E27: Kathy Fettke: Real Wealth, Real Returns: The Cash-Flow Playbook
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Release Date: 11/03/2025
E35: Bridging the Wealth Gap: Founder and Investor Lessons from 2025
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
2025 closes by revisiting the most practical lessons shared by founders, investors, and community builders across this year’s Fortunes of the Brave conversations. This recap threads together a single theme: better decisions happen when your mindset, strategy, and community support are aligned. First, we return to a mental framework for entrepreneurs and investors who feel the pressure of constant uncertainty. A five-step system called PEACE outlines how positive thinking, embracing challenge, appreciation, certainty, and empathy can reduce fear-based reactions and improve decision quality....
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E34: Michael Scarpati: Rethinking Retirement For The Rest Of Us
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
For too long, retirement planning and independent fiduciary financial advice have felt reserved for the top 1 to 2 percent. In this episode of Fortunes of the Brave, Mary Kathryn Johnson sits down with Michael Scarpati, CEO and co founder of Retire.us, to unpack how technology and true fiduciary financial planning can finally open the doors for everyday Americans. Michael shares how his platform connects people with independent fiduciary financial advisors who focus on holistic retirement planning, not just selling products. They dig into the mindset barriers that keep people with 50,000 to...
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E33: Dan Egan: The Behavior That Builds Wealth
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Mary Katherine Johnson sits down with Dan Egan, VP of Behavioral Finance & Investing at Betterment, to decode how our habits, narratives, and timing drive financial outcomes more than hot tips ever will. Dan explains why success comes from matching risk to time horizon, building automatic systems that spare your willpower, using tax-aware prompts (hello, long- vs short-term gains), and reframing money from a scarce enemy to a tool you can wield responsibly, and often with your community. We dig into teachable moments that stick, how to design routines that “pay yourself first,” why...
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E32: Nick Malouin: From Chaos to Clarity: How Innovators Turn Uncertainty Into Action
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Mary Katherine Johnson welcomes Nick Malouin, Senior Strategy Director at Electric Innovation, to unpack how innovation strategy turns ambiguity into action. From Capgemini to Electric, Nick has spent a decade taking ideas from insight to in-market—bridging hard data with human truth so teams can build products people actually want. He breaks down why the best work starts with the consumer journey, not the org chart; how to separate signal from noise with out-of-category insights; and why “possible futures” beat single-line forecasts. If you care about product development, consumer...
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E31: Janice Shade: How Community Capital Moves Money from Wall Street to Main Street
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Community capital, crowdfunding, and local investing take center stage in this episode of Fortunes of the Brave. Systems entrepreneur and financial innovator Janice Shade, co-founder of Milk Money Vermont and founder of Capital Innovation Lab and Fundamenta, joins host Lance Woodson to unpack how everyday people can invest in the small businesses that define their hometowns. From her early days at Seventh Generation questioning the “green premium” to designing new models for Main Street investing, Janice shows why traditional capital markets leave most founders and communities...
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E30: Chad Hufford: Dare to Be Different: The Blueprint for Abundance
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Mary Katherine Johnson welcomes Chad Hufford, Founder & Financial Planner at Veritas Wealth Management, for a refreshingly human conversation about building wealth you’ll actually want to live with. Chad argues we’re wired for scarcity and crowd-following—great for survival, terrible for long-term freedom—so real progress starts with mindset, meaning, and management of the investor (not just the investments). You’ll hear how to define date-specific, dollar-specific goals (e.g., “₍future date₎ + net monthly income after tax”), then reverse-engineer the needed...
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E29: Rebecca McLean: Bridge the Gap: The Reg CF Revolution for Everyday Investors
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Mary sits down with Rebecca McLean to unpack how the JOBS Act and Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) opened a new lane for everyday investors and community focused entrepreneurs to fund real estate; legally, transparently, and at scale. Rebecca traces National REIA’s 40-year mission to promote, protect, and educate the industry, including advocacy that helped unlock today’s crowdfunding rules. They dig into attainable housing, revitalizing blocks “one address at a time,” and why local collaboration + policy + partnerships matter just as much as capital. From accredited vs....
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E28: Matt Slepin: From Cowboys to Platforms: What’s Next in Real Estate
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Lance sits down with Matt Slepin, one of real estate’s best-known executive recruiters and storytellers, to trace the industry’s arc from the RTC era to today’s institutional, tech-enabled platforms—and what comes next. Matt explains how CMBS and REITs catalyzed a shift from “piles of assets” to true operating companies, why technology and capital markets now define competitive advantage, and how leaders must evolve from property whisperers to business builders with resilient balance sheets, systems, and succession. They get real about purpose and...
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E27: Kathy Fettke: Real Wealth, Real Returns: The Cash-Flow Playbook
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Mary Katherine Johnson sits down with Kathy Fettke, Co-Founder of Real Wealth, to unpack a practical roadmap to real estate investing that ordinary professionals can use to build durable wealth. After a family health scare wiped out her savings, Kathy discovered the power of rental income and house hacking, then turned a weekend radio show into a learning engine interviewing experts (including Robert Kiyosaki) and stress-testing everything with commonsense cash flow. In this episode, she explains how to leave bubble markets for fundamentals, why average-priced homes...
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E26: Eric Miller: Treat Your Business Like an Investment: Readiness, Returns, and Purpose
Planet Wealth: Fortunes of the Brave
Mary Kathryn Johnson interviews Eric Miller, Co-Owner and Chief Financial Advisor at Econologics Financial Advisors, on how practice owners and entrepreneurs can engineer financial freedom with a disciplined approach to exit planning, owner compensation, and post-sale purpose. Drawing on two decades of experience with private practice owners in healthcare and other fields, Eric explains why every founder should plan an exit early, how to gauge emotional and financial readiness, and why a business must be treated like an investment rather than a job. He introduces the Financial Beast framework:...
info_outlineMary Katherine Johnson sits down with Kathy Fettke, Co-Founder of Real Wealth, to unpack a practical roadmap to real estate investing that ordinary professionals can use to build durable wealth. After a family health scare wiped out her savings, Kathy discovered the power of rental income and house hacking, then turned a weekend radio show into a learning engine interviewing experts (including Robert Kiyosaki) and stress-testing everything with commonsense cash flow. In this episode, she explains how to leave bubble markets for fundamentals, why average-priced homes near jobs and infrastructure win, and how disciplined vetting of property managers protects returns.
Kathy traces the origins of Real Wealth, now an 88,000-member community helping busy professionals buy sensible rentals and participate in passive syndications. You’ll hear how she helped clients exit overheated markets, redeploy into metros like Dallas at the start of massive growth cycles, and avoid the 2009 wipeout—while emphasizing education over hype. We cover criteria for market selection (jobs, population, schools, infrastructure), avoiding analysis paralysis, and building a retirement portfolio of cash-flowing assets you’d be proud to offer tenants.
She also shares the mindset reset that unlocked her progress—challenging limiting beliefs about money, trusting data plus intuition, and taking action after a focused year of study. Whether you’re early in your journey or ready to scale, you’ll walk away with a playbook for resilient passive income that aligns purpose, planet, and profit. Subscribe to Fortunes of the Brave for bold, credible, visionary conversations that help you take the next right step.
Key Takeaways:
• Define buy-box fundamentals and stick to cash flow over speculation.
• Follow jobs, population growth, schools, and new infrastructure when choosing markets.
• Vet property managers rigorously; your team is the moat around your returns.
• Start where the numbers work (average-priced homes); avoid negative cash flow “status”
assets.
• Educate deeply, then act—progress beats perfection and paralysis.
Chapters:
• 00:00 – Welcome + who is Kathy Fettke
• 01:04 – Real Wealth’s mission: build long-term rental portfolios
• 02:10 – Health scare, house hacking, and discovering rental income
• 05:13 – Pivot to broadcasting about wealth and learning from experts
• 07:07 – Mortgage clients’ strategies and the power of leverage (then)
• 09:50 – First high-net-worth client: seeing the planning gap
• 11:44 – Bubble markets vs. fundamentals; enter Dallas playbook
• 12:50 – Buying five Texas rentals that actually pencil
• 16:30 – How to vet property managers and read local demand
• 19:52 – Tenant-first mindset and providing a needed service
• 28:46 – Real Wealth today: 88K members, free education, vetted teams
• 31:07 – Early syndications and the path to passive investing
• 33:37 – Client outcomes and why common sense wins
• 35:11 – Debating “it’s dangerous to buy” and winning on cash flow
• 37:29 – Close + how to connect with Kathy
Resources Mentioned:
• Real Wealth — free education, vetted teams
• Rich Dad Poor Dad — Robert Kiyosaki
• Extreme Success — Rich Fettke
• Case-Shiller Index (context from Kathy’s media appearances)
• Rockwall, TX example (schools, commute, infrastructure)
• JOBS Act and passive real estate syndications (context)
Connect with Kathy:
• Website: realwealth.com
• LinkedIn
• Other: Free weekly investor webinars at Real Wealth
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Website: planetwealth.com