Millennials make up the largest cohort in the current workforce but control only about 5% of total wealth. For millennials to have the same amount of wealth that baby boomers did at this age, we would have to quadruple what we have today. The reality is generating wealth and retaining wealth is harder now than ever before. Dominique Broadway joins us to share her own story with money—from being broke to becoming a multi-millionaire. Listen in as she discusses how you can reframe your mindset around wealth while building opportunities for generational wealth.
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Understanding wealth and investing
When Dominique looks back on her childhood, entrepreneurship was always where she was meant to end up. She was surrounded by independent business owners in her family and a strong work ethic was instilled in her from a young age. After working a few different jobs as a teenager, she realized that she didn’t want to always trade time for money, which was when she learned about investing.
After reading Investing for Dummies at the age of sixteen, she invested in her first two stocks: Apple and Jones Soda, two brands she loved. What started as a $25 investment each, turned into thousands of dollars after a couple of years.
Ultimately, she took this passion to college, studied banking and finance, then landed an internship at UBS Investment Banking, a company focused on high-net-worth individuals. After college, she went to work for UBS full time.
Providing investment opportunities for everyone
While in her role in helping high net-worth individuals (the top 1%), Dominique found her friends were coming to her asking for advice, but she couldn’t help in her current role because they didn’t have enough money to invest. She realized how unrealistic that was—and that inspired her to branch out to help the 99%.
In sharing this idea with her mentor, she was met with the disheartening opinion that she would never make money helping people that don’t have the money of the 1%. She saw a challenge in providing that access, quit her job, and set out to do exactly that.
A different road to success
Unfortunately, she ran into some of the hardest times of her career and life. While she’d done a decent job of saving and investing, along with providing a great experience for her clients, she didn’t price herself right. She undervalued what she had to offer. Her clients were thriving while she was broke—her condo was in foreclosure, BMW was repossessed, and she was defaulting on her credit cards.
She did one of the hardest things she’d ever done: She admitted that she messed up and asked for help. Dominique realized that she thought herself broke and that’s when she decided to only choose wealth.
She took a bridge job consulting for a nonprofit that helped alleviate the financial pressure her bills put on her, allowing her to still run her business. She went from a successful corporate career to failing in her first move into entrepreneurship to climbing back to the top with a few pivots along the way.
While this wasn’t the road Dominique initially saw herself taking, she found success in her own journey. Now, Dominique is a provocative financial literacy trailblazer who is on a mission to make wealth attainable for everyone. As an award-winning personal finance expert, speaker, and founder of Finances Demystified, Dominique has a strong passion for working with young professionals, entrepreneurs, and people of all ages to bring their financial dreams to reality.
Can we talk about money?
Many of us grew up being taught that there are a few things you don’t talk about in life, one of which is money. For independent businesses, this is ultimately encouraging the concept of price secrecy, which is detrimental to the industry as a whole. From what you make from your work to what you charge for your services, most of us avoid the conversation overall.
Since Dominique is on a mission to break down the barriers of building generational wealth for individuals, specifically for entrepreneurs, she is open about money and finances. The fear of talking about these things often comes from a lack of confidence.
Building confidence in what you charge
As an independent business owner, when you share your pricing with confidence, your customers pay it with confidence. When you don’t feel like you’re worth the number that you’re vocalizing, you’ll lack that confidence.
It’s not necessarily about the number either, it’s about being able to clearly articulate the value that you’re bringing. If you can clearly articulate the value you offer, confidence will naturally come to you.
Take time to understand your confidence through a value stack—what value do you bring to others? What tangible takeaways will your customer get when they invest in you or your services? List out those potential results and what they’re worth, allowing you to find confidence in the value you’re bringing to your customer.
Money mantras for individuals
Even as a multi-millionaire, Dominique still runs into battles with doubt and worry around her finances. To disassociate from those feelings, Dominique has a few money mantras that she says daily:
- I’m a money magnet
- I’ve made the decision to become wealthy.
- I am wealthy in more than one way. (I am wealthy because I’m healthy. I am wealthy because I’m surrounded by friends and family that love me.)
You deserve wealth
Our relationship with money and wealth is something many of us have to heal as we learn what we’re deserving of. Whether you’ve been taught to reject greed, therefore reject wealth, or you’re trying to stay humble in the money you earn, consider what that means.
The definition of humble is having or showing a modest or low estimate of one’s own importance. You don’t need to stay humble when it comes to money—you deserve the wealth you can build.
Building generational wealth as an entrepreneur
We live in a time when it’s somewhat scary to think about retirement, especially as an entrepreneur. Many of us won’t receive the same benefits that our parents or grandparents were provided, so we have to create those opportunities for ourselves.
For millennials and gen z, this means we have to have multiple streams of revenue, invest your money, and not simply depend on one source of money. We have to work not just harder, but smarter too. Thankfully, we are positioned with technology that past generations did not have. Free resources, in one sense, make building generational wealth easier than they ever did.
At retirement, whatever you have is all you’re going to be able to live on, so Dominique’s advice is to educate yourself on all things finance and be strategic with your money.
The biggest differentiator between the businesses that succeed and the ones that fail
When asked about the biggest differentiator between businesses that succeed and the ones that fail, Dominique shared that it’s the people that give up too soon. Overnight success isn’t a reality for the majority of us—the independent business owners that are willing to stick it out, put in the hard work, and continue to believe in themselves are the ones who succeed in the end.
- [4:05] Dominique’s financial journey
- [16:30] Hurdles that independent business owners to generate wealth
- [20:08] Price secrecy
- [22:43] Building confidence in your pricing
- [25:13] Money mantras
- [30:07] Inflation, cost of living, and retirement
- [38:59] Creating wealth for independent business owners
- [42:14] The biggest differentiator between the businesses that succeed and the ones that fail
Resources mentioned
- Buy the book: https://dominiquebroadway.com/book/
Connect with the guest
- Website: https://dominiquebroadway.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dominiquebroadway/
