Jamila Souffrant 0:00

You're listening to the Journey to Launch podcast, Our Real Estate Journey Part Two and How We Almost Lost $44,000.

Intro 0:13

Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast with your host Jamila Souffrant. As a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest, and build real wealth. Join her on the journey to launch to financial freedom.

Jamila Souffrant 0:37

Hey, hey, hey journeyers Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast. In this episode of the podcast, I am going to be sharing my real estate experience where I bought a condo No, no, no, I'm promise this is not something you heard already. So Episode 193. I talked about buying my Dumbo property. This is a property that I went into contract with pre construction when I was 22 years old and closed on it moved in when I was 24. I have another tale for you another tale another Well, this is not spooky. It starts out a little spooky. And then it does end up okay. But I want to share this tale of another real estate journey that I went on. That has greatly also impacted my life and is a definite Stark comparison to what happened with my first condominium purchase. So if you have not listened to Episode 193, where I talked about purchasing my DUMBO property, you can listen to that after you listen to this one, or listen to that one. First, it doesn't really matter, you'll get both either way you get the benefit from both. But I'm sharing this with you want to share the takeaways from this experience that definitely did not end up the same way as the DUMBO property. And also taught me so so much. It's a experience where I and my husband Well, he was my boyfriend at the time weren't engaged yet almost lost our downpayment for a condominium that we went in, to contract on. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about how that came to be what happened and how we essentially were able to recover and make the best out of the situation. Before we hop into this week's episode, I want to bring you a word from today's sponsor.

Journey to launch is brought to you by First Republic bank, the world is changing and your needs are evolving. As your focus turns to what matters most to you and your community. First Republic remains committed to offering personalized financial solutions that fit your needs. From day one, you'll be connected with a dedicated banker who will serve as your primary point of contact throughout your relationship with the bank. They'll be there to listen to you understand your values and meet you on your financial journey. Your banker can offer solutions that support your goals at any stage from setting up a personal checking account to refinancing household debt to buying a first home as your needs evolve. You can call or email your banker at any time for the support you need. Because First Republic believes what matters to you matters most. Learn more at firstrepublic.com that's Firstrepublic.com, member FDIC Equal Housing lender.

So to take you back, I had a great experience buying my first condo in terms of the luck all the stars aligned with the timing of when I purchased it when I you know, discovered Dumbo. You know, for me personally like this area that I didn't grow up too far from but here was this place that I had access to, and there was a pre construction thing I could buy it, you know, and I was able to buy the cheapest apartment in that building at the time. Right. And so that was in 2007 when I closed on that unit. And at the time, you know, dating my boyfriend, you know, we were together throughout college. So you know, we knew we we had a plan. We knew we're gonna get married. We knew we wanted to have kids eventually. And so when I had this experience with the Dumbo unit, I thought to myself Wait, what we me and him could buy something together. You know what if we could buy something together, buy a one bedroom, move into this one bedroom live there for a little bit and then you know move out as we start our family. And because the first purchase I did went so well and the condo appreciated before I even closed on it. I thought the same thing would happen with this next opportunity. And the opportunity was in a place called downtown Brooklyn. And for me, it almost felt like downtown Brooklyn was even a better not a better area than you know Dumbo, but it was more familiar to me. Dumbo was an area more tucked away. There's only one train access in Dumbo while downtown Brooklyn is you know, very accessible. Multiple train lines. Very close to Access to the bridges and the main roads, and Fulton Street and all these places where I went all the time as a child and growing up.

So when we saw that there was construction happening, that people were starting to build developers were, were building high rises, I thought, this is the next thing, this is the next thing that we can purchase. And you know, we can make money from it, stay there, live there, sell it, whatever. And so my boyfriend at the time was gonna call him my husband since he is my husband, now we went to the sales office. And we, you know, saw the plans for this building. And we saw one bedroom that we really liked. This building was, you know, going to be a luxury building had a pool. I mean, we were just like, yes, this is like the life we want to live. Let's do it. And so with that, you know, we did I don't think we signed right away. Like, I think we we came back the next day or a couple days later, but we decided on a one bedroom unit. And I want you guys to guess the date that we signed that contract or the about date. And the date was June 2008. Now, for those of you who are aware of what happened in 2008, you're like, Oh, no. Oh, no. And yes, that's right. Oh, no, because 2008 was the year that the market and real estate market imploded, they crashed. And it literally felt like we signed that contract. And everything went to hell, like right after this, let me tell you how it worked. So to secure our you know, apartment, so no one else would come in and, and try to purchase it, we had to put 10% down of the purchase price, we had to put 10% down, that wasn't unfamiliar to how I did it with my Dumbo condo, I had to put 10% down at signing, so no one else could buy that condo unit. And then you know, you they would start construction. And then at the closing, I needed the additional 10% and closing costs. And so with that my husband and I we put down 10%. And this condo, at the time, put down that money, we went into contract for it at $444,000. a one bedroom, and it actually thinking back on the square footage, it wasn't even that much bigger than my studio apartment. But you know, they made it work. This is New York City. And this is in the middle of like, the real estate boom, not even the middle, this is at the tail end. And we didn't know that. And so when the news hit, when everything started to collapse, we were left with a contract on a unit that was not worth what we were in contract for the unit for the condominium was not worth as much money as we went into contract for it.

And so we were just like, oh my goodness, right. And it was so crazy. Because if we would have waited a few months, we wouldn't have went into contract on it. But again, on feeling like, you know, we have to get in and having the experience that I had before I thought this was gonna be you know, a great deal, quote, unquote, deal. And as you can imagine, when everything kind of fell apart, we were just like, what do we do? Now? Luckily, I would say Luckily, we you know, we were able to connect with other people who purchase units in the building, you know, there was a community of us at this point. Now, like looking at each other, like what do we do now. And with that, you know, we tried to speak to the developers try to negotiate with them, because we figured like, there was so much now, units on the market, there were a lot of developers who were starting construction. And so we thought, okay, maybe we can negotiate and you know, ask for a better deal or some sort of discount on the unit itself, since no one wanted to close at, you know, overpriced condo in this market. But as you can imagine, they really did not want to work with us. And you know, in fact, we hired an attorney, because they actually did do some things that were not legal with the contract in the way they sold the condominium unit. So we thought, okay, we can hire an attorney, maybe that will help them like bring them to the table to talk to us.

That didn't really work either. But we did file a complaint with the attorney general's office to also just see what we can do what was our out in this scenario. And with that, one of the things that some of the people had in their contracts, including us was that we had a walkaway date. So the walkaway date was that if they did not complete the condominium by a certain date, then you can walk away and get your money back. Right. And so the way things were looking at this, we signed the contract in June 2008. We were looking at ways to work with a developer looking at ways to like, figure out what we're going to do and so we're in 2009 at this point, this is months and months of back and forth, wondering what's gonna happen Because if you didn't do the math already put 10% down on a $444,000 unit, which meant we put down $44,000 $44,000 is a lot of money, it's a lot of money, then it's a lot of money now. And for two young people in their 20s, it was a lot of money. And we were contemplating having to walk away from that, it was either closing on a unit that was not worth what we were in contract for, and spending more money and waiting for the market one day to rebound, or like cutting our losses and walking away from 44,000. So that is the kind of decision and thoughts that were We were like thinking throughout this whole time, so there was a walkaway date, they could not finish it by the end of December 2009, we could walk away. And we were pretty confident that they were not going to be able to finish the unit or the building. So remember, this was new construction, the building was still in construction, one of the things that the developers were able to do, they were able to get certificates of occupancy for the floors, for the people who had these walkaway dates, the building wasn't complete, it wasn't like you couldn't live there. But they were able to get the CEOs so that they were able to basically skirt by on this walkaway date where we couldn't walk away anymore. So we were just like, Oh my gosh, we're gonna be stuck with this. It's either we close or we don't.

Then, you know, ultimately, still going back and forth with the developers, we finally got them to at least start the conversation. Because we were really willing to walk away from our 10% if it meant that we had to continue to like put money into this apartment and closing and you know, living in an area that at that moment, you know, after the time has passed, we just thought you know what, it didn't even make sense to move into the area anymore. Like we needed to get back on our feet and save our money again, because we literally both of us, like wiped out our savings to be able to do this. And so the good news is that they were willing to negotiate and talk to us because so many of the other purchasers were in this situation, they didn't want to close either. And so they didn't want to risk everyone walking away. So they came to us or came back to us and said they would offer us a 5% discount. And we're like no, like the property if we need more than that to be able to close. And so I believe we countered and eventually got them to get this we got them to agree to giving us another unit. So same floor plan one bedroom, eight floors higher a discount on that unit, and that they would cover the closing cost. So our main objective was to come to if we had to close on this property, we wanted to close and not have to bring any more money to the table, because we were already out 44,000. And so we were really adamant that we were going to come to this closing and not put any more money down. And they agreed the developers agreed and it was better for us because the unit was eight floors higher, which means the resale value, you know, would be better because it's higher unit then we went to contract with a apartment that was actually like they discounted that apartment. And they were covering closing costs. So eventually, we did close in May 2011. On that unit, we got tenants. So the big thing about this is, when we initially planned to like buy this condominium, we were going to live there for a couple years. Then as everything started, we were like, No, we can't, we can't live there. And so we knew that we needed a tenant, and doing the math and understanding the market. So at this point, I was like beginning kind of like my real estate career. So I was working at my company, but I had transitioned into the real estate department. So for me, I am getting more aware and in tune with real estate investing and how things work. And so understanding that, you know, did the math on Okay, what can we get a tenant for can at least cover the mortgage. And we did have to make that decision. That was one of the thought processes before we even closed was if we have to keep this unit can we at least cover the mortgage with the rent. And at the time the market was still recovering. It was a renters market. There was so many units available, you know, the renters had their pick of the litter. And luckily, you know, the rent at the time, I think it was covering we might have been, you know, had to throw a couple $100 a month towards the, the, like the mortgage on top of what the rent was, but it wasn't you know, it wasn't devastating, where, you know, we couldn't handle it. Because the idea was okay, we keep this we hold on, hold on for the market to recover. Because this is downtown Brooklyn, they still had lots of plans for it. You know, ultimately I knew the market would bounce back and we were in a solid location. But we knew that we wanted to sell it like as soon as we had enough juice on the market had enough juice we were going to sell it. So we closed in May 2011. When we got our first tenant in June of 2011, and, you know, we were just like writing it out until we could sell it. And let me tell you something, even the experience of just managing the renters were different than the Dumbo experience. Because when I finally did move out, once we know my husband, I got engaged, we moved out into his mom's basement, and I was renting the Dumbo unit out and the tenants that I had in that DUMBO unit, Oh, my gosh, I remember, you know, that my first tenant was there for eight years. I think he never bothered me for anything, even when something was broken. I remember combing to re sign his lease. And he was like, Oh, yeah, by the way, the microwave is broken. And I was like, oh, when you know, my gosh, like when did it break, and he was like, oh, months ago, like, that's how low maintenance he was. Whereas with this unit in downtown Brooklyn, you know, we had a few tenants in, and like, it was like the tenants that like, as soon as anything happened, not only did they call once, but they call like multiple times as we're trying to get them help. And so it was more stressful, and just more like, okay, I actually do not want to be a landlord with like, something with this building something with this unit, like, I would like to exit exit as soon as possible. But in any event, we know we held on and we did try to sell it, we tried to sell it in 2013. And we almost we had a buyer but it fell through. And then we tried to sell it again in 2014. And we did, we sold it and we did sell it above for what we closed on. And I will tell you this, you know the whole experience. Sometimes it seems just like a blur someone like my experiences, because at the moment at the time, they were obviously so important, and took up most of my life, especially the money part of it, there were times where I was thinking to myself, are we really going to lose before we close on the apartment. Are we really going to lose $44,000? If we don't close on this, it seems surreal. At the moment, it still seems surreal now, and we ended up selling. And I would say this dropped that whole time, but strengthened our relationship, it helped me understand the possibilities of real estate, that yes, it can go really well. And it can go really, really bad. And so we did use the proceeds. So we did actually pull this up the actual numbers, we sold it at $585,000. So we did make money off of the sale eventually. And you know, I think back sometimes and I say you know, maybe we should have kept it, you know, we should have kept it because the market did rebound. Um, there is a lot of development downtown Brooklyn now, but we definitely would be able to sell it for more money today. But we sold it because one we needed to sell it. We wanted to buy a home, a home that we could like, move into and grow a family. And we couldn't do that in a one bedroom unit. And we needed money to do that we needed money for the new house. And so we didn't use a majority of the money we made from that to buy our new home to renovate our new home. And so it didn't end up working out. But man oh man, let me tell you, it was an experience.

So I did want to talk about some lessons learned that I hope that you can apply to your own experience your own life again, I know these are like totally different times. For us, these are the things that like I learned the process. Okay, so one, there is a cause and effect to everything is a cause and effect to everything. So the same system, and practices that allowed me to purchase my first condo in Dumbo was the reason that the market imploded with the purchase of the second condo. So at the time that I went into contract for my unit in Dumbo the market was in a frenzy. That's why I went to Dumbo because I couldn't afford anything and the other places like the multi families that I wanted to buy the prices were at the time, you know, just ridiculous. And because the market was you know, booming and people were kind of overvalue overvaluing things, I was able to find this opportunity in Dumbo the studio, and the cheapest one was able to kind of barely afford it. And what that did for me was I had to put down the 10% save the apartment, but then it gave me two years to save up the additional money to close on this unit. But again, when I closed on this unit, we were still in at the height of this bubble. And so most people who you know, were given loans that they couldn't afford predatory lending, you know, the subprime mortgages, like I was kind of one of those people, I was able to close on my dumbo property without showing any documentation, like any documentation in terms of validating my income, because I did a no loan doc close. And that's what got a lot of people in trouble. They were able to, you know, buy properties they couldn't afford, they were over leveraged and then when the market imploded, they were left with payments. They couldn't afford. Now luckily for me, I did pick a solid location to the location held through, you know, it really was I say, the stars aligned for that Dumbo purchase. But I should not technically have been able to close on that property if they would have checked my income. Because my income at the time was really just like barely covering and or I would have needed a cosigner. So I was able to close on that unit without a cosigner. And this is the same thing that then caused the market to implode. So the cause being Yes, I was able to, you know, thank God be able to do what I did in Dumbo that has created such a momentum of wealth for myself for my family, because the property is worth so much more than what I went to contract for it for. But on the other end, the same, like the reason I was able to do that was the reason why the second one didn't work. Everything exploded at that moment, like after we signed the contract. And so it just taught me there's a cause and effect to everything. And we know you at one point, will benefit from something, whether maybe it's a law, or just a caveat and whatever is going on, right. And that's good. But also know that if that reason that you're benefiting is not based on like a solid reason or good thing that potentially can swing back the other way, and it swung back the other way on us. And so it's very interesting how that happened. But it just taught me again, there's a cause and effect for everything.

The other thing is determining your BATNA ba TNA actually did a kind of like a paper on this whole experience for my real estate degree. So I have my Master's in real estate from NYU. And one of the things we had to do was like a paper on negotiating. And I remember I picked buying this downtown condo, and I talked about negotiating, like how we got to the point where we're able to, you know, negotiate an apartment on a higher floor to get a, you know, a discount on the price and then closing costs. But we had to determine our BATNA. So BATNA is best alternative to a negotiated agreement. All right? I remember having to list this out when I was writing this paper up after the fact. So we had already, you know, close on the downtown property, but I was like recapping it in this paper. And I remember talking about BATNA. And so you have to develop a list of actions you would take if no agreement is reached. So if you come to a table, like a negotiating table, right, there's a party on one side that wants one thing and you want another, you have to think about what will you be willing to do? What are the alternative things that you'll need to do if you don't get what you want in some negotiation? And so we had to figure that out, like, what were our courses of action? If this developer did not want to talk to us? What could we do? Like, let's just say, you know, we offered them this, or they didn't even come to the table, what are options options are to close, or to walk away or to, you know, potentially open up a conversation for negotiation again, and we had to be okay with walking away. So part of the, you know, one of our list of things was walking away from all that money. And it sounds like crazy to like, say, Okay, are you going to walk away from $44,000? Or are you going to like to stick it out. But you also have to understand that this

is like, another lesson I just learned is the sunk cost, the sunk cost understanding that like, our brains will tell us that we rather hold on to something that sinking like a sinking ship, or you know, there's money already lost, you know, that person that's losing money on a bet, but they're like, you know what, I can just make it back, I can make it back, but they end up losing more money. And because it feels so bad to walk away from, you know, the little bit that you lost, because you think you can make it back up. And we, you know, decided that if we had to if we ultimately if they did not want to talk to us at the market at that time, was just doesn't make sense. And we personally just couldn't afford because that was part of it. Like, could we actually afford to close on this, like, we have to take out, you know, we have to get closing costs, take out more loans, like, we just didn't want to do that. So we were actually Okay, with walking away. I mean, we didn't want to, but when we were able to come to terms with that, it allowed us to have a more position of power in negotiating, right. So once you know that you are okay, with the scenario of walking away, that does put you in a better positioning power of just negotiating at the table. And luckily, you know, they wanted to work with us too, because they also the developers at the end of the day wanted their units to be closed upon. They didn't want everyone walking away. And so you know, it ultimately ended up working out for us.

But again, talk about a wild roller coaster, and then it's leveraging and using a strategy, whatever that is at that moment for something else for something better. sticking through a plan, now we did end up selling at a profit. But that money is what we use to purchase our current home. That money is what we use to create a, you know, a home that we love, we were able to renovate our home with the money. And, you know, again, we could have held on to the apartment more, you know, we could have like, sold it later on for more money. But realizing where we were in our lives at that moment, we wanted to get our own place, I was like pregnant, like I knew wanted more kids like it was more important for us to have a home our own. And that's what we did. So we leveraged this moment, or these moments, this kind of real estate almost, that went bad into a better opportunity for us, it put us at another you know, level where we actually had to move deeper into Brooklyn. So you know, one of the things that I loved, loved loved about the locations of where we were, like the Dumbo area and a downtown area was the proximity to the city. Now, there's obviously good and bad with that, you know, the closer you are to Manhattan, less parking, it's more congested, but I just love the you know, access to the different modes of transportation, how quickly can you get to the city, I was working, you know, in corporate America at this time. So for me to be able to, you know, get through, and I was driving to work. So you know, get on the bridge to the Holland Tunnel, it was quick, you know, also, I love just like the options that you get when you are like more downtown Brooklyn with the terms of options to eat, and things you can do. It's just just, it's more diverse. And so realizing that and realizing we could not afford a, you know, multiple bedroom house downtown, we had to go deeper in Brooklyn. But with that, we're able to buy something bigger, something that could fit us. And that's what we're able to do with the money that we got from when we sold the unit. So lots of lessons here to unpack, but I wanted to share kind of like the other side, the other tail to my real estate journey. Because yes, it did work out. But for a while, it didn't seem like it was going to. And I think it's a perfect example of how Yes, real estate can work really well for you. You know, at the time, you also remember this was like years ago, so you know, I wouldn't be able to at this moment for to buy something downtown right now, or in Dumbo right now. So I can, you know, feel for especially the younger generation coming up, you know, they are going up with maybe their grandparents who possibly own something, and then they can't even own anything in the area that they grew up in. Right, a lot of gentrification happening and all that. But with that said, it's important to look for other opportunities. You know, at one point I was willing to go elsewhere, Jersey, even to buy something, or even other states, you know, I was actually looking in other states to invest at one point when I was really into real estate and so even if, if you're a New Yorker, I'm you know, or someone that's living in an area where you're, you're out priced like you can't even buy near you who you grew up. That one, real estate is a great investment, but not all the time and not for everyone, you really have to understand the

market, the timing and buy something that you can afford and look at it as a true investment. So even if you're planning to move into like a property, like you're going to own it, it has to be solid, a solid value that if you plan to move out, it can be rented out or if you plan to sell, you can sell it because it has appreciated in value. So that is my second tale. In my second real estate story tale. I hope you got some more insight. I hope you learned some lessons. Let me know what you thought and share with me I'm on social media at journey to launch and I love to hear your takeaways and ahas

If you want to check out the episode shownotes that's where you can get links to anything that's mentioned, and even get a transcribed version of this episode that you can read and go to journeytolaunch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode.

If you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you are not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this and Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review. Number Two follow me on my social media accounts. I'm at journey to launch on Facebook Instagram and Twitter. And I love love love interacting with journeyers there. Three support and check out the sponsors of this show if you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here. So show them some love for supporting your girl. Four and last but not least, share this episode this podcast with a friend or family member or co worker so that we can spread the message of journey to launch. Alright, that's it until next week, keep on journeying journeyers

Jamila Souffrant 0:00

You're listening to the Journey to Launch podcast Healthcare Options for Financial Independence, Early Retirement Seekers and Entrepreneurs with Lynn Frair.

Intro 0:12

Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast with your host Jamila Souffrant as a money expert who walks her talk she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest, and build real wealth. Join her on the Journey to Launch to financial freedom.

Jamila Souffrant 0:37

Hey, hey journeyers Welcome to another insightful, educational, hopefully motivating episode for you. If you are brand new to this podcast, sit back, relax, buckle up, we are launching to financial independence and financial freedom. See what I did there? I did that launch into you get it? I like to like just, you know, put the rocket with a launch. It's something with rockets. I don't know. Anyway, back to the topic. Okay, listen, this conversation, I knew I had to have it. I'm so glad I connected with Lynn freer to have this conversation because I get asked a lot of questions. You know, there are a million topics within the realm of personal finance, like a million budgeting and investing, even now, when you break it down, right? I always say like personal finance, General personal finance, you can have a million topics. And then when you go to the next level, which is kind of like what we talked about here, reaching financial independence, there are different types of strategies and things you need to know different things you need to have in your toolkit and be aware of So one of the questions that people always ask is What do I do about healthcare, right? And this even just not only for people who are on the journey to try to retire early from the corporate jobs, or reach financial independence, but entrepreneurs, right, if you do not have a spouse, if you're not as lucky as I was, and am to have a spouse that currently still has a full time job so I can go on his health care. What are you to do about your health care? Right. And so I get this question asked a lot, you know, how do you even factor in your health care cost for your financial independence goal? How do you figure that out? Right. And so I'm so glad that connected with Lynn because she is going to help us at least answer these questions and think more about what we can do what we need to look into to figure out our own situation and what's best for us as it pertains to health care.

Okay, so a little bit more about Lynn and what we're going to talk about. So Lynn is a nurse and self proclaimed money geek and founder of fihealthcare.com. She after a brain tumor in her 20s wiped out her savings, but we built her investments to where her passive income overtook her nursing wages. And she was able to make work optional at age 39. Listen, that is the goal guys to make work optional. So Lynn started FI Healthcare, which is a crowdsource knowledge base for healthcare options for early retirees and she pulls together information in the community. So from the FIRE space, will FIRE stands for financial independence, retire early from the community, have the questions and resources so that everyone can get access to understand their health care options, because Lord knows, it is confusing. And the fact that our current system has us tied to jobs, we hate people or you know, situations that are not healthy, you know, marriage, whatever that is potentially for someone just for the sake of healthcare is really, I think, a tragedy. And it really holds so many people back, right. Like how many of you listening right now, if it weren't for maybe healthcare, you would have jumped ship and took a risk a long time ago. So Lynn helps to break that down and make it easier for all of us to understand that. In the conversation with Lynn, we're going to talk about what do most people do when it comes to health care if they're trying to reach early retirement or entrepreneurship? What are the options? How can they compare the options? What impacts the plans that you qualify for, you know, we're going to get a little bit into the administration and policies that impact this. There's no way that we couldn't talk about this part, and Obamacare and all the things so this is gonna be a really insightful, hopefully educational episode for you.

First, a word from today's sponsor. As we are in the beginning of a brand new year, it's the perfect time to get focused and committed to your financial goals. Not only is it great to reflect on your money wins and lessons learned from the previous year, but it's the perfect opportunity to set and commit to your financial goals for the year ahead. Take time to reevaluate your current financial tools, banking situation, and consider joining your local credit union if you're not already a member, for example, digital Federal Credit Union, better known as DCU is committed to providing their members with the financial products and services they need to help them achieve their financial goals. Not only does DCU offer free online education for the members On many topics, including saving, building credit and budgeting, DCU also offers products that can help members establish or improve their credit. To learn more, check out DCU. org. And stick around to the end of the show for the DCU money Tip of the Week, where I'll be sharing tips to help you save and manage your money so that you can reach your goals. Okay, let's get into the episode.

Hey, journeyers. So I get so many questions and you know, requests about this topic, healthcare. I know like, Whoa, jameelah, that doesn't sound exciting. But when it comes to planning out our financial independence journey, this is an important part of it. Because it's one of like the most, it's a block for a lot of people in terms of like preparing for how they're gonna prepare for health care if they leave their stable job early, or just like general retirement. And may I say to for entrepreneurs, that health care, but being able to afford it and you know, knowing all your options are key. So I get questions about this. And I'm really excited to bring on Lynn Frair, from EFI healthcare, to talk more about this topic. So welcome to the podcast. Lynn.

Lynn Frair 6:10

Thank you, Jamila. I'm so excited to be here. And I first have to ask you a question. How does it feel to win podcast of the year? That just happened?

Jamila Souffrant 6:19

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So it feels a little surreal. because ever since I came into this space, it's like, you know, from the beginning, I listened to all their podcasts. And it's kind of cool to be like, nominated with the other people that you started to listen to before you even had a podcast. So it's it's an honor. And I'm just I'm really glad that this is resonating with people. And my goal is for more people to hear the message. Hopefully that helps.

Lynn Frair 6:44

Yeah, I'm so happy for you. I saw that I was there live when it was was presented. And I'm thrilled for you. I know, you're also close to 2 million downloads. So this has been a big year for you.

Jamila Souffrant 6:54

Yeah, and I love it. So depending on so depending on when this is released. So journeyers will you'll probably maybe some of this news will be not old news, but it'd be like happened last month, we'll see. So working out the schedule. But yes, the podcast is doing amazing in terms of growth, and it wouldn't be possible without people listening like you so journeyers. So you admitted that you're a journeyer

Lynn Frair 7:17

Yes, I am. I love it.

Jamila Souffrant 7:19

I love that you get the vibe. And now you're talking to fellow journeyers about this important topic?

Lynn Frair 7:24

Yes. Yeah.

Jamila Souffrant 7:26

Okay, first, healthcare. It's a barrier for a lot of people or a block in terms of how they are thinking about their, like their future. Because, you know, for me, at least I am lucky and have the privilege where you know, even as an entrepreneur, I'm on my husband's off health care. So I didn't have to really worry about like factoring that in, in my cost of like leaving my job. But not everyone has that as an option. What if you have both partners who wants you know, to be entrepreneurs and or reach early financial independence or retire early? Right. So I want to really just dive in. Why does it have to be so complicated? And why are we so restricted in terms of how we make money and live in, like, based on just like having health care?

Lynn Frair 8:07

Yes, oh, gosh, I just want to write I, I first want to tell you guys why I got into this, and it'll give good context. And then to dive right in. So I'm a nurse, and I reached financial independence, I was 38. In spite of losing everything that I had, I started investing when I was 12 years old in the stock market with my babysitting money. I lost it all in my late 20s due to a brain tumor. Due to the cost of health care, health insurance, mostly the health care costs that was before out of pocket maxes, I believe, and had to rebuild from there. So I rebuilt got to the point where I was approaching financial independence. And for our family of four, I was trying to figure out what we do about health care. So I got familiar with the fire movement. And I talked to over 100 people from the fire movement, I researched 1000 or more publications on the topic, and I compiled them into a database, and I went to something called Camp mustache. Everybody wanted to have access to this database. And so I went to fin con to see who is working on this. So I could give them all my information. And nobody was, but they wanted me to make it public. And so BiggerPockets heard about it, they announced the name of the website, and it went live from there. And so the reason I created the site was because it was a real big problem for me, trying to look at healthcare options, and also for any folks who are interested in fire and for any entrepreneurs. It's really for anybody who's outside of the traditional employer plan.

So to answer your question, why is it so complicated? It is so complicated, but I want to make it easier to be a lot less complicated for folks and it is complicated. There's a lot of different reasons and it's because we have different motivations from different parties. The health insurance industry wants to make a profit here. We've got some government involvement there. We have a lot of different incentives lined up all over the place. And we have it growing the cost growing at over twice inflation, all sorts of reasons that it's complicated. But on my site, what I do is I take a look at what are the different options for folks. And I found about 22 major options, I compare the pros and cons, eligibility criteria, and my favorite links to help people sort of figure out what is out there. Right,

Jamila Souffrant 10:31

right now, so I want to the site that Linda's referring to is fihealthcare.com.

Lynn Frair 10:37

Yes.

Jamila Souffrant 10:38

And, you know, I love that you threw in like a little bit of your backstory. And there's like me being the interviewer and the nosy person I am. I'm like, Okay, I have to have you back to just to talk about your whole financial independence journey. Because, you know, it sounds fascinating the fact that you want to reach financial independence. So hopefully, we'll be able to learn a little bit more, as we like, just unfold these questions and answers about health care. But what do most people do like, what's your healthcare setup like?

Lynn Frair 11:04

So I'm going to look at the exchange, I'm this is open enrollment period right now runs November 1 to December 15, for most people, and we look at what's called the exchange, or the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, it's all basically what anybody outside of a government or outside of employer based health care would look at. And for our family we're looking at, we have been looking at high deductible health plans. But we are kind of high utilizers of health care historically. So I'm, I've read data that folks with high deductible health plans, and that's a big popular item in the fire community, but they actually delay care. So for our personal family, we're going to be looking at sort of higher premium, lower deductible. The problem I'm seeing when I'm comparing plans, is that the deductibles are still really high and the out of pocket maximums are still really high. So let me dig into that. I'm going to give you guys some actionable nuggets here. So the the main costs, and we'll talk about other things, but for most folks in the fire movement, what I see is they first go to what's available in their area. So they would go to healthcare.gov. It will direct you to your state specific area. To see what plans are available, it will give you recommendations. And you'll enter a few items I recommend first trying in incognito mode and not entering personal information. Otherwise, you'll get a slew of contact information alerts. So that's how I recommend looking to see what do you have on your state's benefit exchange to see what's available. What I've seen lately is that the premiums seem a little seem lower over time, but the deductibles and out of pocket maxes are high. So at first blush, it looks like a very reasonably priced plan. But those three things are really the elements of what it's going to cost. So Oh, go ahead,

Jamila Souffrant 13:06

I just wanted to jump in and just define some terms just like just a really basic for people. So premium is what the deductible and out of pocket

Lynn Frair 13:14

Jamila, you read my mind, that's exactly what I was just gonna do. So premiums are what you'll pay every month that is a given cost. A fixed cost, whether you use health healthcare or not. A deductible is the amount of money that you have to pay, before your insurance basically will start to cover anything. So if you have a deductible of say, 4500, you have to pay the first $4,500 of your care before your insurance will start to share the cost with you. So once you meet your deductible, so you got your premiums going every month, once you need to care, you will meet your deductible and have to pay that whole amount before you get insurance. And then the maximum you can expect to pay is what's called the out of pocket max. And that can be anywhere there's a huge range of this. It could be anywhere from sometimes it's zero if you have a fantastic plan through an employer, but we're talking about the exchange here. So it could be as low as a few $100. very unlikely 1000 2000 up to the federal maximum. And the federally defined maximum is for 2021 is going to be $17,100 is what I hear.

Jamila Souffrant 14:31

So that's the most that you would pay out of pocket for any if you have insurance.

Lynn Frair 14:36

If you saw I'll give you yet in a way. So I'll explain you'll always have your premium. So you pay that every month that does not count toward your out of pocket max. So your premium your monthly premium plus your out of pocket max if you have lots of health care needs. But there are exclusions to the out of pocket maximum. So I have a list What those are usually. And they are, if anything is out of network. So insurance companies will say always not a guarantee of payment, because they're not really incentivized to take good care of you. I mean, that's the reality. They're, they're incentivized to keep you going for as long as they have you. And that's the sad truth. Any amounts that are billed, that are beyond what the insurance company's allowed amount is, could be considered an exclusion. And sometimes medication costs are outside of there, it's going to be pretty rare that folks are going to need to go beyond their out of pocket Max, and their premium into this world beyond combined multiple years in a row. But I do want folks to know that that's possible.

Jamila Souffrant 15:52

Yeah. Okay. And that's just a good point. I'm glad we like kind of took it back and explained all that. And so as you were saying, in terms of when you're like looking on the exchange, and you brought up something you said, you know, open enrollment. So it's the same thing for someone who is an entrepreneur or just retired, let's say early, that they have to make a decision between that timeframe. What if you What if you make a decision or you quit your job in March? How does that work?

Lynn Frair 16:18

Yeah. Such great questions. Jamila. So I should say there are some states that extend the open enrollment period. So that's the federal guideline. But there's a few states who go beyond this. So if you're listening outside of that, check to see what your state allows. But if you've left your job, or you've lost health care, you've lost health insurance, I should say, you may qualify for what's considered outside of the normal open enrollment period. So you would have what's called a qualifying event. So if you lost healthcare, it's considered a qualifying event. That's under the rules that exists now. So you may be able to and I would encourage folks if they're not sure to see if they qualify for a qualifying event in order to get health, health insurance, even outside of open enrollment.

Jamila Souffrant 17:06

Right, right. So you were talking about like comparing plans and like, so for most people who are looking on the exchange, these are, you know, if you're not covered through an employer, they're going to this exchange also, that's, that's basically Obamacare. Right?

Lynn Frair 17:20

Yeah.

Jamila Souffrant 17:20

And they have to compare now all these different plans. But what are those plans? Like, because I hear a lot of people talk about how expensive, you know it is, and they can't really afford the cost of it.

Lynn Frair 17:31

Yeah. So I want to say it's really interesting, when you, I take a look at sometimes the the polls that go out about health insurance, and people have a misunderstanding, they'll say that they don't like Obamacare, but they like the ACA, the Affordable Care Act, and they're really the same thing. So when they go on the exchange, you'll see a variety of things, you'll probably see it state specific, so they're all slightly different. But you'll see what sort of proposed to you likely. And you can filter and adjust for if you want a higher deductible or a lower deductible plan. But the reality is, health care is extremely expensive. So for an average family of four, depending on the data, you look at the cost of providing health care for a family for somewhere in the neighborhood on average of 24 to $28,000 a year. And folks who are employed, don't see most of that, because employers pay on average 82 to 84%, of the cost of health care. And so some people think, well, then it's not affecting me because I have my own private insurance through my employer. Well, no, the high costs of healthcare are probably affecting most of us in the form of wage stagnation. You know, the costs are just, they're just really out of control, to be honest, they're, you know, twice inflation at least. And that's just not a sustainable level. But So the reality is, what they're seeing is expensive, because it is expensive. But there are a few different things we can look at is Does it make sense to have a higher premium, lower deductible, lower premium, higher deductible? And there's a tool that I like, that's from Wex health, and I'll get the link to you for this show notes that

Jamila Souffrant 19:19

you i W.

Lynn Frair 19:20

I think it's w e x

Jamila Souffrant 19:23

e x. Okay, we'll get that in the show notes for everyone.

Lynn Frair 19:25

Yes, where you can take a look at what what sort of plan may make sense to you. And so, at some point, we should also talk so that's the the ACA, but there's all these other options, too. I don't know that we want to go through all of them. But I did want to pull them into that database, because there's a lot of folks who want to look at health care and health insurance, you know, traveling or who want to look at health sharing ministries, and compare the pros and cons of those. So I loaded those in there and looked at the pros and cons. And, and other folks from the fire community entrepreneur community, what they like, favorite articles and such. So that is also covered there. And I

Jamila Souffrant 20:08

we'll link that. And you know, one of the other things is, as you're looking, let's just say, you know, you're going out to see, because some people are actually doing this, maybe they already have a job. But they're preparing, like, they kind of want to bake in what, okay, if I do choose to leave my job, I want to understand what this is going to how this is going to impact my budget. Right? So are you also looking at plans or plans dependent on your income and dependence? So like, if you're more or lower income, does that help in terms of you have, you can get better affordable plans?

Lynn Frair 20:38

Yeah. So the on the exchange, the Affordable Care Act, the way that it is, now, that amount that you pay for your premium is adjusted based on the number of people in the household and your, your income. I think it's your magic, your modified adjusted gross did gross income. And so you'll see that and I think one of the reasons that we're seeing the deductibles and out of pocket maxes adjust is because at first blush, the premium looks low for folks who have a lower adjusted gross income, but the out of pocket and the deductible are quite high. So you really want to make sure to see that. And I don't know that there's limitations on those for those plans. And I think that's how they're sort of compensating for these lower premiums.

Jamila Souffrant 21:24

And you know, and you have to be careful, because then you know, you're thinking you're paying less monthly, but if something does and should happen, then you get caught up in having higher out of pocket costs.

Lynn Frair 21:36

Yeah, yes. So I really recommend to folks that they have their deductible, set aside ready to pay at the very minimum, and planning at least the year ahead. If we're talking about fire for multiple years and multiple decades, I have separate recommendations for that. But for folks who are currently working, at least have I meet, because you really can expect to pay the deductible. If you have any sort of care, at least a portion of it. And the deductible if we remember, it's it's that portion that you pay before your health care, or your health insurance kicks in. So it's the part that you're responsible for. Unfortunately, there's an individual and a family deductible often. So you have, and I'll tell you what those are. So the federal maximum will allow in 2021, up to an $8,550 deductible is what it's going to look like. What it means is you have to meet a separate deductible for separate individuals, and then they sort of cap it usually at around two. It's a it's quite a cost. And I tell folks, when they're thinking about health insurance, to think of it more in terms of a house payment, rather than a car payment, in terms of amount. Yeah. And I know that's not very reassuring. And my goal with the site is to talk about what is and to come together for resources, clarity. But yeah, I'm the bearer of bad news here.

Jamila Souffrant 23:09

Yeah. Okay. So and that's fine. I get, you know, reality, I don't mind like the reality of it all. So people can understand, like, what it is they're going to be facing. And so, you know, just to give an example, if you're someone who is, you know, the different types of people listening to this right now, there are people who eventually one day want to quit their job, something else while they're on the journey to financial independence. There are some people who are like, I'll keep working, you know, for in my job for 1015 years with the idea that I'll you know, retire early. So for the people who are looking to make a you know, a leap to entrepreneurship don't have the benefit of a partner whose insurance they can go on, go to the exchange. And if they're like trying to budget out a in advance to help cover these expenses, they can go to the exchange, go incognito, a little bit in like numbers and say, Okay, if I'm not going to be working, maybe I'm taking a break, what is my income going to be and then see what those premiums are, but then also what the deductible is, so that they can save up for the deductible in advance, hopefully, you know, to help cover that if something happens.

Lynn Frair 24:12

Yes. So that's exactly what I would do. If you're thinking about making the jump into entrepreneurship, the best information we have is what we have. Now. We can there's all sorts of extrapolations, we can do about the cost of health care, and we can expect that the cost is going to increase more than inflation, and perhaps much more. But what we can do is start with where we are now. It's going incognito mode, check it out, see what it is now see what the options are now, and then extrapolate for the number of years you're wanting to cover and go from there and at a very minimum. So the deductible really is the minimum that I think folks should be prepared for. But there is an out of pocket maximum possibility and so for folks who are planning to fire, I recommend looking at the out of pocket maximum for a decade. That's kind of a bad scenario look sorry.

Jamila Souffrant 25:09

So per year, so if you're out of Max is like 4000, out of pocket is 4000, you do like 4000 times 10 years.

Lynn Frair 25:17

And if you have an out of pocket max of 4000, that's pretty low. The Federal that federal amount is 18,000.

Jamila Souffrant 25:24

Oh, the limit?

Lynn Frair 25:25

Yeah, 17,100, there abouts. And move that for a decade, you know, you could calculate it out your entire early retirement. But the safest way, or one of the ways you could consider it is to look at what it might be for a decade plan for that. And if you're willing to work again, in the worst case scenario, where you're meeting your out of pocket max for a decade, which is really, really extreme, then you have a decade to figure out another plan. And, you know, I think that if you're really risk averse, you could plan for an out of pocket max until your early retirement until your earth until standard retirement. But most people are going to not hit that. And certainly not for a decade, even me with my brain tumor, it was really difficult. And it was about three years where I had really, really high and I had to learn how to walk again, and everything, it was bad. So I certainly recovered within a decade. In fact, they reached financial independence within a decade. So I think that that's pretty extreme example, and allows you a decade to kind of figure out a new plan,

Jamila Souffrant 26:29

right. And that part is like the lump sum that you need, but then you still need to figure out that monthly premium that you're going to cover,

Lynn Frair 26:36

right, Yep. So I would take a look at what is and sort of extrapolate that out. And kind of go from there, I have a great site that I love. And I'll also link this in the show notes about an algorithm of how to choose your plan. And it's the best one that I found. And I recently found it, what's great about having this site is I get all the best material on the subject. And so I get to filter through and, and post the things that I think are the best. And so I have a great algorithm I'll give you in the show notes.

Jamila Souffrant 27:09

Awesome. Okay. And so when it comes to, you know, one of these the thing, the thing is that we can't ignore the, like, the political things involved with healthcare, like, especially now, I mean, you know, we're recording this right now in November, I'm not sure when this will be released. But you know, we're in the middle of or just outside of this, you know, this last election, you know, we're still waiting for like it to be officially just like put to rest. But you know, who's in power also determines, like, you know, like what happens, right? And I wonder if you can just like talk through like the, like, the current administration, so like a Trump administration, like, what is it that they wanted to change about? Or that they didn't like about the obama care or things now? And then what does like the incoming administration? What are they? What are their thoughts, you know, their position on it?

Lynn Frair 27:59

Yeah, I can speak to some parts of that really, quite well, I've been watching it. And so I'm going to try to stay as objective as I can my higher level thinking here, because this is a very charged issue for a lot of folks, understandably, including myself as a nurse. And I don't think you knew this Jamila, but our area was the first epicenter of Coronavirus. So that's been really interesting. And I'm a hospice nurse, actually, and so been deeply impacted. But so I'm going to stick to my higher level thinking on this. And what we see generally, what we're seeing with the what's happening right now is the Affordable Care Act is in right now at the supreme court level. So back in, I think it's 2017. So there's something called the individual mandate. And you guys may remember that because if you didn't have a health insurance plan, you had a fee a tax basically, for not having health insurance. And the intention behind that was to encourage folks to have health insurance. Yeah, it wasn't really to charge this fee, it was to encourage financially, folks to elect a plan. And that was not a popular section of the ACA. So basically, it wasn't removed from the ACA, but it was reduced down to zero. So it still exists there. And right now, it's at the Supreme Court, because the it's coming under question. Several attorneys general from various states are saying because this part has been adjusted, the whole law should be removed. And so that's being heard right now, are awaiting the findings there. And so if that law is if the ACA is thrown out it, it throws out a lot of various protections. And so that will really impact folks a lot. While it will impact I think, at least 100 million people so What the ACA does is it looks at pre existing conditions. And what we see is bipartisan support for, for protecting those with pre existing conditions. I think it's about 70% of Republicans support, giving folks with pre existing conditions a chance to get health care. I think it's about 70%. And that's, that's close to the, where they feel about like gun ownership. This is like a pretty popular thing bipartisan, it's even higher on the Democratic side. So I think what would be unfortunate about it is that if we throw this out at a bipartisan consumer level, Democrat, Republican, most folks support a lot of the provisions within that. So it has 10 major protections, and I'll include that in the show notes as well. Things like pregnancy care, preventative care. So there's a lot of things lumped in with that act. Now, not everything in that is very popular, and certainly a lot of insurance companies don't love it, it also limits their profit. And that has been a really big problem for them, as you can imagine. So I think there's a lot of folks who'd like it thrown out and and a lot of industry who might like it thrown out. But at a consumer level, there's a lot of bipartisan support for a good portion of it. And not not everything, certainly. So if the administration changes, we could see, we could see a difference in the amount of support for that. But we also we have the Supreme Court right now, who it's really a lot of the upholding of it is going to land in their hands. So it's really tends to have more democratic support, certainly, the ACA, and I think that that could certainly change things.

Jamila Souffrant 31:52

Right. Right and, again, I don't know it's hard not to get political, or to talk to talk political when it comes to money and health care when we realize that, you know, certain communities are more impacted, right than others. And these protections and the lack of affordability and health care like that. And then now you you know, don't want a pandemic and even just exaserbates everything more.

Lynn Frair 32:15

Yes, Jamila, like I don't even know that this is under question that communities of color and have worse access to health care period. And I don't even know that it's under question that the cases in communities of color of Coronavirus is larger, more impacted and more morbidity. And I think of my friends like Nasima, Mackleroy and Ashley Evans, doing work around this disparity of care, this unintentional bias and health care. And you're right, that this just exacerbates it. This is very politically charged, and can be very emotional, but I think we should talk about it. There's some facts here that are really undeniable. And I think some people, I think you take a look at what the opinions are. And some people believe that it it may not matter, because it doesn't affect them directly. It really To be honest, it blows my mind. But I think that it could be so much better. And my philosophy is are you familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Jamila Souffrant 33:20

Yeah.

Lynn Frair 33:21

Okay. So in the bottom, you have your basic provisions, you have water, food, shelter, those are the things you really need before you can really consider anything else. somewhere above that is sort of self actualization. And we might put education there, and we might put access to health, basic health care, somewhere up there. And because if we don't have a basic access to health care, what we see is a population sort of running to the ER for extreme circumstances, which number one is very expensive to the system, and is suboptimal, in my opinion, to care. So now we're getting into Lynn's personal beliefs about how a healthcare system could run. If we look at education, we have our education system, we have public health, or we have public education. And then we also have a private option. So if people want to do private school, if they want to buy ABC mouse, because they have the resources to do that, if they want to add in a tutor, because they have the resources, but every kiddo pretty much has access to a private education or public education. I apologize. Yeah. Because it's sort of seen as a societal benefit that we get to educate. We educate our population, then we have more people like nurses, we have more engineers, we which is good for a population. I have a similar personal philosophy about health care that a basic access to health care, allows people to self actualize in a way that helps. And I think that there is a way to do that where people have their own sort of individual accountability and buy in, and it doesn't have to be what I hear is that Well, it's going to be extreme, it's going to be like Venezuela. But when I talk to people about that, I asked, Are you familiar with the four major different types of structure that this could be? It doesn't have to be like the Venezuela plan.

Jamila Souffrant 35:13

So what is the Venezuela plan? And what are the four? Yeah,

Lynn Frair 35:16

so Venezuela, for those who aren't familiar, and I'm not gonna, I'm not sure that I can talk deeply about Venezuela.

Jamila Souffrant 35:25

And if anyone needs, wants to, like, go research it more they can.

Lynn Frair 35:28

Yeah. So Venezuela has sort of out of control inflation hyperinflation, and they also have a healthcare system that is provided generally by the government, and they're really having, basically, economic collapse. So there's a lot of ways that we, we can structure health care, that doesn't look exactly like, you know, heading toward an economic collapse. And I think we saw some of that with the ACA. And if we start to sort of peel that back again, what we're gonna see is what I think we're going to see is increased overall health care costs, because we are not going to have people who are incentivized to have better care. It's short term provisions, like what we were talking about, if folks keep their health insurance for a year or two years, the insurance companies are their motivation is to keep people healthy, or keep costs low for a year or two years. And so what I think could happen is that people are incentivized to sort of have a maintenance program, where costs are reasonable. And one of those possibilities that I've seen and recently, and I talked with Pete, a couple years ago, Mr. You guys might know mister money mustache. And so he's doing a model called direct primary care DPC. And that's a model I've been looking at for a while. And it's also on the the knowledge base, the pros and cons with that. But the idea is that you pay a monthly premium, it's usually cash, so that they don't have to fuss with going through insurance companies, and they keep you healthy

Jamila Souffrant 37:10

to a doctor directly.

Lynn Frair 37:13

Yeah, to a doctor's office, directly direct primary care, you're taking out all this administrative burden that has overburdened in my opinion overburdened our system. So direct primary care, they are getting a monthly premium to kind of keep you healthy. And so their incentive is to keep you healthy, long term to keep you as a long term client. There are some limits, which I cover on the site as well. But the limits are, you know, catastrophic type care. And hospitalizations are usually not covered. But a lot of the day to day, you know, like I have a cold or I think I might have bronchitis or I got a cut or screening for cholesterol a lot of the day to day stuff that would be preventative, and just sort of basic primary care can run through that. And so sometimes folks will pair that the DPC direct primary care with like a higher deductible plan so that if something does happen, they have that to fall back on. Right. So that's a model that I that I really like I've been watching closely. A lot of providers like it because they don't have to fuss with insurance. And a lot of our costs in health care are this administrative burden that's gotten out of control. Right.

Jamila Souffrant 38:26

And I'm glad you like we're like now kind of turning to or at least presenting other ways to be creative about looking into healthcare. So that's good. The other thing you briefly mentioned was like these faith based providers, Do you want to just touch upon that briefly. So this is in place of going through the Affordable Care route?

Lynn Frair 38:45

Mm hmm. Yeah. So that is probably one of the most common options that I hear from the fire community and entrepreneur community is that they elect a health sharing ministry, instead of a plan through a typical insurance provider. The benefits of that is the costs for the premiums are much lower. But there are a lot of potential downsides. And I also have that so for folks who are listening in the car, you know, you don't have to memorize this. But the downsides are that it's essentially not insurance. It's considered a donation. These are faith based. And so they have the ability to exclude you, if you have pre existing conditions, they have the ability to deny payment. Another downside is they can exclude anything that's considered sinful, which could be getting pregnant outside of marriage, it could be all sorts of things that another typical plan would cover. They can exclude if you were in the car with a drunk driver, but you didn't know they were drunk like an Uber driver, because that is sort of to drink while driving is considered sinful. There's all sorts of exclusions. The other downside to that is that It's not considered health insurance. And so before the Affordable Care Act, if you had a gap in coverage, you couldn't get coverage again. And so for those who have health sharing ministries, if we lose those provisions, they may be able to be denied coverage, like indefinitely. I don't mean to worry people, but I, before they elect that plan, I want folks to know about these potential downsides of those.

Jamila Souffrant 40:24

Yeah,

Lynn Frair 40:24

Of those plans, we don't know, we don't know the future. But I really want folks to think about that before they they kind of elect those plans. And there's, there's a few other things that I covered on the site that are going to be so really the the Affordable Care Act through the healthcare.gov is going to be the most common, health sharing ministries are the most common alternative I see. And then I go through sort of what are the travel options like, you know, living somewhere in another country for health insurance, and you know, basically everything everybody has sent me about what they do for their solution. And those are going to apply to a lot fewer people, but they they are included, one of them, one of the options is going off your spouse's plan. That's what a lot of folks do. They they quote, fire and then or they become an entrepreneur, and then they're able to get on their spouses plan. That's very, very common.

Jamila Souffrant 41:18

Right So I mean, this is all great information. And it's a lot to digest. I think, you know, I wanted the this goal for the podcast, this episode specifically to be is just that for those of you who are thinking about, you know, becoming an entrepreneur, maybe taking a break you if you you know, you do have like a partner find that maybe more direct way in which you get the health insurance, but like, how do you plan for that, right, and you gave some great tips, talk to at least figure out the number doesn't mean like you'll have the number, you know, but at least you can bake that into your planning for leaving a corporate job and or just early retirement. And so I think it's really helpful just to at least get the numbers down instead of like, I have no clue like, and then you're you're blindsided by the cost of this all.

Lynn Frair 42:02

Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly it. And that's why I include those resources. So just to be honest, my website is the worst business plan ever because I totally self funded I bootstrap it and I charge nothing. So it's, it's really is a passion project. So in case people are like, what's the catch? Well, it's my husband's like, what are you doing spending? This is the worst business plan, because it's not a business plan. That's the reality of it. I hire people to help me too

Jamila Souffrant 42:32

it sounds like it's really a nonprofit, then that you can get funding.

Lynn Frair 42:35

I may actually now we're at our it's grown. It's got 10s of 1000s of visits. So I'm at the point where it's hard to keep up. And so I'm looking at I'm I've been really intentional, I think I'm going to be looking at affiliate relationships in 2021. Where can I add value to folks? Or where can I make this more sustainable and still not detract from the value for folks? So in case you guys are wondering what the catch is, there isn't one my husband's like, I spend more and more time on it. And I'm hiring people and I, I'm just very passionate about it, I get frustrated. And I want people who they have great potential in this world, they, they want to become entrepreneurs, they want to fire and do something good in the world. And healthcare is their barrier. So I want to help eliminate that, or at least clarify it, or at least get them passionate about helping make it better and reducing this administrative burden that hurts all of us. Yeah,

Jamila Souffrant 43:32

I mean, I love I love your mission. I love what you're doing. And you know, it's it's like it's so multi dimensional. because on one hand, we're talking about healthcare, and providing this information and access and resources for people so that they at least have a starting point. And then when we kind of dig into your story just even now, right? Like as a business model, I'm like what you're doing because that's the other end of it, too, that people you have a gift to share. And you're trying to figure out how to make a sustainable, right. So that's what you're doing right now. And a lot of people are think are at that point where they're like, Well, I have all this information, I have like a gift for maybe pulling information together and making it making it easier for people to consume. Whether people choose to make that free for everyone and or not like it's still cost money to run anything on the internet, it does.

Lynn Frair 44:16

Especially if you're like me, and you're fussy about what you want to do and what you don't want to do. And, you know, life is so so short.

Jamila Souffrant 44:24

But I think part of your story, what hopefully you can also like spark on thought or just inspire people is, and I would love to keep up with you to see what you do, maybe next year to make this a sustainable business because it's like another case study on you reached financial independence, but it sounds like you're still working out a choice.

Lynn Frair 44:42

So yeah, so what happened was I had to decide if I was going to keep my nursing license. And so I was going to take a travel assignment this was in December 2019. So I gave my notice in mid 2018. So in this I had to start deciding do I want to end and it made me feel kind of Sick to think about leaving it. So I was going to take a travel assignment. So I called called my old job for a recommendation. And they said, We will let you do when I left, I told them, I would like to have a position where I can work as much as or as little as I want, whenever I want from wherever I want, what do you what do you think about that? And they said, No. So I left. And when I called them back for reference, a year and a half later, they said, you know, that position you? Would you like to do that. So that's what I did. And little did I know that the epicenter of the pandemic would start here, and that I would help with remote operations for hospice, and figuring out how to do a lot of, you know, move virtually. And so that's what I've been doing. And I do that per diem, which is the requirement is five days per month, I get to keep my license, I get to have flexibility. It's really a sweet spot for me, but there's no health insurance through that, you know, I don't work enough hours for that. And my husband doesn't he, he works because we got a kindergarten and a first grader in virtual school. So we got 54 zoom meetings a week, but not in a paid way. So that's what we're up to now.

Jamila Souffrant 46:08

And so you're on this exchange, you have it through the health exchange yourself, you and your family.

Lynn Frair 46:13

Yeah. And that's what we're gonna be doing probably next year, there's a position that's coming up that would have healthcare for me, you know, that I could take, but I still love that flexibility.

Jamila Souffrant 46:23

But that's the thing, right? Like you're deciding between like the flexibility and healthcare like basically that's it like and that's a lot of people's choice right now. It's just like, do I keep this job just for the healthcare or do I have enough money to pay this $400 Premium $800 Premium depending on you know, how many people are in the family? So I think again, I hope if you're listening to this like I don't know we didn't provide all the answers but hopefully it was a good place for you guys to start. Where are you located by the way?

Lynn Frair 46:52

I am near the Seattle Washington area Bothell if you guys look I Market Watch did a video about us during the pandemic so you can see my house we had to self film it because it was in the middle. I remember Market Watch. They saw me speak in Cincinnati right before everything shut down at a conference called economy. And they said we'd like to come you know your story is inspiring. We'd like to come and I said this Coronavirus thing, this might be a thing. You know, I don't know if your film crew can come here. And sure enough, so we self recorded on iPhone and uploaded it virtually. And at that time, that was a really innovative idea that Yeah, so you can see more than you want to know about our family. If you look at one of the Firestarter videos.

Jamila Souffrant 47:36

So yeah, we have a lot to like link in the show notes for everyone. So please let everyone know more about your site and where they can really support you. If you need like a Patreon or some kind of Donate button. Do you have that on your site?

Lynn Frair 47:47

I don't yet, but I think I should. So maybe

Jamila Souffrant 47:50

You need one. Yeah.

Lynn Frair 47:52

For the time, I've had even people say that they wanted to donate, they wanted to give a big gift. And I just don't I'm not set up for that yet. But I have people helping me now. So maybe we'll get that started. And that would be really, really awesome. I want to make it more sustainable but not compromise the integrity of the site. So it's fihealthcare.com for financial independence healthcare.com

Jamila Souffrant 48:16

healthcare.com are you on social at all or it's really just a website?

Lynn Frair 48:19

Not that much. You can Instagram a little bit and LinkedIn a little bit.

Jamila Souffrant 48:26

Okay, it's totally fine. It's totally fine. I will link your the website and then the market watch video so people can see that and thank you so much for coming on and really giving us this information. It was great talking to you.

Lynn Frair 48:37

Oh, it's so nice to talk to you. Jamila

Jamila Souffrant 48:43

Okay, I hope you enjoyed and got a lot from that conversation with Lynn make sure you go out and check out fihealthcare.com. Share this with someone you know that would benefit from this who has questions maybe you have some people who do question your your mission to retire early or reach financial independence and their first thing is, what are you going to do about health care? Maybe that's what they want to do. Right? So share this knowledge with someone else this podcast episode, and let me know what you thought of it. You can always tag me @journeytolaunch and let me know your thoughts.

Okay, now it's time for DC use money Tip of the Week. This is where I share a quick win a resource or money tip that can help you with your money goals. Now, this is going to be all about your credit, limits your credit rating and how to improve it and keep it at a great score. So I'm going to give you three tips here. One, keep your balances on your credit cards low compared to the limits. A big factor in your credit rating is how much of your credit limit you've actually use what you're currently using. So maintaining balances close to your credit limit counts against you. So try to get that to a fraction of your total limit and will be in your favor for your credit rating. Number two, avoid applying for new loans while you're rebuilding your credit. So especially avoid applying for credit cards, including Store and gas company cards and other unsecured loans unless you are certain you can transfer a balance or reduce your interest rate. Tip three on that is avoid closing open credit card accounts. So pay down or pay off your balances but keep your accounts open, having available unused credit signals that you can manage your credit wisely. Okay, so for more helpful tips and resources to help you with your money goals, check out dcu.org

If you want to check out the episode shownotes that's where you can get links to anything that's mentioned, and even get a transcribed version of this episode that you can read and go to journeytolaunch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. Now you can also still grab your free journeyer jumpstart guide by texting, launch to 3377 or go to journeytolaunch.com/jumpstart.

If you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you are not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this and Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review. Number two, follow me on my social media accounts. I'm at journey to launch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And I love love love interacting with journeyers there. Three support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here. So show them some love for supporting your girl. Four and last but not least, share this episode this podcast with a friend or family member or co worker so that we can spread the message of journey to launch. Alright, that's it until next week, keep on journeying journeyers

Jamila Souffrant 0:00

You're listening to the Journey to Launch podcast Starting a Mobile Bank and FinTech Company with Sheena Allen.

Intro 0:11

Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast with your host Jamila Souffrant as a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest, and build real wealth. Join her on the Journey to Launch to financial freedom.

Jamila Souffrant 0:35

Hey, hey, hey journeyers Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast. If you are totally new, then you're wondering why I'm calling you a journeyer. Well, journeyer means you are now on the mission with me to launch to financial independence and freedom, your journey or now there's no turning back. Let's launch together. Now before we happen to this episode with Sheena Allen. It's amazing conversation, I want to just let you know about the free class that I'm having on January 14. So this episode drops on January 13. So if you're listening to this, as soon as it comes out, then you still have the opportunity to join me on January 14, for a free class all about what my favorite topic Financial Independence 101: How to Build an Action Plan to Financial Freedom and still live your best life. It's going down at 8:30pm, Eastern Time, January 14, and you can still join me at journeytolaunch.com/freeclass. And if you do miss this free class, don't worry. I mean, you know, I'm always working on something special for you guys. And I will be opening up doors for the second cohort the second enrollment in my Journey to Financial Independence Course. So this is the course where I walk you through step by step, how to get you from where you currently are now to financial independence, giving you a flexible roadmap, giving you the confidence and support for you to get there. So if you want to learn more about that go to journeytolaunch.com/ficourse, but doors will be closing on the 19th. So I will be shutting down enrollment so I can focus on the amazing, amazing people who enroll in student we did this course live we did a live launch of this course the first cohort late last year in 2020. And it was amazing so you get to see some of the results and testimonials if you go to journeytolaunch.com/ficourse. But if you can join me for the free class journeytolaunch.com/freeclass but if you missed that and you're like Jamila, I am ready. Take me to the promised land then join us in this next cohort journeytolaunch.com/ficourse before enrollment ends, enrollment ends on January 19.

Now let's get into a bit about Sheena. So Sheena Allen is best known as the founder and CEO of Fintech company and mobile bank Capway and mobile app company Sheena Allen apps. Sheena went on to scale Sheena on apps to five apps and was able to generate millions of downloads all with no outside funding and get this She didn't even know how to code. When she first developed and created her first mobile app in 2016. She thought of an idea for her second startup Capway. Capway is a mobile bank and fin tech company that focuses on those who lack fair opportunity and access to mainstream financial services and the cashless economy. This is such an important mission that Sheena is on and you're going to hear more about her story, how she came up with this idea, what gave her the guts to go after it. I mean, she started a bank. I'm so inspired by Sheena story and I think you will be too.

First a word from today's sponsor. As we are in the beginning of a brand new year, it's the perfect time to get focused and committed to your financial goals. Not only is it great to reflect on your money wins and lessons learned from the previous year, but it's the perfect opportunity to set and commit to your financial goals for the year ahead. Take time to reevaluate your current financial tools, banking situation and consider joining your local credit union if you're not already a member, for example, digital Federal Credit Union, better known as DCU is committed to providing their members with the financial products and services they need to help them achieve their financial goals. Not only does DCU offer free online education for the members on many topics, including saving, building credit and budgeting. DCU also offers products that can help members establish or improve their credit. To learn more, check out DCU. org and stick around to the end of the show for the DCU money Tip of the Week. Well I'll be sharing tips to help you save and manage your money so that you can reach your goals.

Okay, depending on when you're listening to this is going to be important information for you to know I am holding a free class on January 14 8:30pm. Eastern time it's my brand new training on creating your building blocks to reach financial independence. What are the things that you need to know? What are the stages you need to go through to get to financial independence? How can you figure out your financial independence number? What are the tools you need to succeed? We are going to be talking about all that and more on January 14 8:30pm Eastern time. So make sure you join us it's completely free. You can go to journeytolaunch.com/freeclass to save your seat right now. Okay, let's get into the episode.

Hey, journeyers really excited to have today's guest on the podcast I've been seeing her around so much on social super impressed by what she's been able to do in the finance space and not like, you know, I'm in like, the more informational educational side of things. And I'm always impressed with people when they get into like the tech side, like, you know, like actual providing a system and product for people. And so I was like, Oh, I can't wait to have Sheena on the podcast. So welcome Sheena. Allen.

Sheena Allen 6:01

Thank you for having me.

Jamila Souffrant 6:03

How would you describe your what like what you do in this space? I feel like you're a creator. I saw somewhere I'm someone tagged you and is like the youngest black woman to own a bank?

Sheena Allen 6:12

Yes. Apparently I try to fact check it. I'm like, Am I really the youngest? So I don't know. Maybe but people have said I am so I guess so.

Jamila Souffrant 6:21

I think it's the youngest person. Like even if you just take the blackout.

Sheena Allen 6:24

I think it's the youngest female female. Okay, I think I think he's just female, which I still is crazy. Well, I guess I don't know. I start this company when I was with ideal Can I was 27. So I guess kind of got you thinking about owning a bank? I guess.

Jamila Souffrant 6:38

Yeah, yeah. So so we're gonna get to the bank. So your bank is cap way. I want to talk about what what it is the problem it solves. So people can get more information about it. But I kind of want to take it back to how you got into this field. Because you went to school, you graduated with a major in psychology and film? Yes, your undergraduate. And then you found yourself though, like starting to like develop apps, like you became very popular and successful in the app space at a young age without even knowing how to write code. So I'm really want to get into like what like, led you down that route? Yeah.

Sheena Allen 7:10

So in college, as you mentioned, double major film psychology, I minded in marketing, and I was kind of all over the place, as you probably can tell, when I was in college, and my senior year of college, I went to Walmart, right, I sold my apartment out this summer. So I went back to school, I was had to go to Walmart, like no, like buy stuff just to be back around the house. And I had this like long receipt. It wasn't like CVS long. But it was like a long receipt from Walmart. And I told my roommate who was with me, I know wish there was an app, I can keep my money and my receipts. And this was 2011. And of course, the App Store 2011 had like, I don't know, 200,000 apps in it, still very, very young. And I couldn't find anything. And I was like, Okay, well, I'm gonna figure out like how to develop this app and my remote like Sheena, I don't do anything technical. And I was like, I love computers. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna figure it out. And that was literally like the first step into doing apps.

The thing is here, like, I have an app idea a day, like in my head, like right now. And I'm just like, and then I think about like execution. I know, they're like services. And you have, like, I know, you can plug plug us into how all that works, where you can get help with it, right? Like most people have ideas, but they don't like, execute the way you did. So are you just that kind of person like you think of an idea, you just do it? Or what prompted you to really go after it?

Yeah, I mean, I was like, I really need this, and I can't find it. So I'm gonna figure out how to do it myself. And I honestly had no clue what the heck I was doing. So let me be very clear. I was at the University of Google. And I was like, What do I do? And so I literally use printer paper, which I got my printer, like every time I apartment, and I sketched out the way but I want you to look, and I took that the sketches and I open up Microsoft Word. And like, look at the text boxes that is not used for designing. I use text boxes to design out how I wanted it to look. And I was like, I'm just going to figure it out. Like I really want this app, but I can't find it. So hey, let me get it done it. I did everything that you're not supposed to do when it comes to designing and building apps. But I didn't know what I was doing. So I I figured out the hard way.

Jamila Souffrant 9:23

So you created that app did what happened with that app was the name of it.

Sheena Allen 9:27

The name of the app was called PMO is good for picture and money organizer. It sounds so stupid. And I know that I think about it, but that was what I came up with. So it's called PMO I put it out. I go like 50 downloads like it was it. It was not a huge success in any way. The first month it was like 50 downloads. But I think the most important thing that came out of that was one I fell in love the process of like saying I'm looking for an idea to like people can download this all over the world. So, if you can download this, and then it was something about this technology piece that was like you can touch people from anywhere and everywhere. That was so amazing to me. I just completely fell in love with it.

Jamila Souffrant 10:15

So I know that's not something you do now, like that app is just like a history. But I would think there are similar things like that. Now in the market, like you, you basically took a picture, you could take a picture of your receipt, and it kind of organized that those numbers on an app for you. Yeah, we'll need that. Now. I'm sure there's something there must be something that does that now.

Sheena Allen 10:32

Yeah, I think I think there's a few that do it now. But like, yeah, I want it, I want it to be like, you could take a picture of your receipt, and then it organizes your, your numbers, your money for you. But then on the other side, I wanted it to be like, we also didn't accept the receipts, or we had the option to like get a receipt and take a picture. Or like we could do that digital option of our receipt, and it goes to this app to organize our money. So they will often do that, like 2011.

Jamila Souffrant 10:58

Yeah. You still were an undergraduate at that point.

Sheena Allen 11:01

Yeah I was still in school.

Jamila Souffrant 11:03

So how did you take that experience and start to expand it right? It wasn't just like a one time thing you did. This is like that eventually led you into your career, what you're doing now, right?

Sheena Allen 11:11

Yeah. So this was first went to school and falls, this was August was like July, it actually happened once August. And I mentioned it wasn't like a huge success. But I because I fell in love with the process. I want to give it another try. And I was like, Well, you know, maybe it didn't work out, I'm gonna try a different one. I'm into like, anything creative. So even before going to college, I was really deep into like painting and drawing and all the art. So I kind of love the photo piece of like, even the receipt thing. And so I planned an app in November of that year called works on pics, which as you probably can guess, was adding words on pictures. And that app did probably like 2500 downloads the first month, which was much better than the 50,000, the 50 that I got from my first app. And so that app did will and I graduated in December. And I my mom was pretty much like go to grad school. My mom was encouraged in grad school. My dad was more of like he had two degrees, yes, and student loan debt, you'd get 9-5 and get some income. And thank God, I didn't have too much student loan debt. I had a lot of scholarships, but I still had some student loan debt. Well, that's your nine to five money security and get a guaranteed paycheck. And I myself, so let me give myself six months. And if like this tech thing doesn't work, I'll go to grad school. And I put out two apps in between those six months. And the first one that was taken with a third one. But the first one that six months was app called twit booth. And what I was trying to do was actually make Instagram pretty much Instagram for Twitter. I put it out it did really well, honestly, very, very well. But I got an email from Twitter that I yeah, that they weren't too happy, I guess. And like, I don't know, maybe like a month later, the Media tab in the Twitter app showed up. So there's my Twitter story.

Jamila Souffrant 13:09

Anyway, good idea.

Sheena Allen 13:12

Yeah, pretty much. But then the fourth Apple's App called Dublin and allows you to clone yourself within within this app, I saw my friend had did it. For her graduation, photo shoot, I thought was the dopest thing ever. And I want to make into an app. And I put it out. And it just I mean, it would have viral it just blew up. And that was pretty much solidified. This is what I want to do. And this is what I'm gonna say.

Jamila Souffrant 13:35

Right. And is that what you started Sheena Allen Apps says like the house all those apps that you are creating, correct? Yep. But you were doing this without coding it yourself. I know you did the design all the work. But like then you had Did you just outsource the coding, but the back end part of it? Is that how you did it? Okay.

Sheena Allen 13:50

Yeah.

Jamila Souffrant 13:51

And how long would end? And so just being curious about like the app process. I know nowadays, even tracking things are even easier than when you started right in terms of finding people to like help you do something like this. But how long does an app take you think from thought? And I know that varies depending on the complication of it. But how long does a typical typical process take to to get an app

Sheena Allen 14:11

I'd say the quickest I've done from idea to launch has been about six weeks.

Jamila Souffrant 14:19

and is expensive?

Sheena Allen 14:21

Even now I can tell people there are some really basic apps you can get done for two, three grand, I mean, very basic, I will say in today's time, your average app is probably gonna call She is an MVP. So like your minimum viable product, you need to somewhere around like five to 10 grand to get the MVP going. But my shortest was like six weeks. It cost me like 20 maybe two grand, but my longest of course, which is a full company, though, who just cap way. I mean, it's taken us this idea of a cap way came in 2016. We pretty much did the r&d for two, three years. We started building in 2019 and we're launching technically to the public. From a banking side in January of 2021. So it's I mean, sometimes super quick. I mean, sometimes it's a lot of money a long time.

Jamila Souffrant 15:09

Right? Well, now that you talked about Capway, let's let's talk more like about it. One, what is Capway? And I'd love to get like at that moment that you decided that Cayway needed to exist, like, what prompted you to want to do it?

Sheena Allen 15:20

Yeah, so Capway itself, we are a financial service provider. The core of what we do is mobile banking, or it's a term for now, neo banking, which is digital banking. So that's the core of what we do, and that we provide debit cards, we provide money accounts, we don't have a checking account, just because in digital banking, you don't write checks. Uh huh. So the they make us call them money accounts or spend accounts not not checking accounts, we do savings. So we do things that are pretty standard for what your traditional banking, but usually with neobank, you don't get really deep into like mortgages and, you know, retirement accounts. Now, some some do, but usually, especially the early time, you see more like just like savings accounts and spending accounts, lending, things like that. So overall, we are a financial service provider. And what we do is mobile banking, digital banking, we have other things that we do that support really what the goal of Capway and that goal of Capway is, how do we close gaps through access and opportunities and this access gap, this digital gap says information gap. So financial literacy and income gaps, income inequality in America is ridiculous mess amongst women, that's amongst race this this across a lot of different sectors. And of course, you get the racial wealth gap, which you know, we all know is is ridiculous that the average black family I think net worth is around 17,000 18,000 versus a white families about 170 172,000. So you have a lot of gaps who are so my Our goal is financial service providers, how do we fill those gaps by providing access and opportunities that really haven't been afforded. I feel like people have overlooked a large sector of Americans, I always tell people, most people say a lot of times overlooked and underbanked. And most people would not consider themselves underbanked. I think the name, the term underbanked people kind of equate to poor, which is actually not true. But you can be underbanked because you can't afford the minimum balance fee that your bank is charging you, you know, your person is going to overdraft, you know, often or even once or twice, but you're also underserved. Because the fact that financial institution doesn't do much for you, if you lose your job today, I mean, stats range, but roughly was about 70 70% of Americans are said to live paycheck to paycheck, even pre COVID. And most people, that means about 70% of Americans, if they lost their job today, they can't pay their bills next month, which means that you're gonna end up probably paying to bank because you can't afford the minimum balance fee. So a lot of us are actually underbanked we just don't see ourselves that way.

Jamila Souffrant 18:06

Hmm. Was there a certain moment that you said that, hey, you know what, because there, you know, there are other online banks and other credit unions, that I'm a huge fan of now that provide some solutions, right? But what was for you like the idea that Capway would be that would fill in gaps that these other places maybe you know, are not able to reach or fill in?

Sheena Allen 18:25

Yeah, so I grew up in a small town here, Mississippi, well, essentially a little small town in central Mississippi. I grew up in a banking desert. So I knew it was like not having proper or fair access to financial services. You know, it's funny, cuz I always tell people growing up in a place like Mississippi, we don't have the big national charter so that national banks like there's no Bank of America, there's no Chase. We only have CDFIs, your community bank, your credit unions, your regional banks, or just there's no bank at all use payday lending and check cashing and Title Loans. So growing up around that, I knew it was like for my great grandma, let's keep her money. Her house, she didn't have a bank. He didn't have a bank account at all, like her money is really at her house. I have a few family members who are like that, mainly cash base. And so crazy enough, when I started my first company, my first tech company, I first moved to Silicon Valley, and I actually end up building my company out in Austin. So I've mainly spent my time in Austin, my first company. And it's crazy because being in California being Austin, there's banks on every corner specifically where I lived it. It was like, you know, you just walk downtown, there's a bank, like three banks right beside each other. What prompted me was like, I will go back home and I will notice that people back home still cashing checks for like the convenience store and the grocery store. And there was not a bank on every corner. And I had two things that really happened for me that kind of tilted me to say, hey, I need to kind of focus more was one.

I remember walking to restaurants when I'll be in like New York or Texas or California. And this was like 2017 2016 2017 and even then it will be like, you know, debit and credit only or cash free, everything like back home like they can't eat here because they already have cash. So that was the first one. And the second thing was that understanding we were moving into a social age. And why that's important is because, you know, my my grandmother, or people back home, they probably have never left Mississippi or at the most likely brides like Memphis or New Orleans, like that's our version of like getting away. And the fact that we were in a social age, somebody who had never left their small town in Mississippi, or Arkansas or Kentucky, social media has shown you the world. So like, right now I'm sitting in Atlanta, but I can easily get on social media and see what's going on in New York, or going on to LA or Miami. And what that created was sort of creating FOMO, too, and I had people who were still in small towns, but they want to like get amazon prime, they want to Spotify, they want it Netflix, you can't do that if you only have cash. And it's an interesting stat that I found that caught what those who pushed me over the edge, which was 52% of Americans live in the same nine states. So we're all kind of pushed into the same nine states, New York, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, California, we're literally all pretty much half of Americans are in the same nine states. And then you have 48 of Americans who are spread out across everywhere else. And what I found was that I had the privilege of living on both sides, I had lived in the 48%, but also lived in the 52%, I realized the difference. And I feel like when we look at the newer agents or banks, they really focus on that 82% because most of these banks are born out of Boston, they're born out of New York, they're born on San Francisco, they're usually created by middle aged white men who probably came from Stanford or Harvard. And it's like, they have no clue what it's like to live in that 48% because they probably never been to Little Rock, Arkansas, or they've never been to South Side Chicago, or the other part of Detroit or Jackson, Mississippi. So that was really what led me to say, there's still huge gaps in this financial system, even though we have digital banks and credit unions unfortunate The truth is, you're not going to have average 18 year old or 25 year olds not gonna like be like, yeah, let me walk to my local Credit Union and start a bank account. Because we're so used to doing everything on our phone, there was a huge gap there. And that was really what led me to Capway.

Jamila Souffrant 22:37

So there's a lot of like, I think lessons to pull off from everything you just said is that one even though there are other options, even other digital banks, what you bring to the table outside of like your expertise and you just like experience in the tech field is this like the soul like the perspective that other people even if they have more money, even if they have more connections, like they don't know what it's like to be you and that then allows you to speak directly to like from your soul to the soul of the customer, your potential customer because they get it so it's going to be through your messaging it's going to be through you know, how you design things and I think things like that people sometimes overlook and you know, maybe someone's you know, listening to this has an idea and they're like, well there are other people doing it. But your perspective like guarantee there's other people who directly can either relate because they've had the same experience or they can find pockets to relate to and that's what's gonna set you apart. So I think that's just inspiring for others who think like Yes, so what like there are other solutions, but they're not your solution. Right? And I do love how you just even broke don't even realize that whole 52% of like people live because I'm you know, I was born in Jamaica the island I always have to say that like that, you know, nothing wrong with the borough but the island and then raised mostly in New York, so I am only used to really like Yes, a bank on every corner. And even yet even in New York, there are pockets of people like in different neighborhoods, that even if there is the bank, like down the block, they they're not considering that an option for themselves.

Sheena Allen 24:02

Yep. Right.

Jamila Souffrant 24:03

So there's still gaps within these like the states like the the that we live in these coastal states. So Capway now you formed it. I mean, I can't imagine like you just said you thought of the idea when

Sheena Allen 24:14

2016.

Jamila Souffrant 24:16

And now 2021 is like the first time you're coming to market. Like Is that what you how you call it?

Sheena Allen 24:21

Yeah.

Jamila Souffrant 24:22

So all that time to bring it to this level. Now? I don't know. I feel like, you know, I've had Arlen on the podcast before. And I've been on her podcast. And then you know, I'm also like speaking to a couple just other people in the tech field. And I listen to you know, how I built this. And you know, sometimes they'll bring on all these founders and start these tech companies. And there's a gap between like, not only just women getting money to build their visions, but black woman. So what is your experience been like to get people behind this app and to get the money to fund your vision?

Sheena Allen 24:56

Yeah, so you know, I will say I was still running my first company. Oh, Until 2018. So I was, even though the idea for Capway came in 2016. Really, for two years, it was more of like this idea stage, I'll call it like a lot of r&d. And we went to a very small, very, very small, like, amount of money to do the r&d. And actually, all I had until was one of our investors very, very early. And I was one of my biggest benefits even be able to raise even a small amount of money for r&d, which lasted two years, two and a half years to be quite honest. $100,000 last two and a half years, can you imagine that?

Jamila Souffrant 25:30

Wait, I'm sorry, I just want to $100,000 just for the r&d portion of this. Yeah.

Sheena Allen 25:33

But that had left me two and a half years

Jamila Souffrant 25:37

And I'm breaking this down just because I want people to get a sense of like how this works. So $100,000 over two years to cover, like just research and development. So that's what like looking at all the other systems, maybe out there developing the What the? What is that part involved? Yeah, that

Sheena Allen 25:52

is that's doing a lot of research that was literally me in between. And once again, wasn't my first company. But that was literally like me, like doing online research. That was me taking once again, my experiences what I knew, and saying, hey, how does this also work for people outside of Mississippi. So this wasn't me, doing like online research and going off data. This was like me getting on planes and get in my car and going to neighborhoods and talking to community activists like this was like true, hardcore r&d. This was doing a beta application. This was running debate schools and with community organizations. And this was two and a half years of making $100,000 do the in tech, which is not a lot. And I will say the reason I believe I even got that was because my first company was successful. I had my first company not been successful. I don't, I don't know if I would have gotten that at all. And I know what it's like to bootstrap my first company. I didn't raise any money at bootstrap that.

So I want people to know, I say to be very clear, it wasn't that came to calculate and raise money. And it was like, oh, like, she's one of the few that was able to easily raise money. But I went through the struggle with my first company I know, it was like the bootstrap. I know, it's like they have millions of app downloads, and investors still question, are you worth a check for your company. So I will the biggest benefit, I guess, in the end, it didn't come from that, though, was I was able to raise a small amount of money early for r&d for Capway, which once again, Arlen was was one of those I've known around for a while for my first company. But I did that for as mentioned two and a half by two and a half years. And then in 20, late 2018, we raised our pre seed, so our pre seed funding. So the thing I want to be very clear about when it comes to FinTech or especially when it comes to mobile banking, or digital banking, you have to raise money, pre product, because it's such a regulated industry, there's so much money to pay up front for so many different things, where it's like, you know, I can't like social media, use an example. If I was building a social media website, there's so many resources to build, like for free to gain traction, and then go some investors say, Hey, I have X amount of users. And I think you should fund me, we'll because it's such a regulated industry. This is finance and it's banking. There, you have to build this all pre product like you can't bootstrap a bank. Like that's not how it works. So we ended up getting a pre seed round. And the person who had a pre seed round was actually a connection that Arlan made for us. So Arlen shout out to Arlen. So shout out backstage capital. Christy, also Christy is amazing. Also, Christina Arlan, I know both lead backstage capital, but right, the pre seed round. And in 2019, I pretty much took that and I've moved the company to Atlanta. So we're now based here in Atlanta. But that money, we like raised less than $2 million for a mobile bank, for our pres seed. And that lasted us 18 months, less than a million dollars, 18 months and building, building a bank. And I mean, I one thing you probably hear from any black woman in tech, we know how to make money last, because we don't know when our next check is coming. We got to focus on one that we get how do we make it last, how to get how to focus on revenue. A lot of times you see tech companies in like, they raise all this money, but they don't really make money. They're not profitable. They don't make money. But I mean, every model is different to let me say that but for most black women, we have to focus on revenue, because we don't know if we're ever going to get another check.

Jamila Souffrant 29:33

Right.

Sheena Allen 29:35

So we break that pre seed round that last 18 months. And then currently we just raise our seed round, but raising money is hard and it's really difficult, especially black women get less than 1%. But then it goes back to i'm a black woman FinTech which is even

Jamila Souffrant 29:51

even more difficult.

Sheena Allen 29:53

Even less of a people looked at looks like me in this in this industry.

Jamila Souffrant 29:57

Yeah. Well and and and That's the thing too, because you know, there may be people listening right now who have ideas for technology, new ideas or just a business and they may want to go the route of funding, you know, versus self funding. And it is a barrier, but from just what you said, even you know, a lot of times, it's even better to start with bootstrapping first, so you understand exactly what it is. So your first company bootstrap. So you understood like the process, you were in this field for a while, before you knew and the type of product you're launching needs, like, external money, right? Like you can't bootstrap a bank, like you said,

Sheena Allen 30:33

Yeah, I think that if, and I think I always tell people, though, if you can bootstrap, do it, man raising money. But there are some industries, like I said, that you just is bootstrapping. And it's not gonna happen unless you come from a super wealthy family. So like building a bank, like telehealth, like you're not trying to do this whole medical piece. And you're going to bootstrap it like it's probably like a lot of money pre product to get that up and going. But if you can bootstrap, I'll say bootstrap, because when you do raise money, I think people sometimes overlook the fact that, but every check that you take, you're giving away a piece of your company. And so we have this really bad habit in media, that we, we celebrate somebody say, Oh, I raised $10 million, which is great, but how much equity Do you give up for that $10 million. If you talk to sometimes if you talk to founders who are liking their Series B, or is funding a series A, and I remember I was at an event and Tristan Walker was speaking who you know, and he was in Atlanta with him, he first moved to Atlanta. And he said something that stuck out to me, I think it's a lot of entrepreneurs need to hear this. And he said, I had pretty much given up so much equity to the point where like, I would do all the work, but I didn't really own majority of my company anymore. And I think this thing is really important. People keep saying don't invest in one investor. Every check, you take your company's less than your company, but your work doesn't become less work.

Jamila Souffrant 32:02

Right. You become an you become an employee again, like for your company.

Sheena Allen 32:06

Yes. For your shareholder,Yeah,

Jamila Souffrant 32:09

now I don't we don't have to get too in detail. But you threw out some words and maybe some people who and I'm gonna direct them to Arlan Hamilton's episode, we did talk a little bit about funding, but like your whole like pre seed that you said seed rounds, series A Series B, I know, we don't have to go through all of it. But just for some people, just to get a sense of what that's like to raise money. Can you just like quickly go through that if it's possible to quickly go through it?

Sheena Allen 32:31

Yeah, so pre seed is usually when your idea stage, you have and you specifically have pre seed investors where you go to them and you're literally like, you may have an MVP, sometimes you do sometimes you don't, but you're pretty much idsa so this is someone who is literally believing in more of you, honestly, than they are in your company. Because every store is going to pay a bit I don't care if you're Dropbox, I don't care if you're instacart I don't care of yours, you know, Instagram, whatever Instagram started out of something totally different. So everybody pivots but that precinct investors want to say hey, I believe you as a founder. So when something goes wrong, and we have to pivot I still show that you're going to build something great. So your pre see most people in preseed these days raise about usually less than less than a half a million dollars is usually pre seed in your PC is usually going to be funded by angels, which is individuals that's not like huge financial institutions. So you have your pre seed round and then you go into your seed round this is when you literally have like something in the market you've proven at least some part of a product market fit in this is where like you're trying to like scale that product market fit to see like if you have something that's going to be able to stick and build longevity so this is like your it's like your seed is it kind of the mission you see this is you plant the seed and you're trying to make sure it is going to grow so you seed around and funding rounds that increase the last so I will say a seed round every seed round probably in today's time is probably like $2 million you know years ago seed round was a half million dollars but not anymore seed round now is 2 to $3 million so that's your see the app you see Congress series A, your series A is okay now I have traction I have revenue if your model is to make money you want to be profitable and most important not profitable with a series A but I'm making money. I'm seeing what works what doesn't work. Now I can hammer down on these two things. This one thing and I'm now catered for acceleration. So that's your series a series once again to answer is a huge scale but you're right like 7 million series A but I've seen people raise 35 million series A so it also depends on your industry. And then from there you go Series B Series C. Some people get to like series. But usually what you find is people either get acquired or they go public, probably around like series D

Jamila Souffrant 34:57

and during all these rounds are you raising as well. You're giving up some equity,

Sheena Allen 35:01

you give up equity everywhere each time, every time.

Jamila Souffrant 35:05

So how are you positioned now? Right? So right now, you're presenting your first debit card by hopefully the time this is released. So is it now that like your mission was up until this point to, you know, get as many users who put a sign up as like a way of the show, hey, people want this this is this is interest. And now is it that now it's time to like show that people are going to use this debit card, or like, what is that next round for you to or thing that you need to do for the business to like, help it go to the next level.

Sheena Allen 35:32

So for our pre seed, of course, there was money that we use to, you know, kind of build an MVP or get beta going. And then what we did at Capway specifically for us is, we built the first part of our platform was financial education. And so we end up getting a lot of users mainly through our financial literacy or financial education portion of what we are doing with Capway, because what was really important to me and building this company was, I think that the information gap is so important, it's like, if I give you a whole bunch of money, I don't give you any information or what to do with it, I'm not gonna go too well. And the same thing is opposite if I, if I give you all this information, but I don't give you any way to build money, like a great use what am I suppose to do this information. So we ended up building a nice audience strictly from our content side. And then now with the debit cards coming out, we're going to add that next layer, which is users for actually baking with Capway using this for, you know, for financial outlet for banking purposes. And then we'll go into our next thing, which then we're adding other layers onto not just debit cards, or just like spend account. But now we're adding like micro lending, we're adding different ways of saving, we're adding credit building. So we're looking to get to our acceleration point, you know, from projection wise about summer 2021. And then they'll lead to this the next layer of acceleration, which goes to your Series B Series C. So that's, that's where we are.

Jamila Souffrant 37:00

Well, it sounds exciting. Like, I mean, it sounds like it's a lot. Obviously,

Sheena Allen 37:04

it is.

Jamila Souffrant 37:06

But it sounds like being able to provide this service. And then I think the person who you who you are behind the business, like when people know what you doing this, like young black black woman, I think it's even more just inspiring. And part of it is kind of like the product works. But also the person behind the product is also someone you want to support to, you know, like you want want to see you win, like, you know, like want to cheer you on. And, you know, as you were talking so one of the things that like, you know, I've thought about and I'm sure other people think about but the education part of this whole thing is important because you can like build a tool first. But then if your users don't know how to manage their money, like you're not really helping, like making it sustainable, right? And then I think about all the people within like the finance space like me who are more like information and maybe service providing right now with information. And then there's like I have an idea for an app. And so like what would you tell someone like me, I'm in terms of if I wanted to pursue, right, creating an app. And I've seen people also say this, like some people get into this, like, as an entrepreneur, and you think you can get into like an app space. It's like, No, no, no, actually, that's not your lane, you should probably stick to like more of the you know, the face or like kind of like the influencer kind of person because that app that's or that technology, part of it is a different like level, but part of me feels like the technology part of it. That's where this whole like world is going to it's like the service base stuff. And education stuff is important, obviously. But I feel like lasting and like real impact is going to come from having someone use something. So I don't know,

Sheena Allen 38:37

So to your point, one thing that you'll see in our next release with with Capway, is exactly what you say what you said and what you're saying. We thought through that. And so of course at Capway we have a content team ourselves, like we have a Capway content team who puts out you know, information. But what I was seeing, even as we were doing like, you know, we do this thing every Thursday, on our on our Instagram Live, but what I was saying was he was talking to a lot of influencers. And they were also saying, like, you know, I had this great following all my social media, you know, my website, like, I kinda want to get into like, more like an app. And, you know, when I was when I was telling people from, you know, my long time doing apps, is there's, I don't know, 10 million apps in the app store now. And so if 1000 influencers decide I'm gonna play the app on financial literacy, like someone's gonna download it, but it's like, you're gonna get kind of lost in the sauce because it's like, you're kind of pushing the same things and so we that Capway Well, I said, I told my team, my marketing my engineering team, I say, you know, what we see as a benefit people go to Facebook because they can find everything and Facebook, people go to Instagram because I can see everybody's pictures on Instagram. I go to Twitter, cuz I see everybody know, everybody's thinking in one place. You know, everybody had their own blog, which was how it was years ago before social media became a thing. You know, people did that. But now people Go see social networks, I can see your page or someone else's page. So we're doing the same thing for financial literacy or financial education within Capway. And so someone like yourself could come and say, Sheena, I want to have full financial sessions, you literally have a full financial session within Capway.

Jamila Souffrant 40:19

Like a course or training from

Sheena Allen 40:21

Yes, yeah. And you can, so someone can come and they'll go to, they can search for you, they can search for a certain topic. And the same way you would have popped up in the Apple App Store, you will pop up in our content site for your specific your specific course, or session, or program. And so we want to create a place where people can come to really learn about money, all in one place, because we just feel like there wasn't an available, there wasn't it didn't exist. And you can only know you're learning about money, and you're getting access to all of this. But then you're able to also, once again, you're able to build your finances because you also have an option for banking there, you have an option for savings, option for credit and money goals. So it's taking information they're learning in a way to actually build we hope and financial health and generational wealth and the exact same platform.

Jamila Souffrant 41:14

Right, right. All right, I kind of want to get now more just into you building a business, you being an owner, and entrepreneur, how you manage all this, because not only the pressure, I would imagine, like this pressure that you get money from other people, like you know, it's millions of dollars now, like there's that pressure, there's the pressure of managing your day to day, right, like you have this big goal, but there's a lot of little goals that you need to complete every day to get that done. And then the marketing side of it, right? Like how much do you put yourself out there to grow this company versus you, you know, you lead the company itself? So I know that was a lot but how are you managing all those different assets or facets of being entrepreneur while still keeping sane during these times?

Sheena Allen 41:53

Yes, saying is this a good way to put it? I I'll say like, my biggest benefit is I'm actually reading the book again, there's a book called the 1%. And it tells you pretty much that every day, your goal is to complete just 1% of something. Because that means in a year you create you accomplish 365% of something. And so what I tried to break down tasks, to say, Hey, I can't get all this done in a week. But I want to get this done today, I'm gonna get this done tomorrow. And the point is you look up in a week, and you've actually accomplished a lot because you only focus on something very small. Every day. That's one thing for me is for us. I keep sane, keeping organized. My friends are great. My friends and family are great. They keep me sane. I literally probably can be like standing next to I don't know, Michelle Obama and my friend was still probably clown me.

Jamila Souffrant 42:55

Why don't you look like that?

Sheena Allen 42:56

Exactly. But that keeps me very grounded, which is I'm beyond appreciative of that. But entrepreneurship is very lonely route. And I tell people what I think people feel like is lonely. Like you're by yourself all the time, which in some cases you are, but you have a team of 100 people and you still feel lonely because it's like sometimes, like this is my journey. Nobody understands it. So it's more of a mental lonely than it is a physical lonely. And then once again, you know, you have all this money, and you know, in our case now it is millions and you have investments to answer to you know, that's one of the that's a big difference also on bootstrapping and raising money. When I was bootstrapping, I don't have to answer to anybody but Sheena, you know, but now that investors I sent out a monthly you know, investor update and I just want to know how the company is doing and you know, if you have to answer to people, so that is that's a different piece that goes along with it. And I will say entrepreneurship is and I say this, I always make sure I put a disclaimer with it. Entrepreneurship is not for everybody. And the reason I say that there is some people who are just more comfortable in their skin and it makes them more comfortable to say hey, I'm want to go to my job it's a nine to five want to clock in want to clock out and I'll get my paycheck and I'm okay with that and it is that it is okay there's nothing wrong with that I really hate it when people try to put that as a as at the bottom like this. Okay, if this if it was worked for you, that works for you. But then some people you know that entrepreneurship is what is in them but it's it's a hustle it's a I'm still up at three o'clock in the morning there is no clocking in and clocking out like oh, you know, what are you doing this weekend working or you're working on the weekend? We you run a company there's no such thing is no, I'm off all weekend like there's no basis on this. You just it's the bane they they know Saturday Sunday's like they but you know i i will say for me, I love what I do. So yes, I am sleepy sometimes. Yes, I get stressed sometimes. But even when I'm at three o'clock in the morning, I still We'll say, I love what I'm doing.

Jamila Souffrant 45:05

Which is I mean, and you're making like an impact and doing something that's has not been done before by someone who looks like you. So it's even more inspiring. And, you know, so part of the background of like, you know, my podcast and just like my brand is, you know, I'm about like helping people reach financial independence, which is a very lofty goal. Because in turn, it means that, like, literally, you'd have enough invested and saved, where you wouldn't have to work again, if you didn't want to. But really, it's like you're choosing what you want to do. Most people want to work and do something, right. And so I would love your perspective, like where you are, right? Because you're now like, you're building you, you have this company, you're still have a ways to go, a lot of it sounds like to like you want to you know, you want to make that impact you want to see it through. But for you, I would imagine like it's financial independence, something on your Horizon. I just feel like sometimes people, even in our space are entrepreneurs, like they making the money and you know, they're building the things, but they're not even thinking about their own financial like health. I'm not saying that you I'm just saying, putting it into perspective for people where it's just like, you know, what if I didn't want to walk away from this, like my exit strategy, is that one day, I don't have to hustle and work on the weekends. And you know, for the rest of my life. Have you started to think about that journey for yourself?

Sheena Allen 46:14

Yeah, I mean, I definitely want to be on a yatcht and where my feet kicked up, in that, in that working, it's sort of like a morning on a Saturday. But I also am that person where if I literally had to sell Capway today for a billion dollars, and I might take a small break. I'm gonna go back. I'm gonna go back and do something my my great grandmother passed away at 92 and she would always tell me, you know, you should have a goal untul the day that you die.

Jamila Souffrant 46:44

I say that part again. I want to make sure I got that.

Sheena Allen 46:46

You should have a goal until the day that you die.

Jamila Souffrant 46:49

Yes.

Sheena Allen 46:51

Like even my grandmother who was who was a game pass at 92 even her goal might be like, I'm gonna go sit on the porch today and sit up for a while or no, I'm a cook this week or it was always something and she kept herself going. Because I had this conversation last night. Some people are just existing, not everybody is living some people are really just existing. I think we started to exist, you lose your purpose and you lose your purpose. Like it's like you're just you're just here and I never want to feel like I'm existing. You can exist and have like money there's plenty people who have plenty of money and are miserable that is existing and never want to get that feeling so I want financial independence for myself. I want you generational wealth for my kids my grandkids my great grandkids way will when I'm gone. I'm an adult. I want that generational wealth to be there. But for my personally for myself. Yes, financial independence. I don't I don't honestly ever see myself not doing something.

Jamila Souffrant 47:48

Right. Right.

I love that. I love that. Okay, Sheena tell everyone where they can find more about you and Capway.

Unknown Speaker 47:56

Yes. So Capway you can find us on our website it's capway.co you can find some the app store that's the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. So definitely download our app on social media across all of our social media handles. We are @gocapway GO ca p w a y and then personally for myself, is SheenaAllen.com on social I it is who is Sheena, sh e e na,

Jamila Souffrant 48:25

right. And the goal here is like people go and they download the app like there's no fee to download it you really it's a financial education part they get and then they by the time hopefully this is released, you'll have this debit card that they can potentially opt into and start banking with you.

Sheena Allen 48:37

Yes.

Jamila Souffrant 48:38

All right. Thank you so much, Sheena.

Sheena Allen 48:40

Thank you.

Jamila Souffrant 48:45

Okay, I really hope you enjoyed that conversation with Sheena Allen. I was super inspired by just her journey, her growth from not knowing how to code, but to figuring it out. So even if you are not into you know, the FinTech world, this story should have been an inspiration. Hopefully it's an inspiration to you on just going after it an idea if it is planted. If there's a seed in your head, I want you to know that anything is possible, you know, and the thing

Okay, so before I go I just want to remind you You still have time to join me on January 14 at the free class where I'll be talking about financial independence 101 breaking down the building blocks you need to create and live your best life while on the journey to financial freedom. You can join me at journeytolaunch.com/freeclass the classes on January 14 at 8:30pm eastern time, so join me live Do you like hearing me talk on the podcast and you'll love to be able to like let's see let's interact with each other see me teach what I love teaching best financial independence and financial freedom topics. Also, the doors to the phi course are going to be open but only open until January 19. So if you want to find out more about That go to journeytolaunch.com/ficourse. Don't forget you only have a few hours if you're listening to this in real time when this episode drops to join me on January 14 at 8:30pm. Eastern Time for my free class, where I'll be helping you map out your journey to financial independence. You don't want to miss it, sign up by going to journey to launch comm slash free class.

Now it's time for a DCU's money Tip of the Week. This is where I share a quick money tip or resource or tool to help you on your journey to financial freedom. Now, I'm going to talk to you about phishing as a scam and how to avoid it. I'm not talking about fishing to get fish like fish you eat or maybe have as pets, but phishing as a scam where you get fraudulent emails that look like they're from our familiar organization, but they're really asking you for information that could jeopardize your personal data. So you may be asked to make a payment or verify personal information such as your social security number or a password. Do not give this in an email protect yourself in these three ways. One never provide your personal information online or over the phone unless you initiated the contact and you know it's a trustworthy company. Two, contact the company using a phone number or website that you know is real instead of following a link in an email and three report any phishing attacks to the Federal Trade commission@ftc.gov/complaint. Okay, for more tools and information to help you with your money goals, check out dcu.org

If you want to check out the episode shownotes that's where you can get links to anything that's mentioned, and even get a transcribed version of this episode that you can read. Go to journeytolaunch.comor click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. Now you can also still grab your free journeyer jumpstart guide by texting, launch to 33777 or go to journeytolaunch.com/jumpstart. If you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you are not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this and Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review number. Two, follow me on my social media accounts. I'm at journey to launch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And I love love love interacting with journeyers there. Three, support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here. So show them some love for supporting your girl. Four and last but not least, share this episode this podcast with a friend or family member or co worker so that we can spread the message of journey to launch. Alright, that's it until next week, keep on journeying journeyers.

Jamila Souffrant 0:00

You're listening to the Journey to Launch podcast How I Bought My First Real Estate Property at 22 Years Old Plus Lessons Learned That You Can Apply To Your Own Journey.

Intro 0:13

Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast with your host Jamila Souffrant, as a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest, and build real wealth. Join her on the Journey to Launch to financial freedom.

Jamila Souffrant 0:37

Hey, hey, hey journeyers I have been meaning to do this episode. For the longest time, I'm going to be talking about my personal real estate journey, my journey to buy my first property at 22 years old in Dumbo Brooklyn. Now, this like decision, this purchase this investment has been like the single biggest thing I've done on my own the riskiest thing I've done and the most financially rewarding thing I've done. And you know, I always kind of mention it, especially like, if you maybe look me up or saw some of my story online, it's usually mentioned, you know, she bought her first property at 22. And that is true, but I've never really gotten a chance other than actually, I mean, I wrote an article about this, I'll link in the show notes. If it's out by now, I'm not sure we'll be out. But I never really got a chance to talk about it on the episode. And I kept saying, I'm going to do an episode just on this experience, because I think a lot can be learned from this because I picked out a few things that really helped me now even looking back at that decision, what put me in a position to be able to do that. Right. So while you may have different tools and different starting point, and just your situation may not be the same as mine, you know, this was years ago, that to pull some educational, inspirational, hopefully, things you can see from this story and apply it to your own life. That is always my goal when I'm sharing my personal story is to hopefully inspire you but also to spark that little light in your head that says Hmm, how can this apply in my life?

First a word from today's sponsor. As we are in the beginning of a brand new year, it's the perfect time to get focused and committed to your financial goals. Not only is it great to reflect on your money wins and lessons learned from the previous year, but it's the perfect opportunity to set and commit to your financial goals for the year ahead, take time to reevaluate your current financial tools, banking situation, and consider joining your local credit union if you're not already a member, for example, Digital Federal Credit Union, better known as DCU is committed to providing their members with the financial products and services they need to help them achieve their financial goals. Not only does DCU offer free online education for the members on money topics, including saving, building credit, and budgeting. DCU also offers products that can help members establish or improve their credit. To learn more, check out DCU. org. And stick around to the end of the show for the DCU money Tip of the Week, where I'll be sharing tips to help you save and manage your money so that you can reach your goals.

Okay, journeyers, I have to remind you about two things that are happening in the next couple of weeks that are very time sensitive, depending on when you're listening to this episode. So one, I have a secret/ private podcast that you can listen to. It's a series of five and six episodes that are really short, about 11 minutes long each that helped break down financial independence. So it's financial independence 101, and it gives you the building blocks, you need to think about how you can craft your journey. So if you love listening to the podcast in this form, you like audio as learning, then you'll love this secret podcast, but you have to sign up right now because I'm going to be removing the episodes altogether, you know from the public in just a few days. So go to journeytolaunch.comc/secretpodcast to get access to that private feed right now to get your financial independence 101 building blocks. And then make sure you join me I am doing a free class to kick off the new year on January 14 at 8:30pm Eastern Time to help you map out how you're going to get to where you currently are in debt maybe mindset that you're thinking about wanting to reach freedom but you don't know how you're going to get there. Breaking it down from how you get to where you are right now to where you ultimately want to be. And so you don't want to miss that it's free. You can sign up by going to journeytolaunch.com/freeclass join me on January 14 at 8:30pm Eastern time.

If you want the episode Show Notes for this episode, go to journeytolaunch.com or you can click the description of wherever you listen to this episode to get the full episode show notes. Now if you are a new listener to the podcast or OG journeyer, I've created a jumpstart guide to help you on your journey to financial freedom. It includes the top episodes to listen to, the stages to go through to reach financial freedom, resources to help you and so much more. Get it for FREE by texting launch to 33777 text launch to 33777 or go to journeytolaunch.com/jumpstart to get your guide for free right now.

Okay, let's hop to the episode.

Okay, so let's take it back. Let's take it all the way back of how this all came to be. So yes, when I was 22 years old, I put down a deposit on my first property in New York City. It was a small 525 square foot apartment, it was a studio apartment. And it was in the fast developing area of Brooklyn called DUMBO. So Dumbo stands for down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. It's literally right under the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, and across the river from Manhattan. And this studio was in a new high rise condominium development. So it was not constructed yet, you know, talk about this a bit how it was when I went to the sales office. But the area at the time is nowhere near what it is today. There was no development, there was nothing really going on. This was I think the first new development condo in that area. But you know, I didn't know at the moment, but buying that property was not only very dangerous, but really rewarding. So it worked out in my benefit. And I do have another real estate story, I don't know if I have time to share that. Depending on how long this episode gets, I'm gonna have to do a part two of a totally different purchase that did not go the same way as this one did. And that one is also a very interesting case study. So okay, let's take it back.

How did this come to be? How did I at 22, which is a pretty young age, gets serious or want to buy something. So as a senior in college, I really became interested in real estate investing, I'd met a couple older of older folks in the community. So at that time, I was living in the Fort Greene area of Brooklyn. And I met a couple of what I like to call neighborhood millionaires very unassuming. They were usually older. And I remember just a couple of them, where they had bought property back in the day in Fort Greene and Bed Stuy. And you know, back in the day, like in the 80s 90s, when no one wanted to buy real estate in that area, because it was high crime. There were stories about like, I remember those people told me the stories that you couldn't even walk in Fort Greene or Bed Stuy, you know, after a certain time, like it was that dangerous. So these people had the foresight, or just, you know, went against what other people thought was like just saying, and ended up buying brownstones back in the day. And when I came of age, when I became like, you know, in college, the neighborhood was booming. That was when there was a lot of gentrification, it was a safer neighborhood. And so those same properties saw an immense value increase. So I would see these like older people, they were usually older, and like get a little insight in their lives and they did not look wealthy. They look just and you know, wealthy, that's just who looks wealthy, right? Meaning they were not flashy individuals. But they did their own thing. They had their own businesses. One was a grandmother who was taking care of her grandchild, she had the kind, you know, she had the flexibility in her life and her money to be able to help her daughter with her grandchild that always stood out to me. So I was just so like, intrigued by this, because here I am, this is I was in college at this point. So maybe like in my, you know, early 20s before I graduated, and I met these people, and they would say, Oh, I own a brownstone here and a brownstone around the corner. And they that's what they they didn't really have like corporate jobs, they did their own thing. They collected rent, and they were literally sitting on millions of dollars of real estate. And I just was just so impressed by I know that it left such a big impression on me. And I am the kind of person where, you know, I typically can, like if I see something that impresses me, especially if the person is relatable, even if they're not relatable, if there's just one thing about them that I you know, I'm just like, wow, that was interesting. I kind of try to see how I can apply that self to me. So that's kind of what I did. And I knew kind of at that point, like I should buy something if I get in early enough. And so I grew up, you know, I grew up in different parts of Brooklyn. The longest that I did grew up was like in Fort Greene.

So my grandmother also by like, whether luck or faith, she also became one of these investors' but not on purpose. My grandmother I told this story before she immigrated here Actually, she is the one that took me on the plane, she always says I was her carry on luggage. Like I sat in her lap from Jamaica here, she brought me up here because my mom was already here trying to establish herself. So my grandmother literally landed here with really nothing. And she worked for she did like she was a nanny for wealthy, or, you know, the upper class people in the city. I remember she has she was working for a family in Park Slope at one point. And so that was her job. And she was always ambitious, but her dream was to own real estate. So she also became one of these, like, unassuming, I would say, Now, you know, just millionaires because she ended up buying a three family house in Fort Greene. I was very young at the time, I you know, so I had no clue was going on. But she ended up buying something because she wanted to have something of her own. So she ended up because she saved because she was a saver I was talking about, you know, the one thing on my family is, I didn't know about investing, but saving was a big part of it. Like they were very resourceful. So she was able to get a three family house and at the time she bought the two family house in Fort Greene, people also told her like, what are you doing? Like, this is not that great of an area, even though like, you know, oh my gosh, hindsight is 2020. It's like, the best area if you wanted to buy something at that time for investment purposes. But she didn't know that she just wanted a piece of the American dream, she wanted a place to call her own. And it happened to be a three family. So she moved in, she, she took the first floor, and then my mom and myself took the second floor and moved into the second floor. And then we they rented out the third floor.

So I grew up in this neighborhood, I think I forgot how old I was. I was like maybe like 11 or 12, maybe a little younger when we moved there. And I kind of came to age came of age in this neighborhood. So when I got like, you know, just a little bit more aware of what I wanted to do with my life. And then I want to be you know, to make money and all these things. I saw that even my grandmother who had no like, you know, it's not like she was strategically buying this property, because she knew in 10 15 20 years, it would be valued at so much. She just wants to do it. So with that I thought to myself if these people, you know, especially my grandmother who didn't intentionally like want to, like become, you know, real estate investors, why can't I do this like, and I think this is like, the baton that is passed down to us from generations is like when our parents or grandparents come here as immigrants with nothing and they make something of themselves they get it together and do the most I always look at my husband's like even family and I'm just amazed at what you know that they were able to buy a home, they're Haitian you know, and navigate, you know, different a different language, you know, and be able to do that and I'm like, Well, our generation as their children as their grandchildren should surely like if we have the opportunities that we've had here should be able to do better. So that was like, my whole mindset. And that's why I really like it piqued the interest of me while I was still in college, that I would buy something I was like, You know what, this seems like a good way to you know, basically get some wealth going more wealth in our family. So that was really important.

So now when it came time that I wanted to buy something, right so now I'm like okay, I do want to buy something. I know it's possible I see these people succeeding in it like Why not? So at the time I didn't make that decision. I think I was maybe like a junior in college, junior or senior in college so I started to look around the neighborhood to buy something and my goal was to buy a multifamily property because again, I saw all the the examples I saw people who made money is that they bought three family four family like brownstones or houses so that they can live in one and rent the others out have the rent pay for the mortgage and and some more. So that was my goal. I started looking but at the time I started looking it was the real estate It was like the bubble was bubbling meaning like the prices for property were like at that time were crazy and you know looking back now Oh my I wish the prices were what it were back then. But I guess I could remember going to Bed Stuy looking at like a two or three family house and it was like seven or $800,000 and it still needed work. Now that today is a steal. If you know show me a brownstone in Bed Stuy, or Fort Greene area, Brooklyn for seven or 800,000. Like that is a steal. But back then, that was a lot of money, especially for like a 21 22 year old. So I really, really started looking and I went like on, you know, to like a couple open houses and I was looking online and I'm like, I can't afford this. It was really kind of discouraging for a moment because I was just like, What am I supposed to do? I can't like, at that time I was had an internship, but it wasn't like consistent money. It was just money that I earned while I was in school.

So I even looked in New Jersey, I remember I almost went to contract on a property in New Jersey, because we, you know, I went out there, I was like, Well, if I can't afford anything in Brooklyn, in the area that I want, because I knew I wanted it to be in like, you know, closer to the city bedstuy, Fort Greene, then let me go to Jersey, because I was also interning the job that I had. It was in New Jersey. And even that, like something felt off with that. Lo and behold, though, I was doing my research, and I saw this advertisement, and it would believe it was online. And it was saying, oh, new construction, condo, luxury condo in Dumbo, Brooklyn. And the price range it started it said 300 K, and then up, you know, like studios to the penthouse. And that 300 k caught my eye because again, at that time, I was seeing things that were like seven 800,000. And in my head, I'm like 300,000 seems like a steal. So with that, I went to the sales office in Dumbo. Now just to remind you Dumbo stands for down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass that is literally like maybe 10 minutes from Fort Greene, Brooklyn where I grew up. And I don't remember like at 21 I believe I can't believe I can't remember if it was 21 or 22. I don't ever really remember ever going to Dumbo that it was only 10 15 minutes away from me. But I saw this advertisement. I took my mom right took my mom with me. And I was like, Come on, let me check this out. It's a new construction. Let's see what this is all about. remember going to the sales office. And there was nothing in the area of Dumbo. It was just like, you know, warehouses. But it was close to the water it was close to it was even closer to Manhattan. So I saw something there. When I went there. I was like, wow, what into the sales office and of course, new development. So there was no The ground was not even broken in terms of the construction being started. But they had really nice displays of what this condominium unit would look like. Like they showed all the amenities they would have a doorman, a gym, a yoga like studio. And I was like, wow, this sounds like something that I can do. And I remember looking at the apartment list, and the cheapest apartment started at, like $338,000 Yeah, that was probably the cheapest. If there was cheaper, it was already taken by the time I got there. And then of course, it went all the way up to the million when it came to the penthouse. And I literally just looked at the cheapest one that was left. And I was like, Okay, I think I'm gonna go with that. So it was like the cheapest and smallest unit that I could barely afford. Because remind you I'm still in college at this point, about to graduate, but I'm just like, Well, you know, the 700 $800,000 multi units are not going to work. So let me try this. This is like a half the price and it's in Brooklyn. And you know, they were also the developers also sold the vision of Dumbo. You know, they talked about all the just the new construction that was coming to Dumbo all the amenities. You know, the Brooklyn Bridge Park, there was no Brooklyn Bridge Park. So anyone who's familiar with Brooklyn, we'll know kind of what I'm talking about. But right now, if you go to Dumbo, like beautiful miles and miles of just water way access, and you know, this ferries that go there, like where people can commute to work to city, and there's parks, and restaurants. But back then it wasn't much of that. And what they talked about how Dumbo was going what Dumbo could be. And I I bought into the dream. So I remember leaving there and saying to myself, and so what you needed at the time to secure the apartment was 10%.

So the apartment I bought was like 338,000 that's what I cheapest one. So I need a 10% they said you need to 10% to save the apartment, meaning no one else will come in after you after you left the sales office and buy that apartment. So you need 10% to save it. And then 10% at closing plus closing costs. So the key here and what really saved me and able to be able to do any of this. I mean, there's there's a lot of there's a list of things that I'll go through it. But was that because they hadn't they did not start construction yet it would take about two years for this building to be built. So I thought to myself, if I can just come up with the first 10% I have two years to save the additional 10% and closing costs and be prepared financially to move into this unit. So remember leaving and you know my mom was with me and if you know if you listen to the episode with my mom, I'll link that in the show notes. I could not have asked for a better mother in life and support her because she always just she knew I was I was always ambitious and she never tried to, you know, squash, or turn off that light of mine inside. And so she encouraged me she was such a pivotal role in being able to do this because she was just like, Okay, if you want to do this, sure. And so I put on a 10%, my mom did gift me a portion of that first 10%. And I'm going to go into a little bit more that when I go through the list of things that allowed me to do this, but she helped with the first 10%, I already had money saved because I had been interning through inroads at my corporate kind of internship. And at this point, this is also a key to remember, because I was interning at inroads and I did that for three years at the same company. Before I left to go to my senior year in college, I got a full time offer. So I knew full time offer to work at that company once I graduated. So I knew that I had a job. And that job is the full time offer. I remember it being $55,000 with like a signup bonus of like 5000, again, for a college student going into their senior year to know that when they graduated, you I had a job like that was amazing. So I thought to myself, well, finding that 10%, which we did fine. So I had that money saved from my internship because they paid me and I saved like majority of my internship money. So I had my internship money, I had my mom's where she helped me put the first 10% down. So together, we were able to get to that first 10%.

But I knew I had two years to save up for the additional 10% and the closing costs. And that was all going to be me like that was going to be me, fast forward. And it was crazy. Because I graduated from college. Now I'm in contract for this condominium unit. And the thing about it is putting that 10% down was risky, because you can't get it back if you decide that you're not closing. But I just knew there's something in me that knew that this was like, the right thing to do. Because I just saw so much promise in the area. And my worst case scenario was like, you know, what, if I can't close on this, because I can't afford it, I can't get the additional 10% the additional what $33,000 plus the closing costs in two years, then maybe I'll be able to sell the contract the purchase contract, right. Like at least I'll be able to sell it for what I went into the contract for, you know, with it for, you know, because I didn't think that the the failure would be on the building itself or the area, meaning I felt it was a solid investment and building and a solid area. So if it wasn't going to work, it was going to be because of me because I couldn't come up with the money. So I waited two years for this condominium to be built. And I used to pass this every day going to work. So I would commute from Brooklyn to New Jersey. And I'd have to go over the mannhattan and bridge every day. And I remember for those two years, I would pass it and you know, you see nothing. But as you're going over the bridge and you start seeing the development go up store, you know, one floor by one floor. Patience is like an understatement. And having to watch this building go up. But I also knew that I wasn't prepared if the building was ready the next day I couldn't have afforded to move in. So it was almost just like the many stars that needed to align. That was one big one, the fact that I had to wait even though I didn't, you know, it was like crazy to wait two years, it was it was necessary, I wouldn't have been able to move into the apartment if I didn't have those two years. So I was also able to at that point, stay at home with my mom.

So when I graduated from college, I was able to move back home with my mom and save money that way. So every single penny so when I started to work, remember I had this full time offer, I started to work full time. So it really the timing was right also because after that 10% was put down, I started to work full time. And all my money, most of it went to savings. Because I even did the math, okay, I'm making this much money now. What will be my potential mortgage payment once I move in, oh, it's gonna be this. And I kid you not when I did the math, my rent, my mortgage payment was like the same as what my my check, my monthly check would be. And I was like, okay, so not not only do I need to save the 10% in closing costs, I need to save living expenses. So again, taking a huge risk because literally like graduating, even when I graduated, like the money that was making was good money, but it wasn't. It didn't give me much room to also like pay for other things other than the mortgage.

Okay, let's fast forward. Two years later. Finally, this building is complete. And I did my best to save up that 10% for the additional money that it needed to close and the closing costs and I had the money. So I went into contract at 22 ended up closing on the unit at 24. And moving in, by the time I closed on the unit in Dumbo. It had appreciated I went into contract for it. I think it was like you know 338 338,000 by the time like I closed on it, you know how they have to do the appraisal and you know to get the mortgage I believe by then it was like 500 something maybe like high 400 either high $400,000 value or the low $500,000 value. So I had a ready seen appreciation. And I you know, of course, I kept in touch with the market because I was always interested in real estate, right? So I kind of knew as even those two years are passing that, okay, this the property values is appreciating. So no matter what I'll be able to at least get out of this and possibly get my, my down payment back if I can't close. And so yes, it worked out because I closed that 24 on this unit, had the had the money saved up and was able to move in. And looking back at those moments. And those years of my life like my early 20s it was such a gift. Because I mean, you couldn't tell me anything

to be 24 living in this Dumbo. So now Dumbo was a little bit more developed, there's more opportunities coming to the area. And I and I remember being like one of the earlier people who bought in the building, and being one of the youngest that moved in. Plus, no one else looked like me. I felt like I was just like little black girl in this area, with people wondering probably like, What is she doing here? Not in a bad way necessarily. But it was just like, I felt really proud of being able to do that, in that area at that time. And so I lived in that apartment. So I lived in an apartment, you know, and for a few years, a couple years enjoyed my life. I think I talked about this. I definitely said this on social media. But even in that time, I had an older car. I remember upgrading because, you know, I was not as into my finances. Even though I did a lot of great things in my 20s I was not as I would say strategic. So I remember also in my 20s buying a luxury car. But I did wait till my older car like conked out, which is actually broke down in the Holland Tunnel. Can you imagine that? My car that I had for years throughout college, it broke down in the New Holland Tunnel. And I was like, Oh, no. Okay, we need a new car. And I ended up buying a used car. But it was a luxury car. So here I am in this like, you know, nice luxury condo building with my nice luxury car like I was living the life in my early 20s like, and then eventually, you know, I got engaged and ended up moving out of the condo, but I rented it out. So I still own that Dumbo unit today. And I rent it out. And so it's been at just a amazing experience. It's obviously appreciated even more since I left. And you know, the market has definitely changed with the pandemic. I've been lucky enough only to have this is go I'm going on my third person renting in the time that I've left, you know, over like, probably over 10 years since I left or about 10 No, maybe like a little under 10 years since I left. Dumbo. I left that unit. So I've usually had like long term renters my first renter was amazing. Like he stayed there for like, I don't know, five, six years, he never I never heard from him. It was such a like, I would go there to renew his lease. And he'd be like, oh, by the way, the microwave is broken. And like, oh, why didn't you tell me he was like, it's been months, but I don't use it. I'm like, okay, I still own it to this day, I have no plans on selling it. It's like, emotionally, it's more than just a unit of property. I know financially, I couldn't, you know, stand to gain a lot of money if I were to sell it. But at this point is bigger than that. I feel like, at this point, I couldn't find anything in Dumbo right now. I mean, I couldn't even move my family, like it's a studio apartment, the five of us could not live in that studio apartment. So for me, what I envision is a way for my family, like my children to continue on with the wealth baton. And if I teach them, right, and, you know, they'll be able to hold this or use this as leverage to also continue to build wealth, just like I used my grandmother's inspiration to help me figure out that I wanted to, you know, do something like this. And so, you know, I've even had offers from the next door unit owner to buy my property without an agent. So to save money there to buy my property, um, so that they can, like knock the walls out and create like a bigger apartment. And I was like No, and I've had offers to like for someone to buy it. But I'm like, No, this is so much more than just like the money while the money is cool. And I'm grateful that it actually appreciated and worked out in my favor.

This is my pride. It's my legacy. I mean, I don't want to tie my my worth is not tied to this apartment. Right? I want to be clear about that. Because I think it's really important that we don't tie our worth too much to physical things that can be taken away. But we should also be proud of the things that we've accomplished and done and be smart about like these tools. And so for me The fact that right now, I mean, maybe in a couple years I'll be able to buy in Dumbo again, I can't re enter that market. There's not too many people who look like me that own in not only that building, but in that area, it's like one of the most expensive places to buy real estate in New York. So it's almost like I'm making a statement for my family. For my people that listen, we can do this, we can be here. And it's my real estate story. And I do have some lessons learned. So I just wanted to give you a background of how that all came to be. But there's also things in here, when I look back at being able to do this that really contributed to the success of this, hopefully, you can pull out some own less your own lessons from this apply to your life. Again, I know, the things are totally different. Now, the market is totally different. And you may if you're especially if you grew up in like New York, or somewhere, I think it's like, it's hard, right? Because like, if you grew up in an area, like in New York, sometimes the areas that you grew up in, you can't afford to buy in, and you have to venture out, you know, somewhere else. But I'm hoping that sharing, like these takeaways will kind of help get your juices flowing on what you can do in your life.

Okay, so looking back the factors that contributed to my success, Okay, I'm gonna say this No, this is like random. There's no like, actual order. But I will say first the real estate bubble, and for different reasons, but there was a real estate bubbling, bubbling, the real estate bubble at that time. And like 2005, to like me preach that and five, right to like, 2007/8 price me out of what I want what I thought I wanted to be in. I mean, honestly, I would love to own a brownstone in Fort Greene or, you know, Bed Stuy, but it priced me out of that at that moment. And so I had to look elsewhere. But let me tell you something, when it was time to close on this Unit Two years later, so I think it was 2007 that I closed on this condominium, and the market was in a frenzy still meaning people this is when they were giving out no loan documents, meaning they did not check your income, you can like close on a unit or a property without showing proofing of income, you can just tell them what you earned. At the time that I went to go get this mortgage, my income, like I said, it was barely covering what this mortgage would be, like I didn't have enough like the ratio was not, there was not enough room in the ratio, like if they would have done the math for me to pay for the mortgage and living expenses. So I actually closed on my unit as a no loan doc mortgage, meaning I didn't have to prove my income. Now, if there was not a real estate bubble, and it is like it is now where you know, they're checking and making sure you can afford, as they should, as they should to buy things because so many people lost so much money, you know, over leveraged and got into properties they could not afford. And I honestly was one of them. If you look on paper, I could not have really afforded that apartment. But I was determined. So in the two years that it took for the unit to be built. Like I said, I saved the majority of my money so I knew that okay, even if my income at the moment is not there, I knew it would increase at some point. And I knew that I could sell it at some point if I wanted to if things really got bad, but really the real estate bubble while it was, you know, a crazy time, the no loan Doc, just the way they were doing things allowed me to close if they were checking my my my real income, I would not have been able to close on that unit and the ability to adapt.

So adapting because I had my mindset on a brownstone, a multifamily unit, but I was open to different things. And I think that's really important. Because sometimes what you think will be your thing, what you think will be the path to your success. The success will be there, but your path can be different. And so I was willing to go to New Jersey to look at something I was willing to go to a condo instead of a brown, a brownstone. And so I adapted and I learned to kind of see something different, where the possibilities were and so you can't be so frigid. Sometimes in your goal, you have to allow flexibility, because you could still possibly get to a different goal, even a better goal. But you have to make room for the flexibility and changing your mind and doing something different and supportive family. I mean, mainly my mom, so I talk about this earlier, my mom did give me a portion of the first 10% and then the fact that I was able to live at home the fact that like I didn't have to pay rent like I had to pay for my own like you know, expenses, but she didn't make me pay rent. And it's obvious I wouldn't have been able to do this without her support. And I want to like say because I know there may be some people will say like, Hey, you know, of course your mom helped you. That's like why and I get that she did help me. But my mom also came to this country with nothing. When I tell you she had As a single mom at 20 years old, immigrated here from Jamaica work minimum wage jobs, for her to put herself in a position to be able to help her 20 something year old daughter buy something like this, that ultimately benefits us as a whole as a family. But like she's like, all sacrificed her own money and position to, to give me a boost means everything because what that shows me is that maybe right now you don't have that support, you know, you don't have you don't have a mom, you don't have a mom that can do that for you or family members that you can live with and save money, I get it. But what I look at when I see that is, my mom was able to boost and give me a headstart. And so even if you don't have that, right now, you can do that for someone else, you can do that for your children, you can be someone who, because you're getting your finances in order, because you're working hard, you can give the assistance to your kids to help them do better. And quite honestly, like my mom, like I always say like, I mean, again, I'm blessed to have her. And she but she worked her way up to now where she is financially secure. So while she started without much, now she's at a place where I you know, luckily, I don't have to worry about having to take care of her when she retires. Because as she got her education, she started to make more money, she started to you know, invest in her her 403B and, you know, so she's doing okay, so having her as a support system obviously was a like a huge benefit. But and I couldn't have done it without her. But I look at it as even if you don't have that in your life right now to look at is but you can still be you can still be successful, maybe it won't be as fast or at the rate or as young as I was able to maybe buy something. But even looking at my mom like she is also right now financially secure. Something that 30 years ago when she 40, you know, 30 years ago when she first came here was not the case.

Okay, a savers mindset. So when I started saving most of my money at my internship, I didn't know I was saving it, I just felt like there was going to be something that I needed to save it for. And saving was, again, something really important in our family, even if like they always, even if it's $1, save one cent of that, and that was passed down to me. And it's something that I kept, so even no matter what jobs I got. So I had my internship through inroads, but I also worked on campus, you know, I had my first job at 14. And so, I just always remember saving something and that is my charge to everyone here. While you may have like, you know, debt payments and things going on, even if it's $1, I don't care how much it is, I want you to allocate something that you are saving, because the amount will change as your position and station in life changes as you earn more money. As you know, maybe you get a windfall of you know, a tax return or just something else that occurs. If you are already allocating and knowing like flexing that savings muscle, you can then be prepared to save more when you are able to save more. And so having that money and saving even before I knew what it was for it was crucial.

The next thing, representation matters so much, seeing other people doing something matters, because sometimes there are things that you don't even know are possible, because you don't see someone doing it. You see someone doing it, and it's not just seeing someone doing it, but seeing them do it doing it and saying, huh, why not me?Why not you? And this goes for anything that you're thinking about doing in life, a podcast, you know, like you see someone see me having a podcast and you have an idea for something, why not you? Why can't you start a podcast? Why can't your podcast be successful? You see someone you know, in a career that seems exciting, and you're like, wow, that person must be like lucky. Why can you be Why can't you create your own luck to do that, in terms of what did they do to get there? Is there a way that you can take a similar path or change paths to do it? I just always feel that representation is key. If I did not see those in person, neighborhood millionaires, like if maybe, you know, I had no clue they existed if they never opened up and told me that they own property. And were landlords. If I didn't have my own grandmother as a mirror of what I could be in one day, I don't know that I would have had the guts to go in and buy a property at 22. But it was because I saw these people doing it. And they were normal people, they were not knowing they weren't. I mean, maybe they were worth millions of dollars, but they were regular every day, people from similar backgrounds, or even more, maybe disadvantaged backgrounds. And I was like, Okay, I can do this too. So seeing and seeking out the representation. Maybe it's not immediate for you, but seek it out. There are people who you can relate to, or it may be part of the story. Maybe everything's not relatable, that if you can just see yourself in what they're doing and then apply that you can do it too. You'll get somewhere.

Okay, belief in self is going to be key here. It's one thing to see something Doing something. But then there's another thing to say, Hey, I can do it too. And I believe I do have a strong belief in my abilities. That's not to say I don't have big insecurities, I actually really do. But I'm able to really like, tell those insecurities to shut up most of the time and go after and lean into my ability. And I think that's for everyone, every journeyer listening right now that I know that you're, there's a little voice in your head, sometimes telling you, you can't do something, telling you if it was that easy, more people would have done it. I know, I know those voices still come up in my head. But you must find a way to push past that you must find a way to see where you are now, and see how your abilities have helped you to where you are now. And that is not by accident, you are worthy, you can do it too. Maybe not in the same way. Because we don't have the same tools, we don't have the same starting point. But you can. And so you have to develop that belief in self, you have to surround yourself with people. And I don't want to put it on people to pour into you. But it doesn't hurt to have people who also believe in you. And again, my mom was a big part of that if I had a mom, that was very critical, and maybe not as helpful, maybe my mindset would be a little bit different. But I know for some people that is the case, you don't have supportive people or family around you. But seeking out supportive spaces where they can reinforce your belief is going to be important but bigger than that, because sometimes you won't even get that you have to have that belief in yourself.

And then I would say the risk versus reward, being able to identify that. And this can go for anything that you're thinking about doing whether it is investing in a course, or quitting your job or starting a business for me to buy this property, there was a big risk, right? Like I could have lost that 10% that I put down if I was not able to close. And you know, I don't think I'll have time for this second part, I'll probably have to do a part two of my other real estate story where actually almost did lose, we did my husband, I did something similar. We went in, and we bought a prop condo, put 10% down and literally almost lost at 10%. So that would have to be another story. But I looked at the risk of losing that 10% versus the reward of what was possible. If it worked. This one thing to do something and be like oh my gosh, that was such a mistake. But most times the mistakes do not lead to death. Most times, not 99% of the time, you won't die from your mistake, you may lose some money, you may have your ego bruised, you may lose some time, but you won't die. And for me, I thought the award of having my own place to close on a condo unit in this area that is developing that could be worth a lot of money one day, it's worth it. And so think about for you whether it is buying that course buying that investment property, only you can tell yourself what your risk tolerance is, right?

There are some people who were at that age or with those circumstances would have not done what I did. I'm pretty sure if I went back in Word to like, you know, maybe I was calling into like, like a Suzy Orman or Dave Ramsey and told them about my situation and I want to buy this condo, they'd be like, Hell, no, you can't afford it. You're right. That's why you have to have your own internal guidance system to guide you on these things. Because you know, the price point matters, right? So if you're spending like $500 or $1,000 on a course or something, you know, depending on your situation, you know, for me, I knew that the outcome would be way better than the risk if I lost this. And so if you think about like, you know, if I spent $500 on this course on this thing, if I don't do the work, which you know, hopefully once you put that money and skin in the game, you're going to do the work. But think about if I don't do it Will I still be in the same situation. And for me, I didn't want I didn't want 2/3/4 years to pass and me not to own property. Like Same thing with quitting my job. Like I knew that timing was of the essence. And I would regret more not trying out Journey to Launch full time than staying in my quote unquote safe job. Because again, if I'm not going to die, if I'm not gonna lose every single penny I have, then the risk for me was worth it. So this is why I think I'm able to take a bit of risk and I want you to think about your risk and rewards and if the reward outweighs the risk that you're going to take then to consider for you what that means to take these risks.

Okay, so overall, that is my buying a property at 22 years old story my my condo in Brooklyn, you know, so the thing about it is to like I kind of alluded to this, the pandemic definitely changed things a bit. I had a tenant in there, but he had to actually couldn't renew because of the pandemic. He was someone who actually was he only lived there a couple times a like month because he he traveled a lot for work but he was older. So when the pandemic hit He couldn't, he couldn't stay there any longer. He had to, like, be home. And I had to find a new tenant during all this. And right now, during this, it is a renters market, meaning there's so many units on the market, you know, there's so much more development to write like in Dumbo in downtown Brooklyn. And so I actually did have a little bit of trouble finding someone, but I did I found new tenant, and it just goes to show you like, wow, yes, it this is a great investment. It is a way that my family has built even more wealth, it's been my biggest proponent of wealth, or my biggest part of my portfolio, in terms of wealth, right now. But, you know, that's not to say it doesn't come with you know, like responsibility. It's not to say like, like, you know, just being a landlord is 100%, like, easy. In terms of, you know, there's always a condominium increase that add a tax abatement that ran out. So the cost of having the condo is more than when it was 15 years ago. But to me, the good outweighs any of the bad or things that are happening. And I'm just so grateful. So happy to be able to be put in the position to take this opportunity. When I saw it, and part of it. Yes, it's preparation, and part of it is luck. And I know that you are in your own journey, and you're figuring out maybe what you should do and what you should invest in. I know I got a lot of people who listen, who are interested in real estate investing. But I just want to tell you that your path is going to be all your own. Hopefully, you got some inspiration, and some tips from this. But I'm really glad to be able to share the story with you, I will come back. I don't know when but for part two about the other real estate purchase that did not go as well as this one.

Okay, journeyers, don't forget, I have some time sensitive things that if you want to take advantage of you got to do it right now. Do not delay. One I have a secret podcast series called Financial Independence 101, where you can listen to episodes around the building blocks of financial independence. So these are short episodes to help you and guide you to start your journey. It even comes with a free workbook, you can get access to that series at journeytolaunch.com/secretpodcast. And then do not do not forget to join me on January 14, at 8:30pm Eastern Time for a free class where I'm going to bring together the building blocks, the next steps you need to take and all the things that you can crush your goals in 2021 and beyond. Go to journeytolaunch.com/freeclass to save your seat. I'll see you there.

Now it's time for DCU money Tip of the Week. This is where I share helpful money tip to help you manage your money and reach your goals. This week's tip is to invest the time to learn about a topic or subject matter that will help you reach your goals. Take the time to learn about a specific topic that will help you reach your goals for this year. Take advantage of any resources that you may have available to you. So for example, credit unions like DCU offer free online education for their members on money topics like saving, building, credit, budgeting and so much more. Continuing to listen to podcasts like this will also help you would really take the time to invest to get the knowledge that you need to reach your goals in this year. Okay, for more tools and information to help you on your financial freedom journey, check out dcu.org.

If you want to check out the episode shownotes that's where you can get links to anything that's mentioned and even get a transcribed version of this episode that you can read. Go to journeytolaunch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. Now you can also still grab your free journeyer jumpstart guide by texting, launch to 33777 or go to journeytolaunch.com/jumpstart.

If you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you're not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this and Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there I appreciate and read every single review. Number two, follow me on my social media accounts. I'm at journey to launch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And I love love love interacting with journeyers there. Three, support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here. So show them some love for supporting your girl. Four And last but not least, share this episode this podcast with a friend or family member or co worker so that we can spread the message of joy ready to launch. Alright, that's it. Until next week, keep on journeying journeyers.

Jamila Souffrant 0:00

You're listening to the Journey to Launch podcast, A 2020 Year End Review and Lessons I Learned from This Year.

Intro 0:10

Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast with your host Jamila Souffrant, as a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest, and build real wealth. Join her on the Journey to Launch to financial freedom.

Jamila Souffrant 0:45

Hey journeyers, happy early New Year or happy new year depending on when you are listening to this. I am Wow. Like I'm so excited to be rounding out the year with you what a year it has been. Oh my goodness. And here we are. And so for this episode, I wanted to pull back the curtain and share with you some real numbers of what Journey to Launch as a business has been able to do this year. I'm super proud of how far I've come. And I want to share that with you guys in hopes that I can inspire you, whether you're a business owner or not just inspire you to go after whatever your dream is. And to basically show you just the real right behind the scenes of what is taking to run Journey to Launch. So I'm going to actually be sharing my numbers, how much Journey to Launch made this year, like the gross income, how much we spent this year as a business and then share some more insights lessons, I've learned things that I hope to do in 2021. And I'm wishing you that you also are reflecting and thinking about your year, right. It's been a tremendous one on many fronts, and so I'm happy to share the behind the scenes of my year with you.

First a word from today's sponsor. Choosing to bank at a credit union is not only beneficial for your wallet, but for your community too. You can improve your financial health and make a statement with your dollars by choosing where you bank with the lack of accessibility and trust that most people have with the traditional banking system. Credit unions are a direct solution to leveling the playing field for your banking needs. You're not just another customer at a credit union. You are a member who matters also at DCU. They place an enhanced focus on financial education by offering learning modules on key financial topics like budgeting, saving for the unexpected building credit and much more. DCU also offers a secured credit card that helps individuals establish or improve their credit by borrowing securely against their DCU savings account. To learn more, check out dcu.org and stick around to the end of the show for the DCU money Tip of the Week, where I'll be sharing money tips to help you save and manage your money so you can reach your goals.

If you want the episode Show Notes for this episode, go to journeytolaunch.com or you can click the description of wherever you listen to this episode to get the full episode show notes. Now if you are a new listener to the podcast or OG journeyer I've created a jumpstart guide to help you on your journey to financial freedom. It includes the top episodes to listen to the stages to go through to reach financial freedom, resources to help you, and so much more. Get it for FREE by texting launch to 33777 text launch to 33777 or go to journeytolaunch.com/jumpstart to get your guide for free right now. Okay, let's hop into the episode.

Okay, okay journeyers Hey, hey, hey. Now I thought I would record a year end review of Journey to Launch the business and give an update on my own personal journey to financial independence. So if you are completely new to my work and to the podcast to give you just a quick background, I started Journey to Launch really the Chronicle my path to financial independence I thought that I would reach my financial independence number meaning I have what I considered enough saved and invested for myself and my family to be comfortable where I did not have to work in corporate America or actually work at all so we can literally live off of our investment and my husband's income because my husband still planned to work but with that it kind of involves you know me working still full time. I had a very well paying job was on the path you know climbing the corporate ladder and then find out about financial independence people retiring early quote unquote, and was intrigued and said, you know what I'm going to try and do that. Why not, you know, my husband and I, together, we had healthy incomes. And I've always been really ambitious. So I started journey slosh, to chronicle how I was going to reach that in seven years at the time, I was 33, when I kind of initially put that stake in the ground and made that my goal, because I wanted to do it by 40 years old. And then, you know, as I started doing Journey to Launch much more often and it quickly morphed into just like this thing I did on the side to share my journey to wait a second. This is actually something that is pretty powerful, that can change lives, changing my life, you know, I can lean into this and have this be a vehicle that also not that it just helps me reach financial independence, but it allows me to do something I love while making money. And yeah, if it replaces what I do full time, and I can now really enjoy what I'm doing, then this is like the path I should be on. So fast forward, after I started Jounrey to Launch, I started to set myself up so that I can quit my job. So in 2018, actually left my six figure job to do Journey to Launch full time, which was scary as hell, anybody who is an entrepreneur, or who is thinking about making this leap, it's definitely not an easy decision. Because you know, by that time, I had just had my daughter. So a mama three wife, we have a mortgage, we have responsibilities, things that need to be paid for. And my husband is a teacher, and he earns for you know, for a teacher, he earns good money. But I always say if it was the opposite way around, and like I was a teacher, and he worked in corporate America, that would have been more ideal because like I had the higher income trajectory, meaning I had potential to make a lot more money in my career. So walking away from that was a big deal. But we did decide, like we and I and I talked about this in a previous episode, I look in the link in the show notes. But how I prepare to quit my job. So it wasn't just like a last minute decision. When I found out that I was pregnant, when I knew that I wanted to journey to launch full time, we did make provisions we did save to be able to take this risk and to do this. So I'm giving you that whole background to bring you to where we are today.

So 2020 marks the second full time year that I've had in full time entrepreneurship. So I quit my job in 2018, after I gave birth to my daughter, like right after my maternity leave, which was in the fall of 2018. So I was entrepreneur full time. But you know, I was still kind of not a new mom, because that was my third baby. But you know, fairly, my baby was an infant. And so I consider like, full time entrepreneurship like this is my second year doing this, because 2019 was the first full year of entrepreneurship. And then 2020, which is this year was the second. And I want to share basically how this year went. And one of the reasons why I want to share it is because you know last year, I shared on my also on the podcast, I did like a year end review. And then I also like did a post on Twitter and Instagram. And a lot of people were inspired by it because I shared my actual numbers. And in that post in 2019, you know, I shared that Journey to Launch as a business, the business brought in about $81,000 in 2019. My expenses were about $55,000. And our profit was about $26,000. Now, I did not pay myself in 2019. So that was one of the things that we set ourselves up for when I took this leap is how could I build up the business without worrying about having to pay myself so we had to save up enough money to cover our expenses, our household expenses to do this. And so, and I talked about this in the episode, which I'll also link in the show notes. And in the post that I made that wow, like, you know, I know, the business made 81,000. But like Jamila did not write like it sounds like you know, if you're not an entrepreneur, you're not familiar, like when you see like, you know, someone selling a product or business saying that they earn six figures, really six figures is not a lot of money, if your whole business is on earning that because you you know there are going to be expenses, there's going to be taxes out of that you're lucky if depending on how the business is run and the type of business you're getting 20% of that, right if you're not setting yourself up, right. So when I had broke down the math in the previous post for my 2019 year end, I think it worked out to less than minimum wage, like all the hours that I put in that I came like that my net profit was so after expenses, after taxes, there was a little profit, but actually, you know, I did not pay myself with that. I kept it in the Journey to Launch account bank account because I knew I wanted to reinvest that. And you know, I share that people were like, thank you for sharing the real deal of entrepreneurship because you'll hear people be like, Oh, I earn six figures. And entrepreneurship is so great. And I'm like listen, it is great. The fact that I was able to do this, I'm doing this. It is a I wouldn't say a luxury because this is hard work, but I'm very fortunate to be in this position to be able to do this.

But to be real, making money, like it's a totally different game, when you are in business for yourself, when you are essentially selling yourself, right, like when I worked for a company, I could kind of just coast. I mean, I feel like I did a good job when I work that, you know, my company, but you know, really like, I don't have to put myself on the line to sell something, I don't have to be as vulnerable. Like, in a lot of ways. If you are working in a corporation, you do have to kind of make sure you're networking and it is a form of selling yourself and being vulnerable, but not the way it is when you have to sell a product. And you're asking people like face to face, hey, I have something I've made. Do you want it? And you literally can like see people just like No, I don't. There's nothing that brings you just more realness and clarity and rawness than being entrepreneur trying to like make money and sell something. So I shared that. And I was like, wow, like, you know, I appreciated that you guys appreciated the truth behind like, what that year was like, for me, and it was a great year 2019. I mean, I hit a million downloads that year, Journey to Launch started, you know, it started to even like do better in terms of downloads and recognition. And so it definitely was a great year, but I knew that 2020 like I had to step it up. Because if I had continuous years where my net profit was like $10,000, or I couldn't pay myself that I could not do Journey to Launch going forward. Because at the end of the day, I'm not financially independent, yet, we need this income, you know, while we saved up a lot of money, to help sustain ourselves, because my biggest thing was not feeling pressure to make money, you know, like not just doing whatever and taking whatever deals that come my way. I want it to be very selective and have integrity about how I run this business. So while that is true, and we have, we had a healthy runway, in order for me to really be selective with what I did, me not earning money or making money couldn't last forever. And it was such a mindset shift for me, you know, I went from both of us, my husband and I working and bringing in good income and being able to save so much money, we saved the 169,000 in two years two. And so we saw our our savings go up every month, right. And our investment accounts go up every month when we were both working. And then to switch to me an entrepreneur, like we had to pull from our savings every month, which was the plan. That was what it was for, because we knew that was gonna happen. But it was such a mindset shift like wow, this is actually depleting. And so and I knew that we had about two years to be able to do that without Journey to Launch making any money. But I knew that like, Listen, if you want this to last, if you want to be able to impact people the way you want to, then you have to step it up, or at least this needs to earn money. This is not a charity. This is not a nonprofit, you know, so 2020 was that year for me. And I knew that I wanted to earn money, you know, with my own products, and with brand partnerships and sponsorships. So the podcast and you know, speaking and all these things. So I had an idea of what I wanted to do, I already had some of those products in place. And so it was about executing. And one of the things that I said I was going to do at the end of the year, no matter what happened was I was going to share the numbers again, just like the cut forward because people like Okay, did you do well this year do Jamila?

And the answer is yes. So Journey to Launch did very well. This year, I'm super proud of it. Journey to launch made over $250,000 this year. Like it kind of sounds surreal to say that, and I want to be clear Journey to Launch made over $250,000 this year, that's like a quarter of a million dollars. Like that sounds insane to me. And the reason why I felt like I needed to share that part. And I'm going to go and break down the numbers and how I got there is because part of me almost felt more comfortable sharing the lower number in 2019. And there's probably some blocks around that right like cuz me sharing the lower number and then I barely made money is kind of like the underdog story. Right. Like, you know, here I am feeling like I'm doing this great work and I am but you know, I'm grinding it out. I'm doing it. You know, like, this is like the hustle and people relate to that. And sharing that I like made a little over $250,000 like over like a quarter million dollars this year as a business. It kind of feels like oh my gosh, you're not really the underdog anymore. And part of me related a lot to the underdog story. And it's so interesting how we, how we relate especially when it comes to money like you know, we said we want more and we want the abundance. But sometimes our identity is tied more into other things because we get celebrated like as the underdog, right. And I started thinking like this whole week, the last couple weeks as I was thinking about sharing this, how at certain points like even at like $25,000 of revenue as a business that's still like peanuts compared to even some other entrepreneurs in this space or, you know, in the personal finance space, right. But there's levels to it, it's way better than I did last year. And then probably what some people are doing and were able to do this year. But you know, relative to other people, that's it's still, you know, still a growing business, right. And I talked about this with Saundra, a couple episodes ago, where she was kind of coaching me, Saundra Davis through what 2020 look like for me. And like being, you know, proud of the moment and you know, basically, yes, this was a good year. And I was like, well, I can't just share like, not the bad year, but I can't just like share the lower number. And pretend like 2020 wasn't a good year for me, not that I was pretending. But I also have to show the outcome of the work the outcome of walking in your purpose, what that does, and it says something that I'm aware of. So here's the thing, too, as you look at your own life, and how you feel about money, how you earn money, how you feel about the money you earn, is too sometimes you don't always have the answer, but you can reflect on and see your blocks. And so I realized that for me, earning more money, while that is the goal, that's what I want to do. That's why I feel like it's inevitable based on the value I feel like I bring to the space, it still feels like kind of weird to say that I earn or Journey to Launch earned that much money. So I was like, you know, if I shared when it wasn't that great. Or when I was like on the come up, I need to share like this part too. Because hopefully in the same way that kind of inspired you when I shared the lower number in 2019 like this will inspire you as a you know, maybe potential entrepreneur, or some of you guys have just rooting for me from the sidelines. I know a lot of you guys listen, because you want you know, help with your finances, and you want to reach financial independence. And I think through my story you see yourselves you know, like you relate, I relate to you, you relate to me, we are on this journey together. And so some of you really just want to see me win. And so I was like, I need to share this because I do feel like this was like a big year, and a breakout year for me, and why I like I have to share both sides.

Now, when we were talking, Saundra was coaching me. I said, you know, yes, it's great. And I was feeling this. And this is why there's like always going to be something else I'm telling you journeyers is always gonna be something else. Because here it was last year saying, Oh, you know, I want to earn six figures, I want to earn more than six figures. So this year I did that. And now my concern or not concerned but you know, the thought is in my head, can I keep this up? Because like it's one thing like if you have a job that's paying you six figures and you kind of know your job is pretty stable, you can expect that you'll get that six figures going forward right like unless you know there is something crazy that happens. pandemic, recession, I know, a lot of people's jobs were impacted, right. But as a business owner, especially like for me, and I'm going to break down kind of like the sources of my income. It's kind of scary, because I'm like, Can I replicate this in 2021? Can I keep up this growth, just in terms of like percentage wise, from 2019 to 2020, the business earned 217% more 217% more. So that's over double, almost triple what it earned in 2019. The business and in the same regard, which this is pretty cool, which is why it was such a great year is because remember, it's not just about revenue, guys, revenues, what the business earned was, there's a lot of things that come off the top so Jamila Souffrant did not take home 200 and something $1,000 in my account, because it costs money to run a business you have expenses like your contractors, employees, I don't have any employees like full time I just have contractors, but you have taxes, you have just up just like systems like for me to run my email list is a couple $1,000 a year. You know, like when I have email lists, I send out emails for me to host podcasts or to host my membership, all that comes with fees, right. So you have all that right. But the cool thing about this year compared to last year is I kept my expenses pretty much around the same ballpark.

So in 2019, I spent about like $55,000 in expenses for the business and in 2020 to date. So this is like I'm recording this in early December, there may be some other things I expense because I you know, expensing it is good for your tax write off. And there's some things I need to buy I'm at maybe about $62,000 for the year, so only 13% more that I spent in 2019 than I did in 2020 which is pretty cool, because then my profit is pretty spectacular compared to 2019 so you know 2019 our profit was like $26,220 our profit is $195,000. Now that does not include my owners pay so what I paid myself and taxes. So you know, this is the interesting part because as you're running a business you're growing it you're thinking about Okay, how much more you I put back into the business? How much do I pay myself I'm pretty conservative. person. So you know, even though I started to make money this year, and here's the thing, okay, here's, I'm gonna pull up the stat, I'm looking at my fresh books, I use fresh books like to track my numbers. I just told you, I made like a quarter of a million dollars this year as a business. Let me tell you something in the first six months of my business, I was like seeing like, almost low couple $1,000 a month, in profit to negative things started to pick up for me actually, like the last six months of the year. But those first six months, like, I'll tell you, I'm looking at January, actually, it's I'll do a rolling amount. By the time I hit, let's say, like, may like a rolling from January for February, March, April, May, I had a profit of like, 3400. Like, there are months where I was like losing money, like I was, I had to spend more than came in, like, there were months where the entire income was like $1200 in the first couple months. And you know, what's crazy, I wasn't even that I was concerned. But I wasn't that concerned, because I knew that there were things in the works, that I had a plan. But like the first six months, like I'm looking at this chart here, they were like, oh, my goodness, like what is happening. But I kept the faith and kept grinding to get to the number that I am now.

But for me, you know, the biggest thing was okay, now that you are able to like have this income. Now what right like so when I started to now get the income, what do I invest back in. So there were times where I had to invest in like, I had to pay the people that were helping me. You know, I have a assistant/ Podcast Producer/ she does. She helps me with everything Johana. And I have Shaina. So I hired my sister, in the later half of the year, or later part of the year to help me with a bunch of projects she's doing like everything too. So you know, I have a podcast editor, Emily, like, all these people are helping me with the business, I couldn't like stop paying them, or just because Journey to Launch wasn't making money, right? Which is like the big purpose of also making sure like you're saving up for these things, if you're starting a business, you know, and for me, it was important to be able to pay people because I knew like, especially going back to the earlier days is that I couldn't spend all my time doing all the work that it takes to do this by myself, or I would never progress, I would never grow because I would never have energy, especially with a pandemic, and the kids being home for most of the time, like I had to consistently be able to pay people.

Okay, so I want to break down kind of like where the sources of income came from, I'm going to do in percentages, just because some of this also involves brand partnerships that, you know, I'm just not at liberty to say how much I'm earning from them. But I do want to give you percentages, and then talk about what I want to do in 2021, what my goals are in terms of changing up these percentages. So fun, the total amount that you know, I earned or Journey to Launch earned products. So my products, I would consider these other things I directly sell to you, right you listening I my goal is to make a service or product that helps you that you want to buy directly from me. And so with that, that accounted for about 18% of my income. So I have the FI course that's a Journey to FI course, where I help you map out your journey to financial independence. I launched that as a separate products later that like in the later half of this year. I have the Money Launch Club. That's a membership community that's like for ongoing support, tools and help. And then I did have a high ticket group coaching program that I ran at the way beginning of the year, I don't do that anymore. My ongoing two products are the FI course and Money Launch Club. But with the group coaching included, that sector of my business gave me about 18% of my income, which is pretty good. Now, most of the other things that I'm kind of composed it were things like speaking and writing. So it wasn't a big part of what I earned this year. But it was about 4% speaking and writing podcast. So it's kind of hard to break out just podcasts on sponsorship. Because sometimes some of my deals or the capital of collaborations I do aren't like includes podcast sponsorship, but just for some strict podcast sponsorship, it came out to about 4% sponsorship and brand collaborations that actually came out to 31%. So these are where, you know, brands hire me to or partner with me to spread their message for me to promote something that they're doing or a campaign on my platform. So whether that's through the podcast or through social media, and I did get my biggest partnership that I absolutely love, which was DCU is DCU. You know, they've been partnering and sponsoring the podcast, I've been writing articles for them. So that was pretty amazing. And then my affiliate income has been 42% for the year. So the affiliate income the biggest part of that was the collaboration with Teri of Trade and Travel. And so all that together, made 100% of the quarter of a million dollars that Journey to Launch brought in for this year, which is pretty amazing, you know. And what's interesting is, while I am so appreciative of like the higher so the the ones that brought in the most money, the affiliate partnerships, and the sponsorship and brand collabs. I mean, that was like, almost 75% 74% of the business this year. I, I love it, you know, but I actually want to increase the percentage of income that my direct products bring in, that is like, my main goal going forward over the next couple years, because while I love partnerships, like you know, working with Teri, and while I love working with brands and partners, that to me is an I don't have much control over those partnerships, meaning these brands are these companies, they can have changes in budget, they can have a change in direction, Teri might say, hey, I want to like go travel the world and not doing this course anymore, right like, and that would drastically impact my income, right. So my main goal is from these these sources of income, to really pour back into my business to create more income from my own product streams, because I have more control over that. Now the thing about that is it takes more time to build up that source of income. So I have more control over because it's my course I have like quality control and control over the curriculum and, and the way I deliver it, which is great. But in my opinion, so far, it's been not harder, but it takes more work to build that up. And so the other money that's like, you know, you know, bigger streams of income, it's not actually it's, you know, some of them can be a lot of work depending on what the project is. But it's not as long of a setup as what I'm trying to do now with my own product. So growing the FI course enrollment, growing the Money Launch Club, all those things. So I thought I would share with you and break down the percentages of just the income that I brought in.

And then I also want to go to expenses, because that would be just interesting to share, like, where the expenses side of things come into play. And last year, I spent a lot of money on training, and education. And you know, I am big on making sure like you're investing in yourself. So I like to walk the walk, like I'm telling you to do in terms of investing in yourself. So in 2019, I bought into some coaching programs I invested in myself. But for 2020 I knew I wanted to execute. So I have all these things at my disposal. Now you know all these amazing resources that I invested in last year. But I knew that if I just kept buying courses, and I didn't execute them, then it would be pointless. So I did not spend as much money this year on education at all my highest expenses were contractors. And I feel really good about that. Like my goal would be to hire people full time eventually. But even though I don't have anyone full time right now, like my team, first of all, they're amazing. They are absolutely amazing. And it's not really like it's not often that you find contractors, right people who are not working for you full time who have other clients that care about like your work. And I feel like I've fostered, we fostered such a good team so far with everyone that works with me. And so I feel proud that like this is,This is consistent income that I can guarantee my contractors who are on board with me. So I talked about hiring Shaina a bit as a contractor later this year, and she came over and she like she took over a couple other roles that other people were doing that just kind of moved on. You know, I had Jill Jill was my community manager in the Money Launch Club. She's moving on and Shaina came in and took some most of that responsibility from Jill, I had Acquania, who was working on my show notes for the podcast, Shaina is also doing that now. Even social media marketing, like Shaina has more on that. And I have like a million other things that I need Shaina it to. And like then Johana helps him a lot of the operational side of things with a podcast she helps me with. So like I have a team that's like working really hard to help support your launch and grow it. And so I feel like it's my duty to be able to consistently pay them. Because maybe that's not their full source of income, but they're, you know, they have families, they have goals, they have things they want to do. And so I want to help support them in that. And so I feel pretty good that I was able even in the beginning months when like Journey to Launch was like losing money, I was still able to pay my contractors and my people. And my goal, hopefully in the future is actually hire some people maybe, you know, people on my team already, like into full time positions as we grow. So contractors were a big part of my expenses. And then everything else was the you know, other expenses it takes to run the business, all the things that you know, you maybe not like you wouldn't notice if you're not an online entrepreneur, but things like paying for the network that the Money Launch Club is on paying for the network or the platform that the journey to FI courses on those are 1000s of dollars like a year paying for the email list, you know, and as the email list grows, the cost to host that grows. Right so there are a bunch of expenses that come along. with it. And again, everything else, you know, wasn't much traveling. So I did play around with Facebook ads this year. So if you've seen me stalking you on Instagram or Facebook, you can thank Glynda she's been helping me with my Facebook ads. So I was I've been playing around with that towards the later half of the year. But yeah, so my expenses were pretty reasonable compared to what my income for the business was. So because of that I was able to pay myself. So starting on in the summertime, I said to myself, okay, when I knew that contracts, were coming in, the things were kind of looking up for the business, I said, Okay, Jamila, this time you start paying yourself because one, you're not going to pay yourself, you just, you won't be as not excited or motivated. But at some point, you also need to start seeing a payoff in what you're doing. Especially because I was doing Journey to Launch, so long, right. And so I talked about the psychology of seeing my savings account, dwindle every month, because we were pulling from it to pay for things or to pay for our expenses. And I knew that if I couldn't see a correlation between what I was doing and Journy to Launch and me earning money, because I deserved to earn money, then the fuel the fire, the fire within me would would start to dwindle, right. Like you do need like some sort of return and satisfaction and return on your output. And also feel like it's really important for me to walk in my truth in terms of how is it that I'm telling you guys listening to me that you should earn money, you should go demand your worth, and give your best and find ways to earn more and be abundant. When I'm not doing that for myself? Like how could you trust me as as a leader, right? Like how could you I just feel like it's so it's not congruent to the message that Journey to Launch is about. And so I was like, you have to start paying yourself, and you have to start paying yourself well,

especially now that you know, now that you see that things are coming through that you know, you're on track now. But to hit a certain amount, like you have to start paying yourself. So one of the biggest things I did do was start paying myself in the summer, and I even gave myself a raise. So because I'm so conservative, I said to myself, okay, let me start with a little amount. And then I said Jamila, you can pay yourself a little bit more. And my biggest thing was whatever I was paying myself like it had to be consistent. And it had to be some money in the bank like to pay me going forward. So I couldn't pay myself like $3000 month and have zero next month, wanted to make sure that I could smooth out my payments to myself. So that was really big for me, I'm in terms of like being able to pay myself this year. So not only like paying my people to make sure that they were good. But like Jamila if you're not good, then this whole thing breaks down. If you can't sustain this business, and you can't pay anyone, if you can't sustain this business, then there is no podcast that what happened to the journeyers, right. So it became about me, right earning money. But I knew that then if I could earn more and be happy and earning more than I could then pour more into my community into you guys.

Okay, so I want to talk about the business itself now. So 2020, you heard the numbers, a great year, I was able to pay myself, which is great, but I want to talk about more. So the business itself, and some of the things that we were able to accomplish as a community. You guys are amazing. I mean, I could not have done this without you guys in terms of the support and sharing the podcast and sharing the content. So let's just go over some amazing wins this year. So yes, we hit a quarter of a million in revenue for the business. I won the Plutus Awards for Best Personal Finance podcast. So plutus they basically honor the top content producers in the personal finance space. And so that's whether that's from video content, the podcasts, blogs, and so this year, I won Best Personal Finance podcast was which was pretty amazing, because I literally remember coming into the space three years ago after starting the podcast, and being nominated as best new personal finance podcast, and being in the category with like podcasts or seeing like the other categories of people that I used to like listen to and read before I started Journey to Launch. And so to be at the stage now where like you know, I'm winning on word like this, and there's so many amazing people in the space doing amazing things as an honor the podcast also hit 2 million downloads. So we're over 2 million downloads now. But yeah, we hit a major milestone over 2 million downloads. super proud. This is an independent podcast so really like it's just me. And this mic I know sometimes my sound is janky in general, Emily, my editor she does amazing but I'm talking about the way I record like I literally right now and in my room in the dark because it's getting dark and I don't feel like getting up and turning on the light. Or I'm in my kitchen. This is really like getting it out the mud like this podcast in terms of just like scrappy, the scrappiness that I created this podcast with the tools that I use for this podcast. And so to hit 2 million downloads without like a major network, and major backing is amazing, super proud of that. And again, most of that is you guys. So word of mouth is the best way to this podcast grows. And so that's from you sharing it with your family and friends, you sharing it on social media, whatever, like that is the best way that this podcast can grow and it may take a little longer when it grows that way. But that means is sustainable growth because the people that journeyers that are joining me right now you listening like you're in it, you're in it because like you get it, it's not like, you know, I'm just here just for like, for a quick win, you know, like you're invested in a journey or invested in yourself because you're listening to the podcast because a friend recommended it, because you're not following me or maybe on my newsletter. So amazing.

Oh, featured on the apple homepage. So the apple podcast homepage, you know, this podcast was featured two or three times on that, meaning when you go to your purple app on your iPhone, you would see like Journey to Launch, which was amazing, because again, as an independent podcaster when you go to Apple podcasts a lot is the people that are mostly featured are from big networks, because they have the reach, they have the money, they just have the platform to be featured and things like that. So for Journey to Launch be featured was amazing. on Apple podcast homepage.

Like I said, I'm super excited that I'm able to pay my contractors and especially my little sister so Shaina, you know, she is a creative, she's a dancer. She studied dancing in college, but she's super technologically smart. You know, I'm not so not just like dancing like and creative in that way. But she's also like, into like technology. And she has so many big dreams, right. And so for like a lot of creators and dancers and people in that space. And shes into fitness. So she teaches a lot of fitness classes was she was impacted a lot this year, by everything that happened with the pandemic. So I just feel like super honored to be able to have her on my team. Now hopefully she stays forever, even though I know she has her own goals to help her. You know, like while she's helping me help her feels really good. So I'm really excited about that.

Also, I took new brand pictures. So if you saw the amazing pictures that I've kind of been sharing for the past couple months, I spent some time in the fall and September taking pictures, and they came out so great. Let me just give a shout out to the photograph team and like the team that helped put that together. So I will share in the show notes. Kind of like the reels I created an Instagram about it. But I had also style by Elsa helped me with my outfits which I would not have picked on my own. I had Taylor or mamaphotog on the picture. She was amazing. I had Tara Lauren as my makeup artist again, I'll tag all these people in the episode show notes or the reel that I share. And then Shaina. I had Shaina as my assistant that day and my movement director. So the pictures were a big deal. Because the last time I took pictures, my hair was longer. So you know, here's the thing, I have short hair. Now, I think I'm planning to keep my short hair for a long time, because I just it's less work. But the older pictures that everyone saw me before were like years ago, it was like, you know, I took them when my middle child Luke was like a baby. And so I was like, Okay, it's time for updated pictures. But I was kept putting it off, kept putting it off. And what happened was, I decided that I finally needed a new website. And as I went down the road of getting a new website, it came very clear that if you're going to do a website, you need new pictures. So what started out as me just needing a website and just trying to do that turned into Oh, no, no, you need a whole new project of getting like new pictures to go with this website and to go to get updated social media presence. And so I did that. And that was like, actually one of like, my major accomplishments this year was just doing that, because it turned out to be a bigger production than I thought. But it was worth every penny. And I'm so glad that I was able to get that done. And you know, it's crazy, because technically, you probably should be taking pictures like at least once a year. So I'm like, Oh my gosh, I have to do this again next year, but we'll see.

Okay, also with the new website, so I'm hoping by the time this airs, I have a new website, I'm not sure. But I'm working with an amazing website designer Shirley T and she's really really good things always take longer than they need to or just because it's just with technology, website design, but I think we're getting there but I'm not sure that it'll be out. So just keep checking back the journeytolaunch.com is getting a facelift and it may have one already by the time you are listening to this. Another like great thing that happened or is happening this year is the magic of affiliate sales. So partnering with Teri was a total blessing for me and the business but also for journeyers that decided to basically take her course. So I knew of Teri on the internet right. Like, I knew her. Like from being in the personal finance space. I knew she had a course. And when I finally said, Okay, I'm going to interview her, I had no clue that it would turn into the relationship it is now I just thought, okay, she has a really cool story. And oh, yeah, this is course she has, but okay, whatever. But when I interviewed Teri on the first episode of the podcast, and again, I will link that in the show notes, the first episode. It was like probably one of those episodes that I got, like the most immediate feedback from like, Wait a second,

who is this lady? Jamila, what is her course about? Because she, you know, she Tero talked about being able to quit her job and learn to trade and travel the world. And so when she talked about that, and if you heard her episode, if you've been listening to this for a while, and then you may have heard her on the podcast already. But you, when you hear her talk, you're like, oh, my goodness, like, there's just something about her right. And so when I spoke to her even afterwards, and even after the interview aired, I had this thought, and here's what I want you to also pick up for your own lives is that the thought I have about to invite Teri to be like an affiliate or to be a mutual partner in like, the affiliate program that she has. It was like a fleeting thought. What happened was a few people like either emailed me or in my DMS asking me about Teri's program. And I was like, Well, I don't know, you know, like Teri needs to answer these questions. And so I remember writing Teri and saying, hey, Teri,

I'm getting so many questions about what you do. Do you mind us do like doing a joint webinar together for your program? And by the way, if you want to listen to Terry's original episode, that was Episode 154. So that's the first episode she was on. So I thought that episode, you know, I just had a thought, you know, maybe I should just like, ask her if we should do something together to inform my audience, on what her program was about, like, who it's good for, and all these things. So Teri, and I, we set up that webinar/ class to educate my audience and I, at the time, I had no idea the outcome would be what it was. So we set up that class, I think that happened in July, the first class we did together, and so many of my audience bought Teri's course. And of those people that bought, like, I'm telling you, like people like my sister, so Shaina actually bought the course. My best friend in real life, like Shaleia bought the course, like I had so many people that actually knew, by the course, even one of my friends, she didn't tell me at the time, she told me months later, like, Hey, I actually bought Teri's course, too. And I didn't realize how much of this was a tool that people wanted in my audience. And that's the thing with affiliates, right? So sometimes you can, you know, you can affiliate for a lot of different things. It can be like a, like a product. Me, I'm affiliate for YNAB, which is a budgeting app, right? So like, basically, if you sign up with my link, for YNAB, I get a couple dollars, right? And so you could do that with different services, which is great. I mean, think about when you recommend, you know, you get those emails like oh, refer a friend, you get $5. Like, if it's something you love, and they love to not only do they get $5 off, you get $5. Right. So that's kind of what affiliate is. But you have to, for me, I want to be really careful about who I partner with who I introduce my audience to, and especially with something like trading, right, because trading is not something that I am well versed in, in terms of the way Teri does it. And so, if I'm going to introduce my audience, to someone, especially because my audience, you guys, you you trust me, you like me, so if I'm vouching for someone saying, hey, this person look at you know, their course, is something you should look into, I need to make sure that this person is going to treat you the way I would treat you is gonna like deliver you amazing, amazing results and do the best of their ability to teach you what it is that you paid for. And so that's why I like before, I really haven't done course affiliates. Right. So what Teri though, it was just like a thought that came up. But I wanted I said let me follow my gut to explore this. And following it just I mean, it was true, because not only was it just like the success of the partnership, but it was a success from the students from journeyers, who actually took her course. Now I haven't taken her course yet. I hope so one day I will but I have not taken it yet. But I've had people who I'm very close with, hence sister, best friends, other friends, people who are in the Money Launch Club, people on my list, who have taken her course so after, you know, people who had enrolled in from that July class taken her course, and was just like, Oh my gosh, like this was me. This is everything I needed wanted, and more. And so I was really excited about the prospect of how I was able to connect you guys with someone that had an expertise in something I didn't but it could be helpful for you to reach your own goals, right? It's another way to reach your goals. And Teri says it herself. I say it constantly. This is not a quick, rich program like get rich program where you know, I'm only going to spend two minutes on the classwork and go trade. No, this is in depth training and support for you to be the best that you can be in this. And so if you want to hear again, the episode that Teri was originally on, it's Episode 154 was the original episode. And then I bought her actually back on Episode 172, where she did an update because she reached Financial Independence. And she talked about that and buying her home in cash. And then actually had a roundtable discussion, Episode 173. So actually brought on actual students who did her program. So one of them did include Shaina and Crystal and Shamessia. These are people who actually were going through her program and sharing the real results. So they weren't earning, you know, a million dollars, you know, in a day, but they were learning it and they were they were willing to come on the podcast and share their experience. So that was Episode 173. So I say all that to say is that because you know, working with Teri and expanding more into affiliate was a big part of my income this year. And, you know, the it's crazy because I thought of the idea and almost didn't even act upon it, you know how we all get these ideas or thoughts and we're just like, you let it pass and you know, something else happens. And sometimes, you know, we think the magic, like the big moments in our life where like there's gonna be fireworks.

But a lot of times, you know, they're not, it's not as obvious there's a little pulling, there's a thought there's a seed that is planted. And all you have to do is water the seed doesn't have to sprout right away. But fall, you know, what are the seed, follow the clues, follow your heart, your intuition, and then that's what then allows that that tree, that little bud to bloom. And that's how I felt about this whole idea or relationship with Teri because honestly, it almost didn't happen. And so I love being affiliate for Teri, if you want to check out Teri's course you can go to journeytolaunch.com/teri, we are probably going to do some more things in 2021. I want to even have some more creative ways to prep journeyers for taking her course if they're interested. So stay tuned for that if you want to learn more, but I just thought that that relationship, especially as a business person, because she does so well, not only in her personal finances, but as a business owner, that she's able to earn a lot of money, but also earn it with integrity is super inspiring. That whole experience was just amazing this year for me.

Also, most recently, I was featured on Good Morning, America. So GMA three. So it's the Good Morning America that comes on at 1pm. Eastern time, but it's still Good Morning America. Okay. And that was so cool. And again, like these things, it's crazy when you know when people work in certain areas or for like the people who worked at Good Morning America, when they reached out to me, they're so nonchalant. They're like, do you want to go do you want this segment, I'm like what, of course I want to do this segment. But it's like I love how the people who are like in a position to like almost change your life are so nonchalant about it, which is kind of pretty cool. And they were really nice. But I was able to do the Good Morning America, GMA three segment hosted by Amy Robach and TJ Holmes, and I talked about basically how to save for the holidays how to, you know, buy gifts in a way that can save you money and gift ideas. But what was really cool about it is that they were able to share the podcast, they were able to share a little bit of my story in the beginning. And the fact that the podcast hit 2 million downloads. So I thought it was a really nice way to include my personal story while giving the tips and think that's been my biggest kind of media hit, you know, so far. And what's even more special is the day that that aired, that actually was my stepfather's birthday, so he passed away last year. But you know, the segment got pushed back, it was supposed to happen a few weeks earlier. And they happen to then schedule it on his birthday. And I just thought it was like not a coincidence that it happened that way. So I just thought the whole experience was really, really cool. A couple other things about the business, you know, come on, like also survived the pandemic. So was able to still run journey's launch, during this pandemic, with the kids at home, which was not easy. Not easy at all. You know, luckily, I do have help. So my husband, you know, he's a teacher, but when things hit and he was home too that was obviously helpful. I do have my aunt who you know, helps with Blake the baby for the most part. And so like, you know, I had support, but it was still really emotionally and mentally hard. Because I still felt like I had all these deadlines and things I had to do. And then but also now I'm home and like my whole routine is kind of like messed up and the kids need my attention. And there's virtual learning and you know, not my kids are like, Why do I have to sit here and do this right. So it was a lot but kudos to you parents for doing that but in terms of the business to be able to still do all the things I did with the business was awesome.

Okay, and then just in terms of like saving, so the way I run the business side for Journey to Launch meaning, like how money comes in, I used to profit first system, I hope to have the author and I always say his name wrong. Mike Michalowicz, which Did I say that right? I use his system in terms of how to every dollar that comes in, there's a certain percentage that goes to taxes, and to owners pay into expenses and to profit. And so I've been doing that for the past year. And with that system, and being able to basically take the money that came in, I actually have enough money saved up because I'm super conservative, enough money for at least 10 to 12 months of owners pay. So I set myself up to where even for the next 10 to 12 months out, I can consistently pay myself the same amount of money, it's in a savings account. Same thing with my expenses for the business, we have about 11 to 12 months of expenses saved up for the business. And that feels really good. Because that means I can still run this with integrity. Meaning like, I don't have to take everything that comes in, I can say no, if I don't want to do something or rent a product or, or sell a certain thing, I don't have to because I haven't the money saved up. Now, of course, one of my kind of biggest things and I'll talk about my 2021 goals is figuring out how to sustain this growth like I don't, I shouldn't say that I'll take any blessings that come. But I'm not hung up on I need to earn a million dollars next year. That's not where I'm going. I want sustainable growth. And so for me, if that means earning the same amount, even if that means maybe earning less, and maybe because there's some lessons learned and things I did, but it even feels better, that's fine, too. I just want it to be sustainable, and I want to be happy doing it. Money is not a driving force. For me, obviously, there's a security factor, I want to be able to at least like you know, cover and contribute to you know, our expenses as a family and to do the things that I want to do. But now you know that I have like a healthy savings account that I could pay myself and I no longer have to pull from our savings account from our personal account, I can, you know, use the owner's account to pay myself that feels really good. And so I'm about trying to figure out, Okay, how to sustainably grow this business in a way that feels good and having the money saved up for the owners pay and for our operating expenses. And you know, making sure I'm saving for taxes, like a front feels really, really good.

Okay, so I want to move into like personal finances, it's gonna be really quick, this part, but I do want to share that I was able to max out my 2019 Roth IRA. So I did that in the beginning in 2020. My plan is to also max out my 2020 Roth IRA. So remember, like starting Journey to Launch, we were not really able to invest anymore, because all the money that we had coming in had to go to our expenses, when I took a break, that's what when I took a break and I no longer worked at my corporate job. So being able to finally invest again, you know, feel so good. So was able to max out those Roth IRAs. One of my goals, I have not done it yet. So you can call me on it, if I do not update you in 2021 is opened up my solo 401k and put a little bit of money into that. Again, I paid myself for the first time this year, even gave myself a raise. So once I started paying myself for like that first month, I was like wait, I can't afford to do a little more. And so that felt good. And then just like little things like that, for me still leads into personal finances. So I actually hired or we have someone to come in and clean the house every other week, which feels so good. It's like one less thing for me to worry about. I got way back into my health and fitness. So at the beginning of the year, I you know signed up for the gym, I was like back on my thing. And then the pandemic and it closed and so I was feeling really just like also out of it. And then I discovered running and I talked more about running on my personal Jamila Souffrant Instagram but and I honestly it's like cold so I have not wrapped my head around running in the cold. But running and like looking and getting back into my health has been really clutch for me. And even like the hiring like the housecleaning that comes in, like those things like are actually me investing money in myself investing time to myself. So even when I wasn't running, I found these amazing like areas to walk them that are not too far from me. These parks, the public parks that are beautiful, they have trails and hills and it just makes me feel like I'm not in the city. So doing more things like that, during like this year has really helped me because I found more of a balance than I did years before where it was just work, Journey to Launch and the kids. I'm you know making myself a priority. And by doing that, and even if that means investing and spending money, that's fine. Again, it's about how can I buy my time back so that I can show up as my best self here for Journey to Launch on the podcast, as a mom, as a wife. So I did a lot more than in 2020. I plan to do a lot more that in 2021.

Okay, let's talk about 2021. Like, what are my goals? What am I trying to do? Well, listen, as I said before, I don't need to continue the same growth that I had. No, the business in itself, like, almost increased, like 217%. In terms of business income, I don't necessarily expect or want to do that, again, if the good Lord says that, that's what's gonna happen, I'll take that too. But I really, really want to do it in a sustainable way. So it's more about how can I continue to earn money in a way that feels good, that serves my audience, that allows me to live the life I want to live. And so we talk about financial freedom and financial independence, how can I experience that freedom and those options while I'm on the path? So even as I haven't, you know, a business, not to put myself on a treadmill, again, like I quit my job to escape a treadmill of always having to work and not feeling happy. And while

there, you know, at the end of the day, you have to do you have to do things you don't want to do sometimes, right as you're running something and building something. But really, how do I do more of the things I want to do in 2021 make money in a way that feels good, that is effortless, right? That is one of my goals. And so part of that also is still leaning into more of my products and services. Because once again, I love the partnerships. And I love the affiliates, it's more about things that I have a bit more control over. And so I'm looking to hopefully grow that and help more people serve more people, the people that I had go through my journey to FI course that first round that I ran only. So previously, before the journey to FI course was included in the money launch club, I decided to separate it, because I realized that it was just too much for people to do at once. And I was also undervaluing what I was giving. And so the journey to FI course is now a standalone product or, or course that you can take. And the next time I open up doors will be in January. So if you want and open up doors, meaning the next time I enroll the next cohort where we do like coaching, and this essentially will help you map out how you get from point A to point z on your financial independence journey, the first round of students that went through that, oh my gosh, the feedback, the transformation, the impact that the course and our time together, that we had was amazing. And I'm just like, this is the kind of thing you need to grow and give more to people because I know there's lots of, you know, courses and products about budgeting and maybe even investing, learning the basics which which are important. But when you hear about the concept of financial independence, and you think about where you currently are, there is a system, there's a way there's a path that you have to think about to get there. But then how do you make it a flexible path? How do you make it one that you feel like, Oh, well, the concept of financial independence sounds great. But is that something I can actually do. And so this course allows you to see that, yes, you can but gives you the concrete tools, and information and support to help you map it out, like how much you need to save, how much you need to invest, what's the mindset you need, what things you need to change and habits that you need to do right now to get you to where you want to go. So I'm excited because more people need to know about this more people need to go through this program. And so it's something that I want to grow into as in 2021, I also want to help and serve more members through the Money Launch Club. So that's where you get more ongoing support. So if you like the podcast, so I do coaching calls, every month, there's a book club, there's a community, like a safe community where you can connect with other journeyers, that's the Money Launch Club. So I want to be able to grow and serve more people there. So if you want to get on the the enrollment list for the journey to FI course you can go to journeytolaunch.com/ficourse. And if you want to get on the waitlist for the money launch club, you can go to moneylaunchclub.com. Although journey to FI, that course is the best bet in terms of being able to get into money launch club, because that's what we're going to be opening first in January as a class with coaching sessions and all that. So look out for that.

I also want to hire more people and very well, maybe contractors, maybe someone full time. But while I love that my team is so like small, like everyone does everything. And that's what happens when you're like running a business from the bottom up. Like you just take on multiple hats, but I'm hoping to you know, have people with specific expertise possibly help in certain areas to help grow the business. So I'm looking forward to doing that. Again, I'm also looking to think about some physical products. I don't want to overextend myself, you know, I learned that you know, in the third and fourth quarter that my brain works like I have so many ideas and sometimes trying to pursue those ideas are just not smart because I'm stretching myself too thin. So I'm thinking through what a physical product could look like, you know, for those people who need more hands on approach to mapping out their goals, and merch, and that's the thing I was looking into too. It's like, Okay, what about some merch for people in terms of, you know, just want to show some brand affinity, you want to declare to the world, you're a journeyer. So that might be some things in 2021. It's not like one of my main priorities, but we are looking into it. Other things on my list is, I still want to write that book. You know, I talked about in earlier episodes that I always felt like a book was in my future, and I've had more confirmation than ever about that recently. And so I'm still leaning into that. And we'll see what happens, maybe something happens in 2021. Oh, my goodness, this is getting long.

Okay. So overall lessons that I hope you got from this, that you can hopefully apply to your journey and your life. One, you can have it all, but you just can't do it all. So me, doing all the things is not sustainable or healthy. And that's for anyone. And sometimes you feel like you're in the position where you need to do all the things. But if you can, and maybe will involve giving up income or spending more, which you should look at as an investment, like it's okay to hire people, whether that's in your business or in your household, you know, like a household, like a cleaner, or maybe a babysitter and help with your kids. But you have to let go, the idea that you have to do it all and it has to all be done your way. It's something I did this year, and it helped tremendously. So you can have it all, but you just can't do it all yourself. So get some help. The other lesson I learned was say no, and protect your space. I did a lot more of that. This year, I said no to a lot of things. And you know, I'm not gonna lie. Sometimes I felt like wait, should I have said no, I'm missing out on this opportunity. You know, hustling and saying yes to everything is what helped me get to where I am. But what got you here won't get you there. So you have to be very selective and careful, like there will be some seasons in your life where you will say yes to things that you normally wouldn't. But as you level up as you grow, you'll have to start saying no and protecting your space. And so I can imagine that in 2021, I'll be saying no, to a lot more things and people in maybe it'd be opportunities that at one time, I would have said yes to but for now, in order for me to grow, and really use my time wisely Say no more often. That's what I learned this year. The other thing was keep filling up your joy tank, whatever that means. And it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. But if you remember that you used to love to read like I used to love reading when I was younger, or you like bubble baths. So you like you know, exercising and running or walking, keep filling up your joy tank. Because if you don't do that, all your efforts will be in vain in terms of how you earn money, even how you spend money won't be in alignment, because you might be trying to just compensate for something, when really you need to get back to you like what makes you happy. So me filling up my little joy tank was really important, especially during this year and the pandemic. And so I encourage you to continue doing that. And if you're not make space, make a budget for it. And then also really not caring what people think of you. So that's gonna be my last kind of lesson this year, is that there are some things that I did even say no to people, right. I was like, Oh my gosh, I kind of think that I'm not a nice person or that I think I'm better than them. But I had to let that go. As long as I said it, you know, in a nice way and with integrity. If I turn someone down, then it's my prerogative, even with you know, some of the ways that I chose to earn money this year, affiliate partnerships, there were some people who like reached out to me and said, You know, I wouldn't do Teri affiliate partnership, because you know, people are gonna lose money. And what if you're responsible for that? And in my head, I'm like, wow, I'm, you know, I'm glad you're concerned. But I've done so much work to educate my audience, and stress. And even Teri, you know, about the right way to earn money in trading is and that it's about taking your time and doing making sure you're taking the precautions and letting go of the idea that someone out there thinks that I am not a good person, or that I'm doing the wrong thing of how I'm choosing to run my business, like what's something I had to do. Because as long as I know, my intention that I'm doing it with integrity is like what matters. So letting go of this idea that people are not going to like everything you do, letting go the idea that you need approval, even showing up on social media more even showing up on the podcast more like I'm doing. I did a little bit more solo episodes this year, I plan on doing a lot more, but just letting go of the fact that you know, you think people are just gonna criticize you, because most people and that's you listening, I believe, want to support you. And so letting go of the idea that you know, they're just looking for you to make a mistake, that they see what God sees in you what the universe what, what the stars are aligned, what you've been brought to this earth for. So I know that was pretty long. But I hope that you got something from my 2020 recap, I again cannot believe what a year 2020 has been. I know for some people, it's been a really tough year. I mean, it's been challenging for almost everybody. But I know more challenging for others, for some than others. So I want to continue to encourage you on this journey. And on this path, I am so happy that you are here with me. I can't wait to see what 2021 brings for you, brings for me, brings for this world. And whatever you do, just don't, don't give up. You keep on going.

Okay, Journeyers, I hope by sharing my numbers that helped you and whatever journey you are going through. Thank you. Thank you, once again, for sticking with me throughout 2020. You know, this is right before the New Year, depending on when you're listening to it, or really, maybe right after, but we are entering a new year, a new opportunity. And I for one, I'm excited about what's to come and couldn't have done any of this without you. So thank you for continuing to listen. Thank you for continuing to support and I hope that I can continue to pour into you to educate to inspire you on your journey to

Okay, now it's time for DCU's money Tip of the Week. This is where I share a helpful money tip that you can use to manage your money and reach your goals. This week's money tip is set a financial goal that you can measure is the perfect time to set a financial goal that you can achieve in the new year by making it measurable. So make your goals smart, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely, so that you can have more clarity on what it is you're trying to achieve and that you can measure your progress towards that goal. So for example, if you have a goal to pay off debt, get specific about that goal and make it smart, set how much you want to pay off and by when a non specific goal would be I want to just pay off debt. A more specific and SMART goal would be I want to pay off $2,000 worth of credit card debt by 12/31/2021. For more tools and information to help you on your money goals, check out dcu.org

If you want to check out the episode shownotes that's where you can get links to anything that's mentioned, and even get a transcribed version of this episode that you can read. Go to journeytolaunch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. Now you can also still grab your FREE journeyer jumpstart guide by texting, launch to 33777 or go to journeytolaunch.com/jumpstart.

If you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you're not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this and Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review. Number two, follow me on my social media accounts. I'm at journey to launch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And I love love love interacting with journeyers there. Three, support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here. So show them some love for supporting your girl. Four and last but not least, share this episode this podcast with a friend or family member or co worker so that we can spread the message of journey to launch. Alright, that's it until next week, keep on journeying journeyers

Jamila Souffrant 0:00

You're listening to the Journey to Launch podcast Identifying your Defining Moments and Using Them as Fuel to Get to Your Goals Plus My Top Defining Moments in My Life.

Intro 0:15

Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast with your host Jamila Souffrant as a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave Journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest, and build real wealth. Join her on the Journey to Launch to financial freedom.

Jamila Souffrant 0:42

Hey, hey, hey, Journeyers. Welcome to the Journey to Launch podcast. First, I would like to say if you are actually listening to this when it is released, so I am recording this intro a bit early. But I know that this will be dropped in December actually, right around Christmas. So I'm planning to release this episode, really just a couple days before Christmas, December 23. So holidays are definitely different this year. So whatever it is that you're doing, I hope that you are doing it with someone you love, someone you care about, someone that cares about you. But in this episode, it's a solo episode. And it's actually going to be the first of three solo episodes. So I've recorded solo episodes to take us through through the new year. And this one is going to be all about defining moments. And I wanted to do this because you know, it actually makes sense to release it around this time as we talk about this being the holiday season and right before Christmas. And you know, this is heavy on the gift giving. And I know some people are taking a break from giving gifts this year based on everything that's happened with the pandemic and their finances. But even so you don't have to give physical gifts to give someone something. And I believe that when you look at your life, what you've accomplished, what you've done, the things that have made you who you are today, what has brought you to wherever it is you are listening to this podcast, they are your defining moments, these are gifts to you. These are gifts that if you recognize them as gifts, that you can then use you can open you can accept and use them in your advantage for what's going to happen to you what what you're going to do in the future. And so in this episode, I'm actually going to talk about my defining moments, you get an opportunity to learn more about me, I share a little deeper on some topics that I have not talked about before. And I hope that in defining my moments with you that you sit down and think about all the things that make you who you are. And once you can identify that I think you it really goes a long way to understanding you know why you make the choices you make, why you have the attitude you have in terms of reaching your goals, or not all the things that make you you, so I hope you enjoy this episode.

But first a word from today's sponsor. Choosing to bank at a credit union is not only beneficial for your wallet, but for your community too. You can improve your financial health and make a statement with your dollars by choosing where you bank with the lack of accessibility and trust that most people have with the traditional banking system. Credit unions are a direct solution to leveling the playing field for your banking needs. You're not just another customer at a credit union, you are a member who matters also at DCU, they place an enhanced focus on financial education by offering learning modules on key financial topics like budgeting, saving for the unexpected building credit and much more. DCU also offers a secured credit card that helps individuals establish or improve their credit by borrowing securely against their DCU savings account. To learn more, check out dcu.org and stick around to the end of the show for the DCU money Tip of the Week, where I'll be sharing money tips to help you save and manage your money so you can reach your goals.

If you want the episode Show Notes for this episode, go to journe tolaunch.com or you can click the description of wherever you listen to this episode to get the full episode show notes. Now if you are a new listener to the podcast or an OG journeyer I've created a jumpstart guide to help you on your journey to financial freedom. It includes the top episodes so listen to the stages to go through to reach financial freedom, resources to help you and so much more. Get it for FREE by texting launch to 33777 text launch to 33777 or go to journeytolaunch.com/jumpstart to get your guide for free right now. Okay, let's hop into the episode.

Okay, I thought I would do something a little different. In this episode, a solo episode, I'm going to be sharing some defining moments, the building blocks, the fabric that weaves together to basically create the person I am today. And I'm doing this and identifying these moments. And you know, I won't be able to go into detail in all of them. But my goal here is for you to also sit down and think about your defining moments. And the things that have brought you to the point you are today.

Maybe some things you once thought were negative or you did not like about something growing up or an attribute but in retrospect you have a different opinion and or maybe it's not maybe you still just don't like it, whatever it is, but I'm going to share some things and even know how many of the things I actually just like wrote notes and bullet points for each one. But I'm sharing this as a way to show basically, what I believe my defining moments are, I'm probably missing a lot of them. But these are the ones that stood out the most so far, and how they have shaped me today. So if you see me and you admire maybe what I've done with journey to launch, or my finances, or as a person, really, you know, I wasn't born just with all this, I had to grow into this. And I still have a lot of growing to do. So I want you to also reflect on your own defining moments. So that way, you know, you can harness the power with inside of you. Because this is the thing, we can identify the unique abilities, our unique experiences, these things that make us who we are, I think that's when we are able to really surge ahead on this journey. Even the things that are what you may consider negative qualities or knowing what are the things your kryptonite, right, like knowing the things that you can improve upon, or your blocks are important as you navigate this. So hopefully, in sharing my defining moments, and points, using them as a feeling basis of understanding for myself, you can do the same for your own journey.

Okay, so one is my mom. So some of these are like moments. Some of these are just like things in my life, phases in my life. But the biggest thing for me or one of the biggest things is my mom. And she was on the podcast, I'll link that in the episode show notes, quite interviewed her. But every time I remember that my mom had to leave me back behind in Jamaica, eight months old when she was only 20 years old, to come to the United States. And I wasn't reunited with her until months later. Every time I think of that, I am just amazed at the kind of person who was able to do that, at only 20 years old, like her bravery. And her working so hard as a single mom to raise me. And she's been through so much in terms of also how she was brought up, which really impacted how she raised me because she felt she didn't really have a voice and she couldn't express herself. And she was limited in a lot of ways. And so she encouraged me to have a voice. And while other people you know, she's Jamaican. So back up a little bit. My we're Jamaican, my mom was you know, Jamaican, my dad's Jamaican. But my dad didn't really have a part raising me. But I knew him and I knew like my, my father's side of the family. But so she essentially came to United States had to leave behind while she established herself in a new country without anything. And when she was growing up herself, she wasn't like really allowed to have a voice. So she made sure that I did and so people like, you know, in Jamaican culture, or I guess in any maybe Caribbean, or immigrant culture, it's you know, I believe more strict a bit about like how kids are supposed to be. And she said she'd always remember the people, the older people in the family would be like, Jamila is this, you know, she doesn't sit still, she's so rude. And my mom, let me be like, she encouraged me to just be me. And while everyone's was a little concerned about how just out of the box and bold I was, she encouraged it because she never had that. And that's a big part of like, what you see today, why I believe I can take risks, even when I'm scared as hell. I can take risk and I and some people would still call me bold, and but it's really my mom, she inspires me every day of how much she was able to do with so little. So a defining, I guess, moment, or a real big building block in my life is my mom, how she raised me and what she had to do, to put herself in a position to have me thrive. So that's like one.

Two is not having a father raise me. So this is interesting. I call it on my on my note, I have it as fatherless. But not having a father around shaped my mindset a lot. It also contributes a lot to my fear of rejection, you know, my fear of getting too close to people. It also feeds into this ability that I have, like if you know if you know me in real life. If anyone who really knows me in real life, you probably know that I'm very guarded for the most part. And once you're in my life, we pass a test of each other like in terms of just being genuine and there for each other in terms of like friendships in my life. It's forever like I have, I'm the type of person that if I if we're friends and we we we become friends like in high school, middle school or college even like most of those friends, the real close ones I still kind of have around. But it's really easy for me to to walk away from people who I believe are not doing things in the best interest of me. Meaning, if I sense any deceit or betrayal like that's big right and i think that's good. For the most part. It has allowed more to really stay away from toxic people, but I do think I can be a little, you know, prickly when it comes to relationships, right. And I do think that stems from not having my father around. And so I define like having like being fatherless a big defining moment, a thread that creates who I am today. Because one, it did show me, basically, that I needed to be self sufficient that I wasn't gonna depend on anybody, you know, I wasn't gonna depend on any man. And so I went after it, I went after I saw how my, like, my mom, you know, was treated by men in her life, and I did not like it. And I was like, I'm not ever gonna be like that, you know. And so I learned from that, and said that I was going to, you know, choose the partner, if I was going to get married, it was going to be no to a to a man that I could trust and depend on. And I was very, very keen on those qualities. And so being fatherless was really, really important in terms of how I develop the mindset that I have. And while I do think, obviously, I think every little girl, every little boy, everyone I think deserves a father or to have a father in their life. But I think in not having my father and be close to them, and even my stepfather. So I did have a stepfather. And you know, both my father and stepfather have passed that even so I wasn't, you know, growing up, I wasn't that close to my stepfather, either. But even so having like, these relationships with men in my life, or the lack of them, really taught me to be self sufficient. And I really don't think I'd be who I am today, I don't think I would have chosen to partner, my amazing partner that I chose, if it were not for these experiences. And so being fatherless is a major defining moment in my life. That was like number two, number three, exposure and possibilities.

So this is kind of general because I've had so many little moments, or just big moments, but things that shaped my worldview, and how I interact with people. But exposure and possibilities for me include being a gymnast. So I remember my mom again, being who she was, she wanted me even if she couldn't, like, have like, she didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up. But she wanted me to have so much experience, right, she wanted to put me in as many things as she could. So she would spend her last dime, she would travel hours, if it meant for me to like experience a thing. And so one of the things that she put me in was gymnastics as a little girl. And it was pretty cool. So I started gymnastics at the YWCA in Brooklyn, I was pretty young. And you know, like, I never grew to be like, you know, as great as Dominic Dawes, you know, like that level.

But she being a gymnast, she really was important to my formative years, because I spent a few years you know, I can't remember the exact ages. It was probably I think I started like, maybe around five, my mom is probably listening like, no, that's not the age. But I believe, you know, I did gymnastics from like, let's just say five or six to like, was it like 10. And I used to go to summer practice. And I went to, I went to gymnastics summer camp. So that was what I did in the summer. And then I did take a break. And then I started back again in high school. So being a gymnast, like, I think it's the most amazing sport in the world. Because, you know, you see these little, usually like, for me, you know, these little women, these girls actually little girls doing these like amazing tricks, right. So I grew up in watching gymnastics and other gymnast but then I was doing some of these tricks, and was amazed at how I fought through the fear to do like the back handspring or the back bridge, walk over on the beam, you know, and I would go to competitions and have to do this in front of, you know, a lot of people. And again, I wasn't like top notch as a gymnast. But I was pushed to my limit, like so many times that I remember this like as a little girl, like whether it's my physical limit, and not in a bad way. Definitely not in a bad way. But meaning I was scared to do something or even just conditioning, right. Like I was so used to working out and running around and running laps and doing push ups that it definitely fueled my just determination as a person today. And so I say exposure and possibilities. I like being a gymnast, even though that could stand on its own by itself as a defining moment in there. And then along with that, just for me to be able to be exposed to different things. You know, a lot of the times like not too many people like that look like look like me, we're also doing gymnastics or at the meets that I want to. And so all my friends like, you know, when I would go to school, like they would hear that I was a gymnast, like I was like that, you know, while you're a gymnast, like Tell me more about that, because that wasn't something like for them. That was like the norm to do. Being a gymnast, you know, being a black girl gymnast in Brooklyn, you know, in the inner city, but so I was exposed to different types of people very early on, which was really helpful in helping me navigate and being able to be different Different types of settings and environments. You know, I went to a very diverse High School. And I went to a diverse college meaning, you know, I was around, you know, different types of people. So the Goths, right, I will never go into high school and we have like a goth section like where all the golf kids hung out. And you know, there was, you know, white people in my school Spanish, black, all these races, cultures. And even in college, same thing. So I was exposed, and I was able to navigate being around different people, whereas I have some friends who they only went to, like, you know, a school with only black kids. And for them, it was so much harder for them to assimilate, to code switch to environments where there were other people in it. And I find that being able to have been in these environments at a younger age, you know, prepared me for the future. Because oftentimes, we're in rooms as black people as like the one and only or it just, it's just not a lot of us. And unless you learn how to play the game, I think nowadays, which is actually good, I think nowadays, we're able to show up more as ourselves completely without having to change things, which is how it should always be. But unless you really know how to play the game. Unfortunately, sometimes you can fall behind or not get the same opportunities. And I think I learned to do that well, because I was, you know, in different rooms or different places as a little girl growing up in different environments where I could navigate that. So I would say exposure and possibilities like is important. That was like a big defining fabric or moment for me.

Okay, next one, my internship and corporate career. Again, I lump these together because I went to college and in college, I applied to become an Inroads scholar. So Inroads is an organization that helps put minorities into fortune 500 companies as interns, and but they pay you like they pay you good money, at least that's for me at the time. It was very good money comparing to like what I made, and my summer job. And so I applied my first year it was I was a rising how's it sophomore, so I was a freshman in college, I applied my freshman year, summer like year, so that I can get an internship that freshman summer after that. And I got accepted. Actually, I did go on a few interviews with different companies. And I did get rejected from like the first two. And then the last company at the last minute, because I guess they had to place me was like, Okay, we'll take her so I was like, okay, at least I have like, you know, this internship. And I remember it being in the IT department. So my internship was in the IT department, my major was business management, with a specialization in finance. And so I got this Inroads internship. For the first two years, I actually interned in the IT, Department of the company. These were great internships, I'll probably talk about a couple of defining moments from those internships. Maybe in this point, I'll just lump it in. But I remember, I interned with the CTO of the company, and the C CTO, and CIO CIO, the Chief Technology Officer and the Chief Information Officer. Those are like my first two internships, those two summers, and I got some amazing like exposure and experience, let me tell you something. So my that second summer internship, I got to go on the corporate jet with the CEO of the company. And I believe it was the CTO, I always mix them up between the CTO and CIO, but it was the CEO, and two other men, so like the CTO, and then my manager, and me, I was like, What 20 on the corporate jet. I remember the day before this opportunity. They came to me and they were like, oh, we're, you know, we're going to Boston for this meeting and we thought this would be a great opportunity for you would you like to go, you know, we're gonna leave from Teterboro airport. That's where like, all the private jets fly out, would you be interested and like they, my manager asked me so casually. And I'm looking at him, like, would I be interested? Why would I say no, I remember that same evening, I went to H&M. And I bought like a suit. You know, H&M has those, like suits you can buy and they're not that expensive. And I bought like a skirt suit. Because I was like, Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna be on the corporate jet. And they sent a black car to get me the next morning and best believe, picked me up took me to Teterboro in Jersey. And I went on this trip with the CEO, and it was so amazing, there was a red carpet to get on the plane. I remember we're sitting on the plane and the personal attendant on the plane was like, so nice. And even the CEO at the time of the company was just like, you may want to hold on to your glass because you know, these things take off pretty fast because we were about to take off. And I was just like, I can't believe this. And I could do a whole episode on that experience. And it's crazy because you know, I have the worst memory so for me like to remember the like the small details like that means like it really stood out. But at that time, like phones Right. We didn't have Okay, like iPhones back then maybe flip phones were in I think at the time I had a sidekick. Anybody remember the sidekick days? But like I wasn't taking pictures like nowadays, I would think if that happened, I'd be like, Can I please get a picture? So I could remember this, but I never took a picture of that, like that whole experience. But I got to experience that as an intern, as you know, and it was like me, this little black girl and these three, like older men, these white men, powerful men, and like we're walking into so we went there to visit a company we were acquiring. And the so the CEO was having meetings with this company and their their employees. And here I am sitting at this table, people are probably wondering, like, Who is this girl? Like? How is she here?

And so for me, right, Like that whole experience, my whole intern ship experience was amazing, because I got exposed to things like that. And let me tell you something. So those first two years were in IT. And I knew I did not want to eventually work in it full time, I wanted to be where the money was, I wanted to be in investments. And the investments department, though, was in another state. So I interned for the company in New York office, but the investments department was in New Jersey, and remember going to my Inroads manager at the time, so like inroads into the organization, they had an outside person like coordinating, who coordinated the internships, I went to that person, I was like, I don't want to stay in it. And I know if I stay here another year, they're going to offer me a full time position in IT. And I was like, I want to intern in the investment department. And they were like, Well, you know, the investments department, it's like, you know, in another state, you technically would have to change from like the New York Inroads people to New Jersey Inroads people. And then plus, you know, it is like an hour away. I might have just gotten a car. Yeah, I think I had a car at that time. But they were like, you know, I don't know, like, they were trying to tell me that I couldn't do it. And I said, Oh, no, no, no, I'm gonna do this. And so I called I made the necessary meetings that I had to, I drove to New Jersey to that office, where the investments department was met with that Inroads coordinator, who worked at the company told her what I wanted to do, she even at first was like, Well, I don't know, like, you know, you're really supposed to stay in your like, lane, stay in IT, because that's who you intern with for the last couple years. Now they know. So with that, I eventually did get my third internship in real estate. So I interned in the real estate investment department, my third internship, so this was from the summer of me, going into my senior year. And then good thing Inroads at that time, like if you were interning all that time for a company, and they had it in their budget, they would typically offer you a full time position. And so I was offered a full time position, right before I left for my senior year in college. So I knew at that point, like I'd have a full time job if I accepted it. And so that was like an amazing experience, obviously, because my senior year I wasn't really worried about, like interviewing or getting a job because I knew I had one, the whole experience and even my corporate career, because this is the same company now that I interned to it that I actually stayed with, I graduated and then started to work for, and it's the same company that I left, you know, when I started to work for journey's launch full time. But really, you know, ultimately, during the time that I was with this company, like it was a great experience, I learned so much about myself, about climbing the ladder about being strategic, and, you know, meeting the right people, you know, ultimately, I did get my master's in real estate from NYU. And they paid for, like 90% of it. And so it was great. And that's obviously where I also had my crazy commute. So that's where the three to four hour driving commute developed. And but from that driving commute, that's how I found financial independence. And what prompted me to start Journey to Launch. So definitely my whole internship and corporate career, many, many defining moments, but a big part of who I am today.

The next one is actually very interesting. I was in a car accident, and I actually don't remember this because I was only about five or six years old. And my mom had to remind me, because it was something where it was really serious, like almost like passed away, almost died. And we were like driving, I was in the backseat, and it was with my mom and her friend. And she I didn't have a seatbelt on like at that time seatbelts weren't mandatory. We got hit by a car. And like the car that we were in, spun around, and I basically was since I wasn't wearing anything, I luckily I wasn't ejected from the car, but like I did, sustained massive like head injuries. And when my mom came to, she said that she didn't know if I was alive or not. She didn't have cell phone at the time. Like there were no cell phones. So she had to like people saw it so they call like the ambulance and cops but she didn't know what to do. She was panicking. She didn't know if I was alive. Now, you know, eventually, obviously, I am alive, thank God. But she said, like, that was like literally like she almost lost me. And while I don't like I remember parts of that day, like I don't like have a vivid memory about it. But for me to have like a near death experience, she always says like, I've always been, like so determined, you know, as a little girl, and so she doesn't have like any, any hesitation that I had a determination that I was like, kind of live that day. And I do still have like a scar on my forehead or other side of my forehead from that car accident. But I believe that having like a near death experience like that has to shape you in some way, even if I don't like remember the details of it. So that is definitely a defining moment.

Okay, the next few defining moments that I'm using as fuel that I'm using as things that when I reflect back, I'm saying to myself, wow, they happen for a reason. What did you learn? What are you using for you now going forward? So the next one would be meeting Earl grave senior. So Earl Graves Sr, is the founder of black enterprise, he passed away. But at the time, I was in college, and I had a magazine. So my best friend Shaleia and I, we started a magazine in college. And we thought we were going to be like the next big magazine like Ebony, you know, Honey magazine back in the day was a magazine that was around, but we called our magazine Empress magazine. And so it was going to be for the young, black woman, young, multicultural woman. And it was going to be fashion, Business, Finance, basically just like an all around entertainment, but also educational magazine. We started in college, we had no connection. So we started like just making pamphlets. We had a website, we started making blog. So we were like really serious about this, because I was like, maybe this is the thing, right? Like, I thought this was gonna be my like way out of having to actually like work forever. Because even in college, I had thoughts of wanting to be an entrepreneur. So I knew about black enterprise, the magazine, but when I learned about Earl Graves sr, and his story, so he, Earl Graves also grew up in Brooklyn. So I grew up in Brooklyn, he, he went to a school in Brooklyn, a high school in Brooklyn.

And he started and created this successful magazine. And I remember saying to myself, Oh, my gosh, we're just alike. So I wrote a letter to Earl Graves Sr black enterprise. And I wish I hadn't made a copy of this letter. I don't have it because I sent it to him. But I sent him this letter. And it just introduced myself. I was like, you know, I love what you done with your life, what you've done, like to create a legacy. Here's what I'm doing, you know, I'm starting this magazine, or I have this magazine. And basically, I just wrote this letter to him and saying, you know, I just love it opportunities to meet you to learn. And he responded. Now, again, my memory is like, so shot like, I don't remember if he like it was an email, or if it was a letter that he sent back. This was in college. So this was like years ago, like 14 years ago. But he responded. So what I do remember, is meeting him. So I remember I said he sent me to his secretary. And I met him made a meeting with the Secretary and went to the city that day to meet Earl Graves senior at Black Enterprise, at their home office at the place where the company was run from in the city. And it was, so again, one of those moments where you're just like, what else is possible in this world? Right? Like, here I am, you think you have the magazine was going to be my thing and meeting this man who has created this, like, at the time, this empire, this amazing publication for black people about just money in business. And so when I met him, one of the things that stood out to me that he said was, you know, I get a lot of letters, and I can imagine he did really get a lot of letters of people inquiring to meet him. And he was like, I rarely respond to all of them, because I can't or any of them, but something about your letter stood out. And I know you're going to be successful in whatever you do. Because I don't typically respond to letters. And I remember thinking, oh, wow, you know, like, whatever I did, whatever I said, granted me this meaning and, you know, nothing really came from it. Like I was hoping he'd be like, yeah, like come aboard will invest in your magazine. That didn't happen, which was okay. But meeting him gave me confirmation in real life, what was possible, and that all you have to do is just have the guts to put yourself out there. Like if I never sent this letter, if I never thought that I was worthy of a reply from him, I would have never maybe drafted a letter. And so I again, this boldness in me to kind of think of certain things to do and to reach out or to just have this confidence is built upon even like the previous defining moment, I've explained. But again, these are just confirmations for me of like wow, Jamila, you like you're on the right path, and this I was again, I was in college at the time, I think I was like a sophomore or junior. And so I felt just I felt really good about what my life would be because I figured I'm having all these amazing experiences at this point, like what else is out there for me. So I've always been optimistic in that way. So meeting our group senior, so wasn't amazing experience, because it just showed me what was possible for myself.

The next defining moment, real estate. So I'm gonna definitely I keep saying this, but I will do a separate episode all about my real estate experience buying property at 22 years old, in Dumbo, Brooklyn. So I'm not going to go into too much detail. But to be able to do that with the help of my mom, and just just the foresight at the time, and having things really line up the stars line up for for me to be able to do that has been an amazing experience, it's been my most risky and rewarding investment to date in my life. And I still own that property, but being able to buy that condo at 22 years old, or to go into contract for it, and then live there for a bit. You know, I enjoyed my kind of like, young 20s there, I thought I was living the life in this really nice apartment, this luxury apartment. And so I really enjoyed myself, but I still own it and rent it out. But that whole experience has again showed me because there's not too many people who look like me who own in Dumbo. And at the moment when I bought it like they weren't also any people as young as me who were in the building. So it again, show me what's possible. All right, I want to go to just a couple more defining moments, I hope that you are thinking about your own defining moments, what has fueled you to this point, and I can bet you, you can probably find a common theme in things.

I'm even as I'm talking to you guys realizing a common theme that I'm picking up in my defining moments that I need to make sure I harness and continue as I travel on my path. But the next one was partnership. So I did talk about or touched upon this when I talked about my father. But choosing the right partner for me has been huge. And what I mean by that is so my husband like we were college sweethearts, we dated we met and dated in college. And even though we he's from Brooklyn, I'm from Brooklyn, we didn't meet until our freshman year. For me the biggest thing about like dating, like I dated other people, but I was always so sure about what I was not willing to compromise on when it came to someone who was going to be serious with, like I needed, I didn't want anyone, like my father in terms of I needed someone who was dependable, right, so not the person that said, I'm gonna call you for your birthday, and you don't hear from them, or just disappears on you. So for me, having someone picking someone with integrity that I knew, like, worst case, even if we, like, you know, I think so far ahead. I'm like, well, even if I have kids with this person, and it doesn't work out, how will What kind of man will he be to my kids kind of thing. And I knew even just like, in the beginning stages of meeting my husband, when we were just dating, that he was like a solid stand up guy. We had a little breaks, you know, in college and a little bit after but we we've we've been together ever since. But for the most part. And so now we're married, with three kids, building a life together. And I can't tell you how important it is for my journey that we partner together. Because he's he we are alike in so many ways, but also totally opposite. He cares a lot about like me and Journey to Launch but he also doesn't care about Journey to Launch. You know, like, he's not an entrepreneurship business. Like he doesn't want his own business. Not that I know of not yet at least he's he's a teacher. for him. Like he doesn't really care. Like, it doesn't matter if I get featured on Oprah or not like he'll be proud of me. Either way, it doesn't matter if no one listens to the podcast, or a million people listen, he's like, Oh, that's cool. Like, he's so unassuming and laid back that sometimes I'm just like, Hello, like, Are you excited, but like, it's such a good measure of stability in my life, because he's so supportive. Like the reason why I you know, I was able to quit my job the reason why I'm able to work as hard as I do with Journey to Launch, and I'm able to go for my runs. And you know, I still have time for my what I like and my friends and like it's because he's he's such a like equal partner in the household with the kids. So choosing a partner for me like the right one has been like, really a big catalyst in my success in me developing as like a woman. That was major, obviously. So partnership, choosing the right partner, really important.

And then of course, just a couple more and then I'm going to be done: fails. Not everything I do succeeds guys. Even now with Journey to Launch You know, there are things that like I think are gonna happen, they don't happen things I get rejected for opportunities that I that I'm just like, that would be so nice if I could do it and they're just like, nope, we're not really interested in you. Or maybe, you know, just when I'm launching things like any, like products or cause selling is a big part of entrepreneurship, right. Is that like, no, that didn't go well, no one bought that or it didn't, you know, wasn't like a big success, but also my other like stuff that I did. So my online magazine Empress, I talked about that a little bit before I started that magazine, and then realized after a couple years that we were not happy doing it. So Shaleia, my business partner, and I decided to end it, which was bittersweet, because we thought that that was going to be our thing. But it wasn't we lost interest in it also became a real estate, I have my real estate license. So while I worked in corporate real estate investments, and management, I thought maybe I should actually sell and like rent out like real estate residential real estate. Since I love real estate so much tried that didn't like it didn't work. I also had a vending machine business, which deserves its own episode, spent a lot of money to invest and buy vending machines, had them for a couple years that didn't work. And so I failed, in endeavors that I've had, which causes me to be really cautious because sometimes when I go in, and I have a thought, I'm like, oh, going all in. Sometimes I'll rush to do something before I can change my mind. And sometimes I lose interest. So my, one of my biggest fears with Journey to Launch was, well, what if I like I'm so excited about it now. But what if I don't feel like this in a couple years, right? Like, because I know that I have like I have started it and stopped before. But then realizing that you know what, everything that you started and stopped, was a building block to lead you right here. And if for whatever reason you stop or choose to go in another direction with Journey to Launch, it's going to be the thing that leads you to your next thing, the thing that you were meant to do. So I'm sharing those, like those failures or things that did not work out, have been really crucial on the lessons I've learned from those things in my life.

Okay, two more things. And then I'm done, then I'm done. I promise. So children, having children, oh, my goodness, I firmly believe that you like most you really don't know what it's really like to have kids because then you you may not have them. No, I'm just No, I'm kidding. But I'm not like becoming a mom, I can't describe the way it changes you how it's changed me. Because my kids, I'll speak for myself, my kids are my biggest Why, I don't think if I did that, like if I didn't have like, my kids, I don't know that I would have been so motivated to leave my job corporate America, like I probably could have balanced, you know, like running a business on the side. And working full time because I would have had presumably more time. But so while they are the reason I think my fuel, my why the reason why I go, you know so hard now is because like they're my legacy, I want to, I want to lead by example with them. They also are almost like, you know, the thing that you have to also like, figure out how to like, have, for me, at least on my journey, like how to still be Jamila, like so a lot of times, like, when you become a mom, especially, you know, let's talk about like, we're still in a pandemic, so many things have changed even and have been putting more pressure on us as parents. So for me, navigating that, as someone who is usually you know, before kids very independent needs, my own space needs my own time. And like that is not necessarily that does not default, as a parent, like these little kids need your time. My kids are like obsessed with me as they should be like, I'm obsessed with them. So there is no space, you know, and so I have to create that space for myself, which in the beginning, I felt so bad about. But I'm slowly I'm able to do more of that now, as I realized that I can't be my best Jamila my best mom, my best, you know, everything in life without being good to me first. So it's something I'm still working on. But having children Oh, my goodness, they change you forever. And so I'm grateful for my kids, because without them, I don't think I'd be on this mic talking to you. They may have not ever been the Journey to Launch without my kids. So defining moment. And every day, I'm learning something about myself through the way I react to them, through the way I love them through, through everything. So kids are really a reflection of you. And big defining moment is being a mom for me.

Okay, last thing is Journey to Launch and entrepreneurship. Like nothing will challenge you other than kids than trying to start your own business, running your own business. because let me tell you, my fellow entrepreneurs listening, you probably already know this, but to put yourself out there, to put your work out there, to try to sell anything. So whether I'm selling to you as like my audience or to a brand who wants to work with me, like you still have to have something valuable that you're giving people that they want to come to right and so there's this beautiful and sometimes chaotic dance between, you know, creating amazing content and things that people need and want and giving to your community and to whoever you know, your audience is your customers are and then also the running a business. So as a business owner, you're like running a gazillion hats. Like, it's not just creating the content. But now you're the bookkeeper, you're the marketer, you know, they're all these things you're doing. And so starting Journey to Launch like this, again, my other like, things that I tried before, this has been the longest thing that I've stuck with that I poured energy money into, you know, I quit my job to do this. It's been a big, big leap to do this. And it's definitely a defining moment of who I am. But I'll tell you this, all the other moments I talked about, gave me the fuel, to start Journey to Launch, every single thing. And so my defining moments, all of them really are building blocks up until the ultimate one, there's not one that like, by itself is not impacted by another, everything weaves itself together. And you know, I talked about finding a common thread, and I challenge you to sit down and think about the defining moments and the fuel and the threads in your life, and to find commonalities between them. Because for me, what I'm realizing even as I was talking was one of the biggest thing that has allowed me to have these moments to get through them, to be better, or try to be better as a person, because of them is like, I feel like I'm very daring, Daring Greatly, you know, as Brene Brown would say, even when I'm scared, even when I don't know what I'm doing. I just believe that I'm worthy of it. And doesn't mean like, I'm completely confident all the time. I'm not. But this confidence that I have is definitely something I see that was developed over time, and each of my defining moments that lead to me or led me to the next moment, and I just wanted to share that with you.

So if you enjoyed this episode, let me know. I told you, I was gonna do more solo episodes. So I am doing more solo episodes, for sure in 2021. And I hope you enjoyed this one. Again, the point of this was for you also to think about your defining moments, to find the common thread to find maybe where your blind spots are, what you've learned from some of those moments and how you use those learning opportunities to push you forward. And once you connect the dots, once you have a kind of, you know, a perspective, then everything else starts to make sense as you move forward on your path.

Okay, journeyers I hope you enjoyed that episode. Once again, if you're listening to this around the time, it comes out on Christmas around Christmas, Happy Holidays. This is again, a tough time but also a wrap up of a crazy, exciting, challenging all the adjectives you can think of kind of year. And I hope that by talking to my defining moments, you will sit and reflect on your defining moments. So what makes you you all right now remember, if you're actually listening to this, when this comes out, I'd love for you to take a screenshot I always love seeing that. And wishing you a happy holidays and share that with me on social media. I hang out mostly on Instagram @journeytolaunch.

Okay, now it's time for DCU money Tip of the Week, we are going to continue with helping our children save and become good with money. So piggy banks still work at a young age, you can even identify the concept of interest, you might add a certain percentage to their savings each week and let them hold the coins and add them themselves into their piggy bank. Also, many children by age five are ready for an allowance. Experts recommend that you make the amount and the time you give the allowance consistent, discuss responsible uses for their allowance including saving for things they want, and let them use their money as they wish but within family guidelines. For more tips and information check out dcu.org

If you want to check out the episode shownotes that's where you can get links to anything that's mentioned. And even get a transcribed version of this episode that you can read. Go to journeytolaunch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. Now you can also still grab your free journeyer jumpstart guide by texting, launch to 33777 or go to journey to launch.com/jumpstart.

If you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen just to Subscribe so you are not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this and Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there, I appreciate and read every single review. Number two follow me on my social media accounts. I'm @journeytolaunch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And I love love love interacting with journeyers there. Three, support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here. So show them some love for supporting your girl. Four and last but not least, share this episode this podcast with a friend or family member or coworker so that we can spread the message of journey to launch. Alright, that's it until next week, keep on journeying journeyers.