Marcia Dawood: Bold Money Moves

About This Episode

What does it mean to be bold with your career and your money? Marcia Dawood, early-stage investor, venture capital partner at Mind Shift Capital, and member of the SEC’s Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee, shares lessons from her own career and breaks down angel investing in practical terms. Tune in to hear why more women investors matter, how beliefs about money can shape financial decisions, and simple ways to become more informed and engaged with how your money is invested and spent.

About Marcia Dawood

Marcia Dawood is the author of two award winning books, Unapologetic Wealth and Do Good While Doing Well. She is also a TEDx speaker, Podcast host, and an early-stage investor who serves as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. She is a venture partner with Mindshift Capital and the chair emeritus of the Angel Capital Association (ACA), a global professional society for angel investors. She is an associate producer on the award-winning documentary Show Her the Money.

Additional Resources

LinkedIn: @MarciaDawood

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast. My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host. If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world. This podcast is all about those kinds of stories. Every week we'll hear from someone who has taken the lead or embarked on an extraordinary journey. In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen. Whether they faced challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals. These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey. I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be free. Tune in and get ready to be inspired. Welcome to the Bold Lounge. Today we have Marcia Daywood. Marsha is an early stage investor who serves on the Security and Exchange Commission's Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. She's a venture capital partner with Mind Shift Capital, a member of Golden Seeds, and chair emeritus of the Angel Capital Association, a global professional society for angel investors. She's the author of Do Good While Doing Well, Invest for Change, Reap Financial Rewards, and Increase Your Happiness, and an associate producer on the award-winning documentary show Show Her the Money. A TEDx speaker and host of the Angel Next Door Podcast, Marsha always walks the talk and holds the investments in over 50 early stage companies and funds. She's committed to expanding support for diverse companies that overcome the world's biggest problems and accelerate positive change. She is passionate about bridging the gap from early stage inception to building thriving profitable companies. Previously, Marsha worked in sales, marketing, and operations for Kaplan Education for over 16 years. She's received her MBA from the University of North Carolina, Keenan Flagler Business School. Welcome to the bold lounge, Marsha. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Bold Means Standing Up For Yourself

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Thank you. So we'll jump in right into what does it mean to be bold in your life? What would you define bold as?

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Oh, there's so many ways that you can look at it, but I look at bold as standing up for yourself. You know, in a lot of cases, women, we've we've had a lot of things that we've had to go through over the last not just a couple of years, but many years. And I really see like standing up for yourself as being something that can make you be bold.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yeah. And when you stand up for yourself, what does that mean? Does it mean you believe in yourself? You believe, you know, you'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

I think it's like you stand up for what's right. And I can give you an example. Okay, actually put an example in my book that we'll end up talking about in a little bit, where I was working in a job where I was asked to take a role. And in that role, they were not going to allow me to have the title that the male person before me had had. And it was because I had been at the company a long time. And so I had pigeonholed myself into a certain status or job. And even though I could do the job and they knew I could do the job, they didn't want to give me the title. And long story short, I did end up with the title, but it was a little bit too little, too late. And the department I was taking over was not doing well. But I really wanted the people who worked in the department to feel like they could be bold and like they could do the things in order to make their metrics better. And so we did that. And about six months after they gave me the title, and I had spent at that point about a year and a half building the department back up, we got the results that the metrics were incredibly better and that the team had really stood up and they rose to the occasion and we had some really good outcomes. And the next day I resigned.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

So it was like drop the mic kind of a thing. You did what you committed to do, but you also stood your ground in the sense of I I did see how this rolled out, right? In the sense of how you had to advocate for yourself and that's right. You got the title, but there was a price for it, it sounded like it was a price.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

It was a little bit too little, too late.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

I fought for it for a while before they finally gave it to me. Yeah. And I had to threaten to quit in order for them to give it to me. And I thought this is ridiculous. I'm doing a better job than the person before me who had the title, regardless of their gender. You know, why is this even an issue? Why are you talking about this? But I believe you're talking about this. We're talking about this because I'm a woman. And I just was like, I mean, I can't.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

And I'm sure they were surprised when you did make that move. So what in you said this is not somewhere I want to stay? Is it in the sense of it was misaligned with who you are? It was not aligned, obviously, from a mission perspective and a culture perspective. Are those the big indicators for you? Because sometimes people stay longer than they should.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

That's true. I I would agree with you there. I think that people leave people. People go to places because of people and people leave because of people. And you could have a great job and a great company, but if you end up with, you know, somebody that you're working for that just doesn't appreciate you or there is misalignment, I think that's where things start to fall apart.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

So, you know, communication is just so incredibly important. If they would have said to me anything, like even had a conversation with me about it in in a way that we could lead up to it or something like that. But no, it got to a point where I literally, and that's not really my personality, to be fighting for something, you know, in that way. I wanted to be able to do my job. This was very distracting, you know, to have to be, you know, fighting over something that was so ridiculous and that, you know, I should have had from day one, just from the sense of the fact that they were like, oh no, we want you to do this job. We'll pay you to do the job. They did actually give me the salary, they just wouldn't give me the title. I'm like, this mustn't make any sense. It makes zero sense, right? So, but it was more like an optics thing. They're like, Well, you're a woman, you know, yeah. I was like, no.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Yeah. So you moved on. And what did you move on to? As you were thinking about your own career and what you wanted to do next. What was drawing you forward?

Discovering Angel Investing And Its Power

SPEAKER_00 6:08

So in 2012, I was invited to an angel investing meeting. And I remember thinking to myself, angel investing, that sounds cool, but I have absolutely no idea what that is.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Well, that's what a lot of us think, I think.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yeah, exactly. So I'm like, okay, so I go to the meeting, no idea what to expect. And I was living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the time, and I see local entrepreneurs who are talking about the innovations that they're working on. And I thought to myself, wow, where have I been? Like I feel like I've been living under a rock or something. I have no idea that this has been going on, like right in my own backyard. And it does go on in every city and every town. And so over time, I ended up, you know, going to some more meetings and learning more about it and getting more involved and quickly realized how little funding goes to women and people of color and thought, okay, wait a minute. Like we have a lot of really good ideas and we have a lot of innovation that we would like to see in the world. How come there's so little funding? And over time, I ended up on the board of the National Association for Angel Investing. I I ran, you know, funds and some angel groups with people. And I just started to think, maybe we just have an awareness problem. If we could solve the awareness problem, maybe that would be it. Because I'd be like at the you know, the community barbecue or something. And so I'd see a friend and they'd say, Oh, tell me all about the like the cool companies you saw. And, you know, this week or this month. And I would say, okay, but like you, you could see the companies too. Like you could be involved too. Oh, me? No, I I could I I thought you have to have a finance degree, you have to be wealthy, you have to be a billionaire, you have to fly private planes. I'm like, no, that's that's like a myth from before. Maybe that was true, you know, 30, 40 years ago, but not today. You know, today you can invest, you know, for much, much, much less money. And we can get into that. But I just thought, well, how can this change? And I just thought, well, maybe I'll do something to try to educate because you know, angel investing or any type of alternative investing, it is risky. So you want to like only use a certain portion of your investable assets. You don't want to like take your money from your kids' college fund when they're 17 and invest it in something you're never gonna see again for 10 years or whatever it is. You have to be very careful, right? Yeah. Always talk to your financial planner.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

It's thoughtful. Yeah, it's very pragmatic, right? It isn't just like uh, you know, like you're throwing the dice. It's nothing like that.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Nothing like that, right? So always, you know, talk to your financial planner. I don't give financial advice, but I always was thinking to myself, hey, if we could just have more people that used a little bit of money instead of so many of these bigger people using a lot of money, maybe we would then have a voice to see the innovation we want to see in the world. And when I when I talk about innovation, I'm talking about in healthcare. Women's healthcare is extremely underfunded. And imagine if we could start to get funding in that area. And that's just one of many how the climate, the planet, people, all of these things. And so having a voice at the table means you're an investor and you're writing a check in a lot of cases. And you don't have to write big checks, but we need a lot of people who would want to have a seat at the table and have a voice. And so I started a podcast in 2021 called The Angel Next Door. It's been going on for quite a while now. I'm uh almost up to 200 episodes. And it started out as me just asking people, like, hey, how come you're an angel investor and why did you do it? And where did you get the money? And you know, whatever. What money do you use? And this type of thing. And how do you think about it? And then it's kind of morphed into more educational. I have a lot of people who come on and talk about things like equity crowdfunding or any type of crowdfunding or using philanthropic capital to invest in a for-profit company, which is something that's very we could have a whole other podcast episode on this. And then in 2022, I spoke at TEDx Charlotte. I wrote a book called Do Good While Doing Well, all in an effort to try to demystify this whole early investing space.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

And then quickly realized that the bigger problem is that women, for the most part, we we don't, and again, I'm generalizing here, so listeners, please give me a little slack. That, you know, we just have a lot of limiting beliefs and kind of preconceived notions that are not our fault. It's not men's faults, not women's faults, nobody's fault. But it is something that we need to think about. Like, I mean, women couldn't even have a credit card in their own name until 1974.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah, I was like, I was two years old. I that still just baffles me. Like it just like literally, I was two, and you know, my mom could now have her own bank account. And right, I think, yeah, it's it's crazy how slow it goes, I think at times, but there's also good things that are happening too, I think, in who we see investing, who we see out there, who's talking about it, like you, and and just having more conversations. And I think, you know, one of the things you say is everyone has a story about money. That's right. What do you mean by that? And I agree with you 100%.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Okay, so let's go back to the 1974 first credit

Money Stories And Limiting Beliefs

SPEAKER_00 10:52

card, right? But let's even go back farther than that. Let's think about like dowries, the fact that like women were the gatherers, men were the hunters, right? This is ingrained in our DNA. It's ingrained in our society. So, yes, there are a lot of things right now that are happening. There are more things that we'll just use women right now, for example, that women are going to school, they're getting PhDs, they're becoming doctors, and it's phenomenal. But when it comes to certain things like anything in STEM, investing, it's just not quite at the level that we probably would like it to be at. So the more we can talk about it, the more we can have those conversations, and the more we can talk about our own money story, then we're actually setting the example for the next generation. Because the next generation and the generation after that, and after that, those are the ones that I worry about the most. Because we could, you know, right now just say, hey, you know what? I'm fine. I'm fine with everything. You know, I don't need to do anything differently with money, although we probably all could do a little something differently. But how can we actually model the behavior and start to show the younger generations that you can be bold? You can be bold with money, you can make investment decisions. I talked to, as I was writing Unapologetic Wealth, which is a prequel to my first book, is I talked to so many women about their money stories and they would tell me how much money they had sitting in cash. And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, that's terrifying because that's not how things have been. So if now all of a sudden with the great wealth transfer, there's a lot more money going into the hands of women, which is fantastic because women really are good investors, even if they don't know it or believe it, they are, then we are going to have as a society a much bigger problem if we have so much money sitting on the sidelines.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Right. Yeah, it's kind of weird in some certain spaces for sure. As I I said, certainly on the outside, you're more of an expert. I know just enough uh to know, but I think there's a lot of whether it's myths or urban legends about angel investing, you shared a few of them, but just so people know what we're talking about, where we're starting from, just give a definition of what angel investing is and how women can make an impact by being more a part of it.

What Angel Investing Is And Is Not

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yeah. So an angel investor is somebody simply who is making a private investment in a private company using their own money. So we hear about venture capitalists, and a venture capitalist is somebody who pools money together and then they make investments into private companies. So we all have heard a lot about public companies. So Apple, Amazon, you know, those are publicly traded stock companies, right? And I think in a lot of cases, we hear people talk about those companies. Private companies is just any company that is not on the public stock exchange. And right now, those are companies that are big, like SpaceX, Anthropic, although SpaceX filed an IPO. We'll see what happens. But uh, you know, then there's all so many smaller companies. And in some cases, there's startups, which would be a scalable company or somebody, something that we would find to be investable, or there's a lot of small businesses here in America. I mean, that's kind of what America has been, you know, built on capitalism and the ability for people to start a business if they want to and run it. So all of those private companies would be something an angel investor could potentially invest in. And most of the time they're looking for ones that can scale and grow.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Yeah. Why do you think we overcomplicate it as women when it comes to investing, investing, you know, our own funds, whether, you know, just starting there, albeit like being an actual angel investor? Why do you you said something about limiting beliefs before, ingrained culturally, like, you know, but I feel like it's 2026. Let's go, girls. Like, let's let's go invest. Like, what do we need to do to get this moving faster? And I know you've been working on it, obviously, with your book and your messaging, but you know, is it generational potentially? Is there hope that maybe there'll be a some type of change sooner?

SPEAKER_00 14:46

I think there can be change. What we need to do as women, though, is start to talk about it more. So in my book, I even give an example of a lawyer who at the water cooler, you know, partner, has a really good book of business, you know, doing really well. At the water cooler, she's talking to the other women about their shoes. The men are around the water cooler, proverbial water cooler, talking about their deals. So we have been trained, I guess, or you know, it's in our DNA that we don't really talk about money. We were taught that, you know, it's it's in bad taste. We don't, you know, talk about, but men would go in the other room, you know, after dinner or whatever, and they would have conversations about what they're investing in or what they could help each other with, or they're on the golf course, you know, texting each other, whatever the story is. But as women, we don't do that. And I talked to a lot of women about this as I was writing the book, and I said, you know what? What has to change in order for this to be more comfortable for you? And a lot of them told me, I just look at it as a chore because I don't have the time. I don't have the time. If I wanted to do it, which as women, we are, we are built to dissect and ask questions and really look at something. And that's what makes us such good investors. The problem is we just don't have the time between jobs and kids and families and all this stuff. And so a lot of women told me, you know what, I just have so much that I'm trying to do. That's one thing I can give to my husband or partner or whatever, and it's just say, I don't have to do this anymore. I can let them do it. But then what happens is time passes and you think it's going to be six months or a year, but then next thing you know, it's five years, 10 years later, and you have no idea where your money is, what you're invested in. And then there could be a death, a divorce, or some some type of you know, job loss, anything, medical bill. And all of a sudden life changes. And so just awareness alone can be so powerful. But also, how can we get more women to be bolder to stand up and say, hey, I want that raise, or I want to be a part of this conversation? I talked to way too many women who said my financial planner doesn't even look at me when I'm in the room with my husband.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Yeah. So shaking my head for those that can't see it, I think when it comes to taking agency around your money, and it and this isn't a pro-woman or pro-man type of statement, but you need to know. You need, and we've had other podcasts about this and some horror stories of people who didn't know and then they had nothing and those types of things, they, you know, they figure it out, but it's a different, you know, type of bold that's happening there. If someone's sitting there right now and says, I don't even know what my investments look like. I know I have this and I know I have that. I know like when I was um in corporate, I had my 401k like on auto and I was always like, I don't really know what to even ask or what to do. It seemed like it was going well, but I bet it could have gone better there, you know, in certain places, uh, Marsha. But like someone's just not sure what where do they start? So to me, I wasn't empowering myself to actually take action. I was just like, oh, like you said, one more thing, and it seems like it's okay, right? But we need to be more actively involved, even in those types of things. Would you say yes to like knowing what's going on there?

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Totally. And nowadays, the 401k administrations or you know, the the custodians who administer the 401ks have really gotten a lot better at letting the investor pick what they want to invest in. And yes, that might take, you know, an hour or two of research, or you might want to talk to somebody or a financial planner or something like that. And and also making sure that you know if this aligns with your values. You know, I have some people who are like, well, I'm invested in a mutual fund. I don't really know what they invest in. And it turns out that they invest in a lot of things that they're against, you know, it could be like fossil fuels or, you know, it's hurting the climate or whatever the story is.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

You know, I'm involved with a group called Invest for Better. And they are end up talking about this a lot, like aligning your money and your values. And sometimes we have no idea what we're actually invested in. And then the other thing is like if you do have a financial planner, finding out what it is that that financial planner is doing for you and what they're invested in. Cause I found in a lot of cases there are financial planners out there who are incentivized by the investments that they put you in. For example, if you have $100,000 to invest and then they take it and they divvy it up into a couple of different mutual funds, they could be getting a kickback on those mutual funds in order to put you in there because it's a product that they offer. So they get like, you know, a percentage.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Do they have to tell you that though?

SPEAKER_00 19:18

I'm sure they tell you in the very fine print on them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Okay. It's in the paragraph at the bottom I need my glasses for. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Exactly. I don't think it's a real regular conversation. And then, you know, in some places, people are, they don't even they're what I like to see is people thinking about their money in a timeline. If they look at where they are now and they could even go back to their childhood and start thinking about their money story and, you know, what has happened? Have they been proactive with saving for kids' college, retirement, whatever you want to say? And how does that look?

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

And then let's say, you know, depending on the age that they are, where do they want to be in five years or 10 years, or not just where do you want to be the day you retire? I feel like we're really good at talking about two things. One is, hey, it's January 1st. Let's make a New Year's resolution for the rest of the year. And we're good at that.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

For about 18 days. Yeah, that lasts like a month or two, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

And we're good at, hey, our retirement age is I would like to be at blah, blah, whatever that age is. And I need to be saving, you know, this much or that much from every paycheck.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

That's something that we talk about not as regularly as we probably should, but it's something that's talked about. But I don't see people talking about, hey, where do I want to see myself in five years? And maybe two years, even or three years. And sometimes writing that down and really starting to examine, you know, where am I today? Where do I want to be? And why do I want to be there? You know, just because you got a raise, just because you got a bonus, doesn't mean you should go out and buy a new car and, you know, put the addition on your house unless you absolutely need it. You know, sometimes it's just like we keep accumulating and accumulating and accumulating. And then we see people when they get into their 50s, 60s, then they're like, oh no, I just want to declutter, downsize. And so it's almost like, could we be actually doing that along the way? Do we need all the big fancy things?

SPEAKER_01 21:11

For sure. Like we want more, more, more, more, more. We want the, we want the title. And, you know, I'm I'm certainly part of that in the corporate, like, you know, just going and getting the, you know, doing the work and, you know, moving up an organization, it's it's an incredible career type of, I would say, motivator, right? You know, you want the pay and you want the title and you can keep on going. And then you do accumulate, you know. There's always probably some way that you could be looking at what you're doing with regard to your money. Sometimes we're taught something that we need to unlearn. Like, do you feel that you see in all your research and writing these two incredible books? Do you feel like there's a trend of any particular thing that we need to unlearn specifically as women when it comes to investing or knowing our numbers?

SPEAKER_00 21:53

I I I think at the end of the day, I've heard too many people, men and women, say for years and years and years. Years, women aren't good with money. And I just do not believe that that is true. Women are good with money. We are just not really practiced at it as much. You know, men tend to be the ones who are doing the bills or doing the investing. I mean, again, I'm really generalizing here because that has changed quite a bit. But I think this concept of like women aren't good with money is just flat out wrong. Yeah. And if we could get more women to pay attention and say, hey, this is actually important. And not that they don't think it's important, but they kind of think, well, I'll get to that. I'm going to get to that when the kids are a little bit older. Or once I get to this certain level in my job, and then I'll I'll be making a certain amount of money, then I'll start to think about like this bigger investment. We definitely put it, at least I just, yeah, definitely like to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing. And the way I like to look at it is in buckets.

Simple Ways To Start Investing

SPEAKER_00 22:52

So I think about, I need a bucket of money that is going to, and I just use the word bucket because I don't know what else to call it, but you know, like a bucket for my everyday expenses, like the mortgage or the rent or like shelter, food, the necessities, right? Yeah. And then you've got a bucket for retirement and what you want to have down the road. And then of course, if you have children, you're going to have to think about college or whatever, however, you're handling that. So there's like these buckets. But then when I talk to people about angel investing, I would say, well, you know, that should be a bucket that is no more than we say at the Angel Capital Association, it's really no more than like 5% of your investable assets. So take all your investable assets and and maybe 5% of that, right? And then that would be something that you could put toward an alternative asset. And that's basically what an angel investment is. It's alternative. You could also think of an alternative asset like art or wine or some people would even call real estate an alternative asset. Some people call purses or exactly right. Gold jewelry. Jewelry, right. So there's lots of things that you could take your investable asset bucket and invest it in. And one of the things is angel investing. And like I talked about before, you you did used to have to have quite a bit of money. And in some cases, even like back in the 80s and 90s, you probably needed to have like $250,000. This was like way long ago.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

But today, for example, with an internet access and some type of credit card or or debit card, you can invest into a company through equity crowdfunding for as little as like $100 or $200.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

And that just wasn't something that you could do before. This all came out of the Jobs Act. And it was actually completely established and the SEC kind of turned it on in 2016. So it's only been around for about 10 years and it's kind of morphed and developed. But there's three main platforms that have the majority market share right now. And that's Republic WeFunder and Start Engine. And so you could go on to any of those and you could just start looking around. You don't even have to make an investment, but get educated. You get educated, exactly. And I always call it a fun dinner table conversation with kids, especially teenagers, because you can really start to talk about different companies. What are they working on? What do you like about it? And it's just something completely different than what we usually talk about.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Yeah, no, I'm ready to sit around that table and have that conversation because you learn a lot, I think, just by seeing what's being created. Another space that I go to, in addition to looking at the new companies that are popping up or are needing funding, is also like what job descriptions are being posted in companies. It's really fascinating right now. If you look at the ones in finance and you look at the ones in strategy or innovation, I, you know, one of the ones I look at a lot is uh the ones at Vayner. And, you know, they have a relevancy strategist. That's the newest one. And I think it's just really interesting to see what people are doing in the sense to be informed, to have more information. And absolutely, you know, joining and just learning is is part of it and then becoming active. You know, you could, you know, invest $100. You don't need the $250K, or you could invest more.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

I think one of the things that I'm pretty sure this is an urban legend, but you know, my parents used to say, don't touch your retirement, don't touch it, don't, don't move it around, you know, talk to your advisor, you know, who was assigned to me. I don't think I ever even had like a real conversation in the you know 10 plus years that I was uh at one uh institution and you know had a a great retirement plan, but I don't think I did more than than just email and those types of things. And I would say that you know, I kind of missed the boat there because I had the opportunity to do it, but it did seem like one more thing. And I also had that resonate in my head of don't touch your retirement.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

When we think about our retirement investing and maybe thinking we would like to use some of it, like you know, we could use the 5% rule for that. Is it an easy conversation to have with your advisor? Is it do you get dinged? Do you get penalized? Like, you know, obviously seek, you know, professional advice, but just in general, is it a bad thing to touch your retirement?

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Well, I I mean, I think that all depends on how people think about it, how they have it set up. I mean, so much of this is all about mindset, but you can use IRA dollars through a self-directed IRA in order to invest in private companies. Okay. And I think it's a great way because in a lot of cases it is a long tail, meaning that you could write a check to a startup company, or I particularly like if you haven't invested in anything like this before to invest through a fund, because a fund will give you more diversification right off the bat. In some cases, maybe even 10, 15 companies just from writing one check. But either way, you could use the money in your self-directed IRA in order to do that. And let's say you're, you know, let's say you're under 60, you would be okay to wait five years or 10 years for that to mature and actually come into something. So in a lot of cases, it is attractive. It's something that we're talking about a lot more. And I see a lot more self-directed IRA custodians coming onto the scene and talking to people about it.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Okay. So it's possible. And again, I think the message is learn, ask questions, get educated in that space. Is there a certain space, you know, with your books and all your conversations on your podcast that you see some traction, some light at the end of the tunnel, and that things, you know, we just need to be paying attention to of like how we can get involved or what we should know about it?

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Yeah. So if you look at the data that's come out of the Angel Capital Association, it is encouraging to see how many female investors are coming to the table to be a part of this. So if you look at venture capital funding, the needle hasn't moved much in the last many, many, many years. 2% of the funding is going to women. And I believe that we're not going to change that until we start to get more women writing checks. I believe the people will invest in the people that look like them. And they are comfortable with the things that they understand and want to talk about. But the thing that we've seen at the angel level, and the data has come out through the Angel Capital Association, that we are starting to see more of like 25% of the money is going to women, and maybe even higher than that, at the smaller check sizes. So the angels are the ones who are writing the early, early checks. We're the ones who are kind of getting the companies off the ground. It's the VCs, though, that we really need to come in with the bigger checks in order to really grow and scale and get the companies off the ground. So that's where we really do need to see change. And I'm hopeful because it was very bad when I back in 2012, when I first came on the scene, I think there was a line to the men's room at one of the places I was at. Um, you know, so there were not but not very many women in the room. That has definitely changed and there's a lot more diversity. And so I'm hoping that what we'll see is that women will start to be bolder with this. They'll start to see how many it the more stories like I do love that we're talking about it, and it can be now a story on YouTube or Instagram or anything, that awareness, media, can really help to drive substantive. And I think that is where we can start to move the needle.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Yeah.

Unapologetic Wealth And Taking Action

SPEAKER_01 30:03

So your first book, you know, Unapologetic Wealth, why that title?

SPEAKER_00 30:08

So that's actually technically the second book. Oh, second, but yeah, it's a prequel. Yeah, I keep thinking prequel. You're right, because it's the prequel to the first. So I know it's a little bit confusing. So I picked the title though, because after the first book, Do Good While Doing Well, came out, I just started talking to women and saying, okay, here you go. Like I just here's the blueprint. Like it is literally, I gave you like a hundred examples. There's a workbook, free resources on my website. I mean, like this is I'm trying to make this as easy as possible. Yeah. And then they would sometimes just say to me, I just I don't know. Like I'm still so overwhelmed and I just don't even know where my money is. My husband, uh, my financial. I mean, I heard all the stories. I mean, I was talking to people who were like, you know, really high up in companies, had their own big companies. Like these are smart, really successful, capable women. It's not their, again, it's not their fault. It's just this is how society that, and then, and then time passes, and the next thing you know, you're in your 40s or 50s and you're like, oh dear, I I really don't know where my money is. My husband's been doing it, or my I let my financial guy do it. I don't really talk to him that much, kind of like you were saying, yeah, I email every once in a while. Like, it's just not something that's thought about or talked about. And I think we're back to what we said at the very beginning of the episode, which is talking about it is just so important. So then when I came up with the title Unapologetic, I was like, okay, that's how we need to be feeling. And we're talking about wealth. Wealth is something that we need to think about on many levels. So we can't just talk about wealth and think money. We have to think about wealth in the ways of time, wealth, health, wealth, relationship wealth, all of these things, and start to say, how do I want my money to align with my values so that I can create the types of wealth that I really care about?

SPEAKER_01 31:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

So that is why I was so adamant about the title being something that was kind of grabby because it does come down to being bold and not just asking about, hey, where's my money and how am I going to invest it? I mean, that's just one of the things. But it could also be about, I had somebody, a beta reader, who read part of the book and comes back to me the next day and said, you know what? I was about to send a client, she was a contractor, I was about to send a client an invoice, and I just read the part about being bold. So I doubled the amount of the invoice and they paid it. And I was like, good for you, you know. So, like that was somebody being unapologetic about how they're feeling, about their because maybe they put themselves like they thought, oh, I need to be cheaper or I need to lower this price.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

And she said, This is what it's worth, and this is what I'm going to charge. And she did it. So she stood in her value. Yes. Which is not something we always do.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Which again is kind of what I said at the top of the episode standing up for yourself, standing up for what you believe you're worth.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Yeah. Yeah. Taking agency in that and not letting someone else tell you what your worth is. So if someone's sitting there right now and going, Oh gosh, is it too late? I can't, I haven't done anything. I don't even know where to start, or I don't even have a retirement. What can they do? Where do they start? Or what's something that it is I you know, I would believe like anything you do today will help tomorrow. So That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Yes. Today is the soonest you could do it. Um well, that's kind of why I I agonized over the subtitle of the book. So it's Unapologetic Wealth, rewrite your money story from any beginning. And I added it was originally just rewrite your money story. And I talked to a couple of people and they were like, Yeah, but I think maybe I'm too young for this or I'm too old for this. And I was like, Okay, wait a minute. The book really is designed to help anybody at any point in their life. And to your point, sometimes maybe people think that they're too old or the ship has sailed, or I just don't believe that that's true. So it's mindset here too. Belief. It's a lot about mindset and belief. And also, I've talked to people who are cash poor, but then you look at the assets that they have, and I'm like, well, do you need, do you need all that? To do you need the boat and the, you know, the Rolex or whatever it is, you know, do you need all of these things? You know, maybe their definition of wealth and aligning with their values is to actually take a look at what are they spending money on and is it the way that they want their future to be? And that future might be a year from now, it might be five years from now, it might be 10, but how can they really start to think about it differently? So the book isn't about how you can invest or where you should go, or it isn't even about investing. It's about how are you thinking about your money so that you can live the life that you really want to live and not feel that angst, that like waking up in the morning and feeling that kind of tightness in your chest of like, oh, you know, what am I gonna do? Because nobody like wakes up in the morning and says, you know what, I'm gonna be great with money today, or or I'm gonna be terrible with money today, or I'm not, I'm just gonna play small today. Nobody does that. But at the same time, nobody's knocking on your door and saying, hey, you know what? Today, today's your day that you need to actually start to take a look at your finances. People like we talked about, they're gonna be like, oh, I'll get to it. I'll get to it. No, it has to be happening.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Yeah, take action. Don't do the normal just I'll get to it someday or next week or when things are, you know, that's one of the things I think no matter what it is, when people say, Well, when I'm this or when this happens, it's feels like it's just being put off and put off and put off. And obviously, sometimes there is a reason to put things off, but I think that becomes an excuse not to tackle it in some just take one step towards it, I say. One step, yeah. And then that leads to the next for sure. So as we close out, I think people are using AI

Using AI To Review Spending

SPEAKER_01 35:44

in different ways. And there's ways to use it and ways not to use it when it comes to investing. Anything you want to put out there in the sense of how it could be used for positive, you know, part of the education, of course, always with checks and balances. But outside of that, what would you say is a a good use and not a good use of AI when it comes to investing or being an angel investor?

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Yeah, so I mean, we talk about this a lot in angel investing world because we use it to summarize things, we use it to help us do research, you know, on different industries and things like that. I really think that when it comes to money mindset, I have a lot of exercises in the book and some reflection questions that people can ask. And I think that they could sit with those questions, but they could also use some AI if they wanted to, to help them elaborate a little bit on how they're thinking and maybe, you know, what could they start to scale back on in order to scale up on some other things? So if we're really saying that time wealth is so important to us, spending time with our families, I hear that over and over again. But yet how many people are actually spending time with our families because they're out like hustling and doing this and doing that, running at 18 different directions. Or if you look at another good thing you could use AI for is go ahead and print out or, you know, get a get a copy of your last year's uh credit card statement and put it into AI and have it analyze it and start to really look at what you're spending money on. And did you need all of those things that you bought? Did you need all the Amazon primes or whatever you're doing? I know that's something that sometimes I can be guilty of. You know, so what is it that you can do to start to really think about my values and my money and how can I align them? And it sounds simple, but it's not easy, right? It's not gonna be something easy to do. It's simple to do, but you really have to think about it.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Yeah. And I think starting is the key thing. You have incredible assets that people can download on your website as well as your two books. All the information uh to gather that is in the episode notes for everyone. Thank you so much for being on the Bold Lounge. Could talk for hours about this, I think, and really appreciate what you're doing and the message you're putting out into the world that we really take agency and know what we're investing in and also know how we can help others and more women be in this space. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

No, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast. Through the continuum of bold stories, vulnerability to taking the leap, you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important stories. By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset. We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journeys with you.