Speaker 1: Oh iba fam, It's time for another Hola back Monday.
Speaker 1: This week we're featuring a mega entrepreneur. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: my friend. I just saw her the other day, Lauren Mailman.
Speaker 1: Lauren has advised and invested in over forty startups and
Speaker 1: her portfolio represents over five billion in market capitalization. Lauren
Speaker 1: is that chick. Okay, she's gonna talk about everything you
Speaker 1: need to know about investing. And like I said, I
Speaker 1: just saw her, so I don't believe in coincidences. Okay,
Speaker 1: give it a listen.
Speaker 2: Hey, hey, hey, we're black. We're back. We're brown.
Speaker 1: Ambition ambition, ambition, ambition. We're extra brown today. Hey, Mandram,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 3: Hi, beautiful, I'm doing pretty good.
Speaker 4: How are you?
Speaker 2: I'm good. I'm good.
Speaker 3: And we just popped a couple of extra strength talent
Speaker 3: all so I'm rare and to go.
Speaker 1: We have some extra brown in the STU. I love
Speaker 1: what I say this, dou I feel so cool. We
Speaker 1: have some extra primes to today. Super special because she's
Speaker 1: like super impressive, but she's also my frian friend. Let's
Speaker 1: welcome Lauren and Melman.
Speaker 2: To the studio. Welcome Lauren.
Speaker 1: She's a change agent, committed to diversity, innovation, equity, and inclusion.
Speaker 1: She's an award winning marketer, prolific investor, advisor, entrepreneur, and
Speaker 1: board member with a multi health hyphen it career spanning
Speaker 1: over fifteen years. She's advised invested in over forty starters
Speaker 1: in her portfolio represents over five billion in market cap.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: She's the founder and the CEO of LMB Group, a
Speaker 1: strategic marketing and advisory company partnering with brands like CoverGirl.
Speaker 1: She also started straight Up and Successful women focused community
Speaker 1: and professional development firm. She discovers and sees this hidden
Speaker 1: profitable value across retail CpG lifestyle brands. Luxury goods, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: YadA is about pioneer stuff. She's basically the bomb dot
Speaker 1: com Okay. Oh, last, but not least. When she was nineteen,
Speaker 1: she became the youngest winery owner girl in the country,
Speaker 1: co founding the internationally recognized Sugar Leaf Vineyards.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, this.
Speaker 4: Is incredible, Lauren.
Speaker 3: I'm exhausted and I don't even is.
Speaker 2: A mama of two beautiful kids on top of.
Speaker 3: Her now I'm dead. I'm not also a bad as
Speaker 3: my mom.
Speaker 2: And she got her mom is so awesome and she
Speaker 2: got a bad as mama.
Speaker 3: And it's self proclaimed. What'd you call yourself a rich
Speaker 3: auntie in this space?
Speaker 4: Oh me?
Speaker 5: I call myself like a dinosaur in this space, an auntie.
Speaker 5: I'm just like the auntie dinosaur because I've been around
Speaker 5: this for a long time. Like Tiffany says, we've known
Speaker 5: each other a long time, so I've been able to see,
Speaker 5: you know, her glow up and you know, the beginning
Speaker 5: of this incredible podcast. But I just feel like I
Speaker 5: feel like a lot of people's auntie in this space
Speaker 5: because I have been around since we were all starting
Speaker 5: and we're still here and now we're all thriving.
Speaker 4: So I'm not new to this. I'm true to this. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well it's such a pleasure for me. This is my
Speaker 3: first time meeting you, and I feel like just from that,
Speaker 3: just from getting to know you a little bit, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: Brown ambition personified. Obviously. Why haven't you we had you
Speaker 3: on before? Well tell everybody, Like, I mean, there's so
Speaker 3: much you have going on, and I feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: seasons come and go as far as like entrepreneurship, So like,
Speaker 3: right now, what are you focusing on? Because I or
Speaker 3: are you going to tell me that you do everything
Speaker 3: perfectly and you can do it all? No, the baby's
Speaker 3: in the vineyard and the venture capital and all that.
Speaker 4: Well, let me decide you. My babies are not babies.
Speaker 5: So first of all, my babies are at the age
Speaker 5: of being like useful. So I know everyone thinks that
Speaker 5: I have like these little babies and it's like, girl,
Speaker 5: how are you doing all this and wrangling like toddlers.
Speaker 5: Luckily I've already gone through that stage. They are well
Speaker 5: potty trained, they can cook, they can my son as
Speaker 5: much as are driving, So fifteen year old son and
Speaker 5: a thirteen year old daughter, and so they keep me busy.
Speaker 4: For sure.
Speaker 5: I'm more like a chauffeur than anything until they can
Speaker 5: take them with all everywhere they need to go.
Speaker 4: So it's a good age for sure.
Speaker 5: And the things I'm working on now as an entrepreneur,
Speaker 5: it's been really interesting. I think I'm in I'm in
Speaker 5: the stage of my life where ran and we're talking
Speaker 5: about this before we went live, where the bar is heightening, right,
Speaker 5: it is raising, and both by design but also by choice,
Speaker 5: because I want to do more and I have found
Speaker 5: ways to do more and I think the epiphany season
Speaker 5: that I'm in right now is that as women, especially
Speaker 5: as founders and entrepreneurs, we try to create a life
Speaker 5: that gives us the license to do the things we love.
Speaker 5: We try to create a life that allows us to
Speaker 5: move in these spaces. So, you know, ten years ago,
Speaker 5: when I wrote my best selling book, The Path We Defined,
Speaker 5: I have this chapter that was so enlightening for everyone,
Speaker 5: and it's entitled, build a life That's serendipitous by design,
Speaker 5: And I just think I'm doing that at that next level.
Speaker 5: So it's like, you know, serendipity is not happenstance. It
Speaker 5: is still strategic and it's by design if you keep
Speaker 5: around good people, good ideas come, good businesses come, good
Speaker 5: investments come right, like one thing kind of begets the other.
Speaker 5: So I think, you know, as women, we spend a
Speaker 5: lot of time trying to create our careers, our lives
Speaker 5: that give us the license to do the things we love.
Speaker 5: And that often means having the ability to do the
Speaker 5: next thing right. So we spent so long talking about
Speaker 5: you know, the next level, the next chapter, next, next, next,
Speaker 5: and next really means move on from one thing and
Speaker 5: replace it with another. And I think I'm in the
Speaker 5: season of accumulation right, and like portfolio building, legacy building,
Speaker 5: where I want to do more, But it doesn't mean.
Speaker 4: To replace something.
Speaker 5: It means to be good enough and have great teams
Speaker 5: and infrastructure and systems that allow you to create a
Speaker 5: portfolio that is an ongoing repertoire of all the things.
Speaker 5: And so it's about building instead of replacing. So the
Speaker 5: season that I'm in right now is about building, bigger, building,
Speaker 5: more building at scale, bigger impact. So it is a
Speaker 5: lot of what I've always done when you ask what
Speaker 5: am I up to the same things, but in the
Speaker 5: season of building for scale, for impact, for global for
Speaker 5: global awareness, which just looks different because I'm not looking
Speaker 5: to replace it. I still want to sustain and maintain
Speaker 5: the things that I've already done well and established, and
Speaker 5: I want to establish something else, right, I want to
Speaker 5: layer on top of it. I want to want to
Speaker 5: make it more complex and more robust, want to.
Speaker 4: Again have that scale.
Speaker 5: And I think we think about scale and businesses, but
Speaker 5: I'm starting to think about scale in my life and
Speaker 5: in my career and in the people that I'm able
Speaker 5: to help and influence and advise and.
Speaker 3: Invest in and I've got a feeling when you say portfolio,
Speaker 3: you ain't talking about index funds like me and the
Speaker 3: basic the basic bs out here still trying to like
Speaker 3: make sure we're investing. I mean, you are an investor
Speaker 3: in businesses, you have your own you have your own
Speaker 3: VC firm, Is that right?
Speaker 5: I do so, I have a family office. I had
Speaker 5: started a VC more than ten years ago. Tend my
Speaker 5: capital partners really early to the game in terms of
Speaker 5: creating founder friendly capital, which was not cool in twenty eleven.
Speaker 5: Two thousand eleven was very much the time of the
Speaker 5: VC and not the time of the founder. So the
Speaker 5: idea of founder friendly capital was like this, humh, like,
Speaker 5: you're either one or the other. You're either on this
Speaker 5: side of the table as the founder or you're on
Speaker 5: this side of the table as the funder and show
Speaker 5: my capital. And my role was to really say, hey, look,
Speaker 5: founders can become funders, and we can be really great
Speaker 5: funders because we know what it's like to be the founder,
Speaker 5: and so we're going to do more than just give
Speaker 5: you money. We're going to give you money, but we're
Speaker 5: going to make sure that you use that money in
Speaker 5: the right way that you stay on the right track,
Speaker 5: that you know the right people, that you're around the
Speaker 5: right networks, because the money enough alone is not enough
Speaker 5: to achieve what you want. And so yes, now I
Speaker 5: have this incredible portfolio that has been just so fun
Speaker 5: and exciting to build because I could have never imagined
Speaker 5: that it would take me to where it has today.
Speaker 5: So now I look back and it's, yes, it's angel investments,
Speaker 5: it's real estate, it's art, it's growth equity investments that
Speaker 5: I've made of later stage into later stage companies. It's
Speaker 5: you know, a year and a half ago, meeting into
Speaker 5: the spack world of special purpose of acquisition companies and
Speaker 5: being a partner investor and athena consumer and helping to
Speaker 5: pay companies public trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 4: So it's been that for me was probably the beginning
Speaker 4: of the build.
Speaker 5: When I talk about build not replace, right, it's like
Speaker 5: it's not you know, stocks for crypto and like moving
Speaker 5: from one to the other.
Speaker 4: It's like, no, how do you create a portfolio that's
Speaker 4: a little bit of everything?
Speaker 5: Right? In my case, I don't do crypto, but just
Speaker 5: as an example, a lot of people are like going
Speaker 5: to the next thing right, we think about a gold rush,
Speaker 5: it's still like being one thing to rush to another.
Speaker 5: It's not building upon what you have to create a
Speaker 5: larger portfolio that can become even more valuable.
Speaker 4: So that's the season I'm in and the lessons.
Speaker 5: That I've learned that continue to kind of dictate the
Speaker 5: steps that I take in my career. But also I'm
Speaker 5: a big believer that proof is in the pudding. So
Speaker 5: like you look at you look at the pudding, and
Speaker 5: it's profitable, and the companies are growing, and there's unicorns
Speaker 5: in there, and there are companies that are getting acquired
Speaker 5: and that are really meaningful and that are changing lives and.
Speaker 4: Making a difference.
Speaker 5: And that's the portfolio I always wanted to have, Right,
Speaker 5: So it's not always going to be the unicorns, it's
Speaker 5: not always going to be the.
Speaker 4: You know, the companies that are just in one sector.
Speaker 5: I've always looked at my life as this medley, and
Speaker 5: I think the world is finally catching up to this idea,
Speaker 5: like this is what innovation looks like, because if we
Speaker 5: stay in one lane, we get stale and stagnant, even
Speaker 5: if we keep researching, right, Like I look at Tip,
Speaker 5: like Tip's been doing budget.
Speaker 4: Okay, budget, but not all budgets are created equal.
Speaker 5: One minute, you budget in for saving money, then you're
Speaker 5: budgeting for doing something big. Then you're budgeting for acquiring
Speaker 5: an asset. Right, Like, not all budgets are the same.
Speaker 5: They have different purposes. And you begin to build that
Speaker 5: portfolio where you want to go, but we all have
Speaker 5: to start somewhere.
Speaker 1: That's a good like segree into like where what did's
Speaker 1: starting look like for you? You know, because I feel like
Speaker 1: you started so young, you know, starting your winery at nineteen,
Speaker 1: but as far as like this where you are now?
Speaker 1: You know, if someone was like, oh my gosh, I
Speaker 1: want to chart the course that Lauren chart and I
Speaker 1: want to create a portfolio for myself, but I have
Speaker 1: no idea where to start. So someone is listening, like
Speaker 1: what does that look like? We're like how what's the
Speaker 1: iteration of? Like Lauren, like we started here and I
Speaker 1: learned this and I did this, Like what did that
Speaker 1: look like?
Speaker 2: Your journey?
Speaker 5: I think the journey is a series of baby steps.
Speaker 5: Like I look at the baby steps I was making
Speaker 5: early on in my career, and they were quick succession
Speaker 5: of baby steps because it was much easier to break
Speaker 5: down the big, lofty goal into these short, achievable goals,
Speaker 5: and in the early days, it was really easy to
Speaker 5: get to those next little milestones, especially when I was
Speaker 5: only focused on that one thing, because I was still
Speaker 5: trying to establish subject matter expertise, right, So you can't
Speaker 5: create the expertise and build the portfolio at the same time.
Speaker 4: I think that's difficult.
Speaker 5: To do, and so I learned a lot of ways
Speaker 5: to achieve what I wanted to achieve, and also realizing
Speaker 5: what had the most leverage, what had the most influence,
Speaker 5: what had the most power. A lot of times people
Speaker 5: think it's money, but then there were times when as
Speaker 5: a founder, I didn't always have the money, but I
Speaker 5: had the network, and the network showed up for me
Speaker 5: in ways that were more powerful and opened more doors
Speaker 5: than the money would have. And I think a lot
Speaker 5: of those experiences were happening to me, which were the
Speaker 5: lessons that I was designed to learn to determine in
Speaker 5: which path to take when conventional traditional methods and books
Speaker 5: and articles would say to go one way. I would
Speaker 5: have these series of aha moments within my baby steps
Speaker 5: of achievement. And I was also able to very quickly
Speaker 5: figure out, Okay, well, if this is not going the
Speaker 5: way that I want it to, I'm I'm not going
Speaker 5: to keep trying something that's clearly not working right because
Speaker 5: if it's a baby step, okay, your step a little bit,
Speaker 5: you go stop, and you're going to go onto something
Speaker 5: else because you're not trying to leap, so you can
Speaker 5: figure out sooner what's not right for you. And I
Speaker 5: think that the accumulation of those lessons for me, combined
Speaker 5: with taking those baby steps, allowed me to be where
Speaker 5: I am now, but also allowed me to a mass
Speaker 5: networks knowledge, access, acumen, and expertise at the same time.
Speaker 5: So I was absorbing information from top sources because in
Speaker 5: that moment, especially ten eleven years ago.
Speaker 4: Women or not, there was not the movement that we
Speaker 4: have now. There was not a spotlight on us.
Speaker 5: I mean to if you remember this, this was not
Speaker 5: how this ecosystem was, and so I think there weren't
Speaker 5: a lot of us that were paying attention to the lessons.
Speaker 5: And I think when you paid attention to the lessons
Speaker 5: and kept learning and kept your intentionality, you saw a
Speaker 5: lot of movement.
Speaker 4: You saw the needle moving in ways.
Speaker 5: That were important, but a lot of us didn't know
Speaker 5: what to do with that, and so I spent a
Speaker 5: lot of time listening as much as I was learning,
Speaker 5: you know, researching, analyzing, but also trying to figure out
Speaker 5: how I someone who was completely self made, who did
Speaker 5: not come up with the soilver spoon in their mouth. Yes,
Speaker 5: my parents worked really hard to give you what they have,
Speaker 5: but I always say like, if I had had siblings,
Speaker 5: I would not have even been raised the same way.
Speaker 5: Like my parents told me all the time, we had
Speaker 5: enough money to we ave money, we had to send
Speaker 5: you to school by yourself. Like there was only one
Speaker 5: there was three or four of you would not have
Speaker 5: been going on the same school. So you know, where
Speaker 5: do we learn these lessons if we don't grow up
Speaker 5: with families that can tell us how it's done, or
Speaker 5: that can usher us through that process. And so for me,
Speaker 5: that's what starting looked like. And I was also really
Speaker 5: grateful to have people in my life in my career
Speaker 5: who gravitated towards me because I was so persistent. So
Speaker 5: my persistence was very off putting to a lot of
Speaker 5: people for a long time.
Speaker 4: It was like, ah, it's.
Speaker 5: Too much, But if you don't ask, you don't get
Speaker 5: and the people who saw me continue.
Speaker 4: To ask were like, Okay, we see you.
Speaker 5: And people started telling me even then, ten eleven years
Speaker 5: ago that they weren't initially going to take my meetings
Speaker 5: for gin Way Capital, but when they saw my emails
Speaker 5: coming in at you know, one, two, three, four o'clock
Speaker 5: in the morning, they were like, okay, she's serious, right,
Speaker 5: I wasn't sitting there scheduling send for seven am. No,
Speaker 5: if I was up in the middle of the night.
Speaker 5: I was up in the middle of the night. But
Speaker 5: that's what people paid attention to. That's what folks noticed.
Speaker 5: It was that consistency, that dedication that allowed me to
Speaker 5: start and allowed me to realize the way in which
Speaker 5: I wanted to build a portfolio or the ways in
Speaker 5: which I wanted to be diversified based upon my experiences,
Speaker 5: but also based upon the opportunities that were coming to me.
Speaker 5: And so some of the greatest opportunities for me as
Speaker 5: an investor, as a founder, as someone in media, as
Speaker 5: a women's advocate came from people saying, hey, look, maybe
Speaker 5: you don't have the expertise, Lauren, but what you do.
Speaker 4: Have is the drive and the persistence. And so if
Speaker 4: we can just teach you these things. We want to
Speaker 4: watch you go. And there was a lot of that.
Speaker 5: There was a lot of people that I just knew
Speaker 5: wanted to see if that energy of Lauren, like how
Speaker 5: long they could sustain that for? And that was exhausting
Speaker 5: because that was the game of proving myself essentially right.
Speaker 4: But that's what's allowed me to build.
Speaker 3: Can we talk about out? I mean, I'm just listening
Speaker 3: in the common theme I'm hearing are things that I
Speaker 3: love to talk about, which is the secret sauce of
Speaker 3: people and relationships and networking. So you mean you early
Speaker 3: in your career, I know you owned a winery, you
Speaker 3: worked in modeling, but eventually someone showed you it was
Speaker 3: possible to become a founder and an investor and an
Speaker 3: angel investor in all of that. And for someone like yourself, who,
Speaker 3: like you said, you haven't grown up surrounded by those
Speaker 3: types of people, how did you because of so many people,
Speaker 3: somebody of us struggled with that, especially as you know,
Speaker 3: minority women getting ourselves in even the same orbit as
Speaker 3: people who can help us think bigger? So how did
Speaker 3: you start putting yourself in those spaces to feel like
Speaker 3: it was possible and then make those connections translate into
Speaker 3: I'm going to enter this new path from myself and
Speaker 3: I'm going to make it happen.
Speaker 4: That's a great question.
Speaker 5: I think when when I really analyzed my career to date,
Speaker 5: it's that my approach is one that most people don't forget,
Speaker 5: either because I am persistent, or because I am outspoken,
Speaker 5: or because they meet me in a room at a
Speaker 5: conference and I walk in and I'm the six foot
Speaker 5: tall black woman and I'm like, well, where did she
Speaker 5: come from?
Speaker 4: But it's always he.
Speaker 3: Seems so calm, but like I'm imagining, like when you
Speaker 3: say your approach, I'm just like, what do you do
Speaker 3: to these people? Intimidates them?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 5: It does intimidate a lot of people, but it also
Speaker 5: intrigues them. And so there was so many times and
Speaker 5: again it was like you've got to be comfortable knowing
Speaker 5: that you're being tested, right, So in those instances, it
Speaker 5: was like, Okay, I want to be in this room,
Speaker 5: but I know why they're inviting me in this room.
Speaker 4: I'm not silly.
Speaker 5: I know why they're asking me if I can show
Speaker 5: up this way or if I'm available to.
Speaker 4: Speak on X Y Z topic.
Speaker 5: But I had to be strategic about what my presence
Speaker 5: in those moments were going to mean to me, not
Speaker 5: what they were going to mean to the audience that
Speaker 5: was inviting me in the room, because for me, that
Speaker 5: was no different than like having your one shot at
Speaker 5: the meeting, right of being invited to conferences and on
Speaker 5: stages to speak because I had been outspoken, because some
Speaker 5: people considered my opinions to be radical, because if it
Speaker 5: was in the corporate sphere, they could bring me in
Speaker 5: to talk about it far easier than someone on the
Speaker 5: inside that wanted to say the same thing.
Speaker 4: Knew they couldn't, right, And so I knew that how
Speaker 4: I showed up.
Speaker 5: In those moments was going to create my reputation, was
Speaker 5: going to create an opinion of me.
Speaker 4: And I do think I was.
Speaker 5: Really thoughtful in that process of what is it that
Speaker 5: I What is it.
Speaker 4: That I want them to leave feeling or knowing about me?
Speaker 5: That's different, right, because what they knew about me was
Speaker 5: the obvious, But what they didn't know about me, what
Speaker 5: was here or what was driving me from here? And
Speaker 5: so that's what I spent and I know some people
Speaker 5: are going to be listening to it, so I was
Speaker 5: touching my head and I was touching my heart in
Speaker 5: terms of they don't know what's in my mind. They
Speaker 5: don't know my ideas. They don't know how I strategize,
Speaker 5: how I analyze.
Speaker 4: They don't know the.
Speaker 5: Intellectual property that I could bring to their companies or
Speaker 5: to their clients or to their projects.
Speaker 4: They don't know how driven I am. They don't know
Speaker 4: the integrity that I come to work with.
Speaker 5: And so when people were able to see that and
Speaker 5: experience that, even if it was in short engagements, those
Speaker 5: same people, many of whom are the ones that would
Speaker 5: circle back and say, it doesn't matter, Lauren, that you
Speaker 5: don't have the resume experience. We trust you, or we
Speaker 5: trust that you're going to figure it out, or we
Speaker 5: trust that you're going to work really hard to figure
Speaker 5: it out because we've been watching you and so for
Speaker 5: a long time. You know, early on in my career,
Speaker 5: I was frustrated that a lot of people would ask
Speaker 5: me to do things and then there wasn't follow up,
Speaker 5: or the follow up would be another invitation to do
Speaker 5: something else again, but not an answer to the feedback
Speaker 5: I was asking for in that exact moment, And I
Speaker 5: realized years later that that was basically my audition for
Speaker 5: if I would be allowed into these rooms, into these circles,
Speaker 5: into these networks. I kept showing up, and I kept
Speaker 5: showing up with a level of consistency that created trust
Speaker 5: that I had no other way to establish with these
Speaker 5: rooms and these groups of people, who are the stakeholders,
Speaker 5: who are the decision makers, who are the leaders of
Speaker 5: tech and venture capital, who are the ones that you know,
Speaker 5: are the ones to watch, the ones to know, the
Speaker 5: ones who can make or break, you know, a major
Speaker 5: career decision or you know, if you go on to
Speaker 5: be the founder to watch or not. And so I
Speaker 5: had to find other ways to establish credibility and trust
Speaker 5: with these people that I also really wanted to learn from,
Speaker 5: and I had to show them that I was going
Speaker 5: to be a good student.
Speaker 1: I guess my question really is is just like if
Speaker 1: someone is like, I feel like you've come so far,
Speaker 1: but it could not have been easy during that time,
Speaker 1: and if you could kind of like, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to investing, how did you learn?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Like, I mean, I know
Speaker 2: it wasn't like mentors, was it sponsors? Was it books?
Speaker 2: Was it podcasts? Like you know, like cauld.
Speaker 1: I remember, like you had a party at your house,
Speaker 1: don't know if it was New Year's or something, and
Speaker 1: we just were talking and you were telling me how, like, girl,
Speaker 1: do you invest in art? And then you went to
Speaker 1: this whole diatribe about like if you do this and
Speaker 1: you can put the art here. And I remember being
Speaker 1: like way long talking about me at a party. But
Speaker 1: you know, like you had such this deep, like deep
Speaker 1: knowledge of like the way art can be used to
Speaker 1: like to grow well, to shield well to you know,
Speaker 1: And I just like, but where did this knowledge come from?
Speaker 2: Like was it you know, did you go to school
Speaker 2: for this?
Speaker 1: You know, like because I know there are people who
Speaker 1: are listening and they're like I want to start, but
Speaker 1: you know, is it a book, is it a class?
Speaker 1: Is it I need to find someone to put me
Speaker 1: under their wing. So like, where did your knowledge, like
Speaker 1: at least the beginning of it really start to come from.
Speaker 5: So so much of my knowledge is acquired through reading
Speaker 5: and asking questions. I've always been so inquisitive, So I've
Speaker 5: been fascinated with my whole life. I've been fascinated with
Speaker 5: how certain cultures and communities grow, create, keep, maintain, pain, share,
Speaker 5: and spread wealth amongst themselves in ways that we don't
Speaker 5: see in our community. And I've lived several places.
Speaker 4: Around the world.
Speaker 5: I've lived in Europe, I've lived in West Africa, I've
Speaker 5: lived in South America. I speak fluent Spanish, I speak French.
Speaker 5: I consider myself to really truly be a global citizen
Speaker 5: in many ways. And I've always had this interesting network
Speaker 5: of you know, I've got folks that are at every
Speaker 5: end of the socioeconomic spectrum. I've got folks that fly coach.
Speaker 5: I got folks that have g fives. I got folks
Speaker 5: I got NetJets.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 5: I've always had this kind of access or network to
Speaker 5: a variety of lifestyles.
Speaker 4: And it didn't matter that I wasn't maybe living all
Speaker 4: of those lifestyles. For whatever reason, I was still being.
Speaker 5: Invited into the room, whether it was because I had
Speaker 5: established trust or credibility, whether I was on a long
Speaker 5: audition and didn't realize it, you know, like, whatever that was,
Speaker 5: I took note. I took note of how those families
Speaker 5: were constructed. I took note of how wealthy family businesses
Speaker 5: were hiring.
Speaker 4: I had asked questions when the time was appropriate.
Speaker 5: I'll never forget. I once asked a wealthy family leader.
Speaker 5: I said, how do you determine like who gets to
Speaker 5: rise in the ranks in the company and if you
Speaker 5: promote the family member and not the family member. They said, well,
Speaker 5: years ago, it used to be the family members were
Speaker 5: the ones that led the business. But you know, now
Speaker 5: we have nepotism rules and this is how it works.
Speaker 5: And we actually require that they go work at competing
Speaker 5: businesses outside of college, like after college in Europe or
Speaker 5: in North America, to go acquire this knowledge to see
Speaker 5: how other companies do it. And they're required to work
Speaker 5: at least two jobs or minimum of two years for
Speaker 5: competitive companies or companies where they can grow their skill
Speaker 5: set before they're even allowed to work for the family business.
Speaker 5: That to me was like, oh, mental note, mental note
Speaker 5: for my children. Should my children be where being in
Speaker 5: the family business right off of the cup? Probably not
Speaker 5: right because what are they going to learn and it
Speaker 5: is going to learn from me on the job versus
Speaker 5: if I'm going to be in media, do they go
Speaker 5: work at a big media company for two years? And
Speaker 5: then if we're going to be an investing do they
Speaker 5: go work at a big VC for two years, even
Speaker 5: if they're just an intern, just to even be a
Speaker 5: fly on the wall to learn process or see people
Speaker 5: move in a different way.
Speaker 4: And then should they come back to meet four years
Speaker 4: after college. And I'd sit and think about it, just
Speaker 4: as one of many examples, and it.
Speaker 5: Was like, hm, that probably makes more sense, right, Like
Speaker 5: go learn out in the world from folks that are
Speaker 5: doing it at this level and then come back to
Speaker 5: mom and keep it on the family.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: But I don't have the framework for doing that because
Speaker 5: I'm an only child, I'm a black woman.
Speaker 4: That has not been done in my family.
Speaker 5: But I'm around people who, for whatever reason, variety of reasons,
Speaker 5: wanted me around them, and I knew that I had
Speaker 5: a purpose to them. But I also knew that there
Speaker 5: was something I could learn and me becoming a good
Speaker 5: student in that regard. Yeah, it was helpful for me
Speaker 5: for my own personal life because it can help me
Speaker 5: figure out. Oh, Jayden and Cloue, this is what I
Speaker 5: want you to do. This is I want you to
Speaker 5: think about internships.
Speaker 4: Even now thirteen and fifteen.
Speaker 5: I talk to them about how I want them to
Speaker 5: build their resume, because what do we see happening in
Speaker 5: other communities. We see kids going off to college already
Speaker 5: worked at three fourteen one hundred companies because the parents
Speaker 5: hooked them up, right, or because they grew up with
Speaker 5: an auntie and uncle who were an executive, and they've
Speaker 5: heard the vernacular and they've had the interest, and the
Speaker 5: parents have been sending them articles, and so they can
Speaker 5: they're qualified to be an intern while in high school, right,
Speaker 5: and they can have a great resume. These are things
Speaker 5: that I say, hmm, let me see how folks that
Speaker 5: are doing things far better than me are doing them,
Speaker 5: and let me see which components of that, what pieces
Speaker 5: of that I want to replicate or emulate in my life,
Speaker 5: in my family and my career, in my construct to
Speaker 5: try to escape achieve something similar.
Speaker 4: The same thing with art.
Speaker 5: I'll never forget when I remember exactly what you're talking
Speaker 5: about with this party at the house, and I had
Speaker 5: just sold some art at Sotheby's for the first time
Speaker 5: ever at auction. It was my first auction experience. I
Speaker 5: didn't know anything about art at auction at that time.
Speaker 5: I knew the value of what we had, and I
Speaker 5: knew that the starting bid was going to be lower
Speaker 5: than its value, but I asked all the right questions
Speaker 5: in terms of how does the auction work, how quick
Speaker 5: does it go? How many dollar values can you rise
Speaker 5: in sixty seconds, ninety seconds? And if you ever listened
Speaker 5: to an art auction, which is maybe a good exercise
Speaker 5: just because for whoever's listening, you'd be wildly surprised at
Speaker 5: how quick prices can double or how quickly something can
Speaker 5: triple or quadruple in a quick bid. And so that
Speaker 5: gave me an opportunity to have information to analyze, to go, oh,
Speaker 5: do I want to take burdenhand, Do I want to
Speaker 5: take the surefire sale, or do I want to risk
Speaker 5: going to auction starting at a lower bid, but having
Speaker 5: working out some probability of my own decision calculus of
Speaker 5: what's best burdenhand and sale and gallery or taking the
Speaker 5: risk of going to auction.
Speaker 4: Ultimately, it was the going to auction.
Speaker 5: But then I learned something at that auction, and I'll
Speaker 5: ever forget this very wealthy family next to me that
Speaker 5: was watching their own art in auction. I had gone
Speaker 5: to the auctions previous just to see how the auctions went,
Speaker 5: because that was part of my decision calculus. I haven't
Speaker 5: seen it auction in action. Let me go see The
Speaker 5: only auction I had seen before this was the car
Speaker 5: auctions because I used to go to those impound those
Speaker 5: tow yard auctions where you can pick up the cars,
Speaker 5: people don't pay their ticket.
Speaker 4: That's the only auction I knew before.
Speaker 5: Okay, you go with the car mechanic and you pick
Speaker 5: up the cars and they make you a new key.
Speaker 4: That was the only auction I knew. So I was like,
Speaker 4: how does this art work?
Speaker 5: So I was going to the auctions to just be
Speaker 5: a flat from the wall, and I watched another very
Speaker 5: wealthy family sell works of art, and I said. I
Speaker 5: ended up talking to them after I said, why are
Speaker 5: you selling so much of this incredible art like all
Speaker 5: at one time? It turned out that they were doing
Speaker 5: it because the family member who owned the art.
Speaker 4: Had just passed and they didn't want to have to
Speaker 4: have all this inheritance tax.
Speaker 5: So they schooled me on the step up and basis
Speaker 5: quote unquote and when to sell and how to sell,
Speaker 5: and so they were like, we have this window and
Speaker 5: we love this art, but we have so much art.
Speaker 5: They did their decision calculus. So I'm like, how come
Speaker 5: our people aren't talking about step up and basis, how
Speaker 5: come our people aren't talking about how to hold these
Speaker 5: assets so that our children can grow up with art
Speaker 5: collections the way that others grow up with art collections.
Speaker 5: I'm not just accumulating these assets to just sit from here,
Speaker 5: and I'm not accumulating these assets to leave my children
Speaker 5: with more work to do. So I've always looked at
Speaker 5: the people who are more accomplished, who are wealthier, to
Speaker 5: know and understand what moves, not that I always should
Speaker 5: be making, but what moves I could be making, because
Speaker 5: I think that for black women, we.
Speaker 4: Don't even know the full extent of ways that.
Speaker 5: We can you had mentioned before make or shield our
Speaker 5: money and our wealth.
Speaker 4: We don't even know the full extent of things that
Speaker 4: are available to us.
Speaker 5: And oftentimes even we have an accountant, the account's not
Speaker 5: telling you because the.
Speaker 4: Accountant was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't need to
Speaker 4: know this, or it doesn't apply to you.
Speaker 5: Like you don't know what's going to apply to me, right,
Speaker 5: And so that's why I've always been inquisitive, is that
Speaker 5: I never wanted anyone to tell me what knowledge I
Speaker 5: needed to know, and I had enough people tell me
Speaker 5: early on when I started investing. Oh, you don't need this,
Speaker 5: or you don't need to know this. My first investment
Speaker 5: started when I was a single mom. I had two
Speaker 5: kids under two, and I remember people telling me why
Speaker 5: am I investing twenty five fifty thousand dollars in a
Speaker 5: startup when I'm going through a terrible divorce and I
Speaker 5: have kids to feed and diapers and I need to
Speaker 5: get Similac and my baby's actually one too similarc One
Speaker 5: took nest the good start almentum and I was on
Speaker 5: the expensive formula, and I was like, you know what,
Speaker 5: let me stop telling people, because I just believed in
Speaker 5: my soul that this was the way for me to
Speaker 5: use my entrepreneurial gifts to identify companies early, to make investments,
Speaker 5: to use my talents to help those companies ultimately grow,
Speaker 5: and to ultimately help my money grow. But I also
Speaker 5: knew that at that point in my life and my career,
Speaker 5: I didn't have people in my orbit wh spoke that language,
Speaker 5: who understood that intention, or who appreciated that kind of
Speaker 5: of hustle. And so that was my first experience in
Speaker 5: life of don't get advice or don't attempt to get
Speaker 5: advice from people that aren't walking in your shoes in
Speaker 5: the most respectful way possible. Because my grandparents loved me,
Speaker 5: they wanted the best for me. But they're, well, baby,
Speaker 5: what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Why are you doing it?
Speaker 1: Don't do it?
Speaker 4: Don't make any sense. Well it makes a lot of
Speaker 4: sense now.
Speaker 5: And so I took a lot of risks where I
Speaker 5: didn't always have people to talk to. I didn't always
Speaker 5: have the answers for a long time. I was shooting
Speaker 5: from the hip for a long time. It was just
Speaker 5: my intuition. I think back to Ruggable Machine, Rashable Rugs.
Speaker 5: I invested in that company in tw twenty sixteen, investor
Speaker 5: number five on the cap table.
Speaker 4: Everyone was like, rugs, they're only five by seven. Well
Speaker 4: now they're nine by twelve, and now they're sold all
Speaker 4: over the world. You know.
Speaker 5: But a lot of it was just me trusting my
Speaker 5: gut because we didn't have these kinds of podcasting conversations,
Speaker 5: and we didn't have you know, women like us that
Speaker 5: we're at this level where we can have these conversations
Speaker 5: about art. And so I was like, let me just
Speaker 5: do it by myself, and I hope I'm making the
Speaker 5: right decision.
Speaker 3: When it comes to hearing all these different perspectives and
Speaker 3: here's what our path was, and here's why we're doing something.
Speaker 3: It sounds like you also have a really healthy understanding
Speaker 3: of the fact that you don't have to take everyone's
Speaker 3: path as Bible like as you need to emulate it.
Speaker 3: And I think that's where so many people get overwhelmed
Speaker 3: and they start to get off course and out of
Speaker 3: center with themselves and their own goals when they absorb
Speaker 3: so much insight from other people and they don't know
Speaker 3: how to filter that through their values, their dreams or goals.
Speaker 3: So can you talk a little bit about how all
Speaker 3: this information you have been able to discern what fits
Speaker 3: for you, like what works for you? And what advice
Speaker 3: do you have for people who are maybe hearing you
Speaker 3: talk about some things and thinking like, how do I
Speaker 3: decide if that makes sense for me?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think determining what is right for you, your personal
Speaker 5: decision calculus of the risks that you feel comfortable taking,
Speaker 5: based upon how long you can live in the unknown.
Speaker 5: And I think the blessing, the blessing in the curse
Speaker 5: of being a founder is that you really know how
Speaker 5: to live in the unknown.
Speaker 4: Right. I remember when COVID happened, everyone was like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, I'm not going to get a paycheck, and
Speaker 4: I was like, I've.
Speaker 5: Never had a weekly paycheck in my life, So you know,
Speaker 5: in that moment, it was like, oh, there's the blessing.
Speaker 4: Like I don't know what.
Speaker 5: It's like to have that consistency there, and so it
Speaker 5: feels just the same for me.
Speaker 4: But it's also that we have goals.
Speaker 5: We see what people are doing, and a lot of
Speaker 5: us are sitting back now going I want to be
Speaker 5: an investor.
Speaker 4: I wanted this. I wanted that.
Speaker 5: And recently somebody said to me, what do I what's
Speaker 5: the first investment I make if I want to.
Speaker 4: Invest in tech startups? And I asked them a series
Speaker 4: of questions and the questions.
Speaker 5: Were along the lines up. This is not the whole list,
Speaker 5: but some of them. How much of a nest egg
Speaker 5: do you have? Do you have at least six months
Speaker 5: of runway? The money that you're going to that you
Speaker 5: have that you're thinking about investing. Is that the only
Speaker 5: pot of money that you have to make that investment
Speaker 5: or are there more tranches of that same capital?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: So, if you have twenty five k, twenty I wouldn't
Speaker 5: say put twenty five k in one company, right, I'd
Speaker 5: say put it in five companies, even if you have
Speaker 5: a smaller position, just that you diversify your exposure because
Speaker 5: you're not there yet right now.
Speaker 4: When you go to sell, I'd say, at least pay
Speaker 4: yourself back.
Speaker 5: Your principle and one hundred percent. If you've got one
Speaker 5: hundred percent, then go play with the rest. A lot
Speaker 5: of people don't have a good handle on, you know,
Speaker 5: what they're going to save, split, reinvest, what have you.
Speaker 5: And the more I think about it, folks are often
Speaker 5: chasing what they think is the thing for now, and
Speaker 5: we see investors do the same thing. The investors that
Speaker 5: were hot into cannabis all went into crypto. Now all
Speaker 5: the crypto guys are just into blockchain. Now those guys
Speaker 5: are into something else.
Speaker 1: Right GP two there, you know.
Speaker 4: But it's also starting with the capital.
Speaker 5: You have to get to where you want to go
Speaker 5: to build towards where you want to be, and that
Speaker 5: means also baby steps.
Speaker 4: Just like I said at the beginning.
Speaker 5: So things that I started doing when I started growing
Speaker 5: my money years ago, I don't do anymore, and not
Speaker 5: because they're not good for growing my money, but they
Speaker 5: grow my money at a different rate than I now
Speaker 5: have access to other.
Speaker 4: Avenues and investment vehicles to grow my money.
Speaker 5: So I used to buy properties back in the day
Speaker 5: on list pendence pre for closure, and that was how
Speaker 5: I accumulated my money in the beginning was in real estate.
Speaker 5: I would not start out with tech because I didn't
Speaker 5: have a foundation to feel comfortable going into tech in
Speaker 5: the first place. But I felt comfortable going into tech
Speaker 5: knowing that I had the stability of real estate, real
Speaker 5: estate that was income generating real estate that was a
Speaker 5: growing asset. But also knowing that I could put smaller
Speaker 5: dollars into multi family units and rent them out and
Speaker 5: have small mortgages versus trying.
Speaker 4: To come up with money to angel invest in a
Speaker 4: company that I'm not going to see for ten years.
Speaker 5: Right, that's not necessarily an appreciating asset that I could
Speaker 5: sell at any time, whether it's for break even or
Speaker 5: for profit. And so I'm speaking now a lot of
Speaker 5: the times to women, especially around like what are the
Speaker 5: asset classes where you should start with growing your money?
Speaker 4: What are the areas in your life? Even if we can.
Speaker 5: Think about asset classes, but we can also look at
Speaker 5: our expertise and our intellect as an asset. And there
Speaker 5: are so many women that have jobs doing one thing,
Speaker 5: but maybe they have a super skill doing something else
Speaker 5: that they could be having a side hustle making more
Speaker 5: money per hour than they are in a week doing
Speaker 5: their day job, which provides a separate set of security
Speaker 5: or benefits that they need. Right, So, what other assets
Speaker 5: do we have do we possess that we can grow
Speaker 5: to make money, to preserve money, or to shield the
Speaker 5: money that we're attempting to create wealth with.
Speaker 1: Wow, honestly, I never is listening like wait, what, Like
Speaker 1: you think to yourself, how do I get here? And
Speaker 1: you know, like it's I'm glad that you share that
Speaker 1: you were a single mom, that you went through a divorce,
Speaker 1: that you didn't grow up with all of this access,
Speaker 1: and that you persisted your way through. I think that
Speaker 1: that's critically important if people want to stay connected with you, Lauren,
Speaker 1: if they want to learn more about you. Maybe somebody's like,
Speaker 1: well I want to be my mentor Like how do
Speaker 1: they continue like to connect with you and to learn
Speaker 1: what else you're going through, like what else you are
Speaker 1: working on? Like how does someone follow your journey digitally.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I'm pretty active on Instagram and on LinkedIn.
Speaker 4: So I'm at Lauren Mylin on LinkedIn and on Instagram,
Speaker 4: so you can find me there. I'm pretty active on
Speaker 4: both of those sites.
Speaker 5: I do a lot of writing, a lot of opinion sharing,
Speaker 5: a lot of lifestyle hack sharing. But you know, we
Speaker 5: as brown women, as black women, being ambitious is not easy, right,
Speaker 5: Like we say ambition and it's cool, it's awesome that
Speaker 5: we can possess it.
Speaker 4: What do we do with it? Right? What do we
Speaker 4: do with it?
Speaker 5: How do we harness it in our life to achieve
Speaker 5: the outcomes that we want?
Speaker 4: And I'm so passionate about that.
Speaker 5: And I know that if it was not for entrepreneurship
Speaker 5: and my unconventional path, I.
Speaker 4: Wouldn't be here today.
Speaker 5: There's no way that at thirty eight years old, single bomb,
Speaker 5: you know, a single bomb for eight years, remarried, you know,
Speaker 5: fifteen and thirteen year old, I mean, never gotten a diamond,
Speaker 5: tiles of woid till this day. So I'm grateful for
Speaker 5: what entrepreneurship has taught me, and I'm grateful for the
Speaker 5: opportunity to have been around people who have allowed me
Speaker 5: to see frameworks and examples of preserving and creating wealth
Speaker 5: that you know we can we can look at and
Speaker 5: we often see the end result, but do we understand the.
Speaker 4: How or the why? Right we read the articles on
Speaker 4: what the moves that people are making, taking a step further,
Speaker 4: Go research, you know, go research what folks are doing.
Speaker 5: Go research smart way better ways to do something that
Speaker 5: you want to accomplish. Grab a couple of friends, and
Speaker 5: start making investments in companies so that you can diversify
Speaker 5: your exposure.
Speaker 4: Right, Like, you great to need.
Speaker 5: Access, but diversify your exposure is the worst thing that
Speaker 5: can happen. Things are on land and they don't go
Speaker 5: as we'd like them too. But if we've got this portfolio,
Speaker 5: it's okay. You win some, you loose them, You win some,
Speaker 5: you loose them, and it all comes out in the
Speaker 5: wash and you get to hopefully perfectly have a life
Speaker 5: that you love and that you're proud of and that
Speaker 5: is authentic to who you are, and that sets you
Speaker 5: up to live the life that you want to create
Speaker 5: for your family.
Speaker 3: I love that well. I feel like this was for
Speaker 3: many people listening, probably like for me, I feel like
Speaker 3: the kid who's stuck into a college level course was
Speaker 3: like in the remedial class, and it's like this is no,
Speaker 3: but it's so important, I think to be witnessed to
Speaker 3: these kinds of conversations because it's like, Okay, this is possible,
Speaker 3: and my AHA moment is And what I'm so glad is,
Speaker 3: you know, it's about those baby steps and really like,
Speaker 3: in order to get to where you are now, you
Speaker 3: had to first make some money and use wealth building
Speaker 3: strategies basic ones to you know, grow the capital so
Speaker 3: that you could do something with it. And I feel like, Tiff,
Speaker 3: you're at this like rich Aunty phase where this is
Speaker 3: the level where it's like where's the budget, needs to
Speaker 3: VC fund you know what I mean, like angel investing
Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff. So thank you so
Speaker 3: much Lauren for just sharing a little bit of your journey,
Speaker 3: because for me, I'm just like I will always remember
Speaker 3: it's possible because I met Lauren.
Speaker 4: It's possible. It is so possible, and I want to
Speaker 4: help you achieve whatever dreams you've got to.
Speaker 5: We'll talk offline and make that happen anyway that I
Speaker 5: can be helpful.
Speaker 1: Well, ba fam Hopefully your mind is blown like ours
Speaker 1: is and you can take you to listen and yeah,
Speaker 1: be able have va QA at the end of the week.
Speaker 1: You have questions you have maybe you want to be
Speaker 1: on the podcast because you're dope and amazing. Certainly can
Speaker 1: hit us up at briannivisionpodcast dot com. We are Brand
Speaker 1: and Vision podcast on IG the BA Podcast on Twitter.
Speaker 2: But until next time, y'all, We'll see you soon.
Speaker 1: Oh I got ba fam. Wasn't that such an awesome throwback?
Speaker 1: It's such a fun trip down memory lane. Mm hm, Well,
Speaker 1: make sure to check out Brown Ambition every Monday, Wednesday
Speaker 1: and Friday. That's Looless, Miacherless and their nas Oh my
Speaker 1: god on my lingual.
Speaker 2: We'll see you next walks. You see you on Wednesday. Bye,