the bossbabe podcast - 125. How to Create Wealth and Make Your Money Work for You with Investing Queen, Kiana Danial

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

Do you want to become a master at managing your money? We’re joined by Kiana Danial, the Invest Diva. Kiana is an award-winning, internationally recognized personal investing and wealth management expert, and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, TIME Magazine and more. Her mission is to educate women on how to build and grow investment portfolios so they can generate wealth and take ownership of their finances.  Tune in as Kiana reveals how she went from humble beginnings in Iran, to an electrical engineering student and TV guest star in Japan, to the inspirational life she leads in the US today. We’re also diving deep into what it’s like to pave the way for women in the masculine-dominated field of finance, and why it’s important for us to get a grasp of our cash.  If you’re interested in investing but need help understanding the ins and outs, Kiana will leave you in the know and ready to go. After this episode, you’ll feel more confident with taking control of your finances and making investments that build your future regardless of your financial situation.  Use code BOSSBABE to get 20% off on SOUL CBD products https://mysoulcbd.com/⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ Follow: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty, @daniellecanty Kiana Danial, @investdiva

The first and foremost is that you need to understand your financial situation and you need to invest with intention. You got to stop trading and you got to start investing and that's the most important component is understand your risk tolerance. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Danielle Canty, president and co-founder of Boss Babe and your host for this episode. Now, when it comes to money, we all know that this is quite

a sensitive subject for one reason or another, especially when it comes to making money for women. Now, I don't know about you, but I feel women are even more sensitive and cautious when it comes to talking about money and finances. I know that was certainly my past. Actually, I would love you to message me whether you agree with that statement or not. Just DM me at danielacanti to share your thoughts because I'm super, super curious. But my previous believings were that, you know, if you discussed money as a woman, it was never quite received the same way as if you discussed it as a man. So you all know that our mission at Boss Babe is to help women create wealth, financial

freedom and impact doing what they love by helping them either start a business and scale it to six figures and beyond, or move up their career ladder in a way that they deem supports them in this mission. We don't want to just normalize women generating wealth. We want to empower women. And that's why I'm so excited for today's guest, Kiana Danielle. Now, Kiana Danielle is an award-winning, internationally recognized personal investing and wealth management expert. She's the founder and CEO of Investiva, and her mission is to empower and educate women to take control of their financial future by actually investing in stocks and other online assets. Now, Kiana's work in the Wall

Street Journal, Time Magazine, Forbes, Nasdaq and so much more she has built up a following has become a speaker, executive coach and an accomplished order. Now what's really interesting about Kiana's story is contrary to a lot of belief she actually did not have a strong background in finances. In her own words she was actually completely illiterate about the subject. So you're really going to love hearing how that changed for her and what she learned along the way and how she turned that around. So in this episode, you are going to hear that no matter your financial situation right now, you can start taking more control over your finances and learning actually

how to build wealth. So make sure you tune in and have a notepad and pen ready. And as always, take a screenshot and share your biggest takeaways on Insta stories, tagging me at Danielle Canty and tagging at bossbabe.inc. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself, confidently stepping outside her a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Kiana, welcome to the Boss Babe podcast. I am so excited to have you on here and to be talking all

about things, finances and money today. I'm super honored to be on your podcast. Now, as I shared in the introduction, you teach women to build wealth, how to invest and how to really take control of their financial future. So I'd love for you to share your journey of learning how to do this and how you've ended up now in this position. Absolutely. So the interesting thing is that yes, I do teach women how to take control of their financial future and how to make their money work for them. But I did not come from a financial background. Actually, I was completely far from it.

I was born and raised in Iran to a Jewish family during the Middle Eastern War between Iran and Iraq. And my dad, he was an engineer. He had a very successful construction company before the revolution in Iran. And the government took over all of my dad's assets, they froze his bank accounts, they were actually going to kill him. But he got lucky because the guy who was about to sign his execution turned out to be his buddy from military days. But they took all of his money and banned him from leaving the country. So I actually grew up with almost nothing. So it's not like I grew up with money, or my parents taught me about money or anything like that. And

when I grew up, I decided to follow my dad's footsteps and become an engineer, even though I realized then that I'm not that advanced in math, I don't want to say that I'm I suck at math, because I kind of did. But I studied electrical engineering, and I was not really good at it. But one thing that stood out to me was that I was the only girl in my class. And it always felt like an outsider was the only foreigner, was the only girl. Everybody was speaking Japanese. I had to study in Japanese. I didn't get what was going on. And so that is my background.

I don't actually have a financial background. But the interesting thing that got me interested in money was the 2008 recession. And I was so completely illiterate when it came to finance, I didn't even know what a recession means, right. But all I could hear was that, you know, the US dollar is getting cheaper versus the Japanese yen. Now that I understood because I was living in Japan and going from Iran to Japan, I always understood the value of currency and the fluctuations because every time I went back to Iran, I had to exchange my Japanese yen to the Iranian real and then my family was in the US. So I knew like my family had to send money to my brother, they had to exchange it if the US dollar was cheaper, like they would have got a better

deal. So that was I had an understanding about currency exchange. And I heard during the 2008 recession, that the Japanese yen is getting stronger, and the US dollar is getting cheaper. And I'm like, wow, that's interesting. So if I ever want to go to the US, then maybe I should exchange my Japanese yen to the US dollar now and get more US dollar. I was like, maybe I should buy US dollar now that is cheap. It's like on sale. I was like, okay, that's cool. All right, let me go to the ATM and exchange some of a Japanese. I didn't do all of it. By the way, by this time, I actually did have a Japanese TV show. I learned Japanese, right? So I was on a Japanese TV show. So I was getting paid a little bit on that. So I had some savings in the bank. And it was like, okay, so maybe I should start like just exchanging a little

bit of my money into US dollar and see what happens. And I went to the ATM, I exchanged it the next day, the US dollar got even cheaper. I'm like, oh my God, I should have waited. That hindsight. I know, I was like, oh man. All right, okay, I'm gonna exchange it a little bit more today. The next day it got even cheaper. I'm like, damn it. Right, so I'm like, what can I do?

Oh, I wish, like I can't go to the ATM every day. Like maybe I can just, I don't know. Like again, now I have, I was in my engineering mindset. I was like, maybe I should create a program, like code or something and tell the bank to buy it at this level. And I was just talking about it out of nowhere with my Japanese host family mom. It's just like, yeah, so you're basically want to trade. I'm like, what? She's like, you can go to a broker and you can tell the broker to exchange your money at the price level that you want it.

I'm like, I don't know. I don't understand what you're saying. But she's like, okay, don't worry want it. I'm like, I don't know. I don't understand what you're saying. But she's like, Okay, don't worry about let me do it for you. So she opened up an account for me at a brokerage account in Japan. And I funded the account with $10,000 worth of Japanese yen. And we said, and we told the broker to buy US dollar when it reached, I think the price was like 96. So when the US dollar was 96 yen. And so we did that. Now I know that's called shorting the dollar yen pair. That's the fancy name of it. What happened is that within a month, the markets crashed and I doubled my money with that one trade. And I'm like, my mind was blown. Like what? Like a college kid,

like I made 10,000 bucks in a month. At this point, how old were you at this point? So I was getting my master's, I was 23, I guess. And you were on a TV show. Yeah, that was my glorious days. Yeah, I was in a Japanese TV show. It was like, it was a show, it was called Generation Y. I think now the new generation is called gen z we were apparently gen y and we a group of foreigners would sit around and discuss japan's social and political issues in japanese so that was the show and it was actually pretty successful so i'm really fine it was like kind of like the view in the u. like people just get together and talk. But at this point, nothing to do with banking or finances. So this was your first taste of like, okay, I'm like playing around here. And at this point, were you just like

having a little bit of fun? Like, how did you see this? Did you start thinking, oh, I could do a career out of this? Or were you just like, oh, this is a good way to, you know, have a little bit of a side income. No, I was shocked. I was like, what just happened? I made $10,000 doing nothing. When the world's biggest banks are going bankrupt, I made money. So I was just blown away about this new world of finance. So yes, it piqued my interest. And then I also was hearing all these things that all the governments are printing money. So the money is going to get devalued. If you're not investing, then inflation is going to kill. So I was interested. I was asking questions that were

hearing these things. And I was like, okay, I want to invest. But of course, because I didn't have the background, I didn't have the confidence to do it on my own. And the first trade, I didn't do it. It wasn't me. It was somebody else who did it for me. So I obviously it didn't make me feel confident about myself. But it showed me the importance of investing. And I was like, Okay, I want to invest, but I don't know how to do it. I suck at math. So I did the next best thing that any logical person would do. I was like, I'm going to hire a money manager, I'm going to get somebody else to manage my money for me, it's better than just sitting in the bank, because sitting in the bank right now, when the Federal Reserve and central banks are printing money, that means just my money, if it sits in the bank, the value of it is going to go lower. And I thought the money manager, the financial advisor is going to have my best interest in mind is their job, right? It's their

freaking job. So that's what I did. But unfortunately, as it turned out, the financial advisor was not the best way to go. So as I went to that person, I handed them a bunch of money. And I had this contract that I had to give them money like on a monthly basis. At this point, I had started working. So I was making money. I had agreed to give them or fund their account a portion of my salary every month. And so I started researching a little bit more about what money managers are and how they do. And I learned that money managers actually invest your money in things that make them more money, not necessarily you. They had their best interest in mind. They invested my money in things that make the money through commissions. And on top of that, they were taking a commission of what little money that I did make too. And really one of the lows really that I learned was that the mutual funds and the

indexes and the money managers funds actually underperformed the market average by quite a lot by 86%. Now market average, what is market average? That means like if you invest your money in anything like a market average is around 10 to 12% per year, they underperformed that, which means my money was barely growing. And on top of that, they were taking a commission out and my money was locked in their fund. It was a 25 year fund. And if I wanted to take my money out, I would have to pay a 75% penalty, which was, oh my God, I was like, okay, so you're underperforming the market. Then like years later, I got fired from my job, I needed the money to pay rent, but I was not able to touch the money in that fund.

And it was locked up. And I had to pay a penalty. And I'm like, that is just absurd. So I'm like, this is there must be a better way to do these things. And I really just wanted to, I mean, the first experience kind of opened my eyes about that this is possible. So I was like, okay, you know what, I'm going to take things into my own hands. And that's when I became obsessed. I was like, I'm going to surround it myself. I studied for sort of a financial planning degree, the CFP, charted market technician, CMT, CFA, all these C-level, ABC, DFGE things that they make on Wall Street to make themselves sound smart. And I was going through and oh my god, this is actually not as hard as I

thought. This is actually pretty easy. And I was shocked that people that they don't teach this at high school. Like, why don't people know about the basics of personal finance? It's personal finance. So why are you handing your personal finance to somebody else? Money is like one of the closest things to us as people, as a society. It's what makes the world go round. And yet it is so demonized and people are so scared of talking about it and they ignore it. And then they just give it away to somebody else to manage it for them.

That made me really sick to my stomach. And the rest, I guess, is history. I was like, I was, I decided to come to Wall Street and work over there. There's, again, a little bit more story to that as to how I felt. I know. I love how you're like, the rest is history. Well, not really because I know that you then you move from Japan to New York because you're like right I'm gonna have a career on Wall Street is that correct yeah at this point I was like oh my god Wall Street is

like such a dream come true if I just go and walk on Wall Street it was when people go to Disneyland that was the first time I went on Wall Street like Oh my God, this is the place I've been hearing about all my life. I was so excited. I came to New York. I got a job actually within two weeks of coming to the US on Wall Street. So I was again, super excited. I was on cloud nine, just to find out about all the shady stuff that goes down there. So again, I was the only girl and in my team and I was not taken seriously and they wanted to give me like PR jobs and this kind of done that kind of like they were not, it was bad. So that's a job that I actually eventually got fired from. I think you should share the story, but I actually do think this is probably that unfortunately a lot of women have encountered because my understanding is the reason you got

fired is because you actually went to your boss with ways that they could be better and change things for the better and they didn't like those ideas. Is that right? So they didn't tell me exactly that's the reason why because that would look really bad on them. Yes but really between the lines we can do that here. Right so what happened is I had a direct boss and then I had a boss of my direct boss. So I went and I was coming with all these ideas like, oh my God, like, first of all, why are there not many women? How about we get more women? How about like, why are we?

So I was working for a broker and that broker actually got finally after I left. That is interesting. They got penalized by the SEC, and they are not allowed to operate in the US anymore. But they still exist. So I'm not going to name their name. However, I could see that they make money when the investors and the traders on their platform lose money. And I was like, well, aren't you like demotivating people from investing? Well, isn't it better if you make them aware that this is happening? Isn't it better if they actually make more money? Like I was kind of coming and hinting on the things that I was seeing, and they did not like it.

And yeah, they told me the reason they wrote on the thing that I got fired was that I apparently got drunk on at work, which is funny, because I don't drink. And so that's the reason they took me. Oh my goodness. I got fired, but yeah. You get lucky at Sweet Bath. Yeah, my direct boss did forward me, I really wanted to become an analyst and share the real trading methods

that I was learning and seeing in the backend with their customers. And the email that he sent to my direct boss, and my direct boss shared with me was Kiana is not an analyst, and she never will be. Now, this story actually does have a very happy ending that I'm going to jump on before we get into the next rest of the story. Years later, after I founded Investiva, after I wrote a book on the very trading that got me to where I am today, I was making a presentation at Money Show in New York City. And that boss who said that Kiana is not an analyst and she never will be was in the audience listening to me and my strategies for trading. So that was just,

that gave me so much satisfaction. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things, so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and

making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash boss babe i bet so let's just pick up the story where like you say you're working on wall street had these could see that really in your opinion it wasn't like ethically like you weren't really happy with how things were being done made some suggestions ended up getting fired what did you do then because now like i said i know how you help women and how you teach wealth,

but what did that piece of that journey look like? How did you decide actually, you know what, this is what I'm going to go on to? It set me on fire. So it really did. Cause it was like a slap in the face. I thought I was doing the right thing. Cause you know, as kids, you're always told to do the right thing and stand up for your beliefs and ideas. And it didn't work out for me. And it got me really set me on fire. And that is when I decided to found Investiva. And the goal was exactly this, how to help women become more financially literate and how to get them into trading and help them go and beat the Wall Street boys at their own game. So that's written in my first book on the cover of my first book that came out a year after I got

fired, how to beat the Wall Street boys at their own game. And that's what I did. I poured all of my anger because it was like a slap in the face. You get fired and when one thing goes wrong in life, you know how everything else falls apart wrong in life, you know, how everything else falls apart. My boyfriend broke up with me, I was an emotional mess. And the one thing that I feel like has always helped me moving through my life and turning something negative into positive is I pour that anger and emotions and like, just all that tension into something new. And that is my way of moving on. Like every time I get cheated on, or if I get broken up with, or if something like that happens, I just pour that anger into something new and creating something new. So

that's what I did. I poured that into my book. I didn't have a publisher. Obviously, nobody believed in me. So I started just making random videos on YouTube. And obviously, my family was laughing at me. They were like, What are you doing? Just go get another job. I actually did get offered two jobs at a two Japanese banks on Wall Street because I'm bilingual. So and now I already had a Wall Street year on my resume under my belt. So I actually got offered by Mitsubishi UFJ and Mizuho on Wall Street to work for them. But at this point, I was like, by the time I got those offers, I was already invested and like, become super passionate about this new vision and mission that I was on, that I decided to turn those down. That was the best decision that I ever made. Cause even though it took me a good five years to really become profitable and make money, even,

I mean, writing a book doesn't really make you money, but it gave me the credibility at least, but I'm so happy. First of all, that I got fired. I'm so happy that I turned those jobs down. And now the mission and the movement that that I mean, I see how many women's lives have changed because they see somebody and they're like, Oh my god, I could be that I could do it. She can do it. I can do it too. And that's what it is. Majority of times, the reason why a lot of people don't get into investing is because they've not seen an example of somebody else who's just normal or random, making it happen. And when they see it, it becomes possible for them. And now in our community, when I see our, we call them invest divas, you know, reporting there, again, we call

it hashtag diva wins in our community. It just, it's the most rewarding thing. And yeah, so here we are. I love that. And I think that's like a beautiful segue into let's talk about that like we love doing the Boss Babe podcast because we get the details and I just really want to lift the lid on investing because like you said it can feel so intimidating to so many people they have not met other people that have invested wisely or even been able to have these conversations sometimes you can start a conversation and go hang on a minute I have no idea what they're even talking about at this point but I don't want to ask because I'm going to look stupid. And I think this is just a really, really great conversation for us to be having. So right from the beginning,

I want to just ask, like, how do people get started in investing? Let's start there. Right. So I have some steps that I want everybody to take. Because I mean, honestly, anyone right now, things have become a lot easier to just get started I mean, honestly, anyone right now, things have become a lot easier to just get started investing, you can just download an app. It's called Robin Hood. If you're in the US, it's free, you can get started investing started investing right away. And there's a lot of information, there's a lot of click base, there's a lot of buzzwords. And so that's great. I see a lot of people starting investing but there are some steps that i want you to take before you actually jump the gun and the first and foremost is that you need to understand

your financial situation and you need to invest with intention you should not invest just because you heard somebody said oh buy this stock because it's dropped during COVID-19. And I know airline stocks, everybody's, oh my God, let's go buy airline stocks. And yeah, I mean, airline stocks could be great for some people, but it may not be great for some other people. And we have seen this over and over again

because when you're not investing with intention and you don't know where you're going and why you're investing in this specific asset and you haven't set your time horizon and how long you're going to stay in it, you can get nervous very, very fast. And so the first step that you need to take is understand your financial situation and understand that the most important component is understand your risk tolerance. What is your risk tolerance? There are two components to your risk tolerance, because when we talk about risk tolerance, a lot of people are like, oh, okay, yeah, no, I can take a risk.

Well, that's your willingness to take a risk. And that's your emotional psychology. Okay, I can take a risk. Or, oh, no, no, no, I'm very conservative. That's your willingness. And that's good. You have to understand how much you personally are willing to take a risk, because that also determines what you're going to invest and how much you're going to invest. I give you a personal example. Actually, when I first started trading, I lost $15,000 because I was just following. So at one point, I got a side gig. And I started reporting on the financial markets from the New York Stock Exchange. And I was surrounded by CNBC and MSNBC and all these reporters and the best investors who are on the floor talking things and sounding smart. And I was like, okay, I'm just going to follow everybody, right? So I started following everyone. And I blew up that account. I lost my entire savings, actually. And I was so upset and disappointed in myself. I mean, how could I lose all of my money when I was just listening to what other people who were making millions were doing? And after that, I was actually reached out by a

man named Guy Spire. He works closely with Warren Buffett. He reached out to me on LinkedIn after seeing one of my videos. And he's like, Hey, Kiana, I know you have a lot of potential, but you're doing this all wrong. And I was like, what do you mean? I'm just doing what everybody else is doing. And he's like, he said something that changed my life forever. And he said, you got to stop trading. You got to start investing. And I was like, wait, isn't trading and investing the same thing? And the answer is that absolutely not. Because what I was doing when I lost a $15,000 account was I was trading, I was trying to make a quick profit, which is always very high risk. And it's evidently what I did. In Japan, I got lucky I made money. Now I know that that was just pure luck. And I do not recommend anyone to do

what I did. Because I was a success story then. But then doing the same thing later, I blew up my account, which is normally what happens. So trading versus investing, trading as high risk is short term is get rich quick. And if you want to do it properly, you actually require a ton of money to start. Otherwise, you're going to get kicked out of the game very, very fast. Plus, the most important thing of all is that trading is an all-day job. So if you don't want this to be your job, you probably don't want to be trading. If you have another job, you don't want to be trading. So for example, I'm an entrepreneur first and I'm an investor second.

Investing is lower risk. You can determine your risk that you want to take. It is longer term. It's about building wealth and it can start small. You can start with literally $500 and it requires maximum one hour per week. Okay, so I hope you enjoyed this episode so far. Please stay tuned as we share a bit of info about who sponsored this episode. This episode is brought to you by Sol CBD. Now I want to share a little bit about my favorite CBD line because if you've been following

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So I took my friend Guy's advice. I started a new account with $500, started making my own investments, ignored all the hype and the trends and what other people on Wall Street was telling me to do. And in three years, I actually got pregnant with my daughter, Jasmine, and we were ready to buy a house. And we were $50,000 short. And that account that I had sorted with $500 had grown to $53,000 actually. So I was able to help with the down payment of our house. So it was our dream house back then. And yeah, that was great. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. So you turned $500 into $53,000 via investing. Yeah. I love that. And this is going to be my next question, right? Because I know that some women will be listening going, oh my goodness, I need to do this. I want to get

on this. But there'll be some women going, I don't have any money to invest. But you've just said that you start with $500. Yeah. I mean, of course, if you are putting more money in it, returns are going to be greater. But what you can do is start small, and then you add on to your account every month. So let's say instead of spending money on your Starbucks coffee every month, if you accumulate it every month, $20 $100. If you add it, it's like tax, you never see it, you can just make your peace with it that this is going to your investment account and eventually it will grow. Like one of the best stories that I love, I heard this from Tony Robbins,

that he was sitting in a cab and he was talking to the cab driver and the cab driver was worth a million dollars because he started just contributing to his investment account like 25 years ago and it reached $1 million. And that's the power of compound interest and the power of investing. It's making your money work for you. So that's

why I don't like trading, because trading isn't working for that money. But investing is the side thing is making your money work for you on the side. And that's so powerful, because if you know that it's just there, and I mean, I don't just there, I'm a little bit more active with it. I dedicate, as I said, one hour per week to my four investment accounts that I manage. I invest in my investment account, my husband's, my dad's and my sister's. And I do that every Tuesday at 10am. That's when I go live for my students too. I just show them what I'm doing with my account and they can take whatever they want from what I'm doing and that's it I love this and I want to break this down even more so what are the risks so obviously you shared earlier with regards to

trading and you losing money there but you'd also gain money previously and that being very short term now we're talking investing now we understand the difference but what are the other risks to investing particularly in like you know we're recording investing, now we understand the difference. But what are the other risks to investing, particularly in like, you know, we're recording this, LA has gone into another shutdown due to COVID-19. Like how do people understand what the risks are? How, what are the percentages? What are the, you know, let's just like dive into that a little bit. Okay, let's get into it. So basically the risk tolerance, we were actually talking about this, and I think I kind of got carried away. After you look at your financial situation, and I have this risk management questionnaire, you basically have

to answer a number of questions about what you're making right now, how much you're spending on things, what are your necessary spendings, what are the things that basically just look at what you have, because some people don't even know where they stand on that realm, right? So you have complete understanding of your debts, what you owe, how much you're making, how much you're spending. That's the first step. And then you answer these ratios. Again, you don't have to be math whiz. It's just like you literally say, this is how much I make, this is how much I spent. Bam. You have like, okay, this is your net worth. This is your, this ratio, housing ratio. And you put them together in this question.

We answer the questions and depending on your age, depending on where you are financially, you get into either low risk, medium risk, or high risk. And that is the ability to take a risk. Then we also talked about the willingness to take a risk. So you put them together, and then you have your unique risk tolerance that is different than anybody else. And that's the reason why I always say that investing is not a one size fits all, right? Because you have to understand what your willingness is. Are you between the ages 20 to 35, 40, you are more, people normally have more risk appetite while they may have lower ability to take a risk. Between 35 to 50, 60, you are in growth oriented, maybe medium risk appetite.

Above 60, you're in retirement age. So you probably don't want to take as much risk anymore. Meanwhile, you have more ability to spend money and take a risk. So this kind of gives you a balance. This gives you exactly where you stand today. And then the next step is to have your investment policy statement, which is setting the intention with your portfolio. So sometimes we're like, oh, well, I have this intention, that intention, then have two different portfolios that you treat them exactly opposite or differently. So one, if you want to like get on the ride, because some guys or even some women, they enjoy the roller coaster. And I used to enjoy it too. I don't anymore at all. I after I became a mom,

my risk tolerance completely changed. When I was single, I was like, oh, let's do this, let's do that. Now I'm a different person. Sleep is so important for me. I don't want to wake up in the morning and see my account is just tanking up and get panicked about it. I don't look at my account throughout the week. And I tell my students, they don't believe me. They ask me questions throughout the week. I'm like, I'm not going to look at the markets throughout the week. Like that's just not my style. But some people are so you can have different portfolios and you can create the investment strategies based on that. I love that. And then really deciding where you want to take it. I like the idea of breaking them

up as well. Like you can have that like play fund versus like the one that you're going to be saving them for long periods. Because my understanding as well is that, you know, when we talk about risk tolerances, et cetera, and we talk about should I buy and should I go in at this point, my understanding is that length in the market is also really favorable. So like you said, that cab driver who invested really young, like the earlier you get in with that little bit and start growing that, longevity in the market wins is what I hear a lot of people say. Yeah, absolutely. The saying is actually time in the market is better than timing the market. So if you spend enough time in the market, it's better than that. But then again,

I mean, sometimes so how I do it, I don't just set let my investments just sit on my bank account for 25 years, there are ways to change it based on where you want to go. And there are investments. So for example, for my dad, I kind of let it sit there for majority of things. And I invest heavily in dividend stocks, dividend paying stocks for him because he doesn't care about what he like, he doesn't have 20, he's 80. He doesn't have like 20, 30 years to wait for a growth stock or a tech stock to go up. He is more interested in the income that comes from dividend paying stocks. And of course, there is still risk in there, like some dividend paying stocks cut their

dividend payments like Boeing did because of everything that is going on. But if you, you know, have a that is the reason why, again, your risk tolerance comes in handy, because then you know, where your next, like how much of it you can take. So if it's not serving you anymore, you can cut it short, right? So for example, for myself right now, I'm not interested even in paying stocks because majority of them don't really make for growth stocks. I'm interested in things that can make me money in a year or three years and I can take

profit and then jump on to the next growth stock. So we share that strategy as well. So there's so many different strategies you can take phase of your life you're at and based on what your risk tolerance is. Love that. And what are some common mistakes that you see people making, or like mistakes to look out for specifically, like, oh, always make sure you do this, don't do that. The biggest, absolute biggest mistake is checking your account every single day if you're an investor. So markets are not about math, first of all. They're about psychology. And the crowd is looking at the markets and getting hyped

up when the media says something and they get FOMO again when media says something. We saw the perfect example in this back in 2017 when Bitcoin became a thing. Do you remember Bitcoin? So I wrote a book, Cryptocurrency Investing for Dummies, in 2018 after the Bitcoin crash. And it's because I was so frustrated seeing people just in 2016 when Bitcoin was just going up from $3,000 to $6,000 to $8,000 and everybody, like my friends who had never ever shown any interest in investing, they're like, maybe I should get some Bitcoin. I'm like, do you even know what Bitcoin is? No, no, no, but I've heard of it. Like, oh my God. So that's exactly what happened. The bubble happened. Everybody and their grandmother and their nephews and nieces, my nephew, my eight-year-old

nephew was asking me about Bitcoin and they were getting on it. And of course what happened, there was this FOMO and hype and created a bubble which had no choice but to burst. So the first advice is do not fall for clickbaits. And that again, comes with your discipline. Because I sometimes still fall for clickbaits, because you can't help it. Like I sometimes see it and I'm like, Oh, this is the one stock that you it's the next Amazon, it's the next Apple. And oh my god, was it? Oh, let me see. And you know what? They may be right, but you have to understand where you want to go. You have to have the intention with your investment strategy before you go and buy what that person said. I actually give you an

example. One of my students, Misty, so she's a yoga instructor and she's actually battling Lyme disease. And she has apparently Lyme disease is not covered by majority of insurances, she has been having to pay for her medical expenses out of pocket for years. And when her mom passed away, she was left with an inheritance. And she really wanted to put that money into work for her so that she can have an additional stream of income for her medical expenses. What happened is that she heard about the stock from like some guy i think it was her brother and it's like oh yeah so this stock is like this is the great next best thing and she put all of that hundred thousand dollars into that one stock and that one stock got delisted from stock exchange so she lost all of that money and then that's when she came to me she's like oh my

god this was happening like this is heartbreaking okay let me show you the strategy let me show you how you can do this on your own and And this time she started with much smaller amount because she didn't have the inheritance anymore. And she was able to, she came on to our investment group and she said that she was able to pay off her medical expenses. And that's because this time she was doing it with intention because she was not putting all of her eggs in one basket. Actually, this brings us to the next common mistake, putting all of your eggs in one basket.

I mean, it's common sense, I know, but sometimes it's very tempting when you hear something that someone talks about with so much confidence. Bitcoin is the next airline, cruise lines, like just go to. So you get tempted. And sometimes I do too. And then I have to like kind of meditate and then step back and hey, wait, hold on go to. So you get tempted. And sometimes I do too. And then I have to like kind of meditate and then step back. Hey, wait, hold on a minute. Hold on. Let me see how much of my portfolio I want to dedicate to this thing.

And when? What price? Because normally when you're hearing about a specific asset is when its price has skyrocketed. Everybody's super excited about it. It's like Bitcoin has $20,000. And it's soon about to crash. So normally, what I do is I set something that's called a buy limit order, which is, again, something that I did when I first invested in 2008. I didn't know what I did. But I told my broker to exchange my US dollar to Japanese yen at that specific price that I had in mind. And these prices are not random, you just don't like

pull it out. Okay, I want to buy Apple at like 100. There is actually a psychology behind it. And that's what I actually teach at Investiva how to confirm or how to identify key psychological price levels in any market because markets are psychological and history is bound to repeat itself over and over again because people make the same mistakes all the time. So there are price levels that have been created where the markets, every time it goes back up, it goes down to one of those psychological levels. So that's what I teach. I teach you how to set or how to identify the optimal buying price for the assets that you're interested in.

I love that. I'm going to make sure you get to share all your details after this call as well. But I want to ask you, outside of, you know, I know you have Investivas, but outside of that, where should people read the information on this? Because I know what we're saying is like, you know I know you have investivas but outside of that where should people read the information on this because I know what we're saying is like you know by the time sometimes articles get released like you know thousands millions of people have read them like how do people like start educating themselves and start reading about okay maybe I should invest in these pieces or these companies like where is it that a good source is I know we never just kind of read one thing and take that as gospel,

but where are the good sources of information if people are starting to feel interested in this and want to do a little bit more research? Like what are some good publications to read? Right. So if you're trying to do it on your own, what I recommend is first of all, starting to invest in things that you're interested in, right? So if you're interested in makeup, and you know everything about this specific makeup company that is public, then go and read about that company, read about their management. So actually, I prefer not to look for investment education on investment websites, I sometimes do. But that actually might be a little bit higher level. And it's not necessary. Because if you know a company really, really well, if you know that

they're like CEO is awesome and like their management is great, you had a great customer support experience with them. You believe in their products, see these things because actually investing, as I said, it's not about math is it's about common sense. And if you know where to shop and when to shop, if you love shopping at Black Friday and at the biggest sale days in the week, you probably are going to make a good investor because you're going to look for sales. So I would recommend, first of all, kind of creating a list of the companies that you personally use and you're interested in and read as much as you can about those companies. One thing that I do, I don't go to a specific publication most of the times.

I just type in that company's name on Google search. And sometimes I type in that company name stock. So let's say if you're interested in Apple stock, I just type in Apple stock just to see what's going on with their company. Read a bunch of different reviews. Normally, we have people who this is what I call the bulls, or say, bears say people who are like, who are fans of that company, they say all the good things about and then you want to read some negative points to get an idea about what's happening. And I normally don't depend on one specific publication. So I can share with you the names of the companies.

If I want to, if I'm analyzing a specific asset, I normally have about 10 tabs open, just comparing some of the things. I look at Morningstar, Yahoo Finance. I look at Motley Fool is actually kind of cool. I'm starting to like them a lot. They break it down in an easier vocabulary compared to a Wall Street Journal or CN app that you can use to actually invest. They have a newsletter too that breaks things down in a digestible vocabulary that is not too, you know, tech babble and like talking about finance words that you don't know.

So Robinhood, what else? Yeah. And look around and start with what you know. That is probably the best way to go. I love that. That's great advice. And then for some people, I know that some people listening are like, oh, okay, I'm ready to learn about this more, educate myself. And I want to invest, but I also don't have the time and I want to go to someone to help me invest. What are some of the credentials that people should be looking at if they're planning on

not doing it themselves? Because your whole journey has been like, okay, there's some people who are going to invest really wisely for you. And then some that might have, you know, I don't want to say it, but maybe have ulterior motives, maybe, I don't know. But like, what is some like, qualifications and some traits? And how do people do good research? Oh, you're asking the wrong person. Because my thing is, don't do it yourself. No one is going to take care of your money better than you. And you can do it. You really can do it. And it doesn't take much time. I'm telling you, like, I know that it can seem very, oh my god, I have to read 10. I know that I kind of freak some people out right now. When I said I open up 10 tabs, but that's

just one for one asset. And that's like one time, one time in like a month or like three months. I don't do that every single day. And what you can do, and I know I honestly, yes, there are all these C-level things that you can look at if you really want to do. Yes, you can go to somebody who is a certified financial planner and the credential they claim you have to have is that you have to be registered with a brokerage. And you can do all that. You can do all that 100%. But I think the best thing to do, even if you don't want to invest on your own, is to first educate yourself, because that will help you when you're interviewing these advisors to understand if they actually are doing a good job or not. Because yes, I can go and tell you, hey, go and yes, Certified Financial Planner is the title that you're looking for. But there

are so many different types of Certified Financial Planners. So you have to interview them. I think that's really important, isn't it? It's like interview them, like you would interview someone for a job or you've interviewed for a job, like go through that process and really see it like that. Don't just kind of go with one one person get people to almost pitch themselves to you if you like say do decide to that go down that route or likewise maybe you do want to take it into your own control and I also think that's super empowering as well and I know something that a lot of people won't have even considered doing because like you said there's this whole kind of illusion that oh my goodness this is so so difficult to do you have to have all these degrees and all these training to be able to do it. But I really like how you said,

it's not so about the maths, it's about the psychology. I think that's something that, you know, as well during COVID-19 and what's happening with the market right now, I know that lots of people will be seeing that, oh, actually, you know, there are conversations about, hang on, how are things like adding up right now? And that's where you see these psychology pieces coming into play, which is really interesting. I actually do want to share something with you and your audience. I want you guys to know something about me. I'm actually no one special at all. I don't have any supernatural gifts when it comes to math, especially. I actually really struggle with math. And the funny story is that my husband is from Melbourne, Australia. He's an actual rocket scientist,

like an actual legitimate rocket scientist. That's so cool. We met on Tinder and I was like, okay, what do you do? He's like, I'm a rocket scientist. I was like, okay, who do you design rockets for? He actually designed the world's fastest helicopter. He's a math genius, right? And when we got married, he obviously wanted to, he got interested in investing because I got ideas. And so he put money into our investment account and we started trading together on one joint account. And he was like, ah, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna outsmart the system. My math is like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. And he's, he actually is a math genius. Like I was like, okay, all right.

And he probably does know better than me. And I started listening to him this. I'm going to do that. And he actually is a math genius. Like I was like, okay, all right. And he probably does know better than me. And I started listening to him. But things started to go south from there because he is a math genius, but he didn't have his emotions under control. And he's still to this day, every time we make money, he gets super excited. And he's like, see, I told you so Lucy.

Like that is like the emotions kick. And then every time we lose money, he's like, oh, we have to go and I have to do something else. And he comes up with the quote unquote math solution to make up for the losses. So that's how you dig yourself a deeper hole. And the fact is that, as I said, yeah, it's not about math. It's about psychology. It's about going against the crowd and against the hype. Research, by the way, shows that women are better at investing than men. This is a fact. Research by so many different universities, female investors outperform their male counterparts because they have a longer term outlook. They are not investing to win a game,

and they're investing for long term financial security. So finally, Matt doesn't like this when I share the story, but he did swallow his pride and realize that my investment system is getting better results than his math, even though my account was smaller. And that's why he gave up. And now half of his annual income is through an investment account that I manage doing zero math just by using my investing system. I love that. That is so cool. And I just love that you're able to outsmart a rocket scientist. We won't let him listen to this. No, but you know, I'm only joking. I think this is just really incredible. I'm really empowering guys what I take away from that,

because I think it can be a very intimidating industry. And you know, just you sharing that story, I know it's going to allow so many women listening and men hopefully to think, oh, okay, like I don't have to be a rocket scientist to do this. Like I actually can apply my common sense. I can apply things that I've learned in my life and I can make informed decisions and I'm capable of doing that. And I just really want to say thank you for coming in and having this conversation with myself and the audience, because I think it really is like we don't talk about money enough. And I think it's really, really important and empowering to do so. So as always, I really want to invite our listeners to share their biggest takeaways. I know I've had so many and I would love you guys to tag

myself at Danielle Canty, tag at bossbabe.inc and tag Kiana as well. And Kiana, I just wanted to give your handle. Yeah, so it's at invest diva, no dots, no underlines. And unfortunately, I have so many, there's so many fake accounts that pretend to be me and they have my pictures with my daughter's pictures. It's very important that you get it right. You don't tag somebody else. It's I-N-V-E-S-T, D as in Danielle, as in danielle i v a no dots no underscores no nothing no numbers when we share this we'll make sure your handle is attached but thank you so much kiana this has been absolutely amazing thank you so much for having me on if you loved this episode please subscribe download few more, and please leave us a review.

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