How to Stop Running (Business) Races that Don’t Matter

Kathryn Finney: Welcome back to Build a Damn Thing, the podcast where I teach you how to use entrepreneurship to build a life that you control. I'm your host, Catherine Finney. In today's episode, we're diving into the question of how will you measure your life? In the words of our guest, Christina Wallace, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and the author of The Portfolio Life and the now iconic Harvard Business Review article, Everyone Deserves a Season to Step Back. This question recognizes that our time and energy are always being allocated and adjusted across work, creative projects, family time, community, health, and spiritual commitments. That leads to a mix of purposeful chosen investments. Christina herself is a true Venn diagram, human Venn diagram, bringing together seemingly disparate worlds to create groundbreaking work. Kathryn Finney: Welcome back to Build a Day of the Thing, the podcast where I teach you how to use entrepreneurship to build a life you control. I'm your host, Catherine Finney. Today's episode, we're diving into the question of how will you measure your life? In the words of our guest, Christina Wallace, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and the author of The Portfolio Life and of the now iconic Harvard Business Review article, Everyone Deserves the Seas in the Step Back. This question recognizes that our time and energy are always being allocated and adjusted across work, creative projects, family time, community, health, and spiritual commitments, a mix of purposefully chosen investments. Christina herself is a true human Venn diagram, bringing together seemingly disparate worlds to create groundbreaking work. Whether she's teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs or investing in startups or or co-producing Broadway shows, Christina's approach to portfolio careers and multi-dimensional success has inspired countless professionals. So whether you're navigating the future of work or dreaming of your own portfolio career, this episode is packed with insights to help you build your own version of a creative multi-dimensional life. Welcome, Christina. I'm so happy to have you with us. Christina Wallace: I am thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me, Catherine. Kathryn Finney: So I was sent your article by a friend who knew that I was going through a period of change, of stepping back myself. And your article, which was in Harvard Business Review, February 2025, so just came out a couple of months ago. And when she sent it to me and I clicked on it and I read it, I let out like a yelp. I was like, my gosh, this is so where I'm at. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: What exactly is stepping back? Christina Wallace: a great question. Start from the beginning. Stepping back, it could mean a lot of things. And I think part of it starts with the permission to not be 110%. Right, I think the default for all ambitious people is to be on, all on, all the time, all on. And the... Kathryn Finney: All the time. Christina Wallace: opposite of all on is all off, right? There's this trend around at least the TikTok world of bed rotting. This idea that Gen Z, bed rotting, that's what Gen Z calls it, where you like collapse into bed on Friday when you get home from work and you basically don't move until Monday morning. You sit there staring at your phone or you're watching TV or you're ordering takeout and you just, you just. Kathryn Finney: I'm Christina Wallace: lay there. You bed rot, right? Because you're so exhausted, right? There's like, you're all on or you're all off. And I think for me, this idea of stepping back is like, okay, like there can be something between that where you say, I'm not dead. I don't need to bed rot, but like, I just need to, I need to just step back for a hot second. I need to dial down. Kathryn Finney: Bed Rod. Christina Wallace: to 80 % or 60 % or maybe I need to pull down to 0 % this one piece of my portfolio so that I can keep the other pieces going and now have the capacity to take care of me or take care of this new thing that has entered my life. And I recognize, cause it's just a season of stepping back, this is a temporary thing. It's not the new normal. And so it's the permission to acknowledge that you need something different. And I think in many ways, for I think many of our generation who had that finger shaking of lean in, 10 or 15 years ago, that this is the permission to step back. It's not lean out. We're not using that word. It's step back. Kathryn Finney: except that I felt like I was leaning in so much I was planking at one point. Christina Wallace: Yes, yes, I have used that. I'm like, I'm horizontal, y'all. Kathryn Finney: I'm a horizontal, like I've leaned all the way in. mean, maybe I'm even like kind of upside down. You you talk about portfolio and in your book, The Portfolio Life, you talk about basically creating a life and thinking of your life as a business person, right? Like when I think of portfolio as an investor in a venture capitalist, it's all my companies that I've invested in, whether it's angel or venture-based investments, that's my portfolio. I've never thought of thinking of my life in that way too. Christina Wallace: Yes! Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: all the things that I invest my time in as part of my life portfolio. Can you explain a little bit about this concept of thinking of your life as a portfolio? Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Yeah, so I came to business school, we won't say how many years ago, having never been exposed to financial anything that wasn't really a topic that came up at our kitchen table in my family. And Lansing, Michigan, we were a blue collar family. And so it was all new to me. And I was like, this is genius. The fact that you can Kathryn Finney: Where did you grow up? hey, hey Midwest. Christina Wallace: add risk, you can diversify to offset that risk. There's ways that you can quantify and be strategic about. Like it blew my mind, this idea of how you can build a portfolio really intentionally, toward a strategy. And then sort of in tandem with that learning, I had this class with Clay Christensen who asked us, how will you measure your life? And I thought, okay, this idea of work and life in opposition to each other, like that doesn't work. It doesn't work for anyone. It certainly doesn't work for me. And that was the very beginning of this framework, this idea of your portfolio life, right? And that if work is one of the pieces in your portfolio, then you have other pieces in your portfolio. And they each do something different. They meet different needs and they allow you to different kinds of risks or offer different kinds of rewards. And as long as the portfolio delivers, then everything is good. And if suddenly your needs change or your desires change or the world around you changes and it doesn't work anymore, like you don't judge yourself if a financial portfolio isn't working anymore, you rebalance it. You're not like, I wanted that when I was 26 and I don't want it anymore. No, you change it. And I think it's freeing to kind of give yourself that permission to evolve and change as your desires and autonomy and circumstances and the world changes. And that's where this all began. And I think certainly as an entrepreneur, I started my first company. And I went all in. didn't keep my full-time job before I quit, before I raised any money. And I had just a little bit of savings to live off of. I didn't have a partner with income. As I mentioned, did not have family money to lean on. And I was doing this in New York City because I saw everyone else doing this. And I thought, well, this is how we do it. Because it was called Quincy Apparel. Kathryn Finney: What was the company? Okay. Christina Wallace: We raised, we were like bonobos for women. We failed, obviously. This is why you haven't heard of us. But what I didn't see was that all these other entrepreneurs who on the surface were doing what I thought I was doing, they had a piece of their portfolio, which was a trust fund or savings from an iBanking job or a partner who was paying for their mortgage and their health insurance. They had the bonds in their portfolio so that they could be the risky stocks or the risky assets. And I didn't have any bonds in my portfolio. I was just all in on the risky assets. And that was completely crazy. And so when I came around to be like, next time when I do this again, I have to design my portfolio differently because I don't have those resources. that some other entrepreneurs have. And like no shade to them, love that they have it, I don't. So how am I designing? Kathryn Finney: You know, it's so interesting that you bring that up because oftentimes I will have conversations with some of our younger team members and just young women that I mentor. And we talk about partnerships and relationships in particular. And I always say to them, you know, marry someone useful. Like, if you're gonna partner with someone, make sure they have a skillset. And if you're gonna be the risk taker, right, you're gonna be the entrepreneur. Christina Wallace: Mmm. Christina Wallace: Hahaha Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: I have friends that are like documentary filmmakers that makes like no money, right? You're gonna need to partner with someone that does make some money. You both can't be broke, that's gonna be hard. That's gonna be hard, especially living in certain cities. And actually one of my very dear friends, I remember when she was dating her husband, and... Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Yes. Yes. Kathryn Finney: They had just met, weren't like, and she was like, I don't know, he was a little boring, I'm gonna date this, he worked at Lehman Brothers, this is how long ago this was. And he was like, I don't know exactly what he did there, but it was something I banking-y. Christina Wallace: man. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: And she is like a documentary filmmaker that does documentaries on like, you know, civil rights movements, right? And I'm like, you know what, you need to give him a chance because he can actually fund your project. You're an artist and you want to make this great important art that's very, important. And you're documenting our history, but no one's paying for that. Unfortunately, there's an. Christina Wallace: Hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: And so in order for you to do this important work, you need someone who's gonna have, I don't know, health benefits that you can get around the face. And I mean, they're still married, they've been married for 15 years. that obviously was some advice, but I think, even when it comes to dating and just life in general, thinking of this sort of portfolio. So how do you start to think about risk as you're creating your life portfolio? Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Of Christina Wallace: Yeah, it's a great question. And I love that example that you brought up because that's also how I think about with my husband and our partnership. you know, I've got my portfolio on a personal level, as does he. And then we also design at a family level. And one of the reasons, you know, I met him through the apps. We were an OK Cupid success story. But one of the reasons I knew very early on that we were going to be a good fit is that we are both artists, creators, musicians, theater people who also have real jobs. And that allows us, and we keep both of those pieces of us active. We have these portfolios and that allows us to flex. So one of us can have the creative piece active while the other one brings in the sturdiness. And then we can flex the other way. So one of our rules is only one of us gets to write a book at any given time. So when I was done writing Portfolio Life, he got to start his novel. And now we are weeks away from him turning in his novel. And now I'm talking with my agent about my next book. Right. And that's one of the reasons not so much because of the financial risk of writing a book, because we both have full time jobs. He runs the town of Brookline. He's basically like a city manager and I am a professor. Kathryn Finney: Hahaha Christina Wallace: But we have two small children. And writing a book in your free time, when you have small children, you have no free time. So writing a book is taking time away from something, which is why when you think about a portfolio, it's not just money, it's time, it's energy, it's all, it's brain power, it's all the things that you allocate yourself to. And so we as a family say, only one book at a time. So when I think about risk, or some of the... Kathryn Finney: Exactly. Christina Wallace: I'm designing risk into my portfolio always. You just don't wanna have too much risk, right? So if I have the sturdiness of my job, then I can take on risks like co-producing Broadway musicals. I started my career in theater. I was a double major in math and theater. And... Kathryn Finney: That's a very interesting double major. Where did you go to college out of curiosity? Really? Okay. Christina Wallace: Emory University in Atlanta. Yes, and I would have loved to have been a theater director professionally. I started out doing some theater directing in regional theater in Atlanta. I moved to New York to see if I could make it in the professional world. But again, no trust fund. Again, one of those unseen things that a lot of artists have that you don't always know about. And so I needed a day job. And I got a day job at the Metropolitan Opera doing arts management, which is how I got exposed to the world of business and management in the first place. And that led me to business school. But I sort of knew early on that the business model of directing, of making theater, doesn't work for a girl from Michigan with no trust fund and no rich husband. Like it doesn't work. And I wasn't willing to live hand to mouth and in sublets for the next 20 years. And so the great joy of having found a sturdy version of entrepreneurship, the professor version of entrepreneurship is quite sturdy, is that I can now produce theater in a very risky way. And if the money... comes that's wonderful and if I lose all of it it's not that much and in no way affects whether I can pay my mortgage. So I'm allowing the art to be a huge part of my creative expression but a very small part of my financial expression of my portfolio and all of the stress is gone. because I'm not asking the arts to support me. Kathryn Finney: So get to do what you love. It reminds me of the saying, do what you have to do so you can do what you wanna do. And there's a story that comes from my own life. Many, many years ago, I received a scholarship. Scholarship, sort of fellowship when I was in graduate school from the human rights organization, Amnesty International. Christina Wallace: Exactly. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: And it was sponsored by Patrick Stewart, the actor, John Luke Picard for people who, let me just say when he would say Catherine, I was like, my God. Anyway, I know like Catherine, I just should have like recorded, it was like 20 years ago. But he was meeting with us, he brought us all to New York City, we were seeing him in the play and then we were having dinner with him. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You gotta like turn that into your ringtone. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: And one of the fellows asked him a question, which now in hindsight was like a little rude, but was, you know, why do you do things like Star Trek and pop culture type things? And he said, because that allows me to do this fellowship. That allows me to fund us. And I think a lot of people don't sort of organize their lives in that sort of way, this portfolio approach where you think of Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Exactly. Yeah. Kathryn Finney: the reason I'm doing this is so that I have the ability to do this or it de-risk the other opportunities in my life that I wanna do. And so we often think in very binary ways, it's either, like you said, it's either on or off, it's either yes or no, it's either this is 100 % or it's nothing. And so how do we break out of that mindset? Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Yes. Yes. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: I, one of the great joys of like 2016 for me, 2016 was a rough year for the world, but one of the great joys for me is that I discovered Marie Kondo. I was a little late to the Marie Kondo train. And I lived in a very small apartment, so I never really had a clutter issue, but I decided that year to like declutter my calendar, Marie Kondo style. Kathryn Finney: Hahaha, yeah. Christina Wallace: And I started reading up on her method. And one of the things I loved about her method was that you gather all these things together and then you ask each one if it brings you joy. And if the answer is no, you thank it for its service and you let it go. And at first people are like, joy, like Tupperware, socks, know, like socks don't ever bring me joy. And then you start thinking about it and you realize It's not the sock that brings you joy. It's the moment where you know that your feet are gonna be toasty warm. It's not the Tupperware that brings you joy. It's knowing that you get to come home from the dinner party with leftovers that will help you sort of extend the joy of that dinner party for several days. And you start to realize the joy is not the thing. The joy is what it enables you to do. And I think very similarly around the portfolio and the life. When I have students that say, have to take this job out of business school, I've got 200 grand in student loans. And I was like, I get that. I had it too. 183 grand, paid them off, I get it. And that's okay. Take the job for the period that allows you to pay off the loans and thank it for the ability. to get you out from that debt. And the second that's gone, you leave that job because it gave you the ability to be free. Kathryn Finney: You know, it's. Kathryn Finney: It seems that the portfolio life is deeply connected also to a life of gratitude. To let something go. and also recognize its role in your life. I think that's a very hard thing for a lot of people to do, may it be relationships, may it be Tupperware bowls or socks. But it's hard, right, to look at something, especially Americans, right, I wanna be very specific, because we have an international audience, and Americans tend to look at letting things go as a negative. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mmm. Christina Wallace: That's interesting, Kathryn Finney: that something leaves you that it's a negative. it's a very, instead of honoring the role of that thing and that everything, there's a season and a reason, And letting it kind of go on. How much is gratitude and this portfolio life connected? Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Yeah, so much. And I love that you noticed that. I don't think I'd ever kind of put that word to it, but you're exactly right. Because the seasonality of this is crucial. If you only add and you never take away, you will burn out. Kathryn Finney: Yes. Yes, he will. Christina Wallace: Right? Like that is the core of burning out. You add, add, add, you say yes to everything and you never prune, you will burn out. And so you have to have the ability to assess and say, served me and I'm grateful it did, but it no longer serves me. And so I'm going to stop doing it. I'm gonna prune it from my life for whatever reason. And I'm not gonna judge and beat myself up for the fact that it once served me and it is no longer what I need. I'm just gonna let it go. And I think a big part of that might be for me, a lesson I learned with the failure of my first company. I talk about failure in the book as a necessary part of building a portfolio. in order to put risk in a portfolio, you have to be prepared for some failure. If there's no potential for failure, you have no risk. And the potential for failure can freak a lot of overachievers out. Even entrepreneurs, right? They say, like, I get it, I get it, most startups fail. But they always believe, like, but I won't. I will be the exception to that. And I think for me, the first startup failing and the pain of it, the failure in a nutshell was not from a product market fit standpoint. We developed and created something our customers wanted. Our failure was from a business model standpoint. We couldn't make the economics work for the channel and the go-to-market that we had developed. And seeing that all go to zero and having to take ownership of the pieces that I contributed and be able to acknowledge the pieces that were out of my control and then be grateful for how much I learned in that two year period and what it now enabled me to do going forward. It was the only way to get up and keep going. Christina Wallace: And I had to get up and keep going because I just paid my rent with a cash advance on my credit card. And I had 30 days to get a job. Sometimes not having a safety net is really good motivation. And I am grateful for that in that moment. I've seen founders who wallow for a year after a failure because they can financially. And then that wallowing becomes stasis. And having a little bit of a fire underneath your bum. Kathryn Finney: Yeah. Christina Wallace: can be a really good thing. So I think part of the gratitude is also the willingness to prune, the willingness to accept that failure will be part of this practice. And that's okay. Kathryn Finney: You know, it's such an interesting discussion around failure. The communities that I'm a part of, African American community, failure can be fatal. At least that's what it's told to us. And mostly because we don't own our failure. When we fail, especially if you're sort of a known person, it is almost like. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm. Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm. Kathryn Finney: And this may or may not be true, but you almost feel like you're failing an entire community, right? Because it's like, you're the first one to do this, you're the first one to do that. And as someone who's done a lot of that, like first-firstness, it can be a trap for us and can make it very difficult for us to create a portfolio that takes risk because we know we don't have. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: Not only do we not have a safety net, we are often the safety net for other people. And that's where the like trap comes in at. It's one thing to not have a safety net, it's another thing where you are literally the safety net for 10 other people in your family. And so how would someone in that sort of situation, in those sort of communities design a portfolio? How would they take their life and design risk within that? Christina Wallace: Right. Right. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, great question. There's a couple of ways I think about this. So if you look at the research on the costs of failure, they divide it into three buckets. There's the financial costs, which are pretty obvious, right? The opportunity costs, the actual money lost itself. There are the social costs, whether it's relationships burned or perceptions that have changed, other people now see you differently. And then there is the psychological costs of how you now see yourself differently. And at least for many of my students, it's the third bucket, the psychological costs that are actually the hardest of the three. They think it's the social, They come into office hours with the perception that it's my parents, my classmates, the world around me that's gonna see me differently. And as we peel back the onion, they realize so much of that is the story they've told themselves. And that really most of the time no one is thinking about them, which is freeing. And really it's the story that they tell themselves about themselves that they have to be able to shift. And so I don't want to discount the racial and the actual differences that are true for Black Americans. But I do want to challenge just a little bit how much of this might be internal in addition to the external pressures. Kathryn Finney: No, I would agree, actually. I think when you grow up, and this is not just African American, if you come from immigrant communities, what have you, if you grow up in a space where exceptionalism is kind of the key, you have to be exceptional, because people sacrifice so much for you to be where you're at. And again, this is a. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: I think it's very American, very deeply capitalist society sort of situation, but when you put a lot of pressure on yourself, because there's a lot of expectations and you don't want to fail because people put you in their portfolio. You were part of their portfolio, right? And you were the risk that they took. Christina Wallace: Yes, yes. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: And so you want to make sure that you're one of the wins, know, in venture capital. You want to make sure you're the one out of the 10 that like actually became the unicorn. And so you feel this pressure to do that. So a lot of it is it is societal, but it also is internal. And how do you how does one handle that, especially in the world we're in right now, where we have AI? Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Yeah. Christina Wallace: Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's here. Kathryn Finney: It is here, it is came, it's come, it's came, it's coming again, it's here, it's all around us, it's in our face, it's been here, it's our next door neighbor, like it's here, right? And as a result, it's disrupting the entire concept of work. In fact, there was a video of former President Obama talking about how we're in the most disruptive time in the workforce since the Industrial Revolution. Christina Wallace: It's been here. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Correct. Kathryn Finney: As Americans, those of us who are Americans, work is so central to who we are. It is how we define ourselves in America. Where do you work? It's almost what do you do for a living? It's almost always the first question that people ask. And I always love saying venture capitalist because like no one ever knows what that means unless I'm in tech or venture. I love it. Christina Wallace: Yes. Yes. Christina Wallace: Ha Did you ever watch the movie Wedding Crashers? Yes, that's the job they claimed. I rewatched it recently and I was like Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson. They're like, we're venture capitalists. And no one pressured them on that until one father was like, yeah, what does a venture capitalist do? And they're like, we venture some capital. Kathryn Finney: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. Kathryn Finney: No one has ever Kathryn Finney: You Which is like exactly, yes. Yes, that's exact. mean, literally people are like, people never ever question it. They don't ask questions and stuff like that. But it's such essential, what we do is such a central part of our identity. So how do you redesign your portfolio when... Christina Wallace: Which is true. Christina Wallace: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Christina Wallace: Yeah. Yeah. Kathryn Finney: that key aspect, your stability, right? AI is taking jobs. Those jobs are not coming back. And you're somebody who went to Harvard Business School and you were in Professor Wallace's class in her office hours every week. And all of a sudden, AI has taken that job that you spent how many years dreaming about how many years working. Like, how do you redesign your life for this shift? Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, this is a question we grapple with on the regular here. So there's a couple of pieces here. The first piece, as you rightly point out, Americans almost to a person identify with their job. That is so dangerous. It will be even more dangerous going ahead. We already see this. This is a big part of why we see depression among men. in middle age is why we see depression and unhappiness among the underemployed younger boys, right, and young men. Like we're seeing this already in previous generations struggling with getting the appropriate identity to work because they aren't getting the right work. That is going to spread with the advent of AI taking over more and more of these jobs. So one of the pieces of this, the very first tenet of the portfolio life is to step back and discover your identity in a broader sense than just how you currently monetize your time. So this is why I describe myself as a human Venn diagram who's built a career at the intersection of business, technology and the arts. I do not introduce myself as a professor. I do not introduce myself as an entrepreneur. I do not introduce myself as the founder of blank because those are all ways that I have received paychecks, but that's not who I am. I am an interdisciplinary creative who has zigged and zagged and I can talk with you about any number of things. Where would you like to start? Right? And I think that's step one. allow yourself to sort of excavate the pieces of your identity. Christina Wallace: separate from your current job title, step one. Step two, that excavation actually helps you uncover all of the pieces of your Venn diagram, because I would argue everyone is a Venn diagram, that you have to, you could be putting to use, even if you're not currently using it, right? Your Venn diagram is who you are. Your portfolio is what you do currently. So you might have stuff in your Venn diagram. You're like, I did that 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I haven't touched it in a while, but I could. I could put that back in rotation. This gives you your toolkit of all the things that should it come down to it. Put me in coach. You've got these things. And that actually might be, it might give you direction of like, should I pick up a hobby? Should I start developing the network? of other people in my area who are into this? Are these communities or circles that as I'm thinking about the diversification of not just skills or income streams, but also networks and worlds, industries that I'm in, might that be a lever that I can start accessing? before the moment that the rug is ripped out from under me. And then the third piece really speaks to that diversification. And that's how do I start laying the groundwork before I need it? So this is part of the advice that I offer people who say, well, I am someone else's safety net. I can't take that risk myself. And we're like, OK, so don't take that risk just yet. Keep your day job. Build the startup on the side. Take small risk, validate that risk, build conviction before you quit the day job. Don't make that. Win small before you go for big. Get a small acquisition before you go try to raise venture capital so you can show points on the board because you know you're not the pattern matching that most VCs are looking for. Whatever that is, sort of get that. Christina Wallace: that track record and look for people who do have the pattern matching that the in-group is looking for and ask them to borrow their social capital. Ask them to be your sponsor. Ask them to open doors, like explicitly. Be like, hey, help me get in that room because I can't get in that room on my own. Do this before the moment of crisis, because the argument under all of the portfolio life is the only way to future proof is through diversification. You cannot predict. So you have to diversify so that you are prepared when the earthquake happens, you can zig and zag appropriately. Kathryn Finney: I think that's something that most people don't think of, right? This diversification, we put all our eggs into sort of one basket. And this idea of finding ways to connect with those who are in leadership. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: and those who maybe for whatever reason the social fabric of America in particular are at a certain place certainly higher than others. I think that's really important. I remember doing a 2016, since we talked about it before, I'll bring it back there. I had a very good friend who's very, very successful, white guy, startup founder. Love him to pieces and was really upset. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: with the election in 2016, very, very upset. And he called me and at the time I had just moved to Atlanta. So you can imagine, I kind of saw what was happening. Even though Atlanta is not Georgia, there's Georgia and then there's Atlanta. But it was like, I saw it, I saw it. He was complaining, complaining, complaining. And I was like, you know, look dude, you have a birthright. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm. Yeah. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Yeah. Kathryn Finney: And whether you want it or not, you have it. People will give you the benefit of the doubt. They will give you grace that they will never give me. And there's nothing you can do about it. You're like Prince Harry, right? He's always going to be Prince Harry, even if he leaves the monarch. He's going to be Prince Harry. So what are you going to do with it? That's exactly what I said to him. You can bring people in. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Right. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. So what are you gonna do with it? Kathryn Finney: to the table and no one is going to question. You can open doors and no one will question you at all because of the fact that you are at this certain social position in American society. And I say that for everyone, regardless of your race or gender, we all sit in positions of privilege. And so how are you utilizing your position of privilege, right? And it's not even risky for you. It's not even like a risky thing, right? Christina Wallace: Yes. Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Exactly. No, it costs you no social capital to do this. Kathryn Finney: None whatsoever to just invite someone. always like to bring, when I do speeches, I always like to bring people along. Like, you bring a whole squad. I'm like, I sure do, I invite everyone. But I think that's really important and that's something very easy to do. And if you talk about future-proofing your portfolio and basically building these relationships before you need them, this is something I think those of us who do have positions of privilege can actually call our friends on. Christina Wallace: Yeah. Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: and say, hey, hi, know, head of X, Y, and Z, you have the ability to invite people into this room and no one's gonna question you. But my friend had a response I hadn't thought of before. And I think to those of us who come from marginalized communities, sometimes we don't have the privilege of understanding like, Christina Wallace: Mm-hmm. Kathryn Finney: worldview of those in power and I'm not saying that necessarily correct worldview, but it's a very interesting way of thinking and my friend said, know, I never Thought to look behind me. All I knew is that I wasn't Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos I was only looking forward and I didn't take a chance to look back and realize that I'm ahead of 99.9 % of the world Christina Wallace: Hmm. Christina Wallace: Hmm. Kathryn Finney: because in my world, I'm not taught to look back. I'm taught to look forward and chase what's in front of me, not what's behind me. Self-reflection is not something that's taught in the startup world very much. And that's blew my mind, because I was like, yeah. Christina Wallace: Well, I mean, that's basically the entire ethos of white feminism for the last 20 years too, so. Kathryn Finney: Yeah, right? Like you never thought to pause and look and say, my goodness, I'm so far ahead of other people. So you're building this portfolio life, you're assessing risk and you're putting these pieces together. How do you manage this? Christina Wallace: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Christina Wallace: Great question. So the last third of the book is literally how do you operationalize all of this? Because like the theory is lovely, but it sounds like a lot of work. And I will admit getting it up and running is a chunk of work because you're effectively becoming the entrepreneur of your life. You have to be the CEO and the CMO and the CFO. You got to figure out the money side and... You've got figure out how you're going to talk about it and put yourself out in the world, right? There's a number of systems and operations you have to get up and running. But then once they're up and running, it kind of runs itself with just like a twice a year check-in. So there's a couple of systems I put in place, and I have all of these as templates on my website for free for anyone who wants them. But I'll talk about a couple that I really like. One is my personal balance scorecard that I put together at the beginning of the year. Kathryn Finney: which is amazing, amazing. And we will have links to it in the show notes, but yes. Christina Wallace: It is as nerdy as it sounds. And it is, you know, I basically set where some people do like their New Year's resolutions. I set like, what are my priorities for the year along these kind of four categories? One is professional, sure. But then I also think financial and, you know, my personal goals, which are like friends and family and community and my health goals. And then among those priorities that I have like very specific like targets and then like actionable like what will that thing be that I can measure at the end of the year that I will know I hit it yes or no. And then I check in on that like six months in and I sort of tweak the goals if I need to and then at the end of the year I can give myself a red, yellow, green and sort of give myself a grade. And then most importantly, because I love dashboards. At the bottom, I have this question. You know, like in Excel spreadsheets where you have like the checksum of like, does it add up to 100? So my checksum is this question that says, are you happy? Because I know myself and as a type A achiever, I am really good at winning races that don't matter to me. Kathryn Finney: races that don't matter to you. Christina Wallace: Yeah. So the are you happy is to make sure I'm not acing this test, but making myself miserable in doing so, right? Am I like choosing to allocate my time toward these things? Because I know I'm being measured up against these things. Like I'm measuring myself. Let me be clear here. This is my own grade. But in doing so, like not actually choosing the things that will bring me joy. And so that is my my big flashing red warning sign that says, it's time to rebalance. Like, you're not happy. And happy for me, everyone can define it differently. For me, it's like, did you have more good days than bad this year? You know, like everyone's gonna have some rough days and you're gonna even have like a string of rough days. But on balance, did you have more good days than bad? And if the answer is no, then it's time to make some changes. And that's usually the sign for me where the portfolio is not meeting my needs. The friction is greater than the reward. maybe it's paying my financial needs, but it's no longer giving me the creative development. It's not meeting my community needs. It's not. It's not giving me the flexibility and the autonomy anymore. My job used to be remote and now I have to go into the office and half of the needs that that used to give me have gone out the window. Whatever those things are, this is the sign that it's time to redesign that portfolio. And for me, that's sort of like every five to seven years. Sometimes it's around big life things. The last major redesign was when I had my first child five years ago. That's what took me from being an entrepreneur to being a professor of entrepreneurship. The next big shift will probably be when my youngest hits kindergarten and then we can reassess. so that's kind of the big one. And then I have all sorts of other things like Gantt charts that I make with my husband, where we can figure out this one's actually really important. You laugh. I do too, but it's important because here's the downside to diversification. There's one downside. Christina Wallace: And that is you can build a life where you never stop, which brings us full circle back to the season of stepping back. The downside to diversification is that if you do it without protecting downtime, you can have something always running. You've got a new project going, you've got new client work, you've said yes to this new thing. And especially if you do it with a partner and you're balancing all these things, you find yourself having gone four years without a vacation. And you are, especially if you're in this moment where you are pursuing entrepreneurship as a way to get ahead of the AI apocalypse, and you've got this, maybe not even awareness of, but you have this sort of sentiment of scarcity. where it's like every dollar I just gotta grab and hold on to, you will burn out. And so carving out and protecting these seasons of whether it's a year like you took or whether it's a month like I have taken or something in between where you say, I need to step back. And it doesn't have to be total downtime. It's not go to the beach, turn off your computer and never talk to anyone again. You don't have to bed rot. But allow yourself that lull rather than the always on. Or you'll never get it. Kathryn Finney: Winning races that don't matter to you. Stop winning races that do not matter to you. Christina, thank you so much. It was such an honor having you. I was so looking forward to this conversation and it delivered everything that I was hoping for. It gave me life to use. Is that a millennial term or a Jim Z term? Am I dating myself? Christina Wallace: I think it's Gen Z. I don't know. They find us cringe and I take it as a compliment. Kathryn Finney: I don't know, right? Kathryn Finney: I have a nine year old, he's kind of like, both finds me interesting and funny, but also cringy at the same time too. I don't, I'm like, am I saying the right words? Am I like, he's like, just don't, just let it go old lady. But thank you so much Christina for joining us today. If you want to know more about Christina and definitely download her charts and her resources, please. Christina Wallace: Ha Hahaha Christina Wallace: You're very welcome. Kathryn Finney: please head to her website, we'll link to in the show notes. Follow her on all the profiles, not profiles, follow her on all the different platforms, the YouTubes, the TikToks, all of them. And if you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to hit that subscribe button and leave a review. And also make sure you share this episode, because this episode has so many gems in it. Make sure you share it. And remember, As you're building your own damn thing, keep pushing those boundaries and keep going because the world needs more of what you're creating. Until next time, keep building.