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