Investing 101 with Expert Dominique Broadway

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Welcome to Moneymaker, the podcast that gives you the tools to enrich your life in every sense of the word. I'm your host, Nelly Galán. Let's get started. Dominique Broadway, I've been dying to meet you. We're colleagues on the Money News Network, and I'm so excited about your new show. We Have Options. And you're an investing expert. And it's so exciting to see another woman, another woman of color that loves finance and financial literacy and is getting our people excited and showing them that this stuff is fun.

Yes. And it's fun and it's possible, right?

It's possible. And I loved your story. I have to say, I related so much because I always think I was like a freaky kid because I was selling Avon at a young age. And I was like, I wanna be a millionaire. Now, again, my parents lost everything. We came from Cuba and we lost everything, but not a lot of kids that were Latina at that age were wanting to do well. And you, I know since you're a little kid, knew what you wanted to do.

Yeah.

Tell us your story.

It's so funny. I loved Avon when I was a kid. And honestly, I think I actually tried to become an Avon rep too. I feel like they had a program like for like teens or something at the time. I think they were launching some like teen deodorants and stuff like that. I think I may have tried my hand at it, but I don't think I did well. But so I'll say, Probably very similar to you. Like, I really became an entrepreneur when I was like 5 selling bracelets. I was like the first kind of thing that I sold. We would make bracelets out of gimp and little, you know, strings. And my mom would take me to Michael's on the weekend and I just would use extra materials from camp and make bracelets. Like, that was the first thing that I really sold. And it was— I was just really intrigued that I could make something and people would give me money for it. And, you know, honestly, a lot of it was just because as a kid, you know, you go to the store with your parents and they're like, Don't ask for anything when you go in the store. But I'm like, if I have my own money, I don't have to ask you. So I was always looking for ways to make money, you know, going on to high school, you know, selling candy in school. I actually got suspended one time for selling gum because people were spitting the gum out and it shut down my whole operation. Then I ended up becoming chief operating officer for one of my friend's companies called Kids Interactive Data Systems. And it was just us two. And we had like maybe one or two other kids who were employees. And we were actually teaching kids how to use computer programs and software because they didn't do it in schools at that time. And then he went on to go to college. And so I was back to being unemployed teenager. And that was when I started working just kind of like odd and end jobs, you know, working at like Old Navy and Target.

Yeah.

Very quickly I realized making this $6.75 an hour was not going to cut it for me. And so that's when I really just tried to start trying to understand like, how are people making money? Like we lived in like Rockville, Maryland at the time, me and my mom. And, you know, we were up the street from Potomac, Maryland, which was a you know, very high net worth area. My mom would always drive me around and show me these mansions and say, you know, if you work not just hard, but work smart, you can have these things too. And so I started researching like, how do rich people get rich? Like, how do they make money? And I realized it was really, it was two ways, but it was really three ways: entrepreneurship, real estate, and the stock market. And I had already dabbled a little bit in entrepreneurship. So I'm like, okay, let me try some other things here. I didn't really have money to buy houses, but I did have money to start investing. So at 16 years old, I started teaching myself how to invest And eventually after a couple years, started trying to learn how to trade.

Can I go a little deep on that? Because, you know, there was no YouTube channels, I assume, to teach you how to do it. How did you say you taught yourself? And exactly what does it mean to invest?

Yes. So when I was doing this research, I realized that one of the things that all these rich people had in common, or wealthier people, is that they weren't working. They were working for their money, but they weren't just working for their money. They had their money working for them. So I was like, okay, so this isn't the end-all be-all. Because the way I looked at it is, You go, you work, and you just go back to work and keep working and keep working. Right. But they had figured out how to make their money work for them. And that was really through investing. The definition of investing is putting your money into something, understanding that it's going to grow over time, right? It's going to be working for you. It may not give you a return today. It may not give you a return tomorrow, but it is going to be working for you and growing. And it's something that you don't physically have to go and do work for. And I was just like obsessed with this, right? When I started teaching myself, as you said, there was No YouTube, you know, it was internet, but it wasn't as many websites as it is now. And I started reading magazines. You know, my parents had Black Enterprise and Essence and Money Mag sitting around the house, and I would pick those up and read them and understand and really focus on the investing sections. And then my grandfather bought me Investing for Dummies. And then there was this website called investopedia.com. And then I did this thing called going to the library and, and borrowing books. And that was really how I, Honestly taught myself because there weren't any, like you said, there was no YouTube. And so, because of that, it probably took me a little bit longer. I realized there were, you know, a couple different investment firms that I could open it and I didn't have a lot of money. And so, I opened my first account with ShareBuilder and ShareBuilder actually ended up getting acquired by Capital One. I made my first two investments. So, my first two investments.

And what were those? This is unbelievable. And when I talk to kids today, I go, There's no excuse. You guys have YouTube.

No excuse.

You figured it out.

Yes. Now they can just go online. How to start investing. And boom, it's right there. But yeah, so my first two investments were— I had about $50. It was Apple because I was obsessed at the time with my iPod, right? Because I remember the days. I know you remember the days when to listen to music, we had either a Walkman, right? A Walkman. That would get stuck and then you got to take it out and the string gets in there. And also, I remember the evolution of that for me was, was the CDs, but you had to have that big binder. Of CDs, you know, in the back of your car.

I still have them.

But then you had to like stop and pull over and go to the trunk and get your CDs. And then maybe your friends get in your car and they scratch up your CDs. But I was just really obsessed with the fact that you could have thousands of songs on this one device. So that was my first investment. And then the second was Jones Soda, because at the time I was completely obsessed with like green apple soda.

You picked two things that you loved and you believed in.

Yes, that I loved as a 16-year-old. 16-year-old Dominique Broadway, that's all she worried about was listening to music and drinking her green apple soda. But And that theory of investing in what I like has panned out over time. And it's still one of my favorite pieces of advice to give to people when they are actually starting to invest. But yeah, that was how I kicked it off. And then obviously just kept investing, investing, investing. Ended up going to college. I went to Bowie State University, which is a historically Black college in Bowie, Maryland. Majored in banking and finance there. Ended up like out of God's grace, getting a job internship at this company called UBS Financial Services. I had never heard of that company. My dream internship was actually with Morgan Stanley. Because that was the only company that I saw that had a woman of color working in financial advising.

Carla Harris.

Yes. I was like, okay, I need to be like her. That was the only person I saw. And so I ended up getting the internship at Morgan Stanley, but that weekend they cut the internship program for the entire company. So my whole dream was like, you know, as a kid, your world just came to an end, right? It's like, oh my gosh, shattered. But UBS was nice and said, all right, we'll take some of the Morgan Stanley interns. I had to re-interview. And that was how I ended up getting that internship. They ended up loving me off offered me a full-time position, but I had to go obviously go back to school, finish, took the full-time position, and after a couple years became a licensed financial planner and advisor for high net worth individuals. So that was really how things started to kick off before I started my business.

And then in the middle of all that, you bought a house, right?

I did.

So talk about how you were able to do that.

It took me an extra semester to graduate college, probably because I was working a million jobs, because I'm just like always just trying to get to the bag, right? Trying to make money. Yeah, so I ended up buying my first house. I was, I was 22. So like I said, it took me an extra semester to graduate college, I went through a first-time homebuyers program and was able to just get an awesome deal on a home, what they call a moderately priced dwelling unit. So I tell people all the time, you don't need a bunch of money to purchase your first home. You just need to have some decent credit and some income, and that's it. There's programs out there that will qualify you no matter what your income is. At that time, I just accepted my full-time position, although I was finishing my last semester in school. But because I had that job, I had income. And so I was only making probably about $48,000 or maybe $38,000. It wasn't— maybe less than $40, actually about $38,000, but that qualified me as low income. But in Montgomery County, Maryland, they have a program called Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit, MPDU. And basically they have a certain percentage of the homes in these luxury buildings, these luxury high-rises that are set aside for lower income. So I was able to end up purchasing a home on the 15th floor of a high-rise. These condos at the time, one bedroom, were actually going for maybe like $300,000. And because of this program, I was able to purchase one for $167,500.

And so, so you made money the first minute you bought it? Literally, literally doubled your money.

I couldn't tap into all that equity. That's the way the program works, right? So those are priced lower, but the same amenities, same experience, same everything. And it still has the ability to increase in value. But I was able to do that with those programs. And so I think I ended up putting down maybe $1,000. That was it, right? And so, you know, I had some money saved from school, you know, because I didn't use all the money that my grandparents had put aside for me. And I also had money from investing, right, from all those years. But because of the lower income program, I still was able to get in for little to nothing.

It goes back to always finding the loopholes or the incentives or the whatever, because there are so many and we just don't do the homework. Did your friends at that time go, what the heck, this girl's got a house? She's so young.

Yeah, they were like, what in the hell are you doing? Like, what are you doing, right? It was funny, my friends were like, okay, so we all moved back home with our parents and you're in this dope condo. Like, when they came to visit me, they're like, what are you doing? And I'm like, you guys have been saving? And they're like, no. And so that's when, over a couple years, I realized, like, you know, my friends kept coming to me asking me for advice. I'm like, okay, people don't know, like, a lot of this information, just the basic savings, and honestly, even just being resourceful and the programs that are out there. And that's when I realized, you know, you start getting that entrepreneurial itch again. And I honestly felt like it was God telling me, like, you're supposed to be something bigger. This is what I kept hearing every day. There's something bigger you're supposed to be doing. But I had no clue what it was. And I'm just like, what is it, right? But something kept telling me to quit my job. And I remember going to my family and they're like, why would you quit your job when you don't know what you're going to do? And I'm like, I don't know, but something's telling me there's something bigger that I'm supposed to be doing. Now I have an idea of what that was, but at the time I had no clue. Like when I tell you no clue whatsoever, no clue, which was scary. So I ended up quitting my job and starting my company. I went to my mentor at the time and I said, I want to help people that don't have millions of dollars to hopefully maybe be able to get there one day. Because all of our clients at the time had millions and millions of dollars. You know, you had to have at least $1 million to become a client of the firm I worked with. And he said, you'll never make money helping people that don't have money. And I was like, say less, right? Quit the job. You did it.

You did it. I did it.

It took a while.

But let me ask you something, because one of the things I love about your story is you said, and I think that happens to all of us, that all of us, especially, you know, women of color, we want to save the world. And in that process of you saving the world, you talk a lot about being incongruent, and you weren't taking care of yourself that much, and that you had some falls, and you had to learn— Like, we have savior personality disorders.

I've never heard that. I like that. Savior personality disorder. Mm. I think I have that.

We are saving other people, and then you start becoming resentful because you stop doing your work with yourself.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

And you have to remind yourself never to stop doing your own work, otherwise you'll get resentful. So, can you talk a little bit about that period of your life?

Thank you for diagnosing that period of my life. I've never heard it said that. I paid for a lot of therapy.

I'm like you, so I get it.

I'm like, you've literally just summed it up better than any therapist ever has. But yeah, so that savior personality disorder kicked in. And I'm trying to save the world. I'm on this mission to save the world. And you know, I had this beautiful condo and a cute little black BMW. And I'm, you know, I'm 20-something years old, and I'm single and helping people, helping so many people, and, you know, trying to keep my prices affordable. I end up going broke, completely broke. You know, I had about $50,000 saved up once I had quit my job, you know, just from saving and also investing, and felt very confident that I had a nice cushion because I kept my expenses pretty low. You know, I'm working and I am helping all these people, and my clients are winning. Like, they're investing, they're buying their first house, they're buying investment properties, they're They're saving for their kids to go to college. All their financial goals are coming to reality. And I am silently drowning, like drowning. Business is booming, but I'm overworked and underpaid by my own self because I was trying to help everyone, as you said, trying to save everyone. And even people like, they couldn't afford my services. I'm like, okay, cool. I'll do it for you. You know, just, I wanted to help everyone. I look up and my house is in foreclosure. My car is repossessed and I have no money. And I'm like, what happened? I had to relive those times recently. I have a book coming out soon and we were recording the Audible version and I was reading it. I went back to those days and it brought me to tears, just like feeling that feeling when I'm on calls and everyone's winning and I'm drowning. And I was embarrassed to tell anyone because I felt like a hypocrite, right? How can you be the financial expert? How can you be the, the financial planner? That's broke.

So you feel shame, you feel shame about that. You don't want anybody to know.

I felt horrible. And that's also why I didn't tell anyone. And I remember I finally went to my mom and I was like, I need you to tell someone. I can't do this anymore. I'm a failure. I'm helping people, but I can't even help myself. I had created this big mental block that did not allow me to address what was really happening in my life. And so I ended up also going to my grandfather and I'm like, look, I need you to sit down with me. I had this big stack of mail and I'm like, I need you to help me go through this mail. And like, create a plan because—

Oh, because you're paranoid. You think you owe so much money that you don't open the mail. I think people can really relate to that. They just let it go because it's— there is so much shame, especially in our communities, about that, that I can almost feel your pain around that.

As people of color, we know how hard our families have sacrificed for us to be where we are. And I did not want to disappoint anyone. I didn't want to let anyone down because I knew how much they sacrificed. And I felt like I failed everyone. I know when I went to my family and expressed address this to them, you know, they were like, well, we've gone through similar things. And I was like, well, why didn't no one tell me? Also, another thing that people like to do is make it look like everything is perfect. So I thought everything was always perfect. And so because of that, I felt like I was the one failure in the family. Right. And so, you know, I was able to sit down and address everything, open up the mail and get a complete picture of what was really happening financially. And it was nowhere near as bad as what I had made it out to be in my mind. The first thing I had to do. And this is also why my book that's coming out is— it's called The Wealth Decision, because I made a decision like that day. I'm just like, this is it. Like, I am never going to go back down this path again. I am deciding to be wealthy. I'm deciding that this is not going to be my story. And after that, everything changed because my mindset changed. I'm like, I'm opening all this mail, I'm addressing what's happening because this is a short-term problem. I'm going to fix it and I'm going to change it. It took me a couple years to change it, But I knew that I had made the decision that wealth was the only option for me. And so every day I chose wealth. Every day I woke up, I'm picking wealth. So that means I need to tackle this debt. That means I need to get— I call it a BJ or a bridge job. Some people think it's the other thing, but a bridge job. And I got a consulting job and used that money to start paying some of my bills down. And I was still running my business, right? My business will actually be 10 years old this year. And I was still running my business at this time. I couldn't do one of my favorite things. Investing. I couldn't do it, right? I went probably a couple years, I could not invest because I didn't have the money to invest. Didn't have the money.

And you know what? I think it's great for people to hear that because even the people that shine in our communities, you know, you have these athletes that make so much money. I have a stepson who's a skateboarder. You have all these different people and then you ask yourself, how could they have gone bankrupt? The idea that just because you make money, but if you don't know how to keep the money or if you take your eyes off the prize, it's very easy to lose the money. It's very humbling. And I think what you were saying is, for those of us that do well, your family's so— everybody puts you on a pedestal. It's important to be vulnerable and admit that you don't know. Like, I'm so happy talking to you because I've put all my money in real estate. You know, in my book I say, "Don't buy shoes, buy buildings." Because as somebody who comes from a communist regime and lost everything, I wanted real assets. But I also need to learn from you, how to diversify and do these other things. And I think we have to keep growing and learning with each other or we stagnate.

Yeah, totally.

So I love hearing your story.

Thank you.

Hold on. Moneymaker will be right back.

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Let's get back to the show. So you went back after that to— you started also trading. And can you explain investing and trading and what's the difference?

Investing is literally like investing your money into something, right? Like I said, with the expectation that it's going to give you a return in the future. So you can invest in everything from real estate, as you mentioned, to jewelry. There's people who invest in watches. There's people who invest in, you know, traditional things like stocks, art, bonds, mutual funds, whiskey, wine, oil, energy, right? There's so many different things that you can invest in, right? But those things, you understand that you're putting your money in and you're not going to see a return immediately, but it's going to grow a return over time. So example, your real estate, You're buying real estate today. Yes, it may not give you a return today, but over time it's going to increase, you know, in value. And maybe you're getting rental payments that may come, you know, annually or, or monthly or however the deal is worked out. With trading, we're looking to make money more frequently. We're looking to make money every day, every week, right? And so you're making more transactions. So when you're investing, you're just putting your money in and understanding it's going to grow over time. With trading, you're like, okay, I'm going to buy this now and it's going to go up or down, you know, in value, and I'm going to take my profits. And so that's something that you can literally do— I typically do only probably about 3 days a week, right? Just getting into trades, but it allows me to create additional stream of income.

So you do that for yourself, or you do it for yourself and others?

Just myself. I teach others.

In my country, you know, all the stocks became worth nothing and all that. It is scary to me, and I've put it into a brokerage firm, you know, put some money in, but it does scare me because I feel very out of control. Like somebody else is trading or doing whatever, and I've given them permission to do it. So So what is the difference between doing it that way and learning to do it your way?

Yeah. So I would say you have to do what works best for you, right? So I do a combination of what you said and what I said, right? Investing and trading. So I have a bulk of my investments. I would say most of my investments, they are just invested, right? They're sitting in the account. They're growing over time. There's stocks in major companies that I'm holding: Apple, Google, Amazon, you know, Tesla, the big boys, right? Or big boys and girls. Investing into those and holding them over time. Over time, the market always goes up, right? In the US, I can't speak for other countries, but over time it does go up. And that is also how many of the wealthiest people in the world continue to grow their wealth, right? They're putting millions in, this millions is producing hundreds and sometimes millions of dollars a year for them without them having to wake up right now. When it comes to the trading piece, you don't need a lot of capital to do that, right? So let's say even if you have a portfolio, I don't know, let's say $20,000 in it, right? You may have $15,000 of that sitting in investments that's growing over time. Time that you're not touching, but you can still feel in control of it because you can go and look at these things every day, right? Typically those investments, they're not being actively traded. They're literally just sitting there, right? So even I think about my kids' accounts, I have a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, their funds, they're just sitting, right? I do some trading in some of their accounts, but most of their money is just sitting, right? And so I can just open it and see. And that's one of the things, like you mentioned earlier with the real estate, you like to be able to see it, right? You know, you can pull up up on the building and it's still standing there.

Even though it's a pain because you still have to take care of it.

You got to take care of it.

I mean, I explained to people, it's not like, you know, check the box like this. This is more, but you're trading, which is also very active. So I want to learn. I'm excited even hearing about this from you.

Yeah. So with the trading aspect, and like I said, even with the trading and investing, I love, I love being able to just pull up my phone and see my money sitting up in there. Right. So that's my thing. Like you, I like, I would love to have my money in more buildings, but I also know that I can always look at it and see that it's here. With The trading, I love it because you really don't need a lot of capital, right? And so even with a lot of our students, I'm telling them you can start with as little as $500, right? We've had students who literally invested $80 into an Apple call, and I can tell you what that is in a second, and made $2,000, right? And so to me, with trading, especially with options trading, which is one of the things that I love, hence my show We Have Options, it allows you to risk risk less and make larger amounts of money. So let me tell you a little bit about a couple of the things that you can trade. The financial instrument that's most commonly heard of trading are stocks, right? So you can purchase stock in any publicly traded company, you know, Apple, Google, Amazon. Twitter used to be a publicly traded company, but now it's a private company because Elon owns it, so we can no longer purchase stock stock in Twitter, right? So that's an example of a company that was public and now private. But you can now go and purchase— so example, Apple, right? I love Apple products. I have Apple iPhone coming to you from Apple Mac here, etc., etc. You can go right now and purchase stock in any publicly traded company such as Apple. You can buy the stock in that company and the stock price can go up. You make money, right, if you're just owning the stock and holding it, as they say, long, right? So we can invest in any of these companies. Now, when we're trading stocks, that's how make money if the price goes up. But if we are trading options, which is what I love— options are essentially contracts, essentially, on these companies. Now let's say right now Apple's trading at just, oh, example, $150, right? It's going to cost you $150 to buy one share of Apple, one share, right? But you can also purchase what we call fractional shares. So young Dominique, that's how I I got started, remember I didn't have tons of money, so I was buying fractions of the share. So if I had $10, $20—

so that's a bunch of people coming together and buying a fraction of that share.

No, it's just you saying, all I got is $20, so give me what $20 is a percentage of. I tell people all the time, like, if you only have $10 or $20, just gradually over time, just invest. And it may take you a couple months to get up to one share, but if you're doing that over time, it's going to start turning into shares. So let's say if a share is $150 and you only have $75, it's going to give you 50% of that share, right? Now let's say you're like, look, I don't have tons of money and I'm actually looking to grow my money. You can also do options, and I love options because options allow you to not own, okay, but control hundreds of shares of stock at a fraction of the cost. Wow. So it may cost you $150 to buy one share, and let's say if you wanted to buy 100 shares, that's going to cost you $15,000. Not everyone has $15,000 sitting around. Now obviously you can buy the fraction, but let's just for this purpose, if you were buying 100, it's going to cost you $15,000. But if you wanted to control control 100 shares. Let's say the premium price, which is the price that you pay to buy the option, is a dollar. Okay, so a dollar times 100 is $100. So you can own the 100 shares for $15,000, or you can control 100 shares for $100. What would you choose right now?

The option.

The $100, right? And then when Apple's stock price goes up, if you own the shares, yeah, you'll see those small returns. But if you are just controlling the shares, you've only paid $100. So that $100 can quickly, if the price goes up, right, substantially, can turn into $200, $1,000, $2,000. It's very, very possible. And so that's another reason why I personally love options, right? It was a way when I was starting to rebuild my own portfolio, it was a way for me to do what I wanted to be able to do, but I couldn't afford to do it, right? I wanted to be able to start trading stocks again, but I didn't have the capital. So I just started using options. And so with the options, I was able to control all these shares, still be able to take advantage of these big increases and decreases in the market, and still make profit and build my portfolio back up that way.

So what I'm hearing you say is like exactly what you said about the real estate, that you started real estate in a way that was is affordable to enter, and this is the way that's affordable to enter. But like, so when you say that to me, I think to myself, what is the personality type of someone that wants to trade? Because what scares me as you're saying that is when I go in, how do I know when to get out? And also, do I pay a fee to get in and a fee to get out?

Depending on the brokerage firm, right? Typically there's no fees to get in or out, but it does depend. Like some Firms do charge a fee, but typically the ones we're using— Robinhood, Webull, maybe even E-Trade— a lot of times they're no-fee brokerage firms.

You go on one of these platforms and you have an account.

Mm-hmm. Yep. So you pick your platform. That's the first step, pick a platform. So you could pick any of the ones we mentioned or anyone that you're comfortable with, honestly. And then you pick your account type, a second step, because there's different account types, right? You may get an individual account, you may get a, a joint account with you and your significant other, you may get a custodian account for your kids, you may retirement account, right? You have different options. And then the next thing you want to do is decide how much you want to start investing with. So I always tell people, just pick an amount, right? So this is more like just specifically investing, but you can do this with trading as well. Pick an amount. I always say, just pick an amount. It could be $100. So you may say, hey, I'm going to take my $100, and then pick a company you like, what stores or places you constantly frequent, right? So let's say me, I get Amazon packages in my house every day, every day, every day, every day, every day. There's usually not And if it is a day, maybe I told them to bundle the order and that's the only reason, but there's typically an Amazon package coming to my house every day. So that may be a great company to invest in. I also really love Starbucks, right? So, hmm, maybe I'm going to invest there. And I'm not sure about you, but my daughter thinks that a shopping trip is supposed to be at Target. Every time I pick her up from school, she's like, let's go shopping. And I'm like, we're not going to Target every day, Dawson, right? So these are a couple of companies that we use, but these could be great places to start investing and maybe even eventually trading. Trading. So let's say if you're saying, hey, I'm going to take $100 and I'm going to put it into Target every month, right? And set it and make sure it happens automatically. Now that is the key— automatic investing every month, right? And you don't even have to think about it, and it will grow. And if you, you know, want to do the trading, obviously with trading it takes some education. You can always tune into We Have Options, and we're literally talking about this every week. And you can go and listen to some of the older episodes, and we're breaking it down episode by episode to understand the basics of when to get in, when to get out, all the different order types, but it does take some time. Now, one of the things you had mentioned was the personality of a trader. Very good question. If you want to get rich quick, don't try to trade, right? That's not the personality. You never want to go into the markets greedy or desperate.

I say that to my son all the time. Desperate people do desperate things. You can never be desperate.

Don't be desperate. The market can feel it. It's just like when you walk into the casino, right? You're like in there, you're like, oh my God, I need to pay my car note, and you No, not, not the thing to do. Also, when it comes to trading specifically, self-control, discipline, and patience— you need those three things.

So not a gambler personality?

No, it's not gambling. It's not just picking red and blue and closing your eyes. You want to make sure that you're making high probability trades, meaning trades that have a high probability of being successful, right? So that's a lot of stuff that I'm teaching in my course. And also, risk management is key. Key, right? So there's a lot of strategy that goes into it. But if you do it right, it can get— I don't want to say easy, but you can create a simple strategy to make tens of thousands of dollars a day. I've done it, you know, I've done it consistently for years. But you have to practice self-control, discipline, and patience, and really learning the markets and studying the markets.

You talked about doing it 3 days a week. My question to you is like, first of all, how do you pick the 3 days? What are the other 2 days? Something happens. And then also, if you want to go on vacation, does that screw you up because you have to trade?

No, so it doesn't. So when I say 3 days, it's not like I have to do 3 days. That's just on average, typically what I do, because, you know, I'm a mom and, and the CEO, I have 20,000 businesses, it feels like. So some days I wake up and I'm just not in the mood, right? I've been going through a lot, a divorce, all these— I'm like, uh-uh, it's just too much. Some days I'm just not in the mood. And if ever I wake up and my energy is off, I don't go into the markets because I'm probably going to make an emotional decision. There's been weeks I haven't traded at all. There's some weeks where I'm like, hey, I may trade every day, but those trading times, believe it or not, they only take about usually 5 to 10 minutes to trade because I'm very in tune with the markets. I wake up, you know, I do my research. My research usually takes 5 minutes if that, and then it takes a second to enter the trade, and that's it, right? And then so you put your parameters on, if that's the stop loss, etc., etc., or maybe I'm putting my trades in the night before and I'm waking up, $20,000, $30,000 closing it out at the opening bell, and I go about my life. So vacation, I can do that too. I can trade from anywhere in the world as long as I have internet. The biggest struggle with vacation is sometimes the time zones, right? You just got to make sure that you get up on time. That's really also why I am a big proponent of the markets. You know, I felt like it was when I was learning about the stock market from an investor standpoint and then learned about it from a trader standpoint, which is totally different. I was like, okay, now I see why white people was keeping us out of this because this is insane. I mean, it literally allows you to control your income if you take the time to learn it. And so that's why I'm really excited about it. Cause I feel like it can give a lot of people of color the opportunity to have more control over their wealth building. And it's just a whole nother thing that requires less time, not as much capital as people think, and can literally help to propel our financial futures and create more generational wealth for us.

And that's what we both care about more than anything. And I think, you know, you're right that when you see that there's no financial literacy in schools, you start thinking there's a reason for it.

Oh yeah.

Because we are so happy sometimes taking crumbs from people or thinking like we're victims because nobody's taught us that we don't have to be. We have such a great purchasing power. We have so many things going for We have the highest purchasing power. I know.

But we don't know these things. Also, an uneducated consumer is worth way more than an educated consumer. That's another thing as well.

Listen, we're running out of time, but I have to hear, because I know you had one year where you went from making no money to then you made $850,000 to then you made $8.5 million. Can you briefly just tell us about that? And I could talk to you for hours, so I just want to make sure we get that story out there.

Yeah, I mean, that was just doubling down in some of the markets, also in the business as well. I mean, in that year, I think I had a baby. I think I was pregnant most of the year. So that was— yeah, it was, you know, just honestly being consistent and being able to generate 7 figures in the markets, and then also being able to do almost, you know, 8 or 9 within the business, right. And so it was really cool because it was a large income, but even bigger impact. Impact on, you know, just tons of women and also just tons of people that look like me.

I could talk to you for hours, and I can't wait to see you in Miami, and we're gonna learn from each other. I'm super excited.

I would love that. Love that for sure.

You're such a boss lady and such a moneymaker. So happy to have you on, and I can't wait to meet you in person.

Likewise. Thank you for having me.

Money Maker is a production of Money News Network. Money Maker is written and hosted by me, Nelly Galan. Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Hey, Mama, thanks for making all my favorite recipes.

Hi, Ma, thanks for your unfiltered advice.

Hi, Mom! Thanks for always being by the phone.

Hey, Mom. Happy Mother's Day.

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