But I was Braveheart and I was like, "Hold. Hold."
Is that Braveheart or Gladiator?
I think it's Braveheart. Hold
Hold. Hold. Hold!
Hey it's number one best-selling author and motivational speaker Erik Qualman
A lot of you know me as Equalman. Welcome to today's 7 Super Tips where today we
have motivational speaker, TV host, and financial expert Suze Orman. So, without
further ado here are 7 Super Tips from Suze Orman.
Well, just because I happen to be in California I just briefly, briefly want to tell you where I got my start.
It was here in California - Berkeley, California - on the corner of College and
Alcatraz in a little restaurant called The Buttercup Bakery. After spending four
years at the University of Illinois, in 1973, I came out to Berkeley, California
where I lived in my van on the streets on …. on Hearst Avenue there
because I did not have the money back in 1973 to be able to afford a first and
last month deposit on an apartment and rent was only $200 a month back then.
So, I was living in my van on the streets for three months until I landed my dream
job at The Buttercup Bakery - right - for $400 a month. Now, I wasn't just a
waitress for $400 a month from 1973 to 1974. Oh no no. I was a waitress making
$400 a month from 1973 to 1974 to 1975 to 1976 to 1977 78 79 80. What now I'm
essentially 29 years of age. All right, are you doing the math? Are you trying to
figure out how old I am right now? I'm about to be 59 mm-hmm. I look good, don't I?
So, so, anyway, here I am all those years being a waitress and I get this idea
that I can open up my own restaurant and all I need is $20,000 to do so.
So, I call up my mother. I asked for $20,000 and she says, "Suze,
honey, that's more money than we have to our name. We can't give you that kind of
money." I go into work the next day. A man by the name of Fred Hasbrouck comes in.
He said, "What's wrong, Sunshine?" I tell him the story - how I want to open up my own
restaurant and before I know it, I leave there with $50,000 in checks and
commitments that all the customers had gathered together and gave
me because Fred went throughout the restaurant that day and told them how I
was upset because I didn't have enough money to open up my own restaurant and
they backed me. Now I didn't know what to do with that money and so I'm told to
take it down to Merrill Lynch in Oakland and open up an account 'till I can be
helped to open up my own restaurant. I go into the account at Merrill Lynch and
again to make a very long story short all $50,000 was lost within three months.
And, it was lost because I had a crooked financial advisor and I was just
listening to what this financial adviser was telling me. Now, I didn't know what to
do. So now I thought, "I know I can be a broker they just make you broker." So I
went and I got a job at Merrill Lynch. They hired me simply to fill their
women's quota. I walked in with pinstripe pants - red and white - tucked into my
white cowboy boots with a blue silk shirt. I thought that
would be a good dress because that was my fanciest outfit I had and they looked
at me and they had never hired a woman before - this was 1980 - and the manager
said, "You know, Suze, I'm going to hire you. I'm gonna hire you, but I'm here to
tell you you will be out of here in six months because I personally believe
women belong barefoot and pregnant. Mmm. His name was Peter Sansevero.
Anyway, so I'm hired there and as I'm working for Merrill Lynch, I'm reading
the code studying to be a financial adviser, that what my broker did was
illegal. He couldn't invest my money in such a way that I could lose it when that
money was there to be safe and sound so I can open up my restaurant. So, I went in
to tell Peter that he had a crook that worked for him and Peter said to me, "Suze,
that crook makes us a lot of money. You go down and you sit in your chair and
don't you say anything." I went and I sat down in my little
cubicle on my little chair and I thought to myself, well, Peter told me that I
would be out of here in six months - and this was four months into it. He told me
that I didn't belong here. Now I could sit there and I could do nothing but
what happened with Randy, who was the financial advisor, and what he did to me
wasn't right. Now, I was young and I had time to make back that money to pay
everybody back, but what if it were your parents or your grandparents or somebody
who didn't have the time to make it back? It wasn't right. So right then and there
I decided to do what was right versus what was easy and I sued Merrill Lynch
while I was working for them. Now what was great - mmm-
what was great about that is because I sued them they couldn't fire me.
They couldn't fire me and two years later I was their number six producing broker.
They had fired Randy, they gave me back all of my money plus 18 percent interest -
because that is what money markets were paying back then - and here we are
everybody. The story begins. So, from that what I
took was that it is always better to do what is right versus doing what is easy.
When one door closes another door opens up.
Most of us go through life holding on so tightly to that which we really don't have
because we don't have enough. So, the little that we have we hold on to it so tightly
that our hands literally are not open to receive that which is meant to come our way.
There's only one way that I know to force the opening of the hands and that is through giving. Giving not so
that you can get back but giving so that you can have values. Giving to say thank
you for what you have as well as giving to say thank you for what you do not
have. When you open those hands you feel generous. When you feel generous you feel
powerful. And when you feel powerful, the world can recognize your power and,
therefore, employers are attracted to you. Job offers come your way. You get pay
raises. So, it's almost by giving to others that you actually become more. The
question has to be asked and answered: How much do you give? You have got to
give a respectful amount to yourself. It doesn't make any sense for you to give
everything you have away and then leave yourself a victim to your own financial
tsunami. That doesn't help you and it doesn't help anybody around you. So you
dig into your heart and you find out an amount that feels right to you. And it
doesn't matter if it's a dollar, it doesn't matter if it's $10,
or $100 or whatever. But that is the amount that you give, however, I have to
tell you you just don't give it because there was a disaster.
You give it every single month somewhere for the rest of your life. You make the
first check that you write every month as an honoring to your own values, as an
honoring and an offering to start the month with your hands open rather than
your hands closed. And my biggest fear that money that goes out right now and
we're helping everybody and that's fabulous
but what happens in two months, one year, five years from now? Then what happens? So
just don't give once. Give once a month for the rest of your life and then your
values will escalate along with how you feel about yourself and along with all
the people that you've helped.
You teach your kids true strength by showing them
what you can overcome, not by lying to them by, providing for them with things
you can't afford. 'Cause then we pass that lie from generation to generation.
Women, we have now stopped... we have now... we now have to start passing the truth down
to one another about who you are more than what you have.
Now you have to start looking at your life. We have to look at how do we make an investment
in who we are as people who are 25, 30 and 35
so we get to build a career for ourselves. So, the goal here is
going to be as follows: rather than you being in a situation where you are
dependent on a paycheck, I want you to get into a situation where those who
give you a paycheck are dependent upon you. Did you hear that?
That can happen. But, in order to do that, you need time to make your mark so that
you are noticed by those who you're working for.
People don't know where they're going and what people don't know where something goes, sometimes they
usually get lost. Too many of you, in my opinion, and too many people, Brad, in the
United States, they're waiting for answers to come to them. They want the
administration to fix them, the economy to fix them, their employer to fix them,
the stock market to fix you, the real-estate market to fix you. Nobody's
gonna fix you until you decide to fix yourselves. Real estate isn't going to be
recovering until at least the year 2023 people. And so you have to then, rather
than saying, "It'll be ok, next year," you have to make a plan.
[HOST] How? So what does that mean?
[ORMAN] What that means is if you're under water in your home, you take action
on it. You don't wait for the action to be that the market is going to come back
and save you. Because the market is not going to save you. Only you can save
yourselves. So, if you're underwater in your home, you have to make a decision. Do
you walk away? Do you try to deal with the bank? Do you do a short sale? What
action? Because here's the real thing: if you are afraid, there's only one way to
conquer fear and that is through taking an action.
I want to tell you a story that I did with a woman by the name of Lauren. This is a true life story and this is how
you start to go from being broke to not being broke and working in a situation that you want.
Here's Lauren. 21 years of age and she wants to be a
shoe designer. She gives her application to every single place in New York City
and everybody turns her down. She doesn't know what to do. She's talking to me
about it and, one day, a friend of her mother's offers her a job
for $65,000 a year as a toy designer for this woman's company. Lauren comes to me
and says, "Suze, $65,000 a year. I have to take this job," and I said. "Lauren, do you
want to be a toy designer?" and she said, "No but, Suze, I'm being a waitress right now.
I'm doing things I don't want to do. The shoe places haven't answered me yet.
This is $65,000 a year." I said, "Lauren, I am asking you not to take this job. If
there was ever a time in your life to stick by what you want to become, now is
the time. Now is not the time for you to work for money. Now is the time for you
to work for something that you love and you want to be for the rest of your life."
She stuck by that. She turned it down. She didn't talk to me for almost two
months after that, but what happened was she got a job in a shoe company in New
York City for under $30,000 a year. And she says to me, "Alright, after taxes
after everything in New York City, can you tell me, Suze Orman, how do you expect
for me to make it?" I said, "Well Lauren, we'll get to that in one second but here are the rules of
this game: if this is a company that you want to develop a career with, which it is, this is what you need to do.
They want you to be there at 8:00? Get there at 7. You're supposed to leave at 5?
Stay until 8 or 9. Come in on Saturday's. You come in and work and do
everything that they ask you and everything that they don't ask you and
you are not to ask them for a pay raise. This is not about money. This is about
you establishing yourself to this company as the greatest worker they have
ever seen bar none.
We can fool ourselves all we want between needs and want.
We can play the psychological word game between the difference between a need
and a want. But, if you don't have an eight-month emergency fund, if you aren't
fully funding your retirement account, if you have credit card debt, if you're
behind on payments, if your student loan is in deferment or even in default,
you better get serious with your life and you know what it need is. You need to
buy food at a grocery store for you to eat. You do not need to go to a
restaurant. You need gasoline in your car possibly to get to work.
You don't need gasoline in your car to go skiing. So you can fool yourself all
you want, but, in the end, the only person that you are hurting is you. So if you
don't have money, you should only buy needs. You have to buy needs because you
need it. If you just give up your wants, you'd be amazed how your life turns around.
That's it for today's 7 Super Tips with Suze Orman. Remember you can
listen to this in a podcast format. It's called Super U Podcast. It's available
on iTunes and Spotify. My hope is that today's 7 Super Tips help unlock and
unleash your inner superpower. I'm your host, Erik Qualman, reminding all of us, until
next time: It's not what we take from the world, it's what we leave behind.
When you say, "You got really bright," like the light or just what I was saying, "this is so bright?"
Do we know who sings that song?
I don't know. I think... Is it John Denver?
I'm your host, Eric Qualman, reminding all of you, until next time: It's what we take take from the world