Money Tales Aspiriant

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Christina Bui. As Christina tells us, losing everything was good for her. The fall of Saigon happened in 1975. Leaving everything they had behind, Christina’s mom paid a stranger with gold to get a flight out of Vietnam. The plane took off on what happened to be the day before the Saigon airport was bombed. This harrowing escape was a pivotal moment that created more opportunities for Christina and her mother than they ever would have imagined. This is a story you won’t want to miss.

Christina is Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Kylan Ventures, a venture studio focused on championing the global talent and innovation of Vietnamese entrepreneurs. She serves as an operating partner, strategic advisor, and board advisor with various companies: Chief Business Development Officer at OnSky Health, a remote patient monitoring health tech company; Chief Growth Officer at Top Care Medical Group; a healthcare practice group; Board Advisor at Omni Bev, a Vietnamese Cold Brew Coffee Company; Board Advisor at Son Foods, a seafood company; Board Advisor at Wynn’s Kitchen, Asian food spices and condiments; Strategic Advisor at Enterprise Purchasing Group, a supply chain management company; Strategic Advisor at Networked, a community networking platform; and Fund Advisor and Limited Partner at How Women Invest Fund.

A refugee of Vietnam's Fall of Saigon, Christina believes in giving back to the community. She serves on the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Advisory Board; Fulbright University Vietnam Global Advisory Board, Executive Board of How Women Lead, and Board Member of the Association for Corporate Growth. Christina holds a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and French from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in corporate finance from Johns Hopkins University. She was awarded “Most Influential Women in Business” in 2016 and 2017 by the San Francisco Business Times. Christina has Co-Chaired the Association for Corporate Growth’s M&A West Coast Conference eleven years in a row from 2012-2023.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Ken Pecus. Ken is one of those resilient people who hit financial bottom and catapulted back up again. Long story short, he got caught up in legal battle over a franchise agreement. He knew he was in the right and kept the fight going for four long years. In the end, he lost half the lawsuit, and faced financial tragedy when the judge awarded the other side attorney fees just as Ken’s own business was being hurt by the Financial Crisis. This meant Ken was on the hook for paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in a short time period, which nearly wiped him out. Ken’s biggest lessons from that time are to watch your ego, don’t always be focused on proving you are right, and keep communication lines open.

Ken is the founder and Team Leader of The Pecus Group. Having obtained his license in 1989, Ken has more than 34 years of experience representing sellers and buyers throughout San Diego County. He has worked for a variety of companies including small independent firms and large national organizations. In the early 2000s, Ken founded Ascent Real Estate which grew to become the largest non-affiliated real estate company with 10 offices in San Diego County, prior to its merger with a national firm. 14 years after founding Ascent, Ken set out to rebuild a new brand, and has since joined forces with national real estate market leader eXp Realty in order to provide a seamless cutting edge transactional experience for his clients and team agents.

Ken is a native San Diegan having grown up on the island paradise of Coronado, California. After graduating Coronado High School, he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University. Despite always planning to have a real estate career, his first job was working as a software engineer manager at NAS North Island. His engineering background, as well as his time working in a high intensity government aircraft program, provided Ken with invaluable business experience in performance expectations, planning, budgeting and delivering.

Since becoming licensed, Ken has completed hundreds of transactions and has extensive negotiation experience in luxury high value cash and financed sales, foreclosure and short sales, and portfolio building with multi-unit residential. Throughout his career, he has continued to provide extensive training to other agents in all facets of the real estate transaction. His business philosophy has revolved around doing business by referral, and The Pecus Group maintains a comprehensive referral network of other agents, both locally and nationally.

On the personal side, Ken is an avid outdoor sports lover. His game of choice (since grade school) is definitely tennis and tries to spend as much time as he can every week out on the court! He’s also passionate about traveling the world in order to experience new cultures, food and history, but mostly getting to engage with people from every walk of life.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Fran Maier. From her first start-up, Match.com, to her latest and fifth start-up, BabyQuip, Fran is a passionate entrepreneur whose mantra is, “It’ll all work out”. Fran’s motto was put to the test during the pandemic. On March 6, 2020 she presented BabyQuip, a baby gear rental business dependent on people’s travel, to the sharks on Shark Tank. Days later, the pandemic became a reality and the economy closed. Don’t worry. It all works out. Being a savvy businesswoman, Fran and her partners took the necessary steps for the company to survive and now thrive as life gets back to normal.

Fran is a highly successful serial entrepreneur, investor, and fundraiser with an impressive track record of launching and scaling five profitable business ventures, such as Match.com and TRUSTe (now @TrustArc). Throughout her career, Fran has pioneered game-changing solutions that have disrupted industries, built trusted brands, and driven growth and valuation.

Currently, as the founder and CEO of BabyQuip, the leading global baby gear rental marketplace, Fran has taken the company's reach to over 1,200 markets worldwide. Her leadership has also resulted in the recruitment of thousands of gig economy entrepreneurs to provide services, as well as valuable partnerships with brands such as VRBO, Wyndham, Destination Hotels by Hyatt and Guesty.

Fran's impressive set of skills include change management, business expansion, brand and product development, government relations, and international outreach. She has also demonstrated her dedication to giving back to the community as a commercial and non-profit board member for organizations such as GE Capital Bank, Children's Council of San Francisco, Stanford Women on Boards, and Girls in Tech. Moreover, Fran is an advisor to several startups, including Portfolia, Women's Start-up Lab, Sign-up.com and Kango.

As a thought leader in entrepreneurship, women in business, and family travel, Fran is a sought-after keynote speaker and media personality. She has been featured in major media outlets such as Forbes, CNBC and ABC's Shark Tank, and has hosted a popular radio show. Fran also regularly appears as a guest on podcasts and contributes articles to publications such as The Washington Post.

Fran holds a BA and MBA from Stanford University and has been recognized with numerous honors and awards. She is passionate about supporting female founders and promoting Latinx leadership and Latina entrepreneurs, in honor of her Hispanic heritage. Fran is a proud mother of two grown sons and now lives in Santa Fe, NM, after spending most of her career in San Francisco.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Hilary Blair. Hilary helps businesspeople get comfortable in the uncomfortable. She believes our society has shut down a lot of sharing within conversations and, as a result, we miss out on leadership opportunities by confusing confidence and comfort. Hilary observes that you can be confident if you accept the discomfort that might be involved. Tell your story, share your vulnerability and where you’ve made mistakes. This transparency, especially in money conversations, will allow you to tell your story, connect with others and, as Hilary says, own the awkward.

Hilary is a keynote speaker, champion of human connection and the CEO of ARTiculate: Real&Clear. She is impassioned by moving beyond habits and learned behaviors to uncover what is unique and authentic in individuals and groups. A presentation and speaking voice expert, Hilary is a highly regarded coach and facilitator working extensively across the globe with a variety of businesses including Maersk, Liberty Global, Slalom and AWS.

Whether working on leadership communication with members of the C-Suite, or facilitating workshops using improvisation to improve communication skills, Hilary’s 35 plus years as a teacher combined with her professional stage, film and voice over career present a unique and essential skill set. She and the ARTiculate team partner with HR departments to co-create experiential learning events that activate individual presence and team effectiveness.

Hilary is certified in Conversational Intelligence and CultureTalk. She is an active member of NSA and former board member of the Colorado Chapter. She is also a former board member of VASTA – the Voice and Speech Trainers Association. Hilary is on the faculty for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and has been adjunct faculty for a number of universities. She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Buzzfeed and numerous podcasts. Hilary holds an MFA in acting from the National Theatre Conservatory and a BA from Yale University.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Lauren Keen Aumond. Lauren landed a finance job with a small company when she graduated college. A year into the role, she decided she wanted to learn more and earn more. Lauren thought she had to leave the company to do so, but instead an internal opportunity opened up for a sales position. Sure enough, she applied. When the head of the company learned this news, he said with surprise, “Spreadsheet Lauren is going to do sales?” Yes, she did. Lauren blew her quota out of the water that year.

Today, Lauren is a content creator and real estate investor based in Tampa Bay, Florida. Along with her husband, Aric, Lauren built a 12-door portfolio that helped them achieve financial independence by the ages of 32 and 29, respectively. They specialize in short-term rentals on the nature coast of Florida (the west coast). In 2019, Lauren launched the Adulting Is Easy podcast to teach her younger sister about personal finance, which has since expanded into social media, digital products and coaching. When she's not working, Lauren enjoys spending time on her boat, playing pickleball and volleyball, watching sports and savoring a glass of red wine.

In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Diania Merriam. In her twenties, Diania felt like she was wasting her privilege. She was an educated white woman in a first world country with a good job, yet Diania was living paycheck to paycheck and running up a mound of debt. She decided something had to change. Diania made a mindset shift and became a supersaver. She got creative and resourceful about meeting her needs and developed a brand-new relationship with money.

Diania Merriam is the founder of The EconoMe Conference, a party about money designed specifically for the FIRE movement (financial independence, retire early). She's also the host of the popular podcast Optimal Finance Daily where she narrates articles from the best personal finance blogs on the planet. After getting out of $30k of debt in eleven months, Diania used her newfound financial freedom to negotiate a remote working arrangement with her employer, take a two-month sabbatical to walk 500 miles across northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago and launch her own business.