In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Meredith Jones, author of The Women of the Street and investment blogger at aboutmjones.com. Jones shares her personal journey from a modest, rural Alabama upbringing—shaped by a math‑professor mother, a junior‑high teacher who taught stock trading, and a small inheritance—to a career on Wall Street, highlighting how atypical her background is in a male‑dominated industry. She points out that roughly 95% of investment decision‑makers are men, arguing that this gender imbalance hurts both Wall Street and Main Street by leaving returns on the table and limiting capital for diverse communities. Jones offers career advice: discover who you truly help, align work with passion, and surround yourself with people invested in your success. She stresses the importance of stopping excessive apologizing, especially for women, and recommends the book Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office as a tool to overcome that habit. Her favorite quote—“The rooster may crow, but it’s the hen that lays the eggs”—captures the growing impact of women in finance. The episode concludes with her online contact points: her website and Twitter handle @MJMeredithJ.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Wags Media. Wags Media provides you with everything you need to generate more customers and grow your brand. Head on over to wagsmedia.com, W-A-G-S-M-E-D-I-A dot com, to enter a contest where you can win a free, done-for-you custom website valued at $2,500 for a limited time only. Now let's jump into the episode. All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Meredith Jones with us. She is an award-winning author of The Women of the Street. Why Female Money Managers Generate Higher Returns and How You Can Too. And she also pens an investment blog on www.aboutmjones.com. So, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Of course, grateful to have you here, Meredith. I'm excited for this one. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And I'll dive in. The first question I have for you is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
That is a good, great question. You know, I would have to say that it is really somewhat remarkable that I am in the industry that I'm in, the investment industry, and that's because I grew up really poor in somewhat rural Alabama, and I'm a woman. And you put all of those things together, and it means that it's really unusual to find someone with my background in the investment industry. But when I was growing up, I had certain things that were working in my favor that made this journey possible. Number one, my mom is a retired math professor. So unlike many girls who tend to shy away from STEM topics, I was not allowed to do that. In fact, when I attempted to fail a trigonometry class, my mom threatened me with a convent if I didn't go back and excel at it. In addition, I had a junior high school teacher who for some reason decided to teach a bunch of semi-rural Alabama Alabama kids how to research and trade stocks in the 1980s in Alabama. And that's, that's pretty remarkable. And then also my grandparents gifted me with a small part of my great uncle's inheritance and allowed me to manage the money myself, which I'll admit I did a terrible job of that. I spent all of it on '80s fabulous clothing. And so maybe that wasn't the best decision on their part. But If it hadn't been for those things, I wouldn't be comfortable with numbers and math and statistics. I wouldn't have probably ever applied for this job in the first place, and I wouldn't have had the experience and knowledge to get an entry-level position in investing. And so I think what that goes to show is that this is a career that's open for lots of different people, not just old white dudes, which is what you tend to see, if people have the right experiences and right opportunities when they're growing up.
Yes. And so I wonder how much those '80s, those '80s clothes are worth now. It may have been a good investment.
I was very Cyndi Lauper-esque. So they're kind of out there.
The next one I have for you, Meredith, is what is the most valuable piece of information that we should know that is within your expertise or industry?
So I think one of the things that people intuitively know, but maybe they don't, it doesn't float to the, to the front of their mind is just how male-dominated my industry is. Roughly 95% of the people that take risk with investment capital are men. And that number hasn't really changed a lot over the years. And the thing that makes that particularly problematic is the fact that because we don't have more women and more people of color in my industry, we're all actually poor because of it. We're leaving investment returns on the table. We're not funding companies that might make investments in certain communities that could use the economic uplift. We're not making investments in companies that might be more profitable than the companies that are getting investment these days. And so both Wall Street is losing out and Main Street is losing out too.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice? And if you want to kind of keep it in the industry, like maybe if somebody was just starting out in the financial or investment industry, like what would you tell them?
I think I would tell them that they have to get to what's really important to them. You know, I think a lot of people tend to look at the investment industry and they think that we're just a bunch of crazy guys who are into hookers and blow. Maybe they've seen The Wolf of Wall Street. And they think that it's all, you know, screwing people over to make a buck and hard partying and things like that. You know, I think the thing that you have to do is you have to figure out who you're really helping when you're in business. And the thing that I know is that the work that I do, I'm always thinking about the person who's on the other end of that. So I'm— I think the work that I do is I'm helping people be able to retire securely. I'm helping universities be able to fund scholarships for deserving kids so they can get a better education. And so I think you have to look past the shiny veneer that you may be fed about a particular industry and figure out if it's something that can fit your passion. And you may be surprised once you, once you do that additional digging.
And if you can, by the way, that is a great movie.
It's a great movie, but it's not necessarily indicative of My 20 years on Wall Street, I can tell you, I did get a call one night from a colleague asking me if I had keys to handcuffs while I was at a conference one night. And that's probably the most crazy thing that's happened to me. By the way, I did not have a key to the handcuffs. That is not something I generally travel with, so I wasn't able to help them. And luckily, I never figured out exactly what was going on, and I'm grateful for that too. Got it.
So you leave those at home, huh?
Exactly, exactly.
Gotcha. And if you could give— next one I have for you— if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Stop apologizing so much. And I see this from a lot of women in all industries, but it was particularly true of me. I think that I could feel guilt and responsibility for an amazing array of stuff that was not my fault. And so early on in my career, I apologized for everything, and it took a long time for me to finally realize that I wasn't that powerful. I couldn't impact everything bad or good that happened in the world. And so maybe I needed to take a step back and think about what my role was and where an apology would be appropriate and where I was just saying it to smooth the waters or to soothe somebody's ego or because it was by then a nervous tic. So don't take responsibility for everything. Take responsibility for the stuff that is yours.
And that could lead in or partly lead into the next one. So in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Lord, if I knew that, I would be probably much happier. You know, I'm not really sure I know what the answer to that question is. I can say that I tend to be much happier when a couple of things are in place. Number one, I think you need to surround yourself with people who have a vested interest, or at least a semi-vested interest in your continued success. And that means your employers, your friends, your loved one, your spouse, your significant other. They have to want to see you succeed because people who don't want to see you succeed will only bring bad luck and stress and head damage into your life. And then the other thing I think is that Again, I think you have to find something that you're passionate about. You know, there's a lot of people that could look at the research and the work that I do and think of it as, you know, kind of nerdy statistics, spreadsheet-driven mathematical hell. But again, when I look at what I'm doing to influence diversity in my industry, when I look at what I'm doing to help retirees and individuals with their investment goals, you know, I feel really good about that. So I think you have to be passionate and I think that you have to be around people who respect your passions.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
I read all the time, so I don't know that I have necessarily a best book, but I did really enjoy reading quite a few years ago, Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office. That was one of the things that helped me get over my apology fetish. And I would recommend it to any young woman who is starting out in their business career.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
The rooster may crow, but it's the hen that lays the eggs. You know, we tend to hear a lot in my industry about super successful guys and how they've made tons of money or lost tons of money. And meanwhile, there are a a small but growing number of women that are out there just getting it done every day. And that quote really embodies that.
Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on. The last one that I have for you before we let you go, Meredith, is where is the best place for people to find you online?
You can look for me on my website, www.aboutmjones.com, or you can find me on Twitter with the world's most convoluted Twitter ID, which is @MJ_Meredith. Underscore J. Gotcha.
Thank you again for joining us. We appreciate it.
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