Generational Wealth: How to Build a Family Fortune

Transcript:

welcome everyone today um it is our women's investor group event and we are going to be talking about financial planning so the aim of this series is to empower women with financial literacy and access to experts and investments because a large a large section of eligible investors i.e women are not participating in the private markets so we want to change that so today we have three exceptional speakers erica lille linda p jones and susan miller and they're going to speak to us about financial planning so a kind of bit more into the introductions before i give a bit of context erica lille um welcome she's an advisor to ceos and family offices primarily on an early stage in crypto investing she has over 25 years of investor experience and has helped foster growth and success in over 30 companies linda p jones welcome back um linda featured on our inaugural um uh women's investor group she is ceo of be wealthy and smart she's written two books including an international bestseller she has a podcast also called be wealthy and smart and as ceo she delves into how to invest in stocks and digital assets and she's really well set up to work with women who are not ready to invest um and last and by no means least is our very own susan miller she is our chief growth officer she spent over 20 years as a growth strategist at both massive global companies as well as startups this is actually her fourth startup um she is everywhere at the same time also being a mum to four kids which is highly impressive she's a force and actually the brain the brains behind this entire women's group so just before we get started i want to kick off with a few stats so here we go so did you know that there are 195 countries in the world and not a single one has achieved financial gender equality research also shows that two-thirds of women don't feel confident about investing only one in five women hold investments in the uk and the concerning discovery um whilst i was delving into this research is that the crypto world seems to mirror the tech and finance worlds in terms of gender so twice as many men as women invest in crypto and seeing as this industry is kind of in its infancy women need to set the precedent and have a seat at the table so why this financial literacy efforts um women do want to invest 50 of women are more interested in investing since the start of a pandemic and over the past year 20 of women have branched out by making first-time investments in a new type of asset um the research also shows that women on average are actually better investors um so over this kind of 10-year period fidelity saw that it's female customers earned on average 0.4 percentage points more annually than their male counterparts and i know that kind of sounds small but over the years that really really adds up and i should probably reiterate at this stage that i am talking in averages so um the problem is despite it being 2022 investing is still very much a boys club and to kind of give you an example of this i recently tried to read this book um called harriman's new book of investing rules the do's and don'ts of world's best investors and as i kind of leased through the pages containing contributions from the world's best investors i couldn't help but notice that of the 67 um contributors there was only one woman um the rest were all entirely male and also very pale um so this book is dubbed as a fresh selection of the most interesting and eloquent exponents of a wide range of investing approaches and yet there's just like one female voice so to be clear many of the books contributors are excellent investors it just seems a little bit galling to be told that 50 of the population merits only a 1.5 representation in this book there are iconic female investors and we would benefit from capturing their ideas on paper too which would do the world of investment a great service um because in my opinion as long as women are underrepresented or ignored future generations will believe consciously or subconsciously that investment is just for men so um why are we doing this at link two we democratize the private market the private markets democratizing is opening the door to everyone so we want to change the fact that a large section of these investors women are not participating because everyone should have the opportunity to build wealth it's imperative we learn from one another by creating community and to avoid one more sideline watching situation this is a space uh specifically this webinar is where we connect learn and ask questions whatever you're doing so whether it's investing or planning your retirement this should matter to you whatever your gender um so today we have the pleasure of hosting these three bright successful women who have pages of advice to lend us so without further ado susan i'm going to hand it over to you to moderate and start kicking off some questions and introducing these two lovely ladies thank you irini appreciate it yeah it's staggering to me that um on a personal note uh when at the you know under 40 when i was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer i actually had a better chance of one you know 1.5 chance just over of getting breast cancer than i did of uh you know as we think about being being an investor and being reflected in some of these guru and industry knowledge books so um today i'm really excited that we have the women on the line with us today and um i think we'll start um linda if i can ask you to kick things off um we'd love to hear a little bit about um you know when you're thinking about the current market what advice do you have for women both men and women but what advice do you have for women as they're thinking about investing today well thank you susan i think that investing isn't you know gender specific of course but i think that we need to just involve women a little bit more interest women a little bit more and let them know they can do it let them know that they have all the skills they have all the abilities they do all the things you know in their normal daily life that investing involves and this is something that they definitely can do i think we just need to build confidence a little bit uh but really you know when you're looking at investing it's kind of the same thing that we do with some of some of the ways that we shop in some ways where we're looking at value we're looking at price we're looking at potential and so when you're looking at investments you know what i do is look at what is the potential future growth that they have and and what is it that they could grow into are they a dominant leader in the current space that they're in uh who are they supported by in the private equity space you know we have the ability to come in after the venture capitalist so it's it's a matter of looking at who else has already invested in these companies and supported these companies and believes in these companies and what is their you know future potential i was just sharing with karim that uh the 5 000 fastest growing companies from inc magazine just came out yesterday and one the fastest growing company for the last three years was blockfi which was up 245 000 and that's been on your platform so this is the kind of opportunity the kind of growth potential that we see and and the kind of um you know ability that we have to invest in companies before they go public it's absolutely tremendous well and we see the latest research shows that family offices um who you know are often called the smart money family offices are increasing their investment in private companies think pre-ipo they don't all have an ipo but think um you know they may have some sort of exit or liquidity event but the companies that are not trade publicly traded or available on the nasdaq the new york stock exchange et cetera we're seeing the prediction is that family offices will increase the percentages um by up to 10 percent this year um erica that's your space can you tell us a little bit about some of the trends that you're seeing in family offices uh i definitely see and thank you for having me by the way i appreciate it good morning everybody but i'm definitely seeing that trend more and more family offices are investing at earlier and earlier stages many family offices do like to invest in the secondary stage more where linked to is do a little bit more de-risks but it still allows them as linda said to to get into some very interesting companies uh pre-ipo um but i will say this is what i see in the family office space i see people like michael loeb who's a very very active investor in very very early companies really being an advocate for that amongst other family offices so as as i've seen in other things other related issues i see family offices teaching other family offices how to invest in an early stage which which i think is great right so it's very helpful and he's also a big advocate for female founders and invests in a lot of female founders so i really appreciate that that learning channel is going through there and um so to that extent uh to that end um we see uh in investing particularly for female investors they're often looking for a mentor a tribe a group advice someone that they can follow would love to hear from both of you who are some of the mentors that you watch who do you follow and who might you recommend as good resources for other folks who are on the group today go ahead linda well early on in my life my mentor was my mom and she really was a good investor she really understood that you wanted your money to compound and to put it to work for you and so she really taught all of us five children a lot about investing and not everybody has a role model in their family so today with the internet we have so many resources we have all the social media and youtube and podcasts and everything and of course i have a podcast and i call myself america's wealth mentor because i want people to learn about money and investing and wealth building in a in a plain english sort of way because there's been so much jargon i was in the financial industry for over 20 years on the corporate side and there was so much jargon it was a whole nother language to learn and i realized that that keeps people from really understanding finance from seeing how exciting it is from seeing how fun it is to invest and i didn't want people to have that barrier anymore of you know keeping them out so i think you know podcasts youtube channels there's so many great uh resources that we have available to us and i would just say find a mentor that really fits with your personality with your goals with your lifestyle and because mentors are different and have different ideas about how we should be living some people think we should be living you know very frugally other people are more expansive so i think you just need to make sure you're aligned with the person that you're following and um and listen to what they have to say and learn from them and can you tell us a little bit um about your podcast because i know you do have a tribe um of folks who are following you and and um you know on a very regular cadence uh learning about investing yeah it's called be wealthy and smart you can find it on apple podcast google play any podcast platform it's also on my website at lyndap jones.com forward slash podcast so all my episodes are there there's over a thousand episodes i've been doing this for over eight years have more than eight million downloads and um it's one you know some uh mentions for excellence and i just recommend that you know people go use the search engine on my website and look up any topic that they want to know more about one of the things that's a little bit different about me is that i think that mindset is where all wealth begins so having a wealthy mindset how you think about money what your thoughts are uh your planning your you know basically everything mental is very very important in in my opinion in wealth building so that's where we start with step one to wealth uh and then we go through the other six steps to wealth but uh that's something that i i find that a lot of financial experts leave out the mental side of wealth so that's something i like to talk about and um erica how about from your perspective can you tell us a little bit about who are some of the uh mentors or folks that you look to for advice or any groups that you might be a part of that help shape your outlook on financial planning yeah well you know i'm from the seattle very old school do a deal on the back of a napkin kind of space and so i was fortunate enough to be around super brilliant people when i was really young probably more smart than i should have been around um we had exit to microsoft in the 80s so i was i met bill gates in his 20s and the original people that did the microsoft were just so brilliant i mean it was just incredible it was very important to just for me to be quiet in that room and listen and i think that that is a big key to learning and i appreciate linda that you're that you're doing what you're doing because i'm not quite that public i like to be doing the deal on the back of the napkin that's me but but a man i could have used a lot more help when i was young and when i opened my first business uh was that travel company was it was uh primarily in a women-owned industry and it was it was difficult they didn't really want to help me i didn't i found a lot of conflict um in trying to find mentors when i was young and 23 and opening my first business so i have to say i think women have gone a long way since then and because i had that experience i myself am very helpful to female founders i try to give them some extra time and energy and and whenever a female founder wants to have um you know really go through the process with me i'm very happy to explain the whole thing to them and open my rolodex to them and whatever needs to happen so um because i ran into that problem but but you're right now with the internet oh my god i don't know what i would do without youtube i myself still watch it every single day like the crypto world is changing so fast if i watched it eight hours a day i couldn't keep up right again another room's full of brilliant people and i've been fortunate enough to sit right next to ftx and and meet sound bank and creed and go into their offices and in the bahamas and and see that startup environment with the computer screen sitting side by side and 65 people in a 400 square foot office and the beanbag chair on the floor right so it's just i've been very lucky to just be around really brilliant people and i've had the ability when i recognize a person like that to just learn ask as many questions get as close as i can and uh and yeah and get online and so linda comes from the financial services side um you're an entrepreneur by background can you tell us a little bit about how that shaped um your career and uh helped put you where you are today yeah it's a weird journey you know you sort of live life going forward and then you look back and try to understand the journey a little bit but um i just i grew up in montana in a very small town with a family of entrepreneurs my grandmother opened her last business when she was like 70 years old a little summer you know candy shop thing and so it's definitely in my blood it never even occurred to me to grow up and work in corporate america any sort of job was a placeholder uh because i grew up in that small kind of limited environment i really wanted to travel and so i wanted to move to seattle and open this travel company and so i moved to seattle and opened a travel company and that was my mission and that was what i was going to do and that was what i did and i married an entrepreneur then again we had that early exit and so we acted sort of like a family office even though it wasn't that much wasn't 100 million dollars by a long shot and there was no such term as family office but we were looking at a lot of opportunities we bought companies out of bankruptcy with a owner that passed away we started companies from scratch and found it ourselves with our own passion and mission we were first money in with other people's passion and sat on the boards i threw companies in the garbage i sent investment checks away that flew away as fast as the ink was dry on them right so you really do have to be careful you have to i think invest in things that you understand particularly in the beginning and i think particularly for women like when we want to do an investment then go on a platform that's so readily available now you can read white papers and you can invest in companies and products that you use and that's a beautiful thing and i think that's a very comfortable way for people to start investing both in the private market and kind of in the public market and so that is another interesting point um when you think about uh the investments that you've made and linda maybe the investments you've made as well as the advice you've given what percent of the time do you think that you were on the money how often did things maybe not work out as you had anticipated initially well i think that's a tough question because sometimes investments take a while to work their way through for example we're early in a technological age right now and i wrote a book recently because of the opportunity that i see for this decade for blockchain for cryptocurrencies for different technologies that are available to us to invest in and that hasn't played out yet and we've gone through a very difficult time in crypto where you know a lot of the cryptos have really pulled back sharply so i don't consider that not to have worked out i consider that to have not worked its way through yet we're early we're very early in this technological revolution we don't even have laws yet uh really governing cryptocurrency but as soon as we do it's my belief that we're going to have large institutions and endowments and sovereign wealth funds and all kinds of large pools of money allocate three to five percent of their overall portfolio into some type of cryptocurrency and probably other blockchain investments and that's going to create massive wealth even more than what we saw in the internet uh decades so i think that we're very early and we're lucky to have the opportunities to invest in that we have today we just need to keep perspective and look at pullbacks like this as opportunities because this is really a gift um that we have the opportunity to buy in so low and at these amazing prices uh it's just incredible and so to that end what are some of the trends some of the macroeconomics or indicators what are some of the things that you're monitoring and you're paying attention to i'm looking at certainly what congress is doing with the laws i'm looking at who the leaders are uh what the overall market cap is of crypto i'm looking at uh who are the fastest growing companies who are the dominant companies uh what are the exchanges doing and what are uh some of the payment companies doing i'm listening to a lot of founders and leaders in the industry which is one of the reasons why i love youtube also because part of the research i do is listening to uh interviews of these people so interviews of ceos and interviews direct interviews so even if i'm not not there to ask them the questions i can learn from their presentations on stage and so on and so i do first party research listening to all these experts what are they saying what are their plans for the future where's andreessen horowitz going to invest next those kinds of things i pay attention to apparently with adam newman wasn't that something that was a surprise to me yeah wow so um erica you had said uh you um lately you know you you are looking for the room that you can be in where you can be the listener and you can be listening um to something new for example one of the companies that we've recently listed on linked to is a company called alloy um and they are helping to do all the um think about um the financial services checks on customers um that that companies are you know financial services banks and such are required to do um and so there are all of these spaces that we may be like crypto aren't as familiar with um erica what advice would you give people as they're trying to learn about something different um a new space how they're extending their horizon or stretching out of their their comfort zone well kind of like what linda just said i mean you kind of you listen to the leaders and you listen to you know the smartest people that you can find and and right now we're really lucky because we have a lot of access like online we can get to a lot of people but i mean and you have to understand that you're not going to understand everything either when i opened my first company i was very modern because i had a server room in my back room i had like three computers and i had server and i could get email at home and in the computer and that was like a big deal in my in the early 90s right i was like super high tech but i didn't and in the beginning when i opened my company i tried to understand every single aspect of what was happening in my business how was my company networked and how did that work and i rapidly realized that the brain and the time is only so long and so big and so you have to take and use your best and strongest skills in their best and strongest way and get the smartest people you can around you to deal with the things that you're not going to be the best at right if you don't like to do the financial statements or you don't know how get somebody in there that will help you if you're if you need an i.t person in your business then get an ip person and you do what you are what you are really needed to do and function in your business and for me that was mentoring my staff training my staff to deal with the type of client that i was going after and then getting the client so that was really my primary goal and understanding that is very important otherwise you just grind yourself in the ground trying to do everything and and honestly i'm never going to be a tech person i'm never going to be as zeros and ones and even and i'm not a sitting person even sitting in zooms for me is hard to do like all day long i've noticed like that on my body and all this stuff i'm like i understand why programmers have all these issues because sitting all day is just not good for you you know and um yes no i definitely find myself the the working for a remote company so link to headquarters is actually in san jose california and i'm in washington dc and so i find myself you know walking around the house with the headphones on and you're uh you know i don't know exercising or what have you while you're doing the conference call timing your calls and and things the podcasts that you need to listen to or research you need to do as a way to like always be moving right well our kids you can't sit down ever so yeah exactly sitting for you ever not for another 20 years yeah exactly there's many many years to go yes before that happens um and so um linda you had mentioned this before and i know both of you are when you're evaluating different companies that you should invest in the first thing that we we had talked on a call prior to this session about some of the tools that you're using for financial planning you know what tools is there a plan is there a spreadsheet or a you know a template that you use and linda um i think you were quick to point out that there there isn't like a great place to start so we talked a little bit about fundamentals where do you start big picture when you're thinking about your financial plan and when you're thinking about you know specific companies that you might invest in well yeah earlier we were talking about financial planning and i was a certified financial planner for a very many many years decades and so i learned you know all the the formal side of that education but really what it came down to was articulating it in a way that people could really handle it for themselves and do it very quickly and so i called that the wealth building formula money compounding and time are the three parts that it takes to build wealth so just to reiterate money compounding and time yeah so i call it mct mct just like mcdonald's and mcd mct just so you can kind of remember it easily um so money meaning how much money do you have to invest compounding meaning what rate can you compound at how well are your investments performing and time meaning how much time do you have usually people are planning to invest until retirement or at least that's their goal to get a certain amount by retirement so time is how many times how many years do you have until retirement so people are usually finding themselves lacking in one of those three areas they either don't have enough money to invest and so they're a little bit cash strapped or that's they don't have as much as they want to invest or their their investments haven't done as well or maybe they've been a little bit too scared and taken not enough risk and they've been sitting in cash for too long and earning you know i got a i got two cents from my bank the other day for interest i mean really my checking account i mean so i mean the interest is nil and so if people are having their money sitting in cash there's there's not much that they're gonna earn there um and then you know time are people getting a late start investing or how are they starting early because the best thing you can do is start early and have more time to compound that makes it a lot easier but most people many people are kind of getting late to the party getting a late start so wherever you're struggling you have to sort of make up for it with the other two factors so if you're um if you're if you don't have that much money to invest as much as you'd like and you don't have that much time until retirement or you're starting late then you've got to invest better and you have to get better compounding rates and that's one of the reasons why i was actually attracted to link to is because private equity provides the opportunity to get some higher compounding rates because you're getting in pre-ipo and that to me was very attractive and very interesting uh so you know people need to think about what what potential that their investments have to invest but when when you think about financial planning that's how i answer that question and um i i think it's you know it's it's a three part situation that um can be solved but you really need to think about all three of those components erica would love to hear your perspective you know i i think it's very much like like a business i think you need to write the end down first and work your way backwards like what do you really want how do you do you really want to retire what is your financial need you know how far how far does it take to get your house paid off and to get you living comfortably and get you so you have no financial responsibilities and are allowed to live the life that you want make the investments you want and do what you want and so if you make the goal from the end and then i think and i think you work backwards and i do think you keep it simple right i think i think quickbooks is super simple and even if you put all your personal expenses on there and just kind of get a grasp of where everything is i think that that's a that's a really good way to help guide you going forward with putting money away and investing money and knowing what those percentages are and where your money's actually going i think that's a big thing that women don't keep track of very well and i think we keep too much money in the bank and don't invest enough money right and there's no money to be made on it but it makes us feel safe right so you know especially women of my age you know that i was definitely taught that as a kid you know save the money save the money save the money i actually taught my parents to invest in the stock market so different different roles so it's funny that reminds me um so i recently came back from a vacation with said four children um and so it's me with the four children and um and they were like oh this is the best we had a great time and i said do you want to be able to take your kids on vacation when you grow up is that a goal that you have okay so if that's your goal that means you need to do your homework and they're like what and i'm like if you do your homework in second grade you'll likely get good grades i went through the whole thing of all the steps that lead to when they're an adult and they have their own children being able to take those kids on more than one vacation in a given year um and so but it all came back to like and that's why it's important to do the homework in second grade uh but working all the way through it so i think you're right and linda you know whether you're starting when you're 60 years old and you've got a late start because you're you know in the next chapter of your life or whether you're very early on in your career um and you're thinking about hey how do i take with a longer horizon maybe there are some riskier bets that i might take um you know i i read recently uh someone was asking what are some of the financial secrets uh that you have it was just to a group of of business women and one of them erica she actually said um i have a secret bank account with a hundred thousand dollars in it and i was like so you're not investing it oh you're pointless you're earning that one penny per you know period um why do you think that women aren't investing equitably in the way that men are i'm not talking about the dollar amounts but the the participation the presence in different asset classes would love to hear your perspectives you know i've been thinking a lot about this since this this webinar came up and we get asked this question all the time as female founders and female investors you know why isn't there more now do we blah blah blah honestly i think it's kind of a pain in the ass to be in a room full of men all the time you know they kind of want to you know bully over they don't want to listen to what you say they you know you can be made fun of in the room and and it can be really difficult and you really have to have kind of a thick skin to stay in the room to be in the room and want to stay in the room and i the stories that i've heard a lot lately that have been compounding on me that i really need to figure out how to deal with is i can't tell you how many female founders have actually walked away from money they've actually went to some place to pitch they got some maybe negative feedback or some questions that they felt were negative feedback and so then they sort of packed up and left and left money on the table or got stopped to retrieve the money that they were going to leave on the table and and then and i and i started hearing three or four or five of these stories and i thought i thought you know what i think it's just the pain in the ass factor to be honest with you i mean i can't think of a single other reason why more women won't come into the room or stay in the room because certainly we're as smart as men we are making as much money as men are we have investable dollars we're inheriting money there's been a giant transfer of wealth from men to women in the past decade and continuing for the next decade and um and i think that we need to make the rooms more friendly to women and that was really one of the points of this initiative as um as irini said at the onset of the call today we looked at private equity and am you know so proud of the mission of link two which is to democratize private investing you know historically only uh two percent of eligible investors participate in private investing um and uh so there's millions of people who could be investing um and uh one of the reasons is accessibility people don't know well where do i find it you know i can go on schwab or e-trade and dive into a you know a public stock pick a stock or pick a you know an etf or a fund how do i invest in in private private equity um and uh and then the second was just the price point was a barrier so the average private equity investment it's traditionally qualified institutional buyer so it's your sovereign wealth funds your uh pe firms the vc firms venture capital firms um and uh their average investment is 7.5 million dollars so who has 7.5 million dollars to take a flyer on a company that may or may not have a positive exit um and so i love the fact that you know link to has it thought about like okay well how are we going to democratize private investing we're going to pick unicorns so the companies as a threshold from our investment thesis they already have a billion dollars in valuation so they're much later stage it's not the seed stage companies that maybe have a 10 chance of success this is a company that's already valued at a billion dollars and then you know you think about uh breaking down the price point barrier from an affordability perspective the minimum investment is ten thousand dollars um and uh that gives much more accessibility right but then we look through the demographics uh broadly speaking from a number of public sources that were available and then likewise our own customer data and we saw such a significant disparity that private equity is inequitable um and so we thought okay let's bring some of these smart women into the room and give advice and help give in some ways it's the advice and it's the mentoring but in other ways i think it's feeling part of a collective goodness the tribe the mentoring that i have support that i'm i'm not alone i'm doing this yeah i'm taking some risks but i have some other people who are doing it with me um and you know i that's one of the reasons i love linda's podcast and the resources that are on her website that it gives you the confidence to take some of those risks to invest in an ally or a block daemon or a block fi you know if i maybe don't know as much about uh cryptocurrency uh but i understand that xrp has um enterprise use case so companies are using as a bridge currency for international um international payments you know maybe i feel more comfortable investing in the infrastructure per se than in a cryptocurrency um and actually that was the first uh podcast that i listened to of yours linda was you did an assessment of okay i have ten thousand dollars should i invest in a ripple lapse or should i invest in xrp and so i loved you know as you you did an analysis thinking about uh investing in the infrastructure of crypto versus an actual currency um but it was one of those things where you done the math done a lot of the research um and uh i think was a a voice of helping to instill confidence probably you know in me but probably in the you know the audience that was listening as they're trying to make those uh evaluations on their own so would love to hear a little bit you know how are you picking some of the topics for the podcast these days as you're thinking about inspiring your audience um and this group of folks who are following you and looking looking to topics you know so funny susan because when i started the podcast i had a list of things that i normally talked about and when i got through that i thought well now what am i going to talk about oh no and then i realized oh my gosh there's just an unending list of financial topics to talk about so i've never worried about it since but i always look at what do i think is going to make the most impact that someone should know uh what is the most important thing for them uh dealing with whatever is going on right now so for example in this stock market correction i did a lot of podcasts about what was my forecast for you know when was the correction going to be finished i thought it was going to be more toward may but it turned out to be june 16th but i did you know follow the whole situation so that people could feel comfortable hopefully staying invested even during a downturn because trying to time the markets usually is a losing solution but uh also i just tried to give them uh confidence to stay invested confidence about the future i really believe we're going to go on to new all-time highs now and i know that that's a very controversial thing because a lot of people are so bearish the bearishness is palpable right now the negativity in the markets is palpable uh but i really believe that that is um i'm a contrarian and that is is not my view so just really trying to be as accurate as i can be forecasting things for people giving them confidence showing them what they should be paying attention to at any particular time because sometimes what the media is focused on is not necessarily where i'm going to focus us sometimes i have a different opinion about how they're interpreting things so um i just really try to make these short podcasts i do them three times a week sometimes they're you know eight minutes sometimes they're longer depending on the topic but i really just try to say what is the one thing that somebody needs to know today that's really going to make a difference in their financial situation or help them make the right financial decision today and so that's how i do it uh and um erica on your side um how are you selecting investments for the family office um you know is do you have companies that are applying are you reaching out are you following certain vc firms or you know how how are you thinking about uh what's next on your side well there's a tremendous amount of deal flow honestly right so i probably look at about 1500 deals a year i would say and i just have kind of a large network of family offices that different families invest in different sorts of things and so i try to connect people appropriately but i personally look at things that are really relevant into the marketplace today so i'm working with like a software company that's scaling through the us for the hybrid workplace that helps you understand how to deal with your staff who's in who's out who needs to collaborate oh you're a woman going in the office and you want your desk to be warmer i can warm that temperature up for you instead of having you freeze in the office space and not only does that solve workplace issues right i wouldn't need to bring the illegal space heater in anymore right like we needed software to solve this right exactly we all have the illegal space heater and the 47 sweaters on the back of our thing right it's ridiculous right and and not only does it solve kind of how or how is the workplace happening today but what do i lease and what kind of space do i really need and what kind of analytics am i going to get out of that that says do people just come in to collaborate do i need more conference room space do i need more desk space do i this space need to be bigger like how does it need to work so things like that that are like super relevant or have a super um emotional or physical tie to something relevant or to the ceo right if that makes sense like a really compassionate story and a reason why that company would be successful because of that story and those are the sorts of companies i bring and i think i invested in all different types of companies and i still do right so tech media travel apparel boat building i mean i've been all over the place right and and i think family offices many of them do the same so yeah i have found my most successful investments have been things where um i really learned to understand it um where you know whether it was one of the startups i was in where i didn't know much about the internet of things or machine learning and ai prior to starting you know joining the company like you get deeply emerged and now you really understand the space and you can understand okay this is actually a real need and it solves a pain point and so you you can believe both understand the segment in the sector but then also believe in the business problem long term that it's solving which makes you i think feel more connected to those types of investments and that's exactly what's happened with bitcoin right so i bought bitcoin at 400 and then i first read the white paper and and i saw the compassion and i understood that because i'm such a traveler i understand the international financial need of having kind of a global currency like that so it didn't surprise me at all that it's bouncy but it's going to keep going so and i agree with you linda i think we're in a hella market and i think wealthy people have just got over making a ton of money through covet and all that money needs to get deployed it will get deployed back in the marketplace and i think we're gonna see there is a ton of dry powder right now where you know we think about where is it going to be deployed um one of the questions that was just a poll for participants was asking about where are you deploying it so make sure you answer that one i think that'll be an interesting one for us to uh to report back to the group um so um we do have a number of questions on the q and a front uh but before we dive in um hopefully folks participating today have learned a little bit about very different perspectives both from the financial advising side um as well as family offices we're thinking more about institutional capital when um before we dive into the q a um when we were preparing for today's call anything else um linda i'll go to you anything else that that we missed that you feel like is important that we cover before we dive into the q a yeah i think that it's important to acknowledge that there was a study done and they asked women about you know talking about money and women responded more women responded that they would rather talk about their own death than talk about money so this is a reality that we are dealing with um so i think that you know there's many reasons for that but um i think at the root of it is getting comfortable and educated and so i think you know finding a place that they want to get educated that they feel good being educated that particular way that they relate to it they find it interesting i think that's really important for women because you can't just neglect money you can't just ignore it or delegate it because the the reality is is that if you delegate it to your spouse or significant other you know a lot of times women outlive them and i've seen it where you know all their life they've delegated it to someone else and then at the end of life they're alone trying to make decisions and really don't know anything or have any kind of educational place to come from to make the right decisions or to understand why the decisions were made to get them to the point where they're at and so it's really important that couples discuss money together that they understand their financial situation together that there's a conversation going on around this and maybe women are busy and aren't always the ones that want to bring it up but i think it is really important that you know couples are on the same page and really understand what's going on with their financial situation and um linda just to add to that um i think a lot of the issue is jargon and language and i don't know whether you agree with me but i found when i first got into the space like acronyms and long-windedness just like quite frankly boring but also intimidating and when actually investing really doesn't need to be that complicated and i think that's kind of the problem it's like why why why is this investment arena set out to be so intimidating when actually we can have people talk to other people in a really simple way and talk about the fundamentals and so i think that needs to change as well and that is one thing that uh we have begun work on a uh women's investor group glossary um of course we'll allow men to read it too but um but we're going to eventually that will be posted on our blog on our website so stay tuned um one of the other things i thought was interesting that i had uh had wanted to share um is that i do think there is a significant opportunity for um again not financial advice but i do think there's a significant opportunity in the crypto space that i just read um that there are more than 50 digital asset bills and resolutions that have been proposed in the united states this year not to mention biden's march executive order so when we think about change coming um i think there right now is some uh you know regulation legislation and regulation happening uh via lawsuits and court cases and that's gonna you know shed some light on how these things evolve and progress but knowing that there are 50 different bills that have been proposed certainly the digital asset space is somewhere um where there will be changes happening and so now in my opinion is kind of the time to really learn and try and understand that space and take advantage of the opportunity before uh you know maybe there are you know things shift or change there and um erica on your side anything else that you hadn't shared that you um you wanted to touch on today nothing really other than i i really agree with what you just said i think you know with the last poll again not investment advice but i think the biggest uh opportunities are in the crypto space one way or another whether you're investing in the infrastructure or the coin or right nfts or wherever you are study read white papers white papers are in all the apps if you just dig down into the company's information is in there and so just dig in there and read and the more we read the more we know and more we watch youtube the more we know that's it i think that's the biggest opportunity thank you absolutely yep and irene can you share some of the q a questions that may have been submitted during the call yeah absolutely and i actually had a question of my own which feeds on very nicely to what you just said erica um in that you were like you know let's watch more youtube videos let's read more i think people learn in different ways um and via different mediums and one of the reasons and we touched on this on our call previously that i really love linda's podcast is because you can actually listen to it while you're doing other things and as women you know women have multiple different things to do they've got kids you know they run households they've got jobs um so having the medium of a podcast for me personally is a really nice way of learning um and i was just wondering linda whether was that that was something that you thought about when you started the podcast be like actually this is why people can do multiple tasks whilst they're listening to my podcast was that something that came into your mind it actually was because uh and you know when i started it was kind of early on in podcasting and first it was just about getting financial knowledge out there in plain english like you talked about and in an interesting way and in a way that was very understandable i mean i have multiple generations of people that listen to my podcast so the grandparents the parents and the children all can listen to it because they all understand it and i did the podcast for that reason because they can do other things people tell me i'm with them when they're walking i'm with i'm with them when they're folding the laundry when they're doing the dishes when they're picking up the kids from school um this is when they're listening to the podcast so yes definitely it's so that you can multitask and listen yeah which is amazing and then erica like obviously you're saying that you know you don't like working by sitting in front of zoom you you know make deals on the back of the napkin um is like your way of learning is that kind of like going out doing meeting people um a different kind of style right yeah i'm really not smart at all my only ability is to stand up to smart people and transcend that information in a simple way that's my only skill but i've been fortunate enough to be around some really smart people in my life either by accident or on purpose but it's been a great journey and i've been very lucky to be able to learn from some super brilliant people along with the people in this podcast i mean my god it's been amazing well i think that's a great i think that is a great um eq skill though that we may downplay as you think about being able to make the assessment of who is a good fit for you to learn from and collaborate with and i mean that is something that you know i learned early on i guess i guess i was in college right you learn that you don't pick the course based on the topic in the syllabus you pick it based on the professor and then you know same thing when i started working in startups where it's like you don't pick the company based on i wasn't like wildly excited about mobile back end as a service but i loved the founders and the vc investors uh so it's like surround yourself with the smart people totally agree with that yeah it's like osmosis you've got to be engaged um okay so a couple of questions from the audience um are there any particular companies you ladies are investing in and then i think we can probably add to that kristen lloyd says what are your top three investments that link to and why i guess susan maybe you can chip in and we can chat a little bit about our most recent investments that link to um um so our number one investment uh i'll tear the top three the top three it probably doesn't surprise you they're all in the fintech and digital asset space um so the top performing investment um at link two right now um is ripple labs so i had mentioned the xrp podcast that linda has go on her website search for that one listen to it i think that's uh that's an incredible resource but as you're making that decision if that's something that you'd be interested in i think that's great background research so ripple labs is one um they just had a big announcement today i believe a new on-demand liquidity outlet in brazil so there's new international expansion coming every day from them then the second one is uphold so the digital wallet folks that anything to anything um so if you think about uh whether it is um uh stable coins or crypto or its um stakes in in uh private equity or um gold you know what have you commodities uh this concept as you were saying erica when you were traveling internationally the concept of being able to switch from currency to currency and value to value um is really upholds um secret sauce uh and then the third one no surprise is um the folks who are democratizing private investing um so link two is our third best performing investment on the platform right now it's been really popular in particular this year we more than doubled the size of the company we have now more than very quickly approaching 150 million invested on the platform so to go from a um startup launched in midst of a global pandemic to have over 150 million invested on the platform and to go from about 20 000 members to more than triple that um we are growing at leaps and bounds 10x revenue last year and quarter over quarter continuing to continuing to climb so um needless to say it's a little bit of a background scoop on link two but those are the top three investments right now and actually we are hosting another link to learn um which is all about the future of the wallet um so uphold we will be talking about um okay so another question is do you think that the integration of iso 222 will be will have an impact on the cryptocurrency market anyone wanna i definitely do i think that's um iso 2022 is a messaging system uh among financial providers with banks and with cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency companies um and in my i guess over here in my book that i i came out last november um my cryptocurrency book three steps to quantum wealth the welfarist's guide to financial freedom by investing in cryptocurrencies i wrote about it because of iso 2022 because these financial institutions that have already that they're using this messaging system i believe that that is a two-way system whether rather than the swift system which is really a one-way system and so um the swift system when they send money it actually has about a six percent error rate which is enormous and so we really need a faster system it's actually faster to get on a plane and fly your money to another country than it is ascended by wire so we really need a faster more scalable lower fee less friction uh type of financial system and that is what i believe is coming and the iso 2022 cryptos are there they are with companies that have that messaging that are able to communicate back and forth and send it technologically so that the receiving end understands what they've gotten and they have all the instructions of what to do with it and it's highly efficient and yes i think it is the future and very important thanks linda so linda i really susan erica this has been amazing and i'm sitting here actually observing and looking at the polls so i have a question here you know when we do podcasts and we do these webinars it's all outgoing messages right it's people and some some folks on the on the on the chat are responding and asking questions but my thought is this i don't know i'm going to ask for the audience response right on this particular question is would it be beneficial because as we look at a lot of responses on the on the on the polls it's like do you have a financial plan yeah half of them say yes half of them say no do you know how to create a financial plan it's half and half do you know what you're going to invest in sort of i don't really know but this is probably where i'm going to go so this is actually an audience question guys for all of you still there would you prefer or would you like us to have an interactive session where all of you us are involved in the same room that you can actually ask your questions physically to linda and erica and we can just go through that q a section and just talk about things a little bit more in depth would that be beneficial to all of us because what i do find is that even though i want to make a financial plan sometimes it's difficult for me to know where to start from what is the question right i mean you've mentioned start with the end start with the beginning it's a compounding it's the amount of money it's what are you investing in but these things become very very difficult if i by myself it's like okay do i want to put a pen to paper right one of the poll questions was like do you pay attention to your financial new or financial planning or independent wealth on a regular basis and the answer was not really but i should so perhaps maybe if you guys are all open to it we could actually just have interactive sessions and it's not going to be recorded and just shared internally for the people who are at that event so they can actually verbalize some of their thoughts and get some feedback how do you feel about all of that brand there's like six seven yeses already in the chat oh okay yeah like a round table more like a round table that would be great i would be happy to help any time yeah it would be great the other question that i get all the time karim is like okay so what's the new investment tell me about it like what is figment it came out this week you know it's the uh blockchain infrastructure crypto staking company okay you know so people might have questions about those things too um so as they're thinking about what actually where do i start what goes in it what are some of the new things i should be considering um i think that could be a really powerful session can i attend these events too we'll allow you i'm a boy you're everybody's favorite green unlike the rooms that are close to women we are equal opportunity opening our doors thank you um i like what erica said the other day because a a little bit of a story before we end this um so one time i went to an investor conference uh i will tell you i was the second of two men in a in a room full of women investors i think there were about 15. i was so intimidated and i stood on the sidelines because it was like what do i do next who do i talk to how do i engage with 48 other women i had to step out of my comfort zone quite literally grab myself by my shoulders and drag myself to have a conversation so i can almost understand the perspective on the other side when you've got a room full of men and you've got a few women and it's very difficult and kudos to everyone has been able to do it but it's not easy to step out of that comfort zone to to to engage but thank you all i think uh we've got a response here that's been great which is yes we would like a workshop sort of environment uh we'll keep that an invite group if you have folks that you think would be participants in this please we'll create this we'll try it out we'll try it out in the next couple of two or three weeks we'll say hey we're doing a workshop it's just let's talk about uh creating wealth for us and our families and let's just see how we we do that and if you have people that you think would like to attend let's bring them together let's create this experiment to see how that works and i appreciate linda and erica and susan and irene's time and and motivation here so let's do that and thank you all for participating thank you all for joining us today uh do join us next week in the link to learn you'll find um the stuff there this recording uh will be posted on the site and the poll and the results you will see so thank you all thanks susan erica thanks linda thanks karen thank you so much have a great day ladies