In less than 20 minutes on the phone, the Love careened from one topic to the next from depression in the Hamptons to fixing trade lines to her bitter take on hip-hop. Most surprisingly, the loquacious front-woman talked about business advice she's sought out and learned (the hard way) in her quarter-century career. Love is hardly the Lean In archetype, but she is proof that if you sit at enough tables � if you refuse to leave enough tables � you may eventually find yourself sitting square next to Warren Buffett, just as she did.

...What's the best business advice you received?: I sat at Le Bernardin with Richard Johnson, who was editing Page Six, and I was sort of sick of how Page Six was treating me. I wasn't being a bad girl or anything. He said [to me]: "New York is a 13-mile island and you only want to live in three of it, so even if you're going to get a divorce, make sure it's polite, because you're going to see that person � again and again and again and again."

Business advice? I am so close to understanding mortgage fraud entirely, but we're not getting into that. However, I can fix your credit without breaking the law if you're making under half-a-million, you only own one house, and you skipped a mortgage payment or something? I can get you up to $800.

The most important thing is personal finance, because corporate finance is something that happened to me while I was sleeping in the '90s and on a lot of drugs. So corporate finance, I had a vast, vast amount of wealth that I had no idea I had, because it was in different entities and LLCs. The most important thing, I think, is to keep three credit cards on the go, make those payments on time and watch every one of your trade lines.

The most useful thing is to have a couple CEOs as buddies. I have one major politico as a buddy, I have one major litigator � who is like, the closest voice to God there is in Manhattan � as a buddy, I have one LVHM CEO as a buddy, one hotelier as a buddy. We make big money, but they steal it all from us.

You were young and a mom when you inherited your late husband's estate. What was it like having to learn the business at that point?: I'm still the [estate] owner. The problem is that I sold some of it, which was really, really stupid. That's another thing: if you own something, don't sell it. Just don't. I mean, I do hedge funds with people I trust like Woody Harrelson and Edward Norton, who went to Yale. Although he did go for Japanese history, he's still really good with money.

You know, my friend Oliver Stone made this movie called Wall Street 2 and I was sitting with my friend [big-time director/producer] Brett Ratner and this really old dude. [That night] every trader was in Cipriani's; they were all kissing his ass. I had no idea who he was. Two days later, Brett got this text and it was from Warren Buffett, who was the little old man. He said that he really liked Courtney and he wanted Courtney to do a PSA. I had no idea who Warren Buffett was and I was sitting with him all night. That's kind of on the stupid side, I have to say.

The other important thing, I just have to get this out, is: audit, audit, audit. If the IRS knows you're going to audit, they get scared of you.