From Zero to $1M Before 30 - My Exact System | Mallory Rowan | 135

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Nathan Barry Show

Episode 135 (July 2, 2026)

Title: From Zero to $1M Before 30 – My Exact System | Mallory Rowan
Host: Nathan Barry
Guest: Mallory Rowan (Lululemon Legacy Ambassador, Shopify Master, Entrepreneur)

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Overview

In this inspiring and actionable episode, Nathan Barry sits down with entrepreneur and creator Mallory Rowan to break down her journey from college side hustler to achieving a $1 million net worth before the age of 30. Mallory shares the exact systems and mindsets that enabled her to reach this milestone—after first burning out at 22—and details how creators, founders, and anyone with ambitious goals can align their business, health, and personal wealth to create sustainable success. The conversation balances real talk on burnout, identity, ambition, building wealth through business cash flow, and practical investment strategies, all in a tone that is both candid and motivating.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Burnout and the Cost of Early Hustle

[01:07–08:41]

• Mallory’s Early Hustle: Built a six-figure powerlifting apparel company as a student, worked at a startup, competed in powerlifting—all at once.
• Physical & Emotional Signs: Ignored early “whispers” of burnout until her body forced her to stop (hair loss, unexplained rashes, chronic pain).
• Quote:
  “They say your body whispers before it screams. And I definitely ignored the whispers. And so it was aggressively screaming at me.” — Mallory Rowan [01:28]
• Industry Influence: Hit peak hustle culture (“Gary Vee, Monster energy drinks, ‘hustle’ screensaver on my phone”), later realizing self-care isn't a compromise but can be integrated with ambition.

2. Recognizing Signals—What Burnout Looks Like

[04:55–08:41]

• Early Signs: Irritability, uncharacteristic anger, frequent emotional breakdowns.
• Nathan’s Similar Story: Juggled explosive business growth, young kids, a home remodel, and ended up with shingles as his own crash point.
• Cycle of Work and Health: Many founders oscillate between prioritizing business and health—often forced by crisis.

3. Re-evaluating the Business & Life Approach

[08:50–14:59]

• Pausing and Reassessing: Mallory stepped away from her first business when health forced a break; questioned if they wanted to sell T-shirts forever or scale further.
• Creativity and Pressures Conflict: Financial pressure on creative work can kill initial joy and innovation.
• Quote:
  “Every win is a big win [when starting], but now there’s a lot of financial pressure on the creative things… it was harder to come up with designs for apparel when rent depended on it.” — Mallory Rowan [11:02]

4. The Pivot—Foundation for the Next Chapter

[13:42–16:11]

• Resetting Career: Took social media contracts to stabilize income, gave herself space to decide what’s next.
• Building for Boredom: Structured new offerings (group programs to course format) to match her attention span/brain.

5. Cohesive Wealth Building: Business, Health, and Happiness

[16:11–20:25]

• Integrated Approach: Prioritize health, business, and happiness together rather than in damaging cycles.
• Financial Infrastructure: Business profits fund both current lifestyle and future investments; main wealth vehicles became real estate and stocks.

6. The Mindset Shift—Profit & Asset Building over Revenue

[18:56–22:28]

• Don’t Just Chase Revenue: Revenue is a status marker, but profit and how it’s invested matter more.
• Quote:
  "What am I doing with that profit? How am I turning that into assets that are going to compound?" — Nathan Barry [20:05]
• Excitement-Driven Goals: Anchor investing and saving efforts to goals that genuinely excite you, not just generic advice.

7. The Six Solutions Theory & Creative Problem Solving

[22:28–27:23]

• Six Solutions Theory: For any problem, there are at least six possible solutions. Push beyond the obvious three to unlock creative, out-of-the-box ideas.
• Quote:
  "The theory is there’s six solutions to every problem you’re facing… most of us can rattle off three pretty easily." — Mallory Rowan [22:29]
• Nathan’s “Thumbnailing” Analogy: Creativity often emerges only after the obvious answers are exhausted.

8. Building an Investable Net Worth: Real Estate & Stock Market

[27:23–36:42]

• Stepwise Scaling:
  • Partner got his real estate license to “get close to the industry.”
  • Aggressive saving for first down payment—funneled all surplus from lean business.
  • Leveraged equity from the first house for a second purchase (moved in to access favorable rates/terms).
  • Third property purchase—pushed loan eligibility, then pivoted to stock investing.
  • Target: $1 million invested (benchmarked against a peer).
  • Simple investments: S&P 500, low-risk stocks.
  • Dabbled in angel and crypto investments (“put the money in and forget it; if it comes back, great”).

9. Reverse Engineering Financial Goals

[36:42–41:09]

• Baseline-First Budgeting: Fund life essentials from business, then channel surplus to investments based on timeline ambitions.
• Aggressive Shortcuts: Mallory prefers aggressive timelines for investment targets, often achieving in 1–2 years what others plan in 8—by tying creativity and business levers to her financial ambitions.
• Quote:
  "I don’t make my revenue grow linear... My non-negotiable is that I'm having fun in my business because I know how it feels not to." — Mallory Rowan [55:42]

10. Identity, Ambition, and Navigating Trade-offs

[41:55–46:07]

• Untangling Identity: Separating self-worth from business revenue and achievements.
• Modeling “Enough”: Willing to let revenue fluctuate if it means more happiness or rest.
• Healthy Ambition: Remaining ambitious, but within clear, self-enforced constraints and seasons.

11. Constraints & Leverage: Achieving “Both”

[47:16–59:33]

• Work-Life “Harmony”: See life in seasons: intentionally alternate sprints with deep rest/creative breaks (e.g., sprinting in 2021, coaching sabbatical in 2022 to renovate a cottage).
• Systems & Boundaries: Use habits and boundaries to make hard pushes sustainable.
• Non-negotiables, Nice-to-haves, and Experiments: Mallory organizes her goals by what must happen, what’s ideal, and what can be played with—driven by curiosity, not shame.
• Nathan’s Take: Boundaries force creative problem solving and delegation, often unlocking greater potential than just hustling harder.

12. The Security of a Nest Egg: Freedom, Playfulness, and Optionality

[59:33–62:22]

• Safety Net Enables Play: Hitting her investment goals allows Mallory to play more, experiment, say “no,” and keep lifestyle inflation in check.
• Quiet Wealth:
  “Having money as a nest egg is a very quiet thing to do.” — Nathan Barry [60:18]
• Work Optionality: Focus is on financial independence to enable meaningful work, not early retirement.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “They say your body whispers before it screams. And I definitely ignored the whispers. And so it was aggressively screaming at me.” — Mallory Rowan [01:28]
• “What am I doing with that profit? How am I turning that into assets that are going to compound?” — Nathan Barry [20:05]
• "The theory is there’s six solutions to every problem… most of us can rattle off three pretty easily." — Mallory Rowan [22:29]
• “Revenue is a great example where identity does get so tied into it. And one of my favorite things is when bigger creators do these revenue breakdowns … there's a year where the revenue goes up but the expenses massively jump… And often coming out of that year they go, ‘I don't want to do that again.’” — Mallory Rowan [44:00]
• "My non-negotiable is that I'm having fun in my business because I know how it feels not to." — Mallory Rowan [55:42]
• "Having money as a nest egg is a very quiet thing to do." — Nathan Barry [60:18]
• “I believe our generation is more attracted to like work-optional versus this idea of retiring and never being seen again – because a lot of us want to have that impact.” — Mallory Rowan [61:01]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:07–08:41: Burnout—What it looks & feels like, lessons from collapse
• 08:50–14:59: Stepping back; redesigning business and life after burnout
• 14:59–20:25: Rebuilding—Contract work to fund thinking time, starting new business
• 22:28–27:23: Six Solutions Theory—Creative problem solving
• 27:23–36:42: Achieving $1M net worth—Real estate, investing, strategies
• 36:42–41:09: Reverse engineering investment goals, choosing your timelines
• 41:55–46:07: Identity, revenue obsession, letting go of linear growth
• 47:16–59:33: Balancing seasons, constraints as leverage, experimenting playfully
• 59:33–62:22: Security of wealth, enabling lifestyle freedom, living a “work optional” life

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Final Thoughts

Mallory Rowan demystifies the myth of hustle at all costs, outlining a roadmap where health, ambition, and wealth can compound together. Her methodical, self-aware, and creative approach—paired with detailed financial strategy and a willingness to question every assumption—makes her a modern role model for ambitious (but sustainable) creators everywhere.

To follow Mallory and learn more about her upcoming community "The Fund Club," visit [@malloryrowan on Instagram].

Transcript

[Mallory Rowan]

There's six solutions to every problem you're facing, especially the ones where there feels like there's only one answer. But most of us can rattle off three.

[Nathan Barry]

So for you, what would those three

[Mallory Rowan]

be for the million dollars?

[Nathan Barry]

Mallory is a Lululemon Legacy Ambassador, Business Influence of the Year, Shopify Master, and has partnered with brands like Adobe and Uber Eats.

[Mallory Rowan]

The best thing you can do is be excited about your investing goals. And so for me, it's really important to find goals that you actually care about and not that you think you're supposed to care about.

[Nathan Barry]

She scaled her first business, a powerlifting apparel brand, to multi six figures while still a student. But it nearly broke her.

[Mallory Rowan]

I couldn't even work on my business because I would just be laying in bed in pain. I started losing hair, I started getting unexplainable rashes. I really felt like I had lost that personality. I thought it seemed so crazy and impossible.

[Nathan Barry]

In this conversation, Mallory breaks down how to use cash flow to buy equity and why buying equity is what actually buys freedom.

[Mallory Rowan]

When I burnt out building my business, it really made me face the identity piece. I didn't realize at the time that now looking back, I am really grateful for is.

[Nathan Barry]

Mallory, you built a million dollar net worth by age 29. Pretty massive accomplishment. But you also burnt out along the way at age 22. What's the big contrast between those two moments? And like, tell us the story.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah. So when I was still in school, I decided to build my first business, which was actually a powerlifting apparel company.

[Nathan Barry]

Okay.

[Mallory Rowan]

I was competing in the sport at the time and actually just started dating this guy. And we were like, let's build a business at the same time. Because that's what you do when you start dating, of course. Right. I will preface this with a DID workout. 11 years later, we are still together. I wouldn't probably recommend it because it's just an odd choice, but for us it really worked. So we started building this business and at the time I was already. I always knew that I was into business, so I was already working at a startup in university. I was obviously going to my classes and then I was competing in powerlifting, which is three hour plus gym sessions multiple times out of the week. So I very quickly burnt out building that. There was a lot of emotional and mental psychological signs that I missed that often happen earlier. And so it wasn't until the physical signs really started to come. They say your body whispers before it screams. And I definitely ignored the whispers. And so it was aggressively screaming at me. I Started losing hair. I started getting unexplainable rashes all over my body that, you know, the specialists couldn't explain. I would wait months and months for an appointment just to be told, like, huh, Nothing's wrong.

[Nathan Barry]

Right.

[Mallory Rowan]

And you're like, well, I'm pretty sure this is going on. Yeah. And there's all these different things happening. My gut would react to everything I ate, so I couldn't even work on my business because I would just be laying in bed in pain. And the worst part was I didn't even feel like myself anymore. I really felt like I had lost that personality. And it's an interesting age for that to happen because you're like, is this being an adult? Like, do I just kind of suck now? Like, am I not as fun?

[Nathan Barry]

And that's.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

It's an age when everything should be fun and easygoing and all of that. But you've taken on these massively ambitious goals.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

So you were competing as a powerlifter, still working in the startup.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yep.

[Nathan Barry]

School full time. And then, you know, just doing the little, Little side venture of building an. A physical products company from scratch.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yes. Running the inventory out of our studio apartment.

[Nathan Barry]

Yeah.

[Mallory Rowan]

When you say it like that.

[Nathan Barry]

Yep. You know, hindsight is 2020 relationship as well. Some people would say, like, you know, I'm gonna. My relationships right now. And that's kind of it.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

And you're like, that's just.

[Mallory Rowan]

Let's just do it all.

[Nathan Barry]

Let's just do everything. You sound a lot like me. I think we're pretty similar in that. In that way.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah. So I. I burnt out really hard from it. And I think something that often happens when our body reacts to stress is it. It reacts in these interesting ways where you don't get something that's a clear diagnosis. You haven't necessarily broken your leg and, you know, you get a cast. So it's a lot of advocating for yourself when you're at your lowest, and that can also be really difficult. So I spent about two years going to a whole bunch of specialists. Everyone felt like, I, I can fix you, I can fix you. And you get your hopes up. And then every time it feels like, okay, well, this one piece got better. But I had to take a long time to work on my health. And what really changed for me with that was it forced me to look at how I was approaching business. I also think this was peak. Like, it was peak. Gary Vee, and I know even his perspective has changed since those early videos, but it was like, we Were having monster energy drinks. You know, we were listening to the Gary Vee videos. It was like hustle screensaver on my phone. And so I realized just grind it out. You just grind it out. Wanted to approach it differently and I wanted to actually be the proof point that you can build without burnout. Because I think often when we have these self care conversations it becomes for a lot of us ambitious people seen as a compromise of like I'm willing to maybe accomplish less but and also take care of myself. And I wanted to prove that, hey, I think there's a way that if you're doing this in alignment, they can all actually happen.

[Nathan Barry]

Okay, So I want to dive into that. But first on the burnout itself. What were you're talking about? You know, your body whispering before it screams. Yeah, what were some of those whisper signs that if you could go back or you were coaching someone else through it, you'd be like, hey, here are the signals that you should actually listen to.

[Mallory Rowan]

I think when the issues start as mental, anything like emotional or psychological, we, we think we can just push it down. And I really think I learned like we're pushing that down into our body but we think we just know how to like push through it. So for me it was getting really easily irritated by things. I'm never an angry person. Like I've had my car broken into and I'm like, okay, who do we call?

[Nathan Barry]

Like, this is now a problem to be solved. There's steps to it.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah, it's done. But I felt so angry, like especially working with a team in that business, you know, someone would make a mistake. And I just felt that inside, like, ah, like how are you so stupid? Like why would you do that? And I never really reacted to things in that way. So that was an early flag for sure. And I think just feeling on the brink of emotional at all times, you know, like the wrong song comes on. Driving home from my job and I just start crying. And you're like, oh, this is good, I'm releasing. Which is true. But you're also like, I probably shouldn't be like this close to tears at all times.

[Nathan Barry]

Such an interesting thing for me. I had a similar time where you're in hindsight you're like, I was showing you all of that at once. Where we, I was working for myself. I had built my audience and business had just had three months of my best revenue possible. Was like, okay, I'm going to scale this up even more. We had a two year old and then a two week old so, you know, two little kids, they were doing great. We bought a new house, and we were. I was the general contractor on the remodel. And like.

[Mallory Rowan]

Like, why not?

[Nathan Barry]

Oh, yeah, of course. We always trying to learn new things. Yeah. You know, great opportunity, all of that. Save some money as well. And. Yeah. And then one day. Well, really what happened is when the kids both got sick at the same time and stopped sleeping, and then it, like, all fell apart. But. Yeah. And then one day I woke up with a big rash on my leg, and I was like, figure out what that is. And turns out it was shingles. And, you know, that was, like, the big crash and burn for me, where it took a long time for me to admit that, like, oh, this is totally unsustainable.

[Mallory Rowan]

Totally.

[Nathan Barry]

But then also, like, it ends up taking. I. I think I had this idea before of, like, okay, I will push to the limits because I'm very driven. I want to accomplish all of these things. And when I find the limit, I'll just dial it back a little bit. Or similar to your powerlifting, I'll be stronger. And so I, you know, I'll either be able to handle it, or if I'm feel like I'm close to, you know, the limit, I'll just dial it back a little bit. It'll be fine. And I crashed and burned hard. Like, it probably took me two years to get back to level I was before. And so I didn't realize the level that I was, like, playing with fire in. Was it similar for you?

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's such a good and dangerous quality that a lot of us have where, like, the limit keeps moving. Right, Right. So once we achieve the thing that we never thought was possible, it opens up our eyes and we go, oh, wow, I can dream even bigger. And what else could be possible? But then if we're saying we're going to deal with our health or prioritize our happiness after those things.

[Nathan Barry]

Right.

[Mallory Rowan]

When does that really come? And it either doesn't come or, similarly to your point, we get forced into it. So we end up in this cycle where we focus on the business, and then we have to focus on the health. Right. We have to take the step back from the business, focus on that. And sometimes when we're in that health journ, then it becomes a mental health journey where, you know, founders get depressed because they feel so physically exhausted, and now the business maybe isn't thriving. And so we're just constantly going in this cycle of business priority, then health priority, and Then happiness. And then once we're happy again, we feel like we can thrive in the business. And so I think looking at it as, okay, what if we stopped doing that semi toxic relationship and looked at how can we actually build all three into it?

[Nathan Barry]

Yeah, that makes sense. And then what did it look like? What happened to the business as you realized, like, oh, I can't function like this anymore.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah, for us, what we did was first remove myself a bit from the business because we were also going to a lot of in person events. That was a main lead generator for us was in person events and Instagram. So I took the step back and that really forced me to work on things, but also think about what is it that we're building. We had a few interesting things happening at the same time. We were always designed to give back. So for every item we sold, we provided one month of clean water to a community that needed it. And when we worked with athletes, we would do different charities that were significant to them. And so I felt like we were really, you know, existing to do good. But then we were also starting to play more and more into this, like, consumerist culture of we were dropping bigger collections every time, more and more clothing. And I got to a point where I'm like, I actually don't even need new items of our stuff. Like, how do other people need new stuff? And so this was all kind of happening at the same time. And so we thought about, okay, do we want to sell T shirts for the rest of our lives? Like, what did we think about with this business? Because, you know, I've learned since then to think about those things going in. We weren't at the time thinking about building this business to sell. We weren't thinking about so many of those things because we didn't really have those examples in our life. We were, for both of us, like the first entrepreneurs in our family. So we were just kind of running with it. So it forced us to kind of stop. And then honestly, it just gave us that moment of like, hey, is this our opportunity to go to the next thing? And for us too, we had felt like we had this collision of creativity and finances. And I remember because when we started, keep in mind, when it's side hustle, I think this is familiar. For a lot of people, it's all out of passion, it's all out of fun. Every win is a big win, right? And so for us, it started to feel like, oh, now there's a lot of financial pressure on the creative things. And it made it so much harder for me to come up with designs because we were ultimately designing apparel. Right. So all of a sudden it became like, hey, we need this collection to really hit to pay off that amex. And I.

[Nathan Barry]

There's a lot of stress on it because early on, you know, that thousand dollars you made on the side is incredible. And you're like, oh, And I had leverage in it in this way. Like, that was so good. And then later, it's the. Well, it has to make at least a thousand dollars, because otherwise we can't make rent.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yes.

[Nathan Barry]

And. And not only that, but it has to make the same amount of money, like, next week and the week after. And that's a totally different thing.

[Mallory Rowan]

Always felt like having no budget can actually be a really great strength in a business because you have to get so creative. Like, the way we would problem solve in the beginning was always, like, really interesting. It just forced you to come up with things that other people wouldn't think of. And then as is growing and you are seeing that money come in, you're like, oh, let's sponsor this event for $10,000. When before we would, you know, always do our booths for free. And were we really thinking through all of the things we should consider with making that sponsorship? So it was kind of, you know, coming to a head where we were spending more, and we honestly felt like we were kind of zeroed out financially for how we felt inside, too. Right. Like, I just feel so incredibly horrible in my body right now. And then also, this business we made to make money is, like, not really making us that much. Um, and so we. We looked at them. We're like, well, this isn't great. So we put the business on pause, and we had talked to a few people we were looking at selling it, but at the time, with my health, I was like, I can't imagine doing the transition that's required to properly hand this off. Especially in something like a niche community where it is so intertwined. We're like, you know what? I think for looking at the value we could sell it for, we would rather maintain the ownership of the brand and just see if it's something that ever, like, comes back around.

[Nathan Barry]

Yeah. If you want to revisit it in the future, there's a quote that I want to get your reaction to.

[Mallory Rowan]

Okay.

[Nathan Barry]

And that's that rock bottom is a pretty good foundation to build a new life from.

[Mallory Rowan]

Oh, I love that.

[Nathan Barry]

Curious what you think.

[Mallory Rowan]

I love that. I think it's so true. I was thinking about this in the car Ride over. I was just watching a documentary actually about a cult.

[Nathan Barry]

And as one does.

[Mallory Rowan]

As one does, I will watch any cult documentary. Absolutely. Sign me up. But. But to make a long story short, some of the women ended up actually landing in prison for their role in trying to evade the police in the end. And prison was the best thing that ever happened to them because it got them out of the cult mentality. And it was the first time they were able to sit with their thoughts and think about what they really wanted and see right from wrong. And I was like, oh, this is kind of similar to my burnout experience because it was the first time where you had to step back from the business and then go, is this the thing that I want? And what do I really want out of the next thing?

[Nathan Barry]

Okay, so what did it look like? Because now there's only seven years between burnout and a million dollar net worth, which most people would take them far longer than that. Like if you achieve a million dollars by, in net worth by 40, that's like you're way ahead. You know, most of that compounding that gain comes like at 50 years old, 60 years old and beyond. So what was the process of rebuilding?

[Mallory Rowan]

So I think the burnout ended up being around 24. Like we were building that business. Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

So maybe an even shorter one. Yeah.

[Mallory Rowan]

I'm like, not to, not to mention

[Nathan Barry]

too much, but it's not seven years.

[Mallory Rowan]

I was like, I had seven years to do that. No, most of it was like within the five year time period. Yeah. So what I did, practically speaking was I'm like, I got bills to pay. What's a skill set I can utilize that I already have. So I got two social media contracts for businesses I knew and I ran their social media for about eight months time.

[Nathan Barry]

Because how much were you charging to run those accounts?

[Mallory Rowan]

Like just under 2000 maybe each.

[Nathan Barry]

So this is like I get those two accounts and then that will cover my expenses and like the financial pressure is relieved.

[Mallory Rowan]

Absolutely. And I wanted to take a little space because I learned from that first business. We just jumped in and kept running. I wanted to really take a beat to say, like, what do I actually want to build and what do I want that to look like? So giving myself that time was really helpful and I just kind of optimized the business to a point. I was paying someone else to like do the post. So I was really spending like one morning a week making this content. And then I just had space to think about these things of what do I need to do A big thing for myself is I know I get bored easily, and so that can be bad in a business. I think a lot of us have adhd. Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

So blessing and a curse.

[Mallory Rowan]

Absolutely. So I knew I wanted to actually stop running away from that and stop trying to fix it and actually build the boredom into my business. So looking at things like, I started running a group program because we had always built our businesses through social media. So I'm like, I can teach this to people, but I know if I teach it over and over and over again in a cohort, I'm going to get bored of saying the same thing. So I looked at, okay, do it as a cohort once, and then we're moving it into a course format. So looking at these things of a course, you know, it might take updates, but I can be more and more removed from it. Right. So really looking at how can I create a business that actually supports how my brain works and how I like to live my life? And so that was really helpful in changing it. And so, so I started building the coaching and consulting business. And that's what I did. I started with a group program. I moved to some live workshops. The timing of that Covid came around, which you'd think would be bad, but everybody was at home deciding they wanted to start a business. So it was a really interesting experience because I was hosting these live workshops, and they took off way more than expected because people were like, oh, I'm realizing maybe my 9 to 5 isn't as stable as people were being laid off and all of that. So I started building the business. And then as we approach this business, I find that we have these really siloed conversations. We have people who talk about health and wellness over here. We have people who talk about building a business over here. And then even within finance, we have the stock market people, and we have the real estate investors and the cryptos. I guess that would be the other one.

[Nathan Barry]

Don't leave us out.

[Mallory Rowan]

And so I wanted to look at, like, how do we build more cohesively? How do I put in the boundaries to actually make sure that I stay healthy? Because once you've experienced something like that, I'm sure you can relate to that. You don't want to do it again. And then how can I look at finances as the vehicle? So looking at how can the business support both current me and future me? And kind of looking at that under all angles, both the habits, the finances, and what I would call, like, your dream life, where that's the happiness piece really. So with my finances looking at, okay, what part of the business, or maybe the whole business itself, is going to fund that stability side. Right. How do we make sure my bills are paid? Because I do think for most of us creatives, like, that's a good baseline to have to make sure that we're not making choices that don't necessarily align, or we're panicking and going after the trends instead of what we really want to build. So how can your finances cover that? And then looking at what's going to be the bigger vehicle? And so for us, the bigger vehicles was the investment piece and looking at first buying real estate and then building our stock market portfolio. And so that's really the approach I took. And I think what I didn't realize at the time that now looking back, I am really grateful for is realizing that that chapter, it was okay to build something that wasn't necessarily scalable in its current format. And I think with creators, we face this a lot. Right. You want to get out of coaching, because you either need to build coaches under you or you have to turn it into the courses.

[Nathan Barry]

And I really, everyone will tell you, like, oh, you're trading time for money. It's not scalable. This will never work.

[Mallory Rowan]

And you're like, what if I trade time for money, but I get paid really well to do it, and then

[Nathan Barry]

I trade money for equity, right. Through the stock market or real estate or whatever.

[Mallory Rowan]

Exactly. And so that's what I realized is like, hey, I'm in a phase. Especially it being Covid thinking about, like, in those, those early years, like, we were not leaving our home, let alone traveling. So I'm like, if I'm going to be stuck, I can spend a lot more time on calls than I would like in a regular life, because I'm barely going outside, let alone like on a plane. So really looking at, okay, what are the things in my business that can be high profit and keep it really lean and move that money into. In to the next vehicle, really funnel that cash into the investments. And I think that's what a lot of creators and personal brands miss is we're like spending so much energy like I did in the first business. I'm building the business because we think that's how people get the money. Right?

[Nathan Barry]

Right.

[Mallory Rowan]

Is at. At the end, there's like a little golden pot waiting for us. But looking at how can I actually build that into the business from the

[Nathan Barry]

start, let's go to, like, revenue versus profit. Because a lot of creators that I see, they're very focused on top line revenue because that's a credibility indicator in the space. Like, oh, you know, he did 500,000 in revenue last year, she did a million. Someone else just, you know, she had a million dollar launch, you know, or that sort of thing. And then you end up repeating that line over and over again because it gives credibility and there's nothing wrong with it. It is. You end up optimizing for the wrong thing. It's like in my world, in the software space, the number that people quote or used to quote is headcount. How's business going? Oh, great. We went from 50 to 100 people last year, you know, and you like, you subconsciously optimize, like your brain is like going, oh, so headcount what matters? Okay, we can get more headcount. We can hire more people.

[Mallory Rowan]

How cool is the office, right?

[Nathan Barry]

Yeah, exactly.

[Mallory Rowan]

Those kind of things.

[Nathan Barry]

All of those things. And so the first like, leap that I see these creators make is they realize, oh, I shouldn't optimize for revenue that matters. It's a key part of the equation. But, but profit and net income is actually what matters more. The leap that I've seen you make is where you go, well, what, what am I doing with that profit?

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

And how am I turning that into assets that are going to compound? Because there's all of these creators that, you know, say, do a million in revenue, do 5 or $600,000 in profit a year, and then spend most of it and very little actually makes it into something that builds long term equity value.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah. And keep in mind, when you're getting into those larger revenue numbers, the team is growing usually too. And a lot of entrepreneurs maybe don't want to manage a team. And I've seen that happen too. I think that can be the entrepreneur trap too. Similar to the headcount. Right. You're like, oh, I have, I have this big team. And then you realize I actually never wanted the big team. And I really liked being lean with like an assistant or a few small roles. So I feel like I see people falling into that trap a lot.

[Nathan Barry]

Right. Okay, so how do you think about taking the profit in your business and what, you know, gets spent on lifestyle and what gets spent on acquiring assets.

[Mallory Rowan]

I think the best thing you can do is be excited about your investing goals.

[Nathan Barry]

Yeah.

[Mallory Rowan]

And so for me, it's really important to find goals that you actually care about and not that you think you're supposed to care about. So for us, we have always loved real estate, so we knew we wanted to buy a property, and so it makes it a lot easier to. To put that money first towards a down payment and then spend the rest that's left over versus spending first and, like, slowly saving for that house. Because we knew, like, we want to buy this soon. So how do we get there quickly? And then you realize, like, a lot of the things that we end up spending on in day to day is just stuff. Right, right. And if you're getting closer to that goal, it's similar to hitting the gym, to be honest. Like with a bench press, you know, when, like, you maybe only added five pounds, but it moved so much better. And you're like, that small win just feels so good.

[Nathan Barry]

I'm all about those two and a half pound plates. Throw on the barbell, you know, it's always a joke. You'll have like, I don't know, deadlift, you know, and you've got a bunch of big 45 pound plates on there. And you're like, yeah, but, but that's two and a half.

[Mallory Rowan]

The little one on the bed that

[Nathan Barry]

gives you the tiny, tiny gain.

[Mallory Rowan]

And you're like, did you see how it moved?

[Nathan Barry]

Exactly. Um, but what I was thinking about is, or what I heard you saying, that is almost that you get to choose where you get your dopamine from.

[Mallory Rowan]

Absolutely.

[Nathan Barry]

And so do you get your dopamine from the trip to the mall and the new handbag or the new iPhone or whatever else? Or do you get it from going, hey, we've got a. We're trying to do a $50,000 down payment. And I was able to just get another 2,500 bucks.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

In there and knock it out.

[Mallory Rowan]

And I think it doesn't. Like, sometimes people hear that and they think they have to sacrifice, like, the little things they like. But the way I would do it is like, let's get to the down payment first. And if I have a really great year in business, I should be able to still buy the iPhone at the end of the year. Right. And just making those things, the things that excite you the most. And I also like a challenge. So I'm like, if I want to see like, like the whole million dollars by 29 was because my mom's boss growing up, I knew, was a millionaire by 30. And I thought it was the coolest thing. And it was like the closest example when I mentioned, like, we didn't have a lot of examples of that. And so I just went like, I want to do that. And I thought it seemed so crazy. And Impossible. And it wasn't until we sat down with something at like 28, I was like, oh, I'm actually going to do this. Like, I'm going to do it a year early even. And so for me, that's been a big, big thing, is it forces you to get creative with it. So I do this thing called the six solutions theory. And it's that the theory is there's six solutions to every problem you're facing, especially the ones where there feels like there's only one answer. And so I actually got this from a real estate investor where he said he always has three exits for a building. And I was like, double it to the next person. Why not? You know, three felt easy, right? Because you're like, oh, like, like rent it, sell, live in it, whatever, right? So I started looking at everything as, how could I come up with six solutions to what I wanted to do? So if I want to have a million dollars invested, what's six different ways I can do it? And I think most of us can rattle off three pretty easily, right?

[Nathan Barry]

So for you, what would those three

[Mallory Rowan]

be for the million dollars? Well within the business, right? It could be like, do you take on more coaching clients? Do you raise your rights? Do you launch a membership? Is there a completely different venture that you go off into? Do you choose to go like the super frugal route, like where you're eating ramen nood 90 cents and like living with the power off? Right. But you can look at all those options to quickly go like, well, those ones don't appeal to me, but these ones do, right? And I find when you do those six, sometimes it just lets you get out of that box of being like, I might need like a silly kind of crazy idea. And a lot of the times, the ways that we've been able to build the wealth is by going like, what if we just did this thing, right? And it feels like the thing you're maybe scared to say out loud because someone else might be like, that's kind of like a weird idea. Like, even when we were buying properties, like, we didn't go, can we buy a property a year for three years? But once we did the first one, I'm like, what if we could do it again next year, right? And just opening that up makes you go like, okay, well, let's actually look at a plan. Because if you're never putting it on the table, it's absolutely not going to happen. But if you start to do that thing where you're opening up your eyes to what the other options are. I think it's really helpful, and it helps you find the answer that you're excited about. Because a lot of the times, like we were talking about with the headcount, right, you're scaling in a way that you think you're supposed to scale. But when you start to do this and realize, well, here's this thing over here that I actually want, and now I'm realizing there's actually six ways I can get there, I don't feel the same pressure to do the traditional way of getting there.

[Nathan Barry]

It makes me think of my one semester of art school before I realized that art school was not for me, where the one thing they taught us was thumbnailing. Because people would say, like, okay, I'm going to, you know, make the sketch or do a painting or whatever else. And so I guess I'm gonna do it like this. And everyone would just start. And so they would make us fold up a piece of paper until it made, I don't know, 10 squares or something like that. And you had to do 10 different. You had to fill every square with a different possible composition. And then you look at. Once you had all 10. You, like, getting to five was easy. And then you're like, I don't. I don't know. What other ways could I look at this? And it was actually really hard to get to 10. And then you'd go, okay, now let me choose one of these. And it was usually one of the later ones.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

So it was like, most likely one of the later ones ended up being your solution, or if it ended up being an early one, you could pursue it with confidence because you've explored every single opportunity. And I actually remember, you know, where my career ended up going was into software design. And the designers on the iPhone team, right, doing the iPhone UI, they had a similar rule where they had to create thumbnails of 10 different concepts or how they lay out an interface before they were allowed to pick one and move forward. And so it's exactly like your six solutions thing, where it's like you have to brainstorm and expand your thinking before you choose one to go all in.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah. And sometimes it's the one, too, that you're like, I didn't even think that was an option. Right, right. Is. Is that thing that you secretly want. I see that a lot where, you know, people are kind of doing a roundabout way to get the thing they want. I remember talking to someone at an event, and she told me, you know, she's going to fashion school. And she's going to build up this whole business that eventually can then have a not for profit arm off of it to help young women with certain things. And I was like, well, why don't you just build the knot for profit? Like if you want to go to a fashion school and build that business, that's fine. But when what I hear you saying is that that's the thing you're really passionate about and is there a world where that that's what you could build now? And the answer sometimes is yes and sometimes no, but it lets you go, well, okay, let's look at an actual plan for that.

[Nathan Barry]

So I want to get specific on how you got to that million dollar net worth and the investment process in there. So it sounds like you started with real estate. What did it look like to get to the first down payment and, and then the first purchase?

[Mallory Rowan]

So I'm really big on education too. And one of the things we did actually was my partner got his real estate license after the first business because we knew we wanted to get into real estate. So we're like, what's the closest way to learn it? So he got his license and started trading. And so I feel like that alone gave us an in because we better understood like what makes a good offer. We had a good idea of the market. So when we saw a house that was a good opportunity, we knew how to jump on it. So that would be kind of that pre step one. And then in the business I was focusing on putting all of that revenue, essentially anything that wasn't covering my bills was going towards that down payment. So we purchased the first house. And we were really lucky too in that at the time where we lived, real estate really had a spike which happened for a lot of places during the pandemic. So we built equity very quickly in that property simply by the value going up so much. And so for our second property we looked at, okay, how do we buy a second property? And one of the things that can make the down payment smaller is if you're willing to move into it. So if it's a new primary. So then we looked at, oh well, where would we want to live? Because we were doing this dance of do we buy, you know, some sort of of rental property and explore doing this. And you know, a lot of people on the real estate rental side, it's like buy these maybe lower income spaces and navigate that. And we thought, okay, that's going to be a lot as first time landlords. And so we looked at hey, we'd like to move back more central in the city. We were living in the suburbs, so we decided, okay, well, if we move, win win, we get new life experiences and we can do less of a down payment. And so we actually took money out of the first property.

[Nathan Barry]

So it did like a cash out refinance.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah, we, because we had the equity that had grown, we were able to pull from it. And so we use that for the down payment on the new house and then also to renovate it slightly before, we just did new paint and new floors. But that was really cool because even though the business revenue was still coming in, we actually didn't really pull from any personal income or business revenue to buy the second property.

[Nathan Barry]

And then, and that's an important tweak of saying, like, oh, if we move into this house.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yes.

[Nathan Barry]

Then the interest rates are lower. You know, the down payment can often be lower and all that. Yeah. Because at least in the US you get into these categories of, okay, is it single family or multi family? You know, multifamily ads, interest rate. Right. And you know, is it personal investment? You know, there's all these sort of categories. Yes, that raises the rates and raises the down payment, and they're very favorable to, oh, you want to live there? Okay, great.

[Mallory Rowan]

Right.

[Nathan Barry]

We give you the easiest option there.

[Mallory Rowan]

And again, when we look at these lifestyle choices of knowing, hey, we're both building businesses right now, what feels like the lowest lift of a tenant. And so we got a tenant in the first property, but because it was like a suburb home, like, it was a home that we loved living in, we knew it would bring in a certain quality of tenant that probably wouldn't be a lot of work. And also that home itself didn't need a lot of work. It wouldn't be things breaking down all the time. So we moved into that second property. And then that was when we were like, we want to do it again next year. But now we're not sure if we're kind of pushing, like, figuring out how to make that happen. And we had always wanted a cottage. So I grew up with a cottage, a family cottage that was passed down. And it was just like so impactful to me and loved having those experiences. And then my partner, Josh, he's Filipino and most of his family had never been to a cottage before. And so we would bring his cousins up to my cottage, and it was really lovely. But my cottage is three hours away from where we lived. And so it's not very practical for, for people especially doing like shift work and things like that. So we were like, I would love to have a cottage near the city. So again we started looking at the numbers and asking those questions of like, what's the six different ways we could do this? And you know, I, I would also suggest leaning on people in that, like we have a mortgage broker on speed dial. We just call him and he always says like, I love you guys because you asked me the craziest questions because we're like, can you do this? And like, does this work? Is this gray area? Like, okay, but what if we wanted to do it this way? And so that was really helpful because buying a cottage is considered a secondary home. So even though we weren't moving into it, we were once again able to do a smaller down payment. And we did it through a private sale as well, which I think we got a really fantastic deal on it. Because of that, knowing they didn't want to go through the whole process of listing. And then we were able to renovate that. We actually, we use like a home equity line of credit to buy the cottage. So it's almost like buying it cash in terms of the sale itself. And then we were able to mortgage it after we renovated it.

[Nathan Barry]

So get a higher appraisal.

[Mallory Rowan]

Exactly.

[Nathan Barry]

Okay, so what was your active income around the time that you made the first purchase? And then like, and what was the down payment?

[Mallory Rowan]

How do you save up for it the first year? I think it was around 250k in revenue at the time. And my business has always stayed very lean. I think I was like traumatized from a product based business. So I was just like, how do I make everything? I don't want inventory, I don't want all of these things. So I kept a really lean business. I had some savings from before and then it was really just funneling the money into the down payment, myself and my partner. And yeah, I think it was around the 250k mark for that part.

[Nathan Barry]

And then. Yeah, and then you already talked about how to get the second one, the equity from the first. So you built up the real estate side. And why'd you stop at three properties? What was the.

[Mallory Rowan]

We were starting to push it of like on paper, what anyone would approve us for.

[Nathan Barry]

Right.

[Mallory Rowan]

And this is where I was talking about like learning along the way, you know, finding out like, okay, at what point do you move these into corporate? Like, at what point does a corporation buy this? Because also when you are self employed, especially if you're incorporated, you're paying yourself out a salary, like we pay a salary just so we could buy real estate, like, whatever it was on paper. And looking at, like, okay, at what point can you not.

[Nathan Barry]

You're looking at your investment portfolio and saying, like, okay, I'm now overweight in real estate.

[Mallory Rowan]

And then.

[Nathan Barry]

So it sounds like then you turn to the stock market and you set some very specific goals around that.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah. So we were like, okay, this is really great that we have those properties. And we had started just very baseline investing in the stock market. And then a lot of the times, what my goals have been is looking at other people and going like, well, that seems cool. And I'm attracted to that. And I. I honestly think it. Especially if you don't have those role models and you're learning everything from, like, the Internet or people you're asking questions to, it's not a bad place to start because you can start by shooting for that big number. And then along the way, you're figuring out more and more like, hey, is this actually for me or not? And does this make sense with my goals? Do I actually have to go bigger or smaller or whatever it might be? And so I had a friend that said she was aiming to have a million dollars invested. So I just said, okay, me too.

[Nathan Barry]

I'll do that.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah, I'll do that. That sounds good.

[Nathan Barry]

And it was like, what she said, exactly.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah. I was like, that sounds great. Learn more and more about investing through that process and started really focusing on the investment side of things. And same thing kind of happened. Being so excited about those goals allowed me to really focus on that and not feel the need to have all the extra shopping purchases or things like that.

[Nathan Barry]

And then what was the process of, like, you know, you're just putting into the s and P500 index funds, and then how much were you compounding each year?

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah, primarily. So Covid was also really great for investment portfolios, which is nice. We very much stayed simple. Like, yeah, just anything that's, like, a safe stock. I was not doing a lot of stock picking or things like that. For me, it's like, okay, a million dollars can be the baseline in steady things. And then along the way, looking at the same. We kind of did the same thing of. Once we started to get closer to that number, we're like, okay, now there's, like, a lot in stock. Should we explore other things? And we had an angel investment opportunity that kind of landed in our lap. We're like, okay, this is going to be the riskiest one yet, but if it works, you know, it really works. And every time we, we did this, I really took it as a learning experience of, okay, well, whether we do this angel investment or not, let's go through the process. Let's talk to the accountants. I love using accounts as a resource too, because they have clients who do way more interesting things.

[Nathan Barry]

They show you all these different examples.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yes. And they know how people are doing it in the back end. So looking at like, okay, if we want to do this, what are we looking at? And deciding to make those kind of moves. So we started doing angel investments and crypto, but both of those, it was kind of like, let's put the money in and forget it ever exists. And if it comes back to us, great. And if not, we have to be okay with that. Being more of a high risk might go down the toilet.

[Nathan Barry]

So I'm curious about how you think, you know, you have your revenue coming in and the profit you get to choose to allocate that profit to lifestyle or to invest investments of some kind. And then obviously within investments that could go to a bunch of different places. I think it's a hard thing where people don't know how much, like maybe they heard growing up, like, you know, if you, if you invest 10 of your income, you're doing great, you know, and that might make sense if you're making $75,000 a year and your living expenses like come all the way up and you're like, okay, I just need to get this up to 10%. But when you're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, then obviously there's a different level to it. It. So how do you think about like what goes into lifestyle and what goes into investments?

[Mallory Rowan]

We always start with like the base expenses. So what is the rent or the mortgage bills, if you have dependents, things like that. What's like that baseline, month to month of living, always making sure the money is going to that first. And then when you look at what's left over, deciding really what you're comfortable with timeline wise. So if you want to go fast, then you're going to put a much larger percentage of that towards the investments. If you have maybe some other big things happening in your life, like maybe it is the year you're having kids. Right. Maybe you want more budget for that. Adjusting and thinking about that timeline as how you pick the percentage. Because as much as I would love to give, like, rule of thumb, I feel like my whole, my whole being is like, it depends for everyone. Like that's the point. I want to get across to people. A great example is when we hit. I think it was when we hit the million invested. There was one point where my partner said, okay, if we invest 30k for the next 8 years, we'll have 2.5 million invested by 40 if the stock market continues as, as averages. And I said, okay, well, how much is that, like total? And so it was around like 240k, like give or take, because we're talking about like compounding every year. And so I went, okay, well, I'm just gonna do that. And so I just went, okay, could I do that in two years? And so I really zeroed in on that and I actually did it last year in one year. Thank you. But that's an example where it's the timeline you're working with and it doesn't mean again, I was like eating noodles, but it forced me to get creative. Well, if you wanna invest 240k in the next two years, you have to be making more revenue in the business and you have to keep the business profitable. So I think always looking at like, what's the route that feels good to you because for him, he is more the person that's like, I think that's we pull off between the two of us, like 30k a year for eight years. Like, that feels pretty fair with what we've done before. But for me, I'd rather get it out of the way because if I know I have that locked in, it makes me feel more secure in my future. And it means that the decisions I make with where I take my business can now be based on where I truly want to take it and not just necessarily being like, okay, well, I have to do a few more things to get that extra investment money or whatever it might be.

[Nathan Barry]

What I. And what I'm realizing that you're doing is you're solving or you're putting the entire math equation in front of you. And a lot of people say like, well, here's a few inputs and we'll see what comes out the other end and how long that takes. And, you know, that's interesting to know, but what you're doing is you're like, no, I have a specific dollar amount and then a year that I would like that to happen in. And so then you're like, okay, what do I need to make an income? What do I need to save? And then you get to the point where you're like, like, okay, maybe that's cutting it a little too close. And so instead of pulling this off in three years, we'll pull it off in five.

[Mallory Rowan]

Right.

[Nathan Barry]

And that's fine. But it's like looking at every equation in there.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

And how it ties into your goal.

[Mallory Rowan]

And I think it's how you can look after that current you and the future you. I had an interesting conversation recently with someone where they asked if I sent set goals for the year. And I had this hesitancy because it was a space of a room of people who set big goals. Right. And I'm like, ah, like not really. But what I realized that works really well for me is these like big scary goals. That is the like 2.5 million invested by 40. And then the competitive, like self. Competitive person in me goes like, how can I get there faster? And so instead of going, you know, okay, I need to be here by the end of the year if I want to stay on track to hit that goal.

[Nathan Barry]

It.

[Mallory Rowan]

I'm really someone that's like, it doesn't really matter where I am at the end of this year or next year if I'm going for that big goal, because I could be in one place in five years or in one year. But just looking at like, how do I want to get to that end goal? And then it forces you to get creative. So another example we were talking about with him was with followers. It's like, I know that I want 50k followers to just kind of like look more legit online for a lot of these rooms that you're in. And so he's like, you know, is it a good goal to hit 10k by the end of this year? And I'm like, okay, sure. But like also the actions we're going to take to hit 10k might actually feel a little bit smaller. Right. Like the team knows they could probably get there, so we're operating in a bit more of a comfortable zone. But if we just went, hey, team, we want to go to 50, like, we want to get to 50, then you start to go, well, like, oh, well, if we're under 10k, like how are we going to do that? And it forces that creative problem solving. And I think that's something that's really been helpful to me is using that creative problem solving. Because then you're, it's, it's the 50 you care about. Who cares if you're at 10k at the end of this year? Because you could hit 10k 2 years from now, but then hit 50k a month later because you changed how you're approaching it. Right.

[Nathan Barry]

You know what's so interesting is almost Every creator that I talk to do sets goals. And, you know, you know, nearly all of them set goals around revenue, some set goals around profit. Very, very few. Probably 1% of the creators I talked to set goals around net worth or investable, like invested assets. And I think it's such an important pivot to make for two reasons. One, the revenue you have to keep hitting every single year.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

The invested assets, they're gonna start, they're gonna compound. And so long as you don't touch that, it's gonna keep working for you. And then the other thing is, it's going to. You're. You're optimizing for the goal that will truly serve you. And it's the goal that lets you step off the hamster wheel at any time. Like, how. How do you think about that?

[Mallory Rowan]

So when I burnt out building my business, it really made me face the identity piece. I loved being not only an entrepreneur, I loved being a young entrepreneur. Like, something about that. I was like, I'm so cool for this. You know, you're like, this is such a cool thing. Cause it' often the people you looked up to.

[Nathan Barry]

I remember someone calling me precocious and I was like, I don't know what that means. And I looked it up and it was basically like, you know, doing things at such a young age and all that. And that was exactly me, like at 22, at 24 all. And everyone would always say, like, oh, yeah, you're. Yeah, he's done all of this and he's only whatever age. Yeah, they don't say that to me quite so much anymore. I think when the gray hair kicked

[Mallory Rowan]

in, they're like, come on, get together at your age. You know that Kevin Hart clip with Don Cheadle? And he says how old he is. And Kevin Hart's like, damn. Like, it's that energy.

[Nathan Barry]

Yeah, exactly.

[Mallory Rowan]

But, yeah, I love being a young entrepreneur and I love being a strong power lifter. And so when I burnt out, it felt like both of those things.

[Nathan Barry]

Oh, your identity were going away.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

A lot of entrepreneurs say, like, I think I've heard Tim Ferriss say this of like, you should have, you know, your business goals and then separately, you should have like your health or fitness goals because you're going to have a terrible day in your business, but you might have a great day and like, you can play these two off of each other.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah. So when they both fall apart, you're

[Nathan Barry]

like, I was doing the thing. Yeah.

[Mallory Rowan]

And then my personal brand and what I was known for was A combination of those two things. So you're like, okay, that's cool. Like that's just a little pressure.

[Nathan Barry]

Who needed an identity anyway?

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah, yeah, who needs it? And so in that period, I got really comfortable with like having no professional identity. Just in conversations, like if people said, what did you do for work? I'd be like marketing. I was like, I don't need to be a certain person. I'm going to lean into like what makes me me outside of both of those things. Right. Because it's so easy for us to like fall into the labels and love the labels. But I think the identity piece piece is a really big part of it. So when I was able to look at separating that identity, I think that's been one of the most powerful things in the chapters that followed for me. Because when everything is not tied to the identity piece, especially around your business, it lets you actually look at, to your point, what do I actually want? Right? A lot of us got into business, yes, we want to have impact in the business we're building, but we also have those personal goals, right? We maybe want the house on the water, maybe we want the yacht, whatever it might be. We want to be able to be completely logged off often traveling the world with our family. Everyone has those things that we want later. And so if you can really look at that is actually the goal and what are those different paths to get there? It really just keeps opening it up. So revenue is a great example where identity does get so tied into it. And one of my favorite things is when creator bigger creators do these revenue breakdowns at the end of the year and we see often there's a year where the revenue goes up but the expenses like massively jump because of what it took to get there. And often coming out of that year they go like, I don't want to do that again because it wasn't very, very fun. It was exhausting. And I'm actually landing in the same spot or maybe not further. And sometimes that is just the risk that you have to take when you want to build something massive. So I think there's always an asterisk here of like if you are building a massive company, like there is going to be those high expenses and that is going to be. There's years of that. But I think for a lot of people, they got into it of like, hey, I can have this light hearted creator business where I get to reap the benefits from it and have this future life, life. But how can we actually like get that feeling now? And how can we find different ways to get it? And for me, the net worth has been such an interesting way to look at it because even we're looking at right now, like two years from now, we could probably pull, pull fully between stock markets, the long term tenants, and what the short term rental can do. We can cover a comfortable lifestyle.

[Nathan Barry]

Right.

[Mallory Rowan]

So then it.

[Nathan Barry]

You're financially independent at that stage.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah, it lets me look at, okay, well then what do I want to build and what's like the message I want to put out in the world and it lets me now build this thing without it being so risk involved.

[Nathan Barry]

Yeah. Okay. So one of my biggest pet peeves in business is the hustle, bro. Who has built, hustled their way all the way up to massive success and then goes around preaching like, you know what, actually you don't need to, you don't need to work that hard. Balance is a better answer. Like, I wish I'd done things differently. And it's like, you can say all

[Mallory Rowan]

of that because with your $10 million,

[Nathan Barry]

with your $10 million. Right. Like you built the business, the brand, the content, the following, whatever. And so now you can be like, you know, I'm just all about relaxation and, you know, I don't know. And I, I think it, I. It's both a helpful and harmful message because there's an element of truth to it. But it's also like coming from someone who. It's like, that is not how you got any of your success. Yours is interesting because you have some of this message of, of, hey, maybe hustle is not the only way to do it. You're like, I've done it to an extent. But what I think is fascinating about your story is that you built really your whole empire. You, you learned a lot of skills through hustle.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yep. With the first business.

[Nathan Barry]

With the first business. And you paid the price. And. But those skills have compounded over a long period of time. But the, the net worth was all on based, built post.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

You know, it was all built under these new rules. Yes. And so, yeah. What were those rules? Like, how do you think about the way that you build versus, you know, like in 2.0 versus 1.0.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah. I think a big thing is like, you don't necessarily have to lower the ambition because I totally agree. When we hear people say that, we're like, okay, yeah, but that's how you got to where you were. Right.

[Nathan Barry]

Right.

[Mallory Rowan]

And I think, I think they're always a proof point that like the health and happiness does matter, because they come out the other side and they go like, whoa, nobody else do that. They're just maybe telling you, like, don't do it. But I'm sitting here in my pool of money.

[Nathan Barry]

I wish I'd learned that when I was still in my first marriage, right?

[Mallory Rowan]

That's the big thing we see at the front of the rooms, right? It's like the three times divorce and they're telling you, here's how to build the business. And it's like, well, what if I don't want to end up in that place, right? So I think for me, it's like realizing that there's seasons to everything. And I think we get, like, afraid of that. And it comes into that identity piece too. We either are ambitious or we're not. We're lazy or we're not, right? And we self identify that way. And maybe we also, like, judge it in others. And it's always that mirror of like, oh, that person's like, lazy, this person's successful. And we really look at this, like, identity piece of it. But if we can see everything in seasons and look at, you know, whether you want to call it work, life, balance, work life, harmony, whatever you want to call it, I just call it life. But looking at that can have seasons too. So for me, it doesn't mean that I've like, just always like, like chilling and like not working very hard. There's just seasons of that. So an example being in 2021, I decided to really dial up the coaching business. And so that actually you could say I was hustling. But the difference is I put in the boundaries. So I got comfortable with what do I need from the health side? How do I use habits to have these boundaries? And habits can look like going to the gym and drinking your water. And I think those are really key habits. But habits can also be learning how to delegate, right? Learning how to ask for help. And like being someone who asks for help, that is like a habit that we have to practice, right? So I think if you can put those boundaries on the work, you can still have these seasons of hustle. The key is it's a season, right? So 2021, I took on an absurd amount of coaching clients because I was like, I'm sitting home alone. This is sad. I don't even get to see my family, right? So I took on way more clients. And then the next year I went. That was a lot, but I knew it was going to be a lot. But now I'm going to to have no clients for the entire year. And I'm going to go renovate this cottage in the woods with my hands. I'm going to learn to drywall and paint because that's what I want to do of that trade off. And I think a lot of the conversation we think of this like everyday balance of now I also have to meditate and go to the gym and like do all these things to take care of myself. But you can also sprint and then just make sure that there's something that comes after that. So I love, like, I haven't worked a December in a very long time because often for November and December I, I take it off because I do still like to sprint in some ways through the year. But then in December we were in the Philippines and Singapore and just doing like absolutely nothing. So I think finding that balance in like these longer seasons and acknowledging that you might have a season where you do feel more ambitious, you feel more driven, and then you might have a season where you want to take it easy. And that's where the full picture, like net worth side of things is really helpful because you can go, okay, well actually if I had to pull from my stocks right now, I could, could. But if you're only ever in the hustle mode, you get in this stuck position where you have to keep going well.

[Nathan Barry]

And as you were saying of like being okay if revenue declines in a given year because your net worth didn't decline, you're just saying, oh, I contributed less. I, I bought fewer investable assets this year than I did last year. But I still have, you know, I still have more than I did. And those are working for you. And those are compounding. We've got family friends who, they both had successful professional careers. So I don't know, maybe five years after they got married, they decided they wanted to take investing and you know, their, their net worth seriously. And so they pulled their expenses down to the smallest possible amount they could. And then they took both their, one worked in it and the other worked in accounting and they took both of their salaries and said, we're taking, taking absolutely everything we can and we are putting that, all of our active income into buying investment properties. And then their rule was they, once they got to the point that their passive, their investment income matched, like met their expenses, then they're like, okay, we can only live off of our passive income and our active income is the only goes to buying more investable assets. And so every time they'd be like, I think I want to, we want to like buy a new car, inflate our lifestyle in some way. It's like, okay, well figure out how to get that much more in passive income so that you can do it. And I mean, they compounded with normal jobs, they compounded their wealth in an astronomical way.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

Because they just said, no, the, like, they inverted the normal methodology.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah. And that's where I, I look at it as like, the habits make you actually able to like do the building and enjoy it after the fact. Because we've all been there where we've seen people build these massive things and not be okay. Right. But the finance, it's the two vehicles you're talking about.

[Nathan Barry]

Right?

[Mallory Rowan]

Right. One of those vehicles is going towards the bills and then deciding, okay, what's going to be the vehicle that's going to build this other thing. And sometimes we can just do it in a smarter way and it doesn't mean they had to work harder or differently. Right.

[Nathan Barry]

So there's this idea that, you know, maybe ambition and results is on one side and balance is on the other.

[Mallory Rowan]

Right.

[Nathan Barry]

We have these, these binary scales and you're like, you got to choose where in there is right for you. Or you know, in this case where you're saying, like, okay, if you want more balance in life, then you need to set smaller goals or extend the timeline. You've put these constraints in and said, actually to some extent, I can have it all. That's what I feel like. I don't think in avoiding burnout and putting constraints in, I don't think you slowed down your wealth acceleration journey, which everyone, like common sense would say that you would have to. Right. Like, what are the constraints that you put in and how did you not make it a trade off?

[Mallory Rowan]

I think it really is about that creative problem solving. So one thing I love to do whenever you have a goal is this thing called the toddler test. And like, you know how a toddler asks you why? Why?

[Nathan Barry]

Why?

[Mallory Rowan]

It's like, why is this kind of blue? I'm sure you're very familiar.

[Nathan Barry]

Yes.

[Mallory Rowan]

Um, we want to do that to ourselves. So when you have a goal or when I have a goal, I think about, well, why do I want that? What do I really mean by that? And if we can keep going a layer and a layer down until we feel like we're at the root really reason we want something, then that's where we can actually have a conversations. So that, that could be a goal too, that you're maybe like not acting on and you're not sure why. You're, you think you want this thing, but you're like, oh, I'm really not taking the steps in the direction, like, am I scared or what is it? We can get to the root of it. And same with something that you're really chasing, maybe you get there too, and it's not that satisfying. It's like, well, did you actually want that thing or was it someone else's?

[Nathan Barry]

Right?

[Mallory Rowan]

So when you get all the way to the root, one of three things will happen. In one scenario, you realize, like, I actually don't care about this goal at all, right? Maybe this was someone else's goal. Maybe you're, to me where you see someone else's like, million dollar goal. And I go, okay, I want that. And sometimes that works. And sometimes we realize, oh, I was just doing that because, you know, I saw Nathan doing it and he's a successful person, so I thought that's the thing I should want, right? So sometimes we realize, like, oh, I don't actually care about the surface level goal here. And then in that scenario, you get to make a new goal, which is exciting. In the second scenario, it's more of that six solutions path where you realize, okay, okay, now that I understand what's underneath this goal, I can actually realize there's different ways to get here. So if I want that financial freedom, it could still be building the business the way that I'm building. But maybe it's buying these assets or flipping these properties or doing these other things or focusing on my stock investments. Or maybe it's a different business idea, right? Maybe we're just already in the motions of one business. So we think, like, that's the way we have to go. But if we're really looking at the root of what we want, it opens up those doors. And then in the third scenario, you're to going, like, actually, hell yeah. Like, I. I am really excited about this goal, but I have that deeper understanding. Maybe we've reconnected with the why behind it. And often that person can go like, further, faster because they feel so passionate about it. But then those first two scenarios, you can start to explore what is the goal that you actually want. And I think it's such an important process to come back to over and over, because sometimes too, we did want the goal, but then when we actually get like, real about what's underneath it, maybe it's an identity piece, maybe it's a security piece, and then that's where you can start letting go. And I think that's the thing I've been able to, you know, we were talking privately about, you know, being in rooms where there's really big revenue numbers and people are talking about the ways they're growing every year. And I don't make my revenue grow linear. Like, it's not a non negotiable for me. My non negotiable is that I'm having fun in my business because I know how it feels, how to not. So that for me is actually the priority. And for me, it's okay if a year is less revenue because I probably intentionally took the time to go renovate the cottage or do something like that. But so much of that comes back to that identity piece of like, can you let go and look at what's the thing that you actually underneath?

[Nathan Barry]

Yeah. And I think those constraints, when you clearly identify what you want and then you put constraints around how you're going to get there, I think it actually really helps because there's so many aspects. I mean, I think about this in the goals that I have for Kit and how I'm growing the business. There's a. There's a ton of ways to accomplish any goal. And if you say like, oh, I have to be home this much for my family, I have to do all, you know.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah.

[Nathan Barry]

Then I have to choose. Okay, these are the events that I'm going to go travel with to. You know, I start to say no to the average opportunities that would drive the business forward. And I only say yes to the best opportunities, which tends to make other great opportunities come along.

[Mallory Rowan]

Right.

[Nathan Barry]

And so I like, recalibrated in this way. And there's things where it's like, oh, if we're just maximizing output, then I would do all these things myself. But because I have constraints around it, yeah, I can't do it myself. And so I guess I'm gonna have to spend some money and hire a person to do that. And then it's like, oh, wait, and they did it better than I did. Okay. So the constraint actually Totally, totally, you know, gave me much bigger results.

[Mallory Rowan]

I kind of look at three categories in my mind. One being the non negotiables. So this can be things like the family time. And I think it's important to clarify what that is. Because if we say I want to spend time with my family, that can look very different from parent A to parent B. Right. So figuring out, like, what pieces of that is important. Is it a certain amount of hours per week? Is it doing the bath time at night? Right. Like figuring out specifically what those non negotiables are. Um, and for me too, I love to do like a. A quick exercise of like, thinking of your day in the life in like 2050 or whatever it might be. And when you wake up, like, how do you feel in the morning? Right? Like, who's around you? And really focusing on that feeling, I think is so important. And similarly to how I was talking about, we can go in a circle for goals. Usually we can have that feeling in our current. Right. I want to feel light, or I want to feel like I'm having fun, or I want to feel at peace. Okay, well, the non negotiable is how we can make sure that we keep that feeling now because we don't know that we're going to get there later. Right. Things happen, unfortunately, to people, so we might as well get that feeling now. And I think it's again, a good challenge to be like, I think I have to do all of this stuff to get to that feeling. But is there micro ways I could pull in that feeling of peace? Right. Maybe peace for you is a Saturday morning with a book. And so we're bringing that into our everyday life with those non negotiables. And then we have our nice to have. So the nice to haves give you wiggle room. And the nice to haves exist so that the non negotiables, like, truly stay non negotiable. Because I think we've all done that, especially in the new year. We're like, here's all the habits I'm gonna do and they're not negotiable. And then we start negotiating them, right? So the nice to haves is that wiggle room. And for some people, maybe that feeling you want later actually falls in a nice to have. Maybe there's seasons of that feeling right now. Maybe it's not all the time. Like, maybe you're not going to feel at peace when you're hosting craft and commerce, right? Like, that might be a season where it's not. Not necessarily a prevalent feeling. But the nice to haves are things where you're like, in the ideal world, this is what's happening. But I'm okay with sometimes it not being there, really working with those seasons. And then the third category is really where we can find those other ways to growth. And it's treating things like an experiment. So, like, that's also been a big theme for me, is just asking, you know, what would happen if. And going from there. And I think we do so much out of shame. You Know, I should go to the gym more. I should grow my business this way. I should hire for the this. And we don't do enough out of curiosity. And curiosity induced stuff is just way more fun. And it's also a lot less stressful because it feels like we're just, you know, a scientist testing a theory and it feels less like that identity piece. So if you're like, well, what would happen if I tried to get a million followers on Instagram? What would happen if I wanted to build this thing? And letting yourself experiment in that phase, that's really where we can like send it to the moon but not burn out because we have those non negotiables and nice to haves.

[Nathan Barry]

You have this like lightness and joy and playfulness to the way that you approach the business that I think is so different from so many people I talked to who are like, I have to make sure that revenue this year is at least 5% higher than revenue last year. And the thing that I think makes this difference is that you have this nest egg. Like, you know, you have the now over a million dollars in invested assets that like, your worst case scenario is pretty well protected. How do you think about the downside and how has that enabled you to live differently?

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah, you know, it's so funny, one time I posted a story and I was like, I think I've cured my scarcity. And people were like, oh my God, what was it? And I was like, oh, I just like, got a lot of money.

[Nathan Barry]

But you, you, you got a lot of money and then you kept your lifestyle low.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yes.

[Nathan Barry]

Like, you're not. That's another big thing. People often say, they look at all this money and they're like, oh, I want to be rich so that I can. And they list off all of these things when I, whether it's planes or handbags or yachts or whatever. You're starting to sound like that Taylor Swift song about, you know, your balance shades, you know, but. And it's like, no, those are, those are all signs of spending money that actually having the money is a very quiet thing to do. Right. And so what you're talking about is the signs of, no, I have the money as the nest egg, as the growing assets. And that's a very different thing.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yeah, And I think too, like, I, I believe our generation is more attracted to like work optional versus is like this idea of like, I'm retiring and you're never going to see me again because a lot of us do want to have that impact. And we want to have that personal fulfillment. We've seen it a lot in the, the financial, like fire, financial independence, retire early, community where people like get lost and bored. Right. It's the same after people sell a business, they don't know who they are anymore. And so I think having that nest egg is something that I craved so much in picking a non traditional career. And so to build it for myself truly has been anytime, you know, I'm getting nervous about what I'm building or I'm not sure about which direction to take, it's like coming back to that, well, you are going to be good because you've made these other decisions for future you. And that gives me a lot of power to decide where I want to take things. It lets me say no to things, it let me keep those boundaries and it just, to your point, lets me keep this playfulness in the business.

[Nathan Barry]

Yeah. And then you could say like, you know what, I want to renovate a cot cottage and I'm gonna take a step back and go do that.

[Mallory Rowan]

Yes. And even writing a book, that's something that's on the radar for me that I've always wanted to do. And I've had so many friends that have had very interesting experiences writing a book where, you know, it kind of takes over your whole life. And if you're not ready for it, they can sometimes be grieving like where their business was at and this thing kind of, you know, self imploded because they're trying to meet the book deadlines. And that's something where I feel like as I move into that, I'm like, I can have space to like take 2 years to write the book and if I know what I need and I know that, that that season can be, hey, we're going to live off like tighter expenses but pull it from stocks, then it can be that.

[Nathan Barry]

I feel like you do such a good job of being a public role model for a different way of building businesses. That's what's been so impactful for me is like not growing up around money or people who talked about this is just seeing like, oh wait, random people on the Internet will share, you know, all of these details. So thank you for sharing your whole journey and being willing to talk through the exact numbers, if you will want to follow more of what you're doing in those, like, oh, I like this. Yeah, yeah, not only this creator, but I like this life philosophy. I'll subscribe to that. Where should they go to check out more of what you're doing? What you're building next.

[Mallory Rowan]

Instagram's always my main platform at Mallory Rowan, but I'm really excited. We're building a membership community space called the Fund Club, and this is where we're going to continue these conversations. So it's going to be a place for both entrepreneurs and non entrepreneurs to come together to have these creative money conversations to say, hey, what are you guys doing differently? What should I do with this money that's just sitting? And we'll be bringing in experts who have done really cool different things to say, like, hey, we have friends, you know, they travel full time through content creation. So how are they doing that? And it's going to be one of those spaces where I just want people to hear a certain strategy and it has that moment where it clicks and you're like, I can do that.

[Nathan Barry]

Yeah, I'll have what she's having.

[Mallory Rowan]

I'll have what she's having. So I'm basically making a formalized version of I'll have what she's having. So we have a wait list right now if people want to sign up. Everything's available through my Instagram. Instagram.

[Nathan Barry]

That sounds good. All right, we'll go follow you on Instagram. And Mallory, thanks so much for coming on.

[Mallory Rowan]

Thanks for having me.

[Nathan Barry]

If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Barry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were. And also, just who else do you think we should have on the show? Thank you so much for listening.