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

Dominique Broadway 0:02

Your mind is a very powerful thing. You've heard this before. But in my mind I owed and this isn't even a number, but you know, I owed a million bajillion dollars. Okay, that's how much I owe a million bajillion dollars. And there was this Debt Monster and this Debt Monster sat beside my bed all night long and just bothered me and stressed me out what it was all said and done. I think I only owed like $21,000 It was not as much as I thought. But I created this whole narrative in my head. That was really the first step for me.

Intro 0:35

T-Minus 10 seconds. Welcome to the journey to launch podcast with your host jameelah. So frogs as a money expert who wants her talk, she helps brave juniors like you get out of debt, save, invest and build real Whoa. Join her on the journey to launch to financial freedom in five, four, three, two, one.

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Intro 2:07

If you want the episode show notes for this episode, go to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode. In the show notes. You'll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned and so much more. Also, whether you are an OG journey or are brand new to the podcast, I've created a free jumpstart guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes, so listen to stages to go through to reach financial freedom, resources and so much more. You can go to journey to launch.com/jumpstart to get your guide right now. Okay, let's hop into the episode.

Jamila Souffrant 2:49

Hey, journeyers excited for you to meet this week's special guests we have on Dominique Broadway, financial literacy trail blazer, and the award winning personal finance experts. She's the founder of finances demystified, she is on a mission to make the dreams of people a reality. And as the author of the new book, The Wealth decision. She's an OG to me in this personal finance space. So welcome to the podcast, Dominique Broadway.

Dominique Broadway 3:17

Thank you so much for having me, Jim. I'm super excited to be here. Finally, on your show.

Jamila Souffrant 3:25

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

Dominique Broadway 3:58

Thank you. I appreciate it. Man. I really appreciate it.

Jamila Souffrant 4:01

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

Dominique Broadway 4:16

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

Jamila Souffrant 6:28

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

Dominique Broadway 6:41

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

Jamila Souffrant 9:13

at the company. So at your company where you are helping these high net worth individuals, I'm sure you started to see commonalities. So was there like a comment there? Like you saw, even just like you don't have people say, Well, you have money. And so maybe this is just from my outside perspective, right? When you have a lot of money, your problems are different, but sometimes the problems are at the core, the same. So did you see any of that? Like, what were some common threads? You saw people who had money were you like this? Like they still have these problems? Or they were a different type of problems? I'd love to kind of hear about that.

Dominique Broadway 9:46

They were definitely different type of problems, right? I was talking to my friend the other day, we were joking that we should start a show called rich people problems. Rich people problems are are so different, you know, originally were problems is like, my ex wife transferred all my money or my ex wife is trying to increase my child support from 5000 to 15,000. Right? Like, that's a huge amount of child support, or calling in, hey, I need you to wire me $3 million. Like in the next hours, I need to buy this. Yeah. And we're like, Okay, Mr. Mrs. So and so we need to sell these, you know, at the time when you sell your stock and you sell your stocks to get this capital out for you. It's t plus three, the trade day plus three days, I can't get you to 3 million today, right in there. Like, what what do you mean? Like, those are the problems they have like the money's there, but we can't, why are you with us today, it's gonna take a couple days to get this money to you. So it was different types of problems, I would say. One of the things I've observed here, we had one time who was like, constantly overdrafting, and this man had millions of dollars, and he was a doctor, I never forget him millions of dollars. And I was like, I was so surprised, like rich people overdraft to and they do. But it was because of key for some reason, just constantly forget that the millions he had was sitting in the investment portion of his account, not necessarily liquid cash. And so he would just be like, charging stuff up, because the accounts had a debit card to it. And he you know, like, um, like, we would have to call and say, Hey, Mr. Jones, all your own your your accounts overdrafted, like $80,000, right, that's a rich person problem, they're not gonna let you know, a regular income account go, you know, negative at the net, explain to him like, if you're making these purchases, we need to keep more cash liquid, we liquid, we can't have as much as much invested. So those were some of their like problems that they would have. But you know, when you make more money, you do have different problems, you have more people trying to get to your money. So you have to do a lot more to protect it. You also have more taxes and things of that nature. And so we were also working with them to do a lot of like strategy and tax strategy to help reduce their taxes, taxable income. And so those are the type of problems that you would see not necessarily like paycheck to paycheck, just different problems.

Jamila Souffrant 12:05

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

Dominique Broadway 12:16

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

Jamila Souffrant 14:34

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

Dominique Broadway 15:33

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

Jamila Souffrant 18:09

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

Dominique Broadway 18:18

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

Jamila Souffrant 20:56

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

Dominique Broadway 21:29

Yeah. It's never what you think it is.

Jamila Souffrant 21:31

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

Dominique Broadway 21:54

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

Jamila Souffrant 22:24

But I know what it is I'm just being really lazy. And I might even me, even me who knows that I can use this money for something that might Jamila, you are like, what is this? But listen, I think it's a human thing. Thank you for sharing that part of your story. Because it also shows anyone else even if you're going through something really financially feeling heavy and dark. Like I mean, we're going to talk about where you are now, which is amazing, right financially, but it's like you, this is temporary, it's no but you have to make the decision and take the steps to get out of it. If you want to change it.

Dominique Broadway 22:54

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

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Jamila Souffrant 23:57

So the ship has turned around you're now making headway right with your finances. What are some of the next steps because I mean, now you're running a multimillion dollar business you're I'm assuming financially in a way better position. But there's a lot of steps that took you from there to hear. So how did you transfer your business from and what what at the time were you doing? Were you doing like coaching and brand work? What were like some of your major things? Yeah,

Dominique Broadway 24:24

yep. At that time, I was only doing I wasn't doing any brand work. I was just doing coaching when I really first started so it was that was it honestly just just coaching. And then I realized also too when I was kind of re getting my financial life together, that I needed to figure out another way right to create money because obviously there's only so many hours in a day. And so that's when I created like my first course right? So I was like okay, I realized that there was certain questions that everyone was asking so I was okay if I could just figure out how to package what everyone is asking me for. Yeah, some people will still sign up for one on one which is great. So I enjoyed it. But some people will want to just pay lesser Come out, get the course and still walk through at their own pace. So that was a big game changer for me. Right. And that was able to start to turn the business around I, you know, went from making maybe 60 to 80,000 a year to making, you know, 200 to 250 1000 a year pretty consistently. And then, you know, after a while, I was starting to do some brand deals every now and then that's when, you know, kind of the following or audience picked up a little bit. But that was really all that I was doing. At the time. Yeah.

Jamila Souffrant 25:29

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

Dominique Broadway 25:40

At that time, or now?

Jamila Souffrant 25:42

Well, at the time, so at that 250 mark, right, what were your next step to like, what did you see?

Dominique Broadway 25:50

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

Jamila Souffrant 28:46

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

Dominique Broadway 28:55

I couldn't afford to do it.

Jamila Souffrant 28:57

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

Dominique Broadway 30:08

It's not, it's not. And that's, that's also why there's been times I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore, because there's people out there who are just like misleading people. And it's creating a bad name for the financial education space. And as you'd like, as I'm doing this, now, I have a business my business now full time for 10 years. So I've been doing this for a while. And so just being able to provide that insight is is great. But I think the question we're asking, too, is about investing. Right? What was it? Like? What was the question?

Speaker 3 30:35

Yeah, let's break down, right. Like, what do you mean, when you talk about investing or trading what that means?

Dominique Broadway 30:41

Yeah, so I do the dry, boring investing. But I also like to trade right. So investing to me is putting your money in something with the expectation of it, giving you additional profit or income in the future? Right. So let's say, like you said, index funds, right, index funds are grayed out, there's a they're all index funds, but understanding that they're not gonna get you a bunch of money today, but they are going to give you good solid, sexy returns over time, which is great, right? But you know, you can invest anything from stocks, bonds, index funds, mutual funds, real estate, are jewelry, right? People invest in all different types of things where I understand that 70, give me a return today. But these are all things that are all assets that I am building, right. That's what investing means to me, buying something understanding that it's going to give me a profit or income in the future, in the future could be in six months, it could be eight months, it could be a year, it could be a couple of years, it could be 10 years, what I think about trading trading is what I'm looking to make a return every day, every week, every month, right? So I typically only trade maybe three days a week, some weeks more, what is the earning season, I'm in by four days a week or five days a week. Typically, I'm only trading like three days a week. And that's because that's all I will all the time I want to put into it. Right. But typically, my goal is to try to do you know, at least 50 a week, right? And so but that's my goal. But that also is because I'm working with a large amount of capital. And I've been doing this now for 22 years, right. So those results may not be what a newbies want to see. And I like to make sure that people understand that right. But that's the difference between the two. So with investing, you're putting it in letting it sit with trading is, hey, I'm buying this right now. And I'm selling it and taking the 10,000 20,000 in profit today or tomorrow, the next couple hours. And that's the difference between the two.

Jamila Souffrant 32:36

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

Dominique Broadway 33:10

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

Jamila Souffrant 37:15

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

Dominique Broadway 38:34

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

Jamila Souffrant 40:03

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

Dominique Broadway 40:26

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

Jamila Souffrant 42:20

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

Dominique Broadway 42:42

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

Jamila Souffrant 45:19

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

Dominique Broadway 46:20

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

Jamila Souffrant 47:15

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

Dominique Broadway 47:23

Yes, so the book is getting released. I'm so so so excited. Please make sure you go grab it. It's called the wealth decision, it talks about all the things I was talking about, but the 10 steps to help you succeed, or achieve your own financial success, whatever that looks like for you. So you can find it in Amazon, target Barnes and Nobles, all the major publishers, you gotta go to my website, Dominique broadway.com. And it's on there. And if you follow me on social, the link is in all the BIOS as well. And I'm also just Dominique Broadway on Instagram, and all the socials.

Jamila Souffrant 47:57

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

Dominique Broadway 48:03

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Outro 48:07

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