I've never told this story publicly before: for the five years after my son was born, I was heavily discouraged from going into entrepreneurship — told, essentially, that starting a business or hiring a coach could put my child support at risk. No shade to anyone; we all operate from where we think safety lives. But when I finally started my business, I cleaned out my 401(k) to do it. Less than twenty grand, a bigger tax bill than I bargained for, and zero regrets. Katherine calls that an "alternative investment." I call it the best bet I ever made on myself.

This episode with Katherine Tipper — one half of the husband-and-wife team behind a 27-year-old pension firm, and the voice behind the 401(k) Couple and Planarchy podcasts — went straight past 401(k)s and into the stuff nobody teaches you: money is an emotion. We get into why retail therapy actually "works" (it fakes the feeling of progress), and Katherine's game-changing reframe: name the emotion you're chasing first, then ask whether you actually need to spend money to get there. Sometimes it's a new couch. Sometimes it's a three-dollar donut in a park, or a stack of France books from the library.

We also go deep on what it really looks like to build a business with your spouse — roles, boundaries, and the very real difference between your marriage voice and your work voice (turns out you cannot pitch a great idea through the shower curtain). Katherine's the queen of the berets, and there's a whole thread here about becoming more visible as you get older instead of less, once you stop caring whether 99 people think you're insane and start caring about the one person who recognizes you.

If you're starting a business, or eyeing a second act, this is the honest version: entrepreneurship is the most intense interpersonal work you'll ever do, running a business is far more creative than anyone tells you, and passion doesn't pay unless you get strategic about the vehicle. Find the emotion. Then find a way to get paid for it.

This week's guest: Katherine Tipper, pension administrator and co-host of the 401(k) Couple and Planarchy podcasts Connect with Katherine on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/🐅katherine-tipper-4469512/

Listen to her podcasts:

401(k) Couple (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/401-k-ouple-podcast/id1828492940)

Planarchy (https://rss.com/podcasts/the-planarchy-podcast/2988809/)

-----> LinkedIn Mastery: My On-Demand Course <----- Ready to make LinkedIn actually generate business? My on-demand course walks you through it at your own pace — 12 modules on the algorithm, profile strategy, content that gets found, and the exact outreach system behind my 86% connection acceptance rate. Enroll here: theblissmagic.com/linkedin-mastery

Brand new to LinkedIn? Start with LinkedIn Basics for $39: theblissmagic.com/linkedin-basics

Grab my book: Everything Is Your Fault by Lia Bliss — https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Your-Fault-Understanding-Unlocking/dp/B0B3HVBJGM

Host: Lia Bliss on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/liabliss) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bestliabliss)

New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss one.

Master Your Bliss Life — Real conversations. Real pivots. Real growth.

Two years in, something clicked for me: for the first stretch of a business you say yes to everything, and then one day you wake up and realize it's time to start saying no. Last week Laura got me thinking about that, and this week I went down the rabbit hole — because the thing nobody tells you when you're just trying to make rent is that the real money isn't in running the business. It's in building something you can walk away from.

This one's about the least sexy, most important work you'll ever do as a founder: getting everything out of your head and onto paper. I talk about the trap of the founder-led business — where you're the brand, the product, and the salesperson all at once, and you literally can't sell yourself — and how I've spent the last few months writing SOPs for every obnoxious little click of my mouse so that one day my business can run without me in every seat.

Whether you want to sell in five years or you just need your first client this week, the move is the same: document your processes, define the roles, and get crazy flexible with what you offer. (That's literally how my VIP days were born — someone told me what they wanted and I said "yep, great," then built the program after.) Building to scale and building to sell are the same muscle. And no, you don't need a fancy title or a search-engine-optimized name for what you do. Just say what you do. Let your clients call you the Queen.

The goal here is to make you a millionaire. I mean that. I'm on this ride right alongside you — sharing everything as I learn it, from every woman I sit down with who's already been there.

-----> LinkedIn Mastery: My On-Demand Course <----- Ready to make LinkedIn actually generate business? My on-demand course walks you through it at your own pace — 12 modules on the algorithm, profile strategy, content that gets found, and the exact outreach system behind my 86% connection acceptance rate. Enroll here: theblissmagic.com/linkedin-mastery

Brand new to LinkedIn? Start with LinkedIn Basics for $39: theblissmagic.com/linkedin-basics

Grab my book: Everything Is Your Fault by Lia Bliss — https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Your-Fault-Understanding-Unlocking/dp/B0B3HVBJGM

Connect with me: Lia on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/liabliss) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bestliabliss)

New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss one.

Master Your Bliss Life — Real conversations. Real pivots. Real growth.

Every so often you sit down with someone and realize you've been quietly running the same playbook in two different lanes, she does video, I do LinkedIn, and the whole conversation just turns into "yes, exactly, THIS." That's my episode with Laura Garfield, co-founder of Idea Decanter and the woman who introduced me to Mitch Slater and genuinely changed the trajectory of my business. I owe her.

The line that stuck with me most: "Who, not how." Laura shared a story from Dan Sullivan's book about a CEO who tried to sell his own business without any experts, tanked the deal, and then, after finally learning to bring in the right people, went and fell off his own roof in retirement because he still wouldn't call a guy. The universe will make you learn the lesson. So stop trying to clone yourself and go find your who.

We also got into the thing nobody warns you about when you're starting out: say yes to almost everything for the first couple of years, then find the guts to start saying no. That's how you actually niche down. Laura and her partner pivoted from making videos for wineries (yep that's where the name Idea Decanter comes from) to owning one of the hardest, most regulated corners of the market: financial services. Because when you get specific enough that the airline pilot down the street feels like you're talking directly to him, marketing stops being a grind and starts being magnetic.

And if you've ever felt like a failure because you weren't 10x-ing every single year this one's for you. Slow, steady, and specific still wins.

Connect with Laura:

LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauragarfield)

Website (https://ideadecanter.com)

Idea Decanter on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/ideadecanter)

Join the Real #Finfluencer Community — video tips and early invites straight to your inbox: https://ideadecanter.com/join

-----> Done being invisible on LinkedIn? <-----

LinkedIn Mastery is my on-demand course for turning a quiet profile into actual business conversations — algorithm, profile, content, outreach.

Learn it once, run it forever. Enroll: theblissmagic.com/linkedin-mastery

Brand new to LinkedIn? Start with LinkedIn Basics for $39: theblissmagic.com/linkedin-basics

Grab my book: Everything Is Your Fault by Lia Bliss — https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Your-Fault-Understanding-Unlocking/dp/B0B3HVBJGM

Host: Lia Bliss on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/liabliss) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bestliabliss)

New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss one.

Master Your Bliss Life — Real conversations. Real pivots. Real growth.