Why More Founders Need a Personal Wealth Strategy
Rebecca Klodinsky built two wildly successful brands from scratch. Now she’s urging fellow founders to take their personal wealth as seriously as their business growth.
3 min
When I launched my first business in my twenties, I thought success meant sales, scale, and building a brand with cut-through. And to some extent, it did.
But it took me a little longer to realise that real success — the kind that sustains you beyond your startup — also means financial independence. Not just revenue. Not just growth. But wealth.
We don’t talk about this enough. Founders are often so focused on cash flow, growth targets and reinvesting in the business that they neglect their own financial future.
And for women in particular, that can be a costly blind spot — especially in a climate like this.
Right now, the cost of living is at record highs. Inflation is steadily eroding savings. And Australian women are still retiring with, on average, 25% less superannuation than men. Financial literacy is no longer a nice-to-have — it’s a survival skill.
And founders, of all people, should be thinking about how they’re building wealth personally — not just professionally.
When I started my first business, I was a young solo mum navigating life without a blueprint — financially or otherwise. I didn’t grow up talking about money. I didn’t have a financial adviser on speed dial.
But I taught myself. I bought property. I built multiple income streams. I started investing. And I did it all while bootstrapping.
What I learned is this: you don’t need to be a finance expert to build wealth. But you do need to get intentional about it. Because if your personal finances aren’t growing with your business, you’re more exposed than you think.
Here are three things I’ve learned that I now believe every founder should factor into their strategy:
Wealth is the long game, and revenue isn’t enough
There’s a big difference between making money and building wealth. Your business might generate strong revenue, but if you’re not pulling money out, protecting it, and putting it to work, you’re still operating from a place of risk. I learned to treat my personal finances like a second business — with goals, structure, and long-term thinking. That shift was a turning point.
Diversification applies to life, not just portfolios
As founders, we know the risk of relying on a single product or market. The same logic applies to your personal income. One revenue stream — even a thriving one — is still one point of failure. I started looking for ways to build parallel income early: investing in markets, creating digital assets, and adding secondary product lines. That strategy gave me freedom, not just extra income.
Financial literacy makes you a better founder
The more confident I became with money — understanding debt, interest, returns, tax — the sharper my decision-making got. It wasn’t about becoming an expert.
It was about building fluency. Knowing my numbers gave me leverage — in negotiations, in team conversations, and in moments of pressure. It made me more resilient and more resourceful.
We often hear about “closing the gap” in funding, leadership, and opportunity. But there’s another gap we rarely acknowledge: the financial confidence gap.
And it starts with founders — especially women — being willing to prioritise their own wealth as part of their growth story.
You don’t need to have it all figured out. But you do need to start. Because the goal isn’t just to build a successful business — it’s to build a life that gives you freedom, security, and options long after the business has scaled.
Rebecca Klodinsky is the founder of IIXIIST and co-founder of The Prestwick Place, two multi-million dollar brands built without investors or retail stores. Known for her sharp digital strategy and sustainable, direct-to-consumer approach, she continues to rewrite the rules of modern luxury
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The federal budget has rattled property investors. But the biggest mistake isn’t the tax changes, it’s the conclusion many are drawing from them.
2 min
The recent budget has forced a reckoning for property investors.
Negative gearing now restricted to new residential builds, the CGT discount gone and on paper, the numbers look different.
And many investors are responding by pivoting toward yield, prioritising cash flow over capital growth in a way that property strategists say misses the point entirely.
“The debate has shifted to yield versus growth as if they are opposing forces,” says Abdullah Nouh, founder of Melbourne-based buyers’ agency Mecca Property Group. “But that framing is itself the mistake.”
Nouh, who works with high-net-worth families and investors on long-term acquisition strategy, argues that capital growth remains the primary driver of genuine wealth creation and that the post-budget environment has made quality assets more important, not less.
The numbers make his case plainly. An additional $500 per week in rental income is welcome. A prestige asset appreciating by $1 million over a market cycle is transformative.
These are not equivalent outcomes, and portfolios built around yield at the expense of location and land value tend to generate income while wealth stands largely still.
The more nuanced shift Nouh is seeing among sophisticated investors is a move toward assets where both outcomes can be engineered simultaneously – established homes on substantial land in quality locations, where the existing dwelling can be repositioned, rental returns improved, and the underlying land value compounds independent of what sits on it.
For investors with existing equity, commercial property is also entering the conversation in a more serious way.
Prestige industrial assets, medical centres and long-leased essential retail offer income profiles that residential property in most capital city markets cannot currently match: longer lease terms, tenants covering outgoings, and greater predictability than the residential tenancy cycle.
“The investors who build lasting wealth are rarely the ones who chased yield or growth exclusively,” says Nouh.
“They are the ones who built a strategy they could sustain – one that generated enough income to hold quality assets through multiple cycles while those assets compounded in value.”
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