with free technology. Yeah. And I keep saying to my niece and nephew, who are, you know, 11 and 13? I mean, you live in such an amazing time when you can create a business with a mobile phone and a laptop, and you can go out and make money today, learn some skills if you want to go out and get a degree or something that requires you to have a specialized degree or masters, or whatever it is in terms of academic qualification, because it’s required, because it needs for the role like being a doctor or a lawyer or something. I get it. But the reality is today, do you still need that academic qualification to then go and live the life that you want to create for yourself?

Michael Waitze 28:30
Yeah, I would say, I would say, No, almost for sure. You know, I studied economics and then went and worked on Wall Street, so it kind of helped me out that I understood how the economy worked and how economics worked, right? But to be fair, I wouldn’t do that again. And I do. I have a daughter, and my hope is that she’ll never have a job in her whole life, not that she won’t have income, but that you’ll never have a job like I did, because it’s just a terrible, terrible way to live. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Pauline Kirk 29:01
And most Some people love their jobs. You know, my husband absolutely loves his job. He couldn’t leave tomorrow, but he loves it. He gets up every day. He’s full of enthusiasm, and he loves what he does. He loves his boss. I’d rather say he loves his boss, because he has such a good relationship with his boss, and he loves what he does every day. He’s currently traveling around Asia at the moment, but he loves what he does, and therefore, then he’s making a different decision, because he could actually choose to retire, but he’s choosing not to because he’s made a different decision. As opposed to having to stay in a corporate job you really don’t want to be in because you need the money. And I call it golden handcuffs. You know, golden handcuffs are firmly strapped to the wrist, and you can’t do anything different because you’re suck into this. Well, I need money because I bought an expensive house, or I’m paying a lot of money in rent, or I’ve, you know, got this expensive car, I’ve got my kids in these expensive schools, and therefore, then, because I’m living this lifestyle, cost, therefore I can’t make these decisions, as opposed to, I want to do something different,

Michael Waitze 29:55
yeah, that you’ve just described my entire life. Yeah?

Pauline Kirk 30:02
Uh, until now, we all get sucked into it. We all get sucked into it. You know, we certainly, you know, whether you live in Singapore or Dubai or Hong Kong or whatever, there’s a status thing. It’s around. This is perception of, you know, where do kids go to school? What car do you drive, and where’s your house? And, you know, describe your lifestyle and what clothes are you wearing, what designer bag and your shoes, and people make their decision based on how you look and act and where you live and your kids and how they dress and where they go to school. So we see it in this part of the world, but I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve had the privilege of living and working in 10 countries, and the happiest people I’ve seen in some of the poorest developing countries in the world, because they don’t see this consumeristic world. Yeah, and kids playing with a football? Yeah? Exactly. Kids playing with football the happiest they’ve ever been. Yeah? Here, there’s all this different type of pressure because we have to act to look a certain way, because we’re driven by status and significance, and most of us are trying to impress people we don’t even like. Let’s be honest,

Michael Waitze 30:55
exactly. I feel like you’ve had a camera following me around for my whole life, and now you’re just playing it back to me. Oh, back to me. This is when

Pauline Kirk 31:05
you get to the end of life and play it back and go, this is exactly what she’s telling me,

Michael Waitze 31:09
exactly. I wish somebody had told me when I was 25

Pauline Kirk 31:13
Well, this is a good thing for your audience, so whatever age they’re listening, this is like, right? This is something I need to do right now. I’m gonna take some action listen and go, right? What do I need to do to move the needle? So if I’m in my corporate job or my business, I’m not happy about what does that money that comes in enables me to do to build the life that I want to create for myself Exactly? And that is the motivation to then go, when I’m at the point where this income is subsidizing this income, and I can choose to make a different decision, then that’s the exciting part. But most of us are in the corporate life, and we don’t know what to do. When have thought about it, we just know that this isn’t it, and we’re not happy. I’m like, focus on what the goal is. Focus on what’s going to bring you joy and happiness in life, and then create a plan for yourself to then go right this little bit of money here, and you know, these two hours a night, or these five hours a week that I have, what am I going to do to build what I want to build, to build, to create the life I want to create. Yeah,

Michael Waitze 32:04
you know, I remember when we did our prep call, and I thought this level of energy is going to make it really easy to do the recording. And I was not wrong. Um, what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Pauline Kirk 32:20
So, yep. So connect for us through femvestors global com. So we’re online, and you know, across all our socials, we have Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. So yeah, so you can follow us across our platforms. We do put out a lot of content in terms of, you know, getting people the knowledge, whether it be, I know us focus on women, but yes, I’m like, ladies, bring your men along, because one’s taught them either so and bring your kids along. So we’re actually running out a product as we speak that’s going to support children in the metaverse, which is enabling children how to get educated, watching online videos around how to get educated, whether it be a young child or a teenager, in terms of how to get better with money and understand some of the things that you talk about, such as compounding. Yeah, that’s pretty exciting coming through.

Michael Waitze 33:04
Awesome. Okay…Pauline Kirk, the founder of Femvestorsglobal, that was awesome. That was the fastest 30 something minutes of my entire life. I knew it was going to be that way when we connected with each other. I really appreciate you doing this. And if you know anybody else great that can help kind of get this message out. Help perpetuate this message. Please let me know who they are, and I’ll have them on the show as well.

Pauline Kirk 33:27
Thank you so much for your time, Mike. I really appreciate it.