Live Counterflow

Amanda Neely
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

Most financial advice was designed for employees with W-2s and a 30-year runway. If you're a business owner or entrepreneur, you've probably already figured out that it wasn't built for you. Live Counterflow is for the ones the standard playbook missed. Hosted by Amanda Neely, CFP® — Bank on Yourself Professional and Profit First Professional — each episode covers the financial principles that actually work for business owners: liquidity before growth, building wealth without requiring perfect timing or heroic discipline, and designing your finances around your real life instead of an idealized version of it. New episodes every Saturday, tied to the Live Counterflow Substack at livecounterflow.substack.com. livecounterflow.substack.com

  1. 6d ago

    Nobody Fixes the River

    In October 2004, Brandon hosted a bonfire that almost burned a house down. That’s the night we met. I grew up in the country. I love a bonfire. I went. I was dating someone else at the time, so when Brandon started calling afterward, I didn’t answer. We ran into each other again months later, and that time it stuck. What I didn’t know yet was how much we already had in common before we’d ever had a real conversation. Participate in the comments at https://livecounterflow.substack.com/ Where in your own financial life are you doing downstream rescue work, when you could be building upstream instead? Get full access to Live Counterflow at livecounterflow.substack.com/subscribe

    Nobody Fixes the River

  2. Aug 8

    The Kind No (Episode 15)

    Mary Poppins was my favorite movie as a kid. I loved her the way kids love a good babysitter ... fun, a little magic, doesn’t yell. I understand her better every year I get older. She never flattered the Banks children or told Mr. Banks what he wanted to hear. She gave whichever medicine each of them actually needed, said the hard thing when it needed saying, and left the moment she wasn’t needed anymore instead of staying around for the thanks. That was never nice. It was kind. It took me over 30 years to notice the difference. The same split shows up with money, whether or not anyone in the room would call it that. A nice advisor tells a business owner who’s ready to grow: “That’s exciting. Let’s make it happen.” It’s the answer that matches the energy in the room. Nobody feels talked down to. Nobody leaves the meeting deflated. A kind advisor asks a different question: “How are you funding it?” Where in your business are you funding tomorrow’s growth with money that hasn’t arrived yet? Comment at https://livecounterflow.substack.com/. Get full access to Live Counterflow at livecounterflow.substack.com/subscribe

    The Kind No (Episode 15)

  3. Aug 1

    The Thousand Dollar Rule Doesn't Hold Water (Episode 14)

    In July, we experienced 5 feet of water in our basement. It put our entire HVAC system totally out of commission. In 90-degree weather with a 77-year-old living with us, we stayed in a hotel while we waited for the cleanup and new system to be installed. It made us think a lot about “emergency funds.” The replacement cost more than Dave Ramsey’s famous starter emergency fund ... a whole lot more. Even the hotel stays would have come close to blowing through the starter emergency fund. Thankfully, we questioned the typical advice years ago ... What number were you taught to treat as “enough,” and have you ever actually checked whether it still is? Get the links and participate in the comments at https://livecounterflow.substack.com/ Get full access to Live Counterflow at livecounterflow.substack.com/subscribe

    The Thousand Dollar Rule Doesn't Hold Water (Episode 14)

  4. Jul 25

    The Pipes Were Fine for Eighty Years (Episode 13)

    Our basement flooded last Friday. We’ve lived in this house since 2020. It’s flooded twice before, a few inches each time ... enough to be annoying, not enough to be alarming. This time it was feet, not inches. And it wasn’t just our house. It was the whole street. The pipes that failed don’t run under our foundation. They run under the road, and every house that drains into them found out at the same time we did. Those pipes were laid around 1940 (when most of the houses were originally built). For eighty-some years, the pipes did their job. Then a storm came through that dumped more water, faster, than they were ever sized to carry ... hotter air holds more moisture, and when it lets go, it lets go all at once, in a way nobody designing a drainage system in 1940 had reason to plan for. The pipes did a 1940’s job in a 2026 reality. So far, so good, is the entire logic of underground infrastructure. Nobody thinks about the pipe until the day the whole street finds out at once it can’t keep up. The city is supposedly bringing in the Army Corps of Engineers to help make sure this doesn’t happen again, but what if it didn’t have to happen in the first place? ... The meteorological storms aren’t 1940’s storms anymore. I pray we don’t repeat the same mistakes of that decade politically, economically, and internationally. Practically speaking though, it’s worth checking whether your pipes and your financial “rules” are sized for the future that’s actually coming. Are they even sized for today? What’s a piece of financial advice you were taught that you’ve started to wonder if anyone’s actually checked lately? Tell me which one and perhaps it’ll show up in a future post. Comments are open at https://livecounterflow.substack.com/. Get full access to Live Counterflow at livecounterflow.substack.com/subscribe

    The Pipes Were Fine for Eighty Years (Episode 13)

  5. Jul 18

    Who's Policing What's Inside Your Pillow? (Episode 12)

    Years ago, a small family business made pillows. Real goose down, the good stuff, priced accordingly. Their competitors had figured out something cheaper. Ground-up chicken feathers, dyed and treated to look and feel like down, are sold at the same price as the real thing. There was no government agency checking. No inspector walking the floor asking what was actually inside the pillow on the shelf. Just a label, and whatever the label claimed. So the family did the only thing left to do. They bought their competitors’ pillows off the shelf, tore them open, and tested what was actually inside. Then they took what they found to the retailers and the press. They became the industry’s own fraud police because nobody else was coming. ... The pillow company couldn’t wait for a regulator who was never coming. Most people can’t wait for a downturn to tell them what’s actually in their portfolio, either. The check has to happen before the thing that forces it does. So, who’s checking what’s inside yours? Has anyone ever actually shown you what was inside your own portfolio, your own policy, your own plan ... or has it mostly been “So far, so good”? Tell me which one in the comments at https://livecounterflow.substack.com/. Get full access to Live Counterflow at livecounterflow.substack.com/subscribe

    Who's Policing What's Inside Your Pillow? (Episode 12)

  6. Jul 11

    Who Owns Your Insurance Company? (Episode 11)

    We’re told the stock market is the great equalizer. Buy shares, and you’re an owner. Put money in your 401(k), and you own a piece of corporate America right alongside the people running it. Everybody wins together. Here’s what that story leaves out: the richest 10% of Americans own more than 80% of the value of the entire stock market. When a company buys back its own shares or pays out a dividend, that money is overwhelmingly returning to a narrow slice of people who were already at the top. Most of us buying an index fund in our 401(k) aren’t really investing in anything. We’re speculating on a price, hoping to sell at a higher price than we bought. The company doesn’t get our money. Another shareholder does, on the other side of the trade. None of that requires anyone to be a villain. Nobody has to intend for wealth to concentrate upward for it to concentrate upward. That’s just what the ownership structure does, on its own, every single day, whether anyone in the building is thinking about it or not. The stock market was sold to us as a wealth equalizer. Structurally, it’s closer to the opposite. But I’ve belonged to ownership structures that actually work the way the stock market is supposed to work. And I noticed the difference long before I had language for it. Comment at livecounterflow.substack.com - Have you ever belonged to something structured like this ... a co-op, a mutual, a member-owned anything ... and noticed the difference before you could name it? I’d love to hear it. Get full access to Live Counterflow at livecounterflow.substack.com/subscribe

    Who Owns Your Insurance Company? (Episode 11)

  7. Jul 4

    He Made $3 Billion in a Day. Then He Went Broke. (Episode 10)

    In October 1929, while the rest of the country watched their savings disappear, Jesse Livermore made what would be worth $3 billion today. He’d seen the crash coming. Bet against it. When the market collapsed, he was on the right side of the trade. It was one of the most precise financial calls anyone had ever made. By the time it was over, he was one of the wealthiest people in America. By 1934, he was bankrupt. Comment at https://livecounterflow.substack.com/. What was your education in keeping wealth? Did you have to go find it, or did someone hand it to you? Get full access to Live Counterflow at livecounterflow.substack.com/subscribe

    He Made $3 Billion in a Day. Then He Went Broke. (Episode 10)

  8. Jun 27

    We Got On the Plane (Episode 9)

    Join the conversation at https://livecounterflow.substack.com/. In 2014, I made Brandon a promise. He could pick anywhere in the world for his 40th birthday. We’d go. We didn’t have the money for it yet... but we were already building something that would get us there. We’d started building financial architecture the year before. The promise was real before the funds were. In 2017, he turned 40, and we booked the tickets in early July. He picked Ireland. Our coffee shop flooded at the end of July 2017. ... What’s a moment you were able to say yes to because you’d built something that could hold it? Get full access to Live Counterflow at livecounterflow.substack.com/subscribe

    We Got On the Plane (Episode 9)
See All (16)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Most financial advice was designed for employees with W-2s and a 30-year runway. If you're a business owner or entrepreneur, you've probably already figured out that it wasn't built for you. Live Counterflow is for the ones the standard playbook missed. Hosted by Amanda Neely, CFP® — Bank on Yourself Professional and Profit First Professional — each episode covers the financial principles that actually work for business owners: liquidity before growth, building wealth without requiring perfect timing or heroic discipline, and designing your finances around your real life instead of an idealized version of it. New episodes every Saturday, tied to the Live Counterflow Substack at livecounterflow.substack.com. livecounterflow.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Amanda Neely
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Amanda Neely
  • Show Website
    Live Counterflow

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