Who is behind Mindset Upgrade

Hi! I’m Danielle, the Chief Mutha of this operation. This website is a family project—the Ciminiera Family, that is. The way you pronounce our name is with a ch- sound and not an s- sound. It quite literally means chimney in Italian, so remember that when you pronounce it in your head. Phonetically it’s “chim-i-ñera.”

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way – who is this crew of mindset upgraders? We are a family of four: my husband Toni; our two sons: Jason and Nicolas; and I.

I will do most, if not all the writing here. BUT I hope that my sons will feel inspired one day to contribute their stories and learnings—that would be epic!

I have a day job that I absolutely love. As the sole financial provider of our household, I do not plan to leave that day job any time soon either…that is, until I reach my FI (financial independence) number. I started this site for two reasons.

1. I’m passionate about the centenarian philosophy and winning as much time as possible on this Earth doing the things I love with the people I love most. I believe to do that though, you have to be mentally, physically, and financially healthy, otherwise you won’t live very long, and if you do, you’ll likely be miserable.
2. I’m using this side gig as a learning experiment for my two boys. As a family, we are on our journey to FI together and I want the whole family to have skin in the game. I want them to feel the success and failures along the way. That’s why they will work with me on this site. I’ll teach my boys important life skills like how to write a resume, how to apply for a job, how to interview, and how to work in a team. I’ll also teach them how to run a business end-to-end, Profit & Loss statements and all baby, yeehaw!! And as they earn money, I’ll teach them what I’ve learned about what to do with it, like spending well below their means, investing the savings, and avoiding debt; so they too can learn as early as possible to set themselves up for financial independence one day. 

I hope this blog will inspire you to upgrade your mindset to live hard, healthy, and financially sound so that you too can live a long, happy life with those you love, doing what you love.

And since we’ll be chronicling the learning experiment while running this site with my sons, maybe that will also inspire you to do something similar to teach your kids or family members important life lessons and skills they’ll need to be great humans.

All our love,

The Chief Mutha and the Fam

P.S. Please note: this is a family operation. My 10 and 13-year-old sons are working on this with me, so pardon our dust and thank you for your patience while we work out the kinks! If you notice something not working as it should, please let me know at [email protected]. Thank you!