Pushkin. Susie Orman, the myth, the legend. The woman has been around pretty much my entire life, popping up everywhere as in money Guru. She was hosted The Suzie Orman Show on CNBC for over a decade and was one of the most recurring guests on Oprah Winfrey's network shows, which I can't overstate how incredible that is. Susie was everywhere and still is, from podcasts to magazines to mainstream cable news, giving people advice on what they should do
with their money. That level of expertise in this field really intimidates me. I thought, by talking to Susie Orman, I'd feel judged and small for my lack of financial knowhow, which is really lacking and is really small. But it turns out that Susie Ormand is not just smart, She's not judgmental at all. She's a super soulful person with a story that completely shocked me. And if I could wish anything for myself and anyone listening to the show, it's that we'd be less afraid to take big swings
in life. And Susie she certainly put fear asides several times to take a couple of gigantic swings. This has started from the bottom, harder and success stories from people like us. To start a conversation, Susie tells me about her childhood in Chicago and eventually making her way to Berkeley, California.
I grew up on the South side of Chicago. I grew up where my mother was the secretary sold avon on the side. My father was always sick, So I did not come from a family who when I was born and whatever, had money. They had it before I was born, and then something legally happened that I still don't understand to this day. They lost everything. So by the time I came around, they had nothing, and my
mother early fifties, was working. No other mothers worked at that time, so I came from that kind of background.
When I went to the University of Illinois.
I had to pay for it myself, so I had to work every day at the Bubbys and Zadies deli during the day and at night at the Red Lion Inn. And I worked till one or two in the morning, and all I cared about was surviving. Never got a grade above a sea I think the entire time I went to the university and What was fascinating is that I really thought that my dream job was being a waitress.
I loved it. So when I ended up as a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery and making four hundred dollars a month, I stayed a waitress from the age really of like twenty, you know, twenty two, all the out twenty nine or thirty.
Yeah, So the Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley, California, you're living there, You've dropped out of college, and you're waiting tables for what about nine years?
Eight nine years, eight nine years.
So it never dawned on me that I would be able to make money, that I was supposed to be anything other than a waitress. That wasn't my ambition. My ambition was to just get by. I didn't even have credit cards then, right, But you know it's a you know, it's I didn't have any money when when something broke down, you know, I don't even know how I paid for it. So I had no ambition.
It is very important to highlight because the Susie Ormond we know today it seems very different from the suits the early to late twenties. Susie Ormond who was content to be a waitress. And it really highlights that ambition, discipline, and all the other sort of ingredients for success aren't necessary things that you are have to be born with. These are things you can you can learn and develop. And I'm curious how you started to develop, how your ambition developed.
Yeah, so what happened was here. It is nineteen seventy nine and the Buttercup Bakery. When I first started, it was on College and Alcatraz College Avenue in Alcatraz was this little tiny place that you couldn't even really sit down. You would come in, get a cup of coffee and whatever, and leave. Because of my ideas and the things I said, why don't we do this? Why don't we do that?
Before you knew it, they owned half the block. And I'm sitting there going, oh great, my ideas have caused these people to become very wealthy and I'm still making four hundred dollars a month. What's wrong with this equation? I thought, I know, I can open up my own restaurant. So I mistakenly called up my mom and I asked her for twenty thousand dollars. And the reason that I say mistakenly justin is my mother didn't have twenty thousand
dollars to their name. My father was now really really ill at this time, and she felt so bad because she couldn't give it to me. And there isn't a mother in this world that doesn't want to help their daughters in particular. And so I went to work the next morning, and a man by the name of Fred Hasbrick, who I've been waiting on for all seven years, came in and he said, what's wrong, Sunshine, you don't look happy.
I told him the story. He went back and sat with all the other gentlemen that I've been waiting on for all of these years. They were like my family, This was their stop before they went on to their jobs,
and none of them are wealthy. Fred was a salesman who sold little tiny tape recorders, and so before he left, he came up to the counter and on the count owner he put all this papers and checks, and they were commitments and actual checks totaling fifty thousand dollars, with a little note on a napkin that said, this is for people like you to be paid back in ten years with no interest, if you can. I didn't know
what to do with that. Kind of money. I said to him, are the checks going to bounce like all mind you?
And he said no, Susie.
He said, go down to the local Merrill Lynch office, open up a money market account and will help you from there. Problem was And I said to him, I don't know what Merrill Lynch is, and I don't know what a money market account was. He told me, for those of you who may not know, Merrill Lynch is a brokerage firm where people go and they buy and sell stocks. They have financial advisors, very reputable, truthfully, and a money market account is what was coming along that
were replacing savings accounts. So I was to put that money in a money market account until they could help me. I walked into Merrill Lynch. I was met by Randy, who was the broker of the day. He met all the new people that came in. He had me sign paperwork of blank papers. I didn't even know what I was signing, and he said, how would you like to make it quick? Hundred dollars a week, and I said,
of course. I left. And what I didn't know is that Randy filled out that paperwork to make it look like I was a very sophisticated investor with a lot of money, and I could speculate and started to invest all fifty thousand dollars in what's called the options market, the most speculative thing you can do with money, buying options because ninety percent of all people who do so lose money. Within three months, all fifty thousand dollars was lost. Now I didn't know what was I going to do.
I needed to pay back these people, even though they, you know, told me I didn't have to. And so I thought, I know I can be a broker. They just make you broker. Got dressed in my red and white striped sants soon pants, tucked into my white cowboy boots with a blue silk shirt, the fanciest outfit I had. I was a sly size six back then. That's the only thing that I wish I could go back to. But that is besides the point. And I went into Merrill Lynch and before I knew it, I was in
the manager's office. His name is Peterson san Severo, and he literally said to me, you know that, in his opinion, women belong barefoot and pregnant. But he would hire me, but in six months he would fire me, and obviously he was hiring me to fill their women's quota because it was affirmative action. Being the Susie Ormond that I am today that I was still back then on some level. I said to him, how much are you going to pay to make me pregnant? And he said fifteen hundred
dollars a month? So it didn't take me long to figure out fifteen hundred a month. Time six was nine thousand dollars.
That's two and a.
Half years at the Buttercup Akery. Almost wow, right to make that kind of money, So I said, but fine.
What qualifications did you have at that point to work there? So no, So you literally imagine that you were given the job simply to fill the quota.
You got that, right, boyfriend.
The level then for you to get to to put on a suit and walk into Merrill Lynch with no background in this that's the amazing part. It's almost not even that you got the job, that you had the audacity to walk in there, and how did you think that was going to go?
Well? I didn't care so much.
All.
I didn't care about me. I cared about the people that gave me this money more than myself because Fred he couldn't afford to lose two thousand dollars, and they all had faith in me. And because of them, not my audacity, my desire to honor them, I knew I had to do something, and that wasn't going to be a waitress for the rest of my life to pay fifty thousand dollars back.
More Susie Orman. After this quick break.
Those three months that Randy was trading options, I started to read what he was doing, and watching Wall Street Week on PBS and reading barons and going, oh, I get this, I understand this.
He's going to lose all my money in some level.
By the time those three months passed, justin I knew more than I ever thought I would know. And when they hired me, he told me he was going to fire me. So I didn't really care about that either, But I liked reading about it and studying to take what they called the Series seven exam, which you have to take if you're going to become a stockbroker, which is a seriously hard exam to take, the first time I took it, I flunked it, and I was in
New York. They send you to New York. I was scared to death to go there, but they send you there. And after I flunked it, like I think six people out of hundreds flunked it. I was one of them. And then you have one week to study and try to pass it again. The second time. I passed it. But I'm telling you all this because you have to know. I wasn't a brainchild, and so it was hard work
and determination that that. It was like, all right, this is a test from God to see if I really want this, and I wanted it to pay back other people. So I then passed the exam. Now I'm a stockbroker. Now I'm scared to death because I don't belong with these one hundred and five men, not one other woman in the whole place. I'm still driving a sixty seven Vovo.
They're driving nineteen eighty Mercedes and BMW's. That's when I learned that I needed to create a new truth because I was afraid I didn't you know, I didn't belong there. I didn't come from their world. So I decided to create a truth that when I would be shivering going to work, I could say to hopefully calm me down. And the new truth went like this, I am young, powerful, and successful, producing at least ten thousand dollars a month. I wasn't so young. I was thirty now right powerful.
I was the most powerless thing you ever could have imagined. So I was young, powerful, no successful. I don't think so nothing about it, producing at least ten thousand dollars a month, because I decided if God wanted to give me more than ten thousand dollars a month, because I knew he had to do it for me, because I wasn't going to be able to do it right that
that why limit myself to ten thousand dollars. For six months after I had passed my Series seven and became a broker, I wrote it twenty five times a day. I screamed it in the card out loud twenty five times going to work, and at night, before I went to bed, I looked in the mirror, looking back at myself, and I said it silently. Six months later, all those truths that I said came true.
You were hired to be fired. But yes, within the six months that you felt like you were on the line, you love the firing line. You turned out to be a great stockbroker.
Yes, But while I was working for Merrill Lynch. I myself am gay and have been my entire life, and the head of operations was also a gay man, and we were the only two in this gigantic office that had this in common. So of course we gravitated to each other. And I did not hide it from anybody
that I was gay. I never have. And so he said to me one day, Susie, what happened to you here at Merrill Lynch wasn't quite legal and all the lawsuits went through this man, and he said, you know, you might want to go into my office after I leave today. I've told my secretary you might do. So look at the drawer bottom drawer to your left, and you figure out why I want you to do that.
That's all I can tell you. I go in his office that day, say hi to his secretary, Sit down, open the drawer and there's all these Manila file folders that say on them lose, lose.
Lose, win, win, win, win.
And I start looking at him, and the ones that say win are lawsuits that are being brought against Merrill Lynch, most of them by this one attorney. I call this attorney, and I'm so sorry. I can't even remember his name to this day. Told him my story. He says to me, I'll take this case on contingency. I said, well, what the hell is that? And he said, it's where it's not going to cost you anything if we lose. If we win, I get thirty percent of whatever the settlement is.
So I said, great, we sue Merrill Lynch.
While you're working, Well, you're working.
While I'm working them because justin I knew it would be easy for me to say nothing and just sit there, but would not have been right. What if it was my mom and all her money she put in there and she got a quick and broker. So I decided, no, this wasn't right and I needed to do something about it. And again I felt like it was a sign that the operations manager was telling me this. So because I see Merrill Lynch, they could not fire me. Who knew.
Two years later, when the suit came to court, a new manager came in and he looked at everything and he said, Susie, this is ridiculous. We're set. We're going to say this with you. And they gave me enough money to pay back all the people that let me money plus eighteen percent interest, and so I was able to do that, and the rest is kind of history.
Now, the original reason you were lunch to fifty thousand was to open up a restaurant of your own. By that point, was that still a desire of yours? No?
Because I loved what I was learning. I loved that Every Tuesday there would be a sales meeting at one o'clock in California. The market closed at one, and I would be there and they would be, you know, they would be telling you what they wanted you to buy and sell, and I was understanding it all right. So I was always honest with what I knew and what I didn't know. And because I knew I didn't know, I was open to learning from people who really did know.
And over time I started to be one of those people.
The way you are describing yourself is the antithesis of the way we imagine powerful wealthy folks to We don't expect powerful multi folks to admit when they don't know something. Is that solid advice? Did not admit when you don't know something just to continue to.
No, it's solid advice, because you know why, when you stand in your truth, everybody can feel it when you tell a lie. They can feel that as well. But they don't want to believe that you're lying, but they know something isn't quite right. What makes you truly powerful in life is that every word that comes out of your mouth is the truth. Because there is a law of money that I realized years ago, which is is
power attracts money and powerlessness repels it. It's people that hire you, it's people that give you a pay raise. So people are attracted to power. They can feel it in you. What renders you the most powerful is when you stand in your truth. What renders you the most powerless are two things. Number One, when you stand in a lie, when what you tell people is a lie. And also another form of a lie when it comes
to money is debt. When you have debt, I'm not talking about car loan debt, mortgage debt, or student loan debt. When you have credit card debt, you are standing in a lie because you are spending money. You don't even have to impress people in most cases that you don't
even know or like. Now, obviously there are exceptions to that rule because of medical expenses and things like that, but the majority of debt that people have on their credit cards, going out to eat, buying clothes, going on vacations, doing all kinds of things like that, And that is a lie because you don't have the money to pay for it. So debt is bondage. Debt is a lie in most cases. So the most the thing that renders you the most powerful is standing in your truth.
Where do Susan ormand get all that courage from? She talks about it when we come back.
I loved that I was a lesbian and it was not easy to be a lesbian in the sixties. Imagine going to high school, you know, from like you know, sixty four to sixty nine, or well sixty five to sixty nine, and also in grammar school when I already knew that I was a lesbian, and you know, there weren't gay rates rights back then. You know, none of this really happened. It happened started to happen in nineteen sixty nine. Really, But I always told everybody I was gay.
Where did you get that courage from?
I got that courage because I didn't know better. I think, you know, it wasn't like at first, obviously, when I first started to realize it that I went around telling everybody. But when I went to college, I went to a gay liberation meeting there because I knew it, and I realized that gay men were very different than lesbians. And that's when I decided, I have to do something about this.
We need to break off from gay men. And so with my friends, I started the Gay Women's House in Champagne, Illinois, and the University of Illinois arranged all these talks for me, and I would go to Paxton, Illinois and all these places that were so behind the times and talk about it and nobody ever rejected me or treated me poorly. And then at Merrill Lynch, when I told everybody I
was gay, right, they didn't care. I mean, when somebody had a birthday, they would have these women's strippers come in, and they thought I would enjoy that, you know, and I was just like whatever, But you know, justin even when I got my first big contract for my book that I got not the you know, my first book was You've earned it, don't lose it. The second book
is what gave me a you know, big contract. It was eight hundred thousand dollars and I thought, who's going to pay me eight hundred thousand dollars to somebody who doesn't even know how to write. So I went into Chip Gibson, who was president of Crown Publishing at the time, and I said, Chip, I can't take this kind of money without you knowing two things about me. Number One, I don't know how to write, and he said, oh great, find me a writer who knows that they don't know
how to write. And number two, I'm a lesbian and he said, well, tell me something I don't know.
Why did you tell him that?
Because if I was on interviews and asked if I was gay, I was going to I wasn't going to lie.
It seems like so many of the ingredients for your success were they're early from your standing in your truth, like knowing who you were, not being afraid of who you were, not being afraid to acknowledge what you don't know, And there certainly must have been some underlying level of ambition, even if it was dormant. Why do you think why do you think it took until thirty, which is still
relatively young, but rather than twenty. Why do you think it took until thirty for these sorts of ingredients to start coming together to create a level of financial success.
Well, because I loved my life as a waitress. The person that I admired the most in life was a woman by the name of Helen. Helen had red hair and a beehive on top of her head and smoked a cigarette, was probably sixty five or seventy, and had worked her entire life at the Buttercup restaurant, you know, the Buttercup Bakery. And I loved her and I wanted to be like her. She was my role model because she was happy and she was excited to go home to her kids or her grandkids or whatever. And I
didn't look at it like I wanted money. I looked at it like I love what I do. Helen loves what she does, and look how happy she is. Yeah, so I didn't, That was my truth. Yeah, Yeah, I didn't. I didn't have anybody to inspire me to want to be more than that.
Yeah, you start your You start your group in nineteen eighty seven. Yeah, she's Ormand's financial group. Tell me about why you started that.
I started it because after Merrill Lynch, I then was hired by Prudential Based Securities as a vice president of investments for them. They paid me a lot of money to do so, and I became known as the nation's expert. While I work there in an investment called single premium whole life, very different than the whole life insurance that most financial advisors sell today or insurance agents sell today.
And Prudential Base did not like that I was putting people in single premium whole life policies that they themselves did not sell. They wanted me to sell maybe the Prudential one, but at the time I liked equitables or I forget which one, and so I needed to start my own firm so that I could do what was right for people and put them in the best policy possible. And you know, so that's what I did. So I
started my own firm in nineteen eighty seven. So I then decided people would pay me what they thought my services were worth. That is how I charged them, and that's kind of how that firm started. If you are in the financial industry and you put money in front of people, you're in big trouble. That's why for the teen years that I did the Susie Orman Show on CNBC, I ended every show with there's only one thing that I want you to remember when it comes to your money,
and that's people first, then money, then things. All right, So if you always put people first, if you always put their needs in front of your needs, you will always be a financial advisor that other people want to work with, especially if you do the right things with their money. And so to this day, I still do that, Susie.
You're seventy one and a half. Now you're doing the half Earlier someone throwing the half seventy one and a half.
I always celebrate my half birthdays.
I love it. I love it. You're seventy one and a half. The world is quite different from nineteen eighty. Yeah, what advice would you give young women now? Taking it two things in consideration, what advice would you give young women that you would say worked for you in nineteen eighty and what advice would you give? What advice do you think has to be modified in twenty twenty two or is there or is there if there is such a thing.
Now, I don't think there is such a thing of modifying anything, because the truth is everlasting, justin what's true is true. Truth doesn't really change. So what I would tell a twenty two year old, no, matter how you identify yourself is there is no excuse big enough to keep you from being who you are meant to be. When you are in a situation, you know what's true
and you know what's not. You know, if you're in a relationship and it's not good for you, you know what's true and what you need to do about it. You know, if you are pulling out your credit card to buy something that you can only pay the minimum payment due when that bill comes in, you know that is a lie. You know it's the truth when you have an eight to twelve month emergency fund and when you put something on your credit card, you can pay it off in full at the end of the month.
Susie, your a real inspiration. You're a real soulful human being, and you've done incredible work. And thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.
Thank you so much, Susie, anytime, talk to you soon.
Bye bye the Great Susie or Man. She completely eliminated any empocess syndrome I had with that Meri Lynch story. It's the most gangster thing I've ever heard on the show. I think taking that level of confidence with you in your day to day life is going to make stretching out of your comfort zone so much easier. The Start from the Bottom is produced by David Jah, edited by Keishaw Williams, Engineered by Ben Holliday, Booked by Laura Morgan
with production help from Lea Rose. The show is executive produced by Jacob Goldstein, who's not all up in the videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme music's by Ben Holliday and David Jaw featuring Anthony Aggs and Savannah Joe Lack. Listen to Start from the Bottom. Wherever you get your podcasts and if you want ad free episodes available one week early sign up for Pushkin Plus. Check out Pushkin dot fm or the Apple show page for more information.
If you like your show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. I'm justin Richmond.