SPEAKER_02 0:03

Hi, Huntresses.

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This is Talk Ridge Tonight.

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Where we get more comfortable talking about money and dealing with money.

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Brought to you by Huntress Wealth. 71% of women are investing, but only one in six feels confident about where she's headed. Huntress is the all-in-one financial app built to help you make a plan, get actionable steps, and build your wealth. Join the wait list at HuntressWealth.com and get good with money.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

We are here today with Marcia Dawwood to talk about angel investing, not just the math, but the mindset behind it. She's an angel investor with over 50 companies. She works with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the board of the Small Business Capital Formation Committee. She's the author of two books, a TEDx speaker, and a host of the Angel Next Door podcast. Oh, chair emeritus of the Angel Capital Association. So this woman knows Angel Investing, and we're so happy to have you here today, Marj. Thanks for having me. So first, I'd love to start off with how you got into angel investing. Um, kind of where were you in your journey and like what prompted the like, huh?

SPEAKER_00 1:36

I should try that out. So I was working in corporate America, kind of doing the same thing. I worked for Kaplan Education uh for almost 17 years. And in 2012, I was invited to an angel investing meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I was living at the time. And I remember thinking, cool, what is that? Like, I have absolutely no idea what angel investing is. And I don't know what it, I certainly don't know what an angel investing meeting is. So anyway, I go and we saw three entrepreneurs who were local uh present their companies to us and tell us what they were working on. And I thought to myself, where have I been? I think I've been living under a rock. I had absolutely no idea about all the amazing and creative things that entrepreneurs are working on. I certainly did not think that there was that much innovation happening in Pittsburgh at the time. And I didn't think that I could get involved because I thought it was just for rich people, people who had a finance degree, you had to be invited, all that kind of stuff. And I come to find out that really nowadays, um, it's gotten easier, especially since 2012, even. But even in 2012, it was a lot different than what I thought. There were a lot of myths out there. So that's when I started to think, huh, I think we kind of have an awareness problem about all this, which led to all of my next adventures.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

When did you make your first investment?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Okay, so this is actually why I wrote the book, Do Good While Doing Well, because it is literally a cautionary tale of a ton of things that I did that I'm like, do not do this. Okay. One of the things I did was I made an investment in the very like one of the very first companies I ever saw. Because I was like, this is so cool. It has to be like the most amazing thing ever. And it really was. And actually, this particular company turned out to be a very good investment, and we got a nice return on it. Um, but that's really not a good idea. Um, first of all, you really want to take your time, learn, get to know other angels, do things in groups, collaborate on diligence, find the money that you're going to invest with, have that kind of parceled out because it is a risky asset class. So you want to just have like a tiny bucket of money that you're going to use for this. And it should be no more than 5% of your investable assets. And then that will be the money that you use for angel investing. And so I didn't really follow that playbook at the beginning. And I wish I had.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

And I feel like there's something to like just trying and figuring it out. Did you have any strategy when you were going in? No strategy.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

No, I didn't even know that there could be a strategy. So that is really the whole uh the whole thesis of do good while doing well is about having a, I call it a halo strategy so that you could think about, okay, what are the things that I actually care about and what do I want to be investing in? Because that small bucket of money doesn't go very far. So I personally ran out of my own money to invest, you know, a while back. And it's only when we get returns that I can start to invest again and recycle the money back into the economy.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

I'm curious what your average check size was in the, I guess maybe in the beginning and then like once you had a strategy.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Yeah. So like back then, you really couldn't invest in a company without investing maybe 20,000 or even more. You could really only be maybe doing one um every year or every other year. So what I started to really like was this idea that you could invest in a fund. And a fund would then give you the ability to invest maybe that same 20,000, but it it started to come down even to like 10,000 or even $5,000. And then you could get exposure to multiple companies with that one check, as opposed to you having to figure out your own um portfolio and and then writing a check to every single one of those companies.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

The word angel investing or angel investor is kind of loaded, right? Like angel implies like savior or like guiding hand, right? Like it's this, you know, maybe maybe it's who you pray to, like, I don't know, but like this, it's a pretty loaded um term. I think that's interesting what you point out versus like investing in a fund and that being a little bit more distant. Can you talk about like there's the financial investment of angel investing, but what are what's the other investment that you're kind of signing up for?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, I actually had somebody tell me once, they're like, oh, an angel investor. It don't you just like fly down from the sky and then you just like you give people money and then you fly away. Um so I angel, by definition, an angel investor is somebody who uses money out of their own checkbook or their own bank accounts. I think it's important that people know that yes, you're trying to get a financial return. And hence the title of my book, which was do good, because we we that's what we're trying to do as angel investors. We're trying to get, you know, health care and climate and good things that are good for people on the planet out into the world. But we also want to do well. We want to have a financial return. But there's more to it. I mean, if that's all we were looking for, I'm maybe, you know, considering how risky angel investing is, maybe you don't want to put uh do that. But I think there's so much more to it. I'm I really love the fact that you're helping to create jobs, you're helping to really put innovation into the world. And if you want to be the change that you want to see in the world, we hear that saying a lot, that Ma that Gandhi quote, like, what is it that you can do to help be the change you want to see in the world? And some of the other perks are, you know, you get to see things before they're necessarily out and in the market. I've gotten to try lots of products and get got to see a lot of different types of innovation that I would have never been a part of. But also, I met people that I would have never met otherwise. In all different types of industries, people come together in order to invest in a company. And when you're doing that, you're having much different conversations than you would at, let's say, a cocktail party or a barbecue or something like that. You're you're talking about things that are very meaningful to the company, and you really get to know somebody that way. So there's a lot more to it than just a financial return.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Totally. We met with an angel the other week who his whole perspective is he he writes bigger checks, but he his plans to be very involved, right? And helpful. And there's like a sliding scale of like, it's not just like if you write the big check, you get to be involved. There's almost an expectation if you're making that big of an investment, um, that you're gonna be in the know and and maybe provide some influence and support, right? Um and it's like those are two choices like how big is your check size, which will get into like doing that math, right? But there's also how much are you willing to invest time-wise? And then there might be different strategies in what you're doing, right? Like if you are um, you know, full-time working kids at home, right? You might not be have like bandwidth to like be the person that gets the call to help with introductions or you know, prep for a sales pitch or something, right? Um, and so there's like ways to be more distant from it if you need to be, and like keep that time box managed. So it's really like how much time are you able to invest and how much money are you able to invest?

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Yes, I would totally agree with that.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

No. Um and it's all interesting people, like on both sides of the table. Both sides, yeah. Meeting founders, meeting investors, like these are people who are chomping at like what's new and like figuring stuff out. And it's just like the coolest people.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Yes, I completely agree.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

I do want to break down kind of just some 101 terms. We talked about what an angel investor is. What is an accredited investor?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

So, by definition, an accredited investor is someone who has $200,000 in income if they are solo, $300,000 in income if they're including a partner, or a million dollars in net worth minus your home. So a lot of people, when they hear the word accredited investor, it does kind of sound like you have to have taken a test or filled out an application or done something. No, just you have to have two years worth of that uh financial stature before you could invest in a private company, which is what that's by the SEC's definition. They're starting to expand the definition a little bit to include other types of education. I personally believe, and I do sit on the SEC Advisory Committee for Small Business Capital Formation. And I do believe that education is a great part of what uh angel investors need to have. And I don't really like the idea that if you have a certain amount of income or wealth, all of a sudden you're it's okay for you to invest, but it's not okay for somebody else to invest. But just because somebody has a lot of money doesn't really mean they're a smart investor. I would rather that that person, if they have the money and they meet the definition by income or wealth, that they have the education so that then they will make smarter decisions for investing. Because I've seen people who have a lot of money make an angel investment. In a lot of cases, if you just pick one or two companies, the chances of those one or two companies doing well probably aren't super high. So that company could go out of business. And then all of a sudden the person thinks, this is the worst thing ever. I'm never doing this angel investing stuff again. But that's not real, that's not reality. So we need to like kind of put everything into perspective a little bit more.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

We talk with a whole lot of people that are accredited investors and and don't realize it. And so it's like, it's like this little like cap you can put on, this like little mentality you can put on is like, I'm accredited. Doesn't mean I need to do anything with it necessarily, but it's nice to know when you kind of like hit that benchmark that you're eligible for these private investments, should you be interested. You know, short of giving investment advice.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Um I do not. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Require disclaimer.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Where does angel investing fit in, you know, someone's financial strategy?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Well, I really believe that if people want to align their money and their values, in some cases, investing in innovation and the things that they want to see in the world, that aligns. Maybe that's through public companies, maybe that's through where you bank or where you shop, or it could be uh the type of restaurant that you eat in. Um, maybe you're gonna shop all women-owned companies, or, you know, uh there's lots and lots of ways that you can use your dollars to show that you really care about a certain cause or or issue. Um, investing in in an angel investment or a private company is another way. It is riskier um than in a lot of other cases, but there are a lot of people who are very interested in becoming angel investors, but it seems very daunting. And so what I've been trying to do for the last five, six years is demystify a lot of the things that are happening in angel investing so that people can get a better sense of what they could do and maybe think about well, nowadays, even through equity crowdfunding, you can invest for as little as $100 and you don't have to be an accredited investor. Well, most people don't know that. So it's, I think a lot of the problem we have right now is simply an awareness problem. Back to your question, it can really fit into people's um financial portfolio however they want it to. But the problem is in a lot of cases, they don't even know it's an option. So until we start to talk about it more and still until it becomes a little bit more mainstream, I don't know that it's fair to say if it's here or if it's there. I think for everybody it's a little bit different. Um, but it can be something that is much more accessible now than it was 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Emphasizing private companies and especially startups are risky investments. I want to talk about the couple of ways that they're risky risky. And they're also illiquid investments, right? You might not see returns whenever, right? It should be money that you're not gonna have um a crisis over if you lose, right? Um, but it's also long term, like even if it's successful, it could be 10 years before you see an outcome, right? And so it's really um I was gonna say, you know, thinking of like someone in their 40s, right? It's like cool, you maybe long term, you know, investing through retirement funds or or whatever is a great strategy to align with that like long-term nature. Um, but if you're approaching retirement and counting on this money, maybe Angel's like not a great fit with that. Yeah, completely agree. I really liked your emphasis on like fulfilling values. Uh, I know we're gonna get to like the doing good by doing well. What were some of your values when approaching angel investing?

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Well, for me, I was just so surprised when I first started getting involved more involved to find out that women get less than 2% of venture capital funding. We're at like a little 1% this year or something. Yeah, it's it's really bad. And and in the angel world, it has gotten a little bit better. We have some statistics out through the Angel Capital Association, which can show that it is improving. Um, but I personally believe, and again, my views are my own, but uh that I will we will only see a change in how much funding goes to women when we start to see a change in the people writing the checks and having those checks be written by women. And I mean that for everything from angel investing, equity crowdfunding, whatever it is, all the way up to the very higher level venture capital firms. So we will not start to see change until we start to get more women involved. And so that really became my mission for this demystifying. Because I thought, well, it seems like men can get involved. It's the way that society has been like forever. I mean, think about dowries. Think about the fact that women couldn't get credit cards in their own name until 1974. That's nobody's fault. It's just how things were and are or they are they were then, and and still we have these limiting beliefs now. So how do we overcome that? How do we, you know, become better at thinking about where this all fits into our own financial life?

SPEAKER_02 17:17

And when we first chatted, that's why we overwhelmingly connected. And I was like, Marsha, you have to come on, is this notion of uh women using their money to and create the world around them. And it's there's been a lot of structural barriers preventing us from doing that in the past, right? But those are like slowly chipping away. And not that everyone should become an angel investor tomorrow kind of thing, but one of our hopes through Huntress is that the people who it's a fit for otherwise realize that, oh yeah, I'm already an investor. Oh yeah, I am accredited. And like I really do believe in that thing and think it should exist in the world, right? And make it happen, you know? That's right. All right. So getting kind of like to the a little bit of the nitty-gritty kind of how-to here about figuring out how much you can do and then determining check size. Can you walk us through that?

SPEAKER_00 18:23

So the Angel Capital Association has a lot of information and data. So I encourage everybody to go to their website, Angel Capital Association.org. Um, but pretty much uh the general consensus is that you really don't want to use more than about 5% of your investable assets in order to invest in a risky asset class like angel investing. And angel investing is considered an alternative asset. And so an alternative asset is can be a lot of different things. It could be art or wine or um even real estate in some cases is considered an alternative asset. But to your point earlier, like you don't want to be investing money that you're going to need, especially like don't invest your kids' college money um when they're 17. That would be a very bad idea. When you say check sizes, I think there's there's more opportunity today to graduate up in check sizes. You don't have to come out of the gate writing, you know, tens of thousands of dollars worth of checks. You do not have to, you don't have to do that. You can literally start with very, very small dollar amounts. You could even start with, I have an exercise in my workbook that goes with do good while doing well, which is a mock portfolio. So if you don't even want to put start with investing yet, you just want to learn. There is so much information out there on these equity crowdfunding sites, especially places. So the big three that uh has the most market share is WeFunder, Start Engine, and Republic. But there are tons and tons of information you could just simply peruse and learn and not necessarily ever have to invest anything. But then as you get more comfortable, you might see opportunities where you could invest. And it all depends on, you know, I always think of money in buckets. Like so you're gonna need a bucket of money that's gonna be for your living expenses. You have the buckets for retirement, your kids' college, whatever the situation is of what you need. And then when you are at a point where you want to make investments in alternative assets, then that's when you carve out that little bit of money and you think to yourself, what is it that I really care about and where would I want this money to go?

SPEAKER_02 20:41

I've personally made like a $500 investment uh on a platform called Play Money, right? They do require you to be an accredited investor so that that hurdle is still there, can have little $500 investments and feel a part of something, you know.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Yes, yes. And there's a lot of places that people can go to make those smaller investments. I do love Play Money. Uh, they're a great platform. They invest through SPV special purpose vehicles where people can pool their money together, and that's why the check sizes can be lower.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Um, but then there's something called angel networks, right? What are those?

SPEAKER_00 21:19

So an angel network or a group, we call them a lot of times angel groups, are where there's some group of people that come together over a cause. And back in the day, it was basically geography. We met in person once a month, we saw deals, we collaborated, we did diligence together, all that kind of stuff. Nowadays, after COVID, with everything going online, I see a lot more specialization. Like there can be healthcare groups or there's several groups that invest in women led companies. But in a network, you don't necessarily have to invest in in any of the companies. Um But a fund is a different type of thing. So you've got an angel network and angel fund. So a fund, you put in your money, and then that gets invested in multiple companies. And you don't do that. Somebody else does that. The fund manager does that. But with a network, you're the one who's deciding which companies you're gonna you're gonna possibly invest in and which companies you might do diligence on, and then which ones you will actually write a check for.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

I think you said something really important there is that like you don't actually have to make investments. Um some of these angel networks cost money to join. There's usually some level of commitment required, but it's a great way to like go learn, like how other people do due diligence, right? Like see a whole bunch of deals and pitches come through so you can get a taste of what the market is before you like are actually making investments. Um, and that's if you're ready to get a little bit more involved in the process. So in doing all of this, you started to notice patterns about who angel invests. What's the makeup of angel investors today?

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Well, nowadays, because you can get in at lower dollar amounts, I think they're we're seeing a lot more. But um, you know, there's three primary types of companies that an angel would want to invest in because they're scalable, which would be tech, healthcare, and consumer products. So people that tend to know a lot about those spaces also tend to like to invest in them. So, for example, doctors might want to invest in certain types of healthcare because they know that it's so needed because they've experienced the pain of not having, you know, X, Y, Z thing in the marketplace. Younger people are starting to get more interested in it and want to learn at a much earlier age, which I think is incredible. I wish I knew all of this at 22 that I know now. I would have definitely started very small, very early.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

We've mentioned your first book, which is Do Good While Doing Well. And now you've written a second book. What made you write this book that just came out?

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Yeah. So I never thought I would write one book, let alone two. Um, but I just saw this need for demystifying what angel investing was. So I wrote book one. And after it came out, like very quickly after it came out, um, people were like, okay, this is cool. I just don't even know what money I would use. And I, I mean, you're asking me to do something that's at like a 501 level, and I'm still back here at 101. And and so I thought, okay, well, maybe I think we have to have a bigger conversation, especially for women, because we really don't talk about money. Men talk about money much more openly and freely than women do. And for some reason, we we've been taught it's a bat taboo subject, or don't, you know, don't talk about the dinner table and these types of things. But it really is something that women need to be talking about just as much as men because the great wealth transfer is happening. We are going to be inheriting money first horizontally, like uh if spouses die and women inherit their husband's uh estate, or then vertically, where it'll come down to the children and the next generation. So we definitely need to be talking about it more because my biggest fear is that it will sit in cash or sit in some kind of an investment that will not get the innovations out into the world that are needed. And so I think sometimes people think, oh, it's okay. I, you know what, I just I feel safer with my money being here or here. But the actual harm that you're doing is not just to you in not growing that wealth, but you are actually keeping that money from from doing the good out in the world. And I'm not saying go risk everything. Of course, there's lots of lots of tiers. We talked about buckets and where you're gonna put money, but I've talked to women who have literally tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars sitting in a checking account, earning nothing. Okay, there are money market accounts out there, especially right now, with where interest rates are that can earn several percent interest. I mean, at least do that. Like, or I mean, there's so many talk to a financial advisor. I'm not a finance, I'm not a financial advisor, I'm not giving financial advice. But like I cringe when I hear that because I think to myself, oh my gosh, you could actually be earning something on this money, keeping it and checking account, especially that much money. Now you're past like the safety things of the FDIC and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, I could go on and on, but like we need to just really start thinking about and talking about this. And I don't think it's fair to just say to women, oh, go find a financial advisor and let them handle it all. No, I mean, we should know about this, we should talk about it, we should have every single person be able to make their own decisions about what they care about and be able to align their money with their values in whatever way they want to do that. But if we're not talking about it and the and people aren't even invited to the table, well, then what? So that's really why I thought I need to write a book that is going to help people figure out what it is they care about, what they want to do with their money, what are they doing with their money right now? Do they even know what they're doing with it? And then let's figure that out. Because too often, like something could happen that we it happens all the time. There could be a divorce, a death, like somebody loses a job, there's a medical bill. I mean, all kinds of things happen in our life financially all the time. It's not some straight line of like, oh, I'm just gonna put my money in an account and watch it grow. No, that's just not reality.

SPEAKER_02 27:53

Yeah. I the getting involved and like having an intimacy with your money, right? Like, and again, you you in the first book, there's this emphasis on values, right? And we were talking about angel investing, like knowing what's important to you. One, if angel investing fits your values, and two within angel investing, like how do you realize your values? But that's true for like all of your money.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

All of your money.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

Right. And so it's, you know, and I do believe like sitting on cash can feel like you're fulfilling some values. And there is some level of cash that does fulfill values, but there's a point where that's that value is met and you're not serving it anymore if you're sitting on too much. And so the notion of like get your get in the game, right? Um, and that I mean, and that could be boring investing. Like, I don't care if it's just general investments, right? Again, it doesn't have to be angel, but I think they're like noting that there is a cost of not participating in these areas of the market, um, that is like a societal cost, right? Like we've been told that serving women is niche, which is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Ridiculous. Right.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Um, well, and uh taking an active role in their money, right? Like we're uh generationally, like boomer women, like 30, 35 percent participated in household financial decisions and investment decisions. And that's like 70 to 75 percent of millennial women. It's not even like the um like women don't want to, or it's like we have money, we're involved in money, right? And I think it's recognizing the different areas of the market, and if we just sit it out, they're going to continue to be male-dominated. I agree.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

So box step off. Um you bring up a couple of concepts from your book. Um, can you talk with me about money guilt and our like I really loved the phrase shared emotional legacy?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Yeah. So in a lot of cases, we carry around these limiting beliefs, and it can go all the way back as long as history has been around. I mean, think about women were the gatherers, men were the hunters. And that's just how our society has been. And so things that our mothers and grandmothers even couldn't do, we now can, but are we just gonna like all of a sudden be like, oh, we're allowed to do this, and so we're just gonna go dung-ho forward? Well, maybe not, because we still are carrying these limiting beliefs of what we can and can't do. So nobody wakes up in the morning and just says to themselves, hey, I'm gonna have a limiting belief today about money. Like it just doesn't really work like that. But at the same time, waking up and putting on your like limiting. Yeah, I'm gonna put on my limiting belief over here. I'm gonna go out there and play small today. Yeah, I know. Nobody, nobody thinks that. But at the same time, nobody is pounding on your door saying, Hey, guess what? Today's the day that you're gonna go ahead and just make all your financial decisions and you're gonna have all of this boldness that's gonna, it doesn't work like that either. So we're in this kind of what I call cultural crossroads of where we have opportunities today that our mothers and grandmothers didn't have before. And if we don't take them and if we don't start to model the behavior, even if women say, Oh, I'm okay, you know, I'm good, like I'm fine, like I have enough money or whatever the story is. No, we're actually modeling the behavior still for the next generation. And we need to get that to stop because it's our daughters and our granddaughters and niece, grandnieces, and all the things that those are the people that we need to help make sure that they feel bold going out and doing the thing.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Someone had said to me the other day, like, I can't wait till your daughter fixes all of this. I'm like, I am not waiting around for my daughter to fix it. Like I I would love to have to educate her on the problem and challenges because she doesn't experience them. Like we're not we're not waiting another 20 years. We're doing it now.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Um, so how do how do these limiting beliefs show up in our like actions and decisions? Like what have you noticed, or you know, what data do you have and how like how that's showing up for us?

SPEAKER_00 32:42

So I asked a lot of people as I started to write the book, like, hey, do you have any money stories you want to tell me? Well, I was bombarded with people who had money stories that they wanted to tell me. And it was really interesting because a lot of the patterns that were being recognized now, they came from childhood. Let's say that somebody grew up in, you know, poverty. Well, now they were making decisions though, even though they had money, even though they were living in a nice place or whatever the story was, they they were making decisions based on the learnings of their childhood that they didn't ask for, they didn't consciously decide on. It was kind of like inherited. So, how do we start to change that? And I think that is what I really wanted to recognize in the book is showing people that yes, there are patterns from the past. But not only can you like just saying, oh, I'm aware of my pattern now, like that's not magically going to make anything better. It might help a little bit. But I started to, I what I wanted to do was show stories that would allow people to see not only what the pattern was from the past, how it was affecting the person in their life, what they did when they recognized it, how they changed it, and then what the outcome was now. So that they could see something full cycle, so that it really they could say to themselves, oh, okay, well, that makes sense. And I have a lot of exercises in the book that are very simple ways that they can start to figure out what their money stories are, because every one of us has money stories.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

All right. And I you mentioned uh you know, these inherited beliefs, and they're not all necessarily related to your socioeconomic background, right? I think a lot of people assume if you kind of grew up without money that you have these beliefs on like scarcity, um, or there's the different money stories. But it's not just people who grew up without money. There's people who grew up with money that carry these too, right? Um in forget whether it was one of your podcasts again, the angel next door or the book, um, where it's this notion of like a sense of ownership over your money, right? Because if you grew up without it, you might not have been shown how to to feel positive about it or take ownership over it. And if you grew up with it, you might feel like maybe you didn't deserve it or didn't earn it, or you're fulfilling your parents' values and not your own, right? And so it's like, or in a partnership, we see people all the time where um, you know, it's not necessarily he makes all the money. There could be people who are both um earners in a household, but feeling like not a sense of ownership over the household assets because it's like shared assets, right? And so there's this it's like the actions are showing up and like reflecting that like sense of ownership over your money. Yeah. Um, how do you stop playing small?

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Well, I think in a lot of cases, we need to recognize that we're doing it in the first place. So, you know, in a lot of cases, playing small, it it doesn't show up as like, hey, I'm playing small right now, and you can recognize it. Some cases it's you're being overly polite or you're maybe just staying quiet because you just don't want to rock the boat. And, you know, you just want everybody to be happy. And, you know, in a lot of cases, that is playing small. If you're not standing up for yourself, if you're not, you know, talking about how you can um maybe even get a bigger uh amount of money on a contract or get a bigger job or ask for a raise. These are all ways that we are playing small when we're not doing those things, but we don't even realize it. I had people who have read the book and then told me that they went to submit a um an you know contract or you know proposal to a potential client, they actually doubled the price that what they were going to say that it was gonna cost, and they got it.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

Yeah. All right. And then the last idea, and I loved this one. I think this is the concept of the whole bucks, it's like a nice little bow tie is what is financial fluidity?

SPEAKER_00 37:20

So when we were talking earlier about how, you know, things happen in life. It could be something big like a divorce or medical bill or something like that, or it could just be, you know, you're just moving, buying a new house, or or something little like you just need some new clothes for a new job or whatever. Um nothing is gonna just go up in a straight line or necessarily down in a straight line. There's a lot of ebbs and flows in life. And I think we get more stressed out. We kind of can actually uh become more anxious around money if we are not prepared for the things that could potentially happen. So to me, financial fluidity is being able to kind of ebb and flow with what's happening without panicking. And so that might mean having an emergency fund or thinking about like, if this did happen, what would I do? If you think about that now without the thing actually happening, you could at least start to say, what could I do? instead of thinking it would be the end of the world. And so financial fluidity lets people think about, well, maybe in some seasons of life I'm gonna have a little bit more money, but then I might want to do some things and I might spend some of that money, and then it might go down a little bit, and that's okay. It doesn't, it nothing has to be a straight line up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

I liked your little uh one of the stories from I think I think it was early on, when you're like, I'm an optimist, but then I met my partner and he's a really big optimist. And so like you were going through, I believe it was something at work, and you were like, you know, scenario planning every bad thing that could happen. But then he actually like took you down the like, okay, but really is the worst that could happen. Right. Right. And realizing it's like, oh, I can handle the worst.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

That's right. Right.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

Gives you like such a foundation to like do the rest. Right. It's like I can, and I feel like that's so illustrated that concept. It's like I've had those conversations. Who among us hasn't? Right. Um, and it's the like the spiraling, but it's like, no, actually get to the find the pit and then you'll just like leap right out of it.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

That's right. Because my husband will always just say, Well, what what's the worst that could happen? And I'd be like, There's a horrible thing, horrible things could happen. And he's like, Okay, let's go through them. And I'd be like, Okay, I'm panicking here. All right, and you are destroying my perfectly good panic. Right. But um, yeah, that's how one panicker to another. Yeah. And then he'd be so calm and I'd be like, Okay, you're kind of annoying me right now, but I see your point. You know it's like it's like when you say you appreciate them later. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, once I'm done with my 10-minute panic here, then I'll talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

That's um I and tying back to angel investing specifically. I think like understanding that it's a ride. And that's why statements like, hey, make sure you can lose all your money is like so you're not going through the panic cycles of what happened.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

It's like there are ups, the chips will be down at some point in the like company cycle, right? Um, doesn't mean it's the end. And it's like being able to like stomach the ride a whole lot easier if you have this financial fluidity. All right. Last two questions. What's one piece of advice you have for all the huntresses out there?

SPEAKER_00 41:06

Get in the game of investing, whether whatever that means to you. Um, don't sit on the sidelines. We have a lot of generational wealth to build, and we have some catching up to do. And I think if you get in the game, that is really gonna be the best way to get started. And what does rich mean to you? So I talk a lot in the book on apologetic wealth about the types of wealth. And so I I really don't particularly like the word rich when it comes to money. Okay. I actually think rich should be much more than that. Rich is like health wealth, relationship wealth, time wealth. All of this is richness. And so I think if we start to look at that a little bit differently, that will help us align our money and our values because money at the end of the day, it's simply a tool for us to use to align with our own values.

SPEAKER_02 42:09

Amazing. Thanks for joining us, Marsha. Thanks for having me. If you enjoyed this episode of Talk Rich to Me, you'll love the Huntress Wealth app, where you can get more comfortable with money, make a financial plan, and make your money move. Sign up now at Huntresswealth.com.