Episode 325: Rebuilding From Broke, Making Wealth A Daily Decision & The Power Of A Financial Plan With Dominique Broadway

Not every sale happens at the register.

Before AT&T Business Wireless, checking out customers on our mobile POS systems took too long.

Basically a staring contest where everyone loses.

It's crazy what people will say during an awkward silence. Now transactions are done before the silence takes hold. That means I can focus on the task at hand and make an extra sale or two. Sometimes I do miss the bonding time. Sometimes.

AT&T Business Wireless. Connecting changes everything.

Your mind is a very powerful thing. You've heard this before. But in my mind, I owed— and this isn't even a number, but you know— I owed a million bajillion dollars, OK? That's how much I owed. I owed a million bajillion dollars. And there was this debt monster. And this debt monster sat beside my bed all night long and just bothered me and stressed me out. When it was all said and done, I think I only owed like $21,000.

It was not as much as I thought.

I thought, but I had created this whole narrative in my head. That was really the first step for me. T-minus 10 seconds. Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast with your host, Jamila Souffrant. As a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest, and build real wealth. Join her on the journey to launch to financial freedom. In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Hey, hey, hey, real, real quick. It's Jamila here, and I have some exciting news to share with you. My first book, Your Journey to Financial Freedom: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Wealth and Happiness, is finally available for pre-order. That's right, you can pre-order my book right now, today. The book is officially out December 5th, 2023, but you do not have to wait that long to get some resources and information to help you. If you preorder the book today, I'm giving you some fabulous bonuses that will help you with your financial freedom and independence journey. I'm giving you the financial toolkit for free when you preorder the book. You'll get the Debt Payoff Matrix Workbook, the Goal Fuel Worksheet, the Financial Goals Workbook, and the Retirement Account Questionnaire my most effective and fave resources to share with you for free. Go to journeytolaunch.com/book to get your copy, to preorder that book today. If you want the episode show notes for this episode, go to journeytolaunch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. In the show notes, you'll get the transcribed version of the conversation the links that we mentioned, and so much more. Also, whether you are an OG journeyer or brand new to the podcast, I've created a free jumpstart guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes to listen to, stages to go through to reach financial freedom, resources, and so much more. You can go to journeytolaunch.com/jumpstart to get your guide right now. Okay, let's hop into the episode. Hey, journeyers, excited for you to meet this This week's special guest, we have on Dominique Broadway, financial literacy trailblazer and the award-winning personal finance expert. She's the founder of Finances Demystified. She is on a mission to make the dreams of people a reality and is the author of the new book, The Wealth Decision. She's an OG to me in this personal finance space. So welcome to the podcast, Dominique Broadway.

Thank you so much. I'm super excited to be here finally on your show.

So yes, we made it happen. Listen, we're both busy, but I feel like this is great because like I said in my little brief intro just now, when I was first coming into the space, the podcast was launched in 2017, the blog 2016, but you were like one of the people I used to listen to when I was in my car before I had anybody knowing about it, where you were doing your thing, you know, like one of the— to me, the pillars of the women in the personal finance space. So I'm excited to bring you now on my platform to introduce people to you if they may not know you yet and to hear more about your story. So it's pretty dope.

Thank you, I appreciate it again. I really appreciate it.

So I do want to get into your story, your backstory, a bit. Uh, you worked in finance, you worked managing money in corporations at a brokerage firm, and I want to talk about a little bit of that experience and then transitioning into entrepreneurship. So what was that like?

[Speaker:DOMINIQUE_BROWDER] Yeah, like you said, I'll take it back a little bit further. So I actually started really falling in love with all things personal finance when I was like 16 years old, right? Like started teaching myself how to trade and invest when I was 16 and decided I wanted to become a stockbroker. And I would never forget me telling my family that and they're like, what is a stockbroker? What is that? I would just always just really, really engage and just like semi-obsessed with the world of investing in stocks. Honestly, just understanding how to make my money work for me after I earned it. Like, once I earned it, I'm like, "How can it keep doing something?" Right? And so I ended up going to Bowie State University, majoring in banking and finance, getting a job at UBS Financial Services, which is, you know, well, a private wealth management firm. And it's funny because I had never heard of them at the time because they focus, you know, on high-net-worth clients. I was not a high-net-worth client at the time. And so did that for— interned there for a summer. They offered me a full-time position, but I was— I needed to go finish school. So I went back to school, finished school, graduated a semester late, but I did start working, bought my first house before I graduated college, and just was full steam ahead in the personal finance space, more specifically in the investment management space. Got licensed. And then, like many of us, kind of just kept having that entrepreneurial itch and realizing that if I stayed at this firm, I could only help really just the top 1% and that was it, right? So I'll never forget, I went to my mentor and I said, um, you know, I, I love the work we're doing, but I want to help more people. People who at the time were like me that didn't have millions and millions of dollars but needed access to this information and investment opportunities, and they weren't getting them, right? And so, um, he told me, he said, you'll never make money helping people that don't have money. And I was like, say less, right? I probably said something else back then because that saying wasn't popular, but I'm basically like, okay, let's, let's see. And so I ended up quitting my job and starting my company. At the time, it was just Dominique Broadway, and then we ended up changing it to just Finances Demystified. And that was really how the journey started.

What caused you to be such a go-getter at such a young age? You wanted to be a stockbroker, getting that internship. What was that? Was that all internal? Did you have guides or reference points outside of you to know what to do?

It was a combination, to be honest. I had my first, quote unquote, business was when I was probably like 5 years old, right? Like, literally making bracelets and selling them. You know, sold candy like most people did in middle school. Became the chief operating officer of an education— I guess we could call it an edtech company. When I was 15, we were teaching kids how to use computers. So I was always just like, I couldn't sit still. Maybe it's my ADHD, I don't know, but I could not sit still. Always had to have at least 2 jobs. Always was just really, really ambitious, right? I know my grandmother told me the other day, she's like, "You've always just been so ambitious." And I don't know where it came from. I think part of it was born in me and God's passion for my— or purpose for my life. But also, I would say my parents too. My dad was an entrepreneur, legally and illegally. And then also, my mom was an entrepreneur as well. And my stepfather was as well. So I was surrounded by a lot of entrepreneurs. None of them ever seen the levels of financial success that I was able to see. But just seeing people who were constantly go-getters and hustlers and always making their own money was something that really always intrigued me. You know, sometimes they had 9-to-5s, but most of the time they didn't, right? Just the flexibility that came from that, you know, being able to see, you know, people make way more money than you could if you had a job. And so those things just really, really excited me. And then my, you know, my parents also kept, you know, a lot of Entrepreneur Magazine and Black Enterprise and stuff like that around the house. And I would just sit and read and just be inspired. And, you know, I would see a Melanie Hobson and be like, oh my gosh, I want to be like her, or Carla Harris. And those were the people in that finance space at the time that were really, really leaders. I would say outside of that too, it was— I felt like once I would go work and make money, that the money would just kind of sit, right? And, you know, we're taught to put it in a piggy bank. And I'm like, okay, so I went out and did all this work with this money, and it's sitting in this piggy bank, like make this make sense, right? And that's when I started researching when I was like 15. I would say like, okay, how are the rich getting richer, right? How are they actually building wealth? How are they making money? And I realized it was two ways. It was real estate and the stock market. And so that's when I just really went down the rabbit hole of trying to learn everything I could about real estate and also about, uh, investing, um, in the stock market as well.

At the company— so at your company where you were helping these high net worth individuals, I'm sure you started to see commonalities So was there like a common thread like you saw? Even just like, you know how people say when you have money, and so maybe this is just from my outside perspective, right? When you have a lot of money, your problems are different, but sometimes the problems are at the core the same. So did you see any of that? Like, what were some common threads you saw with people who had money where you're like, this, like, they still have these problems, or they were different type of problems? I'd love to kind of hear about that.

They were definitely different. Type of problems, right? Um, I was talking to my friend the other day, we were joking that we should start a show called Rich People Problems. Rich people problems are so different, you know. Rich people problems is like, my ex-wife trying to take all my money, or my ex-wife is trying to increase my child support from $5,000 to $15,000, right? Like, what? That's a huge amount of child support. Or, uh, calling in, hey, I need you wire me $3 million, like, in the next hours. I need to buy this yacht. And we're like, okay, Mr., Mrs. So-and-so, we need to sell these. You know, at the time when you sell your stock, you know, sell your stocks to get this capital out for you, it's T+3, the trade day plus 3 days. So I can't get you the $3 million today, right? And they're like, what? What do you mean? Like, those are the problems that they have. Like, the money's there, but we can't wire you it out today. It's going to take a couple of days to get this money to you. So it was different types of problems, I would say. One of the things I remember, we had one client who was like constantly overdrafting. This man had millions of dollars. He was a doctor. I never forget. He had millions of dollars. And I was like, I was so surprised, like rich people overdraft too? And they do. But it was because he, for some reason, just would constantly forget that the millions he had was sitting in the investment portion of his account, not necessarily liquid cash. And so he would just be like charging stuff up because the accounts had a debit card to it. And he, you know, like, I'm like, we have to call and say, hey, Mr. So-and-so, your account's overdrafted like $80,000, right? That's a rich person problem. They're not going to let a, you know, a regular income account go, you know, negative $80,000. And we had to explain to him, like, if you're going to be making these purchases, we need to keep more cash liquid. We can't have as much invested. So those are some of the, like, problems that they would have. But, you know, when you make more money, you do have different problems. You have more people trying to get to your money, so you have to do a lot more to protect it. You also have more taxes and things of that nature. And so we were also working with them to do a lot of like strategy and tax strategy to help reduce their taxes, taxable income. And so those are the type of problems that you would see, not necessarily like paycheck to paycheck, just different problems.

Right, right. So you decided to start or go out on your own. How are you with your finances at that point? I mean, you're still pretty ambitious, right? What was your goal for creating your platform?

Yeah, you know, the funny thing is that I didn't really have a financial goal, right? My financial goal was to just replace my income. And when I quit my job, I had, you know, about a little over $50,000 saved. So I felt pretty good. You know, I was in my 20s, I had no debt, $50,000, no student loan debt, no debt at all. Like, so I was like, I'm in a good place. I had no kids, you know, none of that stuff I got now. And, you know, it took, I think, about a year and a half, almost 2 years in, I believe I went completely broke, like completely broke. So financially, I was in a great place when I quit. But because I didn't have a goal, I wasn't doing all the things we're doing now, constantly making sure that we're hitting daily, not just monthly revenue goals, but daily revenue goals. The right amount of leads are coming in. Our ads are getting, you know, 2x, 3x return on ad spend. Like, I wasn't doing all that. I was just like, here I am, let's see what I can do. And so I ended up going broke about 2— I would say about 2 years, a year and a half in. And that's because I was living off of my savings. I wasn't charging enough for the services that I was providing. And so my financial situation completely turned around, which was traumatic. Like, my house went into foreclosure, that beautiful little condo I bought when I was 22. My car got repossessed. And thankfully, I was able to use my personal finance skills to negotiate to get the car back at actually half of the price that was owed. Was able to renegotiate my mortgage and actually get that, that reworked as well. But I went through all these financial hardships that at the time felt like my world was coming to an end. And like, I'm just like, Lord, why would you make me go through all this, right? I know I'm doing all this to help people, but now, obviously now, and years after that, I realized that I was just getting what I like to call a next level or another set of education, right? Education on what is it like when you have millions of debt collectors calling and your credit score goes down to 450 and, you know, you have no money and you're beyond paycheck to paycheck and you ain't even getting no paycheck. What does that look like and how do you navigate that space and then rebuild from that? And so that was like the new level of education that I received from that experience. You know, when you're out of it, you're able to see the benefits of it. So yeah, yeah.

Well, so I think this is so interesting because even though you were good seemingly with numbers on a corporate level, on managing other people's money, and then also for yourself, right, you started a business like a personal finance brand around that. And then, but in your own life, because you were running this business, doing all the things, but not necessarily being strategic with maybe your business not charging enough. I kind of— and I see this happen a lot for new entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs in general, even people who work in finance. Like, either they work in finance and do— they do great at managing other people's money, but their own personal finances are just— they haven't been focusing on it. Or they could be really good maybe knowing about saving, but on the other end, they don't know about like investing and managing their money to create wealth. And so I think, like you said, it almost seemed like that experience for you was important to have because now, like, you were living maybe what you were helping through your clients through.

Yeah. The interesting thing is I know exactly why I got into the situation. I think it's also important anytime you're going through any situation, like especially financial, whatever, understanding why, why and how you got into it so that you don't get into it again. I got into that situation, one, because I wasn't charging enough. I wasn't doing all the things I mentioned. But it was a mental thing, right? So I created this mental block where I was embarrassed and ashamed of the situation that I got myself into. I was feeling like a hypocrite. I turned a blind eye, right? I was ignoring it because I didn't want to accept the fact that it was happening. So I'm like, how did this happen? How did I get here? This is not supposed to be my story. And because I was so embarrassed about it, I just ignored it. And that's what a lot of people do, right? When you run into financial hard times, you just— you almost just want to close your eyes and say, okay, this is going to go away, right? And it's not going to go away. Like, guarantee you it's not going to go away. Actually, if anything, it's going to get worse. That was why I got into that situation. So month after month, my whole goal was like, I'll just make more money, I'll just make more money, I'll just make more money. But it wasn't necessarily working that way because I was still getting behind on bills. And so then I look up and now I'm in, you know, house foreclosure, et cetera, et cetera. And that was literally why. So that's why I always tell people all the time, like, Communication is one of the most important things when it comes to relationships, but it's also one of the most important things when it comes to money. If I had literally just picked up the phone or answered the phone when these bill collectors were calling or when I felt like I was going to get into debt or not be able to pay my bills, I would have been able to honestly avoid or make a lot of those situations way easier than me just trying to avoid and act like they weren't happening. And so that was really why I got into that situation. But also, I will say that my personal finance skills was also what got me back out, right? It was like me accepting like, okay, I messed up. I need to like accept where I am because if I don't accept where I am, I'm never going to be able to get up out of this hole. And that was like that first step or what I call my first decision. And one of the most important decisions for me, which was like the name of the book, "The Wealth Decision," was me making a decision that wealth was the only choice. We not doing this paycheck to paycheck, can't figure it out. Like, this is not going to be my story. And I'm like, this is the only decision that I'm making. And every move that I make every single day needs to be getting me closer to wealth or helping me to build wealth. If what I'm doing every day isn't getting me closer to that, then I'm doing the wrong things. And so that was how I was able to kind of turn it around a little bit.

Talk about some of those specific decisions, right? So now you have made the decision. What do you do the next day? What do you do on the next moment that's starting to turn the ship around?

Yeah, so the next day, next moment is probably the hardest part, right? Actually realizing how much you messed up, right? And so it's like, OK, I made the decision. It's kind of like when people are ready to lose weight. It's like, OK, I made the decision. Now I need to go get on the scale and see how bad it really is. And that's what it was for me. Like, I'm like, okay, I've made this decision. Now I need to go see how much I've messed up my finances. And so for me, I couldn't do it on my own. I realized that if I had tried to do it on my own, I wouldn't have gotten it done because I was in a way lying to myself about what was really happening, not accepting what was going on. So I went to my family. I first went to my mom, just like, look, this is what's happening. I need you guys to just walk me through this because I can't do it on my own. And I also went to my grandfather. I told my grandfather, I said, I need you to treat me like my clients. Like, I literally gave him the spreadsheets and like everything that I typically use for my clients. I'm like, I'mma send you these, I'mma come to your house. I need you to just act like you are my financial planner. And he's always been like my go-to when it came to money anyway. And so we sat down, we literally— I brung over all of my mail. It was so much mail that had been stacked up for months that I didn't open. We opened up all the mail together and we just went through my like debt reduction spreadsheet and just started writing down all the names of debt collectors, how much was owed. And then we just started calling them one by one, one by one, and negotiating. And that was the biggest thing. It was funny because your mind is a very powerful thing. We've heard this before, but in my mind I owed— and this isn't even a number, which, you know, I owed a million bajillion dollars. Okay. That's how much I owed. I owed a million bajillion dollars. And there was this debt monster and this debt that monster sat beside my bed all night long and just like, "Ahh," bothered me and stressed me out. When it was all said and done, I think I only owed like $21,000. It was not as much as I thought, but I had created this whole narrative in my head. That was really the first step for me. And then from there, I was able to start going through my budget as well. I literally went through my budget worksheet. This is how much the business is bringing in. This is how much I can keep, how much I'm making. And just boom, that was it. So once I got the budget done, I knew my numbers, got the debt reduction plan done, also created a plan to clean up my credit and start saving something. I couldn't really start investing just yet because I was rebuilding my savings. Then I had a plan. So I felt good. Like, it literally felt like a huge weight was lifted because now I had my action steps and I had my— my steps were ordered of what I needed to do instead of just trying to hide every day.

Right. So just like a quick recap, you know, making the decision to make the change, but then taking action and trusting people around you that care about you to help you in this. So sharing, right? Stepping out of the shame and sharing what is actually going on with people that will help you and that you can trust. And then also like facing that monster, facing whatever you think it is, because like you said, you always think it's bigger and scarier. You know, as kids, we always think what's in the closet or under the bed is— and it's like, it's nothing, right? Or it can be something. It might be like a lost stuffed animal, but it's not the boogie monster.

Yeah, it's never what you think.

Yeah, it's never that. It's never that. And I love how the vulnerability here, because like, I'm not saying people can't be perfect, but I doubt that many people are. Like, if you say you never mess up, even currently, right? Like, I was looking at something I'm still doing, I need to do, that I'm like, I can't believe like we've been paying for this service that I should have canceled a year ago. Like, this is ridiculous. Like, it's a waste of money. But it's like, it happens.

It happens. I had a similar situation. And I'm like, why do I keep getting these charges from Apple? Apple's just every day, just feel like they're taking out money. So I logged into my Apple ID or whatever and looked. And there's a way you can see all the recurring. When you're buying all these little apps and, you know, when you have kids and they're signing up for stuff, oh my gosh, like, the monthly things. And I had to go through and just start canceling stuff. What is all this?

But I know what it is. I'm just being really lazy. And I'm like, even me, even me who knows that I could use this money for something, I'm like, Jamila, you are like, what is wrong? But listen, I think it's a human thing. Thank you for sharing that part of your story because it also shows anyone else, even if you're going through something really financially feeling heavy and dark, like, I mean, we're going to talk about where you are now, which is amazing, right? Financially. But it's like you, This is temporary. It's— but you have to make the decision and take the steps to get out of it if you want to change it.

Totally agree. And that's one of the most important for people to realize, that all these things are temporary, right? Unless you just decide to stay in that situation, it is temporary.

Did you know I broke out the path to financial independence into what I call 5 journeyer stages? That's right, there are 5 stages that you have to travel through to reach complete financial independence. When you know your stage, you know what to focus on and how to move on to the next stage. I created a free 1-minute quiz to help you determine what stage you're in. After you take the quick quiz, you'll know where you are on your financial independence journey, the main thing you should focus on, plus you'll get a curated list of 10 Journey to Launch podcast episodes to listen to that will help you for your specific stage. Go to journeytolaunch.com/my-stage right now to take the free quiz. That's journeytolaunch.com/my-stage. So the ship is turned around. You're now making headway, right, with your finances. What are some of the next steps? Because I mean, now you're running a multimillion-dollar business. You're, I'm assuming, financially in a way better position. But there's a lot of steps that took you from there to here. So how did you transfer your business from— and what, what, what at the time were you doing? Were you doing like coaching and brand work? What were like some of your major things?

Yeah, yeah. At that time I was only doing— I wasn't doing any brand work, I was just doing coaching when I really first started. So it was— that was it, honestly, just, just coaching. And then I realized also too when I was kind of re-getting my financial life together that I needed to figure out another way, right, to create money because obviously there's only so many hours in a day. And so that's when I created like my first course, right? So I was like, okay, I realized that there was certain questions that everyone was asking. So I was like, okay, if I can just figure out how to package what everyone is asking me for. Yeah, some people will still sign up for one-on-one, which is great. I enjoyed it. But some people will want to just pay lesser amount, get the course and still walk through at their own pace. And so that was a big game changer for me, right? And that was able to start to turn the business around. I, you know, went from making maybe $60,000 to $80,000 a year to making, you know, $200,000 to $250,000 a year pretty consistently. And then, you know, after a while, I was starting to do some brand deals every now and then. That's when, you know, kind of the following or audience picked up a little bit. But that was really all that I was doing at the time. Yeah.

And what was your vision for the business at this point, right? Sometimes we start things— I think at the moment you said you didn't really have one, but like, as you're starting to do it more, what are you seeing that this can turn into for yourself?

At that time or now?

Well, at the time. So at that $250 mark, right, what were your next steps? Like, what did you see?

Yeah, so at that point I realized that, um, I had created like kind of like an entry-level product And I was like, okay, there's opportunity for people that want to go to the next level, right? And they're ready to invest. And my partner was like, yo, like, you have all this investing knowledge. And I had started back investing and trading at that time. I had stopped, you know, investing when I was broke and started back investing and trading. And I was good. Like, I was like, okay, I got it. I got my juice back, right? You know, during COVID because I had more time at home, right? I was also doing speaking as well before that, a lot of speaking. Which was a great revenue generator, but I don't technically count that as part of the suite because that's technically a separate business. But anyway, so I was like, let me create the next level product. And that next level product was the product that I literally did not want to create for years, um, and that was the investing course. Uh, and I never wanted to create an investing course because I felt like everyone that was selling investing courses were just super scammy and super janky, and I was just like, I don't want to be associated with that. But people kind of kept telling me like, yeah, but that's also why you should do it because people do trust you and we know you're not going to give us crap. And I'm also one of the few financial experts that are out that actually has a true financial background. That was really the thing that also took it over the edge. We launched our course, we rebranded it. Now it's called Wealth Demystified, but it was called the Wealth Transfer Investing Course at the time. Launched it and said, hey, the goal was just, let's just see if we can get 20 people to sign up the first month. As the beta group, 66 people that signed up in the first 10 minutes. I was like, okay, right? Um, and so then we were able to scale that from, you know, I think that was like August, from like August to December. I think we ended up doing about $3.5 million or so in sales, um, and then did about $8.5 the following year. And you have generated, I would say, over $14 million in the past 2 years, probably 2 and a half years, and things just like start, you know, really started taking off. Um, and it was something that— it's so funny because it's, it's the thing that I literally did not want to do, right? I did not want to do, but it's been a game changer for so many people's lives too, right? To be able to expose people to investing and like getting your money to work for you, like that has been, you know, obviously the business has been a great generator for my wealth, but the things that I've done even with that wealth and also from trading has really been what has propelled me, right? So taking some of the wealth and putting it into real estate and buying other businesses and acquiring other businesses, like, and those are the things that are like really moving the wealth needle. Like right now I'm in Dubai, um, I'm actually here, we've been looking at property the entire time and we're looking to purchase a bunch of properties here that are international real estate, right? And so it was just all those things that, like I said, over time are helping to really, really build that wealth outside of the business, but also in my, my personal life and brand as well, right?

I do like how you say when you were getting your finances in order, investing wasn't a priority, right? It's not that it wasn't on your radar, but you had to get— there's steps to take.

I couldn't afford to do it, right?

No, but it's good because I do feel that when people hear all the advice— and we're gonna— I want to dive into what you mean by investing and trading versus— because I talk a lot about Listen, I like the boring way to build wealth. It's not as fast, but, you know, I like long-term investing, index funds. But I know that there are other methods and other ways that people can earn money and invest their money outside, even though I always say baseline, at least, you know, do the long-term investing. Like, that should be like your, the bare minimum. And then the extra money, you could do the trading. But when we go back and we think about kind of hearing all the advice people hear and the whole scammy, I'm with you on, and some of the reasons why I'm like so hesitant to bring some people on the show or just talk about certain things is because I'm just like, I know that when people hear this, it sounds really great. And depending on who they're hearing it from, like, it can be— it can be a scam or a trap. And I don't want to be negative in that way. Right. And which is why I preach discernment and doing your research and making sure something works for you. But I'm there with you when it comes to trying to, you know, not wanting to do something because you want to make sure you're giving the best product and value and teaching it the right way, because a lot of it is not done the right way nowadays.

It's not. It's not. And that's, that's also why there's been times I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore because there's people out here who are just like misleading people and it's creating a bad name for the financial education space. And as you'd like to say, I've been doing this now. I've had my business, my business now full-time for 10 years. So I've been doing this for a while. And so just being able to provide that insight is great. But I think the question you're asking too is I do the dry boring investing, but I also like to trade, right? So investing to me is putting your money in something with the expectation of it giving you additional profit or income in the future, right? So let's say, like you said, index funds, right? Index funds are great. I don't think there's anything wrong with index funds, but understanding that they're not going to get you a bunch of money today, but they are going to give you good, solid, sexy returns over time, which is great, right? But, you know, you can invest anything from stocks, bonds, index funds, mutual funds, real estate, art, jewelry, right? People invest in all different types of things where I understand that it's not going to give me a return today, but these are all things that are all assets that I am building, right? That's what investing means to me. Buying something and understanding that it's going to give me a profit or income in the future. In the future could be in 6 months. It could be 8 months. It could be a year. It could be a couple of years. It could be 10 years. When I think about trading, trading is when I'm looking to make a return every day, every week, every month, right? So I typically only trade maybe 3 days a week, some weeks more. When it's an earnings season, I mean, I'm in there 5, 4 days a week, 4, 5 days a week. Typically I'm only trading like 3 days a week, and that's because that's all I want, all the time I want to put into it, right? But typically my goal is to try to do, you know, at least $50 a week, right? Um, and so, but that's my goal. But that also is because I'm working with a larger amount of capital, and I've been doing this now for 22 years, right? So those results may not be what a newbie is going to see, and I like to make sure that people understand that, right? But that's the difference between the two. So with investing, you're putting it in, letting it sit. With trading, it's, hey, I'm buying this right now and I'm selling it and taking the $10,000, $20,000 profit today or tomorrow, in the next couple hours. And that's the difference between the two, right?

Well, talk a bit about growing and scaling your business a bit. I think regardless of what the business is— so in your case, you know, it's a financial, um, like product, right? You're helping people learn how to trade. But you know, there are a lot of people who start out and they may have a product, maybe it's a one-to-one service model or a course model, or they don't even know. Like, they're just listening and they're like, I do want to start something, I just don't know what that is, and I want it to one day become a legitimate business. What are some of the steps or things you put into place internally that are not necessarily seen by everyone that allowed you to grow to be able to support the business that you have?

I didn't realize it was going to be as much as it is. It's, it's, it's a, it's a lot that goes behind the scenes if you want to have a real business. I will say that there's definitely people out here selling crap and with no customer support, no tech, no nothing. But I would say one of the biggest— oh my God, there's so many things. You know, I ran all of the departments within Finance and the Misfit Five up until we made the first probably $6 million in maybe 6 or 7 months, right? It was me, all me, really. And so in addition to like my graphics person, but that was like the biggest thing, like hiring and finding the people that could not just do what I do, do, but do what I do and do it way better than me and do it more efficiently than me. That has been one of the biggest things. Outside of that is also just really understanding the numbers. I think a lot of people do not spend enough time understanding the numbers, and that's very, very important. So having daily sales goals, and I think a lot of times people also fail in business because they have monthly sales goals. And I think you should have a monthly number, but the easiest way to hit the monthly number is to make sure that you're hitting your sales every day. So if you're hitting your sales every day, boom, you can now say, hey, this— we're not on track to hit our sales goals. Let's pivot. And we can make those pivots earlier in the month instead of waiting to the end of the month and saying, oh no, we didn't make our $10,000 or whatever we wanted to make. Also getting into the ad space. I think a lot of times women, especially Black women, don't run ads. Right. And they're like, I don't know what it is, but that was a big, big needle mover for me. Right. Because there's— you only sell to your existing audience. So much, then you got to go out and get new leads. And sales, to any entrepreneur, to any business— if you Coca-Cola, Google, whatever— if you're not selling, you are failing, literally. And this is also why most people fail, because they put all their energy into building the fancy website and getting their social media all cute matching and literally have no plan whatsoever on how they're going to get people to the website or to even their social page. So getting leads— and I was just actually having a call today with, with my revenue manager, just talking about like, what do we need? We need to increase our leads, right? So what do we do? What do those increase in leads need to be so that we can hit this new revenue goal, right? We need to have X amount of leads coming in each week so that we can get X amount of sales converted, which help our— help us reach our goals. So if you're not thinking about your business this way, that's not a good thing. It's not a good thing, right? It's very, very bad. It's not— you're not going to be able to have a sustainable business if you aren't in your numbers. As simple as that. Because if not, you're just hoping and praying that somebody comes and buys a cake or something, right? But there's even a methodology to that, right? Like, how many people need to get exposed to your cake so they come buy your cakes? Maybe you start a birthday list and send people a slice of cake so they'll buy a whole cake. You got to figure out what that's going to be. But those are a lot of the things behind the scenes, you know, project management tools, the staff, the constant digging into the numbers, the setting the KPIs and things like that that people just don't talk about. And it's necessary if you get your— once you get your business to 6, once I got my business to 7, and then what it took to go from 7 to 8 was totally different. The stuff I did at 6 figures did not work at 7. The stuff at 7 did not work at 8, right? The stuff at 8, the stuff from the 7-figure era started breaking when I got to 8, right? So it was like, what is happening? Um, but those are some of the things that I've had to deal with, I would say, behind the scenes that people just don't even realize that's actually happening. You know, having the customer support, having good workflows, um, it's, it's a lot. I was like, this is too much health insurance and 401(k)s, and it's a lot.

Yeah, well, you just— you said something, um, about selling. And here's the thing, for any of us to reach any goals, having income, having money coming in— so whether that is you're working in corporate America, um, there's a form of selling, you know, your services to your company and to your colleagues, right? Marketing yourself. So even if you're not an entrepreneur, like what we're doing, what Dominique Broadway and I are doing. But inside your company, you still have to market yourself. You still have to sell, right, that you know what you're doing so that you can earn at the top, no matter what company you're working in. And then on the side, if you have a side hustle or you're a full-time entrepreneur, and what comes up for me, like with selling and marketing, is you have to be visible. It's visibility and putting yourself out there, which requires vulnerability. And like you had said, For you selling the investing course and the way you've seen it, it's just like there's so many people you don't want to be like, you know, you're not like, but you don't want to be associated with that. And I find that we often don't want to put ourselves out there because we don't want to seem like, am I going to come off this way? Is someone going to judge me or think of me this way? So how do you get past that? Because I think that's a lot of people's stopping points, whether they're in their office or their cubicle or trying to get something online out. It's like they don't want to be visible because they don't want to be vulnerable. And be criticized?

That's something that, like, I would have been— I probably would have hit these numbers way earlier if I wasn't so concerned about what people would say or think. I think that you honestly just have to go for it. You just have to put yourself out there. Um, you know, as they say, faith and fear can't reside in the same heart. And I will also say another thing outside of me making this decision, that decision that I chose the wealth decision was also me choosing to go out on faith 100%. And fear is the only thing. So you're saying like, oh, I'm scared to do this. That scare is fear, right? And so as long as you let the fear stay, you probably won't be successful. Or you may reach a little bit of success, but you're not going to reach the heights that you truly are capable of reaching. And so that other decision was me just 100% going on faith and saying, all right, God, I'm going to let you rock. I'm not going to try to have my own plan and your plan. I'm going to let you do your plan. And if you're constantly telling me I need to show up more, I need to create this thing, I'm going to just do it. And we all have that thing that we've probably heard multiple times that we need to do. And we all know what we need to do. And we're still not doing it. Just do it. And that, for me, has been a big game changer. So if you're scared of something or you're fearing something, pick one. If you're gonna rock with the fear, rock with the fear. But if you're gonna rock with the faith, you got to go all in on, on faith. So that, that's my answer to that.

And because you're, you're at this new level, right, there's other things that you possibly want to do, right? You just said you're looking at property, you might have some just other businesses you want to expand into or grow. Do you find that you have to make the same wealth decision? Because I'd love to like explore this concept more because you named book, Wealth Decision, for a reason. But I'm sure it's not just one wealth decision you have to make. What does this process look like?

To me, it's literally just choosing, right? So we have wealthy decisions that we make every day. And we also have, like, I don't like to say poor, but poor money mindset decisions that we make, right? A lot of times, that's letting the fear come in and saying, oh, should I do this? I'm not sure if I should do this. Can I do this, right? Or also just to me, that constant wealth decision is putting yourself into new scenarios and new situations and being open to even seeing what others are doing to build their wealth, right? And constantly learning is another big, big, big piece. So I think a lot of times people are like, okay, well, I made this decision, I've done this thing, this is all I'm going to do. Totally fine. You like, hey, I just, I just want to invest in stocks and index funds and leave it there. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's not all I want to do, right? Because you look, especially when you start traveling around the world, you see all the other things people are doing and all the possibilities that many people that look like us aren't doing because we're not exposed to. To me, that's a constant decision to open our eyes and see what's out there, right? So, that's another constant thing that you're constantly trying to do, staying abreast of what's happening in the world, right? Everyone's like, "Oh, everyone's on social media." scared about AI now and all these different things that are happening. Don't get scared. Lean into it, right? Look into ways that you can implement it into your business so that you don't get left behind. That's another way that people who are already impoverished stay in poverty because they don't necessarily have sometimes the resources or tools to understand what's happening or just the time, right? Because they're working so much. But constantly learning and saying, okay, this is happening. This isn't something I should be scared of. How can I add it into my life? Maybe I can even start some sort of business surrounding this. Next wave of technology that's coming. So that's another decision that you have to constantly make as well, to be a lifelong learner.

I love that you mentioned AI and like leaning into that. And just like we talk about financial literacy, like being technically literate is important too, right? And there's so many changes and so much more to come. Of course, be cautious, but don't let that prevent you from moving forward and taking calculated risk. There's risk in anything where you want to see reward.

Totally, totally. As they say, the greater the risk, the greater the reward. I love risk personally. Like, I am like, throw it all in, let's see what happens. But I've also seen the best rewards that way. And I think it's important for us all to understand, like, what is our risk tolerance, right? I know some people who may be like, yeah, you're like, look, I just like a vanilla investment, and that's cool, and that's perfectly fine. But some people like, let's jump off the cliff and build the parachute on the way down. That's me. I'm like, let's just go, right? And so you have to figure out what works best for you. When it comes to wealth and money, there's no one size fits all. You have to figure out what is best for you and your mental and your risk tolerance and your budget and your goals, right? Some people, there's certain goals, right? So there's some people who are like, look, I just want to save a million, have a million saved. Or some people are just like, hey, I want to just retire comfortably. I don't even need millions. I just want to retire comfortably. There's some people like, I want $100 million and I want a jet. That's me, right? That's, that's me. But I also just love the game of business. And I'm like, I need, I want this, I want this, I want to have this, I want to create these different opportunities, which is to figure out what's best for you. And I think that's the most important part, right, is not trying to compare yourself to someone else, but really sitting down and saying, when am I happiest? What makes me happy? Where am I happiest financially? Like, I know for me, one of my happy places is seeing water every day, right? Why I live in Miami. I wake up every morning, I see water from every room. That was something that makes me happy. So I know if that's a goal of mine, I'm going to need to figure out how to make enough money so I can be on a high floor in a nice building and see water. That's something that makes me happy, right? And so you have to sit down and think about like, what are you happiest? This, right? I'm also very happy when I'm drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice. So I want to at least be also be able to have the money to afford fresh-squeezed orange juice. You know, this is way more expensive than the pasteurized one. And so you figure out like those little teeny things that you love, and those are— those also are like the decisions that you make. And we talk about the orange juice in the book too. Like, those are the— one of the reasons, one of the moments I was like, okay, I've hit a little bit of a level of wealth where I can go in the grocery store now and buy orange juice without checking my checking account to make sure I can handle it, 'Cause there were a time, there was a time when life was like that. So it's important to kind of figure out like what makes you happy? What lifestyle, lifestyle design as they say, fits best for you? Not for them or your mom or your daddy, whoever, but for you.

[Speaker:DOMINIQUE_BROWNE] I love that. I love the details, figuring out the details, what you want to see, experience. I mean, it's like the senses, right? Like what do you want to taste, touch, see, hear? And then what concessions are you going to make, right? Like some people is like, I do like the water, but I don't want to have to work X amount of time or have to think about how to create however millions of dollars to do that so I can maybe drive to the water, you know, like there's concessions or like compromises. And also realizing, is it out of fear though? Like, are you having— is this a limited mindset that's causing you not to go for it? Or is it just like, I know my comfort level and what I'm willing to put out effort for? Because when you were talking about building your business and all like the work, I was like, ooh, I don't know if I want to go that far, but It's up to me to be introspective to see, is that more of a block for me because it's a scary thing I have not experienced yet, or is it exactly what I want because I actually am quite fine, you know, like we're currently where I am, or maybe reaching just a little higher. So I love this conversation to let people also think through this stuff too.

Yeah. And that's, and that's also too, I would say like now with the social media world, I feel like everyone's just like almost trying to keep up with each other. What's for one person may not be for you. I will say even too, I've built this business, which sometimes feels like this monster, right? So different from when it was just me coaching by myself. And I was like, I decided actually last summer, I'm like, I don't want to be the CEO anymore, right? And so now I'm trying to work on a plan where I'm not going to be the CEO anymore, hopefully, honestly, for the next 6 months and handing it over to someone else because I don't want to— I also own it, but I don't even think I'm I'm a great CEO, to be honest. Like, I'm, I'm okay, right? I'm probably meant more to be the founder than the CEO. And so that's something that you have to, to decide, right? I'm like, I've created a company that I no longer want to work for. I really just want to be talent. That's it. Figuring out and navigating that space, that also comes back to really understanding what is it that you want and what do you want your life to look like.

Yes. Okay, Dominique, please tell everyone where they can find out more about you, your new book, and what's next for you.

Yes. So the book is getting released. I'm so, so, so excited. Please make sure you go grab it. It's called The Wealth Decision. It talks about all the things I just talked about, but the 10 steps to help you succeed, achieve your own financial success, whatever that looks like for you. So you can find it at Amazon, Target, Barnes Noble, all the major publishers. You can also go to my website, DominiqueBroadway.com, and it's on there. If you follow me on social, The link is in, in all the bios as well. And I'm also just Dominique Broadway on Instagram and all the socials.

I love it. Love it. Thank you so much, Dominique. I'll make sure I link all that in the episode show notes. This was great.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Don't forget, you can get the episode show notes for this episode by going to journeytolaunch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this, and you can still grab your jump Jumpstart Guide for free to help you on your journey to financial freedom by going to journeytolaunch.com/jumpstart. If you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are 4 ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple Podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you are not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this in Apple Podcasts, rate, review, and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review. Number 2, follow me on my social media accounts. I'm @journeytolaunch on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and I love, love, love interacting with journeyers there. 3, support and check out the sponsors of this show if you hear something that interests you. Sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here So show them some love for supporting your girl. Four, and last but not least, share this episode, this podcast with a friend or family member or coworker so that we can spread the message of Journey to Launch. All right, that's it. Until next week, keep on journeying, journeyers.

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