Helaine Knapp is a serial entrepreneur, the author of Making Waves, and the host of the Step Into Next podcast. She founded CityRow, the rowing-based fitness brand that landed in studios across the country and homes around the world, and now splits her life between Austin and New York. In this episode, she breaks down how she affords it, starting with the most honest founder money story we've had on the show.

Helaine and I walk through CityRow with a financial lens: the $0 marketing budget that made it explode, the $12 million she raised in six weeks during COVID, the more than $20 million she raised in total, and the exit that came out to a zero for her investors and for her. Plus, what two years on a GLP-1 has actually cost her, from the $1,000 consults to the surprising ways she’s spending less.

Helaine reveals the scrappy strategies that fund a life in two cities, what it felt like to be on the Today Show and unable to pay rent, how she handles the awkward money conversations most of us avoid, and what she's working toward affording next.

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Subscribe to Helaine's weekly newsletter (https://www.helaineknapp.com/what-im-building) and her Substack (https://helainemknapp.substack.com/)

Get Helaine's book, Making Waves (https://www.helaineknapp.com/making-waves).

Check out Ashley’s Money Club (https://www.thefiscalfemme.com/money-club) to join a community of women unabashedly going after their money goals.

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