Welcome, Welcome, guys. What's help was pop? And is your girl amadat La And you're listening to exactly Amada A production of iHeart I once again want to thank you guys so much for tuning in, for always being there, for hitting me up on Instagram all my social media platforms to be like yo, I love the show. I love what you're doing. I really really enjoy getting all this great feedback because everything I do, I do it for y'all. By the way, as usual, I always remind
you don't forget to give us those five stars. Today I've had met and today's guest, Hia or Not more energy than I do, and I love it. I can already tell personalities. I'm about to ask for her sign and everything. I had the opportunity of talking to her a little bit before officially introducing her to the podcast, and I just loved it. So women ding ding ding ding Ding. Today we're talking about being self made, self made. Okay,
all those empowered strong women out there, this is your show. Today. We're talking to Nelli Galan, a financial success and women empowerment.
Queen Gango because you know we both t Ko Latino Market. You know, I used to be president of Telemundo. I was a station manager, and I worked my way up and I became the first Latina president of Telemundo. And then I realized all these women were calling me and saying, how did you do that? Did you go to Harvard? I go no. I started from the bottom, like an assistant, like an intern, And and I had really luckily, I had really learned a lot about money. I lived beneath
my means, I saved my money. I am that I taught women don't buy shoes by buildings.
Obviously, you're a Latina media mogul, right, and and I love the fact that you empower other women. You're an advocate for being independent. I also think it's so important to really have the mindset that we have. In my case, and I'm sure yours as well. I came from poverty. It took me a long time right to understand the importance of being financially educated and understanding the power of money and how you can flip it and how you can lose it, and how you can build up to it,
all those great things. But they don't teach us anything about finances in school, and a lot of minorities.
It's like speaking about money is like a dirty thing.
Briefly, give me a sum up of Like, how was it growing up? Do you come from money?
I'm Cuban. I moved. We moved here when I was five. My parents were broke. We lost everything. We came with the shirt on our backs and my parents like, I mean, I had to I had to make money too for the family. And I always tell everybody that I sold Avon.
Oh my god, the Avon chicks out there, you know, they everywhere, Like I got the lotion in the perfume with that I love.
I live.
Okay.
I didn't know anything about money. I just knew that my parents were broke and I was lucky because I would. I worked for a lot of rich people, and I asked a lot of questions. I realized, oh am, I these people are not doing what my pa are doing. Like I thought it was so important to work for other people only and get a salary and all that.
And I realized, if you don't have a side hustle, if you don't start thinking like an entrepreneur, if you don't start thinking about how to make money, put the money away and then invest the money one of my bosses said to me, when you grow up, you got to like live beneath your meetings and buy property so that you make money while you sleep. And I thought,
it's gino. I don't know what he's talking about. And it's like, we don't know that the money you make and the money you might save isn't going to take you to the rest of your life if we don't start that process, even like in the gig economy that you sort of like if you drive an uber, like so many immigrants now they're coming from Venezuela and all these countries. They drive an uber and you put that money away and you invest that money on the bus and Benthana, You're not gonna have money.
You're my type of friend. Okay, period. But okay, but there's a lot of women, there's a lot of guys that are like, yeah, but I don't I don't think I can do it. The word debts, the word debt has become a fear full word. You have to somewhat get yourself in good debt. Can you talk about your experience with debt? Were you scared that you were you scared to get in debt? Were you scared to start. How did you start financially?
I think that the first thing you got to do is be very grounded and wanted. You have to draw it, you have to say it. In order to manifest big things. You have to declare what you want. And then you have to sacrifice a little bit. Come on, people think sacrifice is a bad word. It's just like you gotta sacrifice a little something for a period of time to get on the road to your goals. So medical says, you got to save money. And the way you save money is by any means necessary. Like I was talking
to Alex, your producer. Sometimes you can't live in New York City, in la in Chicago. Sometimes you have to move to other places, emerging cities. He just moved to North Carolina. You gotta live beneath your means and save money and have two years of your salary saved.
And that sounds mod gosh, Lord, two years of my salary is safe.
Well, you got to do it. And how you do it is because you only need to save for a period of time to have that. Once you have that nest egg, your life begins because that's the money that's going to make you reach.
When you'll say, wait, two years of your salary saved. Do you mean saved or invested?
No? No, no, I say saved. You can't invest till you have two years because you need one year for an emergency for you. Now, what you can do with that money is put it in like a treasury bill or in a savings that's making you money. But you got to first accumulate two years for canton say. After that, you have many decisions. You can say, I want to start a little business. I mean not everybody's an entrepreneur. I want to invest in my friend who's a genius
in their startup. I want to go and buy myself a franchise, which I don't know why more women and minorities don't buy franchisees. Why do we have to start everything from scratch When there's a million franchises and make you rich. You can decide what to do, like you're building something. You're sacrificing to have a pot of money, and then you begin and sometimes in order to do that, you got to move first to a cheaper place. If you're single, you gotta have more roommates. Maybe you're not
buying Starbucks every day. You got to sacrifice for a short period of time in order to be think like a rich person. You have a pot of money now to decide what are you going to do next? And that doesn't mean that part of the money is sitting at home under your mattress. As I said, it could be making interest, but you have to save it.
Way on me, how you already know that I already fucked up because I've invested in a couple of properties. I have a couple of properties in the Dominican Republic I do. I have a lot of Airbnbs and I also have tenants and it's worked for me. But right now, if you were to tell me, oh, two years meha, I mean I'm ana listen. If I said, I mean, what.
Do you had two years? You don't realize it if you put all these down payments down. This is why I say you have to have a plan. Me did you just make way more money than we did? And I go no, But when we were all young, you bought a Jaguar and went on a trip to Europe that was very expensive, and I bought a building. If you have a clear vision for your life, you thay not.
When I was twenty years old, I went with my girlfriends on my twentieth birthday to color me mine and I made a plaque and I said to everybody, let's do what we think we want our life to be. And I did like a little just like a muceramic, and then it went in my parents like garage. And twenty years later they sent me boxes because they were
retiring and moving. And I opened the box and I look at the thing and my son goes, Mom, you're a manifestor because the house that I live in now in California I just moved is exactly the house I pictured it. Like everything I put, the line entertainment, my company, I put all these things that were in my imagination subconsciously. Then you sacrifice because you're like, I'm not going to do that because I want this bigger thing, and you have to things like that.
We all know about the Lemundo right, there's only like two major networks I think for Latino communities like Telemundo. How did Telemundo influence you? How did it make you grow as a woman as a professional? What did you gain and learn from being in Telemundo?
Well, first of all, I was like the like basically these two. I was a reporter for CBS as a young girl. I got a job early on and I interviewed these two guys that bought the first station, Channel forty seven in New York, and they said to me, you should come and work for us. And I was like, I don't want to be in Spanish TV. I want to be at CBS, And he goes, are you stupid?
Do you not know the Latino market is going to be the biggest thing in the world and that if you're our first employee, you're gonna be You're gonna do really, really, really well. And I quit my job as a young reporter at and I went to work for what is now Telemundo, but it was like one station at that time. So for me, I feel like Telemundo taught me, with other people's money, how to run a business from the
bottom up. Like a lot of people that you know, like they might be afraid to go work for a startup, but that startup is going to be the next AI.
But then what about if it's not, Then do you lose all your money because there's a gamble.
Realistically, you don't lose because you learn how to be how to run a business from the bottom up, and then somebody else grabs you. And sometimes to be entrepreneurial and do things, it takes three or four or five or six times to fail, but then you hit it big. You know, when I worked at Channel forty seven, they sold the station. I didn't think I was going to end up. I didn't think it was going to be Telemundo.
I started a little business, and for four years, I made no money, but I did odd jobs and I did a lot of jobs, and I stayed the course. And I stayed the course, and I this company, little company that I started to launch channels abroad. I ended up launching HBO, ESPN, Fox, all these channels in Latin America. My company finally hit big, and then Telemundo hired me back because Sony had bought Telemundo and they were my client.
What So, my journey has been very slow and steady, and I have failed so many times, but in the end, I won because you're learning as you go and you figure it out.
You went from that to you know, real estate investments and all these other things. Where do you think your passion stands at this moment?
Well, first of all, I went from Telemundo. We sold it to NBC and then I became a producer, so I became Tyler Perry Latina. I produced like seven hundred shows, including The Swan, which was a big hit in English for Fox. So I produced shows in English and Spanish. And then I at the same time, I started investing in real estate. And then finally, when I had made a bunch of money, my kid was I had a little kid at the time. Now he's twenty three, and
he was not doing well in school. And he goes, Mom, you never finished school and you've done really well. And I said, you know, one of the things I regretted that I didn't finish school, so I went back to school.
Oh my god, I I regret that too. I regret that too. I really want to go back to school at some point in my life, just to get it out of my system because I okay, well, I I've already done some other kolsa and mim. But by the way, this is a little info of me that I never really made public like that, but I guess. But anyways,
I went to college for business administration. I really wanted to go for funeral services because I've always been Okay, no, Sam, I'm talking to that and that's a really good business. People die every day. And then I ended up not finishing because my mom was like, Oh, my mom's very spiritual, She's like want So I didn't do it, but I still kind of feel like I want to be able to give her that damn paper. It's a piece of paper, but I know it would make her so proud.
Let me just tell you it's never too late to go back to school. My son is the number one skateboarder p rod and he he's about to retire as a skateboarder down you know, in a couple of years, and I tell him, you should go back to school. It's never too late. And school isn't always just about a papelito. It's about having time to think what am I going to do next? What can I do that
is like different? And what came up for me a mana when I was in school is I focused on the I went to psychology school and I focused on the psychology of money in multicultural communities. Because I was I kept thinking to myself, why is it that we all don't like, we don't get wealthy? Why are we not wealth building, and I work for all these amedicanos and they figure it out.
And we don't.
And I went deeply into that and that's when I decided to write this book.
Yes, I definitely want to talk about that. Let's let's get into your book. Okay, self Made. Just from talking to you, you're so motivational, inspirational, You're so driven. You have such a great charisma and energy. I can First of all, I want my own copy because i'm reading I love the title self Made. First, before you get into the details, I want to talk about what inspired you and why do you feel motivated to help others get their shit together, get financially stable and rich.
First of all, I have been very not just blessed. I have also worked very hard to be a wealthy woman. And I think that when you know so, I don't know that that so. And I feel like no. I was on Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump. And when I was on Celebrity Apprentice, all these minority women were writing to me. They go, how did you learn to speak truth to power? Because he would yell at me and I would let him have it, And I go, are you kidding me? I said, because I have my own money.
Because I've worked for a lot of very rich people, I've found my voice. But you know what, when you have your own money, you don't put up with a bad man. You don't put up with a bad you don't put up with a badmi, you don't put up with a bad co Okay. So I realized that I that because so many people said to me, you're like a hidden figure. How did you do it? And I had not gone to Harvard or anything. I went to
school later. So I wanted to write a book to say and the book I love what I wrote here because I said the book is called Self Made, Becoming Empowered, self reliant and rich in every way because also as a Latina, it's not just about money. It's rich in every way, rich in family, rich in spirituality, rich in love. Better money is important because there's mission and there's money. And in a way, money has to come first. You have to get your life settled financially in order to
really do big things. You gets in a podcast, book, you'll get to make a movie book. I can do it because I made money first, and I'm still young, and I made money by sacrificing and investing the money, and I wanted to tell other women how to do it.
I come from an immigrant household, you know where My mother didn't know till this day, I don't know. No English didn't get to you know. She she wanted to go to college. She never got to, like she had Muto, right. I feel that, to a certain extent, is me trying to accomplish those things for her and be like Thoto sacrifices that you did to get to this country to make sure that I was, you know, gonna have a good future. You did it. I did it. I'm here,
I'm learning, I am breaking generational curses. I am, you know, moving forward. However, I know more obviously about finances that my mother did. That's why she couldn't teach me. I know that my girls are only one and this is a very long journey still. Yeah, but I want to know how did you or have you or how do you talk to your children about money? How do you teach them? How do you start them off? Go madre.
If you have a little sister, if you have a little brother, whoever is listening, and you have someone that's young, at what age should you start teaching them about what finances are.
Well, I'll tell you how I did it. And my son is very good because I've taught him. But here's you don't teach. Here's what you do. You make it fun. Like what I would do with my kid is I go to we go to eat breakfast, and I go, Lucas, what do you think this place makes? Like let's do the math, like what do you think they're making? Let's let's each try and figure it out. And so I would say, like what does it cost us to eat here? Okay, like twenty bucks a person that was before the pandemic.
And then I go, okay, how many people are sitting here? Let's do the math. Like we'd make it a game, or we go bowling, and I'd say, Lucas, do you think this bowling alley makes a lot of money? Like in other words, I made it like a fun game. Okay. We'd go to like toys r us and I would say, what do you think is a top selling toy in this in this thing? And and and and he go, I think it's this, and I go, I think it's
I go, let's look it up. And so we started always talking about money like a game, game, a fighter do you know what I mean. So then like now he's like, Mom, we can't spend money on that. We should be doing this because it became such a conversation
all our lives that now it's normal. I normalized it, right, And I think that when we were growing up, we just knew our parents didn't have money, but they didn't say like, and we knew that they didn't turn the lights on because you know, I always say Latinos are green before everybody else because our parents didn't want to waste money. But we never really had a conversation about it. And I think that that's what I do with my son. And if you met my son, you wouldn't believe it
because he is so good at all this stuff. Because we always talked about it. It was like it was and we still do. Like when I told him listen, he was in University of Miami and I said to him, sorry, you have to move to LA And he goes, why and I go, because I'm not paying for your apartment in Miami when right now we have three buildings empty in LA and you could live there. And plus you've got to learn all the real estate that I own.
I'm throwing you into into the lines. Then you got to give me one year of your life to learn my business.
I agree, I agree. And and something else that I'm getting into to I'll talk about it later, but you know, I'm finding out about getting a trust and all these things. Oh, nobody talks about, Like my mom doesn't even know what the hell that is. I'm if you don't know who's
supposed to teach me. So I'm over here. And I feel that you should use Instagram and YouTube obviously as a teaching and educational platform as well, because there's so many amazing people on these platforms teaching you and giving a free game. I never even knew what a trust was. And now that I own several properties and I have certain things, I'm a single mother, it's okay. I have
to be able to prepare for that day. I think that's something else that Latino community doesn't like to talk about, is death, death, finances, taboo topics. Let's talk about it so that we know what's going on. Se get mommy passes away. You don't know what I have, you don't know how to run it, you don't know nothing.
I was a single mom too, and in a way it's a blessing because then you get to mold your kids the way that you want and and it's very important that they see that you're always learning and that you care about learning and that it's okay. Also that everything is moving so fast in the world that we also like right now, AI is going to be the next big thing and we have to learn all that. So I think if your kids see you wanting to
just learn all the time. And in a way, my son has helped me because like my son said to me, Mom, you don't know what you're doing with social media. You need my help. Like if you make it so that you're building a family trust that everybody helps each other in the family to become wealthier and make money and you're learning all these things together, it's it's what we never had.
Yeah. But at the end of the day as well, you know something that I've studied and seen myself many other communities. Let me just put it as a whole, communities where wealth is built into the family as a whold, we're not in competition with one another. You know, we do businesses together, we buy properties together. As a family, we do things so financially we're able to create a name magdon You know, you create a powerhousehold. But we're in a generation. We're in a time lapse where people
are competing against each other. You're competing against your brother and your sister instead of looking at them as partners that you can rely on. And you're dividing your wealth because everybody independently wants to have so many things. Okay, everything starts to fall apart. I think that that's I think that is important for the Latino community to learn that in order for us to create wealth is how can we leverage off each other? Why are you gonna
go pay somebody else? And said, this one is a constructor and you can build together.
I mean the idea of like which we don't even think about, is like generational wealth. I mean, you know, it's funny. Yes, I just went to I just went to to Spain because I was trying to get my dual citizenship because my grandparents are Spanish. And I said, and I was there, and I go, how do these people live? I mean, Europe is expensive, man, it's worse than here. But what I realize is that these people have generational wealth. Like you get a young person in
Spain and their great grandfather left them the house. We don't have that.
Yet, say about so, like we're new to this.
Country, right, so if we don't think how to work together and how to build, you know, like so that your kids get to inherit something and their kids get to inherit something. We don't even think like that yet. But that's how we have to think, right.
I agree. I think it's also important to talk about it. I love seeing a strong, powerful, educated, ambitious woman because I see I see a little bit of me obviously, and you and other things that I want to learn. I think it's also important that we don't talk about it much. Is women Empowerment also includes sisterhood, whether you're not from the same country, whether you may not have
the same background. But if you find another woman just doing amazing, great things, don't be a hating ass bitch and not feel like you can't pass down the info me and Mama, I I am good. Let me pass you some info and help you get up, because you're right, that's we're so caddy with one another. If I know some game, I'm the first one to be like, Mida, do this CALLFUNO.
This is how it works. I don't have a problem sharing a kid. Okay, I think that the best way to find a woman to help you. And I tell young women, I go find a woman that's way older than you. My mentors. Like I'm in my fifties and my mentors are eighty. Okay, because if you come to me and I'm older than you, I mean I've already been there down that bought the T shirt. Yeah, I have more experience experience, so like, come to women that are older than you and like try to be friends.
My mentor, my real estate mentor, is an older Jewish lady who I met years ago when I started inviting her to lunch.
Oh my god, Nelly, Nelly, will you be my mentor? Do you want to go to lunch?
Yeah?
I love girls. Did you see that? You see how easy that was? Don't be scared to just talk to another woman. Don't be scared. It's super simple. Your life can change with one With one conversation, your mind can completely expand, change so many connections. Muchak Nellie O that before before we have Oh my god, I don't want to finish this conversation.
Don't worry. We're going to get together. We live near each other. I think.
We spoke about our children, We spoke about our careers, We spoke about our ambitions, our goals, our dreams, all those great things. What happens to your love life? Do you feel as I talk about it all the time. When you're an independent, strong woman, it's very hard in my eyes to find a man that doesn't see you as competition, who can see you as a partner, who you know all those things? Has it been hard for you? Has it been easy for you? Did you have a partner? How did you go about this?
Listen, I'm going to tell women you can't have everything at once. Hu. I have been in, you know, several long term relationships. I mean, I just broke up with someone that I was with for thirteen years. I'm alone. I am in a place and alone because I finally realized, you know, I didn't want to die without finding real love. And I've had many loves, but you know they don't always last. Exactly what you said. When you're an empowered woman,
you know I have fascy better. I am not. I don't give up, and I believe, I believe it's possible for all of us. It just doesn't happen all at once and that and to me, I wouldn't give up all my empowerment, all my accomplishments, everything that I've accomplished, because I feel very whole and complete, and I think that to find someone that's also whole and complete, you have to feel that way.
I hear you, I hear you. It's been very tough for me.
Fast.
Let's say you can't have your cake and eat it too. I wish that we all could.
I'm going to just speak for myself because I'm older than you. When I was younger, and I was young and dating a lot of people. When I look back now because I've had time to reflect, I dumped a lot of people that were really great men for guys that were a little more dangerous and sex.
And I'll talk about it. Talk about it, ya, mediama at all.
If I had to give advice now, we all don't listen because when our hormones are raging, we make bad choices. I would say, choose a man that you think would be a great father, because in the end, our children are the loves of our lives and you're never going to respect a man and he's not a good father to your kid.
And by the way I asked you you know that personal question because I also know that when you are at peace in your personal life, all those things do also influence the way that you look at life. Ambitions that you have, they also influence in the way that you're able to succeed in your career, whether you're alone and you have that piece, or whether you're with a partner that supports you during this journey, because what you can have is someone in the background. Don't invest in this,
don't do that. I think there's a bad idea. Why are you going to do this? If you're going to have someone that's hating you during your journey of growth, it's best to be alone. And I know it's going to be hard because sometimes you may be in love with this person, you may think that they're great, but these could be the same reasons why you haven't been able to reach your goals in life. Mina Mammy. I want to ask you last but not Liz, Please please
tell us where can we purchase your book? Where can we go? How can we follow you? We want to know more about you.
Okay, so number one at Nellie Glan on Instagram. My book in English is called Self Made and in Spanish it's called Adelante. You can get it on Amazon. And I have a podcast money Maker in English and Mimundo because I did that for all the immigrants. I want all these beautiful immigrants that are coming into America to be able to be onboarded financially. By the way, you have to do my podcast too, because I love you,
but you look at Kitto this seed is. I just want you to know that when you're young and going back to the love thing, because I want women to leave on a good note on the love thing. You know, your hormones are raging. You're young, you're hot. Men like you for your hotness and your looks. But the good news is, as you get older and men have gone through a lot of hell with a lot of women that are taking their money and all this stuff, men
like you. Later in life you have a whole new batchel men that like you because they admire and respect you. And that's what you want your kids to You want your kids to respect and admire you, so they picked good mates.
I love that you said that. Guys, listen today is really hard to do a well you can take home with you because this just such an inspirational conversation of just be ambitious, be driven, you know, don't be afraid to create good sisterhoods. And ask ask a well I learned today, ask a older you know, an older woman who's had more experience and is not going to see you as competition, but it's going to see you as a little sister, and it's willing to guide you into
becoming wealthy, into becoming financially stable, you know. And I think it's important as well. Copy paste. If you see a girl that is also trying to learn her ways into society, into life and you know right from wrong, feel free to give some advice. Nellie, I'm so grateful for.
Because what you've done is amazing. Proud.
Thank you.
As a younger Latina, very proud man.
Likewise, I love having women like yourself. You're such an inspiration. They are all the greater compliments that you've done. And I just want to tell you, guys, thank you so much for being part of Exactly Amada. Follow me on Instagram at amalagra Al and Amada a l And and remember that this has been a production of Iheart's micro Fuda podcast network. For more podcasts from My Heart visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. This is your girl, Amara Negra, and you just heard exactly Amada