When Sahil Bloom was in college, he turned to the richest people he knew for career advice. That’s how the Stanford baseball player — whose athletic aspirations were curtailed by a shoulder injury junior year — ended up in investing.

“By the time I turned 30, I had achieved every marker of what I believed success looked like. I had the high-paying job, the title, the house, the car — it was all there,” he writes in his book “The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life.” 

“But beneath the surface, I was miserable,” he writes. “All I could think was: Is this it?”

It was around the same time that a friend of his laid this nugget on him over a drink: “You’re going to see your parents 15 more times before they die,” given how far away they lived and how often Bloom had been visiting. 

For many years, “I had prioritized one thing at the expense of everything,” he writes. That one thing was money — until he realized he was doing it all wrong. What we should all be looking at is “time, people, purpose, health.”

So in his book, Bloom expands our definition of wealth to include time wealth, social wealth, mental wealth, physical wealth, and financial wealth. His goal is to help readers “measure the right things, make better decisions, and design your journey to wealth, success, happiness, and fulfillment.”

We know CNBC Make It readers want to be happier, smarter, and more successful with their money, work, and life. And we also know that what this ultimately looks like is unique for every single one of you. That’s why we chose “The 5 Types of Wealth” as our October book club pick. 

“This book is about designing your dream life, rejecting the default path, rejecting the default definitions of success, and creating your own,” Bloom says. “You will never feel wealthy, you will never feel successful, unless you create your own definition.”

Ready to dive in? Start reading, request to join our LinkedIn group, and come chat with us and Bloom on Wednesday, October 29, at 10 a.m. ET, at our next CNBC Make It Book Club discussion. 

Any questions for the author? Drop them in the comments of this LinkedIn post (you’ll need to join our private group first, which you can do here). Or email them to us in advance at askmakeit@cnbc.com, using the subject line “Question for Sahil Bloom.”

Have suggestions for future picks? Send them to us at askmakeit@cnbc.com, using the subject line “Make It book club suggestion.”

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Austin Willingham, 30, grew up in Decatur, Alabama, and knew from a very early age that he wanted to leave home as soon as he turned 18.

While studying abroad in Sweden during his junior year at Troy University, he visited the Netherlands for the first time. Now almost 10 years later, Willingham and his partner are living in Rotterdam with the hope that they can obtain permanent residency or EU citizenship. 

It was a move that Willingham admits had been in the works since he returned from his semester abroad in Sweden. 

“Once I came back from Sweden, I was just determined to move back to Europe and had reverse culture shock. I was asking my parents if I could transfer to a different university and complete my degree abroad,” he tells CNBC Make It.

“Me being the first-generation college student in my immediate family, my parents were really adamant about me just going ahead and finishing my degree.”

Prior to moving to Rotterdam, Willingham lived in Ireland, traveled through Southeast Asia and was in and out of Australia for five years.

“We thought that it would be a good break. It would be a good change and transition from life in Australia. We also thought it would not be as difficult a change because Rotterdam is still the second-largest city in the country. We’re definitely city people, so we thought that this would just be the best space for us,” he says. “As soon as we got here, the people were so warm and they immediately welcomed us in.”

An estimated 5.5 million Americans live abroad, according to the Association of Americans Resident Overseas (AARO). That number continues to rise with an estimated 1,285 U.S. citizens expatriated in the first quarter of 2025 alone — a 102% increase compared to the same period a year ago, according to a report from CS Global Partners, which analyzed statistics from the U.S. Federal Register.

Willingham made the official move to Rotterdam in June of this year, on a DAFT (Dutch-American Friendship Treaty) visa. That visa stipulates that he be self-employed or work as a freelancer only.

To satisfy the visa requirements, Willingham works as an event planner and does commercial modeling, but his ultimate goal is to grow his relocation services business, Willing World.

Willingham and his partner live in a two-bedroom apartment with a roommate. The couple splits 430 euros or USD $498 a month for rent — paying 215 euros or USD $249 each — according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Including rent, Willingham’s monthly expenses in Rotterdam total approximately $680, covering utilities, transportation, health insurance, groceries, and his mobile phone bill.

“I like the freedom. This is coming from a privileged place, but I truly feel like anywhere outside the United States, it’s about being able to breathe and have a work-life balance. That’s what I love most about living abroad, even though I’m working for myself, there is still this balance and there’s not this societal pressure of needing to prove myself all the time.”

Willingham started sharing his journey abroad on TikTok and says that since moving to Rotterdam, he’s enjoyed building a community both online and in real life. He’s excited to see what the future holds, he says, but moving back to the United States is just not in the cards for him right now.

“I would love to live. I would love to own. I would love to say yes at some point, but not in the current situation that we have. It would be way down the line when the United States finally gets some change,” he says.

“I want to be able to be there for my parents, so maybe I wouldn’t move back permanently, but I would spend an extended amount of time.”

Willingham says that leaving the U.S. has taught him that he is capable of anything.

“I’ve learned that I can do it even when I’m scared because it still has to get done,” he says. “When living abroad, especially on your own, you don’t have anybody to depend on, so you learn to depend on yourself and trust yourself with it.”

Conversions from euros to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 euro to $1.16 USD on October 14, 2025. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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In 2015, Allison Ellsworth was in her kitchen experimenting with different gut-healthy drink recipes, trying to make apple cider vinegar taste good. Little did she know that the concoctions she was mixing would eventually become a billion dollar business.

Today, the 38-year-old is the co-founder of prebiotic soda brand Poppi, which she started alongside her husband Stephen Ellsworth. Almost a decade after her kitchen experiments, in May 2025, Ellsworth sold the business to PepsiCo for $1.95 billion.

The deal includes $300 million in anticipated cash tax benefits for a net purchase price of $1.65 billion.

Ellsworth has always been a hustler.

“I just knew I never wanted to work for anyone … I was good at, like, hacking systems and … I always had this really great gift to be visionary [and] see through cracks,” Ellsworth told CNBC Make It.

While in college, she took a full year off to travel and still managed to graduate in four years. During her studies, she also worked several jobs where she figured out how to execute more efficiently than expected.

“I worked at a call center, and I learned really early working there, that if I did certain things, I could [double], triple … 5x the sales of everybody else,” Ellsworth said.

After college, Ellsworth spent years on the road working in oil and gas research. She would travel all around the United States by herself, which eventually began to weigh on her health.

“I did that for seven years … working all over the U.S. I’ve driven through every single state by myself, stayed in teeny, little towns and motels and ran huge, multi-million dollar projects in my 20s. It was crazy.” she said.

But since she was always on the road, she had trouble accessing nutritious food. ”I felt ill. So my face started breaking out, my stomach was hurting. I was allergic to all sorts of different things … and I couldn’t figure out what’s going on,” she said.

When doctors couldn’t help, she began to Google all of her symptoms and decided to try taking apple cider vinegar, which is known to have many health benefits, but is unpalatable when taken on its own.

“I just fell in love with apple cider vinegar, and the way it made me feel, but I wanted to make it taste better,” said Ellsworth.

In her kitchen, Ellsworth began experimenting — infusing the apple cider vinegar with different fruits and natural ingredients and mixing it with soda water. Over the span of about three months, she came up with the first version of her recipe which would become the foundation of her brand.

By 2016, she and her husband were preparing for their first child when she decided to take a break from her job and all of the travel. With more free time, she decided to bottle up her gut-healthy drinks and sell them at her local farmers market under the name “Mother Beverage.”

Within three weeks of selling at the farmers market, they were discovered by Whole Foods, she said. “When the Whole Foods buyer came to our booth and was like: ‘We don’t have anything like this in Whole Foods. Here’s my card.’ That was that moment I was like: ‘Oh, I have a business,’” she added.

“I remember, my husband was still working. I was three months pregnant. We just bought a house, and I was like: ‘We’re gonna do this. We’re going all in.’ He thought I was crazy, but … we just never looked back,” she said.

The couple quit their jobs to focus on Poppi.

By 2017, Mother Beverage was selling in Whole Foods and by 2018, Ellsworth said the company made about $500,000 in revenue. In the same year, they went on the television show “Shark Tank” where they pitched Mother Beverage to a lineup of business moguls.

During the filming of the show, Ellsworth was nine months pregnant. “I had the baby 10 days later,” she told CNBC Make It. Ultimately, the couple landed a deal with businessman and investor Rohan Oza — who offered $400,000 for a 25% stake of the business.

After the deal took place, the company went through a nine-month rebrand. They added a touch of sugar and swapped their glass bottles for colorful cans, and “Mother Beverage” became “Poppi.”

“We decided to go with colored cans because it screams soda … If you think about it, soda is the biggest TAM (Total Addressable Market). Everyone drinks soda,” said Ellsworth. “We knew who we were. We’re revolutionizing soda for the next generation, and that is our North Star.”

Poppi launched in March 2020, right around when the pandemic hit and consumers were looking for healthier products, she added. From there, Ellsworth and her team poured into their branding.

“We were a digital-first brand. We were one of the first brands to get on Tiktok and go viral and really build … a social first community,” she said. “We did omnichannel, so we went Amazon and retail at the same time … and then we just brought in an incredible senior team with a lot of experience pretty early on.”

“We had a good partner who kept us funded, and [so] we weren’t always starved for cash,” she said. “We just had the right people, right time, right product, and any time we saw momentum, we invested in it.” All of these decisions created the perfect recipe for Poppi’s success and for the company’s $1.95 billion acquisition by PepsiCo.

When asked why she decided to sell her company, Ellsworth said: “We [wanted] to continue to get Poppi to as many people as possible, the only thing to really secure that is to bring in a distribution partner like Pepsi.”

She added: “It was just a gut feeling, I guess.”

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The people we choose to spend time with, both professionally and personally, have a massive impact on our mental health, productivity, and even career trajectory.

During my 12 years of working as a special agent with the U.S. Secret Service, I saw firsthand how the wrong people can derail even the best of intentions. That’s why I’ve learned to stay far away from three toxic personality types.

Here’s what to look out for, and what to do if you encounter them:

Drama Magnets are always caught in the middle of a crisis: financial troubles, relationship blow-ups, work drama, even legal issues. Chaos follows them like a shadow.

The problem is, they’re usually the ones creating the drama. They pull others into their issues because they crave attention, validation, and emotional stimulation. Drama is part of their identity.

Watch for the signs:

• They are constantly complaining.
• The have crisis-seeking behavior.
• They have emotional overreactions to little things.
• They need your time and energy at all hours.

When you’re around this energy, it’s easy to get swept up. You start reacting instead of leading. Your time, mental clarity, and emotional bandwidth get drained fast.

What to do: Set firm boundaries. Don’t become their emotional caretaker. And if needed, distance yourself entirely. 

This person always needs a target: a manager who overlooked them, a teammate who disagreed, or a system that they think is rigged against them.

They feel morally superior to others, quick to justify their anger, and driven by a need to “win” every exchange.

Watch for the signs:

• They mask insecurity with arrogance or passive-aggression.
• You find yourself walking on eggshells, choosing words carefully just to avoid confrontation.
• Every conversations with them feels like a battle.
• They are highly reactive, and even neutral feedback can set them off.

I’ve seen how dangerous this can be in high-stakes environments like the Secret Service. Collaboration breaks down. People stop speaking up. Progress stalls.

What to do: Don’t match their energy. Stay calm, be clear, and avoid emotional escalation. Focus on outcomes, not egos. Why waste your time and energy fighting battles that don’t move you forward?

A Blame Shifter never takes responsibility. In their view, failure is never a result of their own actions.

If they flunk a course, it’s because the teacher was terrible (not because they didn’t prepare). If they’re passed over for a raise, it’s because their boss is biased (not because of subpar performance). If their business is struggling, the economy is to blame (not their poor business model).

Watch for the signs:

• It’s always someone else who did something wrong, not them.
• They rarely stop to ask what they could have done differently.
• They are terrible communicators, partly because they can’t look at things from an objective standpoint.

In my line of work, accountability wasn’t optional — it was the standard. Mistakes were inevitable, but what mattered was how we responded. Strong professionals own their actions and learn from them.

What to do: Don’t partner with or heavily rely on people who won’t take responsibility. You’ll always end up holding the bag.

My advice is simple: Be strategic about which battles are worth engaging in. Surround yourself with people who take ownership of their lives. The company you keep shapes who you become, and that choice is one of your most powerful tools.

Evy Poumpouras is NBC’s Law Enforcement Contributor, a Former Special Agent and Polygraph Examiner with the U.S. Secret Service, and author of the bestseller Becoming Bulletproof. She is an Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York for Psychology and Criminal Justice with an MA in Forensic Psychology and an MS in Investigative Journalism from Columbia University. Evy is also the host of The AgentX Show. Her online appearances have drawn over 50 million views. Follow her on Instagram @evypoumpouras.

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In April 2024, Florence Poirel left her $390,000-a-year job at Google for what she calls a “mini retirement.”

Eighteen months later, she’s not sure she’ll ever return to full-time work. “I have to say, I’m not particularly antsy to go back to employment,” she tells CNBC Make It.

The 37-year-old lives in Switzerland with her partner, Jan, a fellow Googler who stepped away at the same time. Poirel first started thinking seriously about financial independence in 2018, after meeting Jan, who is 17 years her senior.

“I could not just wait for retirement to enjoy my time with him because he would be much older at that time,” she says.

Thinking about how they could enjoy more time together led Poirel to the FIRE movement — short for “financial independence, retire early” — which focuses on saving and investing aggressively to gain the freedom to step back from work sooner.

Poirel had always been careful with money, saving much of her income even as her salary rose. And despite earning a high salary, she rarely dined out, spent little on entertainment and flew economy or stayed in modest hotels when traveling, she says.

But discovering FIRE gave her frugality a new sense of purpose. And as she learned more about sustainability, she became vegan and started weighing the environmental and ethical impact of everything she bought.

“While I was mostly driven by frugality at the start of my journey, my buying process is now sustainability driven,” she says.

Now, before buying anything, Poirel asks herself the following questions:

• Do I really need this? Is it worth adding as future waste for the planet?
• Can I buy it secondhand?
• Is it vegan?
• Was it ethically produced?
• Is it recyclable, and how long would it take to decompose once thrown away?

“I think it’s important to understand how money gives power for good, whether you actually spend it or not,” she says.

By the time she left Google, Poirel had about $1.5 million in the bank — enough to take a long break from full-time work.

To make her savings last in one of the costliest countries in the world, she continues to live simply and avoid unnecessary spending. Instead of expensive nights out, her days mostly revolve around hiking, swimming in Lake Zurich and cooking at home with Jan.

However, she’s willing to spend more on items that are well made and designed to last. “If I bring something into my home or wardrobe, it has to be something environmentally and ethically sound,” she says.

She isn’t necessarily spending less than she used to — just spending more intentionally. “It’s not about cutting everything out, it’s about choosing better,” she says.

At the same time, her checklist isn’t hard to follow, since she’s always been frugal by nature. “I know people often use shopping as therapy,” she says. “This has never been the case for me. I find shopping boring at best and stressful at worst.”

All amounts are in U.S. dollars, converted from Swiss francs at the OANDA exchange rate of 1 CHF to 1.22 USD on May 31, 2025.

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